Thoughts on Art and Autobiographical Memoirs of Giovanni Dupre Part 28

"Ah, very well!" thought I to myself, "I shall no longer be alone;" then I said to Bezzuoli,--"Thank you for the part you have taken in my defence. I still think if my colleagues only had an idea how I have been taken by surprise when I engaged to do this work, and how the originality of the head excited a desire in me, and if they felt how imperious the impulse born of that little capricious demon Art is--they would, I think, be more indulgent with me; and not only indulgent, but they would even praise me when they knew that I had refused to make a statue of Haynau for himself. And _apropos_ of this statue, which I shall not make, I will tell you about it presently; but first permit me to ask a question. I understood you to say that if this gentleman had gone to you and asked you to paint his portrait, you would have accepted the commission--did I understand right?"

[Sidenote: BEZZUOLI PAINTS HAYNAU'S PORTRAIT.]

"You understood perfectly."

"I then add that he will come. He wants a full-sized portrait of himself on horseback. A large picture, an attack in battle, or something of that kind; and later, after mid-day, he will go to you for this purpose.

Should you like it?"

"I should like it very much; but how can you speak to me with so much a.s.surance about this?"

Then I told him what the reader already knows. That morning the Marshal went with a note from me to Professor Bezzuoli. In a few words all was arranged; the picture was finished in a short time, and had a great deal of deserved praise as far as work went, and bitter censure for the rest, which he divided and bore in company with me--with less resignation, however, than could have been desired from so old an artist who had thought over and discussed the importance of the engagement he had taken. This was the character of Bezzuoli, who preserved even as an old man all the vivacity and impetuosity of open, gay-hearted youth; but at the same time, he was mistrustful and touchy in the extreme. When I remember him, full of vivacity and _bonhomie_, the friend of young men, with his frank, open-hearted, sincere advice, and at the same time full of sensitiveness about the merest nothings, and with childish and ridiculous ambitions, such as not to be willing to be beaten at billiards, it makes me smile to think of the weakness of our poor human nature. He liked to invite a certain number of friends every Sunday to his villa near Fiesole, and after dinner to play at billiards. He who was unfortunate enough to beat Bezzuoli, was sure to find him cold and set against him for some time; and those who knew this, either for pastime and amus.e.m.e.nt, or for fear and interestedness, bravely lost, and the poor professor was full of joy, more even than if he had found some new striking effect in art.

[Sidenote: BEZZUOLI'S CHARACTER.]

Here ends the anecdote of that famous portrait. Further on I will speak of others that I had the order for and could not make, and why I could not make them.

CHAPTER XVIII.

ONE OF MY COLLEAGUES--A MYSTERIOUS VOICE--THE GROUP OF THE "PIETa"--VERY CLEAR LATIN--A PROFESSOR WHO IGNORES THE 'DIVINA COMMEDIA'--COMPOSITION OF THE GROUP OF THE "PIETa"--DIGRESSION--A GOOD LESSON AND NERVOUS ATTACK--MANCINELLI AND CELENTANO.

But if some of my very dear colleagues set themselves against me on account of the great Haynau portrait, not knowing that I had refused to make his statue, others were alienated from me, I do not know for what reason. I will speak of one of them, to show how a most respectable artist and colleague of mine, having been led into error, chose strenuously to abide by it, and thus broke up a relation that one might call friends.h.i.+p; for esteem is the first bond that draws one together and creates love, and I esteemed this colleague of mine, and pitied him for the error into which he had fallen.

When Augusto Rivalta came from the school at Genoa (his birthplace) to complete his studies in sculpture in Florence, his masters, and he himself, had great faith in my school, and I was, with him as with all my scholars, an open and free expounder of those principles that I believe to be good, and to lead directly towards the beautiful, under the guidance of truth. Rivalta was always confiding and studious with me; and as by nature he is endowed with no common genius, he is to-day a professor and active master at our Academy of Fine Arts. Now it happened one day, during the early days that he was under my direction, that I saw hanging on his studio walls a bas-relief of a Madonna by that above-mentioned colleague of mine, and the head of Bartolini's "Fiducia in Dio." I thought it wise to warn my pupil of the error into which too often even tried artists have fallen, which is that of looking at and reproducing in their own works reminiscences of such originals hanging in their studios to attract poor artists. Therefore that morning my lesson consisted of the following words:--

[Sidenote: HOW TO PRESERVE ONE'S ORIGINALITY.]

