fortunate circumstances which raised the Greeks to the legislation of
form: the standard they erected, the canon they set, fell not from
heaven; but as they fancied themselves of divine origin, and religion
was the first mover of their art, it followed that they should endeavour
to invest their authors with the most perfect forms, and finding _that_
the privilege of man, they were led to a complete and reasoned study of
his elements and constitution; this with their climate, which allowed
that form to grow and to show itself to the greatest advantage, with
their civil and political institutions, which established and
encouraged exercises, manners, and opportunities, of all others best
calculated to rear, accomplish, and produce that form, gave in
successive periods birth to that style which beginning with the
_essence_, proportion, proceeded to _character_, and rose to its height
by uniting both with Beauty. Of all three classes specimens in
sufficient numbers have survived the ravages of time, the most
considerable of which, accumulated within these walls, form the ample
stores of information which the Academy displays before its students;
but--I say it with reluctance, though as teacher my office, as your
reader my duty, demand it--displays not always with adequate success.
Too often the precipitation with which admission from the Plaster to the
Life-room is solicited; the total neglect of the Antique after they have
once invaded the model, and the equally slovenly, authoritative, and
uninformed manner of drawing from it, prove the superficial impression
of the forms previously offered to their selection. The reason of all
this lies perhaps in a too early admission to either room. They enter
without elements, and proceed without success; they are set to arrange
and polish before they are acquainted with the rough materials. To one
or both of these causes it is probably owing, that some consider it
still as an undecided question whether the student, when admitted to
draw from the living model, should confine himself to drawing
punctiliously what he sees before him, or exercise that judgment which
his course in the Antique Academy has matured, and draw forms
corresponding with each other. To me, after considering carefully what
has been advanced on either side, it appears demonstrated, that the
student is admitted to the life to avail himself of the knowledge he
acquired from the previous study of classic forms. Here the office and
the essential duties of the _visitor_, I speak with deference, begin, to
confirm him where he is right, to check presumption, to lend him his own
eyes, and, if it be necessary, to convince him by demonstration and
example. But the human system cannot be comprehended by mere
contemplation, or even the copy of the surface. The centre of its motion
must be fixed, justly to mark the emanation of the rays. The
uninterrupted undulation of outward forms, the waves of life, originate
within, and, without being traced to that source, instruct less than
confound. The real basis of sight is knowledge, and that knowledge is
internal; for though, to speak with Milton, in Poetry gods and demigods,
"vital in every part, all heart, all eye, all ear, as they please limb
themselves, and colour, shape, and size assume as likes them best;" in
Art their substance is built on the brittle strength of bones, they act
by human elements, and to descend must rise: hence, though a deep and
subtle knowledge of _anatomy_ be less necessary to the painter than to
the physician or surgeon; though the visible be his sphere and determine
his limits, a precise and accurate acquaintance with the skeleton, the
basis of the machine, is indispensable; he must make himself master of
the muscles, tendons, and ligaments that knit the bones or cover and
surround them, their antagonismus of action and reaction, their issues,
their insertions, and the variety of shapes which they assume, when
according to their relative foreshortenings, laxity, position, they
indicate energy or slackness of action or of frame, its greater or less
elasticity, furnish the characters of the passions, and by their
irritability in louder or fainter tones become the echoes of every
impression.
Nor can _Physiognomy_, the companion of Anatomy, which from the measure
of the _solid_ parts ascertains the precise proportion of the
_moveable_, be dispensed with. There have been, perhaps there are,
teachers of art, who, whilst they admit physiognomy in the mass, refuse
to acknowledge it in detail, or in other words, who admit a language,
and reject its elements: as if the whole harmony of every proportionate
object did not consist in the correspondence of singly imperceptible, or
seemingly insignificant elements, and would not become a deformed mass
without them. Let the twelfth part of an inch be added to, or taken
from, the space between the upper lip of the Apollo, and the God is
lost.
The want of this necessary qualification is one of the chief causes of
MANNER, the capital blemish of Design, in contradistinction to Style:
Style pervades and consults the subject, and co-ordinates its means to
its demands; Manner subordinates the subject to its means. A Mannerist
is the paltry epitomist of Nature's immense volume; a juggler, who
pretends to mimic the infinite variety of her materials by the vain
display of a few fragments of crockery. He produces, not indeed the
monster which Horace recommends to the mirth of his friends, the
offspring of grotesque fancy, and rejected with equal disdain or
incredulity by the vulgar and refined, but others not less disgusting,
though perhaps confined to a narrower circle of judges.
