University of Virginia Library

1. MONALDI.
—
CHAPTER I.

Among the students of a seminary at Bologna
were two friends, more remarkable for their attachment
to each other, than for any resemblance
in their minds or dispositions. Indeed there was
so little else in common between them, that hardly
two boys could be found more unlike. The character
of Maldura, the eldest, was bold, grasping,
and ostentatious; while that of Monaldi, timid
and gentle, seemed to shrink from observation.
The one, proud and impatient, was ever laboring
for distinction; the world, palpable, visible, audible,
was his idol; he lived only in externals, and could
neither act nor feel but for effect; even his secret

reveries having an outward direction, as if he
could not think without a view to praise, and
anxiously referring to the opinion of others; in
short, his nightly and his daily dreams had but one
subject — the talk and the eye of the crowd. The
other, silent and meditative, seldom looked out of
himself either for applause or enjoyment; if he
ever did so, it was only that he might add to, or
sympathize in the triumph of another; this done,
he retired again, as it were to a world of his own,
where thoughts and feelings, filling the place of
men and things, could always supply him with
occupation and amusement.

Had the ambition of Maldura been less, or his
self-knowledge greater, he might have been a
benefactor to the world. His talents were of a
high order. Perhaps few have ever surpassed him
in the power of acquiring; to this he united perseverance;
and all that was known, however various
and opposite, he could master at will. But
here his power stopped; beyond the regions of
discovered knowledge he could not see, and dared
not walk, for to him all beyond was “outer darkness;”
in a word, with all his gifts he wanted that
something, whatever it might be, which gives the
living principle to thought. But this sole deficiency
was the last of which he suspected himself.

With that self-delusion so common to young men
of mistaking the praise of what is promising for
that of the thing promised, he too rashly confounded
the ease with which he carried all the
prizes of his school with the rare power of commanding
at pleasure the higher honors of the
world.

But the honors of a school are for things and
purposes far different from those demanded and
looked for by the world. Maldura unfortunately
did not make the distinction. His various knowledge,
though ingeniously brought together, and
skilfully set anew, was still the knowledge of
other men; it did not come forth as in new birth,
from the modifying influence of his own nature.
His mind was hence like a thing of many parts,
yet wanting a whole — that realizing quality which
the world must feel before it will reverence. In
proportion to its stores such a mind will be valued,
and even admired; but it cannot command that
inward voice — the only true voice of fame, which
speaks not, be it in friend or enemy, till awakened
by the presence of a master spirit.

Such were the mind and disposition of Maldura;
and from their unfortunate union sprang all the
after evils in his character. As yet, however, he
was known to himself and others only as a remarkable

boy. His extraordinary attainments
placing him above competition, he supposed himself
incapable of so mean a passion as envy;
indeed the high station from which he could look
down on his associates gave a complacency to his
mind not unfavorable to the gentler virtues; he
was, therefore, often kind, and even generous
without an effort. Besides, though he disdained
to affect humility, he did not want discretion, and
that taught him to bear his honors without arrogance.
His claims were consequently admitted
by his schoolfellows without a murmur. But there
was one amongst them whose praises were marked
by such warmth and enthusiasm as no heart not
morally insensible could long withstand; this youth
was Monaldi. Maldura naturally had strong feelings,
and so long as he continued prosperous and
happy, their course was honorable. He requited
the praises of his companion with his esteem and
gratitude, which soon ripened into a friendship so
sincere that he believed he could even lay down
his life for him.

It was in this way that two natures so opposite
became mutually attracted. But the warmth and
magnanimity of Monaldi were all that was yet
known to the other; for, though not wanting in
academic learning, he was by no means distinguished;

indeed, so little, that Maldura could not
but feel and lament it.

