The mysterious lock is cut; the dreaded victim is roused from the lap
of the harlot-priestess. Starting unconscious of his departed power, he
attempts to spring forward, and with one effort of his mighty breast
and expanded arms to dash his foes to the ground and fling the alarmed
traitress from him—in vain, shorn of his strength he is borne down by the
weight of the mailed chief that throws himself upon him, and overpowered
by a throng of infuriate satellites. But though overpowered, less aghast
than indignant, his eye flashes reproach on the perfidious female whose
wheedling caresses drew the fatal secret from his breast; the plot is
unfolded, and what succeeds, too horrible for the sense, is left to fancy
to brood upon, or drop it.
This moment of horrour the gigantic but barbarous genius of Rembrandt
chose, and, without a metaphor, _executed_ a subject, which humanity,
judgment and taste taught his rivals, only to _treat_; he displays a
scene which no eye but that of Domitian or Nero could wish or bear to
see. Samson stretched on the ground is held by one Philistine under
him, whilst another chains his right arm, and a third clenching his
beard with one, drives a dagger into his eye with the other hand. The
pain that blasts him, darts expression from the contortions of the mouth
and his gnashing teeth to the crampy convulsions of the leg dashed high
into the air. Some fiend-like features glare through the gloomy light
which discovers Delilah, her work now done, sliding off, the shears in
her left, the locks of Samson in her right hand. If her figure, elegant,
attractive, such as Rembrandt never conceived before or after, deserve
our wonder rather than our praise; no words can do justice to the
expression that animates her face, and shews her less shrinking from the
horrid scene than exulting in being its cause. Such is the work whose
magic of colour, tone and chiaroscuro irresistibly entrap the eye, whilst
we detest the brutal choice of the moment.[87]
Let us in conclusion contrast the stern pathos of this scenery with the
placid emotions of a milder subject, in the celebrated pictures which
represent the Communion or death of St. Jerome by Agostino Carracci and
his scholar Domenichino, that an altar-piece in the Certosa near Bologna,
this in the church of St. Girolamo della Carità at Rome; but for some
time both exhibited in the gallery of the Louvre at Paris. What I have to
say on the Invention, Expression, Characters, Tone and Colour of either
is the result of observations lately made on both in that gallery, where
then they were placed nearly opposite to each other.
In each picture, St. Jerome brought from his cell to receive the
sacrament is represented on his knees, supported by devout attendants; in
each the officiating priest is in the act of administering to the dying
saint; the same clerical society fills the portico of the temple in both,
in both the scene is witnessed from above by infant angels.
The general opinion is in favour of the Pupil, but if in the economy of
the whole Domenichino surpasses his master, he appears to me greatly
inferiour both in the character and expression of the hero. Domenichino
has represented Piety scarcely struggling with decay, Agostino triumphant
over it, his saint becomes in the place where he is, a superiour being,
and is inspired by the approaching god: that of Domenichino seems divided
between resignation, mental and bodily imbecility and desire. The saint
of Agostino is a lion, that of Domenichino a lamb.
In the sacerdotal figure administering the viaticum, Domenichino has less
improved than corrected the unworthy choice of his master. The priest
of Agostino is one of the Frati Godenti of Dante, before they received
the infernal hood; a gross, fat, self-conceited terrestrial feature, a
countenance equally proof to elevation, pity or thought. The priest of
Domenichino is a minister of grace, stamped with the sacred humility that
characterized his master, and penetrated by the function of which he is
the instrument.
We are more impressed with the graces of youth than the energies of
manhood verging on age: in this respect, as well as that of contrast
with the decrepitude of St. Jerome, the placid contemplative beauty of
the young deacon on the fore-ground of Domenichino, will probably please
more, than the poetic trance of the assistant friar with the lighted
taper in the fore-ground of Agostino. This must however be observed, that
as Domenichino thought proper to introduce supernatural witnesses of the
ceremony in imitation of his master, their effect seems less ornamental
and more interwoven with the plan, by being perceived by the actors
themselves.
