carpenter and engineer,
The stonecutter and painter.
You have only once to turn over the leaves of Lionardo's sketch book, in the Ambrosian Library, to see how carpentry is connected with engineering,—the architect was always a stonecutter, and the stonecutter not often practically separate, as yet, from the painter, and never so in general conception of function. You recollect, at a much later period, Kent's description of Cornwall's steward:
"KENT. You cowardly rascal!—nature disclaims in thee, a tailor made thee!
CORNWALL. Thou art a strange fellow—a tailor make a man?
KENT. Ay, sir; a stonecutter, or a painter, could not have made him so ill; though they had been but two hours at the trade."
71. You may consider then this group of artizans with the merchants, as now forming in each town an important Tiers Etat, or Third State of the people, occupied in service, first, of the ecclesiastics, who in monastic bodies inhabited the cloisters round each church; and, secondly, of the knights, who, with their retainers, occupied, each family their own fort, in allied defence of their appertaining streets.
72. A Third Estate, indeed; but adverse alike to both the others, to Montague as to Capulet, when they become disturbers of the public peace; and having a pride of its own,—hereditary still, but consisting in the inheritance of skill and knowledge rather than of blood,—which expressed the sense of such inheritance by taking its name habitually from the master rather than the sire; and which, in its natural antagonism to dignities won only by violence, or recorded only by heraldry, you may think of generally as the race whose bearing is the Apron, instead of the shield.
73. When, however, these two, or in perfect subdivision three, bodies of men, lived in harmony,—the knights remaining true to the State, the clergy to their faith, and the workmen to their craft,—conditions of national force were arrived at, under which all the great art of the middle ages was accomplished. The pride of the knights, the avarice of the priests, and the gradual abasement of character in the craftsman, changing him from a citizen able to wield either tools in peace or weapons in war, to a dull tradesman, forced to pay mercenary troops to defend his shop door, are the direct causes of common ruin towards the close of the sixteenth century.
74. But the deep underlying cause of the decline in national character itself, was the exhaustion of the Christian faith. None of its practical claims were avouched either by reason or experience; and the imagination grew weary of sustaining them in despite of both. Men could not, as their powers of reflection became developed, steadily conceive that the sins of a life might be done away with, by finishing it with Mary's name on the lips; nor could tradition of miracle for ever resist the personal discovery, made by each rude disciple by himself, that he might pray to all the saints for a twelvemonth together, and yet not get what he asked for.
75. The Reformation succeeded in proclaiming that existing Christianity was a lie; but substituted no theory of it which could be more rationally or credibly sustained; and ever since, the religion of educated persons throughout Europe has been dishonest or ineffectual; it is only among the labouring peasantry that the grace of a pure Catholicism, and the patient simplicities of the Puritan, maintain their imaginative dignity, or assert their practical use.
76. The existence of the nobler arts, however, involves the harmonious life and vital faith of the three classes whom we have just distinguished; and that condition exists, more or less disturbed, indeed, by the vices inherent in each class, yet, on the whole, energetically and productively, during the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. But our present subject being Architecture only, I will limit your attention altogether to the state of society in the great age of architecture, the thirteenth century. A great age in all ways; but most notably so in the correspondence it presented, up to a just and honourable point, with the utilitarian energy of our own days.
77. The increase of wealth, the safety of industry, and the conception of more convenient furniture of life, to which we must attribute the rise of the entire artist class, were accompanied, in that century, by much enlargement in the conception of useful public works: and—not by private enterprise,—that idle persons might get dividends out of the public pocket,—but by public enterprise,—each citizen paying down at once his share of what was necessary to accomplish the benefit to the State,—great architectural and engineering efforts were made for the common service. Common, observe; but not, in our present sense, republican. One of the most ludicrous sentences ever written in the blindness of party spirit is that of Sismondi, in which he declares, thinking of these public works only, that 'the architecture of the thirteenth century is entirely republican.' The architecture of the thirteenth century is, in the mass of it, simply baronial or ecclesiastical; it is of castles, palaces, or churches; but it is true that splendid civic works were also accomplished by the vigour of the newly risen popular power.
"The canal named Naviglio Graude, which brings the waters of the Ticino to Milan, traversing a distance of thirty miles, was undertaken in 1179, recommended in 1257, and, soon after, happily terminated; in it still consists the wealth of a vast extent of Lombardy. At the same time the town of Milan rebuilt its walls, which were three miles round, and had sixteen marble gates, of magnificence which might have graced the capital of all Italy. The Genovese, in 1276 and 1283, built their two splendid docks, and the great wall of their quay; and in 1295 finished the noble aqueduct which brings pure and abundant waters to their city from a great distance among their mountains. There is not a single town in Italy which at the same time did not undertake works of this kind; and while these larger undertakings were in progress, stone bridges were built across the rivers, the streets and piazzas were paved with large slabs of stone, and every free government recognized the duty of providing for the convenience of the citizens."15
78. The necessary consequence of this enthusiasm in useful building, was the formation of a vast body of craftsmen and architects; corresponding in importance to that which the railway, with its associated industry, has developed in modern times, but entirely different in personal character, and relation to the body politic.
Their personal character was founded on the accurate knowledge of their business in all respects; the ease and pleasure of unaffected invention; and the true sense of power to do everything better than it had ever been yet done, coupled with general contentment in life, and in its vigour and skill.
It is impossible to overrate the difference between such a condition of mind, and that of the modern artist, who either does not know his business at all, or knows it only to recognize his own inferiority to every former workman of distinction.
79. Again: the political relation of these artificers to the State was that of a caste entirely separate from the noblesse;16 paid for their daily work what was just, and competing with each other to supply the best article they could for the money. And it is, again, impossible to overrate the difference between such a social condition, and that of the artists of to-day, struggling to occupy a position of equality in wealth with the noblesse,—paid irregular and monstrous prices by an entirely ignorant and selfish public; and competing with each other to supply the worst article they can for the money.
I never saw anything so impudent on the walls of any exhibition, in any country, as last year in London. It was a daub professing to be a "harmony in pink and white" (or some such nonsense;) absolute rubbish, and which had taken about a quarter of an hour to scrawl or daub—it had no pretence to be called painting. The price asked for it was two hundred and fifty guineas.
80. In order to complete your broad view of the elements of social power in the thirteenth century, you have now farther to understand the position of the country people, who maintained by their labour these three classes, whose action you can discern, and whose history you can read; while,
Simondi, vol ii. chap. 10.
The giving of knighthood to Jacopo della Quercia for his lifelong service to Siena was not the elevation of a dexterous workman, but grace to a faithful citizen.
