presents it to our eye. The cone or pyramid, the globe, the grape, flame
and stream, the circle and its segments, lend their figure to elevate,
concentrate, round, diffuse themselves or undulate in its masses. It
towers in the Apollo, it darts its flame forward in the warriour of
Agasias, its lambent spires wind upward with the Laocoon; it inverts the
cone in the Hercules of Glycon, it doubles it, or undulates in Venus
and the Graces. In the bland central light of a globe imperceptibly
gliding through lucid demi-tints into rich reflected shades, it composes
the spell of Correggio and entrances like a delicious dream; whilst
like a torrent it rushes from the hand of Tintorett over the trembling
canvass in enormous wings of light and shade, and sweeps all individual
importance in general effects. But whether its groups be imbrowned on
a lucid sky, or emerge from darkness, whether it break like a meridian
sun on the reflected object with Rubens, or from Rembrandt, flash on it
in lightning, whatever be its form or its effect, if it be more or less
than what it ought to be—a vehicle, if it branch not out of the subject
as the produce of its root, if it do not contain all that distinguishes
it from other subjects, if it leave out aught that is characteristic and
exclusively its own, and admit what is superfluous or common-place—it is
no longer Composition, it is grouping only, an ostentatious or useless
scaffolding about an edifice without a base; such was not the Composition
of Raffaello.
The leading principle of Raffaello’s composition is that simple air, that
artlessness which persuades us that his figures have been less composed
by skill than grouped by Nature, that the fact must have happened as we
see it represented. Simplicity taught him to grasp his subject, propriety
to give it character and form, and perspicuity to give it breadth and
place. The School of Athens in the Vatican, the Death of Ananias, and the
Sacrifice at Lystra, among the cartoons may serve as instances.
A metaphysical composition, if it be numerous, will be oftener mistaken
for dilapidation of fragments than regular distribution of materials. The
School of Athens communicates to few more than an arbitrary assemblage of
speculative groups. Yet if the subject be the dramatic representation of
Philosophy, as it prepares for active life, the parts of the building are
not connected with more regular gradation than those groups. Archimedes
and Pythagoras, Plato and Socrates, Aristotle and Democritus, Epictetus,
Diogenes and Aristippus, in different degrees of characteristic modes,
tell one great doctrine, that, fitted by physical and intellectual
harmony, man ascends from himself to society, from society to God. For
this, group balances group, action is contrasted by repose, each weight
has its counterpoise; unity and variety shed harmony over the whole.
In the cartoon of Ananias, at the first glance, and even before we are
made acquainted with the particulars of the subject, we become partners
of the scene. The disposition is amphitheatric, the scenery a spacious
hall, the heart of the action is the centre, the wings assist, elucidate,
connect it with the ends. The apoplectic man before us, is evidently the
victim of a supernatural power, inspiring the apostolic figures, who
on the raised platform with threatening arm, pronounced, and with the
word enforced his doom. The terrour occasioned by the sudden stroke is
best expressed by the features of youth and middle age on each side of
the sufferer; it is instantaneous, because its shock has not yet spread
beyond them, a contrivance not to interrupt the dignity due to the sacred
scene, and to stamp the character of devout attention on the assembly.
What preceded and what followed is equally implied in their occupation,
and in the figure of a matron entering and absorbed in counting money,
though she approaches the fatal centre, and whom we may suppose to be
Sapphira, the accomplice and the wife of Ananias, and the devoted partner
of his fate. In this composition of near thirty figures, none can be
pointed out as a figure of common place or mere convenience; legitimate
offsprings of one subject, they are linked to each other, and to the
centre by one common chain, all act and all have room to act, repose
alternates with energy.
