Chapter IV: Part 4

Thus, but far better adapted, has Raphael personified _Dialogue_, moved the lips of _Soliloquy_, unbent or wrinkled the features, and arranged the limbs and gesture of _Meditation_, in the pictures of the Parnassus and of the school of Athens, parts of the immense allegoric drama that fills the stanzas, and displays the brightest ornament of the Vatican; the immortal monument of the towering ambition, unlimited patronage, and refined taste of Julius II. and Leo X., its cycle represents the origin, the progress, extent, and final triumph of _church empire_, or ecclesiastic government; in the first subject, of the Parnassus, Poetry led back to its origin and first duty, the herald and interpreter of a first Cause, in the universal language of imagery addressed to the senses, unites man, scattered and savage, in social and religious bands. What was the surmise of the eye and the wish of hearts, is gradually made the result of reason, in the characters of the school of Athens, by the researches of philosophy, which from bodies to mind, from corporeal harmony to moral fitness, and from the duties of society, ascends to the doctrine of God and hopes of immortality. Here revelation in its stricter sense commences, and conjecture becomes a glorious reality: in the composition of the dispute on the sacrament, the Saviour after ascension seated on his throne, the attested son of God and Man, surrounded by his types, the prophets, patriarchs, apostles and the hosts of heaven, institutes the mysteries and initiates in his sacrament the heads and presbyters of the church militant, who in the awful presence of their Master and the celestial synod, discuss, explain, propound his doctrine. That the sacred mystery shall clear all doubt and subdue all heresy, is taught in the miracle of the blood-stained wafer; that without arms, by the arm of Heaven itself, it shall release its votaries, and defeat its enemies, the deliverance of Peter, the overthrow of Heliodorus, the flight of Attila, the captive Saracens, bear testimony; that nature itself shall submit to its power and the elements obey its mandates, the checked conflagration of the Borgo, declares: till hastening to its ultimate triumphs, its union with the state, it is proclaimed by the vision of Constantine, confirmed by the rout of Maxentius, established by the imperial pupils receiving baptism, and submitting to accept his crown at the feet of the mitred pontiff.

Such is the rapid outline of the cycle painted or designed by Raphael on the compartments of the stanzas sacred to his name. Here is the mass of his powers in poetic conception and execution, here is every period of his style, his emancipation from the narrow shackles of Pietro Perugino, his discriminations of characteristic form, on to the heroic grandeur of his line. Here is that master-tone of fresco painting, the real instrument of history, which with its silver purity and breadth unites the glow of Titiano and Correggio’s tints. Every where we meet the superiority of genius, but more or less impressive, with more or less felicity in proportion as each subject was more or less susceptible of dramatic treatment. From the bland enthusiasm of the Parnassus, and the sedate or eager features of meditation in the school of Athens, to the sterner traits of dogmatic controversy in the dispute of the sacrament, and the symptoms of religious conviction or inflamed zeal at the mass of Bolsena. Not the miracle, as we have observed, the fears and terrours of humanity inspire and seize us at the conflagration of the Borgo: if in the Heliodorus the sublimity of the vision balances sympathy with astonishment, we follow the rapid ministers of grace to their revenge, less to rescue the temple from the gripe of sacrilege, than inspired by the palpitating graces, the helpless innocence, the defenceless beauty of the females and children scattered around; and thus we forget the vision of the labarum, the angels and Constantine in the battle, to plunge in the wave with Maxentius, or to share the agonies of the father who recognizes his own son in the enemy he slew.

With what propriety Raphael introduced portrait, though in its most dignified and elevated sense, into some compositions of the great work which we are contemplating, I shall not now discuss; the allegoric part of the work may account for it: he has, however, by its admission, stamped that branch of painting at once with its essential feature, character, and has assigned it its place and rank: ennobled by character, it rises to dramatic dignity, destitute of that, it sinks to mere mechanic dexterity, or floats, a bubble of fashion. Portrait is to historic painting in art, what physiognomy is to pathognomy in science; _that_ shews the character and powers of the being which it delineates, in its formation and at rest: _this_ shews it in exertion. Bembo, Bramante, Dante, Gonzaga, Savonarola, Raphael himself may be considered in the inferior light of mere characteristic ornament; but Julius the second authenticating the miracle at the mass of Bolsena, or borne into the temple, rather to authorize than to witness the punishment inflicted on its spoiler; Leo with his train calmly facing Attila, or deciding on his tribunal the fate of the captive Saracens, tell us by their presence that they are the heroes of the drama, that the action has been contrived for them, is subordinate to them, and has been composed to illustrate their character. For as in the epic, act and agent are subordinate to the maxim, and in pure history are mere organs of the fact; so the drama subordinates both fact and maxim to the agent, his character and passion: what in them was end is but the medium here.

Such were the principles on which he treated the beautiful tale of Amor and Psyche: the allegory of Apuleius became a drama under the hand of Raphael, though it must be owned, that with every charm of scenic gradation and lyric imagery, its characters, as exquisitely chosen as acutely discriminated, exhibit less the obstacles and real object of affection, and its final triumph over mere appetite and sexual instinct, than the voluptuous history of his own favourite passion. The faint light of the maxim vanishes in the splendour which expands before our fancy the enchanted circle of wanton dalliance and amorous attachment.

