Chapter 13

(β) A further aspect we shall do well to consider is the transition from the more tranquil, reverential piety to the representation of martyrdoms, and, in general, what is not beautiful in reality. It is more particularly the North German masters who excel in scenes borrowed from the Passion in which they emphasize the savagery of the soldiery, the evil aspects of the mocking, the fierceness of the hate against Christ during the course of His sufferings, with particular insistence on features of ugliness and distortion, and which are intended to denote external forms correspondent with the depravity of spirit. The tranquil and beautiful activity of an unassuming personal piety is thrown into the background, and the movements which are inseparable from the situations above mentioned unfold us hideous distortions, expressions of ferocity, and all the unbridled exhibition of passions. Where we have the contending tumult and the uncouthness of characters presented with such detail, it is not surprising that such pictures are defective in the ideal harmony of their composition no less than their colour, so that, more especially where a taste for old German paintings first crops up, critics when thus confronted with what is, as a rule, an inferior class of technical accomplishment, fall into many mistakes when determining the date of their production. Thus it has been maintained that they are previous to the more consummate pictures of the Van Eyck period, although, for the most part, they hail from a more recent time. However, the Upper German masters were not exclusively occupied with works of this type, but have likewise treated a variety of religious subjects, and, indeed—Albrecht Dürer, with others, exemplifies this—even in scenes from Christ's Passion, have understood how effectively to grapple with the extremes of pure savagery, and even when treating such themes to preserve an ideal nobility and an external independence[369]and freedom.

(γ) Finally, the development of German and Flemish art is characterized in a complete identification of itself with theordinarylife of the Present; and, along with this, in a unified system of the most varied modes of presentation, which, both in respect to their content and technique, are distinct from one another and independently elaborated. We have seen already the advance made by Italian painting from the simple nobility of devotion to an ever-increasing assertion of secular motive, which here, however, as we pointed out in the case of Raphael, was in some measure permeated by ecclesiastical prepossessions, and in part limited by the coherent principle of antique beauty. We may add that the later course of this school is not so much a dissolution of that unity in the representation of every kind of subject-matter under the predominant interest of the colourist as a more superficial disposition, or rather, eclectic imitation of styles of draughtsmanship and painting. German and Flemish art, on the contrary, has in the most definite and exceptional degree traversed the entire scheme of content and modes of treatment, starting from its wholly traditional church pictures, single figures and half lengths, then on to thoughtful, pious, and devotional subjects, until we come to that animation and extension of the same in larger compositions and scenes, in which, however, the free characterization of figure, the heightened vitality effected by means of processions, retinues, incidental personages, embellishment of garments and utensils, wealth of portraiture, architectural works, environment, views of churches, cities, streams, forests, mountains, is still conceived and executed as a whole subject to religious motivation. This focal centre still persists; but we find that the range of subjects, which had hitherto been held together in unity, is broken into division, and the separate parts become, in the specific singularity and contingent character of their alternations or independent modifications, subject to every possible type of conception and pictorial execution[370].

