where the drama, divested of epic or allegoric fiction, meets pure
history, and elevates, invigorates, impresses the pregnant moment of a
_real_ fact, with character and pathos. The summit of these is that
magnificent series of coloured designs commonly called the Cartoons, so
well known to you all, part of which we happily possess; formerly when
complete and united, and now, in the copies of the tapestry annually
exhibited in the colonnade of the Vatican, they represent in thirteen
compositions the origin, sanction, economy, and progress of the
Christian religion. In whatever light we consider their invention, as
parts of _one whole_ relative to each other, or independent _each of the
rest_, and as single subjects, there can be scarcely named a beauty or
a mystery of which the Cartoons furnish not an instance or a clue; they
are poised between perspicuity and pregnancy of moment; we shall have
opportunities to speak of all or the greater part of them, but that of
Paul on the Areopagus will furnish us at present with conclusions for
the remainder.
It represents the Apostle announcing his God from the height of the
Areopagus. Enthusiasm and curiosity make up the subject; simplicity of
attitude invests the speaker with sublimity; the parallelism of his
action invigorates his energy; situation gives him command over the
whole; the light in which he is placed, attracts the first glance; he
appears the organ of a superior Power. The assembly, though selected
with characteristic art for the purpose, are the natural offspring of
place and moment. The involved meditation of the Stoic, the Cynic's
ironic sneer, the incredulous smile of the elegant Epicurean, the eager
disputants of the Academy, the elevated attention of Plato's school, the
rankling malice of the Rabbi, the Magician's mysterious glance, repeat
in louder or in lower tones the novel doctrine; but whilst curiosity and
meditation, loud debate and fixed prejudice, tell, ponder on, repeat,
reject, discuss it, the animated gesture of conviction in Dionysius and
Damaris, announce the power of its tenets, and hint the established
belief of _immortality_.
But the powers of Raphael in combining the drama with pure historic
fact, are best estimated when compared with those exerted by other
masters on the same subject. For this we select from the series we
examine that which represented the Massacre, as it is called, of the
Innocents, or of the infants at Bethlem; an original, precious part of
which still remains in the possession of a friend of art among us. On
this subject Baccio Bandinelli, Tintoretto, Rubens, Le Brun, and
Poussin, have tried their various powers.
The Massacre of the Infants by Baccio Bandinelli, contrived chiefly to
exhibit his anatomic skill, is a complicated tableau of every contortion
of human attitude and limbs that precedes dislocation; the expression
floats between a studied imagery of frigid horror and loathsome
abomination.
The stormy brush of Tintoretto swept individual woe away in general
masses. Two immense wings of light and shade divide the composition,
and hide the want of sentiment in tumult.
To Rubens, magnificence and contrast dictated the actors and the scene.
A loud lamenting dame, in velvet robes, with golden locks dishevelled,
and wide extended arms, meets our first glance. Behind, a group of
steel-clad satellites open their rows of spears to admit the nimble,
naked ministers of murder, charged with their infant prey, within their
ranks, ready to close again against the frantic mothers who pursue them:
the pompous gloom of the palace in the middle ground is set off by
cottages and village scenery in the distance.
Le Brun surrounded the allegoric tomb of Rachel with rapid horsemen,
receiving the children whom the assassins tore from their parents' arms,
and strewed the field with infant slaughter.
Poussin tied in one vigorous group what he conceived of blood-trained
villany and maternal frenzy. Whilst Raphael, in dramatic gradation,
disclosed all the mother through every image of pity and of terror;
through tears, shrieks, resistance, revenge, to the stunned look of
despair; and traced the villain from the palpitations of scarce
initiated crime to the sedate grin of veteran murder.
History, strictly so called, follows the drama: fiction now ceases, and
invention consists only in selecting and fixing with dignity, precision,
and sentiment, the moments of _reality_. Suppose that the artist choose
the death of Germanicus--He is not to give us the highest images of
_general_ grief which impresses the features of a people or a family at
the death of a beloved chief or father; for this would be epic imagery:
we should have Achilles, Hector, Niobe. He is not to mix up characters
which observation and comparison have pointed out to him as the fittest
to excite the gradations of sympathy; not Admetus and Alceste, not
Meleager and Atalanta; for this would be the drama. He is to give us the
idea of a Roman dying amidst Romans, as tradition gave him, with all the
real modifications of time and place, which may serve unequivocally to
discriminate that moment of grief from all others. Germanicus,
Agrippina, Caius, Vitellius, the legates, the centurions at Antioch; the
hero, the husband, the father, the friend, the leader, the struggles of
nature and sparks of hope must be subjected to the physiognomic
character and the features of Germanicus, the son of Drusus, the Cæsar
of Tiberius. Maternal, female, connubial passion, must be tinged by
Agrippina, the woman absorbed in the Roman, less lover than companion of
her husband's grandeur: even the bursts of friendship, attachment,
allegiance, and revenge, must be stamped by the military, ceremonial,
and distinctive costume of Rome.