But the power of Raphael’s invention exerts itself chiefly in subjects where the drama, divested of epic or allegoric fiction, meets pure history, and elevates, invigourates, impresses the pregnant moment of a _real_ fact, with character and pathos: The summit of these is that magnificent series of coloured designs commonly called the cartoons, so well known to you all, part of which we happily possess; formerly when complete and united, and now, in the copies of the tapestry annually exhibited in the colonnade of the Vatican, they represent in thirteen compositions the origin, sanction, œconomy and progress of the Christian religion. In whatever light we consider their invention, as parts of _one whole_ relative to each other, or independent _each of the rest_, and as single subjects, there can be scarcely named a beauty or a mystery of which the cartoons furnish not an instance or a clue; they are poised between perspicuity and pregnancy of moment; we shall have opportunities to speak of all or the greater part of them, but that of Paul on the areopagus, will furnish us at present with conclusions for the remainder.

It represents the Apostle announcing his God from the height of the areopagus. Enthusiasm and curiosity make up the subject; simplicity of attitude invests the speaker with sublimity; the parallelism of his action invigorates his energy; situation gives him command over the whole; the light in which he is placed, attracts the first glance; he appears the organ of a superior Power. The assembly, though selected with characteristic art for the purpose, are the natural offspring of place and moment. The involved meditation of the Stoic, the Cynic’s ironic sneer, the incredulous smile of the elegant Epicurean, the eager disputants of the Academy, the elevated attention of Plato’s school, the rankling malice of the Rabbi, the Magician’s mysterious glance, repeat in louder or in lower tones the novel doctrine; but whilst curiosity and meditation, loud debate and fixed prejudice, tell, ponder on, repeat, reject, discuss it, the animated gesture of conviction in Dionysius and Damaris, announce the power of its tenets, and hint the established belief of _immortality_.

But the powers of Raphael in combining the drama with pure historic fact, are best estimated when compared with those exerted by other masters on the same subject. For this we select from the series we examine that which represented the massacre, as it is called, of the innocents, or of the infants at Bethlem; an original, precious part of which still remains in the possession of a friend of art among us. On this subject Baccio Bandinelli, Tintoretto, Rubens, Le Brun, and Poussin, have tried their various powers.

The massacre of the infants by Baccio Bandinelli, contrived chiefly to exhibit his anatomic skill, is a complicated tableau of every contorsion of human attitude and limbs that precedes dislocation; the expression floats between a studied imagery of frigid horrour and loathsome abomination.

The stormy brush of Tintoretto swept individual woe away in general masses. Two immense wings of light and shade divide the composition, and hide the want of sentiment in tumult.

To Rubens magnificence and contrast dictated the actors and the scene. A loud lamenting dame, in velvet robes, with golden locks dishevelled, and wide extended arms, meets our first glance. Behind, a group of steel-clad satellites open their rows of spears to admit the nimble, naked ministers of murder, charged with their infant prey, within their ranks, ready to close again against the frantic mothers who pursue them: the pompous gloom of the palace in the middle ground is set off by cottages and village scenery in the distance.

Le Brun surrounded the allegoric tomb of Rachel with rapid horsemen, receiving the children whom the assassins tore from their parents arms, and strewed the field with infant-slaughter.

Poussin tied in one vigorous group what he conceived of blood-trained villany and maternal frenzy. Whilst Raphael, in dramatic gradation, disclosed all the mother through every image of pity and of terrour; through tears, shrieks, resistance, revenge, to the stunned look of despair; and traced the villain from the palpitations of scarce initiated crime to the sedate grin of veteran murder.

History, strictly so called, follows the drama: fiction now ceases, and invention consists only in selecting and fixing with dignity, precision, and sentiment, the moments of _reality_. Suppose that the artist choose the death of Germanicus—He is not to give us the highest images of _general_ grief which impresses the features of a people or a family at the death of a beloved chief or father; for this would be epic imagery: we should have Achilles, Hector, Niobe. He is not to mix up characters which observation and comparison have pointed out to him as the fittest to excite the gradations of sympathy; not Admetus and Alceste, not Meleager and Atalanta; for this would be the drama. He is to give us the idea of a Roman dying amidst Romans, as tradition gave him, with all the real modifications of time and place, which may serve unequivocally to discriminate that moment of grief from all others. Germanicus, Agrippina, Caius, Vitellius, the legates, the centurions at Antioch; the hero, the husband, the father, the friend, the leader, the struggles of nature and sparks of hope must be subjected to the phisiognomic character and the features of Germanicus, the son of Drusus, the Cæsar of Tiberius. Maternal, female, connubial passion must be tinged by Agrippina, the woman absorbed in the Roman, less lover than companion of her husband’s grandeur: even the bursts of friendship, attachment, allegiance, and revenge, must be stamped by the military, ceremonial, and distinctive costume of Rome.

The judicious observation of all this does not reduce the historic painter to the anxiously minute detail of a copyist. Firm he rests on the true basis of art, imitation: the fixed character of things determines all in his choice, and mere floating accident, transient modes and whims of fashion, are still excluded. If defects, if deformities are represented, they must be permanent, they must be inherent in the character. Edward the first and Richard the third must be marked, but marked, to strengthen rather than to diminish the interest we take in the man; thus the deformity of Richard will add to his terrour, and the enormous stride of Edward to his dignity. If my limits permitted, your own recollection would dispense me from expatiating in examples on this more familiar branch of invention. The history of our own times and of our own country has produced a specimen, in the death of a military hero, as excellent as often imitated, which, though respect forbids me to name it, cannot, I trust, be absent from your mind.

Such are the stricter outlines of general and specific invention in the three principal branches of our art; but as their near alliance allows not always a strict discrimination of their limits; as the mind and fancy of men, upon the whole, consist of mixed qualities, we seldom meet with a human performance exclusively made up of epic, dramatic, or pure historic materials.

