FIFTH LECTURE.COMPOSITION, EXPRESSION.
ΠΟΛΛΑ Δ’ ΕÎΚΑΡΔΙΑΙΣ ΑÎΔΡΩΠΕΒΑΛΟÎὩΡΑΙ ΠΟΛΥΑÎΘΕΜΟΙ ΑΡΧΑΙΑΣΟΦΙΣΜΑΘ’. ἉΠΑΠΔ’ ΕΥΡΟÎΤΟΣ ΕΡΓΟÎ.ΠΙÎΔΑΡ. ΟΛΥΜΠ. Î .
ΠΟΛΛΑ Δ’ ΕÎΚΑΡΔΙΑΙΣ ΑÎΔΡΩΠΕΒΑΛΟÎὩΡΑΙ ΠΟΛΥΑÎΘΕΜΟΙ ΑΡΧΑΙΑΣΟΦΙΣΜΑΘ’. ἉΠΑΠΔ’ ΕΥΡΟÎΤΟΣ ΕΡΓΟÎ.ΠΙÎΔΑΡ. ΟΛΥΜΠ. Î .
ΠΟΛΛΑ Δ’ ΕÎΚΑΡΔΙΑΙΣ ΑÎΔΡΩΠΕΒΑΛΟÎὩΡΑΙ ΠΟΛΥΑÎΘΕΜΟΙ ΑΡΧΑΙΑΣΟΦΙΣΜΑΘ’. ἉΠΑΠΔ’ ΕΥΡΟÎΤΟΣ ΕΡΓΟÎ.
ΠΟΛΛΑ Δ’ ΕÎ
ΚΑΡΔΙΑΙΣ ΑÎΔΡΩΠΕΒΑΛΟÎ
ὩΡΑΙ ΠΟΛΥΑÎΘΕΜΟΙ ΑΡΧΑΙΑ
ΣΟΦΙΣΜΑΘ’. ἉΠΑΠΔ’ ΕΥΡΟÎΤΟΣ ΕΡΓΟÎ.
ΠΙÎΔΑΡ. ΟΛΥΜΠ. Î .
ΠΙÎΔΑΡ. ΟΛΥΜΠ. Î .
Elements of Composition; Grouping; M. Agnolo; Correggio; Raffaello; Breadth;—Expression; its Classes, its Limits.
Invention is followed by Composition. Composition, in its stricter sense, is the dresser of Invention, it superintends the disposition of its materials.
Composition has physical and moral elements: those are Perspective and Light with shade; these, Unity, Propriety and Perspicuity; without Unity it cannot span its subject; without Propriety it cannot tell the story; without Perspicuity it clouds the fact with confusion; destitute of light and shade it misses the effect, and heedless of perspective it cannot find a place.
Composition, like all other parts of style, had a gradual progress; it began in monotony and apposition, emerged to centre and depth, established itself on harmony and masses, was debauched by contrast and by grouping, and finally supplanted by machinery, common-place, and manner.
Of sculpture as infant painting had borrowed its first theory of forms, so it probably borrowed its method of arranging them; and this is Apposition, a collateral arrangement of figures necessary for telling a single or the scattered moments of a fact. If statuary indulged in the combination of numerous groups, such as those of the Niobe, it might dispose them in composition, it might fix a centre and its rays, and so produce an illusion as far as colourless form is capable of giving it. But sculpture, when it was first consulted by painting, was not yet arrived at that period which allowed the display of such magnificence; a single figure or a single group could not sufficiently inform the painter; he was reduced to consult bassorelievo, and of that Apposition is the element.
