Chapter 9

[111]Sein subjektives Fürsichseyn.Subjective independence of material conditions. Self-consciousness.

[112]Rückkehr in sich.Into itself, its own ideal world of conscious thought and emotion.

[113]In seine innerliche Subjektivität.That is, what is essentially the world of soul. Spirit here stands for mind andGemüthor emotional life.

[114]Ein Sichzeichen des Geistes,i.e., are signs of itself which mind evolves in a mode of externality.

[115]Here called genericallyBaukunst.

[116]Die plastische Deutlichkeit.

[117]Das subjektive Innere, i.e., spiritual experience of a personality.

[118]That is in comparison with the fully independent arts.

[119]That is to say it must be a distinct object of the senses.

[120]In sich materiell particularisirt.We see Hegel's false notions of the theory of colour influencing his expression. It is really false to say that sculpture has nothing to do with colour. Light and shadow at least are necessary and colour is implied.

[121]That is, lets fall some of its aspects.

[122]Das Gemüth.Strictly the more emotional part.

[123]Between the extremes of architecture and poetry or music.

[124]Lit., "Without being manifested in its return to itself as ideal substance."

[125]Unparticularized, that is in its essential experience.

[126]He explains this lower down. The concentrated point is in the flash of the eye. Perhaps here he merely refers to it generally.

[127]Als Innerlichkeit.

[128]This is only partially true of bronze, and any marble that has had weathering.

[129]Bygrosse geistige SinnHegel means no doubt more than "taste." He refers to the deep-rooted instinct in the genius of the race.

[130]Meyer, "History of the Plastic Arts among the Greeks," vol. I, p. 119.

[131]Die acht plastische Mitte.Hegel means that plastic art comes to its most important focus, as it were, between the arts that either incline too much to the material as in architecture, or to ideality as in poetry.

[132]Näheren.

[133]The reader must always bear in mind that Spirit (Geist) includes intelligence. It might no doubt in some places be better translated as "mind."

[134]Substantielle.That is what is the concrete fulness of real spiritual content.

[135]Als Subjekt.

[136]Besonderheit.The isolated self of theAufklärung.

[137]Zufälligen Selbstischkeit.Contingent selfness. The ego above described.

[138]Ohne innere Subjektivität als solche.That is, in the wholly abstract sense.

[139]Begriffappears to refer here to the notion of animal life generally, rather than the generic notion in its narrow sense.

[140]Innern Strukture.The structure that ideally motives the whole.

[141]Dieses ideelle einfache Fürsichseyn des leiblichen.Apparently this includes the vegetable world.

[142]Macht sich.That is an operative principle in the working out of.

[143]Als Seele,i.e., in the narrow sense of the expression above defined.

[144]Pathognomik,i.e., the science, that is, of the expression of the passions, together with that of their physiological aspect.

[145]Lit., contingent subjectivity.

[146]Hegel's expressionMienenis not easy to translate by a single English equivalent. It signifies the passing look—the general variety of facial expression as contrasted with the permanent expression of substantive character.

[147]Den eigentlichen Mienen.The definite aspects of the face which express relatively permanent states of soul-life.

[148]Persists in the line of direction of the Ideal.

[149]Die schöne freie Nothwendigkeit.

[150]ByWitzigkeitI presume Hegel means oddity and funniness of every kind—perhaps "humorous eccentricity" would interpret it.

[151]I think this gives the sense, though the language is rather confused because his image is that of invention attaching itself to what is already presented rather than creating a form that is based on external suggestion.

[152]The celebrated courtesan. She entered the sea with dishevelled hair at a celebrated festival at Eleusis. She had a statue of gold at Delphi.

[153]Eigentlich Vorstellung ist.

[154]Statarisch.That is, modelled on historical associations or the results of former work; perhaps "eclectic" would be a better word.

[155]Der geistige Ton.

[156]De varietate nationum, § 60.

[157]As in savage animals.

[158]The wordsystemis used, which is not readily translated in this context, though I have adopted the literal translation lower down.

[159]Mildrung.The softening of its severe lines.

[160]Werke, vol. IV, bk. 5, c. 5, § 20, p. 198.

[161]It is difficult to see what Hegel means exactly here bySchnitte.I suppose he means the external lines of the eye-socket.

[162]L.c.§ 29.

[163]Flügelnmust here refer to the orifices of the nose.

[164]Winck,l.c.§ 37, p. 218.

[165]Hegel's word ishabitus.Customary attitude and mode of connection appears to be included.

[166]Gebehrde, a word somewhat difficult to translate here. It seems to combine the ideas of gesture and pose.

[167]The reference is, of course, to painting and indirectly to poetry.

[168]Ein in sich versunkenes Dastehn oder Liegen.

[169]Gediegenheit.

[170]See vol. I, pp. 268-272.

[171]Das höhere Innere.

[172]Das geistige Bewusstseyn.

[173]Her. I,c.10.