Novelty and feelings will make the rigid historian sometimes launch out into the marvellous, or warm his bosom and extort a tear; the dramatist, in gazing at some tremendous feature, or the pomp of superiour agency, will drop the chain of sympathy and be absorbed in the sublime; whilst the epic or lyric painter forgets his solitary grandeur, sometimes descends and mixes with his agents. Thus Homer gave the feature of the drama in Hector and Andromache, in Irus and Ulysses; the spirit from the prison house stalks like the shade of Ajax, in Shakspeare; the daughter of Soranus pleading for her father, and Octavia encircled by centurions, melt like Ophelia and Alceste, in Tacitus; thus Raphael personified the genius of the river in Joshua’s passage through the Jordan, and again at the ceremony of Solomon’s inauguration; and thus Poussin raised before the scared eye of Coriolanus, the frowning vision of Rome, all armed, with her attendant, Fortune.

These general excursions from one province of the art into those of its congenial neighbours, granted by judicious invention to the artist, let me apply to the grant of a more specific licence[75]: Horace, the most judicious of critics, when treating on the use of poetic words, tells his pupils, that the adoption of an old word, rendered novel by a skilful construction with others, will entitle the poet to the praise of original diction. The same will be granted to the judicious adoption of figures in art.

Far from impairing the originality of invention, the unpremeditated discovery of an appropriate attitude or figure in the works of antiquity, or of the great old masters after the revival, and its adoption, or the apt transposition of one misplaced in some inferiour work, will add lustre to a performance of commensurate or superiour power, by a kind coalition with the rest, immediately furnished by nature and the subject. In such a case it is easily discovered whether a subject have been chosen merely to borrow an idea, an attitude or figure, or whether their eminent fitness procured them their place. An adopted idea or figure in a work of genius is a foil or a companion of the rest; but an idea of genius borrowed by mediocrity, tears all associate shreds, it is the giant’s thumb by which the pigmy offered the measure of his own littleness. We stamp the plagiary on the borrower, who, without fit materials or adequate conceptions of his own, seeks to shelter impotence under purloined vigour; we leave him with the full praise of invention, who by the harmony of a whole proves that what he adopted might have been his own offspring though anticipated by another. If he take now, he soon may give. Thus Michael Angelo scattered the Torso of Apollonius in every view, in every direction, in groups and single figures, over the composition of the last judgment; and in the Lunetta of Judith and her maid gave an original turn to figures adopted from the gem of Pier Maria da Pescia: if the figure of Adam dismissed from Paradise, by Raphael, still own Masaccio for its inventor, he can scarcely be said to have furnished more than the hint of that enthusiasm and energy which we admire in Paul on the areopagus: in the picture of the covenant with Noah, the sublimity of the vision, and the graces of the mother entangled by her babes, find their originals in the Sistine chapel, but they are equalled by the fervour which conceived the Patriarch who, with the infant pressed to his bosom, with folded hands, and prostrate on his knees, adores. What figure or what gesture in the cartoon of Pisa, has not been imitated? Raphael, Parmegiano, Poussin, are equally indebted to it; in the sacrament of baptism, the last did little more than transcribe that knot of powers, the fierce feature of the veteran who, eager to pull on his cloaths, pushes his foot through the rending garment.—Such are the indulgences which invention grants to fancy, taste, and judgment.

But a limited fragment of observations must not presume to exhaust what in itself is inexhaustible; the features of invention are multiplied before me as my powers decrease: I shall therefore no longer trespass on your patience, than by fixing your attention for a few moments on one of its boldest flights, the transfiguration of Raphael; a performance equally celebrated and censured; in which the most judicious of inventors, the painter of propriety, is said to have not only wrestled for extent of information with the historian, but attempted to leap the boundaries, and, with a less discriminating than daring hand, to remove the established limits of the art, to have arbitrarily combined two actions, and consequently two different moments.

Were this charge founded, I might content myself with observing, that the transfiguration, more than any other of Raphael’s oil-pictures, was a public performance, destined by Julio de Medici, afterward Clement VII. for his archiepiscopal church at Narbonne; that it was painted in contest with Sebastian del Piombo, assisted in his rival-picture of Lazarus by Michael Angelo; and thus, considering it as framed on the simple principles of the monumental style, established in my first discourse, on the pictures of Polygnotus at Delphi, I might frame a plausible excuse for the modern artist; but Raphael is above the assistance of subterfuge, and it is sufficient to examine the picture, in order to prove the futility of the charge. Raphael has connected with the transfiguration not the _cure_ of the maniac, but his _presentation for it_; if, according to the[76] Gospel record, this happened at the foot of the mountain, whilst the apparition took place at the top, what improbability is there in assigning the _same moment_ to both?

Raphael’s design was to represent Jesus as the Son of God, and at the same time as the reliever of human misery, by an unequivocal fact. The transfiguration on Tabor, and the miraculous cure which followed the descent of Jesus, united, furnished that fact. The difficulty was how to combine two successive actions in one moment: he overcame it by sacrificing the moment of the cure to that of the apparition, by implying the lesser miracle in the greater. In subordinating the cure to the vision he obtained sublimity, in placing the crowd and the patient on the fore-ground, he gained room for the full exertion of his dramatic powers; it was not necessary that the dæmoniac should be represented in the moment of recovery, if its certainty could be expressed by other means: it is implied, it is placed beyond all doubt by the glorious apparition above; it is made nearly intuitive by the uplifted hand and finger of the apostle in the centre, who without hesitation, undismayed by the obstinacy of the dæmon, unmoved by the clamour of the crowd and the pusillanimous scepticism of some of his companions, refers the father of the maniac in an authoritative manner for certain and speedy help to his master[77] on the mountain above, whom, though unseen, his attitude at once connects with all that passes below; here is the point of contact, here is that union of the two parts of the fact in one moment, which Richardson and Falconet could not discover.

