But even supposing that the imitation of Nature could supply all the
artist wants, she never could bestow the precision of Contour, that
characteristic distinction of the ancients.
The noblest Contour unites or circumscribes every part of the most
perfect Nature, and the ideal beauties in the figures of the Greeks;
or rather, contains them both. _Euphranor_, famous after the epoch of
_Zeuxis_, is said to have first ennobled it.
Many of the moderns have attempted to imitate this Contour, but very few
with success. The great _Rubens_ is far from having attained either its
precision or elegance, especially in the performances which he finished
before he went to Italy, and studied the antiques.
The line by which Nature divides completeness from superfluity is but
a small one, and, insensible as it often is, has been crossed even by
the best moderns; while these, in shunning a meagre Contour, became
corpulent, those, in shunning that, grew lean.
Among them all, only _Michael Angelo_, perhaps, may be said to have
attained the antique; but only in strong muscular figures, heroic frames;
not in those of tender youth; nor in female bodies, which, under his bold
hand, grew Amazons.
The Greek artist, on the contrary, adjusted his Contour, in every
figure, to the breadth of a single hair, even in the nicest and most
tiresome performances, as gems. Consider the Diomedes and Perseus of
_Dioscorides_[8], Hercules and Iole by _Teucer_[9], and admire the
inimitable Greeks.
_Parrhasius_, they say, was master of the correctest Contour.
This Contour reigns in Greek figures, even when covered with drapery, as
the chief aim of the artist; the beautiful frame pierces the marble like
a transparent _Coan_ cloth.
The high-stiled Agrippina, and the three vestals in the royal cabinet
at Dresden, deserve to be mentioned as eminent proofs of this. This
Agrippina seems not the mother of Nero, but an elder one, the spouse
of Germanicus. She much resembles another pretended Agrippina, in the
parlour of the library of St. Marc, at Venice[10]. Ours is a sitting
figure, above the size of Nature, her head inclined on her right hand;
her fine face speaks a soul “pining in thought,” absorbed in pensive
sorrow, and senseless to every outward impression. The artist, I suppose,
intended to draw his heroine in the mournful moment she received the
news of her banishment to Pandataria.
The three vestals deserve our esteem from a double title: as being
the first important discoveries of Herculaneum, and models of the
sublimest drapery. All three, but particularly one above the natural
size, would, with regard to that, be worthy companions of the Farnesian
_Flora_, and all the other boasts of antiquity. The two others seem,
by their resemblance to each other, productions of the same hand, only
distinguished by their heads, which are not of equal goodness. On the
best the curled hairs, running in furrows from the forehead, are tied on
the neck: on the other the hair being smooth on the scalp, and curled on
the front, is gathered behind, and tied with a ribband: this head seems
of a modern hand, but a good one.
There is no veil on these heads; but that makes not against their being
vestals: for the priestesses of Vesta (I speak on proof) were not always
veiled; or rather, as the drapery seems to betray, the veil, which was
of one piece with the garments, being thrown backwards, mingles with the
cloaths on the neck.
’Tis to these three inimitable pieces that the world owes the first hints
of the ensuing discovery of the subterranean treasures of Herculaneum.
Their discovery happened when the same ruins that overwhelmed the
town had nearly extinguished the unhappy remembrance of it: when the
tremendous fate that spoke its doom was only known by the account which
Pliny gives of his uncle’s death.
These great master-pieces of the Greek art were transplanted, and
worshipped in Germany, long before Naples could boast of one single
Herculanean monument.
They were discovered in the year 1706 at Portici near Naples, in a
ruinous vault, on occasion of digging the foundations of a villa, for
the Prince d’Elbeuf, and immediately, with other new discovered marble
and metal statues, came into the possession of Prince Eugene, and were
transported to Vienna.
Eugene, who well knew their value, provided a Sala Terrena to be built
expressly for them, and a few others: and so highly were they esteemed,
that even on the first rumour of their sale, the academy and the artists
were in an uproar, and every body, when they were transported to Dresden,
followed them with heavy eyes.