By Tintoret only has this unimaginable event been grappled with in its

verity; not typically nor symbolically, but as they may see it who shall

not sleep, but be changed. Only one traditional circumstance he has

received with Dante and Michael Angelo, the boat of the condemned; but

the impetuosity of his mind bursts out even in the adoption of this

image, he has not stopped at the scowling ferryman of the one, nor at

the sweeping blow and demon dragging of the other, but, seized

Hylas-like by the limbs, and tearing up the earth in his agony, the

victim is dashed into his destruction; nor is it the sluggish Lethe, nor

the fiery lake that bears the cursed vessel, but the oceans of the earth

and the waters of the firmament gathered into one white, ghastly

cataract, the river of the wrath of God, roaring down into the gulf

where the world has melted with its fervent heat, choked with the ruin

of nations, and the limbs of its corpses tossed out of its whirling,

like water-wheels. Bat like, out of the holes and caverns and shadows of

the earth, the bones gather, and the clay-heaps heave, rattling and

adhering into half-kneaded anatomies, that crawl, and startle, and

struggle up among the putrid weeds, with the clay clinging to their

clotted hair, and their heavy eyes sealed by the earth darkness yet,

like his of old who went his way unseeing to Siloam Pool; shaking off

one by one the dreams of the prison-house, hardly hearing the clangor of

the trumpets of the armies of God, blinded yet more, as they awake, by

the white light of the new Heaven, until the great vortex of the four

winds bears up their bodies to the judgment seat: the firmament is all

full of them, a very dust of human souls, that drifts, and floats, and

falls in the interminable, inevitable light; the bright clouds are

darkened with them as with thick snow, currents of atom life in the

arteries of heaven, now soaring up slowly, farther, and higher, and

higher still, till the eye and the thought can follow no farther, borne

up, wingless, by their inward faith and by the angel powers invisible,

now hurled in countless drifts of horror before the breath of their

condemnation.

Sec. 25. The imaginative verity, how distinguished from realism.

Now, I wish the reader particularly to observe throughout all these

works of Tintoret, the distinction of the imaginative verity from

falsehood on the one hand, and from realism on the other. The power of

every picture depends on the penetration of the imagination into the

TRUE nature of the thing represented, and on the utter scorn of the

imagination for all shackles and fetters of mere external fact that

stand in the way of its suggestiveness. In the Baptism it cuts away the

trunks of trees as if they were so much cloud or vapor, that it may

exhibit to the thought the completed sequency of the scene;[65] in the

Massacre, it covers the marble floor with visionary light, that it may

strike terror into the spectator without condescending to butchery; it

defies the bare fact, but creates in him the fearful feeling; in the

Crucifixion it annihilates locality, and brings the palm-leaves to

Calvary, so only that it may bear the mind to the mount of Olives, as in

the entombment it brings the manger to Jerusalem, that it may take the

heart to Bethlehem; and all this it does in the daring consciousness of

its higher and spiritual verity, and in the entire knowledge of the fact

and substance of all that it touches. The imaginary boat of the demon

angel expands the rush of the visible river into the descent of

irresistible condemnation; but to make that rush and roar felt by the

eye and heard by the ear, the rending of the pine branches above the

cataract is taken directly from nature; it is an abstract of Alpine

storm. Hence while we are always placed face to face with whatever is to

be told, there is in and beyond its reality a voice supernatural; and

that which is doubtful in the vision has strength, sinew, and

assuredness, built up in it by fact.

Sec. 26. The imagination how manifested in sculpture.

Let us, however, still advance one step farther, and observe the

imaginative power deprived of all aid from chiaroscuro, color, or any

other means of concealing the frame-work of its thoughts.

It was said by Michael Angelo that "non ha l'ottimo scultore alcun

concetto, Ch'un marmo solo in se non circoscriva," a sentence which,

though in the immediate sense intended by the writer it may remind us a

little of the indignation of Boileau's Pluto, "Il s'ensuit de la que

tout ce qui se peut dire de beau, est dans les dictionnaires,--il n'y a

que les paroles qui sont transposees," yet is valuable, because it shows

us that Michael Angelo held the imagination to be entirely expressible

in rock, and therefore altogether independent, in its own nature, of

those aids of color and shade by which it is recommended in Tintoret,

though the sphere of its operation is of course by these incalculably

extended. But the presence of the imagination may be rendered in marble

as deep, thrilling, and awful as in painting, so that the sculptor seek

for the soul and govern the body thereby.

Sec. 27. Bandinelli, Canova, Mino da Fiesole.

Sec. 28. Michael Angelo.

Of unimaginative work, Bandinelli and Canova supply us with

characteristic instances of every kind, the Hercules and Cacus of the

former, and its criticism by Cellini, will occur at once to every one;

the disgusting statue now placed so as to conceal Giotto's important

tempera picture in Santa Croce is a better instance, but a still more

impressive lesson might be received by comparing the inanity of Canova's

garland grace, and ball-room sentiment with the intense truth,

tenderness, and power of men like Mino da Fiesole, whose chisel leaves

many a hard edge, and despises down and dimple, but it seems to cut

light and carve breath, the marble burns beneath it, and becomes

transparent with very spirit. Yet Mino stopped at the human nature; he

saw the soul, but not the ghostly presences about it; it was reserved

for Michael Angelo to pierce deeper yet, and to see the indwelling

angels. No man's soul is alone: Laocoon or Tobit, the serpent has it by

the heart or the angel by the hand, the light or the fear of the

spiritual things that move beside it may be seen on the body; and that

bodily form with Buonaroti, white, solid, distinct material, though it

be, is invariably felt as the instrument or the habitation of some

infinite, invisible power. The earth of the Sistine Adam that begins to

burn; the woman embodied burst of adoration from his sleep; the twelve

great torrents of the Spirit of God that pause above us there, urned in

their vessels of clay; the waiting in the shadow of futurity of those

through whom the promise and presence of God went down from the Eve to

the Mary, each still and fixed, fixed in his expectation, silent,

foreseeing, faithful, seated each on his stony throne, the building

stones of the word of God, building on and on, tier by tier, to the

Refused one, the head of the corner; not only these, not only the troops

of terror torn up from the earth by the four quartered winds of the

Judgment, but every fragment and atom of stone that he ever touched

became instantly inhabited by what makes the hair stand up and the words

be few; the St. Matthew, not yet disengaged from his sepulchre, bound

hand and foot by his grave clothes, it is left for us to loose him; the

strange spectral wreath of the Florence Pieta, casting its pyramidal,

distorted shadow, full of pain and death, among the faint purple lights

that cross and perish under the obscure dome of St^a. Maria del Fiore,

the white lassitude of joyous limbs, panther like, yet passive, fainting

with their own delight, that gleam among the Pagan formalisms of the

Uffizii, far away, showing themselves in their lustrous lightness as the

waves of an Alpine torrent do by their dancing among the dead stones,

though the stones be as white as they:[66] and finally, and perhaps more

than all, those four ineffable types, not of darkness nor of day--not of

morning nor evening, but of the departure and the resurrection, the

twilight and the dawn of the souls of men--together with the spectre

sitting in the shadow of the niche above them;[67] all these, and all

else that I could name of his forming, have borne, and in themselves

retain and exercise the same inexplicable power--inexplicable because

proceeding from an imaginative perception almost superhuman, which goes

whither we cannot follow, and is where we cannot come; throwing naked

the final, deepest root of the being of man, whereby he grows out of the

invisible, and holds on his God home.[68]

Sec. 29. Recapitulation. The perfect function of the imagination is the

intuitive perception of ultimate truth.

Now, in all these instances, let it be observed, for it is to that end

alone that I have been arguing all along, that the virtue of the

imagination is its reaching, by intuition and intensity of gaze, (not by

reasoning, but by its authoritative opening and revealing power,) a

more essential truth than is seen at the surface of things. I repeat

that it matters not whether the reader is willing call this faculty

imagination or no, I do not care about the name; but I would be

understood when I speak of imagination hereafter, to mean this, the true

foundation of all art which exercises eternal authority over men's

minds; (all other imagination than this is either secondary and

contemplative, or utterly spurious;) the base of whose authority and

being is its perpetual thirst of truth and purpose to be true. It has no

food, no delight, no care, no perception, except of truth; it is forever

looking under masks, and burning up mists; no fairness of form, no

majesty of seeming will satisfy it; the first condition of its

existence is incapability of being deceived; and though it sometimes

dwells upon and substantiates the fictions of fancy, yet its own

operation is to trace to their farthest limit the true laws and

likelihoods even of the fictitious creation. This has been well

explained by Fuseli, in his allusion to the Centaur of Zeuxis; and there

is not perhaps a greater exertion of imaginative power than may be

manifested in following out to their farthest limits the necessary

consequences of such arbitrary combination; but let not the jests of the

fancy be confounded with that after serious work of the imagination

which gives them all the nervous verity and substance of which they are

capable. Let not the monsters of Chinese earthenware be confounded with

the Faun, Satyr, or Centaur.

Sec. 30. Imagination now vulgarly understood.

How different this definition of the imagination may be from the idea of

it commonly entertained among us, I can hardly say, because I have a

very indistinct idea of what is usually meant by the term. I hear modern

works constantly praised as being imaginative, in which I can trace no

virtue of any kind; but simple, slavish, unpalliated falsehood and

exaggeration; I see not what merit there can be in pure, ugly, resolute

fiction; it is surely easy enough to be wrong; there are many ways of

being unlike nature. I understand not what virtue that is which entitles

one of these ways to be called imaginative, rather than another; and I

am still farther embarrassed by hearing the portions of those works

called especially imaginative in which there is the most effort at

minute and mechanical statement of contemptible details, and in which

the artist would have been as actual and absolute in imitation as an

echo, if he had known how. Against convictions which I do not

understand, I cannot argue; but I may warn the artist that imagination

of this strange kind, is not capable of bearing the time test; nothing

of its doing ever has continued its influence over men; and if he

desires to take place among the great men of older time, there is but

one way for it; and one kind of imagination that will stand the immortal

light: I know not how far it is by effort cultivable; but we have

evidence enough before us to show in what direction that effort must be

made.

Sec. 31. How its cultivation is dependent on the moral feelings.

We have seen (Sec. 10) that the imagination is in no small degree

dependent on acuteness of moral emotion; in fact, all moral truth can

only thus be apprehended--and it is observable, generally, that all true

and deep emotion is imaginative, both in conception and expression; and

that the mental sight becomes sharper with every full beat of the heart;

and, therefore, all egotism, and selfish care, or regard, are in

proportion to their constancy, destructive of imagination; whose play

and power depend altogether on our being able to forget ourselves and

enter like possessing spirits into the bodies of things about us.

Sec. 32. On independence of mind.

Again, as the life of imagination is in the discovering of truth, it is

clear it can have no respect for sayings or opinions: knowing in itself

when it has invented truly--restless and tormented except when it has

this knowledge, its sense of success or failure is too acute to be

affected by praise or blame. Sympathy it desires--but can do without; of

opinions it is regardless, not in pride, but because it has no vanity,

and is conscious of a rule of action and object of aim in which it

cannot be mistaken; partly, also, in pure energy of desire and longing

to do and to invent more and more, which suffer it not to suck the

sweetness of praise--unless a little, with the end of the rod in its

hand, and without pausing in its march. It goes straight forward up the

hill; no voices nor mutterings can turn it back, nor petrify it from its

purpose.[69]

Sec. 33. And on habitual reference to nature.

