2

tially that of Bury and of the other associates of Tischbein.' They recognized only the artists between Giotto and Raphael, and even Raphael's later manner, after he abandoned the teaching of Perugino, seemed to them an aberration. Giulio Romano was intolerable to them. These views are singularly important for us, as they later controlled Rio, Ruskin's inspirer. The result of the labors, which occupied them many years, must seem to us moderns essentially unsatisfactory. In the history of art, however, they mark an admirable reaction against the shallow glamour of the eighteenth century. Their dependence on F. Schlegel becomes the clearer by the fact that one of their most prominent members was Schlegel's stepson, Philip Veit.

3

So, then, the new criticism seemed established, and even the protest of Goethe and Meyer against the union of art and religion apparently could not destroy the influence of the brilliant brothers. And, indeed, these two had greatly enriched the intellectual life of their generation; their very faults had proved fruitful of important results.

1 The connection between the Tischbein group and the Nazarener was, it seems, established by Eberhard Wächter, of whom, as we saw, Meyer, in his Neu-deutsche religiospatriotische Kunst, spoke as one of the Tischbein circle, and as one who among the first produced works in the spirit of the older masters. In 1806, before Overbeck came to Rome, Wachter met him in Vienna, and seems to have communicated to him the views and prejudices of the German painters in Rome (cf. Gurlitt, loc. cit., p. 213).

2 Cf. Gurlitt, loc. cit., p. 215.

3 Cf. Herman Riegel, Geschichte des Wiederauflebens der deutschen Kunst zu Ende des 18. und Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts (Hannover, 1876), pp. 319 ff.; also Gurlitt, Die deutsche Kunst, loc. cit., pp. 58 ff., 212 ff., 233 ff.; moreover, Muther, History of Modern Painting, loc. cit.; also Howitt, Friedrich Overbeck (Freiburg i. B., 1886); also essays on Overbeck and Cornelius in Allg. Dtsch. Biog.

In 1817 Goethe and Meyer, frightened by the success of Schlegel's criticism and the works of the "Nazarener," published their essay, Neu-deutsche, religios-patriotische Kunst, from which we have already quoted several passages. It aimed a blow at the new ideas, but it showed beyond peradventure that neither Goethe nor his friend was capable of piercing the crude shell of the new principles and of understanding that Schlegel's message was vital for his time, and that Overbeck and Cornelius, with all their shortcomings, were establishing, in contrast to Mengs, a national art. It was, in fact, the example of this school which, forty years later, helped to free from the trammels of academic pedantry a group of young English artists who became known as "The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.” The hyphen between German and English Pre-Raphaelitism was William Dyce, who had learned from Overbeck (cf. Gurlitt, Die deutsche Kunst, loc. cit., p. 303; also Dict. of Nat. Biog. under Dyce). Howitt (Overbeck, Part II, p. 115) claims that Pugin, too, strongly recommended Overbeck as a model to English artists.

For interesting material on the lives of the Overbeck group in Rome, cf. Briefe aus Italien von Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, geschrieben in den Jahren 1817 bis 1827: Ein Beitrag zur Geshichte seines Lebens und der Kunstbestrebungen seiner Zeit (Gotha, 1886). For a French estimate of the "Nazarener" cf. H. Fortoul, De l'art en Allemagne (Paris, 1842), Vol. I, pp. 263 ff.

Yet it would have been far from fortunate for their country, had their ideas prevailed unmodified, and Germany must therefore be congratulated for having produced a scholar and critic who took from the teaching of the Schlegels all that was valuable, and left untouched all that was misleading and unsound. This remarkable man was Rumohr.' His Italienische Forschungen, based on the studies of many years, aimed to do for Christian art what Winckelmann's Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums had done for the art of antiquity. Vasari, Rumohr felt, was unreliable, because, being influenced by the technique of the Italian novelists of his day, he was entertaining, but lacked method. Even Lanzi, despite his great merit, was not sufficiently thorough. Besides, Rumohr, having become acquainted with the work of the Schlegels and of Overbeck, felt vastly more attracted by the earlier periods, and less by the seventeenth century, than did even Lanzi.

