IV. Their manner of Thinking upon the Art; and Allegory.

Probability was all I pretended to, with regard to the first; which

cannot be fully demonstrated, notwithstanding all the assistance of

history. For, these advantages of the Greeks were, perhaps, less founded

on their nature, and the influences of the climate, than on their

education.

The happy situation of their country was, however, the basis of all; and

the want of resemblance, which was observed between the Athenians and

their neighbours beyond the mountains, was owing to the difference of

air and nourishment[113].

The manners and persons of the new-settled inhabitants, as well as the

natives of every country, have never failed of being influenced by their

different natures. The ancient Gauls, and their successors the German

Franks, are but one nation: the blind fury, by which the former were

hurried on in their first attacks, proved as unsuccessful to them in the

times of Cæsar[114], as it did to the latter in our days. They possessed

certain other qualities, which are still in vogue among the modern

French; and the Emperor Julian[115] tells us, that in his time there were

more dancers than citizens at Paris.

Whereas the Spaniards, managing their affairs cautiously, and with a

certain frigidity, kept the Romans longer than any other people from

conquering the country[116].

And is not this character of the old Iberians re-assumed by the

West-Goths, the Mauritanians, and many other people, who over-ran their

country?[117]

It is easy to be imagined what advantages the Greeks, having been subject

to the same influences of climate and air, must have reaped from the

happy situation of their country. The most temperate seasons reigned

through all the year, and the refreshing sea-gales fanned the voluptuous

islands of the Ionick sea, and the shores of the continent. Induced by

these advantages, the Peloponnesians built all their towns along the

coast; see Dicearchus, quoted by Cicero[118].

Under a sky so temperate, nay balanced between heat and cold, the

inhabitants cannot fail of being influenced by both. Fruits grow ripe

and mellow, even such as are wild improve their natures; animals thrive

well, and breed more abundantly. “Such a sky, says Hippocrates[119],

produces not only the most beautiful of men, but harmony between their

inclinations and shape.” Of which Georgia, that country of beauty,

where a pure and serene sky pours fertility, is an instance[120]. Among

the elements, beauty owes so much to water alone, that, if we believe

the Indians, it cannot thrive, in a country that has it not in its

purity[121]. And the Oracle itself attributes to the lymph of Arethusa a

power of forming beauty[122].

The Greek tongue affords us also some arguments in behalf of their

frame. Nature moulds the organs of speech according to the influences

of the climate. There are nations that rather whistle than speak, like

the Troglodytes[123]; others that pronounce without opening their

lips[124]; and the Phasians, a Greek people, had, as has been said of the

English[125], a hoarse voice: an unkind climate forms harsh sounds, and

consequently the organs of speech cannot be very delicate.

The superiority of the Greek tongue is incontestible: I do not speak now

of its richness, but only of its harmony. For all the northern tongues,

being over-loaded with consonants[126], are too often apt to offend

with an unpleasing austerity; whereas the Greek tongue is continually

changing the consonant for the vowel, and two vowels, meeting with but

one consonant, generally grow into a diphthong[127]. The sweetness of the

tongue admits of no word ending with these three harsh letters Θ, Φ, Χ,

and for the sake of Euphony, readily changes letters for their kindred

ones. Some seemingly harsh words cannot be objected here; none of us

being acquainted with the true Greek or Roman pronunciation. All these

advantages gave to the tongue a flowing softness, brought variety into

the sounds of its words, and facilitated their inimitable composition.

And from these alone, not to mention the measure which, even in common

conversation, every syllable enjoyed, a thing to be despaired of in

occidental tongues; from these alone, I say, we may form the highest idea

of the organs by which that tongue was pronounced, and may more than

conjecture, that, by the language of the _Gods_, Homer meant the Greek,

by that of _Men_, the Phrygian tongue.

It was chiefly owing to that abundance of vowels, that the Greek tongue

was preferable to all others, for expressing by the sound and disposition

of its words the forms and substances of things. The discharge, the

rapidity, the diminution of strength in piercing, the slowness in

gliding, and the stopping of an arrow, are better expressed by the sound

of these three verses of Homer, Iliad Δ.

125. Λίγξε βιὸς, νευρὴ δε μέγ’ ἴαχεν, ἆλτο δ’ ὀϊστὸς[128]

135. Διὰ μέν ἂρ’ ζωστῆρος ἐλήλατο δαιδαλέοιο,

136. Καὶ διὰ θωρηκος πολυδαιδάλου ἠρήρειστο,

than even by the words themselves. You see it discharged, flying through

the air, and piercing the belt of Menelaus.

The description of the Myrmidons in battle-array, Iliad Π. v. 215.

Ἀσπὶς ἄρ’ ἀσπίδ’ ἔρειδε, κόρυς κόρυν ἀνέρα δ’ ἀνήρ.

is of the same kind, and has never been hit by any imitation: what

beauties in one line!

Plato’s periods were, from their harmony, compared[129] to a noiseless

smooth-running stream. But we should be mistaken in confining the tongue

to the softer harmonies only: it became a roaring torrent, boisterous as

the winds by which Ulysses’ sails were torn, split only in three or four

places by the words, but rent by the sound into a thousand tatters[130].

This was the “_vivida expressio_,” the living sound; supremely beautiful,

when properly and sparingly used!

How quick, how refined must the organs have been, which were the

depositaries of such a tongue! The Roman itself could not attain its

excellence: nay, a Greek father, of the second century of the christian

æra[131], complains of the horrid sound of the Roman laws.

Nature keeps proportion; consequently the frame of the Greeks was of a

fine clay, of nerves, and muscles most sensibly elastic, and promoting

the flexibility of the body: hence that easiness, that pliant facility,

accompanied with mirth and vigour, which animated all their actions.

Imagine bodies most nicely balanced between leanness and corpulency:

both extremes were ridiculed by the Greeks, and their poets sneer at the

Philesiases[132], Philetases[133], and Agoracrituses[134].

But though they were beautiful, and by their law early initiated into

pleasure, they were not effeminate Sybarites. As an instance of which

we shall only repeat what Pericles pleaded in favour of the Athenian

manners, against those of Sparta, which were as different from those

of the rest of Greece, as their public oeconomy was: “The Spartans,

says Pericles, employ their youth to get, by violent exercises, manly

strength: but we, though living indolently, encounter every danger as

well as they; calmly, not anxiously, mindful of its approaches, we meet

it with voluntary magnanimity, and without any compulsion of the law. Not

disconcerted by its impending threats, we meet its most furious attacks,

with no less boldness than they, whom perpetual practice has prepared for

its strokes. We are fond of elegance, without loving finery; of genius,

without being emasculate. In short, to be fit for every great enterprize,

is the characteristic of the Athenians[135].”

I cannot, nor will I pretend to fix a rule without allowing exceptions.

There was a Thersites in the army of the Greeks. But it is worth

observing, that the beauty of a nation was always in proportion to their

cultivation of the arts. Thebes, wrapt up in a misty sky, produced a

sturdy uncouth race[136],[137]according to Hippocrates’s observation on

fenny, watry soils[138]; and its sterility in producing men of genius,

Pindar only excepted, is an old reproach. Sparta was as defective in this

respect as Thebes, having only Alcman to boast of; but the reasons were

different: whereas Attica enjoyed a pure and serene sky, which refined

the senses[139], and of course shaped their bodies in proportion to that

refinement; and Athens was the seat of arts. The same remark may be made

with regard to Sicyon, Corinth, Rhodes, Ephesus, &c. all which having

been schools of the arts, could not want convenient models. The passage

of Aristophanes, insisted on in the letter[140], I take for a joke, as

it really is—and thereby hangs a tale: to have the parts, whereon

_Sedet æternumque sedebit_

_Infelix Theseus,_

Virg.

moderately complete, were Attick beauties. Theseus[141], made prisoner by

the Thesprotians, was delivered from his captivity by Hercules, but not

without some loss of the parts in question; a loss bequeathed to all his

race. This was the true mark of the Thesean pedigree; as a natural mark,

representing a spear[142], signified a Spartan extraction; and we find

the Greek artists imitating in those places the sparing hand of nature.

But this liberality of nature was confined to Greece, in a narrower

sense. Its colonies underwent the same fate, which its eloquence met with

when going abroad. “As soon, says Cicero[143], as eloquence set out from

the Athenian port, she plumed herself with the manners of all the islands

in her way, adopted the Asiatick luxury, and forsaking her sound Attick

expression, lost her health.” The Ionians, transplanted by Nileus from

Greece into Asia, after the return of the Heraclides, grew still more

voluptuous beneath that glowing sky. Heaps of vowels brought wantonness

into every word; the neighbouring islands partook of their climate and

manners, which a single Lesbian coin may convince us of[144]. No wonder

then, if their bodies degenerated as much from those of their ancestors,

as their manners.

The remoter the colonies the greater the difference. Those Greeks, who

had chosen their abode in Africa, about _Pithicussa_, fell in with the

natives in adoring apes; nay, even gave the names of those animals to

their children[145].

The modern Greeks, though composed of various mingled metals, still

betray the chief mass. Barbarism has destroyed the very elements of

science, and ignorance over-clouds the whole country; education, courage,

manners are sunk beneath an iron sway, and even the shadow of liberty is

lost. Time, in its course, dissipates the remains of antiquity: pillars

of Apollo’s temple at Delos[146], are now the ornaments of English

gardens: the nature of the country itself is changed. In days of yore the

plants of Crete[147] were famous over all the world; but now the streams

and rivers, where you would go in quest of them, are mantled with wild

luxuriant weeds, and trivial vegetables[148].

Unhappy country! How could it avoid being changed into a wilderness, when

such populous tracts of land as Samos, once mighty enough to balance the

Athenian power at sea, are reduced to hideous desarts[149]!

Notwithstanding all these devastations, the forlorn prospect of the soil,

the free passage of the winds, stopped by the inextricable windings of

entangled shores, and the want of almost all other commodities; yet have

the modern Greeks preserved many of the prerogatives of their ancestors.

The inhabitants of several islands, (the Greek race being chiefly

preserved in the islands), near the Natolian shore, especially the

females, are, by the unanimous account of travellers, the most beautiful

of the human race[150].

Attica still preserves its air of philanthropy[151]: all the shepherds

and clowns welcomed the two travellers, Spon and Wheeler; nay, prevented

them with their salutations[152]: neither have they lost the Attick salt,

or the enterprising spirit of the former inhabitants[153].

Objections have been made against their early exercises, as rather

derogating from, than adding to, the beauteous form of the Greek youths.

Indeed, the continual efforts of the nerves and muscles seem rather to

give an angular gladiatorial turn, than the soft Contour of beauty, to

youthful bodies. But this may partly be answered by the character of the

nation itself: their fancy, their actions, were easy and natural; their

affairs, as Pericles says, were managed with a certain carelessness, and

some of Plato’s dialogues[154] may give us an idea of that mirth and

chearfulness which prevailed in all the Gymnastick exercises of their

youth. Hence his desire of having these places, in his commonwealth,

frequented by old folks, in order to remind them of the joys of their

youth[155].

Their games commonly began at sun rise[156]; and Socrates frequented

them at that time. They chose the morning-hours, in order to avoid being

incommoded by the heat: as soon as their garments were laid down, the

body was anointed with the elegant Attick oil, partly to defend it from

the bleak morning-air; as it was usual to practice, even during the

severest cold[157]; and partly to prevent a too copious perspiration,

where it was intended only to carry off superfluous humours[158]. To

this oil they ascribed also a strengthening quality[159]. The exercises

being over, they went to bathe, and there submitted to a fresh unction;

and a person leaving the bath in this state “appears, says Homer, taller,

stronger, and similar to the immortal Gods[160].”

