on Rio.' Only in later years did the book become more influential in its own country.

In England, on the contrary, Rio was soon to make a profound impression. He had married an English woman, and from 1836 on he repeatedly visited Great Britain and there became acquainted with many prominent men, like Lord Stanhope, Lord Houghton, Carlyle, Gladstone, Manning, Wordsworth, and especially Samuel Rogers. Gladstone became deeply interested in the Poésie chrétienne, and took it with him on a trip to Italy in 1838.' The disciples of the new art-criticism after a time became so numerous in England that during the "season" of 1840 Rio's position was much like that of the chief of a sect.3

There was good reason why Rio at precisely this time should make so profound an impression in England, when his own country refused to understand him. For several years before his arrival the English cultured had been stirred by a religious upheaval which in intensity far surpassed any other that had ever reached this class. The Oxford Movement had been started by Keble in 1833. Pusey, enthusiastic and learned, had greatly added to its strength. In 1836 John Henry Newman began his investigations of Catholicism (cf. his Romanism and Popular Protestanism) which, starting in a spirit of hostility to Rome, were later to end in espousal of the Catholic Weltanschauung. In February, 1841, about the time when Rio was impressing London circles, appeared Newman's famous Tract No. 90, in which he tried to refute the allegation that the Thirty-nine Articles were irreconcilable with

1Epilogue, Vol. II, pp. 274, 275, 399, 400.

2 Ibid., pp. 325-60.

3 Ibid., pp. 406 ff. In 1854 there appeared in London a translation of the Poésie, entitled: The Poetry of Christian Art, Translated from the French of A. F. Rio (cf. Epilogue, Vol. II, pp. 412 ff.). Among those who helped to spread Rio's doctrines one of the most enthusiastic was Mrs. Jameson (Epil., loc. cit., p. 412). In 1841 she met Rio in Paris. She calls this meeting "the great event of my life here" (cf. Memoirs of the Life of Anna Jameson, by her Niece Gerardine Macpherson [Boston, 1878], p. 176), and further mentions visiting the Louvre in his company. Mrs. Jameson's books, written before this meeting (e. g., The Diary of an Ennuyée, 1826; Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad, 1834), betray no interest in the early artists. In 1841 she began to devote her life to the interpretation of sacred art. The most important product of her new studies is her Memoirs of the Early Italian Painters (1845) and especially her Sacred and Legendary Art (1848 ff.). About this time the Poésie was taken up with enthusiasm even in Italy. Manzoni and Cesare Cantù admired it, and, Rio states, an Italian translation with notes by Rumohr appeared (I know nothing more of this translation). (Cf. Epilogue, Vol. II, pp. 400, 419, 423.) Germany, the country of Rumohr, was naturally less impressed with the Poésie. Yet Cornelius read it and gave it to Frederick William IV (ibid., p. 416).

Roman Catholic teaching. Sinister significance was given to this publication by the fact that a strong current was beginning to set toward Rome. Many superior minds felt that in the English Church might be found modest types of goodness, but that the Roman produced the heroic. There was a strong rebound in Anglican England from insular ignorance and prejudice in matters Catholic. English travelers had come in contact with high-minded French priests of great originality and eloquence, like Lamennais and Montalembert, the friends of Rio.

These convictions took a strong hold of W. G. Ward, remarkable for great controversial gifts. In his writings he constantly compared the English church with the Roman, to the disadvantage of the former (cf. his Ideal of a Christian Church, 1844). Newman's apostasy in 1845 marked the culmination of these Roman tendencies, but broke the Oxford Movement.'

So then Rio, coming to England while the movement was reaching white heat, found what he missed at home: an atmosphere surcharged with religious sentiment and spirituality. What wonder his teaching was taken up with an avidity, a violence, to which many a page in Ruskin bears eloquent witness! This atmosphere was identical in essentials with that which, two generations earlier, among German artists had produced the reaction against Mengs, and a little later had given birth to German pre-Raphaelitism.

Because of these favorable conditions, Rio's message was destined indirectly to become a great factor in the present culture of the English-speaking nations.

In 1847 Lord Lindsay put out in London his Sketches of the History of Christian Art. This work, written in letters to a young friend, aims to call attention to the importance of Christian art, and is based, for material, chiefly on Rumohr; for interpretation, on Rio. Lanzi, Förster, Kugler, and others are also quoted;

1 Cf. R. W. Church, The Oxford Movement (London, 1900).

2 Alex. Will. Crawford Lindsay, twenty-fifth Earl of Crawford (1812-80), was profoundly religious throughout his life and directed his last years to the study of religious history. His sympathy with its artistic side resulted in his best work, the book mentioned above. The second edition of it appeared in 1882. (Cf. Dictionary of National Biography sub "Lindsay.") This edition, according to the introductory notice, offers no changes from the first. I used the American reprint of it (New York, 1886).

nevertheless, Rumohr and Rio are the author's guides, and he constantly refers to them. He calls the Poésie chrétienne "a work graceful, eloquent and appreciative, and calculated to make enthusiasts in the cause of the Ecole mystique, exclusively of all other excellence."