In order to arrive at a full appreciation of this aspect of art's development in the present context, for we have already referred to the point, we will pass briefly in review the national conditions which were operative in the change. We are under the necessity to justify, as we shall attempt to do in the following observations, a transition from direct relations to the Church and the outlook and pictorial modes of piety to a delight in the world simply, that is to say, to the objects and particular phenomena of Nature, to domestic life in its dignity, congeniality, and peaceful seclusion, to an enjoyment of national festivities and processions, rustic dances, the games and follies attendant upon church fêtes. Now the Reformation had thoroughly penetrated Holland. The Dutch had become Protestants and overcome the despotism of the Spanish Crown and Church. And what is more we do not, if we consider the political condition here, either find a distinguished nobility which drives forth its princes and tyrants, or imposes laws on them, nor yet an agricultural people, oppressed peasantry, who break free as the Swiss have done, but rather a population which, in by far the largest proportion of it, if we except the few brave souls that tilled the soil and its more than brave heroes of the sea, consisted of citizens of the town, men of business, well-to-do burghers, men who, rejoicing in their ordinary avocations, entertained no lofty pretensions, but, as became their courage and intelligence, with audacious reliance in God, stood up to defend the freedom of their hardly-won liberties and the particular privileges of their provinces, cities, and guilds, dared to oppose themselves to all hazards without fear of the transcendent prestige of the Spanish dominion over half the world, to bravely let their blood flow for such an aim, and by virtue of this righteous boldness and endurance victoriously secured both their religious and civic independence. And if we may brand any single condition of soul-life as distinctivelydeutsch, it is just this loyal, well-to-do, and genial citizenship, which, in a self-respect that is without pride, in a piety which is not merely absorbed in enthusiasm and devotion, but which is concretely pious in the affairs of the world[371]and is homely and contented inits abundance, remains neat and clean, and in persistent carefulness and contentment under all circumstances, armed with its own enduring sense of independence and freedom, is able, with loyalty to its former life, to preserve the sterling character of its forefathers unimpaired. This intelligent and artistically endowed people furthermore seeks its enjoyment in the pictorial presentment of its vigorous, justly co-ordinated, satisfying, and comfortable existence; it is all for taking a renewed delight by means of its pictures in the cleanliness under all conditions of its towns, houses, and domestic arrangements, of enjoying thus its household felicity, its wealth, the generous adornment of its wives and children, the splendour of its civic feasts, the boldness of its seamen, the fame of its merchandise and the shipping, in which it rides over all the seas of the world. And it is just this instinct of orderly and cheerful existence, which the Dutch masters emphasize also in their landscape subjects. In one word, in all their pictorial accomplishment they succeed in combining with freedom, and truth of conception, with their enthusiasm for what is in appearance of inferior and momentary significance, with the freshness of open vision and the concentration of their entire soul on all that is most stamped with the seclusion and limitations of their life, the most ample freedom of artistic composition, no less than the finest feeling for accessories and the most perfect effects of studious elaboration. From one point of view this school of painting has developed to an incomparable degree the magic and mystery of lighting and colour[372]generally in its scenes borrowed from war and military life, in its tavern jollifications, in its weddings and other rustic fêtes, in its pictures of domestic life, in its portraits, landscapes, animals, flowers, and the rest. From another aspect it has elaborated with a similar excellence the characterization which penetrates to the heart of life in all the truth of which Art is capable. And although its insistence on the insignificant and contingent includes the expression of what is boorish, rude, and common, yet these scenes are so permeated throughout with ingenuous lustiness and jollity, that it is not the common in its meanness and naughtiness so much as the gaiety and joviality which creates the artistic subject and its content.We do not look at mean feelings and passions, but simply what is boorish, in the sense of being rustic, near to nature, in the poorer classes, a quality which connotes geniality, waggishness, and comedy. In short the Ideal itself is not wholly absent from this unperturbed easy-way-of-life. It is the Sabbath of Life, which brings all to one level and removes all badness, simply as such. Men who are thus so whole-heartedly of good temper can neither be wholly bad nor mean. In this respect it is not one and the same thing, whether evil is of purely momentary appearance in a character, or lies at its root and essence. In the work of these Dutch painters what is humorous in a situation cancels what is evil, and it is at once clear to us that the characters could be something other than that in the guise of which they are for the time being set before us[373]. A gaiety and comedy of this description contributes much to the invaluable character of these pictures. If pictures of this rollicking type are attempted nowadays, the painter, as a rule, only places before us what is essentially mean, coarse and bad without the illuminating atmosphere of a comic situation[374]. A bad wife rails at her tipsy husband in the tavern with all her might. In a scene of this kind we have only put before us, as I have already remarked, the bald facts that the man is a dissipated brute and the woman a rating wench.

If we look at the Dutch masters in this light we shall no longer entertain the view that the art of painting should have said good-bye to such subjects altogether, and merely confined itself to depicting the gods of old, myths, and fables, or even Madonna pictures, crucifixions, martyrs, popes, and saints of both sexes. What is a vital ingredient of every work of art is inseparable also from painting, and this is the observance of what generally concerns our humanity, the spirit and characterization of man, in other words what man is and whateachindividual is. This vital grasp of the conscious life of human nature and the external forms of its appearance, this naive delight and artistic freedom, this freshness and cheerfulness of imaginative sympathy,this absolute directness of execution is what constitutes the poetry that underlies the work of the majority of the Dutch painters of this period. In their paintings we may study and acquaint ourselves with human nature and mankind. Nowadays, however, our artist only too frequently will confront us with portraits and historical pictures, at which we have only to cast a bare glance, and we see that, while flatly contradicting the wildest dream of what is possible in mankind or anyone in particular, he neither knows aught at all about man or his natural colour, nor yet the modes of composition[375]in which we may justly express that humanity[376].