And in this light we ought to contemplate a great part of the Capella Sistina. Its plan was monumental, and some of its compartments were allotted to Apposition, not because M. Agnolo was a sculptor, but because it was a more comprehensive medium to exhibit his general plan than the narrower scale of composition. He admitted and like a master treated composition, whenever his subject from the primeval simplicity of elemental nature retreated within the closer bounds of society: his Patriarchs, his Prophetsand his Sibyls, singly considered or as groups, the scenery of the Brazen Serpent, of David and of Judith, of Noah and his sons, are models of the roundest and grandest composition. What principle of composition do we miss in the creation of Adam and of Eve? Can it grasp with more unity, characterise with more propriety, present with brighter perspicuity, give greater truth of place or round with more effect? If collateral arrangement be the ruling plan of the Last Judgment, if point of sight and linear and aërial perspective in what is elevated, comes forward or recedes, if artificial masses and ostentatious roundness, on the whole, be absorbed by design or sacrificed to higher principles, what effects has the greatest power of machinery ever contrived to emulate the conglobation of those struggling groups where light and shade administered to terrour or sublimity? What, to emulate the boat of Charon disemboguing its crew of criminals, flung in a murky mass of shade across the pallid concave and bleak blast of light that blows it on us? A meteor in the realms of chiaroscuro which obscures whatever the most daring servants of that power elsewhere produced.
If the plan of M. Agnolo must be estimated by other principles, his process must be settled by other rules than the plan and process of Correggio atParma. Though the first and greatest, Correggio was no more than a Machinist. It was less the Assumption of the Virgin, less a monument of triumphant Religion he meditated to exhibit by sublimity of conception or characteristic composition, than by the ultimate powers of linear and aërial perspective at an elevation which demanded eccentric and violent foreshortening, set off and tuned by magic light and shade, to embody the medium in which the actors were to move; and to the splendour and loftiness of that he accommodated the subject and subordinated the agents. Hence his work, though moving in a flood of harmony, is not legitimate Composition. The synod that surrounds the glory, the glory itself that embosoms the Virgin and her angelic choir, Christ who precipitates himself to meet the glory, are equally absorbed in thebravuraof the vehicle, they radiate reflect and mass, but shew us little more than limbs. This makes the cupola of Correggio less epic or dramatic than ornamental. The technic part of Composition alone, though carried to the highest pitch of perfection, if its ostentation absorb the subject, stamps inferiority on the master. Take away Homer’s language, and you take much, but you leave the epic poet unimpaired; take it from Virgil, strip him of the majesty, the glow, the propriety of his diction, and the remainder of his claim to epic poetrywill nearly be reduced to what he borrowed from Homer’s plan. What is it we remember when we leave the cupolas of Correggio, what when we leave the chapel of Sixtus? There, a man who transferred to a colossal scale the dictates of his draped or naked model, applied them with a comprehensive eye and set them off by magic light and shade and wide expanded harmony of tone; here an epic plan combined and told in simple modes of grandeur. Each man gave what he had, Correggio limbs and effect, M. Agnolo being, form and meaning. If the cupola of Correggio be in its kind, unequalled by earlier or succeeding plans, if it leave far behind the effusions of Lanfranchi and Pietro da Cortona, it was not the less their model; the ornamental style of machinists dates not the less its origin from him.
Various are the shapes in which Composition embodies its subject and presents it to our eye. The cone or pyramid, the globe, the grape, flame and stream, the circle and its segments, lend their figure to elevate, concentrate, round, diffuse themselves or undulate in its masses. It towers in the Apollo, it darts its flame forward in the warriour of Agasias, its lambent spires wind upward with the Laocoon; it inverts the cone in the Hercules of Glycon, it doublesit, or undulates in Venus and the Graces. In the bland central light of a globe imperceptibly gliding through lucid demi-tints into rich reflected shades, it composes the spell of Correggio and entrances like a delicious dream; whilst like a torrent it rushes from the hand of Tintorett over the trembling canvass in enormous wings of light and shade, and sweeps all individual importance in general effects. But whether its groups be imbrowned on a lucid sky, or emerge from darkness, whether it break like a meridian sun on the reflected object with Rubens, or from Rembrandt, flash on it in lightning, whatever be its form or its effect, if it be more or less than what it ought to be—a vehicle, if it branch not out of the subject as the produce of its root, if it do not contain all that distinguishes it from other subjects, if it leave out aught that is characteristic and exclusively its own, and admit what is superfluous or common-place—it is no longer Composition, it is grouping only, an ostentatious or useless scaffolding about an edifice without a base; such was not the Composition of Raffaello.
