THIRD LECTURE.INVENTION.PART I.
——ΤΙ Τ’ ΑΡ ΑΥ ΦΘΟΝΕΕΙΣ, ΕΡΗΙΡΟΝ ΑΟΙΔΟΝΤΕΡΠΕΙΝ, ΟΠΠΗ ΟΙ ΝΟΟΣ ΟΡΝΥΤΑΙ; ΟΥ ΝΥ Τ’ ΑΟΙΔΟΙΑΙΤΙΟΙ, ΑΛΛΑ ΠΟΘΙ ΖΕΥΣ ΑΙΤΙΟΣ, ὉΣΤΕ ΔΙΔΩΣΙΝΑΝΔΡΑΣΙΝ ΑΛΦΗΣΤΗΣΙΝ, ΟΠΩΣ ΕΘΕΛΗΣΙΝ ΕΚΑΣΤΩΙ.Homer. Odyss. A. 346.
——ΤΙ Τ’ ΑΡ ΑΥ ΦΘΟΝΕΕΙΣ, ΕΡΗΙΡΟΝ ΑΟΙΔΟΝΤΕΡΠΕΙΝ, ΟΠΠΗ ΟΙ ΝΟΟΣ ΟΡΝΥΤΑΙ; ΟΥ ΝΥ Τ’ ΑΟΙΔΟΙΑΙΤΙΟΙ, ΑΛΛΑ ΠΟΘΙ ΖΕΥΣ ΑΙΤΙΟΣ, ὉΣΤΕ ΔΙΔΩΣΙΝΑΝΔΡΑΣΙΝ ΑΛΦΗΣΤΗΣΙΝ, ΟΠΩΣ ΕΘΕΛΗΣΙΝ ΕΚΑΣΤΩΙ.Homer. Odyss. A. 346.
——ΤΙ Τ’ ΑΡ ΑΥ ΦΘΟΝΕΕΙΣ, ΕΡΗΙΡΟΝ ΑΟΙΔΟΝΤΕΡΠΕΙΝ, ΟΠΠΗ ΟΙ ΝΟΟΣ ΟΡΝΥΤΑΙ; ΟΥ ΝΥ Τ’ ΑΟΙΔΟΙΑΙΤΙΟΙ, ΑΛΛΑ ΠΟΘΙ ΖΕΥΣ ΑΙΤΙΟΣ, ὉΣΤΕ ΔΙΔΩΣΙΝΑΝΔΡΑΣΙΝ ΑΛΦΗΣΤΗΣΙΝ, ΟΠΩΣ ΕΘΕΛΗΣΙΝ ΕΚΑΣΤΩΙ.
——ΤΙ Τ’ ΑΡ ΑΥ ΦΘΟΝΕΕΙΣ, ΕΡΗΙΡΟΝ ΑΟΙΔΟΝ
ΤΕΡΠΕΙΝ, ΟΠΠΗ ΟΙ ΝΟΟΣ ΟΡΝΥΤΑΙ; ΟΥ ΝΥ Τ’ ΑΟΙΔΟΙ
ΑΙΤΙΟΙ, ΑΛΛΑ ΠΟΘΙ ΖΕΥΣ ΑΙΤΙΟΣ, ὉΣΤΕ ΔΙΔΩΣΙΝ
ΑΝΔΡΑΣΙΝ ΑΛΦΗΣΤΗΣΙΝ, ΟΠΩΣ ΕΘΕΛΗΣΙΝ ΕΚΑΣΤΩΙ.
Homer. Odyss. A. 346.
Homer. Odyss. A. 346.
Introduction. Discrimination of Poetry and Painting. General idea of Invention—its right to select a subject from nature itself. Visiones—Theon—Agasias. Cartoon of Pisa—Incendio del Borgo. Specific idea of Invention: Epic subjects—Michael Angelo. Dramatic subjects—Raphael. Historic subjects—Poussin, &c. Invention has a right to adopt ideas—examples. Duplicity of subject and moment inadmissible. Transfiguration of Raphael.
The brilliant antithesis ascribed to Simonides, that ‘painting is mute poesy and poetry speaking painting,’ made, I apprehend, no part of the technic systems of antiquity: for this we may depend on the general practice of its artists, and still more safely on the philosophic discrimination of Plutarch[66], who tells us, that as poetry and painting resemble each other in their uniform address to the senses, for the impression they mean to make on our fancy and by that on our mind, so they differ as essentially in theirmaterialsand theirmodesof application, which are regulated by the diversity of the organs they address, ear and eye.Successive actioncommunicated bysounds, andtime, are the medium of poetry;formdisplayed inspace, and momentaneous energy, are the element of painting.
As, if these premises be true, the distinct representation of continued action is refused to an art which cannot express even in a series of subjects, but by a supposed mental effort in the spectator’s mind, the regular succession of their moments, it becomes evident, that instead of attempting to impress us by the indiscriminate usurpation of a principle out of its reach, it ought chiefly to rely for its effect on its great characteristics space and form, singly or in apposition. In forms alone the idea of existence can be rendered permanent. Sounds die, words perish or become obsolete and obscure, even colours fade, forms alone can neither be extinguished nor misconstrued; by application to their standard alone description becomes intelligible and distinct. Thus the effectual idea of corporeal beauty can strictly exist only in the plastic arts: for as the notion of beauty arises from the pleasure we feel in the harmonious co-operation of the various parts of some favourite object to one end at once, it implies their immediate co-existence in the mass they compose; and therefore can be distinctly perceived and conveyed to the mindby the eye alone: hence the representation of form in figure is thephysicalelement of the Art.
But as bodies exist in time as well as in space; as the pleasure arising from the mere symmetry of an object is as transient as it is immediate; as harmony of parts, if the body be the agent of an internal power, depends for its proof on their application, it follows, that the exclusive exhibition of inert and unemployed form, would be a mistake of the medium for the end, and that character or action is required to make it an interesting object of imitation. And this is themoralelement of the art.