The judicious observation of all this does not reduce the historic
painter to the anxiously minute detail of a copyist. Firm he rests on
the true basis of art, imitation: the fixed character of things
determines all in his choice, and mere floating accident, transient
modes and whims of fashion, are still excluded. If defects, if
deformities are represented, they must be permanent, they must be
inherent in the character. Edward the First and Richard the Third must
be marked, but marked, to strengthen rather than to diminish the
interest we take in the man; thus the deformity of Richard will add to
his terror, and the enormous stride of Edward to his dignity. If my
limits permitted, your own recollection would dispense me from
expatiating in examples on this more familiar branch of invention. The
history of our own times and of our own country has produced a specimen,
in the death of a military hero, as excellent as often imitated, which,
though respect forbids me to name it, cannot, I trust, be absent from
your mind.
Such are the stricter outlines of general and specific invention in the
three principal branches of our art; but as their near alliance allows
not always a strict discrimination of their limits; as the mind and
fancy of men, upon the whole, consist of mixed qualities, we seldom meet
with a human performance exclusively made up of epic, dramatic, or pure
historic materials.
Novelty and feelings will make the rigid historian sometimes launch out
into the marvellous, or warm his bosom and extort a tear; the dramatist,
in gazing at some tremendous feature, or the pomp of superior agency,
will drop the chain of sympathy and be absorbed in the sublime; whilst
the epic or lyric painter forgets his solitary grandeur, sometimes
descends and mixes with his agents. Thus Homer gave the feature of the
drama in Hector and Andromache, in Irus and Ulysses; the spirit from the
prison-house stalks like the shade of Ajax, in Shakspeare; the daughter
of Soranus pleading for her father, and Octavia encircled by centurions,
melt like Ophelia and Alceste, in Tacitus; thus Raphael personified the
genius of the river in Joshua's passage through the Jordan, and again at
the ceremony of Solomon's inauguration; and thus Poussin raised before
the scared eye of Coriolanus, the frowning vision of Rome, all armed,
with her attendant, Fortune.
These general excursions from one province of the art into those of its
congenial neighbours, granted by judicious invention to the artist, let
me apply to the grant of a more specific licence[77]: Horace, the most
judicious of critics, when treating on the use of poetic words, tells
his pupils, that the adoption of an old word, rendered novel by a
skilful construction with others, will entitle the poet to the praise of
original diction. The same will be granted to the judicious adoption of
figures in art.
Far from impairing the originality of invention, the unpremeditated
discovery of an appropriate attitude or figure in the works of
antiquity, or of the great old masters after the revival, and its
adoption, or the apt transposition of one misplaced in some inferior
work, will add lustre to a performance of commensurate or superior
power, by a kind coalition with the rest, immediately furnished by
nature and the subject. In such a case it is easily discovered whether a
subject have been chosen merely to borrow an idea, an attitude or
figure, or whether their eminent fitness procured them their place. An
adopted idea or figure in a work of genius is a foil or a companion of
the rest; but an idea of genius borrowed by mediocrity, tears all
associate shreds, it is the giant's thumb by which the pigmy offered the
measure of his own littleness. We stamp the plagiary on the borrower,
who, without fit materials or adequate conceptions of his own, seeks to
shelter impotence under purloined vigour; we leave him with the full
praise of invention, who by the harmony of a whole proves that what he
adopted might have been his own offspring though anticipated by another.
If he take now, he soon may give. Thus Michael Angelo scattered the
Torso of Apollonius in every view, in every direction, in groups and
single figures, over the composition of the Last Judgment; and in the
Lunetta of Judith and her Maid gave an original turn to figures adopted
from the gem of Pier Maria da Pescia: if the figure of Adam dismissed
from Paradise, by Raphael, still own Masaccio for its inventor, he can
scarcely be said to have furnished more than the hint of that enthusiasm
and energy which we admire in Paul on the Areopagus: in the picture of
the covenant with Noah, the sublimity of the vision, and the graces of
the mother entangled by her babes, find their originals in the Sistine
Chapel, but they are equalled by the fervour which conceived the
Patriarch, who, with the infant pressed to his bosom, with folded hands,
and prostrate on his knees, adores. What figure or what gesture in the
Cartoon of Pisa has not been imitated? Raphael, Parmegiano, Poussin,
are equally indebted to it; in the Sacrament of Baptism, the last did
little more than transcribe that knot of powers, the fierce feature of
the veteran, who, eager to pull on his clothes, pushes his foot through
the rending garment.--Such are the indulgences which invention grants to
fancy, taste, and judgment.
