which conducts the body of S. Mark through a horrible tempest,
with other barges assailed by furious winds; and besides,
groups of aërial apparitions, and various forms of fiends
who vent their blasts against the vessels, that by dint of
oars and energy of arms strive to force their way through the
mountainous and hostile waves which threaten to submerge them.
You hear the howling blast, you see the grasp and fiery exertion
of the men, the fluctuation of the waves, the lightning that
bursts the clouds, the oars bent by the flood, the flood broke
by the oars, and dashed to spray by the sinews of the rowers.
What more? In vain I labour to recollect a picture that equals
the terrours of this, whose design, invention, and colour
make the canvass tremble! Often when he finishes, an artist,
absorbed in the contemplation of parts, forgets the main
point of a design, and as the spirits cool, loses the vein
of his enthusiasm; but this man never losing sight of the
subject, guided his conceit to perfection.’
The effect of this work, when it drew such a stream of eulogy from lips
else so frugal in Venetian praise, may be guessed at from the impression
it makes in its present decay—for even now, it might defy the competition
of the most terrific specimens in chiaroscuro, the boat of Charon in
M. Angelo’s Last Judgment, perhaps only excepted. Yet its master was
defrauded of its glory by his panegyrist, whilst it was exciting the
wonder and curiosity of every beholder: Lanzi is the only historian who
notices its remains, and the real author[92]; we look in vain for it
in Ridolfi, who in his Life of Giorgione treats us instead of it with
a delectable account of a night-piece which he painted, exhibiting the
tragi-comedy of castrating a cat.
It has been treated as a mistake to confine the chiaroscuro of a subject
exclusively to one source; nor can it be doubted that often it is and
has been proved to be both necessary and advantageous to admit more;
this is however a licence to be granted with considerable caution, and
it appears to be the privilege of superiour powers to raise a subject,
by the admission of subordinate, sometimes diverging, sometimes opposite
streams of light, to assist and invigourate the effect of the primary
one, without impairing that unity which, alone can ensure a breadth of
effect, without which each part, for mastery striving, soon would be
lost in confusion, or crumble into fragments. The best instances of the
advantages gained by the superinduction of artificial light, appear to
be the Pietro Martire and the S. Lorenzo of Tiziano; if selection can
be made from the works of a master, where to count is to choose. In the
first, the stern light of evening far advanced in the back-ground, is
commanded by the celestial emanation bursting from above, wrapping the
summit in splendour, and diffusing itself in rays more or less devious
over the scenery. The subject of S. Lorenzo, a nocturnal scene, admits
light from two sources—the fire beneath the saint, and a raised torch:
but receives its principal splendour from the aërial reflex of the vision
on high, which sheds its mitigating ray on the martyr.
The nocturnal studies of Tintoretto from models and artificial groups
have been celebrated: these, prepared in wax or clay, he arranged,
raised, suspended, to produce masses, foreshortening, and variety of
effect: it was thence he acquired that decision of chiaroscuro unknown
to more expanded day-light, by which he divided his bodies, and those
wings of obscurity and light by which he separated the groups of his
composition, though the mellowness of his eye nearly always instructed
him to connect the two extremes by something intermediate that partook
of both, as the extremes themselves by reflexes with the back-ground or
the scenery. The general rapidity of his process, by which he baffled his
competitors and often overwhelmed himself, did not indeed always permit
him to attend deliberately to this principle, and often hurried him into
an abuse of practice, which in the lights turned breadth into mannered
or insipid flatness, and in the shadows into total extinction of parts:
of all this, he has in the schools of S. Rocco and Marco given the most
unquestionable instances; the Resurrection of Christ and the Massacre of
the Innocents, comprehend every charm by which chiaroscuro fascinates its
votaries: in the vision, dewy dawn melts into deep but pellucid shade,
itself rent or reflected by celestial splendor and angelic hues: whilst
in the Infant-massacre at Bethlehem alternate sheets of stormy light, and
agitated gloom, dash horrour on the astonished eye.