Those important moments then which exhibit the united exertion of form and character in a single object or in participation with collateral beings,at once, and which with equal rapidity and pregnancy give us a glimpse of the past and lead our eye to what follows, furnish the true materials of those technic powers, that select, direct, and fix the objects of imitation to their centre.
The most eminent of these, by the explicit acknowledgment of all ages, and the silent testimony of every breast, isinvention. He whose eye athwart theoutward crust of the rock penetrates into the composition of its materials, and discovers a gold mine, is surely superiour to him who afterwards adapts the metal for use. Colombo, when he from astronomic and physical inductions concluded to the existence of land in the opposite hemisphere, was surely superiour to Amerigo Vespucci who took possession of its continent; and when Newton improving accident by meditation, discovered and established the laws of attraction, the projectile and centrifuge qualities of the system, he gave the clue to all who after him applied it to the various branches of philosophy, and was in fact the author of all the benefits accruing from their application to society. Homer, when he means to give the principal feature of man, calls him inventor (αλφηστης.)
From what we have said it is clear that the term invention never ought to be so far misconstrued as to be confounded with that ofcreation, incompatible with our notions of limited being, an idea of pure astonishment, and admissible only when we mention Omnipotence: toinventis to find: to find something, presupposes its existence somewhere, implicitly or explicitly, scattered or in a mass: nor should I have presumed to say so much on a word of a meaning soplain, had it not been, and were it not daily confounded, and by fashionable authorities too, with the term creation.
Form in its widest meaning, the visible universe that envelops our senses, and its counterpart the invisible one that agitates our mind with visions bred on sense by fancy, are the element and the realm of invention; it discovers, selects, combines thepossible, theprobable, theknown, in a mode that strikes with an air of truth and novelty, at once. Possible strictly means an effect derived from a cause, a body composed of materials, a coalition of forms, whose union or co-agency imply in themselves no absurdity, no contradiction: applied to our art it takes a wider latitude; it means the representation of effects derived from causes, or forms compounded from materials, heterogeneous and incompatible among themselves, but rendered so plausible to our senses, that the transition of one part to another seems to be accounted for by an air of organization, and the eye glides imperceptibly or with satisfaction from one to the other and over the whole: that this was the condition on which, and the limits within which alone the ancients permitted invention to represent what was strictly speaking impossible, we may with plausibility surmisefrom the picture of Zeuxis, described by Lucian in the memoir to which he has prefixed that painter’s name, who was probably one of the first adventurers in this species of imagery.—Zeuxis had painted a family of centaurs; the dam a beautiful female to the middle, with the lower parts gradually sliding into the most exquisite forms of a young Thessalian mare half reclined in playful repose and gently pawing the velvet ground, offered her human nipple to one infant centaur, whilst another greedily sucked the ferine udder below, but both with their eyes turned up to a lyon-whelp held over them by the male centaur their father, rising above the hillock on which the female reclined, a grim feature, but whose ferocity was somewhat tempered by a smile. The scenery, the colour, the chiaroscuro, the finish of the whole was no doubt equal to the style and the conception. This picture the artist exhibited, expecting that justice from the penetration of the public which the genius deserved that taught him to give plausibility to a compound of heterogeneous forms, to inspire them with suitable soul, and to imitate the laws of existence: he was mistaken. The novelty of the conceit eclipsed the art that had embodied it, the artist was absorbed in his subject, and the unbounded praise bestowed, was that of idle restless curiosity, gratified.Sick of gods and goddesses, of demigods and pure human combinations, the Athenians panted only for what was new. The artist, as haughty as irritable, ordered his picture to be withdrawn; cover it, Micchio, said he to his attendant, cover it and carry it home, for this mob stick only to the clay of our art.—Such were the limits set to invention by the ancients; secure within these, it defied the ridicule thrown on that grotesque conglutination, which Horace exposes; guarded by these, their mythology scattered its metamorphoses, made every element its tributary, and transmitted the privilege to us, on equal conditions: their Scylla and the Portress of Hell, their dæmons and our spectres, the shade of Patroclus and the ghost of Hamlet, their naiads, nymphs, and oreads, and our sylphs, gnomes, and fairies, their furies and our witches, differ less in essence, than in local, temporary, social modifications: their common origin was fancy, operating on the materials of nature, assisted by legendary tradition and the curiosity implanted in us of diving into the invisible[67]; and they are suffered or invited to mix with or superintend real agency, in proportion of theanalogy which we discover between them and ourselves. Pindar praises Homer less for that ‘winged power’ which whirls incident on incident with such rapidity, that absorbed by the whole, and drawn from the impossibility of single parts, we swallow a tale too gross to be believed in a dream; than for the greater power by which he contrived to connect his imaginary creation with the realities of nature and human passions[68]; without this the fiction of the poet and the painter will leave us stupified rather by its insolence than impressed by its power, it will be considered only as a superior kind of legerdemain, an exertion of ingenuity to no adequate end.