The very first pages reveal Lindsay's view-point. We read there:

But the Sculpture of Greece is the voice of Intellect and Thought, communing with itself in solitude, feeding on beauty and yearning after truth. While the Painting of Christendom-(and we must remember that the glories of Christianity in the full extent of the term, are yet to come) is that of an immortal spirit, conversing with its God.' He disclaims indifference toward Greek art (“do not for a moment suppose me insensible to classical art"), and pretends to take great pleasure in the Elgin marbles. Yet he continues: "But none of these completely satisfy us. The highest element of truth and beauty, the Spiritual, was beyond the soar of Phidias and Praxiteles." Consequently the Christian Weltanschauung is far superior to the Greek. Hence the "vantage" of the Bible over the Iliad.3 The fine arts are a sort of Trinity of Unity. Architecture symbolizes the Father, Sculpture the Son, and Painting the Holy Spirit, the Smile of God illuminating creation.3

The work contains first a treatise on "The Ideal, and the Character and Dignity of Christian Art;" then one entitled "Table of Symbols: The Hierogryphical language of the Universal Church during the Early Ages." Then come (among other things) "Sketches of the History of Christian Art," dealing with Christian painting, sculpture, and architecture down to the fifteenth century. The author stopped here, but hoped some time to continue.

Lindsay's Sketches in themselves have no great importance. They are of interest because symptomatic of a new current, and furthermore because they helped to inspire him in whom the whole movement in favor of Christian art culminated.

Ruskin, by temperament and training as religious as Rio and Lindsay, very early in life exhibited a strong affection for the pic

1 Sketches, Vol. I, p. 3.

2 Ibid., p. 4.

3 Ibid., pp. 5, 6.

turesque in architecture.' This predilection was perhaps encouraged in him by the presumption in favor of Gothic architecture started, as we saw, by Englishmen and Germans in the eighteenth century, and in the nineteenth most powerfully furthered in England by Pugin.

For early Italian painting, we know, there was little feeling in England before the appearance of the Poésie chrétienne. Hence it was possible for Ruskin to go to Italy as a young man without appreciating the merit of the older school. He even could publish a treatise on art (Modern Painters, Vol. I, 1843) in which appears none of that explosive enthusiasm for Christian painting which fills many of his later publications. In the autumn and winter of 1844-45 he claims to have studied Rio and Lindsay.' He could now say of himself: "perceiving thus, what a blind bat and puppy I had been, all through Italy, determined that at least I must see Pisa and Florence again before writing another word of Modern Painters."

From now on it became one of the chief labors of his life to spread the gospel that art can be inspiring and uplifting, can be an ennobling force, only as long as it is the expression of the religious spirit. This spirit, however, he found exclusively in the early masters. The wordliness and learning of the Renaissance killed it.'

His attitude is perhaps most clearly and forcibly expressed in his essay on "Pre-Raphaelitism," originally delivered in November, 1853, as Lecture IV of the "Lectures on Architecture and Painting.

995

Here he tells us:

1 See his Poetry of Architecture, etc., written when he was nineteen, and published over the nom-de-plume "Kata Phusin" (cf. Collingwood, The Life and Work of John Ruskin [Boston and New York, 1893], Vol. I, pp. 81 ff.).

2 Cf. Praeterita, 2d ed. (New York, no date), Vol. II, p. 186. He probably read and studied Rio at this time, but his memory must have played him false in regard to Lindsay, for the latter's book did not appear until 1847. Ruskin wrote a review of the Sketches in the year of their appearance, and published it in the Quarterly Review for June, 1847. It is reprinted in On the Old Road. Collingwood (op. cit., Vol. I, p. 139) uncritically copies Praeterita.

3 Praeterita, Vol. II, p. 186. In consequence he inserted in the third edition of Vol. I of Modern Painters the passages on the drawing of flowers by Cima da Conegliano, Fra Angelico, etc.

4 Fortunately, Ruskin is not always consistent. We should hardly expect dithyrambic enthusiasm for Tintoretto from the greatest follower of Rio.

5Cf. the "Brantwood edition" of Ruskin's Works (New York, 1892), pp. 187 ff.

Now the division of time which the Pre-Raphaelites [meaning, of course, Rossetti and his friends] have adopted, in choosing Raphael as the man whose works mark the separation between Mediævalism and Modernism, is perfectly accurate. It has been accepted as such by all their opponents. You have, then, the three periods: Classicalism, extending to the fall of the Roman empire; Mediævalism, extending from that fall to the close of the fifteenth century; and Modernism thenceforward to our days. Classicism began with Pagan Faith. Mediævalism began and continued, wherever civilisation began and continued to confess Christ.

About the time of Raphael began the denial of religious belief. Modernism is characterized by indifference to God and his word. The consequence is that all ancient art was religious, and all modern art is profane;

. . that art is the impurer for not being in the service of Christianity, is indisputable, and that is the main point I have now to do with . . . just as classical art was greatest in building to its gods, so mediæval art was great in building to its gods, and modern art is not great, because it builds to no God.

No one could claim:

that Angelico painting the life of Christ, Benozzo painting the life of Abraham, Ghirlandajo painting the life of the Virgin, Giotto painting the life of St. Francis, were worse employed, or likely to produce a less healthy art, than Titian painting the loves of Venus and Adonis, than Correggio painting the naked Antiope, than Salvator painting the slaughters of the thirty years' war. If you will not let me call the one kind of labour Christian, and the other unchristian, at least you will let me call the one moral, and the other immoral, and that is all I ask you to admit . When the entire pupose of art was moral teaching, it naturally took truth for its first object, and beauty, and the pleasure resulting from beauty, only for its second. But when it lost all purpose of moral teaching, it as naturally took beauty for its first object, and truth for its second.

Raphael, Ruskin goes on to explain, was responsible for "the great change which clouds the career of medieval art." For in his twenty-fifth year he decorated the chambers of the Vatican, where he wrote

the Mene, Tekel, Upharsin of the Arts of Christianity. . . . . And he wrote it thus: On one wall of that chamber he placed a picture of the World or Kingdom of Theology, presided over by Christ. And on the side wall of