He pursued, however, another method to create, without more assistance
from chiaroscuro than individual light and shade, an effect equivalent
and perhaps superiour to what the utmost stretch of its powers could
have produced, in the crucifixion of the Albergo, or guest-room of S.
Rocco, the largest and most celebrated of his works. The multitudinous
rabble dispersed over that picture, (for such, rather than composition,
one group excepted, that assemblage of accidental figures deserves to
be called), he connected by a sovereign tone, ingulphing the whole in
one mass of ominous twilight, an eclipse, or what precedes a storm, or
hurricane, or earthquake; nor suffering the captive eye to rest on any
other object than the faint gleam hovering over the head of the Saviour
in the centre, and in still fainter tones dying on the sainted group
gathered beneath the cross. Yet this nearly superhuman contrivance
which raises above admiration a work whose incongruous parts else must
have sunk it beneath mediocrity, Agostino Carracci in his print, with
chalcographic callus, has totally overlooked; for notwithstanding the
iron sky that overhangs the whole, he has spread, if not sunshine, the
most declared day-light from end to end, nor left the eye uninformed of
one motley article, or one blade of grass.
With Iacopo Robusti may be named, though adopted by another school,
Belisario Corenzio an Achæan Greek, his pupil, his imitator in the magic
of chiaroscuro, and with still less compunction his rival in dispatch
and rapidity of hand: the immense compositions in which he overflowed,
he encompassed, and carried to irresistible central splendour by streams
of shade, and hemmed his glories in with clouds, or showery, or pregnant
with thunder. The monasteries and churches of Naples and its dependencies
abound in his frescos.
The more adscititious effects of chiaroscuro produced by the opposition
of dark to lucid, opaque to transparent bodies, and cold to warm tints,
though fully understood by the whole Venetian school, were nearly carried
to perfection by Paolo Cagliari. There is no variety of harmonious or
powerful combination in the empire of colour, as a substitute of light
and shade, which did not emanate from his eye, variegate his canvas, and
invigourate his scenery. Many of his works, however, and principally
the masses scattered over his suppers, prove that he was master of
that legitimate chiaroscuro which, independent of colour, animates
composition: but the gaiety of his mind which inspired him with subjects
of magnificence and splendour, of numerous assemblies canopied by serene
skies or roving lofty palaces, made him seek his effects oftener in
opposed tints, than in powerful depths of light and shade.
But all preceding, contemporary, and subsequent schools, with their
united powers of chiaroscuro, were far excelled both in compass and
magnitude of its application by the genius of Antonio Allegri from the
place of his nativity, surnamed Correggio. To them light and shade was
only necessary as the more or less employed, or obedient attendant on
design, composition and colour: but design, composition and colour, were
no more than the submissive vehicles, or inchanted ministers of its
charms to Correggio. If, strictly speaking, he was not the inventor of
its element, he fully spanned its measure, and expanded the powers of its
harmony through Heaven and earth; in his eye and hand it became the organ
of sublimity; the process of his cupolas made it no longer a question
whether an art circumscribed by lines and figure could convey ideas of
reality and immensity at once. Entranced by his spell, and lap’d in his
elysium, we are not aware of the wide difference between the conception
of the medium, the place, space and mode in which certain beings ought,
or may be supposed to move, and that of those beings themselves; and
forget, though fully adequate to the first, that Correggio was unequal
to the second; that though he could build Heaven he could not people it.
If M. Agnolo found in the depth of his mind and in grandeur of line the
means of rendering the immediate effect of will and power intuitive in
the creation of Adam, by darting life from the finger of Omnipotence, the
coalition of light and darkness opened to the entranced eye of Correggio
the means of embodying the Mosaic. ‘Let there be light,’ and created
light in that stream of glory which, issuing from the divine infant in
his Notte, proclaims a god. If Thought be personified in the prophets
and Sybils of the Sistine chapel, he has made silence audible in the
slumbering twilight that surrounds the Zingara; and filled the gloom
which enbosoms Jupiter and Io, with the whispers of Love.
