pictures now before us. I have observed, that every candidate has copied
the celebrated invention of Timanthes in hiding the face of Agamemnon in
his mantle; indeed such lavish encomiums have been bestowed on this
thought, and that too by men of the highest character in critical
knowledge,--Cicero, Quintilian, Valerius Maximus, and Pliny,--and have
been since re-echoed by almost every modern that has written on the
Arts, that your adopting it can neither be wondered at, nor blamed. It
appears now to be so much connected with the subject, that the spectator
would perhaps be disappointed in not finding united in the picture what
he always united in his mind, and considered as indispensably belonging
to the subject. But it may be observed, that those who praise this
circumstance were not painters. They use it as an illustration only of
their own art; it served their purpose, and it was certainly not their
business to enter into the objections that lie against it in another
Art. I fear _we_ have but very scanty means of exciting those powers
over the imagination, which make so very considerable and refined a part
of poetry. It is a doubt with me, whether we should even make the
attempt. The chief, if not the only occasion which the painter has for
this artifice, is, when the subject is improper to be more fully
represented, either for the sake of decency, or to avoid what would be
disagreeable to be seen; and this is not to raise or increase the
passions, which is the reason that is given for this practice, but on
the contrary to diminish their effect.
"Mr. Falconet has observed, in a note on this passage in his translation
of Pliny, that the circumstance of covering the face of Agamemnon was
probably not in consequence of any fine imagination of the
painter,--which he considers as a discovery of the critics,--but merely
copied from the description of the sacrifice, as it is found in
Euripides.
"The words from which the picture is supposed to be taken, are these:
_Agamemnon saw Iphigenia advance towards the fatal altar; he groaned, he
turned aside his head, he shed tears, and covered his face with his
robe_.
"Falconet does not at all acquiesce in the praise that is bestowed on
Timanthes; not only because it is not his invention, but because he
thinks meanly of this trick of concealing, except in instances of blood,
where the objects would be too horrible to be seen; but, says he, 'in an
afflicted Father, in a King, in Agamemnon, you, who are a painter,
conceal from me the most interesting circumstance, and then put me off
with sophistry and a veil. You are (he adds) a feeble painter, without
resources: you do not know even those of your Art. I care not what veil
it is, whether closed hands, arms raised, or any other action that
conceals from me the countenance of the Hero. You think of veiling
Agamemnon; you have unveiled your own ignorance.'
"To what Falconet has said, we may add, that supposing this method of
leaving the expression of grief to the imagination, to be, as it was
thought to be, the invention of the painter, and that it deserves all
the praise that has been given it, still it is a trick that will serve
but once; whoever does it a second time, will not only want novelty, but
be justly suspected of using artifice to evade difficulties.
"If difficulties overcome make a great part of the merit of Art,
difficulties evaded can deserve but little commendation."
To this string of animadversions, I subjoin with diffidence the
following observations:
The subject of Timanthes was the immolation of Iphigenia; Iphigenia was
the principal figure, and her form, her resignation, or her anguish the
painter's principal task; the figure of Agamemnon, however important, is
merely accessory, and no more necessary to make the subject a completely
tragic one, than that of Clytemnestra the mother, no more than that of
Priam, to impress us with sympathy at the death of Polyxena. It is
therefore a misnomer of the French critic, to call Agamemnon 'the hero'
of the subject.
Neither the French nor the English critic appears to me to have
comprehended the real motive of Timanthes, as contained in the words,
'_decere, pro dignitate_, and _digne_,' in the passages of Tully,
Quintilian, and Pliny;[17] they ascribe to impotence what was the
forbearance of judgment; Timanthes felt like a father: he did not hide
the face of Agamemnon, because it was beyond the power of his art, not
because it was beyond the _possibility_, but because it was beyond the
_dignity_ of expression, because the inspiring feature of paternal
affection at that moment, and the action which of necessity must have
accompanied it, would either have destroyed the grandeur of the
character and the solemnity of the scene, or subjected the painter with
the majority of his judges to the imputation of insensibility. He must
either have represented him in tears, or convulsed at the flash of the
raised dagger, forgetting the chief in the father, or shown him absorbed
by despair, and in that state of stupefaction, which levels all features
and deadens expression; he might indeed have chosen a fourth mode, he
might have exhibited him fainting and palsied in the arms of his
attendants, and by this confusion of male and female character, merited
the applause of every theatre at Paris. But Timanthes had too true a
sense of nature to expose a father's feelings or to tear a passion to
rags; nor had the Greeks yet learnt of Rome to steel the face. If he
made Agamemnon bear his calamity as a man, he made him also feel it as a
man. It became the leader of Greece to sanction the ceremony with his
presence, it did not become the father to see his daughter beneath the
dagger's point: the same nature that threw a real mantle over the face
of Timoleon, when he assisted at the punishment of his brother, taught
Timanthes to throw an imaginary one over the face of Agamemnon; neither
height nor depth, _propriety_ of expression was his aim.
