The Quest for the Grail of Ancient Art

WHILE the literary revival of the fifteenth century was at its height, an enthusiast might have been seen rummaging about amid the ruins of ancient buildings ; turning up fragments of architecture and of art; copying the inscriptions of friezes, walls, triumphal arches, and tombs; journeying from city to city and from villa to villa; traversing every part of Italy, then restlessly hurrying away to Greece to ransack each nook and corner of that delightful land ; flitting from island to island of the archipelago; collecting coins, manuscripts, busts, bas-reliefs, and statues ; and everywhere urged on by an impulse resistless as that which impelled the ill-fated poet in the Alastor of Shelley. This man was Ciriaco of Ancona. Educated for commerce, he had spent his years hitherto in the marts of trade; but, touched by the sacred fire of learning, he had abandoned ships and warehouses, and consecrated his life to the task of rescuing from destruction the precious relics of antiquity. A wise and enlightened scholar some called him ; others, a hair-brained visionary, a lunatic, or a fool. Men could not understand how one who might have risen to wealth and ease by the handling of merchandise could forsake its hallowed paths for the whimsical enjoyments of an investigator. The answer which he gave to those who demanded a reason for this strange choice shows a just comprehension of the mission of that age, and merits immortality : “ I go to awake the dead.”

These words fitly characterize the state into which the magnificent civilization of the past had fallen. It was not sleep or temporary lethargy; it was death, and to restore it once more to the domain of active life meant, not to arouse it from slumber, but to summon it from the grave. It is difficult for us, indeed, to realize how vast a distance lay between the time of Perikles, or even Cæsar, and that of Dante. The Greece and Rome of classic memory are immeasurably nearer to the England or America of the nineteenth century than they were to the Italy of the thirteenth. The chasm which separated the ancient from the modern era had not then been bridged. Across the stagnant sea of the Dark Ages the gaze of men wandered only to lose itself in mist. Little did they dream that along its shores were scattered the works of a peerless literature and the remnants of a plastic art more precious than all their scholastic treaties or cherished pictures of saints. Immortal poems were there, buried beneath the sands of forgetfulness ; songs, to which the deepest emotions of the human heart had responded ; the wisdom of sages, whose precepts the race never can outgrow ; the words of orators, who had thrilled assemblies and moulded the destinies of nations; the narratives of historians, in which were recorded the noblest deeds of heroic achievement; the matchless creations of sculpture, — forms that breathed the tenderness and grace of womanhood, limbs instinct with the pulsating life of youth, torsos whose swelling muscles spoke of the completes powers of manhood, faces in whose lineaments dwelt the eternal calmness and repose of divinity. Strange that no eye had ever caught sight of a mirage of lovely creations hovering above the waters, that no ear had heard sighs rippling along the waves, like those which in the first circle ot the Inferno made the dim air tremulous forever ; for truly these, no less than the spirits of that shadowy abode, had cause to grieve at so unmerited a fate.

During almost the whole of the mediæval period Italy had little to do with anything which really merits the name of art. In the third century after Christ sculpture showed unmistakable signs of decay, and before the close of the fourth it was evident that nothing could arrest its downward course. The bas-reliefs of the arch of Constantine indicate how rapid this decline had been, and the statues executed in his reign were in almost the same degraded style. From this time onward things continually grew worse, as society sank deeper and deeper in barbarism, until the rise of the Christian spirit of antagonism extinguished the last ray of sympathy between a degenerate intellect and the masterpieces of antiquity. A slight revival of interest occurred under the Gothic kings in the sixth century, but it was of short duration. It took no hold upon the consciousness of the people, and the returning waves of ignorance obliterated all that had been gained. Henceforward for nearly seven hundred years Europe was a vast desert, in which only stunted shrubs remained where once flourished that magnificent tree of art whose fruit had enriched the nations. Even these sickly growths, too, are chiefly valuable as waymarks, by which the historian of culture may trace his progress through the dreariest of wildernesses. Such works as were produced were mostly rude figures of saints, emperors, and ecclesiastics, or insipid basreliefs, often in wood or common stone, sculptured for sarcophagi, reliquaries, ciboria, and doors of churches, or for public fountains and city gates. Of socalled statues but few survived, those ordered by popes up to the end of the ninth century having perished almost without exception. This is probably due to the fact that they were merely metal images, hammered out by goldsmiths, or first roughly cast, and afterwards retouched and finished with the chisel. Objects of this kind would of course be most exposed to plunder in mediæval wars, and would very easily be lost. Hence the chief means of determining the state of art for some three or four centuries is by an examination of the coins of different rulers. These show a constant deterioration. The finer instincts of the mind seemed dead, and sovereigns whose character and achievements might once have inspired an Apelles or a Lysippos awakened no response in the breasts of the unimaginative limners and stone-cutters of the age. For them there was no higher task than a slavish copying of the conventional and scarcely human representations of their predecessors, — figures devoid of proportion, faces empty and expressionless, members tacked on awry to bodies such as never were tenanted by a human soul, and draped in garments as stiff and awkward as they were ungainly and grotesque. It seems not to have occurred to the makers of these nullities to look at one of their fellow-beings, and see if he were really put together and clothed in such a fashion ; and it may be doubted whether, had they done so, they could have represented him as he actually appeared. Still, we should not forget that the artistic, or rather inartistic, ideal of the age operated no less than the lack of manual skill to produce these results. In the minds of all classes holiness was associated with sallow features and meagre, macerated forms. Beauty was incompatible with sanctity. It was of the earth, earthy. It deified the present existence, which the Christian was taught to despise and turn away from, in order to fix his thoughts upon the life to come. Ancient art was no doubt more perfect in a physical point of view, but it was the type of sleek, well-fed sinfulness, — the glorification of worldly pleasure, the apotheosis of the flesh involving the perdition of the soul. It was inevitable, therefore, that sculpture, employed almost exclusively in the service of the church, should conform to the ecclesiastical conceptions which prevailed.

Thus for a score of generations no attempt was made to throw off the nightmare which oppressed the world. Charlemagne, it is true, had, in the patronage of learning, showed a degree of enlightenment which has cast an enviable lustre upon his reign. That he was not wholly insensible to the influence of art is proved by the marbles which he transported from Ravenna and Rome to adorn his palace at Aix-la-Chapelle. The low state of sculpture at this time is indicated, however, by the bas-reliefs of his own sepulchre at Aix and that of his uncle, Carloman, in the church of St. Remy at Rheims. These are nothing more than rough copies of ancient sarcophagi, such as had long been a regular object of commerce in Italy. The fact that even royalty was forced to content itself with these wretched works, purchased in the open market, instead of having others made expressly for its own use, testifies alike to the dearth of talent and the degraded taste existing in the most cultivated court of Europe. But the eclipse was not yet at its full. The black shadow continued to creep over the face of the sun until the eleventh and twelfth century, when the obscuration was well-nigh complete.

