endeavoured, at least, to fill with propriety that middle station which
we hold in the general connection of things. Our predecessors have
laboured for our advantage, we labour for our successors; and though we
have done no more in this mutual intercourse and reciprocation of
benefits, than has been effected by other societies formed in this
nation for the advancement of useful and ornamental knowledge, yet there
is one circumstance which appears to give us a higher claim than the
credit of merely doing our duty. What I at present allude to, is the
honour of having been, some of us the first contrivers, and all of us
the promoters and supporters, of the annual exhibition. This scheme
could only have originated from artists already in possession of the
favour of the public, as it would not have been so much in the power of
others to have excited curiosity. It must be remembered, that for the
sake of bringing forward into notice concealed merit, they incurred the
risk of producing rivals to themselves; they voluntarily entered the
lists, and ran the race a second time for the prize which they had
already won.
When we take a review of the several departments of the Institution, I
think we may safely congratulate ourselves on our good fortune in having
hitherto seen the chairs of our professors filled with men of
distinguished abilities, and who have so well acquitted themselves of
their duty in their several departments. I look upon it to be of
importance, that none of them should be ever left unfilled: a neglect to
provide for qualified persons is to produce a neglect of qualifications.
In this honourable rank of professors, I have not presumed to class
myself; though in the discourses which I have had the honour of
delivering from this place, while in one respect I may be considered as
a volunteer, in another view it seems as if I was involuntarily pressed
into this service. If prizes were to be given, it appeared not only
proper, but almost indispensably necessary, that something should be
said by the President on the delivery of those prizes: and the President
for his own credit would wish to say something more than mere words of
compliment, which, by being frequently repeated, would soon become flat
and uninteresting, and by being uttered to many, would at last become a
distinction to none: I thought, therefore, if I were to preface this
compliment with some instructive observations on the art, when we
crowned merit in the artists whom we rewarded, I might do something to
animate and guide them in their future attempts.
I am truly sensible how unequal I have been to the expression of my own
ideas. To develop the latent excellences, and draw out the interior
principles, of our art, requires more skill and practice in writing,
than is likely to be possessed by a man perpetually occupied in the use
of the pencil and the palette. It is for that reason, perhaps, that the
sister art has had the advantage of better criticism. Poets are
naturally writers of prose. They may be said to be practising only an
inferior department of their own art, when they are explaining and
expatiating upon its most refined principles. But still such
difficulties ought not to deter artists who are not prevented by other
engagements from putting their thoughts in order as well as they can,
and from giving to the public the result of their experience. The
knowledge which an artist has of his subject will more than compensate
for any want of elegance in the manner of treating it, or even of
perspicuity, which is still more essential; and I am convinced that one
short essay written by a painter will contribute more to advance the
theory of our art, than a thousand volumes such as we sometimes see; the
purpose of which appears to be rather to display the refinement of the
author’s own conceptions of impossible practice, than to convey useful
knowledge or instruction of any kind whatever. An artist knows what is,
and what is not, within the province of his art to perform; and is not
likely to be for ever teasing the poor student with the beauties of
mixed passions, or to perplex him with an imaginary union of excellences
incompatible with each other.
To this work, however, I could not be said to come totally unprovided
with materials. I had seen much, and I had thought much upon what I had
seen; I had something of a habit of investigation, and a disposition to
reduce all that I observed and felt in my own mind to method and system;
but never having seen what I myself knew, distinctly placed before me on
paper, I knew nothing correctly. To put those ideas into something like
order was, to my inexperience, no easy task. The composition, the
_ponere totum_ even of a single discourse, as well as of a single
statue, was the most difficult part, as perhaps it is of every other
art, and most requires the hand of a master.
For the manner, whatever deficiency there was, I might reasonably expect
indulgence; but I thought it indispensably necessary well to consider
the opinions which were to be given out from this place, and under the
sanction of a Royal Academy. I therefore examined not only my own
opinions, but likewise the opinions of others. I found in the course of
this research many precepts and rules established in our art, which did
not seem to me altogether reconcilable with each other, yet each seemed
in itself to have the same claim of being supported by truth and nature;
and this claim, irreconcilable as they may be thought, they do in
reality alike possess.