[214]Die gesammte Menschen-brust.

[215]Die in sich gediegene Individualität des Gottes.

[216]Betrachtung, here implying thought rather than vision.

[217]That is a unity which dissolves all difference.

[218]Als Inneres.

[219]Als Reflexion in sich.Probably Hegel means simply the ultimate fact of self-conscious life—which is to find itself in Nature as the antithesis of the synthetic unity of the ego. This is developed in the latter half of the sentence.

[220]Lit., "Is not an essentially persistent and stereotyped (Erstarrtes, stiffened) individual."

[221]Less than sculpture.

[222]He may mean type of art generally, but I think the reference here is simply to painting. The passage is an important one.

[223]I presume Hegel uses the wordseeligkeitin the ordinary sense, not "soulfulness." The close relation withSchmertznecessitates this. But the spelling suggests the other interpretation.

[224]Which is absent in the classical treatment.

[225]That is, the creative artist.

[226]Innerlichkeit.It is impossible to express Hegel's use of this word by one expression. It combines intimacy, ideal union, and inwardness of soul-life in its contrast to objective reality.

[227]That is the romantic type.

[228]Die für sich seyende Subjektivität.That is a process that elaborates itself in independent form consonant to its own substance.

[229]Als dieses Subjekt.That is, I assume, as the distinctive personality of the artist. This must appear on the face of the work as the crown of its independent type and concrete unity (Zur Spitze des Fürsichseyns) but must not dominate it to the extent of destroying all natural detail, not even to the extent of sculpture.

[230]Zur Spitze des Fürsichseyns.See note above.

[231]That is their union in sculpture.

[232]Als solcher.Hegel means that the universal present in emotion is objective therein as part of the self-conscious life, but is only presented in the concrete objective shape in the work of the artist who therein suffers to escape the wholly personal side.

[233]Sein Inneres, his ideal substance, with more direct reference to feeling.

[234]Aus demselben in sich hineingehend.I think what is meant is that the material is idealized out of one of its spatial conditions rather than that the artist selects hismediumin consonance with his temperament and technique.

[235]That is, does not affect the stability and total effect of the work. Of course the actual effect may vary.

[236]Für diesen festen Punkt des Subjekts.

[237]Die in sich besonderte Innerlichkeit.

[238]The distinctions in matter conditioned in Space.

[239]The meaning, if rather obscurely expressed, appears to be this. The art of sculpture shows us when it treats the spatial dimensions as essential that we must have the entire spatial form to do this, and it shows us that if we wish to pass from the mere presentment of bodily form to a fuller ideal quality we must contract this exclusive appearance of physical matter.

[240]Lit., "Begins to be subjective." Begins to possess a self-excluding centre of unity,i.e., self-identity.

[241]That is to the point of a real subject or ego.

[242]E.g., secure an abstract result in superficies only.

[243]Apart from artistic means.

[244]Though the statements here are suggestive, they are obviously influenced by Hegel's belief in the false theory of light propounded by Goethe.

[245]This is a direct reference to the Newtonian theory, of course.

[246]Zeichnunghere refers to line rather than technical excellence in draughtsmanship. It must be admitted Hegel's emphasis of these two aspects is carried rather too far.

[247]The above passage is open to criticism. Hegel hardly makes allowance for the fact that the defective technique, so far as it is defective, of the earlier masters, was mainly due to their state of knowledge. Art was, in a certain aspect of technique, in its infancy. Moreover to compare Dutch landscape with that of Bellini or Raphael is to compare things that are each unique of their kind and not comparable. Their aim was entirely different. In such pictures as the San Sisto Madonna of Raphael, the great Crucifixion of Tintoret, or the Entombment of Titian it is quite impossible to maintain that the earnestness of conception is in any way inferior to the technique, although we have no doubt a different degree of conviction expressed by Fra Angelico. And the classical landscape of Titian or Tintoret is of its type supreme.