"When the idea comes to you to make a statue, it forms itself naturally in your mind, and takes a movement and character all its own, be it ever so undecided and vague, as an idea always is, until it has been fixed materially into shape; but the idea is there (for him who has it), and is original. Then begins attentive study, and sometimes a long research to be able to find a live model who approaches nearest the idea that you have formed to yourself, and that you have already in your mind in embryo, or have indicated in your sketch. From the moment, however, that you have found the model or models, you must remain alone with them and your idea; no extraneous images must come between you and your work. I am afraid that those casts there facing me, will in some way take from the originality of the character and expression that you wish to give to your statue, and you will do well not to look at them. Let us understand, however, that I say not to look at them whilst you are at work on your statue: afterwards you may look at them and study them as much as you wish."

Rivalta a.s.sured me that he did not look at them, for he understood very well, that instead of being of help to him they would have confused him, and that he found himself more free and unhampered when trusting himself only to working from the live model. Having established this most essential point in art, I left him, well pleased with both myself and him. But in the meantime, this obvious, clear, and easy lesson of mine created at first an angry feeling, and afterwards a rupture, between me and my colleague, the author of the bas-relief; and this happened because a youth in Rivalta's studio reported that I had said to my scholar, "Do not look at those casts, for they are rubbish." I heard this from Professor de Fabris, to whom our friend made a clean breast of it. It was not enough for him that this friend of ours took up my defence, saying that he knew me thoroughly well, and that I was incapable of saying such things, adding, that he ought himself to know well enough that I was averse to giving offence to any one, and so might feel sure there was some misunderstanding. But all this was useless, so that our friend De Fabris, for the sake of peace, thought best to speak to me of it. It can be imagined how astonished and how pained I was. I at once told him how the matter really stood, and begged that he would a.s.sure the professor of my affection and esteem for him as a friend and as an artist. It was all in vain, and he insisted in believing in a boy who had listened badly and reported still worse, rather than in me, or even Rivalta's testimony that I offered to bring forward.

[Sidenote: HOW A FRIENDs.h.i.+P WAS BROKEN UP.]

I should not have mentioned this small matter had it not been to explain the sort of sensitiveness and obstinacy that one observes generally in the artist cla.s.s, and most specially amongst us sculptors, although, to speak the truth, those defects showed themselves oftener, and to a greater degree, amongst artists of the past, or who are now old. The young men of to-day are more frank, more tolerant, and more friendly amongst each other, and sometimes they even go to the excess of these virtues by being frank even unto insolence, tolerant even to scepticism, and careless, thoughtless, frivolous, and even worse, in their friends.h.i.+p. Who ignores the little bursts of temper and cutting words bandied between Pampaloni and Bartolini, between Benvenuti and Sabatelli, and between Bezzuoli and Gazzarrini? I shall not write a record of them, out of respect for their names, and for Death, who, under his broad mantle, has enshrouded them in solemn silence. Sleep in peace, pilgrim souls,--within a short time even we shall join you; and when we are awakened at the _dies irae_, we shall smile at our little outbursts of temper in this most foolish life, and become for ever really brothers. We shall be happy if we have nothing besides the remembrance of these little sins, already forgiven us by G.o.d, if we have forgiven others! If by chance there be any one who thinks that I have offended him by excess of vivacity of temperament or otherwise, even though it be involuntary, as might happen easily, I beg his pardon.

[Sidenote: JEALOUSIES OF ARTISTS.]

This little war of words, sarcasms, and what is worse, reticences, I have always deplored; and to succeed in being less tiresome to my colleagues, and for want of occasion to induce them to temperance, I have always kept myself aloof, and have spoken of them as I could wish them to speak of me. To be just, however, I must declare that I have seldom been (openly, I mean) exposed to the sting of their words; and if, as it happened, I was once attacked with certain insistence in the newspapers on the occasion when my three scholars, Pazzi, Sarrocchi, and Majoli, exhibited their works in the Academy, my friend Luigi Mussini, who handles the pen in the same masterly way as he does the brush, reduced to silence with one single article the poor writer who had been put up to say evil of the works of my scholars in order to do injury to the master. These injurious words have been forgotten and amply pardoned, but the beautiful and generous defence of my friend I have never forgotten. I repeat, however, that these little annoyances are much less nowadays than they were, or at least they have changed form.

