respect to material conditioned in Space; but this abstraction, remote
as it is from being a purely capricious limitation, or an indication of
human incapacity, is just that which brings about the necessary advance
from sculpture. Even sculpture is not simply an imitation of natural
or physical existence, but a creation of intelligence, which removes
from form all aspects of natural existence which are not in accord
with the definite content it undertakes to present. This elimination
was carried out by sculpture in the case of all colour detail, so that
what remained to it was only the abstraction of material form. In
painting we have the opposite process, its content being the ideality
of soul-life, which can only appear on the face of objective reality,
by a process of self-absorption from that very material[234]. The art
of painting, therefore, no doubt, works for the sense-perception,
but in a way, through which the object which it displays remains no
longer an actual natural existence wholly in Space, but is changed to a
counterfeit creation of intelligence, in which it only so far reveals
its spiritual source as it annuls the actual existence of its object,
recreating it for itself in a purely phenomenal semblance within its
own spiritual realm--for Spirit.
(_ββ_) And to this intent painting must necessarily effect a breach
with the totality of the spatial condition, and there is no reason
for charging to human incapacity this loss of Nature's completeness.
In other words, inasmuch as the object of painting from the point of
view of its spatial existence, is merely a semblance, reflective of
the soul of man, exhibited by art for his spirit, the self-subsistency
of the object as we find it actually in Space is dissolved, and the
object is related in a far more restricted way to the spectator than
is the case in sculpture. A statue is by itself wholly an isolated
object, independent of the spectator, who may place himself where
he pleases; his point of view, his movements, his walking round it,
not one of them affect the work of art as a whole[235]. If this
self-subsistency is to be preserved the sculptured figure must also
have some definite impression to offer each and every point of view.
And this independence of the work must be retained in sculpture for
the reason that its content is the tranquillity, self-seclusion, and
objective presence which, in both an external and ideal sense, reposes
on their own substance. In painting, on the contrary, whose content is
conditioned by an ideal atmosphere, and in fact is composed of ideal
relations essentially particularized, it is precisely this aspect of
discord in a work of art between object and spectator which has to be
emphasized, and yet with a like directness to be resolved in the fact,
that the work, as depicting the ideality of intelligence in its entire
mode of presentation, can be only defined under the assumption that it
stands there related to an individual mind, that is a spectator, and
apart from the same has no self-subsistency. The spectator is assumed
and reckoned to be there from the first, and the work of art is only
intelligible as related to this point of personal contemplation[236].
For such a relation to mere _visibility_ and its reflection upon
an individual consciousness, however, the mere show of reality is
sufficient; or rather the actual totality of the spatial condition is
a defect, because in that case the objects seen retain an independent
existence, and do not appear to be created by Spirit for its own
contemplation. Nature consequently is not entitled to reduce its images
to the plain surface; its objects possess and claim to possess a real
and independent existence. The satisfaction, however, we derive from
painting is not in actual existence, but in the contemplative interest
we receive from the external reproduction of ideal truths, things born
of the soul, and its art therefore dispenses wholly with the need and
apparatus of spatial reality in its complete organization.
(_γγ_) And together with this reduction to the level surface we may
_thirdly_ associate the fact that painting is placed in a still more
remote position to architecture than that occupied by sculpture.
Works of sculpture even where exhibited independently for themselves
in public places or gardens, require some kind of pedestal treated
architectonically, and, in the case of apartments, forecourts, and
halls, either the art of building merely assists in presenting the
statue's fitting environment, or conversely the sculptured figure is
used as the decoration of the building, and between these two thus
related objects we find a close association. Painting, on the contrary,
whether placed in the enclosed apartment, or in public halls, or under
the open sky, is limited to the wall. Originally its function is
simply to fill up empty wall spaces. Among the ancients this original
destination is mainly sufficient, and they decorated in this way the
walls of their temples, and in more recent times also their private
chambers. Gothic architecture, whose main task is the enclosure
under the most grandiose conditions, supplies no doubt still larger
surfaces, or rather the largest possible, yet it is only in the most
ancient mosaics that we find painting is employed as a decoration of
empty spaces, whether in the case of the outside or the interior. The
more recent architecture of the fourteenth century, on the contrary,
fills up its enormous wall surfaces in an architectural manner,
the most imposing example I know of which is the main _façade_ of
Strasbourg cathedral. Here we find that the empty surfaces, excluding
the entrance doors, the rose and other windows, are filled in by the
ornamental work analogous to that of windows traced over the walls,
and decorated by figures of considerable delicacy and variety of form,
so that we have no need here for painting. In the case of religious
architecture, therefore, painting mainly appears in buildings which
begin to approximate to the ancient type of architecture. As a rule,
however, Christian painting is to be distinguished from the arts of
building, and presents its works in independent form, as for example in
large pictures, whether placed in chapels or on high altars. It is true
that here, too, the picture must retain some relation to the character
of the place, which it is destined to fill; for the rest, however, it
is not merely intended to fill up wall spaces, but to hang them as
a work of art independently just as a work of sculpture may do. In
conclusion painting has its use as a decoration of halls and apartments
in public buildings, town halls, palaces, and private houses, in which
respect its association with architecture is once more closely marked,
an association, however, in which its independence as a free art ought
not to be lost.
(_β_) A further necessary ground for the contraction of the spatial
dimensions in painting to bare surface is due to the fact that the art
of painting is concerned to express ideal conditions essentially in
their separation[237], and thereby rich in every kind of particular
character. A mere restriction to the shapes of _spatial_ form, with
which sculpture is able to rest satisfied, vanishes therefore in the
more luxuriant art; for the forms of spatial dimension are the most
abstract in Nature, and an attempt must now be made to seize particular
distinctions, in so far as the demand is now for an essentially more
multifold material. The matter specifically defined in the _physical_
sense is attached to the very principle of presentation in Space,
the differences of which[238], if they are to appear as essential
in the work of art, themselves disclose this fact[239] in the total
configuration of spatial form, which no longer remains the final
mode of presentation, and they are compelled to make a breach in the
complete form of spatial dimensions, in order to cancel the exclusive
appearance of the physical medium. For the dimensions in painting are
not presented by themselves in their actual reality, but are merely by
means of this physical aspect made to appear and be visible as such.
(_αα_) If we further inquire what is the nature of the _physical_
element which the art of painting makes use of we shall find this to be
_Light_, regarding it as that medium which renders all objects whatever
visible.
Previously the sensuous, concrete material of architecture was the
resisting matter of gravity, which more particularly in the art of
building asserted this character of heavy material in its features of
burden, constraint, power to support and be supported, and even in
sculpture still retained such characteristics. Heavy material encumbers
because it does not possess its centre of material unity in itself, but
in something else; and it seeks for this centre and strives towards it,
though it retains its position through the resistance of other bodies,
which become by doing so bodies of support. The principle of light is
an opposite, or extreme, of that material of weight which is not as
yet enclosed within its unity. Whatever else we may predicate of light
it is obvious that it is absolutely devoid of weight and offers no
resistance; rather it is pure identity with itself, and thereby simple
self-relation, the primordial ideality, the original self of Nature. In
light Nature make its start on the path of ideality or inwardness[240],
and is the universal physical ego, which of course is not carried
here to the point of particularity[241], nor has as yet concentrated
itself within the unit of individuality and self-seclusion, yet is
thereby enabled to cancel the bare objectivity and external show of
heavy matter and abstract from the sensuous and spatial totality of the
same[242]. From this aspect of the more _ideal_ quality of light it
becomes the physical principle of the art of painting.
(_ββ_) Light regarded simply as such, however, only exists as _one_
aspect contained in the principle of subjectivity, that is, as this
more ideal identity. In this respect light is manifestation, just that,
which, however, in Nature is only asserted _generally_ as the power of
making objects visible, holding the particular content of that which
it reveals outside itself as an objective world, which is not light,
but rather that which confronts it and consequently is dark. These
objects light renders cognizable under their distinctions of form by
irradiating them, that is, illuminating to a greater or less degree
their obscurity and invisibility, and permitting certain parts to be
more visible, namely, as they approach the spectator, and others, on
the contrary, more obscure as they withdraw from him. For light and
darkness, putting for the present on one side the particular colour of
an object, is generally speaking due to the relative remoteness of the
illuminated objects from us in their specific degree of illumination.
In this direct relation to objectivity light is no longer asserted
simply as light, but as essentially particularized brightness and
obscurity, light and shadow, whose varied manifestations render the
shape and distance of objects from one another intelligible to the
spectator. This is the principle which painting makes use of, because
from the first differentiation is implied in its notion. If we compare
this art in this respect with sculpture and architecture we shall
see that in these latter arts the actual distinctions of spatial
configuration are set forth in their nakedness, and light and shadow
are suffered to retain the ordinary effect which light produces in
Nature relatively to the position of the spectator, so that the rondure
of form is here already independently[243] present and light and
shade, whereby they are rendered visible, are merely a result of that
which was already actually on the spot independently of this further
aspect of their becoming visible. In the art of painting, however,
brightness and darkness together with all their gradations and finest
transitions are themselves part of the fundamental _artistic material_,
and it is a purely _intentional appearance_ they produce of that
medium, which sculpture gives form to in its _native_ state. Light and
shade, in short, the appearance of objects under this illumination, is
effected by art rather than the mere natural light, which consequently
only makes that kind of brightness, darkness, and lighting _visible_,
which are the products of painting. And this it is which constitutes
the positive rationale deduced from the material of the art itself, why
painting does not require three dimensions. Form is the creation of
light and shadow simply, and that form which exists in spatial reality
is superfluous.
(_γγ_) Bright and dark, shadow and light, no less than their interplay
are, however, merely an abstraction, which do not exist in Nature as
such abstraction, and consequently cannot be utilized as sensuous
material. In other words Light, as we have already seen, is related
to its opposite Dark. In this relation both principles have no
self-subsistency apart from each other, but can only be asserted in
their unity, that is, as the interplay of light and dark. The light,
which is in this way essentially impaired and obscured, which, however,
to a like extent transpierces and illumines darkness[244], supplies us
with the principle of _colour_ as the genuine material of painting.
Light in its purity is devoid of colour, it is the pure indeterminacy
of essential identity. Distinction from bare light, a lowering of its
value, is the characteristic of colour, which in contrast to light is
already in some degree obscurity, and together with which the principle
of light is asserted in union. It is consequently an incorrect and
false idea to hold that light is the aggregate result of different
colours, or in other words different degrees of obscuration[245].
Form, distance, limitation, rounded shape, in short, all spatial
relations and distinctions visible in the phenomena of Space are
unfolded in the art of painting entirely by means of colour, the
more ideal principle of which is capable of presenting a more ideal
content and by virtue of its profounder oppositions, the infinite
variety of its transitional gradations and the delicacy of its softest
modulations relatively to the fulness and detail of the objects it
accepts as subject-matter, is possessed of a field for its activity
of the widest range. It is beyond belief what mere colour is able to
accomplish in this art. Two human beings are, for example, something
totally distinct. Either is in his self-conscious identity no less than
his bodily organism an independent and exclusive spiritual and bodily
totality, yet the entire result of this difference is in a picture
reduced to a distinction of colours. In one place some particular
shade of colour ceases, in another a particular one starts up, and by
such means we get everything set before us, shape, distance, play of
posture, expression, what is nearest to sense and what is most akin to
intelligence. And we are not to regard this reduction as a make-shift
and defect. Quite the reverse is the fact; the art of painting
dispensing with the third dimension in no such way, but deliberately
rejecting it in order to set in the place of purely spatial reality the
higher and richer principle of colour.
(_γ_) This wealth enables painting to elaborate in its reproductions
the entire extent of the phenomenal world. Sculpture is more or less
restricted to the stable self-seclusion of individuality. In painting,
however, the individual cannot remain in such limitations of stability
whether regarded in his ideal aspect or relatively to the external
world, but is placed in every kind of varied definition. For on the one
hand, as already pointed out, he is placed in a far closer relation to
the spectator, and on the other he receives a more varied connection
with other individuals and the environment of Nature. A process,
therefore, which merely illuminates semblance of objective fact makes
possible the widest expansion of distances and spaces and the present
of such and all the varied objects that appear in them in one and the
same work of art. Yet it must no less, as a work of art, prove itself
to be a self-contained and unified whole, and exhibit itself in this
synthesis, not simply as an aggregate whose limits and boundaries
are defined by no principle, but rather as a totality whose unified
consistency is due to its own subject-matter.