The critic grants that the expedient of Timanthes may be allowed in
'instances of blood,' the supported aspect of which would change a scene
of commiseration and terror into one of abomination and horror, which
ought for ever to be excluded from the province of art, of poetry as
well as painting: and would not the face of Agamemnon, uncovered, have
had this effect? was not the scene he must have witnessed a scene of
blood? and whose blood was to be shed? that of his own daughter--and
what daughter? young, beautiful, helpless, innocent, resigned,--the very
idea of resignation in such a victim, must either have acted
irresistibly to procure her relief, or thrown a veil over a father's
face. A man who is determined to sport wit at the expence of heart alone
could call such an expedient ridiculous--'as ridiculous,' Mr. Falconet
continues, 'as a poet would be, who in a pathetic situation, instead of
satisfying my expectation, to rid himself of the business, should say,
that the sentiments of his hero are so far above whatever can be said on
the occasion, that he shall say nothing.' And has not Homer, though he
does not tell us this, acted upon a similar principle? has he not, when
Ulysses addresses Ajax in Hades, in the most pathetic and conciliatory
manner, instead of furnishing him with an answer, made him remain in
indignant silence during the address, then turn his step and stalk away?
has not the universal voice of genuine criticism with Longinus told us,
and if it had not, would not Nature's own voice tell us, that that
silence was characteristic, that it precluded, included, and soaring
above all answer, consigned Ulysses for ever to a sense of inferiority?
Nor is it necessary to render such criticism contemptible to mention the
silence of Dido in Virgil, or the Niobe of Æschylus, who was introduced
veiled, and continued mute during her presence on the stage.
But in hiding Agamemnon's face, Timanthes loses the honour of invention,
as he is merely the imitator of Euripides, who did it before him?[18] I
am not prepared with chronologic proofs to decide whether Euripides or
Timanthes, who were contemporaries, about the period of the
Peloponnesian war, fell first on this expedient; though the silence of
Pliny and Quintilian on that head, seems to be in favour of the painter,
neither of whom could be ignorant of the celebrated drama of Euripides,
and would not willingly have suffered the honour of this master-stroke
of an art they were so much better acquainted with than painting, to be
transferred to another from its real author, had the poet's claim been
prior: nor shall I urge that the picture of Timanthes was crowned with
victory by those who were in daily habits of assisting at the dramas of
Euripides, without having their verdict impeached by Colotes or his
friends, who would not have failed to avail themselves of so flagrant a
proof of inferiority as the want of invention, in the work of his
rival:--I shall only ask, what is invention? if it be the combination of
the most important moment of a fact with the most varied effects of the
reigning passion on the characters introduced--the invention of
Timanthes consisted in showing, by the gradation of that passion in the
faces of the assistant mourners, the _reason why that of the principal
one, was hid_. This he performed, and this the poet, whether prior or
subsequent, did not and could not do, but left it with a silent appeal
to our own mind and fancy.
In presuming to differ on the propriety of this mode of expression in
the picture of Timanthes from the respectable authority I have quoted, I
am far from a wish to invalidate the equally pertinent and acute
remarks made on the danger of its imitation, though I am decidedly of
opinion that it is strictly within the limits of our art. If it be a
'trick,' it is certainly one that 'has served more than once.' We find
it adopted to express the grief of a beautiful female figure on a
basso-relievo formerly in the palace Valle at Rome, and preserved in the
Admiranda of S. Bartoli; it is used, though with his own originality, by
Michael Angelo in the figure of Abijam, to mark unutterable woe;
Raphael, to show that he thought it the best possible mode of expressing
remorse and the deepest sense of repentance, borrowed it in the
expulsion from Paradise, without any alteration, from Masaccio; and like
him, turned Adam out with both his hands before his face. And how has he
represented Moses at the burning bush, to express the astonished awe of
human in the visible presence of divine nature? by a double repetition
of the same expedient; once in the ceiling of a Stanza, and again in the
loggia of the Vatican, with both his hands before his face, or rather
with his face immersed in his hands. As we cannot suspect in the master
of expression the unworthy motive of making use of this mode merely to
avoid a difficulty, or to denote the insupportable splendour of the
vision, which was so far from being the case, that, according to the
sacred record, Moses stepped out of his way to examine the ineffectual
blaze: we must conclude that Nature herself dictated to him this method
as superior to all he could express by features; and that he recognized
the same dictate in Masaccio, who can no more be supposed to have been
acquainted with the precedent of Timanthes, than Shakspeare with that of
Euripides, when he made Macduff draw his hat over his face.
