St Mark's Rest  

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St. Mark's Rest: The Shrine of the Slaves; Being a Guide to the Principal Pictures by Victor Carpaccio in Venice (1884) is a book by John Ruskin.

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• St Mark
• Carpaccio

Full text

ST. MAEK'S BEST

FIRST SUPPLEMENT.

THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES.

BEIXG A GUIDE TO THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES BY

Victor Carpaccio

IN VENICE.

BV

JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D.,

HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AN'D BLADE PROFESSOR OF FINE ART, OXFORD.

GEORGE ALLEN, SUNNTSIDE. ORPINGTON, KENT.

1877.

2i^^

r

i

Hazell, Wataou, and Viuey, Printers, Loudon and Aylesbury. i

PEEF ACE.

The following (too imperfect) accotint of the pictures by Carpaccio in the chapel of San Giorgio de' Schiavoni, is properly a supplement to the part of ^ St Mark's Rest ' in which I propose to examine the religious mind of Venice in the fifteenth century: but I publish these notes prematurely that they may the sooner become helpful, according to their power, to the English traveller.

The second supplement, which is already in the press, will contain the analysis by my fellow-worker, Mr. James Reddie Anderson, of the mythological purport of the pictures here

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IV PREFACE.

described. I separate Mr. Anderson's work thus distinctly from my own, that he may have the entire credit of it; but the reader will soon per- ceive that it is altogether necessary, both for the completion and the proof of my tentative state- ments; and that without the certificate of his scholarly investigation, it would have been lost time to prolong the account of my own con- jectures or impressions.

THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES.

Counting the canals which, entering the city from the open lagoon, must be crossed as you walk from the Piazzetta towards the Public Gardens, the fourth, called the ^ Rio della Pieti ' from the unfinished church of the Pieti, facing the quay before you reach it, will presently, if you go down it in gondola, and pass the Campo di S. Antonin, permit your landing at some steps on the right, in front of a little chapel of indescribable archi- tecture, chiefly made up of foolish spiral flourishes, which yet, by their careful execution and shallow mouldings, are seen to belong to a time of refined temper. Over its door are two bas-reliefs. That of St. Catherine leaning on her wheel seems to me anterior in date to the other, and is very lovely: the second is contemporary with the cinque-cento building, and fine also ; but notable chiefly for the conception of the dragon as a creature formidable rather by its gluttony than its malice, and de- graded beneath the level of all other spirits of

1

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prey; its wings having wasted away into mere paddles or flappers, having in them no faculty or memory of flight ; its throat stretched into the flaccidity of a sack, its tail swollen into a m,ollus- cous encumhrance, like an enormous worm ; and the human head beneath its paw symbolizing therefore the subjection of the human nature to the most brutal desires.

When I came to Venice last year, it was with resolute purpose of finding out everything that could be known of the circumstances which led to the building, and determined the style, of this chapel — or, more strictly, sacred hall — of the School of the Schiavoni. But day after day the task was delayed by some more pressing subject of enquiry ; and, at this moment — resolved at last to put what notes I have on the contents of it at once together, — I find myself reduced to copy, without any additional illustration, the statement of Flaminio Corner.*

" In the year 1451, .some charitable men of the Illyrian or Sclavonic nation, many of whom were sailors, moved by praiseworthy compassion, in that they saw many of their fellow-countrymen, though deserving well of the republic, perish miserably, either of hard life or hunger, nor have enough to pay the expenses of church burial, determined to establish a charitable brotherhood under the invo* cation of the holy martyrs St. Greorge and St.

♦ * Notizie Storiche/ Venice, 1758, p. 167.

THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES. 6

Trifon — brotherhood whose pledge was to succour poor sailors, and others of their nation, in their grave need, whether by reason of sickness or old age, and to conduct their bodies, after death, religiously to burial. Which design was approved by the Council of Ten, in a decree dated 19th May, 1451; after which, they obtained from the pity of the Prior of the Monastery of St. John of Jerusalem, Lorenzo Marcello, the convenience of a hospice in the buildings of the Priory, with rooms such as were needful for their meetings ; and the privilege of building an altar in the church, under the title of St. George and Trifon, the martyrs ; with the adjudgment of an annual rent of four zecchins, two loaves, and a pound of • wax, to be offered to the Priory on the feast of St. George. Such were the beginnings of the brotherhood, called that of St. George of the Sclavonians.

" Towards the close of the fifteenth century, the old hospice being ruinous, the fraternity took counsel to raise from the foundations a more splendid new one, under the title of the Martyr St. George, which was brought to completion, with its facade of marble, in the year 1501."

The hospice granted by the pity of the Prior of St. John cannot have been very magnificent, if this little chapel be indeed much more splendid nor do I yet know what rank the school of the Sclavonians held, ifl power or number^ among the

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other minor fraternities of Venice. The relation of the national character of the Dalmatians and lUyrians, not only to Venice, but to Europe, I find to be of far more deep and curious interest than is commonly supposed ; and in the case of the Venetians, traceable back at least to the days of Herodotus ; for the festival of the Brides of Venice, and its interruption by the Illyrian pirates, is one of the curious proofs of the grounds he had for naming the Venetians as one of the tribes of the Illyrians, and ascribing to them, alone among European races, the same practice as that of the Babylonians with respect to the dowries of their marriageable girls.-

How it chanced that while the entire Riva, —the chief quay in Venice — was named from the Sclavonians, they were yet obliged to build their school on this narrow canal, and prided them- selves on the magnificence of so small a building, I have not ascertained, nor who the builder was; — his style, difiering considerably from all the Venetian practice of the same date, by its refusal at once of purely classic forms, and of elaborate ornament, becoming insipidly grotesque, and chastely barbarous, in a quite unexampled degree, is noticeable enough, if we had not better things to notice within ihe unpretending doorway. Entering, we find ourselves in a little room about the size of the commercial parlour in an old- fashioned English inn ; perhaps an inch or two

¥he shrine of the slaves. 5;

higher in the ceiling, which is of good horizontal beams, narrow and many, for effect of richness ; painted and gilded, also, now tawdrily enough, but always in some such patterns as you see. At tho end of the low room, is an altar, with doors on the right and left of it in the sides of the room, open- ing, 'the one into the sacristy, the other to the stairs leading to the upper chapel. All the rest mere flat wall, wainscoted two-thirds up, eight ' feet or so, leaving a third of the height, say four feet, claiming some kind of decent decora- tion. Which modest demand you perceive to be modestly supplied, by pictures, fitting that measure in height, and running long or short, as suits their subjects : ten altogether, (or with the altar-piece, eleven,) of which ninie ate worth your looking at.

Not as very successfully decorative work, I admit. A modern Parisian upholsterer, or clever Kensington student, would have done for you a far surpassing splendour in a few hours : all that we can say here, at the utmost, is that the place looks comfortable; and, especially, warm, — the pictures having the effect, you will feel presently, of a soft evening sunshine on the walls, or glow from embers on some peaceful hearth, cast up into the room where one sits waiting for dear friends, in twilight.

In a little while, if you still look with general glance, yet patiently, this warmth will resolve

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itself into a kind of chequering, as of an Eastern carpet, or old-fashioned English sampler, of more than usually broken and sudden yariegation ; nay, suggestive here and there of a wayward patchwork, verging into grotesqueness, or even, with some touch of fantasy in masque, into harlequinade, — ^like a tapestry for a Christmas night in a home a thousand years old, to adorn a carol of honoured knights with honouring queens.

Thus far sentient of the piece, for all is indeed here but one, — go forward a little, please, to the second picture on the left, wherein, central, is our now accustomed friend, St. George : stiflF and grotesque, even to humorousness, you will most likely think him, with his dragon in a singularly depressed and, as it were, water-logged, state. Never mind him, or the dragon, just now ; but take a good opera-glass, and look therewith steadily and long at the heads of the two princely riders on the left — the Saracen king and his daughter — he in high white turban, she beyond him in tho crimson cap, high, like a castle tower.

Look well and long. For truly, — and with hard- earned and secure knowledge of such matters, I tell you, through all this round world of ours, searching what the best life of it has done of brightest in all its times and years, — you shall not find another piece quite the like of that little piece of work, for supreme, serene, un-

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assuming, unfaltering sweetness of painter's perfect art. Over every other precious thing, of such things known to me, it rises, in the com- pass of its simplicity ; in being able to gather the perfections of the joy of extreme childhood, and the joy of a hermit's age, with the strength and sunshine of mid-life, all in one.

Which is indeed more or less true of all Car- paccio's work and mind; but in this piece you have it set in close jewellery, radiant, inestimable.

Extreme joy of childhood, I say. No little lady in her first red shoes, — no soldier's baby seeing himself in the glass beneath his father's helmet, is happier in laugh than Carpaccio, as he heaps and heaps his Sultan's snowy crest, and crowns his pretty lady with her ruby tower. No desert hermit is more temperate ; no ambassador on perilous policy more subtle; no preacher of first Christian gospel to a primitive race more earnest or tender. The wonderfullest of Venetian Harlequins this, — ^variegated, like Greryon, to the innermost mind of him — to the lightest gleam of his pencil : " Con piii color, sommesse e sopra- poste ; non fur mai drappi Tartari ne Turchi;" and all for good.

Of course you will not believe me at first, — nor, indeed, till you have unwoven many a fibre of his silk and gold. I had no idea of the make of it myself, till this last year, when I happily had beguiled to Venice one of my best young Oxford

8 THE SHRINE. OF THE SLAVES.

men, eager as myself to understand this historic tapestry, and finer fingered than I, who once getting hold of the fringes of it, has followed them thread by thread through all the gleaming damask, and read it clear ; whose account of the real meaning of all these pictures you shall have presently in full.

But first, we will go round the room to know what is here to read, and take inventory of our treasures ; and I will tell you only the little I made out myself, which is all that, without more hard work than can be got through to-day, you are likely either to see in them, or believe of them.

First, on the left,, then,- St. George and the Dragon — combatant both, to the best of their powers; perfect each in their natures of dragon and knight. JSTo dragon that I know of, pictured among mortal worms ; no knight I know of,, pictured in immortal chivalry, so perfect, each in his kind, as these two. What else is visible on the battle-ground, of living creature, — frog, newt, or viper, — no less admirable in their kind. The small black viper, central, I have painted care- fully for the schools of Oxford as a Natural History study, such as Oxford schools prefer. St. George, for my own satisfaction, also as well as I could, in the year 1872; and hope to get him some day better done, for an example to Sheffield in iron-armour, and several other things.

THE SHKINE OF THE SLAVES. 9

Picture second, the one I first took you to see, IS of the Dragon led into the market-place of the Sultan's capital — submissive : the piece of St. George's spear, which has gone through the back of his head, being used as a bridle: but the creature indeed now little needing one, being otherwise subdued enough ; an entirely collapsed and confounded dragon, all his bones dissolved away ; prince and people gazing as he returns to his dust.

Picture third, on the left side of the. altar.*

The Sultan and his daughter are baptized by St. George.

Triumphant festival of baptism, as at the new birthday of two kingly spirits. Trumpets and shawms high in resounding transport ; yet some- thing of comic no less than rapturous in the piece ; a beautiful scarlet — ^ parrot ' (must we call him ?) conspicuously mumbling at a violet flower under the steps ; him also-r-finding him the scar- letest and mumblipgest parrot I had ever seen — I tried to paint in 1872 for the Natural History Schools of Oxford — perhaps a new species, or extinct old one, to immortalize Carpaccio's name and mine. When all the imaginative arts shall be known no more, perhaps, in Darwinian Museum, this scarlet "Epops Carpaccii" may preserve our fame.

♦ The intermediate oblong on the lateral wall is not Car- paccio's, and is good for nothing.

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But the quaintest thing of all is St. George's own attitude. in baptizing. He has taken a good platterful of water to pour on the Sultan's head. The font of inlaid bronze below is quite flat, and the splash is likely to be spreading. St. George — carefuUest of saints, it seems, in the smallest matters — is holding his mantle back well out of the way. I suppose, really and truly, the instinctive action would have been this, pouring at the sam^ time so that the splash might be towards himself, and not over the Sultan.

With its head close to St. George's foot, you see a sharp-eared white dog, with a red collar round his neck. Not a greyhound, by any means ; but an awkward animal ; stupid-looking, and not much like a saint's dog. Nor is it in the least interested in the baptism, which a saint's dog would certainly have been. The mumbling parrot, and he— what can they have to do with the pro- ceedings ? A very comic picture 1

But this next, — for a piece of sacred art, what can we say of it ?

St. Tryphonius and the Basilisk — was ever so simple a saint, ever so absurd a beast ? as if the absurdity of all heraldic beasts that ever were, had been hatched into one perfect absurdity — prancing there on the steps of the throne, self-satisfied ; — this the beast whose glance is mortal I And little St. Tryphonius, with nothing remarkable about

THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES. 11

him more than is in every good little boy, for all I can see.

And the worst of it is that I don't happen to know anything about St. Tryphonius, whom I mix up a little with Trophonius, and his cave; also I am not very clear about the difference between basilisks and cockatrices; and on the whole find myself reduced, in this picture, to admiring the carpets with the crosses on them hung out of the window, which, if you will examine with opera-glass, you will be convinced, I think, that nobody can do the like of them by rules, at Kensington ; and that if you really care to have carpets as good as they can be, you must get somebody to design them who can draw saints and basilisks too.