(_c_) In the _third_ place we have, after this general consideration
of the content and sensuous material of painting, briefly to adduce in
general terms the principle of the _artistic mode_ of treatment adopted
by it.
The art of painting more so than either sculpture or architecture
admits of the two extremes. In the first case prominence is given
to the religious and ethical severity of the conception and
presentation of the ideal beauty of form, and in the second, where the
subject-matter is, taken by itself, insignificant, to the detail of
what it contains and the personal aspect of the creative art. We may
therefore not unfrequently hear two extreme kinds of criticism. Our
critic in the one case apostrophizes the nobility of the object, the
depth and astonishing sufficiency of the conception, the greatness of
the expression, and the boldness of the delineation[246]. And in the
other equal praise is given to the fine and unexampled character of
the painter's treatment of his colour. This contrast is implied in the
very notion of the art; indeed, we may affirm that it is impossible
to unite both aspects on one plane of elaboration. Each must remain
inevitably independent of the other. For painting has shape simply as
such, that is, the forms of spatial limitation, no less than colour
as means contributive to its artistic result, and is placed thereby
midway between the Ideal of the plastic arts and the extreme form of
the direct detail of Nature's reality; by reason of which we get two
distinct types of painting. One, that is the ideal, whose essential
basis is universality; and the other, that which presents particular
objects in all their closeness of detail.
(_α_) In this respect painting must accept, in the first instance, as
sculpture, that which is substantive in the sense that the objects of
religious belief are such, no less than the great events of history,
and its pre-eminent individual characters, albeit it renders visible
this substance in a form wherein the ideal and personal aspect is
emphasized. It is the imposing character, the serious significance
of the action portrayed, or the depth of the soul expressed which is
here of most importance, so that the elaboration and employment of all
the rich artistic means which are within the reach of painting, and
the dexterity, which the wholly consummate use of these means demands
regarded as a _tour de force_ of technique, cannot here be entirely
indicated. In cases of this kind it is the force of the content to be
presented and the absorption in what is essential and substantive in
the same, which tend to drive into the background the overwhelming
facility in the art of painting as that aspect which is less essential.
In this sense, for instance, the Cartoons of Raphael are of invaluable
merit, and fully display the entire excellence of their composition,
although Raphael, even in the case of particular pictures, despite all
his mastery in drawing, and the purity of his ideal, and at the same
time wholly vital personal figures, and the composition he may have
arrived at, most certainly in colour, and all that concerns landscape
and other aspects, is excelled by the Dutch masters. This is yet more
the case with the earlier Italian heroes of art, in contrast to whom
Raphael is to a somewhat similar degree inferior in depth, power, and
ideality of expression, as he surpasses such in the technique of his
craft, in the beauty of vital grouping, in draughtsmanship and the
like[247].
(_β_) Conversely, however, the art of painting, as we have seen, ought
to advance further than this exclusive absorption in the ideal and
infinite content of man's soul-life; its function is equally to assert
the subsistency and freedom of detail, which however incidental it may
be, contributes to the environment and background of the work. In this
advance from the profoundest seriousness to the objective features
of independent detail it is bound to force its way to the extreme
articulation of the purely phenomenal, where any and every content is
a matter of indifference, and artistic illusion in a realistic sense
is the main interest. In such a type of art we find depicted for us
the most fugitive aspect of the sky, the time of day, the lighting up
of the woods, the gleam and reflection of the clouds, waves, lakes,
streams, the shimmer and glitter of wine in the glass, the glance of
the eye, and every conceivable look and smile of the human countenance.
Painting in such cases moves from the idealistic standpoint to that of
living reality, whose phenomenal effect it mainly seeks to reproduce
by means of accuracy in the execution of every bit of detail[248]. Yet
this effort is no mere assiduity of elaboration, but a real exercise of
genuine talent, which strives to present every kind of detail in its
independent perfection, and yet retain the whole composition in unity
and fusion, and this can only be done by the finest art. In such work
the vital force of the realistic appearance thus secured tends to be
more near to the artist's aim than the Ideal; and it is precisely this
kind of art, as I have already found occasion to remark, which raises,
as no other, controversial points over the significance of the Ideal
and Nature. No doubt it is very possible to blame the use of the most
elaborate technique in subjects of little importance by themselves
as mere extravagance; yet there is no real reason for rejecting such
material, and it is precisely of that kind which ought to be treated in
this way by art, and be permitted to keep every conceivable subtlety
and refinement of surface appearance that it possesses.
(_γ_) The artistic treatment does not, however, stop at this more
general kind of opposition, but, inasmuch as painting reposes on the
principle of soul-expression and particularity, proceeds yet further
in the direction of differentiation in its results. Both architecture
and sculpture, it is true, assert differences of national type, and in
particular we are made aware in sculpture of a closer individuality
typical of certain schools and masters. In the art of painting this
distinction and personal aspect in the modes of representation expands
to an incalculable degree in proportion as the objects, which it may
accept, are taken from a field without definable limitations. In
this art to a pre-eminent extent the genius of particular peoples,
provinces, epochs and individuals asserts its claims and affects not
merely the choice of subjects and the spirit of their conception, but
also the character of drawing, grouping, colouring, handling of the dry
point no less than that of particular colours down to characteristics
of personal style and wont.
Inasmuch as the function of painting is so without restriction
concerned with the ideal aspect and the details of its subject-matter,
it follows of course that it gives us quite as little opportunity to
make definite statements of universal validity as to adduce specific
facts which can always without exception be accepted as true of it. We
must, however, not rest satisfied with what I have already discussed in
respect of the principle of the content, the material and the artistic
treatment, but make a further effort, however much we leave on one
side all that confronts us in its multifold variety, still to subject
certain aspects, that most emphatically enlist our attention, to
further examination.
2. PARTICULAR MODES OF THE DEFINITION OF PAINTING
The different points of view, according to which we have to undertake
this closer characterization, may be already anticipated from our
previous discussion. They refer once more to the content, the material
and the artistic treatment.
_First_, as to _content_, we have no doubt found the content of the
romantic type of art offer the most adequate subject-matter; we must,
however, inquire further what specific portions we should select from
the entire wealth within this type as pre-eminently adapted to the art
of painting.
_Secondly_, we have already made ourselves fairly cognisant with the
_principle_ of the sensuous material. We have now to define more
narrowly the forms, which may be expressed on the level surface by
means of colouring, in so far as the human form and other facts of
Nature have to be made visible in order that the ideality of Spirit may
be thereby disclosed.
_Thirdly_, we have a similar question with regard to the definite
character of the artistic conception and presentation, which
corresponds to the different character of the content thus itself
similarly differentiated, producing thereby different _types_ or
schools of painting.
(_a_) I have already at an earlier stage recalled the fact that the
ancients have had excellent painters, but added thereto the statement
that the function of painting is only completely satisfied by the way
of looking at things and the type of art which is referable to the
emotional life and which is actively asserted in the romantic type of
art. What appears, however, to contradict this from the point of view
of content is the fact that at the very culminating point of Christian
painting, during the age of Raphael, Rubens, Correggio, and others,
we find that mythological subjects are used and portrayed in part on
their own merits, and in part for the decoration and allegorization of
great exploits, triumphs, royal weddings, and so forth. In this sense
Goethe, for example, has once more borrowed from the descriptions
of Philostratus of the pictures of Polygnotus, and, assisted by his
imaginative powers as a poet, has added a novel freshness to such
subjects for the painter's benefit. If, however, such contributions
further imply the demand that subjects of Greek mythology and saga, or
scenes, too, from the Roman world, for which the French at a certain
period of their painting have evinced a great inclination, should
be conceived and portrayed in the definitive mood and significance
attached to them by the ancient world we can only object generally
that it is impossible to recall to life this past history, and what is
peculiarly appropriate to the antique is not wholly compatible with
the art of painting. The painter must consequently create from such
material an entirely different result, must import therein a totally
different spirit, other emotions and modes of seeing things than those
present to the ancients, in order to bring such a content into accord
with the real problems and aims of painting. For this reason also the
circle of antique material and situations is not that which painting
has elaborated in a consequential process; rather it is an aspect of
it which has been passed over as alien to its material, and which has
first to be essentially remodelled. I have several times insisted that
painting has before all to seize that, the presentment of which it can,
in deliberate contrast to sculpture, music, and poetry, master by means
of external form. And this is preeminently the self-concentration of
Spirit, which is denied to sculpture, while music again is unable to
make the passage to the external appearance of ideality, and poetry
itself can merely render visible the bodily presence in an incomplete
way. Painting, on the contrary, is still in a position to unite both
aspects. It can express the entire content of soul-life in an external
form, and is consequently bound to accept for its essential content
the emotional depth of the soul no less than the particular type of
character and its specific traits in its deepest impression--in other
words intensity of feeling and ideality in its differentiation, for the
expression of which definite events, conditions, and situations not
only must appear as the explanatory source of individual character,
but the specific individuality must disclose itself as a part of the
moulded form of the soul and physiognomy, rooted therein, and entirely
taken up into the external embodiment.
In order to express generally this ideality of soul we do not require
that ideal self-subsistency and largeness[249] of the classical
type we have previously dealt with, in which individuality persists
in immediate accord with the substantive core of its spiritual
essence and the physical characteristics of its bodily presentment;
to quite as little extent will suffice to the manifestation of
this soul-life Nature's ordinary hilarity, that Greek geniality of
enjoyment and blissful absorption in its object; rather true depth
and self-revelation of spiritual life presupposes that the soul has
worked its way through its emotions, its forces, its whole inward life,
has overcome much, has suffered and endured much anguish or misery
of spirit, and yet in all these divisions has retained its sense of
unity and come back to the same out of them. The ancients no doubt
also place before us in the mythos of Hercules a hero, who after many
troubles receives his apotheosis, and enjoys among the gods the repose
of blessedness; but the labours which Hercules accomplishes are purely
external, and the bliss, which he obtains as a reward, is merely a
tranquil cessation from labour; and the ancient rune, that Zeus will
have brought his empire to its consummation by his efforts, he, that
is the greatest hero of Greece, has not accomplished. Rather the end
of the rule of these self-subsistent gods then commences for the first
time, where we find man overcomes the dragons and serpents of his own
breast, the obstinacy and stubbornness of the soul's native realm
rather than the living dragons and serpents of Nature. Only thereby
will Nature's gladsomeness attain to that loftier cheerfulness of the
spirit, which is perfected in its passage through the negative phase
of division, and finally secures an infinite satisfaction through such
travail. The feeling of blitheness and happiness must be glorified and
expanded in real blessedness. For happiness and content still retain
an association with external conditions which partake of Nature's
contingency. In blessedness, however, that happiness, which is still
related to immediate existence, is left behind, and the entire content
is made one with the inner life of soul. Blessedness is a satisfaction
which is an attained result, and is thereby justified; it is the
gladness of a victory, the emotion of a soul which has essentially
set at nought what is sensuous and finite, and thereby thrust from
itself the care which lurks for ever in ambush. Blessed is the soul,
which has, it is true, experienced both conflict and pain, but come
victorious through its troubles.
