ESSAYS
TOWARDS
THE HISTORY OF PAINTING.
ESSAYS
TOWARDS THE
HISTORY OF PAINTING.
BY MRS. CALLCOTT.
LONDON:
EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET.
MDCCCXXXVI.
LONDON:
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS,
WHITEFRIARS.
TO THE MISS WARRENS.
MY DEAR YOUNG FRIENDS,
When your excellent Father suggested to me to engage in some little
work which should afford constant and steady employment, as the best
means of alleviating the wearisomeness of an increasing and incurable
disorder, I hoped to have had the benefit of his advice during its
progress. It has pleased God that it should be otherwise, and I have
had to mourn the premature loss of the most skilful physician and the
kindest friend. Yet I have followed his advice as far as my strength
has permitted. One portion of the task he prescribed to me is done; and
I offer it to _you_ as a token of my gratitude to _him_.
Should I live to go on with the second portion of the work, it will,
perhaps, be more interesting to you in its nature. This, however,
I know you will receive affectionately, when you remember at whose
desire it was begun, and think of the regard I have always felt towards
yourselves since I have known you.
MARIA CALLCOTT.
_June 1st, 1836._
CONTENTS.
ESSAY I.
PAGE.
Introduction.--Lectures on Painting.--History of Art displayed
by its remains.--Object of the present Essays.--Origin of Art.--First
mention of Art in the Book of Genesis.--Egyptian and Chaldean
Colonies.--Art among the Chinese.--Hindoo Art.--Egyptian Art.--Second
Colonization from Egypt.--Egyptian Arts as practised by the
Israelites.--The Ark of the Covenant and the Golden
Calf.--Hieroglyphical Writing; its effects upon Art.--Egyptian
Painting.--Pigments used by the Egyptians 1
ESSAY II.
OF ART IN ANCIENT ITALY.
Italy long a Civilised Nation before the existence of Rome.--The
ancient Etruscans.--The useful Nature of their Works.--Their
Tombs.--Those of Chiusi.--Tarquinii and Vulscii.--Etruscan
Vases.--Painted Tombs.--Early Pictures mentioned
by Pliny.--Etruscan Statues in Rome.--Roman
Pictures.--Fabius Pictor.--Pacuvius.--Triumphal Pictures.--Pictures
used in Law Suits.--Begging Pictures.--Compliment
paid by Augustus to Painting.--First Greek Pictures
brought to Rome by Mummius.--Pictures brought to Italy
by different Conquerors and placed in Temples and Porticos.--New
Italian School of Pottery.--Schools of Painting in Italy.--No
good Roman Painters.--Roman Busts.--Mosaic Pictures.--Miniatures.--Books
first Illustrated with Portraits by
Varro and Atticus.--Antique Pictures found at Pompeii.--Portrait
Painting in Nero’s Time.--Gradual decay of Art
in Italy 44
ESSAY III.
OF PAINTING IN GREECE, FIRST AND SECOND SERIES.
Earliest Painting in Greece.--No relic of Greek Pictures remaining.--The
Arts first cultivated at Sicyon and Corinth.--Their rapid
improvement in Greece.--Art in Asia Minor.--Vases of Clay
and of Metal.--The first Greek Painters.--Progress of Painting up
to the time of Phidias.--The Works of Mycon.--Those of Polygnotus.--The
Battle of Marathon.--The Pictures of Delphi.--Apollodorus.--Improvements
made by him in Art.--Further Improvements made by Pamphilus.--And
still further by Parrhasius.--His Pictures and Character.--Zeuxis,
his Pictures.--Timanthes, his Pictures.--Colotes 85
ESSAY IV.
OF THE THIRD PERIOD OF PAINTING IN GREECE.
Macedonian Kings Encouragers of Art.--Philip.--Alexander.--Pamphilus
and School of Sicyon.--Pictures of Pamphilus.--Apelles.--His
Character.--His Pictures.--His Danger in Egypt.--His Picture
of Calumny.--His Visit to Protogenes.--The Venus
Anadyomene.--Protogenes.--His Pictures.--Aristides of Thebes.--His
Pictures.--Nichomachus.--His Pictures.--Pausias.--His Picture of the
Garland Maker.--Other Pictures.--Euphranor.--Antiphilus.--Familiar Life
Subjects.--Pyreicus.--Interiors, animals, &c.--Minor
Painters.--Nicias.--Timomachus.--His Medea.--Conclusion 137
ESSAY V.
CLASSIFICATION OF PICTURES.
Inconveniences of the present Mode of Classing Pictures.--Proposed
Classification.--Historical Pictures Divisible into
Four Classes.--Further Subdivision.--Present Class of Dramatic
Pictures divided into two.--Three Classes of Portrait
Painting.--Two Classes of Familiar Life Subjects.--Landscape,
its Four Classes.--Two Classes of Animal Painting.--Examples
taken from Ancient and Modern Pictures.--Table of Cebes.--Calumny
of Apelles.--Old Fresco at Sienna.--Allegories of
the Greek Painters.--Of Giotto.--Prophets and Sybils.--Sistine
Chapel.--Works of Polygnotus.--Some Works of
Raffaelle.--Other Pictures of Polygnotus.--Hemelink’s
Three Kings.--Cimabue’s and Giotto’s Lives of St. Francis
and the Virgin.--Raffaelle’s Loggie.--Luini Frescoes.--Andrea
del Sarto.--Domenichino.--Pictures of Single Actions
by the Ancients.--Many Examples by the Moderns.--Dramatic
Pictures of the Ancients.--Of the Moderns.--Historical
Portraits and Examples.--Familiar Life Pictures of the
Ancients.--Of the Moderns.--Examples of the Four Classes
of Landscapes.--Animal Painters Ancient and Modern 169
ESSAY VI.
