THE METHOD OF FIXING A STANDARD AND DEFINING THE PROPORTIONSOF THE HUMAN FRAME,WITH DIRECTIONS TO THE STUDENT IN COPYING THE LIFE.
Themethods of fixing a standard and defining the proportions of the human frame, are eitheranalyticorsynthetic, from the whole to the parts, or from the parts to the whole, and have been promiscuously adopted. The human is the measure of perfection in Vitruvius; he applies its rules to architecture, and indeed to every object of taste.
The length of human proportion in Vitruvius, measured by a perpendicular, or a horizontal, from the middle finger points of both arms extended, is ten heads, the head measured from the chin to the hair-roots of the front; and eight if the head be measured from the extremity of the chin to the vertex of the crown. Three is the favourite number by which the theorists of proportion have divided the humanstructure, as containing a beginning, a middle, and an end; and Pliny observes that we attain the half of our growth in the third year. The body, as well as all its members, consists of three main parts, which correspond with each other, in the same proportion as the parts of the subordinate members among themselves: the head and body are in the same unison of measure with the thighs and legs, as the thighs with the legs and feet, or the upper part of the arm to the elbow and the hand. Thus the face is divided into three parts, or three times the length of the nose: never into four, as some have imagined; for the upper part of the head, from the hair-roots on the front to the top, measured perpendicularly, has only three-fourths of the nose length, or is in proportion to the nose as nine to twelve.
The rules of proportion originated, probably, with sculpture, but in the progress of art received their final determination from the painter: this is the praise of Parrhasius, and Praxiteles applied to Nicias for the ultimate decision and refinement of his forms. The foot was the main medium of ancient measurement; and six feet, according to Vitruvius, became themeasured length of proportion for their statues. Measure is the method of ascertaining an unknown quantity from a known one; and the proportion of the foot is subject to less variation than the head or face. Lomazzo, when he makes the foot of Hercules the seventh part of his length, and fixes ten faces as the standard of ancient proportion for a Venus, nine for a Juno, and eight for Neptune, talked from fancy, and relied on the credulity of his reader.
This relation of the foot to the whole fabric, as established by Nature, the ancients regulated according to ideal or divine, and human or characteristic proportions. Of the Apollo, whose height is somewhat more than seven heads, the standing foot is three inches of a Roman palm longer than the head. The Medicean Venus, however 'suelt,' however small her head, has in length no more than seven heads and a half; and yet her foot measures a palm and a half, and the whole height of the figure six palms and a half.
Of such observations on proportion it would be easier to continue a long series than to make them intelligible or useful without actual demonstration or figures. From Vitruvius withhis commentators, and Lionardo da Vinci, to Albert Durer, Lomazzo, and Jerome Cardan, from the corrected measurements of Du Fresnoy and De Piles, to Watelet, Winkelman, and Lavater, it would be easy to show that the mass of variance, peculiarity, and contradiction, greatly overbalances the coincidence of experiment and measure. "The descriptions of the proportions of the human frame," says Mengs, "are infinite, but seldom agree among themselves. Some are too obscure to give the artist a clear idea; some have too much limited the combinations which might produce, or are capable of, proportions homogeneously uniform: others, on the contrary, have, like Albert Durer, displayed a great quantity and variety of proportions, to little purpose for any one who should not choose to imitate his taste. The ordinary method is that of dividing the figure into a fixed number of heads or faces; but this division is of more use to the sculptor than the painter, who never can see the just size of the head, because perspective hides at least a third of the upper fourth; nor does the breadth of the limbs, in painting, admit ofsculpture measure, as they would appear meagre and scanty on a flat surface, in comparison of the mass they circumscribe in perspective; because the habit of looking at objects with both eyes swells their mass beyond its just diameter, in reality as well as in sculpture. This difference of limbs the ancients observed in their best basso-relievoes; they exceed in volume the limbs of their statues. Such are the forms of the sacrificing group in the gardens of the Medicean Villa at Rome, represented in the Admiranda of Santes Bartoli, and imitated by Raffaello in the Cartoon of the Sacrifice at Lystra."
The painter is infinitely more in want of variety than the sculptor, and consequently cannot submit to the same restriction of rule. Raffaello, who in a certain sense did no more than multiply the antique style of the second order, uniting it with a certain air of truth not within the reach of sculpture, whether from rule or taste, made use of every kind of proportion without a seeming predilection for any. There are figures of his which have little more than six heads and a half: such as the St.Peter in the Cartoon of the Temple Gate; a proportion insufferable in any other painter but Raffaello.