(_α_) If we now inquire what is the nature of the actual _Ideal_
in this content we shall find it to be the _reconciliation_ of the
individual soul with God, who in His human manifestation has Himself
traversed this passage of sorrows. The substantive ideality[250] can
only be that of _religion_, the peace of self-consciousness, which
only feels itself truly satisfied, in so far as it is concentrated
in its own substance, has broken its earthly heart, has raised itself
above the purely natural conditions of finite existence, and in this
exaltation has secured an inward life of universal significance,
an ideal union in and with God Himself. The soul wills itself, but
it finds the object of its will in something other than itself, in
its particularity; it thereby gives itself up in its opposition to
God, in order to find itself again and its joy in Him. This is the
vital character of Love, the soul's function in its truth, that is
religious love purged of mere desire, which communicates to Spirit
reconciliation, peace, and blessedness. It is not the enjoyment and
delight of the actual love of living nature, but rather one that is
devoid of passion, nay, one that is without inclination, a tendency
of the soul, a love in fact which on the side of Nature is identical
with death, and is such a state, so that the actual relation as earthly
bond and relation of man to man floats before us as a thing of the
Past, which essentially has no consummation in its usual existing form,
but carries within itself the defect of its temporality, and as such
prepares the way for an exaltation to something beyond it, which is
found to be at the same time a conscious state and enjoyment of a love
that is without yearning and sensuous desire.
It is this character which gives to us the soulful, intimate, and
more elevated Ideal, which we find now in the place of the tranquil
greatness and self-subsistency of the antique. No doubt the divinities
of the classical Ideal were not without a trait of sombre grief, a
negative replete with fateful import, which is as it were the shadow of
a cold Necessity passing over these blithesome figures, which remain,
however, secure in their substantive divinity and freedom, their simple
greatness and might. The freedom of Love, however, is not a freedom
of this kind, being more instinct with soul-life, for the reason
that it subsists in a relation between soul and soul, and spirit to
spirit. This inward glow enkindles the ray of bliss made actual in the
soul, a love, which in suffering, and the extremest loss not merely
can discover comfort or independence therefrom, but in proportion to
the depth of its suffering can feel the more profoundly therein the
reality and assuredness of its love, making clear the mastery of
its own essential substance in that suffering. In the Ideal of the
ancients on the contrary we find no doubt, independently of that trait
of a tranquil sorrow already indicated, the expression of the pain
of noble natures, as for instance in the case of Niobe and Laocoon.
They do not betake themselves to lamentation and despair, but adhere
to their greatness and loftiness of spirit; but this self-continency
remains empty; their suffering, their pain is likewise the conclusion
of the matter. In the place of reconcilement and satisfaction we can
only have an austere resignation, which, without suffering entire
collapse, surrenders that upon which it had previously laid hold. It
is not the base that is crushed[251]; no rage, no contempt or vexation
is expressed; but despite of it all the loftiness of this type of
individuality is nought but an inflexible self-continency[252], an
endurance of destiny that is without relief, in which the nobility and
pain of the soul do not appear as reconciled in fulfilment. In the
romantic love of religion we find for the first time the expression
of blessedness and freedom. This union and satisfaction is by nature
concrete in a spiritual sense, for it is the feeling of Spirit which
is made cognizant of its unity in something other than itself. And for
this reason we find necessary here, if the content presented is to be
complete, two aspects, in so far as the reduplication of spiritual
personality is necessary to love's appearance. It reposes upon two
independent individuals who possess, however, the sense of their
intrinsic union. With this union, however, the negative condition is
always at the same time connected. In other words Love belongs to the
soul's condition; the subject of such a conscious state is, however,
this independently self-stable[253] heart, which to experience love
must bid goodbye to itself, surrender itself and sacrifice the
unyielding focus of its individual isolation. It is this sacrifice
which constitutes the _motive_ principle of Love, the life and emotion
of which is bound up wholly in a self-surrender. In consequence of
this, if notwithstanding a man retains his consciousness of self in
an act of such surrender, and just in this very annihilation of his
personal independence attains to a truly positive self-subsistency,
in that case he has left him at least in the feeling of this unity
and its supreme happiness the negative aspect, the movement of Love's
principle, not so much in a sense of sacrifice, as of a blessedness
undeserved, which in despite of himself permits him still to feel his
assured identity at unity with itself. The movement is the feeling of
the dialectical contradiction, namely, to have surrendered personality
and yet to remain in self-subsistent unity, a contradiction which is
present in Love and eternally resolved in it.
In so far, then, as the aspect of an individual _human_ state of
soul-life is concerned in this universal condition we find that the
unique Love, which blesses and discovers its heaven within it, tends
to rise over all that is finite and the specific individuality of
character, which lapses into a position of insignificance. Already
we have observed that the divine ideals of sculpture pass into one
another, always provided, however, that they are not wrested from
the content and province of that original and immediate type of
individuality; and yet it must be admitted that this individuality
remains the essential form of the mode of presentment. In this later
pure gleam of blessedness, however, particularity is on the contrary
cancelled. Before God all men are equal, or rather piety makes them
actually equal, so that the sole point of importance is the expression
of love in the concentrated focus above depicted, and which has no
further need of happiness, or this or that particular object. No doubt
religious Love, too, requires definite individuals as a condition of
its existence, which possess also, apart from this experience, other
spheres of existence; for the reason, however, that this soul-possessed
state of intimate life supplies the really ideal content, the
expression and reality of such are not to be found in the isolated
distinctions of character, its talents, conditions, and fortunes, but
are rather lifted above the same. When consequently nowadays we hear
people make a regard for distinctions in the soul-life of different
persons a matter of first importance in education, and in that which
is the essential requirement of each man individually, from which we
deduce the fundamental thesis that every one will and indeed inevitably
must act differently in a given case, such a position directly clashes
with the fact of the love of religion, in which all such diversities
of individual life fall into the background. Conversely, however,
individual characterization now, precisely for the reason that it
is the unessential, which refuses wholly to fuse with the spiritual
realm of celestial Love, receives a more emphatic definition. In
other words, agreeably to the romantic type of art, it is free, and
is written in character all the more distinct in proportion as it
refuses to accept as its supreme principle classical beauty, that is
the entire transfusion of immediate vitality, and the particularity of
finite existence, with a spiritual or religious content. In despite of
this fact, however, there is no absolute reason that this individual
characterization should impair this inward intensity of Love, which,
as such on its own account, is not shackled to such features, but has
become free, and constitutes independently the truly self-substantive
Ideal of Spirit.
What, then, constitutes the ideal centre and main content of the
religious field is, as we have already indicated in our examination of
the romantic type of art, the essentially _reconciled_ and satisfied
Love, whose object should appear in the art of painting, whose function
it is to exhibit the most spiritual content under the mode of human
and corporeal actuality, as no mere "beyond" of Spirit, but in its
veritable presence. In conformity with such a result we may adduce the
Holy Family, and above all the love of the Madonna to her child as the
ideal content pre-eminently fitted to this sphere. On either side of
this centre, however, a mass of additional material extends which is
in varying degree less adapted in this sense to the art in question.
I will now attempt to differentiate the whole of this material on the
following lines.
(_αα_) The first objectification is the object of Love itself in its
pure universality and unimpaired unity with itself--God Himself in
His unphenomenal essence--or God the Father. In this case, however,
painting has great difficulties to overcome, when it attempts to
depict God the Father as the religious imagination of Christendom seeks
to grasp Him. The Father of gods and men regarded as a particular
personality is exhaustively dealt with by art in Zeus. What on the
contrary falls away from the Christian conception of God the Father
is the human individuality, in which painting is alone in a position
to reproduce the spiritual aspect. For taken in His independent
self-exclusion God the Father is no doubt spiritual personality and
supreme Power, Wisdom and so forth, but only retained as such without
defined form and as an abstraction of thought. The art of painting is,
however, unable to avoid anthropomorphization, and must perforce assign
to Him the figure of man. However broad in its generalization, however
lofty, ideal, and masterful the presentment of such a figure may be,
we fail to get beyond the fact that it is entirely a human individual
of more or less grave aspect, which fails entirely to coalesce with
the conception of God the Father. Among the early Flemish painters Van
Eyck in his God the Father of the altar picture at Ghent has attained
the greatest success that we can conceive as possible in this sphere.
It is a creation that may well match our conception of the Olympian
Zeus. But however consummate it may be also in its expression of
eternal repose, loftiness, power, worth, and other qualities--and it
is quite impossible to overstate the depth and imposing character of
its conception no less than its execution--yet our imagination cannot
fail to find something in it which does not satisfy. For what is here
set before us as God the Father, that is to say a creation that is
likewise human personality, is just what we first meet with in Christ
the Son. It is in Him that we contemplate for the first time this
decisive moment in which individuality and human existence combine as a
moment in the Divine Life[254], and moreover combine in such a way that
the same is not disclosed as an ingenious creature of the phantasy,
as was the case with the Greek divinities, but as essential and very
revelation, the fact of all importance and fundamental significance.
(_ββ_) The more essential object, therefore, of Love in the creation
of painting will be _Christ._ In other words, with this object Art at
once finds itself in the sphere of humanity, a sphere which along with
Christ embraces further material in its presentations of the Virgin
Mary, Joseph, John the Baptist, the disciples, and so forth, and
ultimately the common folk who in part are followers of the Gospel, and
in part cry out for the crucifixion of its Master and mock Him in His
sufferings.
And here once more the already mentioned difficulty confronts us how
we are to conceive and depict Christ in his _universality_, when he is
presented in the ordinary way of half-length figures or portraits. I
must admit that for myself at any rate, the heads of Christ I have seen
by Caracci and others and, to take two famous examples, that of Van
Eyck, formerly in the Sully Collection and now in the Berlin Museum,
and that of Von Hemling, now in Munich, do not give me the entire
satisfaction which they ought to do. That of Van Eyck, no doubt, is
very imposing in figure, forehead, colour, and general conception, but
the mouth and eye wholly fail to express anything that transcends our
humanity. The expression is rather that of an inflexible seriousness,
which is emphasized by the general type of the form, the parting of the
hair, and other traits. And when such heads incline still further in
expression and shape towards the specifically human type, and a milder,
more yielding and tender aspect is thereby imported, much of their
depth and power of impression is very readily lost; and least of all
suited to such, as I have already observed, is the beauty of Greek form.
For this reason Christ, as depicted in the experiences of His actual
life, is a more suitable subject for pictorial effort. Yet in this
connection an essential distinction must not be overlooked. It is
quite true that in the biographies of Christ we have from one point
of view the human consciousness of God presented us as a fundamental
aspect. Christ is one of the gods, but under the guise of an actual
man, and takes His place among men as one of them, in whose phenomenal
appearance He can consequently be depicted in so far as such expresses
the life of Spirit. From another point of view, however, he is not
merely an individual man, but entirely God. In such situations,
therefore, in which this supreme Divinity forces its way beyond the
limits of human soul-life, the art of painting is met with a fresh
source of difficulty. The very depth of the content begins to be too
overpowering. For in the majority of cases in which we find Christ
presented for example merely as a teacher, art will not pass much
beyond the point in which He is depicted as the noblest, most worthy,
and wisest of men, much as Pythagoras or any other wise man, is
presented to us in such a picture as Raphael's "School of Athens." The
most important way in which painting can overcome such a difficulty
is to bring the Divinity of Christ mainly into direct contrast with
His surroundings, and above all, to contrast it with the sins, the
repentance and penance, or the meanness and evil of our humanity, or
again conversely through His worshippers, who, by their adoration of
Him remove Him as one of themselves and a man, existing in a particular
place, from such immediate conditions, so that we behold Him exalted
to the heaven of Spirit, and at the same time get a glimpse of the
fact that His appearance has not merely been that of God, but also
that of the human form under its ordinary and natural, in other words,
not wholly ideal conditions, who as Spirit essentially possesses his
existence in our humanity and the human community, and expresses
His divinity as reflected in the same. But we must not understand
this reflection as though God is present in humanity as in a purely
accidental or external mode of form and expression; rather we ought
to regard the Spirit manifested in the consciousness of mankind as
the essential spiritual existence of God Himself[255]. Such a mode of
presentation will be exceptionally appropriate where Christ is to be
represented as man, teacher, as the risen and glorified person who
ascends up to heaven before our eyes. To speak plainly, in situations
such as these the means of expression in painting such as the human
form and its colour, the countenance, the glance of eye, are not wholly
sufficient to express all that is implied in the Christ. And least
of all will the antique beauty of forms suffice. In particular the
resurrection and ascension, and generally, all scenes in the life
of Christ, in which He, the individual man, is already divested of
immediate existence as such on His return to His Father, require a more
elevated expression of Divinity than the art of painting is able to
supply, for the reason that it ought to cancel the very means it uses
in its representation, that is, the expression of human soul-life in
its external form, and glorify the same in a light of purer quality.