[174]This vitality.

[175]Vol. V, bk. 2, p. 503.

[176]Vol. V, bk. 6, ch. 2, p. 56.

[177]Mus. Pio-Clement. Tom. 2, pp. 89-92.

[178]Winck., vol. II, p. 491.

[179]Vol. IV, bk. 5, ch. I, § 29.

[180]I am not sure what is exactly meant bygekrümmthere. The description is not very lucid.

[181]IV, 5, 2, § 10.

[182]Winck., vol. VII, p, 78.

[183]Winck., vol, VII, p. 80.

[184]Vol. IV, p. 78.

[185]Vol. II, § I.

[186]Winck., vol. IV, p. 116.

[187]Such is, I think, the general meaning, though the literal translation of the wordsals den Figuren sämmtlich die Einfachheit abgehtis not quite clear. I take the wordsämmtlichto mean "taken collectively as separate units."

[188]Winck., Werk., vol. V, p. 389. Anmerk.

[189]Meyer'sGesch. der bild. Künste bei den Griechen, vol. I, p. 60.

[190]Pausanias, II, 30.

[191]I presume this is the meaning ofBildnerei.

[192]I am not sure whetherAngabenrefers to actual sketches, or merely other evidence handed down.

[193]In the year 1829.

[194]That is in the accuracy of mechanical line as the result of machine.

[195]Sanftes Verlaufen, i.e., passage from one plane surface to another.Zusammen-stossenappears to me the melting together of lines,i.e., conjunction, fusion.

[196]Meyer'sGesch., vol. I, p. 279.

[197]Vol. III, Vorr. XXVII.

[198]That is in 1821.

[199]Statarischen, scholastic, eclectic.

[200]"De Leg.," Lib. II, ed. Bekk., III, 2, p. 239.

[201]Herod, II,c.167.

[202]Vol. III, bk. 2, ch. I, p. 74.

[203]Vol. III, bk. 2, ch. 2, pp. 77-84.

[204]"Cours d'Archéologie par Raoul-Rochette, 1-12meleçon," Paris, 1828.

[205]I am not sure if this rightly gives the sense of the wordsDie Gestalten bei strenger Zeichnung gedrungen.

[206]Ueber die Aeg. Bildwerke mit kunstgesch. Anmerk. von Schelling, 1817.

[207]That is, it does not approach Egyptian type so nearly.

[208]Hegel's words mean this, I suppose, though the German is somewhat compressed and not very clear as it stands.

[209]Vol. III, ch. 2, § 10, p. 188 and Pl. VI, A.

[210]Hegel uses the unusual wordBegeistigung, I presume somewhat in the sense ofBegeisterung, signifying the personal inspiration of the artist.

[211]This appears to be the meaning of the difficult phrase that sculpture suppliesdas gesammte Daseyn,i.e., is the affiliating link of the collective body. All the different arts are stamped with its characteristics.

[212]I presume the Pietà in St. Peter's.

[213]Hegel's "Vermisch. Schriften," vol. II, p. 561.

The source of the general transition from sculpture to the other arts is, as we have seen, the principle ofsubjectivity, which now invades art's content and its manner of exposition. What we understand here by subjectivity is the notion of an intelligence which ideally exists in free independence, withdrawing itself from objective reality into its own more intimate domain, a conscious life which no longer concentrates itself with its corporeal attachment in a unity which is without division.

There follows from this transition, therefore, that dissolution, that dismemberment of the unity which is held together in the substantive and objective presence of sculpture, in the focus of its tranquillity and all-inclusive rondure and as such is apprehended in fusion. We may consider this breach from two points of view. On the one hand sculpture, in respect to itscontent, entwined what is substantive in Spirit directly with the individuality, which is as yet not self-introspective, in the exclusive unit of a personal consciousness, and treated thereby anobjectiveunity in the sense in which objectivity suggests what is intrinsically infinite, immutable, true—that substantive aspect, in short, which has no part in mere caprice and singularity. And from another point of view sculpture failed to do more than discharge this spiritual content wholly within the corporeal frame as the vital and significant instrument of the same, and by doing so create anew objectiveunity inthatmeaning of the expression, under which objectivity, as contrasted with all that is wholly ideal and subjective, indicates real and external existence.

When we find, then, that these two aspects, at first thus reconciled in one another by sculpture, are separated, that which we callself-introspectivespirituality is not merely placed in opposition to that which isexternal, but also, in the domain of what isspiritualthroughout, what is substantive and objective in that medium, in so far as it no longer continues to be retained in what is substantial individuality simply, is dissevered from the vital particularity of the conscious life, and all these aspects which have been hitherto held together in perfect fusion are relatively to each other and independently free, so that they can be treated too by art as free in this very way.

