where the drama, divested of epic or allegoric fiction, meets pure
history, and elevates, invigourates, impresses the pregnant moment of
a _real_ fact, with character and pathos: The summit of these is that
magnificent series of coloured designs commonly called the cartoons, so
well known to you all, part of which we happily possess; formerly when
complete and united, and now, in the copies of the tapestry annually
exhibited in the colonnade of the Vatican, they represent in thirteen
compositions the origin, sanction, œconomy and progress of the Christian
religion. In whatever light we consider their invention, as parts of _one
whole_ relative to each other, or independent _each of the rest_, and as
single subjects, there can be scarcely named a beauty or a mystery of
which the cartoons furnish not an instance or a clue; they are poised
between perspicuity and pregnancy of moment; we shall have opportunities
to speak of all or the greater part of them, but that of Paul on the
areopagus, will furnish us at present with conclusions for the remainder.
It represents the Apostle announcing his God from the height of the
areopagus. Enthusiasm and curiosity make up the subject; simplicity of
attitude invests the speaker with sublimity; the parallelism of his
action invigorates his energy; situation gives him command over the
whole; the light in which he is placed, attracts the first glance; he
appears the organ of a superior Power. The assembly, though selected
with characteristic art for the purpose, are the natural offspring of
place and moment. The involved meditation of the Stoic, the Cynic’s
ironic sneer, the incredulous smile of the elegant Epicurean, the eager
disputants of the Academy, the elevated attention of Plato’s school, the
rankling malice of the Rabbi, the Magician’s mysterious glance, repeat
in louder or in lower tones the novel doctrine; but whilst curiosity and
meditation, loud debate and fixed prejudice, tell, ponder on, repeat,
reject, discuss it, the animated gesture of conviction in Dionysius and
Damaris, announce the power of its tenets, and hint the established
belief of _immortality_.
But the powers of Raphael in combining the drama with pure historic fact,
are best estimated when compared with those exerted by other masters on
the same subject. For this we select from the series we examine that
which represented the massacre, as it is called, of the innocents, or of
the infants at Bethlem; an original, precious part of which still remains
in the possession of a friend of art among us. On this subject Baccio
Bandinelli, Tintoretto, Rubens, Le Brun, and Poussin, have tried their
various powers.
The massacre of the infants by Baccio Bandinelli, contrived chiefly to
exhibit his anatomic skill, is a complicated tableau of every contorsion
of human attitude and limbs that precedes dislocation; the expression
floats between a studied imagery of frigid horrour and loathsome
abomination.
The stormy brush of Tintoretto swept individual woe away in general
masses. Two immense wings of light and shade divide the composition, and
hide the want of sentiment in tumult.
To Rubens magnificence and contrast dictated the actors and the scene. A
loud lamenting dame, in velvet robes, with golden locks dishevelled, and
wide extended arms, meets our first glance. Behind, a group of steel-clad
satellites open their rows of spears to admit the nimble, naked ministers
of murder, charged with their infant prey, within their ranks, ready
to close again against the frantic mothers who pursue them: the pompous
gloom of the palace in the middle ground is set off by cottages and
village scenery in the distance.
Le Brun surrounded the allegoric tomb of Rachel with rapid horsemen,
receiving the children whom the assassins tore from their parents arms,
and strewed the field with infant-slaughter.
Poussin tied in one vigorous group what he conceived of blood-trained
villany and maternal frenzy. Whilst Raphael, in dramatic gradation,
disclosed all the mother through every image of pity and of terrour;
through tears, shrieks, resistance, revenge, to the stunned look of
despair; and traced the villain from the palpitations of scarce initiated
crime to the sedate grin of veteran murder.