If the attendant characters in the picture of Agostino are more numerous,
and have on the whole, furnished the hints of admission to those of
Domenichino, this, with one exception, may be said to have used more
propriety and judgment in the choice. Both have introduced a man with a
turban, and opened a portico to characterise an Asiatic scene.
With regard to composition, Domenichino undoubtedly gains the palm. The
disposition on the whole he owes to his master, though he reversed it,
but he has cleared it of that oppressive bustle which rather involves and
crouds the principal actors in Agostino than attends them. He spreads
tranquillity with space and repose without vacuity.
With this corresponds the tone of the whole. The evening-freshness of an
oriental day tinges every part; the medium of Agostino partakes too much
of the fumigated inside of a catholic chapel.
The draperies of both are characteristic and unite subordination with
dignity, but their colour is chosen with more judgment by Domenichino,
the imbrowned gold and ample folds of the robe of the administering
priest are more genial than the cold blue, white and yellow on the priest
of his master; in both, perhaps, the white draperies on the fore-ground
figures have too little strength for the central colours, but it is more
perceived in Carracci than in Domenichino.
The forms of the saint in Carracci are grander and more ideal than in the
saint of Domenichino, some have even thought them too vigorous: both, in
my opinion are in harmony with the emotion of the face and expression
of either. The eagerness that animates the countenance of the one may
be supposed to spread a momentary vigour over his frame. The mental
dereliction of countenance in the other with equal propriety relaxes and
palsies the limbs which depend on it.
The colour of Carracci’s saint is much more characteristic of fleshy
though nearly bloodless substance, than that chosen by his rival, which
is withered, shrivelled, leathery in the lights, and earthy in the
shades; but the head of the officiating priest in Domenichino, whether
considered as a specimen of colour independent of the rest, or as set
off by it, for truth, tone, freshness, energy, is not only the best
Domenichino ever painted, but perhaps the best that can be conceived.
SIXTH LECTURE.
CHIAROSCURO.
Non sumum ex fulgore, sed ex sumo dare lucem.
Horat. de Arte Poet. I. 143.
ARGUMENT.
Definition.—Lionardo da Vinci.—Giorgione.—Antonio da Correggio.
SIXTH LECTURE.
The term Chiaroscuro, adopted from the Italian, in its primary and
simplest sense, means the division of a single object into light and
shade, and in its widest compass comprises their distribution over a
whole composition: whether the first derive its splendour by being
exposed to a direct light, or from colours in its nature luminous; and
whether the second owe their obscurity directly to the privation of
light, or be produced by colours in themselves opaque. Its exclusive
power is, to give substance to form, place to figure and to create
space. It may be considered as legitimate or spurious: it is legitimate
when, as the immediate offspring of the subject, its disposition,
extent, strength or sweetness are subservient to form, expression, and
invigourate or illustrate character, by heightening the primary actor
or actors, and subordinating the secondary; it is spurious when from an
assistant aspiring to the rights of a principal, it becomes a substitute
for indispensible or more essential demands. As such, it has often been
employed by the machinists of different schools, for whom it became
the refuge of ignorance, a palliative for an incurable disease, and
the asylum of emptiness; still, as even a resource of this kind proves
a certain vigour of mind, it surprises into something like unwilling
admiration and forced applause.
Of every subject Unity is the soul: unity, of course, is inseparable from
legitimate chiaroscuro: hence the individual light and shade of every
figure that makes part of a given or chosen subject, whether natural or
ideal, as well as the more compound one of the different intermediate
groups, must act as so many rays emanating from one centre and terminate,
blazing, evanescent, or obscured, in rounding it to the eye.
Truth is the next requisite of chiaroscuro, whatever be the subject.
Some it attends without ambition, content with common effects, some it
invigourates or inspires: but in either case, let the effect be that of
usual expanded day-light, or artificial and condensed, it ought to be
regulated by truth in extent, strength, brilliancy, softness and above
all, by simplicity in its positive and purity in its negative parts. As
shade is the mere absence of light, it cannot, except from reflexes,
possess any hue or colour of its own, and acquires all its charms from
transparency.
