Our first picture is a portrait of Richard II. on his coronation day in the year 1377, when he was ten years old. It is the earliest oneselected, and the eyes of those who see it for the first time willsurely look surprised. The jewel-like effect of the sapphire-wingedangels and coral-robed Richard against the golden background is not at all what we are accustomed to see. Nowadays it may take some time and a little patience before we can cast ourselves back to the year1377 and look at the picture with the eyes of the person who painted it. Let us begin with a search for his purpose and meaning at least.
The picture is a diptych—that is to say, it is a painting done upon two wings or shutters hinged, so as to allow of their being closed together. You have no doubt been wondering why I called it a portrait, for the picture is far from being what to-day would commonly be described as such. Richard himself is not even the most conspicuous figure; and he is kneeling and praying to the Virgin. What should we think if any living sovereign, ordering a state portrait, had himself portrayed surrounded on one side by his predecessors on the throne, and on the other side by the Virgin and Child and angels? But, in the fourteenth century, it was nothing strange that the Virgin and Child, the angels, John the Baptist, Edward the Confessor, Edmund the Martyr, and Richard II. should be thus depicted. When we have realized that it was usual for a royal patron to command and an artist to paint suchan assemblage of personages, as though all of them were then livingand in one another's presence, we have learnt something significantand impressive about a way of thinking in the Middle Ages. RichardII. thought of himself as the successor of a long line of kings,appointed by the Divine Power to rule a small portion of the Divine Territories, so what more natural than that he, as the newly reigningsovereign, should have his portrait painted, surrounded by his holiest predecessors upon the throne, and in the act of dedicating his kingdomto the Virgin Mary?
In an account given of his coronation we read that, after the ceremony in West minster Abbey, Richard went to the shrine of Our Lady at Pewe, near by, where he made a special offering to Our Lady of eleven angels, each wearing the King's badge, one for each of the eleven years of his young life. What form this offering of angels took, we know not; they may have been little wooden figures, or coins with an angel stampedupon them; but it is reasonable to connect the offering with this very picture of Our Lady and the angels. The King's special badges were the White Hart and the Collar of Broom-pods which you see embroideredall over his magnificent red robe. The White Hart is pinned in the form of a jewel beneath his collar, and each of the eleven angels bears the badge upon her shoulder and the Collar of Broom-pods round her neck. One of the King's angels gives the Royal Standard of England with the Cross of St. George on it to the Infant Christ in token of Richard's dedication of his kingdom to the Virgin and Child.
Edward III. died at Midsummer 1377 and Richard succeeded him in hiseleventh year, having been born on January 6, 1367. It is necessaryto note the exact day of the year when these events took place, forit can have importance in determining the saint whom a personagechiefly honoured as patron and protector. In this instance St. Johnthe Baptist, whose feast occurs on June 23, near to the day of Richard's accession, obviously stands as patron saint of the young King. Nextto him is King Edward the Confessor, the founder of Westminster Abbey,who was canonized for his sanctity and who points to Richard II. ashis spiritual successor upon the throne. In medieval art the saintsare distinguished by their emblems, which often have an associationwith the grim way in which they met their death, or with some otherprominent feature in their legend. Here Edward holds up a ring, where of a pretty story is told. Edward once took it off his finger to giveit to a beggar, because he had no money with him. But the beggar wasno other than John the Evangelist in disguise, and two years later he sent the ring back to the King with the message that in six months Edward would be in the joy of heaven with him. William Caxton, the first English printer, relates in his life of King Edward that whenhe heard the message he was full of joy and let fall tears from his eyes, giving praise and thanksgiving to Almighty God.
St. Edmund, who stands next to Edward the Confessor, is the othersaintly King of England; after whom the town of Bury St. Edmunds takesits name. He was shot to death with arrows by the Danes because he would not give up Christianity. If I could show you several suitablychosen pictures at once, you would recognize in the arrangement of the three Kings here (two standing, one kneeling before the Virginand Child) a plain resemblance to the typical treatment of a well-known subject—the Adoration of the Magi. You remember how when the three Wise Men of the East—always thought of in the Middle Ages as Kings—had followed the star which led them to the manger where Christ was born, they brought Him gold and frankincense and myrrh as offerings. This beautiful story was a favourite one in the Middle Ages, oftenrepresented in sculpture and painting. One King always kneels beforethe Virgin and Child, presenting his gift, whilst the other two stand behind with theirs in their hands. The standing Kings and the kneeling Richard in our picture, are grouped in just the same relation to thedivine Infant as the three Magi. The imitation of the type is clear.There was a special reason for this, in that the birthday of Richardfell upon January 6, the feast of the Epiphany, when the Wise Men did homage to the Babe. The picture, by reminding us of the three WiseMen, commemorated the birthday of the King as well as his coronation,the two chief dates of his life.
