Chapter 5

Infelix operis summâ, quia ponere totum nescit.Hor.

Infelix operis summâ, quia ponere totum nescit.

Hor.

Design is as certainly the painter’s first, second, and third requisite, as action is that of the orator.

I readily allow the solidity of your remarks, concerning the “reliefs” of the ancients. In my treatise I myself charged them with a want of sufficient skill in perspective;and hence the faults in their reliefs.

The fourth point chiefly concernsAllegory.

In painting we commonly call fiction allegory: for, though imitation arises from the very principles of painting as well as of poetry, it constitutes, by itself, neither of them[192]. A picture, without allegory, is but a vulgar image, and resembles Davenant’s Gondibert, an epopée without fiction.

Colouring and design are to painting what metre and truth, or the fable, are to poetry; a body without soul. Poetry, says Aristotle, was first inspired with its soul, with fiction, by Homer; and with that the painter must animate his work. Design and colouring are the fruits of attention and practice: perspective and composition, in the strictest sense, are established on fixed rules; they are of course but mechanical;and, if I may be allowed the expression, only mechanical souls are wanting to understand and to admire them.

Pleasures in general, save only those which rob the bulk of mankind of their invaluable treasure, time, become durable, and are free from tediousness and disgust, in proportion as they engage our intellectual faculties. Mere sensual sentiments soon languish; they do not influence our reason: such is the delight we take in the common landscape, flower, and fruit paintings: the artist, in performing them, thinks but very little; and the connoisseur, in considering them, thinks no more.

A mere history-piece differs from a landscape only in the object: in the former you draw facts and persons, in the latter, sky, land, seas, &c. both, of course, being founded on the same principle, imitation, are essentially but of one kind.

If it be not a contradiction to stretch the limits of painting, as far as those of poetry,and consequently, to allow the painter the same ability of elevating himself to the pitch of the poet as the musician enjoys; it is clear that history, though the sublimest branch of painting, cannot raise itself to the heighths of tragick or epick poetry, by imitation alone.

Homer, as Cicero tells us[193], has transformed man into God: which is to say; he not only exceeded truth, but, to raise his fiction, preferred even the impossible, if probable, to the barely possible[194]. In this Aristotle fixes the very essence of poetry, and tells us that the pictures of Zeuxis had that characteristick. The possibility and truth, which Longinus requires of the painter, as opposites to absurdity in poetry, are not contradictory to this rule.

This heighth the history-painter cannot reach, only by a contour above common nature, or a noble expression of the passions:for these are requisite in a good portrait-painter, who is able to execute them without diminishing the likeness of his model. They are but imitation, only prudently managed. The heads of Vandyke are charged with too exact an observation of nature; an exactness that would be faulty in a history-piece.

Truth, lovely as it is in itself, charms more, penetrates deeper, when invested with fiction: fable, in its strictest sense, is the delight of childhood; allegory that of riper years. And the old opinion, that poetry was of earlier date than prose, as unanimously attested by the annals of different people, makes it evident, that even in the most barbarous times, truth was preferred, when appearing in this dress.

Our understanding, moreover, labours under the fault of bestowing its attention chiefly on things, whose beauties are not to be perceived at first sight, and of inadvertently slighting others, because clear as day: imagesof this kind, like a ship on the waves, leave but momentary traces in our memory. Hence the ideas of our childhood are the most permanent, because every common occurrence then seems extraordinary. Thus, if nature herself instructs us, that she is not to be moved by common things, let art, as the Orator, ad Herennium, advises us, follow her dictates.

Every idea increases in strength, if accompanied by another or more ideas, as in comparisons; and the more still as they differ in kind: for ideas, too analogous to each other, do not strike: as for instance, a white skin compared to snow. Hence the power of discovering a similarity, in the most different things, is what we commonly call wit; Aristotle, “unexpected ideas”: and these he requires in an orator[195]. The more you are surprized by a picture, the more you are affected; and both those effectsare to be obtained by allegory, like to fruit hid beneath leaves and branches, which when found surprizes the more agreeably, the less it was thought of. The smallest composition is susceptible of the sublimest powers of art: all depends upon the idea.

