Italian Renaissance - John Addington Symonds

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Meaning of the Revival begun by him—Cosmopolitan Philosophy—Toleration—An Intellectual Empire—Worldliness—Confusion of Impulses and Inspirations—Copernicus and Columbus—Christianity and the Classics—Italian Incapacity for Religious Reformation—Free Thought takes the form of License—Harmonies attempted between Christianity and Antique Philosophy—Florentine Academy—Physical Qualities of the Italians—Portraits of Two Periods—Physical Exercises—Determination of the Race to Scholarship—Ancient Memories of Rome—The Cult of Antiquity—Desire of Fame—Fame to be found in Literature—The Cult of Intellect—The Cult of Character—Preoccupation with Personal Details—Biography—Ideal Sketches—Posthumous Glory—Enthusiasm for Erudition—Piero de' Pazzi—Florence and Athens—Paganism—Real Value of Italian Humanism—Pico on the Dignity of Man.

      The conditions, political, social, moral, and religious, described in the first volume of this work, produced among the Italians a type of character nowhere else observable in Europe. This character, highly self-conscious and mentally mature, was needed for the intellectual movement of the Renaissance. Italy had proved herself incapable of forming an united nation, or of securing the principle of federal coherence; of maintaining a powerful military system, or of holding her own against the French and Spaniards. For these defects her Communes and her Despots, the Papacy and the kingdom of Naples, the theories of the mediæval doctrinaires and the enthusiasm of the humanists, were alike responsible; though the larger share belongs to Rome, resolutely hostile to the monarchical principle, and zealous, by espousing the Guelf faction, to maintain the discord of the nation. At the same time the very causes of political disunion were favourable to the intellectual growth of the Italians. Each State, whether republican or despotic, had, during the last years of the Middle Ages, formed a mixed society of nobles, merchants, and artisans, enclosed within the circuit of the city walls, and strongly marked by the peculiar complexion of their native place. Every town was a centre of activity and industry, eagerly competing with its neighbours, proud of its local characteristics, anxious to confer distinction on citizens who rose to eminence by genius or practical ability. Party strife in the republics, while it disturbed their internal repose, sharpened the intellect and strengthened the personality of the burghers. Exile and proscription, the common climax of civic warfare, made them still more self-determined and self-reliant by driving each man back upon his own resources. The despots, again, through the illegal tenure of their authority, were forced to the utmost possible development of individual character: since all their fortunes depended on their qualities as men. The plots and counter-plots of subjects eager for a change of government, and of neighbours anxious to encroach upon their territory, kept the atmosphere of their Courts in a continual state of agitation. One type of ability was fostered by the diplomatic relations of the several cities, yielding employment to a multitude of secretaries and ambassadors; another by the system of Condottiere warfare, offering a brilliant career to ambitious adventurers. In all departments open to a man of talent birth was of less importance than natural gifts; for the social barriers and grades of feudalism had either never existed in Italy, or had been shaken and confounded during the struggles of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The ranks of the tyrants were filled with sons of Popes and captains risen from the proletariat. The ruling class in the republics consisted of men self-made by commerce; and here the name at least of Popolo was sovereign. It followed that men were universally rated at what they proved themselves to be; and thus an aristocracy of genius and character grew up in Italy at a period when the rest of Europe presented but rare specimens of individuals emergent from the common herd. As in ancient Greece, the nation was of less importance than the city, and within the city personal ability carried overwhelming weight. The Italian history of the Renaissance resumes itself in the biography of men greater than their race, of mental despots, who absorbed its forces in themselves.

      The intellectual and moral milieu created by multitudes of self-centred, cultivated personalities was necessary for the evolution of that spirit of intelligence, subtle, penetrative, and elastic, that formed the motive force of the Renaissance. The work achieved by Italy for the world in that age was less the work of a nation than that of men of power, less the collective and spontaneous triumph of a puissant people than the aggregate of individual efforts animated by one soul of free activity, a common striving after fame. This is noticeable at the very outset. The Italians had no national Epic: their Divine Comedy is the poem of the individual man. Petrarch erects self-culture to the rank of an ideal, and proposes to move the world from the standpoint of his study, darting his spirit's light through all the void circumference, and making thought a power.

      The success and the failure of the Italians are alike referable to their political subdivisions, and to this strong development of their personality. We have already seen how they fell short of national unity and of military greatness. Even in the realm of art and literature the same conditions were potent. Some of the chief productions of humanity seem to require the co-operation of whole peoples working sympathetically to a common end. Foremost among these are architecture and the drama. The most splendid triumphs of modern architecture in the French and English Gothic were achieved by the half-unconscious striving of the national genius through several centuries. The names of the builders of the cathedrals are unknown: the cathedrals themselves bear less the stamp of individual thought than of popular instinct; their fame belongs to the race that made them, to the spirit of the times that gave them birth. It is not in architecture, therefore, that we expect the Italians, divided into small and rival States, and distinguished by salient subjectivity, to show their strength. Men like Niccola Pisano, Arnolfo del Cambio, Alberti, Brunelleschi, and Bramante were gifted with an individuality too paramount for the creation of more than mighty experiments in architecture. They bowed to no tradition, but followed the dictates of their own inventive impulse, selecting the types that suited them, and dealing freely with the forms they found around them. Instead of seeking to carry on toward its accomplishment a style, not made, but felt and comprehended by their genius, they were eager to produce new and characteristic masterpieces—signs and symbols of their own peculiar quality of mind. Italy is full of splendid but imperfect monuments of personal ability, works of beauty displaying no unbroken genealogy of unknown craftsmen, but attesting the skill of famous artists. For the practical architect her palaces and churches may, for this reason, be less instructive and less attractive than the public buildings of France. Yet for the student of national and personal characteristics, who loves to trace the physiognomy of a people in its edifices, to discover the mind of the artist in his work, their interest is unrivalled. In each city the specific genius loci meets us face to face: from each town-hall or cathedral the soul of a great man leans forth to greet our own. These advantages compensate for frequent extravagances, for audacities savouring of ignorance, and for awkwardness in the adoption and modification of incongruous styles. Moreover, it must always be remembered that in Italy the architect could not forget the monuments of Roman and Byzantine art around him. Classic models had to be suited to the requirements of modern life and Christian ritual; and when the Germans brought their Gothic from beyond the Alps, it suffered from its adaptation to a southern climate. The result was that Italy arrived at no great national tradition in architecture, and that free scope was offered to the whims and freaks of individual designers. When at length, at the end of the sixteenth century, the Italians attained to uniformity of taste, it was by the sacrifice of their originality. The pedantry of the classical revival did more harm to architecture than to letters, and pseudo-Roman purism superseded the genial caprices of the previous centuries.

      If architecture may be said to have suffered in Italy from the supremacy of local characteristics and personal genius, overruling tradition and thwarting the evolution of a national style, the case was quite different with the other arts. Painting and sculpture demand the highest independence in the artist, and are susceptible of a far more many-sided treatment than architecture. They cannot be the common product of a people, but require the conscious application of a special ability to the task of translating thought and feeling into form. As painters, the Italians hold the first rank among civilised nations of the modern and the ancient world; and their inferiority as sculptors to the Greeks is mainly due to their mastery over painting, the essentially romantic art. The sensibilities of the new age craved a more emotional and agitated expression than is proper to sculpture. As early as the days of Ghiberti and Donatello it became clear that the Italian sculptors were following the methods of the sister art in their designs, while Michael Angelo

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