We may form a very distinct idea of the different kinds and degrees of

wrestling among the ancients, from a vase once in the possession of

Charl. Patin, and, as he guesses, the urn of a gladiator[161].

Had it been a prevailing custom among the Greeks to walk, either

barefooted, like the heroes in their performances[162], or with a single

sole, as we commonly believe, their feet must have been bruised. But

there are many instances of their extreme nicety in this respect; for,

they had names for above ten different sorts of shoes[163].

The coverings of the thighs were thrown off at the publick exercises,

even before the flourishing of the art[164]; which was a great advantage

to the artists. As for the nourishment of the wrestlers in remoter times,

I found it more proper to mention milk in general, than soft cheese.

If I remember right, you think it strange, and even undemonstrable, that

the primitive church should have dipped their proselytes, promiscuously:

consult the note[165].

As I am now entering upon the discussion of my second point, I could wish

that these probabilities of a more perfect nature, among the Greeks,

might be allowed to have some conclusive weight; and then I should have

but a few words to add.

_Charmoleos_, a Megarian youth, a single kiss of whom was valued at two

talents[166], was, no doubt, beautiful enough to serve for a model of

_Apollo_: Him, _Alcibiades_, _Charmides_, and _Adimanthus_[167], the

artists could see and study to their wish for several hours every day:

and can you imagine those trifling opportunities proposed to the Parisian

artists, equivalents for the loss of advantages like these? But granting

that, pray, what is there to be seen more in a swimmer than in any other

person? The extremities of the body you may see every where. As for that

author[168], who pretends to find in France beauties superior to those

of _Alcibiades_, I cannot help doubting his ability to maintain what he

asserts.

What has been said hitherto might also answer the objection drawn from

the judgment of our academies, concerning those parts of the body which

ought to be drawn rather more angular than we find them in the antiques.

The Greeks, and their artists, were happy in the enjoyment of figures

endowed with youthful harmony; for, we have no reason to doubt their

exactness in copying nature, if we only consider the angular smartness

with which they drew the wrist-bones. _Agasias_’s celebrated _Gladiator_,

in the _Borghese_, has none of the modern angles, nor the bony

prominences authorised by our artists: all his angular parts are those we

meet with in the other Greek statues. And this statue, which was perhaps

one of those that were erected, in the very places where the games were

held, to the memory of the several victors, may be supposed an exact

copy of nature. The artist was bound to represent any victor in the very

attitude, and instantaneous motion, in which he overcame his antagonist,

and the _Amphictyones_ were the judges of his performance[169].

Many authors having written on this, and the following point of the

treatise, I have contented myself with giving a few remarks of my own.

Superficial arguments, in matters of this kind, can neither suit the

deeper views of our times, nor lead to general conclusions. Nevertheless

we do not want authors whose premature decisions often get the better of

their judgment, and that not in matters concerning the art alone. Pray,

what decisions of an author may be depended upon, who, when designing to

write on the arts in general, shews himself so ignorant of their very

elements, as to ascribe to _Thucydides_, whose concise and energetick

style was not without difficulties, even for _Tully_[170], the character

of simplicity?[171] Another of that tribe, seems as little acquainted

with _Diodorus Siculus_, when he describes him as hunting after

elegance[172]. Nor want we blockheads enough who admire, in the ancient

performances, such trifles as are below any reasonable man’s attention.

“The rope, says a travelling scribler, which ties together Dirce and the

ox, is to connoisseurs the most beautiful object of the whole groupe of

the Toro Farnese[173].”

_Ah miser ægrota putruit cui mente salillum!_

I am no stranger to those merits of the modern artists which you oppose

to the ancients: but at the same time I know, that the imitation of these

alone has elevated the others to that pitch of merit; and it would be

easy to prove that, whenever they forsook the ancients, they fell into

the faults of those, whom alone I intended to blame.

Nature undoubtedly misled Bernini: a _Carita_ of his, on the monument

of Pope Urban the VIIIth, is said to be corpulent, and another on that

of Alexander the VIIth, even ugly[174]. Certain it is, that no use

could be made of the Equestrian statue of Lewis XIV. on which he had

bestowed fifteen years, and the King immense sums. He was represented

as ascending, on horseback, the mount of honour: but the action both of

the rider and of the horse was exaggerated, and too violent; which was

the cause of baptizing it a Curtius plunging into the gulph, and its

having been placed only in the Thuilleries: from which we may infer,

that the most anxious imitation of nature is as little sufficient for

attaining beauty, as the study of anatomy alone for attaining the justest

proportions: these Lairesse, by his own account, took from the skeletons

of Bidloo; but, though a professor in his art, committed many faults,

which the good Roman school, especially Raphael, cannot be charged with.

However, it is not meant that there is no heaviness in his Venus; nor

does it clear him from the faults imputed to him in the Massacre of the

Innocents, engraved by Marc. Antonio, as has been attempted in a very

rare treatise on painting[175]; for there the female figures labour

under an exuberance of breasts; whereas the murderers look ghastly with

leanness: a contrast not to be admired: the sun itself has spots.

Let Raphael be imitated in his best manner, and when in his prime; those

works want no apology: it was to no purpose to produce Parrhasius and

Zeuxis in order to excuse Him, and the Dutch proportions! ’Tis true, the

passage of Pliny[176], which you quote concerning Parrhasius, meets

commonly with the same interpretation, viz. _that, shunning corpulency

he fell into leanness_[177]. But supposing Pliny to have understood what

he wrote, we must clear him of contradicting himself. A little before

he allowed to Parrhasius a superiority in the contour, or in his own

words, _in the outlines_; and in the passage before us, _Parrhasius,

compared with himself, seems, in POINT OF THE MIDDLE PARTS, to fall short

of himself_. The question is, what he means by middle parts? Perhaps

the parts bordering on the outlines: but is not the designer obliged to

know every possible attitude of the frame, every change of its contour?

If so, it is ridiculous to give this explication to our passage: for

the middle parts of a full face are the outlines of its profile, and

so on. Consequently, there is no such thing as middle parts to be met

with by a designer: the idea of a painter, well-skilled in the contour

of the outlines, but ignorant of their contents, is an absurd one.

Parrhasius perhaps either wanted skill in the Chiaroscuro, or Keeping

in the disposition of his limbs, and this seems the only explication,

which the words of Pliny can reasonably admit of. Unless we choose to

make him another La Fage, who, though a celebrated designer, never

failed spoiling his contours with his colours. Or, perhaps, to indulge

another conjecture, Parrhasius smoothed the outlines of his contour,

where it bordered on the grounds, in order to avoid being rough; a fault

committed, as it seems, by his contemporaries, and by the artists who

flourished in the beginning of the sixteenth century, who circumscribed

their figures, as it were with a knife; but those smooth contours wanted

the support of keeping, and of masses gradually rising or sinking, in

order to become round, and to strike the eye: by failing in which,

his figures got an air of flatness; and thus Parrhasius fell short of

himself, without being either too corpulent or too lean.

We cannot conclude, from the Homeric shape which Zeuxis gave his female

figures, that he raised them, like Rubens, into flesh-hills. There is

some reason to believe, from the education of the Spartan ladies, that

they had something of a masculine vigour, though they were the chief

beauties of Greece; and such a one is the Helena of Theocritus.

All this makes me doubt of finding among the ancients any companion for

Jacob Jordans, though he is so zealously defended in your letter. Nor am

I afraid of maintaining what I have said concerning him. Mr. d’Argenville

is indeed a very industrious collector of criticisms upon the artists;

but as his design is not very extensive, so his decisions are often too

general, to afford us characteristical ideas of his heroes.

A good eye must be allowed to be a better judge, in matters of this kind,

than all the ambiguous decisions of authors: and to fix the character

of Jordans, I might content myself with appealing to his Diogenes,

and the Purification, in the royal cabinet at Dresden. But, for the

reader’s sake, let me inquire into the meaning of what you call _Truth_

in painting. For if truth, in the general sense, can by no means be

excluded from any branch of the arts, we have, in the decision of Mr.

d’Argenville, a riddle to unfold, which, if it has any meaning at all,

must have the following:

Rubens, enabled by the inexhaustible fertility of his genius, to

pour forth fictions like Homer himself, displays his riches even to

prodigality: like him he loved the marvellous, as well in thought and

grandeur of conception, as in composition, and chiar’-oscuro. His

figures are composed in a manner unknown before him, and his lights,

jointly darting upon one great mass, diffuse over all his works a bold

harmony, and amazing spirit. Jordans, a genius of a lower class, cannot,

in the ideal part of painting, by any means be compared with his great

master. He had no wings to soar above nature; for which reason he humbly

followed, and painted her as he found her: and if this be _truth_, he, no

doubt, had a larger share of it than Rubens.

If the modern artists, with regard to forms and beauty, are not to be

directed by antiquity, there is no authority left to influence them.

Some, in painting Venus, would give her a Frenchified air[178]; another

would present her with an Aquiline nose, the Medicean Venus, as they

would say, having such a one[179]: her hands would be provided with

spindles instead of fingers; and she would ogle us with Chinese eyes,

like the beauties of a new Italian school. Every artist, in short, would,

by his performance, betray his country: but, as Democritus says[180],

if the artists ought to pray the gods to let them meet with none but

auspicious images, those of the ancients will best suit their wishes.

Let us, however, make some exception in favour of Fiamingo’s children.

For, lustiness and full health being the common burden of the praises of

children, whose infant forms are not strictly susceptible of that beauty,

which belongs to the steadiness of riper years; the imitation of his

children has reasonably become a fashion among our artists. But neither

this, nor the indulgence of the academy at Vienna, can be, or indeed was

meant to be decisive, in favour of the modern children; it only leads us

to make a distinction. The ancients went beyond nature, even in their

children: the moderns only follow her; and, provided their infant forms,

exuberant as they are, do not influence their ideas of youthful and riper

bodies, they may be allowed to be in the right, though, at the same time,

the ancients were not in the wrong.

Our artists are, likewise, at full liberty to dress the hair of their

figures as they please: but, being so fond of nature, they, must needs

know, that it is nature which shades, with pendant locks, the forehead

and temples of all those, whose life is not spent between the comb and

the looking-glass: and finding this manner carefully observed in most

statues of the ancients, they may take it as a proof of their attachment

to simplicity and truth; a proof of the more weight, as they did not want

people, busier in adorning their bodies than their minds, and as nice

in adjusting their hair, as the most elegant of our European courtiers.

But it was commonly looked upon as a mark of an ingenuous and noble

extraction, to dress the hair in the manner of the statues[181].

The imitation of the ancient contour has indeed never been rejected, not

even by those whose chief want was that of correctness: but we differ

about imitating that “noble simplicity and sedate grandeur” in their

works. An expression which hath seldom met with general approbation, and

never pronounced without hazard of being misunderstood.

In the Hercules of Bandinelli, the idea of it was deemed a fault[182]: an

usurpation in Raphael’s Massacre of the Innocents[183].

The idea of “nature at rest,” I own, might, perhaps, produce figures like

the young Spartans of Xenophon; nor would the bulk of mankind be better

pleased with performances in the taste of my treatise, (supposing even

all its precepts authorised by the judges of the art) than with a speech

made before the Areopagites. But it is not on the bulk of mankind that

we ought to confer the legislative power in the art. And though works of

an extensive composition ought certainly to have the support of a vigour

and spirit proportioned to their extent, yet there are limits which must

not be overleapt: use not so much spirit as to represent the everlasting

Father like the cruel God of war, or an ecstasied saint like a priestess

of Bacchus.

Indeed, in the eyes of one unacquainted with this characteristick of

the sublime, a Madonna of Trevisani will seem preferable to that of

Raphael in the royal cabinet at Dresden. I know that even artists were

of opinion, that its being placed so near one of the former, was not a

little disadvantageous to it. Hence it seemed not superfluous to enquire

into the true grandeur of that inestimable picture, as it is the only

production of this Apollo of painters, that Germany is possessed of.