For seven hundred years antiquity had been receding ever farther from the thoughts of men, and in just that proportion the mind had lost its noblest powers and the hand its mastery over nature. The wings of the soul had been clipped, and it had been weighted with lead, by which it sank continually deeper and deeper in the abysses of a spiritual Inferno. But in the midst of this apparently hopeless darkness the east suddenly grew ruddy with file promise of dawn. Among the ancient relics which had escaped destruction were collected at Pisa a few sarcophagi and urns of Hellenic, Roman, and Etruscan origin, exhumed on the spot, or brought from Southern Italy and Greece in the victorious vessels of the republic. These objects, neglected and discarded by others, at length, in the early part of the thirteenth century, caught the eye of a lad who was accustomed to wander about the old cathedral and examine every fragment of sculpture to be found there. Like the Lynkeus of Argonautic fable, whose gaze could penetrate the earth and behold the treasures which it contained, he discerned the priceless wealth which generations of ignorance had overlooked, and resolved to make it his own. This youth, afterwards known to fame, was Niccolò of Pisa. Refusing to conform to the conventionalities of mediæval schools, he insisted that his work should express himself, and not the mere traditions of his craft; that it should either portray life as seen in the world of reality, or be ennobled and elevated above it as in the masterpieces of Athens and Rome. Though unable fully to embody in his own productions the principles which he recognized as comprising the essence of all true progress, — the ineptitude of centuries, so to speak, still lingering in his chisel, — he nevertheless struck out a new thought for his age, and inaugurated a better era in the plastic art of Europe. Any one who has compared his bas-reliefs with those of his immediate predecessors must have been impressed with their marvelous superiority, and must also have been filled with admiration for the man who could so liberate himself from the thralldom of his times, and leap at a single bound to that higher plane on which he was ultimately to be joined by the giants of the sixteenth century.

Of the antiquities that exerted so powerful an influence on the unfolding genius of Niccolò, the chief were a Greek vase and a sarcophagus ornamented with reliefs generally supposed to represent the story of Phædra and Hippolytos. Both of these may still be seen in the Campo Santo at Pisa, and must ever be regarded with peculiar interest as being the starting-point not only of modern sculpture, but of that movement which has restored to us so many of the chefs-d’œuvre of ancient statuary. His magnificent pulpit in the baptistery of Pisa, finished when he was between fifty and sixty, shows how unswervingly he adhered to the principles which had guided him in early life. The scenes represented upon this display unmistakable affinity with the antique. The reclining Virgin in the Nativity is apparently copied from a figure on an Etruscan tomb, while her attendant maidens are nymphs from a Roman vase. The Crucifixion evinces careful observation of the classic nude, the Christ in it being nearly as muscular as a Hercules. The Last Judgment is thoroughly Greek in style. The form of Moses is an exact reproduction of a bearded Bacchus on the vase already mentioned. The Hercules with lions and the two torsi used as Caryatides might almost have been produced by some ancient master ; and the Eve and Fortune are only the Venus and Abundantia of Roman consular coins. But it would be unjust to regard Niccolò solely or even mainly as an imitator. He had comprehended the truth that Hellenic sculpture was itself based upon nature, and that, to attain any lasting excellence, the study of the two must go hand in hand.

The influence of this remarkable man was felt not only in the places where he found employment, but, through his pupils, in all the chief cities of Italy. Still, he doubtless realized as little as any one the far-reaching consequences of his views. He builded better than he knew. He had, in fact, planted the seeds of the Renaissance ; and though the chill of early springtime might prevent them from germinating at once, they were destined to yield an ample harvest in the end.

Circumstances in the political world now became more favorable to art. The freedom of the Italian towns, conceded by Frederick Barbarossa in the peace of Constance, but little over twenty years before Niecolò’s birth, resulting in an immense expansion of commerce, had led to a state of prosperity unexampled since the days of Roman supremacy. The increase of wealth soon made itself observable in the intellectual and æsthetic life of the people. Sumptuous cathedrals, municipal buildings, and private palaces were constructed and decorated with the utmost care. This called into requisition the services of innumerable architects, painters, and sculptors, while the mysteries and similar spectacles then in vogue furnished an endless variety of subjects for frescoes and other pictures designed for scenic effect. Figures of new saints were carved ; their sepulchres were ornamented with basreliefs exhibiting the principal events of their lives; and the public squares were graced with fountains and statues commemorating important facts in the history of the different cities.

In spite of these facts, the age of Niccolò never really comprehended the truth to which his whole career had pointed. His pupils, and indeed the entire body of his followers, lacking the originality and independence of their master, were content to imitate his style, and maintain art at the point at which he had left it. Even they had not fully divined his secret, and none among them was sufficiently great to conduct the rest along the path that now seems so plain.

But this was natural, — we may say, inevitable. Anything like a wide study of principles was at that time impossible. The ransacking of the soil of Italy had not yet begun, and comparatively few treasures of the Greek and Roman period were known. Before these could become an object of common quest, some one must arise capable of inspiring mankind with such enthusiasm for antiquity that its slightest possessions should seem to them more precious than the gold for which they were so madly struggling. The prejudices of seven hundred years were not to be blown away by a breath. The horror with which all good Christians had been taught to look upon paganism had been like the blight of mildew on every product of the earlier civilizations. It could neither be wise nor safe to concern one’s self with the history or pursuits of nations on whom the Almighty had set the seal of his displeasure by sweeping them, root and branch, into perdition. As a result, men strove to forget the past, or to remember it only as an awful admonition for the future. Its magnificent literature was replaced by the writings of the church, and its free, joyous life by a mournful and depressing gloom. Of Hellenic learning absolutely nothing remained, the mediæval grammarians being unable even to distinguish the titles of Greek books from the names of the authors who wrote them. The Latin language, however, still survived ; the deliberations of general councils, the intercourse between the sovereign pontiff and the church in various nations, and at a later age the rise of the universities, rendering some common medium of communication necessary. For purposes of instruction, therefore, the classics were still found to be serviceable. Among these the chief place in poetry was held by Virgil and Ovid, in prose by Cicero and Boethius, though the grammatical and rhetorical manuals of Donatus, Priscian, and Cassiodorus, with their wide range of quotations, were even more popular. In this way the great names of Latin literature, and of Greek through the medium of Latin translations, were kept before the minds of scholars, though for the most part they were vague, shadowy figures, hovering like phantoms on the borders of the unknown, yet possessing a certain august dignity which made them impressive even at the distance of centuries. The bard of Mantua himself was thought of more as a magician and conjurer than a poet, — a being of occult wisdom and mighty power, capable of piercing mountains and rearing huge blocks of stone into vaults and arches like those beheld among the Roman ruins. So strong was this feeling even in the fourteenth century that Petrarch was accused of familiarity with magic merely from his admiration for the Bucolics and Æneid. Still, those gentler and more lovely traits of character, which rendered Virgil so popular among his contemporaries, were not without their influence upon mediæval thought. The impression which ho made on nobler minds is well seen in the Divine Comedy, where Dante’s love, reverence, and loyalty for the master whom, above all others, he had chosen to be his exemplar in verse form one of the most beautiful and touching features of that immortal work. It is here, indeed, that we discern the dawning of a genuinely modern appreciation of whatever was excellent in antiquity. The devotion of the Florentine scholar to the guide who conducted him on that weird, enchanting journey through “ the blind world ” does not diminish his homage to the other worthies who had once contributed to the intellectual and moral enlightenment of the race. They had, it is true, failed of the bliss of heaven, since that could be entered only through the portal of baptism ; yet it was not in his heart to picture them as in the realms of endless torment, though popes and cardinals would have been their companions there. He assigns them a place in the limbo of departed spirits, where they may live over the scenes of their earthly life, subjected to no punishment except a hopeless but always dignified yearning for joys which cannot be attained. Homer is there, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan ; Socrates, Plato, Zeno, Aristotle, and Euclid ; Cicero, Livy, Seneca, and Cæsar; Æneas, Hector, Electra, Camilla, Penthesilca, Brutus the foe of Tarquin, Lucretia, Julia, Marcia, Cornelia, and others like them, conspicuous in letters, philosophy, virtue, and heroic achievement. There, in the inclosure of their sevenfold wall, this goodly company, with voices sweet and solemn eyes and slow, wander along the green slopes, and bask in the calm, bright atmosphere, where the sighs that tremble on the air without are never heard, conversing on those high themes and glorious deeds whose memory has been the inspiration of mankind. Thus at length we behold the human mind bursting the fetters of centuries, and asserting its claim to its long-lost birthright. Well may we apply to the sad-faced Tuscan himself the words “ onorate l’altissimo pocta,” which he heard addressed to his immortal leader on approaching