Before we proceed to the process and the methods of invention, it is not superfluous to advert to a question which has often been made, and by some has been answered in the negative;whether it be within the artist’s province or not, to find or to combine a subject from himself, without having recourse to traditionor the stores of history and poetry?Why not, if the subject be within the limits of art and the combinations of nature, though it should have escaped observation? shall the immediate avenues of the mind, open to all its observers, from the poet to the novelist, be shut only to the artist? shall he be reduced to receive as alms from them what he has a right to share as common property? assertions like these, say in other words, that the Laocoon owes the impression he makes on us to his name alone, and that if tradition had not told a story and Pliny fixed it to that work, the artist’s conception of a father with his sons, surprised and entangled by two serpents within the recesses of a cavern or lonesome dell, was inadmissible and transgressed the laws of invention. I am much mistaken, if, so far from losing its power over us with its traditional sanction, it would not rouse our sympathy more forcibly, and press the subject closer to our breast, were it considered only as the representation of an incident common to humanity. The ancients were so convinced of their right to this disputed prerogative that they assigned it its own class, and Theon the Samian is mentioned by Quintilian, whom none will accuse or suspect of confounding the limits of the arts, in his list of primary painters, as owing his celebrity to that intuition into the suddenmovements of nature, which the Greeks called φαντασιας, the Romansvisiones, and we might circumscribe by the phrase of ‘unpremeditated conceptions’ the reproduction of associated ideas; he explains what he understood by it in the following passage adapted to his own profession, rhetoric.[69]‘We give,’ says he, ‘the name of visions to what the Greeks call phantasies; that power by which the images of absent things are represented by the mind with the energy of objects moving before our eyes: he who conceives these rightly will be a master of passions; his is that well-tempered fancy which can imaginethings, voices, acts, as they really exist, a power perhaps in a great measure dependent on our will. For if these images so pursue us, when our minds are in a state of rest, or fondly fed by hope, or in a kind of waking dream; that we seem to travel, to sail, to fight, to harangue in public, or to dispose of riches we possess not, and all this with an air of reality, why should we not turn to use this vice of the mind?—Suppose I am to plead the case of a murdered man, why should not every supposable circumstance of the act float before my eyes? shall I not see the murderer unawares rush in upon him? in vain he tries to escape—see how pale he turns—hear you not his shrieks, his entreaties? do you not see him flying, struck, falling? will not his blood, his ashy semblance, his groans, his last expiring gasp, seize on my mind?’
Permit me to apply this organ of the orator for one moment to the poet’s process: by this radiant recollection of associated ideas, the spontaneous ebullitions of nature, selected by observation, treasured by memory, classed by sensibility and judgment, Shakspeare became the supreme master of passions and the ruler of our hearts; this embodied his Falstaff and his Shylock, Hamlet and Lear, Juliet and Rosalind. Bythis power he saw Warwick uncover the corpse of Gloster, and swear to his assassination and his tugs for life; by this he made Banquo see the weird sisters bubble up from earth, and in their own air vanish; this is the hand that struck upon the bell when Macbeth’s drink was ready, and from her chamber pushed his dreaming wife, once more to methodize the murder of her guest.—
And this was the power of Theon[70]; such was the unpremeditated conception that inspired him with the idea of that warriour, who in the words of Ælian, seemed to embody the terrible graces and the enthusiastic furor of the god of war. Impetuous he rushed onward to oppose the sudden incursion of enemies; with shield thrown forward and high brandished faulchion, his step as he swept on, seemed to devour the ground: his eye flashed defiance; you fancied to hear his voice, his look denounce perdition and slaughter without mercy. This figure, single and without other accompaniments of war than whatthe havock of the distance shewed, Theon deemed sufficient to answer the impression he intended to make on those whom he had selected to inspect it. He kept it covered, till a trumpet, prepared for the purpose, after a prelude of martial symphonies, at once, by his command, blew with invigourated fierceness, a signal of attack—the curtain dropped, the terrific figure appeared to start from the canvass, and irresistibly assailed the astonished eyes of the assembly.
To prove the relation of Ælian no hyperbolic legend, I need not insist on the magic effect which the union of two sister powers must produce on the senses: of what our art alone and unassisted may perform, the most unequivocal proof exists within these walls; your eyes, your feelings, and your fancy have long anticipated it: whose mind has not now recalled that wonder of a figure, the misnomed gladiator of Agasias, a figure whose tremendous energy embodies every element of motion, whilst its pathetic dignity of character enforces sympathies, which the undisguised ferocity of Theon’s warriour in vain solicits. But the same irradiation which shewed the soldier to Theon, shewed toAgasias the leader: Theon saw the passion, Agasias[71]its rule.
But the most striking instance of the eminent place due to this intuitive faculty among the principal organs of invention, is that celebrated performance, which by the united testimony of cotemporary writers, and the evident traces of its imitation, scattered over the works of cotemporary artists, contributed alone more to the restoration of art and the revolution of style, than the united effort of the two centuries thatpreceded it: I mean the astonishing design commonly called the cartoon of Pisa, the work of Michael Agnolo Buonarrotti, begun in competition with Lionardo da Vinci, and at intervals finished at Florence. This work, whose celebrity subjected those who had not seen it to the supercilious contempt of the luckier ones who had; which was the common centre of attraction to all the students of Tuscany and Romagna, from Raphael Sanzio to Bastian da St. Gallo, called Aristotile, from his loquacious descants on its beauties; this inestimable work itself is lost, and its destruction is with too much appearance of truth fixed on the mean villany of Baccio Bandinelli, who, in possession of the key to the apartment where it was kept, during the revolutionary troubles of the Florentine republic, after making what use he thought proper of it, is said to have torn it in pieces. Still we may form an idea of its principal groups from some ancient prints and drawings; and of its composition from a small copy now existing at Holkham, the outlines of which have been lately etched. Crude, disguised, or feeble, as these specimens are, they will prove better guides than the half-informed rhapsodies of Vasari, the meagre account of Ascanio Condivi, better than the mere anatomic verdict of Benvenuto Cellini, who denies that the powers afterward exertedin the Capella Sistina, arrive at ‘half its excellence.’[72]
It represents an imaginary moment relative to the war carried on by the Florentines against Pisa: and exhibits a numerous group of warriours, roused from their bathing in the Arno, by the sudden signal of a trumpet and rushing to arms. This composition may without exaggeration be said to personify with unexampled variety that motion, which Agasias and Theon embodied in single figures: in imagining this transientmoment from a state of relaxation to a state of energy, the ideas of motion, to use the bold figure of Dante, seem to have showered into the artist’s mind. From the chief, nearly placed in the centre, who precedes, and whose voice accompanies the trumpet, every age of human agility, every attitude, every feature of alarm, haste, hurry, exertion, eagerness, burst into so many rays, like sparks flying from the hammer. Many have reached, some boldly step, some have leaped on the rocky shore; here two arms emerging from the water grapple with the rock, there two hands cry for help, and their companions bend over or rush on to assist them; often imitated, but inimitable is the ardent feature of the grim veteran whose every sinew labours to force over the dripping limbs his cloaths, whilst gnashing he pushes the foot through the rending garment. He is contrasted by the slender elegance of a half averted youth, who, though eagerly buckling the armour to his thigh, methodizes haste; another swings the high-raised hauberk on his shoulder, whilst one who seems a leader, mindless of dress, ready for combat, and with brandished spear, overturns a third, who crouched to grasp a weapon—one naked himself buckles on the mail of his companion, and he, turned toward the enemy, seems to stamp impatiently theground.—Experience and rage, old vigour, young velocity, expanded or contracted, vie in exertions of energy. Yet in this scene of tumult one motive animates the whole, eagerness to engage with subordination to command; this preserves the dignity of action, and from a straggling rabble changes the figures to men whose legitimate contest interests our wishes.
