OF TYPICAL BEAUTY:--FIRST, OF INFINITY, OR THE TYPE OF DIVINE
INCOMPREHENSIBILITY.
Sec. 1. Impossibility of adequately treating the subject.
The subject being now in some measure cleared of embarrassment, let us
briefly distinguish those qualities or types on whose combination is
dependent the power of mere material loveliness. I pretend neither to
enumerate nor perceive them all, for it may be generally observed that
whatever good there may be, desirable by man, more especially good
belonging to his moral nature, there will be a corresponding
agreeableness in whatever external object reminds him of such good,
whether it remind him by arbitrary association or by typical
resemblance, and that the infinite ways, whether by reason or experience
discoverable, by which matter in some sort may remind us of moral
perfections, are hardly within any reasonable limits to be explained, if
even by any single mind they might all be traced. Yet certain palpable
and powerful modes there are, by observing which, we may come at such
general conclusions on the subject as may be practically useful, and
more than these I shall not attempt to obtain.
Sec. 2. With what simplicity of feeling to be approached.
And first, I would ask of the reader to enter upon the subject with me,
as far as may be, as a little child, ridding himself of all conventional
and authoritative thoughts, and especially of such associations as arise
from his respect for Pagan art, or which are in any way traceable to
classical readings. I recollect that Mr. Alison traces his first
perceptions of beauty in external nature to this most corrupt source,
thus betraying so total and singular a want of natural sensibility as
may well excuse the deficiencies of his following arguments. For there
was never yet the child of any promise (so far as the theoretic
faculties are concerned) but awaked to the sense of beauty with the
first gleam of reason; and I suppose there are few, among those who love
nature otherwise than by profession and at second-hand, who look not
back to their youngest and least-learned days as those of the most
intense, superstitious, insatiable, and beatific perception of her
splendors. And the bitter decline of this glorious feeling, though many
note it not, partly owing to the cares and weight of manhood, which
leave them not the time nor the liberty to look for their lost treasure,
and partly to the human and divine affections which are appointed to
take its place, yet has formed the subject not indeed of lamentation,
but of holy thankfulness for the witness it bears to the immortal origin
and end of our nature, to one whose authority is almost without appeal
in all questions relating to the influence of external things upon the
pure human soul.
"Heaven lies about us in our infancy,--
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy.
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows
He sees it in his joy.
The youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended.
At length the Man perceives it die away
And fade into the light of common day."
And if it were possible for us to recollect all the unaccountable and
happy instincts of the careless time, and to reason upon them with the
maturer judgment, we might arrive at more rapid and right results than
either the philosophy or the sophisticated practice of art have yet
attained. But we lose the perceptions before we are capable of
methodizing or comparing them.
Sec. 3. The child instinct respecting space.
Sec. 4. Continued in after life.
One, however, of these child instincts, I believe that few forget; the
emotion, namely, caused by all open ground, or lines of any spacious
kind against the sky, behind which there might be conceived the sea. It
is an emotion more pure than that caused by the sea itself, for I
recollect distinctly running down behind the banks of a high beach to
get their land line cutting against the sky, and receiving a more
strange delight from this than from the sight of the ocean: I am not
sure that this feeling is common to all children, (or would be common if
they were all in circumstances admitting it), but I have ascertained it
to be frequent among those who possess the most vivid sensibilities for
nature; and I am certain that the modification of it, which belongs to
our after years, is common to all, the love, namely, of a light
distance appearing over a comparatively dark horizon. This I have tested
too frequently to be mistaken, by offering to indifferent spectators
forms of equal abstract beauty in half tint, relieved, the one against
dark sky, the other against a bright distance. The preference is
invariably given to the latter, and it is very certain that this
preference arises not from any supposition of there being greater truth
in this than the other, for the same preference is unhesitatingly
accorded to the same effect in nature herself. Whatever beauty there may
result from effects of light on foreground objects, from the dew of the
grass, the flash of the cascade, the glitter of the birch trunk, or the
fair daylight hues of darker things, (and joyfulness there is in all of
them), there is yet a light which the eye invariably seeks with a deeper
feeling of the beautiful, the light of the declining or breaking day,
and the flakes of scarlet cloud burning like watch-fires in the green
sky of the horizon; a deeper feeling, I say, not perhaps more acute, but
having more of spiritual hope and longing, less of animal and present
life, more manifest, invariably, in those of more serious and determined
mind, (I use the word serious, not as being opposed to cheerful, but to
trivial and volatile;) but, I think, marked and unfailing even in those
of the least thoughtful dispositions. I am willing to let it rest on the
determination of every reader, whether the pleasure which he has
received from these effects of calm and luminous distance be not the
most singular and memorable of which he has been conscious, whether all
that is dazzling in color, perfect in form, gladdening in expression, be
not of evanescent and shallow appealing, when compared with the still
small voice of the level twilight behind purple hills, or the scarlet
arch of dawn over the dark, troublous-edged sea.