No comparison, indeed, is to be made of its composition with that of the

transfiguration; which, however, I think fully compensated by its being

genuine: whereas Julio Romano might perhaps claim one half of the other

as his own. The difference of the hands is visible: but in the Madonna,

the spirit of that epoch, in which Raphael performed his Athenian school,

shines with so full a lustre, as to make even the authority of Vasari

superfluous.

’Tis no easy matter to convince a critick, conceited enough to blame the

Jesus of the Madonna, that he is mistaken. Pythagoras, says an antient

philosopher[184], and Anaxagoras look at the sun with different eyes: the

former sees a God, the latter a stone. We want but experience to discover

truth and beauty in the faces of Raphael, without enquiring into their

dignity: beauty pleases, but serious graces charm[185]. Such are the

beauties of the ancients, which gave that serious air to Antinous, which

we generally ascribe to his shading locks. Sudden raptures, or the

enticement of a glance, are often momentary; let an attentive eye dwell

upon those confused beauties which the transient look conveys, and the

paint will vanish. True charms owe their durability to reflection, and

hidden graces allure our enquiries: reluctant and unsatisfied we leave a

coy beauty, in continual admiration of some new-fancied charm: and such

are the beauties of Raphael and the ancients; not agreeably trifling

ones, but regular and full of real graces[186]. By that Cleopatra became

the beauty of all ensuing ages: nobody[187] was astonished at her face,

but her air engaged every eye, and subdued the melted heart. A French

Venus at her toilet is much like Seneca’s wit: which, if put to the test,

disappears[188].

The comparison of Raphael and some of the most celebrated Dutch, and

new Italian painters, concerns only the management, (_Trattamento_).

The endeavours of the former of these, to hide the laborious industry

that appears in all their works, gives an additional sanction to my

judgment; for, hiding is labour. The most difficult part in performances

of the arts, is to spread an air of easiness, the “UT SIBI QUIVIS” over

them[189]; of which, among the ancients, the pictures of Nicomachus were

entirely destitute[190].

All this, however, is not meant to derogate from Vanderwerf’s superior

merit: his works give a lustre even to the cabinets of kings. He diffused

over them an inconceivable polish; every trace of his pencil, one would

think, is molten; and, in the colliquation of his tints, there reigns but

one predominant colour. He might be said to have enamelled rather than

painted.

His works indeed please. But does the character of painting consist in

pleasing alone? Denner’s bald pates please likewise. But what, do you

imagine, would the wise ancients think of them? Plutarch, from the mouth

of some Aristides or Zeuxis, would tell him, that beauty never dwells in

wrinkles[191].

’Tis said, the Emperor Charles VI. when he first saw one of Denner’s

pictures, was loud in its praise, and in admiration of his industry.

The painter was immediately desired to make a fellow to the first, and

was magnificently rewarded: but the Emperor, comparing each of them

with some pieces of Rembrandt and Vandyke, declared, “that having now

satisfied his curiosity, he would on no account have any more from this

artist.” An English nobleman was of the same opinion: for being shewn

a picture of Denner’s, “You are in the wrong, said he, if you believe

that our nation esteems performances, which owe their merits to industry

rather than to genius.”

I am far from applying these remarks to Vanderwerf; the difference

between him and Denner is too great: I only joined them in order to

prove, that a picture which only pleases can no more pretend to universal

approbation than a poem. No; their charms must be durable; but here

we meet with causes of disgust in the very parts, where the painter

endeavoured to please us.

Those parts of nature that are beyond observation, were the chief

objects of these painters: they were particularly cautious of changing

the situation even of the minutest hair, in order to surprize the most

sharp-sighted eye with all the microcosm of nature. They may be compared

to those disciples of Anaxagoras, who placed all human wisdom in the palm

of the hand—but mark, as soon as they attempt to stretch their art beyond

these limits, to draw larger proportions, or the nudities, the painter

appears

_Infelix operis summâ, quia ponere totum nescit._

Hor.

Design is as certainly the painter’s first, second, and third requisite,

as action is that of the orator.

I readily allow the solidity of your remarks, concerning the “reliefs”

of the ancients. In my treatise I myself charged them with a want of

sufficient skill in perspective; and hence the faults in their reliefs.

The fourth point chiefly concerns _Allegory_.

In painting we commonly call fiction allegory: for, though imitation

arises from the very principles of painting as well as of poetry,

it constitutes, by itself, neither of them[192]. A picture, without

allegory, is but a vulgar image, and resembles Davenant’s Gondibert, an

epopée without fiction.

Colouring and design are to painting what metre and truth, or the fable,

are to poetry; a body without soul. Poetry, says Aristotle, was first

inspired with its soul, with fiction, by Homer; and with that the painter

must animate his work. Design and colouring are the fruits of attention

and practice: perspective and composition, in the strictest sense, are

established on fixed rules; they are of course but mechanical; and, if

I may be allowed the expression, only mechanical souls are wanting to

understand and to admire them.

Pleasures in general, save only those which rob the bulk of mankind

of their invaluable treasure, time, become durable, and are free from

tediousness and disgust, in proportion as they engage our intellectual

faculties. Mere sensual sentiments soon languish; they do not influence

our reason: such is the delight we take in the common landscape, flower,

and fruit paintings: the artist, in performing them, thinks but very

little; and the connoisseur, in considering them, thinks no more.

A mere history-piece differs from a landscape only in the object: in the

former you draw facts and persons, in the latter, sky, land, seas, &c.

both, of course, being founded on the same principle, imitation, are

essentially but of one kind.

If it be not a contradiction to stretch the limits of painting, as far as

those of poetry, and consequently, to allow the painter the same ability

of elevating himself to the pitch of the poet as the musician enjoys; it

is clear that history, though the sublimest branch of painting, cannot

raise itself to the heighths of tragick or epick poetry, by imitation

alone.

Homer, as Cicero tells us[193], has transformed man into God: which is

to say; he not only exceeded truth, but, to raise his fiction, preferred

even the impossible, if probable, to the barely possible[194]. In this

Aristotle fixes the very essence of poetry, and tells us that the

pictures of Zeuxis had that characteristick. The possibility and truth,

which Longinus requires of the painter, as opposites to absurdity in

poetry, are not contradictory to this rule.

This heighth the history-painter cannot reach, only by a contour above

common nature, or a noble expression of the passions: for these are

requisite in a good portrait-painter, who is able to execute them

without diminishing the likeness of his model. They are but imitation,

only prudently managed. The heads of Vandyke are charged with too

exact an observation of nature; an exactness that would be faulty in a

history-piece.

Truth, lovely as it is in itself, charms more, penetrates deeper, when

invested with fiction: fable, in its strictest sense, is the delight of

childhood; allegory that of riper years. And the old opinion, that poetry

was of earlier date than prose, as unanimously attested by the annals

of different people, makes it evident, that even in the most barbarous

times, truth was preferred, when appearing in this dress.

Our understanding, moreover, labours under the fault of bestowing its

attention chiefly on things, whose beauties are not to be perceived at

first sight, and of inadvertently slighting others, because clear as

day: images of this kind, like a ship on the waves, leave but momentary

traces in our memory. Hence the ideas of our childhood are the most

permanent, because every common occurrence then seems extraordinary.

Thus, if nature herself instructs us, that she is not to be moved by

common things, let art, as the Orator, ad Herennium, advises us, follow

her dictates.

Every idea increases in strength, if accompanied by another or more

ideas, as in comparisons; and the more still as they differ in kind: for

ideas, too analogous to each other, do not strike: as for instance, a

white skin compared to snow. Hence the power of discovering a similarity,

in the most different things, is what we commonly call wit; Aristotle,

“unexpected ideas”: and these he requires in an orator[195]. The more you

are surprized by a picture, the more you are affected; and both those

effects are to be obtained by allegory, like to fruit hid beneath leaves

and branches, which when found surprizes the more agreeably, the less it

was thought of. The smallest composition is susceptible of the sublimest

powers of art: all depends upon the idea.

Necessity first taught the artists to use allegory. No doubt, they began

with the representation of single objects of one class: but as they

improved, they attempted to express what was common to many particulars;

_i. e._ general ideas. All the qualities of single objects afford such

ideas: but to become general, and at the same time sensible, they cannot

preserve the particular shape of such or such an object, but must be

submitted to another shape, essential to that object, but a general one.

The Egyptians were the first, who went in search of images of that kind.

Such were their hieroglyphicks. All the deities of antiquity, especially

those of Greece, nay, their very names, were originally Egyptian[196].

Their personal theology was quite allegorical; and so is ours. But the

symbols of these inventors, partly preserved by the Greeks, were often so

mysteriously arbitrary, as to make it altogether impossible to find out

their meaning, even by the help of those authors that are still extant;

and such a discovery was looked upon as a nefarious profanation[197].

Thus sacredly mysterious was the pomegranate[198] in the hand of the

Samian Juno: and to divulge the Eleusinian rites, was thought worse than

the robbery of a temple[199].

The relation of the sign to the thing signified, was in some measure

founded on the known or pretended qualities of the latter. The Egyptian

Horsemarten was of that kind; an image of the sun, because his species

was said to have no female, and to live six months under and six above

ground[200]. In like manner the cat, being supposed to bring forth a

number of kittens equal to that of the days in a month, became the symbol

of Isis, or the moon[201].

The Greeks, on the contrary, endowed with more wit, and undoubtedly with

more sensibility, made use of no signs but such as had a true relation

to the thing signified, or were most agreeable to the senses: all their

deities they invested with human forms[202]. Wings, among the Egyptians,

were the symbol of eager and effectual services; a symbol conformable to

their nature, and continued by the Greeks: and if the Attick _Victoria_

had none, it was meant to signify, that she had chosen Athens for her

abode[203]. A goose, among the Egyptians, was the symbol of a cautious

leader; in consequence of which the prows of their ships were formed like

geese[204]. This the Greeks preserved also, and the ancient _Rostrum_

resembled the neck of a goose[205].

Of all the figures, whose relation to their intended meaning is somewhat

obscure, the Sphinx perhaps alone was continued by the Greeks. Placed in

the front of a temple, it was, among the Greeks, almost as instructive,

as it was significant among the Egyptians[206]. The Greek Sphinx was

winged[207], its head bare, without that stole which it wears on some

Attick coins[208].

It was in general a characteristic of the Greeks, to mark their

productions with a certain chearfulness: the muses love not hideous

phantoms: and Homer himself, when by the mouth of some god he cites an

Egyptian allegory, always cautiously begins with “WE ARE TOLD.” Nay,

the elder Pampho[209], though he exceeds the Egyptian oddities, by his

description of Jupiter wrapt up in horse-dung, approaches nevertheless

the sublime idea of the English poet:

_As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;_

_As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,_

_As the rapt seraph, that adores and burns._

Pope.

It will be no easy matter to find, among the old Greek coins, an image

like that of a snake encircling an egg[210], on a Syrian coin of the

third century. None of their monuments are marked with any thing

ghastly: of these they were, if possible, still more cautious than of

ill-omen’d words. The image of death is not to be seen, perhaps, but

on one gem[211], and that in the shape commonly exhibited at their

feasts[212]; _viz._ dancing to a flute, with intent to make them enjoy

the present pleasures of life, by reminding them of its shortness. On

another gem[213], with a Roman inscription, there is a skeleton, with two

butterflies as images of the soul, one of which is caught by a bird; a

pretended symbol of the metempsychosis: but the performance is of latter

times.

It has been likewise observed, that[214] among those myriads of altars,

sacred even to the most whimsical deities, there never was one set apart

to death; save only on the solitary coasts, which were deemed the

borders of the world[215].

