Zeuxis painted a Helen, and had the courage to write beneath his picture
those famous lines of Homer wherein the elders express their admiration
of her beauty. Never did painting and poetry engage in closer rivalry.
Victory remained undecided, and both deserved to be crowned.
For as the wise poet showed us only in its effects the beauty which he
felt the impossibility of describing in detail, so the equally wise
painter exhibited beauty solely through its details, deeming it unworthy
of his art to have recourse to any outward aids. His whole picture was
the naked figure of Helen. For it was probably the same that he painted
for the people of Cortona.[141]
Let us, for curiosity’s sake, compare with this Caylus’s picture as
sketched for modern artists from the same lines of Homer.
“Helen, covered with a white veil, appears in the midst of several old
men, Priam among the number, who should be at once recognizable by the
emblems of his royal dignity. The artist must especially exert his skill
to make us feel the triumph of beauty in the eager glances and
expressions of astonished admiration on the countenances of the old men.
The scene is over one of the gates of the town. The background of the
painting may be lost either in the open sky or against the higher
buildings of the town. The first would be the bolder, but the one would
be as suitable as the other.”
Imagine this picture, executed by the greatest master of our time, and
compare it with the work of Zeuxis. Which will show the real triumph of
beauty? This, where I feel it myself, or that, where I am to infer it
from the grimaces of admiring graybeards? “Turpe senilis amor!” Looks of
desire make the most reverend face ridiculous, and an old man who shows
the cravings of youth is an object of disgust. This reproach cannot be
brought against the Homeric elders. Theirs is but a passing spark of
feeling which wisdom instantly stifles; an emotion which does honor to
Helen without disgracing themselves. They acknowledge their admiration,
but add at once,[142]—
ἀλλὰ καὶ ὣς, τοίη περ ἐοῦσ’, ἐν νηυσὶ νεέσθω,
μηδ’ ἡμῖν τεκέεσσί τ’ ὀπίσσω πῆμα λίποιτο.
This decision saves them from being the old coxcombs which they look
like in Caylus’s picture. And what is the sight that fixes their eager
looks? A veiled, muffled figure. Is that Helen? I cannot conceive what
induced Caylus to make her wear a veil. Homer, to be sure, expressly
gives her one,
αὐτίκα δ’ ἀργεννῇσι καλυψαμένη ὀθόνῃσιν
ὡρμᾶτ’ ἐκ θαλάμοιο,
“She left her chamber, robed and veiled in white,”
but only to cross the street in. And although he makes the elders
express their admiration before she could have had time to take it off
or throw it back, yet they were not seeing her then for the first time.
Their confession need not therefore have been caused by the present
hasty glance. They might often have felt what, on this occasion, they
first acknowledged. There is nothing of this in the picture. When I
behold the ecstasy of those old men, I want to see the cause, and, as I
say, am exceedingly surprised to perceive nothing but a veiled, muffled
figure, at which they are staring with such devotion. What of Helen is
there? Her white veil and something of her outline, as far as outline
can be traced beneath drapery. But perhaps the Count did not mean that
her face should be covered. In that case, although his words—“Hélène
couverte d’un voile blanc”—hardly admit of such an interpretation,
another point excites my surprise. He recommends to the artist great
care in the expression of the old men’s faces, and wastes not a word
upon the beauty of Helen’s. This modest beauty, approaching timidly, her
eyes moist with repentant tears,—is, then, the highest beauty so much a
matter of course to our artists, that they need not be reminded of it?
or is expression more than beauty? or is it with pictures as with the
stage, where we are accustomed to accept the ugliest of actresses for a
ravishing princess, if her prince only express the proper degree of
passion for her.
Truly this picture of Caylus would be to that of Zeuxis as pantomime to
the most sublime of poetry.
Homer was unquestionably more read formerly than now, yet we do not find
mention of many pictures drawn from him even by the old artists.[143]
They seem diligently to have availed themselves of any individual
physical beauties which he may have pointed out. They painted these,
well knowing that in this department alone they could vie with the poet
with any chance of success. Zeuxis painted besides Helen a Penelope, and
the Diana of Apelles was the goddess of Homer attended by her nymphs.
