always, judge how far an artist has penetrated his subject, what emotion
in treating it he meant to excite. No subjects can elucidate this with
so much perspicuity as those generally distinguished by the name of
Madonnas: subjects stamped with a mystery of religion, and originally
contrived under the bland images of maternal fondness to subdue the
heart. In examining the considerable number of those by Raffaello, we
find generally some reciprocal feature of filial and parental love, "the
charities of father, son, and mother," sometimes varied by infant play
and female caresses, sometimes dignified by celestial ministry and
homage; the endearments of the nursery selected and embodied by forms
more charming than exalted, less beautiful than genial--accordingly the
choice of scenery consists seldom in more than a pleasing accompaniment:
the flower and the shrub, the rivulet and grove, enamel the seat or
embower the repose of the sacred pilgrims under the serenity of a placid
sky, expanded or breaking through trees, or sheltering ruins; whilst in
those surrounded by domestic scenery, a warm recess veils the mother,
now hiding her darling from profane aspect, now pressing him to her
bosom, or contemplating in silent rapture his charms displayed on her
lap--accompaniments and actions, though appropriate, without allusion to
the mysterious personages they profess to exhibit--to discriminate them
the chair, the window, the saddle on which Joseph sits in one, the
flowers which he kneeling presents in another, the cradle, the bath,
are called on. Raffaello was less penetrated by a devout than by an
amorous principle; his design was less to stamp maternal affection with
the seal of religion than to consecrate the face he adored; his Holy
Families, with one exception, are the apotheosis of his Fornarina.
This exception, as it proves what had been advanced of the rest, so it
proves likewise that the omission of its beauties in them was more a
matter of choice than want of comprehension. Than the face and attitude
of the Madonna of Versailles, known from a print by Edelinck, copied by
Giac. Frey, nature and art combined never offered to the sense and heart
a more exalted sentiment, or more correspondent forms. The face still,
indeed, offers his favourite lines, lines not of supreme beauty, but
they have assumed a sanctity which is in vain looked for in all its
sister faces: serious without severity, pure without insipidity, humble
though majestic, charming and modest at once, and without affectation
graceful: face and figure unite what we can conceive of maternal beauty,
equally poised between effusion of affection and the mysterious
sentiment of superiority in the awful Infant, whom she bends to receive
from his slumbers.
The bland imagery of Raffaello was exalted to a type of devotion by M.
Angelo, and place and scenery are adjusted with allegoric or prophetic
ornament: thus in the picture painted for Angelo Doni, where the
enraptured mother receives the Infant from the hands of Joseph, the
scene behind exhibits the new sacrament in varied groups of Baptists,
immersing themselves or issuing from the fount. In another, representing
the annunciation, we discover in the awful twilight of a recess, the
figure of Moses breaking the tables he received on Sinai, an allusion to
the abolition of the old law--an infringement of Jewish habits, for the
figure is not an apparition, but a statue, readily forgiven to its
allegoric beauty. Even in those subjects relating to Christ and his
family, where the back-ground is destitute of allusive ornament, it
appears the seat of meditation or virgin purity, and consecrates the
sentiment or action of the figures, as in the salutation of St. Giovanni
in Laterano, and in that where Maria contemplates her son spread in her
lap, and seems to bend under the presentiment of the terrible moment
which shall spread him at her feet, under the cross; but in that
monumental image of Jesus expired on the cross, with the Madonna and
John on each side, what is the scenery but the echo of the subject? The
surrounding element sympathises with the woe of the sufferers in the two
mourning Genii emerging from the air--a sublime conception, which Vasari
fancied to have successfully imitated and perhaps improved, when in a
repetition of the same subject, he travestied them to Phoebus and Diana
extinguishing their orbs, as symbols of sun and moon eclipsed.[87]
What has been said of the luxuriance of Poussin's scenery, leads to that