And though perhaps we should be nearer truth by ascribing the cause of
Correggio’s magic to the happy conformation of his organs, and his calm
serenity of mind, than to Platonic ecstacies, a poet might at least be
allowed to say ‘that his soul, absorbed by the contemplation of infinity,
soared above the sphere of measurable powers, knowing that every object
whose limits can be distinctly perceived by the mind, must be within
its grasp; and however grand, magnificent, beautiful or terrific, fall
short of the conception itself, and be less than sublime.’—In this,
from whatever cause, consists the real spell of Correggio—which neither
Parmegiano nor Annibale Carracci seem to have been able to penetrate:
the Bolognese certainly not; for if we believe himself in his letters to
Ludovico, expressive of his emotions at the first sight of Correggio’s
cupolas, he confines his admiration to the foreshortening and grace of
forms, the successful imitation of flesh, and rigorous perspective.
Of Correggio’s numerous pretending imitators Lodovico Carracci appears
to be the only one who penetrated his principle: the axiom, that the
less the traces appear of the means, by which a work has been produced,
the more it resembles the operations of nature, is not an axiom likely
to spring from the infancy of art. The even colour, veiled splendour,
the solemn twilight; that tone of devotion and cloistered meditation,
which Lodovico Carracci spread over his works could arise only from the
contemplation of some preceding style, analogous to his own feelings
and its comparison with nature, and where could that be met with in
a degree equal to what he found in the infinite unity and variety of
Correggio’s effusions? They inspired his frescos in the cloisters of St.
Michele in Bosco: the foreshortenings of the muscular labourers at the
Hermitage, and of the ponderous dæmon that mocks their toil, the warlike
splendour in the homage of Totila, the nocturnal conflagration of Monte
Cassino, the wild graces of deranged beauty, and the insidious charms
of the sister nymphs in the garden scene, equally proclaim the pupil of
Correggio.
His triumph in oil is the altar piece of St. John preaching in a chapel
of the Certosa at Bologna, whose lights seem embrowned by a golden veil,
and the shadowy gleam of Vallombrosa; though he sometimes indulged in
tones austere, pronounced and hardy: such is the Flagellation of Christ
in the same church, whose tremendous depth of flesh-tints contrasts the
open wide-expanded sky, and less conveys than dashes its terrours on the
astonished sense.
The Schools of Bologna, Parma, Milano, with more or less geniality,
imitated their predecessors, but added no new features to the theory
of light and shade.—As to its progress on this side of the Alps, it is
better to say nothing than little on the wide range of Rubens and the
miracles of Rembrandt.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES
[1] There will be an opportunity to notice that incredible dereliction of
reminiscence which prompted him to transfer what he had rightly ascribed
to Giorgione, in the Florentine edition, 1550, to the elder Palma in the
subsequent ones. See Lecture on Chiaroscuro.
[2] It ought not, however, to be disguised, that the history of art,
deviating from its real object, has been swelled to a diffuse catalogue
of individuals, who, being the nurslings of different schools, or
picking something from the real establishers of art, have done little
more than repeat or mimic rather than imitate, at second hand, what
their masters or predecessors had found in nature, discriminated and
applied to art in obedience to its dictates. Without depreciating the
merits of that multitude who strenuously passed life in following
others, it must be pronounced a task below history to allow them more
than a transitory glance; neither novelty nor selection and combination
of scattered materials, are entitled to serious attention from him who
only investigates the real progress of art, if novelty is proved to have
added nothing essential to the system, and selection to have only diluted
energy, and by a popular amalgama to have been content with captivating
the vulgar. Novelty, without enlarging the circle of fancy, may delight,
but is nearer allied to whim than to invention; and an Ecclectic system
without equality of parts, as it originated in want of comprehension,
totters on the brink of mediocrity, sinks art, or splits it into crafts
decorated with the specious name of schools, whose members, authorised
by prescript, emboldened by dexterity of hand, encouraged by ignorance,
or heading a cabal, subsist on mere repetition, with few more legitimate
claims to the honours of history than a rhapsodist to those of the poem
which he recites.
