CHAP. III Foreshortening 295 § 169. and Foreshortening. This same process was also applied with equal science and success to individual objects, in relation to which it is known as foreshortening. As perspective taught the representation of the horizontal plane of earth on the vertical plane of the wall or canvas, so it taught the proper delinea tion, under the same conditions, of the extended body or limb. Hence the feats of foreshortening in figure-drawing of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries over which Vasari waxes as enthusiastic as over the lifelike rendering of incidents. We need only mention Michelangelo's tour de force in the Sistine Chapel, where the figure of the prophet Jonah, though actually painted on a part of the coved ceiling sloping towards the beholder, is so drawn as to appear leaning back and violently foreshortened away from the spectator's eye. The Italian painter who most thoroughly grasped the secret of foreshortening was Correggio, whose figures seem to have presented themselves to his imagination more familiarly upon receding planes than in upright poses, or in horizontal positions parallel to the edge of the picture. Giorgione and Titian displayed their fair recumbent nudes on planes of the latter kind, but the 'Danae' of Correggio in the Borghese Palace, Rome, reclines away from the spectator; the Magdalen in the ' Giorno,' or St. Jerome altarpiece, at Parma, Allegri's choicest masterpiece of painting, also leans away into the picture, while the same great draughtsman positively revels in the problems of foreshortening he set himself in the cupolas at Parma. This famous attempt to paint scenes in the upper air just as they would appear to a spectator straining his neck from below, resulted in an effort to delineate a sacred event as going on in the midst of a halo of celestial legs (which is all that under such circumstances could really be seen), and it is now recognised to have been a mistake; none the less however is it a potent instance of the fascination exercised over the painters of the period by the science of linear perspective. § 170. Aerial Perspective and Light-and-shade, necessary for further advance, were not fully mastered by the Italians. Linear perspective and foreshortening, however, though of the first importance, were not the only factors in the transformation of painting from its old to its modern form. It is indeed hardly so much by linear perspective, or the progressive diminution in size of objects as they recede, as by the gradual degradation of the intensity of light and shadow, and the diminished saturation of colours, that distance-and so the face of Nature as a whole-can be brought vividly before the eye. Foreshortening as a matter of drawing is simple enough in itself, but it involves for the conscientious artist the subtlest problems of tone and colour; for as the form in question recedes from the eye, changes of the most delicate kind in the illumination and hue of the parts present themselves for record and reproduction. Only through the rarest gift of artistic vision and skill of hand in matching faint transitions can these new difficulties be fully met and overcome. One may ask, were not these early Italian masters, so keen of eye, so accomplished of hand, ever tempted to probe the aspect of things about them more narrowly and search out those mysteries of light-and-shade that transform as by magic the face of familiar objects? Venice, as well as Florence, had her brilliant festal pageants which shone with redoubled lustre upon the broad expanses of the lagoon. When Beatrice of Este was welcomed to Venice in 1491 CHAP. III Light-and-Shade 297 the sea was covered for a mile or more with gaily-adorned vessels, on which were groups representing tritons and sea nymphs, with fair boys and girls poised up on masts and spars in guise of classical genii. The life, the glitter of these scenes, set off with noble architectural or maritime backgrounds, and bathed in colour reflected by rich Eastern stuffs and pearls and gold, the painters of Venice readily learned to prize; but had they no eye for the remoter charm of fading light and mantling shadow, on the large scale or the small, over the wide lagoon or in the narrow canals? After a supper at Titian's house at the back of Venice looking towards Murano, when the sun had set, we read how the lagoon was quickly alive with gondolas carrying coloured lamps and bearing the valour and beauty of the city for a cruise in the cool evening air. Had not the night a charm when all the richness and beauty of the scene was 'mellow'd to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies'? The truth is that the Italians, like all classical and classically trained peoples, loved the light, and left it to the men of the North to discover what fresh beauties might lie concealed as suggestions beneath a veil of shadow. Here is what a painter of to-day has said about nightfall on the Thames: And when the evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a veil, and the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys become campanili, and the warehouses are palaces in the night, and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and fairyland is before us-then the wayfarer hastens home; the working man and the cultured one, the wise man and the one of pleasure, cease to understand, as they have ceased to see, and Nature, who, for once, has sung in tune, sings her exquisite song to the artist alone, her son and her master———. ' 1 Only in the North and only since the seventeenth century could this have been felt or uttered by the painter. Up to that time sculpture and painting, both Greek and Christian, had aimed at the clear delineation of noble themes. The shapes they created were not fashioned to be in any way concealed, and they offered them with a certain serene selfsatisfaction to close inspection in every part. The change from this principle of representation to that prevailing in modern times is even more momentous than that produced by the introduction of perspective; and it was mainly accomplished through the work of a northern artist, onė of the strongest and most individual of painters. This innovation, with which the name of Rembrandt is chiefly associated, may be briefly described as the introduction of mystery as an element of effect in the imitative arts. As by a stroke of enchantment Rembrandt brought down a cloud over the face of Nature, and beneath it, half-revealed, half-hidden, her shapes met the eye in aspects full of new suggestion. This effect of mystery was secured through the use of light-and-shade on a new principle and to an extent hitherto unknown. Previous artists had indeed, as we shall presently see, made considerable use of shadow, but they had employed it for the purpose of giving roundness and relief to their forms, and so making delineation at once more true and more forcible. Light-and-shade to them were subordinate elements of design, while Rembrandt was the first to make compositions of light-and-shade—to use them as a musician uses his tones, as in themselves vehicles of artistic effect, and this naturally gave chiaroscuro an importance it had never before possessed. 1 J. M'N. Whistler, The Gentle Art, etc. p. 144. CHAP. III Chiaroscuro among the Italians 299 § 171. Light-and-shade as used by the Italian painters; The principal names that represent the first artistic advances in light-and-shade previous to the age of Rembrandt are those of Leonardo da Vinci and Correggio. It is true that as soon as the introduction of perspective began in the fifteenth century to disturb the old placid traditions of mural painting, shadows began also to be deepened and effects of light to be more pronounced. Piero della Francesca represents this movement, but neither he nor his compatriots of a century later, such as Caravaggio, used light-and-shade for any other purpose than to make their forms tell out more forcibly against more forcibly against the background. Leonardo, and, after him, Allegri, observed light-and-shade more narrowly, and strove to represent their subtle play over a form which they kiss without forcibly enclosing. To the ordinary delineator an arm or a leg is a more or less cylindrical object, which can be outlined on both sides and made to appear solid by longitudinal stripes of light and shadow and half-tone; but Leonardo and Correggio saw the light steal over face or torso or limb, giving prominence here to the rounded muscular masses and passing into half-tones as these sink into their tendinous prolongations, marking the dimple with shadow, the ridge of bone with sharper brightness. On Correggio's torso of the halfreclining Danae the light is not all on one side and the shadow on the other, but light and shade chase one another over all the girl-like but rounded forms. In the Mona Lisa of Leonardo in the Louvre, the modelling of the face and hands is carried out with a finish of analysis that has made the work the despair of all who essay these delicate problems, while in a nearer example (though it is a more doubtful specimen of the master), the 'Vierge aux Rochers' |