were carried to such perfection, remain ordinary in the other arts? Was
the sentiment of the beautiful wanting, then, to that society so
polished, to that magnificent court, to those great lords and those
great ladies passionately loving luxury and elegance, to that public of
the _elite_, enamored of every kind of glory, whose enthusiasm defended
the _Cid_ against Richelieu? No; France in the seventeenth century was a
whole, and produced artists that she can place by the side of her poets,
her philosophers, her orators.
But, in order to admire our artists, it is necessary to comprehend them.
We do not believe that imagination has been less freely imparted to
France than to any other nation of Europe. It has even had its reign
among us. It is fancy that rules in the sixteenth century, and inspires
the literature and the arts of the _Renaissance_. But a great revolution
intervened at the commencement of the seventeenth century. France at
that moment seems to pass from youth to virility. Instead of abandoning
imagination to itself, we apply ourselves from that moment to restrain
it without destroying it, to moderate it, as the Greeks did by the aid
of taste; as in the progress of life and society we learn to repress or
conceal what is too individual in character. An end is made of the
literature of the preceding age. A new poetry, a new prose, begin to
appear, which, during an entire century, bear fruits sufficiently
beautiful. Art follows the general movement; after having been elegant
and graceful, it becomes in its turn serious; it no longer aims at
originality and extraordinary effects; it neither flashes nor dazzles;
it speaks, above all, to the mind and the soul. Hence its good qualities
and also its defects. In general, it is somewhat wanting in brilliancy
and coloring, but it is in the highest degree expressive.
Some time since we have changed all that. We have discovered, somewhat
late, that we have not sufficient imagination; we are in training to
acquire it, it is true, at the expense of reason, alas! also at the
expense of soul, which is forgotten, repudiated, proscribed. At this
moment, color and form are the order of the day, in poetry, in painting,
in every thing. We are beginning to run mad with Spanish painting. The
Flemish and Venetian schools are gaining ground on the schools of
Florence and Rome. Rossini equals Mozart, and Gluck will soon seem to us
insipid.
Young artists, who, rightly disgusted with the dry and inanimate manner
of David, undertake to renovate French painting, who would rob the sun
of its heat and splendor, remember that of all beings in the world, the
greatest is still man, and that what is greatest in man is his
intelligence, and above all, his heart; that it is this heart, then,
which you must put and develop on your canvas. This is the most elevated
object of art. In order to reach it, do not make yourselves disciples of
Flemings, Venetians, and Spaniards; return, return to the masters of our
great national school of the seventeenth century.
We bow with respectful admiration before the schools of Rome and
Florence, at once ideal and living; but, those excepted, we maintain
that the French school equals or surpasses all others. We prefer neither
Murillo, Rubens, Corregio, nor Titian himself to Lesueur and Poussin,
because, if the former have an incomparable hand and color, our two
countrymen are much greater in thought and expression.
What a destiny was that of Eustache Lesueur![135] He was born at Paris
about 1617, and he never went out of it. Poor and humble, he passed his
life in the churches and convents where he worked. The only sweetness of
his sad days, his only consolation was his wife: he loses her, and goes
to die, at thirty-eight, in that cloister of Chartreux, which his pencil
has immortalized. What resemblance at once, and what difference between
his life and that of Raphael, who also died young, but in the midst of
pleasures, in honors, and already almost in purple! Our Raphael was not
the lover of Fornarina and the favorite of a pope: he was Christian; he
is Christianity in art.
Lesueur is a genius wholly French. Scarcely having escaped from the
hands of Simon Vouet, he formed himself according to the model which he
had in the soul. He never saw the sky of Italy. He knew some fragments
of the antique, some pictures of Raphael, and the designs that Poussin
sent him. With these feeble resources, and guided by a happy instinct,
in less than ten years he mounted by a continual progress to the
perfection of his talent, and expired at the moment when, finally sure
of himself, he was about to produce new and more admirable
master-pieces. Follow him from the _St. Bruno_ completed in 1648,
through the _St. Paul_ of 1649, to the _Vision of St. Benedict_ in 1651,
and to the _Muses_, scarcely finished before his death. Lesueur went on
adding to his essential qualities which he owed to his own genius, and
to the national genius, I mean composition and expression, qualities
which he had dreamed of, or had caught glimpses of. His design from day
to day became more pure, without ever being that of the Florentine
school, and the same is true of his coloring.
