--------------- In elegant design,
Improving nature: in ideas fair,
Or great, extracted from the fine antique;
In attitude, expression, airs divine;
Her sons of Rome and Florence bore the prize.
_Thomson_.
The sixteenth century was remarkable for the transcendant excellence
of the Italian painters; every city had its school, and each school
preserved a different style, distinguished for expression, grace or
dignity. By schools, we do not mean academies, for there were none
when these great men came forth ennobling nature: they studied in the
"academic groves" of the Arno and the Tiber, and were themselves the
establishers of those schools, that fettered genius with scholastic
rules, and from that day the arts began to decline; each succeeding
generation became imitators of the preceding one, and neglecting the
study of nature and the poetry of art, they fell into a manerism,
growing worse and worse down to their present puerile and meretricious
style. And here permit us to correct a very prevalent error, that
Italy at this day is distinguished far its living artists, when in
fact no country of Europe is so deficient in men eminent in sculpture
and painting; but for the present we will confine our remarks to the
masters of the sixteenth century and their unrivalled works.
For three centuries the palm of excellence has been awarded to Michael
Angelo for originality, to Raphael for correctness of design and
expression, to Titian for color, and Correggio for grace; but that in
which they all agree is sublimity. "This," says Longinus, "elevates
the mind above itself, and fills it with high conceptions and a noble
pride." The sources of the sublime he makes to consist of "boldness or
grandeur in thought, pathos, expression, and harmony of structure,"
and these characterize the works of the Italian masters, and place
them amongst the epics of the pencil. It is not, as pretended
connoisseurs assert, in the high relief, the wonderful foreshortening,
the boldness of the touch or fine finish, or even harmony of coloring,
that these works claim superior merit, for in all these the Dutch as a
school surpass them, but it is "in the grandeur of the thought, in the
pathos, expression and harmony of the whole."
Michael Angelo's originality and creative powers surpassed those of
all men, and his knowledge of the human figure constituted his praise
and his reproach, for in the desire to display his anatomical
learning, he overstepped the modesty of nature and exhibited his
figures with a muscular developement, disproportioned to the strength
required. In the Sistine Chapel, a little child holding the Cybeline
book, is represented with the arms of an infant Hercules; and in his
holy family at Florence, naked men are seen in the back ground at
gymnastic exercises, having no connection with, or reference to the
modesty of the subject; the execution of this picture is hard and the
color opaque. Well might he exclaim after finishing it, "Oil painting
is unworthy of men, I leave it to boys." Raphael was the boy against
whom this sarcasm was hurled, whose works in oil will long survive
_his_ frescos, and who freed from envy--that passion of little
minds--"thanked his maker that he had lived in the days of Michael
Angelo." But the _Last Judgment_ is the work on which M. Angelo's
reputation rests as a painter; it was the last he ever executed, and
is strongly impressed with the peculiar character of its author,
originality and vigor of thought, with incongruity of persons and
place. The son of man appears in wrath to take vengeance on his
enemies, and with an uplifted hand and frowning brows, seems to say
"depart, ye cursed into everlasting punishment," and they are tumbling
headlong down in every conceivable attitude; on the other hand the
righteous are rising to eternal life, in groups of a masterly design,
executed with such strength and simplicity as to convey the most
sublime ideas of the subject; but the improper mixture of mythological
fable and Christian faith detract much from its merit, and we are
scarcely less disgusted with Charon ferrying his boat in hell, than
with the angels playing with the cross in heaven; they are equally out
of keeping, and the whole scene is deficient in drapery--even the
blessed being stands exposed in the nudity of this frail tenement.