The Romans, in their best times, thought like the Greeks; and always,

in adopting the iconology of a foreign nation, traced the footsteps of

these their masters. An elephant, one of the latter mysterious symbols of

the Egyptians[216] (for there is on the most ancient monuments neither

elephant[217] nor hart, ostrich nor cock, to be found), was the image of

different things[218], and perhaps of eternity, as on some Roman[219]

coins, because of his longevity. But on a coin of the emperor Antoninus,

this animal, with the inscription, MUNIFICENTIA, cannot possibly hint

at any other thing but the grand games, the magnificence of which was

augmented by those animals.

But it is no more my design to attempt an inquiry into the origin of

every allegorical symbol among the Greeks and Romans, than to write a

system of allegory. All I propose is, to defend what I have advanced

concerning it, and at the same time to direct the artist to the images of

those ancients, in preference to the iconologies and ill-judged symbols

of some moderns.

We may, from a little specimen, form a judgment of the turn of mind of

those ancients, and of the possibility of subjecting abstracted ideas

to the senses. The symbols of many a gem, coin, and monument, enjoy

their fixed and universally received interpretation; but some of the

most memorable, not yet brought to a proper standard, deserve a nearer

determination.

Perhaps the allegory of the ancients might be divided, like painting and

poetry in general, into two classes, _viz._ the _sublime_, and the _more

vulgar_. Symbols of the one might be those by which some mythological

or philosophical allusion, or even some unknown or mysterious rite, is

expressed.

Such as are more commonly understood, _viz._ personified virtues, vices,

_&c._ might be referred to the other.

The images of the former give to performances of the art the true epick

grandeur: one single figure is sufficient to give it: the more it

contains, the sublimer it is: the more it engages our attention, the

deeper it penetrates, and we of course feel it the more.

The ancients, in order to represent a child dying in his bloom, painted

him carried off by Aurora[220]: a striking image! taken, perhaps, from

the custom of burying youths at day-break. The ideas of the bulk of our

artists, in this respect, are too trivial to be mentioned here.

The animation of the body, one of the most abstracted ideas, was

represented by the loveliest, most poetical images. An artist, who

should imagine he could express this idea by the Mosaick creation, would

be mistaken; for his image would be merely historical, and nothing

but the creation of Adam: a history altogether too sacred for being

either admitted as the allegory of a mere philosophical idea, or into

every place: neither does it seem poetical enough for the flights of

the art. This idea appears on coins and gems[221], as described by the

most ancient poets and philosophers: Prometheus forming a man of that

clay, of which large petrified heaps were found in Phocis in the time

of Pausanias[222]; and Minerva holding a butterfly, as an image of the

soul, over his head. The snake encircling a tree behind Minerva, on the

above coin of Antoninus Pius, is a supposed symbol of his prudence and

sagacity.

It cannot be denied that the meaning of many an ancient allegory

is merely conjectural, and therefore not to be applied on every

occasion. A child catching a butterfly on an altar was pretended to

signify _Amicitia ad aras_, or, “which is not to exceed the borders of

justice[223].” On another gem, Love, endeavouring to pull off the branch

of an old tree, where a nightingale is perching, is said to allegorize

love of wisdom[224]. _Eros_, _Himeros_, and _Pathos_, the symbols of

Love, Appetite, and Desire, are represented, they say[225], on a gem,

encompassing the sacred fire on an altar; Love behind the fire, his head

only over-reaching the flames; Appetite and Desire on both sides of the

altar; Appetite with one hand only in the fire, with the other holding a

garland; Desire with both his hands in the flames. A _Victoria_ crowning

an anchor, on a coin of king Seleucus, was formerly regarded as an image

of peace and security procured by victory, till by the help of history we

have been enabled to give it its true interpretation. Seleucus is said to

have been born with a mark resembling an anchor[226], which not only he

himself, but all his descendants, the Seleucidæ, have preserved on their

coins[227].

There is another Victoria with butterfly’s wings[228], fastened on a

trophy. This, they say, is the symbol of a hero, who, like Epaminondas,

died in the very act of conquering. At Athens such a statue[229], and an

altar to an unwinged Victoria, was the symbol of their perpetual success

in battle: ours may admit of the same explication as Mars in chains at

Sparta[230]. Nor was she, as I presume, provided at random with wings

usually given to Psyche, her own being those of an eagle: they perhaps

signify the soul of the deceased: however, all these conjectures might be

tolerable, if a Victoria fastened on trophies of conquered enemies could

reasonably correspond with their being vanquished.

Indeed the sublimer allegory of the ancients has not been transmitted to

us, without the loss of its most valuable treasures: it is poor, when

compared with the second kind, which is often provided with several

symbols for one idea. Two different ones, signifying the happiness of

the times, are expressed on coins of the emperor Commodus: the one a

lady[231], sitting with an apple or ball in her right, and a dial in her

left hand, beneath a leafy tree: three children are before her, two in a

vase or flower-pot, the usual symbol of fertility: the other represents

four children, who, as is clear by the things they bear, are the seasons.

Both have the subscription FELICITAS TEMPORVM.

But these, and all the symbols that want inscriptions, are of a lower

rank; and some of them might as well be taken for signs of different

ideas. Hope[232] and Fertility[233], for instance, might be Ceres,

Nobility[234], Minerva. Patience[235], on a coin of Aurelian, wants her

true characteristick, as does Erato; and the Parcæ[236] are only by their

garments distinguished from the Graces. On the contrary, ideas which are

often confounded in morality, as Justice and Equity, are extremely well

distinguished by the ancients. The former is represented, as drawn by

_Gellius_[237], with a stern look, a diadem, and dressed hair[238]; the

latter with a mild countenance, and waving ringlets; ears of corn arising

from her balance, as symbols of the advantages of equity; and sometimes

she holds in her other hand[239] a cornu-copia.

Peace, on a coin of the emperor Titus, is to be ranked among those of a

more energetick expression. The goddess of Peace leans on a pillar with

her left arm, in the hand of which she holds the branch of an olive-tree,

whilst the other waves the caduceus over the thigh of a victim on a

little altar, which hints at the bloodless sacrifices of that goddess:

the victims were slaughtered out of the temple, and nothing but the

thighs were offered at the altar, which was not to be stained with blood.

Peace usually appears with the olive-branch and the caduceus, as on

another coin of this emperor[240]; or on a stool placed on a heap of

arms, as on a coin of Drusus[241]. On some of Tiberius’s and Vespasian’s

coins[242] Peace appears in the act of burning arms.

On a coin of the Emperor Philip there is a noble image; a sleeping

Victory: which, with better reason, may be taken for the symbol of

confidence in conquest, than for that in the security of the world as

the inscription pretends. Of an analogous idea was the picture, by which

the Athenian General Timotheus was ridiculed, for the blind luck with

which he obtained his victories: he was represented asleep, with Fortune

catching Towns in her Net[243].

The Nile, with his sixteen children, is of this same class[244]. The

child that reaches the ears of corn, and the fruits, in his Cornu, is

the symbol of the highest fertility; but those that over-reach them are

signs of miscarrying seasons. Pliny explains the whole[245]. Egypt is at

the height of its fertility, when the Nile rises sixteen feet: but if

it either falls short of, or exceeds that measure, it equally blasts

the land with unfruitfulness. Rossi, in his collection, neglected the

children.

Satyrical pictures belong also to this class: the Ass of Gabrias, for

instance[246], which imagines itself worshipped by the people, as they

bow to the statue of Isis on its back. It is impossible to give a

livelier image of the pride of the Vulgar-Great.

The sublimer allegory might be supplied by the lower class, had it not

met with the same fate. We are, for instance, not acquainted with the

figure of Eloquence, or _Peitho_; or that of the Goddess of Comfort,

_Parergon_, represented by Praxiteles, as Pausanias tells us[247].

Oblivion had an altar among the Romans[248], and perhaps a figure: as may

also be supposed of Chastity, whose altar is to be found on coins[249];

and of Fear, to which Theseus offered sacrifices[250].

However, the remains of ancient allegory are not yet worn out: there are

still many secret stores: the poets, and other monuments of antiquity,

afford numbers of beautiful images. Those, who in our time, and that

of our fathers, were busy in improving allegory, and in facilitating

the endeavours of the artists; those, I say, should reasonably have

had recourse to so rich and pure a fountain. But there was an epoch to

appear, in which a shocking croud of pedants should, with downright

madness, conspire in an universal uproar against every the lead glimpse

of good taste. Nature, in their eyes, was puerile, and ought to be

fashioned: blockheads, both young and old, vied in painting devices and

emblems, for the benefit of artists, philosophers, and divines; and woe

to him who made a compliment, without dressing it up in an emblem!

Symbols void of sense were illustrated with inscriptions, giving an

account of what they meant, and meant not: these are the treasures which

are dug for, even in our times, and which, being then in high fashion,

out-shone all antiquity had left.

The ancients, for instance, represented Munificence by a woman holding

a Cornucopia in one hand, and the table of the Roman Congiarium in the

other[251]: an image which looked too parsimonious for modern liberality;

another therefore was contrived[252], with two horns; one of them

inverted, the better to pour out its contents; an eagle, the meaning

of which is too hard for me to guess at, was set upon her head; others

painted her with a pot in each hand[253]. Eternity was, by the ancients,

drawn either sitting on a Globe, or rather Sphere[254], with a Hasta in

her hand; or standing[255], with the Sphere in one hand, and the Hasta in

the other; or with the Sphere in her hand, and no Hasta; or else covered

with a floating Veil[256]. These are the images of Eternity on the coins

of the Empress Faustina: but there was not gravity enough in them for

the modern artists. Eternity, so frightful to many, required a frightful

image[257]; a form female down to the breast, with Globes in each hand;

the rest of the Body a circling star-marked Snake turning into itself.

Providence very often has a Globe at her feet, and a Hasta in her left

hand[258]. On a coin of the Emperor Pertinax[259], she stretches out both

her hands, towards a Globe falling from the clouds. A female figure,

with two heads, seemed more expressive to the moderns[260].

Constancy, on some of Claudius’s coins[261], is either fitting or

standing, with a Helmet on her head, and a Hasta in her left hand; or

without Helmet and Hasta, but always with a finger pointing to her face,

as if closely debating some point. For distinction sake the moderns

joined a couple of pillars[262].

It is very probable, that Ripa was often at a loss with his own figures.

Chastity, in his Iconology, holds in one hand a Whip[263], (a strange

incitement to virtue) in the other a Sieve: The first inventor, perhaps,

hinted at Tuccia the vestal; which Ripa not remembring, indulges the most

absurd whims, not worth repeating.

By thus contrasting ancient and modern allegory, I mean not to divert our

times of their right of settling new allegories: but from the different

manners of thinking, I shall draw some rules, for those that are to tread

these paths.

The character of noble simplicity was the chief aim of the Greeks and

Romans: of which Romeyn de Hooghe has given the very contrast. His book,

in general, may very fitly be compared to the elm in Virgil’s hell:

_Hanc sedem somnia vulgo_

_Vana tenere ferunt, foliisque sub omnibus hærent._

Æn. VI.

The distinctness of the ancient allegory was owing to the individuation

of its images. Their rule, (if we except only a few of those

above-mentioned), was to avoid every ambiguity; a rule slightly observed

by the moderns: the Hart, for instance, symbolizing[264] baptism,

revenge, remorse, and flattery; the Cedar, a preacher, worldly vanities,

a scholar, and a woman dying in the pangs of child-birth.

That simplicity and distinctness were always accompanied by a certain

decency. A hog signifying, among the Egyptians, a scrutator of

mysteries[265], together with all the swine of Cæsar Ripa and some of the

moderns, would have been thought, by the Greeks, too indecent a symbol of

any thing whatever: save only where that animal made part of the arms of

a place, as it appears to be on the Eleusinian coins[266].