Sec. 5. Whereto this instinct is traceable.
Let us try to discover that which effects of this kind possess or
suggest, peculiar to themselves, and which other effects of light and
color possess not. There _must_ be something in them of a peculiar
character, and that, whatever it be, must be one of the primal and most
earnest motives of beauty to human sensation.
Do they show finer characters of form than can be developed by the
broader daylight? Not so; for their power is almost independent of the
forms they assume or display; it matters little whether the bright
clouds be simple or manifold, whether the mountain line be subdued or
majestic, the fairer forms of earthly things are by them subdued and
disguised, the round and muscular growth of the forest trunks is sunk
into skeleton lines of quiet shade, the purple clefts of the hill-side
are labyrinthed in the darkness, the orbed spring and whirling wave of
the torrent have given place to a white, ghastly, interrupted gleaming.
Have they more perfection or fulness of color? Not so; for their effect
is oftentimes deeper when their hues are dim, than when they are
blazoned with crimson and pale gold; and assuredly, in the blue of the
rainy sky, in the many tints of morning flowers, in the sunlight on
summer foliage and field, there are more sources of mere sensual
color-pleasure than in the single streak of wan and dying light. It is
not then by nobler form, it is not by positiveness of hue, it is not by
intensity of light, (for the sun itself at noonday is effectless upon
the feelings,) that this strange distant space possesses its attractive
power. But there is one thing that it has, or suggests, which no other
object of sight suggests in equal degree, and that is,--Infinity. It is
of all visible things the least material, the least finite, the farthest
withdrawn from the earth prison-house, the most typical of the nature of
God, the most suggestive of the glory of his dwelling-place. For the sky
of night, though we may know it boundless, is dark, it is a studded
vault, a roof that seems to shut us in and down, but the bright distance
has no limit, we feel its infinity, as we rejoice in its purity of
light.
Sec. 6. Infinity how necessary in art.
Now not only is this expression of infinity in distance most precious
wherever we find it, however solitary it may be, and however unassisted
by other forms and kinds of beauty, but it is of that value that no such
other forms will altogether recompense us for its loss; and much as I
dread the enunciation of anything that may seem like a conventional
rule, I have no hesitation in asserting, that no work of any art, in
which this expression of infinity is possible, can be perfect, or
supremely elevated without it, and that in proportion to its presence,
it will exalt and render impressive even the most tame and trivial
themes. And I think if there be any one grand division, by which it is
at all possible to set the productions of painting, so far as their
mere plan or system is concerned, on our right and left hands, it is
this of light and dark background, of heaven light or of object light.
For I know not any truly great painter of any time, who manifests not
the most intense pleasure in the luminous space of his backgrounds, or
who ever sacrifices this pleasure where the nature of his subject admits
of its attainment, as on the other hand I know not that the habitual use
of dark backgrounds can be shown as having ever been co-existent with
pure or high feeling, and, except in the case of Rembrandt, (and then
under peculiar circumstances only,) with any high power of intellect. It
is however necessary carefully to observe the following modifications of
this broad principle.
Sec. 7. Conditions of its necessity.
The absolute necessity, for such indeed I consider it, is of no more
than such a mere luminous distant point as may give to the feelings a
species of escape from all the finite objects about them. There is a
spectral etching of Rembrandt, a presentation of Christ in the temple,
where the figure of a robed priest stands glaring by its gems out of the
gloom, holding a crosier. Behind it there is a subdued window light seen
in the opening between two columns, without which the impressiveness of
the whole subject would, I think, be incalculably brought down. I cannot
tell whether I am at present allowing too much weight to my own fancies
and predilections, but without so much escape into the outer air and
open heaven as this, I can take permanent pleasure in no picture.
Sec. 8. And connected analogies.