History, strictly so called, follows the drama: fiction now ceases, and
invention consists only in selecting and fixing with dignity, precision,
and sentiment, the moments of _reality_. Suppose that the artist choose
the death of Germanicus—He is not to give us the highest images of
_general_ grief which impresses the features of a people or a family at
the death of a beloved chief or father; for this would be epic imagery:
we should have Achilles, Hector, Niobe. He is not to mix up characters
which observation and comparison have pointed out to him as the fittest
to excite the gradations of sympathy; not Admetus and Alceste, not
Meleager and Atalanta; for this would be the drama. He is to give us the
idea of a Roman dying amidst Romans, as tradition gave him, with all the
real modifications of time and place, which may serve unequivocally to
discriminate that moment of grief from all others. Germanicus, Agrippina,
Caius, Vitellius, the legates, the centurions at Antioch; the hero, the
husband, the father, the friend, the leader, the struggles of nature
and sparks of hope must be subjected to the phisiognomic character and
the features of Germanicus, the son of Drusus, the Cæsar of Tiberius.
Maternal, female, connubial passion must be tinged by Agrippina, the
woman absorbed in the Roman, less lover than companion of her husband’s
grandeur: even the bursts of friendship, attachment, allegiance, and
revenge, must be stamped by the military, ceremonial, and distinctive
costume of Rome.
The judicious observation of all this does not reduce the historic
painter to the anxiously minute detail of a copyist. Firm he rests
on the true basis of art, imitation: the fixed character of things
determines all in his choice, and mere floating accident, transient modes
and whims of fashion, are still excluded. If defects, if deformities
are represented, they must be permanent, they must be inherent in the
character. Edward the first and Richard the third must be marked, but
marked, to strengthen rather than to diminish the interest we take in
the man; thus the deformity of Richard will add to his terrour, and the
enormous stride of Edward to his dignity. If my limits permitted, your
own recollection would dispense me from expatiating in examples on this
more familiar branch of invention. The history of our own times and of
our own country has produced a specimen, in the death of a military hero,
as excellent as often imitated, which, though respect forbids me to name
it, cannot, I trust, be absent from your mind.
Such are the stricter outlines of general and specific invention in the
three principal branches of our art; but as their near alliance allows
not always a strict discrimination of their limits; as the mind and
fancy of men, upon the whole, consist of mixed qualities, we seldom meet
with a human performance exclusively made up of epic, dramatic, or pure
historic materials.
Novelty and feelings will make the rigid historian sometimes launch out
into the marvellous, or warm his bosom and extort a tear; the dramatist,
in gazing at some tremendous feature, or the pomp of superiour agency,
will drop the chain of sympathy and be absorbed in the sublime; whilst
the epic or lyric painter forgets his solitary grandeur, sometimes
descends and mixes with his agents. Thus Homer gave the feature of the
drama in Hector and Andromache, in Irus and Ulysses; the spirit from the
prison house stalks like the shade of Ajax, in Shakspeare; the daughter
of Soranus pleading for her father, and Octavia encircled by centurions,
melt like Ophelia and Alceste, in Tacitus; thus Raphael personified the
genius of the river in Joshua’s passage through the Jordan, and again at
the ceremony of Solomon’s inauguration; and thus Poussin raised before
the scared eye of Coriolanus, the frowning vision of Rome, all armed,
with her attendant, Fortune.
These general excursions from one province of the art into those of its
congenial neighbours, granted by judicious invention to the artist, let
me apply to the grant of a more specific licence[75]: Horace, the most
judicious of critics, when treating on the use of poetic words, tells his
pupils, that the adoption of an old word, rendered novel by a skilful
construction with others, will entitle the poet to the praise of original
diction. The same will be granted to the judicious adoption of figures in
art.
