Furnishing the Home of Good Taste | Page 4

arts were carried to the same state of perfection as their
greater sisters, for the artists and artisans had the same noble ideal of
beauty and the same unerring taste. We have carved gems and coins,
and wonderful gold ornaments, painted and silver vases, and terra-cotta
figurines, to show what a high point the household arts reached. No
work of the great Grecian painters remains; Apelles, Zeuxis, are only
names to us, but from the wall paintings at Pompeii where late Greek
influence was strongly felt we can imagine how charming the
decorations must have been. Egypt and Greece were the torch bearers
of civilization.

The Renaissance in Italy

The Gothic period has been treated in later chapters on France and
England, as it is its development in these countries which most affects
us, but the Renaissance in Italy stands alone. So great was its strength
that it could supply both inspiration and leaders to other countries, and
still remain preëminent.
It was in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that this great classical
revival in Italy came, this re-birth of a true sense of beauty which is
called the Renaissance. It was an age of wonders, of great artistic
creations, and was one of the great epochs of the world, one of the
turning points of human existence. It covered so large a field and was
so many-sided that only careful study can give a full realization of the
giants of intellect and power who made its greatness, and who left
behind them work that shows the very quintessence of genius.
Italy, stirring slightly in the fourteenth century, woke and rose to her
greatest heights in the fifteenth and sixteenth. The whole people
responded to the new joy of life, the love of learning, the expression of
beauty in all its forms. All notes were struck,--gay, graceful, beautiful,
grave, cruel, dignified, reverential, magnificent, but all with an
exuberance of life and power that gave to Italian art its great place in
human culture. The great names of the period speak for
themselves,--Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli, Titian, Leonardo da
Vinci, Andrea del Sarto, Machiavelli, Benvenuto Cellini, and a host of
others.
The inspiration of the Renaissance came largely from the later Greek
schools of art and literature, Alexandria and Rhodes and the colonies in
Sicily and Italy, rather than ancient Greece. It was also the influence
which came to ancient Rome at its most luxurious period. The
importance of the taking of Alexandria and Constantinople in 1453
must not be underestimated, as it drove scholars from the great libraries
of the East carrying their manuscripts to the nobles and priests and
merchant princes of Italy who thus became enthusiastic patrons of
learning and art. This later type of Greek art lacked the austerity of the
ancient type, and to the models full of joy and beauty and suffering, the
Italians of the Renaissance added the touch of their own temperament

and made them theirs in the glowing, rich and astounding way which
has never been equaled and probably never will be. Perfection of line
and beauty was not sufficient, the soul with its capacity for joy and
suffering, "the soul with all its maladies" as Pater says, had become a
factor. The impression made upon Michelangelo by seeing the Laocoön
disinterred is vividly described by Longfellow--
[Illustration: An exquisite and true Renaissance feeling is shown in the
pilasters.]
[Illustration: The Italian Renaissance is still inspiring the world. In the
two doorways the use of pilasters and frieze, and the pedimented and
round over-door motifs are typical of the period.]
"Long, long years ago, Standing one morning near the Baths of Titus, I
saw the statue of Laocöon Rise from its grave of centuries like a ghost
Writhing in pain; and as it tore away The knotted serpents from its
limbs, I heard, Or seemed to hear, the cry of agony From its white
parted lips. And still I marvel At the three Rhodian artists, by whose
hands This miracle was wrought. Yet he beholds Far nobler works who
looks upon the ruins Of temples in the Forum here in Rome. If God
should give me power in my old age To build for him a temple half as
grand As those were in their glory, I should count My age more
excellent than youth itself, And all that I have hitherto accomplished As
only vanity."
"It was an age productive in personalities, many-sided, centralized,
complete. Artists and philosophers and those whom the action of the
world had elevated and made keen, breathed a common air and caught
light and heat from each other's thoughts. It is this unity of spirit which
gives unity to all the various products of the Renaissance, and it is to
this intimate alliance with mind, this participation in