Reddere personæ scit convenientia cuique.Hor.
Reddere personæ scit convenientia cuique.Hor.
Reddere personæ scit convenientia cuique.
Hor.
Paintings of ceilings, doors, and chimney-pieces, are commonly but the expletives of these places, because they cannot be giltall over. Not only they have not the least relation to the rank and circumstances of the proprietor, but often throw some ridicule or reflection upon him.
’Tis an abhorrence of barrenness that fills walls and rooms; and pictures void of thought must supply the vacuum.
Hence the artist, abandoned to the dictates of his own fancy, paints, for want of Allegory, perhaps a satire on him to whom he owes his industry; or, to shun this Charybdis, finds himself reduced to paint figures void of any meaning.
Nay, he may often find it difficult to meet even with those, ’till at last
——velut ægri Somnia, vanæ Finguntur Species.Hor.
——velut ægri Somnia, vanæ Finguntur Species.Hor.
——velut ægri Somnia, vanæ Finguntur Species.
Hor.
Thus Painting is degraded from its most eminent prerogative, the representation of invisible, past and future things.
If pictures be sometimes met with, which might be significant in some particularplace, they often lose that property by stupid and wrong applications.
Perhaps the master of some new building
Dives agris, dives positis in fœnore nummisHor.
Dives agris, dives positis in fœnore nummisHor.
Dives agris, dives positis in fœnore nummis
Hor.
may, without the least compunction for offending the rules of perspective, place figures of the smallest size above the vast doors of his apartments and salloons. I speak here of those ornaments which make part of the furniture; not of figures which are often, and for good reasons, set up promiscuously in collections.
The decorations of architecture are often as ill-chosen. Arms and trophies deck a hunting-house as nonsensically, as Ganymede and the eagle, Jupiter and Leda, figure it among the reliefs of the brazen gates of St. Peter’s church at Rome.
Arts have a double aim: to delight and to instruct. Hence the greatest landscape-painters think, they have fulfilled but halftheir task in drawing their pieces without figures.
Let the artist’s pencil, like the pen of Aristotle, be impregnated with reason; that, after having satiated the eye, he may nourish the mind: and this he may obtain by Allegory; investing, not hiding his ideas. Then, whether he chuse some poetical object himself, or follow the dictates of others, he shall be inspired by his art, shall be fired with the flame brought down from heaven by Prometheus, shall entertain the votary of art, and instruct the mere lover of it.
SIR,
As you have written on the Greek arts and artists, I wish you had made your treatise as much the object of your caution as the Greek artists made their works; which, before dismissing them, they exhibited to publick view, in order to be examined by everybody, and especially by competent judges of the art. The trial was held during the grand, chiefly the Olympian, games; and all Greece was interested on Ætion’s producing his picture of the nuptials of Alexander and Roxana. You, Sir, wanted a Proxenidasto be judged by, as well as that artist; and had it not been for your mysterious concealment, I might have communicated your treatise, before its publication, to some learned men and connoisseurs of my acquaintance, without mentioning the author’s name.
One of them visited Italy twice, where he devoted all his time to a most anxious examination of painting, and particularly several months to each eminent picture, at the very place where it was painted; the only method, you know, to form a connoisseur. The judgment of a man able to tell you which of Guido’s altar-pieces is painted on taffeta, or linnen, what sort of wood Raphael chose for his transfiguration, &c. the judgment of such a man, I fancy, must be allowed to be decisive.
Another of my acquaintance has studied antiquity: he knows it by the very smell;
Callet & Artificem solo deprendere Odore.Sectan. Sat.
Callet & Artificem solo deprendere Odore.Sectan. Sat.
Callet & Artificem solo deprendere Odore.
Sectan. Sat.
He can tell you the number of knots on Hercules’s club; has reduced Nestor’s goblet to the modern measure: nay, is suspected of meditating solutions to all the questions proposed by Tiberius to the grammarians.