To clear away those difficulties, and reconcile those contrary opinions,
it became necessary to distinguish the greater truth, as it may be
called, from the lesser truth; the larger and more liberal idea of
nature from the more narrow and confined; that which addresses itself to
the imagination, from that which is solely addressed to the eye. In
consequence of this discrimination, the different branches of our art,
to which those different truths were referred, were perceived to make so
wide a separation, and put on so new an appearance, that they seemed
scarcely to have proceeded from the same general stock. The different
rules and regulations, which presided over each department of art,
followed of course: every mode of excellence, from the grand style of
the Roman and Florentine schools down to the lowest rank of still-life,
had its due weight and value,--fitted some class or other; and nothing
was thrown away. By this disposition of our art into classes, that
perplexity and confusion, which I apprehend every artist has at some
time experienced from the variety of styles, and the variety of
excellence with which he is surrounded, is, I should hope, in some
measure removed, and the student better enabled to judge for himself,
what peculiarly belongs to his own particular pursuit.
In reviewing my discourses, it is no small satisfaction to be assured
that I have, in no part of them, lent my assistance to foster
_newly-hatched unfledged_ opinions, or endeavoured to support paradoxes,
however tempting may have been their novelty; or however ingenious I
might, for the minute, fancy them to be; nor shall I, I hope, anywhere
be found to have imposed on the minds of young students declamation for
argument, a smooth period for a sound precept. I have pursued a plain
and _honest method_; I have taken up the art simply as I found it
exemplified in the practice of the most approved painters. That
approbation which the world has uniformly given, I have endeavoured to
justify by such proofs as questions of this kind will admit; by the
analogy which painting holds with the sister arts, and consequently by
the common congeniality which they all bear to our nature. And though in
what has been done no new discovery is pretended, I may still flatter
myself, that from the discoveries which others have made by their own
intuitive good sense and native rectitude of judgment, I have succeeded
in establishing the rules and principles of our art on a more firm and
lasting foundation than that on which they had formerly been placed.
Without wishing to divert the student from the practice of his art to
speculative theory, to make him a mere connoisseur instead of a painter,
I cannot but remark, that he will certainly find an account in
considering once for all, on what ground the fabric of our art is built.
Uncertain, confused, or erroneous opinions are not only detrimental to
an artist in their immediate operation, but may possibly have very
serious consequences; affect his conduct, and give a peculiar character
(as it may be called) to his taste, and to his pursuits, through his
whole life.
I was acquainted at Rome, in the early part of my life, with a student
of the French Academy, who appeared to me to possess all the qualities
requisite to make a great artist, if he had suffered his taste and
feelings, and I may add even his prejudices, to have fair play. He saw
and felt the excellences of the great works of art with which we were
surrounded, but lamented that there was not to be found that nature
which is so admirable in the inferior schools; and he supposed with
Felibien, Du Piles, and other Theorists, that such a union of different
excellences would be the perfection of art. He was not aware, that the
narrow idea of nature, of which he lamented the absence in the works of
those great artists, would have destroyed the grandeur of the general
ideas which he admired, and which was indeed the cause of his
admiration. My opinions being then confused and unsettled, I was in
danger of being borne down by this kind of plausible reasoning, though I
remember I then had a dawning of suspicion that it was not sound
doctrine; and at the same time I was unwilling obstinately to refuse
assent to what I was unable to confute.
That the young artist may not be seduced from the right path, by
following what, at first view, he may think the light of reason and
which is indeed reason in part, but not in the whole, has been much the
object of these discourses.
I have taken every opportunity of recommending a rational method of
study, as of the last importance. The great, I may say the sole, use of
an academy is, to put, and for some time to keep, the students in that
course, that too much indulgence may not be given to peculiarity, and
that a young man may not be taught to believe that what is generally
good for others is not good for him.