Necessity first taught the artists to use allegory. No doubt, they began with the representation of single objects of one class: but as they improved, they attempted to express what was common to many particulars;i. e.general ideas. All the qualities of single objects afford such ideas: but to become general, and at the same time sensible, they cannot preserve the particular shape of such or such an object, but must be submitted to another shape, essential to that object, but a general one.

The Egyptians were the first, who went in search of images of that kind. Such were their hieroglyphicks. All the deities of antiquity, especially those of Greece, nay, their very names, were originallyEgyptian[196]. Their personal theology was quite allegorical; and so is ours. But the symbols of these inventors, partly preserved by the Greeks, were often so mysteriously arbitrary, as to make it altogether impossible to find out their meaning, even by the help of those authors that are still extant; and such a discovery was looked upon as a nefarious profanation[197]. Thus sacredly mysterious was the pomegranate[198]in the hand of the Samian Juno: and to divulge the Eleusinian rites, was thought worse than the robbery of a temple[199].

The relation of the sign to the thing signified, was in some measure founded on the known or pretended qualities of the latter. The Egyptian Horsemarten was of that kind; an image of the sun, because his species wassaid to have no female, and to live six months under and six above ground[200]. In like manner the cat, being supposed to bring forth a number of kittens equal to that of the days in a month, became the symbol of Isis, or the moon[201].

The Greeks, on the contrary, endowed with more wit, and undoubtedly with more sensibility, made use of no signs but such as had a true relation to the thing signified, or were most agreeable to the senses: all their deities they invested with human forms[202]. Wings, among the Egyptians, were the symbol of eager and effectual services; a symbol conformable to their nature, and continued by the Greeks: and if the AttickVictoriahad none, it was meant to signify, that she had chosen Athens for herabode[203]. A goose, among the Egyptians, was the symbol of a cautious leader; in consequence of which the prows of their ships were formed like geese[204]. This the Greeks preserved also, and the ancientRostrumresembled the neck of a goose[205].

Of all the figures, whose relation to their intended meaning is somewhat obscure, the Sphinx perhaps alone was continued by the Greeks. Placed in the front of a temple, it was, among the Greeks, almost as instructive, as it was significant among the Egyptians[206]. The Greek Sphinx was winged[207], its head bare, without that stole which it wears on some Attick coins[208].

It was in general a characteristic of the Greeks, to mark their productions with a certain chearfulness: the muses love not hideous phantoms: and Homer himself, when by the mouth of some god he cites an Egyptian allegory, always cautiously begins with “We are told.” Nay, the elder Pampho[209], though he exceeds the Egyptian oddities, by his description of Jupiter wrapt up in horse-dung, approaches nevertheless the sublime idea of the English poet:

As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,As the rapt seraph, that adores and burns.Pope.

As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;

As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,

As the rapt seraph, that adores and burns.

Pope.

It will be no easy matter to find, among the old Greek coins, an image like that of a snake encircling an egg[210], on a Syrian coin of the third century. None of their monumentsare marked with any thing ghastly: of these they were, if possible, still more cautious than of ill-omen’d words. The image of death is not to be seen, perhaps, but on one gem[211], and that in the shape commonly exhibited at their feasts[212];viz.dancing to a flute, with intent to make them enjoy the present pleasures of life, by reminding them of its shortness. On another gem[213], with a Roman inscription, there is a skeleton, with two butterflies as images of the soul, one of which is caught by a bird; a pretended symbol of the metempsychosis: but the performance is of latter times.

It has been likewise observed, that[214]among those myriads of altars, sacred even to the most whimsical deities, there never was one set apart to death; save only on the solitarycoasts, which were deemed the borders of the world[215].

The Romans, in their best times, thought like the Greeks; and always, in adopting the iconology of a foreign nation, traced the footsteps of these their masters. An elephant, one of the latter mysterious symbols of the Egyptians[216](for there is on the most ancient monuments neither elephant[217]nor hart, ostrich nor cock, to be found), was the image of different things[218], and perhaps of eternity, as on some Roman[219]coins, because of his longevity. But on a coin of the emperor Antoninus, this animal, with the inscription,MUNIFICENTIA, cannot possibly hint at any other thing but the grand games, the magnificence of which was augmented by those animals.