Rumohr's great work is characterized, considering the time in which it was written, by accuracy and care, his statements being always based on intimate study of the Italian archives. The notes reveal a large range of reading and the desire to reach the truth by an objective sifting of arguments.

In the theoretical part of the book, entitled "Zur Theorie und Geschichte neuerer Kunstbestrebungen: Haushalt der Kunst," he emphasizes the fact that Lessing and Winckelmann derived

1 Karl Friedrich von Rumohr was born in 1785 in Reinhardsgrimma, near Dresden, and died in Dresden in 1843. While a student at Göttingen, he took lessons in drawing of Domenico Fiorillo, the author of the Geschichte der zeichnenden Künste von ihrer Wiederauflebung bis auf die neuesten Zeiten. Fiorillo was a pupil of Batoni, and ranged against Mengs in the quarrel between the two. Rumohr at the death of his father inherited a large fortune, became a gentleman of leisure, and devoted himself to literature and art. Early in his life he turned Catholic, but this change of religion no more affected his inner life than a similar step had affected Winckelmann. He went to Italy several times. During a stay in Rome in 1816 he came in contact with the work of Overbeck and his associates, and thus deepened his interest in early Italian art. He published a large number of essays and studies on art and architecture. His greatest work is his Italienische Forschungen (Berlin and Stettin, 1827-31), in which several of these earlier publications were embodied. Besides works bearing on art or history, he put out historical novels, like Der letzte Savello (1834). More than that, being a great Sybarite in matters of food, he issued a cookbook, Der Geist der Kochkunst (1822). His large culture procured him the friendship of men like Friedrich Schlegel, Tieck, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Platen, and others. He was also highly esteemed by Louis I of Bavaria and Frederick William IV of Prussia. His eccentric temperament, however, was apt to estrange even great admirers. On Rumohr see his own Drey Reisen nach Italien (Leipzig, 1832); also H. W. Schulz, Karl Friedrich von Rumohr, sein Leben und seine Schriften (Leipzig, 1844); also Gurlitt, Die deutsche Kunst, pp. 157 ff.; also Allg. Deutsch. Biog.

their ideas from a knowledge merely of antiquity. He adds the sentence, significant for his whole method of work: "Denn nur, wer von einer beschränkenden Vorliebe für eigenthümliche Richtungen, Schulen und Förmlichkeiten der Kunst unabhängig ist, vermag das Wesen der Kunst rein aufzufassen." Rumohr's criticisms of the great exponents of antique art are, however, altogether free from that violence which affects us unpleasantly in Fr. Schlegel's comments on Winckelmann. For it is most impor

tant, Rumohr feels, that we learn to understand the true nature of art. As a contemporary of Tieck and Fr. Schlegel, he is inclined "die Kunst weit entschiedener, als jemals vor uns geschehen, recht in das innerste Heiligthum alles geistigen Wirkens und Lebens zu versetzen."

In the chapter entitled "Betrachtungen über den Ursprung der neueren Kunst" he expounds the value of the beginnings of Christian art. Though technically deficient, these earliest works are characterized by the "Macht einer neuen Begeisterung," which was to determine Christian art for all time to come. In the discussions which follow, Rumohr traces the influence of pagan on Christian art, and betrays a keen appreciation of evolution by proving how early suggestions flowered full-blown in the works of the greatest masters of later centuries. Even in these chapters Rumohr never teaches the theory that art becomes important and inspiring in proportion as it reflects devotion to Christian dogma, and loses value in proportion as such devotion ebbs from it. In the remaining chapters of this volume-"Ueber den Einfluss der gothischen und longobardischen Einwanderungen auf die Fortpflanzung römisch-altchristlicher Kunstfertigkeiten in der ganzen Ausdehnung Italiens," "Zustand der bildenden Künste von Karl des Grossen Regierung bis auf Friedrich I. . " "Zwölftes Jahrhundert: Regungen des Geistes, technische Fortschritte bey namhaften Künstlern," "Dreyzehntes Jahrhundert: Aufschwung des Geistes der italienischen Kunst; rascher Fortschritt in Vortheilen der Darstellung. "the author describes the

In

growth of various branches of art in Italy down to Cimabue. no part of the whole work is one more impressed with Rumohr's infinite care and intellectual honesty than in these studies on

perhaps the most difficult periods of modern art. No wonder he constantly feels compelled to polemize against Vasari, and even against Lanzi and Fiorillo.

