portraits of the period, in marble, attest it, if we had no other
proof. But Nero himself patronised that branch of the art, and ordered
a canvas[66], one hundred and twenty feet high, to be strained, whereon
his colossal portrait might overlook the city, from the gardens of
Marius. But his design was frustrated; the lightning blasted the
portrait ere it was finished, and we have not even the name of the
painter left, who was to have been immortalized along with the emperor!
Some small portraits of this period have been preserved among the
catacombs, and it would be a matter of great interest to examine
carefully those preserved in the cabinets of Christian antiquities,
which fill one long gallery of the Vatican. I had too short a time
when there to make any observations worth setting down. My first visit
to these precious cabinets was in company with Canova, and my second,
after a lapse of eight years, with Maia! They drew my attention to
other objects; and as I then hoped to revisit Rome, I was willing to
be led by such guides, trusting to the future for an opportunity of
forwarding my own particular pursuits. But some other person must
now take my place. Infirmity, not age, binds me to my own fire side.
Happy that I have been permitted to see so much to occupy my thoughts
and time with pleasant retrospect, under circumstances that without
occupation would be dreary indeed.
In the first century of our era, we may consider painting as a merely
decorative art, little better than upholstery, excepting when applied
to portraits, for which human vanity will always create a demand.
There might also be artists employed to copy the ancient pictures of
Greece; and now and then, among that class of painters, one who would,
in some original composition, imitate the style and manner of the older
masters.
This is so natural that it scarcely wants the confirmation of authority
to gain belief. But I think we have authority in the notices scattered
through the dialogues of Lucian[67], and in the descriptions of
pictures by Philostratus[68], who erects his imaginary gallery on the
shores of the bay of Naples.
But a great change was taking place in the world: the gay and poetical,
but licentious belief of Greece and Italy, was fading away. The images
and actions of gods and heroes no longer delighted the multitude. A
graver, purer, yet more impassioned faith, was gradually advancing
through many impediments: and it was long ere its votaries had leisure
to convert to its service the glorious arts that had adorned the
temples of the old religion.
The interval during which the change was going on, could not be
otherwise than hurtful to those arts; and accordingly, the first
efforts of Christian painting, as far as we see in the few relics we
possess, were gross and coarse.
Yet there is in them a certain dignity of expression, which saves them
from contempt. But the revival of art in Christian times belongs rather
to the Greeks than the Italians, as I shall have occasion to point out;
for as the conquest of Greece by Rome brought art and artists into
Italy, so the removal of the seat of government attracted them eastward
again, to the new court, and they left the deserted Capitol of the
Western Empire to seek the patronage of the rising city.
From what I have said in this Essay, it will be seen that the time when
Italy could boast of native artists, equal to those of the surrounding
nations, was before Rome existed.
That after the Roman conquests, native artists gradually disappeared,
and the very few who have left a name seem only placed here and there
as beacons, to show the nakedness of the land.
That the forced luxury of art, fostered by imported pictures and
statues, foreign artists and imperial patronage, produced in Italy
no painter or sculptor of eminence, even in the most flourishing
times of Roman politeness; while the free cities of Greece had
given birth to those men of sublime genius, whose borrowed works
gave to Rome all the lustre she could ever boast of in art[69].
FOOTNOTES:
[33] I am aware that it is unusual to place Italy before Greece in any
ancient historical question; but I am induced to do this because the
real ancient Italian art, namely that of the Etruscans, was coeval
with the oldest Greek schools, if not anterior to them; and that as
the Roman conquests destroyed the arts of old Italy before the most
brilliant periods of Greek painting, I may well look upon Italian or
Etruscan painting as having an earlier life and death than that of
Greece.
[34] Micali, Vol. II., p. 73.
[35] Micali, Vol. I., p. 32, mentions certain books of the ancient
Italians, preserved at Anagni, so late as the time of Fronto.
[36] For whatever notices of ancient or modern authors, before his
own time, that can throw lustre on Etruscan art, I must refer to
Tiraboschi, _Storia delle Lettere Italiane_, Parte Prima, x. to xviii.,
and to Micali’s work generally.