ON THE MATERIALS USED BY PAINTERS.
Introduction.--Early Pictures, in Egypt and Etruria, on bare
Sandstone.--Painting on fine Plaster or Stucco.--On Wood,
prepared.--Kinds of Wood.--Manner of Preparing it by
Ancients and Moderns.--Painting on Linen.--Its Antiquity.--Its
use.--When revived.--Pigments.--Vulgar Error concerning
the Number of Colours used by the Ancient Greeks.--Its
Refutation.--White Pigments of the Ancients.--Middle
Ages.--Moderns.--Yellows.--Reds, especially vermilion.--Minium.--The
Red Ochres.--Dragons’ Blood.--Blue Colours.--Ultra Marine.--The Blue
of Egypt.--Blues used by Early Modern Painters.--Blue Earths and
Indigo, Ancient and Modern.--Green Colours, Native and
Manufactured.--Blacks of the Ancients and Moderns.--Purples and
Browns.--Vehicles used by Painters.--Difficulty of the
subject.--Asphaltum, Petroleum, Wax, and Oil, used as Varnishes by the
Ancients.--Encaustic Painting.--Vehicles certainly known
to the Ancients.--The Vehicles used in the Tenth Century,
in the Thirteenth, and by the Moderns.--Metal Points
used for Drawing by the Ancients.--The Egyptian Drawings,
made with a Pen or fine Pencil.--The Tools of Hogs’ Bristles
have always been the same.--Fine Pencils made of Squirrels’
hair in the Twelfth Century.--Conclusion 217
ESSAYS.
ESSAYS
TOWARDS
THE HISTORY OF PAINTING.
ESSAY I.
The Historical and Literary knowledge of an Art is, for the learned,
and for Artists, what maps are for the Warrior, the Traveller, and the
Sailor.
RASPE.
To write such a book upon any art as should be eminently useful to
the professors of that art, as instructing them in methods whereby
they may improve their practice, and avoid the difficulties they have
to encounter, or gracefully evade them, would require the hand of a
consummate artist, who, to great practice, should join large knowledge
of his subject, and a minute acquaintance with the materials upon whose
nature more of practical success depends, than enthusiasts in art are
willing to own. Besides, he should possess sufficient learning to
communicate the experience of past ages, for the improvement of this;
and a good taste and acquaintance with general literature, to adorn
his subject with the graces that all arts may borrow from each other,
becoming always richer in proportion as they draw from their common
treasury, Nature.
To write a work of just criticism, upon a peculiar art, the author
should no less be a professor, whose practice might exemplify his
criticism, or at any rate might enable him justly to appreciate the
merits and defects of the peculiar works which he should choose as
subjects on which to found his criticisms.
The lectures of Sir Joshua Reynolds made art popular in this country,
less because they contained excellent precepts and well-chosen
examples, than because, like Johnson’s criticism in the Lives of
the Poets, they laid open the general principles applicable to all
the arts. Poetry and music, painting and sculpture, architecture
and landscape-gardening, may equally profit by them, the passages
peculiarly appropriated to painters being far from the most numerous,
though such as none but a painter could have written.
Fuseli appears to be more exclusively a critic in his own art. He
had prodigious practice in his own wild walk, wherein, however, even
he often mistook the glare of caprice for the light of genius. He had
great learning, the effect of which he injured by affectation and
quaintness, yet there are exquisite passages in his lectures, which
will always be read with profit and delight both by artists and lovers
of art.
The practical lectures delivered or published by other authors, some
living, and some whose loss we have to lament, have not been popular,
chiefly because they were most properly composed for the use of
artists. And when we consider that they have been for the most part the
works of men whose lives were passed in the most laborious department
of a Profession that demands constant application, namely portrait
painting, it is surprising how much they did in those hours which
nature might have claimed as due to rest and relaxation. But such is
the advantage possessed by a professor, when writing on the art be
practises and understands.
I am aware that a certain class of connoisseurs, amateurs, or
enthusiasts have lately put forth, perhaps I should say revived, the
strange opinion that a practical artist is of all men the least fit to
judge of art, and that it belongs to _them_, that is the connoisseurs
only, to judge of his work. I believe this notion to have lurked in
secret in the bosom of many an amateur for centuries back; but it
required the fostering hand of German enthusiasm to publish it, as an
axiom, to the world; and to write books upon the absurd notion, that
those who know nothing practically of a subject, are the best judges
and instructors concerning it.
Apelles had different notions; for while he bade the shoemaker _stick
to his last_, he took his advice about the sandals of his Venus.
In truth, to use the words of the wisest of modern men, “the labours of
speculative men, in active matters, seem to men of experience, little
better than Phormio’s discourses of war; which seemed to Hannibal as
dreams and dotage[1].”