In Lesueur every thing is directed towards expression, every thing is in
the service of the mind, every thing is idea and sentiment. There is no
affectation, no mannerism; there is a perfect _naivete_; his figures
sometimes would seem even a little common, so natural are they, if a
Divine breath did not animate them. It must not be forgotten that his
favorite subjects do not exact a brilliant coloring: he oftenest
retraces scenes mournful or austere. But as in Christianity by the side
of suffering and resignation is faith with hope, so Lesueur joins to the
pathetic sweetness and grace; and this man charms me at the same time
that he moves me.
The works of Lesueur are almost always great wholes that demanded
profound meditation, and the most flexible talent, in order to preserve
in them unity of subject, and to give them variety and harmony. The
_History of St. Bruno_, the founder of the order _des Chartreux_, is a
vast melancholy poem, in which are represented the different scenes of
monastic life. The _History of St. Martin and St. Benedict_ has not
come down to us entire; but the two fragments of it that we possess, the
_Mass of St. Martin_, and the _Vision of St. Benedict_, allow us to
compare that great work with every better thing of the kind that has
been done in Italy, as, to speak sincerely, the _Muses_ and the _History
of Love_, appear to us to equal at least the Farnesina.
In the _History of St. Bruno_, it is particularly necessary to remark
St. Bruno, prostrated before a crucifix, the saint reading a letter of
the pope, his death, his apotheosis. Is it possible to carry meditation,
humiliation, rapture farther? _St. Paul preaching at Ephesus_ reminds
one of the _School of Athens_, by the extent of the scene, the
employment of architecture, and the skilful distribution of groups. In
spite of the number of personages, and the diversity of episodes, the
picture wholly centres in St. Paul. He preaches, and upon his words hang
those who are listening, of every sex, of every age, in the most varied
attitudes. In that we behold the grand lines of the Roman school, its
design full of nobleness and truth at the same time. What charming and
grave heads! What graceful, bold, and always natural movements! Here,
that child with ringlets, full of _naive_ enthusiasm; there, that old
man with bended knees, and hands joined. Are not all those beautiful
heads, and those draperies, too, worthy of Raphael? But the marvel of
the picture is the figure of St. Paul,[136]--it is that of the Olympic
Jupiter, animated by a new spirit. The _Mass of St. Martin_ carries into
the soul an impression of peace and silence. The _Vision of St.
Benedict_ has the character of simplicity full of grandeur. A desert,
the saint on his knees, contemplating his sister, St. Scholastique, who
is ascending to heaven, borne up by angels, accompanied by two young
girls, crowned with flowers, and bearing the palm, the symbol of
virginity. St. Peter and St. Paul show St. Benedict the abode whither
his sister is going to enjoy eternal peace. A slight ray of the sun
pierces the cloud. St. Benedict is as it were lifted up from the earth
by this ecstatic vision. One scarcely desires a more lively color, and
the expression is divine. Those two virgins, a little too tall, perhaps,
how beautiful and pure they are! How sweet are those forms! How grave
and gentle are those faces! The person of the holy monk, with all the
material accessories, is perfectly natural, for it remains on the earth;
whilst his face, where his soul shines forth, is wholly ideal, and
already in heaven.
But the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of Lesueur is, in our opinion, the _Descent
from the Cross_, or rather the enshrouding of Jesus Christ, already
descended from the cross, whom Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and St.
John are placing in the shroud. On the left, Magdalen, in tears, kisses
the feet of Jesus; on the right, are the holy women and the Virgin. It
is impossible to carry the pathetic farther and preserve beauty. The
holy women, placed in front, have each their particular grief. While one
of them abandons herself to despair, an immense but internal and
thoughtful sadness is upon the face of the mother of the crucified. She
has comprehended the divine benefit of the redemption of the human race,
and her grief, sustained by this thought, is calm and resigned. And then
what dignity in that head! It, in some sort, sums up the whole picture,
and gives to it its character, that of a profound and subdued emotion. I
have seen many _Descents from the Cross_; I have seen that of Rubens at
Antwerp, in which the sanctity of the subject has, as it were,
constrained the great Flemish painter to join sensibility and sentiment
to color; none of those pictures have touched me like that of Lesueur.