But to the rules which art prescribes to Chiaroscuro, to round each
figure of a composition with truth, to connect it with the neighbouring
groups, and both with the whole—it adds, that all this should be done
with strict adherence to propriety, at the least possible expence of
the subordinate parts, and with the utmost attainable degree of effect
and harmony—demands which it is not my duty to inquire, whether they
entered ever with equal evidence the mind of any one artist, ancient or
modern: whether, if it be granted possible that they did, they were ever
balanced with equal impartiality; and grant this, whether they ever were
or could be executed with equal felicity. A character of equal universal
power is not a human character—and the nearest approach to perfection
can only be in carrying to excellence one great quality with the least
alloy of defects. Thus in the School of Athens, Raffaello’s great aim
being to embody on the same scene, the gradations, varieties and utmost
point of human culture _as it proceeds from the individual to society,
and from that ascends to God_; he suffered expression and character to
preponderate over effect and combination of masses, and contriving to
unite the opposite wings with the centre by entrance and exit at each
extremity, as far as expression could do it, succeeded, to make what
in itself is little more than apposition of single figures or detached
groups, one grand whole.—I say, as far as expression could satisfy a mind
qualified to contemplate and penetrate his principle, however unsatisfied
a merely picturesque eye might wander over a scattered assemblage of
figures equally illuminated and unconnected by a commanding mass of light
and shade.
From this deficiency of effect in the composition we speak of, it is
evident, that mere natural light and shade, however separately or
individually true, is not always legitimate Chiaroscuro in art. Nature
sheds or withholds her ray indiscriminately, and every object has what
share it can obtain by place and position, which it is the business of
art to arrange by fixing a centre and distributing the rays according to
the more or less important claims of the subject: as long as it regulates
itself by strict observance of that principle, it matters not whether
its principal mass radiate from the middle, wind in undulating shapes,
dart in decided beams from the extremities; emanate from one source,
or borrow additional effect from subordinate ones: let it mount like
flame or descend in lightning; dash in stern tones terrour on the eye,
emergent from a dark or luminous medium; through twilight immerse itself
in impenetrable gloom or gradually vanish in voluptuous repose, guided by
the subject the most daring division of light and shade, becomes natural
and legitimate, and the most regular, spurious and illegitimate without
it.
To attain in the execution the highest possible and widest expanded
effect of light, with equal depth and transparence in the shade,
brilliancy of colour is less required than unison: a sovereign tone
must pervade the whole, which though arbitrary and dependent on choice,
decides all subordinate ones, as the tone of the first instrument in a
regular concert tunes all the rest; their effect intirely depends on
being in unison with it, and discord is produced whenever they revolt:
by thus uniting itself with the whole, the simplest tone well managed
may become, not only harmonious, but rich and splendid, it is then
the tone of nature: whilst the most brilliant one, if contradicted or
disappointed by the detail of the inferiour, may become heavy, leathern,
and discordant.
Though every work of Correggio is an illustration of this principle, and
none with brighter evidence than his ‘Notte,’ in which the central light
of the infant irradiates the whole; perhaps the most decisive, because
most appropriate proof of it is in its companion the less known picture
of St. Sebastian, at Dresden; in which the central light of a glory, not
only surprises the eye with all the splendour of a sun, though its colour
is a yellow comparatively faint, and terminates in brown, but tinges the
whole, perfectly transparent, with its emanation.
That not before the lapse of two hundred years after the resurrection of
Art, the discovery of Chiaroscuro, as a principle of beauty in single
figures and of effect in composition, should be awarded to Lionardo da
Vinci, a patriarch of that school which time has shewn of all others
the least inclined to appreciate its advantages, is at once a proof of
the singularity that marks the local distribution of powers, and of the
inconceivable slowness which attends human perception in the progress
of study: but without generally admitting what has been said with more
energy than judgment or regard to truth, that modern art literally sprang
from the loins of Lionardo, it must be granted that no work anterior or
contemporary with his essays in Chiaroscuro now exist to disprove his
claim to the first vision of its harmony; its magic lent the charm, by
which his females allure, to forms neither ideal nor much varied; sisters
of one family they attract by the light in which they radiate, by the
shade that veils them—for the features of Giotto’s or Memmi’s Madonnas or
virgin-saints floating in the same medium, would require little more to
be their equals.
