(_αα_) The first position which the art of painting is able to secure

still betrays its origin from sculpture and architecture: in the

_entire mode_ of its conception it is still in close association with

these arts. And this will pre-eminently be the case where the artist

restricts himself to individual figures, which he does not place before

us in the vital connections of an essentially concrete situation,

but in the simple independence of its self-repose. Out of the many

sources of content which I have indicated as adapted to painting, we

shall find religious subjects, Christ, his apostles, and the like are

exceptionally suited to such abstract treatment. Such figures as these

must necessarily be assumed to possess sufficient significance in

their isolation, to be complete in themselves, and to unfold an object

sufficiently substantive of adoration and love. Belonging to this

type, particularly in early art, we meet with examples of Christ or

his saints isolated without definite situation and environment. If we

do find the latter it mainly consists in architectural embellishments,

particularly Gothic; this is frequently the case in early Flemish or

upper German art[311]. In this relation to architecture, among the

columns and arches of which such figures as the twelve apostles and

others are frequently composed, painting does not as yet attain to the

life-like actuality of its later development, and we find that even the

figures still retain in some measure a character which inclines to the

statuesque, or to some extent do not move beyond such a general type

as we find indicated in its fundamentals by Byzantine painting. For

isolated figures of this character, devoid of any background or only

retaining a purely architectonic outline, a more severe simplicity of

colour, and a more emphatic brilliancy, is as it should be. The oldest

school of painters have consequently employed a single-tinted ground of

gold instead of a rich natural landscape, a ground which the colours

of drapery have to confront, and to which they are compelled to adapt

themselves; these are consequently more decisive and glaring than the

colours employed in the periods of Art's finest bloom, just as we find

as a rule that simple vivid colours such as red, blue, and the rest are

most pleasing to uncultivated people.

To this earliest type of conception it is that for the most part the

miracle-working pictures belong. To such as to something stupendous

man is merely placed in a relation of stupidity, from which the aspect

of their artistic merit vanishes, so that they are not brought nearer

to his conscious life in friendly guise in accordance with their vital

humanity and beauty, and the very pictures which are most revered in a

religious sense are from an artistic standpoint the most execrable.

If, however, isolated figures of this type do not supply an object

for devotion or interest as being already complete and independent

personality, their execution, carried out as it is in consonance

with the principle of statuesque conception, has no meaning at all.

Portraits, for example, are of interest to relatives who know the

man thus portrayed and his individuality. But where the personages

thus depicted are forgotten or unknown the sympathy which is excited

by their portraiture in a given action or situation, which gives

definite content to a particular character, is of a wholly different

kind to that which we find in the entirely simple type of conception

above referred to. Really great portraits, when they face us in the

fullest wealth of life all the means of art can display, possess in

this wealth itself the power to stand forth from and step out of their

frames. In looking at the portraits of Van Dyck, for example, more

particularly when the pose of the figure is not wholly full face, but

slightly turned away, the frame has struck me like the door of the

world, which the man before me enters. When consequently individuals

do not possess, as saints, angels and the like do, a characterization

which is in itself sufficiently complete and acknowledged, and are only

interesting by virtue of the definite character of a given situation,

some single circumstance or particular action, it is not suitable to

present them as independent figures. As an example of this the last

work of Kügelchen in Dresden was a composition of four heads, half

figures, namely, Christ, John the Evangelist, John the Baptist, and the

Prodigal Son. So far as Christ and John the Evangelist are concerned I

found the conception quite appropriate. But in the case of the Baptist,

and in every respect in that of the Prodigal Son, I failed to connect

with them the authentic character which could justify a treatment of

them as half-length portraits. In such cases it is essential to place

the figures in a condition of action or incident, or at least to show

them in situations, by means of which, in vital association with

external environment, they can assert the individuality which marks an

essentially exclusive whole. The head of the Prodigal Son in the above

picture expresses no doubt, very finely too, pain, profound repentance

and remorse, but the only indication we have given us that this is the

repentance of the Prodigal Son is a very diminutive herd of swine in

the foreground. Instead of a symbolical reference of this kind we ought

to see him among his swine, or at least in some other scene of his

life. The Prodigal Son, in short, does not possess for us any further

general characterization complete as such in our minds and only exists,

in so far as he is not purely allegorical, in the well-known scenes of

Biblical narrative. He should be depicted to us as leaving his father's

house, or in his misery, his repentance and return, that is, in the

concrete facts of the tale. Those swine put in the foreground do not

carry us much further than a label with "The Prodigal Son" written on

it.

(_ββ_) And generally it is obvious that painting, for the reason that

its function is to accept as its content the wealth of soul-life in all

its detail, is, to a yet greater extent than sculpture, unable to rest

satisfied with that repose on itself which is without defined situation

and the conception of a character taken by itself and alone simply. It

is bound to make the effort to exhibit such self-subsistency and its

content in specific situation, variety, and distinction of character

viewed in their mutual relations and in association with their

environment. It is, in fact, just this departure from purely eclectic

and traditional types, from the architectonic composition of figures

and the statuesque mode of conception; it is just this liberation from

all that is devoid of movement and action, this striving after a living

human expression, a characteristic individuality; it is this investment

of a content with all the detail of the ideal and external condition

that affects it which constitutes the advance of the art, in virtue of

which it secures its own unique point of view. Consequently to painting

as to no other plastic art is it not merely permitted, but it is even

required from it, that it should unfold dramatic realization, and by

the composition of its figures display their activity in a distinctly

emphasized situation.

(_γγ_) And, in the _third_ place, closely connected with this

absorption in the complete wealth of existing life and the dramatic

movement of circumstance and character, we are aware of the importance

which is increasingly attached, both in conception and execution, to

the individuality and the vital wealth of the colour aspect of all

objects, in so far as in painting we attain to the supremest effects of

vital truth which are capable of being expressed purely by colour.

This magical result of appearance can, however, be carried to such

a pitch, that in contrast to it the exhibition of content becomes a

matter of indifference, and painting tends to pass over, in the mere

charm and perfume of its colour tones, and the contrast, fusion, and

play of their harmonies, into the art of music, precisely as sculpture,

in the elaboration of its reliefs, tends to associate itself with

painting.

(_β_) What we have in the first instance now to pass in review are the

particular lines[312] that pictorial _composition_ is constrained to

adhere to in its productions when presenting to us a definite situation

and the more immediate motives referable to it by virtue of the way it

concentrates and groups together various figures and natural objects in

one self-exclusive whole.

(_αα_) What is of fundamental and pre-eminent importance here is the

happy selection of a situation adapted to the art.

In this respect the imaginative powers of the painter possess an

immeasurable field to select from, a field whose limits extend from

the simplest situation[313] of an object insignificant in itself,

such as a wreath of flowers, or a wineglass composed with plates,

bread, and certain fruits, to rich compositions of important public

events, political actions, coronation fêtes, battles, or even the Last

Judgment, in which God the Father, Christ, his apostles, the heavenly

legions, nay, our entire humanity, and earth, heaven, and hell are

brought together. And here a closer inspection will show us that we

must clearly distinguish what is truly pictorial on the one hand from

that which is sculpturesque, and on the other from what is poetical in

the sense that it is only poetry that can fully express it.

The essential difference between a _pictorial_, and _sculpturesque_

situation consists, as we have already seen, in this, that the

main function of sculpture is to place before us that which is

self-subsistent in its tranquillity, without conflict under conditions

that do not affect it, in which distinctness of definition is not the

main demand, it is only in the relief that it really begins to approach

a group composition, and an epic expanse of figures begins to represent

actions involving motion, and which imply collision of opposing forces.

The art of painting, on the contrary, only thoroughly takes up its

proper task, when it moves away from figures composed independently

of their more concrete relations, moves away from a situation that

is deficient in its elaboration, in order that it may thus pass into

the sphere of living movement, human conditions, passions, conflicts,

actions in persistent association with external environment, and even

in its composition of natural landscape is able to retain firmly

this definite structure of a given situation and its most lifelike

individuality. It was for this reason that from the first we maintained

that painting was called upon to effect the exposition of character,

soul, and ideal qualities, not in the way that this spiritual world

enables us to recognize it directly in its external shape, but in the

way it evolves and expresses its actual substance by means of _actions._

And the truth we have just mentioned is that which brings painting

into closer relation with _poetry._ Both arts have in this respect an

advantage[314], and from another point of view, also a disadvantage.

Painting is unable to give us the development of a situation, event, or

action, as poetry or music, that is to say, in a _series_ of changes;

it can only embody one moment of time. A simple reflection is deducible

from this, namely, that we must in this one moment have placed before

us the substance of the situation or action in its entirety, the very

bloom of it; consequently, that moment should be selected in which all

that preceded and followed it is concentrated in one point. In the case

of a battle, for example, this moment will be that of victory. The

conflict is still apparent, but its decisive conclusion is equally so.

The artist is able, therefore, to retain as it were the residue of the

Past, which, in the very act of withdrawal and disappearance, still

asserts itself in the Present, and furthermore can suggest what has yet

to be evolved as the immediate result of a given situation. I cannot,

however, here enlarge further on this head. The painter, however,

together with this disadvantage as against the poet, is to this extent

advantaged in that he can bring the precise scene before our vision

in all the appearance of its reality, can depict it perfectly in all

its detail. "_Ut pictura poesis erit_" is no doubt a favourite saying

which is particularly and pertinaciously advanced by theorists, and is

no doubt actually accepted and exemplified by narrative poetry in its

descriptions of the seasons, its flowers, and its landscapes. Detailed

transcription of such objects and situations is, however, not only a

very dry and tedious affair, and indeed, so far from being exhaustive,

always leaves something more to say. It is, further, contrasted with

painting, only a confusing result, because it is forced to present as

a successive series of ideas what painting sets before our vision once

and for all, so that we constantly tend to forget what has gone before

and lose it from our minds, despite the fact that it should be held

in essential relation with that which follows, inasmuch as under the

spatial condition it is in fact a part of it, and only is significant

in this association and this immediacy. It is, however, just in this

contemporaneous exposition of detail that the painter can restore that

which, in respect to the progressive series of past and future events,

he fails to secure.

There is, however, another respect in which painting yields place to

poetry and music, and that is in its lyrical quality. The art of poetry

can not only develop emotions and ideas generally as such respectively,

but also in their transitions, movement, and increased intensity. In

respect to concentrated intensity this is yet more the case in music,

which is essentially concerned with soul-movement. To represent this

painting has nothing beyond the expression of face and pose; and if it

does exclusively direct its effort, to what is actually lyrical, it

misconceives the means at hand. However much the soul's passion may

be expressed in the play of the countenance or bodily movement, such

expression should not be directly referable to emotion as such, but

to emotions in so far as they are present, with a _definite_ mode of

expression, in an event or action. The fact that it reveals ideality in

external form therefore does not connote the abstract meaning that it

makes the nature of the soul visible by means of physiognomy and form,

under the mode of which it expresses soul-life; it is rather just the

individual situation of an action, passion in some specific outburst

thereof, by means of which the emotion is unfolded and recognized.

When, therefore, it is attempted to interpret the poetical quality

of painting under the assumption that it should express the soul's

emotion directly, without a motive and action more near to it in facial

expression and pose, all that we do in such a case is to throw the art

back upon an abstraction, which its effort should precisely strive to

be rid of; we ask of it, in short, that it should master the peculiar

and just contribution of poetry; and if it attempts to do this the

result will be a barren and stale one.