This intuition into the pure emanations of nature, Raphael Sanzio possessed in the most enviable degree, from the utmost conflict of passions, to the enchanting round of gentler emotion, and the nearly silent hints of mind and character. To this he devoted the tremendous scenery of that magnificent fresco, known to you all under the name of theIncendio del Borgo, in which he sacrificed the historic and mystic part of his subject to the effusion of the various passions roused by the sudden terrours of nocturnal conflagration. It is not for the faint appearance of the miracle which approaches with the pontiff and his train in the back-ground, that Raphael invites our eyes; the perturbation, necessity, hope, fear, danger, the pangs and efforts of affection grappling with the enraged elements of wind and fire, displayed on the fore-ground, furnish the pathetic motives that press onour hearts. That mother, who but half awake or rather in a waking trance, drives her children instinctively before her; that prostrate female half covered by her streaming hair, with elevated arms imploring heaven; that other who over the flaming tenement, heedless of her own danger, absorbed in maternal agony, boldly reaches over to drop the babe into the outstretched arms of its father; that common son of nature, who careless of another’s woe, intent only on his own safety, librates a leap from the burning wall; the vigorous youth who followed by an aged mother bears the palsied father on his shoulder from the rushing wreck; the nimble grace of those helpless females that vainly strive to administer relief—these are the real objects of the painter’s aim, and leave the pontiff and the miracle, with taper, bell and clergy—unheeded in the distance.
I shall not at present expatiate in tracing from this source the novel combinations of affection by which Raphael contrived to interest us in his numerous repetitions of Madonnas and holy Families, selected from the warmest effusions of domestic endearment, or in Milton’s phrase, from ‘all the charities of father, son, and mother.’ Nor shall I follow it in its more contaminated descent, to those representations of localmanners and national modifications of society, whose characteristic discrimination and humorous exuberance, for instance, we admire in Hogarth, but which, like the fleeting passions of the day, every hour contributes something to obliterate, which soon become unintelligible by time, or degenerate into caricature, the chronicle of scandal, the history-book of the vulgar.
Invention in its more specific sense receives its subjects from poetry or authenticated tradition; they areepicor sublime,dramaticor impassioned,historicor circumscribed by truth. The firstastonishes; the secondmoves; the thirdinforms.
The aim of the epic painter is to impress one general idea, one great quality of nature or mode of society, some great maxim, without descending to those subdivisions, which the detail of character prescribes: he paints the elements with their own simplicity, height, depth, the vast, the grand, darkness, light; life, death; the past, the future; man, pity, love, joy, fear, terrour, peace, war, religion, government: and the visible agents are only engines to forceoneirresistible idea upon the mind and fancy, as the machinery ofArchimedes served only to conveydestruction, and the wheels of a watch serve only to telltime.
Such is the first and general sense of what is called thesublime, epic, allegoric, lyric substance. Homer, to impress one forcible idea ofwar, its origin, its progress, and its end, set to work innumerable engines of various magnitude, yet none but what uniformly tends to enforce this and only this idea; gods and demigods are only actors, and nature but the scene of war; no character is discriminated but where discrimination discovers a new look of war; no passion is raised but what is blown up by the breath of war, and as soon absorbed in its universal blaze:—As in a conflagration we see turrets, spires, and temples illuminated only to propagate the honours of destruction, so through the stormy page of Homer, we see his heroines and heroes, but by the light that blasts them.
This is the principle of that divine series of frescoes, with which under the pontificates of Julius II. and Paul III. Michael Angelo adorned the lofty compartments of theCapella Sistina, and from a modesty or a pride for ever to be lamented, only not occupied thewholeof its ample sides. Its subject istheocracyorthe empire of religion, considered as the parent and queen of man; the origin, the progress, and final dispensation of Providence, as taught by the sacred records. Amid this imagery of primeval simplicity, whose sole object is the relation of the race to its Founder, to look for minute discrimination of character, is to invert the principle of the artist’s invention: here is only God with man. The veil of eternity is rent; time, space, and matter teem in the creation of the elements and of earth; life issues from God and adoration from man, in the creation of Adam and his mate; transgression of the precept at the tree of knowledge proves the origin of evil, and of expulsion from the immediate intercourse with God; the œconomy of justice and grace commences in the revolutions of the deluge, and the covenant made with Noah; and the germs of social character are traced in the subsequent scene between him and his sons; the awful synod of prophets and sibyls are the heralds of the Redeemer, and the host of patriarchs the pedigree of the Son of Man; the brazen serpent and the fall of Haman, the giant subdued by the stripling in Goliah and David, and the conquerour destroyed by female weakness in Judith, are types of his mysterious progress, till Jonah pronounces him immortal; and the magnificence of the last judgmentby shewing the Saviour in the judge of man, sums up the whole, and reunites the founder and the race.