A third, for several years past, has neglected every thing but hunting after ancient coins. Many a new discovery we owe to him; especially some concerning the history of the ancient coiners; and, as I am told, he is to rouse the attention of the world by a Prodromus concerning the coiners of Cyzicum.
What a number of reproaches might you have escaped, had you submitted your Essay to the judgment of these gentlemen! they were pleased to acquaint me with their objections, and I should be sorry, for your honour, to see them published.
Among other objections, the first is surprized at your passing by the two Angels, in your description of the Raphael in the royal cabinet at Dresden; having been told, that a Bolognese painter, in mentioning this piece,which he saw at St. Sixtus’s at Piacenza, breaks into these terms of admiration: O! what Angels of Paradise[14]! by which he supposes those Angels to be the most beautiful figures of the picture.
The same person would reproach you for having described that picture in the manner of Raguenet[15].
The second concludes the beard of Laocoon to be as worthy of your attention as his contracted belly: for every admirer of Greek works, says he, must pay the same respect to the beard of Laocoon, which father Labat paid to that of the Moses of Michael Angelo.
This learned Dominican,
Qui mores hominum multorum vidit & urbes,
Qui mores hominum multorum vidit & urbes,
Qui mores hominum multorum vidit & urbes,
has, after so many centuries, drawn fromthis very statue an evident proof of the true fashion in which Moses wore his own individual beard, and whose imitation must, of course, be the distinguishing mark of every true Jew[16].
There is not the least spark of learning, says he, in your remarks on the Peplon of the three vestals: he might perhaps, on the very inflection of the veil, have discovered to you as many curiosities as Cuper himself found on the edge of the veil of Tragedy in the Apotheosis of Homer[17].
We also want proof of the vestals beingreally Greek performances: our reason fails us too often in the most obvious things. If unhappily the marble of these figures should be proved to be no Lychnites, they are lost, and your treatise too: had you but slightly told us their marble was large-grained, that would have been a sufficient proof of their authenticity; for it would be somewhat difficult to determine the bigness of the grains with such exactness as to distinguish the Greek marble from the Roman of Luna. But the worst is, they are even denied the title of vestals.
The third mentioned some heads of Livia and Agrippina, without that pretended profile of yours. Here he thinks you had the most lucky occasion to talk of that kind of nose by the ancients calledQuadrata, as an ingredient of beauty. But you no doubt know, that the noses of some of the most famous Greek statues, viz. the Medicean Venus, and the Picchinian Meleager, aremuch too thick for becoming the model of beauty, in that kind, to our artists.
I shall not, however, gall you with all the doubts and objections raised against your treatise, and repeated to nauseousness, upon the arrival of an Academician, the Margites of our days, who, being shewed your treatise, gave it a slight glance, then laid it aside, offended as it were at first sight. But it was easy to perceive that he wanted his opinion to be asked, which we accordingly all did. “The author, said he very peremptorily, seems not to have been at much pains with this treatise: I cannot find above four or five quotations, and those negligently inserted; no chapter, no page, cited; he certainly collected his remarks from books which he is ashamed to produce.”
Yet cannot I help introducing another gentleman, sharp-sighted enough to pick out something that had escaped all my attention; viz. that the Greeks were thefirst inventors of Painting and Sculpture; an assertion, as he was pleased to express himself, entirely false, having been told it was the Egyptians, or some people still more ancient, and unknown to him.
Even the most whimsical humour may be turned to profit: nevertheless, I think it manifest that you intended to talk only of good Taste in those arts; and the first Elements of an art have the same proportion to good Taste in it, as the seed has to the fruit. That the art was still in its infancy among the Egyptians, when it had attained the highest degree of perfection among the Greeks, may be seen by examining one single gem: you need only consider the head ofPtolomæus Philopatorby Aulus, and the two figures adjoining to it done by an Egyptian[18], in order to be convinced of the little merit this nation could pretend to in point of art.
