marvellous rather than the beautiful, than the modern. When the pannel
on which the rival lines were drawn, was afterwards carried to Rome, it
attracted more visitors than the finest works of art which hung along
with it in the palace of the Cæsars, where they and it were burned in
one of those calamitous fires which destroyed the choicest libraries
of Rome, as well as the most precious works of art, collected from the
conquered countries.
[129] If these were Attic talents, the sum was 9687_l._ 10_s._,
certainly a prodigious sum for one painter to expend upon the works of
another.
[130] The story is repeated and applied to several other painters in
their horses and dogs; but I believe Protogenes has the prior claim,
and it seems his friend Nealces was his first imitator. He dashed his
sponge at a horse’s month, and produced foam in imitation of that of
Protogenes’ dog.
[131] See Essay II. This practice of defacing ancient pictures
continues even to our own times. During the civil wars in England it
was very notorious. Canova kept two faces for the sitting statue of
Maria Louisa, one for her family, and one for the world of taste. The
modern changes are generally confined to prints of the heroes of the
day, whose faces, like their names, drive one another out of the market.
[132] This story is a charge upon the Grapes of Zeuxis, and furnished
the French with the hint for that of the ass attempting to eat some
thistles, in a picture of Le Sueur, or Le Brun, I forget which.
[133]
The mariner, when storms around him rise,
No longer on a _painted stern_ relies.
FRANCIS’ HORACE, B. I. ODE 14.
[134] These Magistrates chiefly superintended the police of Athens.
[135] _Parerga._ This bordering remained in use among the Greek
painters till the revival of art. There is, in the collection of
the _Belle Arti_, at Florence, a Greek picture of Mary Magdalene,
the _parerga_ of which is made up of small groups, representing her
history, from the raising of Lazarus to her death. Among the early
Fleming or Burgundian painters, the Van Eyks followed this practice
with good effect, and the earlier miniature painters, in the borders of
the pages of their missals, did the same.
[136] Some modern writers have thought that a picture of shipping was
beneath the dignity of the Portico of Minerva; and have laboured hard
to prove that Paralus was a hero; Hemionis a heroine. But Paralus
invented long ships, and the Athenians named their favourite galley,
which was a trireme, after him. Hemionis is another name for Nausicaa,
a sea nymph, or the daughter of a sea king. The vessel named after her
was a long ship, a trireme also; and as the vessels of war of Athens
were sacred to Minerva, what could be a more appropriate ornament for
her portico, than a picture of ships?
The triremes Paralus and Salamina are mentioned by Thucydides, in
his 3rd book, as performing an eminent service to Athens, in the
Lacedæmonian war. It seems that Paralus, or Paralia, was the name of
the vessel that brought the news of the defeat of Ægospotamos to Athens.
So much for the opinion that Paralus _may_ be a hero, but _cannot_ be a
ship.
[137] See Essay II.
[138] See Greek Anthology.
[139] This picture was called Stephanopolis, the flower seller, and was
bought at Athens by Lucullus, for two talents of silver, £387. 10_s._
Whoever has seen the beautiful picture called Titian’s Flora, in the
Florence Gallery, must be reminded of it while reading of the garland
maker of Pausias.
[140] Some think they were the same; but there seems to have been
an older Nicias than either. Perhaps a Thracian, or a Macedonian.
Omphalion, who was employed by the Messenians to paint a long series of
supposed portraits of their ancient kings in the temple of Æsculapius,
at Messene, was the pupil of a Nicias, I suppose of Nicias of Athens.
_Pausanias Messenics_, ch. 21.
[141] In Lucian’s Dialogue of the Encomium of a House, there is a
description of this picture, in which he says, “the little ones,
unconscious of their fate, sit with smiling countenances, and whilst
they see her holding the sword over them, seem pleased and happy.”
_Franklin’s Lucian._
But surely if they saw their mother brandishing a sword or dagger over
them, her aspect must have frightened them.
ESSAY V.
OF THE CLASSIFICATION OF PICTURES.
The more general any word is in its signification, it is the more
liable to be abused by an improper or unmeaning application. A
very general term is applicable alike to a multitude of different
individuals, a particular term is applicable but to a few. The
latitude of a word, though different from its ambiguity, hath often a
similar effect.
