this perilous attempt, perhaps the foremost is Correggio. His style is
founded upon modern grace and elegance, to which is superadded something
of the simplicity of the grand style. A breadth of light and colour, the
general ideas of the drapery, an uninterrupted flow of outline, all
conspire to this effect. Next to him (perhaps equal to him) Parmegiano
has dignified the genteelness of modern effeminacy, by uniting it with
the simplicity of the ancients and the grandeur and severity of Michael
Angelo. It must be confessed, however, that these two extraordinary men,
by endeavouring to give the utmost degree of grace, have sometimes
perhaps exceeded its boundaries, and have fallen into the most hateful
of all hateful qualities, affectation. Indeed, it is the peculiar
characteristic of men of genius to be afraid of coldness and insipidity,
from which they think they never can be too far removed. It particularly
happens to these great masters of grace and elegance. They often boldly
drive on to the very verge of ridicule; the spectator is alarmed, but at
the same time admires their vigour and intrepidity:
Strange graces still, and stranger flights they had,
* * * * *
Yet ne’er so sure our passion to create,
As when they touch’d the brink of all we hate.
The errors of genius, however, are pardonable, and none even of the more
exalted painters are wholly free from them; but they have taught us, by
the rectitude of their general practice, to correct their own affected
or accidental deviation. The very first have not been always upon their
guard, and perhaps there is not a fault, but what may take shelter under
the most venerable authorities; yet that style only is perfect, in which
the noblest principles are uniformly pursued; and those masters only are
entitled to the first rank in our estimation, who have enlarged the
boundaries of their art, and have raised it to its highest dignity, by
exhibiting the general ideas of nature.
On the whole, it seems to me that there is but one presiding principle,
which regulates and gives stability to every art. The works, whether of
poets, painters, moralists, or historians, which are built upon general
nature, live for ever; while those which depend for their existence on
particular customs and habits, a partial view of nature, or the
fluctuation of fashion, can only be coeval with that which first raised
them from obscurity. Present time and future may be considered as
rivals, and he who solicits the one must expect to be discountenanced by
the other.
DISCOURSE V
_Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, on the Distribution of
the Prizes, December 10, 1772._
Circumspection required in endeavouring to unite Contrary
Excellencies.--The Expression of a Mixed Passion not to be
attempted.--Examples of those who excelled in the Great
Style;--Raffaelle, Michael Angelo: Those two Extraordinary Men
compared with each other. The Characteristical Style.--Salvator
Rosa mentioned as an Example of that Style; and opposed to Carlo
Maratti.--Sketch of the Characters of Poussin and Rubens: These two
Painters entirely Dissimilar, but Consistent with themselves. This
Consistency required in All Parts of the Art.
GENTLEMEN,
I purpose to carry on in this discourse the subject which I began in my
last. It was my wish upon that occasion to incite you to pursue the
higher excellences of the art. But I fear that in this particular I have
been misunderstood. Some are ready to imagine, when any of their
favourite acquirements in the art are properly classed, that they are
utterly disgraced. This is a very great mistake: nothing has its proper
lustre but in its proper place. That which is most worthy of esteem in
its allotted sphere, becomes an object, not of respect, but of derision,
when it is forced into a higher, to which it is not suited; and there it
becomes doubly a source of disorder, by occupying a situation which is
not natural to it, and by putting down from the first place what is in
reality of too much magnitude to become with grace and proportion that
subordinate station, to which something of less value would be much
better suited.
My advice in a word is this: keep your principal attention fixed upon
the higher excellences. If you compass them, and compass nothing more,
you are still in the first class. We may regret the innumerable beauties
which you may want; you may be very imperfect; but still, you are an
imperfect artist of the highest order.
If, when you have got thus far, you can add any, or all, of the
subordinate qualifications, it is my wish and advice that you should not
neglect them. But this is as much a matter of circumspection and
caution, at least, as of eagerness and pursuit.