I particularly insist on this point because in the exhibition of art

we had here last year (1828) several pictures from the so-called

Düsseldorf school have received much attention, the painters of which,

while displaying in their work considerable knowledge and technical

ability, have laid almost exclusive stress on this ideal aspect, on

material that is only capable of adequate presentment in poetry. The

content, for the most part borrowed from poems of Goethe or from

Shakespeare, Ariosto, and Tasso, may be generally indicated as the

ideal emotion of Love. As a rule the most capable of these pictures set

before us a pair of lovers, Romeo and Juliet, for example, or Rinaldo

and Armida, without any further situation, so that these couples have

nothing more to do and express except the fact that they are in love

with each other, in other words, they share a mutual attraction, gaze

on each other as lovers, and as lovers look yet again. Naturally in

such a case the main expression must be concentrated in the mouth and

eyes; and we may add that our Rinaldo has been so placed relatively

to his spider legs that he looks very much as though he did not know

what to do with them. They are extensions which are entirely without

meaning. Sculpture, as we have seen, dispenses with the glance of

eye, the soul-flash; painting, on the other hand, seizes on this

potent means of expression, but it must not focus everything at this

one point, it should not make the fire or the refluent languor and

yearning of the eye or soft friendliness of lips the soul and centre

of expression without any other motives. Equally defective was the

fisherman of Hübner, the theme of which was borrowed from that famous

poem of Goethe, which depicts with such wonderful depth and charm of

feeling the indefinite yearning for the repose, coolness and purity

of water. The naked fisher lad, who in this picture is being drawn

into the water, has, just as the male figures in the other pictures

have, a very prosaic looking face, such as we could not imagine, if

the features were in repose, to be capable of profound or beautiful

emotions. And, as a rule, we cannot assert of these figures, whether

male or female, that they are beautiful in a healthy sense; they, on

the contrary, merely betray the nervous excitement, weakness, and

disease of Love and emotional life generally, which people have no

business to repeat and which we would willingly, whether in life or

Art, be spared. To the same class of conception belongs the way that

Schadow, the master of this school, has depicted Goethe's Mignon. The

character of Mignon is wholly poetical. What makes her interesting is

her Past, the severity of her destiny as it affects both her inward

and outward life, the conflict of her Italian, wholly excited passion

in a soul which is still obscure to itself, which can neither decide

upon a course of action or object, and which, being this mystery

to itself, merges itself in such and yet can do itself no good. It

is this self-expression wholly divided in itself and yet retiring

into itself, and only letting us see its confusion in isolated and

unrelated eruptions, which creates the awful interest we cannot fail

to experience in her. Such a network of contradictions we may no

doubt imagine in our minds, but the art of painting is wholly unable

to, present it to us, as Schadow has attempted to do, simply by

means of Mignon's form and physiognomy, without defining further any

situation or action. We may, therefore, assert generally that the

above-mentioned pictures are conceived without any real insight for

situations, motives, and expression. It is, in short, an inseparable

condition of genuine artistic representations of painting that the

entire subject-matter should be grasped with imaginative power,

should be made visible to us in figurative form, which is expressed

and manifests its ideal quality through a series of feeling, that

is, through an action, which is of such significance to the emotion,

that each and everything in the work of art appears to be entirely

appropriated by the imagination to express the content selected. The

old Italian painters have to a conspicuous degree, no less than their

modern fraternity, depicted love-scenes, and in part borrowed the

material from poetry; but they have known how to clothe the same with

imagination and delight. Cupid and Psyche, Cupid and Venus, Pluto's

rape of Proserpine, the rape of the Sabine women, such and other

similar subjects the old masters depicted in lifelike and definite

situations, in scenes properly motived and not merely as simple emotion

conceived without imaginative grasp, without action. They have also

borrowed love scenes from the Old Testament. We may find an example

in the Dresden Gallery, a picture of Giorgione, in which Jacob, after

his long journey, greets Rachel, presses her hand and kisses her; in

the distance there stand a pair of youths by a spring, busily engaged

in watering their herds, which are feeding, a large number of them, in

the dale. Another picture presents to us Isaac and Rebecca. Rebecca

gives Abraham's carls water to drink and is recognized in doing so.

In the same way scenes are taken from Ariosto; we have Medor, for

example, writing the name of Angelica on the edge of a spring. When,

therefore, people nowadays refer to poetry in painting, this can only

mean, as already insisted, that we must grasp a subject imaginatively

and suffer emotions to unfold themselves in action; it excludes the

idea of securing feeling simply as such or endeavouring thus to express

it. Even poetry, which is capable of expressing emotion in its ideal or

spiritual substance, is unfolded in ideas, images, and descriptions.

If this art was content to abide by a mere "I love thee," repeated

eternally, as its entire expression, such a consummation no doubt,

might prove highly agreeable to those masters who have talked so much

about the poetry of poetry, but it would be the blankest prose for all

that. For art generally in its relation to emotion consists in the

apprehension and enjoyment of the same by means of the imagination,

which in poetry displays passion in its conceptions, and satisfies us

in their expression, whether that expression be lyrical, or conveyed

in epical events, or dramatic action. As a presentment of the inward

life of soul, however, in painting the mouth, eye, and pose, do not

alone suffice; we must have the total objective realization in its

concreteness to make valid and vouch for such ideality.

The main thing, then, in a picture is that it present to us a

situation, the scene of some action. And closely associated with this

we have the primary law of _intelligibility._ In this respect religious

subjects possess the supreme advantage, that they are universally

known. The annunciation of the angel, the adoration of the shepherds or

of the three kings, the repose in the flight to Egypt, the crucifixion,

burial, resurrection, no less than the legends of the saints, were

well known subjects with the public, for whom such pictures were

painted, albeit to our own generation the stories of the martyrs are

removed to some distance. For a particular church, for example, it was

mainly the biography of its patrons or its guardian saints which was

represented. Consequently it was not always the painters themselves

who selected such subjects; particular circumstances rendered such

selection inevitable for particular altars, chapels, and cloisters, so

that the place where they are exhibited in itself contributes to their

elucidation. And this is, in part, necessary, for in painting we do not

find speech, words, and names, by which interpretation of poetry may be

materially assisted to say nothing of all its other means. And in the

same way in a royal residence, council-hall, or parliament-building,

scenes of great events, important situations taken from the history of

the state, city, and building in which they are found are there, and

receive a just recognition in the place for which they were originally

painted. It is hardly likely, for instance, that in painting a picture

for one of our palaces an artist would select a subject borrowed from

English or Chinese history, or from the life of King Mithridates. It

is otherwise in picture galleries, where we have all kinds of subjects

brought together that we could wish to buy or possess as examples of

fine works of art. In such a case, of course, the peculiar relation of

any picture to a definite locale, no less than its intelligibility, so

far as it is thereby promoted, disappears. The same thing is true of

the private collection. The collector brings together just what he can

get; the principle is that of a public gallery, and his love of art or

caprice may extend in other directions.

Allegorical pictures are far inferior to those of historical content

in the matter of intelligibility; they are, moreover, for the reason

that the ideal vitality and emphatic characterization of the figures

must in great measure pass out of them, indefinite, and not motive to

enthusiasm. Landscapes and situations borrowed from the reality of

daily life, are, on the contrary, no less clear in their substantial

import than, in respect to their characterization, dramatic variety,

movement and wealth of existence, they supply a highly favourable

opportunity for inventive power and executive ability.

(_ββ_) To render the defined situation of a picture intelligible, in so

far as the artist is called upon to do this, the mere fact of its local

place of exposition and a general knowledge of its subject will not

suffice. As a general rule, these are purely external relations, under

which the work as a work of art is less affected. The main point of

real importance consists, on the contrary, in this that the artist be

sufficiently endowed in artistic sense and general talent to bring into

prominence and give form to the varied motives, which such a situation

contains, with all the bounty of invention. Every action, in which

the ideal world is manifested in that which is external, possesses

immediate modes of expression, sensuous results and relations, which,

in so far as they are actually the activities of spirit, betray and

reflect its emotion, and consequently can be utilized with the greatest

advantage as motives which contribute to the intelligibility of the

work no less than its individual character. It is, for example, a

frequent criticism of the Transfiguration picture of Raphael, that

the composition is cut up into two unrelated parts; and this from an

_objective_ standpoint is the case. We have the transfiguration on

the hill and the incident of the possessed child in the foreground.

From an ideal[315] point of view, however, an association of supreme

significance is undoubtedly present. For, on the one hand, the sensuous

transfiguration of Christ is just this very exaltation of himself

above the earth and his removal from his disciples, a removal which as

such separation ought to be made visible; and from a further point of

view the majesty of Christ is in this, an actual and particular case,

to the highest degree emphasized by the fact that the disciples are

unable to heal the possessed child without the assistance of their

Master. In this instance, therefore, this twofold action is throughout

motived, and the association is enforced before our eyes, both in its

external and ideal aspect, by the incident that a disciple expressly

points to Christ who is removed from them, and in doing so suggests the

profounder truth of the Son of God to be at the same time on Earth,

in accordance with the truth of that saying, "If two are gathered

together in my name I am in the midst of them." I will give yet another

illustration. Goethe on one occasion gave as a subject for a prize

exhibition the representation of Achilles in female garments at the

coming of Odysseus. In one drawing Achilles glances at the helmet of

the armed hero, his heart fires up at the sight, and in consequence

of this emotion the pearl necklace is broken which he wears round the

neck. A lad seeks for and picks up the pieces from the ground. Such is

an example of admirable motive.

Moreover, the artist finds he has to a more or less extent large

spaces to fill in; he requires landscape as background, lighting,

architectonic surrounding, and he has to introduce incidental figures

and objects and so forth. All this material he should apply, in so far

as it can be so adapted, as motives in the situation, and bring this

external matter into unity with his subject in such a way that it is no

longer insignificant. Two princes or patriarchs shake hands. If this

is indicative of a peace treaty, and the seal upon the same, warriors,

armed bands, and the like, preparations for a sacrifice to solemnize

the pact, will be an obviously fitting environment. If such people

happen to meet each other with a similar welcome on a journey, other

motives will be necessary. To invent the same in a way that attaches

real significance and individualization to the action, this it is which

more than anything else will test the artistic insight of the painter

so far as this aspect of his work is concerned. And in order to promote

this not a few artists have also attached symbolical relations between

background and the main action. In the composition, for example, of

the Adoration of the three Kings, we not unfrequently find the holy

Infant in His cradle beneath a ruined roof, around Him the walls of a

building falling in decay, and in the background the commencement of

a cathedral. The falling stone-work and the rising cathedral directly

suggest the victory of the Christian church over paganism[316]. In the

same way we find, not unfrequently, in pictures, more especially of

the Van Eyck school, which depict the greeting of the angel Gabriel to

Mary, flowering lilies like stamens. They indicate the maidenhood of

the mother of God.

(_γγ_) Inasmuch as in the _third_ place the art of painting, by

virtue of the principle of ideal and external variety, in which it is

bound to give clear definition to situations, events, conflicts, and

actions, is forced to deal on its way with many kinds of distinction

and contradiction in its subject-matter, whether purely natural objects

or human figures, and, moreover, receives the task to subdivide this

composite content, and create of it one harmonious whole, a way of

posing and _grouping_ its figures artistically, becomes one of the

most important and necessary claims made upon it. Among the crowd of

particular rules and definitions, however, which are applicable to

this subject, what we are able to affirm in its most general terms can

only be valid in quite a formal way, and I will merely draw attention

shortly to a few of the main points.

The earliest mode of composition still remains entirely architectonic,

a homogeneous juxtaposition of figures or a regular opposition and

symmetrical arrangement, not merely of the figures themselves, but

also their posture and movements. We may add that at this stage the

pyramidal form of grouping is much in favour. When the subject is the

Crucifixion of our Lord such shapes follow as a matter of course.