The leading principle of Raffaello’s composition is that simple air, that artlessness which persuades us that his figures have been less composed by skill than grouped by Nature, that the fact must have happenedas we see it represented. Simplicity taught him to grasp his subject, propriety to give it character and form, and perspicuity to give it breadth and place. The School of Athens in the Vatican, the Death of Ananias, and the Sacrifice at Lystra, among the cartoons may serve as instances.
A metaphysical composition, if it be numerous, will be oftener mistaken for dilapidation of fragments than regular distribution of materials. The School of Athens communicates to few more than an arbitrary assemblage of speculative groups. Yet if the subject be the dramatic representation of Philosophy, as it prepares for active life, the parts of the building are not connected with more regular gradation than those groups. Archimedes and Pythagoras, Plato and Socrates, Aristotle and Democritus, Epictetus, Diogenes and Aristippus, in different degrees of characteristic modes, tell one great doctrine, that, fitted by physical and intellectual harmony, man ascends from himself to society, from society to God. For this, group balances group, action is contrasted by repose, each weight has its counterpoise; unity and variety shed harmony over the whole.
In the cartoon of Ananias, at the first glance, and even before we are made acquainted with theparticulars of the subject, we become partners of the scene. The disposition is amphitheatric, the scenery a spacious hall, the heart of the action is the centre, the wings assist, elucidate, connect it with the ends. The apoplectic man before us, is evidently the victim of a supernatural power, inspiring the apostolic figures, who on the raised platform with threatening arm, pronounced, and with the word enforced his doom. The terrour occasioned by the sudden stroke is best expressed by the features of youth and middle age on each side of the sufferer; it is instantaneous, because its shock has not yet spread beyond them, a contrivance not to interrupt the dignity due to the sacred scene, and to stamp the character of devout attention on the assembly. What preceded and what followed is equally implied in their occupation, and in the figure of a matron entering and absorbed in counting money, though she approaches the fatal centre, and whom we may suppose to be Sapphira, the accomplice and the wife of Ananias, and the devoted partner of his fate. In this composition of near thirty figures, none can be pointed out as a figure of common place or mere convenience; legitimate offsprings of one subject, they are linked to each other, and to the centre by one common chain, all act and all have room to act, repose alternates with energy.
The Sacrifice at Lystra, though as a whole it has more of collateral arrangement than depth of Composition, as it traces in the moment of its choice the motive that produced and shews the disappointment that checks it, has collected actors and faces the most suitable to express both: actors and features of godlike dignity, superstitious devotion and eager curiosity: the scene is the vestibule of the temple of Hermes, and Paul the supposed representative of that deity, though not placed in the centre or a central light, by his elevation, gesture, and the whole of the composition streaming toward him, commands the first glance. At the very onset of the ceremony the sacrificer is arrested in the act of smiting the victim, by the outstretched arm of a young man bursting through the hymning throng of priests and victimarii, observing Paul indignant rending his garment in horrour of the idolatrous perversion of his miracle.[86]The miracle itself is personified in that characteristic figure of the healed man, who with eyes flashing joy and gratitude on the Apostle, and hands joined in adoration, rushes in, accompanied by an aged man of gravity and rank, who, lifting up part of the garment that covered his thigh, attests him to have been the identic owner ofthose crutches that formerly supported him, though now as useless thrown on the pavement.
Among the cartoons which we do not possess, and probably exist only in the tapestries of Rome and Madrid, and engravings copied from them, the Resurrection of Christ and his Ascension, equally mark Raphael’s discriminative powers in their contrasted compositions. The Resurrection derives its interest from the convulsive rapidity, the Ascension from its calmness of motion. In that, the hero like a ball of fire shoots up from the bursting tomb and sinking cearments, and scatters astonishment and dismay. What apprehension dared not to suspect, what fancy could not dream of, no eye had ever beheld and no tongue ever uttered, blazes before us: the passions dart in rays resistless from the centre. Fear, terrour, conviction, wrestle with dignity and courage in the centurion; convulse brutality, overwhelm violence, enervate resistance, absorb incredulity in the guard. The whole is tempestuous. The Ascension is the majestic last of many similar scenes: no longer with the rapidity of a conqueror, but with the calm serenity of triumphant power, the Hero is borne up in splendour, and gradually vanishes from those, who by repeated visions had been taught to expect whateverwas amazing. Silent and composed, with eyes more absorbed in adoration than wonder they follow the glorious emanation; till addressed by the white-robed messengers of their departed king, they relapse to the feelings of men.