Note, also, the group under the loggia which the staircase leads up to, high on the left It is a picture in itself; far more lovely as a com- position than the finest Titian or Veronese, simple and pleasant this as the summer air, and lucent as morning cloud.

On the other side also there are wonderful things, only there's a black figure there that frightens me ; I can't make it out at all ; and would rather go on to the next picture, please.

Stay — I forgot the arabesque on the steps, with the Uving plants taking part in the ornament, like voices chanting here and there a note, as some pretty tune follows its melodious way, on constant

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instruments. Nature and art at play with each other — ^graceful and gay alike, yet all the while conscious that they are at play round the steps of a throne, and under the paws of a basilisk.

The fifth picture is in the darkest recess of all the room ; and of darkest theme, — the Agony in the garden. I have never seen it rightly, nor need you pause at it, unless to note the extreme natural- ness of the action in the sleeping figures — their dresses drawn tight under them as they have turned, restlessly. But the principal figure is hopelessly invisible.

The sixth picture is of the calling of Matthew ; visible, this, in a bright day, and worth waiting for one, to see it in, through any stress of weather.

For, indeed, the Gospel which the publican wrote for us, with its perfect Sermon on the Mount, and mostly more harmonious and gentle fulness, in places where St. Luke is formal, St. John mysterious, and St. Mark brief, — this Gospel, according to St. Matthew, I should think, if we had to choose one out of all the books in the Bible for a prison or desert friend, would be the one we should keep.

And we do not enough think how much that leaving the receipt of custom meant, as a sign of the man's nature, who was to leave us such a notable piece of literature.

Yet observe, Carpaccio does not mean to

THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES. 13

express the fact, or anything like the fact, of the literal calling of Matthew. What the actual cha- racter of the publicans of Jerusalem was at that time, in its general aspect, its admitted degrada- tion, and yet power of believing, with the harlot, what the masters and the mothers in Israel could not believe, it is not his purpose to teach you. This call from receipt of custom, he takes for the symbol of the universal call to leave all that we have, and are doing. "Whosoever forsakeih not all that he hath, cannot be my disciple." For the other calls were easily obeyed in comparison of this. To leave one's often empty nets and nightly toil on sea, and become fishers of men, probably you might find pescatori enough on the Eiva there> within a hundred paces of you, who would take the chance at once, if any gentle person offered it them. James and Jude — Christ's cousins — no thanks to them for following Hiin; their own home conceivably no richer than His. Thomas and Philip, I suppose, somewhat thought- ful persons on spiritual matters, questioning of them long since; going out to hear St. John preach, and to see whom he had seen. But this man, busy iu the place of business — engaged in the interests of foreign governments — thinking no more of an Israelite Messiah than Mr. Goschen, but only of Egyptian finance, and the like — suddenly the Messiah, passing by, says " Follow me.!" and he rises up, gives Him his hand,

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"Yea! to the death;" and absconds from Ijis desk in that electric manner on the instant, leaving his cash-box unlocked, and his books for whoso list to balance ! — a very remarkable kind of person indeed, it seems to me.

Carpaocio takes him, as I said, for a type of such sacrifice at its best. Everything (observe in passing) is here given you of the best. Dragon deadliest — knight purest — parrot scarletest -^ basilisk absurdest — publican publicanest ; — a perfect type of the life spent in taxing one's neighbour, exacting duties, per-centages, profits in general, in a due and virtuous manner.

For do not think Christ would have called a bad or corrupt publican — much less that a bad or corrupt publican would have obeyed the call. Your modern English evangelical doctrine that Christ has a special liking for the souls of rascals is the absurdest basilisk of a doctrine that ever pranced on judgment steps. That which is lost He comes to save, — yes; but not that which is defiantly going the way He has forbidden. He showed you plainly enough what kind of publican He would call, having chosen two, both of the best: "Behold, Lord, if I have taken anything from any man, I restore it fourfold!" — a beautiful manner of trade. Carpaccio knows well that there were no defalcations from Levi's chest — no oppressions in bis tax-gathering. This whom he has painted is a true merchant of Venice,

THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES. 15

uprightest and gentlest of the merchant race ; yet with a glorious pride in him. What merchant but one of Venice would have ventured to take Christ's hand, as his friend's — as one man takes another's ? Not repentant, he, of anything he has done ; not crushed or terrified by Christ's call ; but rejoicing in it, as meaning Christ's praise and love. " Come up higher then, for there are nobler treasures than these to count, and a nobler King than this to render account to. Thou hast been faithful over a few things ; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

A lovely picture, in every sense and power of painting; natural, and graceful, and quiet, and pathetic ; — divinely religious, yet as decorative and dainty as a bank of violets in spring.'

But the next picture I How was ever such a thing allowed to be put in a church? Nothing surely could be more perfect in comic art, St. Jerome, forsooth, introducing his novice lion to monastic life, with the resulting effect on the vulgar monastic mind.

Do not imagine for an instant that Carpaccio does not see the jest in all this, as well as you do, — perhaps even a little better. "Ask for him to-raorrow, indeed, and you shall find him a grave man ;" but, to-day, Mercutio himself is not more fanciful, nor Shakespeare himself more gay in his fancy of "the gentle beast and of a good con- science," than here the painter as he drew his

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delicately smiling lion with his head on one side like a Perugino's saint, and his left paw raised, partly to show the thorn wound, partly in depre- cation, — ' J

" For if I should, as lion, come in strife Into this place, 'twere pity of my life."

The flying monks are scarcely at first intelligible but as white and blue oblique masses ; and there was much debate between Mr. lElurray and me, as he sketched the picture for the Sheffield Museum, whether the actions of flight were indeed well given or not ; he maintaining that the moi^ks were really running like Olympic archers, and that the fine drawing was only lost under the quartering of the dresses ; — I on the contrary believe that Carpaccio had failed, having no gift for repre- senting swift motion. We are probably both right; I doubt not that the running action, if Mr. Murray says so, is rightly drawn ; but at this time, every Venetian painter had been trained to represent only slow and dignified motion, and not till fifty years later, under classic influence, came the floating and rushing force of Veronese and Tintoret.

And I am confirmed in this impression by the figure of the stag in the distance, which does not run freely, and by the imperfect gallop of St. George's horse in the first subject.

But there are many deeper questions respecting

THS SHRINE OF THB SLATES. 17

this St. Jerome subject than those of artistic skill. The picture is a jest indeed ; but is it a jest only ? Is the tradition itself a jest ? or only by our own faulty and perhaps Carpaccio's, do we make it so ?

In the first place, then, you will please to remember, as I have often told you, Carpaccio is not answerable for himself in this matter. He begins to think of his subject, intending, doubtless, to execute it quite seriously. But his mind no sooner fastens on it than the vision of it comes to him as a jest, and he is forced to paint it. Forced by the fates, — dealing with the fate of Venice and Christendom. We must ask of Atropos, not of Carpaccio, why this picture makes us laugh; and why the tradition it records has become to us a dream and a scorn. No day of my life passes now to its sunset, without leaving me more doubtful of all our cherished contempts, and more earnest to discover what root there was for the stories of good men, which are now the mocker's treasure.

And I want to read a good " Life of St. Jerome." And if I go to Mr. Ongaria's I shall find, I sup- pose, the autobiography of Greorge Sand, and the life of — Mr. Sterling, perhaps ; and Mr. Werner, written by my own master, and which indeed I Ve read, but forget now who either Mr. Sterling or Mr. Werner were ; and perhaps, in religious literature, the life of Mr. Wilberforce and of Mrs. Fry ; but not the smallest scrap of informa-

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tion about St. Jerome. To whom, nevertheless, all the charity of George Sand, and all the inge- nuitj of Mr. Sterling, and all the benevolence of Mr. Wilberforce, and a great quantity, if we knew it, of the daily comfort and peace of our own little lives every day, are verily owing ; as to a lovely old pair of spiritual spectacles, without whom we never had read a word of the " Protestant Bible."

4

It is of no use, however, to begin a hfe of St. Jerome now — and of little use to look at these pictures without a life of St, Jerome; but only thus much you should be clear in knowing about him, as not in the least doubtful or mythical, but wholly true, and the beginning of facts quite limitlessly important to all modem Europe — namely, that he was born of good, or at least rich family, in^ Dalmatia, virtually midway between the east and the west ; that he made the great Eastern book, the Bible, legible in the west ; that he w^as the first great teacher of the nobleness of ascetic scholarship and courtesy, as opposed to ascetic savageness : — the founder, properly, of the ordered cell and tended garden, where before was but the desert and the wild wood; and that he died in the monastery he had founded at Beth- lehem.

It is this union of gentleness and refinement with noble continence, — this love and imagination illuminating the mountain cave into a frescoed cloister, and winning its savage beasts into do-

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mestic friends, which Carpaccio has been ordered to paint for you ; which, with ceaseless exquisite- ness of fancy, he fills these three canvases with the incidents of, — meaning, as I believe, the story of all monastic life, and death, and spiritual life for evermore : the power of this great and wise and kind spirit, ruling in the perpetual future over all household scholarship ; and the help rendered by the companion souls of the lower creatures to the highest intellect and virtue of man.

And if with the last picture of St. Jerome in his study, — his happy white dog watching his face — you will mentally compare a hunting piece by Rubens, or Snyders, with the torn dogs rolled along the ground in their blood, — ^you may per- haps begin to feel that there is something more serious in this kaleidoscope of St. George's Chapel than you at first believed — which if you now care to follow out with me, let us think over this ludicrous subject more quietly.

What account have we here given, voluntarily or involuntarily, of monastic life, by a man of the keenest perception, living in the midst of it ? That all the monks who have caught sight of the lion should be terrified out of their wits — what a curious witness to the timidity of Monasticism I Here are people professing to prefer Heaven to earth — preparing themselves for the change as the reward of all their present self-denial. And this is the way they receive the first chance of it that offers I

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Evidently Carpaccio's impression of monks must be, not that they were more brave or good than other men ; but that i^hey liked books^ and gardens, and peace, and were afraid of death — therefore, retiring from the warrior s danger of chivalry somewhat selfishly and meanly. He clearly takes the knight's view of them. What he may afterwards tell us of good concerning them, will not be from a witness prejudiced in their favour. Some good he tells us, however, even here. The pleasant order in wildness of the trees ; the buildings for agricultural and religious use, set doWn as if in an American clearing, here and there, as the ground was got ready for them ; the perfect grace of cheerful, pure, illuminating art, filling every little cornice-cusp of the chapel with its jewel-picture of a saint,* — last, and chiefly, the perfect kindness to and fondness for, all sorts of animals. Cannot you better con- ceive, as you gaze upon the happy scene, what manner of men they were who first secured from noise of war the sweet nooks of meadow beside your own mountain streams at Bolton, and Fountains, Fumess and Tintem? But of the saint himself Carpaccio has all good to tell you. Common monks were, at least, harmless creatures ; but here is a strong and beneficent

• See the piece of distant monastery in the lion picture, with

its fragments of fresco on wall, its ivy-covered door, and iUuminated c<»iiice.

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one. " Calm, before the Lion I " say C. C. with their usual perspicjatity, as if the story were that the saint alone had courage to confront the raging beast — a Daniel in the lions' den! They might as well say of Carpaccio's Venetian beauty that she is "calm before the lapdog.'* The saint is leading in his new pet, as he would a lamb, and vainly expostulating with his brethren for being ridiculous. The grass on which they have dropped their books is beset with flowers; there is no sign of trouble or asceticism on the old man's face, he is evidently altogether happy, his life being complete, and the entire scene one of the ideal simplicity and security of heavenly wisdom : " Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.

And now pass to the second picture. At first you will perhaps see principally its weak monks — looking more foolish in their sorrow than ever they did in their fear. Portraits these, evidently, every soul of them — chiefly the one in spectacles, reading the funeral service so perfunctorily, — types, throughout, of the supreme commonplace ; alike in action and expression, except those quiet ones in purple on the right, and the grand old man on crutches, come to see this sight.

But St. Jerome himself in the midst of them, the eager heart of him quiet, to such uttermost quietness, — ^the body lying — ^look — absolutely flat like clay, as if it had been beat down, and clung^

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clogged^ all along to the marble. Earth to earth indeed. Level clay and inlaid rock now all one — and the noble head senseless as a stone, with a stone for its pillow.

There they gather and kneel about it^— wonder- ing, I think, more than pitying. To see what was yesterday the great Life in the midst of them, laid thus ! But, so far as they do not wonder, they pity only, and grieve. There is no looking for his soul in the clouds, — no worship of relict here, implied even in the kneeling figures. All look down, woefully, wistfiilly, as into a grave. ^^ And so Death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned."

This is Carpaccio's message to us. And lest you should not "read it, and carelessly think that he meant only the usual commonplace of the sacredness and blessedness of the death of the righteous, — ^look into the narrow shadow in the corner of the house at the left hand side, where, on the strange forked and leafless tree that occupies it, are set the cross and little vessel of holy water beneath, and above, the skull, which are i^lways the signs of St. Jerome's place of prayer in the desert.

The lower jaw has fallen from the skull into the vessel of holy water.

It is but a little sign, — ^but you will soon know how much this painter indicates by such things, and that here he means indeed that for the

THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES. 23

greatest, as the meanest, of the sons of Adam, death is still the sign of their sin ; and that though in Christ all shall be made alive, yet also in Adam all die ; and this return to their earth is not in itself the coming of peace, but the infliction of shame.

