‘A fiery soul that working out its wayFretted the pigmy body to decay,And o’er-inform’d the tenement of clay’—
‘A fiery soul that working out its wayFretted the pigmy body to decay,And o’er-inform’d the tenement of clay’—
‘A fiery soul that working out its wayFretted the pigmy body to decay,And o’er-inform’d the tenement of clay’—
‘A fiery soul that working out its way
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o’er-inform’d the tenement of clay’—
do not exactly answer to Raphael’s character, which is mild and thoughtful rather than fiery; nor is there any want either of grace or grandeur in his figures; but the passage describes the ‘o’er-informing’ spirit that breathes through them, and the unequal struggle of the expression to vent itself by more than ordinary physical means. Raphael lived a much shorter time than Michael Angelo, who also lived long after him; and there is no comparison between the number, the variety, or the finished elegance of their works.[53]Michael Angelo possibly lost himself in the material and instrumental part of art, in embodying a technical theory, or in acquiring the grammar of different branches of study, excelling in knowledge and in gravity of pretension; whereas Raphael gave himself up to the diviner or lovelier impulse that breathes its soul over the face ofthings, being governed by a sense of reality and of general truth. There is nothing exclusive or repulsive in Raphael; he is open to all impressions alike, and seems to identify himself with whatever he saw that arrested his attention or could interest others. Michael Angelo studied for himself, and raised objects to the standards of his conception, by aformulaor system: Raphael invented for others, and was guided only by sympathy with them. Michael Angelo was painter, sculptor, architect; but he might be said to make of each art a shrine in which to build up the stately and gigantic stature of his own mind:—Raphael was only a painter, but in that one art he seemed to pour out all the treasures and various excellence of nature, grandeur and scope of design, exquisite finishing, force, grace, delicacy, the strength of man, the softness of woman, the playfulness of infancy, thought, feeling, invention, imitation, labour, ease, and every quality that can distinguish a picture, except colour. Michael Angelo, in a word, stamped his own character on his works, or recast Nature in a mould of his own, leaving out much that was excellent: Raphael received his inspiration from without, and his genius caught the lambent flame of grace, of truth, and grandeur, which are reflected in his works with a light clear, transparent and unfading.
L.Will you mention one or two things that particularly struck you?
H.There is a figure of a man leading a horse in the Attila, which I think peculiarly characteristic. It is an ordinary face and figure, in a somewhat awkward dress: but he seems as if he had literally walked into the picture at that instant; he is looking forward with a mixture of earnestness and curiosity, as if the scene were passing before him, and every part of his figure and dress is flexible and in motion, pliant to the painter’s plastic touch. This figure, so unconstrained and free, animated, salient, put me in mind, compared with the usual stiffness and shackles of the art, of chain-armour used by the knights of old instead of coat-of-mail. Raphael’s fresco figures seem the least of all others taken from plaster-casts; this is more than can be said of Michael Angelo’s, which might be taken from, or would serve for very noble ones. The horses in the same picture also delight me. Though dumb, they appear as though they could speak, and were privy to the import of the scene. Their inflated nostrils and speckled skins are like a kind of proud flesh; or they are animals spiritualised. In the Miracle of Bolsano is that group of children, round-faced, smiling, with large-orbed eyes, like infancy nestling in the arms of affection; the studied elegance of the choir of tender novices, with all their sense of the godliness of their function and the beauty of holiness; and the hard, liny, individualportraits of priests and cardinals on the right-hand, which have the same life, spirit, boldness, and marked character, as if you could have looked in upon the assembled conclave. Neither painting nor popery ever produced anything finer. There is the utmost hardness and materiality of outline, with a spirit of fire. The School of Athens is full of striking parts and ingenious contrasts; but I prefer to it the Convocation of Saints, with that noble circle of Prophets and Apostles in the sky, on whose bent foreheads and downcast eyes you see written the City of the Blest, the beatific presence of the Most High and the Glory hereafter to be revealed, a solemn brightness and a fearful dream, and that scarce less inspired circle of sages canonised here on earth, poets, heroes, and philosophers, with the painter himself, entering on one side like the recording angel, smiling in youthful beauty, and scarce conscious of the scene he has embodied. If there is a failure in any of these frescoes, it is, I think, in the Parnassus, in which there is something quaint and affected. In the St. Peter delivered from prison, he has burst with Rembrandt into the dark chambers of night, and thrown a glory round them. In the story of Cupid and Psyche, at the Little Farnese, he has, I think, even surpassed himself in a certain swelling and voluptuous grace, as if beauty grew and ripened under his touch, and the very genius of ancient fable hovered over his enamoured pencil.
L.I believe you when you praise, not always when you condemn. Was there anything else that you saw to give you a higher idea of him than the specimens we have in this country?
H.Nothing superior to the Cartoons for boldness of design and execution; but I think his best oil pictures are abroad, though I had seen most of them before in the Louvre. I had not, however, seen the Crowning of the Virgin, which is in the Picture-gallery of the Vatican, and appears to me one of his very highest-wrought pictures. The Virgin in the clouds is of an admirable sedateness and dignity, and over the throng of breathing faces below there is poured a stream of joy and fervid devotion that can be compared to nothing but the golden light that evening skies pour on the edges of the surging waves. ‘Hope elevates, and joy brightens their every feature.’ The Foligno Virgin was at Paris, in which I cannot say I am quite satisfied with the Madonna; it has rather aprécieuseexpression; but I know not enough how to admire the innumerable heads of cherubs surrounding her, touched in with such care and delicacy, yet so as scarcely to be perceptible except on close inspection, nor that figure of the winged cherub below, offering the casket, and with his round, chubby face and limbs as full of rosy health and joy, as the cup is full of the juice of the purple vine. There is another picture of his Iwill mention, the LeoX.in the Palace Pitti, ‘on his front engraven thought and public care; ‘and again, that little portrait in a cup in the Louvre, muffled in thought and buried in a kind of mentalchiaro scuro. When I think of these and so many other of his inimitable works, ‘scattered like stray-gifts o’er the earth,’ meeting our thoughts half-way, and yet carrying them farther than we should have been able of ourselves, enriching, refining, exalting all around, I am at a loss to find motives for equal admiration or gratitude in what Michael Angelo has left, though his Prophets and Sibyls on the walls of the Sistine Chapel arethumping make-weightsthrown into the opposite scale. It is nearly impossible to weigh or measure their different merits. Perhaps Michael Angelo’s works, in their vastness and unity, may give a greater blow to some imaginations and lift the mind more out of itself, though accompanied with less delight or food for reflection, resembling the rocky precipice, whose ‘stately height though bare’ overlooks the various excellence and beauty of subjected art.
L.I do not think your premises warrant your conclusion. If what you have said of each is true, I should give the undoubted preference to Raphael as at least the greater painter, if not the greater man. I must prefer the finest face to the largest mask.