We have considered hitherto the mental part of Raffaello’s composition, let us say a word of the technic. His excellence in this is breadth of masses, and of positive light and shade.
Breadth, or that quality of execution which makes a whole so predominate over the parts as to excite the idea of uninterrupted unity amid the greatest variety, modern art, as it appears to me, owes to M. Agnolo. The breadth of M. Agnolo resembles the tide and ebb of a mighty sea; waves approach, arrive, retreat, but in their rise and fall, emerging or absorbed, impress us only with the image of the power that raises, that directs them; whilst the discrepance of obtruding parts in the works of the infant Florentine, Venetian and German schools, distracts our eye like the numberless breakers of a shallow river, or as the brambles and creepers that entangle the paths of a wood, and instead of shewing us our road, perplex us only with themselves. Bybreadth the artist puts us into immediate possession of the whole, and from that, gently leads us to the examination of the parts according to their relative importance: hence it follows, that in a representation of organized surfaces, breadth is the judicious display of fullness, not a substitute of vacuity. Breadth might be easily obtained if emptiness could give it. Yet even in that degraded state, if gratification of the eye be a first indispensable duty of an art, that can impress us only by that organ, it is preferable to the laboured display of parts ambitiously thronging for admittance at the expence of the whole; to that perplexed diligence, which wearies us with impediment before we can penetrate a meaning or arrive at the subject whose clear idea must be first obtained before we can judge of the propriety or impropriety of parts. The principle which constitutes the breadth of Raphael was neither so absolute nor so comprehensive as that of M. Agnolo’s. But his perspicacity soon discovered that great, uninterrupted masses of light and shade, bespeak, satisfy, conduct and give repose to the eye; that opposition of light and shade gives perspicuity. Convinced of this, he let their mass fall as broad on his figures as their importance, attitude and relation to each other permitted, and as seldom as possible, interrupted it. Masses of shade he opposed to light,and lucid ones to shade. The strict observation of this rule appears to be the cause why every figure of Raffaello, however small, even at a considerable distance, describes itself, and strikes the eye with distinctness; so, that even the comparatively diminutive figures of his Loggia are easily discriminated from the Cortile below. To this maxim he remained faithful in all his works, a few instances excepted, when instead of light and shade he separated figures by reflexes of a different colour; exceptions more dictated by necessity than choice, and which serve rather to confirm than to impair the rule.
It cannot be denied that, if this positive opposition gave superior distinctness, it occasioned sometimes abruptness. Each part is broad, but separation is too visible. Reflexes he uniformly neglects, and from whatever cause is often inattentive to transition; he does not sufficiently connect with breadth of demi-tint the two extremes of his masses; and, though much less in fresco than in oil, seems not always to have had a distinct idea of the gradations required completely to round as well as to spread a whole; to have been more anxious to obtain breadth itself than its elemental harmony.
It does not appear that the great masters of legitimate composition in the sixteenth century, attended to or understood the advantages which elevation of site and a low horizon are capable of giving to a subject. They place us in the gallery to behold their scenes; but from want of keeping the horizontal line becomes a perpendicular, and drops the distance on the fore-ground; the more remote groups do not approach, but fall or stand upon the foremost actors. As this impedes the principles of unity and grandeur in numerous composition, so it impairs each individual form; which, to be grand, ought to rise upward in moderate foreshortening, command the horizon, or be in contact with the sky. Reverse this plan in the composition of Pietro Martyre by Tizià n, let the horizontal line be raised above the friar on the fore-ground, space, loftiness, and unity, vanish together. What gives sublimity to Rembrandt’s Ecce Homo more than this principle? A composition, which though complete, hides in its grandeur the limits of its scenery. Its form is as a pyramid whose top is lost in the sky as its base in tumultuous murky waves. From the fluctuating crowds who inundate the base of the tribunal, we rise to Pilate, surrounded and perplexed by the varied ferocity of the sanguinary synod, to whoseremorseless gripe he surrenders his wand; and from him we ascend to the sublime resignation of innocence in Christ, and regardless of the roar below, securely repose on his countenance. Such is the grandeur of a conception, which in its blaze absorbs the abominable detail of materials too vulgar to be mentioned; had the materials been equal to the conception and composition, the Ecce Homo of Rembrandt, even unsupported by the magic of its light and shade, or his spell of colours, would have been an assemblage of superhuman powers.