Finally, it is evident, that like the theoretic faculty, the imagination

must be fed constantly by external nature--after the illustrations we

have given, this may seem mere truism, for it is clear that to the

exercise of the penetrative faculty a subject of penetration is

necessary; but I note it because many painters of powerful mind have

been lost to the world by their suffering the restless writhing of their

imagination in its cage to take place of its healthy and exulting

activity in the fields of nature. The most imaginative men always study

the hardest, and are the most thirsty for new knowledge. Fancy plays

like a squirrel in its circular prison, and is happy; but imagination is

a pilgrim on the earth--and her home is in heaven. Shut her from the

fields of the celestial mountains--bar her from breathing their lofty,

sun-warmed air; and we may as well turn upon her the last bolt of the

tower of famine, and give the keys to the keeping of the wildest surge

that washes Capraja and Gorgona.

FOOTNOTES

[56] Compare Arist. Rhet. III. 11.

[57] For the distinction between fancy and simple conception; see

Chap. IV. Sec. 3.

[58] I take this and the next instance from Leigh Hunt's admirable

piece of criticism, "Imagination and Fancy," which ought to be read

with care, and to which, though somewhat loosely arranged, I may

refer for all the filling up and illustration that the subject

requires. With respect to what has just been said respecting want of

imagination, compare his criticism of Addison's Cato, p. 28. I

cannot, however, confirm his judgment, nor admit his selection of

instances, among painters: he has looked to their manner only and

habitual choice of subject, without feeling their power; and has

given work to the coarseness, mindlessness, and eclecticism of Guido

and the Carracci, which in its poetical demand of tenderness might

have foiled Pinturicchio; of dignity, Leonardo; and of color,

Giorgione.

[59] Fancy, in her third function may, however, become serious, and

gradually rise into imagination in doing so. Compare Chap. IV. Sec. 5.

[60] I am describing from a proof: in bad impressions this trunk is

darkened.

[61] The picture is in the Guadagni palace. It is one of the most

important landscapes Salvator ever painted. The figures are studied

from street beggars. On the one side of the river, exactly opposite

the point where the Baptism of Christ takes place, the painter, with

a refinement of feeling peculiarly his own, has introduced some

ruffians stripping off their shirts to bathe. He is fond of this

incident. It occurs again in one of the marines of the Pitti palace,

with the additional interest of a foreshortened figure, swimming on

its back, feet foremost, exactly in the stream of light to which the

eye is principally directed.

[62] This circumstance, like most that lie not at the surface, has

escaped Fuseli, though his remarks on the general tone of the

picture are very good, as well as his opposition of it to the

treatment of Rubens. (Lecture IX.)

[63] Note the shallow and uncomprehending notice of this picture by

Fuseli. His description of the treatment of it by other painters is

however true, terse, and valuable.

[64] Fresco in an out-house of the Ospedale St^a. Maria Nuova at

Florence.

[65] The same thing is done yet more boldly in the large composition

of the ceiling; the plague of fiery serpents; a part of the host,

and another sky horizon are seen through an opening in the ground.

[66] The Bacchus. There is a small statue opposite it

also--unfinished, but "a spirit still."

[67] I would have insisted more on the ghostly vitality of this

dreadful statue; but the passage referring to it in Rogers's Italy

supersedes all further description. I suppose most lovers of art

know it by heart.

"Nor then forget that chamber of the dead,

Where the gigantic shapes of Night and Day,

Turned into stone, rest everlastingly;

Yet still are breathing, and shed round at noon

A twofold influence,--only to be felt--

A light, a darkness, mingling each with each;

Both, and yet neither. There, from age to age,

Two ghosts are sitting on their sepulchres.

That is the Duke Lorenzo. Mark him well.

He meditates, his head upon his hand.

What from beneath his helm-like bonnet scowls?

Is it a face, or but an eyeless skull?

'Tis lost in shade; yet, like the basilisk,

It fascinates, and is intolerable.

His mien is noble, most majestical!

Then most so, when the distant choir is heard

At morn or eve--nor fail thou to attend

On that thrice-hallowed day, when all are there;

When all, propitiating with solemn songs,

Visit the Dead. Then wilt thou feel his power!"

It is strange that this should be the only written instance (as far

as I recollect) of just and entire appreciation of Michael Angelo's

spiritual power. It is perhaps owing to the very intensity of his

imagination that he has been so little understood--for, as I before

said, imagination can never be met by vanity, nor without

earnestness. His Florentine followers saw in him an anatomist and

posture-master--and art was finally destroyed by the influence over

admiring idiocy of the greatest mind that art ever inspired.

[68] I have not chosen to interrupt the argument respecting the

essence of the imaginative faculty by any remarks on the execution

of the imaginative hand; but we can hardly leave Tintoret and

Michael Angelo without some notice of the pre-eminent power of

execution exhibited by both of them, in consequence of their vigor

and clearness of conception; nor without again warning the lower

artist from confounding this velocity of decision and impatience

with the velocity of affectation or indolence. Every result of real

imagination we have seen to be a truth of some sort; and it is the

characteristic of truth to be in some way tangible, seizable,

distinguishable, and clear, as it is of falsehood to be obscure,

confused, and confusing. Not but that many, if not most truths have

a dark side, a side by which they are connected with mysteries too

high for us,--nay, I think it is commonly but a poor and miserable

truth which the human mind can walk all round, but at all events

they have one side by which we can lay hold of them, and feel that

they are downright adamant, and that their form, though lost in

cloud here and there, is unalterable and real, and not less real and

rocky because infinite, and joined on, St. Michael's mount-like to a

far mainland. So then, whatever the real imagination lays hold of,

as it is a truth, does not alter into anything else as the

imaginative part works at it and feels over it and finds out more of

it, but comes out more and more continually, all that is found out

pointing to and indicating still more behind, and giving additional

stability and reality to that which is discovered already. But if it

be fancy or any other form of pseudo-imagination which is at work,

then that which it gets hold of may not be a truth, but only an

idea, which will keep giving way as soon as we try to take hold of

it and turning into something else, so that as we go on copying it,

every part will be inconsistent with all that has gone before, and

at intervals it will vanish altogether, and leave blanks which must

be filled up by any means at hand. And in these circumstances, the

painter, unable to seize his thought, because it has not substance

nor bone enough to bear grasping, is liable to catch at every line

that he lays down, for help and suggestion, and to be led away by it

to something else, which the first effort to realize dissipates in

like manner, placing another phantom in its stead, until out of the

fragments of these successive phantoms he has glued together a

vague, mindless, involuntary whole, a mixture of all that was trite

or common in each of the successive conceptions, for that is

necessarily what is first caught a heap of things with the bloom off

and the chill on, laborious, unnatural, inane, with its emptiness

disguised by affectation, and its tastelessness salted by

extravagance.

Necessarily, from these modes of conception, three vices of

execution must result; and these are necessarily found in all those

parts of the work where any trust has been put in conception, and

only to be avoided in portions of actual portraiture (for a

thoroughly unimaginative painter can make no use of a study--all his

studies are guesses and experiments, all are equally wrong, and so

far felt to be wrong by himself, that he will not work by any of

them, but will always endeavor to improve upon them in the picture,

and so lose the use of them). These three vices of execution are

then--first, feebleness of handling, owing to uncertainty of

intention; secondly, intentional carelessness of handling, in the

hope of getting by accident something more than was meant; and

lastly, violence and haste of handling, in the effort to secure as

much as possible of the obscure image of which the mind feels itself

losing hold. (I am throughout, it will be observed, attributing

right feeling to the unimaginative painter; if he lack this, his

execution may be cool and determined, as he will set down falsehood

without blushing, and ugliness without suffering.) Added to these

various evidences of weakness, will be the various vices assumed for

the sake of concealment; morbid refinements disguising

feebleness--or insolence and coarseness to cover desperation. When

the imagination is powerful, the resulting execution is of course

the contrary of all this: its first steps will commonly be

impetuous, in clearing its ground and getting at its first

conception--as we know of Michael Angelo in his smiting his blocks

into shape, (see the passage quoted by Sir Charles Clarke in the

Essay on Expression, from Blaise de Vigenere,) and as it is visible

in the handling of Tintoret always: as the work approaches

completion, the stroke, while it remains certain and firm, because

its end is always known, may frequently become slow and careful,

both on account of the difficulty of following the pure lines of the

conception, and because there is no fear felt of the conception's

vanishing before it can be realized; but generally there is a

certain degree of impetuosity visible in the works of all the men of

high imagination, when they are not working from a study, showing

itself in Michael Angelo by the number of blocks he left unfinished,

and by some slight evidences in those he completed of his having

worked painfully towards the close; so that, except the Duke

Lorenzo, the Bacchus of the Florentine gallery, and the Pieta of

Genoa, I know not any of his finished works in which his mind is as

mightily expressed as in his marble sketches; only, it is always to

be observed that impetuosity or rudeness of hand is not

necessarily--and, if imaginative, is never--carelessness. In the two

landscapes at the end of the Scuola di San Rocco, Tintoret has drawn

several large tree trunks with two strokes of his brush--one for the

dark, and another for the light side; and the large rock at the foot

of the picture of the Temptation is painted with a few detached

touches of gray over a flat brown ground; but the touches of the

tree-trunks have been followed by the mind as they went down with

the most painful intensity through their every undulation; and the

few gray strokes on the stone are so considered that a better stone

cone could not be painted if we took a month to it: and I suppose,

generally, it would be utterly impossible to give an example of

execution in which less was left to accident, or in which more care

was concentrated in every stroke, than the seemingly regardless and

impetuous handling of this painter.

On the habit of both Tintoret and Michael Angelo to work straight

forward from the block and on the canvas, without study or model, it

is needless to insist; for though this is one of the most amazing

proofs of their imaginative power, it is a dangerous precedent. No

mode of execution ought ever to be taught to a young artist as

better than another; he ought to understand the truth of what he has

to do, felicitous execution will follow as a matter of course; and

if he feels himself capable of getting at the right at once, he will

naturally do so without reference to precedent. He ought to hold

always that his duty is to attain the highest result he can,--but

that no one has any business with the means or time he has taken. If

it can be done quickly, let it be so done; if not, let it be done at

any rate. For knowing his way he is answerable, and therefore must

not walk _doubtingly_; but no one can blame him for walking

_cautiously_, if the way be a narrow one, with a slip on each side.

He may pause, but he must not hesitate,--and tremble, but must not

vacillate.

[69] That which we know of the lives of M. Angelo and Tintoret is

eminently illustrative of this temper.

CHAPTER IV.

OF IMAGINATION CONTEMPLATIVE.

Sec. 1. Imagination contemplative is not part of the essence, but only a

habit or mode of the faculty.

We have, in the two preceding chapters, arrived at definite conclusions

respecting the power and essence of the imaginative faculty. In these

two acts of penetration and combination, its separating and

characteristic attributes are entirely developed; it remains for us only

to observe a certain habit or mode of operation in which it frequently

delights, and by which it addresses itself to our perceptions more

forcibly, and asserts its presence more distinctly than in those mighty

but more secret workings wherein its life consists.

In our examination of the combining imagination, we chose to assume the

first or simple conception to be as clear in the absence as in the

presence of the object of it. This, I suppose, is in point of fact never

the case, nor is an approximation to such distinctness of conception

always a characteristic of the imaginative mind. Many persons have

thorough and felicitous power of drawing from memory, yet never

originate a thought, nor excite an emotion.

Sec. 2. The ambiguity of conception.

Sec. 3. Is not in itself capable of adding to the charm of fair things.

