over the parts as to excite the idea of uninterrupted unity amid the
greatest variety, modern art, as it appears to me, owes to M. Agnolo.
The breadth of M. Agnolo resembles the tide and ebb of a mighty sea:
waves approach, arrive, retreat, but in their rise and fall, emerging or
absorbed, impress us only with the image of the power that raises, that
directs them; whilst the discrepance of obtruding parts in the works of
the infant Florentine, Venetian and German schools, distracts our eye
like the numberless breakers of a shallow river, or as the brambles and
creepers that entangle the paths of a wood, and instead of showing us
our road, perplex us only with themselves. By breadth the artist puts us
into immediate possession of the whole, and from that, gently leads us
to the examination of the parts according to their relative importance:
hence it follows, that in a representation of organized surfaces,
breadth is the judicious display of fullness, not a substitute of
vacuity. Breadth might be easily obtained if emptiness could give it.
Yet even in that degraded state, if gratification of the eye be a first
indispensable duty of an art that can impress us only by that organ, it
is preferable to the laboured display of parts ambitiously thronging for
admittance at the expense of the whole; to that perplexed diligence
which wearies us with impediment before we can penetrate a meaning or
arrive at the subject, whose clear idea must be first obtained before we
can judge of the propriety or impropriety of parts. The principle which
constitutes the breadth of Raphael was neither so absolute nor so
comprehensive as that of M. Agnolo's. But his perspicacity soon
discovered, that great, uninterrupted masses of light and shade,
bespeak, satisfy, conduct and give repose to the eye; that opposition of
light and shade gives perspicuity. Convinced of this, he let their mass
fall as broad on his figures as their importance, attitude and relation
to each other permitted, and as seldom as possible, interrupted it.
Masses of shade he opposed to light, and lucid ones to shade. The strict
observation of this rule appears to be the cause why every figure of
Raffaello, however small, even at a considerable distance, describes
itself, and strikes the eye with distinctness; so that even the
comparatively diminutive figures of his Loggia are easily discriminated
from the Cortile below. To this maxim he remained faithful in all his
works, a few instances excepted, when instead of light and shade he
separated figures by reflexes of a different colour; exceptions more
dictated by necessity than choice, and which serve rather to confirm
than to impair the rule.
It cannot be denied that, if this positive opposition gave superior
distinctness, it occasioned sometimes abruptness. Each part is broad,
but separation is too visible. Reflexes he uniformly neglects, and, from
whatever cause, is often inattentive to transition; he does not
sufficiently connect with breadth of demi-tint the two extremes of his
masses; and, though much less in fresco than in oil, seems not always to
have had a distinct idea of the gradations required completely to round
as well as to spread a whole; to have been more anxious to obtain
breadth itself than its elemental harmony.
It does not appear that the great masters of legitimate composition in
the sixteenth century attended to or understood the advantages which
elevation of site and a low horizon are capable of giving to a subject.
They place us in the gallery to behold their scenes; but, from want of
keeping, the horizontal line becomes a perpendicular, and drops the
distance on the foreground; the more remote groups do not approach, but
fall or stand upon the foremost actors. As this impedes the principles
of unity and grandeur in numerous compositions, so it impairs each
individual form; which, to be grand, ought to rise upward in moderate
foreshortening, command the horizon, or be in contact with the sky.
Reverse this plan in the composition of Pietro Martyre by Tizian, let
the horizontal line be raised above the friar on the fore-ground, space,
loftiness, and unity, vanish together. What gives sublimity to
Rembrandt's Ecce Homo more than this principle?--a composition, which
though complete, hides in its grandeur the limits of its scenery. Its
form is as a pyramid whose top is lost in the sky, as its base in
tumultuous murky waves. From the fluctuating crowds who inundate the
base of the tribunal, we rise to Pilate, surrounded and perplexed by the
varied ferocity of the sanguinary synod, to whose remorseless gripe he
surrenders his wand; and from him we ascend to the sublime resignation
of innocence in Christ, and regardless of the roar below, securely
repose on his countenance. Such is the grandeur of a conception, which
in its blaze absorbs the abominable detail of materials too vulgar to be
mentioned; had the materials been equal to the conception and
composition, the Ecce Homo of Rembrandt, even unsupported by the magic
of its light and shade, or his spell of colours, would have been an
assemblage of superhuman powers.
