Letters from Italy/Epilogue

As soon as I had read through my letters from Italy, a weighty sense of grief and shame possessed me: I see that I have said practically nothing, and moreover have forgotten to discuss things most interesting and important. A miserable sinner, I have not mentioned for instance Leonardo’s “Last Supper” at Milan; but just by it is a wide space and beyond a chapter hall or something like it, where some frater was painting canonical chairs with Biblical landscapes; they are inartistic, but for all that very beautiful; among them some are Japanese in form, quite bizarre and tender. As regards da Vinci, go and look at the Ambrosiana; he is a spirit uneasily perfect; but in his school I was scared with I know not what moist, endearing, and basely sweet in expression. There are expressions which cannot be forgotten; with Botticelli there is always a deep settled and lowering expression of colds in the head, since his angelic creations live in paradisiacal coolness; with Andrea del Sarto is a gentle and profound shade on the brows, whence gleam eyes burning, veiled, and full of desire; with the Umbrian painters languishing and curling tenderness, a finished heavenly salon de beauté, into which Raphael has poured the thickest Roman blood.

​108 LETTERS FROM ITALY you Aye, Raphael—a prince of artists, divine child of fortune, darling of the Muses, everything you like; one must see at Rome the Farnesina and the Vatican paintings, to be awed at what comes from his hand. But he is really a prince cannot approach him, by your leave, for thus reigns he in his glory, but go and wrestle with Michael Angelo, who is not the least divine but superhuman; he is so superhuman that for this reason he is cloudy and terrible, and will never bless you. Giotto will bless you, the holy artist, and Fra Angelico will sign the cross on your forehead; these two are the most pious of the Masters, when I do not refer to the older ones. But equally beautiful are the virtues of this world: the precious intelligence of Mantegna above all, and Signorelli, Signorelli God, grant that one may be as severe and powerful as he! But when I close my eyes I see Masaccio and no other; I assure you, that I have never met with a spirit more discreet and honourable than this great man.

Ah, I cannot discuss all these modest and wonderful, clear and obscure masters whom I have admired; but at Florence there is Hugo van der Goes, the grace of the north, and at Naples two terrible, flaming Theotocopulos, and these glories of foreign lands will not be suppressed in the blessed garden of the Italian Muses.

Thrice glorified be the name of Donatello! ​The graceful acerbity of the delicate forms of boys, by nature branded with pain like a gleam all illuminating, spiritual and unquiet passion. No sculptor has pierced us more deeply with his works. Michelozzo, Maiano, Rossellino, Verocchio, Mino da Fiesole and the rest of you, whither has departed the tender, genuine grace flourishing in your age? You pompous designers of Italian Baroque, what have you made of the severe, pure discipline of Bruneleschi, Alberti, and Bramante? It will never be absolutely clear to me why art in Italy turned towards Baroque, virtuosity, eclecticism, and return to barbarism, in Caracci, Guido Reni, Bernini, Baroque and stucco work, hair-dressing and naturalism, ecclesiastical and worldly hideousness, and ultimately to a knob, incapacity, and boredom. In fact, I do not know what people will say of this; I have wandered through galleries as indifferently as through the streets, and discovered beauties as though encountering an adventure. And when now as a supplement, with melancholy gaps, I arrange in my head what has pleased me most and not pleased me at all, it seems to me that something has ever led me on, something that connects old Christianity with Giotto, archaic antique with plastic perhaps Romanesque, Etruscans with Christian primitives, and early Renaissance with the delights of my sinful soul. It is—it is something equally humane, homely, and primitively fresh; and in the second place grave intensity of soul, which in ​concentration seeks the genuine, law-abiding form for new conceptions. Be naïve or be severe: as against vice, the serpent, and poison of poisons, be on guard against routine, preciosity, and voluptuous allurements of an art far too clever. Be simple, or obsessed by perfection of form; there is a third road, perhaps the first of all, and that is to be a personality, which to each tiny portion of the work gives evidence of its innermost character and originality. And that is all. Allah is great. Great is art.

In what it has of the best, Italian art gives a twofold example: to begin in order, and to learn much. To begin from the beginning, seek, make experiments, discover and renew, prove and solve, measure possibilities and venture; and on the other hand continue to learn from others and from yourself, to subdue vicious individuality and sauntering originality, and the shameless claim to be oneself. These are the artistic virtues of this wonderful efflorescence.

And thus I conclude my Italian journey. I went there without troubling why and on what account; and so I am satisfied with the little I brought away. Perhaps I have brought shame upon myself by many of my assertions; often I have not known how to express myself, and often have forgotten much. I have written at night, ignoring weariness and vermin, and never forgot to glance through the window towards the north. For with us, my friends, with us there is also ​beauty plains and hills, forests and water and all that is possible; and there perhaps may be found sometimes boundless abundance of pictures and statues and wonders of wonders, for art is great. Amen.