Far from impairing the originality of invention, the unpremeditated
discovery of an appropriate attitude or figure in the works of antiquity,
or of the great old masters after the revival, and its adoption, or
the apt transposition of one misplaced in some inferiour work, will
add lustre to a performance of commensurate or superiour power, by a
kind coalition with the rest, immediately furnished by nature and the
subject. In such a case it is easily discovered whether a subject have
been chosen merely to borrow an idea, an attitude or figure, or whether
their eminent fitness procured them their place. An adopted idea or
figure in a work of genius is a foil or a companion of the rest; but
an idea of genius borrowed by mediocrity, tears all associate shreds,
it is the giant’s thumb by which the pigmy offered the measure of his
own littleness. We stamp the plagiary on the borrower, who, without fit
materials or adequate conceptions of his own, seeks to shelter impotence
under purloined vigour; we leave him with the full praise of invention,
who by the harmony of a whole proves that what he adopted might have
been his own offspring though anticipated by another. If he take now,
he soon may give. Thus Michael Angelo scattered the Torso of Apollonius
in every view, in every direction, in groups and single figures, over
the composition of the last judgment; and in the Lunetta of Judith and
her maid gave an original turn to figures adopted from the gem of Pier
Maria da Pescia: if the figure of Adam dismissed from Paradise, by
Raphael, still own Masaccio for its inventor, he can scarcely be said to
have furnished more than the hint of that enthusiasm and energy which
we admire in Paul on the areopagus: in the picture of the covenant with
Noah, the sublimity of the vision, and the graces of the mother entangled
by her babes, find their originals in the Sistine chapel, but they are
equalled by the fervour which conceived the Patriarch who, with the
infant pressed to his bosom, with folded hands, and prostrate on his
knees, adores. What figure or what gesture in the cartoon of Pisa, has
not been imitated? Raphael, Parmegiano, Poussin, are equally indebted to
it; in the sacrament of baptism, the last did little more than transcribe
that knot of powers, the fierce feature of the veteran who, eager to pull
on his cloaths, pushes his foot through the rending garment.—Such are the
indulgences which invention grants to fancy, taste, and judgment.
But a limited fragment of observations must not presume to exhaust what
in itself is inexhaustible; the features of invention are multiplied
before me as my powers decrease: I shall therefore no longer trespass on
your patience, than by fixing your attention for a few moments on one
of its boldest flights, the transfiguration of Raphael; a performance
equally celebrated and censured; in which the most judicious of
inventors, the painter of propriety, is said to have not only wrestled
for extent of information with the historian, but attempted to leap the
boundaries, and, with a less discriminating than daring hand, to remove
the established limits of the art, to have arbitrarily combined two
actions, and consequently two different moments.
Were this charge founded, I might content myself with observing, that the
transfiguration, more than any other of Raphael’s oil-pictures, was a
public performance, destined by Julio de Medici, afterward Clement VII.
for his archiepiscopal church at Narbonne; that it was painted in contest
with Sebastian del Piombo, assisted in his rival-picture of Lazarus
by Michael Angelo; and thus, considering it as framed on the simple
principles of the monumental style, established in my first discourse, on
the pictures of Polygnotus at Delphi, I might frame a plausible excuse
for the modern artist; but Raphael is above the assistance of subterfuge,
and it is sufficient to examine the picture, in order to prove the
futility of the charge. Raphael has connected with the transfiguration
not the _cure_ of the maniac, but his _presentation for it_; if,
according to the[76] Gospel record, this happened at the foot of the
mountain, whilst the apparition took place at the top, what improbability
is there in assigning the _same moment_ to both?
Raphael’s design was to represent Jesus as the Son of God, and at the
same time as the reliever of human misery, by an unequivocal fact.
The transfiguration on Tabor, and the miraculous cure which followed
the descent of Jesus, united, furnished that fact. The difficulty was
how to combine two successive actions in one moment: he overcame it by
sacrificing the moment of the cure to that of the apparition, by implying
the lesser miracle in the greater. In subordinating the cure to the
vision he obtained sublimity, in placing the crowd and the patient on the
fore-ground, he gained room for the full exertion of his dramatic powers;
it was not necessary that the dæmoniac should be represented in the
moment of recovery, if its certainty could be expressed by other means:
it is implied, it is placed beyond all doubt by the glorious apparition
above; it is made nearly intuitive by the uplifted hand and finger of
the apostle in the centre, who without hesitation, undismayed by the
obstinacy of the dæmon, unmoved by the clamour of the crowd and the
pusillanimous scepticism of some of his companions, refers the father of
the maniac in an authoritative manner for certain and speedy help to his
master[77] on the mountain above, whom, though unseen, his attitude at
once connects with all that passes below; here is the point of contact,
here is that union of the two parts of the fact in one moment, which
Richardson and Falconet could not discover.
FOURTH LECTURE.
INVENTION.