[248]This statement of Hegel again requires parenthesis or at least interpretation. There is a realism such as that we find in the most consummate work of a Titian, or the genre work of the Dutch school, or our own Pre-Raphaelites, to say nothing of mere academical realism, which hardly comes within his remarks. It is obvious that the Ideal is subserved in different degrees by such examples, and in fact to preserve that unity of conception despite the greatest elaboration,isto serve the Ideal at least in one aspect of it. Hegel, at least in the concluding part of this paragraph, appears mainly to have in his mind still life and the genre pictures of the Dutch, and rather seems to overlook his own statement as to the necessity of selection and the power to express detail by the shorthand of genius rather than deliberate imitation.

[249]Grossartigkeit.

[250]Innigkeit.Intimate ideality, inwardness.

[251]I am not sure what Hegel means by the expressionNicht das Niedrige ist zerdrückt.If the text is correct I suppose it means the sensuous side does not make way for a more spiritual synthesis. What we should expect is some other verb thanzerdrücktsuch asausgedrückt, the sense being that "thoughthe mean emotion is not expressed, and no rage, etc., is asserted,yetdespite of it all," etc. I think there must be some misprint here.

[252]Ein starres Beisichseyn.Compare the expression lower downaffirmatives Fürsichseynwith which it contrasts.

[253]Für sich bestehende Herz.

[254]Als ein göttliches Moment.It means an actual phase in the Divine existence.

[255]An important statement. Hegel's words areSondern wir müssen das geistige Daseyn im Bewusstseyn des Menschen als die wesentliche geistige Existenz Gottes ansehn.

[256]A bad master at any rate for such a subject.

[257]This metaphor appears to me rather confused, and in fact I do not pretend wholly to understand its meaning. I suppose the idea is that beyond the clouds of soul-life there are the clouds that obscure Providence. In all this passage Hegel shows his limitations as an art student.

[258]Näher.That is our love of God is mainly through Christ.

[259]Ein bloss eingelnes Moment.A phase that passes or becomes relatively insignificant.

[260]Innigste, most intimate. A curious but characteristic conclusion of Hegel.

[261]This analysis must be accepted of course mainly as an analysis of the ideal proposed to us by the profoundest Christian art. It is obviously not true of much Italian art, Titian's work for example, and it is equally remote from many of the most probable facts of history.

[262]Die Starrheit.The rigid or unyielding character.

[263]Der Gehalt ihres Gemüths.It is possible to see in this analysis something rather capricious and far-fetched, and yet to appreciate its value as an analysis of Christian love for the deceased beloved as contrasted with pagan sentiment. The finest illustration I myself can recollect of this is not the mother Mary at all, but the figure of the Magdalene in Tintoret's "Deposition" in the S. Giorgio Maggiore Church in Venice. As a matter of fact the divine mother in sacred art is almost invariably depicted in a state of swoon under the stress of her grief, though Tintoret's Pietà in the Brera is a notable exception.

[264]I do not know this painter. For pathos I know no finer conception of the death than that of Rembrandt's etching. Blake's drawing, exhibited recently at Cambridge, shows us the tranquillity and dignity of the scene more finely than any other representation.

[265]I presume Hegel means this by the wordsdie Menschheit, but it is a difficult passage.

[266]It is impossible in English to preserve the antithesis betweenbittenandbeten.

[267]Und nichts für sich hat.That is to say reciprocity is of its essence. "Give and it shall be given unto you."

[268]Die Gestaltmay possibly refer to the suppliant.

[269]The Sistine Madonna.

[270]A good instance is the great Crucifixion of Fra Angelico in the S. Mark convent in Florence.

[271]And a painter like Carlo Dolci or the Caracci are even worse.

[272]It would perhaps have been more instructive to consider the difference of temperament in the artist when dealing with such subjects and its influence on his treatment. It is very far from an obvious truth that physiognomy upon which the conflict of soul-life is most marked loses thereby the characteristics of beauty. There is the beauty of gnarled oak no less than that of the rose and the lily.

[273]Das Beisichseyn der Liebe im Absoluten.Lit., the self-inherency cf Love within the Absolute.

[274]Sondern auch selbständig.He seems to mean that they receive from this relation the subsistent individuality of spirit. This reference to landscape is obviously very perfunctory and insufficient.