1. If we examine the content, then, we have through the above process, on the one hand, the substantive being of what is spiritual, the world of truth and eternity, theDivinein fact, which however here, in accordance with the principle of particularity, is comprehended and realized by art as a subject of consciousness, or as personality, as the Absolute, which is self-conscious in the medium of its infinite spiritual substance, as God in His Spirit and Truth. And in contrast to Him we have asserted the worldly andhumancondition of soul-life, which, regarded now as no longer in direct union with the intrinsic substance of Spirit, can unfold itself in all the fulness of that particularity which is simply human, and thereby permits the heart of man wherever and whenever represented[214], the entire wealth of our human mortality, to be open to art's acceptance.

The meeting-ground upon which these two aspects once more coalesce is the principle ofsubjectivity, which is common to both. The Absolute is, in virtue of this, disclosed to us to the full extent a living, actual, and equally human subject of consciousness, as the human and finite conscious life, viewed as spiritual, makes vital and real the absolute substance and truth, or in other words simply the Divine Spirit. The new bond of unity which is thus secured no longer, however, supports the character of that former immediacy, such as sculpture disclosed it; rather it is a union and reconciliation which asserts itself essentially as a mediation of opposed factors, and whose very notionmakes its apprehension only possible in the realms ofthe souland ideal life.

I have already, when the general subdivision of our science in its entire compass offered an opportunity for doing so, laid it down, that if the Ideal of sculpture sets forth in a sensuously present image the essential solidity[215]of the individuality of the God in the bodily form alone able to express that substance, the community thereupon essentially confronts such an object as the intelligent reflection of that unity. Spirit, however, that is wholly self-absorbed can only present the substance of Spirit under the mode of Spirit, in other words as a conscious subject, and receives thereby straightway the principle of the spiritual reconciliation of individual subjective life with God. As particular self, however, man also possesses his contingent natural existence, and a sphere of finite interests, needs, aims, and passions, whether it be more extensive or restricted, in which he is able to realize and satisfy his nature quite as much as he can in the same be absorbed in those ideas of God and the reconciliation with God.

2.Secondly, if we consider the aspect of the representation on itsexternalside, we find that it is by virtue of its particularity at once self-subsistent and possesses a claim to stand forth in this independence, and this for the reason that the principle of subjectivity excludes that correspondence in its immediacy, and disallows to itself the absolute interfusion of the ideal and external aspects in every part and relation of it. For the subjective principle is here precisely that which comes to be, in self-subsistent seclusion, that inward life which retires from real or objective existence into the realm of the Ideal, the world of emotion, soul, heart, and contemplation[216]. This ideal life is manifested no doubt in its external form, under a mode, however, in which the external form itself appears, that is to say it ismerelythe outer shell of a conscious subject that is growingindependentlywithin. The hard and fast association of the bodily form and the life of Spirit in classical sculpture is not therefore carried to the point of an all-dissolving unity[217]but in solight and slack a coalescence that both aspects, albeit neither is present without the other, preserve in this connection their separate independence relatively to the other, or at least, if a profounder union is really secured, the spiritual aspect as that inward principle, which asserts its presence over and beyond its suffusion with the objective or external material, becomes the essentially illuminating focus of all. And it results from this that, to promote the enhancement of this relatively increased self-subsistency of the objective and material aspect,—we have in our mind mainly, no doubt, the extreme case of the representation of external Nature and its objects, even in their isolated and most exclusive particularity,—yet even in such a case and despite all realism in the presentment it is necessary that such counterfeits should permit a reflection of the artist's soul to be visible on their face. They should in other words suffer us to see the sympathy of Spirit in the manner of their artistic realization, and therewith discover to us the life of soul, the ideal life which is the vital breath of their co-ordination, the penetration of man's emotional life itself into this extreme type of external environment.

Speaking, then, generally, we may affirm that the principle of subjectivity carries with it as its inevitable result, on the one hand, that the wholly unconstrained union of Spirit with its corporeal frame should be given up, and the bodily aspect be asserted in a more or less negative relation over against the former, in order that the ideality of Spirit may be emphasized on the front of that external reality, and, on the other hand, in order to procure free scope for every separate feature of the variety, division, and movement of what is spiritual no less than what directly appeals to man's senses.

3. And,thirdly, this new principle has to establish itself in the sensuous material, of which art avails itself in its new manifestations.

(a) The material hitherto was matter simply, that is, the material of gravity in the content of its spatial extension, and no less was it form under its simplest and most abstract definition of configuration. Now that thesubjectiveand at the same time the essentially particularized content of the soul is imported into this material, the spatial totality ofsuch material will without question in some measure suffer loss in order that the former content may appear upon its face with its ideal mintage[218], and contrariwise will be converted from its immediately material guise to an appearance which is the product ofmindor spirit; and, on the other hand, both in respect to form and its externally sensuous visibility, all the detail of what appears will be necessarily emphasized in the way that the new content requires. Art is, however, even now compelled in the first instance to move in the realm of the visible and sensuous, because, following the above course of our inquiry, though no doubt the inward or ideal is conceived as self-introspection[219], yet it has further to appear as a return of its own quality to itself from this very realm ofexternalityandmaterial shape, in short, as a return of itself to itself, which can only from the earliest point of view be portrayed in the objective existence of Nature and the corporeal existence of Spirit's life.