But the genius that was to rouse and quicken Italian society was yet to come. Unlike Dante, he must he more than a poet, more than a schoolman, more than a reformer with overmastering convictions in regard to moral and religious truth. He must be a broad and comprehensive scholar, not only familiar with the thought and learning of the past, but keenly alive to the spirit of his own times, and, above all, capable of addressing men, and firing them with his own enthusiasm. This rare power his generation found in Petrarch. He was no stern, austere nature, hurt, persecuted, and driven from home,as Dante had been, but free, warm, generous, and open-hearted, responsive to the charms of life and love. Surrounded in the most susceptible years of youth, now by the influences of the great University of Bologna, now by the attractions of the gay city of Avignon, which, during the papal residence, was thronged with the learned and noble of every nation, he developed a taste not only for the classical studies which so powerfully moulded his mind, but also for the fascinations of that brilliant social life to which his talents and fine personal qualities secured him instant admission. Endowed with an intellect whose capacity and thirst for knowledge soon placed him far in advance of his age, he was flattered and sought for by kings, cardinals, popes, and emperors, and treated by them more as a superior than an equal. Honors fell thick upon him. Wherever he went, his coming was heralded as an event of no ordinary importance, and the hospitality of sovereigns was strained to assure him of a welcome. Robert of Anjou, King of Naples, chosen judge to decide on Petrarch’s fitness for the laureate’s crown, presented him with one of his own royal robes to wear at the coronation ceremony, and, receiving the poet in Naples, showed him every mark of respect, consulted him in regard to his various pursuits, personally acted as his guide about the city, conducting him up the steep rock that overlooks the fair Vesuvian bay to the tomb of Virgil, and, as we may believe, standing by with reverent emotion and uncovered head while Petrarch planted there the laurel-tree which for more than four centuries continued to blossom as a token of remembrance and affection. Other princes and nobles were not less eager to testify their esteem for the foremost scholar of Italy, and the different cities considered it a day of happy omen that brought him within their walls.

To everything connected with antiquity Petrarch’s nature was keenly alive from his earliest years. Even when a lad, thumbing the pages of his Latin grammar, he was accustomed to read aloud the magnificent prose of Cicero, listening with delight to the musical ilow of its periods, although he could not comprehend its meaning. Young as he was, his instinctive sense of proportion and of the beauties of literary art responded to that consummate mastery of style which had once charmed the ears of cultured Rome, and has been the admiration of all succeeding ages. This feeling gained strength with each succeeding year, and when to the fascination of outward form he was at length able to add the majestic march of thoughts marshaled in such splendid array by that prince among orators and rhetoricians, the flame of enthusiasm which leaped up within him can be realized only by those who have felt something akin to it in their own experience. No wonder that, compared with works like these, the degraded vocabulary, the corrupt syntax, the droning style, and the dull monotony of mediæval authors seemed to him but “ weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable.” No wonder that the hymns of the church, and even the Dies Iræ itself, with whose solemn, organ-like music the awful tones of the judgment trumpet seemed blending, should have fallen with uncouth rudeness upon an ear fresh from the stately lines of Virgil, the facile and melodious verse of Ovid, the polished and ever-varying metres of Horace. How was it possible that one in whose soul the strings of harmony had thus been swept by the most skillful masters of antiquity should not be drawn irresistibly toward that bright civilization by the hands which reached forth across the chasm of the dark ages to clasp his own ? The nearer he came to it, the richer and more satisfying did that civilization appear. What mighty intellects! What glorious achievements ! What sublime virtues! What heroic lives and deaths! How petty and puny appeared, in comparison, the selfishness, intrigue, and vain, low strife which he beheld about him ! How immeasurably had man fallen from his former estate, while blatantly proclaiming to the centuries that he was scaling the heights of heaven ! Here, in spite of the anathemas of more than a thousand years, was the Eden to which the world must return, or give up its birthright and feed forever on husks. As a result of this feeling he set himself in uncompromising antagonism to the so-called science of his age; declaring ceaseless war, not only against the frauds and impostures of physicians, lawyers, and astrologers, but even against theologians, whose trivial erudition yielded nothing satisfying to mind or heart, but on the contrary obstructed and dwarfed those powers which should have been consecrated to nobler uses. Thus the standard of progress was at length raised, and the immense influence which Petrarch had acquired over his generation enabled him to carry with him all the more enlightened thinkers of Italy.

At a little past the age of thirty the poet found himself in the Eternal City, occupying comfortable apartments on the Capitol. Beneath him, on every hand, was the Rome of his boyhood’s dreams and his manhood’s imaginings.

A thousand times he had pictured it in its feeble origin, its grandeur, and its decay ; a thousand times had wandered in thought amid those stupendous structures, whose weird and supernatural stories had been whispered under breath at night, while visions of sorcerers and evil spirits floated before the mind. Now, as guest of a senator, he had actually taken up his abode on that hill which Scipio, Cato, Pompey, and Cæsar had ascended in triumphal procession, to deposit their laurel wreaths in the lap of Jupiter. At his very feet lay the Forum, with all its sacred memories; above and beyond it rose the arches of Titus and Constantine ; on his right were the wonderful ruins of the Palatine, on his left the huge vaults and massive piers of the basilica of Constantine; while, dwarfing all else into insignificance, towered, close at hand, the mighty fabric of the Coliseum. As he gazed upon these miracles of human effort, all that he had read and heard, all that his fancy had conceived of. dwindled into nothingness, and he wrote to the Cardinal Colonna, “ Truly, Rome was greater and her remains are vaster than I had ever believed. Now I wonder, not that she conquered the world, but that she conquered it so late.” Turn whichever way he might, he saw indisputable evidence that in all the arts of peace and war the ancients were possessed of a genius finer, stronger, and grander than the world had since beheld.

