Pictor Ignotus

Florence , 15—. ( Dramatic Romances and Lyrics in Bells and Pomegranates , VII., 1845.) The subject is not historical, but is conceived in the true spirit which animated the work of the great religious (chiefly monastic) painters of the middle ages. The speaker says he could have painted pictures like those of a certain youth whose praise is in every one’s mouth. He could have executed all his soul conceived: hand and brain were pair, and all he saw he could have committed to his canvas. Each pa ion written on the countenance, whether Hope a-tiptoe for embrace, or Rapture with drooping eyes, or Confidence lighting up the forehead, all that human faces gave him, has he saved. He has dreamed of going forth in his pictures to pope or kaiser, to the whole world, with flowers cast upon the car which bore the freight, through streets re-named from the triumphal pa ing of his picture, to the house where learning and genius should greet his coming; and the thought has frightened him, and he has shrunk from the popularity as a nun shrinks from the gaze of rough soldiery; it terrified him to think of his works dragged forth to be bought and sold as household stuff, to have to live with people sunk in their daily pettine , to see their faces, listen to their prate, and hear his work discu ed. If at times he feels his work monotonous, as he goes on filling the cloisters and eternal aisles with the same Virgins, Babes, and Saints, with the same cold, calm, beautiful regard, at least no merchant traffics in his heart. The sacredne of the place where his pictures moulder and grow black will protect him from vain tongues which would criticise and discu his work. This poem has been much misunderstood. Some have seen in it the bitter complaint and the wail of half-suppre ed longing of one whom fame has pa ed unnoticed; he has failed to please the world, and will now retire to pursue his art in the cloister. Nothing could be further from the poet’s purpose in this work. Others, and those the majority of critics, have found in the poem a revelation of the true art-spirit, as though Mr. Browning had made a great discovery in this connection. The plain fact is that this spirit of retirement, this abhorrence of working for the praise of men, this hatred of applause-seeking and of self-advertisement, was that which animated the men of old Catholic times who built our cathedrals and our abbeys, and who painted our great pictures and glorified all Europe with works of art. The poem might fairly be considered as uttered by a Fra Angelico with reference to Raffaele. The great monastic painters, like Angelico, painted under the eye of God, looking upon their work as immediately inspired by His Spirit: for God and through God, not through men and for men, was their work done. It has been the life-work of Mr. Ruskin to point this out. These men were not actuated by the vain advertising spirit which animates so much of our modern work of all kinds. Humility is a virtue now little appreciated: it was the life of these old artists’ souls. Pictor Ignotus was not jealous of the popular youth whose pictures were decked with flowers by the people as they were borne through the streets which were re-named in their honour. He did not want the mob’s applause; he shrank from the appreciations of the thoughtle street folk as a nun would shrink from the compliments of a band of rough soldiery. All this beautiful spirit is fast dying out. When a writer like Browning reminds us that there were once, in “15—,” in a place like Florence, men animated by it, critics cry out, “What a discovery! How wonderful!” It is a discovery like ours of gold in South Africa, where the men of old time went to Ophir to find the precious metal. Note. —Vasari says that the Borgo Allegri at Florence took its name from the joy of the inhabitants when a Madonna by Cimabue was carried through it in proce ion.