§ 24. Influ

ence of En

The influence of the masters of whom we have hitherto spoken is confined to those who have access to their actual works, since J. D. Harding. the particular qualities in which they excel are in no wise to be

graving.

rendered by the engraver. Those of whom we have next to speak are known to the public in a great measure by help of the engraver; and while their influence is thus very far extended, their modes of working are perhaps, in some degree, modified by the habitual reference to the future translation into light and shade; reference which is indeed beneficial in the care it induces respecting the arrangement of the chiaroscuro and the explanation of the forms, but which is harmful, so far as it involves a dependence rather on quantity of picturesque material than on substantial colour or simple treatment, and as it admits of indolent diminution of size and slightness of execution.

We should not be just to the present works of J. D. Harding, unless we took this influence into account. Some years back none of our artists realised more laboriously, or obtained more substantial colour and texture; but partly from the habit of making slight and small drawings for engravers, and partly also, I imagine, from an overstrained seeking after appearances of dexterity in execution, his drawings have of late years become both less solid and less complete: not, however, without attaining certain brilliant qualities in exchange which are very valuable in the treatment of some of the looser portions of subject. Of the extended knowledge and various powers of this painter, frequent instances will be noted in the following pages. Neither, perhaps, are rightly estimated among artists, owing to a certain coldness of sentiment, in his choice of subject, and a continual preference of the picturesque to the impressive; proved perhaps in nothing so distinctly as in the little interest usually attached to his skies, which, if aërial and expressive of space and movement, content him, though destitute of story, power, or character: an exception must be made in favour of the very grand Sunrise on the Swiss Alps, exhibited in 1844, wherein the artist's real power was in some measure displayed, though I am convinced he is still capable of doing far greater things. So also in his foliage he is apt to sacrifice the dignity of his trees to their wildness, and lose the forest in the copse; neither is he at all accurate

enough in his expression of species or realization of near portions. These are deficiencies, be it observed, of sentiment, not of perception, as there are few who equal him in rapidity of seizure of material truth.

Very extensive influence in modern art must be attributed to the § 25. Samuel Prout. Early works of Samuel Prout; and as there are some circumstances painting of belonging to his treatment of architectural subjects which it does architecture, not come within the sphere of the following chapters to examine, I shall endeavour to note the more important of them here.

Let us glance back for a moment to the architectural drawing of earlier times. Before the time of the Bellinis at Venice, and of Ghirlandajo at Florence, I believe there are no examples of anything beyond conventional representation of architecture, often rich, quaint, and full of interest, as Memmi's abstract of the Duomo at Florence at Sta. Maria Novella, but not to be classed with any genuine efforts at representation. It is much to be regretted that the power and custom of introducing well-drawn architecture should have taken place only when architectural taste had been itself corrupted, and that the architecture introduced by Bellini, Ghirlandajo, Francia, and the other patient and powerful workmen of the fifteenth century, is exclusively of the Renaissance styles; while their drawing of it furnishes little that is of much interest to the architectural draughtsman as such, being always governed by a reference to its subordinate position; so that all forceful shadow and play of colour are (most justly) surrendered for quiet and uniform hues of grey, and chiaroscuro of extreme simplicity. Whatever they chose to do they did with consummate grandeur; note especially the chiaroscuro of the square window of Ghirlandajo's, which so much delighted Vasari in Sta. Maria Novella; and the daring management of a piece of the perspective in the Salutation, opposite; where he has painted a flight of stairs, descending in front, though the picture is twelve feet above the eye. And yet this grandeur, in all these men, results rather from the general power obtained in their drawing of the figure, than from any definite knowledge respecting the things introduced in these accessory parts; so that while in some points it is impossible for any painter to equal these accessories, unless he were in all respects as

how deficient.

far desirable.

great as Ghirlandajo or Bellini, in others it is possible for him, with far inferior powers, to attain a representation both more accurate and more interesting.

In order to arrive at the knowledge of these, we must briefly take note of a few of the modes in which architecture itself is agreeable to the mind, especially of the influence upon the character of the building which is to be attributed to the signs of age.

