modern German artists. Yet I think they have carried their admiration
of the ancients to excess in some points, and I cannot but consider
the outlines of Riepenhausen, intended to illustrate the descent of
Ulysses, by Polygnotus, a proof of it. Surely a German should have
looked at Hemelink, and at the history of St. Paul, at Augsburg, by the
elder Holbein, where he would have found that a double story, or even
one of many parts, can be treated without violating common sense, or
the rules of painting.
[106] Olymp. 93.
[107] Holland’s Translation, b. xxxv.
[108] Pliny, b. xxxv. ch. 10.
[109] See Fuseli’s first lecture.
[110] B. iv. Ode 8.
[111] Institutes, b. xii. ch. 10.
[112] Ælian.
[113] This picture was at Lindos in Pliny’s time.
[114] It is a pity that this anecdote has come down to us bald as it
is, because it seems to infer that the lowest kind of excellence was
what these great men aimed at, that is, mere deceptive imitation. But
we should remark that we have not the writings of a single painter or
artist of any kind preserved, and that the relators of the story were
notoriously ignorant of art. It is impossible that the painter of the
Helen of Agrigentum, and he who conceived the Demos of Athens, could
have had such narrow views of art.
[115] Institutes, b. xii. ch. 10.
[116] I cannot help subjoining, as a note, Lucian’s description of one
of the pictures of Zeuxis:--“I will tell you a story of Zeuxis. That
famous painter seldom chose to handle trite or common subjects, such
as heroes, gods, and battles, but always endeavoured to strike out
something new, and exerted all his art and skill upon it. Amongst other
things, he painted a female centaur, with two young ones; there is an
exact copy of it now at Athens; the original was said to have been sent
into Italy, by Sylla, the Roman general, and lost at sea, with the
whole cargo, somewhere, I believe, near Malta. The copy, however, 1
have seen, and will describe to you; not that I pretend to be a judge
of pictures, but because, when I saw it in a painter’s collection
there, it made a strong impression on me, and I perfectly recollect
every part of it.
“The centaur is lying down on a smooth turf; that part which represents
a mare, is stretched on the ground, with the hind feet extended
backwards; the fore feet not reaching out as if she had laid on her
side, but one of them as kneeling with the hoof bent under, the other
raised up and trampling on the grass, like a horse prepared to leap;
she holds one of her young ones in her arms, and suckles it like a
child at a woman’s breast; and the other at her dugs like a colt. In
the farther part of the picture is seen a male centaur, as watching
from a place of observation, supposed to be the father; he is behind,
and discovers only the horse part of the figure, and appears smiling,
showing a lion’s cub, which he lifts up, as if to frighten the young
ones in sport.
“With regard to correctness in drawing, the colouring, light, and
shade, symmetry, proportion, and other beauties, of this picture, as
I am not a sufficient judge of the art, I leave it to painters whose
business it is to explain and illustrate them. What I principally
admire in Zeuxis is, his showing so much variety, and all the riches
of his art, in the management of one subject, representing a man so
fierce and terrible, the hair so nobly dishevelled, rough, and flowing
over the shoulders, where it joins the horse, and the countenance,
though smiling, amazingly wild and savage. The female centaur is a most
beautiful mare, of Thessalian breed, such as had been never ridden or
tamed; all the upper part resembling a very handsome woman, except
the ears, which are like a satyr’s: that part of the figure where
the body of the woman joins to that of the horse, incorporating, as
it were, insensibly and by slow degrees, so that you can scarce mark
the transition, deceiving the sight most agreeably. The ferocity that
appears in the young ones is moreover admirably expressed; as well as
the childish innocence in their countenances when they look towards the
young lion, clinging at the same time to the breast, and getting as
close as possible to their mother.
“When Zeuxis produced this work, he expected undoubtedly to meet with
universal approbation from the spectators; every body indeed praised
and admired it; and how could they do otherwise? Above all, they
commended, as my friends did with regard to me, the novelty of the
invention; said it was a most uncommon subject, and unattempted by any
of his predecessors. But, when Zeuxis understood that their admiration
was confined entirely to the novelty of it, and that they passed over
all the art which he had exerted in it, ‘Cover up the picture,’ said he
to his pupil, ‘and let it be carried home, for these people are only in
love with the dregs, as it were, of the art, and take no notice of the
real merit of the picture; the novelty of the performance alone runs
away with all the praise and admiration.”