FOURTH LECTURE.

INVENTION.

_PART II._

ΦΘΟΝΕΡΑ Δ’ ΑΛΛΟΣ ἈΝΗΡ ΒΛΕΠΩΝ,
ΓΝΩΜΑΝ ΚΕΝΕΑΝ ΣΚΟΤΩΙ ΚΥΛΙΝΔΕΙ
ΧΑΜΑΙΠΕΤΟΙΣΑΝ.

ΠΙΝΔΑΡ. ΝΕΜ. ΕΙΔ. Δ.

ARGUMENT.

Choice of subjects; divided into positive, negative, repulsive.—Observations on the Parerga, or Accessories of Invention.

FOURTH LECTURE.

The imitation of Nature, as it presents itself in space and figure, being the real sphere of plastic Invention, it follows, that whatever can occupy a place and be circumscribed by lines, characterised by form, substantiated by colour and light and shade, without provoking incredulity, shocking our conception by absurdity, averting our eye by loathsomeness or horrour, is strictly within its province: but though all Nature seem to teem with objects of imitation, the ‘Choice’ of subjects is a point of great importance to the Artist; the conception, the progress, the finish, and the success of his work depend upon it. An apt and advantageous subject rouses and elevates Invention, invigourates, promotes, and adds delight to labour; whilst a dull or repulsive one breeds obstacles at every step, dejects and wearies—the Artist loses his labour, the spectator his expectation.

The first demand on every work of art is that it constitute one whole, that it fully pronounce its own meaning, that it tell itself; it ought to be independent; the essential part of its subject ought to be comprehended and understood without collateral assistance, without borrowing its commentary from the historian or the poet; for as we are soon wearied with a poem whose fable and motives reach us only by the borrowed light of annexed notes, so we turn our eye discontented from a picture or a statue whose meaning depends on the charity of a Cicerone, or must be fetched from a book.

As the condition that each work of art should fully and essentially tell its own tale, undoubtedly narrows the quantity of admissible objects, singly taken, to remedy this, to enlarge the range of subjects, Invention has contrived by a Cyclus or series to tell the most important moments of a long story, its beginning, its middle, and its end: for though some of these may not, in themselves, admit of distinct discrimination, they may receive and impart light by connection.

Of him who undertakes thus to personify a tale, the first demand is, that his Invention dwell on the firm basis of the story, on its most important and significant moments, or its principal actors. Next, as the nature of the art which is confined to the apparition of single moments forces him to leap many intermediate ones, he cannot be said to have invented with propriety, if he neglect imperceptibly to fill the chasm occasioned by their omission; and, finally, that he shall not interrupt or lose the leading thread of his plan in quest of episodes, in the display of subordinate or adventitious beauties. On the observation of these rules depends the perspicuity of his work, the interest we take in it, and, consequently, all that can be gained by the adoption of a historic series.

When form, colour, with conception and execution, are deducted from a work, its subject, the unwrought stuff only, the naked materials remain, and these we divide into three classes.

The first are positive, advantageous, commensurate with and adapted for the art. The whole of the work lies prepared in their germ, and spontaneously meets the rearing hand of the Artist.

The second class, composed of subjects negative and uninteresting in themselves, depends entirely on the manner of treating; such subjects owe what they can be to the genius of the Artist.

The repulsive, the subjects which cannot pronounce their own meaning, constitute the third class. On them genius and talent are equally wasted, because the art has no medium to render them intelligible. Taste and execution may recommend them to our eye, but never can make them generally impressive, or stamp them with perspicuity.

To begin with advantageous subjects, immediately above the scenes of vulgar life, of animals, and common landscape, the simple representation of actions purely human, appears to be as nearly related to the art as to ourselves; their effect is immediate; they want no explanation; from them, therefore, we begin our scale. The next step leads us to pure historic subjects, singly or in a series; beyond these the delineation of character, or, properly speaking, the drama, invites; immediately above this we place the epic with its mythologic, allegoric, and symbolic branches.

On these four branches of Invention, as I have treated diffusely in the lecture published on this subject, and since successively in these prelections, I shall not at present circumstantially dwell, but as succinctly as possible remind you only of their specific difference and elements.

The first class, which, without much boldness of metaphor, may be said to draw its substance immediately from the lap of Nature, to be as elemental as her emotions, and the passions by which she sways us, finds its echo in all hearts, and imparts its charm to every eye; from the mutual caresses of maternal affection and infant simplicity, the whispers of love or eruptions of jealousy and revenge, to the terrours of life, struggling with danger, or grappling with death. The Madonnas of Raphael; the Ugolino, the Paolo and Francesca of Dante; the conflagration of the Borgo; the Niobe protecting her daughter; Hæmon piercing his own breast, with Antigone hanging dead from his arm[78], owe the sympathies they call forth to their assimilating power, and not to the names they bear: without names, without reference to time and place, they would impress with equal energy, because they find their counterpart in every breast, and speak the language of mankind. Such were the Phantasiae of the ancients, which modern art, by indiscriminate laxity of application, in what is called Fancy-Pictures, has more debased than imitated. A mother’s and a lover’s kiss acquire their value from the lips they press, and suffering deformity mingles disgust with pity.