If mere lovers of art will, nevertheless, devote their thoughts and
pens to her enchanting service, I think they may do an acceptable
office, even to painters themselves, by collecting what is, or has been
known of her progress, following up her history from the first faint
traces of her path among savage tribes, to her majestic footsteps in
the flourishing states of Greece; nor losing sight of her entirely in
her sad hours of degradation under Imperial Rome, and finally watching
over her gentle though slow revival under the brilliant sun of Italy.
There is a kind of history of art which has been successfully
cultivated: I mean that which addresses itself directly to the eye
by a chronological display of the remaining works of art in the
great publications of Monfaucon, Dagincourt, Micali, and the various
archæological works of different societies[2]. But these are books
of such price as must always render them difficult of access; and,
unfortunately, the descriptions attached to the prints seldom admit of
separation; and are, in general, written too dully to interest, or so
much in the spirit of controversy as to render them disagreeable.
Such history can never become popular. There remains, however, open, an
unpretending path, yet untrodden, by which those who love art may be
led sufficiently near her temple to enjoy her beauties, understand her
virtues, and be blessed by her happy influence, without encroaching on
the province of her professed servants, or engaging in combat with her
false or mistaken friends, or avowed enemies.
Tis this path that I would pursue, and take along with me those of my
sex and country who love the good and the beautiful, and who likewise
love to look up through them, to the fountain of all goodness, and to
the Author of all beauty.
A great deal of time and much temper have been wasted, in disputes
concerning the native country of the arts. China, Upper India, and
Egypt, have been perhaps the favourites of the learned, though there
have not been wanting champions for the claims of Western Asia, and
even Greece.
But, if we could trace all the arts, whether springing from the primary
wants, or the mere desires and wishes of man, to one original inventor,
we should not be much the forwarder. As mankind increased, and formed
separate nations, these arts would naturally and necessarily vary, in
order to accommodate themselves to climates and circumstances. And we
are as little likely to fix, with any thing like certainty, on the
native country of painting or sculpture, as to discover that of the
various kinds of grain, which in all ages have formed the principal
food of civilized men. The discovery of the great Western World, long
enough after the art of printing, to secure whatever memorials might
be written concerning the state of its inhabitants, opened to us a
monument of the early condition of all mankind, a thousand times more
instructive than pillars of marble or of brass.
The Spaniards found in Florida one species of grain, cultivated and
used for bread, in the same way, and in as much ignorance of its
origin, as wheat in the Old World: and in many provinces, a substitute
for the finer grains was used, requiring infinitely more ingenuity
in its preparation, and of the origin of which the natives knew so
little, as to look upon it as the gift of a benevolent enchanter[3].
In Mexico and Peru they found many arts considerably advanced. The
smelting, casting, embossing, engraving of metals; the making of
very fine pottery; the chiselling of the hardest stones and marbles.
There, too, was painting practised, not as a mere luxury, but as a
matter of prime necessity. For the nations were still so young as not
to have discovered alphabetical writing; therefore, painting, mixed
with a variety of conventional signs, almost amounting to hieroglyphic
characters, was used, to record the history of the nations, the
transactions of the priests and merchants, and the decisions of the
laws[4].
Since that great first discovery, many and various tribes have been
gradually revealed to us, none so savage as not to have discovered some
longing after arts, beyond those absolutely necessary to existence.
The cloth of the Sandwich Islander was stamped with mimic leaves and
branches. The clubs, darts, and hatchets of the New Zealanders were
covered with flowers and foliage; and not unfrequently we find on them
an attempt at the human form.
The fences of the Morais presented, on many of the poles, a human head,
grossly cut indeed, but still bearing the impress of man’s imitative
genius.
Instances of this sort might be multiplied; but for the present I have
named enough for my purpose, which is, to prove that it is unnecessary
to trace the arts from country to country, or from house to house, to
give them, as it were, a formal genealogy; but that we may expect to
find that, circumstances being tolerably alike, the fine arts will
spring up in all nations as they advance in civilization.
The progress of art is a separate question, and must have been
influenced by many circumstances not naturally connected with it. Hence
we see it in one nation beginning in splendour and advancing rapidly
for a time; when suddenly it is stopped as by an enchanter’s wand: the
handicraft may improve, but the form, character, and spirit, remain
for ever fixed. In another, on the contrary, it advances, firm and
free: every age improves it: and its career is only cut short when the
nation itself sinks before a foreign conqueror!
Differently again, but still influenced by the circumstances of
society, we have beheld the arts almost touching upon perfection and
then withering, by slow and sickly decay, till all that ennobled them
has disappeared, and they seem fitted for nothing but to adorn the
ephemeral trophies of fashion or caprice.
Having thus so far cleared the ground, I will endeavour to collect the
scattered notices concerning art, in the most ancient times, and among
the most anciently civilized nations; and so prepare the way for more
connected details, when we reach the period of common history.
The book of Genesis names one of the great grandsons of Cain, as the
first who wrought and graved on metal, and another as the inventor of
musical instruments,--a proof that the arts were cultivated in very
early stages of civilization[5].