But a limited fragment of observations must not presume to exhaust what
in itself is inexhaustible; the features of invention are multiplied
before me as my powers decrease: I shall therefore no longer trespass on
your patience, than by fixing your attention for a few moments on one of
its boldest flights, the transfiguration of Raphael; a performance
equally celebrated and censured; in which the most judicious of
inventors, the painter of propriety, is said to have not only wrestled
for extent of information with the historian, but attempted to leap the
boundaries, and, with a less discriminating than daring hand, to remove
the established limits of the art, to have arbitrarily combined two
actions, and consequently two different moments.
Were this charge founded, I might content myself with observing, that
the Transfiguration, more than any other of Raphael's oil-pictures, was
a public performance, destined by Julio de Medici, afterward Clement
VII. for his archi-episcopal church at Narbonne; that it was painted in
contest with Sebastian del Piombo, assisted in his rival picture of
Lazarus by Michael Angelo; and thus, considering it as framed on the
simple principles of the monumental style, established in my first
discourse on the pictures of Polygnotus at Delphi, I might frame a
plausible excuse for the modern artist; but Raphael is above the
assistance of subterfuge, and it is sufficient to examine the picture,
in order to prove the futility of the charge. Raphael has connected with
the transfiguration not the _cure_ of the maniac, but his _presentation
for it_; if, according to the [78]Gospel record, this happened at the
foot of the mountain, whilst the apparition took place at the top, what
improbability is there in assigning the _same moment_ to both?
Raphael's design was to represent Jesus as the Son of God, and at the
same time as the reliever of human misery, by an unequivocal fact. The
transfiguration on Tabor, and the miraculous cure which followed the
descent of Jesus, united, furnished that fact. The difficulty was how to
combine two successive actions in one moment: he overcame it by
sacrificing the moment of the cure to that of the apparition, by
implying the lesser miracle in the greater. In subordinating the cure to
the vision he obtained sublimity, in placing the crowd and the patient
on the foreground, he gained room for the full exertion of his dramatic
powers; it was not necessary that the dæmoniac should be represented in
the moment of recovery, if its certainty could be expressed by other
means: it is implied, it is placed beyond all doubt by the glorious
apparition above; it is made nearly intuitive by the uplifted hand and
finger of the apostle in the centre, who without hesitation, undismayed
by the obstinacy of the dæmon, unmoved by the clamour of the crowd and
the pusillanimous scepticism of some of his companions, refers the
father of the maniac in an authoritative manner for certain and speedy
help to his master[79] on the mountain above, whom, though unseen, his
attitude at once connects with all that passes below; here is the point
of contact, here is that union of the two parts of the fact in one
moment, which Richardson and Falconet could not discover.
FOOTNOTES:
[67] =Hylê kai tropois mimêseôs diapherousi.=
=Ploutarch P. Ath. kata P. ê kath' e. end.=
See Lessing's Laokoon. Berlin, 1766. 8vo.
[68] All minute detail tends to destroy terror, as all minute ornament,
grandeur. The catalogue of the cauldron's ingredients in Macbeth,
destroys the terror attendant on the mysterious darkness of
preternatural agency; and the seraglio trappings of Rubens, annihilate
his heroes.
[69] =Egô de pleon elpomai
Logon Odysseos, ê pathen,
Dia ton hadyepê genesth' Homêron
Epei pseudeessin hoi potana ge machana
Semnon epesti ti. sophia de
Kleptei paragoisa mythois.=
=Pindar. Nem. Z.=
[70] M. F. Quintilianus, l. xii. 10.--Concipiendis visionibus
(quas =PHANTASIAS= vocant) Theon Samius--est præstantissimus.
At quomodo fiet ut afficiamur? neque enim sunt motus in nostra
potestate. Tentabo etiam de hoc dicere. Quas =phantasias= Græci vocant,
nos sanè visiones appellamus; per quas imagines rerum absentium ita
repræsentantur animo, ut eas cernere oculis ac præsentes habere
videamur: has quisquis bene conceperit, is erit in affectibus
potentissimus. Hunc quidam dicunt =euphantasiôton=, qui sibi res, voces,
actus, secundum verum optume finget: quod quidem nobis volentibus facile
continget.