[3] Abstract of the Laws of the Royal Academy, article _Professors_: page
21.
[4] This has been done in a superior manner by J. G. Herder, in his
_Ideen zur Philosophie der geschichte der Menschheit_, Vol. iii. Book 13,
a work translated under the title of _Outlines of a Philosophy of the
History of Man_, 4to.
[5] This account is founded on the conjectures of Mr. _Riem_, in his
Treatise on _die Malerey der Alten_, or the _Painting of the Ancients_,
4to. Berlin, 1787.
[6] Pausanias Attic, c. xxviii. The word used by Pausanias καταγραψαι,
shews that the figures of Parrhasius were intended for a Bassorelievo.
They were in profile. This is the sense of the word _Catagrapha_ in
Pliny, xxxv. c. 8. he translates it “obliquas imagines.”
[7] By the authority chiefly of Pamphilus the master of Apelles, who
taught at Sicyon. ‘Hujus auctoritate,’ says Pliny, xxxv. 10. ‘effectum
est Sicyone primum, deinde et in tota Græcia, ut pueri ingenui ante omnia
_diagraphicen_, hoc est, picturam in buxo, docerentur,’ &c. _Harduin_,
contrary to the common editions, reads indeed, and by the authority, he
says, of all the MSS. _graphicen_, which he translates: ars ‘delineandi,’
desseigner, but he has not proved that graphice means not more than
design; and if he had, what was it that Pamphilus taught? he was not the
inventor of what he had been taught himself. He established or rather
renewed a particular method of drawing, which contained the rudiments,
and facilitated the method of painting.
[8] Pausan. Phocica, c. xxv. seq.
[9] This I take to be the sense of Μεγεθος here, which distinguished
him, according to Ælian, Var. Hist. iv. 3. from Dionysius of Colophon.
The word Τελειοις in the same passage: και ἐν τοις τελειοις ἐιργαζετο
τα ἀθλα, I translate: _he aimed at, he sought his praise in the
representation of essential proportion_; which leads to ideal beauty.
The κρειττους, χειρους, ὁμοιους; or the βελτιονας ἦ καθ’ ἡμας, ἦκαι
τοιουτους, ἠ χειρονας, of Aristotle, Poetic. c. 2. by which he
distinguishes Polygnotus, Dionysius, Pauson, confirms the sense given to
the passage of Ælian.
[10] παρειῶν το ἐνερευθες, ὁιαν την Κασσανδραν ἐν τη λεσχη ἐποιησε τοις
Δελφοις. Lucian: ειχονες. This, and what Pausanias tells of the colour
of Eurynomus in the same picture, together with the coloured draperies
mentioned by Pliny; makes it evident, that the ‘simplex color’ ascribed
by Quintilian to Polygnotus and Aglaophon, implies less a single colour,
as some have supposed, than that simplicity always attendant on the
infancy of painting, which leaves every colour unmixed and crudely by
itself. Indeed the _Poecile_ (ἡ ποικιλη στοα) which obtained its name
from his pictures, is alone a sufficient proof of variety of colours.
[11] Hic primus species exprimere instituit, Pliny, xxxv. 96. as
_species_ in the sense Harduin takes it, ‘oris et habitus venustas,’
cannot be refused to Polygnotus, and the artists immediately preceding
Apollodorus, it must mean here the subdivisions of generic form; the
classes.
At this period we may with probability fix the invention of local colour,
and tone; which, though strictly speaking it be neither the light nor the
shade, is regulated by the medium which tinges both. This, Pliny calls
‘splendour.’ To Apollodorus Plutarch ascribes likewise the invention
of tints, the mixtures of colour and the gradations of shade, if I
conceive the passage rightly: Ἀπολλοδωρος ὁ Ζωγραφος Ἀνθρωπων πρωτος
ἐξευρων φθοραν και ἀποχρωσιν Σκιας, (Plutarch, Bellone an pace Ath, &c.