Again, within four centuries after the flood, we find that men had made
images of wood, and stone, and metal, to worship. They had not only
built them cities, but they had tasted of the barbarous civilities
of war; they had erected trophies; poets had extolled the exploits of
heroes; and sculptors had already fashioned their images, to adore.
Constant tradition names Terah, the father of Abraham, as a maker of
images; and that the worship of them continued in his family for nearly
two hundred years, notwithstanding the call and conversion of Abraham,
is proved by Rachel’s theft of the images of Laban, when she left her
father’s house to accompany her husband to the land of Canaan.
But, if we may believe Greek and Egyptian tradition, more than a
century before the call of Abraham, a colony had been planted at
Sicyon, by an Egyptian leader, Ægialeus,[6] who brought with him the
knowledge of sculpture and painting, and founded the earliest and
purest school of Greek art.
Another civilized colony, from Egypt, soon settled in Greece. Inachus
founded the city of Argos, while Abraham was still an idolater, in Ur.
At this period, Egypt and Chaldea both seem to have sent out colonies
on every side, and history and tradition alike point to this period
also, as that of the invention of alphabetical writing: or, at any
rate, its establishment in a great part of the then civilized world.
The claims of the Egyptian Memnon and the Phœnician Cadmus to the
invention, appear to be equally and entirely without foundation; and
Pliny’s notion that it had existed from the beginning, in Chaldea and
the adjacent countries, is supported, by a very remarkable passage in
the book of Joshua[7].
On the victorious march of the Israelites, under Joshua himself, to
Palestine, we find he took Debir; i.e. the place of an oracle or wise
discourse. The name of the town was before Kirjath Sepher, or city
of books or of letters; therefore books and letters were ancient, in
that country, in Joshua’s time.[8] That pictures and sculpture were so
likewise, I infer from the command given in Numbers, xxxiii. 52, to
destroy the _pictures_ and molten images of the natives of Palestine.
If any reliance is to be placed on the annals of China and of India,
civilization and its attendant arts were at least as early with them as
with Egypt and Chaldea, each claiming the priority, and each pretending
to have been the teacher of the rest of the world, on equally plausible
grounds.
There is no doubt of the antiquity of Indian civilization. The ancient
Greek writers talk of the Indian philosophers, as belonging to a nation
highly polished, before a grain of corn had been sown in Greece; and
the pretensions of China are supported by the Indians themselves.
I have said thus much of the general civilization of these nations,
because I could not separate it from the cultivation of the arts. I
will now keep closer to my subject, reserving, however, the liberty of
digressing wherever I see occasion, or, in other words, whenever it
suits my humour.
As I take it, the Chinese remain, more nearly than any other people, in
the state in which they were two or three thousand years ago, and are,
for their age, the veriest babes that inhabit the earth. I will begin
with them, and see what their proficiency in art has ever amounted to.
It is plain from their written signs, for alphabet they have none:
that in early times, they, like the Mexicans, exerted their powers of
imitation to represent in painting, events, the memory of which they
wished to preserve. On dissecting the hundred and seventeen elementary
characters, whose endless combinations represent their language, it is
not difficult to trace the rude forms of men, birds, quadrupeds, fish,
houses, trees, hills, and so forth; and in the very oldest writings,
before the circular forms were rejected altogether, these shapes were
still more distinct[9].
We may naturally expect that, as long as painting is thus used,
convenience alone would require the once admitted forms and colours
to be invariable, and that precautions would be taken against
innovation, even for improvement, lest the painted pages should
become unintelligible. But the Chinese had advanced far beyond that.
Their characters approach, even more nearly than hieroglyphics, to
alphabetical writing, and yet their art remained stationary and at
a very low point. It is very difficult to account for this among so
ingenious a people. It was not that the Tartar conquest, by any direct
influence, lessened their civilization or stopped their progress. We
have undeniable witnesses to the contrary, in the Chinese histories, as
interpreted by the missionaries and other learned orientalists; and,
what is still more curious and satisfactory, in the writings of Marco
Paulo, who accompanied the Tartar conqueror on his expedition.
The religion of the Chinese, as Bhuddhists, is assuredly not calculated
to call forth the genius of painting. The insipid Goorus do not, like
the gods of the Hindoo or Greek mythologies, present subjects for
fancy to play with; and the statues of Bhud, while they have all the
stiffness, have none of the grandeur of the Egyptian gods.
Perhaps, as the Chinese have always been a commercial nation, they
contented themselves with cultivating the art of painting, just so far
as to decorate their exquisite porcelain and lacquered ware for the
market, and sought after nothing more.
They had certainly attained to great manual dexterity, and the power
of copying servilely whatever inanimate subjects were before them; and
they had discovered the method of extracting colours from metallic
substances, capable of bearing the furnace, as well as those of more
obvious use, in the chalks and earths of their country: besides some
of the finest varnishes in existence. We ought not to marvel that
they did not attain, in their painting, to common, much less ideal
beauty, when we reflect on the general character of form, in their own
nation or their Tartar conquerors, which is very far below that of the
Indians and their western neighbours. And we have, perhaps, no right
to expect better human shapes than that of the portly mandarin and his
crimp-footed lady, upon their plates and dishes. But their animals,
whether painted, modelled in clay, or cast in metal, are little less
distorted than their men: and as to perspective, linear, or aërial,
they seem to have no sense of either[10]. In flowers and birds, their
pencilling is delicate, and often true to admiration; but, even in
these objects, except in treatises on botany or ornithology, their
peculiar taste breaks out in monstrous combinations of leaves and
flowers, that never grew in the same soil; and of beaks and wings,
that were never hatched in the same nest.