In the second volume the initial chapter treats of the earliest Sienese masters and Cimabue. In the next chapter, which is devoted to Giotto, Rumohr makes a great effort to disprove the validity of the general admiration for that artist. In the epitome of this discussion he comes to the conclusion that, though Giotto's merit was great, he helped to bring about "jene allmählich fortschreitende und immer zunehmende Entfremdung von den Ideen des christlichen Alterthumes" which marks the Florentine school, "etwa mit Ausnahme des Fiesole und des Masaccio." This chapter is perhaps the least satisfactory of the book. Here Rumohr loses his objectivity, and even lapses, as the sentence just quoted illustrates, into some of that phraseology about the inferiority of realistic to religious art which is generally so foreign to him. Next Rumohr adds a careful treatment of the disciples of Giotto.

Among the chapters which now follow, the one which we may call the core and kernel of the entire work, and which made the deepest impression on the contemporaries, is the one entitled "Entwurf einer Geschichte der umbrisch toscanischen Kunstschulen für das funfzehnte Jahrhundert." Here all those men of the early Renaissance are passed in review who through Ruskin have become the favorites of the English-speaking world. Again Rumohr at every turn goes beyond Vasari and Lanzi, and brings to light important new material. He was not the first to be attracted by these artists, as we have seen, but he became-to use the words of his biographer Schulz-"der wissenschaftliche Vertreter und Begründer der neuen Kunstansichten und Bestrebungen." The imitators of Giotto-such is Rumohr's thesis-had induced artists to treat the human side of religion, and had thus introduced so much "menschlich Wichtiges" that, on the whole, their innovations must be regarded as a "wesentliche Bereicherung." Yet these methods and theories did not arise from any desire "den Ideen des Christenthumes ihre ganze Tiefe, ihre ernstere Seite abzugewinnen." Masaccio and Fra Angelico represent two currents of the new art. Masaccio "übernahm die Erfor

schung des Helldunkels, der Rundung und Auseinandersetzung zusammengeordneter Gestalten;" Fra Angelico "hingegen die Ergründung des inneren Zusammenhanges, der einwohnenden Bedeutung menschlicher Gesichtszüge, deren Fundgruben er zuerst der Malerey eröffnet." Then Rumohr enters with acumen into the individualities and the historical position of both artists. Masaccio's strength and virility, and his importance for art down to Lionardo, had never before been so well understood; at the same time, Fra Angelico's peculiar depth was never more sympathetically felt, not even by Schlegel. In his best works "erschöpfte sich dieser Künstler in den mannigfaltigsten Andeutungen einer mehr als irdischen Freudigkeit." Fra Angelico influenced Benozzo Gozzoli, for whom Rumohr has evident understanding.

The career of Cosimo Roselli and other minor painters proves that "nach allgemeinem Erlöschen der Begeisterung für die vorwaltenden Kunstaufgaben" only one way was left for the Florentine school to escape becoming mechanical, viz., "ein fröhliches (freylich nicht ein pedantisches) sich Hingeben in den Reiz natürlicher Erscheinungen." Fortunately, the city in which these artists lived was fine, the country lovely, the dress of men and women picturesque. Hence painters derived from the new method "den mannigfaltigsten Gewinn." This inroad of the realistic spirit was encouraged, he explains, by the influence of antiquity.

Filippo Lippi, whom Vasari without proof calls dissolute, was one of the "bedeutenderen Maler" of the Florentine group. His easel pictures are often "schwach, bisweilen derb und gemein;" but in his frescoes, where the subject called for action, "erwachte seine Seele." Botticelli and Filippino fare less well with our critic. He admires the history of Moses in the Sistine Chapel, but has little to say in praise of any other works of Botticelli which charm us today. Filippino is uneven; some of his paintings fairly disgust Rumohr. Ghirlandajo, on the other hand, attracts him. He greatly contributed to a better understanding of the human figure. Rumohr has great praise for many of Ghirlandajo's frescoes, especially those in the Santa Maria Novella in Florence, for their adequate interpretation "wirklichen Seyns.' The thrift of Florence, Rumohr points out, helped realism in art.