Yet what a contrast between them and the Romans of his own day ! In place of that energetic and invincible people was a race sunk in spiritless sloth and ignorance, and unable even to read the inscriptions which told of the glory of their ancestors. Of the temples of the gods, for the most part only shattered masonry and isolated columns remained ; of the palaces of the emperors, nothing but heaps of débris, over which the ivy was creeping. The Forum was buried under accumulated rubbish, and the peerless creations of ancient art slumbered, absolutely forgotten, beneath the soil. The baths were merely aggregations of crumbling walls, upon which the lover of antiquity might climb, and sit him down amid woodbine, convolvulus, and springing shrubs, to muse on the exemplification of the truth enunciated by the noblest of imperial philosophers, when he declared that life was but a warfare and a stranger’s sojourn, and after-fame was oblivion. The wanton destruction of ancient works had already begun. The demolition of buildings by the senator Brancaleone had take place over three quarters of a century before ; the ruins were serving as quarries, and the rich marbles were disappearing in the lime-kiln to furnish mortar for mediæval masons. Large quantities of shafts, capitals, entablatures, and even statues from the sepulchres were, Petrarch lamented, carried off to Naples, and monuments which neither time nor the violence of Rome’s bitterest foes had been able to destroy were now doomed to meet that fate at the bands of her most illustrious citizens. Against this desecration he raised his voice in earnest and repeated protest, seeking to awaken among his countrymen some sense of the injury they were inflicting upon themselves and posterity. To recall the greatness and grandeur which had departed became the ruling passion of his life. Like Ciriaco, he felt it his mission to awake the dead. With this aim, he gathered coins and inscriptions, urged measures for the protection of architecture and art, and ransacked every nook and corner which he thought might contain manuscripts of the classics. This latter quest, beginning with a desire to regain the books of Cicero, gradually grew into a purpose to recover, as far as possible, all the lost masterpieces of ancient authors. To attain this end, he not only undertook extensive journeys himself, but communicated whatever information he possessed to others who were about to visit foreign lands, and urged them to make inquiries and institute search wherever there was the slightest hope that their labors would be rewarded. In this way he either sent or traveled to France, Spain, Germany, Greece, and even England. He induced Boccaccio to learn Greek in order to translate into Latin the works of Homer, who, he says, borrowing an expression of Cicero’s, in allusion to his ignorance of the language, “ is dumb to me, and I am deaf to him. Yet,” he continues, speaking of a copy of the Iliad or Odyssey which had been sent him from Constantinople, “I rejoice even to look at him ; and often embracing him, I exclaim with a sigh, ‘ O great man ! how gladly would I listen to you ! But death has closed one of my ears, and distance the other.’ ” Afterwards he set about the study himself, and when a little under forty began to read Plato under the monk Barlaam.

Thus did the scholar of Vaucluse devote himself to the task of bringing Rome and Athens back into the world from which they had departed so long before. Others lighted their torches at the Ætna of his enthusiasm. Robert of Anjou had been so moved as to declare that literature was dearer to him than his kingdom, and that, if he were compelled to surrender either, he would lay aside his diadem rather than give up the works which had been the food and consolation of his mind. Boccaccio, too, inspired by Petrarch’s example, abandoned commerce for the nobler pursuits of a scholar and man of letters, and not only was able to persuade the republic of Florence to establish in its university the first professorship of Greek founded in the West, but by the influence of his writing contributed powerfully to banish the austerity and gloom that overhung the mediæval mind, and to assert the rightfulness of that free, joyous life which even at the present day forms so striking a contrast between the Italian people and the nations of Germanic origin. In still another way Petrarch contributed unconsciously, and indeed unintentionally, to form the system which more than all else moulded the scholarship of the succeeding age, and inaugurated the Renaissance in its intensest activity. His amanuensis, Giovanni da Ravenna, endowed with an imaginative and passionate temperament, well calculated to make a strong impression upon those with whom he came in contact, having absorbed the poet’s wonderful learning, quarreled with his master, and set out as a wandering professor, to impart to others the treasures of knowledge which he had received. After various vicissitudes, he found himself everywhere welcomed with eagerness and honor. His reputation increased from year to year; the most illustrious youth of Italy enrolled themselves as his pupils, and under his instruction were trained almost all the great scholars whose names leap spontaneously to our lips whenever the fifteenth century is mentioned. Others, encouraged by his success, soon followed in his footsteps, expounding the poets and rhetoricians from place to place, till one city after another was set aflame, and devoted itself to the study of Latin literature. Thus was gradually brought about that brilliant intellectual movement which culminated under the enlightened patronage of the Medici and their contemporaries.

Two sculptors, both men of original genius aud eminent ability, now arose to turn the thoughts of their countrymen in the direction of Greek and Roman art. The first of these was Ghiberti. Like Niccolò of Pisa, he seems from childhood to have felt its superiority, as if by instinct. Educated by his stepfather to the trade of a goldsmith, he rapidly developed a taste for drawing, painting, and modeling, and commenced to make copies of such ancient coins and medals as came within his reach. The influence of these upon the growing mind of the boy it would be difficult to exaggerate. They trained his eye and hand to higher and more subtile forms of beauty, and placed before him nobler ideals than he before possessed. Vasari declares him to have been the first who applied himself to the study of classic models, but the statement is to be considered as among the inaccuracies of that charming biographer. This praise is due to Niccolò alone, and can be shared by no other. Yet the great Pisan had been dead for more than a century, and on no one had his mantle fallen. Now a new genius had arisen, filled with the same spirit and endowed with similar insight and skill. The circumstances of the age, too, were more propitious. An era of culture had succeeded to that dim morning twilight in which Niccolò was compelled to grope about, amid a generation not yet sufficiently awake to comprehend his meaning. The value and significance of the past were at length recognized, and the mind had acquired the confidence which fitted it to walk boldly in the pathway of its choice. A group of fellow artists, also, were gathered around this consummate master of bronze, gifted with power to discern the tendency of the times, and ready to follow in the direction in which his successes pointed. This it was which enabled Ghiberti to do so much for the restoration of the antique. His early fondness for it never diminished. As his productions brought him fume and fortune, he began to purchase the rare and exquisite treasures which the spade was already turning up, or which were coming to light in gardens, tombs, and out-of-the-way corners of Italy, until he had collected in his house a considerable number of choice bronzes, marbles, and terra cottas. These included beautiful Greek vases, two or three Venuses, a Narcissus, a Satyr, a Mercury, and a winged Genius. The Satyr may still be seen in the Bargello at Florence, but the rest have been dispersed and lost sight of.

The second sculptor, whose influence acted so strongly in the same direction, was Donatello. In his early youth he had formed an intimate acquaintance with Brunelleschi, and when he was but seventeen years old the two set out together for the ancient capital, where alone they could be brought face to face with the imposing remains of the imperial age, and imbibe something of its greatness. Here, while Brunelleschi devoted himself to the investigation of Roman buildings:, in his enthusiasm almost forgetting food and sleep, Donatello wandered about the city, pencil in hand, digging amid the ruins of temples, baths, palaces, and basilicas; excavating cornices, bas-reliefs, coins, and fragments of statuary ; and making careful drawings of everything that could throw light upon the subject so dear to his heart. In this way he acquired that breadth of knowledge and insight into fundamental principles which placed him in advance of most of his contemporaries in the handling of costume, in ideal beauty of form, and in that profoundness of character and boldness of treatment which are among the chief excellences of his work.

An anecdote told by Vasari well illustrates the power of Donatello to awaken in others an interest in the things which had strongly impressed himself. One morning after his return to Florence, the young sculptor was standing in the piazza of the cathedral, conversing with a group of brother artists, among whom was Brunelleschi. He was relating that on his way home he had taken the road to Orvieto to see the facade of the Duomo, and that on passing through Cortona he had been surprised and delighted to find in the capitular church of that city a remarkable Greek or Roman vase adorned with sculptures in relief. As he enlarged upon the delicacy and perfection of its execution, Brunelleschi was so moved that when the party separated he immediately set out for Cortona, without going home to change his mantle, hood, or wooden shoes, and, walking the entire distance, made a sketch of the vase, and was back in Florence before any one was aware of his departure.