The form in which conception actually occurs to ordinary minds appears

to derive value and preciousness from that indefiniteness which we

alluded to in the second chapter, (Sec. 2,) for there is an unfailing charm

in the memory and anticipation of things beautiful, more sunny and

spiritual than attaches to their presence; for with their presence it

is possible to be sated, and even wearied, but with the imagination of

them never; in so far that it needs some self-discipline to prevent the

mind from falling into a morbid condition of dissatisfaction with all

that it immediately possesses, and continual longing for things absent;

and yet I think this charm is not justly to be attributed to the mere

vagueness and uncertainty of the conception, except thus far, that of

objects whose substantial presence was ugly or painful the sublimity and

impressiveness, if there were any, is retained in the conception, while

the sensual offensiveness is withdrawn; thus circumstances of horror may

be safely touched in verbal description, and for a time dwelt upon by

the mind, as often by Homer and Spenser, (by the latter frequently with

too much grossness, as in the description of the combat of the Red-Cross

Knight with Errour,) which could not for a moment be regarded or

tolerated in their reality, or on canvas; and besides this mellowing and

softening operation on those it retains, the conceptive faculty has the

power of letting go many of them altogether out of its groups of ideas,

and retaining only those where the meminisse juvabit will apply; and in

this way the entire group of memories becomes altogether delightful; but

of those parts of anything which are in themselves beautiful, I think

the indistinctness no benefit, but that the brighter they are the

better; and that the peculiar charm we feel in conception results from

its grasp and blending of ideas rather than from their obscurity, for we

do not usually recall, as we have seen, one part at a time only of a

pleasant scene, one moment only of a happy day; but together with each

single object we summon up a kind of crowded and involved shadowing

forth of all the other glories with which it was associated, and into

every moment we concentrate an epitome of the day; and it will happen

frequently that even when the visible objects or actual circumstances

are not in numbers remembered; yet the feeling and joy of them is

obtained we know not how or whence, and so with a kind of conceptive

burning glass we bend the sunshine of all the day, and the fulness of

all the scene upon every point that we successively seize; and this

together with more vivid action of fancy, for I think that the wilful

and playful seizure of the points that suit her purpose and help her

springing, whereby she is distinguished from simple conception, takes

place more easily and actively with the memory of things than in

presence of them. But, however this be, and I confess that there is much

that I cannot satisfactorily to myself unravel with respect to the

nature of simple conception; it is evident that this agreeableness,

whatever it be, is not by art attainable, for all art is in some sort

realization; it may be the realization of obscurity or indefiniteness,

but still it must differ from the mere conception of obscurity and

indefiniteness; so that whatever emotions depend absolutely on

imperfectness of conception, as the horror of Milton's Death, cannot be

rendered by art, for art can only lay hold of things which have shape,

and destroys by its touch the fearfulness or pleasurableness of those

which shape have none.

Sec. 4. But gives to the imagination its regardant power over them.

But on this indistinctness of conception, itself comparatively valueless

and unaffecting, is based the operation of the imaginative faculty with

which we are at present concerned, and in which its glory is

consummated: whereby, depriving the subject of material and bodily

shape, and regarding such of its qualities only as it chooses for

particular purpose, it forges these qualities together in such groups

and forms as it desires, and gives to their abstract being consistency

and reality, by striking them as it were with the die of an image

belonging to other matter, which stroke having once received, they pass

current at once in the peculiar conjunction and for the peculiar value

desired.

Thus, in the description of Satan quoted in the first chapter, "And like

a comet burned," the bodily shape of the angel is destroyed, the

inflaming of the formless spirit is alone regarded; and this, and his

power of evil associated in one fearful and abstract conception are

stamped to give them distinctness and permanence with the image of the

comet, "that fires the length of Ophiuchus huge." Yet this could not be

done, but that the image of the comet itself is in a measure indistinct,

capable of awful expansion, and full of threatening and fear. Again, in

his fall, the imagination binds up the thunder, the resistance, the

massy prostration, separates them from the external form, and binds them

together by the help of that image of the mountain half sunk; which

again would be unfit but for its own indistinctness, and for that

glorious addition "with all his pines," whereby a vitality and

spear-like hostility are communicated to its falling form, and the fall

is marked as not utter subversion, but sinking only, the pines remaining

in their uprightness, and unity, and threatening of darkness upon the

descended precipice: and again in that yet more noble passage at the

close of the fourth book, where almost every operation of the

contemplative imagination is concentrated; the angelic squadron first

gathered into one burning mass by the single expression "sharpening in

mooned horns," then told out in their unity and multitude and stooped

hostility, by the image of the wind upon the corn; Satan endowed with

godlike strength and endurance in that mighty line, "like Teneriffe or

Atlas, unremoved," with infinitude of size the next instant, and with

all the vagueness and terribleness of spiritual power, by the "horror

plumed," and the "_what seemed_ both spear and shield."

Sec. 5. The third office of fancy distinguished from imagination

contemplative.

The third function of fancy, already spoken of as subordinate to this of

the imagination, is the highest of which she is capable; like the

imagination, she beholds in the things submitted to her treatment things

different from the actual; but the suggestions she follows are not in

their nature essential in the object contemplated; and the images

resulting, instead of illustrating, may lead the mind away from it, and

change the current of contemplative feeling; for as in her operation

parallel to imagination penetrative, we saw her dwelling upon external

features, while the nobler sister, faculty, entered within, so now, when

both, from what they see and know in their immediate object, are

conjuring up images illustrative or elevatory of it, the fancy

necessarily summons those of mere external relationship, and therefore

of unaffecting influence; while the imagination, by every ghost she

raises, tells tales about the prison-house, and therefore never loses

her power over the heart, nor her unity of emotion. On the other hand,

the regardant or contemplative action of fancy is in this different

from, and in this nobler, than that mere seizing and likeness-catching

operation we saw in her before; that when contemplative, she verily

believes in the truth of the vision she has summoned, loses sight of

actuality, and beholds the new and spiritual image faithfully and even

seriously; whereas before, she summoned no spiritual image, but merely

caught the vivid actuality, or the curious resemblance of the real

object; not that these two operations are separate, for the fancy passes

gradually from mere vivid right of reality, and witty suggestion of

likeness, to a ghostly sight of what is unreal; and through this, in

proportion as she begins to feel, she rises towards and partakes of

imagination itself, for imagination and fancy are continually united,

and it is necessary, when they are so, carefully to distinguish the

feelingless part which is fancy's, from the sentient part, which is

imagination's. Let us take a few instances. Here is fancy, first, very

beautiful, in her simple capacity of likeness-catching:--

"To-day we purpose--aye, this hour we mount

To spur three leagues towards the Apennine.

Come down, we pray thee, ere the _hot sun count

His dewy rosary_ on the eglantine."

Seizing on the outside resemblances of bead form, and on the slipping

from their threading bough one by one, the fancy is content to lose the

heart of the thing, the solemnity of prayer: or perhaps I do the

glorious poet wrong in saying this, for the sense of a sun worship and

orison in beginning its race, may have been in his mind; and so far as

it was so, the passage is imaginative and not fanciful. But that which

most readers would accept from it, is the mere flash of the external

image, in whose truth the fancy herself does not yet believe and

therefore is not yet contemplative. Here, however, is fancy believing in

the images she creates:--

"It feeds the quick growth of the serpent-vine,

And the dark linked ivy tangling wild

And budding, blown, or odor faded blooms,

Which _star the winds with points of colored light_

As they rain through them; and _bright golden globes

Of fruit suspended in their own green heaven_."

It is not, observe, a mere likeness that is caught here; but the flowers

and fruit are entirely deprived by the fancy of their material

existence, and contemplated by her seriously and faithfully as stars and

worlds; yet it is only external likeness that she catches; she forces

the resemblance, and lowers the dignity of the adopted image.

Next take two delicious stanzas of fancy regardant, (believing in her

creations,) followed by one of heavenly imagination, from Wordsworth's

address to the daisy:--

"A Nun demure--of lowly port;

Or sprightly maiden--of Love's court,

In thy simplicity the sport

Of all temptations.

A Queen in crown of rubies drest,

A starveling in a scanty vest,

Are all as seems to suit thee best,--

Thy appellations.

I see thee glittering from afar,

And then thou art a pretty star,--

Not quite so fair as many are

In heaven above thee.

Yet like a star, with glittering crest,

Self-poised in air thou seem'st to rest;--

May peace come never to his nest

Who shall reprove thee.

Sweet flower--for by that name at last,

When all my reveries are past,

I call thee, and to that cleave fast.

Sweet silent creature,

That breath'st with me, in sun and air,

Do thou, as thou art wont, repair

My heart with gladness, and a share

Of thy meek nature."

Sec. 6. Various instances.

Observe how spiritual, yet how wandering and playful the fancy is in the

first two stanzas, and how far she flies from the matter in hand, never

stopping to brood on the character of any one of the images she summons,

and yet for a moment truly seeing and believing in them all; while in

the last stanza the imagination returns with its deep feeling to the

heart of the flower, and "_cleaves fast_" to that. Compare the operation

of the imagination in Coleridge, on one of the most trifling objects

that could possibly have been submitted to its action.

"The thin blue flame

Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not:

Only that film which fluttered on the grate

Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.

Methinks its motion in this hush of nature

Gives it dim sympathies with me, who live,

Making it a companionable form,

Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling spirit

By its own moods interprets; everywhere,

Echo or mirror seeking of itself,

And makes a toy of thought."

Lastly, observe the sweet operation of fancy regardant, in the following

well-known passage from Scott, where both her beholding and transforming

powers are seen in their simplicity.

"The rocky summits--split and rent,

Formed turret, dome, or battlement.--

Or seemed fantastically set

With cupola or minaret.

Nor were these earth-born castles bare,

Nor lacked they many a banner fair,

For from their shivered brows displayed,

Far o'er th' unfathomable glade,

All twinkling with the dew-drop sheen,

The brier-rose fell, in streamers green,--

And creeping shrubs of thousand dyes

Waved in the west wind's summer sighs."

Let the reader refer to this passage, with its pretty tremulous

conclusion above the pine tree, "where glistening streamers waved and

danced," and then compare with it the following, where the imagination

operates on a scene nearly similar.

"Gray rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemm'd

The struggling brook; tall spires of windle strae

Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope,

And nought but knarled roots of ancient pines,

Branchless and blasted, clench'd with grasping roots

Th' unwilling soil. . . .

. . . . . . A gradual change was here,

Yet ghastly. For, _as fast years flow away,

The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin

And white; and where irradiate dewy eyes

Had shone, gleam stony orbs; so from his steps

Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade

Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds

And musical motions._ . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . Where the pass extends

Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks.

And seems with its accumulated crags

To overhang the world; for wide expand

Beneath the wan stars, and descending moon,

Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams,

_Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom

Of leaden-colored even_, and _fiery hills

Mingling their flames with twilight_ on the verge

Of the remote horizon. The near scene

In naked, and severe simplicity

Made contrast with the universe. A pine

Rock-rooted, stretch'd athwart the vacancy

Its swinging boughs, to each _inconstant blast

Yielding one only response at each pause_,

In most familiar cadence, with the howl,

The thunder, and the hiss of _homeless_ streams,

Mingling its solemn song."

[Illustration: STUDY OF STONE PINE, AT SESTRI. From a drawing by

Ruskin.]

In this last passage, the mind never departs from its solemn possession

of the solitary scene, the imagination only giving weight, meaning, and

strange human sympathies to all its sights and sounds.

In that from Scott,[70]--the fancy, led away by the outside resemblance

of floating form and hue to the banners, loses the feeling and

possession of the scene, and places herself in circumstances of

character completely opposite to the quietness and grandeur of the

natural objects; this would have been unjustifiable, but that the

resemblance occurs to the mind of the monarch, rather than to that of

the poet; and it is that, which of all others, would have been the most

likely to occur at the time; in this point of view it has high

imaginative propriety. Of the same fanciful character is that

transformation of the tree trunks into dragons noticed before in

Turner's Jason; and in the same way this becomes imaginative as it

exhibits the effect of fear in disposing to morbid perception. Compare

with it the real and high action of the imagination on the same matter

in Wordsworth's Yew trees (which I consider the most vigorous and solemn

bit of forest landscape ever painted):--

"Each particular trunk a growth

Of intertwisted fibres serpentine,

Up coiling and inveterately convolved,

_Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks

That threaten the profane_."