At the lower edge of the marble pavement is one of Carpaccio's lovely signatures, on a white scroll, held in its mouth by a tiny lizard.

And now you will be able to enter into the joy of the last picture, the life of St. Jerome in Heaven.

I had no thought, myself, of this being the meaning of such closing scene ; but the evidence for this reading of it, laid before me by my fellow- worker, Mr. Anderson, seems to me, in the con- currence of its many clauses, irresistible ; and this at least is certain, that as the opposite St. George represents the perfect Mastery of the body, in contest with the lusts of the Flesh, this of St Jerome represents the perfect Mastery of the mind, in the fulfilment of the right desires of the Spirit : and all the arts of man, — music (a long passage of melody written clear on one of the fallen scrolls), painting (in the illuminated missal and golden alcove), and sculpture (in all the forms of furniture and the bronze work of scattered ornaments), — these — and the glad fidelity of the lower animals, — all subjected in pleasant service to the more and more perfect reading

24 THE SHRIKE OF THE SLAVES.

and teaching of the Word of God ; — ^read, not in written pages chiefly, but with uplifted eyes by the light of Heaven itself, entering and filling the mansions of ImmortaUty.

This interpretation of the picture is made still more probable, by the infinite pains which Car- paccio has given to the working of -it. It is quite impossible to find more beautiful and right paint- ing of detail, or more truthful tones of atmosphere and shadow affecting interior colours.

Here then are the principal heads of the sym- bolic evidence, abstracted for us by Mr. Anderson from his complete account of the whole series, now in preparation.

1. " The position of the picture seems to show that it sums up the whole matter. The St. G-eorge series reads from left to right. So, chronologically, the two others of St. Jerome ; but this, which should according to the story have been first, appears after the death.

2. " The figure on the altar is — ^most unusually — our Lord with the Resurrection-banner. The shadow of this figure falls on the wall so as to make a crest for the mitre on the altar — * Helmet of Salvation.' .... The mitre (by comparison with St. Ursula's arrival in Rome it is a cardinal's mitre), censer, and crosier, are laid aside.

3. " The Communion and Baptismal vessels are also laid aside under this altar, not of the dead but

THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES. 25

of the Eisen Lord. The curtain falling from the altar is drawn aside that we may notice this.

4. *^In the mosaic-covered recess above the altar there is prominently inlaid the figure of a cherub or seraph ^che in Dio piii I'occhio ha fisso.'

5. " Comparing the colours of the winged and four-footed parts of the 'animal binato' in the Purgatory, it is I believe important to notice that the statue of our Lord is gold, the dress of St.. Jerome red and white, and over the shoulders a cape of the brown colour of earth.

6. "While candles blaze round the dead Jerome in the previous picture, the candlesticks on the altar here are empty — ' they need no candle.' ,

7. " The two round-topped windows in line behind the square one through which St. Jerome gazes, are the ancient tables bearing the message of light, delivered ' of angels ' to the faithful, but now put behind, and comparatively dim beside the glory of present and personal vision. Yet the light which comes even through the square window streams through bars like those of a prison.

" Through the body's prison bars His soul possessed the sun and stars/'

Dante Bossetti writes of Dante Allighieri ; but Carpaccio hangs the wheels of all visible heaven inside these bars. St. Jerome's 'possessions' are in a farther country. These bars are another way of putting what is signified by the brown cape.

26 THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES.

8. " The two great volumes leaning against the wall by the arm-chair are the same thing, the closed testaments.

9. ".The documents hanging in the little chamber behind and lying at the saint's feet, remarkable for their hanging seals, are shown by these seals to be titles to some property, or testaments ; but they are now put aside or thrown underfoot. Why, except that possession is gotten, that Christ is risen, and that 'a testament is of no strength at all while the testator liveth ' ? This I believe is no misuse of Paul's words, but an employment of them in their mystic sense, just as the New Testament writers quoted the Old Testament* There is a very prominent illuminated R on one of the documents under the table (I think you have written of it as Greek in its lines) : I cannot but fancy it is the initial letter of * Resurreotio.' What the music is, Caird has sent me no information about; he was to enquire of some friend who knew about old church music. The prominent bell and shell on the table puzzle me, but I am sure mean something. Is the former the mass- bell?

10. " The statuettes of Venus and the horse, and the various antique fragments on the shelf behind the arm-chair are, I think, symbols of the world, of the flesh, placed behind even the old Scripture studies. You remember Jerome's early learning, and the vision that awakened him from Pagan

THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES. 27

thouglits (to read the laws of the True City) with the words, ' Ubi est thesaurus tuus.'

" I have put these things down without trying to dress them into an argument, that you may judge them as one would gather them hap -hazard from the picture. Individually several of them might be weak arguments, but together I do think they are conclusive. The key-note is struck by the empty altar bearing the risen Lord. I do not think Carpaocio thought of immortality in the symbols derived from mortal life, through which the ordinary mind feels after it. Nor surely did Dante (V. esp. Par. IV. 27 and following lines). And think of the words in Canto II : —

^ Dentro dal ciel della Divina Pace Si gira un corpo nella cui virtute Vesser di Mto 8uo contento giace.'

But there is no use heaping up passages, as the sense that in using human language he merely uses mystic metaphor is continually present in Dante, and often explicitly stated. And it is surely the error of regarding these picture writings for children who live in the nursery of Time and Space, as if they were the truth itself, which can be discovered only spiritually, that leads to the inconsistencies of thought and foolish talk of even good men.

" St. Jerome, in this picture, is young and brown- haired, not bent and with long white beard, as in

28 THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES.

the two others, I connect this with the few who have stretched their necks

' Per tempo al pan degli angeli del quale Yivesi qui ma non si yien satollo/

St. Jerome lives here by what is really the immortal bread; but shall not here be filled with it so as to hunger no more ; and under his earthly cloak comprehends as little perhaps the Great Love he hungers after and is fed by, as his dog compre- hends him. I am sure the dog is there with some such purpose of comparison. On that very last quoted passage of Dante, Landino's- commentary (it was printed in Venice, 1491) annotates the words ^ che drizzaste '1 eoUo,' with a quotation,

' Cum spectant animalia cetera terram Os homini sublime dedit^ coelum tueri jussit.'"

I was myself brought entirely to pause of happy wonder when first my friend showed me the lessons hidden in these pictures ; nor do I at all expect the reader at first to believe them. But the condition of his possible belief in them is that he approach them with a pure heart and a meek one ; for this Carpaccio teaching is like the talisman of Saladin, which, dipped in pure water, made it a healing draught, but by itself seemed only a little inwoven web of silk and gold.

But to-day, that we may be able to read better to-morrow, we will leave this cell of sweet mys- teries, and examine some of the painter's earlier

THE SHRINB OF THE SLAVES. 29

work, in which we may learn his way of writing more completely, and understand the degree in which his own personal character, or prejudices, or imperfections, mingle in the method of his scholarship, and colour or divert the current of his inspiration.

Therefore now, taking gondola again, you must be carried through the sea-streets to a far-away church, in the part of Venice now wholly aban- doned to the poor, though a kingly saint's — St. Louis's : but there are other things in this church to be noted, besides Carpaccio, which will be useful in illustration of him ; and to see these rightly, you must compare with them things of the same kind in another church where there are no Carpaccios, — namely, St. Pantaleone, to which, being the nearer, you had better first direct your gondolier.

For the ceilings alone of these two churches, St. Pantaleone and St. Alvise, are worth a day's pilgrimage in their sorrowful lesson.

All the mischief that Paul Veronese did may be seen in the halting and hollow magnificences of them; — all the absurdities, either of painting or piety, under afflatus of vile ambition. Roof puffed tip and broken through, as it were, with breath of the fiend from below, instead of pierced by heaven's light from above ; the rags and ruins of Venetian skill, honour, and worship, exploded all together sky-high. Miracles of frantic mistake, of fiauntir

30 THE SHRIHB OF THE SLAVES.

and thunderons hypocrisy, — universal lie, shouted through speaking-trumpets.

If I could let you stand for a few minutes, first under Giotto's four-square vault at Assisi, only thirty feet from the ground, the four triangles of it written with the word of God close as an illuminated missal, and then suddenly take you under these vast staggering Temples of Folly and Iniquity, you would know what to think of " modern development" thenceforth.

The roof of St. Pantaleone is, I suppose, the most curious example in Europe of the vulgar dramatic effects of painting. That of St. Alvise is little more than a caricature of the mean passion for perspective, which was the first effect of ^ science ' joining itself with art. And under it, by strange coincidence, there are also two notable pieces of plausible modem sentiment, — celebrated pieces by Tiepolo. He is virtually the beginner of Modern- ism : these two pictures of his are exactly like what a first-rate Parisian Academy student would do, setting himself to conceive the sentiment of Christ's flagellation, after having read unlimited quantities of George Sand and Dumas. It is well that they chance to be here : look thoroughly at them and their dramatic chiaroscuros for a little time, observ- ing that no face is without some expression of crime or pain, and that everything is always put dark against light, or light against dark. Then return to the entrance of the church, where under the

THE SHRINE OF THE sLAVES. 31

gallery, frameless and neglected, hang eight old pictures, — ^bought, the story goes, at a pawn- broker's in the Giudecca for forty sous each,* — to me among the most interesting pieces of art in North Italy, for they are the only examples I know of an entirely great man's work in extreme youth. They are Carpaccio*s, when he cannot have been moriB than eight or ten years old, and painted then half in precocious pride, and half in play. I would give anything to know their real history. " School pictures," C. C. call them I as if they were merely bad imitations, when they are the most unaccountable and unexpected pieces of absurd fancy that ever came into a boy's head, and scrabbled, rather than painted, by a boy's hand, — ^yet, with the eternal master-touchin them already.

Subjects. — 1. Rachel at the Well. 2. Jacob and his Sons before Joseph. 3. Tobias and the Angel. 4. The Three Holy Children. 5. Job.

6. Moses, and Adoration of (jolden Calf (C.C).

7. Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. 8. Joshua and falling Jericho.

In all these pictures the qualities of Carpaccio are already entirely pronounced; the grace, quaintness, simplicity, and deep intentness on the meaning of incidents. I don't know if the grim

• "OriginaUy in St. Maria della Vergine " (C. C). Why

are not the documents on the authority of which th'"' ments are made given clearly ?

32 THE SHRIKE OF THE SLAVES.

statue in No. 4 is, as C. C, have it, the statue of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, or that which he erected for the three holy ones to worship, — ^and already I forget how the * worship of the golden calf* according to 0. C, and ^ Moses ' according to my note, (and I believe the inscription, for most of, if not all, the subjects are inscribed with the names of the persons represented,) are relatively pourtrayed. But I have not forgotten, and beg my reader to note specially, the exquisite strange- ness of the boy's rendering of the meeting of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. One would have expected the Queen's retinue, and her spice- bearing camels, and Solomon's house and his servants, and his cup-bearers in all their glory; and instead of this, Solomon and the Queen stand at the opposite ends of a little wooden bridge over a ditch^ and there is not another soul near them, — and the question seems to be which first shall set foot on it I

Now, what can we expect in the future of the man or boy who conceives his subjects, or is liable to conceive them, after this sort ? There is clearly something in his head which we cannot at all make out ; a ditch must be to him the Bubicon, the Euphrates, the Red Sea, — Heaven only knows what I a wooden bridge must be Rialto in embryo* This unattended King and Queen must mean the pre-eminence of uncounseUed royalty, or what not ; in a word, there's no saying, and no

THE SHRINE OF THE SLATES. 33

criticizing him ; and the less, because his gift of colour and his enjoyment of all visible things around him are so intense, so instinctive, and so constant, that he is never to be thought of as a responsible person, but only as a kind of magic mirror which flashes back instantly whatever it sees beautifully arranged, but yet will flash back commonplace things often as faithfully as others.

I was especially struck with this character of his, as opposed to the grave and balanced design of Luini, when after working six months with Carpaccio, I went back to the St. Stephen at Milan, in the Monasterio Maggiore. In order to do justice to either painter, they should be alter- nately studied for a little while. In one respect, Luini greatly gains, and Carpaccio suffers by this trial ; for whatever is in the least flat or hard in the Venetian is felt more violently by contrast with the infinite sweetness of the Lombard's harmonies, while only by contrast with the vivacity of the Venetian can you entirely feel the depth in faintness, and the grace in quietness, of Luini's chiaroscuro. But the principal point of difference is in the command which Luini has over his thoughts, every design of his being concentrated on its main purpose with quite visible art, and all accessories that would in the least have interfered with it withdrawn in merciless asceticism ; whereas a subject under Carpaccio's hand is always just as it would or might have occurred in nature ; and

3

34 THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES,

among a myriad of trivial incidents^ you are left, by your own sense and sympathy, to discover the vital one.