The Sacrifice at Lystra, though as a whole it has more of collateral
arrangement than depth of Composition, as it traces in the moment of
its choice the motive that produced and shews the disappointment that
checks it, has collected actors and faces the most suitable to express
both: actors and features of godlike dignity, superstitious devotion and
eager curiosity: the scene is the vestibule of the temple of Hermes, and
Paul the supposed representative of that deity, though not placed in
the centre or a central light, by his elevation, gesture, and the whole
of the composition streaming toward him, commands the first glance. At
the very onset of the ceremony the sacrificer is arrested in the act
of smiting the victim, by the outstretched arm of a young man bursting
through the hymning throng of priests and victimarii, observing Paul
indignant rending his garment in horrour of the idolatrous perversion of
his miracle.[86] The miracle itself is personified in that characteristic
figure of the healed man, who with eyes flashing joy and gratitude on the
Apostle, and hands joined in adoration, rushes in, accompanied by an aged
man of gravity and rank, who, lifting up part of the garment that covered
his thigh, attests him to have been the identic owner of those crutches
that formerly supported him, though now as useless thrown on the pavement.
Among the cartoons which we do not possess, and probably exist only in
the tapestries of Rome and Madrid, and engravings copied from them,
the Resurrection of Christ and his Ascension, equally mark Raphael’s
discriminative powers in their contrasted compositions. The Resurrection
derives its interest from the convulsive rapidity, the Ascension from
its calmness of motion. In that, the hero like a ball of fire shoots up
from the bursting tomb and sinking cearments, and scatters astonishment
and dismay. What apprehension dared not to suspect, what fancy could
not dream of, no eye had ever beheld and no tongue ever uttered, blazes
before us: the passions dart in rays resistless from the centre. Fear,
terrour, conviction, wrestle with dignity and courage in the centurion;
convulse brutality, overwhelm violence, enervate resistance, absorb
incredulity in the guard. The whole is tempestuous. The Ascension is the
majestic last of many similar scenes: no longer with the rapidity of a
conqueror, but with the calm serenity of triumphant power, the Hero is
borne up in splendour, and gradually vanishes from those, who by repeated
visions had been taught to expect whatever was amazing. Silent and
composed, with eyes more absorbed in adoration than wonder they follow
the glorious emanation; till addressed by the white-robed messengers of
their departed king, they relapse to the feelings of men.
We have considered hitherto the mental part of Raffaello’s composition,
let us say a word of the technic. His excellence in this is breadth of
masses, and of positive light and shade.
Breadth, or that quality of execution which makes a whole so predominate
over the parts as to excite the idea of uninterrupted unity amid the
greatest variety, modern art, as it appears to me, owes to M. Agnolo.
The breadth of M. Agnolo resembles the tide and ebb of a mighty sea;
waves approach, arrive, retreat, but in their rise and fall, emerging or
absorbed, impress us only with the image of the power that raises, that
directs them; whilst the discrepance of obtruding parts in the works of
the infant Florentine, Venetian and German schools, distracts our eye
like the numberless breakers of a shallow river, or as the brambles and
creepers that entangle the paths of a wood, and instead of shewing us our
road, perplex us only with themselves. By breadth the artist puts us
into immediate possession of the whole, and from that, gently leads us
to the examination of the parts according to their relative importance:
hence it follows, that in a representation of organized surfaces, breadth
is the judicious display of fullness, not a substitute of vacuity.
Breadth might be easily obtained if emptiness could give it. Yet even in
that degraded state, if gratification of the eye be a first indispensable
duty of an art, that can impress us only by that organ, it is preferable
to the laboured display of parts ambitiously thronging for admittance
at the expence of the whole; to that perplexed diligence, which wearies
us with impediment before we can penetrate a meaning or arrive at the
subject whose clear idea must be first obtained before we can judge of
the propriety or impropriety of parts. The principle which constitutes
the breadth of Raphael was neither so absolute nor so comprehensive as
that of M. Agnolo’s. But his perspicacity soon discovered that great,
uninterrupted masses of light and shade, bespeak, satisfy, conduct
and give repose to the eye; that opposition of light and shade gives
perspicuity. Convinced of this, he let their mass fall as broad on
his figures as their importance, attitude and relation to each other
permitted, and as seldom as possible, interrupted it. Masses of shade he
opposed to light, and lucid ones to shade. The strict observation of
this rule appears to be the cause why every figure of Raffaello, however
small, even at a considerable distance, describes itself, and strikes the
eye with distinctness; so, that even the comparatively diminutive figures
of his Loggia are easily discriminated from the Cortile below. To this
maxim he remained faithful in all his works, a few instances excepted,
when instead of light and shade he separated figures by reflexes of a
different colour; exceptions more dictated by necessity than choice, and
which serve rather to confirm than to impair the rule.
