PREFACE THE life of Our Lord is the grandest subject in sacred art, the culminating point of interest of all study in this direction. The present book is the natural outgrowth of the writer's editorial work upon the revision of Mrs. Jameson's "Sacred and Legendary Art." It was a cause of great regret to all admirers of Mrs. Jameson, that upon her death in 1860, the crowning work of her series, which was to take up the history of Our Lord, was still so far from completion. She had made ready no material on the most important of all Christian subjects, Our Lord's Passion; and on various other incidents in his life, her collected notes were quite insufficient. In this lack of material from the favorite author's own hand, and with almost inexhaustible stores of art information made available by recent investigation, there has for some years been a very apparent need for the work which the present writer has attempted. A The book is intended to be a brief descriptive history of the art illustrating the incidents in the historic life of Christ. few connected incidents from the life of St. John the Baptist are also included in due course. All symbolical and allegorical Christ art and the history of Christ portraiture are entirely omitted as lying outside a theme quite sufficient in itself for a single volume. The subjects are arranged not according to the group system which has sometimes been adopted, but in the chronological order approved in accepted Harmonies, Robinson being the leading authority. Great pains are taken to distinguish incidents which have frequently been confused, as the Circumcision and the Presentation, the miracles of feeding the multitude, the two occasions of cleansing the Temple, and the various feast scenes. Thus, it is hoped, the book will be more useful to Bible students. A systematic plan of treatment has been followed throughout, and in connection with every subject a certain number of points are uniformly set forth the relation of the subject to the life and character of Christ; the origin and history of its art treatment; the reasons for its popularity or neglect; its appropriateness for representation; the traditional type of composition and the variations possible to it; and, finally, a descriptive account of the leading representative pictures from the origin of the subject to the present day. All these points are necessarily very briefly touched in order to bring so much material into reasonably small compass. In some few cases (not more than six) where Mrs. Jameson's researches were of unusual interest, quotations are made direct from her notes. Otherwise descriptive quotations have been as a rule avoided, as marring the homogeneity of the text. Usually an author's own words are of more value to the reader than a far more eloquent and authoritative statement by another, simply because the former are in better harmony with the general trend of thought. As art is here treated from the standpoint of illustration, the matter of first importance in describing a picture has been the dramatic motif of the composition. The position of the principal figure, the action and gesture which express his intention, the relation of the subordinate figures to the central thought, these are the points which reveal the artist's interpretation of the narrative. The external history of a picture and its artistic qualities are matters which also claim some attention, so that in the end we may know what the painter meant to say, how he has said it, and what impression his work has made in history. In a book of this sort the illustrations form so important a part that some explanation on this subject may be permitted. With some half dozen exceptions every subject treated is illustrated, and in several cases by two pictures, making a total of 104 illustrations. The selection made for full-page plates is from those sixteen subjects which present the main facts in the history of Jesus the Christ: that he was humbly born in the Bethlehem manger; that he awoke to his sacred mission at the age of twelve; that he was set apart for his work at his baptism; that he went about doing good, gracing the wedding feast, blessing the children, encouraging the fishermen, healing the sick, forgiving sinners, raising from the dead; that he was transfigured before three of his disciples; that he was crucified on Calvary; that he rose again from the dead; and that he finally ascended into heaven. All the minor incidents are illustrated by drawings inserted in the text. As to the particular pictures used, many considerations guided the choice, the primary object being to present an historical set of pictures properly illustrative of the text, and to represent therein the greatest names of the history of art. As there are about fourteen subjects from Christ's life which date from a very early period in the Christian era, examples of all these primitive compositions are reproduced to show the germ from which was evolved the final type composition. Of the great old masters the following will be found well represented: Giotto, Duccio, Raphael, Bonifazio, Titian, Tintoretto. The principal northern engravers also appear: Dürer, Schongauer, Holbein, and Rembrandt. A goodly number of other famous names are included in the list of artists with fairly representative work: Angelico, Borgognone, Carpaccio, Cima, Correggio, Ghirlandajo, Mantegna, Moretto, Murillo, Perugino, Rubens, Van Dyck, Veronese. The modern schools have also their share of attention: preRaphaelitism in Holman Hunt, Sir John Millais, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, and Ford Madox Brown; the German mystic. realism in Fritz von Uhde; while Sir Charles Eastlake, Hofmann, Bida, Doré, Vedder, and others are included. Many times choice was made difficult by an embarrassment of riches, where certain subjects inspired the best sacred work of several artists. For instance, the Descent from the Cross is the best work of Christ art by Fra Angelico, Rubens, and Volterra; the Baptism represents the best order of Christ work in Cima, Bellini, and Verocchio. Conversely, some of the greatest artists must be inadequately represented because they painted so few incidents from Christ's life, and these for mechanical reasons unavailable for our purpose. Thus Da Vinci's only Christ picture, the Last Supper, is unavailable because already preoccupied in the illustrations of "Sacred and Legendary Art," while Veronese's best works, the feast scenes, are too large and crowded to be reproduced successfully on a small scale. In spite of trifling difficulties of this kind, the scheme of illustrations, as completed, is one which the writer trusts will commend itself to the kind consideration of the critic. ESTELLE M. HURLL. New Bedford, MASS., May, 1898. |