And I think I am supported in this feeling by the unanimous practice, if
not the confessed opinion, of all artists. The painter of portrait is
unhappy without his conventional white stroke under the sleeve, or
beside the arm-chair; the painter of interiors feels like a caged bird,
unless he can throw a window open, or set the door ajar; the landscapist
dares not lose himself in forest without a gleam of light under its
farthest branches, nor ventures out in rain, unless he may somewhere
pierce to a better promise in the distance, or cling to some closing gap
of variable blue above;--escape, hope, infinity, by whatever
conventionalism sought, the desire is the same in all, the instinct
constant, it is no mere point of light that is wanted in the etching of
Rembrandt above instanced, a gleam of armor or fold of temple curtain
would have been utterly valueless, neither is it liberty, for though we
cut down hedges and level hills, and give what waste and plain we
choose, on the right hand and the left, it is all comfortless and
undesired, so long as we cleave not a way of escape forward; and however
narrow and thorny and difficult the nearer path, it matters not, so only
that the clouds open for us at its close. Neither will any amount of
beauty in nearer form, make us content to stay with it, so long as we
are shut down to that alone, nor is any form so cold or so hurtful but
that we may look upon it with kindness, so only that it rise against the
infinite hope of light beyond. The reader can follow out the analogies
of this unassisted.
Sec. 9. How the dignity of treatment is proportioned to the expression of
infinity.
But although this narrow portal of escape be all that is absolutely
necessary, I think that the dignity of the painting increases with the
extent and amount of the expression. With the earlier and mightier
painters of Italy, the practice is commonly to leave their distance of
pure and open sky, of such simplicity, that it in nowise shall interfere
with or draw the attention from the interest of the figures, and of such
purity, that especially towards the horizon, it shall be in the highest
degree expressive of the infinite space of heaven. I do not mean to say
that they did this with any occult or metaphysical motives. They did it,
I think, with the child-like, unpretending simplicity of all earnest
men; they did what they loved and felt; they sought what the heart
naturally seeks, and gave what it most gratefully receives; and I look
to them as in all points of principle (not, observe, of knowledge or
empirical attainment) as the most irrefragable authorities, precisely on
account of the child-like innocence, which never deemed itself
authoritative, but acted upon desire, and not upon dicta, and sought for
sympathy, not for admiration.
Sec. 10. Examples among the Southern schools.
And so we find the same simple and sweet treatment, the open sky, the
tender, unpretending, horizontal white clouds, the far winding and
abundant landscape, in Giotto, Taddeo Gaddi, Laurati, Angelico, Benozzo,
Ghirlandajo, Francia, Perogino, and the young Raffaelle, the first
symptom of conventionality appearing in Perugino, who, though with
intense feeling of light and color he carried the glory of his luminous
distance far beyond all his predecessors, began at the same time to use
a somewhat morbid relief of his figures against the upper sky. Thus in
the Assumption of the Florentine Academy, in that of l'Annunziata; and
of the Gallery of Bologna, in all which pictures the lower portions are
incomparably the finest, owing to the light distance behind the heads.
Raffaelle, in his fall, betrayed the faith he had received from his
father and his master, and substituted for the radiant sky of the
Madonna del Cardellino, the chamber-wall of the Madonna della
Sediola--and the brown wainscot of the Baldacchino. Yet it is curious to
observe how much of the dignity even of his later pictures, depends on
such portions as the green light of the lake, and sky behind the rocks,
in the St. John of the tribune, and how the repainted distortion of the
Madonna dell' Impannata, is redeemed into something like elevated
character, merely by the light of the linen window from which it takes
its name.
Sec. 11. Among the Venetians.
That which by the Florentines was done in pure simplicity of heart, was
done by the Venetians with intense love of the color and splendor of the
sky itself, even to the frequent sacrificing of their subject to the
passion of its distance. In Carpaccio, John Bellini, Giorgione, Titian,
Veronese, and Tintoret, the preciousness of the luminous sky, so far as
it might be at all consistent with their subject, is nearly constant;
abandoned altogether in portraiture only, seldom even there, and never
with advantage. Titian and Veronese, who had less exalted feeling than
the others, affording a few instances of exception, the latter
overpowering his silvery distances with foreground splendor, the other
sometimes sacrificing them to a luscious fulness of color, as in the
Flagellation in the Louvre, by a comparison of which with the unequalled
majesty of the Entombment opposite, the whole power and applicability of
the general principle may at once be tested.
Sec. 12. Among the painters of landscape.