It cannot be denied that, if this positive opposition gave superior
distinctness, it occasioned sometimes abruptness. Each part is broad,
but separation is too visible. Reflexes he uniformly neglects, and
from whatever cause is often inattentive to transition; he does not
sufficiently connect with breadth of demi-tint the two extremes of his
masses; and, though much less in fresco than in oil, seems not always to
have had a distinct idea of the gradations required completely to round
as well as to spread a whole; to have been more anxious to obtain breadth
itself than its elemental harmony.
It does not appear that the great masters of legitimate composition
in the sixteenth century, attended to or understood the advantages
which elevation of site and a low horizon are capable of giving to
a subject. They place us in the gallery to behold their scenes; but
from want of keeping the horizontal line becomes a perpendicular, and
drops the distance on the fore-ground; the more remote groups do not
approach, but fall or stand upon the foremost actors. As this impedes
the principles of unity and grandeur in numerous composition, so it
impairs each individual form; which, to be grand, ought to rise upward in
moderate foreshortening, command the horizon, or be in contact with the
sky. Reverse this plan in the composition of Pietro Martyre by Tiziàn,
let the horizontal line be raised above the friar on the fore-ground,
space, loftiness, and unity, vanish together. What gives sublimity to
Rembrandt’s Ecce Homo more than this principle? A composition, which
though complete, hides in its grandeur the limits of its scenery.
Its form is as a pyramid whose top is lost in the sky as its base in
tumultuous murky waves. From the fluctuating crowds who inundate the
base of the tribunal, we rise to Pilate, surrounded and perplexed by the
varied ferocity of the sanguinary synod, to whose remorseless gripe he
surrenders his wand; and from him we ascend to the sublime resignation of
innocence in Christ, and regardless of the roar below, securely repose on
his countenance. Such is the grandeur of a conception, which in its blaze
absorbs the abominable detail of materials too vulgar to be mentioned;
had the materials been equal to the conception and composition, the Ecce
Homo of Rembrandt, even unsupported by the magic of its light and shade,
or his spell of colours, would have been an assemblage of superhuman
powers.
* * * * *
Far, too far, from having answered all the demands of composition, my
limits force me, and my subject requires, to give a faint sketch of the
most prominent features of Expression, its assistant and interpreter.
They interweave themselves so closely with each other, and both with
Invention, that we can scarcely conceive one without supposing the
presence of the rest, and applying the principles of each to all; still
they are separate powers, and may be possessed singly. The figure
of Christ by M. Agnolo in the Minerva, embracing his cross and the
instruments of suffering, is sublimely conceived, powerfully arranged;
but neither his features or expression are those of Christ.
Expression is the vivid image of the passion that affects the mind; its
language, and the portrait of its situation. It animates the features,
attitudes, and gestures, which Invention selected and Composition
arranged; its principles, like theirs, are simplicity, propriety, and
energy.
It is important to distinguish the materials and the spirit of
expression. To give this we must be masters of the forms and of the hues
that embody it. Without truth of line no true expression is possible;
and the passions, whose inward energy stamped form on feature, equally
reside, fluctuate, flash or lower on it in colour, and give it energy by
light and shade.
To make a face speak clearly and with propriety, it must not only be
well constructed, but have its own exclusive character. Though the
element of the passions be the same in all, they neither speak in all
with equal energy nor are circumscribed by equal limits. Though joy
be joy, and anger anger, the joy of the sanguine is not that of the
phlegmatic, nor the anger of the melancholy that of the fiery character;
and the discriminations established by complexion are equally conspicuous
in those of climate, habit, education, and rank. Expression has its
classes. Decebalus and Syphax, though both determined to die, meet
death with eye as different as hues. The tremulous emotion of Hector’s
breast when he approaches Ajax, is not the palpitation of Paris when
he discovers Menelaus; the frown of the Hercynian Phantom may repress
the ardour, but cannot subdue the dignity of Drusus; the fear of Marius
cannot sink to the panic of the Cimber, who drops the dagger at entering
his prison, nor the astonishment of Hamlet degenerate into the fright of
vulgar fear.
