[46] Julio Pipi, called Romano, died at Mantoua in 1546, aged 54.
[47] Francesco Primaticcio, made Abbé de St. Martin de Troyes, by
Francis, I., died in France 1570, aged 80.
[48] Polydoro Caldara da Caravaggio was assassinated at Messina in 1543,
aged 51.
[49] Michael Angelo Amerigi, surnamed Il Caravaggi, knight of Malta,
died 1609, aged 40.
[50] Nicolas Poussin, of Andely, died at Rome 1665, aged 71.
[51] Salvator Rosa, surnamed Salvatoriello, died at Rome 1673, aged 59.
[52] Of the portraits which Raphael in fresco scattered over the
compositions of the Vatican, we shall find an opportunity to speak. But
in oil the real style of portrait began at Venice with Giorgione,
flourished in Sebastian del Piombo, and was carried to perfection by
Titiano, who filled the masses of the first without entangling himself
in the minute details of the second. Tintoretto, Bassan, and Paolo of
Verona, followed the principle of Titiano. After these, it migrated from
Italy to reside with the Spaniard Diego Velasquez; from whom Rubens and
Vandyck attempted to transplant it to Flanders, France, and England,
with unequal success. France seized less on the delicacy than on the
affectation of Vandyck, and soon turned the art of representing men and
women into a mere remembrancer of fashions and airs. England had
possessed Holbein, but it was reserved for the German Lely, and his
successor Kneller, to lay the foundation of a manner, which, by
pretending to unite portrait with history, gave a retrograde direction
for near a century to both. A mob of shepherds and shepherdesses in
flowing wigs and dressed curls, ruffled Endymions, humble Junos,
withered Hebes, surly Allegroes, and smirking Pensierosas, usurped the
place of truth, propriety and character. Even the lamented powers of the
greatest painter whom this country and perhaps our age produced, long
vainly struggled, and scarcely in the eve of life succeeded to
emancipate us from this dastard taste.
[53] Francesco Mazzuoli, called Il Parmegiano, died at Casal Maggiore in
1540, at the age of 36. The magnificent picture of the St. John, we
speak of, was begun by order of the Lady Maria Bufalina, and destined
for the church of St. Salvadore del Lauro at Città di Castello. It
probably never received the last hand of the master, who fled from Rome,
where he painted it, at the sacking of that city, under Charles Bourbon,
in 1527; it remained in the refectory of the convent della Pace for
several years, was carried to Città di Castello by Messer Giulio
Bufalini, and is now in England. The Moses, a figure in Fresco at Parma,
together with Raphael's figure of God in the vision of Ezekiel, is said,
by Mr. Mason, to have furnished Gray with the head and action of his
bard: if that was the case, he would have done well to acquaint us with
the poet's method of making 'Placidis coire immitia.'
[54] Lodovico Carracci died at Bologna 1619, aged 64.
[55] Agostino Carracci died at Parma in 1602, at the age of 44. His is
the St. Girolamo in the Certosa, near Bologna; his, the Thetis with the
nereids, cupids, and tritons, in the gallery of the palace Farnese. Why,
as an engraver, he should have wasted his powers on the large plate from
the Crucifixion, painted by Tintoretto, in the hospitio of the school of
St. Rocco, a picture, of which he could not express the tone, its
greatest merit, is not easily unriddled. Annibale Carracci died at Rome
in 1609, at the age of 49.
[56] SONNET OF AGOSTINO CARRACCI.
Chi farsi un buon Pittor cerca, e desia,
Il disegno di Roma habbia alla mano,
La mossa coll' ombrar Veneziano,
E il degno colorir di Lombardia,
Di Michel' Angiol la terribil via,
Il vero natural di Tiziano,
Del Correggio lo stil puro, e sovrano,
E di un Rafel la giusta simetria.
Del Tibaldi il decoro, e il fondamento,
Del dotto Primaticcio l'inventare,
E un po di gratia del Parmigianino.
Ma senza tanti studi, e tanto stento,
Si ponga l'opre solo ad imitare,
Che qui lasciocci il nostro Niccolino.
Malvasia, author of the _Felsina Pittrice_, has made this sonnet the
text to his drowsy rhapsody on the frescoes of Lodovico Carracci and
some of his scholars, in the cloisters of St. Michele in Bosco, by
Bologna. He circumscribes the '_Mossa Veneziana_,' of the sonnet, by
'_Quel strepitoso motivo e quel divincolamento_' peculiar to Tintoretto.