_Franklin’s Lucian._
It is ever the same with the vulgar. As soon as any art seems to have
arrived at something approaching to perfection, the incessant craving
for novelty forces artists to seek new ways of gratifying their
patrons;--sometimes by exaggerating form, sometimes by exaggerating
colour, or light and shadow. The painter by degrees loses sight of
nature, and produces monsters. The sculptor attempts to make marble
flow and flutter in the wind; the musician drowns expression in noise;
and the poet either sickens his reader with blood and murder, or sends
him to sleep over daisies and daffodils.
[117] Neither the French nor the English critics appear to me to
have comprehended the real motive of Timanthes, as contained in the
words “_decere_, _pro dignitate_, and _digne_,” in the passages of
Tully, Quintilian, and Pliny; they ascribe to impotence what was the
forbearance of judgment; Timanthes felt like a father; he did not
hide the face of Agamemnon because it was beyond the power of his
art, not because it was beyond the _possibility_, but because it was
beyond the _dignity_ of expression; because the inspiring feature of
paternal affection at that moment, and the action which of necessity
must have accompanied it, would either have destroyed the grandeur of
the character and the solemnity of the scene, or subjected the painter,
with the majority of his judges, to the imputation of insensibility. He
must either have represented him in tears, or convulsed at the flash
of the raised dagger, forgetting the chief in the father, or shown him
absorbed by despair, and in that state of stupefaction which levels all
features and deadens expression. He might indeed have chosen a fourth
mode; he might have exhibited him fainting and palsied in the arms of
his attendants, and by this confusion of male and female character,
merited the applause of every theatre at Paris. But Timanthes had too
true a sense of nature to expose a father’s feelings, or to tear a
passion to rags; nor had the Greeks yet learnt of Rome to steel the
face. If he made Agamemnon bear his calamity as a man, he made him
also feel it as a man. It became the leader of Greece to sanction the
ceremony with his presence, it did not become the father to see his
daughter beneath the dagger’s point: the same nature that threw a real
mantle over the face of Timoleon, when he assisted at the punishment of
his brother, taught Timanthes to throw an imaginary one over the face
of Agamemnon; neither height nor depth, propriety of expression was his
aim.
The critic grants that the expedient of Timanthes may be allowed in
“instances of blood,” the supported aspect of which would change a
scene of commiseration and terror into one of abomination and horror,
which ought for ever to be excluded from the province of art, of poetry
as well as painting: and would not the face of Agamemnon, uncovered,
have had this effect? was not the scene he must have witnessed a scene
of blood? and whose blood was to be shed? that of his own daughter--and
what daughter? young, beautiful, helpless, innocent, resigned--the
very idea of resignation in such a victim, must either have acted
irresistibly to procure her relief, or thrown a veil over a father’s
face. A man who is determined to sport wit, at the expense of heart,
alone could call such an expedient ridiculous; “as ridiculous,” Mr.
Falconet continues, “as a poet would be, who in a pathetic situation,
instead of satisfying my expectation, to rid himself of the business,
should say, that the sentiments of his hero are so far above whatever
can be said on the occasion, that he shall say nothing.”
And has not Homer, though he does not tell us this, acted upon a
similar principle? has he not, when Ulysses addresses Ajax in Hades,
in the most pathetic and conciliatory manner, instead of furnishing
him with an answer, made him remain in indignant silence during the
address, then turn his step and stalk away? has not the universal voice
of genuine criticism with Longinus told us, and if it had not, would
not Nature’s own voice tell us, that that silence was characteristic;
that it precluded, included, and, soaring above all answer, consigned
Ulysses for ever to a sense of inferiority? nor is it necessary to
render such criticism contemptible to mention the silence of Dido
in Virgil, or the Niobe of Æschylus, who was introduced veiled, and
continued mute during her presence on the stage.