Le Sueur was not aware of this when he painted his Alexander. Perhaps no
picture is, in spite of common sense, oftener quoted for its expression
than Alexander sick on his bed, with the cup at his lips, observing
the calumniated physician. The manner in which he is represented is
as inconsistent with the story as injurious to the character of the
Macedonian hero. The Alexander of Le Sueur has the prying look of a spy.
He who was capable of that look would no more have ventured on quaffing
a single drop of the suspected medicine, than on the conquest of the
Persian empire. If Alexander, when he drank the cup, had not the most
positive faith in the incorruptibility of Philippus, he was more than
an ideot, he was a felon against himself and a traitour to his army,
whose safety depended on the success of the experiment. His expression
ought to be open and unconcerned confidence—as that of his physician,
a contemptuous smile, or curiosity suspended by indignation, or the
indifference of a mind conscious of innocence, and fully relying on its
being known to his friend. Le Sueur, instead of these, has given him
little more than a stupid stare and vulgar form.
The emanations of the passions, which pathognomy has reduced to the
four principal sources of _calm emotion_; _joy_; _grief simple, or with
pain_; and _terrour_;—may be divided into internal and external ones:
those hint their action only, they influence a feature or some extremity;
these extend their sway over the whole frame—they animate, agitate,
depress, convulse, absorb form. The systematic designers of pathognomy
have given their element, their extremes, the mask; the ancients have
established their technic standard, and their degrees of admissibility
in art. The Apollo is animated; the warriour of Agasias is agitated;
the dying gladiator or herald suffers in depression; the Laocoon is
convulsed; the Niobe is absorbed. The greater the mental vigour, dignity,
or habitual self-command of a person, the less perceptible to superficial
observation or vulgar eyes, will be the emotion of his mind. The greater
the predominance of fancy over intellect, the more ungovernable the
conceits of self-importance, so much the more will passion partake of
outward and less dignified energy. The Jupiter of Homer manifests his
will and power by the mere contraction of his eyebrows; Socrates in
the school of Athens only moves his finger, and Ovid in the Parnassus
only lays it over his lips, and both say enough; but Achilles throws
himself headlong, and is prevented from slaying himself by the grasp
of his friend. Only then, when passion or suffering become too big
for utterance, the wisdom of ancient art has borrowed a feature from
tranquillity, though not its air. For every being seized by an enormous
passion, be it joy or grief, or fear sunk to despair, loses the character
of its own individual expression, and is absorbed by the power of the
feature that attracts it. Niobe and her family are assimilated by extreme
anguish; Ugolino is petrified by the fate that swept the stripling at
his foot, and sweeps in pangs the rest. The metamorphoses of ancient
mythology are founded on this principle, are allegoric. Clytia, Biblis,
Salmacis, Narcissus, tell only the resistless power of sympathetic
attraction.
Similar principles award to Raffaello the palm of expression among the
moderns: driven to extremes after his demise by Julio Romano and a long
interval of languor, it seemed to revive in Domenichino; I say seemed,
for his sensibility was not supported by equal comprehension, elevation
of mind, or dignity of motion; his sentiment wants propriety, he is a
mannerist in feeling, and tacks the imagery of Theocritus to the subjects
of Homer. A detail of petty though amiable conceptions, is rather
calculated to diminish than to enforce the energy of a pathetic whole:
a lovely child taking refuge in the lap or bosom of a lovely mother,
is an idea of nature, and pleasing in a lowly, pastoral, or domestic
subject; but, perpetually recurring, becomes common-place, and amid the
terrours of martyrdom, is a shred sewed to a purple robe. In touching the
characteristic circle that surrounds the Ananias of Raffaello, you touch
the electric chain, a genuine spark irresistibly darts from the last as
from the first, penetrates, subdues; at the Martyrdom of St. Agnes by
Domenichino, you saunter among the adventitious mob of a lane, where the
silly chat of neighbouring gossips announces a topic as silly, till you
find with indignation, that instead of a broken pot or a petty theft, you
are to witness a scene for which heaven opens, the angels descend, and
Jesus rises from his throne.