[57] Guido Reni died in 1642, aged 68. Giov. Lanfranco died at Naples in
1647, aged 66. Franc. Albani died in 1660, aged 82. Domenico Zampieri,
called Il Domenichino, died in 1641, aged 60. Franc. Barbieri of Cento,
called Il Guercino, from a cast in his eye, died in 1667, aged 76.
[58] Pietro Berretini, of Cortona, the painter of the ceiling in the
Barberini hall, and of the gallery in the lesser Pamphili palace, the
vernal suavity of whose fresco tints no pencil ever equalled, died at
Rome in 1669, aged 73. Luca Giordano, nicknamed Fa-presto, or Dispatch,
from the rapidity of his execution, the greatest machinist of his time,
died in 1705, aged 76.
[59] We are informed by the Editor of the Latin translation of Albert
Durer's book, on the symmetry of the parts of the human frame,
(Parisiis, in officina Caroli Perier in vico Bellovaco, sub
Bellerophonte, 1557, fol.) that, during Albert's stay at Venice, where
he resided for a short time, to procure redress from the Signoria for
the forgery of Marc Antonio, he became familiar with Giovanni Bellini:
and that Andrea Mantegna, who had heard of his arrival in Italy, and had
conceived a high opinion of his execution and fertility, sent him a
message of invitation to Mantoua, for the express purpose of giving him
an idea of that form of which he himself had obtained a glimpse from the
contemplation of the antique. Andrea was then ill, and expired before
Albert, who immediately prepared to set out for Mantoua, could profit by
his instructions. This disappointment, says my author, Albert never
ceased to lament during his life. How fit the Mantouan was to instruct
the German, is not the question here; but Albert's regret seems to prove
that he felt a want which his model could not supply; and that he had
too just an idea of the importance of the art to be proud of dexterity
of finger or facility of execution, when employed on objects essentially
defective or comparatively trifling. The following personal account of
Albert deserves to be given in the Latin Editor's own words: 'E Pannonia
oriundum accepimus--Erat caput argutum, oculi micantes, nasus honestus
et quem Greci =Tetragônon= vocant; proceriusculum collum, pectus amplum,
castigatus venter, femora nervosa, crura stabilia: sed digitis nihil
dixisses vidisse elegantius.'
Albert Durer was the scholar of Martin Schön and Michael Wolgemuth, and
died at Nuremberg in 1528, aged 57.
[60] Lucas Jacob, called Lucas of Leyden, and by the Italians, Luca
d'Ollanda, died at Leyden in 1533.
[61] Peter Paul Rubens, of Cologne, the disciple of Adam Van Ort and
Otho Venius, died at or near Antwerp in 1641, aged 63.
See the admirable character given of him by Sir Joshua Reynolds, annexed
to his journey to Flanders, vol. ii. of his Works.
[62] Anthony Vandyck died in London, 1641, at the age of 42.--The poetic
conception of Abraham Diepenbeck may be estimated from the Temple des
Muses of Mr. de Marolles; re-edited but not improved by Bernard Picart.
[63] Rembrandt died, at Amsterdam ? in 1674, aged 68.
[64] Hans Holbein, of Basle, died in London, 1544, at the age of 46.
Peter Francis Mola, the scholar of Giuseppe d'Arpino and Franc. Albani,
was born at the village of Coldre, of the diocese of Balerna, in the
bailliage of Mendrisio, in 1621, and died at Rome in 1666.
[65] Eustache le Sueur, bred under Simon Voüet, died at Paris in 1655,
at the age of 88. His fellow-scholar and overbearing rival, Charles le
Brun, died in 1690, aged 71.
[66] For the best account of Spanish art, see Lettera di A. R. Mengs a
Don Antonio Ponz. Opere di Mengs, vol. ii. Mengs was born at Ausig, in
Bohemia, in 1728, and died at Rome in 1779.
THIRD LECTURE.
INVENTION.
PART I.