CAMPBELL. _Philosophy of Rhetoric._
It will be useful to pause a little, between the historic sketch I have
already made of antique painting, and that which is to follow, of the
entire decay, and first faint revival of the Art; and to consider what
branches of painting had been chiefly cultivated by the ancients, and
whether the ordinary classification of pictures can be satisfactorily
applied to their works, or even correctly to the productions of
modern painters. It will not be uninteresting either, to consider the
materials and colours used by the ancient artists, as compared with
those known to the moderns.
I have already shown the probable origin of painting, its earliest
application to the service of religion, and its use as a method
of recording events among some nations, before the invention of
alphabetical writing. While it was confined chiefly to the latter
purpose, it remained fixed, and incapable of improvement; but as soon
as alphabetical writing was either invented or adopted in any country,
the imitative arts became free, and improved in feeling, spirit, and
expression, as well as in execution.
While the Grecian states and cities were struggling for national
independence and civil freedom, the arts maintained a severe and almost
awful character, devoted exclusively to religion and patriotism. But
those great objects once attained, society became more polished; a
larger space was allotted to the exercise of the imagination. Various
sects of Philosophers sprang up: a new race of Poets arose; and the
arts losing part of their grandeur with their austerity, began to
partake of the blandishments of those luxurious times, that succeeded
to the great political struggles of the country.
Painting was capable of assisting the task of the moral teachers, by
her power of expressing passion. She illustrated the dreams of the
poets with graceful compositions, formed no less of imaginary beings
than of real personages; and, for a long period, the Virtues and the
Graces equally presided over the painter’s study.
But it was natural that, in the great diversity of tastes, some should
seek after the mere ornament that the arts could furnish. Hence the
minor walks of painting began to be cultivated apart from the greater.
And something was found to gratify every spectator in the various
departments of this enchanting art.
It has been the custom to distribute all the various works of art
into three or four classes, each comprehending a most incongruous
variety[142].
The first place is always allowed to HISTORIC PAINTING, which, as now
understood, means everything that is not portrait, or domestic scenery,
or landscape, or flowers, or caricature, from the Last Judgment of
Michael Angelo, down to a sleeping nymph, or a weeping Magdalene[143].
PORTRAIT comes next, and even those who have seen Giulio II. are not
ashamed to place in the same class, the _Lord Henrys_ and _Lady Janes_,
Les _Barons de T._, or Les _Comtesses de V._, that annually adorn the
walls of the London and Paris exhibitions.
With the FAMILIAR LIFE class, as now understood, I do not quarrel;
if the Dutch and Flemings, two centuries ago, far exceeded all we do
in execution, we moderns are much above them in sense and feeling;
in having a story to tell and telling it well. Besides, the words
_familiar life_ admit at once every variety of subject, from genteel
comedy to broad farce. It appears to have been cultivated with some
success by the ancients.
But the LANDSCAPE class! Surely it is strange to put the Enchanted
Castle of Claude, and the Deluge of Poussin, together with views on
Hounslow Heath, and scenes in the Waterloo tea gardens! Landscape
painting, indeed, seems to be a modern art, as considered by itself;
though it must have been practised for the sake of backgrounds by the
ancients, as I shall have occasion to notice.
It has pleased the writers upon painting to make a class apart of
ANIMAL PAINTING, and to consider the class as an inferior one. It is
right to separate it: but the inferiority will scarcely be allowed
by those who know the works of Rubens and Snyders. At any rate, the
ancients did not consider it mean, by their praise of the animals of
Nicias and Pausias generally, of the horses of Apelles, and the dogs of
Protogenes, in particular.
In FRUIT, and FLOWERS, and STILL LIFE, we have again the ancients to
support us. How lovely were the fresh flowers in the Stephanopolis of
Pausias! Then the grapes of Zeuxis, and the curtain of Parrhasius, how
exquisitely finished!
As to the delineations of animals, plants, minerals, &c., for the
purposes of natural history, they must be considered as combining the
original uses of the graphic art; namely, history writing, with the
practical improvement of modern times; and I shall not make any further
mention of them[144].
It is evident that this classification is as absurd and inconvenient,
as it would be in poetry to place under the same head, Homer’s Iliad
and the ballad of Colin and Lucy, because both tell a story.
If, however, in conformity with long usage, we must preserve these
classes, they ought to be subdivided, so as to dispose works really of
the same order apart from the masses in which they are now confounded.