The powers of Monaldi, however, were yet to
be called forth. And it was not surprising that to
his youthful companions he should have then appeared
inefficient, there being a singular kind of
passiveness about him easily mistaken for vacancy.
But his was like the passiveness of some uncultured
spot, lying unnoticed within its nook of rocks,
and silently drinking in the light, and the heat,
and the showers of heaven, that nourish the seeds
of a thousand nameless flowers, destined one day
to bloom and to mingle their fragrance with the
breath of nature. Yet to common observers the
external world seemed to lie only

but to them it appeared so because he delighted
to shut it out, and to combine and give another
life to the images it had left in his memory; as if
he would sleep to the real and be awake only to a
world of shadows. But, though his emotions seldom
betrayed themselves by any outward signs,
there was nothing sluggish in the soul of Monaldi;
it was rather their depth and strength that prevented
their passage through the feeble medium of
words. He regarded nothing in the moral or physical
world as tiresome or insignificant; every object
had a charm, and its harmony and beauty, its
expression and character, all passed into his soul
in all their varieties, while his quickening spirit
brooded over them as over the elementary forms of
a creation of his own. Thus living in the life he
gave, his existence was too intense and extended
to be conceived by the common mind: hence the
neglect and obscurity in which he passed his youth.

But the term of pupilage soon came to an end,
and the friends parted — each, as he could, to
make his way in the world.

The profession which Monaldi had chosen for
the future occupation of his life was that of a
painter; to which, however, he could not be said
to have come wholly unprepared. The slight
sketch just given of him will show that the most
important part, the mind of a painter, he already
possessed; the nature of his amusements (in which,
some one has well observed, men are generally
most in earnest,) having unconsciously disciplined
his mind for this pursuit. He had looked at Nature
with the eye of a lover; none of her minutest
beauties had escaped him, and all that were stirring
to a sensitive heart and a romantic imagination
were treasured up in his memory, as themes
of delightful musing in her absence: and they

came to him in those moments with that never-failing
freshness and life which love can best give
to the absent. But the skill and the hand of an
artist were still to be acquired.

But perseverance, if not a mark of genius, is at
least one of its practical adjuncts; and Monaldi
possessed it. Indeed there is but one mode of
making endurable the perpetual craving of any
master-passion — the continually laboring to satisfy
it. And, so it be innocent, how sweet the reward!
giving health to the mind without the sense of
toil. This Monaldi enjoyed; for he never felt
that he had been toiling, even when the dawn, as
it often happened, broke in upon his labors.

Without going more into detail, in a very few
years Monaldi was universally acknowledged to be
the first painter in Italy. His merit, however, was
not merely comparative. He differed from his
contemporaries no less in kind than in degree. If
he held anything in common with others, it was
with those of ages past — with the mighty dead of
the fifteenth century; from them he had learned
the language of his art, but his thoughts, and their
turn of expression were his own. His originality,
therefore was felt by all; and his country hailed
him as one coming, in the spirit of Raffaelle, to
revive by his genius her ancient glory.

It is not, however, to be supposed, that the
claims of the new style were allowed at once,
since it required not only the acquisition of a new
taste, but the abandoning an old one. In what is
called a critical age, which is generally that which
follows the age of production, it is rarely that an
original author is well received at once. There
are two classes of opponents, which he is almost
sure to encounter: the one consists of those who,
without feeling or imagination, are yet ambitious of
the reputation of critics; who set out with some
theory, either ready made to their hands and purely
traditional, or else reasoned out by themselves from
some plausible dogma, which they dignify with
the name of philosophy. As these criticise for distinction,
every work of art becomes to them, of
course, a personal affair, which they accordingly
approach either as patrons or enemies; and woe
to the poor artist who shall have had the hardihood
to think for himself. In the other class is comprised
the well-meaning multitude, who, having no
pretensions of their own, are easily awed by authority;
and, afraid to give way to their natural
feeling, receive without distrust the more confident
dicta of these self-created arbiters. Perhaps at no
time was the effect of this peculiar usurpation
more sadly illustrated than in the prescriptive