The mind is apt to be distracted by a multiplicity of objects; and that
scale of perfection, which I wish always to be preserved, is in the
greatest danger of being totally disordered, and even inverted.
Some excellences bear to be united, and are improved by union; others
are of a discordant nature; and the attempt to join them only produces a
harsh jarring of incongruent principles. The attempt to unite contrary
excellences (of form, for instance) in a single figure, can never escape
degenerating into the monstrous, but by sinking into the insipid; by
taking away its marked character, and weakening its expression.
This remark is true to a certain degree with regard to the passions. If
you mean to preserve the most perfect beauty _in its most perfect
state_, you cannot express the passions, all of which produce distortion
and deformity, more or less, in the most beautiful faces.
Guido, from want of choice in adapting his subject to his ideas and his
powers, or from attempting to preserve beauty where it could not be
preserved, has in this respect succeeded very ill. His figures are often
engaged in subjects that required great expression; yet his Judith and
Holofernes, the daughter of Herodias with the Baptist’s head, the
Andromeda, and some even of the Mothers of the Innocents, have little
more expression than his Venus attired by the Graces.
Obvious as these remarks appear, there are many writers on our art, who,
not being of the profession, and consequently not knowing what can or
cannot be done, have been very liberal of absurd praises in their
descriptions of favourite works. They always find in them what they are
resolved to find. They praise excellences that can hardly exist
together; and above all things are fond of describing with great
exactness the expression of a mixed passion, which more particularly
appears to me out of the reach of our art.
Such are many disquisitions which I have read on some of the cartoons
and other pictures of Raffaelle, where the critics have described their
own imaginations; or indeed where the excellent master himself may have
attempted this expression of passions above the powers of the art; and
has, therefore, by an indistinct and imperfect marking, left room for
every imagination, with equal probability, to find a passion of his own.
What has been, and what can be done in the art, is sufficiently
difficult; we need not be mortified or discouraged at not being able to
execute the conceptions of a romantic imagination. Art has its
boundaries, though imagination has none. We can easily, like the
ancients, suppose a Jupiter to be possessed of all those powers and
perfections which the subordinate deities were endowed with separately.
Yet, when they employed their art to represent him, they confined his
character to majesty alone. Pliny, therefore, though we are under great
obligations to him for the information he has given us in relation to
the works of the ancient artists, is very frequently wrong when he
speaks of them, which he does very often, in the style of many of our
modern connoisseurs. He observes, that in a statue of Paris, by
Euphranor, you might discover at the same time three different
characters; the dignity of a Judge of the Goddesses, the Lover of Helen,
and the Conqueror of Achilles. A statue in which you endeavour to unite
stately dignity, youthful elegance, and stern valour, must surely
possess none of these to any eminent degree.
From hence it appears, that there is much difficulty as well as danger,
in an endeavour to concentrate in a single subject those various powers,
which, rising from different points, naturally move in different
directions.
The summit of excellence seems to be an assemblage of contrary
qualities, but mixed, in such proportions, that no one part is found to
counteract the other. How hard this is to be attained in every art,
those only know, who have made the greatest progress in their respective
professions.
To conclude what I have to say on this part of the subject, which I
think of great importance, I wish you to understand, that I do not
discourage the younger students from the noble attempt of uniting all
the excellences of art; but suggest to them, that, besides the
difficulties which attend every arduous attempt, there is a peculiar
difficulty in the choice of the excellences which ought to be united. I
wish you to attend to this, that you may try yourselves, whenever you
are capable of that trial, what you can, and what you cannot do; and
that, instead of dissipating your natural faculties over the immense
field of possible excellence, you may choose some particular walk in
which you may exercise all your powers; in order that each of you may
become the first in his way. If any man shall be master of such a
transcendent, commanding, and ductile genius, as to enable him to rise
to the highest, and to stoop to the lowest, flights of art, and to sweep
over all of them unobstructed and secure, he is fitter to give example
than to receive instruction.