I am aware that, however decided the distinction may be between the
great works that must form the example for each subdivision, it will
be difficult to keep the limits so clear, that the exact place of any
particular work may be known and fixed at once; but that is surely a
small evil compared with the present confusion.
The class HISTORY, has been felt to be so indefinite, that some of
the best writers on art have tacitly divided it into the strictly
Historical and the Dramatic[145]. As far as it goes, the division is
excellent; but it still leaves such masses to be separated, that I
cannot but wish for farther distinctions. For instance, I should wish
not to place in the same class, the taking of Troy by Polygnotus, the
sacrifice of Iphigenia in Aulis by Timanthes, and the single figure of
Ajax by Apollodorus, but to allow each of those to be the example of a
separate division; and quite apart from those, I should wish to place
all allegorical and didactic subjects, as well as those in which the
machinery of superior or inferior natures is introduced.
Thus, those subjects now clumsily thrown together, under the name of
HISTORY, would come naturally to form four distinct classes, each of
which ought, in strictness, to be again broken into subdivisions.
The four classes I should propose to call,
1st. ETHIC or DIDACTIC.
2nd. EPIC.
3rd. HISTORICAL.
4th. DRAMATIC.
Each of these will admit of farther subdivision. The Ethical subjects
should be distributed into--
The PURELY DIDACTIC;
The EMBLEMATIC;
And SATIRE, or the HIGHER CARICATURE.
Of the EPIC class I should make but two great divisions, each, however,
capable of very marked partition.
1st. The CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS SUBJECTS.
2nd. The ANTIQUE MYTHOLOGICAL SUBJECTS, whether painted by ancients or
moderns.
1st. The CHRISTIAN division depending upon the introduction of Saints,
Angels, and even more awful natures, but _not_ comprehending Christ
while on earth.
2nd. The ANTIQUE upon the introduction of the deified heroes and gods
of Paganism.
The really HISTORICAL class of pictures may be divided into those in
which a whole history is treated in a single picture.
Those in which a history is treated in a series of pictures.
Those in which a single point of history forms the picture.
The DRAMATIC class might comprehend the familiar life subjects; but I
have thought it better to leave those as they have hitherto stood, by
themselves; and to reckon only in this class
The single actions of higher tragedy:
Single actions of a mixed character.
In PORTRAIT painting it will be readily allowed that there are strongly
marked distinctions between
The HISTORICAL PORTRAIT;
The SCENIC PORTRAIT subjects;
And Portraits of common characters.
The FAMILIAR LIFE class naturally divides into,
Grave Comedy;
Light Comedy, or Farce.
Of Landscape, the distinct varieties are,
The EPIC LANDSCAPE;
The HISTORIC LANDSCAPE;
The Imaginary, or POETIC LANDSCAPE;
And the mere PORTRAIT LANDSCAPE.
Animal painters have naturally made two classes:
The Dramatic;
And the mere Portrait.
Of each of these subdivisions, I will point out specimens, which I hope
will support what I have said as to the propriety of a more precise
classification than has hitherto been adopted. Not that I mean to make
a catalogue for every class, though I believe such a thing would have
its use.
The difficulty of making such a catalogue would be very great, because
the subjects so often force the painter into a greater degree of
relation with neighbouring classes than can be reconciled with any
thing like a strict classification.
OF THE ETHIC CLASS.
At the head of the first, or purely didactic division of this class, I
shall place the picture, or “Table of Cebes,” as it is commonly called.
The picture may have been painted, or it may have existed only in the
imagination of that amiable disciple of Socrates. In either case his
description shows the importance which was attached to painting by the
ancients as an instrument of public instruction[146].
He says there was a picture hung in a certain temple, and that one of
the persons attached to the temple was always at hand to exhibit it
to visiters, and to explain its meaning; and he gives the dialogue
between the exhibitor and a visiter at length, that he may introduce
a description of the whole composition, as well as an account of the
moral end of the picture. The action represented is Human Life as a
whole; and the parts are the vicissitudes to which it is subject.
The ground-work of the table seems to have been a landscape in various
parts, of which the different situations occur most proper for the
purpose of the painter. The landscape is subdivided into separate
enclosures, at the first gate of which is placed the Genius of Human
Life, ushering in those who are about to begin their pilgrimage. They
first meet upon their road with Deception, who offers them the Cup
of Error and of Ignorance; then come Opinions, and Appetites, and
Pleasures to delude them.
