pictures, allusive to mysteries of religion and religious institutions,
asylums, charities; or votive pictures of those who dedicate offerings
of gratitude for life saved or happiness conferred: in these the male
and female patrons of such creeds, societies and persons, prophets,
apostles, saints, warriors and doctors, with and without the donor or
the suppliant, combine in apposition or groups, and are suffered to
flank each other without incurring the indignation due to anachronism,
as they are always placed in the presence of the Divine Being, before
whom the distance of epochs, place and races, the customs, dress and
habits of different nations, are supposed to vanish; and the present,
past and future to exist in the same moment.
These, which the simplicity of primitive art dismissed without more
invention than elevating the Madonna with the infant Saviour, and
arranging the saints and suppliants in formal parallels beneath, the
genius of greater masters often, though not always, transformed to
organs of sublimity, or connected in an assemblage of interesting and
highly pleasing groups, by inventing a congruous action or scenery,
which spread warmth over a subject that, simply considered, threatened
to freeze the beholder. Let us give an instance.
The Madonna, called Dell' Impannato, by Raphael, is one of these: it is
so called because he introduced in the back-ground the old Italian
linen or paper window. Maria is represented standing or raising herself
to offer the Infant to St. Elizabeth, who stretches out her arms to
receive him. Mary Magdalen behind, and bending over her, points to St.
John, and caresses the child; he with infantine joy escapes from her
touch, and looking at her, leaps up to his mother's neck. St. John, as
the principal figure, is placed in the fore-ground on a leopard's skin,
and with raised hand seems to prophesy of Christ; he appears to be eight
or ten years old, Christ scarcely two. At this anachronism, or the much
bolder one committed in the admission of M. Magdalen, who was probably
younger than Christ, those only will be shocked who have not considered
the nature of a votive picture: this was dedicated to St. John, as the
tutelary saint of Florence, and before it was transferred to the Pitti
Gallery, was the altar-piece in a domestic chapel of the Medicean
family.[84]
The greater part of this audience are acquainted, some are familiar,
with the celebrated painting of Correggio, formerly treasured in the
Pilotta of Parma; transported to the Louvre and again replaced. In the
invention of this work, which exhibits St. Jerome, to whom it is
dedicated, presenting his translation of the Scriptures, by the hand of
an angel, to the infant seated in the lap of the Madonna, the patron of
the piece is sacrificed in place to the female and angelic group which
occupies the middle. The figure that chiefly attracts, has, by its
suavity, for centuries attracted, and still absorbs the general eye, is
that charming one of the Magdalen, in a half kneeling, half recumbent
posture, pressing the foot of Jesus to her lips. By doing this, the
painter has, undoubtedly, offered to the Graces the boldest and most
enamoured sacrifice which they ever received from art. He has been
rewarded, accordingly, for the impropriety of her usurping the first
glance, which ought to fix itself on the Divinity, and the Saint
vanishes in the amorous gaze on her charms. If the Magdalen has long
possessed the right of being present where the Madonna presides, she
ought to assist the purpose of the picture in subordinate entreaty; her
action should have been that of supplication; as it is, it is the
effusion of fondling, unmixed love.
The true medium between dry apposition and exuberant contrast, appears
to have been kept by Titian, in an altar-piece of the Franciscans, or
Frati, in spite of French selection, still at Venice; and of which the
simple grandeur has been balanced by Reynolds against the artificial
splendour of Rubens in a similar subject. It probably was what it
represents, the thanks-offering of a noble family, for some victory
obtained, or conquest made in the Morea. The heads of the family, male
and female, presented by St. Francis, occupy the two wings of the
composition, kneeling, and with hands joined in prayer, in attitudes
nearly parallel. Elevated in the centre, St. Peter stands at the altar,
between two columns, his hand in the Gospel-book, the keys before him,
addressing the suppliants. Above him, to the right, appears the Madonna,
holding the infant, and with benign countenance, seems to sanction the
ceremony. Two stripling cherubs on an airy cloud, right over the centre,
rear the cross; an armed warrior with the standard of victory, and
behind him a turbaned Turk or Moor, approach from the left and round the
whole.