The form and taste of their Painting have been ascertained by Middleton.[19]The pictures of persons as big as life, on two mummies in the royal cabinet of antiquities at Dresden, are evident instances of their incapacity. But these relicks being curious, in several other respects, I shall hereafter subjoin a short account of them.
I cannot, my friend, help allowing some reason for several of these objections. Your negligence in your quotations was, no doubt, somewhat prejudicial to your authenticity: the art of changing blue eyes to black ones, certainly deserved an authority. You imitate Democritus; who being asked, “What is man?” every body knows what was his reply. What reasonable creature will submit to read all Greek scholiasts!
Ibit eo, quo vis, qui Zonam perdidit—Hor.
Ibit eo, quo vis, qui Zonam perdidit—Hor.
Ibit eo, quo vis, qui Zonam perdidit—
Hor.
Considering, however, how easily the humanmind is biassed, either by friendship or animosity, I took occasion from these objections to examine your treatise with more exactness; and shall now, by the most impartial censure, strive to clear myself from every imputation of prepossession in your favour.
I will pass by the first and second page, though something might be said on your comparison of the Diana with the Nausicaa, and the application: nor would it have been amiss, had you thrown some more light on the remark concerning the misused pictures of Corregio (very likely borrowed from Count Tessin’s letters), by giving an account of the other indignities which the pictures of the best artists, at the same time, met with at Stockholm.
It is well known that, after the surrender of Prague to Count Konigsmark, the 15th of July 1648, the most precious pictures of the Emperor Rodolph II. were carried offto Sweden[20]. Among these were some pictures of Corregio, which the Emperor had been presented with by their first possessor, Duke Frederick of Mantua; two of them being the famous Leda, and a Cupid handling his bow[21]. Christina, endowed at that time rather with scholastic learning than taste, treated these treasures as the Emperor Claudius did an Alexander of Apelles; who ordered the head to be cut off, and that of Augustus to fill its place[22]. In the same manner heads, hands, feet were here cut off from the most beautiful pictures; a carpet was plastered over with them, and the mangled pieces fitted up with new heads, &c. Those that fortunately escaped the common havock, among which were the pieces of Corregio, came afterwards, together with several other pictures, bought bythe Queen at Rome, into the possession of the Duke of Orleans, who purchased 250 of them, and among those eleven of Corregio, for 9000 Roman crowns.
But I am not contented with your charging only the northern countries with barbarism, on account of the little esteem they paid to the arts. If good taste is to be judged in this manner, I am afraid for our French neighbours. For having taken Bonn, the residence of the Elector of Cologne, after the death of Max. Henry, they ordered the largest pictures to be cut out of their frames, without distinction, in order to serve for coverings to the waggons, in which the most valuable furniture of the electoral castle was carried off for France. But, Sir, do not presume on my continuing with mere historical remarks: I shall proceed with my objections; after making the two following general observations.
I. You have written in a style too concise for being distinct. Were you afraid ofbeing condemned to the penalty of a Spartan, who could not restrain himself to only three words, perhaps that of reading Picciardin’s Pisan War? Distinctness is required where universal instruction is the end. Meats are to suit the taste of the guests, rather than that of the cooks,
——Cœnæ fercula nostræMalim convivis quam placuisse coquis.
——Cœnæ fercula nostræMalim convivis quam placuisse coquis.
——Cœnæ fercula nostræ
Malim convivis quam placuisse coquis.
II. There appears, in almost every line of yours, the most passionate attachment to antiquity; which perhaps I shall convince you of, by the following remarks.
The first particular objection I have to make is against your third page. Remember, however, that my passing by two pages is very generous dealing:
non temere a meQuivis ferret idem:Hor.
non temere a meQuivis ferret idem:Hor.
non temere a me
Quivis ferret idem:
Hor.
but let us now begin a formal trial.