intemperate abuse which allots it a greater space, a more conspicuous
situation, a higher finish and effect than the importance of the subject
itself permits--by which, unity is destroyed, and it becomes doubtful to
what class a work belongs, whether it be a mixture of two or more, or
all, where portrait with architecture, landscape with history for
"mastery striving, each rules a moment." It cannot be denied that some
of the noblest works of art are liable to this imputation, and that the
fond admiration of the detailed beauties in the scenery of the Pietro
Martire of Titian, if it does not detract from the main purpose for
which the picture was or ought to have been painted, certainly adds
nothing to its real interest--nature finishes all, but an attempt to
mimic nature's universality palsies the hand of art; the celebrated
"Cene," or Supper-Scenes of Paolo Cagliari can escape this imputation
only by being classed as models of ornamental painting; and were it not
known, that notwithstanding their grandeur, propriety, and pathos of
composition, the Cartoons of Raffaello had been originally destined
still more for popular amusement than the poised admiration of select
judges, it would be difficult to excuse or to account for the
exuberance, not seldom the impropriety of accompaniment and of scenery,
with which some of them are loaded: in the Cartoon of the miraculous
draught of fishes, perhaps Giovanni d'Udine would not have been allowed
to treat us with fac-similes of the herons of the lake on its
fore-ground; in that of Paul on the Areopagus, there would probably have
been less agglomeration of finished, unfinished, or half demolished
buildings; in the Miracle of Peter and John, the principal agents would
scarcely have been hemmed in by a barbaric colonnade, loaded with
profane ornament; or in the Massacre of the Infants, the humble cottages
of Bethlehem been transformed to piles of Ionian architecture, girt with
gods in intercolumnar niches, and the metropolitan pomp of Rome.
FOOTNOTES:
[80] The group in the Ludovisi, ever since its discovery, absurdly
misnamed Pætus and Arria, notwithstanding some dissonance of taste and
execution, may with more plausibility claim the title of Hæmon and
Antigone.
[81] The whole of the gallery of Luxemburg by Rubens is but a branch of
its magnificence: general as the elements, universal and permanent as
the affections of human nature, allegory breaks the fetters of time, it
unites with boundless sway mythologic, feodal, local incongruities,
fleeting modes of society and fugitive fashions: thus, in the picture of
Rubens, Minerva, who instructs, the Graces that surround the royal
maiden at the poetic fount, are not what they are in Homer, the real
tutress of Telemachus, the real dressers of Venus, they are the symbols
only of the education which the princess received. In that sublime
design of Michael Agnolo, where a figure is roused by a descending
genius from his repose on a globe, on which he yet reclines, and with
surprise discovers the phantoms of the passions which he courted,
unmasked in wild confusion flitting round him, M. Agnolo was less
ambitious to express the nature of a dream, or to bespeak our attention
to its picturesque effect and powerful contrasts, than to impress us
with the lesson, that all is vanity and life a farce, unless engaged by
virtue and the pursuits of mind.
[82] L'Aurora Sonnacchiosa.
[83] Speaking of the figure of Christ by Raphael in the Madonna del
Spasimo, he calls it "Una Figura d'un Carattere fra quel di Giove, e
quello d'Apollo; quale effettivamente deve esser quello, che corrisponde
a Cristo, aggiungendovi soltanto l'espressione accidentale della
passione, in cui si rappresenta." Opere 11. 83.
[84] It is engraved by Villamena.
[85] The composition, and in some degree the lines, but neither its tone
nor effect, may be found among the etchings, of Le Fevre.
[86] I cannot quit this picture without observing, that it presents the
most incontrovertible evidence of the incongruities arising from the
jarring coalition of the grand and ornamental styles. The group of
Lazarus may be said to contain the most valuable relic of the classic
time of modern, and perhaps the only specimen left of M. Agnolo's
oil-painting; an opinion which will scarcely be disputed by him who has
examined the manner of the Sistine Chapel, and in his mind compared it
with the group of the Lazarus, and that with the style and treatment of
the other parts.