Consequently, we shall find those scenes of Christ's life treated
with greater advantage and more fitting effect in which He Himself
has not yet arrived at the full consummation, or where His Divinity
appears to be obstructed and depressed in the moment of negation. And
this we find is the case in His _childhood_ and the _Passion._ That
Christ as a child expresses definitely from a certain point of view the
significance which attaches to Him in religion. He is God Who becomes
man, and Who consequently passes through the stages of man's natural
life. In another aspect of the same fact that He is presented to our
minds as a child we are led to feel the practical impossibility of
disclosing entirely to us all that He essentially is. And it is just
here that the art of painting possesses the incalculable advantage
of being able to show how the loftiness and dignity of Spirit can
shine forth from the _naïveté_ and innocence of the child, which in
some measure derives actual force from such a contrast, and in part,
for the very reason that it is predicated of an infant, is to an
infinitely less extent required by us in comparison with that we look
for in Christ as man, teacher, and judge of the world. In this way the
examples of Christ the babe which we find in Raphael's pictures, and
above all, that in the Sistine Madonna picture at Dresden, offer us the
most beautiful presentment of childhood. We are, however, aware in them
also of a tendency to pass beyond merely childlike innocence, a passage
which discloses quite as much the Divine already present in the opening
sheath, as it enables us to surmise the expansion of such Divinity to
an infinite fulness of revelation, a revelation the incompleteness
of which in the child carries with it its own justification. In the
Madonna pictures of Van Eyck, on the contrary, the Divine babe is the
least successful feature, for they are in general stiff and emphasize
the defective form of a newly-born child. It has been attempted to
regard this as allegorical and intentional. They are not to be fair in
aspect because it is not the beauty of the Christ babe which is that
which is adorable, but the Christ as Christ. Such a mode of thought
is not consonant with the true aim of Art, and the babes of Raphael
regarded as works of art are in this respect of far higher rank.
In the same way the history of _Christ's passion_, such as the
scenes where He is mocked and crowned with thorns, that of the Ecce
Homo carrying the cross, deposition, and burial, are exceptionally
appropriate to pictorial presentment. For in these it is precisely
the Divinity, in its contrast to its triumph and in the depression of
its unlimited power and wisdom, which supplies the content. Art is
not merely able to present this, but there is ample room for the play
of originality in the composition of such scenes without falling into
purely fantastical imagery. God is here set before us as suffering, in
so far as He is man and under certain determinate bounds. Such pain
is not merely disclosed as human pain over human calamity, but it is
an awful suffering, the feeling of an infinite negativity, albeit in
human form, as the conscious life of one individual. And withal there
is added, for the reason that it is God who suffers, a certain sense of
alleviation, a reduction of such anguish which is thus unable to break
forth in actual despair, distortion, and horror. This expression of
_soul-suffering_ is, more particularly in the works of several Italian
masters, an original creation. The pain is in the lower portions of
the countenance, a gravity of mien, and nothing more, not as in the
Laocoon a contraction of the muscles, which can be interpreted as
an actual cry; but in the eyes and on the forehead the billows of
soul-anguish are, so to speak, allowed to roll over one another. The
sweat drops that bespeak the heart's agony stand forth; and with true
instinct on the brow, in which the immovable bone constitutes the
determining feature, precisely at the point where nose, eyes, and
forehead coalesce, and the life of mind and heart is concentrated and
emphasized, we find that just one or two indications of skin-folds
and muscles, unable to be distorted to any great extent, are suffered
pre-eminently to bear and express in tension this accumulated weight
of agony. In particular I can recall a certain head in the gallery
of Schleisheim, in which the master--I fancy Guido Reni[256]--and
doubtless others in a similar way, have discovered a distinct colour
tone for the flesh, which is quite unlike that of human flesh. They had
to disclose the night of the Spirit and created for the same a dowry
of colour, most admirably adapted to express this tempest, these black
clouds of Spirit which are likewise encompassed by the brazen forehead
of the Divine Nature[257].
As the most perfect subject of such painting, however, I have already
affirmed that Love, which is essentially _satisfied_, whose object is
no purely spiritual Beyond, but one actually present, so that we can
behold Love itself in its object. The highest and most unique form of
such a Love is that of the Virgin Mother for her Christ child, the
love of the one mother who has brought forth the Saviour of the world
and carries Him in her arms. This is the content of most loveliness
to which we may say Christian art generally and pre-eminently the
painter's art in the religious sphere has been exalted.
The love of God, and more expressly[258] that of which Christ is the
object, is of an entirely spiritual type. Its object is only visible to
the eyes of the soul, so that in these cases we do not in the strict
sense get the reciprocity which is bound with the notion of Love, and
moreover there is no natural tie which secures the lovers and from
its origin binds them to each other. Every other type of love, to
put the matter conversely, remains in some measure accidental in its
incidence, and in another aspect of it the lovers possess, as, for
instance, sisters, or the father's love for his children, yet further
relations outside this particular one, which assert an essential claim
upon them. A father or brothers are compelled to direct their attention
to the world, the State, affairs or war, in one word universal ends;
the sister becomes wife, mother, and so forth. In the case of a
mother's love of her child, on the contrary, the love is from its
very nature neither something that is contingent, nor is it merely a
single phase[259]. It is its highest earthly type, in which its natural
character and its most sacred function immediately coalesce. From
the point of view, however, in which as a rule in maternal love the
mother sees and feels at the same time her husband in her child, we may
observe that this aspect, too, in the Virgin Mary's case disappears.
Her feeling has nothing in common with a wife's love for her wedded
husband; on the contrary her relation to Joseph is rather that of a
sister, and on the side of Joseph a feeling of respectful reverence for
the Child that is God's and Mary's. We therefore find that religious
love is set forth in its fullest and most ideal[260] human form, not in
that for Christ amid His sufferings, nor in His resurrection, nor as He
delays His departure among His friends, but in the emotional nature of
a woman, in Mary. Her entire soul and life is human love for the Child,
which she calls her own, and along with it adoration, and love of God
with whom she feels herself thus united[261]. She is humble before God,
and yet is steeped in the infinite exaltation that she is the single
one among maidens who is above all blessed. Not alone and apart, but
only in her Child is she made perfect in God, but in that, whether it
be by the cradle or as queen of heaven, she is entirely content and
blessed, without passion and yearning, with no other want, with no
other aim to have or possess anything but that which she possesses.
The manifestation of this love under the aspect of its religious
content expands in many directions, such as the annunciation,
the visitation, the birth, the flight into Egypt, and other such
incidents. We may also associate with it, during the later course of
the Christ-life, the disciples and women, who follow Him, and in whom
the love of God is more or less a personal relation of their love to
the living, present Saviour, Who, as actual man, pursues His course
among them, and in like manner also the love of those angels who, on
the occasion of His birth and at other times, hover around in grave
adoration or simple joy. In treating all such figures the art of
painting in particular discloses the complete peace and content of such
a love.
But this peace, furthermore, is dissolved in the most heartfelt
anguish. Mary the mother beholds Christ carrying the cross. She sees
Him suffer on the cross and die; she sees Him taken from the cross and
buried, and no grief is more poignant than her own. And yet we may
observe that it is neither the irreparableness[262] of such a grief, or
rather of such a loss, nor the weight of the calamity, nor the lament
over the injustice of destiny, which constitutes the real content in
such anguish, so that a contrast between it and the sorrow of Niobe is
particularly instructive. Niobe, too, has lost all her children, and
is set before us in severe loftiness and unperturbed beauty. The main
content here is the aspect of the natural life of this ill-starred
sufferer, the beauty in which Nature has robed her and which embraces
the entire presentment of her actual existence. She, this actual
personality, is beauty personified, and therein she persists. But her
soul-life, her heart, has lost the entire content of its love, its
soul, and her individuality and beauty can only turn into stone. The
grief of Mary is of a wholly different type. She feels intimately the
dagger which cuts through her soul's very centre, her heart breaks, but
she does not become stone. She did not merely possess love, but her
soul-life throughout is nothing but love, that is, free and concrete
ideality, which retains the absolute content of that which it loses,
and in the loss itself of the beloved persists in the peace of love.
Her heart indeed breaks, but the substantive principle of her heart,
the content of its life[263], which is disclosed through her anguish
of soul with a vital strength that can never be lost, is something
infinitely more exalted, namely, the living beauty of the human soul,
as contrasted with its abstract substance, whose ideal existence
as presented in _bodily shape_, when it is lost remains indeed
indestructible, but is turned to stone.
There is one further subject for painting in connection with Mary the
mother of Jesus, and that is her death and assumption. Schoreel has
with exceptional beauty depicted a death of Mary in which we find the
charm of her youth once more restored[264]. This master has united
in his picture the expression of somnambulism, presence of death,
rigidity, and blindness towards the exterior world with one which seems
to suggest that the spirit, which seems somehow to penetrate through
their general aspect, has found a home elsewhere and is blessed therein.
(_γγ_)_Thirdly_, we must include within the sphere of the actual
presence of God in the life, sufferings, and glorification of
Himself, _mankind at large_[265], that is to say the consciousness of
_individual human life_, which God, or more accurately the events of
His history, constitutes as itself an object of His love, communicating
to it a content which is not merely finite but absolute in its
significance. Here, too, we may emphasize the three aspects of tranquil
_devotion_, _repentance_, and _conversion_, which both from the
point of view of the soul and that of external condition the history
of the Divine Passion repeats to mankind, no less than the ideal
_consummation_ in glory and the blessedness of pure attainment.
In respect to the _first_ of these, namely, devotion, we have here
what is primarily the content of _prayer._ This relation is in one
aspect of it a humbling, surrender of the self, the seeking of peace
in another; from another point of view it is not a _petition_ but
rather a _prayer_[266]. Petition and prayer are no doubt closely
connected in so far, that is, as a prayer can be a petition. And yet
the genuine petition seeks after something _for itself._ It importunes
the man who possesses something of importance to myself, that he may
feel inclined to do me a favour in virtue of the request, that his
heart may yield, or his love may be roused toward me, in one word that
his feeling of identity with myself may be awakened. What I, however,
feel in making a petition is the desire for something, which the other
person must lose if I am to secure it. The other person is to love me
in order that my self-love may be satisfied, and my weal and necessity
be promoted. I on the contrary give nothing further in the transaction
unless it be contained in an admission that the person thus opportuned
may ask for similar favours from myself. Prayer is not a petition of
this type. It is an exaltation of the heart to the Absolute, which
is assumed to be essentially Love, and as such possesses nothing
independently[267]. The devotion itself is the gift, the petition
itself is the blessedness. For although prayer may contain a petition
for some particular thing, yet it is not this particular thing which
is the true purport of the prayer; rather the essential truth of it is
the conviction that the petition will be heard, and not heard in its
relation to the particular request so much as to the absolute trust
that God will apportion that which is best for me to receive. And thus
even in such a connection prayer is itself its own satisfaction, the
enjoyment, the express feeling and consciousness of eternal Love, which
not only with its ray of illumination shines through the object[268]
of prayer and its situation, but in fact constitutes the situation and
what is there actually or is thereby manifested. It is this type of
supplication which we find exemplified by Pope Sixtus in the picture
of Raphael already mentioned[269], no less than by Santa Barbara in
the same picture, and by many other representations of the prayers of
apostles and saints, of Saint Francis[270] and the like at the foot of
the Cross, where we find in the place of the suffering of Christ, or
the dismay, doubt, and despair of the disciples the love and adoration
of God, and the prayer that loses itself in Him is selected as the
significant content. We find such rendered with particular force for
the most part on the countenances of aged men marked strongly with the
sufferings and experience of life in the earlier period of painting,
faces that appear to be portraits, souls permeated with devotional
feeling to such an extent that this attitude of prayer does not merely
appear to be experienced at this particular moment, but rather they
are presented us as pious and saintlike persons whose entire life,
thought, instinct, and volition is one prayer, and whose expression
despite of all the truth of their portraiture may be summed up wholly
in this assurance and peace of Love. It is otherwise, however, among
many of the earlier German and Flemish masters. The subject of the
altar picture in Cologne Cathedral is the adoring kings and patrons of
Cologne. We find this subject too frequently selected by the school of
Van Eyck. In such examples the persons who adore are frequently famous
individuals, princes, as, for instance, in a well-known adoration
picture, which has been taken for the work of Van Eyck, critics have
identified two of the kings with portraits of Philip of Burgundy and
Charles the Bold. In the case of personages of this type we see that
they are something more than saints, have affairs in the world, and
only go to mass on Sunday or in the early morning, but during the rest
of the week or for the rest of the day have other business to look
after. And more particularly in our Flemish or German pictures the
patrons are pious knights, God-fearing housewives with their sons and
daughters. They resemble Martha who fares hither and thither and is
concerned with matters of external or mundane significance, rather than
Mary who has selected once and for all the best part. Their piety is
not deficient, it is true, in intensity and soul; but we do not find
here the song of Love which is at once the beginning and end of it,
and which is perforce not merely an exaltation, a prayer, or thanks
for a gift received, but is as much its unique life as that of the
nightingale.
