The Marble Faun; Or, The Romance of Monte Beni - Volume 2

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  THE EMPTINESS OF PICTURE GALLERIES

  Hilda descended, day by day, from her dove-cote, and went to one oranother of the great old palaces,--the Pamfili Doria, the Corsini, theSciarra, the Borghese, the Colonna,--where the doorkeepers knew herwell, and offered her a kindly greeting. But they shook their heads andsighed, on observing the languid step with which the poor girl toiled upthe grand marble staircases. There was no more of that cheery alacritywith which she used to flit upward, as if her doves had lent her theirwings, nor of that glow of happy spirits which had been wont to set thetarnished gilding of the picture frames and the shabby splendor of thefurniture all a-glimmer, as she hastened to her congenial and delightfultoil.

  An old German artist, whom she often met in the galleries, once laid apaternal hand on Hilda's head, and bade her go back to her own country.

  "Go back soon," he said, with kindly freedom and directness, "or youwill go never more. And, if you go not, why, at least, do you spend thewhole summer-time in Rome? The air has been breathed too often, in somany thousand years, and is not wholesome for a little foreignflower like you, my child, a delicate wood-anemone from the westernforest-land."

  "I have no task nor duty anywhere but here," replied Hilda. "The oldmasters will not set me free!"

  "Ah, those old masters!" cried the veteran artist, shaking his head."They are a tyrannous race! You will find them of too mighty a spirit tobe dealt with, for long together, by the slender hand, the fragile mind,and the delicate heart, of a young girl. Remember that Raphael's geniuswore out that divinest painter before half his life was lived. Since youfeel his influence powerfully enough to reproduce his miracles so well,it will assuredly consume you like a flame."

  "That might have been my peril once," answered Hilda. "It is not sonow."

  "Yes, fair maiden, you stand in that peril now!" insisted the kind oldman; and he added, smiling, yet in a melancholy vein, and with aGerman grotesqueness of idea, "Some fine morning, I shall come to thePinacotheca of the Vatican, with my palette and my brushes, and shalllook for my little American artist that sees into the very heart of thegrand pictures! And what shall I behold? A heap of white ashes on themarble floor, just in front of the divine Raphael's picture of theMadonna da Foligno! Nothing more, upon my word! The fire, which the poorchild feels so fervently, will have gone into her innermost, and burnther quite up!"

  "It would be a happy martyrdom!" said Hilda, faintly smiling. "But Iam far from being worthy of it. What troubles me much, among othertroubles, is quite the reverse of what you think. The old masters holdme here, it is true, but they no longer warm me with their influence.It is not flame consuming, but torpor chilling me, that helps to make mewretched."

  "Perchance, then," said the German, looking keenly at her, "Raphael hasa rival in your heart? He was your first love; but young maidens are notalways constant, and one flame is sometimes extinguished by another!"Hilda shook her head, and turned away. She had spoken the truth,however, in alleging that torpor, rather than fire, was what she hadto dread. In those gloomy days that had befallen her, it was a greatadditional calamity that she felt conscious of the present dimness of aninsight which she once possessed in more than ordinary measure. She hadlost--and she trembled lest it should have departed forever--the facultyof appreciating those great works of art, which heretofore had made solarge a portion of her happiness. It was no wonder.

  A picture, however admirable the painter's art, and wonderful his power,requires of the spectator a surrender of himself, in due proportion withthe miracle which has been wrought. Let the canvas glow as it may, youmust look with the eye of faith, or its highest excellence escapes you.There is always the necessity of helping out the painter's art with yourown resources of sensibility and imagination. Not that these qualitiesshall really add anything to what the master has effected; but they mustbe put so entirely under his control, and work along with him to suchan extent, that, in a different mood, when you are cold and critical,instead of sympathetic, you will be apt to fancy that the loftier meritsof the picture were of your own dreaming, not of his creating.

