coming out from a veil of clouds. In short, the tombs, the paintings, the mosaics, and bas-reliefs of the early Christians, show us that the unhappy idea of representing God in a work of Art is a modern invention; that the traditional figure of our Lord was rarely depicted, or even indicated; that the preeminence since assigned to the Virgin was absolutely unknown; that the early Christians began by avoiding images; and, that when they were had recourse to, the first were symbols far more than actual representations. For all these outrages against good taste, for all these melancholy innovations upon the pure faith and simple worship of the early Christians, the Roman Catholic Church has to answer; and yet she pretends to be the exclusive patroness of Art, and the most munificent rewarder of genius.

The eighth letter of M. Coquerel is employed in considering "Protestantism at Rome."

"In general," he tells us, "the official position of the Holy See, with regard to Protestantism, is an affectation of ignorance. It is obliged to consent, in spite of itself, that the Prussian Embassy may have a Protestant chaplain; but it wishes to be considered ignorant of his existence; it does not wish to recognise him under a title that would recall his pastoral functions; and it is, therefore, necessary for him to be named attaché to the Embassy by the King of Prussia, in order that he may have on his passport a laical, and, at the same time, an official qualification. Is not all this puerile? It is because actual Protestantism is presumed to have no existence ! It is supposed to have been vanquished in the past; and one may see, at Rome, three public monuments of its defeats in the Vatican, in Santa Maggiore, and in the church of the Jesuits."

M. Coquerel considers that the brightest era of Roman Catholic Art was anterior to that of the highest artistic excellence. From Giotto to Perugino comprises the palmiest days of painting inspired by the Church of Rome, and the true chiefs of that school are Giotto and the Dominican monk Fra Angelico. But when the revival of letters illuminated the world-when that trio of mighty geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci, Michel Angelo, and Raphael-all three at the same time, engineers, architects, sculptors, and painters of the first class-the Roman Catholic school no longer existed. The arts, emancipated from their fetters, shone with unrivalled lustre, which they owed to the study of antiquity, and to that new impulse of the human spirit, which had for its most glorious and fruitful result, the Reformation. M. Coquerel denies that the Romish Church has ever created a great artist; she has made use of those she found, and if great Popes, like Nicholas V. and Leo X., have protected

16

the Fine Arts in all their splendour, Bernini, and a number of ether indifferent artists have experienced no less support; while these men to accommodate to their own false, puerile, and the Church has often permitted, and sometimes commanded, detestable taste, the most pure and elevated remains of antiquity

and of the greatest masters.

A beautiful and interesting letter is written by M. Coquerel from Pisa, that ancient capital, noble even in decay - that tomb of the Middle Ages-that funeral city where Catholic Art, with its stiff beauty and fervent expression, lies buried for ever. The walls of the vast galleries which surround the cemetery of the Campo Santo, are consecrated by the genius of Orcagna, from whom even Raphael and Michel Angelo deigned to borrow, and did not always improve upon what they had taken. Curious and interesting is the Cathedral of Pisa; and a miracle of Gothic architecture in miniature, her church of Santa Maria della spina; and her museum, one of the most perfect collections of pre-Raphaelite art; but all these pale before the treasures which the Campo Santo presents to the student of the history, the religion, and the Art of the Middle Ages. There, Orcagna was charged to represent the four ends of man, Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell; the first and second of which are undoubtedly by his hand. On these lofty walls we may yet behold, though sometimes half effaced by time, the whole Middle Age, and devout; its knights and noble ladies in the costume of their with its strange manners, barbarous and poetical, shameless time; its monks, its diablerie, and its miracles. Here is M. Coquerel's opinion of the Campo Santo:

"The general impression which we receive from this extensive museum of the dead, is that of a vast and sad whole. We are overwhelmed by a feeling of unmeasured greatness, of unquiet multiplicity, of efforts without result, and of movement without effect. Human life, as conceived by the Middle Age, had nothing collective about it. The popular idea of our times, the idea of solidarity, of progress, of a general development in which all ought to take part, of a future amelioration which all ought to strive to hasten, was unknown to the artists of the Pisan cemetery. Every one for himself in this world, for good or for evil: the hermit in the desert, afterwards in heaven; the voluptuary in his pleasures, afterwards in hell; responsibility reduced to a sad and stern law, the law of penitence and maceration; man the sinner, destined to suffer, and only appeasing his offended God and avoiding eternal punishment, by making a hell of this world. There is no trace of either love or progress in this popular and terrible theology. God is pitiless; Jesus Christ, a judge not implacable, but effended; and the difference between the angels and demons is only that between the policeman who seizes the criminal, and the If God is compassion, if Christi

executioner who tortures him.

anity is love, if moral sanctification is the end, and pardon through Christ the means, that is a religion entirely different from what we behold in Campo Santo, which rather resembles Judaism, except that it adds to it the complications and the terrors of a pitiless dogmatism."

In another part of his Pisan letter, M. Coquerel remarks:

"Nothing, in our opinion, more strongly proves the religious superiority of the painters anterior to the great epoch of art, than the contrast between the last judgment of Orcagna and that of Michel Angelo. The former is much more Catholic, more Christian, more pious; he also rises higher, if painting is only a language intended to speak to the soul. The latter, on the other hand, is much less touching, much more pagan; but, as a painter, he is not the less superior. New proof with what degree of truth the Church of Rome boasts of what she has done for artists. Those whom she has most powerfully inspired are not the greatest. The Renaissance, antiquity, the study of nature, have produced the greatest masters, while the inspiration of Catholicism has failed to do so. Orcagna is a mystical artist, depicting what he believes; Michel Angelo, a genius exempt from all mysticism, who, in the treatment of a given subject, displays a marvellous skill, an incredible power, and that anatomical science which he had acquired in dissecting, thanks to the prior of the convent of San Spirito."

M. Coquerel was delighted with the freshness, purity, and fervour of the works of Fra Angelico; and also with those of Giotto, whom he terms the most biblical of all Italian painters; and, while commenting on the fervent and unaffected piety of the monk of Fiesole, he alludes to a mawkish modern imitation in a note which we are tempted to translate:

"Only, it is precisely when one has witnessed the rare elevation of the piety of the fourteenth century, that one feels most the puerility of Puseyism, which believes it possible to resuscitate, to galvanize, or, in truth, to copy such things. That which is beautiful and striking in Angelico, is the spontaneity, the perfect sincerity, of his feelings and beliefs; that which constitutes his merit is, that he belongs to his age and his country. Of what country and of what age is that contemptible counterfeit, that medieval imitation which they have attempted at Oxford ?"

In his "glance over Italian architecture," M. Coquerel points out, that although there is an architecture which may be considered peculiarly Catholic, its masterpieces are not to be found in Italy, but in Germany, Belgium, France, and England. The cathedral of Milan is not pure Gothic. Santa-Maria della Spina at Pisa, though beautiful, is extremely small; at Rome, one church only, that of Santa-Maria sopra Minerva, represents the true

X. S.-VOL. III.

the Fine Arts in all their splendour, Bernini, and a number of other indifferent artists have experienced no less support; while the Church has often permitted, and sometimes commanded, these men to accommodate to their own false, puerile, and detestable taste, the most pure and elevated remains of antiquity and of the greatest masters.