Such is the spirit of the Sistine chapel, and the outline of itsgeneralinvention, with regard to the cycle of its subjects—as in their choice they lead to each other without intermediate chasms in the transition; as each preceding one prepares and directs the conduct of the next, this the following; and as the intrinsic variety of all, conspires to the simplicity of one great end. Thespecificinvention of the pictures separate, as each constitutes an independent whole, deserves our consideration next: each has its centre, from which it disseminates, to which it leads back all secondary points; arranged, hid, or displayed, as they are more or less organs of the inspiring plan: each rigorously is circumscribed by its generic character, no inferiour merely conventional, temporary, local, or disparate beauty, however in itself alluring, is admitted; each finally turns upon that transient moment, the moment of suspense, big with the past, and pregnant with the future; the action no where expires, for action and interest terminate together. Thus in the creation of Adam, the Creator borne on a group of attendant spirits, the personified powers of omnipotence, moves on toward his last, best work,the lord of his creation: the immortal spark, issuing from his extended arm, electrifies the new-formed being, who tremblingly alive, half raised half reclined, hastens to meet his Maker. In the formation of Eve the astonishment of life, just organised, is absorbed in the sublimer sentiment of adoration; perfect, though not all disengaged from the side of her dreaming mate, she moves with folded hands and humble dignity towards the majestic Form whose half raised hand attracts her—what words can express the equally bland and irresistible velocity of that mysterious Being, who forms the sun and moon, and already past, leaves the earth, compleatly formed, behind him? Here apposition is the symbol of immensity.[73]
From these specimens of invention exerted in the more numerous compositions of thissublimecycle, let me fix your attention for a few moments on the powers it displays in the single figures of the Prophets, those organs of embodied sentiment: their expression and attitude, whilst it exhibits the unequivocal marks of inspired contemplation in all; andwith equal variety, energy, and delicacy, stamps character on each; exhibits in the occupation of the present moment the traces of the past and hints of the future. Esaiah, the image ofinspiration, sublime and lofty, with an attitude expressive of the sacred trance in which meditation on the Messiah had immersed him, starts at the voice of an attendant genius, who seems to pronounce the words, ‘to us a child is born, to us a son is given.’ Daniel, the humbler image of eagerdiligence, transcribes from a volume held by a stripling, with a gesture natural to those who, absorbed in the progress of their subject, are heedless of convenience; his posture shews that he had inspected the volume from which now he is turned, and shall return to it immediately. Zachariah personifiesconsideration, he has read, and ponders on what he reads.Inquirymoves in the dignified activity of Joel; hastening to open a sacred scrowl, and to compare the scriptures with each other. Ezechiel, the fervid feature offancy, the seer of resurrection, represented as on the field strewn with bones of the dead, points downward and asks, ‘can these bones live?’ the attendant angel, borne on the wind that agitates his locks and the prophet’s vestments, with raised arm and finger, pronounces, they shall rise; last, Jeremiah, subdued bygriefand exhausted by lamentation, sinks in silent woe over the ruins of Jerusalem. Nor are the sibyls, those female oracles, less expressive, less individually marked—they are the echo, the counterpart of the prophets; Vigilance, Meditation, Instruction, Divination are personified. If the artist, who absorbed by the uniform power and magnitude of execution, saw only breadth and nature in their figures, must be told that he has discovered the least part of their excellence; the critic who charges them with affectation, can only be dismissed with our contempt.
On the immense plain of the last judgment, Michael Angelo has wound up the destiny of man, simply considered as the subject of religion, faithful or rebellious; and in one generic manner has distributed happiness and misery, the general feature of passions is given, and no more.—But had Raphael meditated that subject, he would undoubtedly have applied to our sympathies for his choice of imagery; he would have combined all possible emotions with the utmost variety of probable or real character: a father meeting his son, a mother torn from her daughter, lovers flying into each others arms, friends for ever separated, children accusing their parents, enemies reconciled; tyrants dragged before the tribunal bytheir subjects, conquerors hiding themselves from their victims of carnage; innocence declared, hypocrisy unmasked, atheism confounded, detected fraud, triumphant resignation; the most prominent features of connubial, fraternal, kindred connexion.—In a word, the heads of that infinite variety which Dante has minutely scattered over his poem—all domestic, politic, religious relations; whatever is not local in virtue and in vice: and the sublimity of the greatest of all events, would have been merely the minister of sympathies and passions[74].
If opinions be divided on the respective advantages and disadvantages of these two modes; if to some it should appear, though from consideration of the plan which guided Michael Angelo, I am far from subscribing to their notions, that the scenery of the last judgment, might have gained more by the dramatic introduction of varied pathos, than it would have lost by the dereliction of its generic simplicity: there can, I believe, be but one opinion with regard to the methods adopted by him and Raphael in the invention of the moment that characterises the creation of Eve: both artists applied for it to their own minds, but withvery different success: the elevation of Michael Angelo’s soul, inspired by the operation of creation itself, furnished him at once with the feature that stamps on human nature its most glorious prerogative: whilst the characteristic subtilty, rather than sensibility of Raphael’s mind, in this instance, offered nothing but a frigid succedaneum; a symptom incident to all, when after the subsided astonishment on a great and sudden event, the mind recollecting itself, ponders on it with inquisitive surmise. In Michael Angelo, all self-consideration is absorbed in the sublimity of the sentiment which issues from the august Presence that attracts Eve; ‘her earthly,’ in Milton’s expression, ‘by his heavenly overpowered,’ pours itself inadoration: whilst in the inimitable cast of Adam’s figure, we trace the hint of that half conscious moment when sleep began to give way to the vivacity of the dream inspired. In Raphael, creation is complete—Eve is presented to Adam, now awake: but neither the new-born charms, the submissive grace and virgin purity of the beauteous image; nor the awful presence of her Introductor, draw him from his mental trance into effusions of love or gratitude; at ease reclined, with fingers pointing at himself and his new mate, he seems to methodize the surprising eventthat took place during his sleep, and to whisper the words ‘flesh of my flesh.’