The author talks of certain negligences in the Greek works, which ought to be considered suitably to Lucian’s precepts concerning the Zeus of Phidias: “Zeus himself, not his footstool;”[23]though perhaps he could not be charged with any fault in the foot-stool, but with a very grievous one in the statue.
Is it no fault that Phidias made his Zeus of so enormous a bulk, as almost to reach the cieling of the temple, which must infallibly have been thrown down, had the god taken it in his head to rise?[24]To have left the temple without any cieling at all, like that of the Olympian Jupiter at Athens, had been an instance of more judgment[25].
’Tis but justice to claim an explication of what the author means by “negligences”. He perhaps might be pleased to get a passport, even for the faults of the ancients, by sheltering them under the authority ofsuch titles; nay, to change them into beauties, as Alcæus did the spot on the finger of his beloved boy. We too often view the blemishes of the ancients, as a parent does those of his children:
StrabonemAppellat pætum pater, & pullum, male parvusSi cui filius est.Hor.
StrabonemAppellat pætum pater, & pullum, male parvusSi cui filius est.Hor.
Strabonem
Appellat pætum pater, & pullum, male parvus
Si cui filius est.
Hor.
If these negligences were like those wished for in the Jalysus of Protogenes, where the chief figure was out-shone by a partridge, they might be considered as the agreeable negligée of a fine lady; but this is the question. Besides, had the author consulted his interest, he never would have ventured citing the Diomedes of Dioscorides: but being too well acquainted with that gem, one of the most valued, most finished monuments of Greek art; and being apprehensive of the prejudice that might arise against the meaner productions of the ancients, on discovering many faults in one so eminent as Diomedes;he endeavoured to keep matters from being too nearly examined, and to soften every fault into negligence.
How! if by argument I shall attempt to shew that Dioscorides understood neither perspective, nor the most trivial rules of the motion of a human body; nay, that he offended even against possibility? I’ll venture to do it, though
incedo per ignesSuppositos cineri doloso.Hor.
incedo per ignesSuppositos cineri doloso.Hor.
incedo per ignes
Suppositos cineri doloso.
Hor.
And perhaps I am not the first discoverer of his faults: yet I do not remember to have seen any thing relative to them.
The Diomedes of Dioscorides is either a sitting, or a rising figure; for the attitude is ambiguous. It is plain he is not sitting; and rising is inconsistent with his action.
Our body endeavouring to raise itself from a seat, moves always mechanically towards its sought-for centre of gravity, drawing backthe legs, which were advanced in sitting[26]; instead of which the figure stretches out his right leg. Every erection begins with elevated heels, and in that moment all the weight of the body is supported only by the toes, which was observed by Felix[27], in his Diomedes: but here all rests on the sole.
Nor can Diomedes, (if we suppose him to be a sitting figure, as he touches with his left leg the bottom of his thigh) find, in raising himself, the centre of his gravity, only by a retraction of his legs, and of course cannot rise in that posture. His left hand resting upon the bended leg, holds the palladion, whilst his right touches negligently the pedestal with the point of a short sword; consequently he cannot rise, neither moving his legs in the natural and easy manner required in any erection, nor makinguse of his arms to deliver himself from that uneasy situation.
There is at the same time a fault committed against the rules of perspective.
The foot of the left bended leg, touching the cornice of the pedestal, shews it over-reaching that part of the floor, on which the pedestal and the right foot are situated, consequently the line described by the hinder-foot is the fore on the gem, andvice versa.
But allowing even a possibility to that situation, it is contrary to the Greek character, which is always distinguished by the natural and easy. Attributes neither to be met with in the contortions of Diomedes, nor in an attitude, the impossibility of which every one must be sensible of, in endeavouring to put himself in it, without the help of former sitting.
Felix, supposed to have lived after Dioscorides, though preserving the same attitude, has endeavoured to make its violence more natural, by opposing to him the figure ofUlysses, who, as we are told, in order to bereave him of the honour of having seized the Palladion, offered to rob him of it, but being discovered, was repulsed by Diomedes; which being his supposed action on the gem, allows violence of attitude[28].