But of the value of this mode of treatment there is a farther and more
convincing proof than its adoption either by the innocence of the
Florentine or the ardor of the Venetian, namely, that when retained or
imitated from them by the landscape painters of the seventeenth
century, when appearing in isolation from all other good, among the
weaknesses and paltrinesses of Claude, the mannerisms of Gaspar, and the
caricatures and brutalities of Salvator, it yet redeems and upholds all
three, conquers all foulness by its purity, vindicates all folly by its
dignity, and puts an uncomprehended power of permanent address to the
human heart, upon the lips of the senseless and the profane.[13]
Sec. 13. Other modes in which the power of infinity is felt.
Sec. 14. The beauty of curvature.
Now, although I doubt not that the general value of this treatment will
be acknowledged by all lovers of art, it is not certain that the point
to prove which I have brought it forward, will be as readily conceded,
namely, the inherent power of all representations of infinity over the
human heart; for there are, indeed, countless associations of pure and
religious kind, which combine with each other to enhance the impression,
when presented in this particular form, whose power I neither deny nor
am careful to distinguish, seeing that they all tend to the same Divine
point, and have reference to heavenly hopes; delights they are in seeing
the narrow, black, miserable earth fairly compared with the bright
firmament, reachings forward unto the things that are before, and
joyfulness in the apparent though unreachable nearness and promise of
them. But there are other modes in which infinity may be represented,
which are confused by no associations of the kind, and which would, as
being in mere matter, appear trivial and mean, but for their
incalculable influence on the forms of all that we feel to be beautiful.
The first of these is the curvature of lines and surfaces, wherein it at
first appears futile to insist upon any resemblance or suggestion of
infinity, since there is certainly in our ordinary contemplation of it,
no sensation of the kind. But I have repeated again and again that the
ideas of beauty are instinctive, and that it is only upon consideration,
and even then in doubtful and disputable way, that they appear in their
typical character; neither do I intend at all to insist upon the
particular meaning which they appear to myself to bear, but merely on
their actual and demonstrable agreeableness, so that, in the present
case, while I assert positively, and have no fear of being able to
prove, that a curve of any kind is more beautiful than a right line, I
leave it to the reader to accept or not, as he pleases, that reason of
its agreeableness, which is the only one that I can at all trace,
namely, that every curve divides itself infinitely by its changes of
direction.
Sec. 15. How constant in external nature.
That all forms of acknowledged beauty are composed exclusively of curves
will, I believe, be at once allowed; but that which there will be need
more especially to prove, is the subtilty and constancy of curvature in
all natural forms whatsoever. I believe that, except in crystals, in
certain mountain forms admitted for the sake of sublimity or contrast,
(as in the slope of debris,) in rays of light, in the levels of calm
water and alluvial land, and in some few organic developments, there are
no lines nor surfaces of nature without curvature, though as we before
saw in clouds, more especially in their under lines towards the horizon,
and in vast and extended plains, right lines are often suggested which
are not actual. Without these we could not be sensible of the value of
the contrasting curves, and while, therefore, for the most part, the eye
is fed in natural forms with a grace of curvature which no hand nor
instrument can follow, other means are provided to give beauty to those
surfaces which are admitted for contrast, as in water by its reflection
of the gradations which it possesses not itself. In freshly-broken
ground, which nature has not yet had time to model, in quarries and
pits which are none of her cutting, in those convulsions and evidences
of convulsion, of whose influence on ideal landscape I shall presently
have occasion to speak, and generally in all ruin and disease, and
interference of one order of being with another, (as in the cattle line
of park trees,) the curves vanish, and violently opposed or broken and
unmeaning lines take their place.
Sec. 16. The beauty of gradation.
What curvature is to lines, gradation is to shades and colors. It is
_there_ infinity, and divides them into an infinite number of degrees.
Absolutely, without gradation no natural surface can possibly be, except
under circumstances of so rare conjunction as to amount to a lusus
naturae; for we have seen that few surfaces are without curvature, and
every curved surface must be gradated by the nature of light, which is
most intense when it impinges at the highest angle, and for the
gradation of the few plane surfaces that exist, means are provided in
local color, aerial perspective, reflected lights, etc., from which it
is but barely conceivable that they should ever escape. Hence for
instances of the complete absence of gradation we must look to man's
work, or to his disease and decrepitude. Compare the gradated colors of
the rainbow with the stripes of a target, and the gradual concentration
of the youthful blood in the cheek with an abrupt patch of rouge, or
with the sharply drawn veining of old age.
Sec. 17. How found in Nature.