This principle Lionardo seems seldom if ever to have extended to relieve
or recommend his larger compositions and male figures, if we except
the group of contending horsemen which made or was intended for some
part of his rival cartoon in the Sala del Consiglio: a knot of supreme
powers in Composition and Chiaroscuro; though, as we know it chiefly
from a copy of P. P. Rubens engraved by Edelinck, the gross evidence
of Flemish liberties taken with the style, makes it probable that the
original simplicity of light and shade has been invigourated by the
artificial contrasts of the copyist. Lionardo’s open scenery, tinged
with the glareless evenness of plain day-light, seldom warrants effects
so concentrated. Unostentatious gravity marks the characters of his Last
Supper, and in sober evening tones marked probably the Chiaroscuro of
the groups and scenery, if we may be allowed to form our judgment from
the little that remains unimpaired by the ravages of time and the more
barbarous ones of renovators.
To the discovery of central radiance the genius of Lionardo with equal
penetration added its counterpart, _purity_ of shade and the coalescence
of both through imperceptible demi-tints. Whatever tone of light he
chose, he never forgot that the shade intended to set it off, was
only its absence and not a positive colour, and that both were to be
harmonised by demi-tints composed of both; a principle of which no school
anterior to him has left a trace.
That the discovery of a principle big with advantages as obvious as
important to art should have been reserved for the penetration of
Lionardo, however singular, is less strange than that, when discovered
and its powers demonstrated, it should, with the exception of one name,
have not only met with no imitators, but with an ambiguous and even
discouraging reception from the pupils of his own school, and some next
allied to it. Vasari, his panegyrist rather than biographer, talks of it
more as a singular phænomenon than as an evident principle, and avowing
that he introduced a certain depth of shade into oil-painting, which
enabled succeeding artists to relieve their figures more forcibly[88],
persevered to discolour walls and pannels with washy flat insipidity.
Bartolomeo della Porta alone appears to have had sufficient compass of
mind to grasp its energy and connect it with colour: from him, through
Andrea del Sarto down to Pietro Berettini, who owed his effects rather
to opposition of tints than to legitimate Chiaroscuro, the Tuscan school
gradually suffered it to dwindle into evanescence. Unless we were to
consider its astonishing effects in some of Michael Angelo’s works in the
light of imitations rather than as emanations of his own genius; which
perhaps we are the less warranted to presume as he seems to have paid no
attention to Lionardo’s discovery in its brightest period; for the groups
of his celebrated cartoon exhibit little more than individual light and
shade.
What the Tuscan school treated with neglect the Roman appears not to
have been eager to adopt: if Raffaello did not remain a stranger to the
theories of Lionardo and Frà. Bartolomeo, he suffered the principle to
lie dormant; for no production of his during his intercourse with them
is marked by concentration of light or purity of shade or subordinate
masses: nor is the interval between his last departure from Florence
and his entrance of the Vatican discriminated by any visible progress
in massing and illuminating a whole: the upper and lower parts of the
dispute on the Sacrament, cut sheer asunder, as a whole, are little
relieved in either; and if the Parnassus and the school of Athens have
the beginning, middle, and end of legitimate Composition, they owe it to
expression and feeling; nor can the more vigorous display of Chiaroscuro
in the works of the second stanza, the Deliverance of Peter, the Fall of
Heliodorus, the Attila, the Mass of Bolsena be referred to a principle
of imitation, when we see it neglected in a subject where it might have
ruled with absolute sway, in the Incendio del Borgo, and on the whole in
every Composition of the third and fourth stanza; a series of evidence
that Raffaello considered Chiaroscuro as a subordinate vehicle, and
never suffered its blandishments or energies to absorb meaning or to
supplant expression and form[89]: but the harmony which immediately
after him Giulio Pipi, and Polydoro only excepted, the rest of his pupils
had sacrificed or consecrated to higher beauties, their successors, the
subsequent Roman school from the Zuccari through Giuseppo Cesari down to
C. Maratta, if they did not entirely lose in a heavy display of academic
pedantry, or destroy by the remorseless ‘bravura’ of mannered practice,
they uniformly polluted by bastard theories and adulterated methods of
shade.
