The A2 Proofs, first pulled around 20 September 1869, passed through two
states. This is a partial (corrected) copy of the first state, whereas the
[DGR, 1828-1882
Poems. (Privately printed.) London
Strangeways and Walden
1869]
A2 Proofs
September 21 1869
Copy 1. Corrected
throughout
by Dante G. Rossetti. Provenance:
Dante G. Rossetti
(annotations);
William M. Rossetti;
Jerome Kern
‘Burden. Heavy calamity; The chorus of a
song.’—Dictionary.
* During the excavations, the Tiyari workmen held their ser-
vices in
the shadow of the great bulls. (Layard's ‘
) This
poem was written when the sculptures were first brought
to
England.
* This little poem, written in 1847, was printed in a periodical
at
the outset of 1850, a month or two before the appearance of
‘
writers) is now identified.
* In the design Mary has left a festal procession, and is
ascending
by a sudden impulse the steps of the house where she sees
Christ.
Her lover has followed her and is trying to turn her back.
* The scene is in the house-porch, where Christ holds a bowl of
blood
from which Zacharias is sprinkling the posts and lintel.
Joseph has
brought the lamb and Elisabeth lights the pyre. The
shoes which John
fastens and the bitter herbs which Mary is gather-
ing form part of
the ritual.
* The subject shows Cassandra prophesying among her kindred,
as
Hector leaves them for his last battle. They are on the
platform
of a fortress, from which the Trojan troops are
marching out. Helen
is arming Paris; Priam soothes Hecuba; and
Andromache holds
the child to her bosom.
Before any knowledge of painting was brought to
Florence, there were
already painters in Lucca, and Pisa,
and Arezzo, who feared God and
loved the art. The
workmen from Greece, whose trade it was to sell their
own
works in Italy and teach Italians to imitate them, had
already
found in rivals of the soil a skill that could
forestall their lessons
and cheapen their labours, more
years than is supposed before the art
came at all into
Florence. The pre-eminence to which Cimabue was
raised
at once by his contemporaries, and which he still retains
to
a wide extent even in the modern mind, is to be accounted
for,
partly by the circumstances under which he arose, and
partly by that
extraordinary purpose of fortune born with the
lives
of some few, and through which it is not a little thing
for any who went
before, if they are even remembered as
the shadows of the coming of such
an one, and the voices
which prepared his way in the wilderness. It is
thus, almost
known. They have
left little, and but little heed is taken of
that which men hold to have
been surpassed; it is gone like
time gone,—a track of dust
and dead leaves that merely led
to the fountain.
Nevertheless, of very late years and in very rare in-
stances, some signs
of a better understanding have become
manifest. A case in point is that
of the triptych and two
cruciform pictures at Dresden, by Chiaro di
Messer Bello
dell' Erma, to which the eloquent pamphlet of Dr.
Aemmster
has at length succeeded in attracting the students.
There
is another still more solemn and beautiful work, now proved
to
be by the same hand, in the Pitti gallery at Florence.
It is the one to
which my narrative will relate.
This Chiaro dell' Erma was a young man of very
honorable family in
Arezzo; where, conceiving art almost,
for himself, and loving it deeply, he endeavoured from
early
boyhood towards the imitation of any objects offered
in nature. The
extreme longing after a visible embodiment
of his thoughts strengthened
as his years increased, more
even than his sinews or the blood of his
life; until he would
feel faint in sunsets and at the sight of stately
persons.
When he had lived nineteen years, he heard of the
famous
Giunta Pisano; and, feeling much of admiration, with
per-
haps a little of that envy which youth always feels until
it
has learned to measure success by time and opportunity, he
had been no
more than the worship of beauty. Therefore,
after certain days passed in
perplexity, Chiaro said within
himself, ‘My life and my will
are yet before me: I will
take another aim to my life.’
From that moment Chiaro set a watch on his soul, and
put his hand to no
other works but only to such as had for
their end the presentment of
some moral greatness that
should influence the beholder: and to this
end, he multiplied
abstractions, and forgot the beauty and passion of
the world.
So the people ceased to throng about his pictures as
hereto-
fore; and, when they were carried through town and town
to
their destination, they were no longer delayed by the
crowds eager to
gaze and admire; and no prayers or offer-
ings were brought to them on
their path, as to his Madonnas,
and his Saints, and his Holy Children,
wrought for the sake
of the life he saw in the faces that he loved. Only
the critical
audience remained to him; and these, in default of
more
worthy matter, would have turned their scrutiny on a puppet
or
a mantle. Meanwhile, he had no more of fever upon
him; but was calm and
pale each day in all that he did
and in his goings in and out. The works
he produced
at this time have perished—in all likelihood, not
unjustly.
It is said (and we may easily believe it), that,
though
more laboured than his former pictures, they were cold
and
unemphatic; bearing marked out upon them, the
measure of that
boundary to which they were made to
conform.
And the weight was still close at Chiaro's heart: but he
would not
know it.
Now it happened, within these days, that there fell a
great feast in
Pisa, for holy matters: and each man left his
occupation; and all the
guilds and companies of the city
were got together for games and
rejoicings. And there were
scarcely any that stayed in the houses,
except ladies who
lay or sat along their balconies between open windows
which
let the breeze beat through the rooms and over the
spread
tables from end to end. And the golden cloths that their
arms
lay upon drew all eyes upward to see their beauty;
and the day was long;
and every hour of the day was bright
with the sun.
So Chiaro's model, when he awoke that morning on the
hot pavement of the
Piazza Nunziata, and saw the hurry of
people that passed him, got up and
went along with them;
and Chiaro waited for him in vain.
For the whole of that morning, the music was in Chiaro's
room from the
Church close at hand; and he could hear
the sounds that the crowd made
in the streets; hushed only
at long intervals while the processions for
the feast-day
chanted in going under his windows. Also, more than
once,
there was a high clamour from the meeting of factious
persons:
for the ladies of both leagues were looking down;
and he who encountered
his enemy could not choose but
draw upon him. Chiaro waited a long time
idle; and then
knew that his model was gone elsewhere. When at
his
work, he was blind and deaf to all else; but he feared
sloth:
for then his stealthy thoughts would begin to beat