* * * * *
Far, too far, from having answered all the demands of composition, my
limits force me, and my subject requires, to give a faint sketch of the
most prominent features of Expression, its assistant and interpreter.
They interweave themselves so closely with each other, and both with
Invention, that we can scarcely conceive one without supposing the
presence of the rest, and applying the principles of each to all; still
they are separate powers, and may be possessed singly. The figure of
Christ by M. Agnolo in the Minerva, embracing his cross and the
instruments of suffering, is sublimely conceived, powerfully arranged;
but neither his features nor expression are those of Christ.
Expression is the vivid image of the passion that affects the mind; its
language, and the portrait of its situation. It animates the features,
attitudes, and gestures, which Invention selected, and Composition
arranged; its principles, like theirs, are simplicity, propriety, and
energy.
It is important to distinguish the materials and the spirit of
expression. To give this we must be masters of the forms and of the hues
that embody it. Without truth of line no true expression is possible;
and the passions, whose inward energy stamped form on feature, equally
reside, fluctuate, flash or lower on it in colour, and give it energy by
light and shade.
To make a face speak clearly and with propriety, it must not only be
well constructed, but have its own exclusive character. Though the
element of the passions be the same in all, they neither speak in all
with equal energy, nor are circumscribed by equal limits. Though joy be
joy, and anger anger, the joy of the sanguine is not that of the
phlegmatic, nor the anger of the melancholy that of the fiery character;
and the discriminations established by complexion are equally
conspicuous in those of climate, habit, education, and rank. Expression
has its classes. Decebalus and Syphax, though both determined to die,
meet death with eye as different as hues. The tremulous emotion of
Hector's breast when he approaches Ajax, is not the palpitation of Paris
when he discovers Menelaus; the frown of the Hercynian Phantom may
repress the ardour, but cannot subdue the dignity of Drusus; the fear of
Marius cannot sink to the panic of the Cimber, who drops the dagger at
entering his prison, nor the astonishment of Hamlet degenerate into the
fright of vulgar fear.
Le Sueur was not aware of this when he painted his Alexander. Perhaps no
picture is, in spite of common sense, oftener quoted for its expression
than Alexander sick on his bed, with the cup at his lips, observing the
calumniated physician. The manner in which he is represented is as
inconsistent with the story as injurious to the character of the
Macedonian hero. The Alexander of Le Sueur has the prying look of a spy.
He who was capable of that look would no more have ventured on quaffing
a single drop of the suspected medicine, than on the conquest of the
Persian empire. If Alexander, when he drank the cup, had not the most
positive faith in the incorruptibility of Philippus, he was more than an
idiot, he was a felon against himself and a traitor to his army, whose
safety depended on the success of the experiment. His expression ought
to be open and unconcerned confidence--as that of his physician, a
contemptuous smile, or curiosity suspended by indignation, or the
indifference of a mind conscious of innocence, and fully relying on its
being known to his friend. Le Sueur, instead of these, has given him
little more than a stupid stare and vulgar form.
The emanations of the passions, which pathognomy has reduced to the four
principal sources of _calm emotion_, _joy_, _grief simple, or with
pain_, and _terror_;--may be divided into internal and external ones:
those hint their action only, they influence a feature or some
extremity: these extend their sway over the whole frame--they animate,
agitate, depress, convulse, absorb form. The systematic designers of
pathognomy have given their element, their extremes, the mask; the
ancients have established their technic standard, and their degrees of
admissibility in art. The Apollo is animated; the Warrior of Agasias is
agitated; the dying Gladiator or herald suffers in depression; the
Laocoon is convulsed; the Niobe is absorbed. The greater the mental
vigour, dignity, or habitual self-command of a person, the less
perceptible to superficial observation or vulgar eyes will be the
emotion of his mind. The greater the predominance of fancy over
intellect, the more ungovernable the conceits of self-importance, so
much the more will passion partake of outward and less dignified energy.
The Jupiter of Homer manifests his will and power by the mere
contraction of his eyebrows; Socrates in the School of Athens only moves
his finger, and Ovid in the Parnassus only lays it over his lips, and
both say enough; but Achilles throws himself headlong, and is prevented
from slaying himself by the grasp of his friend. Only then, when passion
or suffering become too big for utterance, the wisdom of ancient art has
borrowed a feature from tranquillity, though not its air. For every
being seized by an enormous passion, be it joy or grief, or fear sunk to
despair, loses the character of its own individual expression, and is
absorbed by the power of the feature that attracts it. Niobe and her
family are assimilated by extreme anguish; Ugolino is petrified by the
fate that swept the stripling at his foot, and sweeps in pangs the rest.
