To the Greek climate we owe the production of TASTE, and from thence
it spread at length over all the politer world. Every invention,
communicated by foreigners to that nation, was but the feed of what it
became afterwards, changing both its nature and size in a country,
chosen, as _Plato_[1] says, by Minerva, to be inhabited by the Greeks, as
productive of every kind of genius.
But this TASTE was not only original among the Greeks, but seemed also
quite peculiar to their country: it seldom went abroad without loss; and
was long ere it imparted its kind influences to more distant climes.
It was, doubtless, a stranger to the northern zones, when Painting and
Sculpture, those offsprings of Greece, were despised there to such a
degree, that the most valuable pieces of _Corregio_ served only for
blinds to the windows of the royal stables at Stockholm.
There is but one way for the moderns to become great, and perhaps
unequalled; I mean, by imitating the antients. And what we are told of
_Homer_, that whoever understands him well, admires him, we find no less
true in matters concerning the antient, especially the Greek arts. But
then we must be as familiar with them as with a friend, to find Laocoon
as inimitable as _Homer_. By such intimacy our judgment will be that
of _Nicomachus_: _Take these eyes_, replied he to some paltry critick,
censuring the Helen of Zeuxis, _Take my eyes, and she will appear a
goddess_.
With such eyes _Michael Angelo_, _Raphael_, and _Poussin_, considered
the performances of the antients. They imbibed taste at its source; and
Raphael particularly in its native country. We know, that he sent young
artists to Greece, to copy there, for his use, the remains of antiquity.
An antient Roman statue, compared to a Greek one, will generally appear
like _Virgil_’s Diana amidst her Oreads, in comparison of the Nausicaa of
_Homer_, whom he imitated.
Laocoon was the standard of the Roman artists, as well as ours; and the
rules of _Polycletus_ became the rules of art.
I need not put the reader in mind of the negligences to be met with in
the most celebrated antient performances: the Dolphin at the feet of
the Medicean Venus, with the children, and the Parerga of the Diomedes
by _Dioscorides_, being commonly known. The reverse of the best Egyptian
and Syrian coins seldom equals the head, in point of workmanship. Great
artists are wisely negligent, and even their errors instruct. Behold
their works as _Lucian_ bids you behold the Zeus of _Phidias_; _Zeus
himself, not his footstool_.
It is not only _Nature_ which the votaries of the Greeks find in their
works, but still more, something superior to nature; ideal beauties,
brain-born images, as _Proclus_ says[2].
The most beautiful body of ours would perhaps be as much inferior to the
most beautiful Greek one, as Iphicles was to his brother Hercules. The
forms of the Greeks, prepared to beauty, by the influence of the mildest
and purest sky, became perfectly elegant by their early exercises. Take
a Spartan youth, sprung from heroes, undistorted by swaddling-cloths;
whose bed, from his seventh year, was the earth, familiar with wrestling
and swimming from his infancy; and compare him with one of our young
Sybarits, and then decide which of the two would be deemed worthy, by
an artist, to serve for the model of a Theseus, an Achilles, or even a
Bacchus. The latter would produce a Theseus fed on roses, the former a
Theseus fed on flesh, to borrow the expression of _Euphranor_.
The grand games were always a very strong incentive for every Greek youth
to exercise himself. Whoever aspired to the honours of these was obliged,
by the laws, to submit to a trial of ten months at Elis, the general
rendezvous; and there the first rewards were commonly won by youths, as
_Pindar_ tells us.[3]_To be like the God-like Diagoras_, was the fondest
wish of every youth.
Behold the swift Indian outstripping in pursuit the hart: how briskly his
juices circulate! how flexible, how elastic his nerves and muscles! how
easy his whole frame! Thus _Homer_ draws his heroes, and his Achilles he
eminently marks for “being swift of foot.”
By these exercises the bodies of the Greeks got the great and manly
Contour observed in their statues, without any bloated corpulency. The
young Spartans were bound to appear every tenth day naked before the
Ephori, who, when they perceived any inclinable to fatness, ordered them
a scantier diet; nay, it was one of _Pythagoras_’s precepts, to beware of
growing too corpulent; and, perhaps for the same reason, youths aspiring
to wrestling-games were, in the remoter ages of Greece, during their
trial, confined to a milk diet.