Diomedes cannot be a sitting figure, for the Contour of his buttock and thigh is free, and not in the least compressed: the foot of the bent leg is visible, and the leg itself not bent enough.
The Diomedes represented by Mariette is absurd; the left leg resembling a clasped pocket-knife, and the foot being drawn up so high as to make it impossible in nature that it should reach the pedestal[29].
Faults of this kind cannot be called negligences, and would not be forgiven in any modern artist.
Dioscorides, ’tis true, in this renowned performance did but copy Polycletus, whoseDoryphorus (as is commonly agreed) was the best rule of human proportions[30]. But, though a copyist, Dioscorides escaped a fault which his master fell into. For the pedestal, over which the Diomedes of Polycletus leans, is contrary to the most common rules of perspective; its cornices, which should be parallel, forming two different lines.
I wonder at Perrault’s omitting to make objections against the ancient gems.
I mean not to do any thing derogatory to the author, when I trace some of his particular observations to their source.
The food prescribed to the young wrestlers, in the remoter times of Greece, is mentioned by Pausanias[31]. But if the author alluded to the passage which I have in view, why does he talk in general of milk-food, when Pausanias particularly mentions soft cheese?Dromeus of Stymphilos, we learn there, first introduced flesh meat.
My researches, concerning their mysterious art of changing blue eyes to black ones, have not succeeded to my wish. I find it mentioned but once, and that only by the bye by Dioscorides[32]. The author, by clearing up this art, might perhaps have thrown a greater lustre over his treatise, than by producing his new method of statuary. He had it in his power to fix the eyes of the Newtons and Algarotti’s, on a problem worth their attention, and to engage the fair sex, by a discovery so advantageous to their charms, especially in Germany, where, contrary to Greece, large, fine, blue eyes are more frequently met with than black ones.
There was a time when the fashion required to be green eyed:
Et si bel oeil vert & riant & clair:Le Sire de Coucy, chans.
Et si bel oeil vert & riant & clair:Le Sire de Coucy, chans.
Et si bel oeil vert & riant & clair:
Le Sire de Coucy, chans.
But I do not know whether art had any share in their colouring. And as to the small-pox, Hippocrates might be quoted, if grammatical disquisitions suited my purpose.
However, I think, no effects of the small-pox on a face can be so much the reverse of beauty, as that defect which the Athenians were reproachfully charged with, viz. a buttock as pitiful as their face was perfect[33]. Indeed Nature, in so scantily supplying those parts, seemed to derogate as much from the Athenian beauty, as, by her lavishness, from that of the Indian Enotocets, whose ears, we are told, were large enough to serve them for pillows.
As for opportunities to study the nudities, our times, I think, afford as advantageous ones as the Gymnasies of the ancients. ’Tis the fault of our artists to make no use of that[34]proposed to the Parisian artists,viz. to walk, during the summer season, along the Seine, in order to have a full view of the naked parts, from the sixth to the fiftieth year.
’Tis perhaps to Michael Angelo’s frequenting such opportunities that we owe his celebrated Carton of the Pisan war[35], where the soldiers bathing in a river, at the sound of a trumpet leap out of the water, and make haste to huddle on their cloaths.
One of the most offensive passages of the treatise is, no doubt, the unjust debasement of the modern sculptors beneath the ancients. These latter times are possessed of several Glycons in muscular heroic figures, and, in tender youthful female bodies, of more than one Praxiteles. Michael Angelo, Algardi, and Sluter, whose genius embellished Berlin, produced muscular bodies,
——Invicti membra Glyconis,Hor.
——Invicti membra Glyconis,Hor.
——Invicti membra Glyconis,
Hor.
in a style rivalling that of Glycon himself; and in delicacy the Greeks are perhaps even outdone byBernini,Fiammingo,Le Gros,Rauchmüller,Donner.