We may summarize the distinction which can be drawn generally in
pictures of this kind between saints and worshippers on the one hand,
and pious members of the Christian community as they actually appeared
on the other, in the statement that the worshippers, more especially in
Italian pictures, disclose in the expression of their piety a complete
harmony of external and spiritual condition. It is their very soul
which we find written for the most part on their countenances, which
are not permitted to express anything opposed to the emotions of their
heart. In the actual conditions of life this is not always the case. An
infant, for example, when it weeps, more particularly when beginning to
do so, quite apart from the fact that we know its grief is not worth
the trouble of crying over, often makes us smile with its ugly faces.
And in the same way old folk pucker up their face when they laugh,
because the lines of their features are too pronounced, cold, and stiff
to accommodate themselves readily to an unreserved and natural laugh
or a friendly smile. The art of painting should endeavour to avoid
this incompatibility between the emotions of piety expressed and the
sensuous forms which have to express them, and, so far as possible,
produce a harmony between the soul and its external mode of expression.
And this in the highest degree was effected by the Italians; the
Germans and Flemish were less successful, because the main object in
their work was living portraiture.
I will add one further remark, that this devotion of the soul ought
not to reach the point of the actual cry of anxiety, that cry of
tribulation and desire, such as the Psalms and many Lutheran hymns
express, and we may illustrate it with the old words: "As the hart
crieth for the water-brooks, so crieth my soul for Thee." We may
rather indicate it as a gradual melting away, not to that attenuation
of sweetness perhaps we associate with the nun, but at any rate a
surrender of the soul, and an enjoyment and satisfaction in such
surrender. For that travail of faith, that anxious troubling of soul,
that doubt and desperation which persists in disunion, such a type of
hypochondriacal piety which never is certain whether it is still sin,
whether there has been repentance and pardon is complete, a surrender,
in which the soul can never advance a step, and is always betraying the
fact by his anxiety, such a state is not compatible with the beauty
of the romantic Ideal. We much prefer that the eye of devotion should
raise its look of yearning heavenwards, although it is both more
artistic and gives us yet more satisfaction when it is centred on some
present object of adoration, whether it be the Virgin Mother, Christ,
or saint. It is a facile thing, only too facile, to attach to a picture
a spiritual interest, by making its central figure gaze heavenwards,
anywhere beyond the world, just as we find that nowadays people are
only too ready to make use of an equally facile way of proving God
and religion to be the foundation of society by quoting texts of the
Bible rather than establishing such a basis on the reason of actual
reality. Such a gaze of countenance upwards becomes in the pictures of
Guido Reni[271], for example, a pure mannerism. The Assumption of the
Virgin, too, which we find at Munich, has been much eulogized by its
admirers and critics, and we may admit that the exalted character of
its transfiguration, the absorption and surrender of the soul in the
heavenly vision, and indeed the entire pose of the ascending figure,
to say nothing of the brilliance and beauty of the colouring, is most
impressive. But for myself I find such representations which depict
the Virgin Mother in her own daydream of love and blessedness with her
glance centred on her babe still more appropriate to her truth. The
other type of yearning and strain, with its upward gaze heavenwards, is
somewhat too near to our modern sentimentalism.
A _further_ aspect of importance is concerned with the entrance of
the principle of negation into the spiritual devotion of Love. The
disciples, saints, and martyrs, have to pass through, in some measure
as an experience of their souls, and in part, too, as one of their
external life, that way of suffering along which the Christ in the
history of His Passion passed before them.
This suffering lies to some extent on the confines of art. Painting can
very easily overstep this boundary, in so far, that is, as it accepts
for its subject-matter the horrors and terrors of the _bodily_ torture,
whether it be in flaying, or burning, or crucifixion, and its pains.
This it is not permitted to do, if it is not to forsake the spiritual
Ideal. This is not solely due to the fact that to present martyrs
under such conditions to our sight is not beautiful to the sense, nor
because our nerves nowadays are too keenly strung, but on the better
ground that this material aspect is not the really important one.
The true content we have to follow with sympathy and which should be
depicted is the _spiritual_ experience, the soul in all that it suffers
through Love, and not the direct bodily pain of a certain individual,
the grief for the sufferings of another, or the anguish felt personally
for personal demerit. The endurance of martyrs in physical tortures
is an endurance which carries with it merely physical pain: what the
spiritual Ideal looks for is the trial of the soul in its own domain,
its own peculiar suffering, the wounds of its love, the repentance,
mourning, anguish, and penance of its heart.
But we must add that in depicting this pain of soul the _positive_
aspect must not wholly be absent. The soul must be assured of the
actual and essentially consummated reconciliation between mankind
and God, and only experience anxiety that this eternal salvation be
realized as a truth in itself. In this connection we not unfrequently
meet with repentant people, martyrs, and monks, who, despite of their
assuredness of an objective atonement, partly are overwhelmed with
sorrow for a heart whose entire surrender they deem to be right, and
partly have already made such complete surrender, and yet are always
for realizing such reconciliation anew, and consequently for ever
imposing on themselves the burden of penances. And we find, therefore,
in the artistic treatment of such situations a twofold point of
departure. In other words, the artist may, to start with, presuppose in
his subject an open disposition, freedom, cheerfulness, and decision
of spirit, such as carries with ease life and the yoke of the actual
world and knows how to readily deal with the same, then he may fitly
associate with such painful experiences a native nobility, grace,
freshness, freedom, and beauty of form. When, on the contrary, his
work is based upon a natural sense that is more refractory, defiant,
savage, and limited, the conflict of the spirit in overcoming the flesh
and the world, and securing to itself the religion of salvation will
necessarily imply more severe travail. In cases of such obstinacy of
soul, therefore, the harsher reflections of force and stability are
more apparent, the scars of the wounds which have been inflicted on an
obstinacy of this type are more visible and enduring, and the beauty
of the physical result tends to vanish[272].
_Thirdly_, that positive aspect of atonement, the _transfigurement_
that results from grief's travail, the blessedness that comes of
repentance may be independently accepted as the subject of artistic
presentment though it may readily pass into false conceptions.
Such, then, are the main distinguishing characteristics of the absolute
spiritual Ideal regarded as the essential content of romantic painting.
It forms the material of its most successful and solemn creations,
works that are immortal by virtue of the depth of their contemplation;
and when the representation of essential truth is thereby expressed
they are nothing less than the most exalted expansion of the soul to
its heaven of bliss, the most intimate and complete revelation of ideal
life that an artist can bring before our vision.
Following this pre-eminently religious sphere of artistic production we
have still to investigate two further fields of its activity.
(_β_) In direct contrast to the province of religion we have that
which, if we consider it in its isolated abstraction, is equally
destitute of the life of soul and God, Nature in its simplest terms,
and regarded more definitely in its connection with painting, Nature's
_landscape._ We have stated the character of the object of religion to
be such that in it the _substantive_ ideality of the soul expresses
therein the indwelling sense of Love as united to the Absolute[273].
This inward ideality has, however, a further content. It is able to
discover in that which is wholly external an accord with soul-life,
and can recognize in the objective world as such traits which have
an affinity with what is spiritual. Regarded in their immediacy, no
doubt, hills, mountains, woods, valleys, streams, meadows, sunlight,
moon, and the starry heavens, are simply perceived to be the natural
objects they are. But, in the _first_ place, these objects have to
start with an _independent_ interest, in so far as it is the free
life of Nature, which appears in them, and produces a sense of fellow
feeling in the individual as one who shares that life himself; and,
_secondly_, the particular changes of Nature's moods bring about states
in the soul which correspond to such moods. It is possible for man
to follow with his own life this animation of Nature and partake in
this harmony of soul with its environment, and feel thereby at home in
Nature. Just as the Arcadians spoke of a Pan, who made them shudder
and frightened in the gloaming of the forest, in the same way the
varied conditions of Nature's landscape in its gentle blithesomeness,
its balmy repose, its spring-freshness, its wintry chill, its morning
awakening and evening rest find their counterfeits in states of the
soul. The tranquil depth of the ocean, the possibility that its depths
may break forth with infinite power is akin to soul movements, just as
conversely the roaring, upwelling, foaming, and break of storm-tossed
waves stir the soul with concordant music. It is an ideal significance
of this kind that the art of painting accepts as its object. And for
this reason it is not natural objects merely as such in their external
form and association which ought to constitute its true content, so
that painting is nothing more than a mere imitation, but rather the
animation of Nature's life, which interfuses it throughout and which
is able to bring into prominence and assert with more vividness in the
scenes of Nature reproduced the characteristic affinity of specific
conditions of this life with particular spiritual states--it is a vital
participation in Nature of this kind which gives us the meeting-point,
steeped as it is in the soul-life and temperament of the artist, by
means of which Nature may become the content of painting not merely as
environment, but as possessing a distinct individuality[274].
(_γ_) There is yet further a _third_ type of idealization which we find
partly in the case where objects wholly insignificant are detached from
the position they occupy in the landscape, and, partly, in scenes of
human life, which may appear to us not merely as wholly accidental as
thus selected, but even of a kind that is both mean and commonplace.
I have already found an opportunity for an attempt to justify the
artistic selection of such subjects[275]. I will in connection with
painting merely add the following remarks to our former discussion.
The art of painting is not merely concerned with the inward life
of the soul, but with that ideal element that is essentially
_particularized_[276]. This latter type of ideality for the reason
that particularity is its principle is not content to rest satisfied
with the absolute object of religion, and as little will merely accept
from the external world Nature's vitality and its defined character
as landscape; rather it insists on partaking of everything, in which
man as an isolated individual soul can take a rational interest and
find pleasure. Even in the case of its representations of religious
material art, in proportion as it develops, it attaches such more
closely to terrestrial conditions and the objects of actual vision,
giving to its content the complete presence of natural existence, so
that we ultimately find that the aspect of sensuous existence is most
important and the interest of devotional life only so in a subordinate
degree. For here, too, art receives the task to work out the Ideal in
its fullest realization, in other words, to present to our senses that
which is originally detached from them, to carry over objects taken
from the remoteness of past life into present life and unite them with
that present human life.
At our present stage of human evolution it is the ideality which we
find in actual life as it faces us, in the circumstances of daily
experience, the most common and the most trivial, which is the actual
content.
(_αα_) If we inquire, then, what it is that makes a content of this
kind, otherwise so poverty-stricken and indifferent, compatible with
the claims of art, we must reply that it is the substantive core that
is contained and made valid therein, in general terms the vitality and
delight of self-subsistent existence, exemplified in the greatest
variety of its aims and interests. The life of mankind is always in
the immediate Present. What a man may do in each moment thereof is
something specific, and its justification consists in the fact that
he carries through all his engagements, the least no less than the
greatest, with heart and soul. In this way he is united with each
particular incident, and, by infusing into each the entire force of
his individuality, appears to identify his whole existence with such.