But in hiding Agamemnon’s face, Timanthes loses the honour of
invention, as he is merely the imitator of Euripides, who did it before
him. I am not prepared with chronologic proofs to decide whether
Euripides or Timanthes, who were cotemporaries about the period of the
Peloponnesian war, fell first on this expedient, though the silence
of Pliny and Quintilian on that head seems to be in favour of the
painter, neither of whom could be ignorant of the celebrated drama of
Euripides, and would not willingly have suffered this master-stroke of
an art they were so much better acquainted with than painting, to be
transferred to another from its real author, had the poet’s claim been
prior: nor shall I urge that the picture of Timanthes was crowned with
victory by those who were in daily habits of assisting at the dramas
of Euripides, without having their verdict impeached by Colotes or his
friends, who would not have failed to avail themselves of so flagrant
a proof of inferiority as the want of invention in the work of his
rival:--I shall only ask what is invention? if it be the combination
of the most important moment of a fact with the most varied effects of
the reigning passion on the characters introduced, the invention of
Timanthes consisted in showing, by the gradation of that passion in the
faces of the assistant mourners, _the reason why that of the principal_
one _was hid_. This he performed, and this the poet, whether prior or
subsequent, did not and could not do, but left it with a silent appeal
to our own mind and fancy.
In presuming to differ on the propriety of this mode of expression
in the picture of Timanthes from the respectable authority I have
quoted, I am far from a wish to invalidate the equally pertinent
and acute remarks made on the danger of its imitation; though I am
decidedly of opinion that it is strictly within the limits of our art.
If it be a “trick,” it is certainly one that has served more than
once. We find it adopted to express the grief of a beautiful female
figure on a basso-relievo formerly in the palace Valle at Rome, and
preserved in the Admiranda of St. Bartoli; it is used, though with
his own originality, by Michael Angelo in the figures of Abijam,
to mark unutterable woe; Raffaelle, to show that he thought it the
best possible mode of expressing remorse and the deepest sense of
repentance, borrowed it in the expulsion from Paradise, without any
alteration, from Masaccio; and, like him, turned Adam out with both his
hands before his face. And how has he represented Moses at the burning
bush, to express the astonished awe of human in the visible presence of
Divine nature? by a double repetition of the same expedient; once in
the ceiling of a stanza, and again in the loggia of the Vatican, with
both his hands before his face, or rather with his face immersed in his
hands. As we cannot suspect in the master of expression the unworthy
motive of making use of this mode merely to avoid a difficulty, or to
denote the insupportable splendour of the vision, which was so far from
being the case, that, according to the sacred record, Moses stepped
out of his way to examine the ineffectual blaze; we must conclude
that Nature herself dictated to him this method as superior to all he
could express by features; and that he recognised the same dictate in
Masaccio, who can no more be supposed to have been acquainted with the
precedent of Timanthes, than Shakspeare with that of Euripides, when he
made Macduff draw his hat over his face.
ESSAY IV.
OF THE THIRD PERIOD OF PAINTING IN GREECE.
The Poets bring the Gods upon the stage, and all that is pompous,
grave, and delightful. The Painters likewise do design as many things
upon a board as the Poets possibly can utter.
PHILOSTRATUS, _Preface to the Picture Gallery_.
In the fantasies of Painters nothing is so commendable as that there
be both possibility and truth.
LONGINUS.
Among the nations bordering upon European Greece, Macedonia was most
like it in manners, language, and physical circumstances; yet the
Macedonians were generally looked upon as barbarians by those proud
Republicans, who claimed the exclusive name of Greeks.
Alexander, the eldest son of Amyntas, King of Macedon, desirous of
distinction in Greece, proposed himself as a competitor in some of
the Olympic games; but the Greeks rejected him at first with scorn as
a Barbarian[118]. However, he brought proofs of his descent from an
Argive family, and was thereupon admitted by the Hellanodicæ[119] to
an equal participation with other Greeks in those sacred games. He
obtained a victory in one of the races, and dedicated a golden statue
in the temple of Olympia.
The title of the Macedonians to appear as Greeks at the Olympic games,
was asserted by the successors of Alexander in person or by proxy, and
Philip received the news that his horses had won the prize in the race
at Olympus, on the very day when the tidings reached him of the birth
of Alexander the Great.