§ 20. Effects It is evident, first, that if the design of the building be originally of age upon buildings, how bad, the only virtue it can ever possess will be in signs of antiquity. All that in this world enlarges the sphere of affection or imagination is to be reverenced, and all those circumstances enlarge it which strengthen our memory or quicken our conception of the dead. Hence it is no light sin to destroy anything that is old; more especially because, even with the aid of all obtainable records of the past, we, the living, occupy a space of too large importance and interest in our own eyes; we look upon the world too much as our own, too much as if we had possessed it and should possess it for ever, and forget that it is a mere hostelry, of which we occupy the apartments for a time, which others better than we have sojourned in before, who are now where we should desire to be with them. Fortunately for mankind, as some counterbalance to that wretched love of novelty which originates in selfishness, shallowness, and conceit, and which especially characterizes all vulgar minds, there is set in the deeper places of the heart such affection for the signs of age that the eye is delighted even by injuries which are the work of time; not but that there is also real and absolute beauty in the forms and colours so obtained, for which the original lines of the architecture, unless they have been very grand indeed, are well exchanged; so that there is hardly any building so ugly but that it may be made an agreeable object by such appearances. It would not be easy, for instance, to find a less pleasing piece of architecture than the portion of the front of Queen's College, Oxford, which has just been restored; yet I believe that few persons could have looked with total indifference on the mouldering and shattered surface of the oolite limestone, previous to its restoration. If, however, the character of the building consists in minute detail or multitudinous lines, the evil or good effect of

age upon it must depend in great measure on the kind of art, the material and the climate. The Parthenon, for instance, would be injured by any markings which interfered with the contours of its sculptures; and any lines of extreme purity, or colours of original harmony and perfection, are liable to injury, and are ill exchanged for mouldering edges or brown weatherstains.

But as all architecture is, or ought to be, meant to be durable, and to derive part of its glory from its antiquity, all art that is liable to mortal injury from effects of time is therein out of place, and this is another reason for the principle I have asserted in the second section of this part, page 197. I do not at this moment recollect a single instance of any very fine building which is not improved, up to a certain period, by all its signs of age, after which period, like all other human works, it necessarily declines; its decline being, in almost all ages and countries, accelerated by neglect and abuse in its time of beauty, and alteration or restoration in its time of age.

Thus I conceive that all buildings dependent on colour, whether of mosaic or painting, have their effect improved by the richness of the subsequent tones of age: for there are few arrangements of colour so perfect but that they are capable of improvement by some softening and blending of this kind; with mosaic, the improvement may be considered as proceeding almost so long as the design can be distinctly seen; with painting, so long as the colours do not change or chip off.

Again, upon all forms of sculptural ornament, the effect of time is such, that if the design be poor, it will enrich it; if overcharged, simplify it; if harsh and violent, soften it; if smooth and obscure, exhibit it; whatever faults it may have are rapidly disguised, whatever virtue it has still shines and steals out in the mellow light; and this to such an extent, that the artist is always liable to be tempted to the drawing of details in old buildings as of extreme beauty, which look cold and hard in their architectural lines; and I have never yet seen any restoration or cleaned portion of a building whose effect was not inferior to the weathered parts, even to those of which the design had in some parts almost disappeared. On the front of the church of San Michele at Lucca, the mosaics have

§ 27. Effects

of light, how necessary to the understanding of detail.

fallen out of half the columns, and lie in weedy ruin beneath: in many, the frost has torn large masses of the entire coating away, leaving a scarred unsightly surface. Two of the shafts of the upper star window are eaten entirely away by the sea wind, the rest have lost their proportions; the edges of the arches are hacked into deep hollows, and cast indented shadows on the weedgrown wall. The process has gone too far, and yet I doubt not but that this building is seen to greater advantage now than when first built, always with exception of one circumstance; that the French shattered the lower wheel window, and set up in front of it an escutcheon with "Libertas" upon it, which abomination of desolation the Lucchese have not yet had human-heartedness enough to pull down.

Putting therefore the application of architecture as an accessory out of the question, and supposing our object to be the exhibition of the most impressive qualities of the building itself, it is evidently the duty of the draughtsman, to represent it under those conditions, and with that amount of age-mark upon it which may best exalt and harmonize the sources of its beauty. This is no pursuit of mere picturesqueness; it is true following out of the ideal character of the building. Nay, far greater dilapidation than this may in portions be exhibited; for there are beauties of other kinds, not otherwise attainable, brought out by advanced dilapidation: but when the artist suffers the mere love of ruinousness to interfere with his perception of the art of the building, and substitutes rude fractures and blotting stains for all its fine chiselling and determined colour, he has lost the end of his own art.

So far of aging; next of effects of light and colour. It is, I believe, hardly enough observed among architects, that the same decorations are of totally different effect according to their position and the time of day. A moulding which is of value on a building facing south, where it takes dark shadows from steep sun, may be utterly ineffective if placed west or east; and a moulding which is chaste and intelligible in shade on a north side, may be grotesque, vulgar, or confused when it takes black shadows on the south. Farther, there is a time of day in which every architectural decoration is seen to best advantage, and certain times in which its