You have some idea now of the train of thought which thisfourteenth-century painter endeavoured to express in his picture commemorative of the coronation of a King. A medieval coronation was a very solemn ceremony indeed, and the picture had to be a serious expression of the great traditions of the throne of England, suggestedby the figures of St. Edward and St. Edmund, and of hope for futuregood to the realm, to ensue from the blessings of the Virgin and Childupon the young King. Religious feeling is dominant in this picture,and if from it you could turn to others of like date, you would find the same to be true. The meaning was the main thing thought of. When Giotto painted his scenes from the life of St. Francis, his first aimwas that the stories should be well told and easily grasped by allwho looked at them. Their beauty was of less importance. Thisdifference between the aim of art in the Middle Ages and in our ownday is fundamental. If you begin by picking to pieces the picturesof the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries because the drawing is bad,the colouring crude, and the grouping unnatural, you might as wellnever look at them at all. Putting faults and old fashions aside tothink of the meaning of the picture, we shall often be rewarded byfinding a soul within, and the work may affect us powerfully, not with standing its simple forms and few strong colours.
Nevertheless, after the painter had planned his picture so as to conveyits message and meaning, he did try to make it beautiful to look upon,and he often succeeded. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it was beauty of outline and a pleasant patching together of bright colours for which the painters strove, both in pictures and inmanuscripts. If you think of this picture for a moment as a coloured pattern, you will see how pretty it is. The blue wings against thegold background make a hedge for the angel faces and look extremely well. If the figure of Richard II. seems flat, if you feel as though he were cut out of cardboard and had no thickness, then turn your mind to consider only the outline of the figure. It is very graceful. Artists in the thirteenth century sometimes made their figures over-long if they thought that a sweep of graceful line would look well in a certain position in their picture; the drapery was bent into impossible curves if so they fell into a pretty pattern.
In the fourteenth century, beauty of outlines still prevailed, even when they contained plain masses of brilliant colour so pure and gem-like that the pictures almost came to look like stained-glass windows. In fact probably the constant sight of stained-glass windows in the churches greatly influenced the painters' way of work. The contrast of divers colours placed next one another was more startling than we find in later painting, whilst an effort was made to finish every detail as though it were to be looked at through a magnifying glass.
In this picture which we are now learning how to see, the Virgin wasto be shown standing in a meadow of flowers. A modern artist know show to paint the general effect of many flowers growing out of grass,but the medieval painter had not the skill to do that. He had not learntto look at the effect of a mass of flowers as a whole, nor could he have rendered such an effect with the colours and processes he possessed. He knew what one flower looked like, and thought that many must be a continued repetition of one. But it was impossible to painta great number of flowers close together, each finished in detail,so he chose instead to paint a few as completely as he could, and leave the rest to the imagination of the spectator. That was his way of makinga selection from nature; thus he hoped to suggest the idea of a flowery meadow, since he could not hope to render the look of it.
Likewise, all the details of the dresses are minutely painted. Therobes of Richard and of Edmund the Martyr are beautiful examples ofthe careful and painstaking work characteristic of the Middle Ages.No medieval painter spared himself trouble. Although he had not mastered the art of drawing the figure, he had learnt how to paint jewellery and stuffs beautifully, and delighted in doing it. The drawing of the figures you can see to be imperfect, yet nothing could be sweeter in feeling than the bevy of girl angels with roses in their hair surrounding the Virgin. Most of them are not unlike English girls of the present day, and the critics who say that this picture must have been painted by a Frenchman may be asked where he is likely to have found these English models for his angels.
Possibly the face of Richard himself may have been painted from life, for the features correspond closely enough with the large full-face portrait of him in Westminster Abbey, and with the sculptured figure upon his tomb. He certainly does not look like a child of ten, forhis state robes and crown give him a grown-up appearance. But if youregard the face carefully you can see that it is still that of a child.
The gold background in the original shines out brilliantly, for afterthe gold was laid on, it was polished with an agate, which gives ita burnished effect, and then the little patterns were carefully punched so as not to pierce the gold and thereby expose the white ground beneath.There is a jewel-like quality in the colour such as you can see inmanuscripts of the time, and it is possible that the painter may have learned his art as an illuminator of manuscripts. Artists in those days seldom confined themselves to one kind of work. We do not knowthis man's name, and are not even certain whether he was French orEnglish.
Before, as in the time of Richard, painting had been mainly a decorativeart, and the object of making pictures was to adorn the pages of abook, or the walls and vaults of a building. The most vital artisticenergies of Western Europe in the thirteenth century had gone intothe building of the great cathedrals and abbeys, which are to-day the glory of that period. Most medieval paintings that still exist in England are decorative wall-paintings of this kind, and only traces of a few remain. In many country places you can see poor and faded vestiges of painting which adorned church walls in the thirteenth century, and occasionally you may come upon a bit by some chance better preserved. These old wall-paintings were done upon the dry plaster.The discovery, or rather the revival, of 'fresco' painting (that is,of painting done upon the wet surface of freshly plastered walls, amore durable process) was made in Italy and did not penetrate toEngland.