All the parts of art are there in the service of expression. The drawing
is severe and strong; even the color, without being brilliant, surpasses
that of the _St. Bruno_, the _Mass of St. Martin_, the _St. Paul_, and
even that of the _Vision of St. Benedict_; as if Lesueur had wished to
bring together in it all the powers of his soul, all the resources of
his talent![137]
Now, regard the _Muses_,--other scenes, other beauties, the same genius.
Those are Pagan pictures, but Christianity is in them also, by reason of
the adorable chastity with which Lesueur has clothed them. All critics
have emulously shown the mythological errors into which poor Lesueur
fell, and they have not wanted occasion to deplore that he had not made
the journey to Italy and studied antiquity more. But who can have the
strange idea of searching in Lesueur for an archeology? I seek and find
in him the very genius of painting. Is not that Terpsichore, well or ill
named, with a harp a little too strong, it is said, as if the Muse had
no particular gift, in her modest attitude the symbol of becoming grace?
In that group of three Muses, to which one may give what name he
pleases, is not the one that holds upon her knees a book of music, who
sings or is about to sing, the most ravishing creature, a St. Cecilia
that preludes just before abandoning herself to the intoxication of
inspiration? And in those pictures there is brilliancy and coloring; the
landscape is beautifully lighted, as if Poussin had guided the hand of
his friend.
Poussin! What a name I pronounce. If Lesueur is the painter of
sentiment, Poussin is the painter of thought. He is in some sort the
philosopher of painting. His pictures are religious or moral lectures
that testify a great mind as well as a great heart. It is sufficient to
recall the _Seven Sacraments_, the _Deluge_, the _Arcadia_, the _Truth
that Time frees from the Taints of Envy_, the _Will of Eudamidas_, and
the _Dance of Human Life_. And the style is equal to the conception.
Poussin draws like a Florentine, composes like a Frenchman, and often
equals Lesueur in expression; coloring alone is sometimes wanting to
him. As well as Racine, he is smitten with the antique beauty, and
imitates it; but, like Racine, he always remains original. In place of
the naivete and unique charm of Lesueur, he has a severe simplicity,
with a correctness that never abandons him. Remember, too, that he
cultivated every kind of painting. He is at once a great historical
painter and a great landscape painter,--he treats religious subjects as
well as profane subjects, and by turns is inspired by antiquity and the
Bible. He lived much at Rome, it is true, and died there; but he also
worked in France, and almost always for France. Scarcely had he become
known, when Richelieu attracted him to Paris and retained him there,
loading him with honors, and giving him the commission of first painter
in ordinary to the king, with the general direction of all the works of
painting, and all the ornaments of the royal houses. During that sojourn
of two years in Paris, he made the _Last Supper_ (_Cene_), the _St.
Francois Xavier_, the _Truth that Time frees from the Taints of Envy_.