It is reasonable to suppose, that in endeavouring to form a standard or a canon of proportion for the human figure, the Greeks began with the head, its form, its position, the manner in which it is attached to the trunk; they found that man alone carries his head erect, and that thence he derives a face and a countenance. Of all the brute creation, what is called the head is only an extremity of the horizontal body, whose under parts are shoved forward to seek food or seize prey; front and upper part are driven back, are shortened, and, in more than one genus, hardly perceivable. The more the brute is raised before and erects the neck, the more it gains variety of aspect; still it hangs forward, an appendix to the trunk: it cannot be properly said to have a head; the etymology of the word implies an erect position. A head, strictly speaking, is the prerogative of man, formed beneath a skull which rounds the forehead and determines the face. The more the front recedes and inclines to the horizontal, so much the nearer a headapproaches the form of a brute; the more it inclines to the perpendicular, the more it gains of man. This observation has been demonstrated in the least fallible manner by Camper, the anatomist, who, by a contrivance equally ingenious and unequivocal, appears to have ascertained, not only the difference of thefacealline in animals, but that which discriminates nations. Placing the skull or head to be measured into a kind of sash or frame, pierced at equidistant intervals to admit the plummet and horizontal and perpendicular threads, he draws a straight line from the aperture of the ear to the under part of the nose, and another from the utmost projection of the frontal bone to the most prominent part of the upper jaw. The whole is divided into ninety or even one hundred degrees, from the actual maximum and minimum of Nature to those of Art. Birds describe the smallest angles, which widen in proportion as the animal approaches the human form: the heads of apes reach from forty-two to fifty degrees, which last approaches man. The Negro and Kalmuck reach seventy, the European eighty; the ancient Roman artists ascended to ninety-five, the Greeks raisedthe idealfrom ninetyto one hundred degrees. What goes beyond this line becomes portentous; the head appears misshapen, and assumes the appearance of a hydrocephalus. It is the limit set by Art, and established on this physical principle: that the more the form of the head reclines to the horizontal or overshoots the given perpendicular, the more the maxillæ are protruded or the more the front, the less it retains of the true human form, and degenerates into brute or monster.
From a head so determined, arose an harmonious system of features. Under a front as full as open, the frontal muscles assumed the seat of meaning; the cavity of the eyes became deeper, and took a regular and equal distance from the centre of the nose, a feature of which few of the moderns ever had a distinct idea; the mouth and lips were shaped for organs of command and persuasion, rather than appetite; and the apodosis of the whole, resolution and support, was given in the chin.
From a head so regulated, and placed on the most beautiful of all columns, the neck, the thinking artist could not fail to conclude to the rest of the body. As the under parts of thehead were subordinate to the front, so was the lower part of the torso to the breast. The organs of mere nutrition, or appetite, and secretion, receded and were subjected to the nobler seats of action and vigour. Such harmony of system was not only the result of numeric proportion, of length and breadth of parts; it was the conception of one indivisibly connected whole, variously uniform:—god, goddess, hero, heroine, male, female, infancy, youth, virility and age, majesty, energy, agility, beauty, character, and passions, directed the method of treatment, and formedStyle.
The sculptured monuments left by the ancients, that have escaped the wreck of time and compose the magnificent collections of the Academy and the Museum, amply prove that these assertions are not the visionary brood of fancy and sanguine wishes, whilst they offer to the student advantages which, perhaps, no ancient, certainly no modern schools ever could or can offer to theirs, not even that of formerly the real and still the nominal metropolis of Art—Rome.
These monuments may be aptly divided into three classes:
1st. Imitations, not seldom transcripts ofEssential Nature.
2nd. Homogeneous delineations ofCharacter; and
3rd. The highest and last—IdealFigures.
The first shows to advantage what exists or existed; the second collects in one individual, what is scattered in his class; the third subordinates existence and character to beauty and sublimity.
The astonishing remains of gods, demigods, and heroes treasured in the Museum, from the Parthenon and the Temple of Phigalia, constitute the first epoch. They establish the elements of proportion, they show what is essential in the composition and construction of the human frame. The artist's principle remained, however, negative; he understood the best he saw, but did not attempt to add, or conclude from what was, to what might be. These works are commonly considered as the produce of the school of Phidias, and the substantiation of his principles: if they are, and there can be little doubt but they are, it must be owned, that the eulogies lately lavished on them, as presenting, even on their mutilatedand battered surfaces, more of the real texture of the human frame, a better discrimination of bone, muscle, and tendon, than most of the works ascribed to more advanced periods, little agree with the verdict of the ancients, as pronounced by Pliny, on the real character of Phidias, the architect of gods, fitter to frame divinities than men, and leave him little more share in the formation of our figures than the conception. In beholding them, we say, such is man, real unsophisticated man, man warm from the hand of Nature, but not yet distinguished by her endless variety and difference of character. The Dioscuri of the Quirinal, the Lapithæ in conflict with the Centaurs from the Parthenon, and the heroes from the fabric of Ictinus, are brothers, and only differ in size and finish; whilst the Panathenaic processions offer the unvaried transcript of Athenian youth.
