Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/164

 132 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. vij. AUG. u. 1920. '* Au PIED DE LA LETTBE." I have often heard this phrase used to signify taking a remark too "literally." Can any one givo the date of and explain its origin ? M. A. P. AUTHOR OF QUOTATION WANTED. Who wrote the following passage, quoted in an article in The Times some six weeks ago, and in which of the author's works is it to be found ? " The sole wisdom for man or boy who is haunted with the hovering of unseen wings, with the scent of unseen roses and the subtle entice- ment of : melodies unheard,' is work. If he follow any of these they will vanish. But if he work they will come unsought, and, while they come, he will believe that there is a fairy-land where poets find their dreams, and prophets are laid hold of bv their visions." H. E. G. E. [The writer of the article in The Times alluded to above kindly informs us that the quotation was from ' Alec Forbes of Howglen ' by George Macdonald.] THE CRUCIFIXION IN r ART : THE SPEAR-WOUND. [12 S. vi. 314 : vii. 11; 97.) MAY I add a little to the information already given by MB. SPABKE. There is no doubt that the tradition of the Catholic Church regarding the spear-wound in the side of our Lord is that it was on the right side. Some few years ago, for the purpose of a lecture on the early representation of the Crucifixion in Christian Art, I examined all the known examples up to the eleventh century, and my recollection is that with one exception and another possible exception, they bore out the Catholic tradition. Take, for example, the lamb pierced in its right side, a mosaic of the sixth century in the apse of old St. Peter's at Rome, or the miniature of the Crucifixion in the MS. of Rabula (A.D. 586). The latter is of the greatest importance because it became the model of the Christian artists of the succeeding centuries. It shows, for our purpose, Longinus piercing the right side of Christ. The exception is in an Irish MS. of the Gospels of St. Gall in Switzerland. This miniature which is of the eighth or ninth century shows St. Longinus on the left side of Christ. The wound is not shown, but a wavy line of red paint proceeds from the left side of the cross to the eye of Longinus. The possible exception, mentioned above, is an ivory in the British Museum which belongs to the decadent period of Roman- art, fifth or sixth century. On the left, side of our Lord (right side as you view it) is the figure of a man with hand uplifted as- if about to strike. It has been suggested that the figure represents Longinus, whose hand must originally have held a knife, now missing. But, as the headdress pro- claims him to be a Jew, I think it more likely that the hand is raised in derision, that it never held a knife, and that it symbolizes - Christ's rejection by the Jewish Church. In the west there was little departure- from the type of the MS. of Rabula until the tenth and eleventh centuries, when realism began to play a greater part in. Christian art : in the East it still remains the type. Take as examples, the well- known fresco of the eighth century in S. Maria Antiqua at Rome, or in our own country the tenth-century carvingfbehind the altar in the South Chapel at Romsey Abbey. Still the wound is always on the right side. For the twelfth century there could be no more conclusive evidence of the tradition than the stigmata of St. Francis, whether you accept their reality or not. With the rise of the great Italian schools of art in the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- turies the Crucifixion becomes more full in detail and more realistic, though not less devotional, and many of its accessories remain symbolical. The figure is no longer the living and triumphant Christ, reigning from the Tree, but a dead Christ in all the humiliation of His Passion. This manner was generalised by the schools of the Florentines, Cimabue and Giotto, and by the Sienese Duccio. The last named is said to have been the first painter who, for an artistic motive, represented the legs of Christ as bent and crossed, the feet pierced by one nail only. In the fourteenth century Fra Angelico left us paintings of the Cruci- fixion which no other artist has equalled. The changes were taking place, but the- wound was still on the right side. In the fifteenth century the devotional treatment of this subject was eclipsed by the- realistic in our modern sense of the word. Religious pictures gave place to pictures of religious subjects in which the artist's efforts were concentrated to display his skill in por- traying the human form. It may be that thisr anatomical school of painters considered that as the heart lies more to the left side of the chest than to the right, the spear wound should be on the left. Whether so-