commonplace which distinguished the period of
which we speak. The first appearance of Monaldi
was consequently met by an opposition proportioned
to the degree of his departure from the
current opinions. But as his good sense had restrained
him from venturing before the public until
by long and patient study he had felt himself entitled
to take the rank of a master, he bore the
attacks of his assailants with the equanimity of one
who well knew that the ground he stood upon was
not the quicksand of self-love. Besides, he had
no vanity to be wounded, and the folly of their
criticisms he disdained to notice, leaving it to time
to establish his claims. Nor was this wise forbearance
long unrewarded, for it is the nature of
truth, sooner or later, to command recognition;
some kindred mind will at last respond to it; and
there is no true response that is not given in love;
hence the lover-like enthusiasm with which it is
hailed, and dwelt upon, until the echo of like
minds spreads it abroad, to be finally received by
the many as a matter of faith. It was so with
Monaldi.

As our business, however, is rather with the
man than the painter, we shall only stop to notice
one of his works; and that less as being the cause
of his final triumph, than as illustrating the peculiar

character of his mind. The subject of the
picture was the first sacrifice of Noah after the
subsiding of the waters; a subject of little promise
from an ordinary hand, but of all others, perhaps,
the best suited to exhibit that rare union of intense
feeling and lofty imagination which characterized
Monaldi. The composition consisted of the patriarch
and his family, at the altar, which occupied
the foreground; a distant view of mount Ararat,
with the ark resting on its peak; and the intermediate
vale. These were scanty materials for a
picture; but the fulness with which they seemed
to distend the spectator's mind left no room for
this thought. There was no dramatic variety in
the kneeling father and his kneeling children; they
expressed but one sentiment — adoration; and it
seemed to go up as with a single voice. This
gave the soul which the spectator felt; but it was
one that could not have gone forth under common
day light, nor ever have pervaded with such emphatic
life other than the shadowy valley, the
misty mountain, the mysterious ark, again floating
as it were on a sea of clouds, and the lurid, deeptoned
sky, dark yet bright, which spoke to the
imagination of a lost and recovered world — once
dead, now alive, and pouring out her first song of
praise even from under the pall of death.

Monaldi was fortunate on the first exhibition of
this picture to have for his leading critic the cavalier
S — , a philosopher and a poet, though he
had never written a line as either.

“I want no surer evidence of genius than this,”
said he, addressing Monaldi; “you are master of
the chiaro' scuro and color, two of the most powerful
instruments, I will not say of Art, but of Nature,
for they were her's from her birth, though
few of our painters since the time of the Caracci
appear to have known it. If I do not place your
form and expression first, 't is not that I undervalue
them; they are both true and elevated; yet,
with all their grandeur and power, I should still
hold you wanting in one essential, had you not
thus infused the human emotion into the surrounding
elements. This is the poetry of the art;
the highest nature. There are hours when Nature
may be said to hold intercourse with man, modifying
his thoughts and feelings; when man reacts,
and in his turn bends her to his will, whether by
words or colors, he becomes a poet. A vulgar
painter may perhaps think your work unnatural;
and it must be so to him who sees only with his
eyes. But another kind of critic is required to
understand our rapt Correggio, or even — in spite
of his abortive forms — the Dutch Rembrant.

These are men, whose hearts and imaginations
seem to have been so dependent on each other,
that I could easily conceive excess of misery might
have driven them to madness.”

But the cavalier S — was not content with
admiring only, he added the picture to his collection;
nor did he stop there, for he was one who
could not look at a work of genius without a feeling
of kindness for its author; and Monaldi was
soon enabled, through his friendship and munificence,
to follow his own inclinations and give free
scope to his powers.

By the aid of this generous friend, added to his
own persevering industry, Monaldi's works, and
consequently his fame, were soon spread throughout
Italy; wealth and distinction followed of
course; and, to complete his triumph, he was
finally honored with a special commission from the
pope himself. In short, no artist since the time
of Raffaelle ever drew after him such a train of
admirers. But with all this incense the head and
heart of Monaldi remained the same; it could not
soil the pure simplicity of his character; he was
still the same gentle, unassuming being.