The congenial histories of literature and of art are accompanied by the
same periodical revolutions; and none is more interesting than that one
which occurs in the decline and corruption of arts, when a single mind
returning to right principles, amidst the degenerated race who had
forsaken them, seems to create a new epoch, and teaches a servile race
once more how to invent! These epochs are few, but are easily
distinguished. The human mind is never stationary; it advances or it
retrogrades: having reached its meridian point, when the hour of
perfection has gone by, it must verge to its decline. In all Art,
perfection lapses into that weakened state too often dignified as
classical imitation; but it sinks into mannerism, and wantons into
affectation, till it shoots out into fantastic novelties. When all
languishes in a state of mediocrity, or is deformed by false tastes,
then is reserved for a fortunate genius the glory of restoring another
golden age of invention. The history of the Caracci family serves as an
admirable illustration of such an epoch, while the personal characters
of the three Caracci throw an additional interest over this curious
incident in the history of the works of genius.
The establishment of the famous _accademia_, or school of painting, at
Bologna, which restored the art in the last stage of degeneracy,
originated in the profound meditations of Lodovico. There was a happy
boldness in the idea; but its great singularity was that of discovering
those men of genius, who alone could realise his ideal conception,
amidst his own family circle; and yet these were men whose opposite
dispositions and acquirements could hardly have given any hope of mutual
assistance; and much, less of melting together their minds and their
work in such an unity of conception and execution, that even to our days
they leave the critics undetermined which of the Caracci to prefer; each
excelling the other in some pictorial quality. Often combining together
in the same picture, the mingled labour of three painters seemed to
proceed from one palette, as their works exhibit which adorn the
churches of Bologna. They still dispute about a picture, to ascertain
which of the Caracci painted it; and still one prefers Lodovico for his
_grandiosità_, another Agostino for his invention, and another Annibale
for his vigour or his grace.[266]
What has been told of others, happened to Lodovico Caracci in his youth;
he struggled with a mind tardy in its conceptions, so that he gave no
indications of talent; and was apparently so inept as to have been
advised by two masters to be satisfied to grind the colours he ought not
otherwise to meddle with. Tintoretto, from friendship, exhorted him to
change his trade. "This sluggishness of intellect did not proceed,"
observes the sagacious Lanzi, "from any deficiency, but from the depth
of his penetrating mind: early in life he dreaded the ideal as a rock on
which so many of his contemporaries had been shipwrecked." His hand was
not blest with precocious facility, because his mind was unsettled about
truth itself; he was still seeking for nature, which he could not
discover in those wretched mannerists, who, boasting of their freedom
and expedition in their bewildering tastes, which they called the ideal,
relied on the diplomas and honours obtained by intrigue or purchase,
which sanctioned their follies in the eyes of the multitude. "Lodovico,"
says Lanzi, "would first satisfy his own mind on every line; he would
not paint till painting well became a habit, and till habit produced
facility."
Lodovico then sought in other cities for what he could not find at
Bologna. Ho travelled to inspect the works of the elder masters; he
meditated on all their details; he penetrated to the very thoughts of
the great artists, and grew intimate with their modes of conception and
execution. The true principles of art were collected together in his own
mind,--the rich fruits of his own studies,--and these first prompted him
to invent a new school of painting.[267]
Returning to Bologna, he found his degraded brothers in art still
quarrelling about the merits of the old and the new school, and still
exulting in their vague conceptions and expeditious methods. Lodovico,
who had observed all, had summed up his principle in one grand
maxim,--that of combining a close observation of nature with the
imitation of the great masters, modifying both, however, by the
disposition of the artist himself. Such was the simple idea and the
happy project of Lodovico! Every perfection seemed to have been
obtained: the _Raffaeleschi_ excelled in the ideal; the
_Michelagnuoleschi_ in the anatomical; the Venetian and the Lombard
schools in brilliant vivacity or philosophic gravity. All seemed
preoccupied; but the secret of breaking the bonds of servile imitation
was a new art: of mingling into one school the charms of every school,
adapting them with freedom; and having been taught by all, to remain a
model for all; or, as Lanzi expresses it, _dopo avere appresso da tutte
insegnò a tutte_. To restore Art in its decline, Lodovico pressed all
the sweets from all the flowers; or, melting together all his rich
materials, formed one Corinthian brass. This school is described by Du
Fresnoy in the character of Annibale,
---- Quos sedulus Hannibal omnes
In PROPRIAM MENTEM atque morem mirâ arte COEGIT.