Such is the invention of a work, which, whilst it fills the mind,
refuses utterance to words; of which it is difficult to say, whether it
subdue more by simplicity, command by dignity, persuade by propriety,
assuage by repose, or charm by contrast. A great part of these groups
consists of portraits in habiliments of the time, deep, vivid,
brilliant; but all are completely subject to the tone of gravity that
emanates from the centre; a sacred silence enwraps the whole; all gleams
and nothing flashes. Steady to his purpose, and penetrated by his
motive, though brooding over every part of his work, the artist appears
nowhere.[85]
Next to this higher class of negative subjects, though much lower, may
be placed the magnificence of ornamental painting, the pompous machinery
of Paolo Veronese, Pietro da Cortona, and Rubens. Splendour, contrast,
and profusion, are the springs of its invention. The painter, not the
story, is the principal subject here. Dazzled by piles of Palladian
architecture, tables set out with regal luxury, terrasses of plate,
crowds of Venetian nobles, pages, dwarfs, gold-collared Moors, and
choirs of vocal and instrumental music, embrowned and tuned by meridian
skies, what eye has time to discover, in the brilliant chaos, the visit
of Christ to Simon the Pharisee, or the sober nuptials of Canah? but
when the charm dissolves, though avowedly wonders of disposition,
colour, and unlimited powers of all-grasping execution, if considered in
any other light than as the luxurious trappings of ostentatious wealth,
judgment must pronounce them ominous pledges of irreclaimable depravity
of taste, glittering masses of portentous incongruities and colossal
baubles.
The next place to representation of pomp among negative subjects, but
far below, we assign to Portrait. Not that characteristic portrait by
which Silanion, in the face of Apollodorus, personified habitual
indignation; Apelles, in Alexander, superhuman ambition; Raphael, in
Julio the IId., pontifical fierceness; Titian, in Paul IIId., testy age
with priestly subtlety; and in Machiavelli and Cæsar Borgia, the wily
features of conspiracy and treason.--Not that portrait by which Rubens
contrasted the physiognomy of philosophic and classic acuteness with
that of genius in the conversation-piece of Grotius, Meursius, Lipsius,
and himself; not the nice and delicate discriminations of Vandyk, nor
that power which, in our days, substantiated humour in Sterne, comedy in
Garrick, and mental and corporeal strife, to use his own words, in
Samuel Johnson. On that broad basis, portrait takes its exalted place
between history and the drama. The portrait I mean is that common one,
as widely spread as confined in its principle; the remembrancer of
insignificance, mere human resemblance, in attitude without action,
features without meaning, dress without drapery, and situation without
propriety. The aim of the artist and the sitter's wish are confined to
external likeness; that deeper, nobler aim, the personification of
character, is neither required, nor, if obtained, recognised. The better
artist, condemned to this task, can here only distinguish himself from
his duller brother by execution, by invoking the assistance of
back-ground, chiaroscuro and picturesque effects, and thus sometimes
produces a work which delights the eye, and leaves us, whilst we lament
the misapplication, with a strong impression of his power; him we see,
not the insignificant individual that usurps the centre, one we never
saw, care not if we never see, and if we do, remember not, for his head
can personify nothing but his opulence or his pretence; it is furniture.
If any branch of art be once debased to a mere article of fashionable
furniture, it will seldom elevate itself above the taste and the caprice
of the owner, or the dictates of fashion; for its success depends on
both; and though there be not a bauble thrown by the sportive hand of
fashion which taste may not catch to advantage, it will seldom be
allowed to do it, if fashion dictate the mode. Since liberty and
commerce have more levelled the ranks of society, and more equally
diffused opulence, private importance has been increased, family
connections and attachments have been more numerously formed, and hence
portrait painting, which formerly was the exclusive property of princes,
or a tribute to beauty, prowess, genius, talent, and distinguished
character, is now become a kind of family calendar, engrossed by the
mutual charities of parents, children, brothers, nephews, cousins, and
relatives of all colours.
