The Revival of Learning in Italy

Fine Arts.

The relation of the plastic arts to the Revival of Learning is similar to that which has been sketched in the case of poetry. Cimabue started with work which owed nothing directly to antiquity. At about the same time Niccola Pisano (d. 1278) studied the style of sculpture in fragments of Graeco-Roman marbles. His manner influenced Giotto, who set painting on a for ward path. Fortunately for the unimpeded expansion of Italian art, little was brought to light of antique workmanship during the 14th and 15th centuries. The classical stimulus came to painters, sculptors and architects chiefly through literature. Therefore there was narrow scope for imitation ; and the right spirit of hu manism displayed itself in a passionate study of perspective, na ture and the nude. Yet we find in the writings of Ghiberti and Alberti, we notice in the masterpieces of these men and their corn peers Brunelleschi and Donatello, how even in the 15th century the minds of artists were fascinated by what survived of classic grace and science. Gradually, as the race became penetrated by antique thought, the earlier Christian motives of the arts yielded to pagan subjects. Gothic architecture, which had always flour ished feebly on Italian soil, was supplanted by a hybrid Roman style. The study of Vitruvius gave strong support to that pseudo classic manner which, when it had reached its final point in Pal ladio's work, overspread the whole of Europe and dominated taste during two centuries. But the perfect plastic art of Italy, the pure art of the cinque cento, the painting of Raphael, Da Vinci, Titian and Correggio, the sculpture of Donatello, Michel angelo and Sansovino, the architecture of Bramante, Omodeo, and the Venetian Lombardi, however much imbued with the spirit of the classical revival, take rank beside the poetry of Ariosto as a free intelligent product of the Renaissance. That is to say, it is not so much an outcome of studies in antiquity as an exhibition of emancipated modern genius fired and illuminated by the mas terpieces of the past. It indicates a separation from the middle ages, inasmuch as it is permanently natural. Its religion is joy ous, sensuous, dramatic, terrible, but in each and all of its many sided manifestations strictly human. Its touch on classical my thology is original, rarely imitative or pedantic. The art of the Renaissance was an apocalypse of the beauty of the world and man in unaffected spontaneity, without side thoughts for piety or erudition, inspired by pure delight in loveliness and harmony for their own sakes.

Science and Philosophy.

In the fields of science and philos ophy humanism wrought similar important changes. Petrarch began by waging relentless war against the logicians and material ists of his own day. With the advance made in Greek studies scholastic methods of thinking fell into contemptuous oblivion. The newly aroused curiosity for nature encouraged men like Al berti, Da Vinci, Toscanelli and Da Porta to make practical ex periments, penetrate the working of physical forces, and invent scientific instruments. Anatomy began to be studied, and the time was not far distant when Titian should lend his pencil to the epoch-making treatise of Vesalius. The middle ages had been satisfied with absurd and visionary notions about the world around them, while the body of man was regarded with too much sus picion to be studied. Now the right method of interrogating na ture with patience and loving admiration was instituted. At the same time the texts of ancient authors supplied hints which led to discoveries so far-reaching in their results as those of Coper nicus, Columbus and Galileo. In philosophy, properly so called, the humanistic scorn for mediaeval dullness and obscurity swept away theological metaphysics as valueless. But at first little be

yond empty rhetoric and clumsy compilation was substituted. The ethical treatises of the scholars are deficient in substance, while Ficino's attempt to revive Platonism betrays an uncritical conception of his master's drift. It was something, however, to have shaken off the shackles of ecclesiastical authority; and, even if a new authority, that of the ancients, was accepted in its stead, still progress was being made toward sounder methods of analysis. This is noticeable in Pomponazzo's system of material ism, based on the interpretation of Aristotle, but revealing a virile spirit of disinterested and unprejudiced research. The thinkers of southern Italy, Telesio, Bruno and Campanella, at last opened the two chief lines on which modern speculation has since moved. Telesio and Campanella may be termed the pre decessors of Bacon. Bruno was the precursor of the idealistic schools. All three alike strove to disengage their minds from classical as well as ecclesiastical authority, proving that the eman cipation of the will had been accomplished. It must be added that their writings, like every other product of the Renaissance, ex cept its purest poetry and art, exhibit a hybrid between mediaeval and modern tendencies. Childish ineptitudes are mingled with in tuitions of maturest wisdom and seeds of future thought ger minate in the decaying refuse of past systems.

Criticism.

Humanism in its earliest stages was uncritical. It absorbed the relics of antiquity with omnivorous appetite and with very imperfect sense of the distinction between worse and better work. Yet it led in process of time to criticism. The cri tique of literature began in the lecture-room of Politian, in the printing house of Aldus, and in the school of Vittorino. The cri tique of Roman law started under Politian's auspices, upon a more liberal course than that which had been followed by the powerful but narrow-sighted glossators of Bologna. Finally, in the court of Naples that most formidable of all critical engines, the critique of established ecclesiastical traditions and spurious historical documents. Valla by one vigorous effort de stroyed the False Decretals and exposed the Donation of Constan tine to ridicule, paving the way for the polemic carried on against the dubious pretensions of the papal throne by scholars of the Reformation. A similar criticism, conducted less on lines of eru dition than of persiflage and irony, ransacked the moral abuses of the Church and played around the foundations of Christianity. This was tolerated by men who repeated the witty epigram, attributed to Leo X, "What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us !" The same critical and philosophic spirit working on the materials of history produced a new science, the honours of which belong to Machiavelli. He showed, on the one side, how the history of a people can be written with a recognition of fixed principles, and at the same time with an artistic feeling for per sonal and dramatic episodes. On the other side, he addressed himself to the analysis of man considered as a political being, to the anatomy of constitutions and the classification of govern ments, to the study of motives underlying public action, the se crets of success and the causes of failure in the conduct of affairs. The unscrupulous rigour with which he applied his scientific method, and the sinister deductions he thought himself justified in drawing from the results it yielded, excited terror and repulsion. Nevertheless a department had been added to the intellectual em pire of mankind, in which fellow-workers, like Guicciardini at Florence, and subsequently Sarpi at Venice, were not slow to f ol low the path traced by Machiavelli.