The genius and intelligence of Donatello, combined with those qualities of character which made him a favorite with all who knew him, eminently fitted him to be the apostle of progress to his generation. His life at Rome had convinced him that inestimable service might be rendered to art if the treasures so little valued or understood could be gathered into a suitable museum. He accordingly suggested to Cosimo de’ Medici the formation of such a collection iu some place where it would be accessible to the rising talent of Italy. This was the beginning of that celebrated garden of San Marco, in which the foremost sculptors of the fifteenth century found examples for study and imitation, and in which the boy Michael Angelo first put chisel to marble, and won his youthful success in the grinning satyr face still to be seen in the gallery of the Uffizi. But discoveries of classic marbles in the age of Donatello were by no means so numerous as at a later date. Ghiberti, in one of his Commentaries, has described three which merit particular attention. Two of these — the fountain-figure at Siena and the statue which had been concealed in a tomb—have been mentioned in a previous article. The former bore the name of Lysippos, and appears to have possessed much merit. From the dolphin at its foot it may be conjectured to have been a Venus. The latter had been disinterred on the estate of the Brunelleschi family at Florence. “ This statue,” Ghiberti continues, “ when the Christian faith triumphed, was hidden there by some gentle spirit, who, seeing it so perfect and fashioned with art and genius so marvelous, moved to pity, caused a sepulchre of brick to be constructed, and within inclosed the figure, covering it with a slab of stone, that it might not be entirely destroyed. It had been found with head and arms broken, and bail been placed here that the rest might not meet a similar fate. Thus secreted, it was preserved in our city for a very long period without farther injury. The statue is a marvel among sculptures. It rests upon the right foot, and is draped about the loins with great skill. It is carefully finished, and possesses very many sweet charms, which the eye comprehends not either by strong or tempered light. The hand alone finds them by the touch.” The third, an hermaphrodite, which he saw in Rome in 1440, was entire, with the exception of the head, which was wanting. It had been exhumed at a depth of about eighteen feet, by some laborers engaged in clearing out a street near Santo Celso. The use to which it had been put strikingly illustrates that contempt for art that has already been dwelt upon. The flat socle on which the figure reclined had been employed as a coping-stone to roof over a common sewer, and the earth had been thrown in above it to the street level. It so happened that a sculptor, coining along, stopped to look at the excavations, and seeing the marble caused it to be taken out and carried to St. Cecilia in Trastevere, where he was engaged upon a tomb for a cardinal. The learning, mastery of details, and excellence of the work, Ghiberti declares, were beyond the power of tongue to describe. This statue has now been lost.

Thus by the combined action of many causes was gradually brought about that brilliant period of literary and artistic revival which must ever be regarded as the most memorable in the history of human development. The fervor which had previously been felt by individuals now permeated society. A sense of the importance of culture took complete possession of Italy. It had come slowly and uncertainly, as a morning beset with clouds, in which the contest between light and darkness seems for a time doubtful. Yet men, peering across the sea on whose borders they had so long been wandering, saw the mists begin to lift, and at length descried the farther shore. Enchanted by the vision which, like some magnificent mirage, arose before their gaze, they stood for a moment spellbound; then reverently knelt to pay their adoration and offer their gifts at the cradle of this new-born redemption for the race. The conviction pervaded all classes that antiquity alone had power to rescue the world from the evils with which it had been so hopelessly struggling. “ Like islands of safety in the midst of the universal deluge,” says Grimm, “ the ideas of the great minds of the past emerged ; in the general confusion men fled to them for refuge.” In city after city the flame of enthusiasm burst forth. Youths forsook the warehouse and the tavern to consecrate themselves to learning. Merchants stole away from their counting-rooms to converse with literary friends, or listen to the lectures of eminent professors. Captains of adventure read Virgil and Livy by the camp-fire, or in the pauses of the march. Noble ladies fled from the ennui of seclusion, and exchanged the trivial gossip of courts for the priceless treasures of knowledge. Princes spent fabulous suras in the patronage of humanists, artists, and authors. Peasants sought for their sons a place in the republic of letters, where genius was everywhere acknowledged as the peer of birth. The leaders of the demimonde applied themselves to the poetry, rhetoric, and philosophy of Rome, in order to acquire that development and elegance of taste which should fit them, like Leontium and Glycera of Athens and Diotirna of Mantinea, for companionship with the wits and thinkers of their time. Municipalities furnished employment to skillful Latinists as secretaries, chancellors, and ambassadors. Popes vied with sovereigns in encouraging and promoting the very things which their predecessors had denounced as damnable. The Medici and other great Florentines directed their correspondents to purchase relics of antiquity at any price, and their ships came home laden not only with costly merchandise, but with precious codices, busts, statues, reliefs, and other objects of virtu. Niccolò Niccoli sat at table with his friends, discussing the questions then uppermost in every mind, and eating from fair antique vases, while his house was literally packed with inscriptions, coins, marbles, and engraved gems, purchased without regard to cost, or sent him as gifts by those who knew his love of such things. The learned rejected their own names in the vulgar tongue, and assumed Latin titles instead. Pagan writers were quoted in the pulpit on an equality with the Fathers of the church, and at length, in the estimate even of high ecclesiastics, were set far above them. “ Give up those trivialities,” wrote Cardinal liembo to Sadoleto, in allusion to the Epistles of St. Paul, “ for such inelegancies are unworthy a man of dignity,”— Omitte has nugas, non enim decent gravem virum tales ineptiæ. The coins of Mantua were marked with the head of Virgil. Pius II. granted amnesty to the inhabitants of Arpino because it was the birthplace of Cicero, and Alfonso the Magnanimous forbade his engineers to trespass on the site of the orator’s villa at Gaeta. Pomponio Leto delighted in leading the life of a Roman sage : tilling his ground in the manner described by Varro and Columella; eating his frugal meals, like a veritable Stoic, beneath the branches of an oak-tree on the Campagna; and directing that after his death his body should be placed in a sarcophagus on the Appian Way, amid the tombs of the republican and imperial age. The class-rooms of professors were crowded to overflowing with pupils from every grade in life, eager to catch each word that fell from the teacher’s lips. The palaces of wealthy citizens were thrown open to the disciples of erudition, and in them assembled those brilliant coteries of scholars whose discussions of ancient authors gradually unlocked the secrets of the past, and made them accessible to all mankind. The scenes which were presented on occasions like these must ever possess an indescribable charm. As the modern traveler stands in the magnificent gardens of Careggi, overlooking Florence, with the Arno stealing silently away to lose itself in the purple Mediterranean, the prospect of beauty before him vanishes like some lovely dream, and in its place return those morning hours of newly awakened intellectual life, when Lorenzo, “ the sure anchor of the storm-tossed muses,” gathered the members of the Platonic academy about him, and spent the long hours of the afternoon in drinking deep from that pure fount of truth, whose waters have refreshed the thirst of great spirits in every age. Then, when their minds had become wearied by concentration, they seated themselves about the board of their munificent host ; rising from it to wander forth among the acacias, rose-trees and laurels, while the air of evening, loaded with the perfume of countless flowers, fanned their temples back to coolness, and the calm stillness of the Italian twilight stole over the landscape, whispering to them each its message of peace. Strolling thus amid the gardenbeds, and communing with each other’s thoughts, while day slowly vanished from the sky and the silent stars came forth one by one above them, with the lights of Florence twinkling in the distance and the Apennines and the mountains of Carrara sleeping in the east and west, what emotions must have thrilled their souls, what visions have been caught sight of, what hopes, aspirations, and high resolves have been theirs, as this new consciousness of power was awakened within their breasts ! What wonder is it that these men were able so to impress themselves upon their generation ; that Politian could tune his lyre to the language of three great nations ; that Pico della Mirandola, at the early age of twenty-three, should have proposed his famous nine hundred theses at Rome, offering to dispute with all comers on any subject in the entire domain of knowledge; that Michael Angelo, even, should have produced the Moses and the Sistine Chapel, or have sculptured those wonderful figures which sleep the centuries away on the Medicean tombs !