For instance, there are two small pictures of his in the Brera gallery at Milan, which may at once be compared with the Luinis there. I find the foUowirfg notice of them in my diary for 6th September, 1876 :—

" Here, in the sweet air, with a whole world in ruin round me. The misery of my walk through the Brera yesterday no tongue can tell ; but two curious lessons were given me by Carpaccio. The first, in his preaching of St. Stephen — Stephen up in the corner where nobody would think of him ; the doctors, one in lecture throne, the rest in standing groups mostly — Stephen's face radiant with true soul of heaven, — the doctors, not monsters of iniquity at all, but superbly true and quiet studies from the doctors of Carpaccio's time ; doctors of this world — not one with that look of heaven, but respectable to the uttermost, able, just, penetrating: a complete assembly of highly trained old Oxford men, but with more intentness. The second, the Virgin going up to the temple; and under the steps of it, a child of ten or twelve with his back to us, dressed in a parti-coloured, square-cut robe, holding a fawn in leash, at his side a rabbit ; on the steps under the Virgin's feet a bas-relief of fierce fight of men with homed monsters like rampant snails: one

THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES. 35

with a conger-eel's body, twining round the limb of the man who strikes it"

Now both these pictures are liable to be passed almost without notice ; they scarcely claim to be compositions at all; but the one is a confused group of portraits ; the other, a quaint piece of grotesque, apparently without any meaning, the principal feature in it, a child in a parti- coloured cloak. It is only when, with more knowledge of what we may expect from the painter, we examine both pictures carefully, that the real sense of either comes upon us. For the heavenly look on the face of Stephen is not set off with raised light, or opposed shade, or princi- pality of place. The master trusts only to what nature herself would have trusted in — expression pure and simple. If you cannot see heaven in the boy's mind, without any turning on of the stage lights, you shall not see it at all.

There is some one else, however, whom you may see, on looking carefully enough. On the opposite side of the group of old doctors is another youth, just of Stephen's age. And as the face of Stephen is full of heavenly rapture, so that of his opposite is full of darkest wrath, — the rehgious wrath which all the authority of the conscience urges, instead of quenching^ The old doctors hear Stephen's speech with doubtful pause of gloom ; but this youth has no patience, — no endurance for it. He will be the first to cry, Away with him,—

Sa THE SHBINE OF THE SLATES.

" Whosoever will cast a stone at him, let them lay their mantle at mj feet/'

Again — ^looking again and longer at the other pictures, you will first correct my mistake of writing *^fawn" — discovering the creature held by the boy to be a unicorn* Then you will at once know that the whole must be symbolic; and looking for the meaning of the unicorn, you find it signifies chastity; and then you see that the bas-relief on the steps, which the little Virgin ascends, must mean the warring of the old strengths of the world with lust: which theme you will find presently taken up also and com- pleted by the symbols of St. George's Chapel.

If now you pass from these pictures to any of the Luini frescoes in the same gallery, you will at once recognize a total difference in conception and treatment. The thing which Luini wishes you to observe is held forth to you with direct and instant proclamation. The saint, angel, or Madonna, is made central or principal; every figure in the surrounding group is subordinate, and every accessory subdued or generalized. All the precepts of conventional art are obeyed, and the invention and originality of the master are only shown by the variety with which ' he adonis the commonplace, — by the unexpected grace with which he executes what all have done, — and the

♦ Corrected forme by Mr. C. Fi Murray.

THE SHRINK OF THE SLAVES, 37

sadden freshness with which he invests what all have thought.

This external difference in the manner of the two painters is connected with a much deeper element in the constitution of their minds. To Carpaccio, whatever he has to represent must be a reality; whether a symbol or not, afterwards, is no matter, the first condition is that it shall be real. A serpent, or a bird, may perhaps mean iniquity or purity ; but primarily, they must have real scales and feathers. But with Luini, everything is primarily an idea, and only realized so far as to enable you to understand what is meant. When St. Stephen standi beside Christ at His scourging, and turns to us who look on, a'^king with unmistakable passion, "Was ever sorrow like this sorrow ? " Luini does not mean that St. Stephen really stood there ; but only that the thought of the saint who first saw Christ in glory may best lead us to the thought of Christ in pain. But when Carpaccio paints St. Stephen preaching, he means to make us believe that St. Stephen really did preach, and as far as he can^ to show us exactly how he did it.

And, lasdy, to return to the point at which we left him. His own notion of the way things happened may be a very curious one, and the more so that it cannot be regulated even by him- self, but is the result of the singular power he has of seeing thiugs in vision as if they we

38 THE SHRINE OF THE feLAVES.

So that when, as we have seen, he paints Solomon and the Queen of Sheba standing at opposite ends of a wooden bridge over a ditch, we are not to suppose the two persons are less real to him on that account, though absurd to us ; but we are to understand that such a vision of them did indeed appear to the boy who had passed all his dawning life among wooden bridges, over ditches ; and had the habit besides of spiritualizing, or reading like a vision, whatever he saw with eyes either of the body or mind.

The delight which he had in this faculty of vision, and the industry with which he cultivated it, can only be justly estimated by close examina- tion of the marvellous picture in the Correr Museum, representing two Venetian ladies with their pets.

In the last general statement I have made of the rank of painters, I named two pictures of John Bellini, the Madonna in San Zaccaria, and that in the sacristy of the Frari, as, so far as my knowledge went, the two best pictures in the world. In that estimate of them I of course con- sidered aa one chief element, their solemnity of purpose — as another, their unpretending sim- plicity. Putting aside these higher conditions, and looking only to perfection of execution and essentially artistic power of design, I rank this Carpaccio above either of them, and therefore, as in these respects, the best picture in the world.

THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES. 39

I know no other which unites every nameable quality of painter's art in so intense a degree — breadth with minuteness, brilliancy with quiet- ness, decision with tenderness, colour with light and shade : all that is faithfullest in Holland, fancifuUest in Venice, severest in Florence, naturalest in England, Whatever de Hooghe could do in shade. Van Eyck in detail — Giorgione in mass — Titian in colour — Bewick and Landseer in animal life, is here at once; and I know no other picture in the world which can be compared with it.

It is in tempera, however, not oil : and I must note in passing that many of the qualities which I have been in the habit of praising in Tintoret and Carpaccio, as consummate achievements in oil- painting, are, as I have found lately, either in tempera altogether, or tempera with oil above. And I am disposed to think that ultimatelj^ tempera will be foupd the proper material for the greater number of most delightful subjects.

The subject, in the present instance, is a simple study of animal life in all its phases. I am quite sure that this is the meaning of the picture in Carpaccio's own mind. I suppose him to have been commissioned to paint the portraits of two Venetian ladies — that he did not altogether like his models, but yet felt himself bound to do his best for them, and contrived to do what perfectlv satisfied them and himself too. He has

40 THE SHBINE OF THE SLAVES.

their pretty faces ^nd pretty shoulders, their pretty dresses and pretty jewels, their pretty ways and their pretty playmates — and what would they have more? — ^he himself secretly laughing at them all the time, and intending the spec- tators of the future to laugh for ever.

It may be, however, that I err in supposing the picture a portrait commission. It may be simply a study for practice, gathering together every kind of thing which he could get to sit to him quietly, persuading the pretty ladies to sit to him in all their finery, and to keep their pets quiet as long as they could, while yet he gave value to this new group of studies in a certain unity of satire against the vices of society in his time.

Of this satirical purpose there cannot be ques^ tion for a moment, with any one who knows the general tone of the painter's mind, and the traditions among which he had been edacated. In all the didactic painting of mediseval Chris- tianity, the faultful luxury of the upper classes was symbolized by the knight with his falcon, and lady with her pet dog, both in splendid dress. This picture is only the elaboration of the well- recognized symbol of the lady with her pets ; but there are two ladies — mother and daughter, I think — ^and six pets, a big dog, a little dog, a parroquet, a peahen, a little boy, and a china vase. The youngest of the women sits serene

THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES. 41

in her pride, her erect head pale against the dark sky — the elder is playing with the two dogs ; the least, a white terrier, she is teaching to beg, holding him up by his fore-paws, with her left hand ; in her right is a slender riding-whip, which the larger dog has the end of in his mouth, and will not let go— his mistress also having dropped a letter,* he puts his paw on that and will not let her pick it up, looking out of gentlest eyes in ardh watchfulness to see how far it will please her that he should carry the jest. Behind him the green parroquet, red-eyed, lifts its little claw as if disliking the marble pavement ; then behind the marble balustrade with gilded capitals, the bird and little boy are inlaid with glowing brown and red. Nothing of Hunt or Turner can surpass the plume-painting of the bird ; nor can Holbein surpass the precision, while he cannot equal the radiance, of the porcelain and jewellery. ^ To mark the satirical purpose of the whole, a pair of ladies' shoes are put in the corner, (the liigh-stilted shoe, being, in fact, a slipper on the top of a column,) which were the grossest and absurdest means of expressing female pride in the fifteenth and following centuries.

In this picture, then, you may discern at once how Carpaccio learned his business as a painter, and to what consummate point he learned itf

• The painter's signature is on the supposed letter.

f Another Carpaccio, in the Correr Museam, of St. Mary

42 THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES..

And now, if you have begun to feel the power of these minor pictures, you can return to the Academy and take up the St. Ursula series, on which, however, I find it hopeless to reduce my notes to any available forni at present : — ^the question of the influence of this legend on Vene-^ tian life being involved with enquiries belonging properly to what I am trying to do in ' St. Mark's Rest.' This only you have to observe generally, that being meant to occupy larger spaces, the St Ursula pictures are very unequal in interest, and many portions seem to me tired work, while others are maintained by Mr. Murray to be only by the hands of scholars. This, however^ I can myself assert, that I never yet began to copy or examine any portion of them without continually increasing admiration ; while yet there are certain shortcomings and morbid faults throughout, un- accountable, and rendering the greater part of the work powerless for good to the general public. Taken as a connected series, the varying person- ality of the saint destroys its interest totally* The girl talking to her father in 539 is not the girl who dreams in 533; and the gentle little dreamer is still less like the severe, stiffly dressed,

and Elizabeth, is entirely lovely, thoagh slighter in work ; and the so-called Mantegna, but more probably (according to Mr» Murray) early John Bellini, — the Transfiguration, — full of majesty and earnestness. Note the inscribed * talk* with Moses and Elias, — " Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, oh ye my friends."

THE SHKINE OF THE SLAVES. 43

and not in any supreme degree well favoured, bride, in 542 ; while the middle-aged woman, without any claim to beauty at all, who occupied the principal place in the final Gloria, cannot by any effort of imagination be connected with the figure of the young girl kneeling for the Pope's blessing in 546.

But indeed had the story been as consistently told as the accessories are perfectly painted, there Would have been no occasion for me now to be lecturing on the beauties of Carpaccio. The public would long since have discovered thcm^ and adopted him for a favourite. That precisely in the particulars which would win popular atten- tion, the men whom it would be most profitable for the public to study should so often fail, becomes to me, as I grow older, one of those deepest mysteries of life, which I only can hope to have explained to me when my task of inter- pretation is ended.

But, for the sake of Christian charity, I would ask every generous Protestant to pause for a while before the meeting under the Castle of St. Angelo, (546).

" Nobody knows anything about those old things," said an English paterfamilias to some enquiring member of his family, in the hearing of my assistant, then at work on this picture. Which saying is indeed supremely true of^ us nationally. But without requiring us to knc^

.y ' • 44 THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES.

anything, this picture puts before us some cer- tainties respecting mediaeval Catholicism, which we shall do well to remember.

In the first place, you will find that all these bishops and ckrdinals are evidently portraits. Their faces are too varied — too quiet — too complete — to have been invented by even the mightiest inveil- tion. Carpaccio was simply taking the features of the priesthood of his time,, throwing aside, doubt- less, here and there, matter of offence ; — the too settled gloom of one, the evident subtlety of another, the sensuality of a third; but finding beneath all that, what was indeed the constitutional power and pith of their minds,— -in the deep of them, rightly thoughtful, tender, and humble.

There is one curious little piece of satire on the fault of the Church in making cardinals of too young persons. The third, in the row of four behind St. Ursula, is a mere boy, very beautiful, but utterly careless of what is going on, and evidently no more fit to b^ a cardinal than a young calf would be. The stiffness of his white dress, standing up under his chin as if he had only put it on that day, draws especial attention to him.

The one opposite to him also, without this piece of white dress, seems to be a mere man of the world. But the others have all grave and refined faces. That of the Pope himself is quite exquisite in its parity, simple-heartedness, and

THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES. 45

■

joyful wonder at the sight of the child kneeling at his feet, in whom he recognizes one whom he is himself to learn of, and follow.

The more I looked at this picture, the more I became wonderstruck at the way the faith of the Christian Church has been delivered to us through a series of fables, which, partly meant as such, are over-ruled into expressions of truth — but how much truth, it is only by our own virtuous life that we can know. Only remember always in criticizing such a picture, that it no more means to tell you as a fact* that St. Ursula led this long procession from the sea and knelt thus before the Pope, than Mantegna's St. Sebastian means that the saint ever stood quietly and happily, stuck full of arrows. It is as much a mythic symbol as the circles and crosses of the Carita ; but only Carpaccio carries out his symbol into delighted realization, so that it begins to be absurd to us in the perceived impossibility. But it only signifies the essential truth of joy in the Holy Ghost filling the whole body of the Christian Church with visible inspiration, sometimes in old men, sometimes in children ; yet never breaking the laws of established authority and subordination — the greater saint blessed by the lesser, when the lesser is in the higher place of authority, and all the common and

♦ If it had been a fact, of conrse he would have liked it all the better, as in the picture of St. Stephen ; but though only an idea, it must be realized to the full.