To portrait painting, thus circumstanced, we subjoin, as the last branch
of uninteresting subjects, that kind of landscape which is entirely
occupied with the tame delineation of a given spot; an enumeration of
hill and dale, clumps of trees, shrubs, water, meadows, cottages, and
houses, what is commonly called Views. These, if not assisted by nature,
dictated by taste, or chosen for character, may delight the owner of the
acres they enclose, the inhabitants of the spot, perhaps the antiquary
or the traveller, but to every other eye they are little more than
topography. The landscape of Titian, of Mola, of Salvator, of the
Poussins, Claude, Rubens, Elzheimer, Rembrandt and Wilson, spurns all
relation with this kind of map-work. To them, nature disclosed her bosom
in the varied light of rising, meridian, setting suns; in twilight,
night and dawn. Height, depth, solitude, strike, terrify, absorb,
bewilder in their scenery. We tread on classic or romantic ground, or
wander through the characteristic groups of rich congenial objects. The
usual choice of the Dutch school, which frequently exhibits no more
than the transcript of a spot, borders, indeed, nearer on the negative
kind of landscape; but imitation will not be entitled to the pleasure we
receive, or the admiration we bestow, on their genial works, till it has
learnt to give an air of choice to necessity, to imitate their hues,
spread their masses, and to rival the touch of their pencil.
Subjects which cannot in their whole compass be brought before the eye,
which appeal for the best part of their meaning to the erudition of the
spectator and the refinements of sentimental enthusiasm, seem equally to
defy the powers of invention. The labour of disentangling the former,
dissolves the momentary magic of the first impression, and leaves us
cold: the second evaporates under the grosser touch of sensual art. It
may be more than doubted whether the resignation of Alcestis can ever be
made intuitive: the pathos of the story consists in the heroic
resolution of Alcestis to save her husband's life by resigning her own.
Now the art can show no more than Alcestis dying: the cause of her
death, her elevation of mind, the disinterested heroism of her
resolution to die, are beyond its power.
Raffaelle's celebrated Donation of the Keys to St. Peter in the Cartoon
before us, as ineffectually struggles with more than the irremovable
obscurity, with the ambiguity of the subject: a numerous group of grave
and devout characters, in attitudes of anxious debate and eager
curiosity, press forward to witness the behests of a person who, with
one hand, seems to have consigned two massy keys to their foremost
companion on his knees, and with the other hand points to a flock of
sheep, grazing behind. What associating power can find the connection
between those keys and the pasturing herd? or discover in an obtrusive
allegory the only real motive of the emotions that inspire the apostolic
group? the artist's most determined admirer, if not the slave of
pontifical authority, ready to transubstantiate whatever comes before
him, must confine his homage to the power that interests us in a
composition without a subject.
Poussin's extolled picture of the Testament of Eudamidas is another
proof of the inefficacy to represent the enthusiasm of sentiment by the
efforts of art. The figures have simplicity, the expression energy, it
is well composed, in short, it possesses every requisite but that which
alone could make it what it pretends to be:--you see an elderly man on
his death-bed; a physician, pensive, with his hand on the man's breast,
his wife and daughter desolate at the foot of the bed; one, who
resembles a notary, eagerly writing; a buckler and a lance on the wall;
and the simple implements of the scene, tell us the former occupation
and the circumstances of Eudamidas;--but his legacy--the secure reliance
on the friend to whom he bequeaths his daughter--the noble acceptance
and magnanimity of that friend,--these we ought to see, and seek in vain
for them; what is represented in the picture may be as well applied to
any other man who died, made a will, and left a daughter and a wife, as
to the Corinthian Eudamidas.