Thus, but far better adapted, has Raphael personifiedDialogue, moved the lips ofSoliloquy, unbent or wrinkled the features, and arranged the limbs and gesture ofMeditation, in the pictures of the Parnassus and of the school of Athens, parts of the immense allegoric drama that fills the stanzas, and displays the brightest ornament of the Vatican; the immortal monument of the towering ambition, unlimited patronage, and refined taste of Julius II. and Leo X., its cycle represents the origin, the progress, extent, and final triumph ofchurch empire, or ecclesiastic government; in the first subject, of the Parnassus, Poetry led back to its origin and first duty, the herald and interpreter of a first Cause, in the universal language of imagery addressed to the senses, unites man, scattered and savage, in social and religious bands. What was the surmise of the eye and the wish of hearts, is gradually made the result of reason, in the characters of the school of Athens, by the researches of philosophy, which from bodies to mind, from corporeal harmony to moral fitness, and from the duties of society, ascends to the doctrine of God and hopesof immortality. Here revelation in its stricter sense commences, and conjecture becomes a glorious reality: in the composition of the dispute on the sacrament, the Saviour after ascension seated on his throne, the attested son of God and Man, surrounded by his types, the prophets, patriarchs, apostles and the hosts of heaven, institutes the mysteries and initiates in his sacrament the heads and presbyters of the church militant, who in the awful presence of their Master and the celestial synod, discuss, explain, propound his doctrine. That the sacred mystery shall clear all doubt and subdue all heresy, is taught in the miracle of the blood-stained wafer; that without arms, by the arm of Heaven itself, it shall release its votaries, and defeat its enemies, the deliverance of Peter, the overthrow of Heliodorus, the flight of Attila, the captive Saracens, bear testimony; that nature itself shall submit to its power and the elements obey its mandates, the checked conflagration of the Borgo, declares: till hastening to its ultimate triumphs, its union with the state, it is proclaimed by the vision of Constantine, confirmed by the rout of Maxentius, established by the imperial pupils receiving baptism, and submitting to accept his crown at the feet of the mitred pontiff.
Such is the rapid outline of the cycle painted or designed by Raphael on the compartments of the stanzas sacred to his name. Here is the mass of his powers in poetic conception and execution, here is every period of his style, his emancipation from the narrow shackles of Pietro Perugino, his discriminations of characteristic form, on to the heroic grandeur of his line. Here is that master-tone of fresco painting, the real instrument of history, which with its silver purity and breadth unites the glow of Titiano and Correggio’s tints. Every where we meet the superiority of genius, but more or less impressive, with more or less felicity in proportion as each subject was more or less susceptible of dramatic treatment. From the bland enthusiasm of the Parnassus, and the sedate or eager features of meditation in the school of Athens, to the sterner traits of dogmatic controversy in the dispute of the sacrament, and the symptoms of religious conviction or inflamed zeal at the mass of Bolsena. Not the miracle, as we have observed, the fears and terrours of humanity inspire and seize us at the conflagration of the Borgo: if in the Heliodorus the sublimity of the vision balances sympathy with astonishment, we follow the rapid ministers of grace to their revenge, less to rescue the temple from the gripe of sacrilege, than inspired by the palpitatinggraces, the helpless innocence, the defenceless beauty of the females and children scattered around; and thus we forget the vision of the labarum, the angels and Constantine in the battle, to plunge in the wave with Maxentius, or to share the agonies of the father who recognizes his own son in the enemy he slew.
With what propriety Raphael introduced portrait, though in its most dignified and elevated sense, into some compositions of the great work which we are contemplating, I shall not now discuss; the allegoric part of the work may account for it: he has, however, by its admission, stamped that branch of painting at once with its essential feature, character, and has assigned it its place and rank: ennobled by character, it rises to dramatic dignity, destitute of that, it sinks to mere mechanic dexterity, or floats, a bubble of fashion. Portrait is to historic painting in art, what physiognomy is to pathognomy in science;thatshews the character and powers of the being which it delineates, in its formation and at rest:thisshews it in exertion. Bembo, Bramante, Dante, Gonzaga, Savonarola, Raphael himself may be considered in the inferior light of mere characteristic ornament; but Julius the second authenticating the miracle atthe mass of Bolsena, or borne into the temple, rather to authorize than to witness the punishment inflicted on its spoiler; Leo with his train calmly facing Attila, or deciding on his tribunal the fate of the captive Saracens, tell us by their presence that they are the heroes of the drama, that the action has been contrived for them, is subordinate to them, and has been composed to illustrate their character. For as in the epic, act and agent are subordinate to the maxim, and in pure history are mere organs of the fact; so the drama subordinates both fact and maxim to the agent, his character and passion: what in them was end is but the medium here.
Such were the principles on which he treated the beautiful tale of Amor and Psyche: the allegory of Apuleius became a drama under the hand of Raphael, though it must be owned, that with every charm of scenic gradation and lyric imagery, its characters, as exquisitely chosen as acutely discriminated, exhibit less the obstacles and real object of affection, and its final triumph over mere appetite and sexual instinct, than the voluptuous history of his own favourite passion. The faint light of the maxim vanishes in the splendour which expands before our fancy theenchanted circle of wanton dalliance and amorous attachment.