It was also to France, to his friend M. de Chantelou, that from Rome he
addressed the _Inspiration of St. Paul_, as well as the second series of
the _Seven Sacraments_, an immense composition that, for grandeur of
thought, can vie with the _Stanze_ of Raphael. I speak of it from the
engravings; for the _Seven Sacraments_ are no longer in France. Eternal
shame of the eighteenth century! It was at least necessary to wrest from
the Greeks the pediments of the Parthenon,--we, we delivered up to
strangers, we sold all those monuments of French genius which Richelieu
and Mazarin, with religious care, had collected. Public indignation did
not avert the act! And there has not since been found in France a king,
a statesman, to interdict letting the master-pieces of art that honor
the nation depart without authorization from the national
territory![138] There has not been found a government which has
undertaken at least to repurchase those that we have lost, to get back
again the great works of Poussin, Lesueur, and so many others, scattered
in Europe, instead of squandering millions to acquire the baboons of
Holland, as Louis XIV. said, or Spanish canvasses, in truth of an
admirable color, but without nobleness and moral expression.[139] I know
and I love the Dutch pastorals and the cows of Potter; I am not
insensible to the sombre and ardent coloring of Zurbaran, to the
brilliant Italian imitations of Murillo and Velasquez; but in fine, what
is all that in comparison with serious and powerful compositions like
the _Seven Sacraments_, for example, that profound representation of
Christian rites, a work of the highest faculties of the intellect and
the soul, in which the intellect and the soul will ever find an
exhaustless subject of study and meditation! Thank God, the graver of
Pesne has saved them from our ingratitude and barbarity. Whilst the
originals decorate the gallery of a great English lord,[140] the love
and the talent of a Pesne, of a Stella, have preserved for us faithful
copies in those expressive engravings that one never grows tired of
contemplating, that every time we examine them, reveal to us some new
side of the genius of our great countryman. Regard especially the
_Extreme Unction!_ What a sublime and at the same time almost graceful
scene! One would call it an antique bas-relief, so many groups are
properly distributed in it, with natural and varied attitudes. The
draperies are as admirable as those of a fragment of the _Panathenaea_,
which is in the Louvre. The figures are all beautiful. Beauty of figures
belongs to sculpture, one is about to say:--yes, but it also belongs to
painting, if you have yourself the eye of the painter, if you have been
struck with the expression of those postures, those heads, those
gestures, and almost those looks; for every thing lives, every thing
breathes, even in those engravings, and if it were the place, we would
endeavor to make the reader penetrate with us into those secrets of
Christian sentiment which are also the secrets of art.
We endeavor to console ourselves for having lost the _Seven
Sacraments_, and for not having known how to keep from England and
Germany so many productions of Poussin, now buried in foreign
collections,[141] by going to see at the Louvre what remains to us of
the great French artist,--thirty pictures produced at different epochs
of his life, which, for the most part, worthily sustain his renown,--the
portrait of _Poussin_, one of the _Bacchanals_ made for Richelieu, _Mars
and Venus_, the _Death of Adonis_, the _Rape of the Sabines_,[142]
_Eliezer and Rebecca_, _Moses saved from the Waters_, the _Infant Jesus
on the Knees of the Virgin and St. Joseph standing by_,[143] especially
the _Manna in the Desert_, the _Judgment of Solomon_, the _Blind Men of
Jericho_, the _Woman taken in Adultery_, the _Inspiration of St. Paul_,
the _Diogenes_, the _Deluge_, the _Arcadia_. Time has turned the color,
which was never very brilliant; but it has not been able to disturb what
will make them live forever,--the design, the composition, and the
expression. The _Deluge_ has remained, and in fact will always be, the
most striking. After so many masters who have treated the same subject,
Poussin has found the secret of being original, and more pathetic than
his predecessors, in representing the solemn moment when the race is
about to disappear. There are few details; some dead bodies are floating
upon the abyss; a sinister-looking moon has scarcely risen; a few
moments and mankind will be no more; the last mother uselessly extends
her last child to the last father, who cannot take it, and the serpent
that has destroyed mankind darts forth triumphant. We try in vain to
find in the Deluge some signs of a trembling hand: the soul that
sustained and conducted that hand makes itself felt by our soul, and
profoundly moves it. Stop at that scene of mourning, and almost by its
side let your eyes rest upon that fresh landscape and upon those
shepherds that surround a tomb. The most aged, with a knee on the
ground, reads these words graven upon the stone: _Et in Arcadia ego_,
and I also lived in Arcadia. At the left a shepherd listens with serious
attention. At the right is a charming group, composed of a shepherd in
the spring-time of life, and a young girl of ravishing beauty. An
artless admiration is painted on the face of the young peasant, who
looks with happiness on his beautiful companion. As for her, her
adorable face is not even veiled with the slightest shade; she smiles,
her hand resting carelessly upon the shoulder of the young man, and she
has no appearance of comprehending that lecture given to beauty, youth,
and love. I confess that, for this picture alone, of so touching a
philosophy, I would give many master-pieces of coloring, all the
pastorals of Potter, all the badinages of Ostade, all the buffooneries
of Teniers.