[37] It is a pity that the want of early Italian writers deprives us of
the means of judging of the truth of some of the marvellous traditional
accounts of Etruscan monuments. The cavern sepulchres of Clusium may
possibly have been connected with the labyrinth which Pliny, B. xxxvi.,
c. 13, on the authority of Varro, says, was under that incomprehensible
tomb of Porsenna, the account of which reads like a fairy tale; and has
uselessly employed some modern dreamers in impossible restorations.
The square body of the building, the four pyramids at the corners, and
that in the centre, will remind the traveller of the modest monument,
miscalled that of the Horatii and Curiatii, on the road between Laricia
and Rome. To me it seems to have some resemblance with that raised by
Simon Maccabeus to his family, about three centuries after Porsenna’s
time, 1 Macc. xiii., v. 27, 28, 29, 30.
[38] See the 22nd chapter of Micali for what can be known of the
religion of ancient Italy, its gradual alteration, and the introduction
of Egyptian, Oriental, and Greek mysteries by the Cabiri, who, in their
mixed character of priest and merchant, appear to have influenced the
whole system of worship.
[39] I say the _re-opening_, because it appears that at some former
time or times, now forgotten, the sepulchres have been searched for the
precious metals which, in the form of ornaments of various kinds, were
buried with their owners. Some of the tombs remaining open served as
refuge for robbers, for sheep-pens, &c. See Tiraboschi as above, also
Micali.
[40] This demon, with his huge tusks and his large tongue, might be
taken for the Hindoo demon that is to destroy all mankind at the end
of the world, according to some. Several plates of this destroyer, who
is sometimes to be identified with Siva, sometimes with Kali, are to
be seen in Moore’s Hindoo Pantheon. The resemblance between the two
monsters is very remarkable.
[41] From this it appears that the whole ear of corn was stored in
these nets, as was the custom in Egypt.
[42] Book xxxv., ch. 3.
[43] Cleophantus is said to have used no other colour than pounded
brick. Demaratus, the father of Tarquinius, had been a fugitive, and
settled as a potter at Tarquinii.
[44] I quote the pleasant old translation by Philemon Holland. The 1st
Book of Tiraboschi, to which I have already referred, may be consulted
if any doubts concerning Pliny’s account should arise.
[45] Pliny mentions that, in his time, Pontius, a lieutenant of
Caligula, wished to have removed the pictures from Ardea, but found
that the plaster or stucco upon which they were painted would not bear
removal. These pictures could not have been painted merely in water
colours, for they were not injured by exposure to the weather. Could
they have been painted with the size of oil, mentioned in book xxxvi.,
chap. 24? or were they not rather true frescoes?
[46] Book xxxiv., ch. 4.
[47] Before Christ, 485.
[48] Book xxxiv, ch. 7.
[49] “C. Fabius, a most noble Roman, who, when he had painted the walls
of the Temple of Salus, before dedicated by Julius Bubulcus, he set
his own name to it: as if a consular, sacerdotal, and triumphal family
stood yet in want of this ornament.” Val. Max. book viii., quoted by
Junius.
[50] Modern Messina.
[51] By Timomachus, a Byzantine contemporary with Cæsar, who was his
patron according to one passage in Pliny’s thirty-fifth book; but
other passages, with, as I think, more likelihood, make him older than
Apelles. On carefully comparing such authorities as we have on the
subject, I cannot help thinking that there were two, if not three,
painters of the name. Two seem to have been Thracians.
[52] Most probably from the Pæcile, where the pictures were not painted
in fresco, but on pannel. The portico of Octavia, with its library and
pictures, was burnt in the time of Titus.
[53] The fashion of the fine wrought cups of chalcedony is said by
Pliny to have been introduced into Rome by Pompey. B. xxxvii., c. 11.
[54] For his other various merits, see Fuseli’s first lecture.
[55] Among the pictures taken from Greece, Tiraboschi names, on the
authority of Vitruvius, b. ii. c. 8, some frescoes from Sparta; which,
by orders of the Ediles Murena and Varro, were sawn from the walls they
adorned, and, being tightly wedged in wooden cases, were transported to
Rome.
[56] Dioscorides, whose works came next in beauty to those of
Pyrgoteles, Acmon, Aulus, and some others in the time of Augustus;
Alpheus and Anthon in that of Caligula; Evodus and Necander under
Titus; Ænorus in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, &c.