They were particularly cautious in avoiding every deforming custom; and
_Alcibiades_, when a boy, refusing to learn to play on the flute, for
fear of its discomposing his features, was followed by all the youth of
Athens.
In their dress they were professed followers of nature. No modern
stiffening habit, no squeezing stays hindered Nature from forming easy
beauty; the fair knew no anxiety about their attire, and from their loose
and short habits the Spartan girls got the epithet of Phænomirides.
We know what pains they took to have handsome children, but want to be
acquainted with their methods: for certainly _Quillet_, in his Callipædy,
falls short of their numerous expedients. They even attempted changing
blue eyes to black ones, and games of beauty were exhibited at Elis, the
rewards consisting of arms consecrated to the temple of Minerva. How
could they miss of competent and learned judges, when, as _Aristotle_
tells us, the Grecian youths were taught drawing expressly for that
purpose? From their fine complexion, which, though mingled with a vast
deal of foreign blood, is still preserved in most of the Greek islands,
and from the still enticing beauty of the fair sex, especially at Chios;
we may easily form an idea of the beauty of the former inhabitants, who
boasted of being Aborigines, nay, more antient than the moon.
And are not there several modern nations, among whom beauty is too common
to give any title to pre-eminence? Such are unanimously accounted the
Georgians and the Kabardinski in the Crim.
Those diseases which are destructive of beauty, were moreover unknown to
the Greeks. There is not the least hint of the small-pox, in the writings
of their physicians; and _Homer_, whose portraits are always so truly
drawn, mentions not one pitted face. Venereal plagues, and their daughter
the English malady, had not yet names.
And must we not then, considering every advantage which nature bestows,
or art teaches, for forming, preserving, and improving beauty, enjoyed
and applied by the Grecians; must we not then confess, there is the
strongest probability that the beauty of their persons excelled all we
can have an idea of?
Art claims liberty: in vain would nature produce her noblest offsprings,
in a country where rigid laws would choak her progressive growth, as
in Egypt, that pretended parent of sciences and arts: but in Greece,
where, from their earliest youth, the happy inhabitants were devoted to
mirth and pleasure, where narrow-spirited formality never restrained the
liberty of manners, the artist enjoyed nature without a veil.
The Gymnasies, where, sheltered by public modesty, the youths exercised
themselves naked, were the schools of art. These the philosopher
frequented, as well as the artist. _Socrates_ for the instruction of a
Charmides, Autolycus, Lysis; _Phidias_ for the improvement of his art
by their beauty. Here he studied the elasticity of the muscles, the
ever varying motions of the frame, the outlines of fair forms, or the
Contour left by the young wrestler on the sand. Here beautiful nakedness
appeared with such a liveliness of expression, such truth and variety of
situations, such a noble air of the body, as it would be ridiculous to
look for in any hired model of our academies.
Truth springs from the feelings of the heart. What shadow of it therefore
can the modern artist hope for, by relying upon a vile model, whose soul
is either too base to feel, or too stupid to express the passions, the
sentiment his object claims? unhappy he! if experience and fancy fail him.
The beginning of many of _Plato_’s dialogues, supposed to have been held
in the Gymnasies, cannot raise our admiration of the generous souls
of the Athenian youth, without giving us, at the same time, a strong
presumption of a suitable nobleness in their outward carriage and bodily
exercises.
The fairest youths danced undressed on the theatre; and _Sophocles_, the
great _Sophocles_, when young, was the first who dared to entertain his
fellow-citizens in this manner. _Phryne_ went to bathe at the Eleusinian
games, exposed to the eyes of all Greece, and rising from the water
became the model of Venus Anadyomene. During certain solemnities the
young Spartan maidens danced naked before the young men: strange this may
seem, but will appear more probable, when we consider that the christians
of the primitive church, both men and women, were dipped together in the
same font.