Lesueur and Poussin, by very different but nearly equal titles, are at
the head of our great painting of the seventeenth century. After them,
what artists again are Claude Lorrain and Philippe de Champagne?
Do you know in Italy or Holland a greater landscape painter than Claude?
And seize well his true character. Look at those vast and beautiful
solitudes, lighted by the first or last rays of the sun, and tell me
whether those solitudes, those trees, those waters, those mountains,
that light, that silence,--whether all that nature has a soul, and
whether those luminous and pure horizons do not lift you involuntarily,
in ineffable reveries, to the invisible source of beauty and grace!
Lorrain is, above all, the painter of light, and his works might be
called the history of light and all its combinations, in small and
great, when it is poured out over large plains or breaks in the most
varied accidents, on land, on waters, in the heavens, in its eternal
source. The human scenes thrown into one corner have no other object
than to relieve and make appear to advantage the scenes of nature by
harmony or contrast. In the _Village Fete_, life, noise, movement are in
front,--peace and grandeur are at the foundation of the landscape, and
that is truly the picture. The same effect is in the _Cattle Crossing a
River_. The landscape placed immediately under your eyes has nothing in
it very rare, we can find such a one anywhere; but follow the
perspective,--it leads you across flowering fields, a beautiful river,
ruins, mountains that overlook these ruins, and you lose yourself in
infinite distances. That Landscape crossed by a river, where a peasant
waters his herd, means nothing great at first sight. Contemplate it some
time, and peace, a sort of meditativeness in nature, a well-graduated
perspective, will, little by little, gain your heart, and give you in
that small picture a penetrating charm. The picture called a _Landscape_
represents a vast champagne filled with trees, and lighted by the rising
sun,--in it there is freshness and--already--warmth, mystery, and
splendor, with skies of the sweetest harmony. _A Dance at Sunset_
expresses the close of a beautiful day. One sees in it, one feels in it
the decline of the heat of the day; in the foreground are some shepherds
and shepherdesses dancing by the side of their flocks.[144]
Is it not strange, that Champagne has been put in the Flemish
school?[145] He was born at Brussels, it is true, but he came very early
to Paris, and his true master was Poussin, who counselled him. He
devoted his talent to France, lived there, died there, and what is
decisive, his manner is wholly French. Will it be said that he owes to
Flanders his color? We respond that this quality is balanced by a grave
defect that he also owes to Flanders, the want of ideality in the
figures; and it was from France that he learned how to repair this
defect by beauty of moral expression. Champagne is inferior to Lesueur
and Poussin, but he is of their family. He was, also, of those artists
contemporaneous with Corneille, simple, poor, virtuous, Christian.[146]
Champagne worked both for the convent of the Carmelites in the _Rue St.
Jacques_, that venerable abode of ardent and sublime piety, and
Port-Royal, that place of all others that contained in the smallest
space the most virtue and genius, so many admirable men and women worthy
of them. What has become of that famous crucifix that he painted for the
Church of the Carmelites, a master-piece of perspective that upon a
horizontal plane appeared perpendicular? It perished with the holy
house. The _Last Supper_ (_Cene_) is a living picture, on account of the
truth of all the figures, movements, and postures, but to my eyes it is
blemished by the absence of the ideal. I am obliged to say as much of
the _Repast with Simon the Pharisee_. The _chef-d'oeuvre_ of Champagne
is the _Apparition of St. Gervais and St. Protais to St. Ambrose in a
Basilica of Milan_. All the qualities of French art are seen in
it,--simplicity and grandeur in composition, with a profound expression.
On that canvas are only four personages, the two martyrs and St. Paul,
who presents them to St. Ambrose. Those four figures fill the temple,
lighted above all in the obscurity of the night, by the luminous
apparition. The two martyrs are full of majesty. St. Ambrose, kneeling
and in prayer, is, as it were, seized with terror.[147]