[87] In a picture which he painted at Rome for Bindo Altoviti, it
represented "Un Cristo quanto il vivo, levato di croce, e posto in terra
a' piedi della Madre; e nell' aria Febo, che oscura la faccia del sole,
e Diana quella della Luna. Nel paese poi, oscurato da queste Tenebre, si
veggiono spezzarsi alcuni monti di pietra, mossi dal terremoto, e certi
corpi morti di santi risorgendo, uscire de sepolcri in vari modi; il
quale quadro, finito che fu, per sua grazia non dispiacque al maggior
pittore, scultore, e architetto, che sia stato a' tempi nostri passati?"
The compliment was not paid to M. Agnolo himself, for the word "passati"
tells that he was no more, but it levied a tribute on posterity.
Vita di Giorgio Vasari.
FIFTH LECTURE.
COMPOSITION, EXPRESSION.
=POLLA D' EN
KARDIAIS ANDRÔN EBALON
HÔRAI POLYANTHEMOI AR
CHAIA SOPHISMATH'. HAPAN D' EURONTOS ERGON.=
=PINDAR. OLYMP. P.=
ARGUMENT.
Elements of Composition; Grouping; M. Agnolo; Correggio;
Raffaello; Breadth;--Expression; its Classes, its Limits.
FIFTH LECTURE.
Invention is followed by Composition. Composition, in its stricter
sense, is the dresser of Invention, it superintends the disposition of
its materials.
Composition has physical and moral elements: those are Perspective and
Light with shade; these, Unity, Propriety and Perspicuity; without Unity
it cannot span its subject; without Propriety it cannot tell the story;
without Perspicuity it clouds the fact with confusion; destitute of
light and shade it misses the effect, and heedless of perspective it
cannot find a place.
Composition, like all other parts of style, had a gradual progress; it
began in monotony and apposition, emerged to centre and depth,
established itself on harmony and masses, was debauched by contrast and
by grouping, and finally supplanted by machinery, common-place, and
manner.
Of sculpture, as infant painting had borrowed its first theory of forms,
so it probably borrowed its method of arranging them; and this is
Apposition, a collateral arrangement of figures necessary for telling a
single or the scattered moments of a fact. If statuary indulged in the
combination of numerous groups, such as those of the Niobe, it might
dispose them in composition, it might fix a centre and its rays, and so
produce an illusion as far as colourless form is capable of giving it.
But sculpture, when it was first consulted by painting, was not yet
arrived at that period which allowed the display of such magnificence; a
single figure or a single group could not sufficiently inform the
painter; he was reduced to consult basso-relievo, and of that,
Apposition is the element.
And in this light we ought to contemplate a great part of the Capella
Sistina. Its plan was monumental, and some of its compartments were
allotted to Apposition, not because M. Agnolo was a sculptor, but
because it was a more comprehensive medium to exhibit his general plan
than the narrower scale of composition. He admitted and like a master
treated composition, whenever his subject from the primeval simplicity
of elemental nature retreated within the closer bounds of society: his
Patriarchs, his Prophets and his Sibyls, singly considered or as groups,
the scenery of the Brazen Serpent, of David and of Judith, of Noah and
his sons, are models of the roundest and grandest composition. What
principle of composition do we miss in the creation of Adam and of Eve?
Can it grasp with more unity, characterise with more propriety, present
with brighter perspicuity, give greater truth of place or round with
more effect? If collateral arrangement be the ruling plan of the Last
Judgment, if point of sight and linear and aerial perspective in what is
elevated, comes forward or recedes, if artificial masses and
ostentatious roundness, on the whole, be absorbed by design or
sacrificed to higher principles, what effects has the greatest power of
machinery ever contrived to emulate the conglobation of those struggling
groups where light and shade administered to terror or sublimity? What,
to emulate the boat of Charon disemboguing its crew of criminals, flung
in a murky mass of shade across the pallid concave and bleak blast of
light that blows it on us? A meteor in the realms of chiaroscuro which
obscures whatever the most daring servants of that power elsewhere
produced.