The work most justly to be brought in comparison with this, is the
_Transfiguration_ by Raphael. The subject is equally sublime, and
composed with equal simplicity. The whole scene rises before you with
such propriety of expression in every countenance, that it requires no
interpreter to know them; no trifling ornament diverts the attention
from the subject, and no idle levity detracts from the solemnity of
the occasion. Human infirmity is brought in strong contrast with
omnipotent power, and the mind is led by a natural gradation from our
dependance up to his goodness. An epileptic boy of interesting age is
supported in the arms of his father, and surrounded with friends and
relations, who bring him to the disciples to be healed, and the
imploring mother, the beautiful countenance of the sister, the anxious
parent and suffering boy, excite our sympathy, and we look to the
apostles for their miraculous power of healing, but their faith had
failed them; sweet charity remained, and
"Hope the comforter lingered yet below,"
as they point to the mount "from whence their help cometh." Following
the direction we behold the prostrate three, Peter, James and John,
veiling their faces in the ineffable presence; above, self-poised in
mid air and bright in the radiance of supernatural light, the "son of
man" is seen between Moses and Elias. It has been objected that there
are two subjects here in one picture, but they are so closely allied
in the history of the event, and simultaneous in time, that to
separate them would be to destroy the effect and interest of both;
nothing could be omitted without detracting from its merit, and
nothing added without impairing its grandeur; with the exception of
two men ascending the mount in sacerdotal robes, doubtless introduced
against the wish of the artist, to gratify some officious patron.
These two paintings may represent the schools of Rome and Florence,
and are justly esteemed the sublimest style of art. The former in
fresco, the latter in oil, and both unattractive by the beauty of
coloring or the magic of effect, but sublime in thought, expression
and design. In presenting these to the admiration of the amateur and
the study of the artist, we would not limit excellence to any one
manner, but on the contrary, reprehend those who see no beauty save in
a smoked antique, or in a modern English portrait, in the boldness of
Salvator Rosa or the finish of Carlo Dolci. These may be all beautiful
in their kind and have equal claims to admiration, though inferior in
sublimity of design.
The Venetian school revelled in the luxury of colors and feasted the
eye with the most harmonious arrangement of the brightest tints and
broadest light and shade; and some have supposed could these have been
added to the Roman school, it would have been the perfection of art,
but Sir Joshua Reynolds thought them incompatible, and it is not
without probability that a gayer dress would have detracted from the
simplicity and greatness of the Roman paintings, as would pearls in
the ears of a fine statue. If the Venetians therefore, were not so
sublime, they were more beautiful:
"To those of Venice. She the magic art
Of colors melting into colors gave.
Theirs too it was by one embracing mass
Of light and shade, that settles round the whole,
Or varies, tremulous, from part to part,
O'er all a binding harmony to throw,
To raise the picture and repose the sight."
Of these, Titian stands pre-eminent in the truth of nature and the
choice of the beautiful; a refinement is impressed on every product of
his pencil, and from the portrait of Charles the 5th to the assumption
of the Madonna at Venice, (his greatest work) there is a nobleness of
air, an elevation of thought above common men or common things; it was
this, not less than the truth of his coloring, that employed his
pencil upon so many crowned and noble heads; his carnations glowed
with the freshness of life, neither erring with too much of the
blossom of the rose or the yellow of the marigold, and it is probable
from his works, Fresnoy drew that admirable precept:
"He that would color well, must color bright,
Hope not that praise to gain by sickly white."
Correggio comes next in the scale of excellence, who with less truth
of color than the Venetians, or greatness of design than the Romans,
surpassed them all in _grace_, that indescribable "_je ne sais quoi_,"
so delightful in the movements of some persons, and equally opposed to
the rules of polished society and clownish rusticity. His figures
repose with a nature unstudied, and his children play with an infant's
artless innocence--though frequently homely in feature and badly
drawn, they irresistibly charm the learned and the simple, and command
at once the highest admiration and the highest price.[1] His finest
work is probably the St. Jerome at Parma, so called from this saint's
forming one figure in the group, with the infant Saviour, his mother,
and Mary Magdalene. The anachronism of thus introducing persons who
lived at different eras, did not affect the minds of good Catholics
three centuries since, more than the same discrepancy does the modern
reader of Anacharsis.
[Footnote 1: A Holy Family, only 9½ by 13 inches in the national
gallery in England, was purchased for 3000 guineas.]