It is too long to quote, but the reader should refer to it: let him note

especially, if painter, that pure touch of color, "by sheddings from the

pining umbrage tinged."

In the same way, the blasted trunk on the left, in Turner's drawing of

the spot where Harold fell at the battle of Hastings, takes, where its

boughs first separate, the shape of the head of an arrow; this, which is

mere fancy in itself, is imagination as it supposes in the spectator an

excited condition of feeling dependent on the history of the spot.

Sec. 7. Morbid or nervous fancy.

I have been led perhaps into too great detail in illustrating these

points; but I think it is of no small importance to prove how in all

cases the imagination is based upon, and appeals to, a deep heart

feeling; and how faithful and earnest it is in contemplation of the

subject matter, never losing sight of it, or disguising it, but

depriving it of extraneous and material accidents, and regarding it in

its disembodied essence. I have not, however, sufficiently noted in

opposition to it, that diseased action of the fancy which depends more

on nervous temperament than intellectual power; and which, as in

dreaming, fever, insanity, and other morbid conditions of mind is

frequently a source of daring and inventive conception; and so the

visionary appearances resulting from various disturbances of the frame

by passion, and from the rapid tendency of the mind to invest with shape

and intelligence the active influences about it, as in the various

demons, spirits, and fairies of all imaginative nations; which, however,

I consider are no more to be ranked as right creations of fancy or

imagination than things actually seen and heard; for the action of the

nerves is I suppose the same, whether externally caused, or from within,

although very grand imagination may be shown by the intellectual

anticipation and realization of such impressions; as in that glorious

vignette of Turner's to the voyage of Columbus. "Slowly along the

evening sky they went." Note especially therein, how admirably true to

the natural form, and yet how suggestive of the battlement he has

rendered the level flake of evening cloud.

Sec. 8. The action of contemplative imagination is not to be expressed by

art.

I believe that it is unnecessary for me to enter into farther detail of

illustration respecting these points; for fuller explanation of the

operations of the contemplative faculty on things verbally expressible,

the reader may be referred to Wordsworth's preface to his poems; it only

remains for us, here, to examine how far this imaginative or abstract

conception is to be conveyed by the material art of the sculptor or the

painter.

Now, it is evident that the bold action of either the fancy or the

imagination, dependent on a bodiless and spiritual image of the object,

is not to be by lines or colors represented. We cannot, in the painting

of Satan fallen, suggest any image of pines or crags,--neither can we

assimilate the brier and the banner, nor give human sympathy to the

motion of the film, nor voice to the swinging of the pines.

Sec. 9. Except under narrow limits.--1st. Abstract rendering of form

without color.

Yet certain powers there are, within due limits, of marking the thing

represented with an ideal character; and it was to these powers that I

alluded in defining the meaning of the term ideal, in the thirteenth

chapter of the preceding section. For it is by this operation that the

productions of high art are separated from those of the realist.

And, first, there is evidently capability of separating color and form,

and considering either separately. Form we find abstractedly considered

by the sculptor, how far it would be possible to advantage a statue by

the addition of color, I venture not to affirm; the question is too

extensive to be here discussed. High authorities and ancient practice,

are in favor of color; so the sculpture of the middle ages: the two

statues of Mino da Fiesole in the church of St^a. Caterina at Pisa

have been colored, the irises of the eyes painted dark, and the hair

gilded, as also I think the Madonna in St^a. Maria della Spina; the

eyes have been painted in the sculptures of Orcagna in Or San Michele,

but it looks like a remnant of barbarism, (compare the pulpit of Guida

da Como, in the church of San Bartolomeo at Pistoja,) and I have never

seen color on any solid forms, that did not, to my mind, neutralize all

other power; the porcelains of Luca della Robbia are painful examples,

and in lower art, Florentine mosaic in relief; gilding is more

admissible, and tells sometimes sweetly upon figures of quaint design,

as on the pulpit of St^a. Maria Novella, while it spoils the classical

ornaments of the mouldings. But the truest grandeur of sculpture I

believe to be in the white form; something of this feeling may be owing

to the difficulty, or rather the immediately, of obtaining truly noble

color upon it, but if we could color the Elgin marbles with the flesh

tint of Giorgione, I had rather not have it done.

Sec. 10. Of color without form.

Color, without form, is less frequently obtainable, and it may be

doubted whether it be desirable: yet I think that to the full enjoyment

of it, a certain abandonment of form is necessary; sometimes by reducing

it to the shapeless glitter of the gem, as often Tintoret and Bassano;

sometimes by loss of outline and blending of parts, as Turner; sometimes

by flatness of mass, as often Giorgione and Titian. How far it is

possible for the painter to represent those mountains of Shelley as the

poet sees them, "mingling _their flames_ with twilight," I cannot say;

but my impression is, that there is no true abstract mode of

considering color; and that all the loss of form in the works of Titian

or Turner, is not ideal, but the representation of the natural

conditions under which bright color is seen; for form is always in a

measure lost by nature herself when color is very vivid.

Sec. 11. Or of both without texture.

Again, there is capability of representing the essential character,

form, and color of an object, without external texture. On this point

much has been said by Reynolds and others, and it is, indeed, perhaps

the most unfailing characteristic of great manner in painting. Compare a

dog of Edwin Landseer with a dog of Paul Veronese. In the first, the

outward texture is wrought out with exquisite dexterity of handling, and

minute attention to all the accidents of curl and gloss which can give

appearance of reality, while the hue and power of the sunshine, and the

truth of the shadow on all these forms is necessarily neglected, and the

large relations of the animal as a mass of color to the sky or ground,

or other parts of the picture, utterly lost. This is realism at the

expense of ideality, it is treatment essentially unimaginative.[71] With

Veronese, there is no curling nor crisping, no glossiness nor sparkle,

hardly even hair, a mere type of hide, laid on with a few

scene-painter's touches. But the essence of dog is there, the entire

magnificent, generic animal type, muscular and living, and with broad,

pure, sunny daylight upon him, and bearing his true and harmonious

relation of color to all color about him. This is ideal treatment.

The same treatment is found in the works of all the greatest men, they

all paint the lion more than his mane, and the horse rather than his

hide; and I think also they are more careful to obtain the right

expression of large and universal light and color, than local tints; for

the warmth of sunshine, and the force of sunlighted hue are always

sublime on whatever subject they may be exhibited; and so also are light

and shade, if grandly arranged, as may be well seen in an etching of

Rembrandt's of a spotted shell, which he has made altogether sublime by

broad truth and large ideality of light and shade; and so I have seen

frequent instances of very grand ideality in treatment of the most

commonplace still life, by our own Hunt, where the petty glosses and

delicacies, and minor forms, are all merged in a broad glow of suffused

color; so also in pieces of the same kind by Etty, where, however,

though the richness and play of color are greater, and the arrangement

grander, there is less expression of light, neither is there anything in

modern art that can be set beside some choice passages of Hunt in this

respect.

Sec. 12. Abstraction or typical representation of animal form.

Again, it is possible to represent objects capable of various accidents

in generic or symbolical form.

Sec. 13. Either when it is symbolically used.

How far this may be done with things having necessary form, as animals,

I am not prepared to say. The lions of the Egyptian room in the British

Museum, and the fish beside Michael Angelo's Jonah, are instances; and

there is imaginative power about both which we find not in the more

perfectly realized Florentine boar, nor in Raffaelle's fish of the

draught. And yet the propriety and nobility of these types depend on the

architectural use and character of the one, and on the typical meaning

of the other: we should be grieved to see the forms of the Egyptian lion

substituted for those of Raffaelle's in its struggle with Samson, nor

would the whale of Michael Angelo be tolerated in the nets of

Gennesaret. So that I think it is only when the figure of the creature

stands not for any representation of vitality, but merely for a letter

or type of certain symbolical meaning, or else is adopted as a grand

form of decoration or support in architecture, that such generalization

is allowable, and in such circumstances I think it necessary, always

provided it be based, as in the instances given I conceive it to be,

upon thorough knowledge of the creature symbolized and wrought out by a

master hand; and these conditions being observed, I believe it to be

right and necessary in architecture to modify all animal forms by a

severe architectural stamp, and in symbolical use of them, to adopt a

typical form, to which practice the contrary, and its evil consequences

are ludicrously exhibited in the St. Peter of Carlo Dolci in the Pitti

palace, which owing to the prominent, glossy-plumed and crimson-combed

cock, is liable to be taken for the portrait of a poulterer, only let it

be observed that the treatment of the animal form here is offensive, not

only from its realization, but from the pettiness and meanness of its

realization; for it might, in other hands but Carlo Dolci's, have been a

sublime cock, though a real one, but in his, it is fit for nothing but

the spit. Compare as an example partly of symbolical treatment, partly

of magnificent realization, that supernatural lion of Tintoret, in the

picture of the Doge Loredano before the Madonna, with the plumes of his

mighty wings clashed together in cloudlike repose, and the strength of

the sea winds shut within their folding. And note farther the difference

between the typical use of the animal, as in this case, and that of the

fish of Jonah, (and again the fish before mentioned whose form is

indicated in the clouds of the baptism), and the actual occurrence of

the creature itself, with concealed meaning, as the ass colt of the

crucifixion, which it was necessary to paint as such, and not as an

ideal form.

Sec. 14. Or in architectural decoration.

Sec. 15. Exception in delicate and superimposed ornament.

I cannot enter here into the question of the exact degree of severity

and abstraction necessary in the forms of living things architecturally

employed; my own feeling on the subject is, though I dare not lay it

down as a principle, (with the Parthenon pediment standing against me

like the shield of Ajax,) that no perfect representation of animal form

is right in architectural decoration. For my own part, I had much rather

see the metopes in the Elgin room of the British Museum, and the

Parthenon without them, than have them together, and I would not

surrender, in an architectural point of view, one mighty line of the

colossal, quiet, life-in-death statue mountains in Egypt with their

narrow fixed eyes and hands on their rocky limbs, nor one Romanesque

facade with its porphyry mosaic of indefinable monsters, nor one Gothic

moulding of rigid saints and grinning goblins, for ten Parthenons; and,

I believe, I could show some rational ground for this seeming barbarity

if this were the place to do so, but at present I can only ask the

reader to compare the effect of the so-called barbarous ancient mosaics

on the front of St. Mark's, as they have been recorded, happily, by the

faithfulness of the good Gentile Bellini, in one of his pictures now in

the Venice gallery, with the veritably barbarous pictorial substitutions

of the fifteenth century, (one only of the old mosaics remains, or did

remain till lately, over the northern door, but it is probably by this

time torn down by some of the Venetian committees of taste,) and also I

would have the old portions of the interior ceiling, or of the mosaics

of Murano and Torcello, and the glorious Cimabue mosaic of Pisa, and the

roof of the Baptistery at Parma, (that of the Florence Baptistery is a

bad example, owing to its crude whites and complicated mosaic of small

forms,) all of which are as barbarous as they can well be, in a certain

sense, but mighty in their barbarism, with any architectural decorations

whatsoever, consisting of professedly perfect animal forms, from the

vile frescoes of Federigo Zuccaro at Florence to the ceiling of the

Sistine, and again compare the professedly perfect sculpture of Milan

Cathedral with the statues of the porches of Chartres; only be it always

observed that it is not rudeness and ignorance of art, but

intellectually awful abstraction that I uphold, and also be it noted

that in all ornament, which takes place in the general effect merely as

so much fretted stone, in capitals and other pieces of minute detail,

the forms may be, and perhaps ought to be, elaborately imitative; and in

this respect again the capitals of St. Mark's church, and of the Doge's

palace at Venice may be an example to the architects of all the world,

in their boundless inventiveness, unfailing elegance, and elaborate

finish; there is more mind poured out in turning a single angle of that

church than would serve to build a modern cathedral;[72] and of the

careful finish of the work, this may serve for example, that one of the

capitals of the Doge's palace is formed of eight heads of different

animals, of which one is a bear's with a honeycomb in the mouth, whose

carved _cells_ are _hexagonal_.