Christ is suspended on high from the cross, and at the sides we have

a group of the disciples, Mary the mother, or saints. In pictures of

the Madonna also, in which Mary is seated with her Child on a raised

throne, and we find adoring apostles, martyrs, and so forth, beneath

them on either side we have a further illustration of this form. Even

in the Sistine Madonna picture this mode of grouping is still in its

fundamental features retained. And, generally, it brings repose to the

eye because the pyramids, by virtue of its apex, makes the otherwise

dispersed association coherent, giving an external point of unity to

the group[317].

Within the limits, however, of such a generally abstract symmetrical

composition, the pose of the figures may be marked in detail by great

vividness and individuality, and equally the general expression and

movement. The artist, while using in combination the means of his art,

will have his several planes, whereby he is able more definitely to

emphasize the more important figures as against the others; and he can

in addition avail himself of his scheme of lighting and colour. The way

he will arrange his groups to arrive at this result is sufficiently

obvious. He will not, of course, place his main figures at the sides,

or place subordinate ones in positions which are likely to attract the

highest attention. And similarly he will throw the strongest light on

objects which are part of the most significant content, rather than

leave them in shadow, and emphasize with such strong light and the most

conspicuous tints objects which are incidental.

In the case he adopts a method of grouping less symmetrical, and

thereby more life-like, the artist will have to take especial pains not

to make the figures press too closely on each other, which results

in a confusion not unfrequently noticeable in certain pictures; we

should not be under the necessity of having first to identify limbs and

discover which belong to which, whether they be arms, legs, or other

properties, such as drapery, armour, and so forth. It will, on the

contrary, be wisest in the case of larger compositions, in the first

instance no doubt, to separate the whole into component parts easily

ascertained, but, at the same time, not to isolate them in dispersion

entirely. And particularly will this be advisable where we have scenes

and situations, which on their own account naturally tend to a broad

and disunited effect such as the gathering of manna in the wilderness,

market-fairs, and similar subjects.

On the above subject I must restrict myself here to these very general

observations.

(_γ_) Having thus, _firstly_, dealt with the general types of pictorial

composition, and, _secondly_, with a composition from the point of

view of selection of situations, arrangement of motives and grouping,

we will now add a few remarks upon the mode of _characterization_, by

means of which painting is to be distinguished from sculpture and its

ideal plastic character.

(_αα_) I have several times previously taken occasion to remark,

that in painting the ideal and external _particularity_ of soul-life

is admitted in its freedom, and consequently is not necessarily

that typical beauty of individualization which is inseparable from

the Ideal itself, but one which is suffered to expand in every

direction of particular appearance, by virtue of which we obtain

that which in modern parlance is called _characteristic._ Critics

have generally referred to "the characteristic" thus understood as

the distinctive mark of modern art in its contrast to the antique;

and, in the significance we are here attaching to the term, no doubt

the above contrast is just. According to our modern criterion Zeus,

Apollo, Diana, and the rest are really not characters at all in this

sense, although we cannot fail to admire their infinitely lofty,

plastic, and ideal individualities. We already find a more articulate

individualization is approached by the Homeric Achilles, the Agamemnon

and Clytemnestra of Aeschylus[318], or the Odysseus, Antigone, and

Ismene in the type of spiritual development which by word and deed

Sophocles unfolds to us, a definition in which these figures subsist in

what appears to be consonant with their substantive nature, so that we

can no doubt discover the presentment of character in the antique if

we are prepared to call such creations characters. Still in Agamemnon,

Ajax, Odysseus, and the rest, the individualization remains throughout

of a generalized type, the character of a prince, of frantic rage, of

cunning in its more abstract determinacy. The individual aspect is in

the result closely intertwined with the general conception, and the

character is merged in an individualization of ideal import. The art

of painting, on the contrary, which does not restrain particularity

within the limits of such ideality, is more than anything else occupied

with developing the entire variety of that aspect of particularization

which is accidental, so that what we have now set before us, instead of

those plastic ideals of gods and men, is _particular people_ viewed in

all the varied appearance of their accidental qualities. Consequently

perfection of corporeal form, and the fully realized consonancy of

the spiritual or ideal aspect with its free and sane existence, in a

word, all that in sculpture we referred to as ideal beauty, in the

art of painting neither make the same claim upon us, nor generally

are regarded as the matter of most importance, inasmuch as now it is

the ideality of soul-life itself, and its manifestation as conscious

life which forms the centre of interest. In this more ideal sphere

that realm of Nature is not so profoundly insistent. Piety of heart,

religion of soul can, no less than ethical sense, and activity in

fact did in the Silenus face of Socrates, find a dwelling in a bodily

form which, viewed on the outside simply, is ugly and distorted. No

doubt in expressing spiritual beauty, the artist will avoid what is

essentially ugly in external form, or will find a way to subdue and

illumine it in the power of the soul which breaks through it, but he

cannot for all that entirely dispense with ugliness[319]. For the

content of painting, as we have above depicted it at length, includes

within itself an aspect, for which it is precisely the abnormal and

distorted traits of human figures and physiognomy, which are most able

to express. This is no other than the sphere of what is bad and evil,

which in religious subjects we find mainly represented by the common

soldiers, who take a part in the passion of Christ, or by the sinners

and devils in hell. Michelangelo was pre-eminent in his delineation of

devils. In his imaginative realization, though we find he passes beyond

the scale of ordinary human life, yet at the same time an affinity with

it is retained. However much notwithstanding the impersonations which

painting sets before us necessarily disclose an essentially complete

whole of characteristic realization, we will not go so far as to

maintain that we cannot find in them an analogue of that which we refer

to as the Ideal in the most plastic type of art[320]. In religious

subjects, no doubt, the feature of all importance is that of pure Love.

This is exceptionally so in the case of the Virgin mother, whose entire

life reposes in this love; it is more or less the same thing with the

women who accompany the Master, and with John, the disciple of Love. In

the expression of this we may also find the sensuous beauty of forms

associated, as is the case with Raphael's conceptions. Such a close

affinity must not, however, assert itself merely as formal beauty, but

must be spiritually made vital through the most intimate expression of

soul-life, and thereby transfigured; and this spiritual penetration

must make itself felt as the real object and content. The conception,

too, of beauty, has its real opportunity in the stories of Christ's

childhood and those of John the Baptist. In the case of the other

historical persons, whether apostles, saints, disciples, or wise men

of antiquity, this expression of an emphasized intensity of soul-life

is rather simply an affair of particular critical situations, apart

from which they are mainly placed before us as independent characters

of the actual world of experience, endowed with force and endurance of

courage, faith and action, so that what most determines the gist of

their characters in all its variety is an earnest and worthy manliness.

They are not ideals of gods, but entirely individualized human

ideals; not simply men, as they ought to be, but human ideals[321],

as they actually are in a certain place, to which neither particular

definition of character is wanting, nor yet a real association

between such particularity and the universal type which completes

them. Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, in his famous Last

Supper, have supplied examples of this type, in the composition of

which we find an entirely different quality of worth, majesty and

nobility present than in those presented by other painters[322]. This

is precisely the point at which painting meets on the same ground with

the ancients, without, however, sacrificing the character of its own

province.

(_ββ_) Inasmuch, moreover, as the art of painting, to the fullest

extent among the plastic arts, acknowledges the claim of the specific

form, and the individualized characterization to assert itself, so

above all we find here the transition to real _portraiture._ We should

be therefore wholly in the wrong if we condemned portrait painting

as incompatible with the lofty aims of art. Who indeed could desire

to lose the great number of excellent portraits painted by the great

masters? Who is not, quite apart from the artistic merits of such

works, curious to have definitely substantiated to their vision this

actual counterfeit of the idea of famous personalities, their genius,

and their exploits, which they may have otherwise had to accept from

history. For even the greatest and most highly placed man was, or is,

a veritable individual, and we desire to see in visible shape this

individuality, and the spiritual impression of it in all its most

actual and vital characteristics. But apart from objects, which lie

outside the purview of art, we may assert in a real sense, that the

advances in painting from its imperfect essays consist in nothing so

much as this very elaboration of the _portrait._ It was, in the first

instance, the pious and devotional sense which brought into prominence

the ideal life of soul. A yet finer art added new life to this sense by

adding to its product reality of expression and individual existence;

and with this profounder penetration into external fact the inward

life of spirit, the expression of which was its main object, was also

enhanced and deepened. In order, however, that the portrait should

be a genuine work of art the unity of the spiritual individuality

must, as I have already stated, be stamped upon it, and the spiritual

impression of the characterization must be the one mainly emphasized

and made prominent. Every feature of the countenance contributes

to this result in a conspicuous degree, and the fine instinct for

detecting such in the artist will declare itself by the way in which

he makes visible the unique impression of any personality by seizing

and emphasizing precisely those traits, and parts in which this

distinctive personal quality is expressed in its clearest and most

vitally pregnant embodiment. In this respect a portrait may be very

true to Nature, executed with the greatest perseverance, and yet

entirely devoid of life, while a mere sketch[323], a few outlines from

the hand of a master, may be infinitely more vivacious and arresting

in its truth. Such a study should, however, by indicating the lines or

features of real significance, reflect that character in its structural

completeness[324], if on the simplest scale, which the previous

lifeless execution and insistence upon crude fact glosses over and

renders invisible. The most advisable course, as a rule, is to maintain

a happy mean between such studies, and purely natural imitation. The

masterly portraits of Titian are of this type. The impression such

make on us is that of a complete personality. We get from them an

idea of spiritual vitality, such as actual experience is unable to

supply. The effect is similar to that afforded by the description of

great actions and events in the hands of a truly artistic historian.

We obtain from such a much loftier and vitally true picture of the

facts than any we could have taken from the direct evidence of our

senses. Concrete reality is so overburdened with the phenomenal, that

is incidental or accidental detail, that we frequently cannot see the

forest for the trees, and often the most important fact slips by us as

a thing of common or daily occurrence. It is the indwelling insight

and genius of the writer which first adds the quality of greatness

to events or actions, presenting them fully in a truly historical

composition, which rejects what is purely external, and only brings

into prominence that through which that ideal substance is vitally

unfolded. In this way, too, the painter should place before us the

mind[325] and character of the impersonation by means of his art. If

success is fully attained we may affirm that a portrait of this qualify

is more to the mark, more like the personality thus conceived than the

real man himself is. Albrecht Dürer has also executed portraits of

this character. With a few technical means the traits are emphasized

with such simplicity, definition, and dignity, that we wholly believe

ourselves to be facing spiritual life itself. The longer we look at

such a picture, the more profoundly we penetrate into it, the more it

is revealed to us. It reminds one of a clear-cut drawing, instinct

with genius, which completely gives expression to the characteristic,

and for the rest is merely executive in its colour and outlines in

so far as the same may make the characterization more intelligible,

apparent, and finished as a whole, without entering into all the

importunate detail of the facts of natural life. In the same way also

Nature in her landscape paints every leaf, branch, and blade to the

last shadow of a line or tint. Landscape painting, on the contrary,

has no business to attempt such elaboration, but may only follow her

subject to a principle of treatment, in which the expression of the

whole is involved, which emphasizes detail, but nevertheless does not

copy slavishly such particulars in all their threads, irregularities

and so forth, assuming it is to remain essentially characteristic

and individual work. In the human face the drawing of _Nature_ is

the framework of bone in its harsh lines, around which the softer

ones are disposed and continue in various accidental details. Truly

characteristic _portraiture_, however, despite all the importance we may

rightly attach to these well defined lines, consists in other traits

indicated with equal force, the countenance in short as _elaborated by

the creative artist._[326] In this sense we may say of the portrait

that it not only can, but that it ought to flatter, inasmuch as it

neglects what pertains to Nature's contingency, and only accepts that

which contributes to the characteristic content of the individual

portrayed, his most unique and most intimate self. Nowadays we find it

the fashion to give every kind of face just a ripple of a smile, to

emphasize its amiability, a very questionable fashion indeed, and one

hard to restrain within the limit imposed. Charming, no doubt; but the

merely polite amiability of social intercourse is not a fundamental

trait of any character, and becomes in the hands of many artists only

too readily the most insipid kind of sweetness.