The next great object in the picture is Fortune, who, with her
followers, occupies a considerable space, near which are the Vices, who
naturally lead to the den of Punishment, where they meet with Sorrow,
Anguish, Lamentation, and Despair.
Some, however, happily reach the dwelling of Repentance, and thence set
forth to seek Education.
Here again some go astray and entangle themselves with False Education,
by whom they are once more betrayed to the Passions and to wrong
Opinions; but the Happy, by the assistance of Self Command and
Perseverance, reach the mansion of True Education, whom they find with
her daughters, Truth and Persuasion. These introduce them to Knowledge
and the Virtues, who conduct them to the palace of their mother,
Happiness, by whom they are crowned as victors in the race of life.
The Calumny of Apelles, of which I have copied Lucian’s description in
a note to a former essay, is another example of this kind of painting
among the ancients.
I shall cite one modern fresco work, now nearly effaced from the walls
upon which it was painted by Lorenzetti, one of the earliest restorers
of painting in the fourteenth century.
In the palace of government, in the city of Sienna, this remarkable
picture is still to be traced. In the time of the freedom of the city,
the magistrates could not go daily to their public duties without
passing through the hall where it was painted, to remind them of the
blessings of peace and good government, and the curse of war and
misrule.
The part that is sufficiently preserved for the design to be
intelligible, is immediately opposite the window. In the centre,
the Almighty Ruler sits, holding a globe; over his head are Faith,
Hope, and Charity; on his left hand are Magnanimity and Justice; on
his right, Prudence, Fortitude, and Peace, each with her several
attributes. Beyond Peace, sits Diligence; above whom is Wisdom. Two
scales hang, one on each side of Diligence, from which angels are
distributing riches and honour to the followers of Diligence and
Wisdom. On the side where Justice and Magnanimity are placed, enough
of the design remains to show the punishment of Crime--the absolving
of Innocence, and generous forgiveness where lenity is possible.
Below these figures a procession of the citizens of Sienna appears to
be moving towards the Almighty Ruler and Protector of their state.
Upon the wall to the left are traced the effects of good government
and public security; on one side cultivated fields, with a busy and
cheerful peasantry, and hard by, a flourishing city, with persons
engaged in trade and commerce, and other occupations of peace. The
rest of the wall is filled up with cheerful landscape, in various
parts of which the social amusements of dancing, hawking, riding, &c.,
are enjoyed. The opposite wall did contain a representation of all
the evils of bad government, Vain Glory, War, Famine, Beggary, and
Cruelty[147].
The second division of the Ethical class of pictures comprises emblems
and allegories.
I have already mentioned two remarkable emblematical pictures of the
ancients: the Demos of Athens by Parrhasius, and Euphranor’s popular
estate. To these I will add the allegories of the shield of Achilles,
and the emblems so beautifully imagined on medals, coins, and gems,
besides the innumerable pictures chiefly upon vases referring to the
mysteries of the Pagan worship, particularly as connected with the
passage of the soul from this life, through death, to another.
The modern painters have also dealt largely in allegory. Not to go
farther back among Christian painters than Giotto, his marriage of St.
Francis with Poverty at Assisi is a striking example; and so are the
figures of the Virtues and Vices, so beautifully designed by him in the
chapel of the Nunziata dell’ Arena, at Padua.
But passing over innumerable pictures of the kind, I will go at once to
the Sistine Chapel, where Michael Angelo’s Prophets and Sybils demand,
at the first view, a class apart from ordinary historical subjects,
and, as moderns, to stand at the head of that class. Then follow
Prophets and Sybils by Raffaelle; Peruzzi’s all but sublime Sybil at
Sienna, and a thousand more, among which the Allegories of Rubens claim
a distinguished place[148]; not, indeed, for refinement of thought, but
for skill in composition.
The third division into which I desire to break the class of Ethical
pictures comprehends the higher caricature.
The ancients certainly practised this species of painting, but I do not
know that the description of any has been preserved.