Sec. 16. Abstraction necessary from imperfection of materials.

Sec. 17. Abstractions of things capable of varied accident are not

imaginative.

Sec. 18. Yet sometimes valuable.

So far, then, of the abstraction proper to architecture, and to

symbolical uses, of which I shall have occasion to speak hereafter at

length, referring to it only at present as one of the operations of

imagination contemplative; other abstractions there are which are

necessarily consequent on the imperfection of materials, as of the hair

in sculpture, which is necessarily treated in masses that are in no sort

imitative, but only stand for hair, and have the grace, flow, and

feeling of it without the texture or division, and other abstractions

there are in which the form of one thing is fancifully indicated in the

matter of another; as in phantoms and cloud shapes, the use of which, in

mighty hands, is often most impressive, as in the cloudy charioted

Apollo of Nicolo Poussin in our own gallery, which the reader may oppose

to the substantial Apollo, in Wilson's Niobe, and again the phantom

vignette of Turner already noticed; only such operations of the

imagination are to be held of lower kind and dangerous consequence, if

frequently trusted in, for those painters only have the right

imaginative power who can set the supernatural form before us fleshed

and boned like ourselves.[73] Other abstractions occur, frequently, of

things which have much accidental variety of form, as of waves, on Greek

sculptures in successive volutes, and of clouds often in supporting

volumes in the sacred pictures; but these I do not look upon as results

of imagination at all, but mere signs and letters; and whenever a very

highly imaginative mind touches them, it always realizes as far as may

be. Even Titian is content to use at the top of his St. Pietro Martiri,

the conventional, round, opaque cloud, which cuts his trees open like a

gouge; but Tintoret, in his picture of the Golden Calf, though compelled

to represent the Sinai under conventional form, in order that the

receiving of the tables might be seen at the top of it, yet so soon as

it is possible to give more truth, he is ready with it; he takes a grand

fold of horizontal cloud straight from the flanks of the Alps, and shows

the forests of the mountains through its misty volume, like sea-weed

through deep sea.[74] Nevertheless, when the realization is impossible,

bold symbolism is of the highest value, and in religious art, as we

shall presently see, even necessary, as of the rays of light in the

Titian woodcut of St. Francis before noticed; and sometimes the

attention is directed by some such strange form to the meaning of the

image, which may be missed if it remains in its natural purity, (as, I

suppose, few in looking at the Cephalus and Procris of Turner, note the

sympathy of those faint rays that are just drawing back and dying

between the trunks of the far-off forest, with the ebbing life of the

nymph; unless, indeed, they happen to recollect the same sympathy marked

by Shelley in the Alastor;) but the imagination is not shown in any such

modifications; however, in some cases they may be valuable (in the

Cephalus they would be utterly destructive,) and I note them merely in

consequence of their peculiar use in religious art, presently to be

examined.

Sec. 19. Exaggeration. Its laws and limits. First, in scale of

representation.

The last mode we have here to note in which the imagination regardant

may be expressed in art is exaggeration, of which, as it is the vice of

all bad artists, may be constantly resorted to without any warrant of

imagination, it is necessary to note strictly the admissible limits.

In the first place, a colossal statue is necessarily no more an

exaggeration of what it represents than a miniature is a diminution, it

need not be a representation of a giant, but a representation, on a

large scale, of a man; only it is to be observed, that as any plane

intersecting the cone of rays between us and the object, must receive an

image smaller than the object; a small image is rationally and

completely expressive of a larger one; but not a large of a small one.

Hence I think that all statues above the Elgin standard, or that of

Michael Angelo's Night and Morning, are, in a measure, taken by the eye

for representations of giants, and I think them always disagreeable. The

amount of exaggeration admitted by Michael Angelo is valuable because it

separates the emblematic from the human form, and gives greater freedom

to the grand lines of the frame; for notice of his scientific system of

increase of size I may refer the reader to Sir Charles Bell's remarks on

the statues of the Medici chapel; but there is one circumstance which

Sir Charles has not noticed, and in the interpretation of which,

therefore, it is likely I may be myself wrong; that the extremities are

singularly small in proportion to the limbs, by which means there is an

expression given of strength and activity greater than in the ordinary

human type, which appears to me to be an allowance for that alteration

in proportion necessitated by increase of size, of which we took note in

Chap. VI. of the first section, Sec. 10, note; not but that Michael Angelo

always makes the extremities comparatively small, but smallest,

comparatively, in his largest works; so I think, from the size of the

head, it may be conjectured respecting the Theseus of the Elgins. Such

adaptations are not necessary when the exaggerated image is spectral;

for as the laws of matter in that case can have no operation, we may

expand the form as far as we choose, only let careful distinction be

made between the size of the thing represented, and the scale of the

representation. The canvas on which Fuseli has stretched his Satan in

the schools of the Royal Academy is a mere concession to inability. He

might have made him look more gigantic in one of a foot square.

Sec. 20. Secondly. Of things capable of variety of scale.

Another kind of exaggeration is of things whose size is variable to a

size or degree greater than that usual with them, as in waves and

mountains; and there are hardly any limits to this exaggeration so long

as the laws which nature observes in her increase be observed. Thus, for

instance: the form and polished surface of a breaking ripple three

inches high, are not representation of either the form or the surface of

the surf of a storm, nodding ten feet above the beach; neither would the

cutting ripple of a breeze upon a lake if simply exaggerated, represent

the forms of Atlantic surges; but as nature increases her bulk, she

diminishes the angles of ascent, and increases her divisions; and if we

would represent surges of size greater than ever existed, which it is

lawful to do, we must carry out these operations to still greater

extent. Thus, Turner, in his picture of the Slave Ship, divides the

whole sea into two masses of enormous swell, and conceals the horizon by

a gradual slope of only two or three degrees. This is intellectual

exaggeration. In the Academy exhibition of 1843, there was, in one of

the smaller rooms, a black picture of a storm, in which there appeared

on the near sea, just about to be overwhelmed by an enormous breaker,

curling right over it, an object at first sight liable to be taken for a

walnut shell, but which, on close examination, proved to be a ship with

mast and sail, with Christ and his twelve disciples in it. This is

childish exaggeration, because it is impossible, by the laws of matter

and motion, that such a breaker should ever exist. Again in mountains,

we have repeatedly observed the necessary building up and multitudinous

division of the higher peaks, and the smallness of the slopes by which

they usually rise. We may, therefore, build up the mountain as high as

we please, but we must do it in nature's way, and not in impossible

peaks and precipices; not but that a daring feature is admissible here

and there, as the Matterhorn is admitted by nature; but we must not

compose a picture out of such exceptions; we may use them, but they must

be as exceptions exhibited. I shall have much to say, when we come to

treat of the sublime, of the various modes of treating mountain form, so

that at present I shall only point to an unfortunate instance of

inexcusable and effectless exaggeration in the distance of Turner's

vignette to Milton, (the temptation on the mountain,) and desire the

reader to compare it with legitimate exaggeration, in the vignette to

the second part of Jacqueline, in Rogers's poems.

Sec. 21. Thirdly, necessary in expression of characteristic features on

diminished scale.

Another kind of exaggeration is necessary to retain the characteristic

impressions of nature on reduced scale, it is not possible, for

instance, to give the leafage of trees in its proper proportion, when

the trees represented are large, without entirely losing their grace of

form and curvature; of this the best proof is found in the Calotype or

Daguerreotype, which fail in foliage, not only because the green rays

are ineffective, but because, on the small scale of the image, the

reduced leaves lose their organization, and look like moss attached to

sticks. In order to retain, therefore, the character of flexibility and

beauty of foliage, the painter is often compelled to increase the

proportionate size of the leaves, and to arrange them in generic

masses. Of this treatment compare the grand examples throughout the

Liber Studiorum. It is by such means only that the ideal character of

objects is to be preserved; as we before observed in the 13th chapter of

the first section. In all these cases exaggeration is only lawful as the

sole means of arriving at truth of impression when strict fidelity is

out of the question.

Other modes of exaggeration there are, on which I shall not at present

farther insist, the proper place for their discussion being in treating

of the sublime, and these which I have at present instanced are enough

to establish the point at issue, respecting imaginative verity, inasmuch

as we find that exaggeration itself, if imaginative, is referred to

principles of truth, and of actual being.

Sec. 22. Recapitulation.

We have now, I think, reviewed the various modes in which imagination

contemplative may be exhibited in art, and arrived at all necessary

certainties respecting the essence of the faculty: which we have found

in all its three functions, associative of truth, penetrative of truth,

and contemplative of truth; and having no dealings nor relations with

any kind of falsity. One task, however, remains to us, namely, to

observe the operation of the theoretic and imaginative faculties

together, in the attempt at realization to the bodily sense of beauty

supernatural and divine.

FOOTNOTES

[70] Let it not be supposed that I mean to compare the sickly

dreaming of Shelley over clouds and waves with the masculine and

magnificent grasp of men and things which we find in Scott; it only

happens that these two passages are more illustrative, by the

likeness of the scenery they treat, than any others I could have

opposed; and that Shelley is peculiarly distinguished by the faculty

of contemplative imagination. Scott's healthy and truthful feeling

would not allow him to represent the benighted hunter provoked by

loss of game, horse, and way at once, as indulging in any more

exalted flights of imagination than those naturally consequent on

the contrast between the night's lodging he expected, and that which

befitted him.

[71] I do not mean to withdraw the praise I have given, and shall

always be willing to give such pictures as the Old Shepherd's Chief

Mourner, and to all in which the character and inner life of animals

are developed. But all lovers of art must regret to find Mr.

Landseer wasting his energies on such inanities as the "Shoeing,"

and sacrificing color, expression, and action, to an imitation of

glossy hide.

[72] I have not brought forward any instances of the imaginative

power in architecture, as my object is not at present to exhibit its

operation in all matter, but only to define its essence; but it may

be well to note, in our own new houses of Parliament, how far a

building approved by a committee of Taste, may proceed without

manifestation either of imagination or composition; it remains to be

seen how far the towers may redeem it; and I allude to it at present

unwillingly, and only in the desire of influencing, so far as I may,

those who have the power to prevent the adoption of a design for a

bridge to take place of Westminster, which was exhibited in 1844 at

the Royal Academy, professing to be in harmony with the new

building, but which was fit only to carry a railroad over a canal.

[73] Comp. Ch. V. Sec. 5.

[74] All the clouds of Tintoret are sublime; the worst that I know

in art are Correggio's, especially in the Madonna della Scudella,

and Dome of Parma.

CHAPTER V.

OF THE SUPERHUMAN IDEAL.

Sec. 1. The subject is not to be here treated in detail.

In our investigation in the first section of the laws of beauty, we

confined ourselves to the observation of lower nature, or of humanity.

We were prevented from proceeding to deduce conclusions respecting

divine ideality by our not having then established any principles

respecting the imaginative faculty, by which, under the discipline of

the theoretic, such ideality is conceived. I had purposed to conclude

the present section by a careful examination of this subject; but as

this is evidently foreign to the matter immediately under discussion,

and involves questions of great intricacy respecting the development of

mind among those pagan nations who are supposed to have produced high

examples of spiritual ideality, I believe it will be better to delay

such inquiries until we have concluded our detailed observation of the

beauty of visible nature; and I shall therefore at present take notice

only of one or two broad principles, which were referred to, or implied,

in the chapter respecting the human ideal, and without the enunciation

of which, that chapter might lead to false conclusions.