But it is no more my design to attempt an inquiry into the origin of every allegorical symbol among the Greeks and Romans, than to write a system of allegory. All I propose is, to defend what I have advanced concerning it, and at the same time to direct the artist to the images of those ancients, in preference to the iconologies and ill-judged symbols of some moderns.

We may, from a little specimen, form a judgment of the turn of mind of those ancients, and of the possibility of subjecting abstracted ideas to the senses. The symbols of many a gem, coin, and monument, enjoy their fixed and universally received interpretation; but some of the most memorable, not yet brought to a proper standard, deserve a nearer determination.

Perhaps the allegory of the ancients might be divided, like painting and poetry in general, into two classes,viz.thesublime, and themore vulgar. Symbols of the one might be those by which some mythologicalor philosophical allusion, or even some unknown or mysterious rite, is expressed.

Such as are more commonly understood,viz.personified virtues, vices,&c.might be referred to the other.

The images of the former give to performances of the art the true epick grandeur: one single figure is sufficient to give it: the more it contains, the sublimer it is: the more it engages our attention, the deeper it penetrates, and we of course feel it the more.

The ancients, in order to represent a child dying in his bloom, painted him carried off by Aurora[220]: a striking image! taken, perhaps, from the custom of burying youths at day-break. The ideas of the bulk of our artists, in this respect, are too trivial to be mentioned here.

The animation of the body, one of the most abstracted ideas, was represented bythe loveliest, most poetical images. An artist, who should imagine he could express this idea by the Mosaick creation, would be mistaken; for his image would be merely historical, and nothing but the creation of Adam: a history altogether too sacred for being either admitted as the allegory of a mere philosophical idea, or into every place: neither does it seem poetical enough for the flights of the art. This idea appears on coins and gems[221], as described by the most ancient poets and philosophers: Prometheus forming a man of that clay, of which large petrified heaps were found in Phocis in the time of Pausanias[222]; and Minerva holding a butterfly, as an image of the soul, over his head. The snake encircling a tree behind Minerva, on the above coin of Antoninus Pius, is a supposed symbol of his prudence and sagacity.

It cannot be denied that the meaning of many an ancient allegory is merely conjectural, and therefore not to be applied on every occasion. A child catching a butterfly on an altar was pretended to signifyAmicitia ad aras, or, “which is not to exceed the borders of justice[223].” On another gem, Love, endeavouring to pull off the branch of an old tree, where a nightingale is perching, is said to allegorize love of wisdom[224].Eros,Himeros, andPathos, the symbols of Love, Appetite, and Desire, are represented, they say[225], on a gem, encompassing the sacred fire on an altar; Love behind the fire, his head only over-reaching the flames; Appetite and Desire on both sides of the altar; Appetite with one hand only in the fire, with the other holding a garland; Desire with both his hands in the flames. AVictoriacrowning an anchor, on a coin of king Seleucus, was formerly regardedas an image of peace and security procured by victory, till by the help of history we have been enabled to give it its true interpretation. Seleucus is said to have been born with a mark resembling an anchor[226], which not only he himself, but all his descendants, the Seleucidæ, have preserved on their coins[227].

There is another Victoria with butterfly’s wings[228], fastened on a trophy. This, they say, is the symbol of a hero, who, like Epaminondas, died in the very act of conquering. At Athens such a statue[229], and an altar to an unwinged Victoria, was the symbol of their perpetual success in battle: ours may admit of the same explication as Mars in chains at Sparta[230]. Nor was she, as I presume, provided at random with wings usually given to Psyche, her own beingthose of an eagle: they perhaps signify the soul of the deceased: however, all these conjectures might be tolerable, if a Victoria fastened on trophies of conquered enemies could reasonably correspond with their being vanquished.

Indeed the sublimer allegory of the ancients has not been transmitted to us, without the loss of its most valuable treasures: it is poor, when compared with the second kind, which is often provided with several symbols for one idea. Two different ones, signifying the happiness of the times, are expressed on coins of the emperor Commodus: the one a lady[231], sitting with an apple or ball in her right, and a dial in her left hand, beneath a leafy tree: three children are before her, two in a vase or flower-pot, the usual symbol of fertility: the other represents four children, who, as is clear by the things they bear, are the seasons. Both have the subscriptionFELICITAS TEMPORVM.