Then every solemnity, every festival, afforded the artist opportunity to
familiarize himself with all the beauties of Nature.
In the most happy times of their freedom, the humanity of the Greeks
abhorred bloody games, which even in the Ionick Asia had ceased long
before, if, as some guess, they had once been usual there. _Antiochus
Epiphanes_, by ordering shews of Roman gladiators, first presented them
with such unhappy victims; and custom and time, weakening the pangs of
sympathizing humanity, changed even these games into schools of art.
There _Ctesias_ studied his dying gladiator, in whom you might descry
“how much life was still left in him[4].”
These frequent occasions of observing Nature, taught the Greeks to go on
still farther. They began to form certain general ideas of beauty, with
regard to the proportions of the inferiour parts, as well as of the whole
frame: these they raised above the reach of mortality, according to the
superiour model of some ideal nature.
Thus _Raphael_ formed his Galatea, as we learn by his letter to Count
Baltazar Castiglione[5], where he says, “Beauty being so seldom found
among the fair, I avail myself of a certain ideal image.”
According to those ideas, exalted above the pitch of material models, the
Greeks formed their gods and heroes: the profile of the brow and nose of
gods and goddesses is almost a streight line. The same they gave on their
coins to queens, &c. but without indulging their fancy too much. Perhaps
this profile was as peculiar to the antient Greeks, as flat noses and
little eyes to the Calmucks and Chinese; a supposition which receives
some strength from the large eyes of all the heads on Greek coins and
gems.
From the same ideas the Romans formed their Empresses on their coins.
Livia and Agrippina have the profile of Artemisia and Cleopatra.
We observe, nevertheless, that the Greek artists in general, submitted to
the law prescribed by the Thebans: “To do, under a penalty, their best in
imitating Nature.” For, where they could not possibly apply their easy
profile, without endangering the resemblance, they followed Nature, as we
see instanced in the beauteous head of Julia, the daughter of Titus, done
by _Euodus_[6].
But to form a “just resemblance, and, at the same time, a handsomer
one,” being always the chief rule they observed, and which _Polygnotus_
constantly went by; they must, of necessity, be supposed to have had in
view a more beauteous and more perfect Nature. And when we are told, that
some artists imitated _Praxiteles_, who took his concubine _Cratina_ for
the model of his Cnidian Venus; or that others formed the graces from
_Lais_; it is to be understood that they did so, without neglecting these
great laws of the art. Sensual beauty furnished the painter with all that
nature could give; ideal beauty with the awful and sublime; from that he
took the _Humane_, from this the _Divine_.
Let any one, sagacious enough to pierce into the depths of art, compare
the whole system of the Greek figures with that of the moderns, by which,
as they say, nature alone is imitated; good heaven! what a number of
neglected beauties will he not discover!
For instance, in most of the modern figures, if the skin happens to be
any where pressed, you see there several little smart wrinkles: when,
on the contrary, the same parts, pressed in the same manner on Greek
statues, by their soft undulations, form at last but one noble pressure.
These master-pieces never shew us the skin forcibly stretched, but softly
embracing the firm flesh, which fills it up without any tumid expansion,
and harmoniously follows its direction. There the skin never, as on
modern bodies, appears in plaits distinct from the flesh.
Modern works are likewise distinguished from the antient by parts; a
crowd of small touches and dimples too sensibly drawn. In antient works
you find these distributed with sparing sagacity, and, as relative to
a completer and more perfect Nature, offered but as hints, nay, often
perceived only by the learned.
The probability still increases, that the bodies of the Greeks, as well
as the works of their artists, were framed with more unity of system, a
nobler harmony of parts, and a completeness of the whole, above our lean
tensions and hollow wrinkles.
Probability, ’tis true, is all we can pretend to: but it deserves the
attention of our artists and connoisseurs the rather, as the veneration
professed for the antient monuments is commonly imputed to prejudice, and
not to their excellence; as if the numerous ages, during which they have
mouldered, were the only motive for bestowing on them exalted praises,
and setting them up for the standards of imitation.