[275]See vol. I, p. 220.

[276]Mit dem in sich particularisirten Innern.With the ideal complexus of particular objects as related to one subject. Their particularity is due to their characterization, and that is dependent on idealization.

[277]Diess Verwachsenseyn.Lit., this growing up with.

[278]There is, however, the aspect of consummate execution which in itself is a very real source of artistic enjoyment, and Hegel rather seems to overlook this here.

[279]Verzweigungen.All off-shoots of attention or interest.

[280]Of course, even in the painting of still life, artistic composition itself implies by its selection and subordination to an idea a new result. And the characteristic technique of a painter inevitably has the same result.

[281]Geistigen Ausdrück.

[282]Grundlage.

[283]It is perhaps rather strange that Hegel should have considered the Dutch and Flemish schools as pre-eminently colourists. Apart from Rembrandt the truth is not very apparent. But he was mainly thinking of their dexterity in the lighting of a picture and the scintillation of colour.

[284]That is, as black and white and its gradations.

[285]It is not quite clear what is intended here byVervielfältigung, probably power of being adapted to various subject matter and modes of expression.

[286]It is hardly necessary to point out that this discussion, being based on Goethe's false theory of colour in opposition to Newton's prismatic analysis, has no scientific value, though historically of interest. The blueness of the sky is due to the blue rays being detained.

[287]I presume by concrete unity Hegel refers in some form to a unity that is such owing to its intrinsic nature.

[288]But red quite as often symbolizes enthusiasm and love, and in Tintoret's Paradise the Virgin has the red tunic and the blue mantle.

[289]As a matter of fact violet or purple is a cardinal colour.

[290]Green is not a cardinal colour.

[291]Hegel seems to have in view the Flemish school rather than the Dutch in the restricted sense. It is rather strange that he should dwell on this rather than work of the Venetians such as Bellini.

[292]Verschwemmte.Carried away by a stream.

[293]Such as Ary Scheffer and others of the same monotony. The flesh tints of Leighton and Poynter and many less men suffer in the same way.

[294]Farbenschein, as Hegel uses it later on, I find it impossible to translate in one word. In fact it is not easy to seize precisely what he means. "Modulation of colour" partly expresses it. But he also seems to refer to what we understand as the personal quality of a picture or its general atmosphere, not regarded simply as Nature's atmosphere, but as the communication of the artist's own afflatus.

[295]I crossed a young landscape-artist of growing fame the other day, who affirmed and endeavoured to express in his pictures the conviction that colour was as strong in distance as foreground. His pictures were of great interest, but I still think his robust theory unsound.

[296]We have no English equivalent for the Germandas Incarnator colour incarnate.

[297]Ein ideelles Ineinander.By ideal Hegel means apparently that the distinctions of tint fine away beyond the grasp of sense vision. This of course is true in all natural colouring. Possibly he may mean that the idea of Life is contributive to the result.

[298]Hardly a just simile for the reason that, as Hegel himself points out, flesh does not reflect external objects.

[299]Den Schein innerer Belebung.This expression seems to prove that Hegel uses the wordideelin its ordinary sense of spiritual ideality.

[300]Als selbst lebendiges Ganze.The colour must appear as itself a part of the vitality, not a mere covering.

[301]Vertreibung.What Hegel exactly means I am not sure, probably finish by over-paintings.

[302]Fresco painting is strictly in tempera. I suppose Hegel has here before him the two processes of tempera painting on the wet wall of plaster and tempera painting on some other dry surface.

[303]Zu grosser innerer Klarheit und schönen Leuchten.I give what appears to me to be the meaning.

[304]I presume Hegel understands byDeck und Lasurfarbenthe distinction of our opaque and transparent colours such as flake white and the madders or umbers. He clearly refers to glazes.

[305]Die Duftigkeit, Magie in der Wirkung des Kolorits.This is a difficult passage to translate, and I am not quite sure what Hegel is aiming at. He seems to have in his mind both the ideal atmosphere of a composition and the presence of a personal style.

[306]Hegel has already related the effects considered to the artist's personality. He now endeavours to examine more closely what is implied in the relation.

[307]Adriaen van Ostade, 1610-1685.

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