Paraphrased by Mason,
From all their charms combined, with happy toil,
Did Annibal compose his wondrous style;
O'er the fair fraud so close a veil is thrown,
That every borrow'd grace becomes his own.[268]
Lodovico perceived that he could not stand alone in the breach, and
single-handed encounter an impetuous multitude. He thought of raising up
a party among those youthful aspirants who had not yet been habitually
depraved. He had a brother whose talent could never rise beyond a poor
copyist's, and him he had the judgment, unswayed by undue partiality, to
account as a cipher; but he found two of his cousins men capable of
becoming as extraordinary as himself.
These brothers, Agostiuo and Annibale, first by nature, and then by
their manners and habits, were of the most opposite dispositions. Born
amidst humble occupations, their father was a tailor, and Annibale was
still working on the paternal board, while Agostino was occupied by the
elegant works of the goldsmith, whence he acquired the fine art of
engraving, in which he became the Marc Antonio of his time. Their
manners, perhaps, resulted from their trades. Agostino was a man of
science and literature: a philosopher and poet of the most polished
elegance, the most enchanting conversation, far removed from the vulgar,
he became the companion of the learned and the noble. Annibale could
scarcely write and read; an inborn ruggedness made him sullen, taciturn,
or, if he spoke, sarcastic; scorn and ridicule were his bitter delight.
Nature had strangely made these brothers little less than enemies.
Annibale despised his brother for having entered into the higher
circles; he ridiculed his refined manners, and even the neat elegance of
his dress. To mortify Agostino, one day he sent him a portrait of their
father threading a needle, and their mother cutting out the cloth, to
remind him, as he once whispered in Agostino's ear, when he met him
walking with a nobleman, "not to forget that they were sons of a poor
tailor!"[269] The same contrast existed in the habits of their mind.
Agostino was slow to resolve, difficult to satisfy himself; he was for
polishing and maturing everything: Annibale was too rapid to suffer any
delay, and, often evading the difficulties of the art, loved to do much
in a short time. Lodovico soon perceived their equal and natural
aptitude for art; and placing Agostino under a master who was celebrated
for his facility of execution, he fixed Annibale in his own study,
where his cousin might be taught by observation the _Festina lente_; how
the best works are formed by a leisurely haste. Lodovico seems to have
adopted the artifice of Isocrates in his management of two pupils, of
whom he said that the one was to be pricked on by the spur, and the
other kept in by the rein.
But a new difficulty arose in the attempt to combine together such
incongruous natures; the thoughtful Lodovico, intent on the great
project of the reformation of the art, by his prudence long balanced
their unequal tempers, and with that penetration which so strongly
characterises his genius, directed their distinct talents to his one
great purpose. From the literary Agostino he obtained the philosophy of
critical lectures and scientific principles; invention and designing
solely occupied Annibale; while the softness of contours, lightness and
grace, were his own acquisition. But though Annibale presumptuously
contemned the rare and elevated talents of Agostino, and scarcely
submitted to copy the works of Lodovico, whom he preferred to rival,
yet, according to a traditional rumour which Lanzi records, it was
Annibale's decision of character which enabled him, as it were
unperceived, to become the master over his cousin and his brother;
Lodovico and Agostino long hesitated to oppose the predominant style, in
their first Essays; Annibale hardly decided to persevere in opening
their new career by opposing "works to voices;" and to the enervate
labours of their wretched rivals, their own works, warm in vigour and
freshness, conducted on the principles of nature and art.
The Caracci not only resolved to paint justly, but to preserve the art
itself, by perpetuating the perfect taste of the true style among their
successors. In their own house they opened an _Accademia_, calling it
_degli Incaminati_, "the opening a new way," or "the beginners." The
academy was furnished with casts, drawings, prints, a school for
anatomy, and for the living figure; receiving all comers with kindness;
teaching gratuitously, and, as it is said, without jealousy; but too
many facts are recorded to allow us to credit the banishment of this
infectious passion from the academy of the Caracci, who, like other
congregated artists, could not live together and escape their own
endemial fever.
It was here, however, that Agostino found his eminence as the director
of their studies; delivering lectures on architecture and perspective,
and pointing out from his stores of history and fable subjects for the
designs of their pupils, who, on certain days exhibited their works to
the most skilful judges, adjusting the merits by their decisions. "To
the crowned sufficient is the prize of the glory," says Lanzi; and while
the poets chanted their praises, the lyre of Agostino himself gratefully
celebrated the progress of his pupils. A curious sonnet has been
transmitted to us, where Agostino, like the ancient legislators,
compresses his new laws into a few verses, easily to be remembered. The
sonnet is now well known, since Fuseli and Barry have preserved it in
their lectures. This singular production has, however, had the hard fate
of being unjustly depreciated: Lanzi calls it _pittoresco veramente più
che poetico_; Fuseli sarcastically compares it to "a medical
prescription." It delighted Barry, who calls it "a beautiful poem.