This is not the only instance in which Poussin has mistaken erudition
and detail of circumstances for evidence. The Exposition of Infant Moses
on the Nile, is a picture as much celebrated as the former: a woman
shoves a child placed in a basket from the shore. A man mournfully
pensive walks off followed by a boy who turns towards the woman and
connects the groups; a girl in the back-ground points to a distance,
where we discover the Egyptian princess, and thus anticipate the fate of
the child. The statue of a river god recumbent on the sphinx, a town
with lofty temples, pyramids and obelisks, tell Memphis and the Nile;
and smoking brick-kilns still nearer allude to the servitude and toil of
Israel in Egypt: not one circumstance is omitted that could contribute
to explain the meaning of the whole; but the repulsive subject
completely baffled the painter's endeavour to show the _real_ motive of
the action. We cannot penetrate the _cause_ that forces these people to
expose the child on the river, and hence our sympathy and participation
languish, we turn from a subject that gives us danger without fear, to
admire the expression of the parts, the classic elegance, the harmony of
colours, the mastery of execution.
* * * * *
The importance of some secondary points of invention, of scenery,
back-ground, drapery, ornament, is frequently such, that, independent
of the want of more essential parts, if possessed in a very eminent
degree, they have singly raised from insignificance to esteem, names
that had few other rights to consideration; and neglected, in spite of
superior comprehension, in the choice or conception of a subject, in
defiance of style and perhaps of colour, of expression, and sometimes
composition, often have left little but apathy to the contemplation of
works produced by men of superior grasp and essential excellence. Fewer
would admire Poussin were he deprived of his scenery, though I shall not
assert with Mengs, that in his works the subject is more frequently the
appendix than the principle of the back-ground; what right could the
greater part of Andrea del Sarto's historic compositions claim to our
attention, if deprived of the parallelism, the repose and space in which
his figures are arranged, or the ample draperies that invest them, and
hide with solemn simplicity their vulgarity of character and limbs: it
often requires no inconsiderable degree of mental power and technic
discrimination to separate the sublimity of Michael Agnolo, and the
pathos of Raffaelle from the total neglect or the incongruities of
scenery and back-ground, which frequently involve or clog their
conceptions, to add by fancy the place on which their figures ought to
stand, the horizon that ought to elevate or surround them, and the
masses of light and shade indolently neglected or sacrificed to higher
principles. How deeply the importance of scenery and situation, with
their proper degree of finish, were felt by Tiziano, before and after
his emancipation from the shackles of Giov. Bellino, every work of his
during the course of nearly a centenary practice proves: to select two
from all, the Martyrdom of the Dominican Peter, that summary of his
accumulated powers, and the Presentation of the Virgin, one of his first
historic essays, owe, if not all, their greatest effect, to scenery:
loftiness and solitude of site assist the sublimity of the descending
vision to consecrate the actors beyond what their characters and style
of limbs could claim, and render the first an object of submissive
admiration, whilst its simple grandeur renders the second one of
cheerful and indulgent acquiescence; and reconciles us to a detail of
portrait-painting, and the impropriety of associating domestic and
vulgar imagery with a consecrated subject.
It is for these reasons that the importance of scenery and back-ground
has been so much insisted on by Reynolds; who frequently declared, that
whatever preparatory assistance he might admit in the draperies or other
parts of his figures, he always made it a point to keep the arrangement
of the scenery, the disposition and ultimate finish of the back-ground
to himself.
By the choice and scenery of the back-ground we are frequently enabled
to judge how far a painter entered into his subject, whether he
understood its nature, to what class it belonged, what impression it was
capable of making, what passion it was calculated to rouse: the sedate,
the solemn, the severe, the awful, the terrible, the sublime, the
placid, the solitary, the pleasing, the gay, are stamped by it.