The last rule of the ancients was to beware of signs too near a-kin to

the thing signified. Let the young allegorist observe these rules, and

study them, jointly with mythology, and the remotest history.

Indeed some modern allegories, (if those ought to be called modern that

are entirely in the taste of antiquity), may perhaps be compared with

the sublimer class of the ancient.

Two brothers of the Barbarigo-family, immediately succeeding each

other[267], in the dignity of Doge of Venice, are allegorized by Castor

and Pollux[268]; one of whom, as the fable tells us, gave the other part

of that immortality which Jupiter had conferred on him alone. Pollux,

in the allegory, presents his brother, represented by a skull, with a

circling snake, as the symbol of eternity; on the reverie of a fictitious

coin, beneath the described figures, there drops a broken branch from a

tree, with the Virgilian inscription,

_Primo avulso non deficit alter._

Another idea on one of Lewis XIVth’s coins, is as worthy of notice;

being struck[269] on occasion of the Duke of Lorrain’s quiting his

dominions, after the surrender of Marsal, for having betrayed both the

French and Austrian courts. The Duke is Proteus overcome by the arts

of Menelaus, and bound, after having, in vain, tried all his different

forms. At a distance the conquered citadel is to be seen, and the year of

its surrender marked in the inscription. There was no occasion for the

superfluous epigraph: _Protei Artes delusæ_.

Patience, or rather a longing earnest desire[270], represented by a

female figure, with folded hands, gazing on a watch, is a very good image

of the lower class. It must indeed be owned, that the inventors of the

most picturesque allegories have contented themselves with the remains of

antiquity; none having been authorised to establish images of their own

fancy, for the general imitation of the artists. Neither has any attempt

of latter times deferred the honour: for in the whole Iconology of Ripa,

of two or three that are tolerable ones,

_Nantes in gurgite vasto_;

an Ethiopian washing himself, as an allusion to labour lost[271], is

perhaps the best. There are indeed images, and useful hints, dispersed in

some books of greater note, (as for instance, The Temple of Stupidity in

the Spectator[272],) which ought to be collected, and made more general.

Thus, were the treasures of science joined to those of art, the time

might come, when a painter would be able to represent an ode, as well as

a tragedy.

I shall myself submit to the publick some images: for rules instruct,

but examples still more. Friendship, I find every where pitifully

represented, and its emblems are not worth mentioning: their flying

scribbled labels shew us the depth of their inventors.

This noblest of human virtues I would paint in the figures of those

two immortal friends of heroic times, Theseus and Pirithous. The head

of the former is said to be on gems[273]: he likewise appears with the

club[274] won from Periphetes, a son of Vulcan, on a gem of Philemon.

Theseus consequently might be drawn with some resemblance. Friendship,

at the brink of danger, might be taken from the idea of an old picture

at Delphos, as described by Pausanias[275]. Theseus was painted in the

action of defending himself and his friend against the Thesprotians,

with his own sword in one hand, and another drawn from the side of his

friend, in the other. The beginning of their friendship, as described by

Plutarch[276], might also be an image of that idea. I am astonished not

to have met, among the emblems of the great men of the Barbarigo-family,

with an image of a good man and eternal friend. Such was Nicolas

Barbarigo, who contracted with Marco Trivisano a friendship worthy of

immortality;

_Monumentum ære perennius_:

a little rare treatise alone has preserved their memory[277].

A little hint of Plutarch’s might furnish an image of Ambition: he

mentions[278] the sacrifices of Honour, as being performed bareheaded,

whereas all other sacrifices, save only those of Saturn[279], were

offered with covered heads. This custom he believes to have taken its

rise from the usual salutation in society; though it may as well be _vice

versa_: perhaps it sprung from the Pelasgian rites[280], which were

performed bareheaded. Honour is likewise represented by a female figure,

crowned with laurels, a _Cornucopia_ and _Hasta_ in her hands[281].

Accompanied by Virtue, a male figure with a helmet, she is to be found on

a coin of Vitellius[282]: and the heads of both on those of Gordian and

Galien[283].

Prayers might be personified from an idea of Homer. Phœnix, the tutor

of Achilles, endeavouring to reconcile him to the Greeks, makes use of

an allegory. “Know Achilles, says he, that prayers are the daughters

of Zeus[284]; they are bent with kneeling; their faces sorrowful and

wrinkled, with eyes lifted up to heaven. They follow Ate; who, with a

bold and haughty mien marches on, and, light of foot as she is, runs over

all the world, to seize and torment mankind; for ever endeavouring to

escape the Prayers, who incessantly press upon her footsteps, in order

to heal those whom she hath hurt. Whoever honours these daughters of

Zeus, on their approach, may obtain much good from them; but meeting with

repulse, they pray their fire to punish by Ate the hard-hearted wretch.”

The following well-known old fable might also furnish a new image.

Salmacis, and the youth beloved by her, were changed to a fountain,

unmanning to such a degree, that

_Quisquis in hos fontes vir venerit, exeat inde_

_Semivir: & tactis subito mollescat in undis,_

Ovid. Metam. L. IV.

The fountain was near Halicarnassus in Caria. Vitruvius[285] thought he

had discovered the truth of that fiction: some inhabitants of Argos and

Trœzene, says he, going thither with a mind to settle, dispossessed the

Carians and Leleges; who, sheltering themselves among the mountains,

began to harass the Greeks with their excursions: but one of the

inhabitants having discovered some particular qualities in that fountain,

erected a building near it, for the convenience of those who had a mind

to make use of its water. Greeks and Barbarians mingled there; and these

at length, accustomed to the Greek civility, lost their savageness, and

were insensibly moulded into another nature. The fable itself is well

known to the artists: but the narrative of Vitruvius might instruct them

how to draw the allegory of a people taught humanity and civilised, like

the Russians by Peter the First. The fable of Orpheus might serve the

same purpose. Expression only must decide the choice.

Supposing the above general observations upon allegory insufficient to

evince its necessity in painting, the examples will at least demonstrate,

that painting reaches beyond the senses.

The two chief performances in allegorical painting, mentioned in my

treatise, viz. the Luxemburg gallery, and the cupola of the Imperial

Library at Vienna, may shew how poetical, how happy an use their authors

made of allegory.

Rubens proposing to paint Henry IV. as a humane victor, with lenity and

goodness prevailing, even in the punishment of unnatural rebels, and

treacherous banditti, represents him as Jupiter ordering the gods to

overthrow and punish the vices: Apollo and Minerva let fly their darts

upon them, and the vices, hideous monsters, in a tumultuous uproar tumble

over each other: Mars, entering in a fury, threatens total destruction;

but Venus, image of celestial love, gently lays hold of his arm:—you

fancy you hear her blandishing petition to the _mailed_ god: “rage not

with cruel revenge against the vices—they are punished.”

The whole performance of Daniel Gran[286] is an allegory, relative to the

Imperial Library, and all its figures are as the branches of one single

tree. ’Tis a painted Epopee, not beginning from the eggs of Leda; but, as

Homer chiefly rehearses the anger of Achilles, this immortalizes only the

Emperor’s care of the sciences. The preparations for the building of the

library are represented in the following manner:

Imperial majesty appears as a lady fitting, her head sumptuously

dressed, and on her breast a golden heart, as a symbol of the Emperor’s

generosity. With her sceptre the gives the summons to the builders;

at her feet sits a genius with an angle, palette, and chissel; another

hovers over her with the figures of the Graces, as symbols of that good

taste which prevailed in the whole. Next to the chief figure sits general

Liberality, with a purse in her hand; below her a genius, with the

table of the Roman Congiarius, and behind her the Austrian Liberality,

her mantle embroidered with larks. Several Genii gather the treasures

that flow from her Cornucopia, in order to distribute them among the

votaries of the arts and sciences, chiefly those, whose good offices to

the library had entitled them to regard. The execution of the Imperial

orders personified, directs her face to the commanding figure, and three

children present the model of the house. Next her an old man, the image

of Experience, measures on a table the plan of the building, a genius

standing beneath him with a plummet, as ready to begin. Next the old

man sits Invention, with a statue of Isis in her right, and a book in

her left hand, signifying, that Nature and Science are the fathers of

Invention, the puzzling schemes of which are represented by a Sphinx

lying before her.

This performance was compared to the great platfond of Le Moine at

Versailles, with an eye to the newest productions of France and Germany

alone: for the great gallery of the same palace, painted by Charles le

Brun, is, without doubt, the sublimest performance of poetick painting,

since the time of Rubens; and being possessed of this, as well as of

the gallery of Luxemburg, France may boast of the two most learned

allegorical performances.

The gallery of Le Brun contains the history of Louis XIV. from the

Pyrenæan peace, to that of Nimeguen, in nine large, and eighteen

smaller pieces: that in which the King determines war against Holland,

contains, in itself alone, an ingenious and sublime application of almost

the whole mythology[287]: its beauties are too exuberant for this

treatise; let the artist’s ideas be judged only by two of the smaller

compositions. He represents the famous passage over the Rhine: his hero

sits in a chariot, a thunderbolt in his hand, and Hercules, the image of

heroism, drives him through the midst of tempestuous waves. The figure

representing Spain is borne down by the current: the river god, aghast,

lets fall his oar: the victories, approaching on rapid wings, present

shields, marked with the names of the towns conquered after the passage.

Europa astonished beholds the scene.

Another represents the conclusion of the peace. Holland, though with-held

by the Imperial Eagle, snatching her robe, runs to meet peace, descending

from heaven, surrounded by the Genii of gaiety and pleasure, scattering

flowers all around her. Vanity, crowned with peacocks feathers;

endeavours to with-hold Spain and Germany from following their associate:

but perceiving the cavern where arms are forged for France and Holland,

and hearing same threatening in the skies, they likewise follow her

example. Is not the former of these two performances comparable, in

sublimity, to the Neptune of Homer, and the strides of his immortal

horses?

But let examples be never so striking, allegory will still have

adversaries: they rose in times of old, against that of Homer himself.

There are people of too delicate a conscience, to bear truth and fiction

in one piece: they are scandalized at a poor river-god in some sacred

story. Poussin met with their reproaches, for personifying the Nile

in his Moses[288]. A still stronger party has declared against the

obscurity of allegory; for which they censured, and still continue to

censure, Le Brun. But who is there so little experienced as not to know,

that perspicuity and obscurity depend often upon time and circumstances?

When Phidias first added a tortoise[289] to his Venus, ’tis likely that

few were acquainted with his design in it, and bold was the artist who

first dared to fetter her: time, however, made the meaning as clear

as the figures themselves. Allegory, as Plato says[290] of poetry in

general, has something enigmatick in itself, and is not calculated for

the bulk of mankind. And should the painter, from the fear of being

obscure, adapt his performance to the capacity of those, who look upon

a picture as upon a tumultuous mob, he might as well check every new

and extraordinary idea. The design of the famous Fred. Barocci, in his

Martyrdom of St. Vitalis, by drawing a little girl alluring a magpye

with a cherry, must have been very mysterious to many; the cherry[291]

alluding to the season, in which that saint suffered.

The painting of the greater machines, and of the larger parts of publick

buildings, palaces, &c. ought to be allegorical. Grandeur is relative to

grandeur; and heroick actions are not to be sung in elegiack strains. But

is every fiction allegorical in every place? The Venetian Doge might as

well pretend to enjoy his superiority in _Terra firma_. I am mistaken if

the Farnesian gallery is to be ranked among the allegorical performances.

Nevertheless Annibal, perhaps not having it in his power to choose his

subject, may have been too roughly used in my treatise: it is known that

the Duke of Orleans desired Coypel to paint in his gallery the history

of Æneas[292].