This coalescence[277] produces that harmony of the individual with
the specific character of his immediate activity in the circumstances
that are nearest him, which is itself a mode of ideality, and which
communicates in such a case to the subsistency of an existence, which
is an exclusive and perfected whole, its attractive character. The
interest, therefore, that we derive from representations of this kind
is not to be attributed to the subject-matter, but rather to this
animating soul, which by itself, and independently of that wherein
it is disclosed as vital, finds an echo in every uncorrupted nature,
in every free spirit, and is for the same an object of sympathy and
delight. We must not, therefore, impair our enjoyment on the ground
that the demand is made of us to admire such works of art under the
aspect of their _likeness_ to _Nature_ so-called and such illusive
imitation[278]. This demand, which works of this kind appear at first
blush to support, is itself merely a deception which fails to hit the
real point. For an admiration of this type is solely deducible from
the wholly external comparison of a work of art and a work of Nature,
and is only associated with the similarity of the counterfeit with an
object or fact presented us, whereas the real content here and the
artistic quality in the composition and execution is the coalescence
of the matter portrayed _with its own substance_, which is the reality
as independently depicted in its vital characterization. According to
the principle of illusion, for instance, the portraits of Denner are
entitled to our praise, which are, no doubt, imitations of Nature, but
for the most part fail entirely to present us that vital animation on
which we lay the main stress in these cases, and are mainly concerned
with depicting hair, wrinkles, and generally every kind of trait which,
without exactly being indicative of a corpse, are equally remote from
the human physiognomy depicted as alive.
Moreover, if we permit ourselves to level down our enjoyment through
superficial thoughts of the above fashionable kind, believing subjects
of this type to be mean and unworthy of our contemplation, we accept
the content by doing so in a form other than that in which art offers
them us. In other words we merely associate with them the relation
in which we stand to them according to our personal needs, pleasure,
such education as we otherwise possess and other objects we have
before us, that is to say we merely conceive them in respect to their
_external purport_, throughout which it is our own requirements which
are the vital thing we aim at for ourselves, and the matter of all
importance. The life of the subject-matter itself, however, is thereby
destroyed, in so far, that is, as the sole object of its existence
appears to be that of a means simply, or lapses into a thing of no
moment at all, just because we personally have no need for it. A gleam
of sunlight, for example, which falls upon a room we enter through
an open door, a part of the country we travel through, a sempstress,
a maid we happen to see busily engaged, one and all we may regard
with indifference, because we suffer them to pass by remote from the
thoughts and interests which are bound up with them, and consequently
in our soliloquy, or conversation with another will not suffer the
situations which actually lie before us to speak a word in the current
of our own thoughts and speech; or we cast what is merely a passing
glance at them, the summary of which does not amount to more than the
remark, "how pleasant, fine, or ugly they are." Thus we are charmed
with the joviality of dance of peasants, while we merely glance at
it superficially, or turn away from it with contempt, because we are
hostile to "every sort of barbarism." We treat in a similar way the
human countenances we come across in our daily life, or which we
happen to chance upon. Our own personal point of view, and the various
matters which engage us are for ever being interposed. _We_ are forced
to address this or that person in a certain way, we have affairs to
despatch, we have certain things to consider, thoughts that affect
our relation to such a person; we observe him under the particular
circumstances of our knowledge; we regulate our conversation relatively
to that, or we are silent upon it, if he may be likely to resent
it--in short we have always in our minds the man's business, station,
and status, and our attitude to and business with him, remaining in
a wholly practical relation, or in a position of indifference and
preoccupied inattention. Art, however, when it depicts such real
life, wholly changes our attitude to it; it cuts away once and for
all all practical deviations[279], such as we are wont to associate
with such material; it places us simply in the attitude of abstract
contemplation to it; and in the like degree it does away with its
indifference, and directs our otherwise preoccupied attention wholly
to the situation portrayed; upon which we must collect and concentrate
all our faculties, if we are to enjoy it. Sculpture, in particular, by
virtue of its ideal mode of production from the first strikes off all
practical relation to the object to the extent that its product at once
betrays the fact that it does not belong to this reality. Painting, on
the contrary, carries us wholly into the presence of the daily life
with which we are in immediate contact, but it furthermore destroys
all the threads of practical necessity, attraction, inclination, or
disinclination, which draw us to such a Present, or the reverse,
and forces us to approach those objects more intimately as ends to
themselves in their own particular phase or mode of life. What we
meet with here is just the opposite to that which Herr von Schlegel,
for example, in the tale of Pygmalion, expresses so very prosily as
the return of the completed work of art to common life, that is to a
relation of a man's own inclinations and an actual enjoyment, a return
which is the very opposite of that alienation, in which the work of
art places the objects delineated in their relation to our practical
necessities, and, precisely by doing so, sets forth before us their own
independent life and appearance.
(_ββ_) Just as, then, art, in this particular sphere, re-establishes
the forfeited independence of a content, which we otherwise failed to
preserve in its unique characteristics, in the same way, _secondly_,
it is able to secure in stability such objects as may happen to
appear in actual existence in a form we are not accustomed to respect
simply as such. The higher Nature stretches in its organization and
shifting appearance the more it resembles the actor who only serves the
present need. In this connection I have already emphasized the fact
as a triumph of art over reality, namely, that it is able to fix that
which is most evanescent. This power of art in attaching permanence
to _momentary_ things applies not only to the sudden flash of life
we find concentrated in certain situations, but also to the magical
effect of its external presentment in the rapid changes of its colour.
A troop of horsemen, for example, may alter every moment in the mode
of its grouping, and the mutual relation of each rider within it. If
we were one of such we should have something else to do than consider
the lively effect of such changes. We should have to mount, dismount,
make up our haversack, eat, drink, rest, groom, drink and feed our
horses: or, if we looked on as ordinary folk, we should look at such
with wholly different interests. We should want to know what they are
there for, what nationality they are, for what reason they have left
their barracks, and so forth. The painter, on the contrary, smuggles
off the most volatile of the movements, the most evanescent expressions
of countenance, the most momentary gleams of colour apparent in such
motion, and places such before us solely in virtue of its interest
in the animation of such phenomena which without it would vanish.
For especially it is the play of the colouring, not treated merely
as flat tint, but in its lights and shadows, and in the prominence
or subordination of the objects painted which is the reason that the
representation appears lifelike, a fact which we are accustomed to
observe in works of art less than such an aspect deserves, bringing
as it does art first clearly to our minds. And, moreover, the artist
preferably accepts in depicting these natural relations the effort of
following the least detail, and making his work concrete, definite
and stamped with individuality, endeavouring as he does to secure for
his subject-matter the individuality which phenomenal life itself
supplies in its most momentary flashes; and yet withal does not so
much seek for such a detail merely as imitated closely to strike our
senses with its directness, but rather to furnish a definite image to
the imagination in which at the same time the ideality of the entire
composition remains active.
(_γγ_) The more insignificant the objects are, in comparison with
the material of religion, which this particular phase of painting
accepts for its content, to that very extent it is just this quality
of _artistic_ creation, the manner of observation, conception,
elaboration, the vitality communicated by the artist to his work by
all his individual faculties, in short the soul and living enthusiasm
of his execution, which constitute a prominent aspect of its interest,
and are part of its content. That which the subject treated is under
his workmanship must, however, substantially remain what it is in
fact and is capable of being. We believe, indeed, that we look upon
something different, and novel, because in actual life we do not pay
the same detailed attention to similar situations, and their manner of
colouring. Looked at on the reverse side no doubt we have something,
too, that is new added to such ordinary subjects, namely, just this
very enthusiasm, artistic insight and spirit, the soul, in which the
artist handles them, adapts them to his uses, and by doing so infuses
the enthusiasm of his activity like the breath of a new life throughout
all his work[280].
Such, then, are the essential points of view, which it was necessary to
discuss in regard to the content of painting.
(_b_) The _second_ aspect which we have next in order to examine is
connected with the more particular modes of definition, to which the
sensuous material, in so far as it has to accept in itself a given
content, has to accommodate itself.
(_α_) The _first_ of these of importance is the _linear perspective._
This is introduced as necessary, because painting has only the
superficies at its disposal and no longer, as was the case with the
bas-relief of antique sculpture, can extend its figures side by side on
one and the same plane, but has to proceed to a mode of presentation,
which finds it necessary to make the remoteness of its objects in
all their spatial dimensions merely appear as such to our senses. For
the art of painting has to unfold the content it selects, to place
the same in its various movement before our eyes, and to associate in
different ways its figures with the landscape of external Nature, its
buildings and so forth, in a wholly distinct grade of literalness to
that which sculpture in the relief is able to secure. And that which
painting in this respect cannot place before us in its actual degree of
remoteness in the realistic manner of sculpture it must present under
the illusion of reality. What we have first to notice here consists
in this that the _single_ surface which confronts painting is divided
into distinct planes, apparently remote from one another, and by this
means the contrasts of a near foreground and a remote background are
secured, which furthermore are linked together by means of a middle
distance. Inasmuch as the objects are, the more distant they are from
the vision, proportionately reduced in size, and this deduction follows
in Nature itself optical laws capable of mathematical determination,
the art of painting, too, has on its part to follow the same rules,
which, by virtue of the fact that objects are set forth on one surface,
are applicable here in a particular way. And this is the rational
ground of the so-called linear or mathematical perspective in the art
of painting, whose more detailed exposition, however, it is not our
business here to discuss.
(_β_) In the _second_ place, however, objects are not only placed
at a certain distance from one another, but they also differ in
_shape._ This particular mode of their spatial limitation by virtue
of which every object is made visible in its particular form is the
subject-matter of _draughtsmanship._ The art of drawing gives us for
the first time not merely the comparative distance of objects from
one another, but their respective configuration. Its most important
principle is _accuracy_ of form and relative distance, which of
course in the first instance is not as yet associated with ideal[281]
expression, but related simply to external appearance, and consequently
forms the purely external framework[282], an accuracy, however, which,
more particularly in the case of organic forms and their varied
movements, is on account of the fore-shortenings thereby rendered
necessary one of extreme difficulty. In so far as these two aspects
are related purely to _form_ and its spatial totality they constitute
the _plastic_ or sculpturesque features in painting, which this art,
for the very reason that it expresses what is most ideal in its
significance by means of external form, can as little dispense with as
it can in another respect remain solely content with. For its supreme
task is the employment of colour, and in such a way that in all that
is truly painting distance and shape only attain and discover their
genuine presentment by virtue of the distinctions of colour.
(_γ_) It is, therefore, _colour_, and the art of colouring, which
make the painter a painter. We dwell with pleasure, no doubt, on the
drawing, and exceptionally so on the study or sketch, as on that
which pre-eminently betrays the quality of genius; but however rich
with invention and imagination, with whatever directness the soul of
an artist may assert itself in such studies by reason of the more
transparent and mobile shell of their form, yet the fact remains
to be painting we must have colour, if the work is not to continue
abstract from the point of view of its sensuous material in the vital
individuality and articulation of its objects. We must, however, at
the same time admit that drawings and dry point drawings from the
hand of great masters such as Raphael and Albrecht Dürer are of real
importance. In fact from a certain point of view we may say that it is
just these hand drawings which carry with them the finest interest. We
find here the wonderful result that the entire spirit of the master is
expressed directly in such manual facility, a facility which places
with the greatest ease, in instantaneous work, without any preliminary
essays, the essential substance of the master's conception. The border
drawings of Dürer, for example, in the Prayer-book of the Munich
library, are of indescribable ideality and freedom. Idea and execution
appear in such a case to be one and the same thing, whereas in finished
pictures we cannot avoid the sense that the consummate result is only
secured after repeated over-paintings, a continuous process of advance
and finish.
