HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN ART.

The History of Christian Art, in the First Eight Centuries of the Church. By Fr. Raffaele Garrucci, S. J. Illustrating all the Monuments of Painting and Sculpture; with Five Hundred Full Page Plates, Engraved on Brass. In Six Folio Volumes.

O reads the title-page of the beautiful and valuable work of

the result twenty

years of toil, one does not see often in a century, and it is a reminder that, amid the torrent of quickly written, cheaply sold, and quickly forgotten books, the age of truly great works has not yet passed away. A glance at the author's life and work, and at the circumstances which led to its production, will be of value to thoughtful minds.

A notice of the death of Father Garrucci in the American Journal of Archæology says: "He was one of the most learned archæologists of Italy, and especially in the branch of iconography, and devoted himself almost entirely to the study of early Christian art. His numerous writings extend over a period of thirty-five years, and comprise his collections of early Latin inscriptions, his Vetri Ornati di Figure in Oro (1858), his monograph on the Jewish Cemetery of the Via Appia, and finally his great work, Storia dell' Arte Christiana nei primi otto secoli della Chiesa (1872-1882), in which he has illustrated, in six folio volumes of text and plates, every known work produced by the Christian art of the first eight centuries. . . . . Shortly before his death he had completed a colossal work, which is soon to be published, on the history of Italian coinage from the origin of the 'aes rude' down to the present time."

His recent death deprives the world of a learned and unwearied worker, but his name must remain forever linked to the history of Christian art. Fr. Garrucci was born in Naples on January 23d, 1812, entered the Society of Jesus at the age of fourteen in 1826, and at the age of seventy-three, on May 5th, 1885, the very day when his hand had corrected the last page of proof of his colossal work on Numismatics, death put an end to his labors.

His training and gradual development were eminently adapted to the great work to which he devoted his life. After several years spent in teaching literature, and pursuing those studies which started him on his career an able theologian, he applied himself exclusively to the study of sacred and profane antiquities. VOL. XI.-40

He soon became universally esteemed for his erudition and philological acquirements, and especially for his skill in the interpretation of emblems, Hebrew, Egyptian, Phoenician, Etruscan, as well as of those of Greece and Rome.

His experience in paleography and art were such that from partial fragments he was able to restore the inscriptions. Years afterwards, when the missing portions were brought to light, the actual readings verified the approximate ones previously given by Fr. Garrucci. To decide the origin, epoch, or country of a parchment or a monument, a short examination was sufficient, and on such points his judgments were sought for by professional men and accepted as of the highest value.

It was after he had spent twenty years in the study of antiquities, reading and annotating all the Oriental, Greek, and Latin Fathers, and making himself familiar with the museums and collections of art, public and private, throughout Europe, that he felt himself prepared to begin his great work.

Among his earlier productions were the Illustrations of the Lateran Museum; the Graphites or Tracings of Pompeii, of Rome; the Inscriptions of Salerno, Benevento, Pozzuoli, Pietri; the Ancient Geography of Italy, the Museum of Campagna, the Oscan Tongue, the Grammar and Dictionary of its Inscriptions, besides papers on archæology without number, published in various reviews, or read before the different academies of which he was a member.

At present our attention must be limited to the work mentioned above, wherein it may be said in truth that the author has created the theory of Christian art.

The first volume of the work explains the theory in six parts. I. Art; 2. Man; 3. Symbols; 4. Personification; 5. Types of the Old Testament; 6. Types of the New Testament. The history embraces Christian art in its origin and progress from the first to the eighth century.

The remaining five volumes include the illustrations of many thousands of subjects, together with the explanations and proofs, from various writers, of their symbolic meaning. In the second volume are the paintings from cemeteries; in the third, those from basilicas, codices, sacred ornaments, glass engraved on gold ground, etc.; in the fourth, mosaics; in the fifth, sarcophagi; and in the sixth, designs on gold, silver, bronze, ivory, marble, glass, lead, coins, seals, and precious stones. The trustworthiness of these illustrations may be gathered from the fact that the plates are from copies made by the author from the original monuments in the cases where these monuments were still in existence. To procure the most perfect results no labor or expense has been

spared, and all the resources of modern times, photography, artificial illumination, skilled draughtsmen, have contributed to the reproduction of these monuments.

The first idea of writing the History of Christian Art was conceived in 1856. Fr. Martin, of Paris, the celebrated author of the Vitreaux de Bourges, was about to publish a translation of Buonarotti's Vitra Cemeterialia, and anxious to have the help of so experienced an archæologist as Fr. Garrucci, invited his aid in the work. Fr. Garrucci called his attention to the fact that, besides the work of Buonarotti, there were many other Vitra yet unpublished; moreover, some of the copies of Buonarotti were not exact, others were copies of counterfeits. Why should not Fr. Martin make a complete publication of his own? On reflection, Fr. Martin. concluded to examine all existing specimens and to publish only those whose genuineness and accuracy he had tested by personal experience. Soon this first idea was enlarged, and Fr. Garrucci proposed to Fr. Martin his own plan of embracing in their work not only the glass collections, but all the monuments of Christian art. The plan was accepted, developed, and matured, and they started out on their career of exploration, examination, and labor together. Both Fr. Martin and Fr. Garrucci were excellent draughtsmen, and with a third experienced hand the work went forward vigorously for three years. In order to copy specimens, it was often necessary to erect scaffoldings at great danger and enormous expense, and during one of the most daring of these enterprises, while copying a mosaic from the ceiling of a cupola at Ravenna, sudden death seized upon Fr. Martin, and Fr. Garrucci was left to carry on the tremendous work alone.