Mannerists may be divided into three classes:
1st. Those who never consult Nature, but at second hand; only see her
through the medium of some prescription, and fix her to the test of a
peculiar form.
2ndly. Those who persevere to look for her or to place her on a spot
where she cannot be found, some individual one or analogous models; and
3rdly. Those who, without ascending to the principle, content themselves
with jumbling together an aggregate of style and model, tack deformity
to beauty, and meanness to grandeur.
Of all Taste, the standard lies in the middle between extravagance and
scantiness; the best becomes a flaw, if carried to an extreme, or
indiscriminately applied. The Apollo, the Hercules of Glycon, and the
figure misnamed Gladiator, are each models of style in their respective
classes; but their excellence would become a flaw if indiscriminately
applied to the distinct demand of different subjects. Neither the
Apollo, the Hercules, nor the Gladiator, can singly supply the forms of
a Theseus, Meleager, or Achilles, any more than the heroes on Monte
Cavallo theirs. It must however be owned, that he would commit a more
venial error, and come nearer to the form we require in the Achilles of
Homer, who should substitute the form of the Apollo or Hercules with the
motion of the Gladiator to the real form, than he who should copy him
from the best individual he could meet with: the reason is clear, there
is a greater analogy between their form and action and that of Achilles,
than between him and the best model we know alive. From the same
principle, he who in a subject of pure history would attempt to
introduce the generic and patriarchal forms in the Capella Sistina would
become ludicrous by the excess of contrast; for to him the organic
characteristics of national proportion are little less essential than to
the draughtsman of natural history or the portrait painter. The skull
of an European, though tinged with African hues, will not assimilate
with the legitimate skull of a negro, nor can the foot of Meleager, or
even of the Laocoon, ever be exchanged for that of a Mongul or Chinese;
and he has probably mistaken his information, who fancies that the
expression, gait, and limbs of the Apollo can find their counterpart on
the Apalachian mountains, or are related to the unconquered tribes of
Florida.
The least pardonable of all Mannerists appears to be he who applies to
meanness to furnish him with the instruments to dignity and grandeur. He
who relies for all upon his model, should treat no other subject but his
model; and I will venture to say, that even the extravagant forms, and,
if you will, caricatures of Goltzius seduced by Spranger are preferable
to those of Albert Durer or Caravaggio, though recommended by the
precision of the one and the chiaroscuro of the other, when applied to a
pure heroic or symbolic subject; for though eccentric and extreme, they
are eccentricities and extremes of the great style, in which meanness of
conception is of all other blemishes the least excusable. From this
blemish the mighty genius of Raffaello, before it emerged from the dregs
of Pietro Perugino, was not entirely free;--whether from timidity or
languor of conception, the Christ in the Dispute on the Sacrament,
though the principal figure, the centre from which all the rest like
radii emanate and ought to emanate in due subordination, is a tame, mean
figure, and, the placidity of the face perhaps excepted, for even that
has a tincture of meanness, inferior to all the patriarchs and doctors
of that numerous composition.
The _third_ class, or those who mix up a motley assemblage of ideal
beauty and common nature, such as was pounded together by Pietro Testa
and Gherard Lairesse, and from which neither Guido nor Poussin were
entirely free--though perhaps not strictly chargeable with the absolute
impropriety of the first and the lowness of the second class, must be
content with what we can spare of disapprobation from either: they
surprise us into pleasure by glimpses of character and form, and as
often disappoint us by the obtrusion of heterogeneous or vulgar forms.
But this disappointment is not so general, because we want that critical
acquaintance with the principles of ancient art which can assign each
trunk its head, each limb its counterpart: a want even now so frequent,
notwithstanding the boasted refinements of Roman and German criticisms,
that a Mercury, if he have left his caduceus, may exchange his limbs
with a Meleager, and he with an Antinous; perhaps a Jupiter on Ida his
torso with that of a Hercules anapauomenos, an Ariadne be turned into
the head of a hornless Bacchus, and an Isis be substituted for every
ideal female.
FOOTNOTES:
[95] Analogia. Vitruv. Commensio?
[96] If this happened at all, it must have happened before 1505, at
least before the expiration of that year: Giov. Bellino, with whom the
author of the preface makes Albert acquainted too, died in 1512. Albert
Durer was born in 1471.
