History of Art - vol. III by Elie Faure

Author:Elie Faure
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Harper's & Brothers
Published: 2012-09-20T15:50:38+00:00

Chapter IV. THE FRANCO-FLEMISH CYCLE

I

THE true spirit of the Renaissance was introduced into the west and the north of Europe only by means of the wars of Italy. In France and in Flanders, the fifteenth century is Gothic; the individualizing of the forms of thought takes place unknown to the artists there. Architects, painters, sculptors, and workers in stained glass all retain the mediaeval soul, dissociated and fragmentary, but perhaps intensified as well. It even seems that when we take the fifteenth century in a mass, in its ensemble, it corresponds better to the general and superficial idea of the Gothic which we make for ourselves than the centuries which preceded it. The communal spirit is conquered. The reign of the theologian begins again, but it is a theologian imprisoned by the letter of the law, and one in whom the flame is extinguished. The people, crushed again under feudal power, and no longer having any hope, turn in the direction of artificial paradises. The magnificent equilibrium of the great cathedrals is entirely destroyed. The flame rises, crackling, twisting, and licking the vaults; it covers the bare skeleton which had defined for the minds of men the real meaning of the edifice, which inclines toward openwork in the stone and toward slightness, exhausting itself in vain leaps, becomes breathless, and involves itself in the complications of fine detail and of technical tricks. The sickly mysticism of unhappy men, fatigued by the efforts of their will and in despair because of their feeling that life was escaping from them, invaded all the forms of thought and of action. Man no longer believes in his strength; the miracle is everywhere: it explains everything, it answers everything, nothing is expected any longer save by grace of the miracle. The only miracle of that century, Joan of Arc, who represents the common sense of the people struggling against the stupidity of the clergy, the spirit of justice rebelling against the spirit of quibbling, the awakening of pure faith after its disfigurement by bigotry, is first regarded as a providential event through which man is saved the trouble of acting.

The abjectness of the people, before the coming of its great daughter, was only too easy to explain. Never had northern France known times so hard. At the end of the sixteenth century its population was reduced by two thirds. The peasant, having taken refuge in the woods or the quarry, abandoned the fields and the roads to the armed bands. Guides, brigands, and soldiers devastated the countryside and held the towns for ransom under the banner of France, of England, of Burgundy, or of Armagnac. Cold and hunger killed more people than war did. Emptied by the plague, by famine, pillage, and taxes, the ruined cities were nothing more than camps, where all industry, all traffic, and all social life were arrested. The wolves wandered about Paris in broad daylight. The people ate what they could—nameless refuse, garbage, and even human flesh, dead or alive.

And so the moment was one of silence.

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