Sec. 2. The conceivable modes of manifestation of Spiritual Beings are

four.

There are four ways in which beings supernatural may be conceived as

manifesting themselves to human sense. The first, by external types,

signs, or influences; as God to Moses in the flames of the bush, and to

Elijah in the voice of Horeb.

The second, by the assuming of a form not properly belonging to them; as

the Holy Spirit of that of a Dove, the second person of the Trinity of

that of a Lamb; and so such manifestations, under angelic or other form,

of the first person of the Trinity, as seem to have been made to

Abraham, Moses, and Ezekiel.

The third, by the manifestation of a form properly belonging to them,

but not necessarily seen; as of the Risen Christ to his disciples when

the doors were shut. And the fourth, by their operation on the human

form, which they influence or inspire, as in the shining of the face of

Moses.

Sec. 3. And these are in or through creature forms familiar to us.

It is evident that in all these cases, wherever there is form at all, it

is the form of some creature to us known. It is no new form peculiar to

spirit nor can it be. We can conceive of none. Our inquiry is simply,

therefore, by what modifications those creature forms to us known, as of

a lamb, a bird, or a human creature, may be explained as signs or

habitations of Divinity, or of angelic essence, and not creatures such

as they seem.

Sec. 4. Supernatural character may be impressed on these either by

phenomena inconsistent with their common nature, (compare chap.

4, Sec. 16).

This may be done in two ways. First, by effecting some change in the

appearance of the creature inconsistent with its actual nature, as by

giving it colossal size, or unnatural color, or material, as of gold, or

silver, or flame, instead of flesh, or by taking away its property of

matter altogether, and forming it of light or shade, or in an

intermediate step, of cloud, or vapor; or explaining it by terrible

concomitant circumstances, as of wounds in the body, or strange lights

and seemings round about it; or by joining of two bodies together as in

angels' wings. Of all which means of attaining supernatural character

(which though, in their nature ordinary and vulgar, are yet effective

and very glorious in mighty hands) we have already seen the limits in

speaking of the imagination.

Sec. 5. Or by inherent Dignity.

But the second means of obtaining supernatural character is that with

which we are now concerned, namely, retaining the actual form in its

full and material presence, and without aid from any external

interpretation whatsoever, to raise that form by mere inherent dignity

to such a pitch of power and impressiveness as cannot but assert and

stamp it for superhuman.

On the north side of the Campo Santo at Pisa, are a series of paintings

from the Old Testament History by Benozzo Gozzoli. In the earlier of

these, angelic presences, mingled with human, occur frequently,

illustrated by no awfulness of light, nor incorporeal tracing. Clear

revealed they move, in human forms, in the broad daylight and on the

open earth, side by side, and hand in hand with men. But they never miss

of the angel.

He who can do this has reached the last pinnacle and utmost power of

ideal, or any other art. He stands in no need thenceforward, of cloud,

nor lightning, nor tempest, nor terror of mystery. His sublime is

independent of the elements. It is of that which shall stand when they

shall melt with fervent heat, and light the firmament when the sun is as

sackcloth of hair.

Sec. 6. 1st. Of the expression of Inspiration.

Let us consider by what means this has been effected, so far as they are

by analysis traceable; and that is not far, for here, as always, we find

that the greater part of what has been rightly accomplished has been

done by faith and intense feeling, and cannot, by aid of any rules or

teaching, be either tried, estimated, or imitated.

And first, of the expression of supernatural influence on forms actually

human, as of sibyl or prophet. It is evident that not only here is it

unnecessary, but we are not altogether at liberty to trust for

expression to the utmost ennobling of the human form: for we cannot do

more than this, when that form is to be the actual representation, and

not the recipient of divine presence. Hence, in order to retain the

actual humanity definitely, we must leave upon it such signs of the

operation of sin and the liability to death as are consistent with

human ideality, and often more than these, definite signs of immediate

and active evil, when the prophetic spirit is to be expressed in men

such as were Saul and Balaam; neither may we ever, with just

discrimination, touch the utmost limits of beauty in human form when

inspiration is to be expressed, and not angelic or divine being; of

which reserve and subjection the most instructive instances are found in

the works of Angelico, who invariably uses inferior types for the

features of humanity, even glorified, (excepting always the Madonna,)

nor ever exerts his full power of beauty either in feature or

expression, except in angels or in the Madonna or in Christ. Now the

expression of spiritual influence without supreme elevation of the

bodily type we have seen to be a work of imagination penetrative, and we

found it accomplished by Michael Angelo; but I think by him only. I am

aware of no one else who, to my mind, has expressed the inspiration of

prophet or sibyl; this, however, I affirm not, but shall leave to the

determination of the reader, as the principles at present to be noted

refer entirely to that elevation of the creature form necessary when it

is actually representative of a spiritual being.

Sec. 7. No representation of that which is more than creature is possible.

I have affirmed in the conclusion of the first section that "of that

which is more than creature, no creature ever conceived." I think this

almost self-evident, for it is clear that the illimitableness of Divine

attributes cannot be by matter represented, (though it may be typefied,)

and I believe that all who are acquainted with the range of sacred art

will admit, not only that no representation of Christ has ever been even

partially successful, but that the greatest painters fall therein below

their accustomed level; Perugino and Fra Angelico especially; Leonardi

has I think done best, but perhaps the beauty of the fragment left at

Milan, (for in spite of all that is said of repainting and destruction,

that Cenacolo is still the finest in existence) is as much dependent on

the very untraceableness resulting from injury as on its original

perfection. Of more daring attempts at representation of Divinity we

need not speak; only this is to be noted respecting them, that though by

the ignorant Romanists many such efforts were made under the idea of

actual representation, (note the way in which Cellini speaks of the seal

made for the Pope,) by the nobler among them I suppose they were

intended, and by us at any rate they may always be received, as mere

symbols, the noblest that could be employed, but as much symbols still

as a triangle, or the Alpha and Omega; nor do I think that the most

scrupulous amongst Christians ought to desire to exchange the power

obtained by the use of this symbol in Michael Angelo's creation of Adam

and of Eve for the effect which would be produced by the substitution of

a triangle or any other sign in place of it. Of these efforts then we

need reason no farther, but may limit ourselves to considering the

purest modes of giving a conception of superhuman but still creature

form, as of angels; in equal rank with whom, perhaps, we may without

offence place the mother of Christ: at least we must so regard the type

of the Madonna in receiving it from Romanist painters.[75]

Sec. 8. Supernatural character expressed by modification of accessories.

And first, much is to be done by right modification of accessory

circumstances, so as to express miraculous power exercised over them by

the spiritual creature. There is a beautiful instance of this in John

Bellini's picture of St. Jerome at Venice. The saint sits upon a rock,

his grand form defined against clear green open sky; he is reading, a

noble tree springs out of a cleft in the rock, bends itself suddenly

back to form a rest for the volume, then shoots up into the sky. There

is something very beautiful in this obedient ministry of the lower

creature; but be it observed that the sweet feeling of the whole depends

upon the service being such as is consistent with its nature. It is not

animated, it does not _listen_ to the saint, nor bend itself towards him

as if in affection, this would have been mere fancy, illegitimate and

effectless. But the simple bend of the trunk to receive the book is

miraculous subjection of the true nature of the tree; it is therefore

imaginative, and very touching.

Sec. 9. Landscape of the religious painters. Its character is eminently

symmetrical.

It is not often however that the religious painters even go this length;

they content themselves usually with impressing on the landscape perfect

symmetry and order, such as may seem consistent with, or induced by the

spiritual nature they would represent. All signs of decay, disturbance,

and imperfection, are also banished; and in doing this it is evident

that some unnaturalness and singularity must result, inasmuch as there

are no veritable forms of landscape but express or imply a state of

progression or of imperfection All mountain forms are seen to be

produced by convulsion and modelled by decay; the finer forms of cloud

have stories in them about storm; all forest grouping is wrought out

with varieties of strength and growth among its several members, and

bears evidences of struggle with unkind influences. All such appearances

are banished in the supernatural landscape; the trees grow straight,

equally branched on each side, and of such slight and feathery frame as

shows them never to have encountered blight or frost or tempest. The

mountains stand up in fantastic pinnacles; there is on them no trace of

torrent, no scathe of lightning; no fallen fragments encumber their

foundations, no worn ravines divide their flanks; the seas are always

waveless, the skies always calm, crossed only by fair, horizontal,

lightly wreathed, white clouds.

Sec. 10. Landscape of Benozzo Gozzoli.

In some cases these conditions result partly from feeling, partly from

ignorance of the facts of nature, or incapability of representing them,

as in the first type of the treatment found in Giotto and his school; in

others they are observed on principle, as by Benozzo Gozzoli, Perugino,

and Raffaelle. There is a beautiful instance by the former in the

frescoes of the Ricardi palace, where behind the adoring angel groups

the landscape is governed by the most absolute symmetry; roses and

pomegranates, their leaves drawn to the last rib and vein, twine

themselves in fair and perfect order about delicate trellises; broad

stone pines and tall cypresses overshadow them, bright birds hover here

and there in the serene sky, and groups of angels, hand joined with

hand, and wing with wing, glide and float through the glades of the

unentangled forest. But behind the human figures, behind the pomp and

turbulence of the Kingly procession descending from the distant hills

the spirit of the landscape is changed. Severer mountains rise in the

distance, ruder prominences and less flowery vary the nearer ground, and

gloomy shadows remain unbroken beneath the forest branches.

Sec. 11. Landscape of Perugino and Raffaelle.

The landscape of Perugino, for grace, purity and as much of nature as is

consistent with the above-named conditions, is unrivalled; and the more

interesting because in him certainly whatever limits are set to the

rendering of nature proceed not from incapability. The sea is in the

distance almost always, then some blue promontories and undulating dewy

park ground, studded with glittering trees; in the landscape of the

fresco in St^a. Maria Maddalena at Florence there is more variety than

is usual with him; a gentle river winds round the bases of rocky hills,

a river like our own Wye or Tees in their loveliest reaches; level

meadows stretch away on its opposite side; mounds set with

slender-stemmed foliage occupy the nearer ground, a small village with

its simple spire peeps from the forest at the bend of the valley, and it

is remarkable that in architecture thus employed neither Perugino nor

any other of the ideal painters ever use Italian forms but always

Transalpine, both of church and castle. The little landscape which forms

the background of his own portrait in the Uffizii is another highly

finished and characteristic example. The landscape of Raffaelle was

learned from his father, and continued for some time little modified,

though expressed with greater refinement. It became afterwards

conventional and poor, and in some cases altogether meaningless. The

haystacks and vulgar trees behind the St. Cecilia at Bologna form a

painful contrast to the pure space of mountain country in the Perugino

opposite.[76]

Sec. 12. Such Landscape is not to be imitated.

In all these cases, while I would uphold the landscape thus employed and

treated, as worthy of all admiration, I should be sorry to advance it

for imitation. What is right in its mannerism arose from keen feeling in

the painter: imitated without the same feeling, it would be painful; the

only safe mode of following in such steps is to attain perfect knowledge

of nature herself, and then to suffer our own feelings to guide us in

the selection of what is fitting for any particular purpose. Every

painter ought to paint what he himself loves, not what others have

loved; if his mind be pure and sweetly toned, what he loves will be

lovely; if otherwise, no example can guide his selection, no precept

govern his hand; and farther let it be distinctly observed, that all

this mannered landscape is only right under the supposition of its being

a background to some supernatural presence; behind mortal beings it

would be wrong, and by itself, as landscape, ridiculous; and farther,

the chief virtue of it results from the exquisite refinement of those

natural details consistent with its character from the botanical drawing

of the flowers and the clearness and brightness of the sky.

