St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-10-19
ART IN ROME.
Rev. William Wilkinson's Dis
onurcn tho

Rev. William Wilkinson's Dis
course at the St. Andre WIS
Church.
Rev. William Wilkinson, rector of st.
Andrews church, in his fourth address
Oh Rome, said yesterday that Rome has.
along with its many other loves, added
a love of art, which has for ages been
one of its characteristics: but it has ere
ated no great school of art; it has called
into its service men from other cities
and lands, men who have given, by
their deft power, life, beauty and charm
to its frescoes. halls, palaces and
churches. A careful study of the great
writers on art, and such an inspection
as a man who is not All expert in paint
ing can give TO the works which the
masters left for us to admire, will
show that the different schools Of artists
had designs which marked them from
all other lovers of the brush. Just as
your late poets differ from the other
poets, so do the Athenian artists from
the Venetian. and they from the Floren-
tine. In Athens the human form could
i'll the palmiest days of Greek art be
drawn better than in :any other land.
but the Greek could not color my pict
ure as well as the best painters in
Venice always did. SO clearly under
stool was this that men of worldwide
fame did not think it beneath their dig
nifty to call in the assistance of the
great colorists of Venice to help
them i'll their noblest pictures.
So 1T often happens that work
which is known by the name of king
in his craft was not his alone, Just as
great architect in his plans may be as
sisted by men whose names are never
heard. All true art has two foundation
principles. 1t may eXemplify many
other things, but must have one or both
OF these. Its representations must be
true, must perfectly represent some real
thing, or must adorn some useful one.
The more acceptably 1t does this the
more vivid, striking and just the repre-
Sentation. the greater the art. 1t is be-
cause of the difficulty there is in copy
ing Nature in her brightest moeds that
artists of the first rank are SO scarce: it
takes perception, facility OF eye
and hand, an understanding of light
and shade, i mastery of perspective
and grouping such as few men in any
aye have or can have, to make great
painter in landscape Few men
who have not seen Italian or Alpine
scenery, or who have not seen the gor-
geOuS panorama which may be seen any
fine summer DAY in the English lake
district can have the faintest conception
OF the endless variety of color, the
Eli, the dell, the mountain cairn, by
their reflection of the sunlight as it
shines through the many cloud form,
CAP assume. For hours | have stood,
and each one gave the whole area of
sight new, strange, fantastic and en-
chanting forms. Never till then
did L understand Ruskin's power
unrivaled of color description. If the
clear sunlight shows exquisite beauty, a
cloudy day, in which the sun begins TO
shine, adds to the wonderful power of
the scene, and gives to it weird beauty
all its own which any man who sees it
can understand, but no man has ever
fully pictured by word or brush. There
are the workings of the heart of man
under every possible emotiOn-of love,
fear, hate, loss, gain-and the profound
est ideas which have ever entered the
mind of manhood, duty. destiny, eter-
nity-and all their multiform combina-
tions as they have become concrete in
the experiences Of hundred genera
tiOns, ana the many manifesto
tons in which they have become
real to sinner, saint and sage.
Added to these are the rheophamis, or
the divine appearances i'll which in some
form God has appeared to man. The
spirit world has been intensely real to
the artist, and he has spared no time.
care, patience Or power of which he was
possessed to make men understand
them as he saw them. This it is which
gives the peculiar charm to much
Italian art. The subject has given to
fln 10 E,,Fy :.
base stood firm as eternal rock the I'M
as we are by men who have spent long
and most painstaking, useful lives
in the culture of art, that it has,
in its early stages, and long into
Christian times been used mainly to
minister to senSuality, to vain show or
| toldolatry as is without doubt the truth.
And that is probably the true reason
why the nations in which art was most
perfect were overtbrown by peoples who
had no love of art. Every boy in our
high school knows how the Greek was
overcome by the Spartan. And so on
through long list named by one of the
greatest artists who ever lived. The
great schools of art in the ancient time
rose and flourished in pagan lands. and
the false religions of Egypt, Babylon,
Greece and Italy gave strong incentive
to,if they did not engender. them. The art
of painting then because Of use to the
Christian faith. AS it gained power the
education Of the people spread amongst
the masses of the people in exact pro-
portion as its teaching was carried out.
But it always had, in the number Of its
followers, men who were in advance of
their time in morals and before their
| time in learning and in cultivation, both
of mind and hand; men who, in abstract
knowledge and applied principle, were
| the peers of the best and most Guilt
waited persons of their, OF, perhaps, of
any, time. AS the Christian painters
gave supreme Importance to what they
regarded as the faith which bring
| eth salvation, and that for men
the most important thing in life
| gave to the representative of religious
thing all the adorer of their best power,
| there is no subject of dramatic interest
or of the concerns of the heart from the
| time when God made the world to the
foretold DAY when the angel shall de-
clare time to be no more which is not
| found in some noble form a place or
wall or on canvas. And thus the eye
| has lent power to the heart, and brought
| joy and courage to it. How many tested
and oppressed men have taken new re-
solve at the sight of Daniel in the den
of lions or st. Peter in chains! how
! motherhood, pure and sweet, has be-
| come more tender to peasant, and noble
women who have looked upon the