Thefirstamong the romantic arts will consequently have as its proper function to assert its content in the visible forms of the external human figure and the natural shape wherever disclosed, without, however, remaining bound to the sensuous ideality and abstract range of sculpture. This is the task and province ofpainting.

(b) In so far, however, as we find in painting for its fundamental type, not as in sculpture the entirely perfected resolution of the spiritual idea and the bodily form in one content, but rather the predominant exposition of the self-absorbed ideality of soul, to that extent the spatial figure in extension is not a truly adequate medium of expression for the inward life of Spirit. Art therefore abandons the previous medium of configuration, and in the place of spatial forms employs the medium oftonein the limited duration of its sounds; tone in fact by its assertion of the material of Space under a purely negative relation secures for itself a finite existence nearer to ideality, and corresponds to thatsoul-life, which in accordance with its own inward experience conceives and grasps that life as emotion, and then expresses that content, as it enforces its claim in the unseen movement of heart and soul, in the procession of tones. The second art, therefore, which follows this principle of exposition is that ofmusic.

(c) Thereby, however, music merely is placed at the opposite extreme, and, in contrast to the plastic arts, both in respect to its content and relatively to its sensuous material, and the mode of its expression, cleaves fast to the formless content of its pure ideality. It is, however, the function of art, in virtue of its essential notion, to disclose to the senses notmerelythe soul-life, but the manifestation and actuality of the same in itsexternal reality.When, however, art has abandoned the process of veritably informing the real and consequently visible form of objective existence, and has applied its activity to the element itself of soul-life, the objective reality, to which it once more recurs, can no longer be the reality as such in itself, but one which is merelyimaginedand prefigured to the mind or sensitive soul. The presentment, moreover, as being the communication to Spirit of creative mind working in its own domain is compelled to use thesensuousmaterial united to its disclosure simply as a mere means for such communication. It must consequently lower its denomination to that of a sign which of itself is without significance. It is at this point thatpoetryor the art of speech, confronts us, which now incorporates its art-productions in the medium of a speech elaborated to an instrument of artistic service, precisely as intelligence already in ordinary speech makes intelligible to spiritual life all that it carries in itself. And, moreover, for the reason that it is able thus to unfold theentirecontent of Spirit in its own medium, it is theuniversalart, which belongs indifferently to all the types of art, and is only excluded in that case where the spiritual life which is still unrevealed to itself in its highest form of content is merely able to make itself aware of its own dim presentiments in the form and configuration of that which is external and alien to itself.

The most adequate object of sculpture is the tranquil self-absorption of personality in its essential substance, the character whose spiritual individuality is in the fullest degree displayed on the face of its corporeal presentment, making the sensuous frame, which reveals this incorporation of spirit, adequate to such an embodiment of mind wholly in its aspects of external form. The sightless look has as yet failed to concentrate at one point the supreme focus of ideal life, the vital breath of soul, the heart of most intimate feeling, and is as yet without spiritual movement, without the deliberate distinction between a world without it and a life within. It is on account of this that the sculpture of the ancients leaves us in some degree unmoved. We either do not remain long before it, or our delay is rather due to a scientific investigation of the fine modifications of form and detail which it displays. We cannot blame mankind if they are unable to take the profound interest in fine works of sculpture which such works deserve. To know how to value them is a study in itself. At first glance we either experience no attraction, or are immediately conscious of the general character of the whole. To come to closer quarters we have first to discover what it is that continues to supply such an interest. An enjoyment, however, which is only the possible result of study, thought, learning, and a wide experience is not the immediate object of art. And, moreover, the essential demand we make that a character should develop, should pass into the field of action and affairs, and that the soul should thereby meet with divisions and-grow deeper, this, after all our journey in search of the delight which this study of the works of antique sculpture may bring to us,remains unsatisfied. For this reason we inevitably feel more at home in painting. In other words we are at once and for the first time conscious in it of the principle of our finite and yet essentially infinite spiritual substance, the life and breath of our own existence; we contemplate in its pictures the very spark which works and is active in ourselves. The god of sculpture remains for sense-perception an object simply; in painting, on the contrary, the Divine appears as itself essentially the living subject of spiritual life, which comes into direct relations with the community, and makes it possible for each individual thereof to place himself in spiritual communion and reconcilement with Him. The substantive character of such a Divinity is not, as in sculpture, an individual that persists in the inflexible bond of its own limitations[220], but is one which expands into and is differentiated within the community itself.