Far, too far, from having answered all the demands of composition, my limits force me, and my subject requires, to give a faint sketch of the most prominent features of Expression, its assistant and interpreter. They interweave themselves so closely with each other, and both with Invention, that we can scarcely conceive one without supposing the presence of the rest, and applying the principles of each to all; still they are separate powers, and may be possessed singly. The figure of Christ by M. Agnolo in the Minerva, embracing his cross and the instruments of suffering, is sublimely conceived, powerfully arranged; but neither his features or expression are those of Christ.
Expression is the vivid image of the passion that affects the mind; its language, and the portrait of its situation. It animates the features, attitudes, and gestures, which Invention selected and Composition arranged; its principles, like theirs, are simplicity, propriety, and energy.
It is important to distinguish the materials and the spirit of expression. To give this we must be masters of the forms and of the hues that embody it. Without truth of line no true expression is possible; and the passions, whose inward energy stamped form on feature, equally reside, fluctuate, flash or lower on it in colour, and give it energy by light and shade.
To make a face speak clearly and with propriety, it must not only be well constructed, but have its own exclusive character. Though the element of the passions be the same in all, they neither speak in all with equal energy nor are circumscribed by equal limits. Though joy be joy, and anger anger, the joy of the sanguine is not that of the phlegmatic, nor the anger of the melancholy that of the fiery character; and the discriminations established by complexion are equally conspicuous in those of climate, habit, education, and rank. Expression has itsclasses. Decebalus and Syphax, though both determined to die, meet death with eye as different as hues. The tremulous emotion of Hector’s breast when he approaches Ajax, is not the palpitation of Paris when he discovers Menelaus; the frown of the Hercynian Phantom may repress the ardour, but cannot subdue the dignity of Drusus; the fear of Marius cannot sink to the panic of the Cimber, who drops the dagger at entering his prison, nor the astonishment of Hamlet degenerate into the fright of vulgar fear.
Le Sueur was not aware of this when he painted his Alexander. Perhaps no picture is, in spite of common sense, oftener quoted for its expression than Alexander sick on his bed, with the cup at his lips, observing the calumniated physician. The manner in which he is represented is as inconsistent with the story as injurious to the character of the Macedonian hero. The Alexander of Le Sueur has the prying look of a spy. He who was capable of that look would no more have ventured on quaffing a single drop of the suspected medicine, than on the conquest of the Persian empire. If Alexander, when he drank the cup, had not the most positive faith in the incorruptibility of Philippus, he was more than an ideot, he was a felon against himself and a traitour to his army, whose safetydepended on the success of the experiment. His expression ought to be open and unconcerned confidence—as that of his physician, a contemptuous smile, or curiosity suspended by indignation, or the indifference of a mind conscious of innocence, and fully relying on its being known to his friend. Le Sueur, instead of these, has given him little more than a stupid stare and vulgar form.
