It is all very well saying Asia is replacing Europe as the prime creator of wealth, but is there any evidence that new superpowers like China and India will be able to supply the cultural magnificence which once accompanied European productivity? We take European art for granted. But its profusion and variety, and the thoroughness of its penetration into every aspect of life, are unequalled. I have been repeatedly to the new medieval and Renaissance galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum since they opened. Many wonderful artefacts never before seen, or at any rate never properly displayed, are now on view in all their opulence. They overflow with objects which testify sometimes to the genius but always to the ingenuity, invention, skill and taste of the craftsmen who created them. What remarkable creatures Europeans were before they committed collective suicide in the two world wars of the 20th century, just as the ancient Greeks destroyed themselves in the Peloponnesian disaster.
One is struck by the sheer density of the achievement. If we look at what emerged in the second decade of the 16th century alone, the mind is overwhelmed by the abundance. Of course the years are dominated by Raphael’s cartoons, which pulse with the almost frantic energy of the High Renaissance. But we forget that these paintings were themselves merely the preliminaries to the exquisite tapestries woven in Brussels, and now displayed in the Vatican Museum. While Raphael was working on his cartoons, Dürer was engraving his magisterial portrait of Erasmus, shown at his writing desk in all the stunning detail of his crowded study, and Lucas Cranach was likewise engraving on copperplate his bold head of Luther, radiating raw-boned defiance and terrifying determination. The V&A has superb examples of both.
The same decade brought two masterpieces of the plastic arts. Holbein’s father designed an exquisite piece in silver, not much more than a foot high, showing St Sebastian assailed with arrows. It is amazing to me that such a horrific martyrdom should be so delightful to contemplate for its artistry of conception and skill in execution, yet I must admit that of all the countless treasures of this museum, London’s finest, it is the object I would most like to possess. For life and vigour, however, it is challenged by an uproarious bronze made perhaps the same year. It is known as ‘The Shouting Horseman’, and is exactly that — a mounted man roaring out his heart, though whether in terror or rage or simply bellowing for his men to follow him is for us to guess. Hard to say which is more arresting, the horse itself neighing fiercely, or its bareback rider; the noisiest statue I know despite its diminutive height (33 centimetres). The artist is Andrea Briosco (1470-1532), one of the greatest Renaissance sculptors. Andrea is usually known as Riccio because of his abundant curly hair, and he produced his wonderful bronzes despite suffering from podagra, an acute form of arthritis or rheumatism.
The years around 1515 were thus fertile in high art of all kinds, but it is characteristic of European culture that it encompassed also countless works of beauty that were for everyday use, or adorned living rooms and bedrooms. From the year 1515 or thereabouts the V&A has numerous good examples of tin-glazed earthenware or hard-paste porcelain. I am captivated by a sumptuous dish, about 40 centimetres across, made to hold fruit I would think, which was baked and glazed in Carfaggiolo just at the time when Raphael was working on his cartoons. It is in the then-fashionable grotesque style, in many colours, and is crowded with erotic figures, so that each time a guest removed an apple or an orange, something new and shocking came into view, with Leda and the Swan as a climactic centrepiece. The blue-and-white jugs and dishes known as Medici porcelain were about to make their appearance, and the V&A has a number of these delectable pieces. These were not, at the time, museum works however, or even rarities for the owners’ studiolo or display cabinets. They were to embellish ordinary life in a comfortable home, where quotidian elegance was natural and expected.
So much so, in fact, that the humblest of objects assumed a role in the endless and stately procession of Renaissance art. If, for instance, a leisured lady, a contemporary of Luther’s, perhaps newly enfranchised from an upper-class priory, wished to perfume herself, she could use a sprinkler made in Venice. The V&A has a superb example, enamelled and gilded, with a fine tapering spout and a luscious belly, engraved with the arms of the Hirschvogel family. And if Erasmus himself had wished to own an inkpot out of the ordinary, but not of ostentatious gold or silver, he might have possessed himself of an earthenware one such as the V&A displays — a most enviable piece of work, created by a minor master of the genre, Giovanni di Nicola Manzoni, just at the time Dürer was busy with his engraving. This adventurous treasure rests on the backs of two large dogs, proto-Labradors I should say. The structure they carry, furnished with one big pot and two smaller ones (for red ink and gold leaf), is constructed in the form of a manger, with the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus, guarded by a long-haired St Joseph, and an ox and an ass peering out from under a green-tiled gable roof.
Hard to find in these glorious galleries anything, however humble its purpose, which is not a thing of beauty. How fortunate the Europeans have been over the centuries! Evelyn Waugh used to say that, until the Industrial Revolution, any object to be found in the house of a well-to-do European was artistic in its fashion, and worth preserving for posterity. In fact the industrialisation of Europe itself produced vast quantities of fine workmanship in its purely utilitarian artefacts — look, for instance, at the bridges, locks, roadworks and canal lodges of Thomas Telford, or Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s rail sheds, stations and viaducts.
Into the 19th century and beyond the quality of European culture was attested by its density and concentration. The ranks of the artists, craftsmen and contrivers of genius ran deep. Because of the bicentenary celebrations this year, all of us now know that Frederick Chopin was born in 1810. But few may be aware that the year before, 1809, Mendelssohn had been born, or that Schumann was born the same year as Chopin, and Liszt the year after, 1811. Two years later, 1813, saw the births of both Richard Wagner and Guiseppe Verdi. Thus, within five years, five of the greatest musical geniuses in history came into the world. That is, indeed, richness.
I recall General de Gaulle, at a press conference, expressing his regret that the uniting of Europe placed so much stress on the purely material structure of life, and so little on its cultural superstructure, and its Judeo-Christian substructure. For me, he said, Europe is not about coal and steel and tariffs, ‘C’est l’Europe de Dante, de Goethe et de Chateaubriand.’ To his annoyance, I interrupted him: ‘Et de Shakespeare, mon Général?’ ‘Oui, Shakespeare aussi,’ he replied, with a sad Gallic shrug of his shoulders at the hopelessness of confronting an uncomprehending philistine world. I fear that in the 21st century, and beyond, the dawn of an oriental age in the production of new and efficient material goods and services will lack the sursum corda, the lifting of the heart and mind which the era of European supremacy once provided.
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