[57] See the basso-relievo, of the size of life, in the Villa Albani,
and the statues in the Museum of the Capitol and the Galleries of the
Vatican.
[58] Marcus Aurelius was himself a painter: his master was, according
to Julian, Diognetes; whether the same Diognetes, who was his master in
moral philosophy, does not appear.
[59] The arch of Constantine in Rome furnishes a perfect example: such
parts as he stole from the forum of Trajan are of great merit, and do
credit to the artists of the last good school of antique sculpture.
Those portions of the decorative bas-reliefs, executed by Constantine’s
workmen, are mean and deformed--totally worthless in design and
contemptible as sculpture.
[60] Now Palestrina. See Cecconi, Historia di Palestrina.
[61] All Roman families of rank preserved the effigies of their
forefathers, some in wax, others in clay, wood, marble, or bronze.
These were carried in procession at funerals.
The images of Brutus and Cassius were not permitted to appear among
those of seventy of the principal houses of Rome, at the funeral
of Junia the widow of Cassius; but Tacitus says, that “before all
the rest THEY flashed upon men’s thoughts, the more for not being
there.”--Annals, Book iii.
The Athenians set up the statues of Brutus and Cassius along with those
of Harmodius and Aristogiton.--Dion. Cassius, Book xlvii., c. 20,
quoted by Colonel Leake.
[62] Of these, there are beautiful examples in the _Libreria_ at
Sienna, and some in the collection at Munich. The latter had not been
arranged when I saw them in 1827.
[63] In and about the market-place at Pompeii, there are buildings
partly repaired, and also preparations for repairing others. So that
the consequences of the first catastrophe had by no means been fully
removed before the second occurred.
[64] These pictures are now in the possession of Sir Matthew White
Ridley. They were discovered in 1823, in a vineyard belonging to Signor
Santa Amandola, to the right of the Via Appia, near San Sebastiano. The
boy with the flute formed the centre of the vault of a Columbarium,
and was taken down to preserve it. There were, in the same tomb, some
relievos, in stucco, and some painted arabesques, of considerable
merit. The Ganymede was found in the same vineyard, as was likewise a
fine sarcophagus, which has been published in an archæological journal.
[65] See Pliny, Book xxxv., c. 11; and further, see Essay 6.
[66] See Essay 5, also see Pliny, Book xxxv. It is curious to observe
how M. Durand has twisted this passage to suit his own views. It
is only necessary to compare Durand’s paraphrase with the honest
translation of old Philemon Holland, to be convinced of the Frenchman’s
want of fidelity. Tiraboschi has, without his usual care, adopted
Durand’s view of this matter. I think wrongly, for my reasons see Essay
6.
[67] See Franklin’s Lucian. In the dialogue, _Zeuxis_, Lucian says,
that the original picture of the Centaurs was lost at sea; but that he
saw a copy in a picture dealer’s shop, at Athens. It is worth while to
refer to Lucian’s dream, for an account of the customs of the sculptors
of his day,--the pupils crying casts about the streets, while the
masters were labouring themselves.
[68] See the French translation, by Blaise de Vigenere, with its
singular plates and notes, ten times more bulky than the original work.
There is an epigram to each of the plates by D’Embry.
[69] Tiraboschi has laboured hard to convince himself and others that
Zeuxis was a native of the Italian Heraclea. But I think he fails. Even
if he succeeded in establishing his birth-place in Italy, his life was
passed in Greece: there he studied and there he painted. His being
employed by the Sicilians at Agrigentum, and by some towns in Magna
Græcia, only prove their taste for Greek art, not that Zeuxis was an
Italian.
* * * * *
(Additional Note to Essay II.)--It may appear strange that I have not
mentioned Sicily, which abounded in works of art, more particularly
in this Essay. But the truth is, there was no native school of
either sculpture or painting; and whoever will take the trouble to
read Cicero’s fourth oration against Verres, will see in that very
interesting catalogue, that with trifling exceptions, all the statues
and pictures which that guilty Prætor plundered the Sicilians of, were
either imported from Greece, or the works of Greek artists. It is a
pity that Cicero has not named the painters of those pictures which
hung in the temple of Minerva at Syracuse[70], and which he praises so
highly, especially the battle piece, representing Agathocles charging
at the head of his cavalry. It would also be interesting to know the
authors of those twenty-seven portraits of the tyrants and other great
men of Syracuse, which the orator says were so valuable, not only as
likenesses of the persons, but as works of art. Cicero, however, was no
connoisseur, and when he wished to adorn his library, at Tusculum, with
some work of art fit for the place, he employed a friend to choose it.