(_γγ_) However compatible with portraiture the course of painting

may be in all its modes of production it should, however, make the

particular features of the face, the specific forms, ways of posing,

grouping, and schemes of colour consonant with the actual situation, in

which it composes its figures and natural objects in order to express a

content. For it is just this content in this particular situation which

should be portrayed.

Out of the infinitely diversified detail which in this connection we

might examine I will only touch upon one point of vital importance. It

is this that the situation may either be on its own account a passing

one, and the emotion expressed by it of a momentary character, so that

one and the same individual could express many similar ones in addition

and also feelings in contrast with it, or the situation and emotion

strikes at the very heart of a character, which thereby discloses

its entire and most intimate nature. Situations and emotions of this

latter type are the truly momentous crises in characterization[327].

In the situations, for example, in which I have already referred to

the Madonna, one finds nothing, however essentially complete the

individualization of the Mother of God may be in its composition,

which is not a real factor in the embracing compass of her soul and

character. In this case, too, the characterization is such that it is

_self_-evident that she does not exist apart from what she can express

in this specific circumstance. Supreme masters consequently have

painted the Madonna in such immortal maternal situations or phases.

Other masters have still retained in her character the expression of

ordinary life otherwise experienced and actual. This expression may be

very beautiful and life-like, but this form, the like features, and a

similar expression would be equally applicable to other interests and

relations of marriage lore. We are consequently inclined to regard

a figure of this type from yet other points of view than that of a

Madonna, whereas in the supremest works we are unable to make room

for any other thoughts but that which the situation awakens in us.

It is on this ground that I admire so strongly the Mary Magdalene of

Correggio in Dresden, and it will for ever awake such admiration.

We have here the repentant sinner, but we cannot fail to see that

sinfulness is not here the point of serious consideration[328]; it is

assumed she was essentially noble and could not have been capable of

bad passions and actions. Her profound and intimately self-imposed

restraint therefore can only be a return to that which she really is,

what is no momentary situation, but her entire nature. Throughout this

entire composition, whether we look at form, facial expression, dress,

pose, or environment, the artist has therefore not in the slightest

degree laid a stress on those circumstances, which might indicate sin

and culpability; she has lost the consciousness of those times, and

is entirely absorbed in her present condition, and this faith, this

instinct, this absorption appears to be her real and complete character.

Such a complete reciprocity between soul-life and external

surroundings, determinacy of character and situation, the masters

of Italy have illustrated with exceptional beauty. In the example

I have already referred to of Kügelchen's picture of the Prodigal

Son, on the contrary, we have no doubt the remorse of repentance and

grief expressed to the life; but the artist has failed to secure the

unity of the entire character, which, apart from such an aspect of

it, he possessed, and of the actual conditions under which such was

depicted to us. If we examine quietly such features, we can only find

in them the physiognomy of any one we might chance to meet on the

Dresden bridge or anywhere else. In the case of a real coalescence of

character with the expression of a specific situation such a result

would be impossible; just as, in true genre-painting, even where

the concentration is upon the most fleeting moments of time, the

realization is too vivid to leave room for the notion that the figures

before us could ever be otherwise placed or could have received other

traits or an altered type of expression.

These, then, are the main points we have to consider in respect to

the content and the artistic treatment in the sensuous material of

painting, the surface, that is, and colour.

3. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF PAINTING

In our consideration of this _third_ section of our subject we are

unable to confine ourselves, as we have hitherto done, to a wholly

general examination of the content and purport appropriate to painting,

and the mode of configuration, which follows from its principle, for

in so far as this art is built up on the particularity of characters

and their situation, and upon form and its pose, colour, and so

forth, we are compelled to fix in our minds and discuss the _actual

reality_ of this art's separate productions. No study of painting is

complete that does not take into its survey and is unable to enjoy

and criticize the pictures themselves, in which the aspects of it we

have examined are enforced. This is a general rule in the case of all

art, but it applies with exceptional force to painting among those we

have up to the present considered. In the case of architecture and

sculpture, where the embrace of the content is more restricted, the

means of exposition and configuration are to a less extent stamped

with wealth and distinctive modification, and the particular aspects

of their definition are simpler and more radical, we can more readily

avail ourselves of copies, descriptions, and casts. It is essential

in dealing with the art of painting that we should see the actual

works themselves. In this case mere descriptions, however important

they may be in a subsidiary sense, will not suffice. In the infinite

variety, however, of its explication, the various aspects of which are

united in particular works of art, these works appear to us in the

first instance as a mere motley array, which, by reason of the fact

that our review of it is based upon no principle of classification,

is only to a small extent able to disclose to us the unique quality

of individual pictures. And it follows from this that galleries, as

a rule, if we are not already able to connect with each picture our

knowledge of the country, period, school, and master to which it

belongs, is simply a collection without meaning, in which we lose

ourselves. The most profitable arrangement for study and enjoyment with

our eyes is therefore an exhibition based on _historical sequence._ A

collection of this kind, co-ordinated in relation to such a principle,

unique and invaluable of its class, we shall shortly be able to admire

in the picture gallery of the royal museum in this city[329]. In

this we shall not only possess a historical survey of the technique

of art in its stages of development, but shall have set before our

minds, as an essential process with a history, that articulation of

its ideal content in the distinctions of its schools, their various

subject-matter, and their different modes of artistic conception and

treatment. It is only through having given us a survey as consonant

as this is with that vital process that we can form an idea from its

origins in traditional and eclectic types, of the living growth of

art, its search after expression and individual characteristic, its

liberation from the inactive and tranquil station of its figures, that

we can appreciate its progress to dramatic movement, grouping, and all

the wealth and witchery of its colour, or finally learn to distinguish

its schools, which either to some extent treat similar subject-matter

in a way peculiar to themselves, or are distinct from each other by

reasons of the variety of their respective content.

A historical development of painting such as that referred to is of as

great importance to _scientific_ observation and exposition as it is

to accurate study. The content of art as I have presented it, namely,

the elaboration of its material, the distinct and fundamental changes

in the mode of its conception, we find all this and more receives thus

for the first time its concrete coherence in a sequence and under

a classification which corresponds with the facts. It is therefore

incumbent on us to glance at this process, if only by way of emphasis

to what most immediately arrests attention.

In general the advance consists in this, that it originates in

_religious_ subjects conceived still in a _typical_ way, with simple

architectonic arrangement and unelaborated colour. After this, in

an increasing degree of fusion with religious situations, we get

actuality, vital beauty of form, individuality, depth of penetration,

charm and witchery of colouring, until Art finally turns its attention

to the world itself, makes itself master of Nature, the daily

occurrence of ordinary life, or what is of significance in national

history whether present or past, or portraiture and anything else

down to the merest trifle and the least significant fact, and with

an enthusiasm equal to that it devoted to the religious ideal, and

pre-eminently in this sphere secures not merely the most consummate

result of technical accomplishment, but also a treatment and execution

which is most full of life and personality. This progress is followed

in clearest outline if we take in succession the schools of Byzantine,

Italian, Flemish, Dutch, and German painting, after noting the most

prominent features of which briefly we shall finally indicate the

transition to the art of music[330].

(_a_) In our review of Byzantine painting we may remark to start with

that the practice of painting among the Greeks was to a definable

degree always carried on; and examples of antique work contributed

to the greater excellence of its results relatively to posture,

draping, and other respects. On the other hand the touch of Nature

and life wholly vanished from this art; in facial types it adhered

strictly to tradition; in its figures and modes of expression it

was conventional and rigid; in its general composition more or less

architectonic. We find no trace of natural environment and a landscape

background. The modelling, by means of light and shadow, brilliance

and obscurity, and their fusion, no less than perspective and the

art of lifelike grouping, either were not elaborated at all, or to a

very slight extent. By reason of this strict adherence to a single

acknowledged type independent artistic production had little room for

its exercise. The art of painting and mosaic frequently degenerated

into a mere craft, and became thereby lifeless and devoid of spirit,

albeit such craftsmen, equally with the workers on antique vases,

possessed excellent examples of previous work, which they could imitate

so far as pose and the folding of drapery was concerned. A similar

type of painting spread its sombre influence over the ravaged West

and more particularly in Italy. Here, however, although in the first

instance with beginnings of little strength, we are even at an early

date conscious of an effort to break away from inflexible forms and

modes of expression, and to face, at first, however, in a rough and

ready way, a development of loftier aim. Of Byzantine pictures we

may, on the contrary, affirm, as Herr von Rumohr[331] has maintained

of Greek Madonnas and images of Christ that "it is obvious even in

the most favoured examples, their origin was that of the mosaic, and

artistic elaboration was rejected from the first." In other words[332]

the Italians endeavoured even before the period of their independent

art development in painting, and in contrast to the Byzantines to

approximate to a more spiritual conception of Christian subjects.

The writer above-named draws attention also as noteworthy support of

his contention to the manner in which the later Greeks and Italians

respectively represented Christ on crucifixes. According to this writer

"the Greeks, to whom the sight of terrible bodily suffering was of

common occurrence, conceived the Saviour suspended on the Cross with

the entire weight of his body, the lower part of the body swollen and

the slackened knees bent to the left, the bowed head contending with

the pains of an awful death. Their subject was consequently in its

essentials bodily suffering. The Italians, on the contrary, in their

more ancient monuments, while we must not overlook the fact that the

representation of the Virgin Mary with her Child no less than the

Crucified is only of rare occurrence, were accustomed to depict the

figure of the Saviour on the cross adopting, so it appears to us,

the idea of the victory of the spiritual, not as in the former case

the death of the body. And this unquestionably nobler conception

asserts itself at an early date in the more favoured parts of Western

Europe[333]." With this sketch I must here rest content.

(_b_) We have, however, _secondly_, another characteristic of art to

consider in the earlier development of Italian painting. Apart from

the religious content of the Old and New Testament and the biographies

of martyrs and saints, it borrows its subjects in the main from Greek

mythology, very seldom, that is, from the events of national history,

or, if we except portraits, from the reality of contemporary life,

and equally rarely, and only at a late stage and exceptionally, from

natural landscape. Now that which it before all contributes to its

conception and artistic elaboration of the subject-matter of religion

is the _vital reality_ of spiritual and corporeal existence, relatively

to which at this stage all its forms are embodied and endowed with

animation. For this vitality the essential principle on the spiritual

side is that natural delightfulness, and on the corporeal side is

that beauty which is consonant with physical form, a beauty which

independently, as beautiful form, already displays innocence, buoyancy,

maidenhood, natural grace of temperament, nobility, imagination,

and a loving soul. If there is further added to a _naturel_ of this

type the exaltation and adornment of the soul in virtue of the ideal

intimacy of religion and the spiritual characteristics of a profounder

piety established as a vitalizing principle of soul-life in this

essentially more admitted and inviolable province of spiritual

redemption[334],--in such a case we have presented to us thereby an

original harmony of form and its expression, which, wherever it is

perfected, vividly reminds us in this sphere of romantic art and

Christian art of the pure Ideal of art. No doubt also within a new

accord of this type the inward life of the heart will be predominant;

but this inward experience is a more happy, a purer heaven of the

soul, the way of return to which form what is sensuous and finite, and

the return to God, albeit the passage may be through a travail in the

profounder anguish of repentance and death, is, however, less saturated

with trouble and its insistency. And the reason of this is that the

pain is concentrated in the sphere of soul, of idea, of faith, without

making a descent into the region of passionate desire, intractable

savagery, obstinate self-seeking and sin, and only arriving at the

hardly won victory through smiting down such enemies of the blessed

state. It is rather a transition of ideal permanence[335], a pain of

the inward life, which feels itself as such suffering rather simply

in virtue of its enthusiasm, a suffering of more abstract type, more

spiritually abundant, which has as little need to brush away bodily

anguish as we have to seek signs in the characterization of its bodily

presence and physiognomy of obstinacy, uncouthness, crookedness, or the

traits of superficial and mean natures, in which an obstinate conflict

is first necessary, before such are meet to express real religious

feeling[336] and piety. This more benign[337] intimacy of soul, this

more original consonancy of exterior forms to ideal experience of this

kind is what creates the charming clarity and the untroubled delight,

which the genuinely beautiful works of Italian painting excite and

supply. Just as we say of instrumental music that there is tone and

melody in it, so, too, we find that the pure song of soul floats here

in melodious fusion over the entire configuration and all its forms.