_PART II._
ΦΘΟΝΕΡΑ Δ’ ΑΛΛΟΣ ἈΝΗΡ ΒΛΕΠΩΝ,
ΓΝΩΜΑΝ ΚΕΝΕΑΝ ΣΚΟΤΩΙ ΚΥΛΙΝΔΕΙ
ΧΑΜΑΙΠΕΤΟΙΣΑΝ.
ΠΙΝΔΑΡ. ΝΕΜ. ΕΙΔ. Δ.
ARGUMENT.
Choice of subjects; divided into positive, negative,
repulsive.—Observations on the Parerga, or Accessories of Invention.
FOURTH LECTURE.
The imitation of Nature, as it presents itself in space and figure,
being the real sphere of plastic Invention, it follows, that whatever
can occupy a place and be circumscribed by lines, characterised by
form, substantiated by colour and light and shade, without provoking
incredulity, shocking our conception by absurdity, averting our eye by
loathsomeness or horrour, is strictly within its province: but though
all Nature seem to teem with objects of imitation, the ‘Choice’ of
subjects is a point of great importance to the Artist; the conception,
the progress, the finish, and the success of his work depend upon it. An
apt and advantageous subject rouses and elevates Invention, invigourates,
promotes, and adds delight to labour; whilst a dull or repulsive one
breeds obstacles at every step, dejects and wearies—the Artist loses his
labour, the spectator his expectation.
The first demand on every work of art is that it constitute one whole,
that it fully pronounce its own meaning, that it tell itself; it
ought to be independent; the essential part of its subject ought to
be comprehended and understood without collateral assistance, without
borrowing its commentary from the historian or the poet; for as we are
soon wearied with a poem whose fable and motives reach us only by the
borrowed light of annexed notes, so we turn our eye discontented from a
picture or a statue whose meaning depends on the charity of a Cicerone,
or must be fetched from a book.
As the condition that each work of art should fully and essentially tell
its own tale, undoubtedly narrows the quantity of admissible objects,
singly taken, to remedy this, to enlarge the range of subjects, Invention
has contrived by a Cyclus or series to tell the most important moments of
a long story, its beginning, its middle, and its end: for though some of
these may not, in themselves, admit of distinct discrimination, they may
receive and impart light by connection.
Of him who undertakes thus to personify a tale, the first demand is,
that his Invention dwell on the firm basis of the story, on its most
important and significant moments, or its principal actors. Next, as the
nature of the art which is confined to the apparition of single moments
forces him to leap many intermediate ones, he cannot be said to have
invented with propriety, if he neglect imperceptibly to fill the chasm
occasioned by their omission; and, finally, that he shall not interrupt
or lose the leading thread of his plan in quest of episodes, in the
display of subordinate or adventitious beauties. On the observation of
these rules depends the perspicuity of his work, the interest we take
in it, and, consequently, all that can be gained by the adoption of a
historic series.
When form, colour, with conception and execution, are deducted from a
work, its subject, the unwrought stuff only, the naked materials remain,
and these we divide into three classes.
The first are positive, advantageous, commensurate with and adapted
for the art. The whole of the work lies prepared in their germ, and
spontaneously meets the rearing hand of the Artist.
The second class, composed of subjects negative and uninteresting in
themselves, depends entirely on the manner of treating; such subjects
owe what they can be to the genius of the Artist.
The repulsive, the subjects which cannot pronounce their own meaning,
constitute the third class. On them genius and talent are equally
wasted, because the art has no medium to render them intelligible. Taste
and execution may recommend them to our eye, but never can make them
generally impressive, or stamp them with perspicuity.
To begin with advantageous subjects, immediately above the scenes of
vulgar life, of animals, and common landscape, the simple representation
of actions purely human, appears to be as nearly related to the art as
to ourselves; their effect is immediate; they want no explanation; from
them, therefore, we begin our scale. The next step leads us to pure
historic subjects, singly or in a series; beyond these the delineation
of character, or, properly speaking, the drama, invites; immediately
above this we place the epic with its mythologic, allegoric, and symbolic
branches.
On these four branches of Invention, as I have treated diffusely in the
lecture published on this subject, and since successively in these
prelections, I shall not at present circumstantially dwell, but as
succinctly as possible remind you only of their specific difference and
elements.