[97] Idealismus.
EIGHTH LECTURE.
COLOUR.--IN FRESCO PAINTING.
EIGHTH LECTURE.
The Painter's art may be considered in a double light, either as
exerting its power over _the senses_ to reach the intellect and heart,
or merely as their handmaid, teaching its graces to charm their organs
for their amusement only: in the first light, the senses, like the rest
of its materials, are only a vehicle; in the second, they are the
principal object and the ultimate aim of its endeavours.
I shall not enquire here whether the Arts, as mere ministers of sensual
pleasure, still deserve the name of liberal, or are competent
exclusively to fill up the time of an intellectual being. Nature, and
the masters of Art, who pronounce the verdicts of Nature in Poetry and
Painting, have decided, that they neither can attain their highest
degree of accomplishment, nor can be considered as useful assistants to
the happiness of society, unless they subordinate the vehicle, whatever
it be, to the real object, and make sense the minister of mind.
When this is their object, _Design_, in its most extensive as in its
strictest sense, is their basis; when they stoop to be the mere
playthings, or debase themselves to be the debauchers of the senses,
they make _Colour_ their insidious foundation.
The greatest master of Colour in our time, the man who might have been
the rival of the first colourists in every age, Reynolds, in his public
instruction uniformly persisted to treat Colour as a subordinate
principle. Though fully aware that, without possessing at least a
competent share of its numberless fascinating qualities, no man, let his
style of design or powers of invention be what they may, can either hope
for professional success, or can even properly be called a painter, and
giving it as his opinion, on the authority of tradition, the excellence
of the remaining monuments in sculpture, and the discovered though
inferior relics of ancient painting, that, if the coloured masterpieces
of antiquity had descended to us in tolerable preservation, we might
expect to see works designed in the style of the Laocoon, painted in
that of Titian;--he still persisted in the doctrine that even the colour
of Titian, far from adding to the sublimity of the Great style, would
only have served to retard, if not to degrade, its impression. He knew
the usurping, the ambitious principle inseparable from Colour, and
therefore thought it his duty, by making it the basis of ornamental
styles, not to check its legitimate rights, but to guard against its
indiscriminate demands.
It is not for me, (who have courted and still continue to court Colour
as a despairing lover courts a disdainful mistress,) to presume, by
adding my opinion, to degrade the great one delivered; but the
attachments of fancy ought not to regulate the motives of a teacher, or
direct his plan of art: it becomes me therefore to tell you, that if the
principle which animates the art gives rights and privilege to Colour
not its own; if from a medium, it raises it to a representative of all;
if what is claimed in vain by form and mind, it fondly grants to
colour; if it divert the public eye from higher beauties to be absorbed
by its lures--then the art is degraded to a mere vehicle of sensual
pleasure, an implement of luxury, a beautiful _but trifling_ bauble, or
a splendid fault.
To Colour, when its bland purity tinges the face of innocence and
sprouting life, or its magic charm traces in imperceptible transitions
the forms of beauty; when its warm and ensanguined vigour stamps the
vivid principle that animates full-grown youth and the powerful frame of
manhood, or in paler gradations marks animal decline; when its varieties
give truth with character to individual imitation, or its more
comprehensive tone pervades the scenes of sublimity and expression, and
dictates the medium in which they ought to move, to strike our eye in
harmony;--to Colour, the florid attendant of form, the minister of the
passions, the herald of energy and character, what eye, not tinged by
disease or deserted by Nature, refuses homage?
But of Colour, when equally it overwhelms the forms of infancy, the
milky germ of life, and the defined lines of manhood and of beauty with
lumpy pulp; when from the dresser of the Graces it becomes the handmaid
of deformity, and with their spoils decks her limbs--shakes hands with
meanness, or haunts the recesses of loathsomeness and horror[98]--when
it exchanges flesh for roses, and vigour for vulgarity--absorbs
character and truth in hues of flattery, or changes the tone demanded by
sublimity and pathos into a mannered medium of playful tints;--of Colour
the slave of fashion and usurper of propriety, if still its charms
retain our eye, what mind unseduced by prejudice or habit can forbear to
lament the abuse?
The principles of Colour, as varied, are as immutable as those of
Nature. The gradations of the system that connects _light_ with _shade_
are immense, but the variety of its imitation is regulated by the result
of their union, Simplicity--Clearness if obtained by Harmony!