Such as would fain deny to the Greeks the advantages both of a more
perfect Nature and of ideal Beauties, boast of the famous _Bernini_,
as their great champion. He was of opinion, besides, that Nature was
possessed of every requisite beauty: the only skill being to discover
that. He boasted of having got rid of a prejudice concerning the Medicean
Venus, whose charms he at first thought peculiar ones; but, after many
careful researches, discovered them now and then in Nature[7].
He was taught then, by the Venus, to discover beauties in common Nature,
which he had formerly thought peculiar to that statue, and but for it,
never would have searched for them. Follows it not from thence, that the
beauties of the Greek statues being discovered with less difficulty than
those of Nature, are of course more affecting; not so diffused, but more
harmoniously united? and if this be true, the pointing out of Nature as
chiefly imitable, is leading us into a more tedious and bewildered road
to the knowledge of perfect beauty, than setting up the ancients for
that purpose: consequently _Bernini_, by adhering too strictly to Nature,
acted against his own principles, as well as obstructed the progress of
his disciples.
The imitation of beauty is either reduced to a single object, and is
_individual_, or, gathering observations from single ones, _composes of
these one whole_. The former we call copying, drawing a portrait; ’tis
the straight way to Dutch forms and figures; whereas the other leads to
general beauty, and its ideal images, and is the way the Greeks took. But
there is still this difference between them and us: they enjoying daily
occasions of seeing beauty, (suppose even not superior to ours,) acquired
those ideal riches with less toil than we, confined as we are to a few
and often fruitless opportunities, ever can hope for. It would be no easy
matter, I fancy, for our nature, to produce a frame equal in beauty to
that of Antinous; and surely no idea can soar above the more than human
proportions of a deity, in the Apollo of the Vatican, which is a compound
of the united force of Nature, Genius, and Art.
Their imitation discovering in the one every beauty diffused through
Nature, shewing in the other the pitch to which the most perfect Nature
can elevate herself, when soaring above the senses, will quicken the
genius of the artist, and shorten his discipleship: he will learn to
think and draw with confidence, seeing here the fixed limits of human and
divine beauty.
Building on this ground, his hand and senses directed by the Greek rule
of beauty, the modern artist goes on the surest way to the imitation
of Nature. The ideas of unity and perfection, which he acquired in
meditating on antiquity, will help him to combine, and to ennoble the
more scattered and weaker beauties of our Nature. Thus he will improve
every beauty he discovers in it, and by comparing the beauties of nature
with the ideal, form rules for himself.
Then, and not sooner, he, particularly the painter, may be allowed to
commit himself to Nature, especially in cases where his art is beyond the
instruction of the old marbles, to wit, in drapery; then, like _Poussin_,
he may proceed with more liberty; for “a timid follower will never get
the start of his leaders, and he who is at a loss to produce something
of his own, will be a bad manager of the productions of another,” as
_Michael Angelo_ says; Minds favoured by Nature,
_Quibus Arte benigna,_
_Et meliore luto, finxit præcordia Titan,_
have here a plain way to become originals.
Thus the account _de Piles_ gives, ought to be understood, that
_Raphael_, a short time before he was carried off by death, intended
to forsake the marbles, in order to addict himself wholly to Nature.
True antient taste would most certainly have guided him through every
maze of common Nature; and whatever observations, whatever new ideas
he might have reaped from that, they would all, by a kind of chymical
transmutation, have been changed to his own essence and soul.
He, perhaps, might have indulged more variety; enlarged his draperies;
improved his colours, his light and shadow: but none of these
improvements would have raised his pictures to that high esteem they
deserve, for that noble Contour, and that sublimity of thoughts, which he
acquired from the ancients.
Nothing would more decisively prove the advantages to be got by imitating
the ancients, preferably to Nature, than an essay made with two youths
of equal talents, by devoting the one to antiquity, the other to Nature:
this would draw Nature as he finds her; if Italian, perhaps he might
paint like _Caravaggio_; if Flemish, and lucky, like _Jac. Jordans_; if
French, like _Stella_: the other would draw her as she directs, and paint
like _Raphael_.