The last and most eminent characteristic of the Greek works is a noble
simplicity and sedate grandeur in Gesture and Expression. As the bottom
of the sea lies peaceful beneath a foaming surface, a great soul lies
sedate beneath the strife of passions in Greek figures.
’Tis in the face of Laocoon this soul shines with full lustre, not
confined however to the face, amidst the most violent sufferings. Pangs
piercing every muscle, every labouring nerve; pangs which we almost
feel ourselves, while we consider—not the face, nor the most expressive
parts—only the belly contracted by excruciating pains: these however, I
say, exert not themselves with violence, either in the face or gesture.
He pierces not heaven, like the Laocoon of _Virgil_; his mouth is rather
opened to discharge an anxious overloaded groan, as _Sadolet_ says;
the struggling body and the supporting mind exert themselves with equal
strength, nay balance all the frame.
Laocoon suffers, but suffers like the Philoctetes of _Sophocles_: we
weeping feel his pains, but wish for the hero’s strength to support his
misery.
The Expression of so great a soul is beyond the force of mere nature. It
was in his own mind the artist was to search for the strength of spirit
with which he marked his marble. Greece enjoyed artists and philosophers
in the same persons; and the wisdom of more than one Metrodorus directed
art, and inspired its figures with more than common souls.
Had Laocoon been covered with a garb becoming an antient sacrificer,
his sufferings would have lost one half of their Expression. _Bernini_
pretended to perceive the first effects of the operating venom in the
numbness of one of the thighs.
Every action or gesture in Greek figures, not stamped with this
character of sage dignity, but too violent, too passioniate, was called
“Parenthyrsos.”
For, the more tranquillity reigns in a body, the fitter it is to draw
the true character of the soul; which, in every excessive gesture,
seems to rush from her proper centre, and being hurried away by
extremes becomes unnatural. Wound up to the highest pitch of passion,
she may force herself upon the duller eye; but the true sphere of her
action is simplicity and calmness. In Laocoon sufferings alone had
been Parenthyrsos; the artist therefore, in order to reconcile the
significative and ennobling qualities of his soul, put him into a
posture, allowing for the sufferings that were necessary, the next to a
state of tranquillity: a tranquillity however that is characteristical:
the soul will be herself—this individual—not the soul of mankind; sedate,
but active; calm, but not indifferent or drowsy.
What a contrast! how diametrically opposite to this is the taste of our
modern artists, especially the young ones! on nothing do they bestow
their approbation, but contorsions and strange postures, inspired with
boldness; this they pretend is done with spirit, with _Franchezza_.
Contrast is the darling of their ideas; in it they fancy every
perfection. They fill their performances with comet-like excentric souls,
despising every thing but an Ajax or a Capaneus.
Arts have their infancy as well as men; they begin, as well as the
artist, with froth and bombast: in such buskins the muse of Æschilus
stalks, and part of the diction in his Agamemnon is more loaded with
hyperboles than all Heraclitus’s nonsense. Perhaps the primitive Greek
painters drew in the same manner that their first good tragedian thought
in.
In all human actions flutter and rashness precede, sedateness and
solidity follow: but time only can discover, and the judicious will
admire these only: they are the characteristics of great masters; violent
passions run away with their disciples.
The sages in the art know the difficulties hid under that air of easiness:
_ut sibi quivis_
_Speret idem, sudet multum, frustraque laboret_
_Ausus idem._
Hor.
_La Fage_, though an eminent designer, was not able to attain the purity
of ancient taste. Every thing is animated in his works; they demand, and
at the same time dissipate, your attention, like a company striving to
talk all at once.
This noble simplicity and sedate grandeur is also the true
characteristical mark of the best and maturest Greek writings, of the
epoch and school of _Socrates_. Possessed of these qualities _Raphael_
became eminently great, and he owed them to the ancients.
That great soul of his, lodged in a beauteous body, was requisite for the
first discovery of the true character of the ancients: he first felt all
their beauties, and (what he was peculiarly happy in!) at an age when
vulgar, unfeeling, and half-moulded souls overlook every higher beauty.
Ye that approach his works, teach your eyes to be sensible of those
beauties, refine your taste by the true antique, and then that solemn
tranquillity of the chief figures in his _Attila_, deemed insipid by the
vulgar, will appear to you equally significant and sublime. The Roman
bishop, in order to divert the Hun from his design of assailing Rome,
appears not with the air of a Rhetor, but as a venerable man, whose very
presence softens uproar into peace; like him drawn by Virgil:
_Tum pietate gravem ac meritis, si forte virum quem_
_Conspexere, silent, adrectisque auribus adstant:_
Æn. I.
full of confidence in God, he faces down the barbarian: the two Apostles
descend not with the air of slaughtering angels, but (if sacred may be
compared with profane) like Jove, whose very nod shakes Olympus.
_Algardi_, in his celebrated representation of the same story, done in
bas-relief on an altar in St. Peter’s church at Rome, was either too
negligent, or too weak, to give this active tranquillity of his great
predecessor to the figures of his Apostles. There they appear like
messengers of the Lord of Hosts: here like human warriors with mortal
arms.
How few of those we call connoisseurs have ever been able to understand,
and sincerely to admire, the grandeur of expression in the St. _Michael
of Guido_, in the church of the Capuchins at Rome! they prefer commonly
the Archangel of _Concha_, whose face glows with indignation and
revenge[12]; whereas _Guido_’s Angel, after having overthrown the fiend
of God and man, hovers over him unruffled and undismayed.
Thus, to heighten the hero of _The Campaign_, victorious Marlborough, the
British poet paints the avenging Angel hovering over Britannia with the
like serenity and awful calmness.
The royal gallery at Dresden contains now, among its treasures, one of
_Raphael_’s best pictures, witness Vasari, &c. a Madonna with the Infant;
St. Sixtus and St. Barbara kneeling, one on each side, and two Angels in
the fore-part.
It was the chief altar-piece in the cloister of St. Sixtus at Piacenza,
which was crouded by connoisseurs, who came to see this Raphael, in
the same manner as Thespis was in the days of old, for the sake of the
beautiful Cupid of _Praxiteles_.
Behold the Madonna! her face brightens with innocence; a form above the
female size, and the calmness of her mien, make her appear as already
beatified: she has that silent awfulness which the ancients spread over
their deities. How grand, how noble is her Contour!
The child in her arms is elevated above vulgar children, by a face
darting the beams of divinity through every smiling feature of harmless
childhood.
St. Barbara kneels, with adoring stillness, at her side: but being far
beneath the majesty of the chief figure, the great artist compensated her
humbler graces with soft enticing charms.
The Saint opposite to her is venerable with age. His features seem to
bear witness of his sacred youth.
The veneration which St. Barbara declares for the Madonna, expressed in
the most sensible and pathetic manner, by her fine hands clasped on her
breast, helps to support the motion of one of St. Sixtus’s hands, by
which he utters his extasy, better becoming (as the artist judiciously
thought, and chose for variety’s sake) manly strength, than female
modesty.
Time, ’tis true, has withered the primitive splendour of this picture,
and partly blown off its lively colours; but still the soul, with which
the painter inspired his godlike work, breathes life through all its
parts.
Let those that approach this, and the rest of _Raphael_’s works, in hopes
of finding there the trifling Dutch and Flemish beauties, the laboured
nicety of _Netscher_, or _Douw_, flesh _ivorified_ by _Van der Werf_,
or even the licked manner of some of _Raphael_’s living countrymen; let
those, I say, be told, that _Raphael_ was not a great master for them.