But these, and all the symbols that want inscriptions, are of a lower rank; and some of them might as well be taken for signs of different ideas. Hope[232]and Fertility[233], for instance, might be Ceres, Nobility[234], Minerva. Patience[235], on a coin of Aurelian, wants her true characteristick, as does Erato; and the Parcæ[236]are only by their garments distinguished from the Graces. On the contrary, ideas which are often confounded in morality, as Justice and Equity, are extremely well distinguished by the ancients. The former is represented, as drawn byGellius[237], with a stern look, a diadem, and dressed hair[238]; the latter with a mild countenance, and waving ringlets; ears of corn arising from her balance, as symbols of the advantagesof equity; and sometimes she holds in her other hand[239]a cornu-copia.

Peace, on a coin of the emperor Titus, is to be ranked among those of a more energetick expression. The goddess of Peace leans on a pillar with her left arm, in the hand of which she holds the branch of an olive-tree, whilst the other waves the caduceus over the thigh of a victim on a little altar, which hints at the bloodless sacrifices of that goddess: the victims were slaughtered out of the temple, and nothing but the thighs were offered at the altar, which was not to be stained with blood.

Peace usually appears with the olive-branch and the caduceus, as on another coin of this emperor[240]; or on a stool placed on a heap of arms, as on a coin of Drusus[241]. On some of Tiberius’s and Vespasian’s coins[242]Peace appears in the act of burning arms.

On a coin of the Emperor Philip there is a noble image; a sleeping Victory: which, with better reason, may be taken for the symbol of confidence in conquest, than for that in the security of the world as the inscription pretends. Of an analogous idea was the picture, by which the Athenian General Timotheus was ridiculed, for the blind luck with which he obtained his victories: he was represented asleep, with Fortune catching Towns in her Net[243].

The Nile, with his sixteen children, is of this same class[244]. The child that reaches the ears of corn, and the fruits, in his Cornu, is the symbol of the highest fertility; but those that over-reach them are signs of miscarrying seasons. Pliny explains the whole[245]. Egypt is at the height of its fertility, when the Nile rises sixteen feet: but if it either falls short of, or exceeds thatmeasure, it equally blasts the land with unfruitfulness. Rossi, in his collection, neglected the children.

Satyrical pictures belong also to this class: the Ass of Gabrias, for instance[246], which imagines itself worshipped by the people, as they bow to the statue of Isis on its back. It is impossible to give a livelier image of the pride of the Vulgar-Great.

The sublimer allegory might be supplied by the lower class, had it not met with the same fate. We are, for instance, not acquainted with the figure of Eloquence, orPeitho; or that of the Goddess of Comfort,Parergon, represented by Praxiteles, as Pausanias tells us[247]. Oblivion had an altar among the Romans[248], and perhaps a figure: as may also be supposed of Chastity, whosealtar is to be found on coins[249]; and of Fear, to which Theseus offered sacrifices[250].

However, the remains of ancient allegory are not yet worn out: there are still many secret stores: the poets, and other monuments of antiquity, afford numbers of beautiful images. Those, who in our time, and that of our fathers, were busy in improving allegory, and in facilitating the endeavours of the artists; those, I say, should reasonably have had recourse to so rich and pure a fountain. But there was an epoch to appear, in which a shocking croud of pedants should, with downright madness, conspire in an universal uproar against every the lead glimpse of good taste. Nature, in their eyes, was puerile, and ought to be fashioned: blockheads, both young and old, vied in painting devices and emblems, for the benefit of artists, philosophers, and divines; and woe to him who made a compliment, withoutdressing it up in an emblem! Symbols void of sense were illustrated with inscriptions, giving an account of what they meant, and meant not: these are the treasures which are dug for, even in our times, and which, being then in high fashion, out-shone all antiquity had left.