The metamorphoses of ancient mythology are founded on this principle,
are allegoric. Clytia, Biblis, Salmacis, Narcissus, tell only the
resistless power of sympathetic attraction.
Similar principles award to Raffaello the palm of expression among the
moderns: driven to extremes after his demise by Julio Romano and a long
interval of languor, it seemed to revive in Domenichino; I say seemed,
for his sensibility was not supported by equal comprehension, elevation
of mind, or dignity of motion; his sentiment wants propriety, he is a
mannerist in feeling, and tacks the imagery of Theocritus to the
subjects of Homer. A detail of petty though amiable conceptions, is
rather calculated to diminish than to enforce the energy of a pathetic
whole: a lovely child taking refuge in the lap or bosom of a lovely
mother, is an idea of nature, and pleasing in a lowly, pastoral or
domestic subject; but, perpetually recurring, becomes common-place, and
amid the terrors of martyrdom is a shred sewed to a purple robe. In
touching the characteristic circle that surrounds the Ananias of
Raffaello, you touch the electric chain, a genuine spark irresistibly
darts from the last as from the first, penetrates, subdues; at the
Martyrdom of St. Agnes by Domenichino, you saunter among the
adventitious mob of a lane, where the silly chat of neighbouring gossips
announces a topic as silly, till you find with indignation, that instead
of a broken pot or a petty theft, you are to witness a scene for which
heaven opens, the angels descend, and Jesus rises from his throne.
It is however but justice to observe, that there is a subject in which
Domenichino has not unsuccessfully wrestled, and, in my opinion, even
excelled Raffaello; I mean the demoniac boy among the series of frescoes
at Grotto Ferrata: that inspired figure is evidently the organ of an
internal, superior, preternatural agent, darted upward without
contortion, and considered as unconnected with the story, never to be
confounded with a merely tumultuary distorted maniac, which is not
perhaps the case of the boy in the Transfiguration; the subject too
being within the range of Domenichino's powers, domestic, the whole of
the persons introduced is characteristic: awe, with reliance on the
Saint who operates the miracle or cure, and terror at the redoubled fury
of his son, mark the rustic father; nor could the agonizing female with
the infant in her arm, as she is the mother, be exchanged to advantage,
and with propriety occupies that place which the fondling females in the
pictures of St. Sebastian, St. Andrew, and St. Agnes only usurp.
The Martyrdom, or rather the brutally ostentatious murder of St. Agnes
leads us to the _limits_ of expression: sympathy and disgust are the
irreconcileable parallels that must for ever separate legitimate terror
and pity from horror and aversion. We cannot sympathise with what we
detest or despise, nor fully pity what we shudder at or loathe. So
little were these limits understood by the moderns, M. Agnolo excepted,
that even the humanity and delicacy of Raffaello did not guard him from
excursions into the realms of horror and loathsomeness: it is difficult
to conceive what could provoke him to make a finished design of the
inhumanities that accompany the martyrdom of St. Felicitas at which even
description shudders; a design made on purpose to be dispersed over
Europe, perpetuated and made known to all by the graver of Marc Antonio:
Was it to prove to Albert Durer and the Germans of his time that they
had not exhausted the sources of abomination? He made an equal mistake
in the Morbetto, where, though not with so lavish a hand as Poussin
after him, instead of the moral effects of the plague, he has
personified the effluvia of putrefaction. What _he_ had not penetration
to avoid, could not be expected to be shunned by his scholars. Julio
Romano delighted in studied images of torture as well as of the most
abandoned licentiousness. Among his contemporaries, Correggio even
attempted to give a zest to the most wanton cruelty by an affectation of
grace in the picture of the Saints Placido and Flavia: but the enamoured
trance of Placido with his neck half cut, and the anthem that quivers on
the lips of Flavia whilst a sword is entering her side, in vain bespeak
our sympathy, for whilst we detest the felons who slaughter them, we
loathe to inspect the actual process of the crime; mangling is
contagious, and spreads aversion from the slaughterman to the victim. If
St. Bartholomew and St. Erasmus are subjects for painting, they can only
be so before, and neither under nor after the operation of the knife or
windlass. A decollated martyr represented with his head in his hand, as
Rubens did, and a headless corpse with the head lying by it, as
Correggio, can only prove the brutality, stupidity, or bigotry of the
employer, and the callus or venality of the artist.