346.) This was the element of the ancient Αρμογη, that imperceptible
transition, which, without opacity, confusion or hardness, united local
colour, demi-tint, shade and reflexes.
[12] ‘Pinxit et monochromata ex albo.’ Pliny, xxxv. 9. This Aristotle,
Poet. c. 6. calls λευκογραφειν.
[13] In lineis extremis palmam adeptus——minor tamen videtur, sibi
comparatus, in mediis corporibus exprimendis. Pliny, xxxv. 10. Here we
find the inferiority of the middle parts merely relative to himself.
Compared with himself, Parrhasius was not all equal.
[14] Theseus, in quo dixit, eundem apud Parrhasium rosa pastum esse, suum
vero carne. Plin. xxxv. 11.
[15] The epithet which he gave to himself of Ἀβροδιαιτος, the delicate,
the elegant, and the epigram he is said to have composed on himself, are
known: See Athenæus, l. xii. He wore, says Ælian, Var. Hist. ix. 11.
a purple robe and a golden garland; he bore a staff wound round with
tendrils of gold, and his sandals were tied to his feet and ancles with
golden straps. Of his easy simplicity we may judge from his dialogue
with Socrates in Xenophon; ἀπομνημονευατων, 1. iii. Of his libidinous
fancy, beside what Pliny says, from his Archigallus, and the Meleager and
Atalanta mentioned by Suetonius in Tiberio, c. 44.
[16] In the portico of the Piræus by Leochares; in the hall of the
Five-hundred, by Lyson: in the back portico of the Ceramicus there
was a picture of Theseus, of Democracy and the Demos, by Euphranor.
Pausan. Attic. i. 3. Aristolaus, according to Pliny was a painter, ‘e
severissimis.’
[17] Cicero Oratore, 73, seq.—In alioque ponatur, aliudque totum sit,
utrum _decere_ an _oportere_ dicas; _oportere_ enim, perfectionem
declarat officii, quo et semper utendum est, et omnibus: _decere_, quasi
aptum esse, consentaneumque tempori et personæ; quod cum in factis
sæpissime, tum in dictis valet, in vultu denique, et gestu, et incessu.
Contraque item _dedecere_. Quod si poeta fugit, ut maximum vitium, qui
peccat, etiam, cum probam orationem affingit improbo, stultove sapientis:
si denique pictor ille vicit, cum immolanda Iphigenia tristis Calchas
esset, mæstior Ulysses, moereret Menelaus, obvolvendum caput Agamemnonis
esse, quoniam summum ilium luctum penicillo, non posset imitari: si
denique histrio, quid deceat quærit: quid faciendum oratori putemus?
M. F. Quintilianus, 1. ii. c. 14.—Operienda sunt quædam, sive ostendi non
debent, sive exprimi _pro dignitate_ non possunt: ut fecit Timanthes,
ut opinor, Cithnius, in ea tabula qua Coloten tejum vicit. Nam cum in
Iphigeniæ immolatione pinxisset tristem Calchantem, tristiorem Ulyssem,
addidisset Menelao quem summum poterat ars efficere Moerorem, consumptis
affectibus, non reperiens quo _digne_ modo Patris vultum possit
exprimere, velavit ejus caput, et sui cuique animo dedit æstimandum.
It is evident to the slightest consideration, that both Cicero and
Quintilian lose sight of their premises, and contradict themselves in
the motive they ascribe to Timanthes. Their want of acquaintance with
the nature of plastic expression made them imagine the face of Agamemnon
beyond the power of the artist. They were not aware that by making him
waste expression on inferior actors at the expence of a principal one,
they call him an improvident spendthrift and not a wise œconomist.
From Valerius Maximus, who calls the subject ‘Luctuosum _immolatæ_
Iphigeniæ sacrificium’ instead of _immolandæ_, little can be expected to
the purpose. Pliny, with the _digne_ of Quintilian has the same confusion
of motive.