Nam ut inter otia animorum et spes inanes, et velut somnia quædam
vigilantium, ita nos hæ de quibus loquimur, imagines persequuntur, ut
peregrinari, navigare, proeliari, populos alloqui, divitiarum quas non
habemus, usum videamur disponere; nec cogitare, sed facere: hoc animi
vitium ad utilitatem non transferemus? ut hominem occisum querar, non
omnia quæ in re præsenti accidisse credibile est, in oculis habebo? non
percussor ille subitus erumpet? non expavescet circumventus? exclamabit,
vel rogabit, vel fugiet? non ferientem, non concidentem videbo? non
animo sanguis, et pallor et gemitus, extremus denique expirantis hiatus
insidebit?
Idem, l. vi. c. 11.
Theon, numbered with the 'Proceres' by Quintilian, by Pliny with less
discrimination is placed among the 'Primis Proximos;' and in some
passage of Plutarch, unaccountably censured for impropriety of subject,
=atopia=, in representing the madness of Orestes.
[71] =Ailianou poik. histor.= l. ii. c. 44. =Theônos tou Zôgraphou polla
men kai alla homologei tên cheirourgian agathên ousan, atar oun kai tode
to gramma.----Kai eipes an auton enthousian, hôsper ex Areos
manenta.----Kai sphattein blepôn, kai apeilôn di' holou tou schêmatos,
hoti mêdenos pheisetai.=
[72] The name of Agasias, the scholar or son of Dositheos, the Ephesian,
occurs not in ancient record; and whether he be the Egesias of
Quintilian or of Pliny, or these the same, cannot be ascertained; though
the style of sculpture and the form of the letters in the inscription
are not much at variance with the character which the former gives to
the age and style of Calon and Egesias; "Signa--duriora et Tuscanicis
proxima." The impropriety of calling this figure a gladiator has been
shown by Winkelmann, and on his remark, that it probably exhibits the
attitude of a soldier, who signalized himself in some moment of danger,
Lessing has founded a conjecture, that it is the figure of Chabrias,
from the following passage of Corn. Nepos: "Elucet maxime inventum ejus
in proelio, quod apud Thebas fecit, cùm Boetiis subsidio venisset. Namque
in eo victoriæ fidente summo duce Agesilao, fugatis jam ab eo
conductitiis catervis, reliquam phalangem loco vetuit cedere; obnixoque
genu scuto, projectaque hasta, impetum excipere hostium docuit. Id novum
Agesilaus intuens, progredi non est ausus, suosque jam incurrentes tubâ
revocavit. Hoc usque eo in Græcia famâ celebratum est, ut illo statu
Chabrias sibi statuam fieri voluerit, quæ publicè ei ab Atheniensibus in
foro constituta est. Ex quo factum est, ut postea athletæ, _cæterique
artifices_ his statibus in statutis ponendis uterentur, in quibus
victoriam essent adepti?"
On this passage, simple and unperplexed, if we except the words
"cæterique artifices," where something is evidently dropped or changed,
there can, I trust, be but one opinion--that the manoeuvre of Chabrias
was defensive, and consisted in giving the phalanx a stationary, and at
the same time impenetrable posture, to check the progress of the enemy;
a repulse, not a victory was obtained; the Thebans were content to
maintain their ground, and not a word is said by the historian, of a
pursuit, when Agesilaus, startled at the contrivance, called off his
troops: but the warrior of Agasias rushes forward in an assailing
attitude, whilst with his head and shield turned upwards he seems to
guard himself from some attack above him. Lessing, aware of this, to
make the passage square with his conjecture, is reduced to a change of
punctuation, and accordingly transposes the decisive comma after
"scuto," to "genu," and reads "obnixo genu, scuto projectâque
hastâ,--docuit." This alone might warrant us to dismiss his conjecture
as less solid than daring and acute.
The statue erected to Chabrias in the Athenian forum was probably of
brass, for "statua" and "statuarius," in Pliny at least, will, I
believe, always be found relative to figures and artists in metal; such
were those which at an early period the Athenians dedicated to Harmodios
and Aristogiton: from them the custom spread in every direction, and
iconic figures in metal, began, says Pliny, to be the ornaments of every
municipal forum.
From another passage in Nepos, I was once willing to find in our figure
an Alcibiades in Phrygia, rushing from the flames of the cottage fired
to destroy him, and guarding himself against the javelins and arrows
which the gang of Sysamithres and Bagoas showered on him at a distance.