Gradation is so inseparable a quality of all natural shade and color
that the eye refuses in art to understand anything as either, which
appears without it, while on the other hand nearly all the gradations of
nature are so subtile and between degrees of tint so slightly separated,
that no human hand can in any wise equal, or do anything more than
suggest the idea of them. In proportion to the space over which
gradation extends, and to its invisible subtilty, is its grandeur, and
in proportion to its narrow limits and violent degrees, its vulgarity.
In Correggio, it is morbid and vulgar in spite of its refinement of
execution, because the eye is drawn to it, and it is made the most
observable and characteristic part of the picture; whereas natural
gradation is forever escaping observation to that degree that the
greater part of artists in working from nature see it not, (except in
certain of its marked developments,) but either lay down such
continuous lines and colors, as are both disagreeable and impossible,
or, receiving the necessity of gradation as a principle instead of a
fact, use it in violently exaggerated measure, and so lose both the
dignity of their own work, and by the constant dwelling of their eyes
upon exaggerations, their sensibility to that of the natural forms. So
that we find the majority of painters divided between the two evil
extremes of insufficiency and affectation, and only a few of the
greatest men capable of making gradation constant and yet extended over
enormous spaces and within degrees of narrow difference, as in the body
of a high light.
Sec. 18. How necessary in Art.
From the necessity of gradation results what is commonly given as a rule
of art, though its authority as a rule obtains only from its being a
fact of nature, that the extremes of high light and pure color, can
exist only in points. The common rules respecting sixths and eighths,
held concerning light and shade, are entirely absurd and conventional;
according to the subject and the effect of light, the greater part of
the picture will be or ought to be light or dark; but that principle
which is not conventional, is that of all light, however high, there is
some part that is higher than the rest, and that of all color, however
pure, there is some part that is purer than the rest, and that generally
of all shade, however deep, there is some part deeper than the rest,
though this last fact is frequently sacrificed in art, owing to the
narrowness of its means. But on the right gradation or focussing of
light and color depends in great measure, the value of both. Of this, I
have spoken sufficiently in pointing out the singular constancy of it in
the works of Turner. Part II. Sect. II. Chap. II. Sec. 17. And it is
generally to be observed that even raw and valueless color, if rightly
and subtilely gradated will in some measure stand for light, and that
the most transparent and perfect hue will be in some measure
unsatisfactory, if entirely unvaried. I believe the early skies of
Raffaelle owe their luminousness more to their untraceable and subtile
gradation than to inherent quality of hue.
Sec. 19. Infinity not rightly implied by vastness.
Such are the expressions of infinity which we find in creation, of which
the importance is to be estimated, rather by their frequency than their
distinctness. Let, however, the reader bear constantly in mind that I
insist not on his accepting any interpretation of mine, but only on his
dwelling so long on those objects, which he perceives to be beautiful,
as to determine whether the qualities to which I trace their beauty, be
necessarily there or no. Farther expressions of infinity there are in
the mystery of nature, and in some measure in her vastness, but these
are dependent on our own imperfections, and therefore, though they
produce sublimity, they are unconnected with beauty. For that which we
foolishly call vastness is, rightly considered, not more wonderful, not
more impressive, than that which we insolently call littleness, and the
infinity of God is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable, not
concealed, but incomprehensible: it is a clear infinity, the darkness of
the pure unsearchable sea.
FOOTNOTES
[13] In one of the smaller rooms of the Pitti palace, over the door,
is a temptation of St. Anthony, by Salvator, wherein such power as
the artist possessed is fully manifested, with little,
comparatively, that is offensive. It is a vigorous and ghastly
thought, in that kind of horror which is dependent on scenic effect,
perhaps unrivalled, and I shall have occasion to refer to it again
in speaking of the powers of imagination. I allude to it here,
because the sky of the distance affords a remarkable instance of the
power of light at present under discussion. It is formed of flakes
of black cloud, with rents and openings of intense and lurid green,
and at least half of the impressiveness of the picture depends on
these openings. Close them, make the sky one mass of gloom, and the
spectre will be awful no longer. It owes to the light of the
distance both its size and its spirituality. The time would fail me
if I were to name the tenth part of the pictures which occur to me,
whose vulgarity is redeemed by this circumstance alone, and yet let
not the artist trust to such morbid and conventional use of it as
may be seen in the common blue and yellow effectism of the present
day. Of the value of moderation and simplicity in the use of this,
as of all other sources of pleasurable emotion, I shall presently
have occasion to speak farther.