The Neptune of Rubens[293], in the gallery at Dresden, painted on purpose

to adorn the magnificent entry of the Infant Ferdinand of Spain into

Antwerp, as governor of the Netherlands, was there, on a triumphal arch,

allegorical[294]. The god of the ocean frowning his waves into peace, was

a poetick image of the Princes escaping the storm, and arriving safe at

Genoa. But now he is nothing more than the Neptune of Virgil.

Vasari, when pretending to find allegory in the Athenian school of

Raphael[295], _viz._ a companion of philosophy and astronomy with

theology, seems to have required, and, by the common opinion of his time,

to have been authorised to require something grand and above the vulgar,

in the decorations of a grand apartment: though indeed there be nothing

but what is obvious at first look, and that is, a representation of the

Athenian academy[296].

But in ancient times, there was no story in a temple, that was not,

at the same time, allegorical; allegory being closely interwoven with

mythology: the gods of Homer, says an ancient, are the most lively images

of the different powers of the universe; shadows of elevated ideas: and

the gallantries of Jupiter and Juno, in the platfond of a temple of

that goddess at Samos, were looked on as such; air being represented by

Jupiter, and earth by Juno[297].

Here I think it incumbent upon me to clear up what I have said concerning

the contradictions in the character of the Athenians, as represented

by Parrhasius. This you think an easy matter; the painter having done

it either in the historical way, or in several pictures: which latter

is absurd. Has not there been even a statue of that people, done by

Leochares, as well as a temple[298]? The composition of the picture in

question, has still eluded all probable conjectures[299]; and the help of

allegory having been called in, has produced nothing but Tesoro’s[300]

ghastly phantoms. This fatal picture of Parrhasius, I am afraid, will of

itself be a perpetual instance of the superior skill of the ancients in

allegory.

What has been said already of allegory, in general, contains likewise

what remarks may be made upon its being applied to decorations;

nevertheless as you insist upon that point particularly, I shall lightly

mention it too.

There are two chief laws in decoration, viz. to adorn suitably to

the nature of things and places, and with truth; and not to follow an

arbitrary fancy.

The first, as it concerns the artists in general, and dictates to them

the adjusting of things in such a manner, as to make them relative to

each other, claims especially a strict propriety in decorations:

——_Non ut placidis coeant immitia_—

Hor.

The sacred shall not be mixed with the profane, nor the terrible with the

sublime: this was the reason for rejecting the sheeps-heads[301], in the

Doric Metopes, at the chapel of the palace of Luxemburg at Paris.

The second law excludes licentiousness; nay circumscribes the architect

and decorator within much narrower limits than the painter; who sometimes

must, in spite of reason, subject his own fancy, and Greece, to fashion,

even in history-pieces: but publick buildings, and such works as are made

for futurity, claim decorations that will outlast the whims of fashion;

like those that, by their dignity and superior excellence, bore down the

attacks of many a century: otherwise they fade away, grow insipid and out

of fashion, perhaps before the finishing of the very work to which they

are added.

The former law directs the artist to allegory: the latter to the

imitation of antiquity; and this concerns chiefly the smaller decorations.

Such I call those that make not up of themselves a whole, or those

that are additional to the larger ones. The ancients never applied

shells, when not required by the fable; as in the case of Venus and the

Tritons; or by the place, as in the temples of Neptune: and lamps decked

with shells[302] are supposed to have made part of the implements of

those temples. For the same reason they may give lustre; and be very

significant, in proper places; as in the festoons of the Stadthouse at

Amsterdam[303].

Sheep and ox-heads stripped of their skin, so far from justifying a

promiscuous use of shells, as the author seems inclined to think, are

plain arguments to the contrary: for they not only were relative to

the ancient sacrifices, but were thought to be endowed with a power

of averting lightning[304]; and Numa pretended to have been secretly

instructed about them by Jupiter[305]. Nor can the Corinthian capital

serve for an instance of a seemingly absurd ornament, authorised and

rendered fashionable by time alone: for it seems of an origin more

natural and reasonable than Vitruvius makes it; which is, however, an

enquiry more adapted to a treatise on architecture. Pocock believed that

the Corinthian order had not much reputation in the time of Pericles, who

built a temple to Minerva: but he should have been reminded, that the

Doric order belonged to the temples of that goddess, as Vitruvius informs

us[306].

These decorations ought to be treated like architecture in general, which

owes its grandeur to simplicity, to a system of few parts, which being

not complex themselves, branch out into grace and splendour. Remember

here the channelled pillars of the temple of Jupiter, at Agrigentum,

(Girgenti now) which were large enough to contain, in one single gutter,

a man at full length[307]. In the same manner these decorations must not

only be few, but those must likewise consist of few parts, which are to

appear with an air of grandeur and ease.

The first law (to return to allegory) might be lengthened out into many a

subaltern rule: but the nature of things and circumstances is, and ever

must be, the artist’s first aim; as for examples, refutation promises

rather more instruction than authority.

Arion riding on his dolphin, as unmeaningly represented upon a

Sopra-porta, in a new treatise on architecture[308], though a significant

image in the apartments of a French Dauphin, would be a very poor one

in any place where Philanthropy, or the protection of artists like him,

could not immediately be hinted at. On the contrary, he would even to

this day, though without his lyre, be an ornament to any publick building

at Tarentum, because the ancient Tarentines, stamped on their coins the

image of Taras, one of the sons of Neptune, riding on a dolphin, on a

supposition of his being their first founder.

The allegorical decorations of a building, raised by the contributions

of a whole nation, I mean the Duke of Marlborough’s palace at Blenheim,

are absurd: enormous lions of massy stone, above two portals, tearing to

pieces a little cock[309]. The hint sprung from a poor pun.

Nor can it be denied that antiquity furnishes some ideas seemingly

analogous to this: as for instance, the lioness on the tomb of Leæna, the

mistress of Aristogiton, raised in honour of her constancy amidst the

torments applied by the tyrant, in order to extort from her a confession

of the conspirators against him. But from this, I am afraid, nothing can

arise in behalf of the above pitiful decoration: that mistress of the

martyr of liberty having been a notorious woman, and whose name could

not decently stand a publick trial. Of the same nature are the lizards

and frogs on a temple[310], alluding to the names of the two architects,

Saurus and Batrachus[311]: the above-mentioned lioness having no tongue,

made the allegory still more expressive. The lioness on the tomb of the

famous Lais[312], holding with her fore-paws a ram, as a symbol of her

manners[313], was perhaps an imitation of the former. The lion was, in

general, set upon the tombs of the brave.

It is not indeed to be pretended that every ornament and image of the

ancient vases, tools, &c. should be allegorical; and to explain many

of them, in that way, would be equally difficult and conjectural. I am

not bold enough to maintain, that an earthen lamp[314], in the shape

of an ox’s-head, means a perpetual remembrance of useful labours, on

account of the perpetuity of the fire; nor to decypher here a mysterious

sacrifice to Pluto and Proserpine[315]. But the image of a Trojan Prince,

carried off by Jupiter, to be his favourite, was of great and honourable

signification in the mantle of a Trojan. Birds pecking grapes seem as

suitable to an urn, as the young Bacchus brought by Mercury to be nursed

by Leucothea, on a large marble vase of the Athenian Salpion[316]. The

grapes may be a symbol of the pleasures the deceased enjoy in Elysium:

the pleasures of hereafter being commonly supposed to be such; as the

deceased chiefly delighted in when alive. A bird, I need not say, was the

image of the soul. A Sphinx, on a cup sacred to Bacchus, is supposed to

be an allusion to the adventures of Oedipus at Thebes, Bacchus’s birth

place[317]; as a Lizard on a cup of Mentor, may hint at the possessor,

whose name perhaps was Saurus.

There is some reason to search for allegory, in most of the ancient

performances, when we consider, that they even built allegorically.

Such an allusive building was a gallery at Olympia[318], sacred to the

seven liberal arts, and re-echoing seven times a poem read aloud there.

A temple of Mercury, supported, instead of pillars, by Herms, or, as

we now spell, Terms, on a coin of Aurelian[319], is of the same kind:

there is on its front a dog, a cock, and a tongue; figures that want no

explication.

Yet the temple of Virtue and Honour, built by Marcellus, was still more

learnedly executed: having consecrated his Sicilian spoils to that

purpose, he was disappointed by the priests, whom he first consulted

on that design; who told him, that no single temple could admit of

two divinities. Marcellus therefore ordered two temples to be built,

adjoining to each other, in such a manner that whoever would be admitted

to that of Honour must pass through that of Virtue[320]; thus publickly

indicating, that virtue alone leads to true honour: this temple was near

the Porta Capena[321]. And here I cannot help remembering those hollow

statues of ugly satyrs[322], which, when opened, were found replete with

little figures of the graces, to teach, that no judgment is to be formed

from outward appearances, and that a fair mind makes amends for a homely

body.

Perhaps, Sir, some of your objections may have been omitted: if so, it

was against my will——and at this instant, I remember one concerning the

Greek art of changing blue eyes to black ones. Dioscorides is the only

writer that mentions it[323]. Attempts of this kind have been made in our

days: a certain Silesian countess was the favourite beauty of the age,

and universally acknowledged to be perfect, had it not been for her blue

eyes, which some of her admirers wished were black. The lady, informed of

the wishes of her adorers, by repeated endeavours overcame nature; her

eyes became black,—and she blind.

I am not satisfied with myself, nor perhaps have given you satisfaction:

but the art is inexhaustible, and all cannot be written. I only wanted

to amuse myself agreeably at my leisure hours; and the conversation of

my friend FREDERIC OESER, a true imitator of Aristides, the painter of

the soul, was not a little favourable to my purpose: the name of which

worthy friend and artist[324] shall spread a lustre over the end of my

treatise.

INSTRUCTIONS

FOR THE

CONNOISSEUR.

——_Non, si quid turbida ROMA_

_Elevet, accedas: examenve improbum in illa_

_Castiges trutina: nec te quæsiveris extra._

_Nam Romæ est Quis non?_——

You call yourself a _Connoisseur_, and the first thing you gaze at,

in considering works of art, is the workmanship, the delicacy of the

pencilling, or the polish given by the chissel.——It was the idea however,

its grandeur or meanness, its dignity, fitness, or unfitness, that ought

first to have been examined: for industry and talents are independent of

each other. A piece of painting or sculpture cannot, merely on account

of its having been laboured, claim more merit than a book of the same

sort. To work curiously, and with unnecessary refinements, is as little

the mark of a great artist, as to write learnedly is that of a great

author. An image anxiously finished, in every minute trifle, may be fitly

compared to a treatise crammed with quotations of books, that perhaps

were never read. Remember this, and you will not be amazed at the laurel

leaves of _Bernini_’s Apollo and Daphne, nor at the net held by _Adams_’s

statue of water at Potzdam: you will only be convinced that workmanship

is not the standard which distinguishes the antique from the modern.

Be attentive to discover whether an artist had ideas of his own, or only

copied those of others; whether he knew the chief aim of all art, Beauty,

or blundered through the dirt of vulgar forms; whether he performed like

a man, or played only like a child.

Books may be written, and works of art executed, at a very small expence

of ideas. A painter may mechanically paint a Madonna, and please; and a

professor, in the same manner, may write Metaphysics to the admiration of

a thousand students. But would you know whether an artist deserves his

name, let him invent, let him do the same thing repeatedly: for as one

feature, may modify a mien, so, by changing the attitude of one limb, the

artist may give a new hint towards a characteristic distinction of two

figures, in other respects exactly the same, and prove himself a man.

Plato, in _Raphael_’s Athenian school, but slightly moves his finger:

yet he means enough, and infinitely more than all _Zucchari_’s meteors.