  Like all revelations of the better life, the adequate perception of agreat work of art demands a gifted simplicity of vision. In this, andin her self-surrender, and the depth and tenderness of her sympathy, hadlain Hilda's remarkable power as a copyist of the old masters. And nowthat her capacity of emotion was choked up with a horrible experience,it inevitably followed that she should seek in vain, among those friendsso venerated and beloved, for the marvels which they had heretoforeshown her. In spite of a reverence that lingered longer than herrecognition, their poor worshipper became almost an infidel, andsometimes doubted whether the pictorial art be not altogether adelusion.

  For the first time in her life, Hilda now grew acquainted with thaticy demon of weariness, who haunts great picture galleries. He isa plausible Mephistopheles, and possesses the magic that is thedestruction of all other magic. He annihilates color, warmth, and, moreespecially, sentiment and passion, at a touch. If he spare anything, itwill be some such matter as an earthen pipkin, or a bunch of herrings byTeniers; a brass kettle, in which you can see your rice, by Gerard Douw;a furred robe, or the silken texture of a mantle, or a straw hat, by VanMieris; or a long-stalked wineglass, transparent and full of shiftingreflection, or a bit of bread and cheese, or an over-ripe peach witha fly upon it, truer than reality itself, by the school of Dutchconjurers. These men, and a few Flemings, whispers the wicked demon,were the only painters. The mighty Italian masters, as you deem them,were not human, nor addressed their work to human sympathies, but toa false intellectual taste, which they themselves were the first tocreate. Well might they call their doings "art," for they substitutedart instead of nature. Their fashion is past, and ought, indeed, to havedied and been buried along with them.

  Then there is such a terrible lack of variety in their subjects. Thechurchmen, their great patrons, suggested most of their themes, anda dead mythology the rest. A quarter part, probably, of any largecollection of pictures consists of Virgins and infant Christs, repeatedover and over again in pretty much an identical spirit, and generallywith no more mixture of the Divine than just enough to spoil them asrepresentations of maternity and childhood, with which everybody's heartmight have something to do. Half of the other pictures are Magdalens,Flights into Egypt, Crucifixions, Depositions from the Cross, Pietas,Noli-me-tangeres, or the Sacrifice of Abraham, or martyrdoms of saints,originally painted as altar-pieces, or for the shrines of chapels, andwoefully lacking the accompaniments which the artist haft in view.

  The remainder of the gallery comprises mythological subjects, such asnude Venuses, Ledas, Graces, and, in short, a general apotheosis ofnudity, once fresh and rosy perhaps, but yellow and dingy in our day,and retaining only a traditionary charm. These impure pictures are fromthe same illustrious and impious hands that adventured to call beforeus the august forms of Apostles and Saints, the Blessed Mother of theRedeemer, and her Son, at his death, and in his glory, and even theawfulness of Him, to whom the martyrs, dead a thousand years ago, havenot yet dared to raise their eyes. They seem to take up one task or theother w the disrobed woman whom they call Venus, or the type of highestand tenderest womanhood in the mother of their Saviour with equalreadiness, but to achieve the former with far more satisfactory success.If an artist sometimes produced a picture of the Virgin, possessingwarmth enough to excite devotional feelings, it was probably the objectof his earthly love to whom he thus paid the stupendous and fearfulhomage of setting up her portrait to be worshipped, not figuratively asa mortal, but by religious souls in their earnest aspirations towardsDivinity. And who can trust the religious sentiment of Raphael, orreceive any of his Virgins as heaven-descended likenesses, after seeing,for example, the Fornarina of the Barberini Palace, and feeling howsensual the artist must have been to paint such a brazen trollop of hisown accord, and lovingly? Would the Blessed Mary reveal herself to hisspiritual vision, and favor him with sittings alt
ernately with that typeof glowing earthliness, the Fornarina?

  But no sooner have we given expression to this irreverent criticism,than a throng of spiritual faces look reproachfully upon us. We seecherubs by Raphael, whose baby innocence could only have been nursedin paradise; angels by Raphael as innocent as they, but whose sereneintelligence embraces both earthly and celestial things; madonnas byRaphael, on whose lips he has impressed a holy and delicate reserve,implying sanctity on earth, and into whose soft eyes he has thrown alight which he never could have imagined except by raising his owneyes with a pure aspiration heavenward. We remember, too, that divinestcountenance in the Transfiguration, and withdraw all that we have said.