The Japanese appear to have carried many arts to much greater
perfection than the Chinese; and even in painting, the very old Japan
figures approach nearer in style to beauty and a certain sort of
greatness.
But the reading of one Chinese novel or drama, such, for instance,
as the “Fortunate Alliance,” or “The Adventures of the Fair Shuey
Ping Sing, and the Chalk Ring,” or “Le Cercle de Craie,” must satisfy
us that, whatever progress that nation may have made in science, or
whatever sagacity it may have displayed in internal government or
in commerce, a true taste for the liberal arts has never ennobled
its other pursuits, or charmed the leisure of its philosophers and
statesmen.
I do not mean to say that they neither look at pictures nor listen to
music: but those pictures and that music differ so widely in taste and
quality from what the greater number of civilized nations are agreed in
admiring, that I feel justified in considering them as insensible to
that standard of taste which all the rest of the world acknowledges.
Was India then the mother of the arts? and, among her many claims to
distinction can she, with justice, advance that of having instructed
Egypt and anticipated the splendours of Babylon?
It might be expected that the remaining works of art, in that most
ancient nation, might decide the question. But far from it. Nor does
history or tradition throw any trust-worthy light on the subject.
The most ancient monuments of Egypt bear a certain resemblance to some
of those of India, and what we know of the religion of both countries
indicates, that, in some most remote period, their mysteries and rites
had a close resemblance. Yet, on some material points, such as their
funeral ceremonies, the difference seems to have been so decided that
we are forced to conclude that they were of different sects, emanating,
possibly, from a common source.
It is curious, that the figures of Bhud, whether on the continent of
India, or the island of Ceylon, or in China, should present the form,
and curled woolly hair of a Southern African. But the Bhuddhists of
India do not appear to have produced better works, in sculpture, than
those of China. The Brahmins, on the contrary, have left, besides
magnificent architectural monuments, in their caverns, in which
they are rivalled by the Bhuddhists, pieces of sculpture, of a very
different character from theirs, where there is occasionally grandeur,
and, not unfrequently, freedom and grace. No one, who has seen the
colossal head of the Trimurti, in Elephanta, can deny the grandeur,
almost the sublimity, of that strange work; and the compartments of the
same temple-cavern are examples of a gracious feeling of nature. The
sculptured rock, at Mavellipoor, or Mahabalipoor, called the Tapas,
or Penance of Arjoon, is a further example of freedom and taste; and
the figures of the elephants, and other animals, attendant on the holy
penitent, are designed with the greatest truth. The deformities, almost
constant in Egypt, of placing the heads of animals on men’s shoulders,
because the qualities of those animals were figurative of the
attributes of the deities, are added to by the Hindoos, who, regarding
the human hand as the symbol of power, have accordingly multiplied the
hands of the gods.
I shewed the late Mr. Flaxman some drawings of the sculptured rocks of
Mahabalipoor: he was struck with the freedom and expression of several
of the figures, in which there was an evident attempt to imitate
nature, and especially he was pleased with the expression of the
courtiers of Bali, in the design of the Vamuna Avater.
I must observe that at Mavellipoor, within a circuit of less than two
miles, there are, besides the ruins of several large temples, built of
hewn stone, eight Monothelite temples: small[11], but all differing in
form, richly and capriciously ornamented; several caverns, on the walls
of which there are many mythological subjects carved in high relief,
some of the figures being seven feet high; and the sculptured rock of
Arjoon, which I have already mentioned.
Yet, in most of these works, the execution is coarse, as if the
material had been too stubborn for the tools of the workman. I am told
that this defect does not exist in some other of the cavern temples of
India, but it runs through all that I have seen.
Of the painting of the Hindoos, no specimen of anything like ancient
times has been preserved[12]; though, from their undoubtedly ancient
poems and plays, it is certain that they did paint, and that their
pictures were not only single portraits, but compositions, both of what
we call history and familiar life[13].
Who, indeed, can read Sir William Jones’s pleasant abridgement of the
Hindoo mythology, his translation of Sacontala, or the hymn to Camdeo,
and not perceive that the Indians wanted neither imagination, nor
subjects to exercise it upon, in their religion and poetry?
But their florid religion, and exaggerated songs, were of later date,
in all probability, than that grave and philosophical faith which gave
the Brahmins their reputation in Greece and Egypt; and, perhaps, their
more natural pieces of sculpture and their pictures belong to that
later time rather than to the age of the gymnosophists; or if the
Indian arts furnished examples to Egypt or Chaldea, we must seek those
examples in the hewn rocks, which represent figures nearly as large
as the Egyptian Memnon, with their hands attached to their sides, and
their feet planted together, and of which some few still exist, within
the Peninsula, and on the Indian side of the borders of Tartary[14].
What do we know of the arts of Chaldea, in very early times[15]?