If the plan of M. Agnolo must be estimated by other principles, his
process must be settled by other rules than the plan and process of
Correggio at Parma. Though the first and greatest, Correggio was no more
than a Machinist. It was less the Assumption of the Virgin, less a
monument of triumphant Religion he meditated to exhibit by sublimity of
conception or characteristic composition, than by the ultimate powers of
linear and aerial perspective at an elevation which demanded eccentric
and violent fore-shortening, set off and tuned by magic light and shade,
to embody the medium in which the actors were to move; and to the
splendour and loftiness of that he accommodated the subject and
subordinated the agents. Hence his work, though moving in a flood of
harmony, is not legitimate Composition. The synod that surrounds the
glory, the glory itself that embosoms the Virgin and her angelic choir,
Christ who precipitates himself to meet the glory, are equally absorbed
in the _bravura_ of the vehicle, they radiate, reflect and mass, but
show us little more than limbs. This makes the cupola of Correggio less
epic or dramatic than ornamental. The technic part of Composition alone,
though carried to the highest pitch of perfection, if its ostentation
absorb the subject, stamps inferiority on the master. Take away Homer's
language, and you take much, but you leave the epic poet unimpaired;
take it from Virgil, strip him of the majesty, the glow, the propriety
of his diction, and the remainder of his claim to epic poetry will
nearly be reduced to what he borrowed from Homer's plan. What is it we
remember when we leave the cupolas of Correggio? what when we leave the
Chapel of Sixtus? There, a man who transferred to a colossal scale the
dictates of his draped or naked model, applied them with a comprehensive
eye and set them off by magic light and shade and wide expanded harmony
of tone; here an epic plan combined and told in simple modes of
grandeur. Each man gave what he had: Correggio, limbs and effect; M.
Agnolo, being, form and meaning. If the cupola of Correggio be in its
kind unequalled by earlier or succeeding plans, if it leave far behind
the effusions of Lanfranchi and Pietro da Cortona, it was not the less
their model; the ornamental style of machinists dates not the less its
origin from him.
Various are the shapes in which Composition embodies its subject and
presents it to our eye. The cone or pyramid, the globe, the grape, flame
and stream, the circle and its segments, lend their figure to elevate,
concentrate, round, diffuse themselves or undulate in its masses. It
towers in the Apollo, it darts its flame forward in the warrior of
Agasias, its lambent spires wind upward with the Laocoon; it inverts the
cone in the Hercules of Glycon, it doubles it or undulates in Venus and
the Graces. In the bland central light of a globe imperceptibly gliding
through lucid demi-tints into rich reflected shades, it composes the
spell of Correggio, and entrances like a delicious dream; whilst like a
torrent it rushes from the hand of Tintorett over the trembling canvass
in enormous wings of light and shade, and sweeps all individual
importance in general effects. But whether its groups be imbrowned on a
lucid sky, or emerge from darkness, whether it break like a meridian sun
on the reflected object with Rubens, or from Rembrandt, flash on it in
lightning, whatever be its form or its effect, if it be more or less
than what it ought to be--a vehicle, if it branch not out of the subject
as the produce of its root, if it do not contain all that distinguishes
it from other subjects, if it leave out aught that is characteristic and
exclusively its own, and admit what is superfluous or common-place--it
is no longer composition, it is grouping only, an ostentatious or
useless scaffolding about an edifice without a base; such was not the
Composition of Raffaello.
The leading principle of Raffaello's composition is that simple air,
that artlessness which persuades us that his figures have been less
composed by skill than grouped by Nature; that the fact must have
happened as we see it represented. Simplicity taught him to grasp his
subject, propriety to give it character and form, and perspicuity to
give it breadth and place. The School of Athens in the Vatican, the
Death of Ananias, and the Sacrifice at Lystra, among the Cartoons, may
serve as instances.
A metaphysical composition, if it be numerous, will be oftener mistaken
for dilapidation of fragments than regular distribution of materials.