H.I wish you could see and judge for yourself.
L.I prythee do not mock me. Proceed with your account. Was there nothing else worth mentioning after Raphael and Michael Angelo?
H.So much, that it has slipped from my memory. There are the finest statues in the world there, and they are scattered and put into niches or separate little rooms for effect, and not congregated together like a meeting of the marble gods of mythology, as was the case in the Louvre. There are some of Canova’s, worked up to a high pitch of perfection, which might just as well have been left alone—and there are none, I think, equal to the Elgin marbles. A bath of one of the Antonines, of solid porphyry and as large as a good-sized room, struck me as the strongest proof of ancient magnificence. The busts are innumerable, inimitable, have a breathing clearness and transparency, revive ancient history, and are very like actual English heads and characters. The inscriptions alone on fragments of antique marble would furnish years of study to the curious or learned in that way. The vases are most elegant—of proportions and materials unrivalled in taste and in value. There are some tapestry copies of the Cartoons, very glaring and unpleasant to look at. The room containing the coloured maps of Italy, done about three hundred years ago, is one of the longest and most striking; and the passing through it with the green hillocks, rivers, and mountains on its spotty sides, islike going a delightful and various journey. You recall or anticipate the most interesting scenes and objects. Out of the windows of these long straggling galleries, you look down into a labyrinth of inner and of outer courts, or catch the Dome of St Peter’s adjoining (like a huge shadow), or gaze at the distant amphitheatre of hills surrounding the Sacred City, which excite a pleasing awe, whether considered as the haunts of banditti or from a recollection of the wondrous scene, the hallowed spot, on which they have overlooked for ages, Imperial or Papal Rome, or her commonwealth, more august than either. Here also in one chamber of the Vatican is a room stuffed full of artists, copying the Transfiguration, or the St. Jerome of Domenichino, spitting, shrugging, and taking snuff, admiring their own performances and sneering at those of their neighbours; and on certain days of the week the whole range of the rooms is thrown open without reserve to the entire population of Rome and its environs, priests and peasants, with heads not unlike those that gleam from the walls, perfect in expression and in costume, and young peasant girls in clouted shoes with looks of pleasure, timidity and wonder, such as those with which Raphael himself, from the portraits of him, might be supposed to have hailed the dawn of heaven-born art. There is also (to mention small works with great) a portrait of George the Fourth in his robes (a present to his Holiness) turned into an outer room; and a tablet erected by him in St. Peter’s, to the memory of JamesIII.Would you believe it? Cosmo Comyne Bradwardine, when he saw the averted looks of the good people of England as they proclaimed his Majesty JamesIII.in any of the towns through which they passed, would not have believed it. Fergus Maclvor, when in answer to the crier of the court, who repeated ‘Long live King George!’ he retorted, ‘Long live King James!’ would not have believed it possible!
L.Hang your politics.
H.Never mind, if they do not hang me.
‘No wher so besy a man as he ther n’as,And yet he semed besier than he was.’Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.
‘No wher so besy a man as he ther n’as,And yet he semed besier than he was.’Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.
‘No wher so besy a man as he ther n’as,And yet he semed besier than he was.’Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.
‘No wher so besy a man as he ther n’as,
And yet he semed besier than he was.’
Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.
Rome is of all places the worst to study in, for the same reason that it is the best to lounge in. There is no end of objects to divert and distract the mind. If a person has no other view than to pass away his time, to fill his portfolio or common-place book, or toimprove his general taste and knowledge, he may find employment and amusement here for ever: if ever he wishes to do any thing, he should fly from it as he would from the plague. There is a species ofmalariahanging over it, which infects both the mind and the body. It has been the seat of too much activity and luxury formerly, not to have produced a correspondent torpor and stagnation (both in the physical and moral world) as the natural consequence at present. If Necessity is the mother of Invention it must be stifled in the birth here, where every thing is already done and provided to your hand that you could possibly wish for or think of. You have no stimulus to exertion, for you have but to open your eyes and see, in order to live in a continued round of delight and admiration. The doors of a splendid banquet of all that is rare and rich in art stand ready open to you, you are invited to enter in and feast your senses and your imaginationgratis; and it is not likely that, under these circumstances, you will try to earn a scanty meal by hard labour, or even to gain an appetite by wholesome exercise. The same thing occurs here that is objected to the inhabitants of great cities in general. They have too many objects always passing before them, that engage their attention and fill up their time, to allow them either much leisure or inclination for thought or study. Rome is the great metropolis of Art; and it is somewhat to be feared that those who take up their abode there will become, like othercockneys, ignorant, conceited, and superficial.
The queen and mistress of the ancient and the modern world claims such a transcendent superiority over the mind, that you look down as it were from this eminence on the rest of mankind; and from the contempt you feel for others, come to have a mighty good opinion of yourself. Thebeingat Rome (both from the sound of the name and the monuments of genius and magnificence she has to show) is of itself a sufficient distinction withoutdoinganything there. After viewing some splendid relic of antiquity, the efforts of contemporary art sink into insignificance and nothingness: but we are disposed to occupy the vacant space, the clear ground thus created, with our own puny pretensions and aspiring fancies. As this indulgence of alternate enthusiasm and reflected self-complacency is a never-failing source of gratification, and a much less laborious one than the embodying our vain imaginations in practice, we easily rest in the means as the end; and without making any farther progress, are perfectly satisfied with what others have done, and what weareto do. We indeed wear the livery, and follow in the train of greatness; and, like other livery-servants, despise the rabble, growing more lazy, affected, luxurious, insolent, trifling, and incapable of gaining an honest livelihood everyhour. We are the dupes of flattering appearances and of false comparisons between ourselves and others. We think that a familiarity with great names and great works is an approach to an equality with them; or fondly proceed to establish our own pretensions on the ruins of others, not considering that if it were not what wedo, but what wesee, that is the standard of proficiency, thousands of spectators might give themselves the same airs of self-importance on the same idle score, and treat us as barbarians and poor creatures, if they had our impertinence and presumption. We stand before a picture of some great master, and fancy there is nothing between him and us: we walk under the Dome of St. Peter’s, and it seems to grow larger with a consciousness of our presence and with the amplitude of our conceptions. All this is fine as well as easy work; nor can it be supposed that we shall be in any haste to exchange this waking dream for the drudgery of mechanical exertion, or for the mortifying evidence of the disparity between our theory and our practice. All the great names and schools of art stand proxy for us, till we choose to take the responsibility on our own shoulders; and as it happens in other cases, we have no objection to make our faith in the merits of others a convenient substitute for good works and zealous exertions in the cause. Yet a common stone-mason or sign-painter, who understands the use of his tools and sticks close to his business, has more resemblance to Raphael or Michael Angelo, and stands a better chance of achieving something great, than those who visit the Corridors of the Vatican or St. Peter’s once a day, return home, spend the evening in extolling what they have witnessed, begin a sketch or a plan and lay it aside, and saunter out again the next day in search of fresh objects to dissipateennuiand kill the time without being obliged to draw for one instant on their own resources or resolution.