The ancients, for instance, represented Munificence by a woman holding a Cornucopia in one hand, and the table of the Roman Congiarium in the other[251]: an image which looked too parsimonious for modern liberality; another therefore was contrived[252], with two horns; one of them inverted, the better to pour out its contents; an eagle, the meaning of which is too hard for me to guess at, was set upon her head; others painted her with a pot in each hand[253]. Eternity was, by the ancients, drawn eithersitting on a Globe, or rather Sphere[254], with a Hasta in her hand; or standing[255], with the Sphere in one hand, and the Hasta in the other; or with the Sphere in her hand, and no Hasta; or else covered with a floating Veil[256]. These are the images of Eternity on the coins of the Empress Faustina: but there was not gravity enough in them for the modern artists. Eternity, so frightful to many, required a frightful image[257]; a form female down to the breast, with Globes in each hand; the rest of the Body a circling star-marked Snake turning into itself.

Providence very often has a Globe at her feet, and a Hasta in her left hand[258]. On a coin of the Emperor Pertinax[259], she stretches out both her hands, towards a Globe fallingfrom the clouds. A female figure, with two heads, seemed more expressive to the moderns[260].

Constancy, on some of Claudius’s coins[261], is either fitting or standing, with a Helmet on her head, and a Hasta in her left hand; or without Helmet and Hasta, but always with a finger pointing to her face, as if closely debating some point. For distinction sake the moderns joined a couple of pillars[262].

It is very probable, that Ripa was often at a loss with his own figures. Chastity, in his Iconology, holds in one hand a Whip[263], (a strange incitement to virtue) in the other a Sieve: The first inventor, perhaps, hinted at Tuccia the vestal; which Ripa not remembring, indulges the most absurd whims, not worth repeating.

By thus contrasting ancient and modern allegory, I mean not to divert our times of their right of settling new allegories: but from the different manners of thinking, I shall draw some rules, for those that are to tread these paths.

The character of noble simplicity was the chief aim of the Greeks and Romans: of which Romeyn de Hooghe has given the very contrast. His book, in general, may very fitly be compared to the elm in Virgil’s hell:

Hanc sedem somnia vulgoVana tenere ferunt, foliisque sub omnibus hærent.Æn. VI.

Hanc sedem somnia vulgo

Vana tenere ferunt, foliisque sub omnibus hærent.

Æn. VI.

The distinctness of the ancient allegory was owing to the individuation of its images. Their rule, (if we except only a few of those above-mentioned), was to avoid every ambiguity; a rule slightly observed by the moderns: the Hart, for instance, symbolizing[264]baptism, revenge, remorse, and flattery; the Cedar, a preacher, worldly vanities, a scholar, and a woman dying in the pangs of child-birth.

That simplicity and distinctness were always accompanied by a certain decency. A hog signifying, among the Egyptians, a scrutator of mysteries[265], together with all the swine of Cæsar Ripa and some of the moderns, would have been thought, by the Greeks, too indecent a symbol of any thing whatever: save only where that animal made part of the arms of a place, as it appears to be on the Eleusinian coins[266].

The last rule of the ancients was to beware of signs too near a-kin to the thing signified. Let the young allegorist observe these rules, and study them, jointly with mythology, and the remotest history.

Indeed some modern allegories, (if those ought to be called modern that are entirelyin the taste of antiquity), may perhaps be compared with the sublimer class of the ancient.

Two brothers of the Barbarigo-family, immediately succeeding each other[267], in the dignity of Doge of Venice, are allegorized by Castor and Pollux[268]; one of whom, as the fable tells us, gave the other part of that immortality which Jupiter had conferred on him alone. Pollux, in the allegory, presents his brother, represented by a skull, with a circling snake, as the symbol of eternity; on the reverie of a fictitious coin, beneath the described figures, there drops a broken branch from a tree, with the Virgilian inscription,

Primo avulso non deficit alter.

Another idea on one of Lewis XIVth’scoins, is as worthy of notice; being struck[269]on occasion of the Duke of Lorrain’s quiting his dominions, after the surrender of Marsal, for having betrayed both the French and Austrian courts. The Duke is Proteus overcome by the arts of Menelaus, and bound, after having, in vain, tried all his different forms. At a distance the conquered citadel is to be seen, and the year of its surrender marked in the inscription. There was no occasion for the superfluous epigraph:Protei Artes delusæ.