----=TI T' AR AU PHTHONEEIS, ERIÊRON AOIDON
TERPEIN, OPPÊ OI NOOS ORNYTAI? OY NY T' AOIDOI
AITIOI, ALLA POTHI ZEUS AITIOS, HOSTE DIDÔSIN
ANDRASIN ALPHÊSTÊSIN, OPÔS ETHELÊSIN EKASTÔI.=
Homer. Odyss. A. 346.
ARGUMENT.
Introduction. Discrimination of Poetry and Painting. General
idea of Invention--its right to select a subject from Nature
itself. Visiones--Theon--Agasias. Cartoon of Pisa--Incendio del
Borgo. Specific idea of Invention: Epic subjects--Michael
Angelo. Dramatic subjects--Raphael. Historic subjects--Poussin,
&c. Invention has a right to adopt ideas--examples. Duplicity of
subject and moment inadmissible. Transfiguration of Raphael.
THIRD LECTURE.
The brilliant antithesis ascribed to Simonides, that 'painting is mute
poesy and poetry speaking painting,' made, I apprehend, no part of the
technic systems of antiquity: for this we may depend on the general
practice of its artists, and still more safely on the philosophic
discrimination of Plutarch[67], who tells us, that as poetry and
painting resemble each other in their uniform address to the senses, for
the impression they mean to make on our fancy and by that on our mind,
so they differ as essentially in their _materials_ and their _modes_ of
application, which are regulated by the diversity of the organs they
address, ear and eye. _Successive action_ communicated by sounds, and
_time_, are the medium of poetry; _form_ displayed in _space_, and
momentaneous energy, are the element of painting.
As if these premises be true, the distinct representation of continued
action is refused to an art which cannot express even in a series of
subjects, but by a supposed mental effort in the spectator's mind, the
regular succession of their moments, it becomes evident, that instead of
attempting to impress us by the indiscriminate usurpation of a principle
out of its reach, it ought chiefly to rely for its effect on its great
characteristics space and form, singly or in apposition. In forms alone
the idea of existence can be rendered permanent. Sounds die, words
perish or become obsolete and obscure, even colours fade, forms alone
can neither be extinguished nor misconstrued; by application to their
standard alone, description becomes intelligible and distinct. Thus the
effectual idea of corporeal beauty can strictly exist only in the
plastic arts: for as the notion of beauty arises from the pleasure we
feel in the harmonious co-operation of the various parts of some
favourite object to one end at once, it implies their immediate
co-existence in the mass they compose; and therefore can be distinctly
perceived and conveyed to the mind by the eye alone: hence the
representation of form in figure is the _physical_ element of the Art.
But as bodies exist in time as well as in space; as the pleasure arising
from the mere symmetry of an object is as transient as it is immediate;
as harmony of parts, if the body be the agent of an internal power,
depends for its proof on their application, it follows, that the
exclusive exhibition of inert and unemployed form, would be a mistake of
the medium for the end, and that character or action is required to make
it an interesting object of imitation. And this is the _moral_ element
of the art.
Those important moments then which exhibit the united exertion of form
and character in a single object or in participation with collateral
beings, _at once_, and which with equal rapidity and pregnancy give us a
glimpse of the past and lead our eye to what follows, furnish the true
materials of those technic powers, that select, direct, and fix the
objects of imitation to their centre.
The most eminent of these, by the explicit acknowledgment of all ages,
and the silent testimony of every breast, is _invention_. He whose eye
athwart the outward crust of the rock penetrates into the composition of
its materials, and discovers a gold mine, is surely superior to him who
afterwards adapts the metal for use. Colombo, when he from astronomic
and physical inductions concluded to the existence of land in the
opposite hemisphere, was surely superior to Amerigo Vespucci who took
possession of its continent; and when Newton improving accident by
meditation, discovered and established the laws of attraction, the
projectile and centrifuge qualities of the system, he gave the clue to
all who after him applied it to the various branches of philosophy, and
was in fact the author of all the benefits accruing from their
application to society. Homer, when he means to give the principal
feature of man, calls him inventor (=alphêstês=).
From what we have said it is clear that the term _invention_ never ought
to be so far misconstrued as to be confounded with that of _creation_,
incompatible with our notions of limited being, an idea of pure
astonishment, and admissible only when we mention Omnipotence: to
_invent_ is to find: to find something, presupposes its existence
somewhere, implicitly or explicitly, scattered or in a mass: nor should
I have presumed to say so much on a word of a meaning so plain, had it
not been, and were it not daily confounded, and by fashionable
authorities too, with the term creation.