There is an Eastern legend that the touch of a maiden’s hand causes the trees to bloom. Thus had the virgin finger of ancient culture been laid upon the modern spirit, and a whole century had leaped into blossom. The infant Hercules was at length born. Ignorance had retarded its birth, and superstition was ready with persecutions, as of old; but the child had been laid at the Juno breasts of heavenly truth and beauty, and had drank therefrom the milk which nourishes only to confer immortality. Snatch it away now, if you will, — fling it to the remotest regions of the sky; yet the divine strength has been imbibed, and with it the capacity for godlike achievements and a promise of Olympus at the end. The feelings which Petrarch had experienced at the sight of Rome’s desolation became universal among men of letters, and the Eternal City was made the Mecca of a new race of pilgrims, prompted not by religious fervor, but by interest in the remains of the classical age. Niccolò Niccoli and Ugo da Este undertook the journey in 1396 for the express purpose of examining its antiquities, and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Leo Battista Alberti, Donato Acciajuoli, and Bernardo Rucellai set out together with the same aim in 1465. But by far the most diligent investigator was Poggio Bracciolini, whose brilliant talents and elegant Latinity won for him the post of Apostolic Letter Writer under Boniface IX. at the early age of twenty-four. The ancient monuments were now for the first time subjected to a systematic and careful study. Poggio attempted to catalogue, and as far as possible to identify, existing relics, comparing them with the descriptions given by Livy, Vitruvius, and Frontinus. The interior of the Coliseum had for a long time been used as a quarry, but the external structure was uninjured, and the bronze of the Pantheon had not yet been carried off for the altar-canopy of St. Peter’s, or for the cannon of the papal fortress. The theatres of Marcellus and Pompey were in great measure occupied by public and private buildings, suggestive of the shops of blacksmiths and other artisans, which to-day surprise the visitor to the former of these renowned edifices. The list of ruins known to him, and described in the opening section of his treatise De Varietate Fortunæ, need not be inserted here. A synopsis of it is given in the seventyfirst chapter of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, where it may be read by such as desire. For the present it suffices to say that during a long residence at the papal court Poggio continually occupied himself with every discoverable vestige of Roman civilization, and sought to awaken a similar interest in others. The learned everywhere regarded him as the leading authority in such matters, and on visiting the capital were accustomed to seek ids services as a guide, for the sake of those explanations which no one else could give so well. ‘‘ Though I have lived here for many years,” he wrote to Bartolommeo Facio, “ and indeed from my youth tiil now, yet, like one who has but just, arrived, I am daily struck dumb with wonder at things so vast, and often seek recreation from my labors in contemplating those edifices which the masses, in their imbecility, declare to have been reared by demons,” But Poggio did not confine bis attention to architecture. Wherever excavations were in progress he was sure to be found, anxious to recover any objects of art which had escaped destruction. Extending his researches into the surrounding country, he exhumed a portion of Ferentinum, and ransacked the ruins of Tiber, Tusculum, Aletrium, Alba, Ostia, Grotta Ferrata, and Arpinum. He had purchased a small villa in the valley of the Arno, a few miles from Florence, to which he intended to retire from the strife and confusion of public life, and end his days in the peaceful seclusion of a scholar and author. For his library and garden he could conceive of no more fitting ornaments than the treasures which the spade was constantly turning up in different parts of Italy. Happening to pass through Monte Cassino, where some workmen were enaned in ditradnar for the foundations of a house, " I fished out, uninjured,” he wrote to Niccolò Niccoli, “ a female bust in marble which greatly delights me. I took good care that it should be delivered to me and forwarded to my garden at Terra Nova, which I am adorning with articles of great beauty.” Learning that a certain Francesco of Pistoia was about to sail for Greece on an embassy from the Pope, Poggio requested him to secure some statue, even if broken, or some fine bead, and bring it with him on his return. A letter of Poggio to Niccolò presents so lively a picture of the times as to be worth quoting : “ Yesterday I received word from him [Francesco] that he has bought me three marble heads by Polykleitos and Praxiteles, representing Juno, Bacchus, and Minerva. He bestows great praise upon them, and promises to deliver them at Gaeta. In regard to the names of the sculptors I know not what to think. The Greeks, as you are aware, are great talkers, and may have misrepresented them in order to command a higher price. I hope I am mistaken. He also writes that he obtained these heads from a man by the name of Caloiros, who recently found about a hundred marble figures, of admirable and beautiful workmanship, uninjured, in a cave. He adds that a certain Andreolo Giustiniano will send something for you. I am sure that, when you read this, you will be filled with a desire to proceed thither at once, and will wish yourself possessed of wings; but neither wings nor the speed of winds would satisfy your haste. I wrote immediately to Messer Francesco, and likewise to Audreolo,— for our friend Renuccio informs me that he is a very learned man, — directing them to make diligent inquiry whether any of those statues could be obtained by money or entreaties, and to report to me without delay. I wish you to share the credit of this discovery. I think, judging from the busts already mentioned, that these works must he statues of divinities, and that they were hidden in some shrine. The head of Minerva, Francesco tells me, has a laurel crown, that of Bacchus two small horns. When they arrive, I shall send them to my villa. A Minerva among us will be a prosperous omen. I shall put her among my books. The Bacchus will be exceedingly appropriate; for if he deserves a shelter anywhere, it is in my native land, where he is held in special honor. We will also find a place for Juno; and as she once suffered from an unfaithful husband, she shall now avenge the wrong by becoming my mistress. I have also something here which I shall bring with me when I come. Donatello has seen it, and bestows upon it the highest praise.” In addition to the works thus mentioned, Francesco obtained a statue about three feet in height, which he was to deliver to Poggio with the rest. On his arrival, however, it could not be found. The wily Pistoian pretended that it had been stolen from the ship, but Poggio could never be persuaded that the thief was any other than Francesco himself. This suspicion seems to have been well founded, the same unscrupulous agent having afterwards sold to Cosimo de’ Medici the antique busts which he had received from Andreolo with instructions to carry them to Poggio.