[18] It is observed by an ingenious Critic, that in the tragedy of
Euripides, the procession is described, and upon Iphigenia’s looking back
on her father, he groans, and hides his face to conceal his tears; whilst
the picture gives the moment that precedes the sacrifice, and the hiding
has a different object and arises from another impression.
——————ὡς δ’ εσειδεν Αγαμεμνων αναξ
ἐπι σφαγας στειχουσαν ἐις ἀλσος κορην
ἀνεστεναξε. Καμπαλιν στρεψας καρα
Δακρυα προηγεν. ὀμματων πεπλον προθεις.
[19] Pliny, l. xxxv. c. 18.
[20] Lysippum Sicyonium—audendi rationem cepisse pictoris Eupompi
responso. Eum enim interrogatum, quem sequeretur antecedentium, dixisse
demonstrata hominum multitudine, naturam ipsam imitandam esse, non
artificem. Non habet Latinum nomen symmetria, quam diligentissime
custodivit, nova intactaque ratione quadratas veterum staturas
permutando: Vulgoque dicebat, ab illis factos, quales essent, homines: a
se, quales viderentur esse. Plin. xxxiv. 8.
[21] Μαλλον δε Ἀπελλης ὁ Ἐφεσιος παλαι ταυτην προῦλαβε την ἐικονα· Και
γας ἀυ και ὁυτος διαβληθεις προς Πτολεμαιον——
Λουκιανου περι του μ. ῤ. Π. Τ. Δ.
[22] Apelles was probably the inventor of what artists call _glazing_.
See Reynolds on Du Fresnoy, note 37. vol. iii.
[23] In matri interfectæ infante miserabiliter blandiente. Plin. 1.
xxxiv. c. 9.
[24] A design of Raphael, representing the lues of the Trojans in Creta,
known by the print of Marc Antonio Raymondi.
[25] Reynolds’ Disc. V. vol. i p. 120. Euphranoris Alexander Paris est:
in quo laudatur quod omnia simul intelligantur, judex dearum, amator
Helenæ, et tamen Achillis interfector. Plin. 1. xxxiv. 8.
[26] See the Hymn (ascribed to Homer) on Apollo.
[27] See the account of this in Vasari; vita di P. Brunelleschi, tom. ii.
114. It is of wood, and still exists in the chapel of the family Gondi,
in the church of S. Maria Novella. I know that near a century before
Donato, Giotto is said to have worked in marble two bassorelievos on the
campanile of the cathedral of Florence; they probably excel the style of
his pictures, as much as the bronze works executed by Andrea Pisano, from
his designs, at the door of the Battisterio.
[28] Masaccio da S. Giovanni di Valdarno born in 1402, is said to have
died in 1443. He was the pupil of Masolino da Panicale.
[29] Andrea Mantegna died at Mantoua, 1505. A monument erected to his
memory in 1517, by his sons, gave rise to the mistake of dating his death
from that period.
[30] Luca Signorelli died at Cortona 1521, aged 82.
[31] Lionardo da Vinci is said to have died in 1517, aged 75, at Paris.
[32] The flying birds of paste, the lions filled with lilies, the
lizards with dragons wings, horned and silvered over, savour equally of
the boy and the quack. It is singular enough that there exists not the
smallest hint of Lorenzo de Medici having employed or noticed a man of
such powers and such early celebrity; the legend which makes him go to
Rome with Juliano de Medici at the access of Leo X, to accept employment
in the Vatican, whether sufficiently authentic or not, furnishes a
characteristic trait of the man. The Pope passing through the room
allotted for the pictures, and instead of designs and cartoons, finding
nothing but an apparatus of distillery, of oils and varnishes, exclaimed,
_Oimè costui non è per far nulla, da che comincia a pensare alla fine
innanzi il principio dell’ opera!_ From an admirable sonnet of Lionardo,
preserved by Lomazzo, he appears to have been sensible of the inconstancy
of his own temper, and full of wishes, at least, to correct it.