And well did that friend choose, if the beautiful fragment now in the
monastery, at Grotta Ferrata, and which was found on the site of the
Tusculan Villa, be the very ornament sent from Athens, in compliance
with his request.
[70] Now converted into the cathedral church. It must have been a
beautiful specimen of Greek Doric, but it is hidden and defaced by the
building and walls necessary for its conversion. I saw it in 1818.
ESSAY III.
PAINTING IN GREECE, FIRST AND SECOND PERIODS.
It is no small glory to be made partaker of a great and worthy matter,
however it be but a little you do possess.
COLUMELLA.
To write of the beginning of painting in Greece, one of two theories
must be repeated. Either that all nations, at a certain stage of
civilisation, have discovered a fondness and aptness for the fine arts
without communicating with others; or that painting was brought with
the other arts ready formed from Egypt to Sicyon and Corinth.
For my part I am apt to consider both these views as partly true.
It is not to be supposed that the civilised people, whatever was its
origin, which possessed Greece before the time of the earliest Egyptian
colonies, and which in the massy walls and curious treasure-houses,
which it has left as monuments, proving a considerable advance in the
knowledge of mechanics, had made none in those finer arts that adorn
and sweeten life. Neither are we obliged to believe that the Egyptian
Colonies, whether led by an unfortunate prince, or composed of men
flying from the tyranny of a harsh government, would forget to practise
the arts which flourished in their native soil. They might improve
the nation on whose shores they landed, and in return be improved by
intercourse with it[71].
It is certain, however, that whatever were the first steps of the arts
of Greece, they soon out-stripped those of every other nation, making
their practice the law by which all others were to be tried for ever.
Alas, for the pictures of Greece! they have perished, and are now mere
matter of history, and like the hands that produced them
Poca polvere son, che nulla sente.
But the temples they adorned, the statues that were coeval with them,
the bassi-relievi conceived in the spirit that inspired them, are not
utterly gone; and while we have them before us, the history of the
pictures of Greece may still borrow a momentary reality as we read
over the descriptions of the heroes of Polygnotus, and the Helens and
Venuses of Zeuxis and Apelles.
Of the plastic arts it is scarcely possible to doubt that modelling in
clay must be the earliest that arrived at any degree of perfection. The
very shaping and moulding of vessels for domestic use, must have given
a facility of hand to the potter, highly advantageous when he began to
model his first ornamental foliage, and afterwards in his imitations of
men and animals. It is a pity not to believe that the first portrait
in profile, and the first bust, owed their common origin to love;
and after all it may be true. The potter’s art may have formed the
clumsy likeness of a human head, and many a rude outline may have been
scratched on rocks, or cut in turf, or drawn in the sands before. But
Dibutatis tenderly tracing the shadow of her sleeping lover, may still
have formed the first individual likeness; and her father’s filling up
of that line, the first head in clay that deserved the name of model.
At all events, I would have the poets and the young believe it.
The tale points to Corinth as an early nursery of art; and we have
seen how closely the beautiful vases of that city and those of Etruria
resemble each other. Of late years, vessels almost equally beautiful,
and not dissimilar in form, have been found delineated in the catacombs
of Egypt; but it is remarkable, that although they are ornamented with
many tracings and scrolls like those of Corinth, there is no instance
of their bearing the human form.
The designs on the Corinthian and Etruscan vases, may be considered as
pictures in monochrome, according to Fuseli[72], whose ingenious but
somewhat fanciful account of the process by which the monochromes were
executed, is probably near the truth.
The works of the earliest Greek painters, therefore, which we know
were called monochromes, resembled the Corinthian and Etruscan figured
vases; and, perhaps, it is equally credible that the two, three, and
four-tinted vases represent, with tolerable accuracy, the steps towards
the many coloured pictures which excited the admiration of the Greeks
in the earliest paintings mentioned in authentic history.