"Ille," says the historian, "sonitu flammæ excitatus, quod gladius ei
erat subductus, familiaris sui subalare telum eripuit et--flammæ vim
transit. Quem, ut Barbari incendium effugisse viderunt, telis eminus
missis, interfecerunt. Sic Alcibiades annos circiter quadraginta natus,
diem obiit supremum."
Such is the age of our figure, and it is to be noticed that the right
arm and hand, now armed with a lance, are modern; if it be objected,
that the figure is iconic, and that the head of Alcibiades, cut off
after his death, was carried to Pharnabazus, and his body burned by his
mistress; it might be observed in reply, that busts and figures of
Alcibiades must have been frequent in Greece, and that the expression
found its source in the mind of Agasias. On this conjecture, however, I
shall not insist: let us only observe that the character, forms and
attitude, might be turned to better use than what Poussin made of it. It
might form an admirable Ulysses bestriding the deck of his ship to
defend his companions from the descending fangs of Scylla, or rather,
with indignation and anguish, seeing them already snatched up and
writhing in the mysterious gripe:
=Autar egô katadys klyta teuchea, kai dyo doure
Makr' en chersin helôn, eis ikria nêos ebainon
Prôrês----ekamon de moi osse
Pantê paptainonti pros êeroeidea petrên
Skepsamenos de----
Êdê tôn enoêsa podas kai cheiras hyperthen
Hypsos aeiromenôn.=----
Odyss. M. 238. seq.
[73] Sebbene il divino Michel Agnolo fece la gran Cappella di Papa
Julio, dappoi non arrivò a questo segno mai alla metà, la sua virtù non
aggiunse mai alla forza di quei primi studi. Vita di Benvenuto Cellini,
p. 13.--Vasari, as appears from his own account, never himself saw the
cartoon: he talks of an "infinity of combatants on horseback,"[74] of
which there neither remains nor ever can have existed a trace, if the
picture at Holkham be the work of Bastiano da St. Gallo. This he saw,
for it was painted, at his own desire, by that master, from his small
cartoon in 1542, and by means of Monsignor Jovio transmitted to Francis
I. who highly esteemed it; from his collection it however disappeared,
and no mention is made of it by the French writers for near two
centuries. It was probably discovered at Paris, bought and carried to
England by the late Lord Leicester. That Vasari, on inspecting the copy,
should not have corrected the confused account he gives of the cartoon
from hearsay, can be wondered at only by those who are unacquainted with
his character as a writer. One solitary horse and a drummer on the
imaginary background of the groups engraved by Agostino Venetiano, are
all the cavalry remaining of Vasari's squadrons, and can as little
belong to Michel Agnolo as the spot on which they are placed.
[74] The following are his own words: "Si vedeva dalle divine mani di
Michelagnolo chi affrettare lo armarsi per dare ajuto a'compagni, altri
affibbiarsi la corazza, e molti metter altre armi indosso, ed infiniti
combattendo a cavallo cominciare la zuffa."
Vasari, Vita di M. A. B. p. 183. ed. Bottari.
[75] =Ho de pôs megethynei ta Daimonia?----Tên hormên autôn kosmikô
diastêmati katametrei.=
Longinus, § 9.
[76] Much has been said of the loss we have suffered in the marginal
drawings which Michael Angelo drew in his Dante. Invention may have
suffered in being deprived of them; they can, however, have been little
more than hints of a size too minute to admit of much discrimination.
The true terrors of Dante depend as much upon the medium in which he
shows, or gives us a glimpse of his figures, as on their form. The
characteristic outlines of his fiends, Michael Angelo personified in the
dæmons of the Last Judgment, and invigorated the undisguised appetite,
ferocity or craft of the brute, by traits of human malignity, cruelty,
or lust. The Minos of Dante, in Messer Biagio da Cesena, and his Charon,
have been recognized by all; but less the shivering wretch held over the
barge by a hook, and evidently taken from the following passage in the
xxiid of the Inferno:--
Et Graffiacan, che gli era più di contra
Gli arroncigliò l'impegolate chiome;
E trasse 'l sù, che mi parve una lontra.
None has noticed as imitations of Dante in the xxivth book, the
astonishing groups in the Lunetta of the brazen serpent; none the
various hints from the Inferno and Purgatorio scattered over the
attitudes and expressions of the figures rising from their graves. In
the Lunetta of Haman, we owe the sublime conception of his figure to the
subsequent passage in the xviith c. of Purgatory:
Poi piobbe dentro al' alta phantasia
Un Crucifisso, dispettoso e fiero
Nella sua vista, e lo qual si moria.