Numberless are the instances of those who go on thus, while vanity and indolence together are confirmed into an incurable disease, the sleek, pampered tone of which they mistake for the marks of taste and genius. What other result can be expected? If they do any thing, it is all over with them. They not only strip off the mask from their own self-love, but expose themselves to the pity and derision of their competitors, whom they before affected to despise. Within ‘the vast, the unbounded’ circle of pretension, of vapouring, and inuendo, they are safe: the futurewould-beRaphaels, Correggios, &c. have nothing to dread from criticism while they hatch their embryo conquests and prepare a distant triumph: no one can apply Ithuriel’s spear to detect what is confessedly a shadow. But they must waive this privilege when they descend into the common lists; and in proportion as they have committed themselves in conversation or inidle fancy, they are ashamed to commit themselves in reality, because any thing they could do at first must unavoidably fall short of that high standard of excellence, which (if at all) can only be attained by the labour and experience of a whole life. Their real incapacity shrinks from the pomp of their professions. The magnificence of the air-drawn edifice of their reputation prevents them from laying the first stone in downright earnest; and they have no other mode of excusing the delay, and the indecision it betokens, than by assuming still greater delicacy of taste and loftiness of ambition, and by thus aggrandising their unfounded schemes, rendering their execution more hopeless and impossible. Should they begin something, a new thought strikes them, and they throw aside a very promising sketch to enlarge their canvass and proceed upon a scale more worthy of them: to this enlarged design some object is indispensably necessary, which is unluckily wanting:—thus time is gained, a new lease of credit is granted, and instead of putting the last hand to the original sketch, they take merit to themselves for the enlargement of their views and the determined pursuit of the higher walk of art. Meantime, the smaller picture stands unfinished on the easel, and nominal commissions pour in for new and more extended projects. Then comes a new secret of colouring, a new principle of grouping, a new theory, a new book—always something to draw off the attention from its proper object, and to substitute laborious idleness for true pains and profitable study. Then a picture is to be copied as a preparation for undertaking a given subject, or a library to be ransacked to ascertain the precise truth of the historical facts or the exact conception of the characters; and after a year thus lost in desultory and scrupulous researches, the whole plan is given up, either because no one comes forward effectually to patronise it, or because some more tempting prospect is opened into the realms of art and high renown. Then again friends are to be consulted; some admire one thing, some another; some recommend the study of nature, others are all for the antique; some insist on the utmost finishing, others explode all attention tominutiæ; artists find one fault, the uninstructed spectator another; and in going backwards and forwards from one to another, listening to new reasons and new objections, in reconciling all parties and pleasing none, life is passed in endless doubts and difficulties, and we discover that our most valuable years have fled in busy preparations to do—nothing. It is then too late, and we consume the remainder in vain regrets and querulous repinings, as we did the flower and marrow of our time in fanciful speculation and egregious trifling. The student should of all things steer clear of the character of the dilettanti—it is the rock on which he is most likely to split.Pleasure, or extravagance, or positive idleness, are less dangerous; for these he knows to be fatal to his success, and he indulges in them with his eyes open. But in the other case, he is thrown off his guard by the most plausible appearances. Vanity here puts on the garb of humility, indecision of long-sighted perseverance, and habitual sloth of constant industry. Few will reproach us, while we are accumulating the means of ultimate success, with neglecting the end; or remind us that though art is long, life is short. It is true, that art is a long and steep ascent, but we must learn to scale it by regular, practical stages, and not by a hasty wish or still more futile calculations and measurements of the height. We can only indeed be sensible of its real height by the actual progress we have made, and by the glorious views that gradually dawn upon us, the cheerers of our way, and the harbingers of our success. It is only by attempting something that we feel where our strength lies, and if we have what travellers call aforte journéeto perform, it is the more indispensable that we should set out betimes and not loiter on the road. What is well done is the consequence of doing much—perfection is the reward of numberless attempts and failures. The chief requisites are a practised hand and eye, and an active imagination. Indolent taste and passive acquirements are not enough. They will neither supply our wants while living, nor enable us to leave a name behind us after we are dead. Farther, the brooding over excellence with a feverish importunity, and stimulating ourselves to great things by an abstract love of fame, can do little good, and may do much harm. It is, no doubt, a very delightful and enviable state of mind to be in, but neither a very arduous nor a very profitable one. Nothing remarkable was ever done, except by following up the impulse of our own minds, by grappling with difficulties and improving our advantages, not by dreaming over our own premature triumphs or doating on the achievements of others.
