Val d\'Arno

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VAL D'ARNO

BY

JOHN RUSKIN, M.A.

LECTURE I. NICHOLAS THE PISAN
LECTURE II. JOHN THE PISAN
LECTURE III. SHIELD AND APRON
LECTURE IV. PARTED PER PALE
LECTURE V. PAX VOBISCUM
LECTURE VI. MARBLE COUCHANT
LECTURE VII. MARBLE RAMPANT
LECTURE VIII. FRANCHISE
LECTURE IX. THE TYRRHENE SEA
LECTURE X. FLEUR DE LYS
APPENDIX

LIST OF PLATES.

THE ANCIENT SHORES OF ARNO

I. THE PISAN LATONA
II. NICCOLA PISANO'S PULPIT
III. THE FOUNTAIN OF PERUGIA
IV. NORMAN IMAGERY
V. DOOR OF THE BAPTISTERY. PISA
VI. THE STORY OF ST. JOHN. ADVENT
VII. " " " " " DEPARTURE
VIII. "THE CHARGE TO ADAM" GIOVANNI PISANO
IX. " " " " MODERN ITALIAN
X. THE NATIVITY. GIOVANNI PISANO
XI. " " MODERN ITALIAN
XII. THE ANNUNCIATION AND VISITATION

VAL D'ARNO

TEN LECTURES

ON

THE TUSCAN ART DIRECTLY ANTECEDENT TO THE FLORENTINE
YEAR OF VICTORIES

GIVEN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD IN MICHAELMAS
TERM, 1873

LECTURE I.

NICHOLAS THE PISAN.

1. On this day, of this month, the 20th of October, six hundred and
twenty-three years ago, the merchants and tradesmen of Florence met
before the church of Santa Croce; marched through the city to the
palace of their Podesta; deposed their Podesta; set over themselves, in
his place, a knight belonging to an inferior city; called him "Captain
of the People;" appointed under him a Signory of twelve Ancients chosen
from among themselves; hung a bell for him on the tower of the Lion,
that he might ring it at need, and gave him the flag of Florence to
bear, half white, and half red.

The first blow struck upon the bell in that tower of the Lion began the
tolling for the passing away of the feudal system, and began the joy-
peal, or carillon, for whatever deserves joy, in that of our modern
liberties, whether of action or of trade.

2. Within the space of our Oxford term from that day, namely, on the
13th of December in the same year, 1250, died, at Ferentino, in Apulia,
the second Frederick, Emperor of Germany; the second also of the two
great lights which in his lifetime, according to Dante's astronomy,
ruled the world,--whose light being quenched, "the land which was once
the residence of courtesy and valour, became the haunt of all men who
are ashamed to be near the good, or to speak to them."

"In sul paese chadice e po riga
solea valore e cortesia trovar si
prima che federigo Bavessi briga,
or puo sicuramente indi passarsi
per qualuuche lasciassi per vergogna
di ragionar co buoni, e appressarsi."
PURO., Cant. 16.

3. The "Paese che Adice e Po riga" is of course Lombardy; and might
have been enough distinguished by the name of its principal river. But
Dante has an especial reason for naming the Adige. It is always by the
valley of the Adige that the power of the German Caesars descends on
Italy; and that battlemented bridge, which doubtless many of you
remember, thrown over the Adige at Verona, was so built that the German
riders might have secure and constant access to the city. In which city
they had their first stronghold in Italy, aided therein by the great
family of the Montecchi, Montacutes, Mont-aigu-s, or Montagues; lords,
so called, of the mountain peaks; in feud with the family of the
Cappelletti,--hatted, or, more properly, scarlet-hatted, persons. And
this accident of nomenclature, assisted by your present familiar
knowledge of the real contests of the sharp mountains with the flat
caps, or petasoi, of cloud, (locally giving Mont Pilate its title,
"Pileatus,") may in many points curiously illustrate for you that
contest of Frederick the Second with Innocent the Fourth, which in the
good of it and the evil alike, represents to all time the war of the
solid, rational, and earthly authority of the King, and State, with the
more or less spectral, hooded, imaginative, and nubiform authority of
the Pope, and Church.