After fifteen years spent in writing, and in gathering these monuments, and preparing his theory, Fr. Garrucci began the publication of his work in 1872. In 1882 it was completed. Ten years may seem a long time for the publication of a single work, but when we consider that in five of the folio volumes every second page is a full page engraving, some containing three, ten, or twenty different figures, the wonder ceases.

Besides the Christian monuments, Fr. Garrucci has given an ample collection of the monuments of the Jews and of non-Catholic art in two separate treatises. An appendix treats of monuments counterfeited by famous impostors. The cemeteries whose paintings are given in the History of Christian Art are the following: all the cemeteries of Rome and Naples; a cemetery of Syracuse, Milan, Rheims, Alexandria in Egypt, Cyrene, and Cyrenic Lybia.

We shall now pass to the examination of the nature of Christian art itself. Art, as such, and Christian art are two different things. A fine art, it is said, aims at the representation of the beautiful.

But Christian art cannot stop here, and rest in the mere representation of what may please the eye. It is inseparable from intellectual and moral good. It lives in a sphere above the sensual, and while it does not reject the materially beautiful, this last must be altogether subordinate to the intellectual and moral good to be derived from the work, as well as to the special end which Christian art has in view. This end is to bring before the mind of man the dogmas and teachings of the Church, as well by the avenues of vision as by those of hearing, through which, says St. Paul, "Faith cometh." Outline, form, color, must all be subject to this end.

Christian art does not mean merely the work of a Christian. Artistic results produced by a brush in the hands of a Christian can no more be styled Christian art, than the "Imitation of Christ" printed by a Protestant, could be called a Protestant book. Christian art means the use of the art of design to teach Catholic dogma, or to suggest the mysteries of the Catholic religion. For Christian art, in the early centuries, was Catholic art, and to-day there can be no true Christian art which is not, at the same time, Catholic art. In the early Christian art of the Church, the elements of form, color, outline, were employed only in so far as they were a mode of conveying the meaning of some mystery or truth of religion, whereas, in modern art, a widely existing complaint is that in many paintings where outline, form, and color are next to faultless, the work itself is devoid of spiritual or intellectual meaning, and too often is utterly innocent of any meaning at all.

It is worth our while here to examine briefly the ideas of our illustrious author on the nature of Christian art. Man may communicate his ideas by means of signs or images impressed on matter. Thus, for instance, alphabetic writing transmits ideas without representing them. Whereas, the art of painting not only transmits the idea, but represents it; and if this is done according to certain rules we call it art. Therefore, the art of design, or painting, is the faculty of communicating ideas by means of images drawn or painted according to fixed rules.

This communication is made by a human act, and, consequently, is inseparable from moral good or evil, according as the idea is or is not conformed to intellectual truth and moral good.

What do we mean by beautiful? Beautiful is the name given to a work of art that represents, truthfully, a concept of the mind and is pleasing to the senses. The ideal of the beautiful, or the æsthetically beautiful, cannot be limited to the materiality of the image. For that cannot be called wholly beautiful which is at variance with truth, even though it have in the highest degree all the perfection that can please the senses.

The end aimed at by Pagan society in its art was to represent the most perfect beauty, in the proportion of limbs and in the grace of attitude, portrayed to express the passions of the soul. But that which could appear beautiful to their pagan eyes, cannot appear so to ours, for whom the ideal of the beautiful must be, as a first requisite, intellectual and moral. The end of the Church, in her art, could not be merely to please the eye by sensible beauty, or to arouse animal passion, which naturally tends to what the eye represents as suited to its appetite. She ordained art to a most. noble end, one in harmony with her divine institution, the constant and vivid remembrance of revealed truth, and the stirring of the will to reach that last end proposed to conscious intelligence. By means of visible pictures she calls to mind the reality of the invisble world, and strives to keep its image ever before the windows of the soul.

To seek only the æsthetics of the human form in Christian art, would be as far out of place as to look for the same in Egyptian hieroglyphics, which were intended to express not beautiful and perfect figures, but a meaning, through the use of action and signs. Art, at times, forgot the reason of its being.

For must it not be conceded that at the Renaissance art became, in a certain sense, Pagan? In general, little was appreciated or sought for save beauty and grace of design; and in the exhibition of this, but small heed was given to what was becoming or to the reverence due religion. And the beholders, in consequence, far from being reminded of holy mysteries, were moved to idle thoughts, to speak of nothing worse.

For this reason, we see the want of logic in those who blame the early Church because she does not seek material perfection in her pictures and sculpture. Her end was not to please men's senses, but to save men's souls. Neither can one with any justice impute to her influence the decadence of art, for in the fourth century, even for material perfection, her pictures are a marvel of artistic beauty.

It is not to be thought, however, that Christian pictures or sculpture should not be as perfect as possible; that would be a mistake. The beauty of God's universe is for the children of God. But this perfection ought to be subordinate to the higher end which the Church, in her paintings, has in view.

For her noble end she made use of Christian artists as she found them; some were good, others only mediocre, some had to be trained anew. To these she taught Christian art—that is, the art which portrayed the religion taught by Jesus Christ Our Lord, thus planting holy thoughts in the mind, and in the heart the chaste love of eternal life. As to herself, history is witness of her respect for what was good in the monuments of Pagan art.