Babylon and Nineveh have, for thousands of years, been buried in
utter ruin; and if here and there a bauble, such as the signet of a
Satrap, or the breast-pin of a lady, be picked up, however delicately
the cornelian or the onyx may be chiselled, the forms are stiff and
angular, and nothing displays the freedom and grace that render art
valuable. The great sculptured rocks met with in various parts of
modern Persia, have everywhere the same character. But, upon the whole
however, there is a graver and more majestic air than in the monuments
of India, and a much greater dexterity of hand is displayed in the
workmanship, but there is less nature in the design.
As to painting, in that country, there are neither relics nor
memorials, of earlier date than our æra[16].
It is with reverence, not unmixed with awe, that I approach the subject
of Egyptian art: and here, as in India and the intermediate countries,
I must consider its sculpture as the only satisfactory monument. I am
aware that coloured subjects, by courtesy called pictures, have been
discovered on the walls of tombs and caverns, by persons well qualified
to examine and pronounce, as antiquaries, on their meaning and their
merit.
But they are, in composition, entirely sculpturesque; and many of them
are, in fact, coloured basso-relievos.
Belzoni told me he had seen, in Egypt, figures in relief wrought in
stucco on the walls of some of the catacombs, which were coloured in
simple unbroken colours. To these he ascribed a marvellous effect,
and said, they were the grandest _pictures_ he had seen. Such also,
I remember, was the language used by my enthusiastic friend Kestner,
when, in 1827, he described to me the tombs of Egyptian character,
opened the year before at Tarquinii, in the country of the ancient
Etruscans.
I can imagine readily that in the chambers of the dead, the plain form
shadowed out in a simple colour, and lighted by the glare of torches,
may have had an awful and ghostly character; and if these figures were
of the size of life, or larger, and further aided by the varying tints
afforded by a low relief, as the torches glared upon them, a describer
could hardly be charged with exaggeration, whatever effects he might
impute to them.
Still these are not pictures, though the artists approached nearly to
picturesque design in many of the chiselled figures on the walls of the
temples and tombs of Thebes, where the attacking and defending towns,
the triumphs of a victorious king, the punishment of rebels, and other
historical facts, are rendered with considerable spirit, and convey
a notion that their authors might have become painters, had they not
been restrained by custom from change or progress. These could not,
however, be the beginnings of art. They mark already a very advanced
state of society, since such great works of ornament could be required
and executed; and they, it seems, were ancient when Herodotus visited
Egypt 450 years before our era[17].
But we have more authentic documents in favour of the antiquity of the
arts in Egypt, even than those afforded by the father of Greek history.
Fifteen centuries before Herodotus travelled into Egypt, Abraham had
been entertained there by a powerful king, who gave him gifts, such
as only the head of a people already conversant with many arts could
bestow. The whole history of Joseph’s life in Egypt[18] bears witness
to the progress already made there in civility and the arts of polished
life.
Could we read the inscription freely, which covers the obelisk of
Mataryah, the only remains of the stately Heliopolis, the On of
Scripture, perhaps we might find some record of that high priest who
gave his daughter in marriage to the Hebrew governor.
Both sacred[19] and profane history[20] fix upon the two centuries
between 1600 and 1400 before Christ, as the period when a prodigious
movement took place in Egypt, and when great works were undertaken by
the kings, and important colonies led forth into the western parts of
Asia, and into Greece.
I have already mentioned the foundation of Argos and Sicyon, said to
have taken place nearly 600 years before the period of which I am now
speaking. They were, therefore, flourishing states when Cecrops[21],
the Egyptian, taught the people of Attica to sow corn, instead of
trusting to the precarious chances of the seasons in bringing forth
wild fruits, or the still more uncertain product of the chase; and
chose for the patroness of his new colony the goddess to whom his
native city Saïs was consecrated; Minerva or Bubastis. The rich country
of Asia Minor had not been more backward than Egypt in the earlier
times; nor afterwards less forward than Greece in receiving colonies.
In the time of Abraham, Damascus was a market, where slaves[22] were
sold; and forty years after Cecrops had founded Athens, Scamander
settled a colony in Troy.
Scarcely a hundred years[23] after the Egyptians had carried their
arts and their religion into Attica, we find the first Panathenaic
procession mentioned, when the whole people of Athens solemnly
dedicated themselves to the service of the goddess Athena or Minerva,
and to that of their country, and bore before them to her temple her
banner, or veil, formed of fine linen, and embroidered with subjects
relative to her history or her attributes.
The fine arts were therefore known in Attica at this early time; for
whether the peplos or veil were wrought in Attica, or imported from
Saïs, those who followed the banner could not be blind to the designs
and colours that adorned it. It was about this time that Cadmus brought
from the Eastern countries to Greece the knowledge of alphabetical
writing; at this time, when Minos gave his laws to Crete; while
Danaus, believed to be an Egyptian prince, reigned at Argos, and
Erichthonius in Athens; that Rameses was Phrah, or king of, at least,
Northern Egypt. He had caused the descendants of Abraham to build for
him the treasure cities of Rameses and Pithom[24]; and in his reign
Moses led forth the Israelites, to escape from his tyranny, into the
land promised to their forefathers.