4. It will be desirable also that you clearly learn the material
relations, governing spiritual ones,--as of the Alps to their clouds,
so of the plains to their rivers. And of these rivers, chiefly note the
relation to each other, first, of the Adige and Po; then of the Arno
and Tiber. For the Adige, representing among the rivers and fountains
of waters the channel of Imperial, as the Tiber of the Papal power, and
the strength of the Coronet being founded on the white peaks that look
down upon Hapsburg and Hohenzollern, as that of the Scarlet Cap in the
marsh of the Campagna, "quo tenuis in sicco aqua destituisset," the
study of the policies and arts of the cities founded in the two great
valleys of Lombardy and Tuscany, so far as they were affected by their
bias to the Emperor, or the Church, will arrange itself in your minds
at once in a symmetry as clear as it will be, in our future work,
secure and suggestive.

5. "Tenuis, in sicco." How literally the words apply, as to the native
streams, so to the early states or establishings of the great cities of
the world. And you will find that the policy of the Coronet, with its
tower-building; the policy of the Hood, with its dome-building; and the
policy of the bare brow, with its cot-building,--the three main
associations of human energy to which we owe the architecture of our
earth, (in contradistinction to the dens and caves of it,)--are
curiously and eternally governed by mental laws, corresponding to the
physical ones which are ordained for the rocks, the clouds, and the
streams.

The tower, which many of you so well remember the daily sight of, in
your youth, above the "winding shore" of Thames,--the tower upon the
hill of London; the dome which still rises above its foul and
terrestrial clouds; and the walls of this city itself, which has been
"alma," nourishing in gentleness, to the youth of England, because
defended from external hostility by the difficultly fordable streams of
its plain, may perhaps, in a few years more, be swept away as heaps of
useless stone; but the rocks, and clouds, and rivers of our country
will yet, one day, restore to it the glory of law, of religion, and of
life.

6. I am about to ask you to read the hieroglyphs upon the architecture
of a dead nation, in character greatly resembling our own,--in laws and
in commerce greatly influencing our own;--in arts, still, from her
grave, tutress of the present world. I know that it will be expected of
me to explain the merits of her arts, without reference to the wisdom
of her laws; and to describe the results of both, without investigating
the feelings which regulated either. I cannot do this; but I will at
once end these necessarily vague, and perhaps premature,
generalizations; and only ask you to study some portions of the life
and work of two men, father and son, citizens of the city in which the
energies of this great people were at first concentrated; and to deduce
from that study the conclusions, or follow out the inquiries, which it
may naturally suggest.

7. It is the modern fashion to despise Vasari. He is indeed despicable,
whether as historian or critic,--not least in his admiration of Michael
Angelo; nevertheless, he records the traditions and opinions of his
day; and these you must accurately know, before you can wisely correct.
I will take leave, therefore, to begin to-day with a sentence from
Vasari, which many of you have often heard quoted, but of which,
perhaps, few have enough observed the value.

"Niccola Pisano finding himself under certain Greek sculptors who were
carving the figures and other intaglio ornaments of the cathedral of
Pisa, and of the temple of St. John, and there being, among many spoils
of marbles, brought by the Pisan fleet, [1] some ancient tombs, there
was one among the others most fair, on which was sculptured the hunting
of Meleager." [2]

[Footnote 1: "Armata." The proper word for a land army is "esercito."]

[Footnote 2: Vol. i., p. 60, of Mrs. Foster's English translation, to
which I shall always refer, in order that English students may compare
the context if they wish. But the pieces of English which I give are my
own direct translation, varying, it will be found, often, from Mrs.
Foster's, in minute, but not unimportant, particulars.]

Get the meaning and contents of this passage well into your minds. In
the gist of it, it is true, and very notable.

8. You are in mid thirteenth century; 1200-1300. The Greek nation has
been dead in heart upwards of a thousand years; its religion dead, for
six hundred. But through the wreck of its faith, and death in its
heart, the skill of its hands, and the cunning of its design,
instinctively linger. In the centuries of Christian power, the
Christians are still unable to build but under Greek masters, and by
pillage of Greek shrines; and their best workman is only an apprentice
to the 'Graeculi esurientes' who are carving the temple of St. John.

9. Think of it. Here has the New Testament been declared for 1200
years. No spirit of wisdom, as yet, has been given to its workmen,
except that which has descended from the Mars Hill on which St. Paul
stood contemptuous in pity. No Bezaleel arises, to build new
tabernacles, unless he has been taught by Daedalus.

10. It is necessary, therefore, for you first to know precisely the
manner of these Greek masters in their decayed power; the manner which
Vasari calls, only a sentence before, "That old Greek manner,
blundering, disproportioned,"--Goffa, e sproporzionata.

"Goffa," the very word which Michael Angelo uses of Perugino. Behold,
the Christians despising the Dunce Greeks, as the Infidel modernists
despise the Dunce Christians. [1]

[Footnote 1: Compare "Ariadne Floreutina," Sec. 46.]