If it were nothing else, the having the works of the great masters of former times always before us is enough to discourage and defeat all ordinary attempts. How many elegant designs and meritorious conceptions must lie buried under the high arched porticoes of the Vatican! The walls of the Sistine Chapel must fall upon the head of inferior pretensions and crush them. What minor pencil can stand in competition with the ‘petrific mace’ that painted the Last Judgment? What fancy can expand into blooming grace and beauty by the side of the Heliodorus? What is itwecould add, or what occasion, what need, what pretence is there to add anything to the art after this? Who in the presence of such glorious works does not wish to shrink into himself, or to live only for them? Is it not aprofanation to think he can hope to do any thing like them? And who, having once seen, can think with common patience or with zealous enthusiasm of doing aught but treading in their footsteps? If the artist has a genius and turn of mind at all similar, they baulk and damp him by their imposing stately height: if his talent lies in a different and humbler walk, they divert and unsettle his mind. If he is contented to look on and admire, a vague and unattainable idea of excellence floats before his imagination, and tantalises him with equally vain hopes and wishes. If he copies, he becomes a mechanic; and besides, runs another risk. He finds he can with ease produce in three days an incomparably finer effect than he could do with all his efforts, and after any length of time, in working without assistance. He is therefore disheartened and put out of countenance, and returns with reluctance to original composition: for where is the sense of taking ten times the pains and undergoing ten times the anxiety to produce not one hundredth part of the effect? When I was young, I made one or two studies of strong contrasts of light and shade in the manner of Rembrandt with great care and (as it was thought) with some success. But after I had once copied some of Titian’s portraits in the Louvre, my ambition took a higher flight. Nothing would serve my turn but heads like Titian—Titian expressions, Titian complexions, Titian dresses; and as I could not find these where I was, after one or two abortive attempts to engraft Italian art on English nature, I flung away my pencil in disgust and despair. Otherwise I might have done as well as others, I dare say, but from a desire to do too well. I did not consider that Nature is always the great thing, or that ‘Pan is a god, Apollo is no more!’—Nor is the student repelled and staggered in his progress only by the degree of excellence, but distracted and puzzled by the variety of incompatible claims upon his ingenuous and sincere enthusiasm. While any one attends to what circumstances bring in his way, or keeps in the path that is prompted by his own genius (such as it may be), he stands a fair chance, by directing all his efforts to one point, to compass the utmost object of his ambition. But what likelihood is there of this from the moment that all the great schools, and all the most preciouschef-d’œuvresof art, at once unveil their diversified attractions to his astonished sight? What Protestant, for instance, can be properly and permanently imbued with the fervent devotion or saint-like purity of the Catholic religion, or hope to transfer the pride, pomp, and pageantry of that detested superstition to his own canvass, with real feeling andcon amore? What modern can enter fully into the spirit of the ancient Greek mythology, or rival the symmetry of its naked forms? What single individual will presume to unite ‘the colouringof Titian, the drawing of Raphael, the airs of Guido, the learning of Poussin, the purity of Domenichino, thecorreggiescityof Correggio, and the grand contour of Michael Angelo,’ in the same composition? Yet those who are familiar with all these different styles and their excellences, require them all. Mere originality will not suffice, it is quaint and Gothic—common-place perfection is still more intolerable, it is insipid and mechanical. Modern Art is indeed like the fabled Sphinx, that imposes impossible tasks on her votaries, and as she clasps them to her bosom pierces them to the heart. Let a man have a turn and taste for landscape, she whispers him that nothing is truly interesting but the human face: if he makes a successfuldebutin portrait, he soon (under the same auspices) aspires to history; but if painting in its highest walks seems within his reach, she then plays off the solid forms and shining surfaces of sculpture before his eyes, urging him to combine the simple grandeur of the Antique with Canova’s polished elegance; or he is haunted with the majestic effects and scientific rules of architecture, and ruined temples and broken fragments nod in his bewildered imagination! What is to be done in this case? What generally is done—Nothing. Amidst so many pretensions, how is choice possible? Or where all are equally objects of taste and knowledge, how rest satisfied without giving some proofs of our practical proficiency in all? To mould a clay-figure that if finished might surpass the Venus; to make a pen-and-ink drawing after a splendid piece of colouring by Titian; to give the picturesque effect of the arch of some ancient aqueduct as seen by moonlight; some such meagre abstractions and flimsy refinements in art are among thespolia opimaand patchwork trophies offered to the presiding Goddess of spleen, idleness, and affectation!—
Nothing can be conceived more unpropitious to ‘the high endeavour and the glad success,’ than the whole aspect and character of ancient Rome, both what remains as well as what is lost of it. Is this the Eternal City? Is this she that (amazon or votaress) was twice mistress of the world? Is this the country of the Scipios, the Cincinnati and the Gracchi, of Cato and of Brutus, of Pompey and of Sylla, is this the Capitol where Julius Cæsar fell, where Cicero thundered against Catiline, the scene of combats and of triumphs, and through whose gates kings and nations were led captive by the side of their conquerors’ chariot-wheels? All is vanished. The names alone remain to haunt the memory: the spirits of the mighty dead mock us, as we pass. The genius of Antiquity bestrides the place like a Colossus. Ruin here sits on her pedestal of pride, and reads a mortifying lecture to human vanity. We see all that ages, nations, a subjected world conspired to build up to magnificence, overthrownor hastening fast into decay; empire, religion, freedom, Gods and men trampled in the dust or consigned to the regions of lasting oblivion or of shadowy renown; and what are we that in this mighty wreck we should think of cultivating our petty talents and advancing our individual pretensions? Rome is the very tomb of ancient greatness, the grave of modern presumption. The mere consciousness of the presence in which we stand ought to abash and overawe our pragmatical self-conceit. Men here seem no better than insects crawling about: everything has a Lilliputian and insignificant appearance. Our big projects, our bloated egotism, shrink up within the enormous shadow of transitory power and splendour: the sinews of desire relax and moulder away, and the fever of youthful ambition is turned into a cold ague-fit. There is a languor in the air; and the contagion of listless apathy infects the hopes that are yet unborn.—As to what remains of actual power and spiritual authority, Hobbes said well, that ‘Popery was the ghost of the Roman Empire, sitting upon the ruins of Rome.’ The only flourishing thing in Rome (and that is only half flourishing) is an old woman; and who would wish to be an old woman? Greatness here is greatness in masquerade—one knows not whether to pity or laugh at it—and the Cardinals’ red legs peeping out like the legs of some outlandish stuffed bird in a Museum, excite much the same curiosity and surprise. No one (no Englishman at least) can be much edified by the array of distinctions, that denote a consummation of art or weakness. Still, perhaps, to the idle and frivolous there may be something alluring in this meretricious mummery and splendour, as moths are attracted to the taper’s blaze, and perish in it!