There is, however, in Fortefiocca’s life of Cola di Rienzi a very
remarkable account of some which that extraordinary man caused to be
painted, in order to stir up the Romans of his time to a sense of their
degradation[149]. One was painted upon the wall of the palace of the
Capitol, looking towards the Forum; the other near St. Angelo. In both,
the nobles and magistrates of Rome were treated with bitter satire, and
the city and commonwealth represented as in the lowest state of misery.
The effect these caricatures had upon the people may be read in the
original life of Rienzi, written in the vernacular idiom of Rome in his
own time.
It would be most unjust not to consider, as preeminent in this walk of
art, Hogarth, whose satirical pencil was employed in the chastisement
of vice, and the promotion of virtue. His works are a school in
themselves; and are as far removed, as a “greatest is from least,” from
the mean and filthy caricatures that libel private life, and from the
evanescent exaggerations of political squibs.
EPIC PICTURES.
The examples for the first division of this class, containing
supernatural agents of a Christian character, must, of course, be taken
exclusively from modern works.
First of these, the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo will occur to every
imagination. With it I will name a work that he himself looked upon
with the highest admiration; the chapel, painted by Luca Signorelli,
at Orvieto, many of the figures of which were adopted by Buonarotti
himself, who, perhaps scarcely ever surpassed in expression the group
of blasphemers struck by the thunderbolt[151].
Nor can I omit Raffaelle’s Heliodorus in the Temple: these are
instances of the terrible in this class.
Of that sublime, the key to which is stillness[152], Raffaelle’s
dispute of the Sacrament is the most perfect example. Though in the
Spanish Chapter-House of St. Maria Novella, in Florence, that elder
painter, Taddeo Gaddi, in a subject of the same kind, has in one or two
figures reached the grand and the awful.
To the Christian division of the Epic class also belong all those
magnificent pictures which represent the Ascension of Christ, the
Assumption of the Virgin, the Martyrdoms and the Miracles of Saints,
with their supernatural appearances, and also many of the subjects
taken from the Old Testament.
Michael Angelo’s Creator, in the several acts of calling light out of
darkness, and enduing man with life; and the other great conceptions
in the roof of the Sistine chapel, occupy the first rank among these
works of genius. Raffaelle’s Vision of Ezekiel is conceived in the
same spirit, and his Madonna of San Sisto[153], in my mind, far
exceeds all other Madonnas in glory, though the place is a high one,
which may justly be claimed for Titian’s Assumption[154]. The same
painter’s Peter Martyr[155], Domenichino’s Saint Jerome[156], Francia’s
Saint Sebastian[157], may be named as some of the most important
works which form this grand and very distinct division of the Epic
class of pictures; it also comprehends Raffaelle’s lovely Madonna del
Pesce[158], Christ’s Agony in the Garden by Correggio[159], and all
those pictures where angelic natures are introduced.
Of examples for the second division, the best and greatest, as far as
we may judge from description, were the works of Polygnotus. When he
introduced the tutelary deity and protecting heroes of Athens into
the battle of Marathon, he was inspired by the same genius that led
Raffaelle in the Stanze to send forth Saint Peter and Saint Paul to
turn back the host of barbarians from Rome.
The descent of Ulysses to the kingdom of Pluto, is another example of
which I have already spoken. The Wars with the Giants of Mycon, and
some other artists, and all subjects of apotheosis belong to this class.
I cannot cite the Wars of the Giants by Julio Romano, in Mantua, as a
successful example of a modern rendering of the subject. And, in truth,
after the Pagan gods ceased to be objects of devotion, the Greek and
Roman mythologies were of infinitely too gay a character to inspire a
painter with any but the most jocund and graceful compositions.
The Parnassus of Raffaelle, and his Psyche of the Farnesina[160],
are charming examples of this. But these should form the chief of a
very delightful class of pictures which cannot justly be called Epic,
but which have fully as little title to their old name of historical
pictures.
Reynolds called his exquisite pictures of children, fancy subjects.
But the term FANCY, in this sense is grown, very undeservedly, as I
think, into disrepute; or I should say it would designate perfectly
the pictures I am now seeking a name for. Among them are Titian’s whole
families of Dianas and Venuses, of Loves and Graces; the rival Auroras
of Guido and Guercino; Paulo Veronese’s and Luini’s Europas; Annibale
Caracci’s Farnese; Poussin’s classical compositions, and some others
which seem to deserve a place very near the Venus Anadyomene of Apelles
and Zeuxis’ Helen.