46 THE SHRINE OF THE SLAVES.

natural glories and delights of the world made holy by its influence : field, and earth, and moun- tain, and sea, and bright maiden's grace, and old men's quietness, — all in one music of mov- ing peace — the very procession of them in their multitude like a chanted hymn — the purple standi ards drooping in the light air that yet can lift St. George's gonfalon;* and this angel Michael alighting — himself seen in vision instead of his statue— on the Angel's tower, sheathing his sword,

What I have to say respecting the picture that

closes the series, the martyrdom and funeral, is partly saddening, partly depreciatory, and shall be reserved for another place. The picture itself has been more injured and repainted than any other (the face of the recumbent figure entirely so) ; and though it is full of marvellous passages, I hope that the general traveller will seal his memory of Carpaccio in the picture last de- scribed.

♦ It is especially to be noted with Carpaccio, and perhaps more in this than any other of the series, that he represents the beauty of religion always in animating the present world, and never gives the charm to the clear far-away sky which is so constant in Florentine sacred pictures.

Second supplement?

THE PLACE OF DRAGONS.

ST. MAEK'S BEST

SECOND SUPPLEMENT.

THE PLACE OF DRAGOJTS.

JAMES REDDIE ANDERSON, M.A.

EDITED B7

JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D.,

HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CFIURCH, AND BLADE PROFESSOR OF FINE ART, OXFORD

GEORGE ALLEN, SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT.

187«.

HARVARD

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

i7

Hazell, Watson, & Yiney, PrinterSt London and Aylesbury.

PREFACE.

Among iihe many discomforts of advancing age, which no one understands till he feels them, there is one which I seldom have heard complained of, and which, therefore, I find unexpectedly dis- agreeable. I knew, by report, that when I grew old I should most probably wish to be young again ; and, very certainly, be ashamed of much that I had done, or omitted, in the active years of life. I was prepared for sorrow in the loss of friends by death; and for pain, in the loss of myself, by weakness or sickness. These, and many other minor calamities, I have been long accustomed to anticipate ; and therefore to read, in preparation for them, the confessions of the weak, and the consolations of the wise.

But, as the time of rest, or of departure, ap- proaches me, not only do many of the evils I had heard of, and prepared for, present themselves in more grievous shapes tUan I had expected ; but

VI PREFACE.

one which I had scarcely ever heard of, torments me increasinglj every hour.

I had understood it to be in the order of things that the aged should lament their vanishing life as an instrument thev had never used, now to be taken away from them ; but not as an instrument, only then perfectly tempered and sharpened, and snatched out of their hands at the instant they could have done some real service with it. Whereas, my own feeling, now, is that everything which has hitherto happened to me, or been done by me, whether well or ill, has been fitting me to take greater fortune more prudently, and do better work more thoroughly. And just when I seem to be coming out of school — very sorry to have been such a foolish boy, yet having taken a prize or two, and expecting to enter now upon some more serious business than cricket, — I am dismissed by the Master I hoped to serve, with a — "That's all I want of you, sir."

I imagine the sorrowfulness of these feelings must be abated, in the minds of most men, by a pleasant vanity in their hope of being remembered as the discoverers, at least, of some important truth, or the founders of some exclusive system called after their own names. But I have never applied myself to discovet anything, being content

PREFACE. vii

to praise what had already been discovered ; and the only doctrine or system peculiar to me is the abhorrence of all that is doctrinal instead of demonstrable, and of all that is systematic instead of useful : so that no true disciple of mine will ever be a ^ Ruskinian ' ! — he will follow, not me, but the instincts of his own soul, and the guidance of its Creator. Which, though not a sorrowful subject of contemplation in itself, leaves me none of the common props and crutches of halting pride. I know myself to be a true master, because my pupils are well on the way to do better than I have done ; but there is not always a sense of extreme pleasure in watching their ad- vance, where one has no more strength, though more than ever the will, to companion them.

Not alioays — be it again confessed ; but when I first read the legend of St. George, which here follows, my eyes grew wet with tears of true de- light; first, in the knowledge of so many beautiful things, at once given to me; and then in the surety of the wide good that the work thus begun would spring up into, in ways before wholly un- conceived by me. It was like coming to the brow of some healthy moorland, where here and there one had watched, or helped, the reaper of some patch of thinly scattered com ; and seeing

nil PREFACE.

suddenly a great plain white to the harvest, far as the horizon. That the first-fruits of it might be given in no manner of self-exaltation — Fors has determined that my young scholar should have his part of mortification as well as I, just in the degree in which either of us may be mortified in the success of others. For we both thought tTiat the tracing of this chain of tradition in the story of St. George was ours alone ; and that we had rather to apprehend the doubt of our result, than the dispute of our originality. Nor was it, in- deed, without extreme discomfiture and vexation that after I had been hindered from publishing this paper for upwards of ten months from the time it was first put into my hands, I read, on a bright autumn morning at Brantwood, when I expected the author's visit, (the first he had made to me in my own house,) a paragraph in the ^ Spectator,' giving abstract of exactly the same historical statements, made by a French antiquary, M. Clermont-Ganneau.

I am well assured that Professor Airey was not more grieved, though I hope he was more con- science-stricken, for his delay in the publication of Mr. Adams' calculations, than I was, for some days after seeing this anticipation of my friend's dis- coveries. He relieved my mind himself, after

PREFACE. IX

looking into the matter, by pointing out to me that the original paper had been read by M. Clermont-Gannean, before the Acad^mie des In- scriptions et Belles-lettres of Paris, two months before his own investigations had begun, and that all question of priority was, therefore, at an end. It remained for us only to surrender, both of us, what complacency we should have had in first announcing these facts ; and to take a nobler pleasure in the confirmation afforded of their truth by the coincidence, to a degree of accuracy which neither of us had ever known take place before in the work of two entirely independent investigators, between M. Clermont-Ganneau's conclusions and our own. I therefore desired mv friend to make no alterations in his paper as it then stood, and to make no reference himself to the French author, but to complete his own course of investigation independently, as it was begun. We shall have some bits all to ourselves, before we have done; and in the meantime give reverent thanks to St. George, for his help, to France as well as to England, in enabling the two nations to read together the truth of his tradition, on the distant clouds of Heaven and Time.

Mr. Anderson's work remains entirely distinct, in its iuterpretation of Carpaccio's picture by this

X PREFACE.

tradition, and since at the mouth of two — or three^ witnesses shall a word be established, Carpaccio himself thus becomes the third, and the chief, witness to its truth ; and to the power of it on the farthest race of the Knights of Venice.

The present essay treats only of the first picture in the chapel of St. George. I hope it may now be soon followed by its author's consecutive studies of the other subjects, in which he has certainly no priority of efibrt to recognize, and has, with the help of the good Saints, and no other persons, done all that we shall need.

J. RUSKIN.

I

Beantwood, 2Uh Jamuiry, 1878.

THE PLACE OF DEAGONS.

"^'Evvo^ffas 8ti rbv iroirfr^v 5ioif etwep fiiWoi rroirjHjs ahai, iroteip fji^Oovs dW oi \6yovs." — Plat. Phcedo^ 61, B.

On the eve of the Feast of the Annunciation, in the year of Christ 1452, the Council of Ten, by decree, permitted certain Dalmatians settled in Venice to establish a Lay Brotherhood, called of St. George and of St. Tryphonius. The brothers caused to be written in illuminated letters on the first pages of their minute book their ^memo- randum of association.' They desired to "hold united in sacred bonds men of Dalmatian blood, to render homage to God and to His saints by charitable endeavours and religious ceremonies, and to help by holy sacrifices the souls of brothers alive and dead." The brotherhood -gave, and continues to give, material support to the poor of Dalmatian blood in Venice ; money to the old, and education to the young. For prayer and adoration it built the chapel known as St. George's of the Sdavonians. In this chapel, during the

2 THE PLACE OF DILAGOKS.

first decade of the sixteenth centary, Carpaccio painted a series of pictures. First, three from the story of St. Jerome — ^not that St. Jerome was oflScially a patron of the brothers, but a fellow- countryman, and therefore, as it were, an aDy; — then three fit)m the story of St. Greorge, one from that of St. Tryphonius, and two smaller from the Gospel History. Allowing for doorways, window, and altar, these nine pictures fill the circuit of the chapel walls.

Those representing St George are placed op- posite those of St Jerome. In the ante-chapel of the Ducal Palace, Tintoret, who studied, not without result otherwise, these pictures of Car- paccio's, has placed the same saints over against each other. To him, as to Carpaccio, they repre- 'sented the two sides, practical and contemplative, of faithful life. This balance we still, though with less completeness, signify by the linked names of Martha and Mary, and Plato has ex- pressed it fully by the respective functions as- signed in his ideal state to philosophers and guardians. The seer " able to grasp the eternal," " spectator of all time and of all existence," — ^you may see him on your right as you enter this chapel, — recognizes and declares God's Law : the guardian obeys, enforces, and, if need be, fights for it

St George, Husbandman by name, and "Tpo- Traio^6po^^' Triumphant Warrior, by title, secures

THE PLACE OF DKAGONS. &

righteous peace, turning his spear into a pruning- hook for the earthly nature of man. He is also to be known as " MeyaXofjudpTvp" by his deeds, the great witness for God in the world, and " r&v affKrjT&v 6 fjb€ya<; Ta^Mpxv^y^ marshal and leader of those who strive to obtain an incorruptible crown.* St. Jerome, the seer, learned also in all the wisdom of the heathen, is, as Plato tells us such a man should be. Lost in his longing after " the universal law that knits human things with divine," t he shows himself gentle and without fear, having no terror even of death. J In the second picture on our right here we may see with how great quiet the old man has laid himself down to die, even such a pillow beneath his head as was under Jacob's upon that night of vision by the place which he thence- forward knew to be the " House of God," though the name of it was called ^ Separation '§ at the first." II The fantastic bilingual interpretation of

• These titles are taken from the earliest (Greek) records of

him. The last corresponds to that of Baron Bradwardine's revered * Mareschal-Duke.'

t Plat. Rep., VL 486 A.

% Ib'td,, B.

§ Lnz. This word stands also for the almond tree, flourish- ing when desire fails, and " man goeth to his long home."

II In the 21st and 22nd Cantos of the * Paradise,' Dante, too, connects the dream of Jacob with the ascetic, living where " e consecrate nn ermo, Che suole esser disposto a sola latria." This is in a sphere of heaven where " la dolce sinfonia del Pftradiso** is heard by mortal ears only as overmastering

4 THE PLACE OF DRAGONS.

Jerome's name given in the ^ Golden Legend,' standard of mediaeval mythology, speaks to the same effect : " flieronimus, quod est Sanctum Nemus," Holy Grove, "a nemore ubi aliquando conversatus est," from that one in which he sometime had his walk — "Se dedit et sacri nemoris perpalluit umbra," * but not beneath the laurels of "Tun giogo de Pamaso,"t to whose inferior summit, only, Dante in that line alludes, nor now under olive boughs —

" where the Attick bird Trills her thick- warbled notes the summer long,"

but where, once on a winter night, shepherds in their vigil heard other singing, where the palm bearer of burdens, witness of victorious hope, offers to every man, for the gathering, fruit unto ever- lasting life. "Ad Bethleem oppidum remeavit, ubi, prudens animal, ad prsesepe Domini se obtulit permansurum." " He went, as though home, to the town of Bethlehem, and like a wise domestic creature presented himself at his Master's manger to abide there."

After the pictures of St. George comes that of

thunder, and where the pilgrim is taught that no created vision, not the seraph's " che in Dio piu I'occhio ha fisso " may jead that eternal statute by whose appointment spirits of the saints go forth upon their Master's business and return to Him again.

• Dante, * Eclogues,* i. 30.

t Dante, * Par.' I. 16.

THE PLACE OF DRAGONS. 5

St. Tryphonius, telling how the prayer of a little child shall conquer the basiKsk of earthly pride, though the soldier's spear cannot overthrow this monster, nor maiden's zone bind him. After the picture of St. Jerome we are given the Calling of Matthew, in which Carpaccio endeavours to declare how great joy fills the fugitive servant of Riches when at last he does homage as true man of another Master. Between these two is set the central picture of the nine, small, dark itself, and in a dark corner, in arrangement following pretty closely the simple tradition of earlier Venetian masters. The scene is an untilled garden — the subject, the Agony of our Lord.

The prominent feature of the stories Carpaccio has chosen — setting aside at present the two gos- pel incidents — is that, though heartily Christian, they are historically drawn quite as much from Greek as from mediaeval mythology. Even in the scenes from St. Jerome's life, a well-known clas- sical tale, which mingled with his legend, is introduced, and all the paintings contain much ancient religious symbolism. St. Tryphonius' conquest of the basilisk is, as we shall see, almost purely a legend of Apollo. From the middle ages onwards it has been often remarked how closely the story of St. George and the Dragon resembles that of Perseus and Andromeda. It does not merely resemble, — it is that story.

The earliest and central shrine of St. George, —

6 THE PLACE OF DRAGONS.

his church, famous during the crusades, at Lydda, — rose by the stream which Pausanias, in the second century, saw runiung still " red as blood," because Perseus had bathed there after his con- quest of the sea monster. From the neighbouring town of Joppa, as Pliny tells us, the skeleton of that monster was brought by M. Scaurus to Borne in the first century B.C. St Jerome was shown on this very coast a rock known by tradition as that to which Andromeda had been bound. Before his day Josephus had seen in that rock the holes worn by her fetters.

In the place chosen by fate for this the most famous and finished example of harmony between the old faith and the new there is a strange double piece of real mythology. Many are offended when told that with the best teaching of the Christian Church Gentile symbolism and story have often mingled. Some still lament vanished dreams of the world's morning, echo the

" Voice of weeping heard, and loud lament,"

by woodland altar and sacred thicket. But Lydda was the city where St. Peter raised from death to doubly-marvellous service that loved garment- maker, full of good works, whose name was Wild Koe — Greek* type of dawn with its pure visions.