Before I say anything concerning the arts of Egypt alone, or the
changes they underwent in different soils, and under different
circumstances, I must point out the only minute account we have, that
can be relied upon, of any peculiar works executed by any of the
various tribes who at that time separated themselves from their nursing
mother. I mean the ark of the covenant, fashioned by the direction of
Moses in the wilderness, and the contemporary golden calf and brazen
serpent.
And here we have, as far as I know, the names of the two most ancient
artists recorded: Aholiab and Bezaleel, whom the Scripture calls the
wise in heart; but they had many assistants, and it appears that Aaron
himself was a skilful workman.
The arts required for the making of the ark and the erection of the
tabernacle were the preparing and dying of skins; the weaving of fine
linen; the fine dyes, blue, scarlet, red, and purple; designing for
the embroiderers[25], who wrought the pomegranates, the flowers, and
the leaves; every variety of carving in wood; casting and chiselling
of metals; and, finally, the engraving on precious stones, and setting
them according to the jewellers’ art.
When, to quiet the impatient Israelites, Aaron consented to make a god
for them, such as they had been used to in Egypt, he caused them to
bring their jewels of gold to him for the purpose; and, after he had
cast or made a molten image, he finished it with the graver[26]. Now
this is the process of casting figures in metal to this very day.
Here, then, we have the Jews designing, making moulds, casting metals,
and finishing with the graver. They were, therefore, not all mere
brick-makers in Egypt; but some of them, like Moses and Aaron, had been
instructed in the learning, or at least the arts, of the Egyptians.
Again, for the brass and gold ornaments of the tabernacle and the ark,
Bezaleel made the cherubim[27] on the mercy seat of beaten gold; that
is, their faces and wings were embossed and chiselled. So likewise was
the great candlestick, with its flowers and its almonds, its leaves and
its buds.
The whole putting together of the tent of the tabernacle is most
ingenious, and denotes an acquaintance with great magnificence in
architecture and in furniture. The breastplate was composed of twelve
precious stones, from diamond the hardest, down to the most easily
wrought, cornelian; yet each was engraved after the manner of a signet,
with the name of one of the tribes, and set in its own peculiar setting.
Such are the particulars we learn on undoubted authority of the arts at
that early period, as practised in Egypt for convenience and ornament.
But Egypt had another use for the arts. She applied them mainly to the
service of religion.
All nations, however rude, evince a desire to record their own actions
and those of their fathers. Poets, bards, senachies, scalds, or by
whatever name the same class of men may be called, are, like the
traditionary tale-tellers of the American Indians, the earliest of
historians. Their art, which is that of so placing words as to form
sentences, whether distinguished by rhyme or by only a peculiar rhythm,
more easily and pleasantly remembered than the same words would be in
the ordinary arrangement of speech, may be practised by the warrior
or the huntsman, without interfering with his other avocations. It
is, therefore, peculiarly fitted for rude tribes, who cannot afford
that any individual should give himself up exclusively to an inactive
profession.
The rhapsodies of the bards, however, may be forgotten, and will
probably be so in a few generations;[28] and, if a tribe migrate so as
to settle where other tongues are spoken, the songs are sung in the
ears of the deaf, and the beginnings of history are swept wholly away.
How, then, shall the memory of the past be preserved? the propensity
of man to imitation will lead him to attempt to form a likeness of
any great benefactor to the community. The simple stone set up for a
memorial will soon be cut into a rude statue. The face of a rock will
admit of carving figures enough to represent an event of importance;
or the outlines may be scratched upon a board, and the use of colour,
which abounds everywhere, is an easy step towards the beginning of
painting. Such, we have positive proof, it was in Mexico; such, we may
reasonably presume, it must have been in Egypt.
But the heroes and benefactors of a lively and enthusiastic people
soon came to be looked upon as something divine. He, who first in the
sight of his tribe, scattered seed upon the earth, and, trusting to
the certain return of the season, taught how to gather in the harvest
and convert the grain into bread, must have stood in the light of a
Creator. When accident had attracted observation to the fatty nature
of the olive, he who applied oil to the feeding of a lamp would be
celebrated as a benefactor. The tamer of the bull, who brought kine to
labour for men, and from their milk produced such variety of delicious
food, merited still higher gratitude; and those who converted rude
dross and shapeless ore into instruments of agriculture, mechanical
tools, weapons offensive and defensive, almost deserved the divine
honours paid to them.
It is neither my business nor my inclination to discuss the origin or
principles of the mythology of any country, farther than as it affected
the arts.
The pictures and statues of the benefactors, or, as they soon began
to be called, of the gods, were intended to be lasting memorials of
their forms and acts. They were to speak a language independent of the
tongue. Hence it became absolutely necessary, that their representative
type should remain for ever fixed. So that to whatever excellence
the _mechanic_ might attain, or whatever improvement the progress of
science might enable the _artist_ to make, all change was forbidden;
and though the labour and finish became exquisite, it would have been
sacrilege to alter the form. Hence, while the statues of other nations
not under these restrictions, assumed the freedom and grace of nature,
Egypt saw her Osiris and Isis retaining their rigid and unnatural
characters, notwithstanding the sublime style in which they were
conceived.
The basso-relievos, intaglios, and painted stuccoes of the temples and
catacombs, present greater varieties of action and design; but even in
them, the human figure is still monotonous in character.
