Val dArno | Page 3

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," § 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