I will take this opportunity of saying that the passage in Pliny
referring to this picture of Apelles needs correcting.[144] But to paint
scenes from Homer merely because they afforded a rich composition,
striking contrasts, and artistic shading, seems not to have been to the
taste of the old artists; nor could it be, so long as art kept within
the narrow limits of its own high calling. They fed upon the spirit of
the poet, and filled their imagination with his noblest traits. The fire
of his enthusiasm kindled theirs. They saw and felt with him. Thus their
works became copies of the Homeric, not in the relation of portrait to
original, but in the relation of a son to a father,—like, but different.
The whole resemblance often lies in a single trait, the other parts
being alike in nothing but in their harmony with that.
Since, moreover, the Homeric masterpieces of poetry were older than any
masterpiece of art, for Homer had observed nature with the eye of an
artist before either Phidias or Apelles, the artists naturally found
ready made in his poems many valuable observations, which they had not
yet had time to make for themselves. These they eagerly seized upon, in
order that, through Homer, they might copy nature. Phidias acknowledged
that the lines,[145]—
Ἦ καὶ κυανέῃσιν ἐπ’ ὀφρύσι νεῦσε Κρονίων·
ἀμβρόσιαι δ’ ἄρα χαῖται ἐπεῤῥώσαντο ἄνακτος
κρατὸς ἀπ’ ἀθανάτοιο· μέγαν δ’ ἐλέλιξεν Ὄλυμπον,
served him as the model of his Olympian Jupiter, and that only through
their help had he succeeded in making a godlike countenance, “propemodum
ex ipso cœlo petitum.” Whoever understands by this merely that the
imagination of the artist was fired by the poet’s sublime picture, and
thus made capable of equally sublime representations, overlooks, I
think, the chief point, and contents himself with a general statement
where something very special and much more satisfactory is meant.
Phidias here acknowledges also, as I understand him, that this passage
first led him to notice how much expression lies in the eyebrows,
“quanta pars animi” is shown in them. Perhaps it further induced him to
bestow more attention upon the hair, in order to express in some degree
what Homer calls ambrosial curls. For it is certain that the old artists
before Phidias had very little idea of the language and significance of
the features, and particularly neglected the hair. Even Myron was faulty
in both these respects, as Pliny observes,[146] and, according to the
same authority, Pythagoras Leontinus was the first who distinguished
himself by the beauty of his hair. Other artists learned from the works
of Phidias what Phidias had learned from Homer.
I will mention another example of the same kind which has always given
me particular pleasure. Hogarth passes the following criticism on the
Apollo Belvidere.[147] “These two masterpieces of art, the Apollo and
the Antinous, are seen together in the same palace at Rome, where the
Antinous fills the spectator with admiration only, whilst the Apollo
strikes him with surprise, and, as travellers express themselves, with
an appearance of something more than human, which they of course are
always at a loss to describe; and this effect, they say, is the more
astonishing, as, upon examination, its disproportion is evident even to
a common eye. One of the best sculptors we have in England, who lately
went to see them, confirmed to me what has been now said, particularly
as to the legs and thighs being too long and too large for the upper
parts. And Andrea Sacchi, one of the great Italian painters, seems to
have been of the same opinion, or he would hardly have given his Apollo,
crowning Pasquilini the musician, the exact proportion of the Antinous
(in a famous picture of his now in England), as otherwise it seems to be
a direct copy from the Apollo.
“Although in very great works we often see an inferior part neglected,
yet here this cannot be the case, because in a fine statue, just
proportion is one of its essential beauties; therefore it stands to
reason, that these limbs must have been lengthened on purpose, otherwise
it might easily have been avoided.
“So that if we examine the beauties of this figure thoroughly, we may
reasonably conclude, that what has been hitherto thought so
unaccountably excellent in its general appearance, hath been owing to
what hath seemed a blemish in a part of it.”
All this is very suggestive. Homer also, I would add, had already felt
and noticed the same thing,—that an appearance of nobility is produced
by a disproportionate size of the foot and thigh. For, when Antenor is
comparing the figure of Ulysses with that of Menelaus, he says,[148]—
στάντων μὲν Μενέλαος ὑπείρεχεν εὐρέας ὤμους,
ἄμφω δ’ ἑζομένω, γεραρώτερος ἦεν Ὀδυσσεύς.
“When both were standing Menelaus overtopped him by his broad shoulders;
but when both were sitting, Ulysses was the more majestic.” Since, when
seated, Ulysses gained in dignity what Menelaus lost, we can easily tell
the proportion which the upper part of the body in each bore to the feet
and thighs. In Ulysses the upper part was large in proportion to the
lower: in Menelaus the size of the lower parts was large in proportion
to that of the upper.