• The Hebrew poets, too, knew "the Hind of the glow of

dawn."

THE PLACE OF DRAGONS. 7

And Lydda " was nigh unto Joppa,"* where was let down from heaven the mystic sheet, fall of every kind of living creature, (this, centuries before, a symbol familiar to the farthest east,t) for lasting witness to the faithful that through his travailing creation God has appointed all things to be helpful and holy to man, has made nothing common or undean.

There is a large body of further evidence prov- ing the origin of the story of St. George and the Dragon from that of Perseus. The names of certain of the persons concerned in both coincide. Secondary, or later variations in the place of the fight appear alike in both legends. For example, the scene of both is sometimes laid in Phoenicia, north of Joppa. But concerning this we may note that a mythologist of the age of Augustus, J recounting this legend, is careful to explain that the name of Joppa had since been changed to Phoenice. The instance of most value, however — because connected with a singular identity of local names — is that account which takes both Perseus and St. George to the Nile delta. The

• Near Joppa the Moslem (who also reyerences St. George)

sees the field of some great final contest between the Evil and the Grood, upon whom the ends of the world shall have come— a contest sorely that will require the presence of our warrior- marshal.

■f Compare the illustrations on p. 44 of Didron*s * Icono- graphie Chretienne' (English translation, p. 41).

J Conon. Narr., XL.

8 THE PLACE OF DRAGONS.

Greek name of Lydda was Diospolis. Now St. Jerome speaks strangely of Alexandria as also called Diospolis, and there certainly was a Dios- polis (later Lydda) near Alexandria, where " alone in Egypt," Strabo tells ns, '* men did not venerate the crocodile, but held it in dishonour as most hateful of living things.*' One of the ' Crocodile towns' of Egypt was close by this. Curiously enough, considering the locality, there was also a ' Crocodile-town ' a short distance north of Joppa. In Thebes, too, the greater Diospolis, there was a shrine of Perseus, and near it another KpoKoSeiXjoDv JTo\49. This persistent recurrence of the name Diospolis probably points to Perseus' original identity with the sun — ^noblest birth of the Father of Lights. In its Greek form that name was, of course, of comparatively late imposition, but we may well conceive it to have had reference* to a local terminology and worship much more ancient. It is not unreasonable to connect too the Diospolis of Cappadocia, a region so frequently and mys- teriously referred to as that of St George's birth. Further, the stories both of Perseus and of St. George are curiously connected with the Persians ; but this matter, together with the saint's Cappadocian nationality, will fall to be con- sidered in relation to a figure in the last of Car- paccio's three pictures, which will open up to us

• Compare the name Heliopolis giyen both to Baalbeck and

On.

THE PLACE OF DRAGONS. 9

the earliest history and deepest meaning of the myth.

The stories of the fight given by Greeks and Christians are almost identical. There is scarcely an incident in it told by one set of writers but occurs in the account given by some member or members of the other set, even to the crowd of distant spectators Carpaccio has so dwelt upon, and to the votive altars raised above the body of the monster, with the stream of healing that flowed beside them. And while both accoiAits say how the saved nations rendered thanks to the Father in heaven, we are told that the heathen placed, beside His altar, altars to the Maiden Wisdom and to Hermes, while the Christians placed altars dedicated to the Maiden Mother and to George. Even Medusa's head did not come amiss to the mediaeval artist, but set in the saint's hand became his own, fit indication of the death by which he should afterwards glorify God. And here we may probably trace the original error — if, indeed, to be called an error — by which the myth concerning Perseus was introduced into the story of our soldier-saint of the East. From the fifth century to the fifteenth, mythologists nearly all give, and usually with approval, an interpretation of the word ' gorgon' which makes it identical in meaning and derivation with ' George.' When comparatively learned persons, taught too in this special subject, accepted such an opinion and insisted upon it, we

10

THE PLACE OF DRAGONS.

cannot, be surpriaod if thoir contemporai-ies, nnr educated, or educated oiily in the Cliristian myH- teries, took readily a similar view, especially when we consider the wild confusion in mediaeval minds concerning the spelling of classical names. Now just as into the legend of St Hippolytus there was introduced a, long episode manifestly derived from soma disarranged and misunderstood series of paintings or sculptures concerning the fate of the Greek Hippolytus, — nnd this is by no means a singular examplcj the name inscribed on the work of art being taken as evidence that it referred to the only bearer of that name then thought of — so, in all probability, it came about with St. George. People at Lydda far on into Christian times would know vaguely, and continue to tell the story, how long ago under that familiar cliff the dragon was slain and the royal maid released. Then some ruined fresco or vase painting of the event would exist, half forgotten, with the names of the cha- racters written after Greek fashion near them in the usual superbly errant caligraphy. Tha Gorgon's name could scarcely fail to be prominent in a series of pictures from Perseus' history, or in this scene as an explanation of the head in his hand. A Christian pilgrim, or hermit, his heart full of the great saint, whose name as ' Tri- umphant ' filled the East, would, when be had spelt out the lettering, at once exclaim, " Ah, hero is lecorded another of my patron's victoiies." The

THE PLACE OP DRAGONS. 11

probability of this is enhanced by the appearance in St. George's story of names whose introduction seems to require a similar explanation. But we shall find that the battle with the dragon, though not reckoned among St. George's deeds before the eleventh or twelfth century, is entirely appropriate to the earliest sources of his legend.

One other important parallel between Perseus and St. George deserves notice, though it does not bear directly upon these pictures. Both are dis- tinguished by their burnished shields. The hero's was given him by Athena, that, watching in it the reflected figure of the Gorgon,* he might strike rightly with his sickle-sword, nor need to meet in face the mortal horror of her look. The saint's bright shield rallied once and again a breaking host of crusaders, as they seemed to see it blaze in their van under Antiochf wall, and by the breaches of desecrated Zion. But his was a magic mirror ; work of craftsmen more cunning than might obey the Queen of Air. Turned to visions of terror and death, it threw back by law of diviner optics an altered image — the crimson blazon of its cross. J

• The allegorising Platonists interpret Medusa as a symbol

of man's sensual nature. This we shall find to be Carpaccio's view of the dragon of St. George.

t Acts xi. 26.

t Compare the strange reappearance of the ^ginetan Athena as St. John on the Florin. There the arm that bore the shield now with pointed finger giyes emphasis and direc- tion to the word * Behold.'

12 THE PLACE OF DRAGONS.

So much for the growth of the dragon legend, fragment of a most ancient faith, widely spread and variously localised, thus made human by Greek, and passionately spiritual by . Christian, art.

We shall see later that Perseus is not St. George's only blood-relation among the powers of earlier belief; but for Englishmen there may be a linked association, if more difficult to trace through historic descent, yet, in its perfect harmony, even more pleasantly strange. The great heroic poem which remains to us in the tongue of our Anglo- Saxon ancestors — ^intuitive creation and honour- able treasure for ever of simple English minds — tells of a warrior whose names, like Si George's, are ^ Husbandman ' and ^ Glorious,' whose crown- ing deed was done in battle with the poisonous drake. Even a figure very important in St. George's history — one we shall meet in the third of these pictures — is in this legend not without its representative — ^that young kinsman of the Saxon hero, "among the faithless" earls "faithful only he," who holds before the failing eyes of his lord the long rusted helm and golden standard, " won- drous in the grasp," and mystic vessels of ancient time, treasure redeemed at last by a brave man's blood from the vaulted cavern of the " Twilight Flyer." For Beowulf indeed slays the monster, but wins no princess, and dies of the fiery venom that has scorched his limbs in the contest. Him there

THE PLACE OF DRAGONS. 13

awaited such fires alone — seen from their bleak promontory afar over northern seas — as burned once upon the ridge of CEta, his the Heraklean crown of poplar leaves only, blackened without by the smoke of hell, and on the inner side washed white with the sweat of a labourer's brow.* It is a Wilder form of the great story told by seers t who knew only the terror of nature and the daily toil of men, and the doom that is over these for each of us. The royal maiden for ever Sfet free, the sprinkling of pure water unto eternal life, — this only such eyes may discern as by happier fate have also rested upon tables whose divine blazon is the law of heaven ; such hearts alone

• There was in his People's long lament for Beowulf one

word about the hidden future, " when he must go forth from the body to become . . . . " What to become we shall not know, for fate has struck out just the four letters that would have told us.

■f * Beowulf ' was probably composed by a poet nearly con- temporary with Bede. The dragon victory was not yet added to the glories of St. George. Indeed, Pope Gelasius, in Council, more than a couple of centuries before, had declared him to be one of those saints " whose names are justly revered among men, but whose deeds are known to God only.** Ac- cordingly the Saxon teacher invokes him somewhat vaguely thus : —

" Invicto mundum qui sanguine temnis Infinita refers, Gteorgi Sancte, trophsea ! '*

Yet even in these words we see a reverence similar to Car- paccio*s for St. George as patron of purity. And the deeds "known to God alone'* were in His good time revealed to those to whom it pleased Him.

14 THE PLACE OF DRAGONS.

conceive, as, trained in some holy city of God, have among the spirits of just men made perfect, learned to love His commandment.

Such, then, was the venerable belief which Car- paccio set himself to picture in the Chapel of St. George. How far he knew its wide reign and ancient descent, or how far, without recognising these, he intuitively acted as the knowledge would have led him, and was conscious of lighting up his work by Gentile learning and symbolism, must to us be doubtful. It is not doubtful that, whether with open eyes, or in simple obedience to the tra- ditions of his training, or, as is most likely, loyal as well in wisdom as in humility, he did so illumine it, and very gloriously. But painting this glory, he paints with it the peace that over the king- threatened cradle of another Prince than Perseus, was proclaimed to the heavy-laden.

The first picture on the left hand as we enter the chapel shows St. George on horseback, in battle with the Dragon. Other artists, even Tintoret,* are of opinion that the Saint rode a whitie horse. The champion of Purity must, they hold, have been carried to victory by a charger ethereal and splendid as a summer cloud. Car- paccio believed that his horse was a dark brown. He knew that this colour is generally the mark of greatest strength and endurance ; he had no

• Tn the ante-chapel of the Ducal Pa"? ace.

THE PLACE OF DRAGONS. 15

wish to paint here an ascetic's victory over the flesh. St George's warring is in the world, and for it ; he is the enemy of its desolation, the guardian of its peace ; and all vital force of the lower Nature he shall have to bear him into battle ; submissive indeed to the spur, bitted and bridled for obedience, yet honourably decked with trappings whose studs and bosses are fair carven faces. But though of colour prosaically useful, this horse has a deeper kinship with the air. Many of the ancient histories and vase-paintings tell us that Perseus, when he saved Andromeda, was mounted on Pegasus. Look now here at the mane and tail, swept still back upon the wind, though already the passionate onset has been brought to sudden pause in that crash of en- counter. Though the flash of an earthly fire be in his eye, its force in his limbs — though the clothing of his neck be Chthonian thunder — this steed is brother, too, to that one, born by farthest ocean wells, whose wild mane and sweeping wings stretch through the firmament as light is breaking over earth. More ; these masses of billowy hair tossed upon the breeze of heaven are set here for a sign that this, though but one of the beasts that perish, has the roots of his strong nature in the power of heavenly life, and is now about His business who is Lord of heaven and Father of men. The horse is thus, as we shall see, opposed to certain other signs, meant for our learning,

16 THE PLACE OF DRAGONS.

in the dream of horror round this monster^s den,*

St. George, armed to his throat, sits firmly in the saddle. All the skill gained in a chiyalric joath, all the might of a soldier^s manhood, he summons for this strange toomej, stooping slightly and gathering his strength as he drives the spear-point straight between his enemy's jaws. His face is very fair, at once delicate and power- ful, well-bred in the fullest bearing of the words ; a Plantagenet face in general type, but much refined. The lower lip is pressed upwards, the brow knit, in anger and disgust partly, but more in care — and care not so much concerning the fight's ending, as that this thrust in it shall now be rightly dealt. His hair flows in bright golden ripples, strong as those of a great spring whose up-welling waters circle through some clear pool, but it breaks at last to float over brow and shoulders in tendrils of living lightf Had Car- paccio been aware that St. George and Perseus are, in this deed, one; had he even held, as surely as Professor Miiller finds reason to do, that at first Perseus was but the sun in his strength

• This cloudlike effect is through surface rubbing perhaps

more marked now than Carpaccio intended, but must always have been most noticeable. It produces a very striking re- semblance to the Pegasus or the Ram of Phrixus on Greek vases.

t At his martyrdom St. George was hung up by his hair to be scourged.

THE PLACE OF DRAGONS. 17

— for very name, being called "the Brightly- Burning" — this glorious head could not have been, more completely than it is, made the centre of light in the picture. In Greek works of art, as a rule, Perseus, when he rescues Andromeda, continues to wear the peaked Phrygian cap, dark helmet of Hades,* by whose virtue he moved, invisible, upon Medusa through coiling mists of dawn. Only after victory might he unveil his brightness. But about Greorge from the first is no shadow. Creeping thing of keenest eye shall not see that splendour which is so manifest, nor with guile spring upon it unaware, to its darken- ing. Such knowledge alone for the dragon — dim sense as of a horse with its rider, moving to the fatal 'lair, hope, pulseless, — not of heart, but of talon and maw — that here is yet another victim, then only between his teeth that keen lance-point, thrust far before the Holy Apparition at whose rising the Power of the Vision of Death waxes faint and drops those terrible wings that bore under their shadow, not healing, but wounds. for men.