11. I sketched for you, when I was last at Pisa, a few arches of the
apse of the duomo, and a small portion of the sculpture of the font of
the Temple of St. John. I have placed them in your rudimentary series,
as examples of "quella vecchia maniera Greca, goffa e sproporzionata."
My own judgment respecting them is,--and it is a judgment founded on
knowledge which you may, if you choose, share with me, after working
with me,--that no architecture on this grand scale, so delicately
skilful in execution, or so daintily disposed in proportion, exists
elsewhere in the world.

12. Is Vasari entirely wrong then?

No, only half wrong, but very fatally half wrong. There are Greeks, and
Greeks.

This head with the inlaid dark iris in its eyes, from the font of St.
John, is as pure as the sculpture of early Greece, a hundred years
before Phidias; and it is so delicate, that having drawn with equal
care this and the best work of the Lombardi at Venice (in the church of
the Miracoli), I found this to possess the more subtle qualities of
design. And yet, in the cloisters of St. John Lateran at Rome, you have
Greek work, if not contemporary with this at Pisa, yet occupying a
parallel place in the history of architecture, which is abortive, and
monstrous beyond the power of any words to describe. Vasari knew no
difference between these two kinds of Greek work. Nor do your modern
architects. To discern the difference between the sculpture of the font
of Pisa, and the spandrils of the Lateran cloister, requires thorough
training of the hand in the finest methods of draughtsmanship; and,
secondly, trained habit of reading the mythology and ethics of design.
I simply assure you of the fact at present; and if you work, you may
have sight and sense of it.

13. There are Greeks, and Greeks, then, in the twelfth century,
differing as much from each other as vice, in all ages, must differ
from virtue. But in Vasari's sight they are alike; in ours, they must
be so, as far as regards our present purpose. As men of a school, they
are to be summed under the general name of 'Byzantines;' their work all
alike showing specific characters of attenuate, rigid, and in many
respects offensively unbeautiful, design, to which Vasari's epithets of
"goffa, e sproporzionata" are naturally applied by all persons trained
only in modern principles. Under masters, then, of this Byzantine race,
Niccola is working at Pisa.

14. Among the spoils brought by her fleets from Greece, is a
sarcophagus, with Meleager's hunt on it, wrought "con bellissima
maniera," says Vasari.

You may see that sarcophagus--any of you who go to Pisa;--touch it,
for it is on a level with your hand; study it, as Niccola studied it,
to your mind's content. Within ten yards of it, stand equally
accessible pieces of Niccola's own work and of his son's. Within fifty
yards of it, stands the Byzantine font of the chapel of St. John. Spend
but the good hours of a single day quietly by these three pieces of
marble, and you may learn more than in general any of you bring home
from an entire tour in Italy. But how many of you ever yet went into
that temple of St. John, knowing what to look for; or spent as much
time in the Campo Santo of Pisa, as you do in Mr. Ryman's shop on a
rainy day?

15. The sarcophagus is not, however, (with Vasari's pardon) in
'bellissima maniera' by any means. But it is in the classical Greek
manner instead of the Byzantine Greek manner. You have to learn the
difference between these.

Now I have explained to you sufficiently, in "Aratra Pentelici," what
the classical Greek manner is. The manner and matter of it being easily
summed--as those of natural and unaffected life;--nude life when nudity
is right and pure; not otherwise. To Niccola, the difference between
this natural Greek school, and the Byzantine, was as the difference
between the bull of Thurium and of Delhi, (see Plate 19 of "Aratra
Pentelici").

Instantly he followed the natural fact, and became the Father of
Sculpture to Italy.

16. Are we, then, also to be strong by following the natural fact?

Yes, assuredly. That is the beginning and end of all my teaching to
you. But the noble natural fact, not the ignoble. You are to study men;
not lice nor entozoa. And you are to study the souls of men in their
bodies, not their bodies only. Mulready's drawings from the nude are
more degraded and bestial than the worst grotesques of the Byzantine or
even the Indian image makers. And your modern mob of English and
American tourists, following a lamplighter through the Vatican to have
pink light thrown for them on the Apollo Belvidere, are farther from
capacity of understanding Greek art, than the parish charity boy,
making a ghost out of a turnip, with a candle inside.