For as it requires more ability to say much in a few words, than to do

the contrary; and as good sense delights rather in things than shews, it

follows, that one single figure may be the theatre of all an artist’s

skill: though, by all that is stale and trivial! the bulk of painters

would think it as tyrannical to be sometimes confined to two or three

figures, in great only, as the ephemeral writers of this age would grin

at the proposal of beginning the world with their own private stock, all

public hobby-horses laid aside: for fine cloaths make the beau. ’Tis

hence that most young artists,

_Enfranchis’d from their tutor’s care_,

choose rather to make their entrance with some perplexed composition,

than with one figure strongly fancied and masterly executed. But let

him, who, content to please the few, wants not to earn either bread or

applause from a gaping mob, let him remember that the management of a

“_little_” more or less really distinguishes artist from artist; that the

truly sensible produces a multiplicity, as well as quickness and delicacy

of feelings, whilst the dashing quack tickles only feeble senses and

callous organs; that he may consequently be great in single figures, in,

the smallest compositions, and new and various in repeating things the

most trite. Here I speak out of the mouth of the ancients: this, their

works teach: and both our writers and painters would come nearer them,

did not the one busy themselves with their words only, the other with

their proportions.

In the face of Apollo pride exerts itself chiefly in the chin and nether

lip; anger in the nostrils; and contempt in the opening mouth; the

graces inhabit the rest of his divine, head, and unruffled beauty, like

the sun, streams athwart the passions. In Laocoon you see bodily pains,

and indignation at undeserved sufferings, twist the nose, and paternal

sympathy dim the eye-balls. Strokes like these are, as in Homer, a whole

idea in one word; he only finds them who is able to understand them. Take

it for certain, that the ancients aimed at expressing much in little,

_Their ore was rich, and seven times purg’d of lead_:

whereas most moderns, like tradesmen in distress, hang out all their

wares at once. Homer, by raising all the gods from their seats, on

Apollo’s appearing amongst them[325], gives a sublimer idea than all the

learning of Callimachus could furnish. If ever a prejudice may be of

use, ’tis here; hope largely from the ancient works in approaching them,

nor fear disappointments; but examine, peruse, with cool sedateness and

silenced passions, lest your disturbed brain find Xenophon flat and Niobe

insipid.

To original ideas, we oppose copied, not imitated ones. Copying we

call the slavish crawling of the hand and eyes, after a certain model:

whereas reasonable imitation just takes the hint, in order to work by

itself. _Domenichino_, the painter of Tenderness, imitated the heads of

the pretended Alexander at Florence, and of the Niobe at Rome[326]; but

altered them like a master. On gems and coins you may find many a figure

of _Poussin_’s: his Salomon is the Macedonian Jupiter: but whatever his

imitation produced, differs from the first idea, as the blossoms of a

transplanted tree differ from those that sprung in its native soil.

Another method of copying is, to compile a Madonna from _Maratta_; a S.

Joseph from _Barocci_; other figures from other masters, and lump them

together in order to make a whole. Many such altar-pieces you may find,

even at Rome; and such a painter was the late celebrated _Masucci_ of

that city.——Copying I call, moreover, the following a certain form,

without the least consciousness of one’s being a blockhead. Such was he

who, by the command of a certain Prince, painted the nuptials of Psyche,

or, if you will, the Queen of Sheba:—’twas a pity there was no other

Psyche to be found, but that dangerous one of _Raphael_. Most of the late

great statues of the saints, in St. Peter’s at Rome, are of the same

stuff—the block at 500 Roman crowns from the quarry.

The second characteristic of works of art is Beauty. The highest object

of meditation for man is man, and for the artist there is none above his

own frame. ’Tis by moving your senses that he reaches your soul: and

hence the analysis of the bodily system has no less difficulties for

him, than that of the human mind for the philosopher. I do not mean the

anatomy of the muscles, vessels, bones, and their different forms and

situations; nor the relative measure of the whole to its parts, and _vice

versa_: for the knife, exercise, and patience, may teach you all these.

I mean the analysis of an attribute, essential to man, but fluctuating

with his frame, allowed by all, misconstrued by many, known by few:—the

analysis of beauty, which no definition can explain, to him whom heaven

hath denied a soul for it. Beauty consists in the harmony of the various

parts of an individual. This is the philosopher’s stone, which all

artists must search for, though a few only find it: ’tis nonsense to

him, who could not have formed the idea out of himself. The line which

beauty describes is elliptical, both uniform and various: ’tis not to be

described by a circle, and from every point changes its direction. All

this is easily said; but to apply it—_there is the rub_. ’Tis not in the

power of Algebra to determine which line, more or less elliptic, forms

the divers parts of the system into beauty—but the ancients knew it; I

attest their works, from the gods down to their vases. The human form

allows of no circle, nor has any antique vase its profile semicircular.

After this, should any one desire me to assist him more sensibly in his

inquiries concerning beauty, by setting down some rules (a hard task), I

would take them from the antique models, and in want of these, from the

most beautiful people I could meet with at the place where I lived. But

to instruct, I would do it in the negative way; of which I shall give

some instances, confining myself however to the face.

The form of real beauty has no abrupt or broken parts. The ancients made

this principle the basis of their youthful profile; which is neither

linear nor whimsical, though seldom to be met with in nature: the

growth, at least, of climates more indulgent than ours. It consists in

the soft coalescence of the brow with the nose. This uniting line so

indispensably accompanies beauty, that a person wanting it may appear

handsome full-faced; but mean, nay even ugly, when taken in profile.

_Bernini_, that destroyer of art, despised this line, when legislator of

taste, as not finding it in common nature, his only model; and therein

was followed by all his school. From this same principle it necessarily

follows, that neither chin nor cheeks, deep-marked with dimples, can

be consistent with true beauty. Hence the face of the Medicean Venus

is to be degraded from the first rank. Her face, I dare say, was taken

from some celebrated fair one, contemporary with the artist. Two other

Venuses, in the garden behind the Farnese, are manifestly portraits.

The form of real beauty has neither the projected parts obtuse, nor

the vaulted ones sharp. The eye-bone is magnificently raised, the chin

thoroughly vaulted. Thus the best ancients drew: though, when taste

declined amongst them, and the arts were trampled on in modern times,

these parts changed too: then the eye-bone became roundish and obtusely

dull, and the chin mincingly pretty. Hence we may safely affirm, that

what they call Antinous, in the Belvedere, whose eye-bone is rather

obtuse, cannot be a work of the highest antiquity, any more than the

Venus.

As these remarks are general, they likewise concern the features of

the face, the form only. There is another charm, that gives expression

and life to forms, which we call Grace; and we shall give some loose

reflexions on it separately, leaving it to others to give us systems.

The figure of a man is as susceptible of beauty as that of a youth:

but as a various one, not the various alone, is the Gordian knot, it

follows, that a youthful figure, drawn at large, and in the highest

possible degree of beauty, is, of all problems that can be proposed to

the designer, the most difficult. Every one may convince himself of this:

take the most beautiful face in modern painting, and it will go hard,

but you shall know a still more beautiful one in nature.——I speak thus,

after having considered the treasures of Rome and Florence.

If ever an artist was endowed with beauty, and deep innate feelings for

it; if ever one was versed in the taste and spirit of the ancients, ’twas

certainly _Raphael_: yet are his beauties inferior to the most beautiful

nature. I know persons more beautiful than his unequalled Madonna, in

the _Palazzo Petti_ at Florence, or the Alcibiades in his academy. The

Madonna in the Christmas-night of _Corregio_, (a piece justly celebrated

for its chiar’-oscuro) is no sublime idea; still less so is that of

_Maratta_ at Dresden: _Titian_’s celebrated Venus[327] in the Tribuna

at Florence is common nature. The little heads of _Albano_ have an air

of beauty; but it is a different thing to express beauty in little, and

in great. To have the theory of navigation, and to guide a ship through

the ocean, are two things. _Poussin_, who had studied antiquity more than

his predecessors, knew perfectly well what his shoulders could bear, and

never ventured into the great.

The Greeks alone seem to have thrown forth beauty, as a potter makes his

pot. The heads on all the coins of their Free-states have forms above

nature, which they owe to the line that forms their profile. Would it not

be easy to hit that line? Yet have all the numismatic compilers deviated

from it. Might not _Raphael_, who complained of the scarcity of beauty,

might not he have recurred to the coins of Syracuse, as the best statues,

Laocoon alone excepted, were not yet discovered?

Farther than those coins no mortal idea _can_ go. I wish my reader

an opportunity of seeing the beautiful head of a genius in the Villa

Borghese, and those images of unparalleled beauty, Niobe and her

daughters. On the western side of the Alps he must be contented with gems

and pastes. Two of the most beautiful youthful heads are a Minerva of

Aspasius, now at Vienna, and a young Hercules in the Museum of the late

Baron Stosch, at Florence.

But let no man, who has not formed his taste upon antiquity, take it into

his head to act the connoisseur of beauty: his ideas must be a parcel

of whims. Of modern beauties I know none that could vie with the Greek

female dancer of Mr. _Mengs_, big as life, painted in _Crayons_ on wood,

for the Marquis Croimare at Paris, or with his Apollo amidst the muses,

in the Villa Albano, to whom that of _Guido_ in the Aurora, compared, is

but a mortal.

All the modern copies of ancient gems give us another proof of the

decisive authority of beauty in criticisms on works of art. _Natter_ has

dared to copy that head of Minerva mentioned above, in the same size

and smaller, but fell short. The nose is a hair too big, the chin too

flat, and the mouth mean. And this is the case of modern imitators in

general. What can we hope then of self-fancied beauties? Conclude not,

however, from this, against the possibility of a perfect imitation of

antique heads: ’tis enough to say, that it has not yet existed: ’twas

probably the fault of the imitators themselves. _Natter_’s treatise on

ancient gems is rather shallow; and what he wrought and wrote, even on

that single branch of engraving, for which he was chiefly celebrated, has

neither the strength nor the ease of genius.

To this consciousness of inferiority we owe the scarcity of modern

supposititious gems and coins. Any man of taste may, upon comparison,

distinguish even the best modern coin from the antique original.—I speak

of the best antiques: for as to the lower Imperial coins, where the cheat

was easier, the artists have been liberal enough. _Padoano_’s stamps, for

copying antique coins, are in the Barberini Collection at Rome, and those

of one _Michel_, a Frenchman, and false coiner in taste, at Florence, in

that of the late Baron Stosch.

The third characteristic of works of art is Execution; or, the sketch

being made, the method of finishing. And even here we commend good sense

above industry. As in judging of styles, we distinguish the good writer

by the clearness, fluency, and nervousness of his diction; so in works

of art, we discover the master by the manly strength, freedom, and

steadiness of his hand. The august contour, and easiness of mien, in the

figures of Christ, St. Peter, and the other apostles, on the right side

of the Transfiguration, speak the classic hand of _Raphael_, as strongly

as the smooth, anxious nicety of some of _Julio Romano_’s figures, on the

left, the more wavering one of the disciple.

Never admire either the marble’s radiant polish, or the picture’s glossy

surface. For that the journeyman sweated; for this the painter vegetated

only. _Bernini_’s Apollo is as polished as HE in the Belvedere; and there

is much more labour hid in one of _Trevisani_’s Madonnas, than in that of

_Corregio_. Whenever trusty arms and laborious industry prevail, we defy

all the ancients. We are not their inferiors even in managing porphyry,

though a mob of scriblers, with _Clarencas_ in their rear-guard, deny it.

Nor (whatever _Maffei_ thinks[328],) did the ancients know a peculiar

method of giving a nicer polish to the figures of their concave gems

(_Intagli_.) Our artists polish as nicely: but statues and gems may be

detestable, for all their polish, as a face may be ugly, with the softest

skin.