There is a great deal of gossiping and stuff going on at Rome. There areConversationes, where the Cardinals go and admire the fair complexions and innocent smiles of the young Englishwomen; and where the English students who have theentréelook at the former with astonishment as a sort of nondescripts, and are not the less taken with their pretty countrywomen for being the objects of attention to Popish Cardinals. Then come the tittle-tattle of who and who’s together, the quaint and piquant inter-national gallantries, and the story of the greatest beauty in Rome said to be married to an English gentleman—how odd and at the same time how encouraging! Then the manners and customs of Rome excite a buzz of curiosity, and the English imagination is always recurring to and teazed with that luckless question ofcicisbeism. Some affect to be candid, while others persist in their original blindness, and would set on foot a reform of the Roman metropolis—on the model of the British one! In short, there is a great deal too much tampering and dalliance with subjects,with which we have little acquaintance and less business. All this passes the time, and relieves the mind either after the fatigue or in the absence of more serious study. Then there is to be an Academy Meeting at night, and a debate is to take place whether the Academy ought not to have a President, and if so, whether the President of the Academy at Rome ought not (out of respect) to be a Royal Academician, thus extending the links in the chain of professional intrigue and cabal from one side of the Continent to the other. A speech is accordingly to be made, a motion seconded, which requires time and preparation—or a sudden thought strikes the more raw and heedless adventurer, but is lost for want of words to express it—Vox faucibus hæsit, and the cast of the Theseus looks dull and lumpish as the disappointed candidate for popular applause surveys it by the light of his lamp in retiring to his chamber,Sedet infelix Theseus, &c. So the next day Gibbon is bought and studied with great avidity to give him a command of tropes and figures at their next meeting. The arrival of some new lord or squire of high degree or clerical virtuoso is announced, and a cabal immediately commences, who is to share his patronage, who is to guide his taste, who is to show him thelions, who is to pasquinade, epigrammatise or caricature him, and fix his pretensions to taste and liberality as culminating from the zenith or sunk below zero. Everything here is transparent and matter of instant notoriety: nothing can be done in a corner. The English are comparatively few in number, and from their being in a foreign country are objects of importance to one another as well as of curiosity to the natives. All ranks and classes are blended together for mutual attack or defence. The patron sinks into the companion; theprotegéplays off the great man upon occasion. Indeed the grand airs and haughty reserve of English manners are a little ridiculous and out of place at Rome. You are glad to meet with any one who will bestow his compassion and ‘his tediousness’ upon you. You want some shelter from the insolence and indifference of the inhabitants, which are very much calculated to repel the feelings, and throw you back on your resources in common humanity or the partiality of your fellow-countrymen. Nor is this the least inconvenience of a stranger’s residence at Rome. You have to squabble with every one about you to prevent being cheated, to drive a hard bargain in order to live, to keep your hands and your tongue within strict bounds, for fear of being stilettoed, or thrown into the Tower of St. Angelo, or remanded home. You have much to do to avoid the contempt of the inhabitants; if you fancy you can ingratiate yourself with them and play offthe amiable, you have a still more charming pursuit and bait for vanity and idleness. You must run the gauntlet of sarcastic words or looksfor a whole street, of laughter or want of comprehension in reply to all the questions you ask; or if a pretty black-browed girl puts on a gracious aspect, and seems to interest herself in your perplexity, you think yourself in high luck, and well repaid for a thousand affronts. A smile from a Roman beauty must be well nigh fatal to many an English student at Rome. In short, while abroad, and while our self-love is continually coming into collision with that of others, and neither knows what to make of the other, we are necessarily thinking of ourselves and of them, and in no pleasant or profitable way. Every thing is strange and new; we seem beginning life over again, and feel like children or rustics. We have not learned the alphabet of civilization and humanity: how, then, should we aspire to the height of Art? We are taken up with ourselves as English travellers and English students, when we should be thinking of something else. All the petty intrigue, vexation, andtracasserieof ordinary dealings, should be banished as much as possible from the mind of the student, who requires to have his whole time and faculties to himself; all ordinary matters should go on mechanically of themselves, without giving him a moment’s uneasiness or interruption; but here they are forced upon him with tenfold sharpness and frequency, hurting his temper and hindering his time. Instead of ‘tearing from his memory all trivial, fond records,’ that he may devote himself to the service of Art, and that ‘hercommandment all alone may live within the book and volume of his brain, unmixed with baser matter,’ he is never free from the most pitiful annoyances—they follow him into the country, sit down with him at home, meet him in the street, take him by the button, whisper in his ear, prevent his sleeping, waken him before the dawn, and plague him out of his very life, making it resemble a restless dream or an ill-written romance. Under such disadvantages, should an artist do anything, the Academy which has sent him out should lose no time in sending for him back again; for there is nothing that may not be expected from an English student at Rome who has not become an idler, apetit-maitre, and a busy-body! Or if he is still unwilling to quit classic ground, is chained by the soft fetters of the climate or of a fair face, or likes to see the morning mist rise from the Marshes of the Campagna and circle round the Dome of St. Peter’s, and that to sever him from these would be to sever soul from body, let him go to Gensano, stop there for five years, visiting Rome only at intervals, wander by Albano’s gleaming lake and wizard grottoes, make studies of the heads and dresses of the peasant-girls in the neighbourhood, those Goddesses of health and good-temper, embody them to the life, and show (as the result) what the world never saw before!
FINE ARTS
Objects of the Article.—In theEncyclopædiathere is some account, under the headArts, of the general theory and history of theFine Arts, including Poetry, Eloquence, Painting, Statuary, and Architecture. The term, in its widest application, would also embrace Music, Dancing, Theatrical Exhibition; and in general, all those arts, in which the powers of imitation or invention are exerted, chiefly with a view to the production of pleasure, by the immediate impression which they make on the mind. The phrase has of late, we think, been restricted to a narrower and more technical signification; namely, to Painting, Sculpture, Engraving, and Architecture, which appeal to the eye as the medium of pleasure; and by way of eminence, to the two first of these arts. In the present article, we shall adopt this limited sense of the term; and shall endeavour to develope the principles upon which the great Masters have proceeded, and also to inquire, in a more particular manner, into the state and probable advancement of these arts in this Country.
Ruling Principle of the Fine Arts.—The great works of art, at present extant, and which may be regarded as models of perfection in their several kinds, are the Greek statues—the pictures of the celebrated Italian Masters—those of the Dutch and Flemish schools—to which we may add the comic productions of our own countryman, Hogarth. These all stand unrivalled in the history of art; and they owe their pre-eminence and perfection to one and the same principle,—the immediate imitation of nature. This principle predominated equally in the classical forms of the antique, and in the grotesque figures of Hogarth; the perfection of art in each arose from the truth and identity of the imitation with the reality; the difference was in the subjects; there was none in the mode of imitation. Yet the advocates for theideal system of artwould persuade their disciples, that the difference between Hogarth and the antique does not consist in the different forms of nature which they imitated, but in this, that the one is like, and the other unlike nature. This is an error, the most detrimental, perhaps, of all others, both to the theory and practice of art. As, however, the prejudice is very strong and general, and supported by the highest authority, it will be necessary to go somewhat elaborately into the question in order to produce an impression on the other side.
What has given rise to the common notion of theideal, as something quite distinct fromactualnature, is probably the perfection ofthe Greek statues. Not seeing among ourselves any thing to correspond in beauty and grandeur, either with the features or form of the limbs in these exquisite remains of antiquity, it was an obvious, but a superficial conclusion, that they must have been created from the idea existing in the artist’s mind, and could not have been copied from anything existing in nature. The contrary, however, is the fact. The general form, both of the face and figure, which we observe in the old statues, is not an ideal abstraction, is not a fanciful invention of the sculptor, but is as completely local and national (though it happens to be more beautiful) as the figures on a Chinese screen, or a copperplate engraving of a negro chieftain in a book of travels. It will not be denied that there is a difference of physiognomy as well as of complexion in different races of men. The Greek form appears to have been naturally beautiful, and they had, besides, every advantage of climate, of dress, of exercise, and modes of life to improve it. The artist had also every facility afforded him in the study and knowledge of the human form, and their religious and public institutions gave him every encouragement in the prosecution of his art. All these causes contributed to the perfection of these noble productions; but we should be inclined principally to attribute the superior symmetry of form common to the Greek statues, in the first place, to the superior symmetry of the models in nature, and in the second, to the more constant opportunities for studying them. If we allow, also, for the superior genius of the people, we shall not be wrong; but this superiority consisted in their peculiar susceptibility to the impressions of what is beautiful and grand in nature. It may be thought an objection to what has just been said, that the antique figures of animals, &c., are as fine, and proceed on the same principles as their statues of gods or men. But all that follows from this seems to be, that their art had been perfected in the study of the human form, the test and proof of power and skill; and was then transferred easily to the general imitation of all other objects, according to their true characters, proportions, and appearances. As a confirmation of these remarks, the antique portraits of individuals were often superior even to the personifications of their gods. We think that no unprejudiced spectator of real taste can hesitate for a moment in preferring the head of the Antinous, for example, to that of the Apollo. And in general, it may be laid down as a rule, that the most perfect of the antiques are the most simple;—those which affect the least action, or violence of passion;—which repose the most on natural beauty of form, and a certain expression of sweetness and dignity, that is, which remain most nearly in that state in which they could be copied from nature without straining the limbs or features ofthe individual, or racking the invention of the artist. This tendency of Greek art to repose has indeed been reproached with insipidity by those who had not a true feeling of beauty and sentiment. We, however, prefer these models of habitual grace or internal grandeur to the violent distortions of suffering in the Laocoon, or even to the supercilious air of the Apollo. The Niobe, more than any other antique head, combines truth and beauty with deep passion. But here the passion is fixed, intense, habitual;—it is not a sudden or violent gesticulation, but a settled mould of features; the grief it expresses is such as might almost turn the human countenance itselfinto marble!