I have strongly inculcated in my former discourses, as I do in this my
last, the wisdom and necessity of previously obtaining the appropriated
instruments of the art, in a first correct design and a plain manly
colouring, before anything more is attempted. But by this I would not
wish to cramp and fetter the mind, or discourage those who follow (as
most of us may at one time have followed) the suggestion of a strong
inclination: something must be conceded to great and irresistible
impulses: perhaps every student must not be strictly bound to general
methods, if they strongly thwart the peculiar turn of his own mind. I
must confess that it is not absolutely of much consequence, whether he
proceeds in the general method of seeking first to acquire mechanical
accuracy, before he attempts poetical flights, provided he diligently
studies to attain the full perfection of the style he pursues; whether,
like Parmeggiano, he endeavours at grace and grandeur of manner before
he has learned correctness of drawing, if, like him, he feels his own
wants, and will labour, as that eminent artist did, to supply those
wants; whether he starts from the east or from the west, if he relaxes
in no exertion to arrive ultimately at the same goal. The first public
work of Parmeggiano is the St. Eustachius, in the Church of St.
Petronius in Bologna, and was done when he was a boy; and one of the
last of his works is the Moses breaking the Tables, in Parma. In the
former there is certainly something of grandeur in the outline, or in
the conception of the figure, which discovers the dawnings of future
greatness; of a young mind impregnated with the sublimity of Michael
Angelo, whose style he here attempts to imitate, though he could not
then draw the human figure with any common degree of correctness. But
this same Parmeggiano, when in his more mature age he painted the Moses,
had so completely supplied his first defects, that we are here at a loss
which to admire most, the correctness of drawing, or the grandeur of the
conception. As a confirmation of its great excellence, and of the
impression which it leaves on the minds of elegant spectators, I may
observe, that our great lyric poet, when he conceived his sublime idea
of the indignant Welsh bard, acknowledged, that though many years had
intervened, he had warmed his imagination with the remembrance of this
noble figure of Parmeggiano.
When we consider that Michael Angelo was the great archetype to whom
Parmeggiano was indebted for that grandeur which we find in his works,
and from whom all his contemporaries and successors have derived
whatever they have possessed of the dignified and the majestic; that he
was the bright luminary, from whom painting has borrowed a new lustre;
that under his hands it assumed a new appearance, and is become another
and superior art; I may be excused if I take this opportunity, as I have
hitherto taken every occasion, to turn your attention to this exalted
founder and father of modern art, of which he was not only the inventor,
but which, by the divine energy of his own mind, he carried at once to
its highest point of possible perfection.
The sudden maturity to which Michael Angelo brought our art, and the
comparative feebleness of his followers and imitators, might perhaps be
reasonably, at least plausibly explained, if we had time for such an
examination. At present I shall only observe, that the subordinate parts
of our art, and perhaps of other arts, expand themselves by a slow and
progressive growth; but those which depend on a native vigour of
imagination generally burst forth at once in fulness of beauty. Of this
Homer probably, and Shakespeare most assuredly, are signal examples.
Michael Angelo possessed the poetical part of our art in a most eminent
degree: and the same daring spirit, which urged him first to explore the
unknown regions of the imagination, delighted with the novelty, and
animated by the success of his discoveries, could not have failed to
stimulate and impel him forward in his career beyond those limits which
his followers, destitute of the same incentives, had not strength to
pass.