Form, in its widest meaning, the visible universe that envelopes our
senses, and its counterpart the invisible one that agitates our mind
with visions bred on sense by fancy, are the element and the realm of
invention; it discovers, selects, combines the _possible_, the
_probable_, the _known_, in a mode that strikes with an air of truth and
novelty, at once. Possible strictly means an effect derived from a
cause, a body composed of materials, a coalition of forms, whose union
or co-agency imply in themselves no absurdity, no contradiction: applied
to our art, it takes a wider latitude; it means the representation of
effects derived from causes, or forms compounded from materials,
heterogeneous and incompatible among themselves, but rendered so
plausible to our senses, that the transition of one part to another
seems to be accounted for by an air of organization, and the eye glides
imperceptibly or with satisfaction from one to the other and over the
whole: that this was the condition on which, and the limits within which
alone the ancients permitted invention to represent what was strictly
speaking impossible, we may with plausibility surmise from the picture
of Zeuxis, described by Lucian in the memoir to which he has prefixed
that painter's name, who was probably one of the first adventurers in
this species of imagery.--Zeuxis had painted a family of centaurs; the
dam a beautiful female to the middle, with the lower parts gradually
sliding into the most exquisite forms of a young Thessalian mare, half
reclined in playful repose and gently pawing the velvet ground, offered
her human nipple to one infant centaur, whilst another greedily sucked
the ferine udder below, but both with their eyes turned up to a
lion-whelp held over them by the male centaur their father, rising above
the hillock on which the female reclined, a grim feature, but whose
ferocity was somewhat tempered by a smile.
The scenery, the colour, the chiaroscuro, the finish of the whole was no
doubt equal to the style and the conception. This picture the artist
exhibited, expecting that justice from the penetration of the public
which the genius deserved that taught him to give plausibility to a
compound of heterogeneous forms, to inspire them with suitable soul, and
to imitate the laws of existence: he was mistaken. The novelty of the
conceit eclipsed the art that had embodied it, the artist was absorbed
in his subject, and the unbounded praise bestowed, was that of idle
restless curiosity, gratified. Sick of gods and goddesses, of demigods
and pure human combinations, the Athenians panted only for what was new.
The artist, as haughty as irritable, ordered his picture to be
withdrawn; "Cover it, Micchio," said he to his attendant, "cover it and
carry it home, for this mob stick only to the clay of our art."--Such
were the limits set to invention by the ancients; secure within these,
it defied the ridicule thrown on that grotesque conglutination which
Horace exposes; guarded by these, their mythology scattered its
metamorphoses, made every element its tributary, and transmitted the
privilege to us, on equal conditions: their Scylla and the Portress of
Hell, their dæmons and our spectres, the shade of Patroclus and the
ghost of Hamlet, their naiads, nymphs, and oreads, and our sylphs,
gnomes, and fairies, their furies and our witches, differ less in
essence, than in local, temporary, social modifications: their common
origin was fancy, operating on the materials of nature, assisted by
legendary tradition and the curiosity implanted in us of diving into the
invisible;[68] and they are suffered or invited to mix with or
superintend real agency, in proportion of the analogy which we discover
between them and ourselves. Pindar praises Homer less for that 'winged
power' which whirls incident on incident with such rapidity, that
absorbed by the whole, and drawn from the impossibility of single
parts, we swallow a tale too gross to be believed in a dream; than for
the greater power by which he contrived to connect his imaginary
creation with the realities of nature and human passions;[69] without
this the fiction of the poet and the painter will leave us stupified
rather by its insolence, than impressed by its power, it will be
considered only as a superior kind of legerdemain, an exertion of
ingenuity to no adequate end.
Before we proceed to the process and the methods of invention, it is not
superfluous to advert to a question which has often been made, and by
some has been answered in the negative; _whether it be within the
artist's province or not, to find or to combine a subject from himself,
without having recourse to tradition or the stores of history and
poetry_? Why not, if the subject be within the limits of art and the
combinations of nature, though it should have escaped observation?