Having said thus much on the _union_ of excellences, I will next say
something of the subordination in which various excellences ought to be
kept.
I am of opinion, that the ornamental style, which in my discourse of
last year I cautioned you against, considering it as _principal_, may
not be wholly unworthy the attention even of those who aim at the grand
style, when it is properly placed and properly reduced.
But this study will be used with far better effect, if its principles
are employed in softening the harshness and mitigating the rigour of the
great style, than if it attempt to stand forward with any pretensions of
its own to positive and original excellence. It was thus Lodovico
Caracci, whose example I formerly recommended to you, employed it. He
was acquainted with the works both of Correggio and the Venetian
painters, and knew the principles by which they produced those pleasing
effects which at the first glance prepossess us so much in their favour;
but he took only as much from each as would embellish, but not
overpower, that manly strength and energy of style, which is his
peculiar character.
Since I have already expatiated so largely in my former discourse, and
in my present, upon the _styles_ and _characters_ of painting, it will
not be at all unsuitable to my subject if I mention to you some
particulars relative to the leading principles and capital works of
those who excelled in the _great style_; that I may bring you from
abstraction nearer to practice, and by exemplifying the positions which
I have laid down, enable you to understand more clearly what I would
enforce.
The principal works of modern art are in _fresco_, a mode of painting
which excludes attention to minute elegances: yet these works in fresco
are the productions on which the fame of the greatest masters depends:
such are the pictures of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle in the Vatican; to
which we may add the cartoons; which, though not strictly to be called
fresco, yet may be put under that denomination; and such are the works
of Giulio Romano at Mantua. If these performances were destroyed, with
them would be lost the best part of the reputation of those illustrious
painters; for these are justly considered as the greatest efforts of our
art which the world can boast. To these, therefore, we should
principally direct our attention for higher excellences. As for the
lower arts, as they have been once discovered, they may be easily
attained by those possessed of the former.
Raffaelle, who stands in general foremost of the first painters, owes
his reputation, as I have observed, to his excellence in the higher
parts of the art: his works in _fresco_, therefore, ought to be the
first object of our study and attention. His easel-works stand in a
lower degree of estimation: for though he continually, to the day of his
death, embellished his performances more and more with the addition of
those lower ornaments, which entirely make the merit of some painters,
yet he never arrived at such perfection as to make him an object of
imitation. He never was able to conquer perfectly that dryness, or even
littleness of manner, which he inherited from his master. He never
acquired that nicety of taste in colours, that breadth of light and
shadow, that art and management of uniting light to light, and shadow to
shadow, so as to make the object rise out of the ground with that
plenitude of effect so much admired in the works of Correggio. When he
painted in oil, his hand seemed to be so cramped and confined, that he
not only lost that facility and spirit, but I think even that
correctness of form, which is so perfect and admirable in his
fresco-works. I do not recollect any pictures of his of this kind,
except perhaps the Transfiguration, in which there are not some parts
that appear to be even feebly drawn. That this is not a necessary
attendant on oil-painting, we have abundant instances in more modern
painters. Lodovico Caracci, for instance, preserved in his works in oil
the same spirit, vigour, and correctness which he had in fresco. I have
no desire to degrade Raffaelle from the high rank which he deservedly
holds: but by comparing him with himself, he does not appear to me to be
the same man in oil as in fresco.
From those who have ambition to tread in this great walk of the art,
Michael Angelo claims the next attention. He did not possess so many
excellences as Raffaelle, but those which he had were of the highest
kind. He considered the art as consisting of little more than what may
be attained by sculpture: correctness of form, and energy of character.
We ought not to expect more than an artist intends in his work. He never
attempted those lesser elegances and graces in the art. Vasari says, he
never painted but one picture in oil, and resolved never to paint
another, saying, it was an employment only fit for women and children.