The unskilfulness of the ancients, in shaping children, is agreed upon by our artists, who, I suppose, would for imitation choose a Cupid of Fiammingo rather than of Praxiteles himself. The story of M. Angelo’s placing a Cupid of his own by the side of an antique one, in order to inform our times of the superiority of the ancient art, is of no weight here: for no work of Michael Angelo can bring us so near perfection as Nature herself.
I think it no hyperbole to advance, that Fiammingo, like a new Prometheus, produced creatures which art had never seen before him. For, if from almost all the children on ancient gems[36]andreliefs[37], we may form a conclusion of the art itself, it wanted the true expression of childhood, as looser forms, more milkiness, and unknit bones. Faults which, from the epoch of Raphael, all children laboured under, till the appearance ofFrancis Quesnoy, called Fiammingo, whose children having the advantages of suitable innocence and nature, became models to the following artists, as in youthful bodies Apollo and Antinous are: an honour whichAlgardi, his contemporary, may be allowed to share.
Their models in clay are, by our artists, esteemed superior to all the antique marble children; and an artist of genius and talents assured me, that during a stay of seven years at Vienna, he saw not one copy taken from an ancient Cupid in that academy.
Neither do I know on what singular idea of beauty, the ancient artists founded their custom, of hiding the foreheads of theirchildren and youths with hair. Thus a Cupid was represented by Praxiteles[38]; thus a Patroclus, in a picture mentioned by Philostratus[39]: and there is no statue nor bust, no gem nor coin of Antinous, in which we do not find him thus dressed. Hence, perhaps, that gloom, that melancholy, with which all the heads of this favourite of Hadrian are marked.
Is not there in a free open brow more nobleness and sublimity? and does notBerniniseem to have been better acquainted with beauty than the ancients, when he removed the over-shadowing locks from the forehead of young Lewis XIV. whose bust he was then executing? “Your Majesty, said Bernini, is King, and may with confidence shew your brow to all the world.” From that time King and court dressed their hair à la Bernini[40].
His judgment of the bas-reliefs on the monument of Pope Alexander VI[41]. leads us to some remarks on those of antiquity. “The skill in bas-relief, said he, consists in giving the air of relief to the flat: the figures of that monument seem what they are indeed, not what they are not.”
The chief end of bas-relief is to deck those places that want historical or allegorical ornaments, but which have neither cornices sufficiently spacious, nor proportions regular enough to allow groupes of entire statues: and as the cornice itself is chiefly intended to shelter the subordinate parts from being directly or indirectly hurt, no bas-relief must exceed the projection thereof; which would not only make the cornice of no use, but endanger the figures themselves.
The figures of ancient bas-reliefs shoot commonly so much forward as to become almost round. But bas-relief being foundedon fiction, can only counterfeit reality; its perfection is well to imitate; and a natural mass is against its nature: if flat, it ought to appear projected, andvice versa. If this be true, it must of course be allowed that figures wholly round are inconsistent with it, and are to be considered as solid marble pillars built upon the theatre, whose aim is mere illusion; for art, as is said of tragedy, wins truth from fiction, and that by truth. To art we often owe charms superior to those of nature: a real garden and vegetating trees, on the stage, do not affect us so agreeably, as when well expressed by the imitating art. A rose ofVan Huisum, mallows ofVeerendal, bewitch us more than all the darlings of the most skilful gardener: the most enticing landscape, nay, even the charms of the Thessalian Tempe, would not, perhaps, affect us with that irresistible delight which, flowing fromDietrick’s pencil, enchants our senses and imagination.
By such instances we may safely form a judgment of the ancient bas-reliefs: the royal cabinet at Dresden is possessed of two eminent ones: a Bacchanal on a tomb, and a sacrifice to Priapus on a large marble vase.