Simplicity represents of every individual its unity, its whole. Light,
and its organ the eye, show us the whole of a being before its parts,
and then diffuse themselves in visual rays over the limbs. Light with
its own velocity fixes a point, the focus of its power; but as no
central light can be conceived without radiation, nor a central form
without extension, their union produces that immutable law of harmony
which we call breadth.
One point is the brightest in the eye as on the object; this is the
point of light: from it in all directions the existent parts advance or
recede, by, before, behind each other; the two extremes of light and
shade make a whole, which the local or essential colour defines,--its
coalition with the demi-tint, the shade and reflexes, rounds,--and the
correspondence of each colour with all, tunes.
The principles that regulate the choice of colours are in themselves as
invariable as the light from which they spring, and as the shade that
absorbs them. Their economy is neither arbitrary nor phantastic. Of this
every one may convince himself who can contemplate a prism. Whatever the
colours be, they follow each other in regular order; they emerge from,
they flow into each other. No confusion can break or thwart their
gradations, from blue to yellow, from yellow to red; the flame of every
light, without a prisma, establishes this immutable scale.
From this theory you will not expect that I should enter into chemic
disquisitions on the materials, or into technic ones on the methods of
painting. When you are told that _simplicity and keeping_ are the basis
of purity and harmony, that _one_ colour has a greater power than a
combination of two, that a mixture of three impairs that power still
more, you are in possession of the great elemental principles necessary
for the economy of your palette. Method, handling, and the modes of
execution are taught by trial, comparison, and persevering practice, but
chiefly by the nature, of the object you pursue. The lessons of
repetition, disappointment, and blunder, impress more forcibly than the
lessons of all masters. Not that I mean to depreciate or to level the
comparative value or inferiority of materials, or that instruction which
may shorten your road to the essential parts of study; but he is as far
from Nature who sees her only through the medium of his master, as he
from colour who fancies it lies in costly, scarce, or fine materials,
in curious preparations, or mouldy secrets, in light, in dark, in
smooth, in rough, or in absorbent grounds: it may be in all, but is in
none of these. The masters of ancient colour had for their basis only
four, and this simplicity made Reynolds conclude that they must have
been as great in colour as in form. He who cannot make use of the worst
must disgrace the best materials; and he whose palette is set or
regulated by another's eye, renounces his own, and must become a
mannerist. There is no compendious method of becoming great; the price
of excellence is labour, and time that of immortality.
Colour, like Design, has two essential parts, Imitation and Style. It
begins in glare, is caught by deception, emerges to imitation, is
finished by style, and debauched by manner.
Glare is always the first feature of a savage or an infant taste. The
timid or barbarous beginner, afraid of impairing the splendour by
diminishing the mass, exults in the Egyptian glare which he spreads over
a surface unbroken by tint and not relieved by shade. Such are in
general the flaming remnants of feudal decoration. This is the stage of
missal painting; what Dante called "alluminar," the art of Cimabue; its
taste continued, though in degrees less shocking, to the time of M.
Agnolo and Raffaello. Gods, and mothers of Gods, Apostles and Martyrs,
attracted devotion in proportion to the more or less gaudy colours in
which they were arrayed. It was for this reason that Julius the Second
wished M. Agnolo had added to the majesty of the Patriarchs and Sibyls
by gold and lapis lazuli.
Deception follows glare; attempts to substitute by form or colour the
image for the thing, always mark the puerility of taste, though
sometimes its decrepitude. The microscopic precision of Denner, and even
the fastidious, though broader detail of Gherard Douw, were symptoms of
its dotage. The contest of Zeuxis and Parrhasius, if not a frolic, was
an effort of puerile dexterity. But Deception, though at its ultimate
pitch never more than the successful mimicry of absent objects, and for
itself below the aim of art, is the mother of Imitation. We must
penetrate the substances of things, acquaint ourselves with their
peculiar hue and texture, and colour them in detail, before we can hope
to seize their principle and give their general air.