Sec. 13. Color, and Decoration. Their use in representations of the

Supernatural.

Another mode of attaining supernatural character is by purity of color

almost shadowless, no more darkness being allowed than is absolutely

necessary for the explanation of the forms, and the vividness of the

effect enhanced as far as may be by use of gilding, enamel, and other

jewellery. I think the smaller works of Angelico are perfect models in

this respect; the glories about the heads being of beaten rays of gold,

on which the light plays and changes as the spectator moves; (and which

therefore throw the purest flesh color out in dark relief) and such

color and light being obtained by the enamelling of the angel wings as

of course is utterly unattainable by any other expedient of art; the

colors of the draperies always pure and pale; blue, rose, or tender

green, or brown, but never dark or gloomy; the faces of the most

celestial fairness, brightly flushed: the height and glow of this flush

are noticed by Constantin as reserved by the older painters for

spiritual beings, as if expressive of light seen through the body.

I cannot think it necessary while I insist on the value of all these

seemingly childish means when in the hands of a noble painter, to assert

also their futility and even absurdity if employed by no exalted power.

I think the error has commonly been on the side of scorn, and that we

reject much in our foolish vanity, which if wiser and more earnest we

should delight in. But two points it is very necessary to note in the

use of such accessories.

Sec. 14. Decoration so used must be generic.

The first that the ornaments used by Angelico, Giotto, and Perugino, but

especially by Angelico, are always of a generic and abstract character.

They are not diamonds, nor brocades, nor velvets, nor gold embroideries;

they are mere spots of gold or of color, simple patterns upon

_textureless_ draperies; the angel wings burn with transparent crimson

and purple and amber, but they are not set forth with peacock's plumes;

the golden circlets gleam with changeful light, but they are not beaded

with elaborate pearls nor set with studied sapphires.

In the works of Filippino Lippi, Mantegna, and many other painters

following, interesting examples may be found of the opposite treatment;

and as in Lippi the heads are usually very sweet, and the composition

severe, the degrading effect of the realized decorations and imitated

dress may be seen in him simply, and without any addition of painfulness

from other deficiencies of feeling. The larger of the two pictures in

the Tuscan room of the Uffizii, but for this defect, would have been a

very noble ideal work.

Sec. 15. And color pure.

The second point to be observed is that brightness of color is

altogether inadmissible without purity and harmony; and that the sacred

painters must not be followed in their frankness of unshadowed color

unless we can also follow them in its clearness. As far as I am

acquainted with the modern schools of Germany, they seem to be entirely

ignorant of the value of color as an assistant of feeling, and to think

that hardness, dryness, and opacity are its virtues as employed in

religious art; whereas I hesitate not to affirm that in such art more

than in any other, clearness, luminousness and intensity of hue are

essential to right impression; and from the walls of the Arena chapel in

their rainbow play of brilliant harmonies, to the solemn purple tones of

Perugino's fresco in the Albizzi palace, I know not any great work of

sacred art which is not as precious in color as in all other qualities

(unless indeed it be a Crucifixion of Fra Angelico in the Florence

Academy, which has just been glazed and pumiced and painted and

varnished by the picture-cleaners until it glares from one end of the

picture gallery to the other;) only the pure white light and delicate

hue of the idealists, whose colors are by preference such as we have

seen to be the most beautiful in the chapter on Purity are carefully to

be distinguished from the golden light and deep pitched hue of the

school of Titian whose virtue is the grandeur of earthly solemnity, not

the glory of heavenly rejoicing.

Sec. 16. Ideal form of the body itself, of what variety susceptible.

But leaving these accessory circumstances and touching the treatment of

the bodily form, it is evident in the first place that whatever typical

beauty the human body is capable of possessing must be bestowed upon it

when it is understood as spiritual. And therefore those general

proportions and types which are deducible from comparison of the nobler

individuals of the race, must be adopted and adhered to; admitting among

them not, as in the human ideal, such varieties as result from past

suffering, or contest with sin, but such only as are consistent with

sinless nature or are the signs of instantly or continually operative

affections; for though it is conceivable that spirit should suffer, it

is inconceivable that spiritual frame should retain like the stamped

inelastic human clay, the brand of sorrow past, unless fallen.

"His face,

Deep scars of thunder had entrenched, and care

Sat on his faded cheek."

Yet so far forth the angelic ideal is diminished, nor could this be

suffered in pictorial representation.

Sec. 17. Anatomical development how far admissible.

Again, such muscular development as is necessary to the perfect beauty

of the body, is to be rendered. But that which is necessary to strength,

or which appears to have been the result of laborious exercise, is

inadmissible. No herculean form is spiritual, for it is degrading the

spiritual creature to suppose it operative through impulse of bone and

sinew; its power is immaterial and constant, neither dependent on, nor

developed by exertion. Generally, it is well to conceal anatomical

development as far as may be; even Michael Angelo's anatomy interferes

with his divinity; in the hands of lower men the angel becomes a

preparation. How far it is possible to subdue or generalize the naked

form I venture not to affirm, but I believe that it is best to conceal

it as far as may be, not with draperies light and undulating, that fall

in with, and exhibit its principal lines, but with draperies severe and

linear, such as were constantly employed before the time of Raffaelle. I

recollect no single instance of a naked angel that does not look boylike

or child-like, and unspiritualized; even Fra Bartolomeo's might with

advantage be spared from the pictures at Lucca, and, in the hands of

inferior men, the sky is merely encumbered with sprawling infants; those

of Domenichino in the Madonna del Rosario, and Martyrdom of St. Agnes,

are peculiarly offensive, studies of bare-legged children howling and

kicking in volumes of smoke. Confusion seems to exist in the minds of

subsequent painters between Angels and Cupids.

Sec. 18. Symmetry. How valuable.

Farther, the qualities of symmetry and repose are of peculiar value in

spiritual form. We find the former most earnestly sought by all the

great painters in the arrangement of the hair, wherein no loosely

flowing nor varied form is admitted, but all restrained in undisturbed

and equal ringlets; often, as in the infant Christ of Fra Angelico,

supported on the forehead in forms of sculpturesque severity. The Angel

of Masaccio, in the Deliverance of Peter, grand both in countenance and

motion, loses much of his spirituality because the painter has put a

little too much of his own character into the hair, and left it

disordered.

Sec. 19. The influence of Greek art, how dangerous.

Sec. 20. Its scope, how limited.

Of repose, and its exalting power, I have already said enough for our

present purpose, though I have not insisted on the peculiar

manifestation of it in the Christian ideal as opposed to the pagan. But

this, as well as other questions relating to the particular development

of the Greek mind, is foreign to the immediate inquiry, which therefore

I shall here conclude in the hope of resuming it in detail after

examining the laws of beauty in the inanimate creation; always, however,

holding this for certain, that of whatever kind or degree the short

coming may be, it is not possible but that short coming should be

visible in every pagan conception, when set beside Christian; and

believing, for my own part, that there is not only deficiency, but such

difference in kind as must make all Greek conception full of danger to

the student in proportion to his admiration of it; as I think has been

fatally seen in its effect on the Italian schools, when its pernicious

element first mingled with their solemn purity, and recently in its

influence on the French historical painters: neither can I from my

present knowledge fix upon an ancient statue which expresses by the

countenance any one elevated character of soul, or any single

enthusiastic self-abandoning affection, much less any such majesty of

feeling as might mark the features for supernatural. The Greek could not

conceive a spirit; he could do nothing without limbs; his god is a

finite god, talking, pursuing, and going journeys;[77] if at any time he

was touched with a true feeling of the unseen powers around him, it was

in the field of poised battle, for there is something in the near coming

of the shadow of death, something in the devoted fulfilment of mortal

duty, that reveals the real God, though darkly; that pause on the field

of Plataea was not one of vain superstition; the two white figures that

blazed along the Delphic plain, when the earthquake and the fire led the

charge from Olympus, were more than sunbeams on the battle dust; the

sacred cloud, with its lance light and triumph singing, that went down

to brood over the masts of Salamis, was more than morning mist among the

olives; and yet what were the Greek's thoughts of his god of battle? No

spirit power was in the vision; it was a being of clay strength and

human passion, foul, fierce, and changeful; of penetrable arms and

vulnerable flesh. Gather what we may of great, from pagan chisel or

pagan dream, and set it beside the orderer of Christian warfare, Michael

the Archangel: not Milton's "with hostile brow and visage all inflamed,"

not even Milton's in kingly treading of the hills of Paradise, not

Raffaelle's with the expanded wings and brandished spear, but Perugino's

with his triple crest of traceless plume unshaken in heaven, his hand

fallen on his crossleted sword, the truth girdle binding his undinted

armor; God has put his power upon him, resistless radiance is on his

limbs, no lines are there of earthly strength, no trace on the divine

features of earthly anger; trustful and thoughtful, fearless, but full

of love, incapable except of the repose of eternal conquest, vessel and

instrument of Omnipotence, filled like a cloud with the victor light,

the dust of principalities and powers beneath his feet, the murmur of

hell against him heard by his spiritual ear like the winding of a shell

on the far-off sea-shore.

Sec. 21. Conclusion.

It is vain to attempt to pursue the comparison; the two orders of art

have in them nothing common, and the field of sacred history, the intent

and scope of Christian feeling, are too wide and exalted to admit of the

juxtaposition of any other sphere or order of conception; they embrace

all other fields like the dome of heaven. With what comparison shall we

compare the types of the martyr saints, the St. Stephen of Fra

Bartolomeo, with his calm forehead crowned by the stony diadem, or the

St. Catherine of Raffaelle looking up to heaven in the dawn of the

eternal day, with her lips parted in the resting from her pain? or with

what the Madonnas of Francia and Pinturicchio, in whom the hues of the

morning and the solemnity of the eve, the gladness in accomplished

promise, and sorrow of the sword-pierced heart, are gathered into one

human lamp of ineffable love? or with what the angel choirs of Angelico,

with the flames on their white foreheads waving brighter as they move,

and the sparkles streaming from their purple wings like the glitter of

many suns upon a sounding sea, listening, in the pauses of alternate

song, for the prolonging of the trumpet blast, and the answering of

psaltery and cymbal, throughout the endless deep and from all the star

shores of heaven?

FOOTNOTES

[75] I take no note of the representation of evil spirits, since

throughout we have been occupied in the pursuit of beauty; but it

may be observed generally that there is great difficulty to be

overcome in attempts of this kind, because the elevation of the form

necessary to give it spirituality destroys the appearance of evil;

hence even the greatest painters have been reduced to receive aid

from the fancy, and to eke out all they could conceive of malignity

by help of horns, hoofs, and claws. Giotto's Satan in the Campo

Santo, with the serpent gnawing the heart, is fine; so many of the

fiends of Orcagna, and always those of Michael Angelo. Tintoret in

the Temptation, with his usual truth of invention, has represented

the evil spirit under the form of a fair angel, the wings burning

with crimson and silver, the face sensual and treacherous. It is

instructive to compare the results of imagination associated with

powerful fancy in the demons of these great painters, or even in

such nightmares as that of Salvator already spoken of, Sect. I.

Chap. V. Sec. 12 (note,) with the simple ugliness of idiotic distortion

in the meaningless terrorless monsters of Bronzino in the large

picture of the Uffizii, where the painter, utterly uninventive,

having assembled all that is abominable of hanging flesh, bony

limbs, crane necks, staring eyes, and straggling hair, cannot yet by

the sum and substance of all obtain as much real fearfulness as an

imaginative painter could throw into the turn of a lip or the

knitting of a brow.