The gradations of expression within, close to, and beyond its limits
cannot perhaps be elucidated with greater perspicuity than by
comparison; and the different moments which Julio Romano, Vandyke and
Rembrandt, have selected to represent the subject of Samson betrayed by
Delilah, offers one of the fairest specimens furnished by art.
Considering it as a drama, we may say that Julio forms the plot, Vandyke
unravels it, and Rembrandt shows the extreme of the catastrophe.
In the composition of Julio, Samson, satiated with pleasure, plunged
into sleep, and stretched on the ground, rests his head and presses with
his arm the thigh of Delilah on one side, whilst on the other a nimble
minion busily, but with timorous caution, fingers and clips his locks;
such is his fear, that, to be firm, he rests one knee on a foot-stool
tremblingly watching the sleeper, and ready to escape at his least
motion. Delilah, seated between both, fixed by the weight of Samson,
warily turns her head toward a troop of warriors in the back ground,
with the left arm stretched out she beckons their leader, with the
finger of the right hand she presses her lip to enjoin silence and
noiseless approach. The Herculean make and lion port of Samson, his
perturbed though ponderous sleep, the quivering agility of the curled
favourite employed, the harlot graces and meretricious elegance
contrasted by equal firmness and sense of danger in Delilah, the
attitude and look of the grim veteran who heads the ambush, whilst they
give us the clue to all that followed, keep us in anxious suspense, we
palpitate in breathless expectation; this is the plot.
The terrors which Julio made us forebode, Vandyke summons to our eyes.
The mysterious lock is cut; the dreaded victim is roused from the lap of
the harlot-priestess. Starting unconscious of his departed power, he
attempts to spring forward, and with one effort of his mighty breast and
expanded arms to dash his foes to the ground and fling the alarmed
traitress from him--in vain; shorn of his strength he is borne down by
the weight of the mailed chief that throws himself upon him, and
overpowered by a throng of infuriate satellites. But though overpowered,
less aghast than indignant, his eye flashes reproach on the perfidious
female whose wheedling caresses drew the fatal secret from his breast;
the plot is unfolded, and what succeeds, too horrible for the sense, is
left to fancy to brood upon, or drop it.
This moment of horror the gigantic but barbarous genius of Rembrandt
chose, and, without a metaphor, _executed_ a subject, which humanity,
judgment and taste taught his rivals, only to _treat_; he displays a
scene which no eye but that of Domitian or Nero could wish or bear to
see. Samson, stretched on the ground, is held by one Philistine under
him, whilst another chains his right arm, and a third clenching his
beard with one, drives a dagger into his eye with the other hand. The
pain that blasts him, darts expression from the contortions of the mouth
and his gnashing teeth to the crampy convulsions of the leg dashed high
into the air. Some fiend-like features glare through the gloomy light
which discovers Delilah, her work now done, sliding off, the shears in
her left, the locks of Samson in her right hand. If her figure, elegant,
attractive, such as Rembrandt never conceived before or after, deserve
our wonder rather than our praise, no words can do justice to the
expression that animates her face, and shows her less shrinking from
the horrid scene than exulting in being its cause. Such is the work
whose magic of colour, tone and chiaroscuro irresistibly entrap the eye,
whilst we detest the brutal choice of the moment.[89]
Let us in conclusion contrast the stern pathos of this scenery with the
placid emotions of a milder subject, in the celebrated pictures which
represent the Communion or death of St. Jerome by Agostino Caracci and
his scholar Domenichino--that an altar-piece in the Certosa near
Bologna, this in the church of St. Girolamo della Carità at Rome; but
for some time both exhibited in the gallery of the Louvre at Paris. What
I have to say on the Invention, Expression, Characters, Tone and Colour
of either is the result of observations lately made on both in that
gallery, where then they were placed nearly opposite to each other.
In each picture, St. Jerome, brought from his cell to receive the
sacrament, is represented on his knees, supported by devout attendants;
in each the officiating priest is in the act of administering to the
dying saint; the same clerical society fills the portico of the temple
in both, in both the scene is witnessed from above by infant angels.