Shall the immediate avenues of the mind, open to all its observers, from
the poet to the novelist, be shut only to the artist? shall he be
reduced to receive as alms from them what he has a right to share as
common property? Assertions like these, say in other words, that the
Laocoon owes the impression he makes on us to his name alone, and that
if tradition had not told a story and Pliny fixed it to that work, the
artist's conception of a father with his sons, surprised and entangled
by two serpents within the recesses of a cavern or lonesome dell, was
inadmissible and transgressed the laws of invention. I am much mistaken,
if, so far from losing its power over us with its traditional sanction,
it would not rouse our sympathy more forcibly, and press the subject
closer to our breast, were it considered only as the representation of
an incident common to humanity. The ancients were so convinced of their
right to this disputed prerogative that they assigned it its own class,
and Theon the Samian is mentioned by Quintilian, whom none will accuse
or suspect of confounding the limits of the arts, in his list of primary
painters, as owing his celebrity to that intuition into the sudden
movements of nature, which the Greeks called =phantasias=, the Romans
_visiones_, and we might circumscribe by the phrase of 'unpremeditated
conceptions' the re-production of associated ideas; he explains what he
understood by it in the following passage adapted to his own profession,
rhetoric.[70] 'We give,' says he, 'the name of visions to what the
Greeks call phantasies; that power by which the images of absent things
are represented by the mind with the energy of objects moving before
our eyes: he who conceives these rightly will be a master of passions;
his is that well-tempered fancy which can imagine things, voices, acts,
as they really exist, a power perhaps in a great measure dependent on
our will. For if these images so pursue us when our minds are in a state
of rest, or fondly fed by hope, or in a kind of waking dream, that we
seem to travel, to sail, to fight, to harangue in public, or to dispose
of riches we possess not, and all this with an air of reality, why
should we not turn to use this vice of the mind?--Suppose I am to plead
the case of a murdered man, why should not every supposable circumstance
of the act float before my eyes? Shall I not see the murderer unawares
rush in upon him? in vain he tries to escape--see how pale he turns--hear
you not his shrieks, his entreaties? do you not see him flying, struck,
falling? will not his blood, his ashy semblance, his groans, his last
expiring gasp, seize on my mind?'
Permit me to apply this organ of the orator for one moment to the poet's
process: by this radiant recollection of associated ideas, the
spontaneous ebullitions of nature, selected by observation, treasured by
memory, classed by sensibility and judgment, Shakspeare became the
supreme master of passions and the ruler of our hearts: this embodied
his Falstaff and his Shylock, Hamlet and Lear, Juliet and Rosalind. By
this power he saw Warwick uncover the corpse of Gloster, and swear to
his assassination and his tugs for life; by this he made Banquo see the
weird sisters bubble up from earth, and in their own air vanish; this is
the hand that struck upon the bell when Macbeth's drink was ready, and
from her chamber pushed his dreaming wife, once more to methodize the
murder of her guest.
And this was the power of Theon;[71] such was the unpremeditated
conception that inspired him with the idea of that warrior, who in the
words of Ælian, seemed to embody the terrible graces and the
enthusiastic furor of the god of war. Impetuous he rushed onward to
oppose the sudden incursion of enemies; with shield thrown forward, and
high brandished falchion, his step as he swept on, seemed to devour the
ground: his eye flashed defiance; you fancied to hear his voice, his
look denounced perdition and slaughter without mercy. This figure,
single and without other accompaniments of war than what the havock of
the distance showed, Theon deemed sufficient to answer the impression he
intended to make on those whom he had selected to inspect it. He kept it
covered, till a trumpet, prepared for the purpose, after a prelude of
martial symphonies, at once, by his command, blew with invigorated
fierceness a signal of attack--the curtain dropped, the terrific figure
appeared to start from the canvass, and irresistibly assailed the
astonished eyes of the assembly.
To prove the relation of Ælian no hyperbolic legend, I need not insist
on the magic effect which the union of two sister powers must produce on
the senses: of what our art alone and unassisted may perform, the most
unequivocal proof exists within these walls; your eyes, your feelings,
and your fancy have long anticipated it: whose mind has not now recalled
that wonder of a figure, the misnamed gladiator of Agasias, a figure,
whose tremendous energy embodies every element of motion, whilst its
pathetic dignity of character enforces sympathies, which the undisguised
ferocity of Theon's warrior in vain solicits. But the same irradiation
which showed the soldier to Theon, showed to Agasias the leader: Theon
saw the passion, Agasias[72] its rule.