Masaccio and Raphael proceeded on the principle, Gherard Lairesse copied
only the image of Timanthes, and has perhaps incurred by it the charge
of what Longinus calls _parenthyrsos_, in the ill-timed application of
supreme pathos, to an inadequate call. Agamemnon is introduced covering
his face with his mantle, at the death of Polyxena, the captive daughter
of Priam, sacrificed to the manes of Achilles, her betrothed lover,
treacherously slain in the midst of the nuptial ceremony, by her brother
Paris. The death of Polyxena, whose charms had been productive of the
greatest disaster that could befall the Grecian army, could not perhaps
provoke in its leader emotions similar to those which he felt at that of
his own daughter: it must however be owned that the figure of the chief
is equally dignified and pathetic; and that, by the introduction of the
spectre of Achilles at the immolation of the damsel to his manes, the
artist's fancy has in some degree atoned for the want of discrimination
in the professor.
Such were the artists, who, according to the most corresponding data,
formed the style of that second period, which fixed the end and
established the limits of art, on whose firm basis arose the luxuriant
fabric of the third or the period of refinement, which added grace and
polish to the forms it could not surpass; amenity or truth to the tones
it could not invigorate; magic and imperceptible transition to the
abrupt division of masses; gave depth and roundness to composition; at
the breast of Nature herself caught the passions as they rose, and
familiarized expression: The period of Apelles, Protogenes, Aristides,
Euphranor, Pausias, the pupils of Pamphilus and his master Eupompus,
whose authority obtained what had not been granted to his great
predecessor and countryman Polycletus, the new establishment of the
school of Sicyon.[19]
The leading principle of Eupompus may be traced in the advice which he
gave to Lysippus (as preserved by Pliny), whom, when consulted on a
standard of imitation, he directed to the contemplation of human variety
in the multitude of the characters that were passing by, with the axiom,
'that Nature herself was to be imitated, not an artist.' Excellence,
said Eupompus, is thy aim, such excellence as that of Phidias and
Polycletus; but it is not obtained by the servile imitation of works,
however perfect, without mounting to the principle which raised them to
that height; that principle apply to thy purpose, there fix thy aim. He
who, with the same freedom of access to Nature as another man, contents
himself to approach her only through his medium, has resigned his
birth-right and originality together; his master's manner will be his
style. If Phidias and Polycletus have discovered the substance and
established the permanent principle of the human frame, they have not
exhausted the variety of human appearances and human character; if they
have abstracted the forms of majesty and those of beauty, Nature,
compared with their works, will point out a grace that has been left for
thee; if they have pre-occupied man as he _is_, be thine to give him
that air with which he actually _appears_.[20]
Such was the advice of Eupompus: less lofty, less ambitious than what
the departed epoch of genius would have dictated, but better suited to
the times, and better to his pupil's mind. When the spirit of liberty
forsook the public, grandeur had left the private mind of Greece:
subdued by Philip, the gods of Athens and Olympia had migrated to Pella,
and Alexander was become the representative of Jupiter; still those who
had lost the substance fondled the shadow of liberty; rhetoric mimicked
the thunders of oratory, sophistry and metaphysic debate that
philosophy, which had guided life, and the grand taste that had dictated
to art the monumental style, invested gods with human form and raised
individuals to heroes, began to give way to refinements in appreciating
the degrees of elegance or of resemblance in imitation: the advice of
Eupompus however, far from implying the abolition of the old system,
recalled his pupil to the examen of the great principle on which it had
established its excellence, and to the resources which its inexhaustible
variety offered for new combinations.
That Lysippus considered it in that light, his devotion to the
Doryphorus of Polycletus, known even to Tully, sufficiently proved. That
figure which comprised the pure proportions of juvenile vigour,
furnished the readiest application for those additional refinements of
variety, character, and fleshy charms, that made the base of his
invention: its symmetry directing his researches amid the insidious play
of accidental charms, and the claims of inherent grace, never suffered
imitation to deviate into incorrectness; whilst its squareness and
elemental beauty melted in more familiar forms on the eye, and from an
object of cold admiration became the glowing one of sympathy. Such was
probably the method formed by Lysippus on the advice of Eupompus, more
perplexed than explained by the superficial extract and the rapid phrase
of Pliny.
