Val dArno | Page 4

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.