A beautiful and interesting letter is written by M. Coquerel from Pisa, that ancient capital, noble even in decay — that tomb of the Middle Ages-that funeral city where Catholic Art, with its stiff beauty and fervent expression, lies buried for ever. The walls of the vast galleries which surround the cemetery of the Campo Santo, are consecrated by the genius of Orcagna, from whom even Raphael and Michel Angelo deigned to borrow, and did not always improve upon what they had taken. Curious and interesting is the Cathedral of Pisa; and a miracle of Gothic architecture in miniature, her church of Santa Maria della spina; and her museum, one of the most perfect collections of pre-Raphaelite art; but all these pale before the treasures which the Campo Santo presents to the student of the history, the religion, and the Art of the Middle Ages. There, Orcagna was charged to represent the four ends of man, Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell; the first and second of which are undoubtedly by his hand. On these lofty walls we may yet behold, though sometimes half effaced by time, the whole Middle Age, with its strange manners, barbarous and poetical, shameless and devout; its knights and noble ladies in the costume of their time; its monks, its diablerie, and its miracles. Here is M. Coquerel's opinion of the Campo Santo:

"The general impression which we receive from this extensive museum of the dead, is that of a vast and sad whole. We are overwhelmed by a feeling of unmeasured greatness, of unquiet multiplicity, of efforts without result, and of movement without effect. Human life, as conceived by the Middle Age, had nothing collective about it. The popular idea of our times, the idea of solidarity, of progress, of a general development in which all ought to take part, of a future amelioration which all ought to strive to hasten, was unknown to the artists of the Pisan cemetery. Every one for himself in this world, for good or for evil: the hermit in the desert, afterwards in heaven; the voluptuary in his pleasures, afterwards in hell; responsibility reduced to a sad and stern law, the law of penitence and maceration; man the sinner, destined to suffer, and only appeasing his offended God and avoiding eternal punishment, by making a hell of this world. There is no trace of either love or progress in this popular and terrible theology. God is pitiless; Jesus Christ, a judge not implacable, but offended; and the difference between the angels and demons is only that between the policeman who seizes the criminal, and the executioner who tortures him. If God is compassion, if Christi

anity is love, if moral sanctification is the end, and pardon through Christ the means, that is a religion entirely different from what we behold in Campo Santo, which rather resembles Judaism, except that it adds to it the complications and the terrors of a pitiless dogmatism."

In another part of his Pisan letter, M. Coquerel remarks:

"Nothing, in our opinion, more strongly proves the religious superiority of the painters anterior to the great epoch of art, than the contrast between the last judgment of Orcagna and that of Michel Angelo. The former is much more Catholic, more Christian, more pious; he also rises higher, if painting is only a language intended to speak to the soul. The latter, on the other hand, is much less touching, much more pagan; but, as a painter, he is not the less superior. New proof with what degree of truth the Church of Rome boasts of what she has done for artists. Those whom she has most powerfully inspired are not the greatest. The Renaissance, antiquity, the study of nature, have produced the greatest masters, while the inspiration of Catholicism has failed to do so. Orcagna is a mystical artist, depicting what he believes; Michel Angelo, a genius exempt from all mysticism, who, in the treatment of a given subject, displays a marvellous skill, an incredible power, and that anatomical science which he had acquired in dissecting, thanks to the prior of the convent of San Spirito."

M. Coquerel was delighted with the freshness, purity, and fervour of the works of Fra Angelico; and also with those of Giotto, whom he terms the most biblical of all Italian painters; and, while commenting on the fervent and unaffected piety of the monk of Fiesole, he alludes to a mawkish modern imitation in a note which we are tempted to translate:

"Only, it is precisely when one has witnessed the rare elevation of the piety of the fourteenth century, that one feels most the puerility of Puseyism, which believes it possible to resuscitate, to galvanize, or, in truth, to copy such things. That which is beautiful and striking in Angelico, is the spontaneity, the perfect sincerity, of his feelings and beliefs; that which constitutes his merit is, that he belongs to his age and his country. Of what country and of what age is that contemptible counterfeit, that mediaval imitation which they have attempted at Oxford ?"

In his "glance over Italian architecture," M. Coquerel points out, that although there is an architecture which may be considered peculiarly Catholic, its masterpieces are not to be found in Italy, but in Germany, Belgium, France, and England. The cathedral of Milan is not pure Gothic. Santa-Maria della Spina at Pisa, though beautiful, is extremely small; at Rome, one church only, that of Santa-Maria sopra Minerva, represents the true

N. S.-VOL. III.

с