Historic Invention administers to truth. History, as contradistinguished from arbitrary or poetic narration, tells us not what might be, but what is or was; circumscribes the probable, the grand, and the pathetic, with truth of time, place, custom; gives “local habitation and a name:” its agents are the pure organs of a fact. Historic plans, when sufficiently distinct to be told, and founded on the basis of human nature, have that prerogative over mere natural imagery, that whilst they bespeak our sympathy, they interest our intellect. We were pleased with the former as men, we are attracted by this as members of society: bound round with public and private connections and duties, taught curiosity by education, we wish to regulate our conduct by comparisons of analogous situations and similar modes of society: these History furnishes; transplants us into other times; empires and revolutions of empires pass before us with memorable facts and actors in their train, the legislator, the philosopher, the discoverer, the polishers of life, the warriour, the divine, are the principal inhabitants of this soil: it is perhaps unnecessary to add, that nothing trivial, nothing grovelling or mean, should be suffered to approach it. This is the department of Tacitus and Poussin. The exhibition of character in the conflict of passions with the rights, the rules, the prejudices of society, is the legitimate sphere of dramatic invention. It inspires, it agitates us by reflected self-love, with pity, terrour, hope, and fear; whatever makes events, and time and place, the ministers of character and pathos, let fiction or reality compose the tissue, is its legitimate claim: it distinguishes and raises itself above historic representation by laying the chief interest on the _actors_, and moulding the _fact_ into mere situations contrived for their exhibition: they are the end, this the medium. Such is the invention of Sophocles and Shakspeare, and uniformly that of Raphael. The actors, who in Poussin and the rest of historic painters, shine by the splendour of the fact, reflect it in Raphael with unborrowed rays: they are the luminous object to which the action points.

Of the epic plan, the loftiest species of human conception, the aim is to astonish whilst it instructs; it is the sublime allegory of a maxim. Here Invention arranges a plan by general ideas, the selection of the most prominent features of Nature, or favourable modes of society, visibly to substantiate some great maxim. If it admits history for its basis, it hides the limits in its grandeur; if it select characters to conduct its plan, it is only in the genus, their features reflect, their passions are kindled by the maxim, and absorbed in its universal blaze: at this elevation heaven and earth mingle their boundaries, men are raised to demigods, and gods descend. This is the sphere of Homer, Phidias, and Michael Agnolo.

Allegory, or the personification of invisible physic and metaphysic ideas, though not banished from the regions of Invention, is equally inadmissible in pure epic, dramatic, and historic plans, because, wherever it enters, it must rule the whole.[79] It rules with propriety the mystic drama of the Vatican, where the characters displayed are only the varied instruments of a mystery by which the church was established, and Julio and Leone are the allegoric image, the representatives of that church; but the epic, dramatic, and historic painter embellish with poetry or delineate with truth, what either was or is supposed to be real; they must therefore conduct their plans by personal and substantial agency, if they mean to excite that credibility, without which it is not in their power to create an interest in the spectator or the reader.

That great principle, the necessity of a moral tendency or of some doctrine useful to mankind in the _whole_ of an epic performance, admitted, are we therefore to sacrifice the uniformity of its parts, and thus to lose that credibility which _alone_ can impress us with the importance of the maxim that dictated to the poet narration and to the artist imagery? Are the agents sometimes to be real beings, and sometimes abstract ideas? Is the Zeus of Homer, of whose almighty will the bard, at the very threshold of his poem, proclaims himself only the herald, by the purblind acuteness of a commentator, to be turned into Æther; and Juno, just arriving from her celestial toilet, changed into air, to procure from their mystic embraces the allegoric offspring of vernal impregnation? When Minerva, by her weight, makes the chariot of Diomede groan, and Mars wounded, roars with the voice of ten thousand, are they nothing but the symbol of military discipline, and the sound of the battle’s roar? or Ate, seized by her hair, and by Zeus dashed from the battlements of heaven, is she only a metaphysic idea? Forbid it, Sense! As well might we say, that Milton, when he called the porteress of hell, Satan’s daughter, _Sin_, and his son and dread antagonist, _Death_, meant only to impress us with ideas of privation and nonentity, and sacrificed the real agents of his poem to an unskilful choice of names? Yet it is their name that has bewildered his commentator and biographer in criticisms equally cold, repugnant and incongruous, on the admissibility and inadmissibility of allegory in poems of supposed reality. What becomes of the interest the poet and the artist mean to excite in us, if, in the moment of reading or contemplating, we do not believe what the one tells and the other shews? It is that magic which places on the same basis of existence, and amalgamates the mythic or superhuman, and the human parts of the Ilias, of Paradise Lost, and of the Sistine chapel, that enraptures, agitates, and whirls us along as readers or spectators.

When Poussin represented Coriolanus in the Volscian camp, he placed before him in suppliant attitudes his mother, wife, and children, with a train of Roman matrons kneeling, and behind them the erect and frowning form of an armed female, accompanied by another with streaming hair, recumbent on a wheel. On these two, unseen to all else, Coriolanus, perplexed in the extreme, in an attitude of despair, his sword half drawn, as if to slay himself, fixes his scared eyes: who discovers not that he is in a trance, and in the female warriour recognises the tutelary genius of Rome, and her attendant Fortune, to terrify him into compliance? Shall we disgrace with the frigid conceit of an allegory the powerful invention which disclosed to the painter’s eye the agitation in the Roman’s breast and the proper moment for fiction? Who is not struck by the sublimity of a vision which, without diminishing the credibility of the fact, adds to its importance, and raises the hero, by making him submit not to the impulse of private ties, but to the imperious destiny of his country?

