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One thing only," says M. Coquerel, seems in my eyes to be beneath the subject, and that is the head of Christ. It is, indeed, admirably painted, which was most difficult to effect; as seen in front from below, the face is widened and foreshortened, which makes it lose something of its nobleness. These difficulties have been vanquished with consummate art. However, the expression, although bearing the impress of a loving majesty and a glorious serenity, remains far below what it ought to be. To me this is the only fault in the picture-a serious, but, I believe, inevitable defect. Which raises the important question, Does there exist in the whole domain of Art a single head of Christ which fully satisfies the Christian sentiment ?"

In the third letter from Rome there is an admirable criticism of the celebrated "Dispute of the Sacrament," where the whole Roman Catholic system of theology is depicted with unequalled skill and grandeur. The following remarks are equally true and curious :

"It represents not the Romish Church, but the Christian dogma as defined by that Church in the year 1500. The Christian sentiment, the Christian life, love, and duty, the meditations and the struggles of a strict conscience, or of a fervent heart, have scarcely any place in that official theology, in that faith of outward show. Nothing is personal or heartfelt; all is brilliant, but formal and external. The heavens and the earth are only a magnificent theatre where God and the Church appear before the painter and before his admirers. Christ there, is but a king of heaven, and would almost resemble the supreme divinities of paganism, the bloody marks on his hands alone recalling the crucified one. As to our world, no one there lifts an eye towards the open heaven filled with beings superior to humanity. It is towards the Host that every regard is turned; that material God, that Christ physically present, is the true God and the true Saviour for that crowd of fathers, popes, bishops, and faithful servants of the Church."

M. Coquerel afterwards contrasts with this picture of formal, official Christianity, so full of genius and marvellous in execution, the equally celebrated "School of Athens," which sprung directly from the inspiration of Renaissance, and which he considers a far superior work of Art.

An amusing account is given of a public consistory at Rome, and of the capping of three new cardinals, which is thus eloquently summed up :

"The arranged programme is as perfectly filled up as it can possibly be with a great deal of external dignity and elegant gravity. In general, everything ceremonial is performed here with consummate ability, with an exquisite feeling of taste and propriety. The talent of playing a part well appears universal at Rome. I shall recapitu

late the impression which all that solemnity produced upon me, by saying, that these pomps, often ridiculous in their details, are, as a whole, magnificent and imposing. It is not Religion; it is Art. It is a satisfaction given to a people greedy of spectacles. It is an answer to the famous cry, panem et circenses, or rather it is an answer to the second of these demands; for the first, in consequence of the exorbitant luxury, has become somewhat difficult to gratify. But what is there in common between all this and the Gospel? between all this and Jesus of Nazareth, the man of sorrows, who had not where to lay his head? I ask in vain. I have seen beneath the vast roof of the Basilica of St. John Lateran all hung with red silk damask, Pius IX. borne on the shoulders of a dozen men clad in crimson; his cardinals preceded him, their long purple robes sweeping the marble floor. His noble-guard, his Swiss, and a multitude of bishops and priests surrounded him; and he, clothed in ample robes of white silk, a golden mitre on his brow, passed along the central nave, borne to his throne above the kneeling crowd, whom he smiled upon and blessed with with a gentle and venerable air. But what seemed to me infinitely curious, was the occasion and the object of this majestic and tranquil triumph, preferable assuredly to those of the Roman generals. All this was done in honour of St. John Baptist, the rude prophet of Bethabara, the indomitable martyr of Herodias, that terrible preacher, nourished upon wild honey and locusts, clothed with camel's hair, and with a girdle of skin about his loins, who cried in the desert, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?'"

M. Coquerel was present at Rome during the illumination of St. Peter's, and he gives an eloquent description of its magnificence, and of the appearance of its vast interior during the fête of the saint. When the Pope enters the church he is preceded by a splendid cortége, at the head of which are borne three episcopal mitres, and three papal tiaras, which (as our author was informed by a priest) are intended to symbolize that the Pope is bishop and chief of three churches; the Church militant upon earth, the Church purifying in purgatory, and the Church triumphant in heaven. On inquiring how a man who acknowledged God and Christ, and who pretended to have had 269 predecessors, could call himself chief of the Church in heaven, he learned that he did so because he possessed the key of it. The following is the conclusion of the able and interesting letter in which M. Coquerel describes the ceremonies of the fete of St. Peter, the superstition of the "Santissimo Bambino," and a sermon in the Coliseum by Father Joseph, one of the most celebrated preachers in Rome:

"There are three catholicisms: that of external pomp, which is nly vanity; that of superstition, which is the debasement of the

human spirit; that of moral and religious teaching where is preserved a living spark of the light from on high, which is the soul that yet keeps alive that vast body of the Romish Church of which one half is already struck by the chill of death, and the other by its corruption."

One of the most important letters in the volume before us is that devoted to the consideration of the "Exigencies of Art and of Worship;" and, as the principal objects of the work, and the peculiar views of the author are there clearly expressed, we need make no apology for the following lengthy quotation:

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"It would be absurd to deny that the Catholic Church has rendered eminent service to artists, were it only by the call which she has made upon the fertility of their talent. It is evident that, in a purely industrial and material point of view, in what is commonly called demand and consumption, the Romish worship has opened up to those skilled in all the Fine Arts a career of work, of profit, and of reputation. We doubt not that this may often be to the detriment of religion; but it is not that which we wish at present to prove. We think that it is to the great damage of the Arts themselves, and we request permission to insist upon this point, shortly glanced at in our previous letters. It is by facts and proofs, not by abstract reasonings, that we shall support our assertion. And that assertion is shortly as follows: the Catholic religion and Art have opposite interests; conditions of existence and success, which are irreconcileable. which is indispensable to the one, is often hurtful, sometimes fatal, to the other. We have mentioned some pictures of Raphael, of Giotto, and of Fra Angelico, where true and simple religious feelings are expressed with a rare elevation. Other names might be added to that list. But it must be confessed that these are only brilliant exceptions; and, to state our real opinion, in spite of the genius of the greatest masters, Catholic painting, far from serving the cause of piety, far from elevating the soul to things above, has done just the reverse. Art has only given to faith a gross and earthly aliment; it has debased the ideal and materialized heaven; it has compelled believing souls to live in those lower regions which are neither pure nor bright. Of Christianity, the religion of love, of holiness, of simplicity, and of peace, it has formed a catholicism intolerant and cruel, sensual and luxurious. But if artists have thus badly served the Church, has the Church on her part treated them any better? Not only has tradition, in consecrating certain types, in stereotyping incorrect costumes and conventional attitudes, enchained genius, fettered spontaneity, and destroyed independence; but one feels too often, even when face to face with a masterpiece, that what speaks to you from that animated canvass, is not the living emotion of a human soul, the throbbing heart of a man who loves and adores, but the thought of the Church, the tradition of the Church, that is to say, a collective thought, an imposed tradition, an abstraction, a

government, the official style in place of the emotions of the heart. Besides, with the exception of a very small number of chosen souls, the great Catholic painter is, in general, but a Pagan in his actual life. The most licentious manners do not hinder Raphael from giving all the conventional purity, all the necessary piety, to a picture of the Virgin, for which the Fornarina has sat to him as a model. That purity, that piety is a costume in which the Church clothes her Madonnas, and which she prescribes to her artists; -happy imposture, springing from a Pagan Art and the service of a formalist Christianity. But is it impossible to conceive an Art more free and true? Let us first examine the subjects which the Church ceases not to prescribe to painters and sculptors. A great number of these she has stamped with a deplorable vassallage by dint of everywhere reproducing them. The most tragic events, the most touching histories become veritable commonplaces, of which one is weary; we look at without seeing them; we turn from them the wearied attention which nothing awakens. That most mournful of all the scenes of the Gospel-the Crucifixion, has it not lost much of its moving horror by being constantly represented by the pencil and the chisel? What more fatiguing to find without end from church to church, these Annunciations, almost always so cold and conventional? The same subjects treated according to fixed rules, have inevitably made Art a matter of routine, and have rendered invention useless, almost impossible, and sometimes even hazardous for the artist."

M. Coquerel afterwards adverts to the monotony of many pictures of sacred subjects, such as the Madonna; to the absurdity of others, such as the representations of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception; to the indecent, cruel, and ridiculous nature of many of the pictures from the legends of the saints. And he gives examples of all these, showing how unworthy an employment the Church has too often assigned to the rare gifts and brilliant genius of the most celebrated painters. He subsequently refers to the ancient church of San Stefano Rotondo at Rome, the walls of which are covered with about forty paintings by Tempesta and Pomarancio, all representing scenes of martyrdom, in which the most refined and varied cruelties are depicted with a sickening minuteness of detail; and he then demands, and with reason: Is not this a debasement, a sullying of the Arts, to employ them in such disgusting, such harrowing representations? And yet this is the Art prescribed and made use of by the Romish Church for her own purposes. To visit her sanctuaries, to study the marvels of Art with which they are enriched, is at the same time to graduate as an executioner, to become learned in every species of torture, and familiar with every description of punishment possible and impossible; and it must be remembered, that in all

these scenes of martyrdom the fury of the executioners, and the apparatus of torture, are necessarily more conspicuous and impressive, because more easily represented by painting, than the courage and constancy of the victims. What then, we may ask, must inevitably be the consequence of the daily contemplation of such abominable pictures upon the development of character, and the habits and modes of thinking of a people? Necessarily the production of a hardness of heart, an indifference to suffering, and a love of cruelty.

Our author also considers the question, how far the representation of the nude figure ought to be allowed in pictures hung up in churches intended for Christian worship; and he particularly refers to the Sistine Chapel, with its unrivalled frescoes, the figures of which, after being finished by Michel Angelo, were afterwards clothed by Volterra (who thence acquired the name of Bracchettone, or the Breeches-maker), and by Pozzi; and he thus concludes his argument:

"I have brought forward these facts, to which I could easily add a number of others borrowed from various churches in Rome and Italy; but the example of this single chapel is sufficient; that series of corrections so necessary for worship, so ever-to-be-regretted by artists, that manifest impossibility, maugre the efforts of two Popes, to make the richest sanctuary of painting suitable for a place of worship, are proofs of the fact of the real incompatibility which will always exist between the exigences of even the Roman Catholic religion and those of Art. That with which we reproach the Romish Church is, the having tried to bring about an impossible alliance, and while so doing, inflicted serious injury upon the Fine Arts-even while constantly making indecent concessions to them. We do not wish to dwell upon this point, which we might prove by a crowd of decisive examples. One will be sufficient: the grand central portico of the Basilica of St. Peter's is of bronze; modern bas-reliefs, taken from the history of the apostle, are there set among the magnificent ancient arabesques, which comprise a number of mythological scenes: amidst these, at the height of the eye and hand, we observe the story of Ganymede and that of Leda. It is between these representations that the Pope makes his solemn entry into the sanctuary on St. Peter's Day, and at Easter. In truth, a Church so intolerant about her dogmas and authority, might be a little more particular with regard to morality and religion-might send that mythology into a museum, and purify her temples from Pagan fables."

Let us now examine for a little whether the Romish Church treats the finished works of her greatest artists in the way which might be expected from a church which boasts of her enlightened and exclusive patronage of the Fine Arts, and we shall speedily find that nothing is more fatal to a picture than

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