When Bracciolini first went to Rome, in 1403, the Temple of Concord in the Forum was almost entire, and the tomb of Cæcilia Metella stood unharmed beside the Appian Way, — a graceful and magnificent structure, overlooking the broad expanse of the Campagna. Before he left the city, he saw the former, with the exception of a portion of its portico, razed to the ground and burned into lime, and the latter stripped of its marble ornaments and in part demolished, for the same purpose. Fra Giocondo, the celebrated architect and antiquary, who was associated with Raphael and San Gallo in the construction of St. Peter’s, declared that Rome was becoming more and more ruined every day ; that remains now seen in the Circus Flaminius would to-morrow be found upon the Tarpeian Rock, it not in some lime-kiln, or in the foundation of some rustic cottage; while even those things which diligent hands had rescued and erected in conspicuous places were often torn down by the ignorant or careless, to be reduced to dust beneath the feet of horses. To snatch some of these precious relics from destruction, he began the celebrated collection which he afterwards presented to Lorenzo de’ Medici. Pius II. affirmed that if the vandalism prevalent in his own time continued for three centuries more every vestige of the former dignity and greatness of the city would be obliterated.

At length, in the pontificate of Leo X., Raphael was appointed superintendent of antiquities at Rome by a brief hearing date of August, 1516. This document ordered that, in view of the constant finding of valuable marbles, the artist should have control of all excavations made within a circumference of ten miles; that persons of whatever rank should report to him any discoveries which might come within their knowledge, under a penalty of from one hundred to three hundred gold crowns ; while those who, without his express permission, sawed or cut any stone containing inscriptions were made liable to a similar fine. In the eight years of his residence there Raphael had seen enough to convince him of the need of such a law. During this time a portion of the Forum Transitorium, the Temple of Ceres in the Via Sacra, the arches at the entrance to the baths of Diocletian, the meta in the Via Alexandrina, and the larger part of the basilica of the Forum had been destroyed. Supported by his friends, the Count Castiglione and the antiquary Andrea Fulvio, he accordingly applied himself to the study of his subject. He directed his men to make drawings of all important structures throughout Italy, and even sent some of them as far as Greece and Germany for the same purpose. He prepared a map of Rome, divided into fourteen sections, and laid plans for a general restoration of all the ancient edifices. So careful was his mastery of details that his contemporary, Paulo Giovio, declared him able to rebuild the entire capital anew, and set it complete in its former glory before the world. In a memorable letter or report to Leo, written in 1518, Raphael explained his whole project, urging the Pope to undertake the task at once, and thus restore the Eternal City to the beauty and grandeur of earlier days. The hopes which tins great scheme had everywhere awakened, however, were doomed to disappointment. Before it could be carried out the artist had passed to his rest, and the work was never attempted.

But the attention of scholars had been called to the importance of bestirring themselves, if they would save the art of their ancestors from utter loss. Experience had shown, too, that the sole means of recovering it was by the spade, which, struck into the ground at almost any point, was liable to be stopped by torso of nymph or goddess, or to reveal limbs whose exquisite proportions had perhaps been chiseled by the hand of Praxiteles or Polykleitos. Men felt that beneath their feet were slumbering forms of unimagined beauty, which a single blow of the pick might restore to the light of day, and which, falling into the hands of the unenlightened, might be broken up for lime or cast into the stone-heap of the mason. They accordingly set to work to preserve as many as possible from such a fate. These precious objects were to be found in every conceivable place, — amid the ruins of ancient buildings, in the débris which had accumulated in public squares, under the road-beds of streets, in the chambers of ancient tombs, built into walls, imbedded in pavements, buried beneath the soil of old estates once owned by the Roman or mediaeval nobility. The mattock exposed them in the vineyard ; the plough turned them up in the corn-field ; the rains of spring uncovered them by the wayside; the laborer disinterred them as he excavated for the foundations of shops and bouses ; the peasant came upon them as he dug his well, or made ditches for the drainage of his land. In the neglected corners of villas and gardens, too, there still existed many busts, statues, basreliefs, and sarcophagi, overgrown and hidden by weeds and bushes, or half covered up by the deposits of decaying vegetation. These were now drawn from their concealment, to be washed, scraped, freed from dirt and mould, and set up in the palaces and courtyards of nobles, rich citizens, and ecclesiastics. Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Ruceilai had agents ever on the watch to purchase and ship to Florence such choice pieces as could be secured. Celebrated collections were also made by Agostino Chigi, Leonardo Bruni, Ferrarini di Reggio, Marcanova, Ciriaco, Bolognini, Feliciano, Pomponio Leto, Flavio Biondo, Isabella d’Este, and others. So eager did this quest become that Lorenzo even broke the heads from the prisoners sculptured on the arch of Trajan, and Lorenzino similarly defaced the pulpit of Niccolò at Pisa to ornament his own study with the fragments. Rome, Venice, and Florence were filled with galleries ; the churches, streets, and piazzas were adorned with the chefs-d’œuvre of classical times ; and cities and individuals vied with each other in placing at the service of rising artists these consummate models of grace and skill.

The feelings awakened within discerning minds, as the masterpieces of art one by one came to light, are well illustrated in the case of the Laocoön. This was found in or near the baths of Titus, in the spring of 1506, by the owner of the property, a Roman citizen, named Felice do’ Fredis. The news reached the ears of the Pope, Julius II., when the figure was but partly disinterred, and he immediately ordered the architect Giuliano San Gallo to go and ascertain what it was. Michael Angelo happening to be at San Gallo’s when the message came, the two set out together early in the morning, accompanied by Francesco, Giuliano’s son. On dismounting at the spot San Gallo at once exclaimed, “ That is the Laocoön of which Pliny speaks ! ” Men were immediately set to work with shovels to enlarge the opening, and the statue was drawn out. After carefully examining it the party went home to breakfast.

The fortunate discoverer of this renowned work now offered it to a cardinal for five hundred gold crowns ; but Julius interfered, bid six hundred, and secured it for himself. It was accordingly removed to the Vatican, where a sort of chapel was constructed for it in the Belvedere. To determine its genuineness, Michael Angelo and Cristoforo Romano were summoned to inspect it, and compare it with Pliny’s description.

They reported that instead of being made from a single block, as the historian had asserted, it consisted of three pieces, — there are now said to be six,— but these had been so skillfully joined that the seams could be discovered only by careful observation. This fact, as well as the surpassing excellence of the execution, caused it to be regarded as genuine.

In all Rome the Laocoön was the chief topic of conversation. Poems were written in honor of it; the learned flocked to the Vatican to see it; artists and antiquaries discussed its merits; visitors to Rome wrote glowing descriptions of it to absent friends. De’ Fredis was rewarded by a grant of the tolls and part of the customs duties received at the gate of St.John Lateran,—an emolument afterwards exchanged for the post of apostolic notary,—and on his death was entombed in the church of Araceli, on the Capitol, with an epitaph declaring that he merited immortality.