But the power of Raphael’s invention exerts itself chiefly in subjects where the drama, divested of epic or allegoric fiction, meets pure history, and elevates, invigourates, impresses the pregnant moment of arealfact, with character and pathos: The summit of these is that magnificent series of coloured designs commonly called the cartoons, so well known to you all, part of which we happily possess; formerly when complete and united, and now, in the copies of the tapestry annually exhibited in the colonnade of the Vatican, they represent in thirteen compositions the origin, sanction, œconomy and progress of the Christian religion. In whatever light we consider their invention, as parts ofone wholerelative to each other, or independenteach of the rest, and as single subjects, there can be scarcely named a beauty or a mystery of which the cartoons furnish not an instance or a clue; they are poised between perspicuity and pregnancy of moment; we shall have opportunities to speak of all or the greater part of them, but that of Paul on the areopagus, will furnish us at present with conclusions for the remainder.
It represents the Apostle announcing his God from the height of the areopagus. Enthusiasm and curiosity make up the subject; simplicity of attitude invests the speaker with sublimity; the parallelism of his action invigorates his energy; situation gives him command over the whole; the light in which he is placed, attracts the first glance; he appears the organ of a superior Power. The assembly, though selected with characteristic art for the purpose, are the natural offspring of place and moment. The involved meditation of the Stoic, the Cynic’s ironic sneer, the incredulous smile of the elegant Epicurean, the eager disputants of the Academy, the elevated attention of Plato’s school, the rankling malice of the Rabbi, the Magician’s mysterious glance, repeat in louder or in lower tones the novel doctrine; but whilst curiosity and meditation, loud debate and fixed prejudice, tell, ponder on, repeat, reject, discuss it, the animated gesture of conviction in Dionysius and Damaris, announce the power of its tenets, and hint the established belief ofimmortality.
But the powers of Raphael in combining the drama with pure historic fact, are best estimated when compared with those exerted by other masters on the same subject. For this we select from the series we examinethat which represented the massacre, as it is called, of the innocents, or of the infants at Bethlem; an original, precious part of which still remains in the possession of a friend of art among us. On this subject Baccio Bandinelli, Tintoretto, Rubens, Le Brun, and Poussin, have tried their various powers.
The massacre of the infants by Baccio Bandinelli, contrived chiefly to exhibit his anatomic skill, is a complicated tableau of every contorsion of human attitude and limbs that precedes dislocation; the expression floats between a studied imagery of frigid horrour and loathsome abomination.
The stormy brush of Tintoretto swept individual woe away in general masses. Two immense wings of light and shade divide the composition, and hide the want of sentiment in tumult.
To Rubens magnificence and contrast dictated the actors and the scene. A loud lamenting dame, in velvet robes, with golden locks dishevelled, and wide extended arms, meets our first glance. Behind, a group of steel-clad satellites open their rows of spears to admit the nimble, naked ministers of murder, charged with their infant prey, within their ranks,ready to close again against the frantic mothers who pursue them: the pompous gloom of the palace in the middle ground is set off by cottages and village scenery in the distance.
Le Brun surrounded the allegoric tomb of Rachel with rapid horsemen, receiving the children whom the assassins tore from their parents arms, and strewed the field with infant-slaughter.
Poussin tied in one vigorous group what he conceived of blood-trained villany and maternal frenzy. Whilst Raphael, in dramatic gradation, disclosed all the mother through every image of pity and of terrour; through tears, shrieks, resistance, revenge, to the stunned look of despair; and traced the villain from the palpitations of scarce initiated crime to the sedate grin of veteran murder.
History, strictly so called, follows the drama: fiction now ceases, and invention consists only in selecting and fixing with dignity, precision, and sentiment, the moments ofreality. Suppose that the artist choose the death of Germanicus—He is not to give us the highest images ofgeneralgrief which impresses the features of a people or a family at thedeath of a beloved chief or father; for this would be epic imagery: we should have Achilles, Hector, Niobe. He is not to mix up characters which observation and comparison have pointed out to him as the fittest to excite the gradations of sympathy; not Admetus and Alceste, not Meleager and Atalanta; for this would be the drama. He is to give us the idea of a Roman dying amidst Romans, as tradition gave him, with all the real modifications of time and place, which may serve unequivocally to discriminate that moment of grief from all others. Germanicus, Agrippina, Caius, Vitellius, the legates, the centurions at Antioch; the hero, the husband, the father, the friend, the leader, the struggles of nature and sparks of hope must be subjected to the phisiognomic character and the features of Germanicus, the son of Drusus, the Cæsar of Tiberius. Maternal, female, connubial passion must be tinged by Agrippina, the woman absorbed in the Roman, less lover than companion of her husband’s grandeur: even the bursts of friendship, attachment, allegiance, and revenge, must be stamped by the military, ceremonial, and distinctive costume of Rome.
The judicious observation of all this does not reduce the historic painter to the anxiously minutedetail of a copyist. Firm he rests on the true basis of art, imitation: the fixed character of things determines all in his choice, and mere floating accident, transient modes and whims of fashion, are still excluded. If defects, if deformities are represented, they must be permanent, they must be inherent in the character. Edward the first and Richard the third must be marked, but marked, to strengthen rather than to diminish the interest we take in the man; thus the deformity of Richard will add to his terrour, and the enormous stride of Edward to his dignity. If my limits permitted, your own recollection would dispense me from expatiating in examples on this more familiar branch of invention. The history of our own times and of our own country has produced a specimen, in the death of a military hero, as excellent as often imitated, which, though respect forbids me to name it, cannot, I trust, be absent from your mind.
Such are the stricter outlines of general and specific invention in the three principal branches of our art; but as their near alliance allows not always a strict discrimination of their limits; as the mind and fancy of men, upon the whole, consist of mixed qualities, we seldom meet with a human performanceexclusively made up of epic, dramatic, or pure historic materials.