But whole statues and pictures engraved on rocks and walls of granite
and freestone, are inconvenient registers. Hence one well known form
was soon allowed to stand as the sign of a subject or action; part of
that figure might, in time, be substituted for the whole.
The forms of animals whose qualities were supposed to bear relation
to those of man, were admitted to represent abstract ideas; as, for
instance, in India, the elephant’s head adorned the shoulders of the
god of wisdom, and in Egypt, the watchfulness of the cat procured
her the honour of lending a mask sometimes to the greatest of the
goddesses. Insects whose appearance was constant at particular seasons,
became the types of those seasons, or of the heavenly bodies which
regulate them; so by a natural process, a scheme of hieroglyphic
representation, if we must not say writing, was framed, which long
continued in use among the governing priests of Egypt to preserve the
annals of the country.
Their hieroglyphics were themselves too cumbrous for constant use,
and it appears certain from ancient tradition and modern discovery,
that they produced a variety of steps approaching more or less to
alphabetical writing; and in all probability the learned priests who
could not be ignorant of the existence of such writing, preferred their
own mysterious and obscure characters for the sake of that power which
unusual and exclusive knowledge always confers.
The effect that the use of hieroglyphic painting, whether more or
less near to writing, had upon the art of painting itself was most
disastrous. Those who were permitted to paint at all, were bound to
make no improvement. The art was jealously kept for the adornment of
hideous mummy cases[29] and sepulchral chambers, where the nearest
approaches to what is properly painting were a sort of portraits, drawn
upon the inner coffins, which were composed of folds of linen prepared
with a chalk ground, or basso-relievos either coloured themselves,
or imitated in flat colours upon the walls. The wood upon which the
commoner coffin-painting was executed appears to have been sycamore;
it was prepared with fine lime, mixed with some kind of gum or size
for the colourer. The pigments were ochres for the most part; but the
blues and greens appear to have been prepared from copper. The black
was lamp-black, and the white a very fine lime[30]. These colours when
applied on wood, or cotton, or linen, were probably mixed with gums,
probably gum arabic or the Sarcocolla, which the Egyptians used in
preparing their mummies, and also for glue[31], and that gum probably
formed part of the varnish found on the mummy cases. According to Mr.
Wilkinson’s account, the pictures in the catacombs were executed either
on the bare limestone wall, or on the sandstone prepared with fine
lime. Whether the groups were to be painted or chiselled in intaglio
or relief, they were outlined with red ochre, then corrected with
black. The next step was the carving the intaglios or the reliefs, or
modelling the stucco applications, after which, in some of the tombs,
plain unbroken colour was applied. But even this approach to painting
arose from the desire of distinguishing objects, as tribute of gold
from tribute of silver, prisoners of white, tawny, or black nations,
and so on. But nothing like a picture, as we understand the word, has
ever been found; nothing displaying a knowledge of light and shadow,
perspective either lineal or aërial, nothing which by means of colour
and tint imitates nature: nor have we the name of any Egyptian painter
in the annals of art.
Under some of the Ptolemys, artists from Greece visited the court of
the Grecian kings; and doubtless the merchants of Alexandria may have
been permitted to possess Greek pictures; but the Ptolemys became
Egyptians, and adopted the hieroglyphic manner of recording their acts
and lives; and until the Christian hermits plastered over the mystic
figures of the Egyptian priests, that they might without pollution
erect their simple altars within the shelter of the abandoned temples,
no change appears to have taken place with regard to the practice of
the arts in Egypt.
It was reserved for the followers of Mahomet, who abhorred statuary and
painting, to introduce a gay and florid architecture among the severe
palaces and tombs of the children of Misraim, to use their temples
as quarries for building materials, and to burn their statues for
lime[32].
Egypt, therefore, though once excelling in architecture and religious
sculpture, knowing the use of colour, and conferring innumerable
benefits on other countries in most of the arts of design, has never
herself been the country of painting.
_Extract of a Letter from_ MR. CLIFT _to_ MRS. CALLCOTT.
_November 1835._
I have been present, and assisted in the opening of several mummies,
in which, although there was a general resemblance in the manner, yet
there were palpable differences too, arising probably from difference
of person, time, and price; but in none of them was there any painting
whatever on the inner linen wrappings: they appear to differ chiefly in
the greater or less care taken according to the price; some being much
more laboriously and carefully prepared than others.
Raspe may have been right in the particular to which you allude, of the
inner bandages being painted, if he has not mistaken the inner coffin
for bandaging: as Mr. Pettigrew in his late quarto volume on Mummies,
has given a three-quarter face portrait, which I think he describes as
having been found on the surface of the immediate wrappers of the body
_within_ the second coffin of a specimen in the British Museum, which I
have not seen; and he has, or had, the head of a supposed female mummy,
which had the features of a face and head-dress outlined upon the
exterior wrapper of the body, but I have seen no other example.
It is not unusual, in the more expensively prepared mummies, to find
the _inside_ of the _outer_ or wooden case ornamented with figures
in outline; but I do not recollect any such that were coloured: the
greatest labour appears to have been always bestowed on the second or
internal coffin, or case which immediately contains the body.