17. Niccola followed the facts, then. He is the Master of Naturalism in
Italy. And I have drawn for you his lioness and cubs, to fix that in
your minds. And beside it, I put the Lion of St. Mark's, that you may
see exactly the kind of change he made. The Lion of St. Mark's (all but
his wings, which have been made and fastened on in the fifteenth
century), is in the central Byzantine manner; a fine decorative piece
of work, descending in true genealogy from the Lion of Nemea, and the
crested skin of him that clothes the head of the Heracles of Camarina.
It has all the richness of Greek Daedal work,--nay, it has fire and
life beyond much Greek Daedal work; but in so far as it is non-natural,
symbolic, decorative, and not like an actual lion, it would be felt by
Niccola Pisano to be imperfect. And instead of this decorative
evangelical preacher of a lion, with staring eyes, and its paw on a
gospel, he carves you a quite brutal and maternal lioness, with
affectionate eyes, and paw set on her cub.

18. Fix that in your minds, then. Niccola Pisano is the Master of
Naturalism in Italy,--therefore elsewhere; of Naturalism, and all that
follows. Generally of truth, common-sense, simplicity, vitality,--and
of all these, with consummate power. A man to be enquired about, is not
he? and will it not make a difference to you whether you look, when you
travel in Italy, in his rough early marbles for this fountain of life,
or only glance at them because your Murray's Guide tells you,--and
think them "odd old things"?

19. We must look for a moment more at one odd old thing--the
sarcophagus which was his tutor. Upon it is carved the hunting of
Meleager; and it was made, or by tradition received as, the tomb of the
mother of the Countess Matilda. I must not let you pass by it without
noticing two curious coincidences in these particulars. First, in the
Greek subject which is given Niccola to read.

The boar, remember, is Diana's enemy. It is sent upon the fields of
Calydon in punishment of the refusal of the Calydonians to sacrifice to
her. 'You have refused _me_,' she said; 'you will not have Artemis
Laphria, Forager Diana, to range in your fields. You shall have the
Forager Swine, instead.'

Meleager and Atalanta are Diana's servants,--servants of all order,
purity, due sequence of season, and time. The orbed architecture of
Tuscany, with its sculptures of the succession of the labouring months,
as compared with the rude vaults and monstrous imaginations of the
past, was again the victory of Meleager.

20. Secondly, take what value there is in the tradition that this
sarcophagus was made the tomb of the mother of the

[Illustration: PLATE I:--THE PISAN LATONA. Angle of Panel of the
Adoration, in Niccola's Pulpit.]

Countess Matilda. If you look to the fourteenth chapter of the third
volume of "Modern Painters," you will find the mythic character of the
Countess Matilda, as Dante employed it explained at some length. She is
the representative of Natural Science as opposed to Theological.

21. Chance coincidences merely, these; but full of teaching for us,
looking back upon the past. To Niccola, the piece of marble was,
primarily, and perhaps exclusively, an example of free chiselling, and
humanity of treatment. What else it was to him,--what the spirits of
Atalanta and Matilda could bestow on him, depended on what he was
himself. Of which Vasari tells you nothing. Not whether he was
gentleman or clown--rich or poor--soldier or sailor. Was he never,
then, in those fleets that brought the marbles back from the ravaged
Isles of Greece? was he at first only a labourer's boy among the
scaffoldings of the Pisan apse,--his apron loaded with dust--and no man
praising him for his speech? Rough he was, assuredly; probably poor;
fierce and energetic, beyond even the strain of Pisa,--just and kind,
beyond the custom of his age, knowing the Judgment and Love of God: and
a workman, with all his soul and strength, all his days.

22. You hear the fame of him as of a sculptor only. It is right that
you should; for every great architect must be a sculptor, and be
renowned, as such, more than by his building. But Niccola Pisano had
even more influence on Italy as a builder than as a carver.

For Italy, at this moment, wanted builders more than carvers; and a
change was passing through her life, of which external edifice was a
necessary sign. I complained of you just now that you never looked at
the Byzantine font in the temple of St. John. The sacristan generally
will not let you. He takes you to a particular spot on the floor, and
sings a musical chord. The chord returns in prolonged echo from the
chapel roof, as if the building were all one sonorous marble bell.

Which indeed it is; and travellers are always greatly amused at being
allowed to ring this bell; but it never occurs to them to ask how it
came to be ringable:--how that tintinnabulate roof differs from the
dome of the Pantheon, expands into the dome of Florence, or declines
into the whispering gallery of St. Paul's.

23. When you have had full satisfaction of the tintinnabulate roof, you
are led by the sacristan and Murray to Niccola Pisano's pulpit; which,
if you have spare time to examine it, you find to have six sides, to be
decorated with tablets of sculpture, like the sides of the sarcophagus,
and to be sustained on seven pillars, three of which are themselves
carried on the backs of as many animals.