If any man had a right to look down upon the lower accomplishments as
beneath his attention, it was certainly Michael Angelo; nor can it be
thought strange, that such a mind should have slighted or have been
withheld from paying due attention to all those graces and
embellishments of art, which have diffused such lustre over the works of
other painters.
It must be acknowledged, however, that together with these, which we
wish he had more attended to, he has rejected all the false, though
specious ornaments, which disgrace the works even of the most esteemed
artists; and I will venture to say, that when those higher excellences
are more known and cultivated by the artists and the patrons of arts,
his fame and credit will increase with our increasing knowledge. His
name will then be held in the same veneration as it was in the
enlightened age of Leo the Tenth: and it is remarkable that the
reputation of this truly great man has been continually declining as the
art itself has declined. For I must remark to you, that it has long been
much on the decline, and that our only hope of its revival will consist
in your being thoroughly sensible of its depravation and decay. It is to
Michael Angelo, that we owe even the existence of Raffaelle: it is to
him Raffaelle owes the grandeur of his style. He was taught by him to
elevate his thoughts, and to conceive his subjects with dignity. His
genius, however formed to blaze and to shine, might, like fire in
combustible matter, for ever have lain dormant, if it had not caught a
spark by its contact with Michael Angelo: and though it never burst out
with _his_ extraordinary heat and vehemence, yet it must be acknowledged
to be a more pure, regular, and chaste flame. Though our judgment must
upon the whole decide in favour of Raffaelle, yet he never takes such a
firm hold and entire possession of the mind as to make us desire nothing
else, and to feel nothing wanting. The effect of the capital works of
Michael Angelo perfectly corresponds to what Bouchardon said he felt
from reading Homer; his whole frame appeared to himself to be enlarged,
and all nature which surrounded him, diminished to atoms.
If we put these great artists in a light of comparison with each other,
Raffaelle had more taste and fancy, Michael Angelo more genius and
imagination. The one excelled in beauty, the other in energy. Michael
Angelo has more of the poetical inspiration; his ideas are vast and
sublime; his people are a superior order of beings; there is nothing
about them, nothing in the air of their actions or their attitudes, or
the style and cast of their limbs or features, that reminds us of their
belonging to our own species. Raffaelle’s imagination is not so
elevated; his figures are not so much disjoined from our own diminutive
race of beings, though his ideas are chaste, noble, and of great
conformity to their subjects. Michael Angelo’s works have a strong,
peculiar, and marked character: they seem to proceed from his own mind
entirely, and that mind so rich and abundant, that he never needed, or
seemed to disdain, to look abroad for foreign help. Raffaelle’s
materials are generally borrowed, though the noble structure is his own.
The excellency of this extraordinary man lay in the propriety, beauty,
and majesty of his characters, the judicious contrivance of his
composition, his correctness of drawing, purity of taste, and skilful
accommodation of other men’s conceptions to his own purpose. Nobody
excelled him in that judgment, with which he united to his own
observations on nature, the energy of Michael Angelo, and the beauty and
simplicity of the antique. To the question, therefore, which ought to
hold the first rank, Raffaelle or Michael Angelo, it must be answered,
that if it is to be given to him who possessed a greater combination of
the higher qualities of the art than any other man, there is no doubt
but Raffaelle is the first. But if, as Longinus thinks, the sublime,
being the highest excellence that human composition can attain to,
abundantly compensates the absence of every other beauty, and atones for
all other deficiencies, then Michael Angelo demands the preference.
These two extraordinary men carried some of the higher excellences of
the art to a greater degree of perfection than probably they ever
arrived at before. They certainly have not been excelled, nor equalled
since. Many of their successors were induced to leave this great road as
a beaten path, endeavouring to surprise and please by something uncommon
or new. When this desire of novelty has proceeded from mere idleness or
caprice, it is not worth the trouble of criticism; but when it has been
the result of a busy mind of a peculiar complexion, it is always
striking and interesting, never insipid.