The same principle generally differentiates the individual from his own bodily frame and external environment to quite as considerable an extent as it brings the soul into mediated relation with the same. Within the compass of this subjective differentiation—regarded as the independent assertion of human individuality as opposed to God, Nature, and the inward and external life of other persons, regarded also conversely as the most intimate relation, the most secure communion of God with the community, and of individual men with God, the environment of Nature and the infinite variety of the wants, purposes, passions, and activities of human existence—falls the entire movement and vitality, which sculpture, both in respect to its content and its means of contributing expression, suffers to escape; and it adds an immeasurable wealth of new material and a novel breadth and variety of artistic treatment which hitherto was absent. Briefly, then, this principle of subjectivity is on the one hand the basis of division, on the other a principle of mediation and synthesis, so that painting unites in one and the same art what hitherto formed the subject-matter of two different arts, namely, the external environment, which architecture treated artistically, and the essentially spiritual form, which was elaborated by sculpture. Painting places itsfigures on the background of a Nature or an architectural environment, both of which are the products of its own invention in precisely the same sense, and is able to make this external material in both of these aspects by virtue of its emotional powers and soul a counterfeit within its ideal realm, in the degree that it understands how best to place it in relation and harmony with the spirit of the figures that live and move therein.

Such is the principle of the new advance that painting contributes to the representative powers of art.

If we inquire now the course which the more detailed examination of our subject necessitates the following division will serve us.

In thefirstplace we shall have yet further to consider thegeneral characterwhich the art of painting must necessarily receive in accordance with its notion and relatively both to its specific content, the material that is made consonant with this content and finally the artistic treatment which is thereby involved.

Secondly, we have to develop theseparatemodes of definition, which are contained in the principle of such a content and manner of presentation, and more succinctly fix the boundaries of the subject-matter which is adapted to painting no less than the modes of its conception, composition, and technical qualities as painting.

Thirdly, painting is itselfbroken upintodistinct schoolsof painting by reason of the above divisions of matter, technique, and so forth, which, as in the other arts, have their own phases of historical development.

After having thus emphasized as the essential principle of painting that world of the soul in its vitality of feeling, conception, and action cast in embrace round heaven and earth, in the variety of its manifestations and external disclosures within the bodily frame, and affirmed on this account that the focus, and centre of this art is to be sought for in romantic and Christian art, it may immediately occur to the reader that not only do we find excellent artists among the ancients, who are as distinguished in this art as others oftheir age in sculpture—and we cannot praise them more highly—but also that other peoples, notably the Chinese, Hindoos, and Egyptians, have secured distinction in the direction of painting. Without question the art of painting is, by virtue of the variety of the objects treated and the particular type of its manner of execution, less[221]restricted in the range of nations that exemplify its pursuit. This, however, is not the point at issue. If our question is simply that of the historian doubtless we find single examples of one type[222]of painting or another have been produced at the most varied epochs by the nations already mentioned and others. It is, however, a profounder question altogether when we ask ourselves what is theprincipleof painting, examine the means of its exposition and in doing so seek to establish that content, which by virtue of itsown natureis emphatically consonant with thepainter's artas such and its mode of presentment, so that we can affirm the form thus selected to be wholly adequate to the content in question. We have but little left us of the painting of the ancient world, examples, in fact, which we see can neither have formed part of the most consummate work of antiquity in this respect, nor have been the product of its most famous masters. At least all that has been discovered through excavation in private houses is of this character. It is impossible, however, not to admire the delicacy of taste, the suitability of the objects, selected, the clearness of the grouping, and, we may add, the lightness of the handling and freshness of the colouring, excellences which without doubt were present in the originals of such pictures in a far higher degree, in imitation of which, for example, the wall paintings in the so-called house of the tragedian at Pompeii have been executed. We have, unfortunately, no examples of the works of famous masters. Whatever degree of excellence, however, these more original productions attained, we may none the less affirm that the ancients could not, alongside of the unmatchable beauty of their sculptures, have lifted the art of painting to the level of artistic elaboration as painting which we find secured in the Christian era ofthe Middle Ages, and pre-eminently in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. And we may assume this to be so on the philosophical ground that the most genuine heart of the Greek outlook is, in a degree which is inapplicable to the other arts, concordant with the root and fragrance of that which sculpture and sculpture alone can supply. And in art we are not entitled to separate spiritual content from its mode of presentation. If, having this clear to our minds, we inquire how it is that painting only reached its most characteristic consummation through the content of the romantic type of art, we can but reply that it is precisely the intimacy of feeling, the blessedness[223]and pain that give to us the soul of this profounder content, whose demand is for such a vital infusion, which has paved the way to and in fact been the cause of this higher perfection of painting.