And as in the music of the Italians and in the tones of their song,

when the pure strains ring forth without a forced utterance, in every

separate note and inflection of sound and melody, it is simply the

delight of the voice itself which rings out; so, too, such an intimate

personal enjoyment of the loving soul is the fundamental tone of their

painting[338]. It is the same intimacy, clarity, and freedom which

meet us again in the great Italian poets. To start with this artistic

resonance of rhymes in their terzets, canzonets, sonnets, and stanzas,

this accord, which is not merely satisfied to allay its thirst for

reverberation in the one repetition, but repeats the echo three times

and more, this is itself a euphony which streams forth on its own

account and for the sake of its own enjoyment. And a like freedom is

stamped upon the spiritual content. In Petrarch's sonnets, sestets, and

canzonets it is not so much the actual possession of their subject,

after which the heart yearns; it is not the consideration and emotion

which are involved in the actual content of the poem as such, and which

is therein necessarily expressed; rather it is the expression itself

which constitutes the source of enjoyment. It is the self-delight of

Love, which seeks its bliss in its own mourning, its laments, its

descriptions, memories, and experience; a yearning, which is satisfied

in itself as such, and with the image, the spirit of those it loves,

is already in full possession of the soul, with which it longs to

unite itself. Dante, too, when conducted by his master Virgil through

hell and hell-fire, gazes at what is the culmination of horror, of

awfulness; he is fearful, he often bursts into tears, but he strides

on comforted and tranquil, without affright and anxiety, without the

sullenness and embitterment which implies "these things should not

be thus." Nay, even his damned in hell receive the blessedness of

eternity. _Io eterno duro_ is inscribed over the gates of hell. They

are what they are, without repentance and longing; they do not speak

of their sufferings; they are as immaterial to us as they are to them,

for they endure for ever. Rather they are absorbed simply in their

personal experience and actions, secure of themselves as rooted in the

same interests, without lamentation and without yearning[339].

When we have grasped this trait of happy independence and freedom of

the soul in love we shall understand the character of the greatest

Italian painters. It is in this freedom that they are masters of the

detail of expression, and situation. On the wings of this tranquillity

of soul they can maintain their sovereignty over form, beauty, and

colour. In their most defined presentation of reality and character,

while remaining wholly on the earth and often only producing portraits,

or appearing to produce such, what we have are pictures of another sun,

another spring. They are roses which are equally heavenly blossoms.

And, consequently, we find that in their beauty we do not have merely

beauty of form, we do not have only the sensuous unity of soul

impressed on sensuous corporeal shapes; we are confronted with this

very trait of reconciled Love in every mode, feature, and individuality

of character. It is the butterfly, the Psyche[340], which in the

sunlight of its heaven, even hovers round stunted flowers[341]. It is

only by virtue of this rich, free, and rounded beauty that they are

able to unfold the ideals of the antique art's more recent perfection.

Italian art has, however, not immediately and from the first attained

to such a point of perfection; it had in truth a long road to traverse

before it arrived there. And yet, despite this, the purity and

innocence of its piety, the largeness of the entire conception, the

unassuming beauty of form, this intimate revelation of soul[342], are

frequently and above all in the case of the old Italian masters most

conspicuous where the technical elaboration is still wholly incomplete.

In the previous century it was fashionable to depreciate these earlier

masters, and place them on one side as clumsy, dull, and barren[343].

It is only in more recent times that they have been once more rescued

from oblivion by savants and artists; but the wonder and imitation thus

awakened has run off into the excess of a preference which tends to

deny the advances of a further development in mode of conception and

presentment, and can only lead astray in the opposite direction.

In drawing the reader's more close attention to the more important

phases in the development of Italian art up to this period of its

fullest perfection, I will only briefly emphasize the following points

which immediately concern the characterization of the essential aspects

of painting and its modes of expression.

(_α_) After the earliest stage of rawness and barbarism the Italians

moved forward with a fresh impetus from that in the main craftsmanship

type of art which was planted by the Byzantines. The compass of

subjects depicted was, however, not extensive, and the distinctive

features of the type were austerity, solemnity, and religious

loftiness. But even at this stage--I am quoting the conclusions of

Herr von Rumohr--who is generally recognized as an authority upon

these earlier periods[344], Duccio, the Sienese, and Cimabue, the

Florentine, endeavoured to assimilate the few remains of antique

drawing, which was grounded on laws of perspective and anatomical

precision, and so far as possible, to rejuvenate the same in their own

genius. They "instinctively recognized the value of such drawings, but

strove to soften the extreme insistence[345] of their ossification,

comparing such insufficiently comprehended traits with the life such

as we find it in fact or suggestion when face to face with their own

productions[345]." Such are merely the first and mediating efforts of

art to rise from the inflexibility of a type to lifelike and individual

expression.

(_β_) The _further_ step of advance consists in the complete severation

from those previous Greek examples, in the full acceptance, relatively

both to the entire conception and execution of what is distinctively

human and individual, and along with this in the profounder suitability

of human characters and forms which was gradually evolved to express

the religious content thus to be expressed.

(_αα_) It is here before all we must draw attention to the great

influence which Giotto and his pupils exercised. Giotto, along with the

changes he effected in respect to modes of conception and composition,

brought about a reform in the art of preparing colours. The later

Greeks probably, such at least is the result of chemical analysis, made

use of wax either as a medium of colour, or as a kind of varnish[346],

and from this we get the yellow-green and obscure general tone, which

is not sufficiently explained by the action of lamplight[347]. Giotto

wholly dispensed with this glutinous medium of the Greek painters, and

used instead, when preparing his colours[348], the clarified milk of

young shoots, unripe figs, and other less oliginous limes[349], which

Italian painters of the early Middle Ages had used, very likely even

before they strenuously imitated the Byzantines[350]. A medium of this

kind had no darkening effect on the colours, but left their luminosity

and clarity unimpaired. Still more important was the reform effected by

Giotto in Italian painting with respect to selection of subjects and

their manner of presentment. Ghiberti himself praises Giotto for having

abandoned the rude style of the Greeks, and without leaning in this

direction to an excess having introduced the truth and grace of Nature.

Boccaccio, too, says of him that Nature is unable to create anything

that Giotto could not imitate to the point of deception[351]. In

Byzantine pictures we can hardly detect a trace of natural appearance.

It was Giotto, then, who concentrated his attention on what is present

and actual, and compared the forms and effects which he undertook to

exhibit with Life as it existed around him. And we may associate with

this tendency the fact that during the times of Giotto not only do we

find that the state of society was more free and intent on enjoyment,

but that the veneration of several later saints took its rise then,

saints whose lives more or less fell in that period[352]. It was such

Giotto utilized particularly in emphasizing the truthful presentment of

the subjects of his art; there was, in fact, thus the further demand

suggested by the content itself that he should bring into prominence

the natural features of the bodily presence and exhibit more defined

characterization, action, passion, situation, pose, and movement. What

we find, however, to a relative degree disappears from this attempt

is that imposing religious seriousness which is the fundamental

characteristic of the phase of art which it followed[353]. The things

of the world receive a stage and a wider opportunity for expression;

and this is illustrated by the way Giotto, under the influence of his

age, found room for burlesque along with so much that was pathetic.

In this connection Herr von Rumohr states rightly, "Under conditions

of this description I am at a loss to understand how certain critics,

who have exclusively insisted on this feature of Giotto's work, can so

overestimate Giotto's tendency and performance by claiming it as the

most sublime effort of modern art[354]." It is a great service of the

above-named critic to have once more placed in a true light the point

of view from which Giotto can be justly appreciated; he throughout

makes us careful to see, that in this tendency of Giotto to humanize

and towards realism he never really, as a rule, advances beyond a

comparatively subordinate stage in the process.

(_ββ_) The advance of painting continued under the manner of

conception for which Giotto was in the main responsible. The typical

representation of Christ, the apostles, and the more important

events which are reported us by the evangelists, were more and more

thrust into the background. Yet in another direction the embrace of

subject-matter was for that reason extended. As our author expresses

it: "All artists engaged in depicting the various phases in the life

of latter-day saints, such as their previous worldliness, the sudden

awakening of conscience, their entrance into the life of piety and

asceticism, the miracles of their lives, more particularly after their

decease, in the representation of which, as is to be expected from

the external conditions of the art, the expression of the effect upon

the living exceeded any suggestion of invisible powder[355]." Add

to this that the events of the Life and Passion of Christ were not

neglected. The birth and education of Christ, the Madonna with her

Child were exceptionally favoured subjects, and were invested with a

more life-like domesticity, touched with a more intimate tenderness,

revealed to us in the medium of human feeling, and, moreover, to quote

yet further: "In the problems[356] suggested by the Passion it was

not so much the sublime and the triumph as simply the pathetic aspect

which was emphasized, a direct consequence of the enthusiastic wave of

sympathy with the earthly sufferings of the Saviour, to which Saint

Francis, both by example and teaching, had communicated a vital energy

hitherto unheard of."

In respect to a yet further advance towards the middle of the fifteenth

century, we have to lay exceptional stress on two names, Masaccio and

Fiesole. In the progressive steps through which the religious content

was vividly carried into the living forms of the human figure and

the animated expression of human traits Herr von Rumohr[357] draws

attention to two essential aspects as of most importance. The one is

the increase of rondure in all forms to which it applies; the other

he indicates as "a profounder penetration into the articulation, the

consistency, the most varied phases of the charm and significance

of the features of the human countenance." Masaccio and Angelico da

Fiesole between them were the first to contribute effectively to

the solution of this artistic problem, the difficulty of which in

its entirety exceeded the powers of any one artist of that period.

"Masaccio was mainly occupied with the problem of chiaroscuro, and the

rounding and effective articulations of groups of figures. Angelico da

Fiesole, on the other hand, devoted himself to sounding the depths of

ideal coherence, that indwelling significance of human features, the

mine of whose treasure he was the first to open to painting[358]." The

effort of Masaccio was not so much one in the direction of grace as

in that of imposing conception, manliness, and under the instinctive

need for unity of the entire composition. The impulse of Fra Angelico

was that of religious intensity, a love severed from the world, a

cloistral purity of emotion, an exaltation and consecration of the

soul. Vasari assures us in his account of him that he never commenced

work without prayer, and never depicted the sufferings of the Redeemer

without bursting into tears[359]. We have, then as aspects of this

advance of painting a more exalted vitality and realism: but, on the

other hand, the depth of piety, the ingenuous devotion of the soul

in its faith overran itself and overpowered the freedom, dexterity,

naturalism, and beauty of the composition, pose, drapery, and colour.