Delineation of character forms the second class of the figures in our possession, and the distinguishing feature of its artists. They found that, asallwere connected by the genus and a central principle of form, so they were divided into classes, and from each otherseparated by an individual stamp, bycharacter: to unite this with the simplicity of thegenericprinciple was their aim; the symmetry prescribed by general proportion was modified and adapted, not sacrificed, to the demands of the peculiar quality which distinguished the attribute they undertook to personify. Thus the Hercules of Glycon, though the symbol of absolute, irresistible, and uniform strength, appears to be swift as a stag and elastic like a ball; and thus Agasias, the author of what the barbarity of custom still continues to misname the "Fighting Gladiator," though its style, evidently Iconic, be more connected with individual than generic nature, has spread over its whole the rapidity of lightning, and substantiated in itsmotionall Homer says of Hector rushing through the shattered portals of the Grecian wall—that, at that instant, nothing could have stopped him but a God.
The wounded Cornicularius, known by the name of the Dying Gladiator, the Savage whetting his knife to excoriate Marsyas, the enraged Shepherd Boy ludicrously transformed to a young Patroclus, are too undisguised portraits to deserve being ranked with thishigher class of characteristic delineation. We with more exultation subjoin to it the Pathetic Groups which, to the historic artist, at once disclose the wholeextentandlimitsof dramatic composition—the agonies of Niobe and her Progeny; the pangs of the Laocoon; Menelaus raising Patroclus slain by Hector; the Warrior who deserves to be called Hæmon, with Antigone, self-slain, hanging on his arm—the softer and more familiar expression of Æthra and Theseus, maternal enquiry and filial simplicity; Orestes and Pylades pouring libations to Agamemnon's shade; Venus expostulating with Amor, Amor embracing Psyche: works of different periods and different styles, but true to the same unerring principles,—principles not abandoned in the lascivious dream of the Hermaphrodite, the gross sonorous repose of the Faun, and the tottering inebriety of Hercules.
The artists of the third epoch concluded from existence to possibility. The simple purity of the first, and the energetic harmonious variety of the second period, were its bases; it amalgamated their artless angular line and rigid precision with the suavity of undulating contours, elegance of attitude, the soft inflexions of flesh:and created a standard of ideal beauty which regulated the whole, from the most prominent, conspicuous, and interesting, to the most remote and minute parts. The Apollo, the Venus, the Torso, arose to prove that in the same degree as in an image of art the idea ofsimplicity, or ofone, predominates, it will partake ofgrandeur; and that in the degree as the idea ofvarietyprevails, it will partake ofbeauty: variety leads to simplicity in images of beauty, simplicity to variety in images of grandeur, and the union of both produces the sublime.
Such are the splendid, and I repeat it, unparalleled advantages that surround you; but lest, by their specious display, I should be suspected of more enthusiasm than becomes the sober office of a teacher, and you be led to delusive expectations and false conclusions, remember that, though even the best directed labour cannot supply what Nature has refused, still it remains an experiment uniformly sanctioned by time, that without unwearied toil, obstinate perseverance, and submissive resignation, neither the theory nor the practice of theart can be fully acquired, and that without them genius is a bubble and talent a trifle.
And now permit me to finish this fragment of observations on Design with a few remarks on our mutual situation, as teachers and as pupils of this Institution: if the advancement of art be the cause and the ultimate aim of its foundation.
When in recommending the antique as the student's guide in copying the life, I comparatively might have seemed to depreciate the servile adherence to the model, I was perfectly aware that the use of life alone can supply the artist with the real expression, and consequently the real appearances of bones and muscles in varied action. It will not be suspected, I trust, that I meant to recommend the frigid introduction of that marble style, that pedantic stiffness, which, under the abused name of correctness, frequently disfigures the labours of those who, at too late a period for successful attempts at changing their manner, abjure or lose the courage to use what they had learnt before, and content themselves with being the tame transcribers of the dead letter, instead ofthe spirit of the ancients, and importers of nothing but forms and attitudes of stone.
It is to life we must recur,—to warm, fleshy, genial life,—for animated forms. To Nature and life Zeuxis applied, to embody the forms of Polycletus and Alcamenes: and what was the prerogative of Lysippus, but to give the air, the "morbidezza," the soft transitions, the illusions of palpitating life, to bronze and marble? The pedantry of geometricallystraightlines is not only no idealism, it is a solecism in Nature.Organization, your object, is inseparable fromlife;motionfrom organization: where organization and life are, there is a seat of life, apunctum saliens, acting through veins and branching arteries, consequently withpulsation, and by that, undulating and rounding the passages of parts to parts. Of the milliards of commas, or points, that Nature mediately or immediately produces, no two are alike: how, then, could she produce straight lines, which are all similar, and by their nature cut, divide, interrupt, destroy?