The first class, which, without much boldness of metaphor, may be said
to draw its substance immediately from the lap of Nature, to be as
elemental as her emotions, and the passions by which she sways us, finds
its echo in all hearts, and imparts its charm to every eye; from the
mutual caresses of maternal affection and infant simplicity, the whispers
of love or eruptions of jealousy and revenge, to the terrours of life,
struggling with danger, or grappling with death. The Madonnas of Raphael;
the Ugolino, the Paolo and Francesca of Dante; the conflagration of the
Borgo; the Niobe protecting her daughter; Hæmon piercing his own breast,
with Antigone hanging dead from his arm[78], owe the sympathies they
call forth to their assimilating power, and not to the names they bear:
without names, without reference to time and place, they would impress
with equal energy, because they find their counterpart in every breast,
and speak the language of mankind. Such were the Phantasiae of the
ancients, which modern art, by indiscriminate laxity of application, in
what is called Fancy-Pictures, has more debased than imitated. A mother’s
and a lover’s kiss acquire their value from the lips they press, and
suffering deformity mingles disgust with pity.
Historic Invention administers to truth. History, as contradistinguished
from arbitrary or poetic narration, tells us not what might be, but what
is or was; circumscribes the probable, the grand, and the pathetic, with
truth of time, place, custom; gives “local habitation and a name:” its
agents are the pure organs of a fact. Historic plans, when sufficiently
distinct to be told, and founded on the basis of human nature, have that
prerogative over mere natural imagery, that whilst they bespeak our
sympathy, they interest our intellect. We were pleased with the former
as men, we are attracted by this as members of society: bound round with
public and private connections and duties, taught curiosity by education,
we wish to regulate our conduct by comparisons of analogous situations
and similar modes of society: these History furnishes; transplants
us into other times; empires and revolutions of empires pass before
us with memorable facts and actors in their train, the legislator,
the philosopher, the discoverer, the polishers of life, the warriour,
the divine, are the principal inhabitants of this soil: it is perhaps
unnecessary to add, that nothing trivial, nothing grovelling or mean,
should be suffered to approach it. This is the department of Tacitus
and Poussin. The exhibition of character in the conflict of passions
with the rights, the rules, the prejudices of society, is the legitimate
sphere of dramatic invention. It inspires, it agitates us by reflected
self-love, with pity, terrour, hope, and fear; whatever makes events, and
time and place, the ministers of character and pathos, let fiction or
reality compose the tissue, is its legitimate claim: it distinguishes and
raises itself above historic representation by laying the chief interest
on the _actors_, and moulding the _fact_ into mere situations contrived
for their exhibition: they are the end, this the medium. Such is the
invention of Sophocles and Shakspeare, and uniformly that of Raphael. The
actors, who in Poussin and the rest of historic painters, shine by the
splendour of the fact, reflect it in Raphael with unborrowed rays: they
are the luminous object to which the action points.
Of the epic plan, the loftiest species of human conception, the aim is to
astonish whilst it instructs; it is the sublime allegory of a maxim. Here
Invention arranges a plan by general ideas, the selection of the most
prominent features of Nature, or favourable modes of society, visibly to
substantiate some great maxim. If it admits history for its basis, it
hides the limits in its grandeur; if it select characters to conduct its
plan, it is only in the genus, their features reflect, their passions
are kindled by the maxim, and absorbed in its universal blaze: at this
elevation heaven and earth mingle their boundaries, men are raised to
demigods, and gods descend. This is the sphere of Homer, Phidias, and
Michael Agnolo.
Allegory, or the personification of invisible physic and metaphysic
ideas, though not banished from the regions of Invention, is equally
inadmissible in pure epic, dramatic, and historic plans, because,
wherever it enters, it must rule the whole.[79] It rules with propriety
the mystic drama of the Vatican, where the characters displayed are only
the varied instruments of a mystery by which the church was established,
and Julio and Leone are the allegoric image, the representatives of that
church; but the epic, dramatic, and historic painter embellish with
poetry or delineate with truth, what either was or is supposed to be
real; they must therefore conduct their plans by personal and substantial
agency, if they mean to excite that credibility, without which it is not
in their power to create an interest in the spectator or the reader.