The bas-relief claims a particular kind of sculpture; a method that few have succeeded in, of whichMatiellimay be an instance. The Emperor Charles VI. having ordered some models to be prepared by the most renowned artists, in bas-relief, intended for the spiral columns at the church of S. Charles Borromæo;Matielli, already famous, was principally thought of; but however refused the honour of so considerable a work, on account of the enormous bulk of his model, which requiring too great cavities, would have diminished the mass of the stone, and of course weakened the pillars.Maderwas the artist, whose models were universally applauded, and who by his admirable execution proved that he deservedthat preference. These bas-reliefs represent the story of the patron of this church.
It is in general to be observed, first, that this kind of sculpture admits not indifferently of every attitude and action; as for instance, of too strong projections of the legs. Secondly, That, besides disposing of the several modelled figures in well-ranged groupes, the diameter of every one ought to be applied to the bas-relief itself, by a lessened scale: as for instance, the diameter of a figure in the model being one foot, the profile of the same, according to its size, will be three inches, or less: the rounder a figure of that diameter, the greater the skill. Commonly the relief wants perspective, and thence arise most of its faults.
Though I proposed to make only a few remarks on the ancient bas-relief, I find myself, like a certain ancient Rhetor, almost under a necessity of being new-tuned. I have strayed beyond my limits; though at the same time I remembered that there is alaw among commentators, to content themselves with bare remarks on the contents of a treatise: and also sensible that I am writing a letter, not a book, I consider that I may draw some instructions for my own use,
——ut vineta egomet cædam mea,Hor.
——ut vineta egomet cædam mea,Hor.
——ut vineta egomet cædam mea,
Hor.
from some peoples impetuosity against the author; who, because they are hired for it, seem to think that writing is confined to them alone.
The Romans, though they worshipped the deity Terminus (the guardian God of limits and borders in general; and, if it please these gentlemen, of the limits in arts and sciences too), allowed nevertheless an universal unrestrained criticism: and the decisions of some Greeks and Romans, in matters of an art, which they did not practise, seem nevertheless authentick to our artists.
Nor can I find, that the keeper of the temple of peace at Rome, though possessed of the register of the pictures there, pretended to monopolize remarks and criticisms upon them; Pliny having described most of them.
Publica materies privati juris sit—Hor.
Publica materies privati juris sit—Hor.
Publica materies privati juris sit—
Hor.
’Tis to be wished, that, roused by a Pamphilus and an Apelles, artists would take up the pen themselves, in order to discover the mysteries of the art to those that know how to use them,
Ma di costor’, che à lavorar s’accingono,Quattro quinti, per Dio, non sanno leggere.Salvator Rosa, Sat. III.
Ma di costor’, che à lavorar s’accingono,Quattro quinti, per Dio, non sanno leggere.Salvator Rosa, Sat. III.
Ma di costor’, che à lavorar s’accingono,
Quattro quinti, per Dio, non sanno leggere.
Salvator Rosa, Sat. III.
Two or three of these are to be commended; the rest contented themselves with giving some historical accounts of the fraternity. But what could appear more auspicious to the improvement of the art, evenby the remotest posterity, than the work attempted by the united forces of the celebrated Pietro da Cortona[42]and Padre Ottonelli? Nevertheless this same treatise, except only a few historical remarks, and these too to be met with in an hundred books, seems good for nothing, but
Ne scombris tunicæ desint, piperique cuculli.Sectan. Sat.
Ne scombris tunicæ desint, piperique cuculli.Sectan. Sat.
Ne scombris tunicæ desint, piperique cuculli.
Sectan. Sat.
How trivial, how mean are the greatPoussin’s reflexions on painting, published by Bellori, and annexed to his life of that artist[43]?
Another digression!—let me now again resume the character of your Aristarchus.
You are bold enough to attack the authority ofBernini, and to challenge a man, the bare mention of whose name would do honour to any treatise. It wasBernini, you ought to recollect, Sir, who at the same age in which Michael Angelo performed hisStudiolo[44], viz. in his eighteenth year, produced his Daphne, as a convincing instance of his intimacy with the ancients, at an age in which perhaps the genius of Raphael was yet labouring under darkness and ignorance!