If the later development was able to attain to a far more exalted and

complete expression of the spiritual consciousness, yet the epoch we

are now considering has never been surpassed in purity and innocence

of religious feeling and serious depth of conception. Many pictures of

this time may very well, by reason of the fact that the forms of life,

which are used to depict the religious intensity of soul-life, do not

appear fully adequate to this expression, give us something like a

repulse; from the point of view, however, of spiritual emotion, which

is the most vital source of these works of art, we have still less

reason to fail to acknowledge the naive purity, the intimacy with the

most profound depths of the truly religious content, the assuredness

of faithful love even under oppression and in grief, and oft, too,

the charm of innocence and blessedness, inasmuch as the epochs that

followed it, however much in other aspects of artistic perfection

they made a step forwards, yet for all that never secured again the

perfection of these previous excellencies, when once it had been lost.

(_γγ_) A _third_ aspect attaches to the further development of the

art, in addition to those already discussed, which may be described

as the wider embrace of it relatively to the subjects accepted

for presentation by the new impulse. Just as what was regarded as

sacred had from the very commencement of Italian painting approached

more closely to reality by reason of the fact that men whose lives

fell about the time of the painters themselves were declared to be

saints, so too Art received into its own sphere other aspects of

reality and present life. Starting from that earliest phase of pure

spirituality and piety, an art whose aim was wholly absorbed in the

expression of such religious emotions, painting proceeded more and

more to associate the external life of the world with its religious

subject-matter. The gladsome, forceful self-reliance of the citizen

in the midst of his professional career, the business and the craft

that was bound up with such qualities, the freedom, the manly courage

and patriotism, in one word, his weal in the vital activities of

the Present, all this newly-awakened sense of human delight in the

virtues of civil life and its cheer and humour[360], this harmonized

sympathy with what was actual in both its aspects of ideal life[361]

and the external framework of the same, all this it was which entered

now into his artistic conceptions and modes of presenting such and

was made valid therein. It is in this spirit that the enthusiasm

for landscape backgrounds, views of cities, environment of church

buildings and palaces becomes a real instinct of artistic life; the

living portraits of famous savants, friends, statesmen, artists, and

other persons remarkable in their day for their wit and vivacity find

a place in religious compositions; traits borrowed from both civil and

domestic life are utilized with a greater or less degree of freedom

and dexterity; and if, no doubt, the spiritual aspect of the religious

content remained the foundation of all, yet the expression of piety was

no longer exclusively isolate, but is linked together with the more

ample life of reality and the open stage of the world[362]. No doubt we

must add that by reason of this tendency the expression of religious

concentration and its intimate piety is weakened, but art required also

this worldly element in order to arrive at its culminating point.

(_γ_) Out of this fusion of the more embracing reality of life with

the ideal material of religious emotion arose a new problem for

genius to solve, the complete solution of which was reserved for the

great masters of the sixteenth century. The supreme aim now was to

bring the intimate life of soul, the seriousness and the loftiness

of religious emotion into harmony with the animation, the actual

presence of characters and forms both in its corporeal and spiritual

aspect, in order that the bodily configuration in its pose, movement,

and colour, may not simply remain an external framework, but become

itself essentially an expression of spirit and life, and by virtue of

that expression, made throughout all its parts wholly the reflex of

soul-life no less than of external form, reveal a beauty without break

or interruption.

Among the masters of most distinction, who set before themselves such

an aim, we should pre-eminently mention Leonardo da Vinci. It was he,

who, by virtue of his artistic thoroughness, his almost over-refined

passion for detail, his exquisite delicacy of mind and feeling, not

only penetrated further than any other[363] into the mysteries of the

human form and the secrets of its expression, but, through his equally

profound knowledge of all the technique of a painter, attained to an

extraordinary infallibility in the employment of all the means that his

researches and practice had placed within his reach. And, along with

this, he was able to retain a reverential seriousness in composing his

religious subjects, so that his figures, however much they present to

us the ideal of a more complete and rounded actuality, and disclose

the expression of sweet, smiling joyfulness in facial traits and the

delicate rhythm of drapery, do not thereby dispense with the dignity,

which the worth and truth of religion demand[364].

The most unflecked quality[365] of perfection reached in this direction

was, however, that first attained by Raphael. Herr von Rumohr assigns

more particularly to the artists of the Umbrian School dating from

the middle of the fifteenth century a mysterious fascination, which

no sympathetic nature can resist, and endeavours to find the source

of this attraction in the depth and tenderness of feeling no less

than the marvellous unity into which these painters knew how to bring

memories from the oldest essays of Christian art of a style only very

partially understood by them[366] with the milder conceptions of a

later time, and in this respect proved themselves superior to the

Tuscan, Lombard, and Venetian fellow artists of that period[367]. It

was just this expression of "flawless purity of soul and absolute

surrender to the yearning and enthusiastic flow of tender feeling" to

which Pietro Perugino, the master of Raphael, devoted his artistic

efforts, and succeeded by doing so in fusing the objectivity and

vitality of external forms, throughout all its actual realization and

in every detail, an aim which had previously received the most marked

attention in the elaborate work of the Florentines. Starting from

the work of Perugino, to whose artistic taste and style he appears

to have consistently adhered in his early work, Raphael proceeded

yet further to realize to the most consummate degree the demand of

the ideal above indicated. In other words we find united in him the

highest ecclesiastical feeling for the themes of religious art and a

complete knowledge and enthusiastic respect for natural phenomena in

all the animation of their colour and shape together with an insight

fully as great for the beauty of the antique. This great admiration

for the idealistic beauty of the ancients did not bring him in any

way to imitate and adapt to his work the forms which Greek sculpture

had elaborated in their perfection. What he seized from it was simply

the general principle of their free beauty which in his hands was

throughout suffused with a more individual vitality more applicable

to his art and with a type of expression more deeply informed with

soul-life, and at the same time with an open, blithesome clarity and

thoroughness, in all the detail of the presentment that up to his

time was as yet unknown among Italian artists. In the elaboration and

consistent fusion and coherence of this ideal atmosphere he reached

the highest point of his attainment. On the other hand, in the magical

charm of chiaroscuro, in the exquisite tenderness and grace of

soul-expression, of forms, movements, and grouping, it is Correggio

who most excels, while the incomparable greatness of Titian consists

in the wealth of natural life that he displays, the illuminating

bloom, fervency, warmth, and power of his colour. We know nothing more

delightful than the _naïveté_ of Correggio's not so much natural as

religious and spiritual grace, nothing more sweet than his smiling,

unconscious beauty and innocence[368].

The artistic perfection of these great masters is a culminating point

of art such as could only be mastered by one nation in the course of

historical development.

(_c_) _Thirdly_, in so far as the question is that of German painting

we may affiliate that which is entirely German with that of Flemish

or Dutch painters. The general distinction between the above schools

and that of the Italians, consists in this, that neither the Germans

nor the painters of the Netherlands were willing as a creation of

their own to attain to the free ideal forms and modes of expression

characteristic of Italian art, or were able to progress to that

spiritually transfigured type of beauty which is essentially the result

of such. What they did elaborate, however, was, in one aspect of it,

the expression of depth of emotion and the austere seclusion of the

individual soul, and, from another point of view, they attach to this

intensity of faith the separate definition of individual character in

the broader significance of it, that is to say, one which does not

merely disclose the fact of its close interest with the claims of faith

and salvation, but also shows how the individuals represented are

affected by the concerns of the world, how they are buffeted by the

cares of life, and in this severe ordeal have gained worldly wisdom,

fidelity, consistency, straightforwardness, the constancy of chivalry

and the sterling character of good citizens. Agreeably to this more

restricted and depressed vision of the detail of life we find here,

and it is particularly conspicuous in the German school, from the

beginning, in deliberate contrast with the purer forms and characters

of the Italians, rather the expression of a formal obstinacy of

stubborn natures, which either oppose themselves to God with energetic

defiance and brutal wilfulness, or are forced to impose restraint on

themselves in order that they may, with sore travail, wrest themselves

from their limitations and uncouthness, and fight their way to the

reconciliation of religion; consequently the deep wounds which they

inflict on their spiritual life inevitably contribute to the visible

expression of their piety. In illustrating this more closely I will

merely draw attention to certain prominent features, which are

important indications of the contrast between the older Flemish school

and the upper German and more recent Dutch masters of the seventeenth

century.

(_α_) Among the early Flemish masters, the brothers Van Eyck, Hubert,

and John are exceptionally distinguished in the early half of the

fifteenth century, and it is only recently that their true merits

have once more been established. It is now an established fact that

they discovered, or at least they were the first to fully perfect,

the process of oil-painting. Looking at the great advance they made

we must now assume that a distinct series of stages in the course of

this progress to its culmination could be set forth. We have, however,

no historical array of works of art preserved for us whereby we could

illustrate such a gradual process. We are face to face at one moment of

time with the beginning and final consummation. For painting of greater

excellence than that of these two brothers it is almost impossible

to imagine. Moreover, the works that have come down to us, in which

the mere type is already dispensed with and overcome, not merely

display a grand mastery in drawing, arrangement, grouping, ideal and

exterior characterization, enthusiasm, clarity, harmony, and delicacy

of colouring, dignity and repose of composition; but we must add that

the entire wealth of painting respectively to nature's environment,

architectonic accessories, backgrounds, splendour and variety of

material, drapery, style of weapons, ornamentation, and much besides,

is already treated with such fidelity, with such an instinctive sense

of what is pictorial, and with such a technical virtuosity, that even

later centuries, at any rate from the point of view of thoroughness

and truth, have been unable to produce any more consummate result. We

are, however, more strongly attracted by the master works of Italian

painting, if we contrast them with this Flemish school, because the

Italians, along with the completest expression of soul-life and the

religious sense, retain throughout the ideal of spiritual freedom and

imaginative beauty. The figures of Flemish art delight us, no doubt,

by virtue of their innocence, _naïveté_, and piety; nay, in the depth

of their emotional life they, in some measure, surpass the work of the

most excellent Italian artists; but the Flemish masters have never been

able to attain to a beauty of form and a freedom of soul comparable

with that of the Italians. Their Christ-babes are, in particular, badly

modelled; and for the rest their characters, whether men or women,

however strongly, subject to their dominant expression of religious

fervour, they may display a sterling character in their relation to

secular interests sanctified by the depth of their faith, nevertheless

appear to us lacking in a significance which can exalt itself over

such a piety, or rather, as dominated by it, do not appear able at the

same time to be essentially free, instinct with imagination and the

enterprise of superior qualities.

(_β_) A further aspect we shall do well to consider is the transition

from the more tranquil, reverential piety to the representation of

martyrdoms, and, in general, what is not beautiful in reality. It is

more particularly the North German masters who excel in scenes borrowed

from the Passion in which they emphasize the savagery of the soldiery,

the evil aspects of the mocking, the fierceness of the hate against

Christ during the course of His sufferings, with particular insistence

on features of ugliness and distortion, and which are intended to

denote external forms correspondent with the depravity of spirit. The

tranquil and beautiful activity of an unassuming personal piety is

thrown into the background, and the movements which are inseparable

from the situations above mentioned unfold us hideous distortions,

expressions of ferocity, and all the unbridled exhibition of passions.

Where we have the contending tumult and the uncouthness of characters

presented with such detail, it is not surprising that such pictures are

defective in the ideal harmony of their composition no less than their

colour, so that, more especially where a taste for old German paintings

first crops up, critics when thus confronted with what is, as a rule,

an inferior class of technical accomplishment, fall into many mistakes

when determining the date of their production. Thus it has been

maintained that they are previous to the more consummate pictures of

the Van Eyck period, although, for the most part, they hail from a more

recent time. However, the Upper German masters were not exclusively

occupied with works of this type, but have likewise treated a variety

of religious subjects, and, indeed--Albrecht Dürer, with others,

exemplifies this--even in scenes from Christ's Passion, have understood

how effectively to grapple with the extremes of pure savagery, and even

when treating such themes to preserve an ideal nobility and an external

independence[369] and freedom.