In general, then, we would be understood to maintain, that the beauty and grandeur so much admired in the Greek statues were not a voluntary fiction of the brain of the artist, but existed substantially in the forms from which they were copied, and by which the artist was surrounded. A striking authority in support of these observations, which has in some measure been lately discovered, is to be found in theElgin marbles, taken from the Acropolis at Athens, and supposed to be the works of the celebrated Phidias. The process of fastidious refinement and indefinite abstraction is certainly not visible there. The figures have all the ease, the simplicity, and variety, of individual nature. Even the details of the subordinate parts, the loose hanging folds in the skin, the veins under the belly or on the sides of the horses, more or less swelled as the animal is more or less in action, are given with scrupulous exactness. This is true nature and true art. In a word, these invaluable remains of antiquity are precisely like casts taken from life. Theidealis not the preference of that which exists only in the mind, to that which exists in nature; but the preference of that which is fine in nature to that which is less so. There is nothing fine in art but what is taken almost immediately, and, as it were, in the mass, from what is finer in nature. Where there have been the finest models in nature, there have been the finest works of art.
As the Greek statues were copied from Greek forms, so Raphael’s expressions were taken from Italian faces; and we have heard it remarked, that the women in the streets at Rome seem to have walked out of his pictures in the Vatican.
Sir Joshua Reynolds constantly refers to Raphael as the highest example in modern times (at least with one exception) of the grand or ideal style; and yet he makes the essence of that style to consist in the embodying of an abstract or general idea, formed in the mind of the artist by rejecting the peculiarities of individuals, and retaining only what is common to the species. Nothing can be more inconsistentthan the style of Raphael with this definition. In his Cartoons and in his groupes in the Vatican, there is hardly a face or figure which is any thing more than fine individual nature finely disposed and copied. The late Mr. Barry, who could not be suspected of a prejudice on this side of the question, speaks thus of them: “In Raphael’s pictures (at the Vatican) of theDispute of the Sacrament, and theSchool of Athens, one sees all the heads to be entirely copied from particular characters in nature, nearly proper for the persons and situations which he adapts them to; and he seems to me only to add and take away what may answer his purpose in little parts, features, &c.; conceiving, while he had the head before him, ideal characters and expressions, which he adapts these features and peculiarities of face to. This attention to the particulars which distinguish all the different faces, persons, and characters, the one from the other, gives his pictures quite the verity and unaffected dignity of nature, which stamp the distinguishing differences betwixt one man’s face and body and another’s.”
If any thing is wanting to the conclusiveness of this testimony, it is only to look at the pictures themselves; particularly theMiracle of the Conversion, and theAssembly of Saints, which are little else than a collection of divine portraits, in natural and expressive attitudes, full of the loftiest thought and feeling, and as varied as they are fine. It is this reliance on the power of nature which has produced those masterpieces by the prince of painters, in which expression is all in all;—where one spirit,—that of truth,—pervades every part, brings down Heaven to Earth, mingles Cardinals and Popes with Angels and Apostles,—and yet blends and harmonizes the whole by the true touches and intense feeling of what is beautiful and grand in nature. It is no wonder that Sir Joshua, when he first saw Raphael’s pictures in the Vatican, was at a loss to discover any great excellence in them, if he was looking out for his theory of theideal,—of neutral character and middle forms.
There is more an appearance of abstract grandeur of form in Michael Angelo. He has followed up, has enforced, and expanded, as it were, a preconceived idea, till he sometimes seems to tread on the verge of caricature. His forms, however, are notmiddle, butextremeforms, massy, gigantic, supernatural. They convey the idea of the greatest size and strength in the figure, and in all the parts of the figure. Every muscle is swollen and turgid. This tendency to exaggeration would have been avoided, if Michael Angelo had recurred more constantly to nature, and had proceeded less on a scientific knowledge of the structure of the human body; for science gives only the positive form of the different parts, which the imaginationmay afterwards magnify, as it pleases, but it is nature alone which combines them with perfect truth and delicacy, in all the varieties of motion and expression. It is fortunate that we can refer, in illustration of our doctrine, to the admirable fragment of the Theseus at Lord Elgin’s, which shows the possibility of uniting the grand and natural style in the highest degree. The form of the limbs, as affected by pressure or action, and the general sway of the body, are preserved with the most consummate mastery. We should prefer this statue as a model for forming the style of the student to the Apollo, which strikes us as having something of a theatrical appearance, or to the Hercules, in which there is an ostentatious and over-laboured display of anatomy. This last figure is so overloaded with sinews, that it has been suggested as a doubt, whether, if life could be put into it, it would be able to move. Grandeur of conception, truth of nature, and purity of taste, seem to have been at their height when the masterpieces which adorned the temple of Minerva at Athens, of which we have only these imperfect fragments, were produced. Compared with these, the later Greek statues display a more elaborate workmanship, more of the artifices of style. The several parts are more uniformly balanced, made more to tally like modern periods: each muscle is more equally brought out, and more highly finished as a part, but not with the same subordination of each part to the whole. If some of these wonderful productions have a fault, it is the want of that entire and naked simplicity which pervades the whole of theElgin marbles.