The general opinion is in favour of the Pupil, but if in the economy of
the whole Domenichino surpasses his master, he appears to me greatly
inferior both in the character and expression of the hero. Domenichino
has represented Piety scarcely struggling with decay, Agostino
triumphant over it, his saint becomes in the place where he is, a
superior being, and is inspired by the approaching god: that of
Domenichino seems divided between resignation, mental and bodily
imbecility and desire. The saint of Agostino is a lion, that of
Domenichino a lamb.
In the sacerdotal figure administering the viaticum, Domenichino has
less improved than corrected the unworthy choice of his master. The
priest of Agostino is one of the Frati Godenti of Dante, before they
received the infernal hood; a gross, fat, self-conceited terrestrial
feature, a countenance equally proof to elevation, pity or thought. The
priest of Domenichino is a minister of grace, stamped with the sacred
humility that characterized his master, and penetrated by the function
of which he is the instrument.
We are more impressed with the graces of youth than the energies of
manhood verging on age: in this respect, as well as that of contrast
with the decrepitude of St. Jerome, the placid contemplative beauty of
the young deacon on the foreground of Domenichino, will probably please
more than the poetic trance of the assistant friar with the lighted
taper in the foreground of Agostino. This must however be observed, that
as Domenichino thought proper to introduce supernatural witnesses of the
ceremony in imitation of his master, their effect seems less ornamental,
and more interwoven with the plan, by being perceived by the actors
themselves.
If the attendant characters in the picture of Agostino are more
numerous, and have on the whole, furnished the hints of admission to
those of Domenichino, this, with one exception, may be said to have used
more propriety and judgment in the choice. Both have introduced a man
with a turban, and opened a portico to characterize an Asiatic scene.
With regard to composition, Domenichino undoubtedly gains the palm. The
disposition on the whole he owes to his master, though he reversed it,
but he has cleared it of that oppressive bustle which rather involves
and crowds the principal actors in Agostino than attends them. He
spreads tranquillity with space, and repose without vacuity.
With this corresponds the tone of the whole. The evening-freshness of an
oriental day tinges every part; the medium of Agostino partakes too much
of the fumigated inside of a Catholic chapel.
The draperies of both are characteristic, and unite subordination with
dignity, but their colour is chosen with more judgment by Domenichino;
the imbrowned gold and ample folds of the robe of the administering
priest are more genial than the cold blue, white and yellow on the
priest of his master; in both, perhaps, the white draperies on the
foreground figures have too little strength for the central colours, but
it is more perceived in Carracci than in Domenichino.
The forms of the saint in Carracci are grander and more ideal than in
the saint of Domenichino; some have even thought them too vigorous:
both, in my opinion, are in harmony with the emotion of the face and
expression of either. The eagerness that animates the countenance of the
one may be supposed to spread a momentary vigour over his frame. The
mental dereliction of countenance in the other with equal propriety
relaxes and palsies the limbs which depend on it.
The colour of Carracci's saint is much more characteristic of fleshy
though nearly bloodless substance than that chosen by his rival, which
is withered, shrivelled, leathery in the lights, and earthy in the
shades; but the head of the officiating priest in Domenichino, whether
considered as a specimen of colour independent of the rest or as set off
by it, for truth, tone, freshness, energy, is not only the best
Domenichino ever painted, but perhaps the best that can be conceived.
FOOTNOTES:
[88] A miracle means an act performed by virtue of an unknown law of
Nature.
[89] The form, but not the soul, of Julio's composition has been
borrowed by Rubens, or the master of the well-known picture in the
gallery of Dulwich college. Few can be unacquainted with the work of
Vandyke, spread by the best engravers of that school. The picture of
Rembrandt is the chief ornament of the collection in the garden-house of
the Schönborn family, in one of the suburbs of Vienna: has been etched
on a large scale, and there is a copy of it in the gallery at Cassel. A
circumstantial account of it may be found in the Eighth Letter, vol.
iii. of Kütner's Travels.
SIXTH LECTURE.
CHIAROSCURO.
Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dare lucem.
Horat. de Arte Poet. L. 143.
ARGUMENT.
Definition.--Lionardo da Vinci.--Giorgione.--Antonio da
Correggio.
SIXTH LECTURE.