All this arrangement had been contrived before Niccola's time, and
executed again and again. But behold! between the capitals of the
pillars and the sculptured tablets there are interposed five cusped
arches, the hollow beneath the pulpit showing dark through their foils.
You have seen such cusped arches before, you think?

Yes, gentlemen, _you_ have; but the Pisans had _not_. And that
intermediate layer of the pulpit means--the change, in a word, for all
Europe, from the Parthenon to Amiens Cathedral. For Italy it means the
rise of her Gothic dynasty; it means the duomo of Milan instead of the
temple of Paestum.

24. I say the duomo of Milan, only to put the change well before your
eyes, because you all know that building so well. The duomo of Milan is
of entirely bad and barbarous Gothic, but the passion of pinnacle and
fret is in it, visibly to you, more than in other buildings. It will
therefore serve to show best what fulness of change this pulpit of
Niccola Pisano signifies.

In it there is no passion of pinnacle nor of fret. You see the edges of
it, instead of being bossed, or knopped, or crocketed, are mouldings of
severest line. No vaulting, no clustered shafts, no traceries, no
fantasies, no perpendicular flights of aspiration. Steady pillars, each
of one polished block; useful capitals, one trefoiled arch between
them; your panel above it; thereon your story of the founder of
Christianity. The whole standing upon beasts, they being indeed the
foundation of us, (which Niccola knew far better than Mr. Darwin);
Eagle to carry your Gospel message--Dove you think it ought to be?

[Illustration: PLATE II.--NICCOLA PISANO'S PULPIT.]

Eagle, says Niccola, and not as symbol of St. John Evangelist only, but
behold! with prey between its claws. For the Gospel, it is Niccola's
opinion, is not altogether a message that you may do whatever you like,
and go straight to heaven. Finally, a slab of marble, cut hollow a
little to bear your book; space enough for you to speak from at ease,--
and here is your first architecture of Gothic Christianity!

25. Indignant thunder of dissent from German doctors,--clamour from
French savants. 'What! and our Treves, and our Strasburg, and our
Poictiers, and our Chartres! And you call _this_ thing the first
architecture of Christianity!' Yes, my French and German friends, very
fine the buildings you have mentioned are; and I am bold to say I love
them far better than you do, for you will run a railroad through any of
them any day that you can turn a penny by it. I thank you also,
Germans, in the name of our Lady of Strasburg, for your bullets and
fire; and I thank you, Frenchmen, in the name of our Lady of Rouen, for
your new haberdashers' shops in the Gothic town;--meanwhile have
patience with me a little, and let me go on.

26. No passion of fretwork, or pinnacle whatever, I said, is in this
Pisan pulpit. The trefoiled arch itself, pleasant as it is, seems
forced a little; out of perfect harmony with the rest (see Plate II.).
Unnatural, perhaps, to Niccola?

Altogether unnatural to him, it is; such a thing never would have come
into his head, unless some one had shown it him. Once got into his
head, he puts it to good use; perhaps even he will let this somebody
else put pinnacles and crockets into his head, or at least, into his
son's, in a little while. Pinnacles,--crockets,--it may be, even
traceries. The ground-tier of the baptistery is round-arched, and has
no pinnacles; but look at its first story. The clerestory of the Duomo
of Pisa has no traceries, but look at the cloister of its Campo Santo.

27. I pause at the words;--for they introduce a new group of thoughts,
which presently we must trace farther.

The Holy Field;--field of burial. The "cave of Machpelah which is
before Mamre," of the Pisans. "There they buried Abraham, and Sarah his
wife; there they buried Isaac, and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried
Leah."

How do you think such a field becomes holy,--how separated, as the
resting-place of loving kindred, from that other field of blood, bought
to bury strangers in?

When you have finally succeeded, by your gospel of mammon, in making
all the men of your own nation not only strangers to each other, but
enemies; and when your every churchyard becomes therefore a field of
the stranger, the kneeling hamlet will vainly drink the chalice of God
in the midst of them. The field will be unholy. No cloisters of noble
history can ever be built round such an one.

28. But the very earth of this at Pisa was holy, as you know. That
"armata" of the Tuscan city brought home not only marble and ivory, for
treasure; but earth,--a fleet's burden,--from the place where there was
healing of soul's leprosy: and their field became a place of holy
tombs, prepared for its office with earth from the land made holy by
one tomb; which all the knighthood of Christendom had been pouring out
its life to win.

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