(_γ_) Finally, the development of German and Flemish art is

characterized in a complete identification of itself with the

_ordinary_ life of the Present; and, along with this, in a unified

system of the most varied modes of presentation, which, both in

respect to their content and technique, are distinct from one another

and independently elaborated. We have seen already the advance made

by Italian painting from the simple nobility of devotion to an

ever-increasing assertion of secular motive, which here, however, as

we pointed out in the case of Raphael, was in some measure permeated

by ecclesiastical prepossessions, and in part limited by the coherent

principle of antique beauty. We may add that the later course of

this school is not so much a dissolution of that unity in the

representation of every kind of subject-matter under the predominant

interest of the colourist as a more superficial disposition, or

rather, eclectic imitation of styles of draughtsmanship and painting.

German and Flemish art, on the contrary, has in the most definite and

exceptional degree traversed the entire scheme of content and modes

of treatment, starting from its wholly traditional church pictures,

single figures and half lengths, then on to thoughtful, pious, and

devotional subjects, until we come to that animation and extension of

the same in larger compositions and scenes, in which, however, the

free characterization of figure, the heightened vitality effected by

means of processions, retinues, incidental personages, embellishment

of garments and utensils, wealth of portraiture, architectural works,

environment, views of churches, cities, streams, forests, mountains,

is still conceived and executed as a whole subject to religious

motivation. This focal centre still persists; but we find that the

range of subjects, which had hitherto been held together in unity,

is broken into division, and the separate parts become, in the

specific singularity and contingent character of their alternations or

independent modifications, subject to every possible type of conception

and pictorial execution[370].

In order to arrive at a full appreciation of this aspect of art's

development in the present context, for we have already referred to

the point, we will pass briefly in review the national conditions

which were operative in the change. We are under the necessity to

justify, as we shall attempt to do in the following observations, a

transition from direct relations to the Church and the outlook and

pictorial modes of piety to a delight in the world simply, that is to

say, to the objects and particular phenomena of Nature, to domestic

life in its dignity, congeniality, and peaceful seclusion, to an

enjoyment of national festivities and processions, rustic dances, the

games and follies attendant upon church fêtes. Now the Reformation had

thoroughly penetrated Holland. The Dutch had become Protestants and

overcome the despotism of the Spanish Crown and Church. And what is

more we do not, if we consider the political condition here, either

find a distinguished nobility which drives forth its princes and

tyrants, or imposes laws on them, nor yet an agricultural people,

oppressed peasantry, who break free as the Swiss have done, but rather

a population which, in by far the largest proportion of it, if we

except the few brave souls that tilled the soil and its more than brave

heroes of the sea, consisted of citizens of the town, men of business,

well-to-do burghers, men who, rejoicing in their ordinary avocations,

entertained no lofty pretensions, but, as became their courage and

intelligence, with audacious reliance in God, stood up to defend the

freedom of their hardly-won liberties and the particular privileges

of their provinces, cities, and guilds, dared to oppose themselves to

all hazards without fear of the transcendent prestige of the Spanish

dominion over half the world, to bravely let their blood flow for

such an aim, and by virtue of this righteous boldness and endurance

victoriously secured both their religious and civic independence. And

if we may brand any single condition of soul-life as distinctively

_deutsch_, it is just this loyal, well-to-do, and genial citizenship,

which, in a self-respect that is without pride, in a piety which is not

merely absorbed in enthusiasm and devotion, but which is concretely

pious in the affairs of the world[371] and is homely and contented in

its abundance, remains neat and clean, and in persistent carefulness

and contentment under all circumstances, armed with its own enduring

sense of independence and freedom, is able, with loyalty to its former

life, to preserve the sterling character of its forefathers unimpaired.

This intelligent and artistically endowed people furthermore seeks

its enjoyment in the pictorial presentment of its vigorous, justly

co-ordinated, satisfying, and comfortable existence; it is all for

taking a renewed delight by means of its pictures in the cleanliness

under all conditions of its towns, houses, and domestic arrangements,

of enjoying thus its household felicity, its wealth, the generous

adornment of its wives and children, the splendour of its civic

feasts, the boldness of its seamen, the fame of its merchandise and

the shipping, in which it rides over all the seas of the world. And

it is just this instinct of orderly and cheerful existence, which the

Dutch masters emphasize also in their landscape subjects. In one word,

in all their pictorial accomplishment they succeed in combining with

freedom, and truth of conception, with their enthusiasm for what is in

appearance of inferior and momentary significance, with the freshness

of open vision and the concentration of their entire soul on all that

is most stamped with the seclusion and limitations of their life, the

most ample freedom of artistic composition, no less than the finest

feeling for accessories and the most perfect effects of studious

elaboration. From one point of view this school of painting has

developed to an incomparable degree the magic and mystery of lighting

and colour[372] generally in its scenes borrowed from war and military

life, in its tavern jollifications, in its weddings and other rustic

fêtes, in its pictures of domestic life, in its portraits, landscapes,

animals, flowers, and the rest. From another aspect it has elaborated

with a similar excellence the characterization which penetrates to

the heart of life in all the truth of which Art is capable. And

although its insistence on the insignificant and contingent includes

the expression of what is boorish, rude, and common, yet these scenes

are so permeated throughout with ingenuous lustiness and jollity,

that it is not the common in its meanness and naughtiness so much as

the gaiety and joviality which creates the artistic subject and its

content. We do not look at mean feelings and passions, but simply

what is boorish, in the sense of being rustic, near to nature, in

the poorer classes, a quality which connotes geniality, waggishness,

and comedy. In short the Ideal itself is not wholly absent from this

unperturbed easy-way-of-life. It is the Sabbath of Life, which brings

all to one level and removes all badness, simply as such. Men who are

thus so whole-heartedly of good temper can neither be wholly bad nor

mean. In this respect it is not one and the same thing, whether evil

is of purely momentary appearance in a character, or lies at its root

and essence. In the work of these Dutch painters what is humorous in a

situation cancels what is evil, and it is at once clear to us that the

characters could be something other than that in the guise of which

they are for the time being set before us[373]. A gaiety and comedy of

this description contributes much to the invaluable character of these

pictures. If pictures of this rollicking type are attempted nowadays,

the painter, as a rule, only places before us what is essentially

mean, coarse and bad without the illuminating atmosphere of a comic

situation[374]. A bad wife rails at her tipsy husband in the tavern

with all her might. In a scene of this kind we have only put before us,

as I have already remarked, the bald facts that the man is a dissipated

brute and the woman a rating wench.

If we look at the Dutch masters in this light we shall no longer

entertain the view that the art of painting should have said goodbye to

such subjects altogether, and merely confined itself to depicting the

gods of old, myths, and fables, or even Madonna pictures, crucifixions,

martyrs, popes, and saints of both sexes. What is a vital ingredient

of every work of art is inseparable also from painting, and this is

the observance of what generally concerns our humanity, the spirit

and characterization of man, in other words what man is and what

_each_ individual is. This vital grasp of the conscious life of human

nature and the external forms of its appearance, this naive delight

and artistic freedom, this freshness and cheerfulness of imaginative

sympathy, this absolute directness of execution is what constitutes

the poetry that underlies the work of the majority of the Dutch

painters of this period. In their paintings we may study and acquaint

ourselves with human nature and mankind. Nowadays, however, our artist

only too frequently will confront us with portraits and historical

pictures, at which we have only to cast a bare glance, and we see that,

while flatly contradicting the wildest dream of what is possible in

mankind or anyone in particular, he neither knows aught at all about

man or his natural colour, nor yet the modes of composition[375] in

which we may justly express that humanity[376].

[Footnote 214: _Die gesammte Menschen-brust._]

[Footnote 215: _Die in sich gediegene Individualität des Gottes._]

[Footnote 216: _Betrachtung_, here implying thought rather than vision.]

[Footnote 217: That is a unity which dissolves all difference.]

[Footnote 218: _Als Inneres._]

[Footnote 219: _Als Reflexion in sich._ Probably Hegel means simply the

ultimate fact of self-conscious life--which is to find itself in Nature

as the antithesis of the synthetic unity of the ego. This is developed

in the latter half of the sentence.]

[Footnote 220: Lit., "Is not an essentially persistent and stereotyped

(_Erstarrtes_, stiffened) individual."]

[Footnote 221: Less than sculpture.]

[Footnote 222: He may mean type of art generally, but I think the

reference here is simply to painting. The passage is an important one.]

[Footnote 223: I presume Hegel uses the word _seeligkeit_ in the

ordinary sense, not "soulfulness." The close relation with _Schmertz_

necessitates this. But the spelling suggests the other interpretation.]

[Footnote 224: Which is absent in the classical treatment.]

[Footnote 225: That is, the creative artist.]

[Footnote 226: _Innerlichkeit._ It is impossible to express Hegel's use

of this word by one expression. It combines intimacy, ideal union, and

inwardness of soul-life in its contrast to objective reality.]

[Footnote 227: That is the romantic type.]

[Footnote 228: _Die für sich seyende Subjektivität._ That is a process

that elaborates itself in independent form consonant to its own

substance.]

[Footnote 229: _Als dieses Subjekt._ That is, I assume, as the

distinctive personality of the artist. This must appear on the face of

the work as the crown of its independent type and concrete unity (_Zur

Spitze des Fürsichseyns_) but must not dominate it to the extent of

destroying all natural detail, not even to the extent of sculpture.]

[Footnote 230: _Zur Spitze des Fürsichseyns._ See note above.]

[Footnote 231: That is their union in sculpture.]

[Footnote 232: _Als solcher._ Hegel means that the universal present in

emotion is objective therein as part of the self-conscious life, but

is only presented in the concrete objective shape in the work of the

artist who therein suffers to escape the wholly personal side.]

[Footnote 233: _Sein Inneres_, his ideal substance, with more direct

reference to feeling.]

[Footnote 234: _Aus demselben in sich hineingehend._ I think what is

meant is that the material is idealized out of one of its spatial

conditions rather than that the artist selects his _medium_ in

consonance with his temperament and technique.]

[Footnote 235: That is, does not affect the stability and total effect

of the work. Of course the actual effect may vary.]

[Footnote 236: _Für diesen festen Punkt des Subjekts._]

[Footnote 237: _Die in sich besonderte Innerlichkeit._]

[Footnote 238: The distinctions in matter conditioned in Space.]

[Footnote 239: The meaning, if rather obscurely expressed, appears

to be this. The art of sculpture shows us when it treats the spatial

dimensions as essential that we must have the entire spatial form

to do this, and it shows us that if we wish to pass from the mere

presentment of bodily form to a fuller ideal quality we must contract

this exclusive appearance of physical matter.]

[Footnote 240: Lit., "Begins to be subjective." Begins to possess a

self-excluding centre of unity, _i.e._, self-identity.]

[Footnote 241: That is to the point of a real subject or ego.]

[Footnote 242: _E.g._, secure an abstract result in superficies only.]

[Footnote 243: Apart from artistic means.]

[Footnote 244: Though the statements here are suggestive, they are

obviously influenced by Hegel's belief in the false theory of light

propounded by Goethe.]

[Footnote 245: This is a direct reference to the Newtonian theory, of

course.]

[Footnote 246: _Zeichnung_ here refers to line rather than technical

excellence in draughtsmanship. It must be admitted Hegel's emphasis of

these two aspects is carried rather too far.]