Among the paltry subterfuges contrived by dullness to palliate the want of invention, the laborious pedantry of emblems ranks foremost, by which arbitrary and conventional signs have been substituted for character and expression. If the assertion of S. Johnson, that the plastic arts ‘can illustrate, but cannot inform,’ be false as a general maxim, it gains an air of truth with regard to this hieroglyphic mode of exchanging substance for signs; and the story which he adds in proof, of a young girl’s mistaking the usual figure of Justice with a steel-yard for a cherry-woman, becomes here appropriate. The child had seen many stall and market-women, and always with a steel-yard or a pair of scales, but never a figure of Justice; and it might as well be pretended that one not initiated in the Egyptian mysteries, should discover in the Scarabæus of an obelisk the summer solstice, as that a child, a girl, or a man not acquainted with Cæsar Ripa, or some other emblem-coyner, should find in a female holding a balance over her eyes, in another with a bridle in her hand, in a third leaning on a broken pillar, and in a fourth loaded with children, the symbols of Justice, Temperance, Fortitude and Charity. If these signs be at all admissible, they ought, at least, to receive as much light from the form, the character, and expression of the figures they accompany, as they reflect on them, else they become burlesque, instead of being attributes. Though this rage for emblem did not become epidemic before the lapse of the sixteenth century, when the Cavalieri of the art, the Zucchari, Vasari and Porta’s undertook to deliver more work than their brains could furnish with thought, yet even the philosophers of the art, in the classic days of Julio and Leo, cannot be said to have been entirely free from it. What analogy is there between an ostrich at the side of a female with a balance in her hand, and the idea of Justice? Yet thus has Raphael represented her in a stanza of the Vatican. Nor has he been constant to the same emblem, as on the ceiling of another stanza, he has introduced her with a scale, and armed with a sword. The _Night_ of M. Agnolo, on the Medicean tombs, might certainly be taken for what she professes to be, without the assistance of the mask, the poppies, and the owl at her feet, for the dominion of sleep is personified in her expression and posture: perhaps even her beautiful companion, whose faintly stretching attitude and half-opened eyes, express the symptoms of approaching _morn_, might be conceived for its representative[80]; but no stretch of fancy can, in their male associates, reach the symbols of _full day_ and _eve_, or in the females of the monument of Julio II. the ideas of _contemplative_ and _active life_.

To means so arbitrary, confused and precarious, the ancients never descended: their general ideas had an uniform and general typus, which invention never presumed to alter or to transgress; but this typus lay less in the attributes than in the character and form. The inverted torch and moon-flower were the accompaniments, and not the substitutes, of _Death_ and _Sleep_; neither _Psyche_ nor _Victory_ depended on her wings. Mercury was recognized without the caduceus or purse, and Apollo without his bow or lyre; various and similar, the branches of one family, their leading lines descended from that full type of majesty which Phidias, the architect of gods, had stamped on his Jupiter. Whether we ought to consider the son of Charmidas as the inventor or the regulator of this supreme and irremovable standard, matters not, from _him_ the ancient writers date the epoch of mythic invention; no revolutions of style changed the character of his forms, talent only polished with more or less success what his laws had established. Phidias, says Quintilian, was framed to form gods; Phidias, says Pliny, gave in his Jupiter a new motive to religion.

Whether or not, after the restoration of art, the Supreme Being, the eternal essence of incomprehensible perfection, ought ever to have been approached by the feeble efforts of human conception, it is not my office to discuss, perhaps it ought not—but since it has, as the Roman church has embodied divine substance, and called on our arts for an auxiliary, it was to be expected that, to make assistance effectual, a full type, a supreme standard of form, should have been established for the author and the agents of the sacred circle: but, be it from the tyranny of religious barbarians, or inability, or to avoid the imputation of copying each other, painters and sculptors, widely differing among themselves in the conception of divine or sainted form and character, agree in nothing but attributes and symbols: triangular glories, angelic ministry and minstrelsy, the colours of the drapery; the cross, the spear, the stigmata; the descending dove; in implements of ecclesiastic power or instruments of martyrdom.

The Biblic expression, as it is translated, ‘of the Ancient of Days’—which means ‘He that existed before time,’ furnished the primitive artists, instead of an image of supreme majesty, only with the hoary image of age: and such a figure borne along by a globe of angels, and crowned with a kind of episcopal mitre, recurs on the bronzes of Lorenzo Ghiberti. The sublime mind of M. Agnolo, soaring beyond the idea of decrepitude and puny formality, strove to form a type in the elemental energy of the Creator of Adam, and darted life from His extended hand, but in the Creator of Eve sunk again to the idea of age. Raphael strove to compound a form from M. Angelo and his predecessors, to combine energy and rapidity with age: in the Loggia he follows M. Agnolo, in the Stanza the prior artists; here his gods are affable and mild, there rapid, and perhaps more violent than energetic. After these two great names, it were profanation to name the attempts of their successors.

The same fluctuation perplexes the effigy of the Saviour. Lionardo da Vinci attempted to unite power with calm serenity, but in the Last Supper alone presses on our hearts by humanity of countenance. The Infant Christ of M. Agnolo is a superhuman conception, but as Man and Redeemer with his cross, in the Minerva, he is a figure as mannered in form and attitude, as averting by stern severity; and, as the Judge of Mankind in the Last Judgment, he seems to me as unworthy of the artist’s mind as of his master-hand. The Christs of Raphael, as infants, are seldom more than lovely children; as a man, the painter has poised His form between church tradition and the dignified mildness of his own character.

Two extremes appear to have co-operated to impede the establishment of a type in the formation of the Saviour: by one He is converted into a character of mythology, the other debases Him to the dregs of mankind.