Considered as a didactic and descriptive poem, no lover of art who has
ever read it, will cease to repeat it till he has got it by heart. In
this academy every one was free to indulge his own taste, provided he
did not violate the essential principles of art; for though the critics
have usually described the character of this new school to have been an
imitation of the preceding ones, it was their first principle to be
guided by nature, and their own disposition; and if their painter was
deficient in originality, it was not the fault of this academy so much
as of the academician. In difficult doubts they had recourse to
Lodovico, whom Lanzi describes in his school like Homer among the
Greeks, _fons ingeniorum_, profound in every part of painting. Even the
recreations of the pupils were contrived to keep their mind and hand in
exercise; in their walks sketching landscapes from nature, or amusing
themselves with what the Italians call _Caricatura_, a term of large
signification; for it includes many sorts of grotesque inventions,
whimsical incongruities, such as those arabesques found at Herculaneum,
where Anchises, Æneas, and Ascanius are burlesqued by heads of apes and
pigs, or Arion, with a grotesque motion, is straddling a great trout; or
like that ludicrous parody which came from the hand of Titian in a
playful hour, when he sketched the Laocoon whose three figures consist
of apes. Annibale had a peculiar facility in these incongruous
inventions, and even the severe Leonardo da Vinci considered them as
useful exercises.
Such was the academy founded by the Caracci; and Lodovico lived to
realise his project in the reformation of art, and witnessed the school
of Bologna flourishing afresh when all the others had fallen. The great
masters of this last epoch of Italian painting were their pupils. Such
were Domenichino, who, according to the expression of Bellori, _delinea
gli animi, colorisce la vita_; he drew the soul and coloured life;[270]
Albano, whose grace distinguishes him as the Anacreon of painting;
Guido, whose touch was all beauty and delicacy, and, as Passeri
delightfully expresses it, "whose faces came from Paradise;"[271] a
scholar of whom his masters became jealous, while Annibale, to depress
Guido, patronised Domenichino, and even the wise Lodovico could not
dissimulate the fear of a new competitor in a pupil, and to mortify
Guido preferred Guercino, who trod in another path. Lanfranco closes
this glorious list, whose freedom and grandeur for their full display
required the ample field of some vast history.
The secret history of this _Academia_ forms an illustration for that
chapter on "Literary Jealousy" which I have written in "The Literary
Character." We have seen even the gentle Lodovico infected by it; but it
raged in the breast of Annibale. Careless of fortune as they were
through life, and free from the bonds of matrimony, that they might
wholly devote themselves to all the enthusiasm of their art, they lived
together in the perpetual intercourse of their thoughts; and even at
their meals laid on their table their crayons and their papers, so that
any motion or gesture which occurred, as worthy of picturing, was
instantly sketched. Annibale catching something of the critical taste of
Agostino, learnt to work more slowly, and to finish with more
perfection, while his inventions were enriched by the elevated thoughts
and erudition of Agostino. Yet a circumstance which happened in the
academy betrays the mordacity and envy of Annibalo at the superior
accomplishments of his more learned brother. While Agostino was
describing with great eloquence the beauties of the Laocoon, Annibale
approached the wall, and snatching up the crayons, drew the marvellous
figure with such perfection, that the spectators gazed on it in
astonishment. Alluding to his brother's lecture, the proud artist
disdainfully observed, "Poets paint with words, but painters only with
their pencils."[272]
The brothers could neither live together nor endure absence. Many years
their life was one continued struggle and mortification; and Agostino
often sacrificed his genius to pacify the jealousy of Annibale, by
relinquishing his palette to resume those exquisite engravings, in which
he corrected the faulty outlines of the masters whom he copied, so that
his engravings are more perfect than their originals. To this unhappy
circumstance, observes Lanzi, we must attribute the loss of so many
noble compositions which otherwise Agostino, equal in genius to the
other Caracci, had left us. The jealousy of Annibale at length for ever
tore them asunder. Lodovico happened not to be with them when they were
engaged in painting together the Farnesian gallery at Rome. A rumour
spread that in their present combined labour the engraver had excelled
the painter. This Annibale could not forgive; he raved at the bite of
the serpent: words could not mollify, nor kindness any longer appease,
that perturbed spirit; neither the humiliating forbearance of Agostino,
the counsels of the wise, nor the mediation of the great. They separated
for ever! a separation in which they both languished, till Agostino,
broken-hearted, sunk into an early grave, and Annibale, now brotherless,
lost half his genius; his great invention no longer accompanied him--for
Agostino was not by his side![273] After suffering many vexations, and
preyed on by his evil temper, Annibale was deprived of his senses.