Berniniwas one of those favourites of nature, who produce at the same time vernal blossoms and autumnal fruits; and I think it by no means probable, that his studying nature in riper years misled either him or his disciples. The smoothness of his flesh was the result of that study, and imparted to the marble the highest possible degree of life and beauty. Indeed ’tis nature which endows art with life, and “vivifies forms,” as Socrates says[45], and Clito the sculptor allows. The great Lysippus, when askedwhich of his ancestors he had chosen for his master, replied, “None; but nature alone.” It is not to be denied, that the too close imitation of antiquity is very often apt to lead us to a certain barrenness, unknown to those who imitate nature: various herself, nature teaches variety, and no votary of her’s can be charged with a sameness: whereas Guido, Le Brun, and some other votaries of antiquity, repeated the same face in many of their works. A certain ideal beauty was become so familiar to them, as to slide into their figures even against their will.
But as for such an imitation of nature, as is quite regardless of antiquity, I am entirely of the author’s opinion; though I should have chosen other artists as instances of following nature in painting.
Jordanscertainly has not met with the regard due to his merit; let me appeal to an authority universally allowed. “There is,says Mr. d’Argenville, more expression and truth in Jordans, than even in Rubens.
“Truth is the basis and origin of perfection and beauty; nothing, of any kind whatever, can be beautiful or perfect, without being truly what it ought to be, without having all it ought to have.”
The solidity of this judgment presupposed,Jordans, according to Rochefoucault’s maxims, ought rather to be ranked among the greatest originals, than among the mimicks of common nature, whereRembrandtmay fill up his place, asRaouxorVatteauthat ofStella; though all these painters do nothing but what Euripides did before them; they draw manad vivum. There are no trifles, no meannesses in the art, and if we recollect of what use theCaricaturawas to Bernini, we should be cautious how we pass judgment even on the Dutch forms. That great genius, they say[46], owed to thismonster of the art, a distinction for which he was so eminent, the “Franchezza del Tocco.” When I reflect on this, I am forced to alter my former opinion of theCaricatura, so far as to believe that no artist ever acquired a perfection therein without gaining a farther improvement in the art itself. “It is, says the author, a peculiar distinction of the ancients to have gone beyond nature:” our artists do the same in theirCaricaturas: but of what avail to them are the voluminous works they have published on that branch of the art?
The author lays it down, in the peremptory style of a legislator, that “Precision of Contour can only be learned from the Greeks:” but our academies unanimously agree, that the ancients deviate from a strict Contour in the clavicles, arms, knees, &c. over which, in spite of apophyses and bones, they drew their skin as smooth as over mere flesh; whereas our academies teach to draw the bony and cartilaginousparts, more angularly, but the fat and fleshy ones more smooth, and carefully to avoid falling into the ancient style. Pray, Sir, can there be any error in the advices of academiesin corpore?
Parrhasiushimself, the father of Contour, was not, by Pliny’s account[47], master enough to hit the line by which completeness is distinguished from superfluity: shunning corpulency he fell into leanness: andZeuxis’s Contour was perhaps like that of Rubens, if it be true that, to augment the majesty of his figures, he drew with more completeness. His female figures he drew like those of Homer[48], of robust limbs: and does not even the tenderest of poets, Theocritus, draw his Helen as fleshy and tall[49]as the Venus of Raphael in the assembly of the gods in the little Farnese? Rubens then, for painting like Homer and Theocritus, needs no apology.
The character of Raphael, in the treatise, is drawn with truth and exactness: but well may we ask the author, as Antalcidas the Spartan asked a sophist, ready to burst forth in a panegyrick on Hercules, “Who blames him?” The beauties however of the Raphael at Dresden, especially the pretended ones of the Jesus, are still warmly disputed.