From the statuary's we may form our idea of the painter's method. The
doctrine of Eupompus was adopted by Pamphilus the Amphipolitan, the most
scientific artist of his time, and by him communicated to Apelles of
Cos, or as Lucian will have it, of Ephesus,[21] his pupil; in whom, if
we believe tradition, Nature exhibited, _once_, a specimen what her
union with education and circumstances could produce. The name of
Apelles in Pliny is the synonyme of unrivalled and unattainable
excellence, but the enumeration of his works points out the modification
which we ought to apply to that superiority; it neither comprises
exclusive sublimity of invention, the most acute discrimination of
character, the widest sphere of comprehension, the most judicious and
best balanced composition, nor the deepest pathos of expression: his
great prerogative consisted more in the unison than in the extent of his
powers; he knew better what he could do, what ought to be done, at what
point he could arrive, and what lay beyond his reach, than any other
artist. Grace of conception and refinement of taste were his elements,
and went hand in hand with grace of execution and taste in finish;
powerful and seldom possessed singly, irresistible when united: that he
built both on the firm basis of the former system, not on its
subversion, his well-known contest of lines with Protogenes, not a
legendary tale, but a well-attested fact, irrefragably proves: what
those lines were, drawn with nearly miraculous subtlety in different
colours, one upon the other or rather within each other, it would be
equally unavailing and useless to inquire; but the corollaries we may
deduce from the contest, are obviously these, that the schools of Greece
recognized all one elemental principle: that acuteness and fidelity of
eye and obedience of hand form precision; precision, proportion;
proportion, beauty: that it is the 'little more or less,' imperceptible
to vulgar eyes, which constitutes grace and establishes the superiority
of one artist over another: that the knowledge of the degrees of things,
or taste, presupposes a perfect knowledge of the things themselves: that
colour, grace, and taste are ornaments not substitutes of form,
expression and character, and when they usurp that title, degenerate
into splendid faults.
Such were the principles on which Apelles formed his Venus, or rather
the personification of Female Grace, the wonder of art, the despair of
artists: whose outline baffled every attempt at emendation, whilst
imitation shrunk from the purity, the force, the brilliancy, the
evanescent gradations of her tints.[22]
The refinements of the art were by Aristides of Thebes applied to the
mind. The passions which tradition had organized for Timanthes,
Aristides caught as they rose from the breast or escaped from the lips
of Nature herself; his volume was man, his scene society: he drew the
subtle discriminations of mind in every stage of life, the whispers, the
simple cry of passion and its most complex accents. Such, as history
informs us, was the suppliant whose voice you seemed to hear, such his
sick man's half-extinguished eye and labouring breast, such Byblis
expiring in the pangs of love, and above all, the half-slain mother
shuddering lest the eager babe should suck the blood from her palsied
nipple. This picture was probably at Thebes when Alexander sacked that
town; what his feelings were when he saw it, we may guess from his
sending it to Pella. Its expression, poised between the anguish of
maternal affection and the pangs of death, gives to commiseration an
image, which neither the infant piteously caressing his slain mother in
the group of Epigonus,[23] nor the absorbed feature of the Niobe, nor
the struggle of the Laocoon, excites. Timanthes had marked the limits
that discriminate terror from the excess of horror; Aristides drew the
line that separates it from disgust. His subject is one of those that
touch the ambiguous line of a squeamish sense.--Taste and smell, as
sources of tragic emotion, and in consequence of their power,
commanding gesture, seem scarcely admissible in art or on the theatre,
because their extremes are nearer allied to disgust, and loathsome or
risible ideas, than to terror. The prophetic trance of Cassandra, who
scents the prepared murder of Agamemnon at the threshold of the ominous
hall; the desperate moan of Macbeth's queen on seeing the visionary spot
still uneffaced infect her hand,--are images snatched from the lap of
terror,--but soon would cease to be so, were the artist or the actress
to inforce the dreadful hint with indiscreet expression or gesture.
This, completely understood by Aristides, was as completely missed by
his imitators, Raphael[24] in the _Morbetto_, and Poussin in his plague
of the Philistines. In the group of Aristides, our sympathy is
immediately interested by the mother, still alive, though mortally
wounded, helpless, beautiful, and forgetting herself in the anguish for
her child, whose situation still suffers hope to mingle with our fears;
he is only approaching the nipple of the mother. In the group of
Raphael, the mother dead of the plague, herself an object of apathy,
becomes one of disgust, by the action of the man, who bending over her,
at his utmost reach of arm, with one hand removes the child from the
breast, whilst the other, applied to his nostrils, bars the effluvia of
death. Our feelings alienated from the mother, come too late even for
the child, who, by his languor, already betrays the mortal symptoms of
the poison he imbibed at the parent corpse. It is curious to observe the
permutation of ideas which takes place, as imitation is removed from the
sources of nature: Poussin, not content with adopting the group of
Raphael, once more repeats the loathsome attitude in the same scene; he
forgot, in his eagerness to render the idea of contagion still more
intuitive, that he was averting our feelings with ideas of disgust.