In truth, the kings of Macedon had been for many generations eager
to civilise their people, by introducing among them some of the
refinements of Greece, when they could snatch an interval of peace
from the wars they were continually forced to wage against their rude
neighbours to the north. They had employed the sculptors and painters
of Athens and Sicyon; and the forced residence of Philip with the
Thebans during the civil wars in Macedon, had rendered _him_ at least
intimate with the literature and philosophy of Greece.
In choosing Aristotle for one of the tutors of his son, Philip probably
had a view to improving his taste, as well as cultivating those higher
qualities, which, though they may exist without it, derive from it a
grace and a spirit which double their value.
The same feeling which led “the stern Emathian conqueror” to
spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tow’r
Went to the ground,
made him the friend of Apelles and the patron of Lysippus and
Pyrgoteles[120].
I am not certain whether it was to Alexander or to his father, though
probably to the latter, that Pamphilus the Macedonian, a disciple of
Eupompus, owed the protection which enabled him to re-establish the
school of Sicyon, with such enlargement as suited the time. In the
public course of instruction he procured painting to be ranked in the
first degree of liberal sciences[121]; and, consequently, all youths
of honourable birth were understood to learn at least the elements of
drawing as part of their education[122].
Pamphilus had cultivated the severe sciences as well as the agreeable
ones, including music and poetry. I have already mentioned that he
required from his pupils a knowledge of arithmetic and geometry. His
course of study, besides, appears to have been exact, if not severe.
“No day without a line,” was a precept learnt by Apelles in his school,
where he studied for ten years, paying a silver talent for each
year[123], according to some, while others imagine the talent was paid
for the whole ten years[124]. At any rate, Pamphilus set a high value
upon his art, and maintained that none but the free could practise it.
His own pictures were much prized: Pliny names one of the battle of
Phlius; another, of Ulysses in a small vessel at sea; and a third
picture, containing, as I imagine, several family portraits. Quintilian
praises the beautiful designs of Pamphilus; and as many of his original
works were in Rome when Quintilian wrote, he had an opportunity of
judging of them for himself. But it is Apelles whose name spreads
lustre over the most refined and polished æra of painting in Greece.
Admired, beloved, and consulted in his own time, and praised by every
writer among the ancients, we have to lament not only that no picture
of his has come down to us, but that those letters to his pupils, and
those more connected works in which he is said to have laid down all
the rules and principles--nay, the very secrets of art, have perished.
Apelles was born in Cos, though Lucian, in one of his dialogues, talks
of him as a native of Ephesus[125]. He seems to have been endowed with
the sweetest temper and disposition, as well as the finest genius.
He was generously eager to set forth the merits of others, and the
urbanity of his manners was such, that while he used perfect freedom,
he could not give offence.
As an instance of this, Pliny relates that Alexander, who frequently
visited his workshop, allowed himself great licence and liberty of
jesting. Apelles gently reproved him, entreating him to forbear, lest
his pupils and the boys who ground his colours should repeat his words
and make a jest of the king.
The freedom of the painter was so far from displeasing, that Alexander
appears to have cultivated an intimacy with him, little usual between a
king and conqueror, and an artist.
Besides employing him to paint his own portrait, and forbidding any
other painter to attempt it, he took so great an interest in the Venus
Anadyomene, which Apelles was at work upon when he arrived at Athens,
that he sent him the most beautiful of his Theban captives, named
Campaspe, with whom he is reported to have been deeply in love, to
serve as a model. Apelles, moved by her misfortunes and her loveliness,
conceived a passion for her which could not be concealed, and Alexander
perceiving that his captive returned the painter’s affection, instantly
resigned her to him[126].
But the favour of Apelles with Alexander seems to have procured him
the ill-will of some of the courtiers, particularly of Ptolemy, as
was shown some years afterwards, when Apelles, being on a voyage to
Rhodes, was shipwrecked at the mouth of the Nile; and on getting ashore
repaired to Alexandria, where Ptolemy, who had become King of Egypt on
Alexander’s death, then held his court. It appears that several Greek
painters had already established themselves there, and that jealous
of the motives of Apelles’ visit, they, in conjunction with a painter
of Alexandria, named Antiphilus, planned his ruin by the following
artifice.