The province delegated by the Academy to its teachers must be,—where hope promises success and sparks of genius appear, to foster,to encourage; but where necessity commands, rather to deter than to delude, and thus to check the progress of that compendiary method, which, according to your late President, has ruined the Arts of every country, by reducing execution to a recipè, substituting manner for style, ornament for substance, and giving admission to mediocrity.
If the students of this Academy must be supposed to have overcome the rudiments, and to be arrived at that point from which it may be discovered whether Nature intended them for mere craftsmen or real artists, near that point, where, in the phrase of Reynolds, "genius begins and rules end," it behoves us not to mistake the mere children of necessity, or the pledges of vanity, for the real nurselings of public hope, or the future supporters of the beneficent establishment that rears them. Instruction, it is true, may put them in possession of every attainable part of the Art in a decent degree; they may learn to draw with tolerable correctness, to colour with tolerable effect, to put their figures together tolerably well, and to furnish their faces with a tolerable expression—it may not be easy for any oneto pick any thing intolerably bad out of their works; but when they have done all this—and almost all may do all this, for all this may be taught—they will find themselves exactly at the point where all that gives value to Art begins—Genius, which cannot be taught—at the threshold of the Art, in a state of mediocrity. "Gods, men, and fame," says Horace, "reject mediocrity in poets." Why? Neither Poetry nor Painting spring from the necessities of society, or furnish necessaries to life; offsprings of fancy, leisure, and lofty contemplation, organs of religion and government, ornaments of society, and too often mere charms of the senses and instruments of luxury, they derive their excellence from novelty, degree, and polish. What none indispensably want, all may wish for, but few only are able to procure, acquires its value from some exclusive quality, founded on intrinsic or some conventional merit, and that, or an equal substitute, mediocrity cannot reach: hence, by suffering it to invade the province of genius and talent, we rob the plough, the shop, the loom, the school, perhaps the desk and pulpit, of a thousand useful hands. A good mechanic, a trusty labourer, an honesttradesman, are beings more important, of greater use to society, and better supporters of the state, than an artist or a poet of mediocrity. When I therefore say that it is the duty of the Academy to deter rather than to delude, I am not afraid of having advanced a paradox hostile to the progress of real Art. The capacities that time will disclose, genius and talents, cannot be deterred by the exposition of difficulties, and it is the interest of society that all else should.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTESObvious typos have been silently corrected.Idiosyncratic spellings have been left unchanged. This includes inconsistent spellings of proper names, oe ligatures and capitalisation.There are numerous Greek quotations, in which accents and smooth breathings are used only occasionally, and rough breathings are always marked. Missing accents and breathings have NOT been added, but two errant smooth breathings (in footnotes 21 and 75) have been deleted. A few amendments are noted below.The following corrections are worth special note:p. 19: "Alcibides" changed to "Alcibiades".p. 33 footnote 9: "ἡ καθ'" (rough breathing) changed to "ἠ καθ'" (smooth breathing), and "ἠκαι" changed to "ἠ και".p. 43 footnote 15: "Ἀβροδιαιτος" (smooth breathing) changed to "Ἁβροδιαιτος" (rough breathing).p. 143: "præliari" changed to "prœliari".p. 145 footnote 71: "ἀ ταρ" changed to "ἀταρ".p. 147 footnote 72: line reference corrected from 328 to 238.p. 159: "Goliah" changed to "Goliath".p. 161 footnote 75: "Ὁρμην" changed to "ὁρμην".p. 284: "Fra." changed to "Frà".
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
Obvious typos have been silently corrected.
Idiosyncratic spellings have been left unchanged. This includes inconsistent spellings of proper names, oe ligatures and capitalisation.
There are numerous Greek quotations, in which accents and smooth breathings are used only occasionally, and rough breathings are always marked. Missing accents and breathings have NOT been added, but two errant smooth breathings (in footnotes 21 and 75) have been deleted. A few amendments are noted below.
The following corrections are worth special note:p. 19: "Alcibides" changed to "Alcibiades".p. 33 footnote 9: "ἡ καθ'" (rough breathing) changed to "ἠ καθ'" (smooth breathing), and "ἠκαι" changed to "ἠ και".p. 43 footnote 15: "Ἀβροδιαιτος" (smooth breathing) changed to "Ἁβροδιαιτος" (rough breathing).p. 143: "præliari" changed to "prœliari".p. 145 footnote 71: "ἀ ταρ" changed to "ἀταρ".p. 147 footnote 72: line reference corrected from 328 to 238.p. 159: "Goliah" changed to "Goliath".p. 161 footnote 75: "Ὁρμην" changed to "ὁρμην".p. 284: "Fra." changed to "Frà".