Such is the great style, as it appears in those who possessed it at its
height: in this, search after novelty, in conception or in treating the
subject, has no place.
But there is another style, which, though inferior to the former, has
still great merit, because it shows that those who cultivated it were
men of lively and vigorous imagination. This, which may be called the
original or characteristical style, being less referred to any true
archetype existing either in general or particular nature, must be
supported by the painter’s consistency in the principles which he has
assumed, and in the union and harmony of his whole design. The
excellency of every style, but of the subordinate styles more
especially, will very much depend on preserving that union and harmony
between all the component parts, that they may appear to hang well
together, as if the whole proceeded from one mind. It is in the works of
art, as in the characters of men. The faults or defects of some men
seem to become them, when they appear to be the natural growth, and of a
piece with the rest of their character. A faithful picture of a mind,
though it be not of the most elevated kind, though it be irregular,
wild, and incorrect, yet if it be marked with that spirit and firmness
which characterises works of genius, will claim attention, and be more
striking than a combination of excellences that do not seem to unite
well together; or we may say, than a work that possesses even all
excellences, but those in a moderate degree.
One of the strongest-marked characters of this kind, which must be
allowed to be subordinate to the great style, is that of Salvator Rosa.
He gives us a peculiar cast of nature, which, though void of all grace,
elegance, and simplicity, though it has nothing of that elevation and
dignity which belongs to the grand style, yet has that sort of dignity
which belongs to savage and uncultivated nature: but what is most to be
admired in him is the perfect correspondence which he observed between
the subjects which he chose and his manner of treating them. Everything
is of a piece: his rocks, trees, sky, even to his handling, have the
same rude and wild character which animates his figures.
With him we may contrast the character of Carlo Maratti, who, in my
opinion, had no great vigour of mind or strength of original genius. He
rarely seizes the imagination by exhibiting the higher excellences, nor
does he captivate us by that originality which attends the painter who
thinks for himself. He knew and practised all the rules of art, and from
a composition of Raffaelle, Caracci, and Guido, made up a style, of
which the only fault was, that it had no manifest defects and no
striking beauties; and that the principles of his composition are never
blended together, so as to form one uniform body, original in its kind,
or excellent in any view.
I will mention two other painters, who, though entirely dissimilar, yet
by being each consistent with himself, and possessing a manner entirely
his own, have both gained reputation, though for very opposite
accomplishments. The painters I mean are Rubens and Poussin. Rubens I
mention in this place, as I think him a remarkable instance of the same
mind being seen in all the various parts of the art. The whole is so
much of a piece, that one can scarce be brought to believe but that if
any one of the qualities he possessed had been more correct and perfect,
his works would not have been so complete as they now appear. If we
should allow him a greater purity and correctness of drawing, his want
of simplicity in composition, colouring, and drapery would appear more
gross.
In his composition his art is too apparent. His figures have expression,
and act with energy, but without simplicity or dignity. His colouring,
in which he is eminently skilled, is notwithstanding too much of what we
call tinted. Throughout the whole of his works, there is a
proportionable want of that nicety of distinction and elegance of mind,
which is required in the higher walks of painting; and to this want it
may be in some degree ascribed, that those qualities which make the
excellency of this subordinate style, appear in him with their greatest
lustre. Indeed the facility with which he invented, the richness of his
composition, the luxuriant harmony and brilliancy of his colouring, so
dazzle the eye, that whilst his works continue before us, we cannot help
thinking that all his deficiencies are fully supplied.[7]
Opposed to this florid, careless, loose, and inaccurate style, that of
the simple, careful, pure, and correct style of Poussin seems to be a
complete contrast. Yet however opposite their characters, in one thing
they agreed; both of them always preserving a perfect correspondence
between all the parts of their respective manners: insomuch that it may
be doubted whether any alteration of what is considered as defective in
either, would not destroy the effect of the whole.