The emanations of the passions, which pathognomy has reduced to the four principal sources ofcalm emotion;joy;grief simple, or with pain; andterrour;—may be divided into internal and external ones: those hint their action only, they influence a feature or some extremity; these extend their sway over the whole frame—they animate, agitate, depress, convulse, absorb form. The systematic designers of pathognomy have given their element, their extremes, the mask; the ancients have established their technic standard, and their degrees of admissibility in art. The Apollo is animated; the warriour of Agasias is agitated; the dying gladiator or herald suffers in depression; the Laocoon is convulsed; the Niobe is absorbed. The greater the mental vigour, dignity, or habitual self-command of a person, the less perceptible to superficial observationor vulgar eyes, will be the emotion of his mind. The greater the predominance of fancy over intellect, the more ungovernable the conceits of self-importance, so much the more will passion partake of outward and less dignified energy. The Jupiter of Homer manifests his will and power by the mere contraction of his eyebrows; Socrates in the school of Athens only moves his finger, and Ovid in the Parnassus only lays it over his lips, and both say enough; but Achilles throws himself headlong, and is prevented from slaying himself by the grasp of his friend. Only then, when passion or suffering become too big for utterance, the wisdom of ancient art has borrowed a feature from tranquillity, though not its air. For every being seized by an enormous passion, be it joy or grief, or fear sunk to despair, loses the character of its own individual expression, and is absorbed by the power of the feature that attracts it. Niobe and her family are assimilated by extreme anguish; Ugolino is petrified by the fate that swept the stripling at his foot, and sweeps in pangs the rest. The metamorphoses of ancient mythology are founded on this principle, are allegoric. Clytia, Biblis, Salmacis, Narcissus, tell only the resistless power of sympathetic attraction.
Similar principles award to Raffaello the palm of expression among the moderns: driven to extremes after his demise by Julio Romano and a long interval of languor, it seemed to revive in Domenichino; I say seemed, for his sensibility was not supported by equal comprehension, elevation of mind, or dignity of motion; his sentiment wants propriety, he is a mannerist in feeling, and tacks the imagery of Theocritus to the subjects of Homer. A detail of petty though amiable conceptions, is rather calculated to diminish than to enforce the energy of a pathetic whole: a lovely child taking refuge in the lap or bosom of a lovely mother, is an idea of nature, and pleasing in a lowly, pastoral, or domestic subject; but, perpetually recurring, becomes common-place, and amid the terrours of martyrdom, is a shred sewed to a purple robe. In touching the characteristic circle that surrounds the Ananias of Raffaello, you touch the electric chain, a genuine spark irresistibly darts from the last as from the first, penetrates, subdues; at the Martyrdom of St. Agnes by Domenichino, you saunter among the adventitious mob of a lane, where the silly chat of neighbouring gossips announces a topic as silly, till you find with indignation, that instead of a broken pot or a petty theft, you are to witness a scene forwhich heaven opens, the angels descend, and Jesus rises from his throne.
It is however but justice to observe, that there is a subject in which Domenichino has not unsuccessfully wrestled, and, in my opinion, even excelled Raffaello; I mean the demoniac boy among the series of frescos at Grotto Ferrata: that inspired figure is evidently the organ of an internal, superiour, preternatural agent, darted upward without contorsion, and considered as unconnected with the story, never to be confounded with a merely tumultuary distorted maniac, which is not perhaps the case of the boy in the Transfiguration; the subject too being within the range of Domenichino’s powers, domestic, the whole of the persons introduced is characteristic: awe, with reliance on the saint who operates the miracle or cure, and terrour at the redoubled fury of his son, mark the rustic father; nor could the agonizing female with the infant in her arm, as she is the mother, be exchanged to advantage, and with propriety occupies that place which the fondling females in the pictures of St. Sebastian, St. Andrew, and St. Agnes, only usurp.