To-day, instead of suggesting in undertones and mellifluous words the defects of a work to some poor writer, adding many that do not exist, and being silent as to its merits, it is rather the custom to come out frankly and openly before your face with a criticism which, if it has not the merit of temperance, does at least not bear that ugly stain of hypocrisy as a mask to truth. To this school, although he be numbered amongst the old and the dead, Bartolini did not belong; and although one of the elect in spirit and strength, yet he sometimes allowed himself to give way to pa.s.sion. While he was a young man in Paris, Canova was there making the portrait of the Emperor Napoleon I. Bartolini demanded and obtained help from that great and beneficent artist; but being asked if he would return with him to his studio in Rome, he refused: but to say, as he did openly to me and to others, that Canova wished to take him with him to put an end to his studies, was not in conformity with the truth, or with Canova's well-known and benevolent character. To the sculptor Wolf, who one day brought him a note from Rauch, he said, without even opening it--

[Sidenote: BARTOLINI.]

"How is Rauch?"

"He is very well, and sends you his greetings, as you will see from the letter I have given you."

[Sidenote: I CHANGE MY STUDIO.]

"Rauch," began Bartolini, ... but I have said above that the dead sleep in peace, and the portraits of Bartolini and Rauch are also at peace with each other, for in my house, at the villa of Lampeggi, they look each other in the face, and smile good-naturedly. _Evviva!_ So, perhaps, they smile in the true life eternal at the littlenesses of our brief life here.

It was at this time (1860) that I was obliged to leave my studio in the Liceo di Candeli, and with me all the other artists who were in that place had to go, as the present Government decided to place the militia there. This change made me feel very sad, for I had an affection for the place. I had improved it and enlarged it, renting a ground-floor in the next house, and putting it into communication with the studio. I had embellished the court with plants, fruit, and flowers. There my dear little girls used to amuse themselves at play, and gathered flowers to take home and arrange in a little vase to put before the image of the Madonna. One of them is no longer here, Luisina, of whom in time I will speak; but the other two--Amalia, who is with me, and Beppina, who is married to Cavaliere Antonio Ciardi--follow, even now, that pious custom, which others may make fun of, but which I love so much when I see these children of mine, in all the simplicity and pureness of their heart, make this act of homage to the Virgin.

My good Marina, who has also now joined our daughter and the other little ones and the boy (seven angels in all)--my good Marina tried to console me with her mild words. In her speech there was no excitement or speciousness, but a persuasive sweetness and serenity, learnt from duty and temperance. She had had no education--was a poor woman of the people, as I have said in the beginning; but I never felt bored by her, never desired a more cultured woman to teach me lessons. It is sweet to me to return in memory to the time that I lived with my good companion; and I owe her so much! I think that, if fate had given me another woman, who had not had the patience to bear my crotchets and the quick words that sometimes escaped me, who had doubted my faith, who had bored me with t.i.ttle-tattle, with sermons or other things, I think (G.o.d save me!) that I should have been a bad husband and a worse artist. So that, with a slight variation, I can repeat the words of the divine poet:--

"E la _mia_ vita e tutto il _mio_ valore, Mosse dagli occhi di quella pietosa."[12]

[12] Vita Nuova, 39.

[Sidenote: A MYSTERIOUS VOICE.]

I had therefore to resign myself to leaving the studio that I had an affection for; and the one I have now at the Academy of Fine Arts was a.s.signed to me, with the charge of _Maestro di Perfezionamento_, without stipend, but with a promise of compensations, which I have never had, perhaps because I have never asked for them.

