Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/333

Rh the picture for a donor’s portrait, omitting to read the words on the scroll she bears in her hand: “Mi verdriet lange te hopen, Wie is hi die syn hert hout open?” i.e.: “I am weary of hoping so long. Who is he who holds his heart open?’” Pictorial expression knew no middle term between the chaste and the obscene. The rendering of erotic subjects was rare, and what there is of it, is naive and innocent. Once more, however, we must bear in mind that the greater number of profane works have disappeared. It would be most interesting to be able to compare the nude of Van Eyck in his “Bath of Women,” which Fazio saw, with that of his “Adam and Eve.” As to the latter picture, it must not be imagined that the erotic element is lacking. Following the rules of the code of feminine beauty of his time, the artist made the breasts small and placed them too high; the arms are long and thin, the belly prominent. But he did so quite ingenuously and with no intention of giving sensual pleasure. A small picture in the Leipsic Gallery, occasionally designated as belonging to the “school of Jan van Eyck,” represents a girl in a room; she is nude, as magical practices require, and is employing witchcraft to force her lover to show himself. Here the intention is present, and the artist has succeeded in expressing the erotic sentiment: the nude figure has the demure lasciviousness which reappears in those of Cranach.

It is most improbable that the restraint thus displayed in fifteenth-century art, in respect of erotic expression, was due to a sense of modesty, for in general an extreme licence was tolerated. Though pictorial art cultivated it very little as yet, the nude occupied a large place in the tableau vivant. The “personnages” of nude goddesses or nymphs played by real women were rarely wanting at the entries of princes. These exhibitions took place on platforms and occasionally even in the water, like that of the sirens who swam in the Lys “quite naked and dishevelled as they paint them,” near the bridge over which Duke Philip had to pass, on his entry into Ghent in 1457. The Judgment of Paris was the favourite subject. These representations should be taken neither as proofs of high æsthetic taste nor gross licentiousness, but rather as naive and popular sensuousness. Jean