‘The character corresponding with that of Christ,’ says Mengs[81], ‘ought to be a compound of the characters of Jupiter and of Apollo, allowing only for the accidental expression of the moment.’ What magic shall amalgamate the superhuman airs of Rhea’s and Latona’s sons, with patience in suffering and resignation? The critic in his exultation forgot the leading feature of his Master—condescending humility. In the race of Jupiter majesty is often tempered by emanations of beauty and of grace, but never softened to warm humanity. Here lies the knot:

The Saviour of mankind extending his arm to relieve, without visible means, the afflicted, the hopeless, the dying, the dead, is a subject that visits with awe the breast of every one who calls himself after His name; the artist is in the sphere of adoration.

An exalted sage descending to every beneficent office of humanity, instructing ignorance, not only forgiving but excusing outrage, pressing his enemy to his breast, commands the sympathy of every man, though he be no believer; the artist is in the sphere of sentiment.

But a mean man, marked with the features of a mean race, surrounded by a beggarly, ill-shaped rabble and stupid crowds—may be mistaken for a juggler, that claims the attention of no man. Of this let Art beware.

From these observations on positive we now proceed to the class of _negative_ subjects. Negative we call those which in themselves possess little that is significant, historically true or attractive, pathetic or sublime, which leave our heart and fancy listless and in apathy, though by the art with which they are executed they allure and retain the eye: here, if ever, the artist creates his own work, in raising, by ingenious combination, that to a positive subject which in its parts is none, or merely passive.

The first rank among these claims that mystic class of monumental pictures, allusive to mysteries of religion and religious institutions, asylums, charities; or votive pictures of those who dedicate offerings of gratitude for life saved or happiness conferred: in these the male and female patrons of such creeds, societies and persons, prophets, apostles, saints, warriours and doctors, with and without the donor or the suppliant, combine in apposition or groups, and are suffered to flank each other without incurring the indignation due to Anachronism, as they are always placed in the presence of the Divine Being, before whom the distance of epochs, place, and races; the customs, dress, and habits of different nations, are supposed to vanish; and the present, past, and future to exist in the same moment.

These, which the simplicity of primitive art dismissed without more invention than elevating the Madonna with the infant Saviour, and arranging the saints and suppliants in formal parallels beneath, the genius of greater masters often, though not always, transformed to organs of sublimity, or connected in an assemblage of interesting and highly pleasing groups, by inventing a congruous action or scenery, which spread warmth over a subject that, simply considered, threatened to freeze the beholder. Let us give an instance.

The Madonna, called Dell’ Impannato by Raphael, is one of these: it is so called because he introduced, in the back-ground, the old Italian linen or paper window. Maria is represented standing or raising herself to offer the Infant to St. Elizabeth, who stretches out her arms to receive him. Mary Magdalen behind, and bending over her, points to St. John, and caresses the child; he with infantine joy escapes from her touch, and looking at her, leaps up to his mother’s neck. St. John, as the principal figure, is placed in the fore-ground on a leopard’s skin, and with raised hand seems to prophesy of Christ; he appears to have eight or ten years, Christ scarcely two. At this anachronism, or the much bolder one committed in the admission of M. Magdalen, who was probably younger than Christ, those only will be shocked who have not considered the nature of a votive picture: this was dedicated to St. John, as the tutelary saint of Florence, and before it was transferred to the Pitti Gallery, was the altar-piece in a domestic chapel of the Medicean family.[82]

The greater part of this audience are acquainted, some are familiar with the celebrated painting of Correggio, formerly treasured in the Pilotta of Parma; transported to the Louvre and again replaced. In the invention of this work, which exhibits St. Jerome, to whom it was dedicated, presenting his translation of the Scriptures, by the hand of an angel, to the infant seated in the lap of the Madonna, the patron of the piece, is sacrificed in place to the female and angelic group which occupies the middle. The figure that chiefly attracts, has, by its suavity, for centuries, attracted, and still absorbs the general eye, is that charming one of the Magdalen, in a half kneeling, half recumbent posture, pressing the foot of Jesus to her lips. By doing this, the painter has, undoubtedly, offered to the Graces the boldest and most enamoured sacrifice which they ever received from art. He has been rewarded, accordingly, for the impropriety of her usurping the first glance which ought to fix itself on the Divinity, and the Saint vanishes in the amorous gaze on her charms. If the Magdalen has long possessed the right of being present where the Madonna presides, she ought to assist the purpose of the picture in subordinate entreaty; her action should have been that of supplication; as it is, it is the effusion of fondling, unmixed love.

The true medium between dry apposition and exuberant contrast, appears to have been kept by Titian, in an altar-piece of the Franciscans, or Frari, in spite of French selection, still at Venice; and of which the simple grandeur has been balanced by Reynolds against the artificial splendour of Rubens in a similar subject. It probably was what it represents, the thanks-offering of a noble family, for some victory obtained, or conquest made in the Morea. The heads of the family, male and female, presented by St. Francis, occupy the two wings of the composition, kneeling, and with hands joined in prayer, in attitudes nearly parallel. Elevated in the centre, St. Peter stands at the altar, between two columns, his hand in the Gospel-book, the keys before him, addressing the suppliants. Above him, to the right, appears the Madonna, holding the infant, and with benign countenance, seems to sanction the ceremony. Two stripling cherubs on an airy cloud, right over the centre, rear the cross; an armed warriour with the standard of victory, and behind him a turbaned Turk or Moor, approach from the left and round the whole.