[76] I have not thought it necessary to give farther instances at

present, since I purpose hereafter to give numerous examples of this

kind of ideal landscape. Of true and noble landscape, as such, I am

aware of no instances except where least they might have been

expected, among the sea-bred Venetians. Ghirlandajo shows keen,

though prosaic, sense of nature in that view of Venice behind an

Adoration of Magi in the Uffizii, but he at last walled himself up

among gilded entablatures. Masaccio indeed has given one grand

example in the fresco of the Tribute Money, but its color is now

nearly lost.

[77] I know not anything in the range of art more unspiritual than

the Apollo Belvidere; the raising of the fingers of the right hand

in surprise at the truth of the arrow is altogether human, and would

be vulgar in a prince, much more in a deity. The sandals destroy the

divinity of the foot, and the lip is curled with mortal passion.

ADDENDA.

Although the plan of the present portion of this work does not admit of

particular criticism, it will neither be useless nor irrelevant to refer

to one or two works, lately before the public, in the Exhibitions of the

Royal Academy, which either illustrate, or present exceptions to, any of

the preceding statements. I would first mention, with reference to what

has been advanced respecting the functions of Associative Imagination,

the very important work of Mr. Linnell, the "Eve of the Deluge;" a

picture upheld by its admirers (and these were some of the most

intelligent judges of the day) for a work of consummate imaginative

power; while it was pronounced by the public journals to be "a chaos of

unconcocted color." If the writers for the press had been aware of the

kind of study pursued by Mr. Linnell through many laborious years,

characterized by an observance of nature scrupulously and minutely

patient, directed by the deepest sensibility, and aided by a power of

drawing almost too refined for landscape subjects, and only to be

understood by reference to his engravings after Michael Angelo, they

would have felt it to be unlikely that the work of such a man should be

entirely undeserving of respect. On the other hand, the grounds of its

praise were unfortunately chosen; for, though possessing many merits, it

had no claim whatever to be ranked among productions of Creative art. It

would perhaps be difficult to point to a work so exalted in feeling, and

so deficient in invention. The sky had been strictly taken from nature,

this was evident at a glance; and as a study of sky it was every way

noble. To the purpose of the picture it hardly contributed; its

sublimity was that of splendor, not of terror; and its darkness that of

retreating, not of gathering, storm. The features of the landscape were

devoid alike of variety and probability; the division of the scene by

the central valley and winding river at once theatrical and commonplace;

and the foreground, on which the light was intense, alike devoid of

dignity in arrangement, and of interest in detail.

The falseness or deficiency of color in the works of Mr. Landseer has

been remarked above. The writer has much pleasure in noticing a very

beautiful exception in the picture of the "Random Shot," certainly the

most successful rendering he has ever seen of the hue of snow under warm

but subdued light. The subtlety of gradation from the portions of the

wreath fully illumined, to those which, feebly tinged by the horizontal

rays, swelled into a dome of dim purple, dark against the green evening

sky; the truth of the blue shadows, with which this dome was barred, and

the depth of delicate color out of which the lights upon the footprints

were raised, deserved the most earnest and serious admiration; proving,

at the same time, that the errors in color, so frequently to be

regretted in the works of the painter, are the result rather of

inattention than of feeble perception. A curious proof of this

inattention occurs in the disposition of the shadows in the background

of the "Old Cover Hack," No. 229. One of its points of light is on the

rusty iron handle of a pump, in the shape of an S. The sun strikes the

greater part of its length, illuminating the perpendicular portion of

the curve; yet shadow is only cast on the wall behind by the returning

portion of the lower extremity. A smile may be excited by the notice of

so trivial a circumstance; but the simplicity of the error renders it

the more remarkable, and the great masters of chiaroscuro are accurate

in all such minor points; a vague sense of greater truth results from

this correctness, even when it is not in particulars analyzed or noted

by the observer. In the small but very valuable Paul Potter in Lord

Westminster's collection, the body of one of the sheep under the hedge

is for the most part in shadow, but the sunlight touches the extremity

of the back. The sun is low, and the shadows feeble and distorted; yet

that of the sunlighted fleece is cast exactly in its true place and

proportion beyond that of the hedge. The spectator may not observe this;

yet, unobserved, it is one of the circumstances which make him feel the

picture to be full of sunshine.

As an example of perfect color, and of the most refined handling ever

perhaps exhibited in animal painting, the Butcher's Dog in the corner of

Mr. Mulready's "Butt," No. 160, deserved a whole room of the Academy to

himself. This, with the spaniel in the "Choosing the Wedding Gown," and

the two dogs in the hayfield subject (Burchell and Sophia), displays

perhaps the most wonderful, because the most dignified, finish in the

expression of anatomy and covering--of muscle and hide at once, and

assuredly the most perfect unity of drawing and color, which the entire

range of ancient and modern art can exhibit. Albert Durer is indeed the

only rival who might be suggested; and, though greater far in

imagination, and equal in draughtsmanship, Albert Durer was less true

and less delicate in hue. In sculpturesque arrangement both masters show

the same degree of feeling: any of these dogs of Mulready might be taken

out of the canvas and cut in alabaster, or, perhaps better, struck upon

a coin. Every lock and line of the hair has been grouped as it is on a

Greek die; and if this not always without some loss of ease and of

action, yet this very loss is ennobling, in a period when all is

generally sacrificed to the great coxcombry of art, the affectation of

ease.

Yet Mr. Mulready himself is not always free from affectation of some

kind; mannerism, at least, there is in his treatment of tree trunks.

There is a ghastliness about his labored anatomies of them, as well as a

want of specific character. Why need they be always flayed? The hide of

a beech tree, or of a birch or fir, is nearly as fair a thing as an

animal's; glossy as a dove's neck barred with black like a zebra, or

glowing in purple grey and velvet brown like furry cattle in sunset. Why

not paint these as Mr. Mulready paints other things, as they are? That

simplest, that deepest of all secrets, which gives such majesty to the

ragged leaves about the edges of the pond in the "Gravel-pit." (No.

125.), and imparts a strange interest to the grey ragged urchins

disappearing behind the bank, that bank so low, so familiar, so sublime!

What a contrast between the deep sentiment of that commonest of all

common, homeliest of all homely, subjects, and the lost sentiment of Mr.

Stanfield's "Amalfi" the chief landscape of the year, full of exalted

material, and mighty crags, and massy seas, grottoes, precipices, and

convents, fortress-towers and cloud-capped mountains, and all in vain,

merely because that same simple secret has been despised; because

nothing there is painted as it is! The picture was a most singular

example of the scenic assemblage of contradictory theme which is

characteristic of Picturesque, as opposed to Poetical, composition. The

lines chosen from Rogers for a titular legend were full of summer,

glowing with golden light, and toned with quiet melancholy:

"To him who sails

Under the shore, a few white villages,

Scattered above, below, some in the clouds,

Some on the margin of the dark blue sea,

And glittering thro' their lemon groves, announce

The region of Amalfi. Then, half-fallen,

A lonely watch-tower on the precipice,

Their ancient landmark, comes--long may it last!

And to the seaman, in a distant age,

Though now he little thinks how large his debt,

Serve for their monument."

Prepared by these lines for a dream upon deep, calm waters, under the

shadow and scent of the close lemon leaves, the spectator found himself

placed by the painter, wet through, in a noisy fishing boat, on a

splashing sea, with just as much on his hands as he could manage to keep

her gunwale from being stove in against a black rock; and with a heavy

grey squall to windward. (This squall, by the by, was the very same

which appeared in the picture of the Magra of 1847, and so were the

snowy mountains above; only the squall at Amalfi entered on the left,

and at the Magra on the right.) Now the scenery of Amalfi is impressive

alike in storm or calm, and the writer has seen the Mediterranean as

majestic and as southern-looking in its rage as in its rest. But it is

treating both the green water and woods unfairly to destroy their peace

without expressing their power; and withdraw from them their sadness and

their sun, without the substitution of any effect more terrific than

that of a squall at the Nore. The snow on the distant mountains chilled

what it could not elevate, and was untrue to the scene besides; there is

no snow on the Monte St. Angelo in summer except what is kept for the

Neapolitan confectioners. The great merit of the picture was its

rock-painting; too good to have required the aid of the exaggeration of

forms which satiated the eye throughout the composition.

Mr. F. R. Pickersgill's "Contest of Beauty" (No. 515.), and Mr. Uwins's

"Vineyard Scene in the South of France," were, after Mr. Mulready's

works, among the most interesting pieces of color in the Exhibition. The

former, very rich and sweet in its harmonies, and especially happy in

its contrasts of light and dark armor; nor less in the fancy of the

little Love who, losing his hold of the orange boughs, was falling

ignominiously without having time to open his wings. The latter was a

curious example of what I have described as abstraction of color.

Strictly true or possible it was not; a vintage is usually a dusty and

dim-looking procedure; but there were poetry and feeling in Mr. Uwins's

idealization of the sombre black of the veritable grape into a luscious

ultramarine purple, glowing among the green leaves like so much painted

glass. The figures were bright and graceful in the extreme and most

happily grouped. Little else that could be called color was to be seen

upon the walls of the Exhibition, with the exception of the smaller

works of Mr. Etty. Of these, the single head, "Morning Prayer," (No.

25.), and the "Still Life" (No. 73.), deserved, allowing for their

peculiar aim, the highest praise. The larger subjects, more especially

the St. John, were wanting in the merits peculiar to the painter; and in

other respects it is alike painful and useless to allude to them. A very

important and valuable work of Mr. Harding was placed, as usual, where

its merits could be but ill seen, and where its chief fault, a

feebleness of color in the principal light on the distant hills, was

apparent. It was one of the very few views of the year which were

transcripts, nearly without exaggeration, of the features of the

localities.

Among the less conspicuous landscapes, Mr. W. E. Dighton's "Hay Meadow

Corner" deserved especial notice; it was at once vigorous, fresh,

faithful, and unpretending, the management of the distance most

ingenious, and the painting of the foreground, with the single exception

of Mr. Mulready's above noticed, unquestionably the best in the room. I

have before had occasion to notice a picture by this artist, "A Hayfield

in a Shower," exhibited in the British Institution in 1847, and this

year (1848) in the Scottish Academy, whose sky, in qualities of rainy,

shattered, transparent grey, I have seldom seen equalled; nor the mist

of its distance, expressive alike of previous heat and present heat of

rain. I look with much interest for other works by this painter.

A hurried visit to Scotland in the spring of this year, while it

enables the writer to acknowledge the ardor and genius manifested in

very many of the works exhibited in the Scottish Academy, cannot be

considered as furnishing him with sufficient grounds for specific

criticism. He cannot, however, err in testifying his concurrence in the

opinion expressed to him by several of the most distinguished members of

that Academy, respecting the singular merit of the works of Mr. H.

Drummond. A cabinet picture of "Banditti on the Watch," appeared to him

one of the most masterly, unaffected, and sterling pieces of quiet

painting he has ever seen from the hand of a living artist; and the

other works of Mr. Drummond were alike remarkable for their manly and

earnest finish, and their sweetness of feeling.

* * * * *

CORRECTIONS MADE TO THE ORIGINAL TEXT.

Page 98: 'wherein the superioity' corrected to superiority.

Page 129: 'Convent of St. Marks' corrected to mark's

Page 159: 'had not been hoplessly' corrected to hopelessly.

Page 218: 'in the landscape of the fresco in St^a.' originally S^ta.

Page 226: 'alike devoid of dignity in arrangement' originally arrangemen

Footnote 40: 'De la Poesie Chretienne', accented to be in accordance

with text.

End of Project Gutenberg's Modern Painters Volume II (of V), by John Ruskin