A fact that I ought to have narrated long before this--quite domestic and intimate in its wondrous strangeness--I have kept silent about, owing to a certain sentiment that I cannot well define; but now, in recalling my good wife and my dead children, I feel as if a voice within me said, "Tell it!--write the fact as it is, without taking anything from it or pa.s.sing judgment on it." So here it is. My second daughter, Carolina, was put out to nurse. She was the only one that the good mother did not bring up herself; but, from motives of health, she could not do so. The wet-nurse of this little child lived at Londa, above the Rufina. The baby was thriving, when all of a sudden a very bad eruption came out all over her and her life was in danger. The nurse wrote to us to come and see her. Without delay I hired a _calesse_,[13] and left with my wife: the grandmother stayed behind to mind the little eldest one, who afterwards died at seven years of age, as I have written in its place. Arriving at Ponta.s.sieve, we bent our way to the Rufina, and from there continued on to Londa; on up a mountain, in part wooded with chestnut-trees, in part bare and stony, until we arrived at the small cottage of the nurse of my little one. The road circles around the hill, and in several places is very narrow, so much so that a _calesse_ has great difficulty in pa.s.sing,--as is most natural, for what has a _calesse_ to do up on that hill and amongst those hovels? But we arrived, as G.o.d willed it. The baby was very ill, and there was now no hope that she could recover. We remained there a night and a day; and having given all the orders in case of the now certain death of the little angel, I took the mother, who could not tear herself from the place, away crying. As I have said, the road was narrow; and in our descent, the hill rose above us on our right, and on the left we were on the edge of a very deep torrent: I don't know whether it was the Rincine, Moscia, or some other. The horse went at a gentle trot on account of the easy descent, and we felt perfectly safe, as I had put the drag on the wheel. My wife, with her eyes bathed in tears, was repeating some words, I know not what, dictated by a hope that the child would recover. The sky was clear, and the sun had only just risen,--we saw no one on the hill, nor anywhere else,--when suddenly a voice was heard to say "_Stop!_" (_Fermate!_) The voice seemed as if it came from the hillside. My wife and I turned in that direction, and I half stopped the horse; but we saw no one. I touched up the horse again to push on, and at the same instant the voice made itself heard a second time, and still louder, saying, "_Stop! stop!_" I pulled in the reins, and this time my wife, after having looked all around with me without seeing a living soul, was frightened.

[13] Old-fas.h.i.+oned one-horse carriage.

[Sidenote: A MYSTERIOUS INCIDENT.]

"Come, have courage," said I; "what are you afraid of? See, there is no one; and so no one can do us any harm." And, to put an end to the kind of fear even I felt, I gave my horse a good smack of the whip; but hardly had he started when we heard most distinctly, and still louder, the same voice calling out, three times, "_Stop! stop! stop!_" I stopped, and without knowing what to do or think, I got out, and helped my wife out, who was all trembling; and what was our surprise, our alarm, and our grat.i.tude for the warning that had been given us to stop!

The linch-pin had come out of the left wheel, which was all bent over and about to fall off its axle-tree, and this almost at the very edge of the precipice. With all my strength I propped up the trap on that side, pushed the wheel back into its place, and ran back to see if I could find the linch-pin, but I could not find it. I called again and again for the person who had come to my help with timely warning, to thank him, but I saw no one! In the meanwhile, it was impossible to go on in that condition. The little town of La Rufina was at some distance, and although we could walk to it on foot, how could the _calesse_ be taken there with a wheel without a linch-pin? I set myself to hunt about on the hill for a little stick of wood, and having found it, I sharpened it, and with the aid of a stone, fastened it in the hole in place of the linch-pin. But as for getting back into the _calesse_, that was not to be thought of; so leading the horse by hand, we slowly descended to Rufina, neither my wife nor myself speaking a word, but every now and again our looks bespoke the danger we had run and the wonderful warning we had had. At the Rufina I got a cartwright to put in another linch-pin, and we returned safely home. If the reader laughs, let him do so; I do not. In fact, the seriousness and truth of this occurrence, which happened about forty years ago, filled me then, as it does now, with a feeling of wonder and surprise.

[Sidenote: I MAKE A "PIETa."]