To distinguish between correctness of drawing, and that part which
respects the imagination, we may say the one approaches to the
mechanical (which in its way too may make just pretensions to genius)
and the other to the poetical. To encourage a solid and vigorous course
of study, it may not be amiss to suggest, that perhaps a confidence in
the mechanic produces a boldness in the poetic. He that is sure of the
goodness of his ship and tackle, puts out fearlessly from the shore; and
he who knows that his hand can execute whatever his fancy can suggest,
sports with more freedom in embodying the visionary forms of his own
creation. I will not say Michael Angelo was eminently poetical, only
because he was greatly mechanical; but I am sure that mechanic
excellence invigorated and emboldened his mind to carry painting into
the regions of poetry, and to emulate that art in its most adventurous
flights. Michael Angelo equally possessed both qualifications. Yet of
mechanic excellence there were certainly great examples to be found in
ancient sculpture, and particularly in the fragment known by the name of
the Torso of Michael Angelo; but of that grandeur of character, air, and
attitude, which he threw into all his figures, and which so well
corresponds with the grandeur of his outline, there was no example; it
could therefore proceed only from the most poetical and sublime
imagination.
It is impossible not to express some surprise, that the race of painters
who preceded Michael Angelo, men of acknowledged great abilities, should
never have thought of transferring a little of that grandeur of outline
which they could not but see and admire in ancient sculpture, into their
own works; but they appear to have considered sculpture as the later
schools of artists look at the inventions of Michael Angelo,--as
something to be admired, but with which they have nothing to do: _quod
super nos, nihil ad nos_.--The artists of that age, even Raffaelle
himself, seemed to be going on very contentedly in the dry manner of
Pietro Perugino; and if Michael Angelo had never appeared, the art might
still have continued in the same style.
Besides Rome and Florence, where the grandeur of this style was first
displayed, it was on this foundation that the Caracci built the truly
great academical Bolognian school, of which the first stone was laid by
Pellegrino Tibaldi. He first introduced this style amongst them; and
many instances might be given in which he appears to have possessed, as
by inheritance, the true, genuine, noble, and elevated mind of Michael
Angelo. Though we cannot venture to speak of him with the same fondness
as his countrymen, and call him, as the Caracci did, _Nostro Michael
Angelo riformato_, yet he has a right to be considered amongst the first
and greatest of his followers: there are certainly many drawings and
inventions of his, of which Michael Angelo himself might not disdain to
be supposed the author, or that they should be, as in fact they often
are, mistaken for his. I will mention one particular instance, because
it is found in a book which is in every young artist’s hands--Bishop’s
_Ancient Statues_. He there has introduced a print, representing
Polyphemus, from a drawing of Tibaldi, and has inscribed it with the
name of Michael Angelo, to whom he has also in the same book attributed
a Sibyl of Raffaelle. Both these figures, it is true, are professedly in
Michael Angelo’s style and spirit, and even worthy of his hand. But we
know that the former is painted in the _Institute a Bologna_ by Tibaldi,
and the other in the _Pace_ by Raffaelle.
The Caracci, it is acknowledged, adopted the mechanical part with
sufficient success. But the divine part which addresses itself to the
imagination, as possessed by Michael Angelo or Tibaldi, was beyond their
grasp: they formed, however, a most respectable school, a style more on
the level, and calculated to please a greater number; and if excellence
of this kind is to be valued according to the number rather than the
weight and quality of admirers, it would assume even a higher rank in
art. The same, in some sort, may be said of Tintoret, Paolo Veronese,
and others of the Venetian painters. They certainly much advanced the
dignity of their style by adding to their fascinating powers of
colouring something of the strength of Michael Angelo; at the same time
it may still be a doubt, how far their ornamental elegance would be an
advantageous addition to his grandeur. But if there is any manner of
painting which may be said to unite kindly with his style, it is that of
Titian. His handling, the manner in which his colours are left on the
canvas, appears to proceed (as far as that goes) from a congenial mind,
equally disdainful of vulgar criticism.
Michael Angelo’s strength thus qualified, and made more palatable to
the general taste, reminds me of an observation which I heard a learned
critic[26] make, when it was incidentally remarked that our translation
of Homer, however excellent, did not convey the character, nor had the
grand air of the original. He replied that if Pope had not clothed the
naked majesty of Homer with the graces and elegances of modern
fashions--though the real dignity of Homer was degraded by such a
dress--his translation would not have met with such a favourable
reception, and he must have been contented with fewer readers.