This however is not meant to blame a statue for its polish, as it is

conducive to beauty: though Laocoon informs us, that the ancients knew

the secret of finishing statues, merely with the chissel. Nor does the

cleanness of the pencil, on a picture, want its merit: yet it ought to

be distinguished from enamelled tints. A barked statue, and a bristly

picture are alike absurd. Sketch with fire, and execute with phlegm. We

blame workmanship only as it claims the first rank; as in the marbles _à

la Bernini_, and the linnen of _Scybold_ and _Denner_.

Friend, these instructions may be of use. For as the bulk of mankind

amuse themselves with the shells of things only, your eye may be

captivated by polish and glare, as they are the most obvious; to put

you on your guard against which, is leading you the first step to true

knowledge. For daily observation, during several years, in Italy, has

taught me how lamentably most young travellers are duped by a set of

blind leaders. To see them skip about in the temple of art and genius,

all quite sober and cool, puts me in mind of a swarm of new-fledged

grashoppers wantoning in the spring.

ON

GRACE.

——Χαριτων ἱμερο φωνων ἱερον φυτον.

Grace is the harmony of agent and action. It is a general idea: for

whatever reasonably pleases in things and actions is gracious. Grace is

a gift of heaven; though not like beauty, which must be born with the

possessor: whereas nature gives only the dawn, the capability of this.

Education and reflection form it by degrees, and custom may give it the

sanction of nature. As water,

_That least of foreign principles partakes,_

_Is best:_

So Grace is perfect when most simple, when freest from finery,

constraint, and affected wit. Yet always to trace nature through the

vast realms of pleasure, or through all the windings of characters,

and circumstances infinitely various, seems to require too pure and

candid a taste for this age, cloyed with pleasure, in its judgments

either partial, local, capricious, or incompetent. Then let it suffice

to say, that Grace can never live where the passions rave; that beauty

and tranquillity of soul are the centre of its powers. By this Cleopatra

subdued Cæsar; Anthony slighted Octavia and the world for this; it

breathes through every line of Xenophon; Thucydides, it seems, disdained

its charms; to Grace Apelles and Corregio owe immortality; but Michael

Angelo was blind to it; though all the remains of ancient art, even those

of but middling merit, might have satisfied him, that Grace alone places

them above the reach of modern skill.

The criticisms on Grace in nature, and on its imitation by art, seem to

differ: for many are not shocked at those faults in the latter, that

certainly would incur their displeasure in the former. This diversity

of feelings lies either in imitation itself, which perhaps affects the

more the less it is akin to the thing imitated; or in the senses being

little exercised, and in the want of attention, and of clear ideas of

the objects in question. But let us not from hence infer that Grace is

wholly fictitious: the human mind advances by degrees; nor are youth, the

prejudices of education, boiling passions, and their train of phantoms,

the standard of its real delight—remove some of these, and it admires

what it loathed, and spurns what it doted on. Myriads, you say, the bulk

of mankind, have not even the least notion of Grace—but what do they know

of beauty, taste, generosity, or all the higher luxuries of the soul?

These flowers of the human mind were not intended for universal growth,

though their seeds lie in every breast.

Grace, in works of art, concerns the human figure only; it modifies the

_attitude_ and _countenance_, _dress_ and _drapery_. And here I must

observe, that the following remarks do not extend to the comic part of

art.

The attitude and gestures of antique figures are such as those have, who,

conscious of merit, claim attention as their due, when appearing among

men of sense. Their motions always shew the motive; clear, pure blood,

and settled spirits; nor does it signify whether they stand, sit, or lie;

the attitudes of Bacchanals only are violent, and ought to be so.

In quiet situations, when one leg alone supports the other which is free,

this recedes only as far as nature requires for putting the figure out

of its perpendicular. Nay, in the _Fauni_, the foot has been observed to

have an inflected direction, as a token of savage, regardless nature. To

the modern artists a quiet attitude seemed insipid and spiritless, and

therefore they drag the leg at rest forwards, and, to make the attitude

ideal, remove part of the body’s weight from the supporting leg, wring

the trunk out of its centre, and turn the head, like that of a person

suddenly dazzled with lightning. Those to whom this is not clear, may

please to recollect some stage-knight, or a conceited young Frenchman.

Where room allowed not of such an attitude, they, lest unhappily the leg

that has nothing to do might be unemployed, put something elevated under

its foot, as if it were like that of a man who could not speak without

setting his foot on a stool, or stand without having a stone purposely

put under it. The ancients took such care of appearances, that you will

hardly find a figure with crossed legs, if not a Bacchus, Paris, or

Nireus; and in these they mean to express effeminate indolence.

In the countenances of antique figures, joy bursts not into laughter;

’tis only the representation of inward pleasure. Through the face of

a Bacchanal peeps only the dawn of luxury. In sorrow and anguish they

resemble the sea, whose bottom is calm, whilst the surface raves. Even

in the utmost pangs of nature, Niobe continues still the heroine, who

disdained yielding to Latona. The ancients seem to have taken advantage

of that situation of the soul, in which, struck dumb by an immensity

of pains, she borders upon insensibility; to express, as it were,

characters, independent of particular actions; and to avoid scenes too

terrifying, too passionate, sometimes to paint the dignity of minds

subduing grief.

Those of the moderns, that either were ignorant of antiquity, or

neglected to enquire into Grace in nature, have expressed, not only what

nature feels, but likewise what she feels not. A Venus at Potzdam, by

_Pigal_[329], is represented in a sentiment which forces the liquor to

flow out at both sides of her mouth; seemingly gasping for breath; for

she was intended to pant with lust: yet, by all that’s desperate! was

this very Pigal several years entertained at Rome to study the antique.

A _Carita_ of _Bernini_, on one of the papal monuments in St. Peter’s,

ought, you’ll think, to look upon her children with benevolence and

maternal fondness; but her face is all a contradiction to this: for the

artist, instead of real graces, applied to her his nostrum, dimples, by

which her fondness becomes a perfect sneer. As for the expression of

modern sorrow, every one knows it, who has seen cuts, hair torn, garments

rent, quite the reverse of the antique, which, like Hamlet’s,

——_hath that within, which passeth shew:_

_These, but the trappings, and the suits of woe._

The gestures of the hands of antique figures, and their attitudes in

general, are those of people that think themselves alone and unobserved:

and though the hands of but very few statues have escaped destruction,

yet may you, from the direction of the arm, guess at the easy and natural

motion of the hand. Some moderns, indeed, that have supplied statues

with hands or fingers, have too often given them their own favourite

attitudes—that of a Venus at her toilet, displaying to her levee the

graces of a hand,

——_far lovelier when beheld._

The action of modern hands is commonly like the gesticulation of a

young preacher, piping-hot from the college. Holds a figure her cloths?

You would think them cobweb. Nemesis, who, on antique gems, lifts her

peplum softly from her bosom, would be thought too griping for any new

performance—how can you be so unpolite to think any thing may be held,

without the three last fingers genteely stretched forth?

Grace, in the accidental parts of antiques, consists, like that of the

essential ones, in what becomes nature. The drapery of the most ancient

works is easy and slight: hence it was natural to give the folds beneath

the girdle an almost perpendicular direction.—Variety indeed was sought,

in proportion to the increase of art; but drapery still remained a

thin floating texture, with folds gathered up, not lumped together, or

indiscreetly scattered. That these were the chief principles of ancient

drapery, you may convince yourself from the beautiful Flora in the

Campidoglio, a work of Hadrian’s times. Bacchanals and dancing figures

had, indeed, even if statues, more waving garments, such as played upon

the air; such a one is in the Palazzo Riccardi at Florence; but even then

the artists did not neglect appearances, nor exceed the nature of the

materials. Gods and heroes are represented as the inhabitants of sacred

places; the dwellings of silent awe, not like a sport for the winds, or

as wafting the colours: floating, airy garments are chiefly to be met

with on gems—where Atalanta flies

_As meditation swift, swift as the thoughts of love._

Grace extends to garments, as such were given to the Graces by the

ancients. How would you wish to see the Graces dressed? Certainly not in

birth-day robes; but rather like a beauty you loved, still warm from the

bed, in an easy negligée.

The moderns, since the epoch of _Raphael_ and his school, seem to have

forgot that drapery participates of Grace, by their giving the preference

to heavy garments, which might not improperly be called the wrappers

of ignorance in beauty: for a thick large-folded drapery may spare the

artists the pains of tracing the Contour under it, as the ancients did.

Some of the modern figures seem to be made only for lasting. _Bernini_

and _Peter_ of _Cortona_ introduced this drapery. For ourselves, we

choose light easy dresses; why do we grudge our figures the same

advantage?

He that would give a History of Grace, after the revolution of the arts,

would perhaps find himself almost reduced to negatives, especially in

sculpture.

In sculpture, the imitation of one great man, of _Michael Angelo_, has

debauched the artists from Grace. He, who valued himself upon his being

“a pure intelligence” despised all that could please humanity; his

exalted learning disdained to stoop to tender feelings and lovely grace.

There are poems of his published, and in manuscript, that abound in

meditations on sublime beauty: but you look in vain for it in his

works.—Beauty, even the beauty of a God, wants Grace, and Moses, without

it, from awful as he was, becomes only terrible. Immoderately fond of

all that was extraordinary and difficult, he soon broke through the

bounds of antiquity, grace, and nature; and as he panted for occasions

of displaying skill only, he grew extravagant. His lying statues, on

the ducal tombs of St. Lorenzo at Florence, have attitudes, which life,

undistorted, cannot imitate: so careless was he, provided he might dazzle

you with his mazy learning, of that decency, which nature and the place

required, that to him we might apply, what a poet says of St. Lewis in

hell:

_Laissant le vray pour prendre la grimace,_

_Il fut toujours au delà de la Grace,_

_Et bien plus loin que les commandements._

He was blindly imitated by his disciples, and in them the want of Grace

shocks you still more: for as they were far his inferiors in science,

you have no equivalent at all. How little _Guilielmo della Porta_, the

best of them all, understood grace and the antique, you may see in that

marble groupe, called the Farnese-bull; where Dirce is his to the girdle.

_John di Bologna_, _Algardi_, _Fiammingo_, are great names, but likewise

inferior to the ancients, in Grace.

At last _Lorenzo Bernini_ appeared, a man of spirit and superior talents,

but whom Grace had never visited even in dreams. He aimed at encyclopædy

in art; painter, architect, statuary, he struggled, chiefly as such,

to become original. In his eighteenth year he produced his Apollo and

Daphne; a work miraculous for those years, and promising that sculpture

by him should attain perfection. Soon after he made his David, which

fell short of Apollo. Proud of general applause, and sensible of his

impotency, either to equal or to offuscate the antiques; he seems,

encouraged by the dastardly taste of that age, to have formed the

project of becoming a legislator in art, for all ensuing ages, and he

carried his point. From that time the Graces entirely forsook him: how

could they abide with a man who begun his career from the end opposite

to the ancients? His forms he compiled from common nature, and his ideas

from the inhabitants of climates unknown to him; for in Italy’s happiest

parts nature differs from his figures. He was worshipped as the genius of

art, and universally imitated; for, in our days, statues being erected to

piety only, none to wisdom, a statue _à la Bernini_ is likelier to make

the kitchen prosper than a Laocoon.

From Italy, reader, I leave you to guess at other countries. A celebrated

_Puget_, _Girardon_, with all his brethren in _On_, are worse. Judge

of the connoisseurs of France by _Watelet_, and of its designers, by

_Mariette_’s gems.

At Athens the Graces stood eastward, in a sacred place. Our artists

should place them over their work-houses; wear them in their rings; seal

with them; sacrifice to them; and, court their sovereign charms to their

last breath.