Works of the Grecian and Italian Artists.—Having spoken here of the Greek statues, and of the works of Raphael and Michael Angelo, as far as relates to the imitation of nature, we shall attempt to point out, to the best of our ability, and as concisely as possible, what we conceive to be their general and characteristic excellences. The ancients excelled in beauty of form; Michael Angelo in grandeur of conception; Raphael in expression. In Raphael’s faces, particularly his women, the expression is very superior to the form; in the ancient statues the form is the principal thing. The interest which the latter excite, is in a manner external; it depends on a certain grace and lightness of appearance, joined with exquisite symmetry and refined susceptibility to voluptuous emotions; but there is in general a want of pathos. In their looks, we do not read the workings of the heart; by their beauty they seem raised above the sufferings of humanity, by their beauty they are deified. The pathos which they exhibit is rather that of present and physical distress, than of deep internal sentiment. What has been remarked of Leonardo da Vinci, is also true of Raphael, that there is an angelicsweetness and tenderness in his faces, in which human frailty and passion are purified by the sanctity of religion. The ancient statues are finer objects for the eye to contemplate; they represent a more perfect race of physical beings, but we have little sympathy with them. In Raphael, all our natural sensibilities are heightened and refined by the sentiments of faith and hope, pointing mysteriously to the interests of another world. The same intensity of passion appears also to distinguish Raphael from Michael Angelo. Michael Angelo’s forms are grander, but they are not so informed with expression. Raphael’s, however ordinary in themselves, are full of expression, ‘even to o’erflowing;’ every nerve and muscle is impregnated with feeling,—bursting with meaning. In Michael Angelo, on the contrary, the powers of body and mind appear superior to any events that can happen to them; the capacity of thought and feeling is never full, never strained or tasked to the extremity of what it will bear. All is in a lofty repose and solitary grandeur, which no human interest can shake or disturb. It has been said that Michael Angelo paintedman, and Raphaelmen; that the one was an epic, the other a dramatic painter. But the distinction we have stated is, perhaps, truer and more intelligible,viz.that the one gave greater dignity of form, and the other greater force and refinement of expression. Michael Angelo, in fact, borrowed his style from sculpture. He represented, in general, only single figures (with subordinate accompaniments), and had not to express the conflicting actions and passions of a multitude of persons. It is therefore a mere truism to say that his compositions are not dramatic. He is much more picturesque than Raphael. The whole figure of hisJeremiahdroops and hangs down like a majestic tree surcharged with showers. His drawing of the human form has the characteristic freedom and boldness of Titian’s landscapes.
After Michael Angelo and Raphael, there is no doubt that Leonardo da Vinci, and Correggio, are the two painters, in modern times, who have carried historical expression to the highest ideal perfection; and yet it is equally certain that their heads are carefully copied from faces and expressions in nature. Leonardo excelled principally in his women and children. We find, in his female heads, a peculiar charm of expression; a character of natural sweetness and tender playfulness, mixed up with the pride of conscious intellect, and the graceful reserve of personal dignity. He blends purity with voluptuousness; and the expression of his women is equally characteristic of ‘the mistress or the saint.’ His pictures are worked up to the height of the idea he had conceived, with an elaborate, felicity; but this idea was evidently first suggested, and afterwards religiouslycompared with nature. This was his excellence. His fault is, that his style of execution is too mathematical; that is, his pencil does not follow the graceful variety of the details of objects, but substitutes certain refined gradations, both of form and colour, producing equal changes in equal distances, with a mechanical uniformity. Leonardo was a man of profound learning as well as genius, and perhaps transferred too much of the formality of science to his favourite art.
The masterpieces of Correggio have the same identity with nature, the same stamp of truth. He has indeed given to his pictures the utmost softness and refinement of outline and expression; but this idea, at which he constantly aimed, is filled up with all the details and varieties which such heads would have in nature. So far from any thing like a naked abstract idea, or middle form, theindividualityof his faces has something peculiar in it, even approaching the grotesque. He has endeavoured to impress habitually on the countenance, those undulating outlines which rapture or tenderness leave there, and has chosen for this purpose those forms and proportions which most obviously assisted his design.
As to the colouring of Correggio, it is nature itself. Not only the general tone is perfectly true, but every speck and particle is varied in colour, in relief, in texture, with a care, a felicity, and an effect, which is almost magical. His light and shade are equally admirable. No one else, perhaps, ever gave the same harmony and roundness to his compositions. So true are his shadows,—equally free from coldness, opacity, or false glare;—so clear, so broken, so airy, and yet so deep, that if you hold your hand so as to cast a shadow on any part of the flesh which is in the light, this part, so shaded, will present exactly the same appearance which the painter has given to the shadowed part of the picture. Correggio, indeed, possessed a greater variety of excellences in the different departments of his art, than any other painter; and yet it is remarkable, that the impression which his pictures leave upon the mind of the common spectator, is monotonous and comparatively feeble. His style is in some degree mannered and confined. For instance, he is without the force, passion, and grandeur of Raphael, who, however, possessed his softness of expression, but of expression only; and in colour, in light and shade, and other qualities, was quite inferior to Correggio. We may, perhaps, solve this apparent contradiction by saying, that he applied the power of his mind to a greater variety of objects than others; but that this power was still of the same character; consisting in a certain exquisite sense of the harmonious, the soft and graceful in form, colour, and sentiment, but with a deficiency of strength, and a tendency to effeminacy in all these.
After the names of Raphael and Correggio, we shall mention that of Guido, whose female faces are exceedingly beautiful and ideal, but altogether commonplace and vapid, compared with those of Raphael or Correggio; and they are so, for no other reason but that the general idea they convey is not enriched and strengthened by an intense contemplation of nature. For the same reason, we can conceive nothing more unlike the antique than the figures of Nicholas Poussin, except as to the preservation of the costume; and it is perhaps chiefly owing to the habit of studying his art at second-hand, or by means of scientific rules, that the great merits of that able painter, whose understanding and genius are unquestionable, are confined to his choice of subjects for his pictures, and his manner of telling the story. His landscapes, which he probably took from nature, are superior as paintings to his historical pieces. The faces of Poussin want natural expression, as his figures want grace; but the back grounds of his historical compositions can scarcely be surpassed. In his plague of Athens, the very buildings seem stiff with horror. His giants, seated on the top of their fabled mountains, and playing on their Pan’s pipes, are as familiar and natural as if they were the ordinary inhabitants of the scene. The finest of his landscapes is his picture of the Deluge. The sun is just seen, wan and drooping in his course. The sky is bowed down with a weight of waters, and Heaven and earth seem mingling together.