It is however but justice to observe, that there is a subject in which
Domenichino has not unsuccessfully wrestled, and, in my opinion,
even excelled Raffaello; I mean the demoniac boy among the series of
frescos at Grotto Ferrata: that inspired figure is evidently the organ
of an internal, superiour, preternatural agent, darted upward without
contorsion, and considered as unconnected with the story, never to be
confounded with a merely tumultuary distorted maniac, which is not
perhaps the case of the boy in the Transfiguration; the subject too being
within the range of Domenichino’s powers, domestic, the whole of the
persons introduced is characteristic: awe, with reliance on the saint
who operates the miracle or cure, and terrour at the redoubled fury of
his son, mark the rustic father; nor could the agonizing female with the
infant in her arm, as she is the mother, be exchanged to advantage, and
with propriety occupies that place which the fondling females in the
pictures of St. Sebastian, St. Andrew, and St. Agnes, only usurp.
The martyrdom, or rather the brutally ostentatious murder of St. Agnes
leads us to the _limits_ of expression: sympathy and disgust are the
irreconcileable parallels that must for ever separate legitimate terrour
and pity from horrour and aversion. We cannot sympathise with what we
detest or despise, nor fully pity what we shudder at or loath. So little
were these limits understood by the moderns, M. Agnolo excepted, that
even the humanity and delicacy of Raffaello did not guard him from
excursions into the realms of horrour and loathsomeness: it is difficult
to conceive what could provoke him to make a finished design of the
inhumanities that accompany the martyrdom of St. Felicitas at which even
description shudders? a design made on purpose to be dispersed over
Europe, perpetuated and made known to all by the graver of Marc Antonio:
was it to prove to Albert Durer and the Germans of his time that they had
not exhausted the sources of abomination? He made an equal mistake in
the Morbetto, where, though not with so lavish a hand as Poussin after
him, instead of the moral effects of the plague, he has personified
the effluvia of putrefaction. What _he_ had not penetration to avoid
could not be expected to be shunned by his scholars. Julio Romano
delighted in studied images of torture as well as of the most abandoned
licentiousness. Among his contemporaries, Correggio even attempted to
give a zest to the most wanton cruelty by an affectation of grace in
the picture of the Saints Placido and Flavia: but the enamoured trance
of Placido with his neck half cut, and the anthem that quivers on the
lips of Flavia whilst a sword is entering her side, in vain bespeak our
sympathy, for whilst we detest the felons who slaughter them, we loath
to inspect the actual process of the crime; mangling is contagious, and
spreads aversion from the slaughterman to the victim. If St. Bartholemew
and St. Erasmus are subjects for painting, they can only be so before,
and neither under nor after the operation of the knife or windlass. A
decollated martyr represented with his head in his hand, as Rubens did,
and a headless corpse with the head lying by it, as Correggio, can only
prove the brutality, stupidity, or bigotry of the employer and the callus
or venality of the artist.
The gradations of expression within, close to, and beyond its limits
cannot perhaps be elucidated with greater perspicuity than by comparison;
and the different moments which Julio Romano, Vandyke and Rembrandt,
have selected to represent the subject of Samson betrayed by Delilah,
offers one of the fairest specimens furnished by art. Considering it as
a drama, we may say that Julio forms the plot, Vandyke unravels it, and
Rembrandt shews the extreme of the catastrophe.
In the composition of Julio, Samson, satiated with pleasure, plunged into
sleep, and stretched on the ground, rests his head and presses with his
arm the thigh of Delilah on one side, whilst on the other a nimble minion
busily but with timorous caution fingers and clips his locks; such is his
fear, that, to be firm, he rests one knee on a foot-stool tremblingly
watching the sleeper, and ready to escape at his least motion. Delilah
seated between both, fixed by the weight of Samson warily turns her
head toward a troop of warriours in the back ground, with the left arm
stretched out she beckons their leader, with the finger of the right
hand she presses her lip to enjoin silence and noiseless approach. The
Herculean make and lion port of Samson, his perturbed though ponderous
sleep, the quivering agility of the curled favourite employed, the harlot
graces and meretricious elegance contrasted by equal firmness and sense
of danger in Delilah, the attitude and look of the grim veteran who heads
the ambush, whilst they give us the clue to all that followed, keep us in
anxious suspense, we palpitate in breathless expectation; this is the
plot.