In despite of this, however, it is only through its employment of
colour that the art of painting is able to give a real and vital
presentment to the wealth of soul-life. All the schools of painting
have, however, not retained the art of colouring at the same high
level. It is a significant fact that we may, with an exception here
and there, assert that it is only the Venetians and the Dutch[283] who
have become consummate masters in their use of it. Both peoples were
linked to the sea-coast, both situated on a low-lying land divided by
fens, streams, and canals. In the case of the Dutch we may find an
explanation in the fact that, on account of their having so perpetually
a cloud-covered horizon, their conception of a gray background became
fixed in their minds, and owing to this very gloomy prepossession they
were the more driven to study colour in all its effects and variety of
lighting, shadow, and chiaroscuro, to emphasize this and to discover
in this the main task of their artistic efforts. In contrast to that
of the Venetians and the Dutch the painting of the Italians generally,
if we except that of Correggio and one or two others, appears to be
more dry, sapless, cold, and lifeless. Looked at more closely we may
emphasize the following points in connection with the art of colouring
as the most important.
(_αα_) In the _first_ place we have the abstract basis of all colour
in _light_ and _dark._ When we posit this contrast and its transitions
by themselves without further distinctions of colour effect, we
get thereby simply the contrasts supplied us by white as light and
black as shadow together with their transitional grades and nuances,
contrasts which offer to the art of drawing its integrating quality,
appertaining as they do to the real plastic character of form, and
producing the prominence, retreat, rondure, and distance of objects.
We may incidentally mention in this connection the art of engraving on
the plate which is wholly concerned with light and shadow as such[284].
Apart from the infinite assiduity and labour it implies we find in
this highly valuable art, at the point of its supreme attainment, soul
intimately associated with the utility of great variety of form[285],
a variety which the art of bookbinding also possesses. Such an art,
however, is not wholly occupied with effects of light and shade as that
of simple draughtsmanship is; it endeavours further in its elaboration
to become distinctly a rival of painting, and in addition to light and
shade such as is purely the effect of illumination, also strives to
express those distinctions of more emphatic light and darkness which
are primarily the result of local colour; we find, for example, in
a copperplate engraving that an attempt is made by its use of light
effects to render visible the distinction between blond and black hair.
In painting, however, as already remarked, mere light and darkness
only supply the fundamental basis, albeit such a foundation is of
the greatest importance. For it is this contrast and only this which
defines the comparative prominence and retirement, the rondure, and
generally the actual appearance of form as sensuous shape, all that
we understand by _modelling._ Masters of colour in this respect
simply carry the process to the most extreme contrasts of the most
brilliant light and the deepest shadow, and merely produce thereby
their grand effects. Such contrasts are, however, only permissible in
so far as they avoid harshness, that is, in so far as they are made
within the limits of a just interplay of intermediate tones and colour
transitions, which bind the entire composition in a fluid unity and
render the finest gradations of tint possible. If such contrasts are
entirely absent the entire effect will be flat, because it is precisely
this distinction between that which is more brilliant and more obscure
which gives emphatic prominence to particular aspects of the work
and a like subordination to others. And especially in the case of
compositions having a large content, and where the distance between
objects is considerable, it is necessary to introduce the deepest
shadow in order to make the scale of light and shadow a broad one.
With regard to the closer definition of light and shade we find that
this depends more than anything else upon the mode of _lighting_
accepted by the artist. The light of day, that of morning, noon, and
evening, sunlight or moonlight, a clear or clouded sky, the light of
tempest, candle-light, a light that is veiled, or falls upon the object
or diffuses itself gradually, every conceivable mode of lighting, in
short, is possible, and the cause of every kind of effect. In treating
a subject of public interest, full of incident, a situation that at
once appeals to our common sense, the question of external lighting is
of subordinate importance. The artist will avail himself here with most
advantage of ordinary daylight, if, that is, the demands of dramatic
vividness, and a desire to emphasize particular figures and groups, or
to throw into the background others, do not render a less usual mode of
lighting necessary, which may fall in more readily with such objects.
The great painters of the earlier school have consequently as a rule
made little use of such contrasts or specific schemes of lighting.
And they did rightly, inasmuch as their emphasis was rather on the
spiritual aspect as such than on the sensuous impression of their
pictures. And on account of the pre-eminent ideality and spiritual
significance of the content they were able to dispense with the aspect
of their work which inclined more or less to the material side. In the
case of landscapes, on the contrary, and subjects of less importance
taken from ordinary life, the question of lighting makes a very
different appeal. In these important artistic and, often, artificial
and mysterious effects are indispensable. In the landscape the bold
contrasts between large masses in illumination and other parts in the
strongest shadow will receive their full effect, but tend also to
develop the artistic mannerism. Conversely we find, more especially
in the treatment of landscape, reflections of light, the flash and
its counterfeit, that wonderful echo of light, which arises from the
interplay of light and dark, and offers an ample and progressive
subject of study both to the artist and the spectator. Such a scheme
of lighting, which the artist has either by direct imitation or
imaginatively conceived in his work, can, however, by itself only be
a transient one, which is subject to rapid change. However sudden or
uncommon the lighting thus permanently retained may be, the artist must
see in the treatment of his composition, even though it be as full of
movement as possible, that the whole, despite all its variety, is not
injured by mere restlessness and wavering motive, but is throughout
clear and marked with unity.
(_ββ_) In accordance with what has already been stated the art of
painting, however, has not merely to express light and dark in its
purely abstract intension, but to add to it the distinctions of colour.
Light and shadow must be coloured light and shadow. We have therefore
in the _second_ place to discuss colour simply.
The _first_ point we have to deal with here is the _brightness_ and
_obscurity_ of particular colours respectively to one another, that
is in so far as they are operative as light and dark in their varied
relations, and either emphasize or suppress and impair their individual
effect. Red, for example, and still more yellow, is at an equal grade
of intensity more brilliant than blue. This is dependent upon the
nature of the colours themselves, which in recent times Goethe has
for the first time fully explained[286]. In other words, we find
that in blue _shadow_ is of main significance, which, in its first
operation through a brighter, but not as yet fully transparent medium,
appears to our sight as blue. The sky, for example, is dark, and on
the highest mountains it is yet darker. Seen through a transparent
but thick medium, such as the atmosphere of its lower planes is, it
appears as blue, and its brightness increases in proportion as the
air is less transparent. In the case of yellow, on the contrary,
essential brightness works through a density, which, however, suffers
this brightness to shine through it. Smoke, for example, is such an
obscuring medium; looked at in front of anything black which works
its way through it, it appears of a bluish tint, and before anything
bright it appears yellow and reddish. Genuine red is the actively
royal and concrete colour, in which blue and yellow, themselves also
extremes of opposition, press together in fusion, We may also regard
green as such a union, not, however, in a unity that is concrete, but
merely as a difference that is cancelled, as a medium of satiated and
tranquillized neutrality[287]. These colours are the purest, simplest,
and original _cardinal_ colours. We may consequently find a symbolical
significance in the way that the old masters made use of them.
Especially is this so in their use of blue and red. Blue corresponds
with the milder, sensuous, more tranquil aspect, a contemplation which
is rich in feeling, in so far as it has obscurity for its principle,
and offers no resistance, whereas the brightness therein rather
suggests that which resists, produces, is alive and blithesome. Red
corresponds with what is masculine, dominant, and royal, green with
that which is indifferent and neutral. According to such symbolism for
example, the Virgin Mary is frequently clothed in red where she is
enthroned, and set before us as queen of heaven; where she is depicted
as mother, she wears a blue mantle[288]. All the other colours in
their endless variety must be regarded as mere modifications of the
above, in which we must recognize a certain degree of shadow fused
with the cardinal colours. In this sense no painter would call violet
a colour[289]. Furthermore all these colours, in their mutual relation
to each other, are respectively of greater brightness or obscurity,
a fact that the artist must bear in mind if he is not to fail in
getting the just tone which any particular section of his modelling or
distance effects ought to have. In other words we have here a source
of exceptional difficulty. In the countenance, for example, the lip is
red, the eyebrow dark, black, brown, or, if blonde, at least darker as
such than the lip; in the same way the cheeks with their reddish tint
are more brilliant in colour than the nose, with its main impression
of yellow, brownish, or greenish tint. Such portions of the face can
readily receive a greater brightness and intensity owing to this local
colour than is consonant with their modelling as parts of the whole.
In sculpture, indeed in mere drawing too, such parts of a composition
receive their light and shadow wholly in reference to their particular
form and its manner of lighting. A painter on the contrary must
accept their local colouring, and this disturbs such a relation. Such
a difficulty is even more obvious between objects more removed from
one another. For the ordinary vision of sight it is our mind which
determines the distance and form of such objects, not merely by means
of their colour appearance, but also on a variety of other grounds. In
painting, however, all that we have before us is colour, which as such
is able to interfere with that which is demanded by mere brightness and
darkness as such. The art of the painter, therefore, consists in his
ability to resolve this contradiction, and so to arrange his colours
that neither in their local tints, nor in their mutual relation in
any other way, they impair the modelling as a whole. Only if success
is secured in both respects are we likely to see the actual shape and
colour of the objects realized in perfection. With what consummate
art, for example, have the Dutch painted the sheen of satin dresses
with all their variety of reflections and gradations of shadow in
their folds, or the flash of silver, gold, copper, vessels of glass
and velvet; and in the same way we may mention the lighting a Van Eyck
gives to his jewels, gold borders, and metals. The colours by means of
which the flash of gold is presented have nothing of metallic about
them: looked at closely we merely see yellow, which by itself is of
no great brightness. The entire effect is due on the one hand to the
prominence of the form, and on the other to the contiguity of the
mutual gradations of distinct colour tones.
A further aspect in the _second_ place is the _harmony_ of the
colouring.
I have already observed that the very nature of the facts necessitates
that colour should have itself an articulated system. And this complete
result should appear. No fundamental colour should be wholly omitted,
otherwise our sense of this integrated whole is lost. To an exceptional
degree the old Italian masters and the Dutch satisfy us in this
respect. We find in their pictures blue, yellow, red, and green[290].
It is this completeness which supplies the basis of our colour harmony.
The colours, moreover, must be so arranged that not merely their
artistic contrast, but also their mediation and resolution, and a
repose and reconciliation as the result of such, is made visible to the
sight. Such effective contrast and repose in conciliated extremes is
brought about partly by the way the colours are associated, and partly
by the degree of intensity which characterizes each colour. In early
painting it was principally the Dutch school[291], which employed the
cardinal colours in their purity and their unimpaired brilliance, by
which means the harmony is rendered more difficult by reason of the
emphasis laid on contrast, but when secured should be pleasing to the
eye. Where, however, the decisive character and force of colour is
insisted on the nature of the subject-matter itself should be more
definite and simple. And by attending to this a higher degree of
harmony between colouring and content is also obtained. The important
personages, for instance, must receive the colour that is most
emphatic, and in their characterization, their entire deportment and
expression should appear more imposing than the subordinate figures,
who will receive merely the composite colours. In landscape painting
the contrast of pure cardinal colours is less pronounced. In scenes,
on the contrary, in which human figures are of most importance, and
more particularly where drapery occupies large spaces of canvas, the
more simple colours will be in their right place. In such we have a
scene taken from the world of spiritual life, in which that which is
inorganic, the natural environment, is more abstract, in other words
must not appear in its natural completeness and isolated manner of
effect, and the varied tints of landscape in all the profusion of
their gradations are less suitable. As a rule the landscape is not
so entirely fitted to the environment of human scenes as a room, or
generally that which is architectural, inasmuch as situations which
take place in the open air are in general not accepted from a class in
which the life of soul without considerable reserve is manifested. If
a man is placed before us with the open landscape around him it should
appear simply as environment. And in cases of this type it is right
to make use of colours that are exceptionally prominent. But the use
of such involves also boldness and power of execution. Sickly sweet,
overpowered[292], doting faces are not the kind for such treatment.
