Earthwork out of Tuscany | Page 9

Nature and
Art have worked hand in hand, as they will when, we let them. For
what is an art so inimitable, so innocent, so intimate as this of Tuscany,
after all, but a high effort of creative Nature--Natura naturans, as
Spinosa calls her? Here, on the weather-fretted walls, a Delia Robbia
blossoms out in natural colours-- blue and white and green. They are
Spring's colours. You need not go into the Bargello to understand Luca
and Andrea at their happy task; as well go to a botanical museum to
read the secret of April. See them on the dusty wall of Orsammichele.
They have wrought the blossom of the stone--clusters of bright-eyed
flowers with the throats and eyes of angels, singing, you might say, a
children's hymn to Our Lady, throned and pure in the midst of the bevy.
See the Spedale degli Innocenti, where a score of little flowery white
children grow, open-armed, out of their sky-blue medallions. Really,
are they lilies, or children, or the embodied strophes of a psalter? you
ask. I mix my metaphors like an Irishman, but you will see my meaning.
All the arts blend in art: "rien ne fait mieux entendre combien un faux
sonnet est ridicule que de s'imaginer une femme ou une maison faite
sur ce modèle-là." Pascal knew; and so did Philip Sidney, "Nature
never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done";
and the nearer truth seems to be that Art is Nature made articulate,
Nature's soul inflamed with love and voicing her secrets through one
man to many. So there may be no difference between me and a
cabbage-rose but this, that I can consider my own flower, how it grows,
or rather, when it is grown.
It is very pleasant sometimes to think that wistful guess of Plato's true
in spite of everything--that the state is the man grown great, as the
universe is the state grown Infinite. It explains that Florence has a soul,
the broader image of her sons', and that this soul speaks in Art, utters
itself in flower of stone and starry stretches of fresco (like that serene
blue and grey band in the Sistine chapel which redeems so many of
Rome's waste places), sings colour-songs (there are such affairs) on
church and cloister walls. Seeing these good things, we should rather
hear the town's voice crying out her fancy to friendly hearts. Thus--let
me run the figure to death--if Luca's blue-eyed medallions are the crop

of the wall, they are also the soul of Florence, singing a blithe secular
song about gods whose abiding charm is the art that made them live.
And if the towers and domes are the statelier flowers of the garden, lily,
hollyhock, tulip of the red globe, so they are Florence again as she
strains forward and up, sternly defiant in the Palazzo Vecchio, bright
and curious at Santa Croce, pure, chaste as a seraph, when, thrilling
with the touch of Giotto, she gazes in the clarity of her golden and rosy
marbles, tinted like a pearl and shaped like an archangel, towards the
blue vault whose eye she is.
Wandering, therefore, through this high city; loitering on the bridge
whereunder turbid Arno glitters like brass; standing by the yellow
Baptistery; or seeing in Santa Croce cloister--where I write these lines--
seven centuries of enthusiasm mellowed down by sun and wind into a
comely dotage of grey and green, one is disposed to wonder whether
we are only just beginning to understand Art, or to misunderstand it?
Has the world slept for two thousand years? Is Degas the first artist?
Was Aristotle the first critic, and is Mr. George Moore the second? As
a white pigeon cuts the blue, and every opinion of him shines as
burnished agate in the live air, things shape themselves somewhat. I
begin to see that Art is, and that men have been, and shall be, but never
are. Facts are an integral part of life, but they are not life. I heard a
metaphysician say once that matter was the adjective of life, and
thought it a mighty pretty saying. In a true sense, it would seem, Art is
that adjective. For so surely as there are honest men to insist how true
things are or how proper to moralising, there will be Art to sing how
lovely they are, and what amiable dwellings for us. Thus fortified, I
think I can understand Magister Joctus Florentiæ. He lies behind these
crumbling walls. Traces of his crimson and blue still stain the
cloister-walk. What was he telling us in crimson and blue? How dumb
Zacharias spelt out the name of his son John in the roll of a book?
Hardly that, I think.

II
LITTLE FLOWERS

The