Patience, or rather a longing earnest desire[270], represented by a female figure, with folded hands, gazing on a watch, is a very good image of the lower class. It must indeed be owned, that the inventors of the most picturesque allegories have contented themselves with the remains of antiquity; none having been authorised to establishimages of their own fancy, for the general imitation of the artists. Neither has any attempt of latter times deferred the honour: for in the whole Iconology of Ripa, of two or three that are tolerable ones,

Nantes in gurgite vasto;

an Ethiopian washing himself, as an allusion to labour lost[271], is perhaps the best. There are indeed images, and useful hints, dispersed in some books of greater note, (as for instance, The Temple of Stupidity in the Spectator[272],) which ought to be collected, and made more general. Thus, were the treasures of science joined to those of art, the time might come, when a painter would be able to represent an ode, as well as a tragedy.

I shall myself submit to the publick some images: for rules instruct, but examples still more. Friendship, I find every wherepitifully represented, and its emblems are not worth mentioning: their flying scribbled labels shew us the depth of their inventors.

This noblest of human virtues I would paint in the figures of those two immortal friends of heroic times, Theseus and Pirithous. The head of the former is said to be on gems[273]: he likewise appears with the club[274]won from Periphetes, a son of Vulcan, on a gem of Philemon. Theseus consequently might be drawn with some resemblance. Friendship, at the brink of danger, might be taken from the idea of an old picture at Delphos, as described by Pausanias[275]. Theseus was painted in the action of defending himself and his friend against the Thesprotians, with his own sword in one hand, and another drawn from the side of his friend, in the other. The beginning of their friendship, as described byPlutarch[276], might also be an image of that idea. I am astonished not to have met, among the emblems of the great men of the Barbarigo-family, with an image of a good man and eternal friend. Such was Nicolas Barbarigo, who contracted with Marco Trivisano a friendship worthy of immortality;

Monumentum ære perennius:

a little rare treatise alone has preserved their memory[277].

A little hint of Plutarch’s might furnish an image of Ambition: he mentions[278]the sacrifices of Honour, as being performed bareheaded, whereas all other sacrifices, save only those of Saturn[279], were offered with covered heads. This custom he believes tohave taken its rise from the usual salutation in society; though it may as well bevice versa: perhaps it sprung from the Pelasgian rites[280], which were performed bareheaded. Honour is likewise represented by a female figure, crowned with laurels, aCornucopiaandHastain her hands[281]. Accompanied by Virtue, a male figure with a helmet, she is to be found on a coin of Vitellius[282]: and the heads of both on those of Gordian and Galien[283].

Prayers might be personified from an idea of Homer. Phœnix, the tutor of Achilles, endeavouring to reconcile him to the Greeks, makes use of an allegory. “Know Achilles, says he, that prayers are the daughters of Zeus[284]; they are bent with kneeling; their faces sorrowful and wrinkled, witheyes lifted up to heaven. They follow Ate; who, with a bold and haughty mien marches on, and, light of foot as she is, runs over all the world, to seize and torment mankind; for ever endeavouring to escape the Prayers, who incessantly press upon her footsteps, in order to heal those whom she hath hurt. Whoever honours these daughters of Zeus, on their approach, may obtain much good from them; but meeting with repulse, they pray their fire to punish by Ate the hard-hearted wretch.”

The following well-known old fable might also furnish a new image. Salmacis, and the youth beloved by her, were changed to a fountain, unmanning to such a degree, that

Quisquis in hos fontes vir venerit, exeat indeSemivir: & tactis subito mollescat in undis,Ovid. Metam. L. IV.

Quisquis in hos fontes vir venerit, exeat inde

Semivir: & tactis subito mollescat in undis,

Ovid. Metam. L. IV.