  Poor Hilda, however, in her gloomiest moments, was never guilty of thehigh treason suggested in the above remarks against her beloved andhonored Raphael. She had a faculty (which, fortunately for themselves,pure women often have) of ignoring all moral blotches in a characterthat won her admiration. She purified the objects; of her regard by themere act of turning such spotless eyes upon them.

  Hilda's despondency, nevertheless, while it dulled her perceptions inone respect, had deepened them in another; she saw beauty less vividly,but felt truth, or the lack of it, more profoundly. She began to suspectthat some, at least, of her venerated painters, had left an inevitablehollowness in their works, because, in the most renowned of them, theyessayed to express to the world what they had not in their own souls.They deified their light and Wandering affections, and were continuallyplaying off the tremendous jest, alluded to above, of offering thefeatures of some venal beauty to be enshrined in the holiest places. Adeficiency of earnestness and absolute truth is generally discoverablein Italian pictures, after the art had become consummate. When youdemand what is deepest, these painters have not wherewithal to respond.They substituted a keen intellectual perception, and a marvellous knackof external arrangement, instead of the live sympathy and sentimentwhich should have been their inspiration. And hence it happens, thatshallow and worldly men are among the best critics of their works; ataste for pictorial art is often no more than a polish upon the hardenamel of an artificial character. Hilda had lavished her whole heartupon it, and found (just as if she had lavished it upon a human idol)that the greater part was thrown away.

  For some of the earlier painters, however, she still retained muchof her former reverence. Fra Angelico, she felt, must have breathed ahumble aspiration between every two touches of his brush, in order tohave made the finished picture such a visible prayer as we behold it, inthe guise of a prim angel, or a saint without the human nature. Throughall these dusky centuries, his works may still help a struggling heartto pray. Perugino was evidently a devout man; and the Virgin, therefore,revealed herself to him in loftier and sweeter faces of celestialwomanhood, and yet with a kind of homeliness in their human mould, thaneven the genius of Raphael could imagine. Sodoma, beyond a question,both prayed and wept, while painting his fresco, at Siena, of Christbound to a pillar.

  In her present need and hunger for a spiritual revelation, Hilda felt avast and weary longing to see this last-mentioned picture once again. Itis inexpressibly touching. So weary is the Saviour and utterly worn outwith agony, that his lips have fallen apart from mere exhaustion; hiseyes seem to be set; he tries to lean his head against the pillar, butis kept from sinking down upon the ground only by the cords thatbind him. One of the most striking effects produced is the sense ofloneliness. You behold Christ deserted both in heaven and earth; thatdespair is in him which wrung forth the saddest utterance man ever made,"Why hast Thou forsaken me?" Even in this extremity, however, he isstill divine. The great and reverent painter has not suffered the Son ofGod to be merely an object of pity, though depicting him in a state soprofoundly pitiful. He is rescued from it, we know not how,--by nothingless than miracle,--by a celestial majesty and beauty, and some qualityof which these are the outward garniture. He is as much, and as visibly,our Redeemer, there bound, there fainting, and bleeding from thescourge, with the cross in view, as if he sat on his throne of glory inthe heavens! Sodoma, in this matchless picture, has done more towardsreconciling the incongruity of Divine Omnipotence and outraged,suffering Humanity, combined in one person, than the theologians everdid.

  This hallowed work of genius shows what pictorial art, devoutlyexercised, might effect in behalf of religious truth; involving, as itdoes, deeper mysteries of revelation, and bringing them closer to man'sheart, and making him tenderer to be impressed by them, than the mosteloquent words of preacher or prophet.

  It is not of pictures like the above that galleries, in Rome orelsewhere, are made up, but of productions immeasurably below them,and requiring to be appreciated by a very different frame of mind. Fewamateurs are endowed with a tender susceptibility to the sentiment ofa picture; they are not won from an evil life, nor anywise morallyimproved by it. The love of art, therefore, differs widely in itsinfluence from the love of nature; whereas, if art had not strayed awayfrom its legitimate paths and aims, it ought to soften and sweetenthe lives of its worshippers, in even a more exquisite degree than thecontemplation of natural objects. But, of its own potency, it has nosuch effect; and it fails, likewise, in that other test of its moralvalue which poor Hilda was now involuntarily trying upon it. It cannotcomfort the heart in affliction; it grows dim when the shadow is uponus.