They bribed the court jester to invite Apelles formally to sup with
the king. On his presenting himself, Ptolemy, remembering his ancient
enmity, was extremely enraged, and threatened him with death, unless he
instantly informed him of the name and quality of his inviter. Apelles
being entirely ignorant of both, and unacquainted with any person at
court, took a piece of charcoal and drew the face of the jester, which
was recognised instantly; the life of the painter was spared; but his
treatment was such that he hastened to escape from Egypt, and soon
after painted, in memorial of his danger, the allegory of Calumny,
which has been highly praised by the ancients, and has furnished
several modern painters with a theme[127].
Apelles’ first voyage to Rhodes was expressly to visit Protogenes, at
that time extremely poor, and living in obscurity. Some of his works
having been brought to Athens for sale, and publicly exhibited, Apelles
instantly resolved to make acquaintance with the painter, and embarked
accordingly. On landing, he ran eagerly to the house of Protogenes,
and, finding that he was abroad, took up his pencil, and drew a fine
pure line, such as he thought only himself could draw. He left it and
returned, when he hoped Protogenes might be found; but he had been
obliged to leave home again, not, however, without acknowledging the
line of Apelles, for he drew another still finer within it. Apelles
now added a third finer than either, which Protogenes seeing, now made
it his business to discover the stranger, with whom he contracted a
lasting friendship[128].
The proverb that a prophet is not honoured in his own country, was not,
it seems, falsified in the case of Protogenes, whose fellow-townsmen,
the Rhodians, esteemed his pictures but lightly, and paid him a very
inadequate price for them. Apelles, however, on inquiring the cost of
some works he was engaged upon, declared he thought the sum much too
small, and immediately engaged to give fifty talents for them[129]. The
Rhodians, astonished at the price, imagined that Apelles had purchased
them for the purpose of selling again as his own. They therefore began
to open their eyes to his merit, and the reputation of Protogenes rose
nearly to an equality with that of Apelles himself.
In a former Essay I have mentioned the compliment paid to Protogenes
by Demetrius, who refused to attack the quarter of the city of Rhodes,
where his famous picture of Ialysus then hung. It is of that painting
that we are told that accident produced one of its greatest beauties.
Protogenes, being anxious to represent the foam from the mouth of one
of the overtired dogs, found it so difficult, that, losing patience,
he threw his sponge at it. The softness of the sponge just obliterated
so much of the form as the foam might naturally have hidden, and the
painter, improving the accident, rendered the picture perfect[130].
But Apelles, however he might admire and assist Protogenes, used to
find one fault with him, he said he never knew when to have done, and
that he sometimes injured his works by over-anxiety. In this matter he
preferred himself to his friend, as of better judgment.
Yet Apelles was careful beyond what we know of modern painters, as
we learn from the well known story of his publicly exhibiting his
pictures, and hiding himself behind them, that he might profit by the
unrestrained criticism of the multitude. On one occasion, a shoemaker
passing, remarked that something was wanting to the sandal of the
principal figure. In the evening, Apelles altered the faulty sandal,
and when the shoemaker passed the next morning, he was so charmed with
the attention paid to his observations, that he extended them farther,
and began to find fault with the limbs; upon which, Apelles broke out
of his hiding place, exclaiming, “Let not the shoemaker go beyond his
last,” which words have passed into a proverb.
The most noted work of Apelles was his Venus Anadyomene, which was
afterwards carried to Rome, and so greatly injured in the carriage,
that it could not be restored.
He had undertaken to make a duplicate of this celebrated figure, but
died before it was finished, and the imperfect work is said to have
been valued as highly as his more perfect paintings, because it was the
last thing upon which that skilful hand had rested.
In the Greek Anthology there are the following lines of Leonidas, which
inform us how the painter had treated the subject:
When from the bosom of her parent flood
She rose refulgent with the encircling brine,
Apelles saw Cytherea’s form divine,
And fixed her breathing image, where it stood.
Those graceful hands entwined, that wring the spray
From her ambrosial hair, proclaim the truth;
Those speaking eyes where amorous lightnings play,
Those swelling heavens, the harbingers of youth:
The rival flowers behold with fond amaze,
And yield submission in the conscious gaze.