[Footnote 247: The above passage is open to criticism. Hegel hardly

makes allowance for the fact that the defective technique, so far

as it is defective, of the earlier masters, was mainly due to their

state of knowledge. Art was, in a certain aspect of technique, in its

infancy. Moreover to compare Dutch landscape with that of Bellini or

Raphael is to compare things that are each unique of their kind and

not comparable. Their aim was entirely different. In such pictures as

the San Sisto Madonna of Raphael, the great Crucifixion of Tintoret,

or the Entombment of Titian it is quite impossible to maintain that

the earnestness of conception is in any way inferior to the technique,

although we have no doubt a different degree of conviction expressed by

Fra Angelico. And the classical landscape of Titian or Tintoret is of

its type supreme.]

[Footnote 248: This statement of Hegel again requires parenthesis or

at least interpretation. There is a realism such as that we find in

the most consummate work of a Titian, or the genre work of the Dutch

school, or our own Pre-Raphaelites, to say nothing of mere academical

realism, which hardly comes within his remarks. It is obvious that the

Ideal is subserved in different degrees by such examples, and in fact

to preserve that unity of conception despite the greatest elaboration,

_is_ to serve the Ideal at least in one aspect of it. Hegel, at least

in the concluding part of this paragraph, appears mainly to have in

his mind still life and the genre pictures of the Dutch, and rather

seems to overlook his own statement as to the necessity of selection

and the power to express detail by the shorthand of genius rather than

deliberate imitation.]

[Footnote 249: _Grossartigkeit._]

[Footnote 250: _Innigkeit._ Intimate ideality, inwardness.]

[Footnote 251: I am not sure what Hegel means by the expression _Nicht

das Niedrige ist zerdrückt._ If the text is correct I suppose it means

the sensuous side does not make way for a more spiritual synthesis.

What we should expect is some other verb than _zerdrückt_ such as

_ausgedrückt_, the sense being that "_though_ the mean emotion is not

expressed, and no rage, etc., is asserted, _yet_ despite of it all,"

etc. I think there must be some misprint here.]

[Footnote 252: _Ein starres Beisichseyn._ Compare the expression lower

down _affirmatives Fürsichseyn_ with which it contrasts.]

[Footnote 253: _Für sich bestehende Herz._]

[Footnote 254: _Als ein göttliches Moment._ It means an actual phase in

the Divine existence.]

[Footnote 255: An important statement. Hegel's words are _Sondern

wir müssen das geistige Daseyn im Bewusstseyn des Menschen als die

wesentliche geistige Existenz Gottes ansehn._]

[Footnote 256: A bad master at any rate for such a subject.]

[Footnote 257: This metaphor appears to me rather confused, and in

fact I do not pretend wholly to understand its meaning. I suppose the

idea is that beyond the clouds of soul-life there are the clouds that

obscure Providence. In all this passage Hegel shows his limitations as

an art student.]

[Footnote 258: _Näher._ That is our love of God is mainly through

Christ.]

[Footnote 259: _Ein bloss eingelnes Moment._ A phase that passes or

becomes relatively insignificant.]

[Footnote 260: _Innigste_, most intimate. A curious but characteristic

conclusion of Hegel.]

[Footnote 261: This analysis must be accepted of course mainly as an

analysis of the ideal proposed to us by the profoundest Christian

art. It is obviously not true of much Italian art, Titian's work for

example, and it is equally remote from many of the most probable facts

of history.]

[Footnote 262: _Die Starrheit._ The rigid or unyielding character.]

[Footnote 263: _Der Gehalt ihres Gemüths._ It is possible to see in

this analysis something rather capricious and far-fetched, and yet to

appreciate its value as an analysis of Christian love for the deceased

beloved as contrasted with pagan sentiment. The finest illustration I

myself can recollect of this is not the mother Mary at all, but the

figure of the Magdalene in Tintoret's "Deposition" in the S. Giorgio

Maggiore Church in Venice. As a matter of fact the divine mother in

sacred art is almost invariably depicted in a state of swoon under the

stress of her grief, though Tintoret's Pietà in the Brera is a notable

exception.]

[Footnote 264: I do not know this painter. For pathos I know no finer

conception of the death than that of Rembrandt's etching. Blake's

drawing, exhibited recently at Cambridge, shows us the tranquillity and

dignity of the scene more finely than any other representation.]

[Footnote 265: I presume Hegel means this by the words _die

Menschheit_, but it is a difficult passage.]

[Footnote 266: It is impossible in English to preserve the antithesis

between _bitten_ and _beten._]

[Footnote 267: _Und nichts für sich hat._ That is to say reciprocity is

of its essence. "Give and it shall be given unto you."]

[Footnote 268: _Die Gestalt_ may possibly refer to the suppliant.]

[Footnote 269: The Sistine Madonna.]

[Footnote 270: A good instance is the great Crucifixion of Fra Angelico

in the S. Mark convent in Florence.]

[Footnote 271: And a painter like Carlo Dolci or the Caracci are even

worse.]

[Footnote 272: It would perhaps have been more instructive to consider

the difference of temperament in the artist when dealing with such

subjects and its influence on his treatment. It is very far from an

obvious truth that physiognomy upon which the conflict of soul-life is

most marked loses thereby the characteristics of beauty. There is the

beauty of gnarled oak no less than that of the rose and the lily.]

[Footnote 273: _Das Beisichseyn der Liebe im Absoluten._ Lit., the

self-inherency cf Love within the Absolute.]

[Footnote 274: _Sondern auch selbständig._ He seems to mean that they

receive from this relation the subsistent individuality of spirit. This

reference to landscape is obviously very perfunctory and insufficient.]

[Footnote 275: See vol. I, p. 220.]

[Footnote 276: _Mit dem in sich particularisirten Innern._ With the

ideal complexus of particular objects as related to one subject. Their

particularity is due to their characterization, and that is dependent

on idealization.]

[Footnote 277: _Diess Verwachsenseyn._ Lit., this growing up with.]

[Footnote 278: There is, however, the aspect of consummate execution

which in itself is a very real source of artistic enjoyment, and Hegel

rather seems to overlook this here.]

[Footnote 279: _Verzweigungen._ All off-shoots of attention or

interest.]

[Footnote 280: Of course, even in the painting of still life, artistic

composition itself implies by its selection and subordination to an

idea a new result. And the characteristic technique of a painter

inevitably has the same result.]

[Footnote 281: _Geistigen Ausdrück._]

[Footnote 282: _Grundlage._]

[Footnote 283: It is perhaps rather strange that Hegel should have

considered the Dutch and Flemish schools as pre-eminently colourists.

Apart from Rembrandt the truth is not very apparent. But he was mainly

thinking of their dexterity in the lighting of a picture and the

scintillation of colour.]

[Footnote 284: That is, as black and white and its gradations.]

[Footnote 285: It is not quite clear what is intended here by

_Vervielfältigung_, probably power of being adapted to various subject

matter and modes of expression.]

[Footnote 286: It is hardly necessary to point out that this

discussion, being based on Goethe's false theory of colour in

opposition to Newton's prismatic analysis, has no scientific value,

though historically of interest. The blueness of the sky is due to the

blue rays being detained.]

[Footnote 287: I presume by concrete unity Hegel refers in some form to

a unity that is such owing to its intrinsic nature.]

[Footnote 288: But red quite as often symbolizes enthusiasm and love,

and in Tintoret's Paradise the Virgin has the red tunic and the blue

mantle.]

[Footnote 289: As a matter of fact violet or purple is a cardinal

colour.]

[Footnote 290: Green is not a cardinal colour.]

[Footnote 291: Hegel seems to have in view the Flemish school rather

than the Dutch in the restricted sense. It is rather strange that he

should dwell on this rather than work of the Venetians such as Bellini.]

[Footnote 292: _Verschwemmte._ Carried away by a stream.]

[Footnote 293: Such as Ary Scheffer and others of the same monotony.

The flesh tints of Leighton and Poynter and many less men suffer in the

same way.]

[Footnote 294: _Farbenschein_, as Hegel uses it later on, I find it

impossible to translate in one word. In fact it is not easy to seize

precisely what he means. "Modulation of colour" partly expresses it.

But he also seems to refer to what we understand as the personal

quality of a picture or its general atmosphere, not regarded simply

as Nature's atmosphere, but as the communication of the artist's own

afflatus.]

[Footnote 295: I crossed a young landscape-artist of growing fame the

other day, who affirmed and endeavoured to express in his pictures the

conviction that colour was as strong in distance as foreground. His

pictures were of great interest, but I still think his robust theory

unsound.]

[Footnote 296: We have no English equivalent for the German _das

Incarnat_ or colour incarnate.]

[Footnote 297: _Ein ideelles Ineinander._ By ideal Hegel means

apparently that the distinctions of tint fine away beyond the grasp of

sense vision. This of course is true in all natural colouring. Possibly

he may mean that the idea of Life is contributive to the result.]

[Footnote 298: Hardly a just simile for the reason that, as Hegel

himself points out, flesh does not reflect external objects.]

[Footnote 299: _Den Schein innerer Belebung._ This expression seems

to prove that Hegel uses the word _ideel_ in its ordinary sense of

spiritual ideality.]

[Footnote 300: _Als selbst lebendiges Ganze._ The colour must appear as

itself a part of the vitality, not a mere covering.]

[Footnote 301: _Vertreibung._ What Hegel exactly means I am not sure,

probably finish by overpaintings.]

[Footnote 302: Fresco painting is strictly in tempera. I suppose Hegel

has here before him the two processes of tempera painting on the wet

wall of plaster and tempera painting on some other dry surface.]

[Footnote 303: _Zu grosser innerer Klarheit und schönen Leuchten._ I

give what appears to me to be the meaning.]

[Footnote 304: I presume Hegel understands by _Deck und Lasurfarben_

the distinction of our opaque and transparent colours such as flake

white and the madders or umbers. He clearly refers to glazes.]

[Footnote 305: _Die Duftigkeit, Magie in der Wirkung des Kolorits._

This is a difficult passage to translate, and I am not quite sure

what Hegel is aiming at. He seems to have in his mind both the ideal

atmosphere of a composition and the presence of a personal style.]

[Footnote 306: Hegel has already related the effects considered to the

artist's personality. He now endeavours to examine more closely what is

implied in the relation.]

[Footnote 307: Adriaen van Ostade, 1610-1685.]

[Footnote 308: He means painting, of course. He never passed beyond the

stage of the average amateur.]

[Footnote 309: _Spiel von Scheinen._ The play of appearance, that is,

as it strikes on different natures.]

[Footnote 310: _Malerischen Auffassung._ Here the ideas on mental

conception and artistic composition seem to be combined. But Hegel is

rather loose in his use of them.]

[Footnote 311: Hegel has doubtless Albrecht Dürer and yet earlier

German art in his mind.]

[Footnote 312: _Die besonderen Bestimmungen._ The lines of its definite

exposition.]

[Footnote 313: I adopt Hegel's generic term. But he means here little

more than delineation or composition.]

[Footnote 314: As between the art of painting and those of poetry and

music.]

[Footnote 315: _Geistig._ We may say the same thing of Tintoret's great

Golden Calf picture. But the objection to the composition as a work of

art remains more strongly than is the case with Raphael's picture.]

[Footnote 316: The same thing is a characteristic of Tintoret's

Annunciation in the S. Rocco Scuola and several pictures of Dürer.]

[Footnote 317: Fine examples of this are Rembrandt's Descent from the

Cross in the Munich Gallery, and the group of mourners in Tintoret's

Great Crucifixion.]

[Footnote 318: They have in this respect been well contrasted with the

characters of Euripides in the play of Aristophanes which particularly

emphasizes the difference between the heroic type of Aeschylus and the

realism of Euripides, "The Frogs of Aristophanes," text and translation

of B. B. Rogers; see Introd., pp. XVIII, XIX, XLV.]

[Footnote 319: As to ugliness and its treatment by Hegel, see Professor

Bosanquet's "History of Aesthetik," pp. 338, 355, and generally pp.

432-436.]