Titian is at the head of the Venetian school. He is the first of all colourists. In delicacy and purity Correggio is equal to him, but his colouring has not the same warmth and gusto in it. Titian’s flesh-colour partakes of the glowing nature of the climate, and of the luxuriousness of the manners of his country. He represents objects not through a merely lucid medium, but as if tinged with a golden light. Yet it is wonderful in how low a tone of local colouring his pictures are painted,—how rigidly his means are husbanded. His most gorgeous effects are produced, not less by keeping down, than by heightening his colours; the fineness of his gradations adds to their variety and force; and, with him, truth is the same thing as splendour. Every thing is done by the severity of his eye, by the patience of his touch. He is enabled to keep pace with nature, by never hurrying on before her; and as he forms the broadest masses out of innumerable varying parts and minute strokes of the pencil, so he unites and harmonises the strongest contrasts by the most imperceptible transitions. Every distinction is relieved and broken by some other intermediate distinction, like half notes in music; and yet all this accumulation of endless variety is so managed, as only to produce the majestic simplicity of nature; so that to a common eye there is nothingextraordinary in his pictures, any more than in nature itself. It is, we believe, owing to what has been here stated, that Titian is, of all painters, at once the easiest and the most difficult to copy. He is the most difficult to copy perfectly, for the artifice of his colouring and execution is hid in its apparent simplicity; and yet the knowledge of nature, and the arrangement of the forms and masses in his pictures, is so masterly, that any copy made from them, even the rudest outline or sketch, can hardly fail to have a look of high art. Because he was the greatest colourist in the world, this, which was his most prominent, has, for shortness, been considered as his only excellence; and he has been said to have been ignorant of drawing. What he was, generally speaking, deficient in, was invention or composition, though even this appears to have been more from habit than want of power; but his drawing of actual forms, where they were not to be put into momentary action, or adapted to a particular expression, was as fine as possible. His drawing of the forms of inanimate objects is unrivalled. His trees have a marked character and physiognomy of their own, and exhibit an appearance of strength or flexibility, solidity or lightness, as if they were endued with conscious power and purpose. Character was another excellence which Titian possessed in the highest degree. It is scarcely speaking too highly of his portraits to say, that they have as much expression, that is, convey as fine an idea of intellect and feeling, as the historical heads of Raphael. The chief difference appears to be, that the expression in Raphael is more imaginary and contemplative, and in Titian more personal and constitutional. The heads of the one seem thinking more of some event or subject, those of the other to be thinking more of themselves. In the portraits of Titian, as might be expected, the Italian character always predominates; there is a look of piercing sagacity, of commanding intellect, of acute sensibility, which it would be in vain to seek for in any other portraits. The daring spirit and irritable passions of the age and country, are distinctly stamped upon their countenances, and can be as little mistaken as the costume which they wear. The portraits of Raphael, though full of profound thought and feeling, have more of common humanity about them. Titian’s portraits are the most historical that ever were painted; and they are so, for this reason, that they have most consistency of form and expression. His portraits of Hippolito de Medici, and of a young Neapolitan nobleman, lately in the gallery of the Louvre, are a striking contrast in this respect. All the lines of the face in the one, the eye-brows, the nose, the corners of the mouth, the contour of the face, present the same sharp angles, the same acute, edgy, contracted, violent expression. The other portrait has the finest expansion offeature and outline, and conveys the most exquisite idea possible, of mild, thoughtful sentiment. The consistency of the expression constitutes as great a charm in Titian’s portraits, as the harmony of the colouring. The similarity sometimes objected to his heads, is partly national, and partly arises from the class of persons whom he painted. He painted only Italians; and in his time it rarely happened, that any but persons of the highest rank, Senators or Cardinals, sat for their pictures. The similarity of costume of the dress, the beard, &c. also adds to the similarity of their appearance. It adds, at the same time, to their picturesque effect; and the alteration in this respect, is one circumstance among others that has been injurious, not to say fatal, to modern art. This observation is not confined to portrait; for the hired dresses with which our historical painters clothe their figures sit no more easily on the imagination of the artist, than they do gracefully on the lay-figures over which they are thrown.
Giorgioni, Paul Veronese, Tintoret, and the Bassans, are the remaining great names of the Venetian school. The excellence of all of them consisted in the bold, masterly, and striking imitation of nature. Their want ofideal formand elevated character is, indeed, a constant subject of reproach against them. Giorgioni takes the first place among them; for he was in some measure the master of Titian, whereas the others were only his disciples. The Carraccis, Domenichino, and the rest of the Bolognese school, formed themselves on a principle of combining the excellences of the Roman and Venetian painters, in which they for a while succeeded to a considerable degree; but they degenerated and dwindled away into absolute insignificance, in proportion as they departed from nature, or the great masters who had copied her, to mould their works on academic rules, and the phantoms of abstract perfection.
Flemish and Dutch Painters.—Rubens is the prince of the Flemish painters. Of all the great painters, he is perhaps the most artificial,—the one who painted most from his own imagination,—and, what was almost the inevitable consequence, the most of a mannerist. He had neither the Greek forms to study from, nor the Roman expression, nor the high character, picturesque costume, and sun-burnt hues which the Venetian painters had immediately before them. He took, however, what circumstances presented to him,—a fresher and more blooming tone of complexion, arising from moister air, and a colder climate. To this he added the congenial splendour of reflected lights and shadows cast from rich drapery; and he made what amends he could for the want of expression, by the richness of his compositions, and thefantastic variety of his allegorical groups. Both his colouring and his drawing were, however, ideal exaggerations. But both had particular qualities of the highest value. He has given to his flesh greater transparency and freshness than any other painter; and this excellence he had from nature. One of the finest instances will be found in hisPeasant Family going to Market, in which the figures have all the bloom of health upon their countenances; and the very air of the surrounding landscape strikes sharp and wholesome on the sense. Rubens had another excellence; he has given all that relates to the expression of motion in his allegorical figures, in his children, his animals, even in his trees, to a degree which no one else has equalled, or indeed approached. His drawing is often deficient in proportion, in knowledge, and in elegance, but it is always picturesque. The drawing of N. Poussin, on the contrary, which has been much cried up, is merely learned and anatomical: he has a knowledge of the structure and measurements of the human body, but very little feeling of the grand, or beautiful, or striking, in form. All Rubens’s forms have ease, freedom, and excessive elasticity. In the grotesque style of history,—as in the groups of satyrs, nymphs, bacchanals, and animals, where striking contrasts of form are combined with every kind of rapid and irregular movement, he has not a rival. Witness his Silenus at Blenheim, where the lines seem drunk and staggering; and his procession of Cupids riding on animals at Whitehall, with that adventurous leader of the infantine crew, who, with a spear, is urging a lion, on which he is mounted, over the edge of the world; for beyond we only see a precipice of clouds and sky. Rubens’s power of expressing motion perhaps arose from the facility of his pencil, and his habitually trusting a good deal to memory and imagination in his compositions; for this quality can be given in no other way. His portraits are the least valuable productions of his pencil. His landscapes are often delightful, and appear like the work of fairy hands.
It remains to speak of Vandyke and Rembrandt, the one the disciple of Rubens, the other the entire founder of his own school. It is not possible for two painters to be more opposite. The characteristic merits of the former are very happily summed up in a single line of a poetical critic, where he speaks of