Richard II. was not the only art-loving King of his time. You have read of John, King of France, who was taken prisoner at the Battleof Poitiers by the Black Prince, father of Richard. During hiscaptivity he lived in considerable state in London at the Savoy Palace,which occupied the site of the present Savoy Hotel in the Strand; hebrought his own painter from France with him, who painted his portraitwhich still exists in Paris. This King John was the father of four remarkable sons, Charles V., King of France, with whom Edward III.and the Black Prince fought the latter part of the Hundred Years' War; Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy; John, Duke of Berry; and Louis, Duke of Anjou. In this list, all are names of remarkable men and greatart-patrons, about whom you may some day read interesting things. Numerous lovely objects still in existence were made for them, and would not have been made at all if they had not been the men they were.It was only just becoming possible in the fourteenth century for aprince to be an art-patron. That required money, and hither to even princes had rarely been rich. The increasing wealth of England, France, and Flanders at this time was based upon the wool industry and the manufacture and commerce to which it gave rise. The Lord Chancellorin the House of Lords to this day sits on a woolsack, which is a reminder of the time when the woolsacks of England were the chief source of the wealth of English traders.
After the Black Death, an awful plague that swept through Europe in1349, a large part of the land of England was given up to sheep grazing, because the population had diminished, and it took fewer people to look after sheep than it did to till the soil. Although this had been an evil in the beginning, it became afterwards a benefit, for Englishwool was sold at an excellent price to the merchants of Flanders, who worked it up into cloth, and in their turn sold that all over Europe with big profits. The larger merchants who regulated the wool traffic were prosperous, and so too the landowners and princes whose property thus increased in value. The four sons of King John became very wealthy men. Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, by marrying the heiress ofthe Count of Flanders acquired the Flemish territory and the wealth obtained from the wool trade and manufacture there. Berry and Anjou were great provinces in France yielding a large revenue to their two Dukes. Each of these princes employed several artists to illuminate books for him in the most splendid way; they built magnificent châteaux, and had tapestries and paintings made to decorate their walls. They employed many sculptors and goldsmiths, and all gave each other aspresents works of art executed by their favourite artists. In the British Museum there is a splendid gold and enamel cup that John, Duke of Berry, caused to be made for his brother King Charles V.; to see it would give you a good idea of the costliness and elaboration ofthe finest work of that day. The courts of these four brothers were centres of artistic production in all kinds—sculpture, metal-work, tapestries, illuminated manuscripts and pictures, and there was astrong spirit of rivalry among the artists to see who could make the loveliest things, and among the patrons as to which could secure thebest artists in his service.
These four princes gave an important impulse to the production of beautiful things in France, Burgundy, and Flanders, but it is needless to burden you with the artists' names.
In the fourteenth century an artist was a workman who existed to do well the work that was desired of him. He was not an independent man with ideas of his own, who attempted to make a living by painting whathe thought beautiful, without reference to the ideas of a buyer. Ofcourse, if people prefer and buy good things when they see them, good things will be likely to be made, but if those with money to spend have no taste and buy bad things or order ugly things to be made, then the men who had it in them to be great artists may die unnoticed, because the beautiful things they could have made are not called for. To-day many people spend something upon art and a few spend a great deal.Let us hope we may not see too much of the money spent in creatinga demand for what is bad rather than for what is beautiful.
It was not unusual in the fourteenth century for a man to be at one and the same time painter, illuminator, sculptor, metal-worker, and designer of any object that might be called for. One of these many gifted men, André Beauneveu of Valenciennes, a good sculptor and a painter of some exquisite miniatures, is sometimes supposed to have been the painter of our picture of Richard II. In the absence of any signature or any definite record it is impossible to say who paintedit, but it is unnecessary to assume that it must have been paintedby a French artist, since we know that at the end of the fourteenth century there were very good painters in England.
It was by no means an exception not to sign a picture in those days,for the artists had not begun to think of themselves as individual sentitled to public fame. Hand-workers of the fourteenth century mostly belonged to a corporation or guild composed of all the other worker sat the same trade in the same town, and to this rule artists were no exception. Each man received a recognized price for his work, and the officers of the guild saw to it that he obtained that price and that he worked with good and durable materials. There were certainad vantages in this, but it involved some loss of freedom in the artist,since all had to conform to the rules of the guild. The system was characteristic of the Middle Ages, and arose from the fact that inthose troublous times every isolated person needed protection and was content to merge his individuality in some society in order to obtainit. The guilds made for peace and diminished competition, so that aguildsman may have been less tempted to hurry over or scamp his task.The result was much honest, careful work such as you see in the original of this picture. We are told by those who know best that there hasnever been a time when the actual workmanship of the general run of crafts men was better than in the Middle Ages.
This picture of Richard II. has not faded or cracked or fallen off the panel, and it seems as though we may hope it never will, for itwas well made and, what is even more important, it seems always to have been well cared for. If only the nice things that are producedwere all well cared for, how many more of them there would be in the world!
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