Sometimes it ought to be negative, entirely subordinate, receding or
shrinking into itself; sometimes more positive, it acts, invigorates,
assists the subject, and claims attention; sometimes its forms,
sometimes its colour ought to command.--A subject in itself bordering
on the usual or common, may become sublime or pathetic by the
back-ground alone, and a sublime or pathetic one may become trivial and
uninteresting by it: a female leaning her head on her hand on a rock
might easily suggest itself to any painter of portrait, but the means of
making this figure interesting to those who are not concerned in the
likeness, were not to be picked from the mixtures of the palette:
Reynolds found the secret in contrasting the tranquillity and repose of
the person by a tempestuous sea and a stormy shore in the distance; and
in another female contemplating a tremulous sea by a placid moonlight,
he connected elegance with sympathy and desire.
Whatever connects the individual with the elements, whether by abrupt or
imperceptible means, is an instrument of sublimity, as, whatever
connects it in the same manner with, or tears it from the species, may
become an organ of pathos: in this discrimination lies the rule by which
our art, to astonish or move, ought to choose the scenery of its
subjects. It is not by the accumulation of infernal or magic machinery,
distinctly seen, by the introduction of Hecate and a chorus of female
demons and witches, by surrounding him with successive apparitions at
once, and a range of shadows moving above or before him, that Macbeth
can be made an object of terror,--to render him so you must place him on
a ridge, his down-dashed eye absorbed by the murky abyss; surround the
horrid vision with darkness, exclude its limits, and shear its light to
glimpses.
This art of giving to the principal figure the command of the horizon,
is perhaps the only principle by which modern art might have gained an
advantage over that of the ancients, and improved the dignity of
composition, had it been steadily pursued by its great restorers, the
painters of Julio II. and Leone X., though we find it more attended to
in the monumental imagery of the Capella Sistina than in the Stanze and
the Cartoons of Raffaello, which being oftener pathetic or intellectual
than sublime, suffered less by neglecting it.
The same principle which has developed in the cone, the form generally
most proper for composing a single figure or a group, contains the
reason why the principal figure or group should be the most elevated
object of a composition, and locally command the accidents of scenery
and place. The Apollo of Belvedere, singly or in a group, was surely not
composed to move at the bottom of a valley, nor the Zeus of Phidias to
be covered with a roof.
The improprieties attendant on the neglect of this principle are,
perhaps, in no work of eminence more offensively evident than in the
celebrated Resuscitation of Lazarus by Sebastian del Piombo, whose
composition, if composition it deserved to be called, seems to have been
dictated by the back-ground. It usurps the first glance; it partly
buries, everywhere throngs, and in the most important place squeezes the
subject into a corner. The horizon is at the top, Jesus, Maria, and
Lazarus at the bottom of the scene. Though its plan and groups recede in
diminished forms, they advance in glaring opaque colour, nor can it
avail in excuse of the artist, to say that the multitude of figures
admitted are characters chosen to show in different modes of expression
the effect of the miracle, whilst their number gives celebrity to it and
discriminates it from the obscure trick of a juggler: all this, if it
had been done, though perhaps it has not, for by far the greater part
are not spectators, might have been done with subordination: the most
authentic proof of the reality of the miracle ought to have beamed from
the countenance of Him who performed it, and of the restored man's
sister.--In every work something must be first, something last; that is
essential, this optional; that is present by its own right, this by
courtesy and convenience.[86]
The rival picture of the resuscitation of Lazarus, the Transfiguration
of Christ by Raffaello, avoids the inconvenience of indiscriminate
crowding, and the impertinent _luxuriance_ of scenery which we have
censured, by the artifice of escaping from what is strictly called
back-ground, and excluding it altogether: the action on the fore-ground
is the basis and Christ the apex of the cone, and what they might have
suffered from diminution of size is compensated by elevation and
splendour. In sacrificing to this principle the rules of a perspective
which he was so well acquainted with, Raffaello succeeded to unite the
beginning, the middle, and the end of the event which he represented in
one moment; he escaped every atom of common-place or unnecessary
embellishment with a simplicity and so artless an air, that few but the
dull, the petulant, and the pedant, can refuse him their assent,
admiration and sympathy; if he has not, strictly speaking, embodied
possibility, he has perhaps done more, he has done what Homer did, by
hiding the unmanageable but less essential part of his materials, he has
transformed it to probability.