Count Caylus also seems to require that the poet should deck out the
creatures of his imagination with allegorical attributes.[81] The Count
understood painting better than poetry.
But other points more worthy of remark have struck me in the same work
of his, some of the most important of which I shall mention here for
closer consideration.
The artist, in the Count’s opinion, should make himself better
acquainted with Homer, that greatest of all word painters,—that second
nature, in fact. He calls attention to the rich and fresh material
furnished by the narrative of the great Greek, and assures the painter
that the more closely he follows the poet in every detail, the nearer
his work will approach to perfection.
This is confounding the two kinds of imitation mentioned above. The
painter is not only to copy the same thing that the poet has copied, but
he is to copy it with the same touches. He is to use the poet not only
as narrator, but as poet.
But why is not this second kind of imitation, which we have found to be
degrading to the poet, equally so to the artist? If there had existed
previous to Homer such a series of pictures as he suggests to Count
Caylus, and we knew that the poet had composed his work from them, would
he not lose greatly in our estimation? Why should we not in like manner
cease to admire the artist who should do no more than translate the
words of the poet into form and color?
The reason I suppose to be this. In art the difficulty appears to lie
more in the execution than in the invention, while with poetry the
contrary is the case. There the execution seems easy in comparison with
the invention. Had Virgil copied the twining of the serpents about
Laocoon and his sons from the marble, then his description would lose
its chief merit; for what we consider the more difficult part had been
done for him. The first conception of this grouping in the imagination
is a far greater achievement than the expression of it in words. But if
the sculptor have borrowed the grouping from the poet, we still consider
him deserving of great praise, although he have not the merit of the
first conception. For to give expression in marble is incalculably more
difficult than to give it in words. We weigh invention and execution in
opposite scales, and are inclined to require from the master as much
less of one as he has given us more of the other.
There are even cases where the artist deserves more credit for copying
Nature through the medium of the poet’s imitation than directly from
herself. The painter who makes a beautiful landscape from the
description of a Thomson, does more than one who takes his picture at
first hand from nature. The latter sees his model before him; the former
must, by an effort of imagination, think he sees it. One makes a
beautiful picture from vivid, sensible impressions, the other from the
feeble, uncertain representations of arbitrary signs.
From this natural readiness to excuse the artist from the merit of
invention, has arisen on his part an equally natural indifference to it.
Perceiving that invention could never be his strong point, but that his
fame must rest chiefly on execution, he ceased to care whether his theme
were new or old, whether it had been used once or a hundred times,
belonged to himself or another. He kept within the narrow range of a few
subjects, grown familiar to himself and the public, and directed all his
invention to the introducing of some change in the treatment, some new
combination of the old objects. That is actually the meaning attached to
the word “invention” in the old text-books on painting. For although
they divide it into the artistic and the poetic, yet even the poetic
does not extend to the originating of a subject, but solely to the
arrangement or expression.[82] It is invention, not of the whole, but of
the individual parts and their connection with one another; invention of
that inferior kind which Horace recommended to his tragic poet:
Tuque
Rectius Iliacum carmen deducis in actus,
Quam si proferres ignota indictaque primus.[83]
Recommended, I say, but not commanded. He recommended it as easier for
him, more convenient, more advantageous: he did not command it as
intrinsically nobler and better.
The poet, indeed, has a great advantage when he treats of familiar
historical facts and well-known characters. He can omit a hundred
tiresome details otherwise indispensable to an understanding of the
piece. And the sooner he is understood, the sooner he can interest his
readers. The same advantage is possessed by the painter when his subject
is so familiar to us that we take in at a glance the meaning and design
of his whole composition, and can not only see that his characters are
speaking, but can even hear what they say. On that first glance the
chief effect depends. If that necessitate a tiresome guessing and
pondering, our readiness to be touched is chilled. We take revenge upon
the unwise artist by hardening ourselves against his expression; and
alas for him, if to that expression he have sacrificed beauty! No
inducement remains for us to linger before his work. What we see does
not please us, and what it means we do not understand.
Considering now these two points: first, that invention and novelty in
the subject are by no means what we chiefly require from the painter;
and secondly, that a familiar subject helps and quickens the effect of
his art, I think we shall find a deeper reason for his avoidance of new
subjects than indolence or ignorance or absorption of his whole industry
and time in the mechanical difficulties of his art, which are the causes
assigned for it by Count Caylus. We may even be inclined to praise as a
wise and, as far as we are concerned, a beneficent forbearance on the
part of the artist, what seemed to us at first a deficiency in art and a
curtailment of our enjoyment.
I have no fear that experience will contradict me. Painters will be
grateful to the Count for his good intentions, but will hardly make as
general use of his advice as he expects. Should such, however, be the
case, a new Caylus would be needed at the end of a hundred years to
remind us of the old themes and recall the artist to a field where
others before him have reaped undying laurels. Or shall we expect the
public to be as learned as the connoisseur with his books, and familiar
with all the scenes of history and fable that offer fit subjects for
art? I grant that artists, since the time of Raphael, would have done
better to take Homer for their manual than Ovid. But since, once for
all, they have not done so, let us leave the public in its old ruts, and
not throw more difficulties in the way of its pleasure than are
necessary to make the pleasure worth having.
Protogenes had painted the mother of Aristotle. I know not how much the
philosopher paid for the picture, but instead of the full payment, or
perhaps over and above it, he gave the painter a piece of advice which
was of more value than the money. Not, as I believe, in the way of
flattery, but because he knew that art needed to make itself universally
intelligible, he advised him to paint the exploits of Alexander. The
whole world was ringing with the fame of them, and he could foresee that
their memory would remain to all posterity. But Protogenes was not wise
enough to follow this counsel. “Impetus animi,” says Pliny, “et quædam
artis libido,”[84] a certain presumption in art, and a craving after
something new and strange, led him to the choice of other subjects. He
preferred the story of Ialysus,[85] of Cydippe, and others of like kind,
whose meaning we can now scarce even conjecture.