Tiziano laboured first to make facsimiles of the stuffs he copied,
before he changed them into drapery, and gave them local value and a
place; he learnt first to distinguish tint from tint, and give the
skeleton of colour, before he emboldened himself to take the greatest
quantity of colour in an object for the whole; to paint flesh which
abounded in demi-tints, entirely in demi-tints, and to deprive of all,
that which had but a few. It was in the school of Deception he learnt
the difference of diaphanous and opaque, of firm and juicy colour; that
this refracts and that absorbs the light, and hence their place; those
that cut and come forward, first, and those which more or less partake
of the surrounding medium in various degrees of distance. It was here he
learnt the contrast of the tints, of what is called warm and cold, and
by their balance, diffusion, echo, to poise a whole. His eye as musical,
if I may be allowed the metaphor, as his ear, abstracted here, that
colour acts, affects, delights, like sound; that stern and deep-toned
tints rouse, determine, invigorate the eye, as warlike sound or a deep
bass the ear; and that bland, rosy, gray, and vernal tints soothe,
charm, and melt like a sweet melody.
Such were the principles whose gradual evolution produced that coloured
imitation which, far beyond the fascination of Giorgione, irresistibly
entranced every eye that approached the magic of Tiziano Vecelli. To no
colourist before or after him, did Nature unveil herself with that
dignified familiarity in which she appeared to Tiziano. His organ,
universal and equally fit for all her exhibitions, rendered her simplest
to her most compound appearances with equal purity and truth. He
penetrated the essence and the general principle of the substances
before him, and on these established his theory of colour. He invented
that breadth of local tint which no imitation has attained, and first
expressed the negative nature of shade: his are the charms of glazing,
and the mystery of reflexes, by which he detached, rounded, corrected or
enriched his objects. His harmony is less indebted to the force of light
and shade, or the artifices of contrast, than to a due balance of
colour equally remote from monotony and spots. His tone springs out of
his subject, solemn, grave, gay, minacious, or soothing; his eye tinged
Nature with gold without impairing her freshness: she dictated his
scenery. Landscape, whether it be considered as the transcript of a
spot, or the rich combination of congenial objects, or as the scene of a
phenomenon, as subject and as background, dates its origin from him. He
is the father of portrait-painting, of resemblance with form, character
with dignity, and costume with subordination.
Colour may be considered relatively to the whole or the detail of the
parts that compose a picture. In that point of view it depends on the
choice of a sovereign tone; in this on the skilful disposition,
gradation, rounding, and variety of the subordinate tones, their
principal light, the local colour, the half tints, the shades, and the
reflexes.
The general regulation of the primary tone, and the specific arrangement
of the subordinate ones for the rounding of every figure, is the same.
In both, the attention is to be directed to obtain a principal mass of
light, and a predominant colour. This is to be supported by the mutual
assistance and reciprocal relief of secondary ones, must be associated
with the demi-tint and the shades, and recalled and relieved by the
reflexes.
When treating on Chiaroscuro, we have observed what may now be applied
to Colour, that the primary tone depends on choice, and is arbitrary;
but it decides all the rest, as the tone of the first violin in a
regular concert tunes all the voices and all the instruments. Its effect
entirely depends on the union of the surrounding tones with it, and has
no other value but what it derives from contrast. By this the simplest
tone, well managed, may become rich, splendid, and harmonious; it is
then the tone of nature; whilst the most brilliant colour, if
contradicted or disappointed by the detail of inferior ones, may become
heavy, leathern, and discordant.
The best illustration of these principles is in the celebrated Notte of
Correggio, where the Infant from the centre tinges the whole with his
rays; but perhaps still more in its companion at Dresden, the less known
picture of St. Sebastian; for to produce union and tone in the nearly
equilateral composition of a votive picture, required a deeper
comprehension and a steadier eye. Like the picture of Raffaello at
Foligno, it represents the Madonna with the Infant in her arms, throned
on clouds, in a central glory of sunny radiance, attended by angels, and
surrounded by angelic forms: below are St. Geminian with a maiden by his
side, St. Rocco and Sebastian tied to a tree. The first surprise is
caused by the central light of the glory, which has all the splendour of
a sun, though its colour is a yellow comparatively faint, and terminates
in brown. The Madonna, dressed in a robe of glowing lake and a dark blue
mantle, seems to start from this body of light as from a sombre ground,
and as the Infant from her. The carnation of both is of a low tint, to
support the keeping of their distance. The two angels at her side, in
tints reflected from the centre, address the Saints below, and connect
the upper with the lower part of the picture, which emerges from the
darksome clouds on which they stand, and gathers its tones of light from
the emanations of the central one, but in subordinate flashes, vanishing
from twilight into massy shade. By those who have not seen this picture,
a faint idea of its tone may be formed from the votive one of
Parmegiano, at the Marquis of Abercorn's, which, had it received its
last harmony, would probably have emulated the principle of that we have
described.