Such soft expressions, such over-diluted countenances, which, ever
since Mengs gave them as people are wont to think typical of ideality,
would be entirely pulverized by such decision of colour. In recent
times and among us Germans, weak faces which have essentially nothing
to say[293], carefully posed in ways that imagine themselves to possess
grace, simplicity, and imposing character, are all the fashion. This
lack of distinction, on the side of spiritual characterization, has
its counterpart in and indeed produces a similar lack of definition
in colour and tone, so that all colours are run together in one
confusion, and forceless condition of mutilation and evaporization, and
no real emphasis is laid on any. You cannot say that one suppresses
another exactly, but then none adds contrast to another. It is no
doubt a colour harmony of a kind, and frequently it impresses with
its excessive sweetness and flattering endearment, but the note of
distinction is absent. In this connection Goethe thus expresses himself
in his observations added to the translation of Diderot's essay on
painting: "Critics do not by any means admit that it is easier to make
weak colour harmonious than a strong scheme: but it stands to reason
when colour is strong, when colours are placed before us vividly,
in that case the eye will experience their harmony or discord with
greater vividness. If, however, we weaken our colours, employ some with
brilliance, others in fusion, others in obscure squalour, then it is
obvious no one will be able to say whether the picture he looks at is
harmonious or not. One thing in any case we can say of it, it lacks
distinction."
With harmony of colour, however, we have not by any means attained the
goal of the art of colouring. To reach this consummate effect, in the
_third_ place, several other aspects must not be neglected. In this
respect I will restrict my observations to three points, first, the
so-called _atmospheric perspective_, secondly, _flesh-colour_, and in
conclusion, the magic of _colour brilliancy._[294]
Linear perspective is connected in the first instance merely with
the different degrees of size, which the lines of objects possess in
their greater or less remoteness from the human eye. This alteration
and reduction of form is, however, not the only thing painting has
to reproduce. In Nature everything is affected by the presence of
atmosphere, not merely between different objects, but even different
parts of them, a difference which asserts itself in colour. This tone
of colour which thus as it were evaporates with the distance is what
constitutes _atmospheric perspective_, in so far as thereby objects
are modified partly in deliberate outline, and partly in respect to
their light and shadow and general colouring. As a rule people think
that what is nearest to the eye in the foreground is brightest, and
what lies in the background is more obscure; in truth the matter is
otherwise[295]. But lights and shadows in the foreground are strongest,
in other words the contrast between light and shade has a more powerful
effect, and outlines are more defined near to the spectator. In
proportion, however, to the degree of their remoteness, they lose in
definition of colour and form, because the contrast of their light and
shadow is gradually reduced, until finally everything disappears in
transpicuous gray. Different schemes of lighting, however, necessitate
in this respect various modes of treatment. In landscape painting more
especially, but also in other compositions, which present large spaces,
atmospheric perspective is of first importance, and the great masters
of colour have carried out by this means the most bewitching effects.
The most difficult achievement in colouring, the ideal and consummation
of its art, is the colour effect of the human flesh[296], which unites
in its perfection all other colour tones, without permitting any
particular one to be singly prominent. The healthy red in the cheeks of
youth is, no doubt, pure carmine without any admixture of blue, violet,
or yellow, but this red is itself only a flush, or rather a sheen,
which appears to rise on the surface, and imperceptibly passes into the
prevailing flesh-tints. And this is an ideal[297] commixture of all the
fundamental colours. Through the transparent yellow of the skin the red
of the arteries and the blue of the veins is visible, and along with
the light and shade and all the variety of sheen and reflection we have
further tones of gray, brown, even green, which at first sight appear
as contrary to Nature, but for all that may contribute to the justness
and truth of the effect. Moreover, this composite treatment of many
apparent tints is wholly without sheen as such, that is, it reflects
nothing alien to it on its surface; its vital quality is entirely a
result of itself and the living thing it is. It is this rendering of
that which is the life shining through the organic integument which
constitutes the main difficulty. We may compare it to a lake in the
evening glow, in which we behold the objects that it reflects[298] no
less than the clear depth and native character of water. The flash of
metal combines on the contrary, no doubt, both light of its own and
transparency, jewels both flash and are translucent, and something
similar is seen in the case of velvet and silk-stuffs, but none of
these approaches the life-conferred interfusion of colours apparent
on the surface of the living flesh. The skin of animals, whether hair
or hide, wool, and so forth, are in like manner of the most varied
colouring, but it is a colour capable of more direct and independent
definition in its parts, so that the variety is rather the result
of different surfaces and planes, it is not a single transfusion
and suffusion of many colours such as human flesh is. The nearest
approach to it perhaps is the interplay of colour visible in the
bunch of grapes, or the exquisitely tender gradations of translucent
colour in the rose. And yet even this last example is unable to give
us the counterfeit of ideal animation[299] which flesh-colour should
possess. It is this volatile emanation of the soul exhibited on a
non-transparent surface which is one of the most difficult problems of
painting. For this ideality, this reflex of the inward life of soul
must not appear on a surface as imported there, must not be pasted
there as so many streaks, hatchings, and so forth of material colour,
but seem to us itself to belong to the living whole[300], a transparent
depth, as the blue of heaven, which offers our vision no repellent
surface, but one in which we are infallibly invited to unfold. Already
Diderot, in the essay on painting translated by Goethe, expressed
himself as follows on this head: "He who once has truly felt and
secured the apparition of flesh-colour is far on his way to perfect
victory. Thousands of painters have died without such a feeling, and
many thousands more will die without doing so."
In so far as the material is concerned, by means of which this
untransparent vitality of flesh is reproduced, the first medium to
declare its suitability for such an effect was the oil-pigment. Work
in mosaics is of all the least fitting to present us such a composite
effect. Its permanency is no doubt a recommendation, but inasmuch
as it can only express colour gradations through variously coloured
glass cubes or stones placed in juxtaposition, it is wholly unable to
reproduce the intermingling flow of one unified presentment of many
colours. Fresco and tempera painting carry us considerably further in
this direction. Yet in the case of fresco-painting the colours are
put on the wet plaster with too great rapidity, so that, on the one
hand, the greatest facility and sureness of brushwork is an essential,
and, on the other, the work has to be carried out with broad adjacent
strokes, which on account of their drying so rapidly do not admit of
a fine degree of finish[301]. The same kind of difficulty meets us in
the case of tempera-painting, a process[302] which no doubt admits of
great lucidity of expression[303] and beautiful contrasts of light
and shadow, yet for all that, by reason of the fact that its medium
dries so quickly, is less adapted to the fusion and elaboration of its
effects, and necessitates an articulate surface made up of definite
strokes of the brush. The oil pigment, on the contrary, not only
permits of the most tender and subtle melting together and elaborate
fusion of colour effect, so that transitions are so imperceptible we
cannot say where one colour begins and where it leaves off, but it is,
where its component elements are properly fused and the execution of it
is as it should be, itself remarkable for a luminous quality like that
of precious stones, and it can, by virtue of its distinctions between
opaque or transparent colours[304], reproduce in a far higher degree
than tempera painting the translucency of different layers of colour.
The _third_ and last point for our consideration in this connection
is the emanation[305] and _mystery_ of colour in its entire effect.
This witchery of colour appearance will mainly be found, where the
substantive ideality of objects has become an effusion of spirit which
enters into the scheme and treatment of its coloured presentment. In
general, we may say that the magic consists in a handling of colour
by means of which we obtain an interplay of scenic effect which is
devoid of defined articulation as such, which is, in fact, simply the
result of moulding of colour in the finest degree of fluency, a fusion
of coloured material, an interplay of reflected points which pass
into one another, and are so fine and evanescent in their gradations,
so full of vital cohesion that the medium here seems already to have
entered that of musical sound. From the point of view of modelling
the mastery of chiaroscuro is part of this magic result, an aspect of
the art in which among the Italians Leonardo da Vinci and, above all,
Correggio were supreme. While introducing the very deepest shadow, the
transparency of this is not only preserved, but is carried through
imperceptible gradations to the most brilliant light. By this means
roundness in the moulding of form is complete; there is no harshness
of line or limit, but all is equable transition. Light and shadow are
not here merely in their immediate effect as such, but gleam through
one another much as a spiritual force is operative through an external
shell. It is just an effect like this we find in the artistic treatment
of colour, and the Dutch were no less than others consummate masters
of this. By virtue of this ideality, this mutual relation between the
parts, this interfusion of reflections and colour scintillations, this
alternation and evanescence of transitional tones, a breath of soul and
vitality is throughout communicated in the brilliancy, depth, the mild
and juicy illumination of colour. It is this which gives us the magic
effect of a masterpiece of colour; it is the unique gift of the genius
of the artist who is himself the magician.
(_γγ_) And this brings us to the last point we have to discuss on this
part of our subject.
We started with the _linear perspective_, we passed on then to
_drawing_ and concluded with _colour_; _first_ considering light and
shade in its relation to modelling, and, _secondly_, viewing it as
colour simply, or more accurately, as the mutual relation between
degrees of brightness and darkness in colours, regarding it, moreover,
in its aspects of harmony, atmospheric perspective, flesh-colour
and magical effect. We have now to consider more directly[306] the
_creative impulse_ of the artist in bringing about such colour effects.
The ordinary view is that the art of painting follows definite rules
in attaining its results. This is, however, only true of the linear
perspective, being as it is a wholly geometrical science, and even
in this case rules must not obtrude themselves in their abstract
stringency, if we are to preserve all that essentially contributes to
our art. And, in the second place, we shall find that artistic drawing
accommodates itself even less readily than perspective to universal
rules, but least of all is this true of colouring. Sense of colour
ought to be an artistic instinct or quality, should be as much a unique
way of looking at and composing existing tones of colour, as it should
be an essential aspect of creative power and invention. On account
of this personal equation in the production of colour, the way, that
is, the artist looks at and is active in the making of his world, the
immense variety which we find in different modes of treating, it is no
mere caprice and favourite mannerism of colouring, which is absent from
the facts _in rerum natura_, but lies in the nature of the case. Goethe
supplies us with an example of personal experience which, as confided
in his "Dichtung und Wahrheit," illustrates what I mean: "As I returned
to my cobbler's house [he had just visited the Dresden Gallery] once
more to take lunch I could scarce trust the evidence of my eyes. I
believed myself to see before me a picture of Van Ostade[307], so
complete it was, that you might have hung it there and then in the
Gallery. Composition of subject-matter, light, shadow, brown tone
of the whole, all that is admirable in this artist's pictures I saw
actually before me. It was the first time that I was aware, to such a
high degree of the power which I subsequently exercised with intention,
the power of seeing, that is, with the eyes of the particular artist,
to whose works I had just happened to devote exceptional attention.
This facility afforded me great enjoyment, but also increased the
desire from time to time to persevere in the exercise of a talent
which Nature seemed ungracious enough to disallow me[308]." This
variety in the manner of colouring is exceptionally conspicuous in the
painting of human flesh, quite apart from all modifications rendered
necessary by the mode of lighting, age, sex, situation, and the like
considerations. And for the rest, whether the subject depicted be
daily life, outside or within the interior of private houses, taverns,
churches, or other buildings, or it be that of Nature's landscape,
with its wealth of objects and colour, which finds more or less
accurate reflection in the personal essay of any particular painter,
the result cannot fail to illustrate this varied play of form and
colour effect[309], which will infallibly appear, due as it is to the
manner in which each comprehends, reproduces, and creates his own work
according to his own outlook, experience and imaginative powers.
(_c_) We have hitherto, in discussing the several points of view which
are given effect to in the art of painting, referred, _firstly_, to its
content, and _secondly_ to the sensuous medium in which such content
can be built up. We have in conclusion to define the mode under which
the artist is bound to conceive and execute his content as a painter
and under the conditions of his particular medium. We will divide the
very considerable matter which such an investigation implies in the
following manner:
_First_, we have to deal with the more _general_ distinctions in forms
of _conception_, which it will be necessary to classify and follow in
their progressive advance to richer manifestations of life.
_Secondly_, we shall have to direct attention to the more definite
aspects, which, within these general types of conception, are more
directly referable to genuine pictorial _composition_, that is, the
artistic motives apparent in the particular situation and manner of
grouping selected.
_Lastly_, we propose to review rapidly the mode of _characterization_,
which results from distinctions of subject-matter no less than modes of
conception.
(_α_) With respect to the most generally prevailing modes of artistic
conception[310], we shall find these are in some measure due to the
content which has to be depicted, and in part are referable to the
course of the art's evolution, which does not from the first seek to
elaborate all that is apparent in any subject, but rather through a
variety of stages and transitions makes itself fully mistress of Life
and its manifestations.