But, before we take up the history of painting exclusively, it will
not be uninteresting to name a few of those early productions of the
workers in metal, mentioned by the poets or older historians, and, in
some instances, preserved in the treasures of the Grecian temples,
particularly those of Delphi, to a late period[73]. We must remember
that the Greeks of Europe, Asia, and the Islands, practised the arts
with equal taste and success; that, by trade or by alliance with the
Phœnicians, they maintained an intercourse with Egypt, and also a
direct commerce with the Etruscans; and that their border nations on
the Asiatic side were cultivated and luxurious, drawing their origin
either from the same ancient civilised stock with themselves, or from
Egypt, or its immediate neighbourhood.
The shield of Achilles, that noble piece of chased and inlaid work as
described by Homer, about nine centuries before our era, is an example.
Its rich design could not have been imagined, unless the arts necessary
to produce it had arrived at a high degree of perfection in his country
at the time he wrote[74], though we may doubt if, at the period of the
war of Troy, three hundred years before Homer, there existed artificers
capable of executing it.
Within a century after the taking of Troy, there was a great movement
among the Greek tribes; many new colonies settled in Asia Minor, and
the Heraclidæ finally regained their ancient seats in Peloponnesus. It
is worthy of remark, that at that period Jerusalem was adorned with
her first magnificent temple by Solomon, and that David built his
house of cedar. The chief workman sent by Hiram the king of Tyre, to
assist Solomon in the building of the Temple, but more especially to
superintend the execution of the ornaments, was the son of a Tyrian
artist by a Jewess of the tribe of Naphthali. According to one passage
of scripture he was like his master called Hiram[75].
A little before the building of the temple we must place the
construction of the tomb of Absalom, part hewn in the rock, and part
built; which resembles in those particulars, and, in my mind, surpasses
in taste, many of those described and figured by late travellers in
Asia minor; while I should say, the cavern tombs of the kings of
Judah have a resemblance to those of Egypt, or rather, perhaps, to
the curious excavations discovered by late travellers, at Petra in
Edom[76]. These are surely proofs that the arts were flourishing as
freely in Syria, as in Asia Minor at that time.
But, to return to Greece. About seven centuries before the Christian
era, the temple of Delphi was enriched by a number of most precious
gifts by some of the kings of Asia. Gyges, whose story has served for
the foundation of so many charming tales of enchantment and fairyism,
sent to the god at Delphi the first foreign offering, or, as the
Greeks term it, the first gift from a barbarian[77]. It consisted of
vessels of gold, silver, and brass; among which, six golden goblets,
particularly valued, were afterwards placed, in a chest or cupboard
called the treasury of Corinth, which was presented by Cypselus[78]
to the shrine, some years afterwards. Midas had by a short time
anticipated the gifts of Gyges, consecrating to the Delphian Apollo
the throne whence he dispensed justice, said to be of exquisite
workmanship[79].
Halyatus, the great-grandson of Gyges, sent a vase to Delphi, precious
for its material, but still more precious on account of the workmanship
of the under cup which supported it. The vase was of chased silver, the
under cup of iron curiously inlaid with silver, the work of Glaucus of
Phocis, said to be the inventor of that kind of work in metal. This
was the only one of the gifts of the Lydian kings that remained when
Pausanias visited the temple.
Indeed, the magnificent presents sent by Crœsus, the son of Halyatus,
would have been sufficient to tempt the cupidity of a conqueror, and
perhaps to overcome the honesty of the priests of Delphi themselves. Of
pure gold there were a hundred and seventeen bricks or tiles, forming
the floor for a lion of great size, of the same metal, and the statue
of a woman said to have baked the bread for the king’s household.
These were taken by the Phocians to defray the expenses of the sacred
war. There were also many beautiful chiselled vases of gold and
silver, basins, ewers, fountains, and cisterns. One goblet of silver
was particularly precious; it was said to be the work of Theodorus of
Samos[80], one of the earliest founders in bronze.
Crœsus also enriched other temples with precious gifts. The great
temple at Ephesus possessed three golden heifers and some fine columns
given by him. The shrines of Thebes in Bœotia, were enriched by him;
and to the temples in Miletus, he had sent gifts of equal value with
those he consecrated at Delphi.