The martyrdom, or rather the brutally ostentatious murder of St. Agnes leads us to thelimitsof expression: sympathy and disgust are the irreconcileable parallels that must for ever separate legitimate terrour and pity from horrour and aversion. We cannot sympathise with what we detest or despise, nor fully pity what we shudder at or loath. So little were these limits understood by the moderns, M. Agnolo excepted, that even the humanity and delicacy of Raffaello did not guard him from excursions into the realms of horrour and loathsomeness: it is difficult to conceive what could provoke him to make a finished design of the inhumanities that accompany the martyrdom of St. Felicitas at which even description shudders? a design made on purpose to be dispersed over Europe, perpetuated and made known to all by the graver of Marc Antonio: was it to prove to Albert Durer and the Germans of his time that they had not exhausted the sources of abomination? He made an equal mistake in the Morbetto, where, though not with so lavish a hand as Poussin after him, instead of the moral effects of the plague, he has personified the effluvia of putrefaction. Whathehad not penetration to avoid could not be expected to be shunned by his scholars. Julio Romano delighted in studied images of torture as well as of themost abandoned licentiousness. Among his contemporaries, Correggio even attempted to give a zest to the most wanton cruelty by an affectation of grace in the picture of the Saints Placido and Flavia: but the enamoured trance of Placido with his neck half cut, and the anthem that quivers on the lips of Flavia whilst a sword is entering her side, in vain bespeak our sympathy, for whilst we detest the felons who slaughter them, we loath to inspect the actual process of the crime; mangling is contagious, and spreads aversion from the slaughterman to the victim. If St. Bartholemew and St. Erasmus are subjects for painting, they can only be so before, and neither under nor after the operation of the knife or windlass. A decollated martyr represented with his head in his hand, as Rubens did, and a headless corpse with the head lying by it, as Correggio, can only prove the brutality, stupidity, or bigotry of the employer and the callus or venality of the artist.
The gradations of expression within, close to, and beyond its limits cannot perhaps be elucidated with greater perspicuity than by comparison; and the different moments which Julio Romano, Vandyke and Rembrandt, have selected to represent the subject of Samson betrayed by Delilah, offers one of thefairest specimens furnished by art. Considering it as a drama, we may say that Julio forms the plot, Vandyke unravels it, and Rembrandt shews the extreme of the catastrophe.
In the composition of Julio, Samson, satiated with pleasure, plunged into sleep, and stretched on the ground, rests his head and presses with his arm the thigh of Delilah on one side, whilst on the other a nimble minion busily but with timorous caution fingers and clips his locks; such is his fear, that, to be firm, he rests one knee on a foot-stool tremblingly watching the sleeper, and ready to escape at his least motion. Delilah seated between both, fixed by the weight of Samson warily turns her head toward a troop of warriours in the back ground, with the left arm stretched out she beckons their leader, with the finger of the right hand she presses her lip to enjoin silence and noiseless approach. The Herculean make and lion port of Samson, his perturbed though ponderous sleep, the quivering agility of the curled favourite employed, the harlot graces and meretricious elegance contrasted by equal firmness and sense of danger in Delilah, the attitude and look of the grim veteran who heads the ambush, whilst they give us the clue to all that followed, keep us in anxious suspense,we palpitate in breathless expectation; this is the plot.
The terrours which Julio made us forbode, Vandyke summons to our eyes. The mysterious lock is cut; the dreaded victim is roused from the lap of the harlot-priestess. Starting unconscious of his departed power, he attempts to spring forward, and with one effort of his mighty breast and expanded arms to dash his foes to the ground and fling the alarmed traitress from him—in vain, shorn of his strength he is borne down by the weight of the mailed chief that throws himself upon him, and overpowered by a throng of infuriate satellites. But though overpowered, less aghast than indignant, his eye flashes reproach on the perfidious female whose wheedling caresses drew the fatal secret from his breast; the plot is unfolded, and what succeeds, too horrible for the sense, is left to fancy to brood upon, or drop it.
This moment of horrour the gigantic but barbarous genius of Rembrandt chose, and, without a metaphor,executeda subject, which humanity, judgment and taste taught his rivals, only totreat; he displays a scene which no eye but that of Domitian or Nero could wish or bear to see. Samson stretchedon the ground is held by one Philistine under him, whilst another chains his right arm, and a third clenching his beard with one, drives a dagger into his eye with the other hand. The pain that blasts him, darts expression from the contortions of the mouth and his gnashing teeth to the crampy convulsions of the leg dashed high into the air. Some fiend-like features glare through the gloomy light which discovers Delilah, her work now done, sliding off, the shears in her left, the locks of Samson in her right hand. If her figure, elegant, attractive, such as Rembrandt never conceived before or after, deserve our wonder rather than our praise; no words can do justice to the expression that animates her face, and shews her less shrinking from the horrid scene than exulting in being its cause. Such is the work whose magic of colour, tone and chiaroscuro irresistibly entrap the eye, whilst we detest the brutal choice of the moment.[87]
Let us in conclusion contrast the stern pathos of this scenery with the placid emotions of a milder subject, in the celebrated pictures which represent the Communion or death of St. Jerome by Agostino Carracci and his scholar Domenichino, that an altar-piece in the Certosa near Bologna, this in the church of St. Girolamo della Carità at Rome; but for some time both exhibited in the gallery of the Louvre at Paris. What I have to say on the Invention, Expression, Characters, Tone and Colour of either is the result of observations lately made on both in that gallery, where then they were placed nearly opposite to each other.