The statues which came to light at the period of the Renaissance, like those found at a later date, were as a rule sadly mutilated. It was but natural that, in an age when æsthetic considerations predominated over mere antiquarian interest, an effort should be made to restore them to something like completeness, in order to realize anew the impressions which they originally produced. The services of eminent artists were therefore obtained to supply missing parts, and thus call back to life the fair ideals of the ancient world. In general, however, as in the case of the Laocoön, the authorship of these modern additions is difficult to determine. The sculptor did not feel at liberty to put his name upon them, and for the most part nothing but questionable tradition remains. But this is not always so. The Apollo Belvedere was repaired by Montorsoli in 1532, the left hand and the fingers of the right alone being lost. The legs of the Farnese Herakles, which with the Farnese Bull and Flora was found in the baths of Caracalla in the middle of the sixteenth century, were replaced by Guglielmo della Porta ; his success pleasing Michael Angelo so much that, on the discovery of the antique limbs twenty years later, they were thrown aside as superfluous. This act Grimm attributes to the great respect which Angelo felt for Guglielmo, since he cannot have been insensible to the immense superiority of the original. Goethe, too, saw the figure when in Rome, and was well satisfied with it till the genuine feet were brought forward. Then he declared it inconceivable that the others had been thought good so long. This celebrated production was at length removed to Naples, and the ancient portions, having been presented to King Ferdinand by Prince Borghese, were reunited to it, and now sustain it in the National Museum. A large number of statues, busts, and bas-reliefs were restored by the sculptor Cavaceppi in the latter half of the eighteenth century, aud described in three sumptuous folios then published. The right arm of the so-called Dying Gladiator is attributed to Michael Angelo, merely, as Grimm remarks, because its extraordinary excellence allows it to be assigned to no one else, — a kind of argument which has been relied upon far too often. When we remember that “ none like him could animate bronze or cause marble to breathe,” we can realize that the temptation to connect his name with well-known works, in order to increase their value, must at times have been irresistible ; the same may be said of other eminent masters of that age.

In the repairs thus made the greatest liberty was allowed. It was not demanded that the character and intention of a given fragment should be settled beyond doubt before the artist put chisel to marble. He was chosen to complete, often, indeed, to reconstruct it, in accordance with some conjecture already formed, or was allowed to follow his own judgment in the matter. If no one could suggest a more probable theory, his guesses were carried into effect without hindrance from bis employers, who rivaled each other in the possession of galleries without a defective piece. Such a course at any time could lead only to countless blunders and utter falsifying of the original conception. In that age, just emerging from the long night of ignorance and superstition, — an age when archæological science was as yet unknown, — these unfortunate possibilities were multiplied a thousand-fold. As a result, the crudest and most random surmises were accepted with unquestioning credulity. Legs, arms, heads, and drapery were placed upon statues with whose real meaning they were at variance, and whose pose and muscular action were flatly contradicted by them. Extremities that had become separated from the works to which they belonged were attached to trunks in want of such parts, and chiseled over, if need he, to reduce them to the right proportions. Limbs of later and more sensuous types were joined to torsos of archaic severity. Heads of Roman ladies were set on figures of deities, and vice versa; and in some cases even sex was disregarded, through the obtuseness of the workman, or his eagerness to join fragments which must otherwise have remained unused.

Of sculpture recovered during the Renaissance, the greater part was unearthed between 1450 and 1550. The torso of Herakles, the Fighting Gladiator, the Apollo Belvedere, and the Meleager came to light about the middle of this period; the Farnese Bull, Herakles, and Flora, at its close. Many of the most famous statues, however, were not discovered till much later, — the Mediccan Venus in the seventeenth century, the Capitoline Venus and the Barberini Juno some time in the eighteenth, the Apollo Sauroktonos in 1727, the Discobolos in action in 1781, the companion statue in repose not far from the same time, the Venus of Melos in 1820, the Apoxyomenos in 1840, the Augustus in armor in 1863, the Mastai Hercules in 1864, the Hermes of Olympia in 1877.

The private galleries, to which reference has been made, experienced many vicissitudes. When the Medici were expelled from Florence, in the autumn of 1494, their residences were stormed and plundered by the people. The garden of San Marco was laid waste; its works of art were sold to the highest bidder, and scattered over Europe. A few days later Charles VIII. of France entered the city, and appropriated to himself and suite all the valuables found in the chief palace of the family, which had been saved with difficulty when the others fell. On the capture of Rome by the Constable of Bourbon, in 1527, worse scenes were enacted. The soldiers kindled their fires on the inlaid marble floor of the Vatican, the magnificent stained-glass windows were broken for their lead, the tapestries of Raphael were plundered, the eyes of renowned paintings on the walls were put out, horses were stabled in the Sistine Chapel, valuable documents were thrown to them for litter, the images of the Virgin in the churches were shattered, and statues in the streets were thrown down and broken to pieces. During the investment of Florence by these same adventurers, two years later, works of gold and silver were melted, and pictures and statues were sold by their possessors, and passed from the country. Francis I. kept an agent constantly on the lookout, who, taking advantage of the universal scarcity of money, raked together all that could be secured among the distressed citizens, and sent them to his master in Paris. Other collections met a similar fate in ihe calamities of war, or on the extinction of the families who had formed them.

Public museums, however, have been more fortunate. The earliest of these, the Capitoline at Rome, was begun in 1471, when Paul II. bought up such statues as could be obtained in the vicinity, and placed them in his palace at the foot of the ancient citadel. Chief among these were the bronze Hercules from the Forum Boarium, the boy pulling a thorn from his foot, the urn of Agrippina, and the group which represents a lion attacking a horse. This number was greatly increased by subsequent popes, and was at length ceded to the municipal authorities.

The art treasures of the Vatican date from 1503, when the celebrated Apollo was placed there by Julius II. This statue had been found in the ruins of Antium a few years before, and had been acquired by Julius when he was the Cardinal della Rovere. On his election to the papacy it was erected in the gardens of the Belvedere, receiving from them the name by which it has become universally known. Around it, in that lovely inclosure, where the poets and artists of the Renaissance were accustomed to assemble, soon gathered a group of marble masterpieces, such as the Laocoön, the Ariadne, the Commodus of the Campo di Fiore, the Nile, the Tiber, the torso of Herakles, and the Antinous of the baths of Trajan. From this small beginning has arisen that bewildering array of antiquities which, filling eighteen or twenty great halls of the papal palace, is now the wonder and admiration of the world.

Various cities and nations followed the example of the church and state of Rome. The Medici of Florence, after their restoration in 1512, again began to purchase works of art to replace those which had been lost. The Uffizi is the result. The Farnese statues from Rome and Parma were united with the numerous relics excavated in Campanian towns to stock the noble Museum of Naples. At length the enthusiasm spread beyond the Alps, until at London, Paris, Dresden, Munich, Vienna, and Berlin were founded collections rivaling those of Italy. In the stillness and seclusion of these retreats the fair creations of the classic period have at length found shelter. Here the student, passing but the thickness of a wall, may lind himself for the time being in another world. The hurry arid noise of the century recede from his thoughts, and in their place return the ages of Hadrian, Augustus, Alexander, Scopas, and Perikles. The motionless forms around him seem like the gods and people of those far-off days, turned to stone by the spell of some mighty enchanter. The Herakles reposes in its almost divine perfection of human development; the Laocoön writhes in eternal pain; the Ariadne sleeps her unbroken sleep of beauty; the lip of the Apollo curls forever in contempt of his haughty but impotent foe; the sad, tender features of Demeter plead with hopeless yearning for her long-lost daughter ; the eyes of the Melian Venus look with the calmness of deity into the vistas of the hereafter. Wars may rage without ; famine and pestilence do their work of destruction ; generation after generation come into being, to fret and strut their little hour upon the stage, then lapse into silence and forgetfulness: but to these no change can come. As in some bright Olympus, they dwell forever apart from the joys and sorrows of human life and love, in the undisturbed serenity of their marble immortality.

William Shields Liscomb.