The fountain was near Halicarnassus in Caria. Vitruvius[285]thought he had discovered the truth of that fiction: some inhabitants of Argos and Trœzene, says he, going thither with a mind to settle, dispossessed the Carians and Leleges; who, sheltering themselves among the mountains, began to harass the Greeks with their excursions: but one of the inhabitants having discovered some particular qualities in that fountain, erected a building near it, for the convenience of those who had a mind to make use of its water. Greeks and Barbarians mingled there; and these at length, accustomed to the Greek civility, lost their savageness, and were insensibly moulded into another nature. The fable itself is well known to the artists: but the narrative of Vitruvius might instruct them how to draw the allegory of a people taught humanity and civilised, like the Russians by Peterthe First. The fable of Orpheus might serve the same purpose. Expression only must decide the choice.

Supposing the above general observations upon allegory insufficient to evince its necessity in painting, the examples will at least demonstrate, that painting reaches beyond the senses.

The two chief performances in allegorical painting, mentioned in my treatise, viz. the Luxemburg gallery, and the cupola of the Imperial Library at Vienna, may shew how poetical, how happy an use their authors made of allegory.

Rubens proposing to paint Henry IV. as a humane victor, with lenity and goodness prevailing, even in the punishment of unnatural rebels, and treacherous banditti, represents him as Jupiter ordering the gods to overthrow and punish the vices: Apollo and Minerva let fly their darts upon them, and the vices, hideous monsters, in a tumultuous uproar tumble over each other:Mars, entering in a fury, threatens total destruction; but Venus, image of celestial love, gently lays hold of his arm:—you fancy you hear her blandishing petition to themailedgod: “rage not with cruel revenge against the vices—they are punished.”

The whole performance of Daniel Gran[286]is an allegory, relative to the Imperial Library, and all its figures are as the branches of one single tree. ’Tis a painted Epopee, not beginning from the eggs of Leda; but, as Homer chiefly rehearses the anger of Achilles, this immortalizes only the Emperor’s care of the sciences. The preparations for the building of the library are represented in the following manner:

Imperial majesty appears as a lady fitting, her head sumptuously dressed, and on her breast a golden heart, as a symbol of the Emperor’s generosity. With her sceptre thegives the summons to the builders; at her feet sits a genius with an angle, palette, and chissel; another hovers over her with the figures of the Graces, as symbols of that good taste which prevailed in the whole. Next to the chief figure sits general Liberality, with a purse in her hand; below her a genius, with the table of the Roman Congiarius, and behind her the Austrian Liberality, her mantle embroidered with larks. Several Genii gather the treasures that flow from her Cornucopia, in order to distribute them among the votaries of the arts and sciences, chiefly those, whose good offices to the library had entitled them to regard. The execution of the Imperial orders personified, directs her face to the commanding figure, and three children present the model of the house. Next her an old man, the image of Experience, measures on a table the plan of the building, a genius standing beneath him with a plummet, as ready to begin. Next the old man sitsInvention, with a statue of Isis in her right, and a book in her left hand, signifying, that Nature and Science are the fathers of Invention, the puzzling schemes of which are represented by a Sphinx lying before her.

This performance was compared to the great platfond of Le Moine at Versailles, with an eye to the newest productions of France and Germany alone: for the great gallery of the same palace, painted by Charles le Brun, is, without doubt, the sublimest performance of poetick painting, since the time of Rubens; and being possessed of this, as well as of the gallery of Luxemburg, France may boast of the two most learned allegorical performances.

The gallery of Le Brun contains the history of Louis XIV. from the Pyrenæan peace, to that of Nimeguen, in nine large, and eighteen smaller pieces: that in which the King determines war against Holland, contains, in itself alone, an ingenious and sublime application of almost the wholemythology[287]: its beauties are too exuberant for this treatise; let the artist’s ideas be judged only by two of the smaller compositions. He represents the famous passage over the Rhine: his hero sits in a chariot, a thunderbolt in his hand, and Hercules, the image of heroism, drives him through the midst of tempestuous waves. The figure representing Spain is borne down by the current: the river god, aghast, lets fall his oar: the victories, approaching on rapid wings, present shields, marked with the names of the towns conquered after the passage. Europa astonished beholds the scene.

Another represents the conclusion of the peace. Holland, though with-held by the Imperial Eagle, snatching her robe, runs to meet peace, descending from heaven, surrounded by the Genii of gaiety and pleasure, scattering flowers all around her. Vanity,crowned with peacocks feathers; endeavours to with-hold Spain and Germany from following their associate: but perceiving the cavern where arms are forged for France and Holland, and hearing same threatening in the skies, they likewise follow her example. Is not the former of these two performances comparable, in sublimity, to the Neptune of Homer, and the strides of his immortal horses?