In each picture, St. Jerome brought from his cell to receive the sacrament is represented on his knees, supported by devout attendants; in each the officiating priest is in the act of administering to the dying saint; the same clerical society fills the portico of the temple in both, in both the scene is witnessed from above by infant angels.
The general opinion is in favour of the Pupil, but if in the economy of the whole Domenichino surpasses his master, he appears to me greatly inferiour both in the character and expression of the hero.Domenichino has represented Piety scarcely struggling with decay, Agostino triumphant over it, his saint becomes in the place where he is, a superiour being, and is inspired by the approaching god: that of Domenichino seems divided between resignation, mental and bodily imbecility and desire. The saint of Agostino is a lion, that of Domenichino a lamb.
In the sacerdotal figure administering the viaticum, Domenichino has less improved than corrected the unworthy choice of his master. The priest of Agostino is one of the Frati Godenti of Dante, before they received the infernal hood; a gross, fat, self-conceited terrestrial feature, a countenance equally proof to elevation, pity or thought. The priest of Domenichino is a minister of grace, stamped with the sacred humility that characterized his master, and penetrated by the function of which he is the instrument.
We are more impressed with the graces of youth than the energies of manhood verging on age: in this respect, as well as that of contrast with the decrepitude of St. Jerome, the placid contemplative beauty of the young deacon on the fore-ground of Domenichino, will probably please more, than thepoetic trance of the assistant friar with the lighted taper in the fore-ground of Agostino. This must however be observed, that as Domenichino thought proper to introduce supernatural witnesses of the ceremony in imitation of his master, their effect seems less ornamental and more interwoven with the plan, by being perceived by the actors themselves.
If the attendant characters in the picture of Agostino are more numerous, and have on the whole, furnished the hints of admission to those of Domenichino, this, with one exception, may be said to have used more propriety and judgment in the choice. Both have introduced a man with a turban, and opened a portico to characterise an Asiatic scene.
With regard to composition, Domenichino undoubtedly gains the palm. The disposition on the whole he owes to his master, though he reversed it, but he has cleared it of that oppressive bustle which rather involves and crouds the principal actors in Agostino than attends them. He spreads tranquillity with space and repose without vacuity.
With this corresponds the tone of the whole. The evening-freshness of an oriental day tinges every part; the medium of Agostino partakes too much of the fumigated inside of a catholic chapel.
The draperies of both are characteristic and unite subordination with dignity, but their colour is chosen with more judgment by Domenichino, the imbrowned gold and ample folds of the robe of the administering priest are more genial than the cold blue, white and yellow on the priest of his master; in both, perhaps, the white draperies on the fore-ground figures have too little strength for the central colours, but it is more perceived in Carracci than in Domenichino.
The forms of the saint in Carracci are grander and more ideal than in the saint of Domenichino, some have even thought them too vigorous: both, in my opinion are in harmony with the emotion of the face and expression of either. The eagerness that animates the countenance of the one may be supposed to spread a momentary vigour over his frame. The mental dereliction of countenance in the other with equal propriety relaxes and palsies the limbs which depend on it.
The colour of Carracci’s saint is much more characteristic of fleshy though nearly bloodless substance, than that chosen by his rival, which is withered, shrivelled, leathery in the lights, and earthy in the shades; but the head of the officiating priest in Domenichino, whether considered as a specimen of colour independent of the rest, or as set off by it, for truth, tone, freshness, energy, is not only the best Domenichino ever painted, but perhaps the best that can be conceived.