Such is the invention of a work, which, whilst it fills the mind, refuses utterance to words; of which it is difficult to say, whether it subdue more by simplicity, command by dignity, persuade by propriety, assuage by repose, or charm by contrast. A great part of these groups consists of portraits in habiliments of the time, deep, vivid, brilliant; but all are completely subject to the tone of gravity that emanates from the centre, a sacred silence enwraps the whole; all gleams and nothing flashes. Steady to his purpose, and penetrated by his motive, though brooding over every part of his work, the artist appears no where.[83]

Next to this higher class of negative subjects, though much lower, may be placed the magnificence of ornamental painting, the pompous machinery of Paolo Veronese, Pietro da Cortona, and Rubens. Splendour, contrast, and profusion, are the springs of its invention. The painter, not the story, is the principal subject here. Dazzled by piles of Palladian architecture, tables set out with regal luxury, terrasses of plate, crowds of Venetian nobles, pages, dwarfs, gold-collared Moors, and choirs of vocal and instrumental music, embrowned and tuned by meridian skies, what eye has time to discover, in the brilliant chaos, the visit of Christ to Simon the Pharisee, or the sober nuptials of Canah? but when the charm dissolves, though avowedly wonders of disposition, colour, and unlimited powers of all-grasping execution, if considered in any other light than as the luxurious trappings of ostentatious wealth, judgment must pronounce them ominous pledges of irreclaimable depravity of taste, glittering masses of portentous incongruities and colossal baubles.

The next place to representation of pomp among negative subjects, but far below, we assign to Portrait. Not that characteristic portrait by which Silanion, in the face of Apollodorus, personified habitual indignation; Apelles in Alexander superhuman ambition; Raphael in Julio the IId. pontifical fierceness; Titian in Paul IIId. testy age with priestly subtlety; and in Machiavelli and Cæsar Borgia the wily features of conspiracy and treason.—Not that portrait by which Rubens contrasted the physiognomy of philosophic and classic acuteness with that of genius in the conversation-piece of Grotius, Meursius, Lipsius, and himself; not the nice and delicate discriminations of Vandyk, nor that power which, in our days, substantiated humour in Sterne, comedy in Garrick, and mental and corporeal strife, to use his own words, in Samuel Johnson. On that broad basis, portrait takes its exalted place between history and the drama. The portrait I mean is that common one as widely spread as confined in its principle; the remembrancer of insignificance, mere human resemblance, in attitude without action, features without meaning, dress without drapery, and situation without propriety. The aim of the artist and the sitter’s wish are confined to external likeness; that deeper, nobler aim, the personification of character, is neither required, nor, if obtained, recognised. The better artist, condemned to this task, can here only distinguish himself from his duller brother by execution, by invoking the assistance of back-ground, chiaroscuro and picturesque effects, and thus, sometimes produces a work which delights the eye and leaves us, whilst we lament the misapplication, with a strong impression of his power; him we see, not the insignificant individual that usurps the centre, one we never saw, care not if we never see, and if we do, remember not, for his head can personify nothing but his opulence or his pretence; it is furniture.

If any branch of art be once debased to a mere article of fashionable furniture, it will seldom elevate itself above the taste and the caprice of the owner, or the dictates of fashion; for its success depends on both; and though there be not a bauble thrown by the sportive hand of fashion which taste may not catch to advantage, it will seldom be allowed to do it, if fashion dictate the mode. Since liberty and commerce have more levelled the ranks of society, and more equally diffused opulence, private importance has been increased, family connections and attachments have been more numerously formed, and hence portrait painting, which formerly was the exclusive property of princes, or a tribute to beauty, prowess, genius, talent, and distinguished character, is now become a kind of family calendar, engrossed by the mutual charities of parents, children, brothers, nephews, cousins, and relatives of all colours.

To portrait painting, thus circumstanced, we subjoin, as the last branch of uninteresting subjects, that kind of landscape which is entirely occupied with the tame delineation of a given spot; an enumeration of hill and dale, clumps of trees, shrubs, water, meadows, cottages and houses, what is commonly called Views. These, if not assisted by nature, dictated by taste, or chosen for character, may delight the owner of the acres they enclose, the inhabitants of the spot, perhaps the antiquary or the traveller, but to every other eye they are little more than topography. The landscape of Titian, of Mola, of Salvator, of the Poussins, Claude, Rubens, Elzheimer, Rembrandt and Wilson, spurns all relation with this kind of mapwork. To them nature disclosed her bosom in the varied light of rising, meridian, setting suns; in twilight, night and dawn. Height, depth, solitude, strike, terrify, absorb, bewilder in their scenery. We tread on classic or romantic ground, or wander through the characteristic groups of rich congenial objects. The usual choice of the Dutch school, which frequently exhibits no more than the transcript of a spot, borders, indeed, nearer on the negative kind of landscape; but imitation will not be entitled to the pleasure we receive, or the admiration we bestow, on their genial works, till it has learnt to give an air of choice to necessity, to imitate their hues, spread their masses, and to rival the touch of their pencil.

Subjects which cannot, in their whole compass, be brought before the eye, which appeal for the best part of their meaning, to the erudition of the spectator, and the refinements of sentimental enthusiasm, seem equally to defy the powers of invention. The labour of disentangling the former, dissolves the momentary magic of the first impression, and leaves us cold: the second evaporates under the grosser touch of sensual art. It may be more than doubted whether the resignation of Alcestis can ever be made intuitive; the pathos of the story consists in the heroic resolution of Alcestis to save her husband’s life by resigning her own. Now the art can shew no more than Alcestis dying: the cause of her death, her elevation of mind, the disinterested heroism of her resolution to die, are beyond its power.