But let examples be never so striking, allegory will still have adversaries: they rose in times of old, against that of Homer himself. There are people of too delicate a conscience, to bear truth and fiction in one piece: they are scandalized at a poor river-god in some sacred story. Poussin met with their reproaches, for personifying the Nile in his Moses[288]. A still strongerparty has declared against the obscurity of allegory; for which they censured, and still continue to censure, Le Brun. But who is there so little experienced as not to know, that perspicuity and obscurity depend often upon time and circumstances? When Phidias first added a tortoise[289]to his Venus, ’tis likely that few were acquainted with his design in it, and bold was the artist who first dared to fetter her: time, however, made the meaning as clear as the figures themselves. Allegory, as Plato says[290]of poetry in general, has something enigmatick in itself, and is not calculated for the bulk of mankind. And should the painter, from the fear of being obscure, adapt his performance to the capacity of those, who look upon a picture as upon a tumultuous mob, he might as well check every new and extraordinary idea. The design of the famous Fred. Barocci, in his Martyrdom of St. Vitalis,by drawing a little girl alluring a magpye with a cherry, must have been very mysterious to many; the cherry[291]alluding to the season, in which that saint suffered.

The painting of the greater machines, and of the larger parts of publick buildings, palaces, &c. ought to be allegorical. Grandeur is relative to grandeur; and heroick actions are not to be sung in elegiack strains. But is every fiction allegorical in every place? The Venetian Doge might as well pretend to enjoy his superiority inTerra firma. I am mistaken if the Farnesian gallery is to be ranked among the allegorical performances. Nevertheless Annibal, perhaps not having it in his power to choose his subject, may have been too roughly used in my treatise: it is known that the Duke of Orleansdesired Coypel to paint in his gallery the history of Æneas[292].

The Neptune of Rubens[293], in the gallery at Dresden, painted on purpose to adorn the magnificent entry of the Infant Ferdinand of Spain into Antwerp, as governor of the Netherlands, was there, on a triumphal arch, allegorical[294]. The god of the ocean frowning his waves into peace, was a poetick image of the Princes escaping the storm, and arriving safe at Genoa. But now he is nothing more than the Neptune of Virgil.

Vasari, when pretending to find allegory in the Athenian school of Raphael[295],viz.a companion of philosophy and astronomy with theology, seems to have required, and, by the common opinion of his time, to have been authorised to require somethinggrand and above the vulgar, in the decorations of a grand apartment: though indeed there be nothing but what is obvious at first look, and that is, a representation of the Athenian academy[296].

But in ancient times, there was no story in a temple, that was not, at the same time, allegorical; allegory being closely interwoven with mythology: the gods of Homer, says an ancient, are the most lively images of the different powers of the universe; shadows of elevated ideas: and the gallantries of Jupiter and Juno, in the platfond of a temple of that goddess at Samos, were looked on as such; air being represented by Jupiter, and earth by Juno[297].

Here I think it incumbent upon me to clear up what I have said concerning the contradictions in the character of the Athenians, as represented by Parrhasius. Thisyou think an easy matter; the painter having done it either in the historical way, or in several pictures: which latter is absurd. Has not there been even a statue of that people, done by Leochares, as well as a temple[298]? The composition of the picture in question, has still eluded all probable conjectures[299]; and the help of allegory having been called in, has produced nothing but Tesoro’s[300]ghastly phantoms. This fatal picture of Parrhasius, I am afraid, will of itself be a perpetual instance of the superior skill of the ancients in allegory.

What has been said already of allegory, in general, contains likewise what remarks may be made upon its being applied to decorations; nevertheless as you insist upon that point particularly, I shall lightly mention it too.

There are two chief laws in decoration,viz. to adorn suitably to the nature of things and places, and with truth; and not to follow an arbitrary fancy.

The first, as it concerns the artists in general, and dictates to them the adjusting of things in such a manner, as to make them relative to each other, claims especially a strict propriety in decorations:

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