Many of the Flemish painters, who studied at Rome in that great era of
our art, such as Francis Floris, Hemskerk, Michael Coxis, Jerom Cock,
and others, returned to their own country with as much of this grandeur
as they could carry. But, like seeds falling on a soil not prepared or
adapted to their nature, the manner of Michael Angelo thrived but little
with them; perhaps, however, they contributed to prepare the way for
that free, unconstrained, and liberal outline, which was afterwards
introduced by Rubens, through the medium of the Venetian painters.
This grandeur of style has been in different degrees disseminated over
all Europe. Some caught it by living at the time, and coming into
contact with the original author, whilst others received it at second
hand; and being everywhere adopted, it has totally changed the whole
taste and style of design, if there could be said to be any style before
his time. Our art, in consequence, now assumes a rank to which it could
never have dared to aspire, if Michael Angelo had not discovered to the
world the hidden powers which it possessed. Without his assistance we
never could have been convinced that painting was capable of producing
an adequate representation of the persons and actions of the heroes of
the Iliad.
I would ask any man qualified to judge of such works, whether he can
look with indifference at the personification of the Supreme Being in
the centre of the Capella Sestina, or the figures of the Sibyls which
surround that chapel, to which we may add the statue of Moses; and
whether the same sensations are not excited by those works, as what he
may remember to have felt from the most sublime passages of Homer? I
mention those figures more particularly, as they come nearer to a
comparison with his Jupiter, his demi-gods, and heroes; those Sibyls and
prophets being a kind of intermediate beings between men and angels.
Though instances may be produced in the works of other painters, which
may justly stand in competition with those I have mentioned, such as the
Isaiah and the vision of Ezekiel, by Raffaelle, the St. Mark of Frate
Bartolommeo, and many others; yet these, it must be allowed, are
inventions so much in Michael Angelo’s manner of thinking, that they may
be truly considered as so many rays, which discover manifestly the
centre from whence they emanated.
The sublime in painting, as in poetry, so overpowers, and takes such a
possession of the whole mind, that no room is left for attention to
minute criticism. The little elegances of art, in the presence of these
great ideas thus greatly expressed, lose all their value, and are, for
the instant at least, felt to be unworthy of our notice. The correct
judgment, the purity of taste, which characterise Raffaelle, the
exquisite grace of Correggio and Parmeggiano, all disappear before them.
That Michael Angelo was capricious in his inventions cannot be denied;
and this may make some circumspection necessary in studying his works;
for though they appear to become him, an imitation of them is always
dangerous, and will prove sometimes ridiculous. “Within that circle none
durst walk but he.” To me, I confess, his caprice does not lower the
estimation of his genius, even though it is sometimes, I acknowledge,
carried to the extreme: and however those eccentric excursions are
considered, we must at the same time recollect, that those faults, if
they are faults, are such as never could occur to a mean and vulgar
mind: that they flowed from the same source which produced his greatest
beauties, and were therefore such as none but himself was capable of
committing: they were the powerful impulses of a mind unused to
subjection of any kind, and too high to be controlled by cold criticism.
Many see his daring extravagance who can see nothing else. A young
artist finds the works of Michael Angelo so totally different from those
of his own master, or of those with whom he is surrounded, that he may
be easily persuaded to abandon and neglect studying a style which
appears to him wild, mysterious, and above his comprehension, and which
he therefore feels no disposition to admire; a good disposition, which
he concludes that he should naturally have, if the style deserved it. It
is necessary therefore that students should be prepared for the
disappointment which they may experience at their first setting out; and
they must be cautioned, that probably they will not, at first sight,
approve.
It must be remembered that this great style itself is artificial in the
highest degree; it presupposes in the spectator a cultivated and
prepared artificial state of mind. It is an absurdity therefore to
suppose that we are born with this taste, though we are with the seeds
of it, which, by the heat and kindly influence of his genius, may be
ripened in us.