The forms of Spranger and Goltzius are blasphemies on art; the monstrous
incubations of dropsied fancy on phlegm run mad. This verdict, though
uniformly true of every male figure of Goltzius that demanded energy of
exertion, cannot be equally applied to his females, the features of the
face excepted. On limbs and bodies resembling the antique in elegance if
not correctness, he placed heads with Dutch features, ideally, often
voluptuously dressed: such are his Venus between Ceres and Bacchus; and
still more his Diana and Calisto, a composition which in elegance and
dignity excels that of Tiziano. In the dreadful familiarity with which
the guardian snake of the Beotian well approaches the companions of
Cadmus, he has touched the true vein of terror and its limits, and
atoned in some degree for the loathsome horror that had polluted his
graver, when he condescended to copy the abominable process of that
scene from the design of Pistor.
The male forms of Rubens are the brawny pulp of slaughtermen, his
females are hillocks of roses: overwhelmed muscles, dislocated bones,
and distorted joints are swept along in a gulph of colours, as herbage,
trees and shrubs are whirled, tossed, or absorbed by vernal inundation.
The female forms of Rembrandt are prodigies of deformity; his males are
the crippled produce of shuffling industry and sedentary toil.
The line of Vandycke is balanced between Flemish corpulence and English
slenderness.
Sebastian Bourdon, sublime in his conceptions, filled classic ground and
eastern vests with local limbs and Gallic actors.
Poussin renounced his national character to follow the antique; but
could not separate the spirit from the stone.
152. The imitator seldom mounts to the investigation of the principles
that formed his model; the copier probably never.
153. Many beauties in art come by accident, that are preserved by
choice.
_Coroll._--Neither the froth formed on the mouth of Jalysus' hound by a
lucky dash from the sponge of Protogenes, nor the modern experiments of
extracting composition from an ink-splashed wall, are relatives of the
beauties alluded to in this aphorism.
154. The praise due to a work, reflects not always on its master; and
superiority may beam athwart the blemishes that we despise or pity;
some, says Milton, praised the work and some the master: would you
prefer him who is able to finish the image which he was unable to
conceive, to its inventor?
155. It is the privilege of Nature alone to be equal. Man is the slave
of a part; the most equal artist is only the first in the list of
mediocrity.
156. He who seeks the grand, will find it in a trifle: but some seem
made to find it only there. Rösel saw man like an insect, and insects as
Michael Angelo men.
157. Physiognomy teaches what is homogeneous and what is heterogeneous
in forms.
158. The solid parts of the body are the base of physiognomy, the
muscular that of pathognomy; the former contemplates the animal at rest,
this its action.