In the first part of the year 1862, Marchese b.i.+.c.hi-Ruspoli of Siena gave me the order for a monument to be placed in the cemetery of the Misericordia in that city, where he had bought a mortuary chapel for himself and family. He left me free in the choice of the subject, and I decided on a "Pieta," a subject that has been frequently treated by many artists at different times, as lending itself to the expression of the most unspeakable sorrow, even if looked upon from a purely human point of view; and if one adds thought and religious sentiment, then its interest gains tenfold, as it contains in itself, besides the beauty of form in the nude figure, and the touching sorrow of the mother, the mystery of the incarnation, of the death and of the resurrection of our Saviour. The subject, therefore, was highly artistic, exquisitely touching, and particularly well adapted to a Christian sepulchre. But with all these admirable qualities, the rendering of the subject was extremely difficult, because so many great artists of every epoch had done all they could, in painting as well as in sculpture, to express this sublime idea. Wis.h.i.+ng to keep myself from doing what others had done before me, I thought a long time on this difficult theme; but cudgel my brains as much as I would, my conceits always bore the impress of one or other of those many groups that one sees everywhere. As the gentleman who had given me the commission pressed me--in a polite way, it is true, but with some insistence--to let him see at least the sketch, I set to work with much ardour, but with little hope of succeeding. After a great deal of study, I made a small sketch, with which the gentleman p.r.o.nounced himself content, and ordered me to set to work on it as soon as possible. When the stand was ready, the irons put up, the clay prepared, and the models had been found, one of my friends, who had come to look in on me, exclaimed on seeing the sketch--

[Sidenote: I ABANDON THE SKETCH.]

"Oh, what a fine sketch! It is Michael Angelo's 'Pieta.'"

"What?" said I.

"Oh, I see I have made a mistake," said my friend; "it is quite a different thing."

But none the less, this was the impression he had received and proclaimed, and, if not absolutely correct, was yet a sincere, true, spontaneous, and disinterested one; for my friend, although far from being an artist, or even a _dilettante_, was very intelligent, and a lover of art. So from that moment my mind was made up, and I said to myself--"Either I will find some new idea, even though it be a less beautiful one, or I will abandon the commission." I put by all the things that had been prepared, went to work on other work, and thought no more of it. I ought rather to say that I thought of it constantly, perhaps even too much; for it was an irritated, futile kind of thinking, that did harm, giving me no rest even during my sleep, and not leaving my mind sufficiently free or my inspirations calm enough to seize hold of a new idea and make another attempt.

[Sidenote: A QUOTATION FROM DANTE.]

The gentleman who had given me the commission still pressed me, and could not understand why I had set aside the work after having, as he said, so well conceived it, and after it had met with his own approval.

To which I only answered these words, "Have patience!" And so he had, the poor Marchese, for I must do him the justice to say, that seeing that this was a painful subject to me, he never spoke to me any more about it; and only when affairs called him sometimes to Florence, after having talked to me about many other things, he would say, when leaving me, with his usual kind and genial manner, "Good-bye, Nannino, _memento mei!_" This blessed Latin in its brevity worked upon me more than a long sermon would have done; but it was useless to try to set myself to make another sketch, for think about it as much as I would, although in my brain there were any number of mediocre groups of the "Pieta," there was still wanting the one of my own creation, for the others belonged to me as some cantos of the 'Divina Commedia' do by force of memory. _apropos_ of this, here is a curious little story. It happened one day when I was speaking with a man excellent in every respect, that, being to the point, I quoted the following well-known verses:--

"O voi che siete in piccioletta barca, Desiderosi d'ascoltar, seguti Dietro al mio legno che cantando varca," &c.

"O ye who in some pretty little boat, Eager to listen, have been following Behind my s.h.i.+p, that singing sails along;"[14]

at which that excellent gentleman showed himself surprised, and asked if those verses were mine. I looked at him attentively, and saw in his face that he was perfectly frank, serious, and ingenuous; and so I had the impudence to say _Yes_. I regretted it afterwards, and still do so. That gentleman died some time ago, and I should not have told this joke if he had been still living, for even withholding his name, he might have recognised himself and taken it in ill part; but for all this, I repeat, he was an excellent man, stood high in his art, was professor, _cavaliere_, and _commendatore_ of more than one order, but as ignorant, as it would seem, of our cla.s.sics as I am of the propositions of Euclid.