  So the melancholy girl wandered through those long galleries, and overthe mosaic pavements of vast, solitary saloons, wondering what hadbecome of the splendor that used to beam upon her from the walls. Shegrew sadly critical, and condemned almost everything that she was wontto admire. Heretofore, her sympathy went deeply into a picture, yetseemed to leave a depth which it was inadequate to sound; now, on thecontrary, her perceptive faculty penetrated the canvas like a steelprobe, and found but a crust of paint over an emptiness. Not that shegave up all art as worthless; only it had lost its consecration. Onepicture in ten thousand, perhaps, ought to live in the applause ofmankind, from generation to generation, until the colors fade andblacken out of sight, or the canvas rot entirely away. For the rest, letthem be piled in garrets, just as the tolerable poets are shelved, whentheir little day is over. Is a painter more sacred than a poet?

  And as for these galleries of Roman palaces, they were to Hilda,--though she still trod them with the forlorn hope of getting back hersympathies,--they were drearier than the whitewashed walls of a prisoncorridor. If a magnificent palace were founded, as was generally thecase, on hardened guilt and a stony conscience,--if the prince orcardinal who stole the marble of his vast mansion from the Coliseum, orsome Roman temple, had perpetrated still deadlier crimes, as probably hedid,--there could be no fitter punishment for his ghost than to wander,perpetually through these long suites of rooms, over the cold marble ormosaic of the floors, growing chiller at every eternal footstep. Fancythe progenitor of the Dorias thus haunting those heavy halls wherehis posterity reside! Nor would it assuage his monotonous misery, butincrease it manifold, to be compelled to scrutinize those masterpiecesof art, which he collected with so much cost and care, and gazing atthem unintelligently, still leave a further portion of his vital warmthat every one.

  Such, or of a similar kind, is the torment of those who seek to enjoypictures in an uncongenial mood. Every haunter of picture galleries,we should imagine, must have experienced it, in greater or less degree;Hilda never till now, but now most bitterly.

  And now, for the first time in her lengthened absence, comprisingso many years of her young life, she began to be acquainted with theexile's pain. Her pictorial imagination brought up vivid scenes of hernative village, with its great old elm-trees; and the neat, comfortablehouses, scattered along the wide, grassy margin of its street, and thewhite meeting-house, and her mother's very door, and the stream of goldbrown water, which her taste for color had kept flowing, all thiswhile, through her remembrance. O dreary streets, palaces, churches, andimperial sepulchres of hot and dusty Rome, with the muddy Tiber eddyingthrough the midst, instead of the gold-brown rivu
let! How she pinedunder this crumbly magnificence, as if it were piled all upon herhuman heart! How she yearned for that native homeliness, those familiarsights, those faces which she had known always, those days that neverbrought any strange event; that life of sober week-days, and a solemnsabbath at the close! The peculiar fragrance of a flower-bed, whichHilda used to cultivate, came freshly to her memory, across the windysea, and through the long years since the flowers had withered. Herheart grew faint at the hundred reminiscences that were awakened by thatremembered smell of dead blossoms; it was like opening a drawer, wheremany things were laid away, and every one of them scented with lavenderand dried rose-leaves.

  We ought not to betray Hilda's secret; but it is the truth, that beingso sad, and so utterly alone, and in such great need of sympathy, herthoughts sometimes recurred to the sculptor. Had she met him now, herheart, indeed, might not have been won, but her confidence would haveflown to him like a bird to its nest. One summer afternoon, especially,Hilda leaned upon the battlements of her tower, and looked over Rometowards the distant mountains, whither Kenyon had told her that he wasgoing.

  "O that he were here!" she sighed; "I perish under this terrible secret;and he might help me to endure it. O that he were here!"

  That very afternoon, as the reader may remember, Kenyon feltHilda's hand pulling at the silken cord that was connected with hisheart-strings, as he stood looking towards Rome from the battlements ofMonte Beni.