Novelty and feelings will make the rigid historian sometimes launch out into the marvellous, or warm his bosom and extort a tear; the dramatist, in gazing at some tremendous feature, or the pomp of superiour agency, will drop the chain of sympathy and be absorbed in the sublime; whilst the epic or lyric painter forgets his solitary grandeur, sometimes descends and mixes with his agents. Thus Homer gave the feature of the drama in Hector and Andromache, in Irus and Ulysses; the spirit from the prison house stalks like the shade of Ajax, in Shakspeare; the daughter of Soranus pleading for her father, and Octavia encircled by centurions, melt like Ophelia and Alceste, in Tacitus; thus Raphael personified the genius of the river in Joshua’s passage through the Jordan, and again at the ceremony of Solomon’s inauguration; and thus Poussin raised before the scared eye of Coriolanus, the frowning vision of Rome, all armed, with her attendant, Fortune.
These general excursions from one province of the art into those of its congenial neighbours, granted by judicious invention to the artist, let me apply to thegrant of a more specific licence[75]: Horace, the most judicious of critics, when treating on the use of poetic words, tells his pupils, that the adoption of an old word, rendered novel by a skilful construction with others, will entitle the poet to the praise of original diction. The same will be granted to the judicious adoption of figures in art.
Far from impairing the originality of invention, the unpremeditated discovery of an appropriate attitude or figure in the works of antiquity, or of the great old masters after the revival, and its adoption, or the apt transposition of one misplaced in some inferiour work, will add lustre to a performance of commensurate or superiour power, by a kind coalition with the rest, immediately furnished by nature and the subject. In such a case it is easily discovered whether a subject have been chosen merely to borrow an idea, an attitude or figure, or whether their eminent fitness procured them their place. An adopted idea or figure in a work of genius is a foil or a companion of the rest; but an idea of genius borrowed by mediocrity, tears all associate shreds, itis the giant’s thumb by which the pigmy offered the measure of his own littleness. We stamp the plagiary on the borrower, who, without fit materials or adequate conceptions of his own, seeks to shelter impotence under purloined vigour; we leave him with the full praise of invention, who by the harmony of a whole proves that what he adopted might have been his own offspring though anticipated by another. If he take now, he soon may give. Thus Michael Angelo scattered the Torso of Apollonius in every view, in every direction, in groups and single figures, over the composition of the last judgment; and in the Lunetta of Judith and her maid gave an original turn to figures adopted from the gem of Pier Maria da Pescia: if the figure of Adam dismissed from Paradise, by Raphael, still own Masaccio for its inventor, he can scarcely be said to have furnished more than the hint of that enthusiasm and energy which we admire in Paul on the areopagus: in the picture of the covenant with Noah, the sublimity of the vision, and the graces of the mother entangled by her babes, find their originals in the Sistine chapel, but they are equalled by the fervour which conceived the Patriarch who, with the infant pressed to his bosom, with folded hands, and prostrate on his knees,adores. What figure or what gesture in the cartoon of Pisa, has not been imitated? Raphael, Parmegiano, Poussin, are equally indebted to it; in the sacrament of baptism, the last did little more than transcribe that knot of powers, the fierce feature of the veteran who, eager to pull on his cloaths, pushes his foot through the rending garment.—Such are the indulgences which invention grants to fancy, taste, and judgment.
But a limited fragment of observations must not presume to exhaust what in itself is inexhaustible; the features of invention are multiplied before me as my powers decrease: I shall therefore no longer trespass on your patience, than by fixing your attention for a few moments on one of its boldest flights, the transfiguration of Raphael; a performance equally celebrated and censured; in which the most judicious of inventors, the painter of propriety, is said to have not only wrestled for extent of information with the historian, but attempted to leap the boundaries, and, with a less discriminating than daring hand, to remove the established limits of the art, to have arbitrarily combined two actions, and consequently two different moments.
Were this charge founded, I might content myself with observing, that the transfiguration, more than any other of Raphael’s oil-pictures, was a public performance, destined by Julio de Medici, afterward Clement VII. for his archiepiscopal church at Narbonne; that it was painted in contest with Sebastian del Piombo, assisted in his rival-picture of Lazarus by Michael Angelo; and thus, considering it as framed on the simple principles of the monumental style, established in my first discourse, on the pictures of Polygnotus at Delphi, I might frame a plausible excuse for the modern artist; but Raphael is above the assistance of subterfuge, and it is sufficient to examine the picture, in order to prove the futility of the charge. Raphael has connected with the transfiguration not thecureof the maniac, but hispresentation for it; if, according to the[76]Gospel record, this happened at the foot of the mountain, whilst the apparition took place at the top, what improbability is there in assigning thesame momentto both?
Raphael’s design was to represent Jesus as the Son of God, and at the same time as the reliever of humanmisery, by an unequivocal fact. The transfiguration on Tabor, and the miraculous cure which followed the descent of Jesus, united, furnished that fact. The difficulty was how to combine two successive actions in one moment: he overcame it by sacrificing the moment of the cure to that of the apparition, by implying the lesser miracle in the greater. In subordinating the cure to the vision he obtained sublimity, in placing the crowd and the patient on the fore-ground, he gained room for the full exertion of his dramatic powers; it was not necessary that the dæmoniac should be represented in the moment of recovery, if its certainty could be expressed by other means: it is implied, it is placed beyond all doubt by the glorious apparition above; it is made nearly intuitive by the uplifted hand and finger of the apostle in the centre, who without hesitation, undismayed by the obstinacy of the dæmon, unmoved by the clamour of the crowd and the pusillanimous scepticism of some of his companions, refers the father of the maniac in an authoritative manner for certain and speedy help to his master[77]on the mountain above, whom,though unseen, his attitude at once connects with all that passes below; here is the point of contact, here is that union of the two parts of the fact in one moment, which Richardson and Falconet could not discover.