As an example of what I mean I will but recall to recollection one particular instance already cited, namely, that we borrow from Raoul-Rochette of the treatment of Isis carrying Horns on her knees. In general the subject is identical with the Madonna pictures, a Divine mother and her child. The difference of handling and conception in the two cases, however, is immeasurable. The Egyptian Isis, as we find her thus situated on bas-reliefs, has nothing maternal about her, no tenderness, no trait of soul or emotion, such as is not even wholly absent in the stiffer Byzantine pictures of the Madonna. And if we think of Raphael, or any other great Italian master, what results have they not achieved from this subject of the Mother and Christ-babe! What depth of emotion, what spiritual life, what intimacy and wealth of heart, what exaltation and endearment, how human and yet how entirely filled with divine spirit is the soul which speaks to us from every line and feature. And under what infinite variety of forms and situations is this one subject presented to us even by particular masters taken singly and still more by different artists. The mother, the pure Virgin, the physical, the spiritual beauty, loftiness and devotion of love, all this and countless other features are emphasized in their turn as the main significance of theexpression. But chief of all we find throughout that it is not the sensuous beauty of mere form, but the animate life of Spirit, by virtue of which artistic genius no less than mastery of execution is asserted and secured. Now it is quite true that Greek art has passed a long way beyond Egyptian art, and we may add that it has made the expression of man's soul an object aimed for. But it was not capable of grasping that intimacy and depth of emotion which is discovered to us in the Christian type of expression, and indeed was careful, in accordance with its entire character, not to attach itself to such intensity of feeling. Take, for instance, the case I have more than once already cited of the faun, who carries the youthful Bacchus in his arms; it is, no doubt, expressive of extremely tender and amiable qualities. The nymphs are equally so who tend upon Bacchus, a situation which is depicted by a gem in a very beautiful group of figures. In such cases we have an analogous sentiment of unconstrained love for a child, equally free from passion and yearning; but, even putting on one side the maternal relation[224], the expression possesses in no respect the intimacy, the depth of soul, which confront us in Christian paintings. The ancients may very well have painted excellent portraits, but neither their way of conceiving natural fact, nor the point of view from which they regarded human and divine conditions was of the kind that, in the case of painting, an infusion of soul-life could be expressed with such intimate intensity as was possible in Christian painting.

The demand of painting, however, for this more personal type of inspiration is a result of its very material. In other words, the sensuous medium in which it moves is an extension on pure surface, and the display of form by means of the use ofdiversifiedcolours, by virtue of which process the objective shape, as we have it presented to the vision, is converted to an artificial illusion adopted by a spiritual agency[225]in the place of the actual form of fact. It is part of the principle of such a treatment of material that which is external should not ultimately retain its validity in its independent native existence, even in the modified form it takesas a vital product of human hands, but should in this form of realization be lowered as reality to a purely phenomenal reflex of theinwardsoul-life itself, which seeks to contemplate itself independently as such. When we look into the heart of the matter we shall find that the advance from the rounded form of sculpture amounts to nothing less than the above statement. It is the soul-life, the ideality of Spirit which undertakes to express itself in an intimate way through the counterfeit of the objective world. Add to this, in the second place, that the surface on which the art of painting makes its objects visible, opens independently the path to the employment of a surrounding background and other complex relations; and colour too, regarded as the articulation of that which appears, requires a correspondent differentiation of soul-life, which can only be rendered clearly through the definition of expression, situation, and action, and consequently makes necessary variety, movement, and the detailed exposition of both the inward and external life. This principle of inwardness[226]taken alone, which at the same time in its actual manifestation is associated with the variety of external existence and is cognizable on the face of such particular existence as an essentially complete and independent complex of conditions, we have already seen to be the principle of the romantic type of art, in whose configuration and mode of presentation consequently the medium of painting discovers in a unique way itswholly adequate object.Conversely we may affirm at the same time that romantic art, when the question is actually one of definite works of art, must seek for material which is consonant with its content, and in the first instance it finds such in painting, which consequently remains more or less of a formal character when dealing with all objects and compositions not of this type[227]. Granting, then, the fact that we find outside the Christian paintings an Oriental, Greek, and Roman school of painting, yet the real centre and focus of all is none the less the elaboration which this art secured within the boundaries of romanticart. We can only speak of Oriental and Greek painting in the same kind of way as we did when, despite our main thesis that sculpture attained its highest crown of perfection in the classical Ideal, we referred to a subordinate Christian type of sculpture. In other words we are forced to admit that the art of painting first apprehends its content in the material of the romantic type of art, which completely corresponds to its instruments and its modes, and consequently that it was only after the treatment of such material that it discovered how best to use and elaborate in every direction all the means at its disposal.

Following now the course of the above remarks in a wholly general way we have to observe as follows in connection with thecontent,material, andartistic modeof treatment of painting.

(a) The fundamental definition of thecontentof painting is, as we have seen, subjectivity as an independent process[228].