The spear pierces the base of the dragon's brain, its point penetrating right through and standing out at the back of the head just above its junction with the spine. The shaft breaks in the shock between the dragon's jaws. This shivering of St. Greorge's spear is almost always

• Given by Hermes (Chthonios).

18 THE PLACE OP DRAGONS.

emphasized in pictures of him — sometimes, as here, in act, oftener by position of the splintered fragments prominent in the foreground. This is no tradition of ancient art, but a purely mediaeval incident, yet not, I believe, merely the vacant reproduction of a sight become familiar to the spectator of tournaments. The spear was type of the strength of human wisdom. This checks the enemy in his attack, subdues him partly, yet is shattered, having done so much, and of no help in perfecting the victory or in reaping its reward of joy. But at the Saint's "loins, girt about with truth," there hangs his holier weapon — the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.

The Dragon* is bearded like a goat,-f» and essentially a thorny J creature. Every ridge of his body, wings, and head, bristles with long spines, keen, sword-like, of an earthy brown colour or poisonous green. But the most truculent-looking of all is a short, strong, hooked one at the back of his head, close to where the spear-point protrudes. §

• It should be noticed that St. George's dragon is never

human-headed, as often St. Michael's.

t So the Theban dragon on a vase, to be afterwards referred to.

J The following are Lucian's words concerning the monster slain by Perseus, " Kal rb fikv iveiai wefppiKbs rats &Kav6ais Kal ZeZiTTtfJievov ry x'^^^'A***"**"

§ I do not know the meaning of this here. It bears a striking resemblance to the crests of the dragon of Triptolemus

THE PLACE OF DRAGONS. 19

These thorns are partly the same vision — though seen with even clearer eyes, dreamed by a heart yet more tender — ^as Spenser saw in the troop of urchins coming up with the host of other lusts against the Castle of Temperance. They are also symbolic as weeds whose deadly growth brings the power of earth to waste and chokes its good. These our Lord of spiritual husbandmen must for preliminary task destroy. The agricultural pro- cess consequent on this first step in tillage we shall see in the next picture, whose subject is the triumph of the ploughshare sword, as the subject of this one is the triumph of the pruning-hook spear.* To an Italian of Carpaccio's time, further, spines — etymologically connected in Greek and Latin, as in English, with the backbone — were an acknowledged symbol of the lust of the flesh, whose defeat the artist has here set himself to paint. The mighty coiling tail, as of a giant eel,t carries out the portraiture. For this, loath- some as the body is full of horror, takes the place of the snails ranked by Spenser in line beside his urchins. Though the monster, half-

on vases. These crests signify primarily the springing blade of com. That, here, has become like iron.

• For " pruning-hooks " in our version, the Vulgate reads

" ligones " — ^tools for preparatory clearance.

t The eel was Venus* selected beast-shape in the " Flight of the Gods." Boccaccio has enlarged upon the significance of this. Gen. Deor. IV. 68. One learns from other sources that a tail was often symbol of sensuality.

20 THE PLACE OF DRAGONS.

rampant, rises into air, turning claw and spike and tooth towards St. George, we are taught by this grey abomination twisting in the slime of death that the 'threatened destruction is to be dreaded not more for its horror than for its shame.

Behind the dragon lie, naked, with dead faces turned heavenwards, two corpses — a youth's and a girl's, eaten away from the feet to the middle, the flesh hanging at the waist in loathsome rags torn by the monster's teeth. The man's thigh and upper-arm bones snapped across and sucked empty of marrow, are turned to us for special sign of this destroyer's power. The face, foreshortened, is drawn by death and decay into the ghastly likeness of an ape's.* The girl's face — seen in profile — ^is quiet and still beautiful ; her long hair is heaped as for a pillow under her head. It does not grow like St. George's, in living ripples, but lies in fantastic folds, that have about them a savour, not of death only, but of corruption. For all its pale gold they at once carry back one's

• In the great Botticelli of the National Gallery, known as

Mars and Venus, but almost identical with the picture drawn afterwards by Spenser of the Bower of Acrasia, the sleeping youth wears an expression, though less strongly marked, very similar to that of this dead face here. Such brutish paralysis is with scientific accuracy made special to the male. It may be noticed that the power of venomously wounding, expressed by Carpaccio through the dragon's spines, is in the BotticeUi signified by the swarm of hornets issuing from the tree-trunk by the young man's head.

THE PLACE OF DRAGONS. 21

mind to Turner's Pytho, where the arrow of Apollo strikes him in the midst, and, piercing, reveals his foulness. Round her throat cling a few torn rags, these only remaining of the white garment that clothed her once. Carpaccio was a diligent studont of ancient mythology. Boccaccio's very learned book on the Gods was the standard classical dictionary of those days in Italy. It tells us how the Cyprian Venus — ^a mortal princess in reality, Boccaccio holds — to cover her own disgrace led the maidens of her country to the sea-sands, and, stripping them there, tempted them to follow her in shame. I suspect Carpaccio had this story in his mind, and meant here to reveal in true dragon aspect the Venus that once seemed fair, to show by this shore the fate of them that follow her. It is to be noticed that the dead man is an addition made by Carpaccio to the old story. Maidens of the people, the legend-writers knew, had been sacrificed before the Princess ; but only he, filling the tale — like a cup of his country's fairily fashioned glass — full of the wine of profit- able teaching, is aware that men have often come to these yellow sands to join there in the dance of death — not only, nor once for all, this Saint who clasped hands with Victory. Two ships in the dis- tance — one stranded, with rigging rent or fallen, the other moving prosperously with full sails on its course — symbolically repeat this thought.*

• " The many fail, the one succeeds."

22 THE PLACE OF DKAGOXS.

Frogs clamber aboat the corpse of the man, lizards aboot the woman. Indeed for shells and creeping things this place where strangers lie slain and nnboried would hare been to the £:ood Palissy a veritable and valued potter's field. But to every one of these cold and scaly creatures a special symbolism was attached by the science — not unwisely dreaming — of Carpaccio's day. They are^ each one, painted here to amplify and press home the picture's teaching. These lizards are bom of a dead man's flesh, these snakes of his marrow : * and adders, the most venomous, are still only lizards ripened witheringly from loath- some flower into poisonous fruit. The frogs f — sjTubols, Pierius tells us, of imperfection and shame- lessness — are in transfigured form those Lycian husbandmen whose foul words mocked Latona, whose feet defiled the wells of water she thirsted for, as the veiled mother painfully journeyed with those two babes on her arm, of whom one should be Queen of Maidenhood, the other, Lord of Light, and Guardian of the Ways of Men.J This subtle association between batrachians and love declining to sense lay very deep in the Italian mind. In ' Ariadne Florentina* there are two engravings from

• "The silver cord" not "loosed" in God*s peace, but

thus devilishly quickened.

t Compare the " unclean spirits come out of the mouth of the dragon,*' in Revelation.

t *A7utcjJf.

THE PLACE OF DRAGONS. 23

Botticelli of Venus, as a star floating through heaven and as foam-born rising from the sea. Both pictures are most subtly beautiful, yet in the former the lizard likeness shows itself dis- tinctly in the face, and a lizard's tail appears in manifest form as pendulous crest of the chariot, while in the latter not only contours of profile and back,* but the selected attitude of the goddess, bent and half emergent, with hand resting not over firmly upon the level shore, irresistibly recall a fros:.

In the foreground, between St. George and the Dragon, a spotted lizard labours at the task set Sisyphus in hell for ever. Sisyphus, the cold- hearted and shifty son of jEolus,t stained in life by nameless lust, received his mocking doom of toil, partly for his treachery — winning this only in the end, — partly because he opposed the divine conception of the jEacid race ; but above all, as penalty for the attempt to elude the fate of death " that is appointed alike for all," by refusal for his own body of that " sowing in corruption," against which a deeper furrow is prepared by the last of husbandmen with whose labour each of us has on earth to do. Then, finding that Carpaccio has had in his mind one scene of Tartarus, we may believe

• Compare the account of the Frog's hump, 'Ariadne

Florentina,' p. 93. •

t Compare Pindar's use of aL6\os as a fit adjective for ^evdoSf Nem. viii. 43.

24 THE PLACE OF DRAGONS.

the corpse in the background, torn by carrion- birds, to be not merely a meaningless incident of horror, but a reminiscence of enduring punishment avenging upon Tityus* the insulted purity of Artemis, t

The coiled adder is the familiar symbol of eternity, here meant either to seal for the defeated their fate as final, or to hint, with something of Turner's sadness, that this is a battle not gained "once for ever" and "for all," but to be fought anew by every son of man, while, for each, defeat shall be deadly, and victory still most hard, though an armed Angel of the Victory of God be our marshal and leader in the contest. A further comparison with Turner is suggested by the horse's skull between us and Saint George. A similar skeleton is prominent in the corresponding part of the foreground in the " Jason " of the Liber Studiorum. But Jason clambers to victory on foot, allows no charger to bear him in the fight. Turner, more an antique J Hellene than a Christian prophet, had, as all the greatest among the Greeks, neither vision nor hope of any more perfect union between lower and higher nature by which that inferior creation, groaning now with us in pain, should cease to be type of the mortal element, which seems to shame our soul as basing

• " Terrae omniparentis alumnum."

t Or, as the story is otherwise given, of the mother of Artemis, as in the case of the Lycian peasants above. t Hamlet, V. ii. 352.

THE PLACE OF DRAGONS. 25

it in clay, and, with that element, become a temple- platform, lifting man's life towards heaven.*

With Turner's adder, too, springing immortal from the Python's wound, we cannot but connect this other adder of Carpaccio's, issuing from the white skull of a great snake. Adders, according to an old fancy, were born from the jaws of their living mother. Supernatural horror attaches to this symbolic one, writhing out from between the teeth of that ophidian death's-head. And the plague, not yet fully come forth, but already about its father's business, venomously fastens on a frog, type of the sinner whose degradation is but the beginning of punishment So soon the worm that dies not is also upon him — in its fang Circean poison to make the victim one with his plague, as in that terrible circle those, afflicted, whom " vita bestial piacque e non humana."

Two spiral shells f lie on the sand, in shape

• Pegasus and the immortal horses of Achilles, born like

Pegasus by the ocean wells, are always to be recognised as spiritual creatures, not — as St. George's horse here— earthly creatures, though serving and manifesting divine power. Com- pare too the fate of Argus (Homer, Od., XVII.) In the great Greek philosophies, similarly, we find a realm of formless shadow eternally unconquered by sacred order, offering a contrast to the modem systems which aim at a unity to be reached, if not by reason, at least by what one may not inaccurately call an act of faith.

t Ovid associates shells with the enemy of Andromeda, but regarding it as a very ancient and fishlike monster, plants them on its back —

"terga cavis super obsita concliis."— 0». lfc<., IV. 724.

26 THE PLACE OF DRAGONS.

./

related to each other as frog to lizard, or as Spenser's urchins, spoken of above, to his snails. One is round and short, . with smooth viscous- looking lip, turned over, and lying towards the spectator. The other is finer in form, and of a kind noticeable for its rows of delicate spines. But, since the dweller in this one died, the waves of many a long-fallen tide rolling on the shingle have worn it almost smooth, as you may see its fellows to-day by hundreds along Lido shore. Now such shells were, through heathen ages innumerable and over many lands, holy things, because of their whorls moving from left to right * in some mysterious sympathy, it seemed, with the san in his daily course through heaven. Then as the open clam-shell was special symbol of Venus, so these became of the Syrian Venus, Ashtaroth, Ephesian Artemis, queen, not of purity but of abundance, Mylitta, rjri,^ iror iarlv, the many- named and widely worshipped, f In Syrian figures still existing she bears just such a shell in her hand. Later writers, with whom the source of this sym- bolism was forgotten, accounted for it, partly by- imaginative instinct, partly by fanciful invention concerning the nature and way of life of these creatures. But there is here yet a further refer-

• In India, for the same reason, one of the leading marks of

the Buddha's perfection was his hair, thus spii'al.

f Compare the curious tale about the Echeneis. Pliny, Hist. Nat., IX. 25. *' De echeneide ejusque natur^ mirabili"

THE PLACE OF DRAGONS. 27

ence, since from sach shells along the Syrian coast was crushed out, sea-purple and scarlet, the juice of the Tyrian dye. And the power of sensual delight throned in the chief places of each mer- chant city, decked her " stately bed ' ' with cover- ings whose tincture was the stain of that baptism.* The shells are empty now, devoured — lizards on land or sea-shore are ever to such " inimicissimum genus " t — or wasted in the deep. For the ripples J that have thrown and left them on the sand are a type of the lusts of men, that leap up from the abyss, surge over the shore of life, and fall in swift ebb, leavinor desolation behind.

Near the coiled adder is planted a withered human head. The sinews and skin of the neck spread, and clasp the ground — as a zoophyte does its rock — in hideous mimicry of an old tree's knotted roots. Two feet and legs, torn oflF by the knee, lean on this head, one against the brow and the other behind. The scalp is bare and withered. These things catch one's eye on the first glance at the picture, and though so painful are made thus prominent as giving the key to a large part of its symbolism. Later Platonists — and among them those of the fifteenth century — developed from

• The purple of Lydda wasfamons. Compare Fors Clavigera,

April, 1876, p. 2, and DeucaUon, § 39.

t Pliny, Hist. Nat., VIII. 39.