When I say that the Roman school uniformly erred in their principle of
shade, I have not forgot M. Angelo da Caravaggio, whose darks are in
such perfect unison with the lights of his chiaroscuro, that A. Carracci
declared he did not grind colour but flesh itself for his tints (‘che
macinava carne’), and whom for that reason and on such authority I choose
rather to consider as the head of his own school than as the member of
another: in some of his surviving works, but far more frequently in those
which without sufficient authenticity are ascribed to him, an abrupt
transition from light to darkness, without an intervening demi-tint, has
offended the eye and provoked the sarcasm of an eminent critic: but as
long as the picture of the entombing of Christ in the Chiesa Nuova at
Rome may be appealed to; as long as the Pilgrim’s kneeling before the
Madonna with the child in her arms, of St. Agostino at Rome, shall retain
their tone; or the Infant Jesus, once in the Spada palace, crushing the
Serpent’s head, shall resist the ravages of time—it will be difficult to
produce in similar works of any other master or any other school, from
Lionardo down to Rembrandt, a system of chiaroscuro which shall equal
the severe yet mellow energy of the first; the departing evening ray and
veiled glow of the second; or, with unimpaired harmony, the bold decision
of masses and stern light and shade of the third.
The homage sparingly granted or callously refused to chiaroscuro by the
two schools of design was with implicit devotion paid to it by the nurse
of colour, the school of Venice. Whether as tradition on the authority
of Vasari maintains, they received it as a principle of imitation from
the perspicacity, or as a native discovery from the genius of Giorgione
Barbarelli, though from what has been advanced on both sides of the
question, it would be presumptuous positively to decide on either,
it must be allowed, that if the Venetian received a hint from the
Florentine, he extended it through a system, the harmony of which was all
his own, and excelled in breadth and amenity the light which it could not
surpass in splendour, added transparence to purity of shade, rounded by
reflexes and discovered by the contrast of deep with aërial colour, that
energy of effect which mere chiaroscuro could not have reached, and which
was carried near perfection by Paolo Cagliari.
Among the varied mischief poured into this country by the rapacious
sophistry of traders and the ambitious cullibility of wealthy collectors,
no hand perhaps has been more destructive to the genuine appreciation
of original styles than the baptism of pictures with names not their
own: by this prolific method worse ones than those of Luini, Aretusi,
Timoteo della Vite, Bonifacio, are daily graced with the honours due to
Lionardo, Correggio, Raffaello, Tiziàn; though none have suffered more by
the multiplication than Giorgione, whom shortness of life, a peculiar
fatality of circumstances, and the ravages of time, have conspired to
render one of the scarcest as well as least authenticated artists even
in Italy: to whom his earliest and latest biographers have been as
critically unjust as chronologically inattentive; Vasari by transferring
to another his principal work; Fiorillo by making him paint the portrait
of Calvin the Reformer.[90]
To form our opinion therefore of Giorgione’s chiaroscuro from a few
portraits or single figures, if legitimate, often restored, or from the
crumbling remnants of his decayed frescoes, would be to form an estimate
of a magnificent fabric from some loose fragment or stone: to do full
justice to his powers we must have recourse to his surprising work in the
school of St. Marco at Venice; a composition whose terrific graces Vasari
descants on with a fervour inferior only to the artist’s own inspiration,
though he unaccountably ascribes it to the elder Palma.[91]