(α) In this process, looking at it from the point of view of areflex of soul-life, individuality must not wholly pass into the universality its substance, but must on the contrary disclose how it retains that content as a distinctive personality[229], and possesses and expresses its inward life, that is the vitality of its own conception and feeling in the same; neither should the external form be wholly dominated by the ideal individuality as is the case in sculpture. For the principle of subjectivity, albeit that it permeates the external material as the mode of objectivity adequate to express it, is notwithstanding likewise an identity which withdraws itself into itself out of that objective domain, and by virtue of this self-seclusion is relatively to that objective aspect neutral, leaving it quite untrammelled. Just as therefore, on the spiritual side of the content, the particularity of the personal life is not set forth in direct union with its substance and universality, but is essentially reflected asthe culminating feature of its independent embodiment[230], so, too, in the objective envisagement of form, the particularity and universality of the same are carried from their previous plastic union[231]to a predominance of the individual aspect, and indeed of comparatively accidental and indifferent features, and in a manner much the same as that which, in the reality of sense experience, is the prevailing character of all phenomena.

(β) Afurtherimportant point is that connected with the range ofscopethat is permitted to the art of painting in virtue of its principle with regard to the objects to be thus presented.

The free principle of subjectivity suffers on the one hand the entire field of natural objects, and every department of human activity to remain in its substantive mode of existence; on the other, it is capable of entering into fusion with all possible detail, and creating therefrom a content of its own ideal life, of rather we should say that only in this interfusion with concrete actuality does it assert itself as concrete and vital in its products. Consequently it is possible for the painter to import a wealth of material into the realm occupied by his artistic works, which remains outside, the reach of the sculptor. The entire world of the religious idea, conceptions of heaven and hell, the history of Christ, his disciples and saints, external Nature, all that concerns humanity down to the most fugitive of situations and characters, all this material and more can find a place here. For as we have seen all that pertains to the detail, caprice, and accidental features of human need and interest is affected by this principle, which at once strives to comprehend and compose it.

(γ) And along with this fact we have as itscorollarythat painting makes thesoulof man itself the subject of its creative work. All that is alive within the soul is present in ideal form, if it is, when we consider its content, at once objective and absolute in the abstract sense[232]. For the emotionallife of soul can without question carry the universal within its content, a content, however, which, as feeling, does not retain the form of this universality, but appears under the mode as I, this individual person—I know my identity therein and feel the same. In order to educe and set forth this objective content as objective, I must forget myself. In this way the painter no doubt reveals to our sight the ideal substance of soul in the form of external objects, but the truly real content which it expresses is the personal soul that feels. For which reason painting, from the point of view of form, is unable to offer such distinctive envisagements of the Divine as sculpture, but only ideas of less defined character such as belong to the emotions. It may appear as a contradiction to this position that we find again and again selected as subjects of the paintings of masters, who stand without question in the highest rank, the external environment of mankind, mountains, valleys, meadows, brooks, trees, ships, buildings, their interiors, in short earth, sea, and sky. What, however, constitutes the core in the content of such works of art is not the objects themselves, but thevitalityand soul imported into them by the artist's conception and execution, his emotional life in fact, which is reflected in his work, and gives us not merely a counterfeit of external objects, but therewith his own personality and temperament[233]. And it is precisely by his doing this that the objects of Nature, as reflected by painting, even from this realistic point of view, are relatively insignificant, because the influence of soul-life begins to assert itself in them as the main significance. In this tendency towards temperament, which, in the case of objects borrowed from external Nature, may frequently only amount to a general response emphasized between the two sides, we find the most important distinction between painting on the one hand and sculpture and architecture on the other. Painting indeed approximates in this respect more closely to music and emphasizes here the point of transition from the plastic arts to that of tone.

(b) To proceed to oursecondmain division I have already several times referred, if only in respect to features of fundamentalimportance, to the difference we discover between the sensuousmaterialof painting and that of sculpture. I will therefore in this place only touch upon the closer connection which obtains between this material and the spiritual content which it most notably has to display to us.

(α) The first fact we have to consider in this connection is this that painting compresses thethreedimensions, of Space. Absolute concentration would be carried to the point, as elimination of all juxtaposition, and as unrest essentially predicable of such concentration, as we find it in the point of Time. Such a mode of negation carried out in its entire result, however, we only meet with in the art of music. Painting, on the contrary, permits the spatial relation still to subsist, and only effacesoneof the three dimensions; superficies is made the element of its representations. This reduction of the three dimensions to level surface is implied in principle of increasing reality, which is only capable thereby of asserting itself in spatial relation as such ideal transmutation, owing to the fact that it does not suffer the complete totality of objective fact to persist as such, but restricts the same. Ordinarily we are accustomed to view this reduction as a caprice of the art which amounts to a defect. What is here sought for, it appears, is that natural objects in all their naked reality, or spiritual ideas and feelings, by means of the human body and its postures should be made visible to our senses for such an aim it is obvious that the surface is insufficient and inferior to Nature, which appears before us with a completeness wholly different.