\ Under the name of Salacia and Yenilia. See St. August., Civ. Dei, VII. 22.

28 THE PLACE OF DRAGONS.

certam texts in the Timaeus* a doctrine concerning the mystical meaning of hair, which coincides with its significance to the vision of early (pre-Platonic) Greeks. As a tree has its roots in earth, and set thus, must patiently abide, bearing such fruit as the laws of nature may appoint, so man, being of other family — these dreamers belonged to a vefy " pre-scientific epoch" — has his roots in heavep, and has the power of moving to and fro over the earth for service to the Law of Heaven, and as sign of his free descent. Of these diviner roots the hair is visible type. Plato tells us,t that of innocent, light-hearted men, "whose thoughts were turned heavenward," but " who imagined in their simplicity that the clearest demonstration of things above was to be obtained by sight" the race of birds had being, by change of external shape into due harmony with the soul {'^ fiereppvOfil^ero^^) — such persons growing feathers instead of hair. J We have in Dante, § too, an inversion of tree nature parallel to that of the head here. The tree, with roots in air, whose sweet fruit is, in Purgatory, alternately, to gluttonous souls, tempta- tion, and purifying punishment — ^watered, Landino

• Plato, Tim., 75, 76.

t Ibid,, 91, D. E.

X The most devoid of wisdom were stretched on earth, hecoming footless and creeping things, or sunk as fish in the sea. So, we saw Venus' chosen transmigration was into the form of an eel — other authorities say, of a fish.

§ Dante, Purg., XXII., XXIII.

THE PLACE OF DRAGONS. 29

interprets, by the descending spray of Lethe — signifies that these souls have forgotten the source and limits of earthly pleasure, seeking vainly in it satisfaction for the hungry and immortal spirit. So here, this blackened head of the sensual sinner is rooted to earth, the sign of strength drawn from above is stripped from off* it, and beside it on the sand are laid, as in hideous mockery, the- feet that might have been beautiful upon the mountains. Think of the woman's body beyond, and then of this head — " instead of a girdle, a rent ; and instead of well-set hair, baldness." The worm's brethren, the Dragon's elect, wear such shameful tonsure, unencircled by the symbolic crown ; prodigal of life, " risurgeranno," from no quiet grave, but from this haunt of horror, *^ co crin mozzi " * — in piteous witness of wealth ruinously cast away. Then compare, in light of the quota- tion from Plato above, the dragon's thorny plumage; compare, too, the charger's mane and tail, and the rippling glory that crowns St. George. It is worth while, too, to have in mind the words of the "black cherub" that had overheard the treacherous counsel of Guido de Montefeltro. From the moment it was uttered, to that of the sinner's death, the evil spirit says, " state gli sono a crini"t — lord of his fate. Further, in a Venetian series of engravings' illustrating Dante (published 1491),

• Dante, Inf., VII. 57. Purg., XXII. 46.

t Dante, Inf., XXVII.

30 THE PLACE OF DRAGONS.

the fire-breathings of the Dragon on Cacus' shoulders transform themselves into the Centaur's femininely flowing hair, to signify the inspiration of his forceful fraud. This " power on his head " he has because of such an angel.* When we con- sider the Princess we shall find this sjTnbolism yet further carried, but just now have to notice how the closely connected franchise of graceful motion, lost to those dishonoured ones, is marked by the most carefully-painted bones lying on £he left — a thigh-bone dislocated from that of the hip, and then thrust through it. Curiously, too, snch dislocation would in life produce a hump, mimicking fairly enough in helpless distortion that one to which the frog's leaping power is due.f

Centrally in the foreground is set the skull, perhaps of an ape, but more probably of an ape- like man, "with forehead villanous low." This lies so that its eye-socket looks out, as it were, through the empty eyehole of a sheep's skull beside it When man's vision has become ovine merely, it shall at last, even of grass, see only such bitter and dangerous growth as our husband- man must reap with a spear from a dragon's wing.

The remaining minor words of this poem in a forgotten tongue I cannot definitely interpret. The single skull with jaw-bone broken off, lying under the dragon's belly, falls to be mentioned

•Dante, Inf., XXV.

t * Ariadne Florentina,' Lect. III., p. 93.

THE PLACE OF DRAGONS. 31

afterwards. The ghastly heap of them, crowned by a human mummy, withered and brown,* beside the coil of the dragon's tail, seem meant merely to add general emphasis to the whole. The mummy (and not this alone in the picture) may be compared with Spenser's description of the Captain of the Army of Lusts : —

" His body lean and meagre as a rake, And skin all withered like a dryed rook, Thereto as cold and dreary as a snake.

Upon his head he wore a helmet light. Made of a dead man's skull, that seemed a ghastly sight.

»»

The row of five palm trees behind the dragon's head perhaps refers to the kinds of temptation over which Victory must be gained, and may thus be illustrated by the five troops that in Spenser assail the several senses, or beside Chaucer's five fingers of the hand of lust. It may be observed that Pliny speaks of the Essenes — preceders of the Christian Hermits — who had given up the world and its joys as " gens socia palmarum."t

Behind the dragon, in the far background, is a great city. Its walls and towers are crowded by anxious spectators of the battle. There stands in

• The venom of the stellio, a spotted species of lizard,

emblem of shamelessness, was held to cause blackening of the face.

t Pliny, Hist. Nat., V. 17.

^2 THE PLACE Ot BBAGOSS.

it, on a lofty pedestal^ the equestrian statue of an emperor on horseback, perhaps placed there by Carpaccio for sign of Alexandria, perhaps merely from a Venetian's pride and joy in the great figure of Colleone recently set up in his city. In the background of the opposite (St. Greorge's) side of the picture rises a precipitous hill, crowned bv a church. The cliffs are waTewom, an arm of the sea passing between them and the city.

Of these hieroglyphics, only the figure of the princess now remains for our reading. The ex- pression on her face, ineffable by descriptive words,* is translated into more tangible symbols by the gesture of her hands and arms. These repeat, with added grace and infinitely deepened meaning, the movement of maidens who encourage Theseus or Cadmus in their battle with monsters on many a Greek vase. They have been clasped in agony and prayer, but are now parting — still just a little doubtfully — into a gesture of joyous gratitude to this captain of the army of salvation and to the captain's Captain. Baphael t has

• Suppose Caliban had conquered Prospero, and fettered

him in a fig-tree or elsewhere ; that Miranda, after watching the struggle from the cave, had seen him coming triumphantly to seize her ; and that the first appearance of Ferdinand is, just at that moment, to her rescue. If we conceive how she would have looked then, it may give some parallel to the expression on the princess's face in this picture, but without a certftin light of patient devotion here well marked.

f Louvre.

THE PLACB OF DRAGONS. 33

painted her numing from the scene of battle. Even with Tintoret * she tarns away for flight ; and if her hands are raised to heaven, and her knees fall to the earth, it is more that she stambles in a woman's weakness, than that she abides in faith or sweet self-surrender. Tintoret sees the scene as in the first place a matter of fact, and paints accordingly, following his judgment of girl nature.f Carpacdo sees it as above all things a matter of faith, and paints mythically for our teaching. Indeed, doing this, he repeats the old legend with more literal accuracy. The princess was offered as a sacrifice for her people. If not willing, she was at least submissive ; nor for her- self did she dream of flight. No chains in the rock were required for the Christian Andromeda.

" And the king said, . . . ^ Daughter, I would you had died long ago rather than that I should lose you thus.' And she fell at his feet, asking of him a father's blessing. And when he had blessed her once and again, with tears she went her way to the shore. Now St. George chanced to pass by that place, and he saw her, and asked why she wept. But she answered, * Good youth, mount quickly and flee away, that you die not

• National Gallery.

f And perhaps from a certain ascetic feeling, a sense grow- ing with the growing license of Venice, that the soul must rather escape from this monster by flight, than hope to see it subdued and made serviceable, (vide p. 10).

34 THE PLACE OF DRAGONS.

here shamefully with me.' Then St. George said, ^ Fear not, maiden, but tell me what it is you wait for here, and all the people stand far off behold- ing.' And she said, ^ I see, good youth, how great of heart you are ; but why do you wish to die with me ? ' And St. George answered,

• Maiden, do not fear ; I go not hence till you tell

me why you weep.' And when she had told him all, he answered, * Maiden, have no fear, for in the name of Christ will I save you.' And she said, ^ Good soldier, — lest you perish with me I For that I perish alone is enough, and you could not save me ; you would perish with me.' Now while she spoke the dragon raised his head from the waters. And the maiden cried out, all trembling,

• Flee, good my lord, flee away swiftly.' " * But

our " very loyal chevalier of the faith " saw cause to disobey the lady.

Yet Carpaccio means to do much more than just repeat this story. His princess, (it is im- possible, without undue dividing of its substance, to put into logical w^ords the truth here " embodied in a tale,") — but this princess represents the soul of man. And therefore she wears a coronet of seven gents, for the seven virtues ; and of these, the midmost that crowns her forehead is shaped into the figure of a cross, signifying faith, the saving virtue, t We shall see that in the picture

• Legenda Aurea.

f St. Thomas Aquinas, putting logically the apostle's ** sub-

THE PLACE OF DRAGONS. 35

of Gethsemane also, Carpaccio makes the repre- sentative of faith central. Without faith, men indeed may shun the deepest abyss, yet cannot attain the glory of heavenly hope and love. Dante saw how such men — even the best — may not know the joy that is perfect Moving in the divided splendour merely of under earth, on sward whose "fresh verdure," eternally changeless, ex- pects neither in patient waiting nor in sacred hope the early and the latter rain,* " Sembianza avevan n& trista ne lieta."

This maiden, then, is an incarnation of spiritual life, mystically crowned with all the virtues. But their diviner meaning is yet unrevealed, and fol- lowing the one legible command, she goes down to such a death for her people, vainly. Only by help of the hero who slays monstrous births of nature, to sow and tend in its organic growth the wholesome plant of civil life, may she enter into that liberty with which Christ makes His people free.

stance of things hoped for," defines faith as " a habit of mind by which eternal life is begun in us " (Summa II. III. IV. 1).

• Epistle of James, v., Dante selects (and Carpaccio follows

him) as heavenly judge of a right hope that apostle who reminds his reader how man's life is even as a vapour that appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away. For the connection — geologically historic — of grass and showers with true human life, compare Genesis ii. 5 — 8, where the right translation is, " And no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb yet sprung up or grown," etc.

36 THE PLACE OF DRAGONS.

The coronet of the princess is clasped about a close red cap which hides her hair. Its tresses are not yet cast loose, inasmuch as, till the dragon be subdued, heavenly life is not secure for the soul, nor its marriage with the great Bridegroom complete. In comers even of Western Europe to this day, a maiden's hair is jealously covered till her wedding. Compare now this head with thct of St. Greorge. Carpaccio, painting a divine service of mute prayer and acted prophecy, has followed St. Paul's law concerning vestments. But we shall see how, when prayer is answered and prophecy fulfilled, the long hair — " a glory to her," and given by Nature for a veil — is sufficient covering upon the maiden's head, bent in a more mystic rite.

From the cap hangs a long scarf-like veil. It is twisted once about the princess's left arm, and then floats in the air. The effect of this veil strikes one on the first glance at the picture. It gives force to the impression of natural fear, yet strangely, in light fold, adds a secret sense of security, as though the gauze were some sacred a^gis. And such indeed it is, nor seen first by Carpaccio, though probably his inti^itive invention here. There is a Greek vase-picture * of Cadmus attacking a dragon, Aresrbegotten, that guarded the sacred spring of the warrior-god. That fight

♦ Inghiraini gives this (No. 239).

THE PLACE OF DRAGONS. 37

was thus for the same holy element whose symbolic sprinkling is the end of this one here. A maiden anxiously watches the event ; her gesture resembles the princess's ; her arm is similarly shielded by a fold of her mantle. But we have a parallel at once more familiar and more instructively perfect than this. Cadmus had a daughter, to whom was given power upon the sea, because in utmost need she had trusted herself to the mercy of its billows. Lady of its foam, in hours when " the blackening wave is edged with white," she is a holier and more helpful Aphrodite, — a " water-sprite " whose voice foretells that not " wreck " but salvation " is nicrh." In the last and most terrible crisis of that long battle with the Power of Ocean, who denied him a return to his Fatherland, Ulysses would have perished in the waters without the veil of Leucothea wrapped about his breast as divine life-buoy. And that veil, the " immortal " icpijBe/jbvoVj'^ was just such a scarf attached to the head-dress as this one of the princess's here.f Curiously, too, we shall see that Leucothea (^t first called Ino), of Thebes' and Cadmus' line, daughter of Harmonia, is closely connected with

♦ In pursuance of the same symbolism, Troy walls were once literally called " salvation," this word, with, for certain historical reasons, the added epithet of "holy," being applied to them. With the Kpi/jScfiva, Penelope shielded her " tender " cheeks in presence of the suitors.

t Vide Nitsch ad Od., V. 346.

^^ THE PLACK OF DRAG053.

certain scurces of the story oi St. Creorge.* But we hare first to CMisider the dragon's service.

• \eymn 1^ & tmi AcXw-ra

(Pmd. CH.. n. 51.)

The Editor had hope of publishing this book a fall jear ago. He now in all hnmilitr, yet not in nnceriaintj, can snm the causes of its delaj, both with respect to his friend and to himself, in the words of St. Paul,