The School of Athens communicates to few more than an arbitrary
assemblage of speculative groups. Yet if the subject be the dramatic
representation of Philosophy, as it prepares for active life, the parts
of the building are not connected with more regular gradation than those
groups. Archimedes and Pythagoras, Plato and Socrates, Aristotle and
Democritus, Epictetus, Diogenes and Aristippus, in different degrees of
characteristic modes, tell one great doctrine, that, fitted by physical
and intellectual harmony, man ascends from himself to society, from
society to God. For this, group balances group, action is contrasted by
repose, each weight has its counterpoise; unity and variety shed harmony
over the whole.
In the Cartoon of Ananias, at the first glance, and even before we are
made acquainted with the particulars of the subject, we become partners
of the scene. The disposition is amphitheatric, the scenery a spacious
hall, the heart of the action is the centre, the wings assist,
elucidate, connect it with the ends. The apoplectic man before us is
evidently the victim of a supernatural power, inspiring the apostolic
figures, who on the raised platform with threatening arm pronounced, and
with the word enforced his doom. The terror occasioned by the sudden
stroke is best expressed by the features of youth and middle age on each
side of the sufferer; it is instantaneous, because its shock has not yet
spread beyond them, a contrivance not to interrupt the dignity due to
the sacred scene, and to stamp the character of devout attention on the
assembly. What preceded and what followed is equally implied in their
occupation, and in the figure of a matron entering and absorbed in
counting money, though she approaches the fatal centre, and whom we may
suppose to be Sapphira, the accomplice and the wife of Ananias, and the
devoted partner of his fate. In this composition of near thirty figures,
none can be pointed out as a figure of common place or mere convenience;
legitimate offsprings of one subject, they are linked to each other and
to the centre by one common chain, all act and all have room to act;
repose alternates with energy.
The Sacrifice at Lystra, though as a whole it has more of collateral
arrangement than depth of Composition, as it traces in the moment of its
choice the motive that produced and shows the disappointment that checks
it, has collected actors and faces the most suitable to express both:
actors and features of godlike dignity, superstitious devotion and eager
curiosity: the scene is the vestibule of the temple of Hermes, and Paul,
the supposed representative of that deity, though not placed in the
centre or a central light, by his elevation, gesture, and the whole of
the composition streaming toward him, commands the first glance. At the
very onset of the ceremony the sacrificer is arrested in the act of
smiting the victim, by the outstretched arm of a young man bursting
through the hymning throng of priests and victimarii, observing Paul
indignant rending his garment in horror of the idolatrous perversion of
his miracle.[88] The miracle itself is personified in that
characteristic figure of the healed man, who with eyes flashing joy and
gratitude on the Apostle, and hands joined in adoration, rushes in,
accompanied by an aged man of gravity and rank, who, lifting up part of
the garment that covered his thigh, attests him to have been the identic
owner of those crutches that formerly supported him, though now as
useless thrown on the pavement.
Among the Cartoons which we do not possess, and probably exist only in
the tapestries of Rome and Madrid, and engravings copied from them, the
Resurrection of Christ and his Ascension, equally mark Raphael's
discriminative powers in their contrasted compositions. The Resurrection
derives its interest from the convulsive rapidity, the Ascension from
its calmness of motion. In that, the hero like a ball of fire shoots up
from the bursting tomb and sinking cerements, and scatters astonishment
and dismay. What apprehension dared not to suspect, what fancy could not
dream of, no eye had ever beheld and no tongue ever uttered, blazes
before us: the passions dart in rays resistless from the centre. Fear,
terror, conviction, wrestle with dignity and courage in the centurion;
convulse brutality, overwhelm violence, enervate resistance, absorb
incredulity in the guard. The whole is tempestuous. The Ascension is
the majestic last of many similar scenes: no longer with the rapidity of
a conqueror, but with the calm serenity of triumphant power, the Hero is
borne up in splendour, and gradually vanishes from those who by repeated
visions had been taught to expect whatever was amazing. Silent and
composed, with eyes more absorbed in adoration than wonder, they follow
the glorious emanation; till addressed by the white-robed messengers of
their departed king, they relapse to the feelings of men.
We have considered hitherto the mental part of Raffaello's composition,
let us say a word of the technic. His excellence in this is breadth of
masses, and of positive light and shade.