(αα) Painting is unquestionably yet more abstract than sculpture in respect to material conditioned in Space; but this abstraction, remote as it is from being a purely capricious limitation, or an indication of human incapacity, is just that which brings about the necessary advance from sculpture. Even sculpture is not simply an imitation of natural or physical existence, but a creation of intelligence, which removes from form all aspects of natural existence which are not in accord with the definite content it undertakes to present. This elimination was carried out by sculpture in the case of all colour detail, so that what remained to it was only the abstraction of material form. In painting we have the opposite process, its content being the ideality of soul-life,which can only appear on the face of objective reality, by a process of self-absorption from that very material[234]. The art of painting, therefore, no doubt, works for the sense-perception, but in a way, through which the object which it displays remains no longer an actual natural existence wholly in Space, but is changed to a counterfeit creation of intelligence, in which it only so far reveals its spiritual source as it annuls the actual existence of its object, recreating it for itself in a purely phenomenal semblance within its own spiritual realm—for Spirit.

(ββ) And to this intent painting must necessarily effect a breach with the totality of the spatial condition, and there is no reason for charging to human incapacity this loss of Nature's completeness. In other words, inasmuch as the object of painting from the point of view of its spatial existence, is merely a semblance, reflective of the soul of man, exhibited by art for his spirit, the self-subsistency of the object as we find it actually in Space is dissolved, and the object is related in a far more restricted way to the spectator than is the case in sculpture. A statue is by itself wholly an isolated object, independent of the spectator, who may place himself where he pleases; his point of view, his movements, his walking round it, not one of them affect the work of art as a whole[235]. If this self-subsistency is to be preserved the sculptured figure must also have some definite impression to offer each and every point of view. And this independence of the work must be retained in sculpture for the reason that its content is the tranquillity, self-seclusion, and objective presence which, in both an external and ideal sense, reposes on their own substance. In painting, on the contrary, whose content is conditioned by an ideal atmosphere, and in fact is composed of ideal relations essentially particularized, it is precisely this aspect of discord in a work of art between object and spectator which has to be emphasized, and yet with a like directness to be resolved inthe fact, that the work, as depicting the ideality of intelligence in its entire mode of presentation, can be only defined under the assumption that it stands there related to an individual mind, that is a spectator, and apart from the same has no self-subsistency. The spectator is assumed and reckoned to be there from the first, and the work of art is only intelligible as related to this point of personal contemplation[236]. For such a relation to merevisibilityand its reflection upon an individual consciousness, however, the mere show of reality is sufficient; or rather the actual totality of the spatial condition is a defect, because in that case the objects seen retain an independent existence, and do not appear to be created by Spirit for its own contemplation. Nature consequently is not entitled to reduce its images to the plain surface; its objects possess and claim to possess a real and independent existence. The satisfaction, however, we derive from painting is not in actual existence, but in the contemplative interest we receive from the external reproduction of ideal truths, things born of the soul, and its art therefore dispenses wholly with the need and apparatus of spatial reality in its complete organization.

(γγ) And together with this reduction to the level surface we maythirdlyassociate the fact that painting is placed in a still more remote position to architecture than that occupied by sculpture. Works of sculpture even where exhibited independently for themselves in public places or gardens, require some kind of pedestal treated architectonically, and, in the case of apartments, forecourts, and halls, either the art of building merely assists in presenting the statue's fitting environment, or conversely the sculptured figure is used as the decoration of the building, and between these two thus related objects we find a close association. Painting, on the contrary, whether placed in the enclosed apartment, or in public halls, or under the open sky, is limited to the wall. Originally its function is simply to fill up empty wall spaces. Among the ancients this original destination is mainly sufficient, and they decorated in this way the walls of their temples, and in more recent times also their private chambers. Gothic architecture, whose main task is the enclosure under the most grandiose conditions,supplies no doubt still larger surfaces, or rather the largest possible, yet it is only in the most ancient mosaics that we find painting is employed as a decoration of empty spaces, whether in the case of the outside or the interior. The more recent architecture of the fourteenth century, on the contrary, fills up its enormous wall surfaces in an architectural manner, the most imposing example I know of which is the mainfaçadeof Strasbourg cathedral. Here we find that the empty surfaces, excluding the entrance doors, the rose and other windows, are filled in by the ornamental work analogous to that of windows traced over the walls, and decorated by figures of considerable delicacy and variety of form, so that we have no need here for painting. In the case of religious architecture, therefore, painting mainly appears in buildings which begin to approximate to the ancient type of architecture. As a rule, however, Christian painting is to be distinguished from the arts of building, and presents its works in independent form, as for example in large pictures, whether placed in chapels or on high altars. It is true that here, too, the picture must retain some relation to the character of the place, which it is destined to fill; for the rest, however, it is not merely intended to fill up wall spaces, but to hang them as a work of art independently just as a work of sculpture may do. In conclusion painting has its use as a decoration of halls and apartments in public buildings, town halls, palaces, and private houses, in which respect its association with architecture is once more closely marked, an association, however, in which its independence as a free art ought not to be lost.

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