63. Invention, strictly speaking, being confined to _one_ moment, he
invents best who in that moment combines the traces of the past, the
energy of the present, and a glimpse of the future.
64. Composition has been divided into natural and ornamental: that is
dictated by the subject, this by effect or situation.
65. Distinguish between composition and grouping: though none can
compose without grouping, most group without composing.
_Coroll._--The assertion that grouping may not be composing, has been
said to make a distinction without a difference: as if there had not
been, still are, and always will be squadrons of artists, whose skill in
grouping can no more be denied, than their claim to invention, and
consequently to composition, admitted, if invention means the true
conception of a subject and composition the best mode of representing
it. After the demise of Lionardo and Michael Angelo, their successors,
however discordant else, uniformly agreed to lose the subject in the
medium. Raffaello had no followers. Tiziano and something of Tintoretto
excepted, what instance can there be produced of composition in the
works of the Venetian school? Are the splendid masquerades of Paolo to
be dignified with that name? If composition has a part in the effusions
of the great founder of the Lombard school, it surely did not arrange
the celestial hubbub of his cupolas, content to inspire his Io, the
Zingaro, Christ in the Garden, perhaps (I speak with diffidence) his
Notte. So characteristically separate from real composition are the most
splendid assemblages, the most happy combinations of figures, if founded
on the mere power of grouping, that one of the first, and certainly the
most courteous critic in Art of the age, in compliment to the Venetian
and Flemish Schools, has thought proper to divide composition into
legitimate and ornamental.
66. Ask not, what is the shape of composition? You may in vain climb the
pyramid, wind with the stream, or point the flame; for composition,
unbounded like Nature, and her subjects, though resident in all, may be
in none of these.
67. The nature of picturesque composition is depth, or to come forward
and recede.
_Coroll._--Pausias, in painting a sacrifice, foreshortened the victim,
and threw its shade on part of the surrounding crowd, to show its height
and length.[8]
68. Sculpture composes in single groups or separate figures, but
apposition is the element of basso-relievo.
_Coroll._--Poussin painted basso-relievo, Algardi chiselled pictures.
69. He who treats you with all the figures of a subject save the
principal, is as civil or important as he who invites you to dine with
all a nobleman's family, the master only excepted: this sometimes may
be no loss, but surely you cannot be said to have dined with the chief
of the family.
70. Examine whether an artist treats you with a subject, or only with
some of its limbs: many see only the lines, some the masses, others the
colours, and not a few the mere back-ground of their subject.
71. Second thoughts are admissible in painting and poetry only as
dressers of the first conception; no great idea was ever formed in
fragments.
72. He alone can conceive and compose, who sees the whole at once before
him.
73. He who conceives the given point of a subject in many different
ways, conceives it not at all. Appeal to the artist's own feelings; you
will ever find him most reluctant to give up that part of it which he
conceived intuitively, and readier to dismiss that which harassed him by
alteration.
74. Metaphysical composition, if it be numerous, will be oftener
mistaken for dilapidation of fragments than regular distribution of
materials.
_Coroll._--The School of Athens as it is called, by Raffaelle,
communicates to few more than an arbitrary assemblage of speculative
groups: yet if the subject be the dramatic representation of philosophy,
as it prepares for active life, the parts of the building are not
connected with more regular gradation than those groups: fitted by
physical and intellectual harmony, man ascends from himself to society,
from society to God.