Chapter VI: Part 6

If the attendant characters in the picture of Agostino are more numerous, and have on the whole, furnished the hints of admission to those of Domenichino, this, with one exception, may be said to have used more propriety and judgment in the choice. Both have introduced a man with a turban, and opened a portico to characterise an Asiatic scene.

With regard to composition, Domenichino undoubtedly gains the palm. The disposition on the whole he owes to his master, though he reversed it, but he has cleared it of that oppressive bustle which rather involves and crouds the principal actors in Agostino than attends them. He spreads tranquillity with space and repose without vacuity.

With this corresponds the tone of the whole. The evening-freshness of an oriental day tinges every part; the medium of Agostino partakes too much of the fumigated inside of a catholic chapel.

The draperies of both are characteristic and unite subordination with dignity, but their colour is chosen with more judgment by Domenichino, the imbrowned gold and ample folds of the robe of the administering priest are more genial than the cold blue, white and yellow on the priest of his master; in both, perhaps, the white draperies on the fore-ground figures have too little strength for the central colours, but it is more perceived in Carracci than in Domenichino.

The forms of the saint in Carracci are grander and more ideal than in the saint of Domenichino, some have even thought them too vigorous: both, in my opinion are in harmony with the emotion of the face and expression of either. The eagerness that animates the countenance of the one may be supposed to spread a momentary vigour over his frame. The mental dereliction of countenance in the other with equal propriety relaxes and palsies the limbs which depend on it.

The colour of Carracci’s saint is much more characteristic of fleshy though nearly bloodless substance, than that chosen by his rival, which is withered, shrivelled, leathery in the lights, and earthy in the shades; but the head of the officiating priest in Domenichino, whether considered as a specimen of colour independent of the rest, or as set off by it, for truth, tone, freshness, energy, is not only the best Domenichino ever painted, but perhaps the best that can be conceived.

SIXTH LECTURE.

CHIAROSCURO.

Non sumum ex fulgore, sed ex sumo dare lucem.

Horat. de Arte Poet. I. 143.

ARGUMENT.

Definition.—Lionardo da Vinci.—Giorgione.—Antonio da Correggio.

SIXTH LECTURE.

The term Chiaroscuro, adopted from the Italian, in its primary and simplest sense, means the division of a single object into light and shade, and in its widest compass comprises their distribution over a whole composition: whether the first derive its splendour by being exposed to a direct light, or from colours in its nature luminous; and whether the second owe their obscurity directly to the privation of light, or be produced by colours in themselves opaque. Its exclusive power is, to give substance to form, place to figure and to create space. It may be considered as legitimate or spurious: it is legitimate when, as the immediate offspring of the subject, its disposition, extent, strength or sweetness are subservient to form, expression, and invigourate or illustrate character, by heightening the primary actor or actors, and subordinating the secondary; it is spurious when from an assistant aspiring to the rights of a principal, it becomes a substitute for indispensible or more essential demands. As such, it has often been employed by the machinists of different schools, for whom it became the refuge of ignorance, a palliative for an incurable disease, and the asylum of emptiness; still, as even a resource of this kind proves a certain vigour of mind, it surprises into something like unwilling admiration and forced applause.

Of every subject Unity is the soul: unity, of course, is inseparable from legitimate chiaroscuro: hence the individual light and shade of every figure that makes part of a given or chosen subject, whether natural or ideal, as well as the more compound one of the different intermediate groups, must act as so many rays emanating from one centre and terminate, blazing, evanescent, or obscured, in rounding it to the eye.

Truth is the next requisite of chiaroscuro, whatever be the subject. Some it attends without ambition, content with common effects, some it invigourates or inspires: but in either case, let the effect be that of usual expanded day-light, or artificial and condensed, it ought to be regulated by truth in extent, strength, brilliancy, softness and above all, by simplicity in its positive and purity in its negative parts. As shade is the mere absence of light, it cannot, except from reflexes, possess any hue or colour of its own, and acquires all its charms from transparency.

But to the rules which art prescribes to Chiaroscuro, to round each figure of a composition with truth, to connect it with the neighbouring groups, and both with the whole—it adds, that all this should be done with strict adherence to propriety, at the least possible expence of the subordinate parts, and with the utmost attainable degree of effect and harmony—demands which it is not my duty to inquire, whether they entered ever with equal evidence the mind of any one artist, ancient or modern: whether, if it be granted possible that they did, they were ever balanced with equal impartiality; and grant this, whether they ever were or could be executed with equal felicity. A character of equal universal power is not a human character—and the nearest approach to perfection can only be in carrying to excellence one great quality with the least alloy of defects. Thus in the School of Athens, Raffaello’s great aim being to embody on the same scene, the gradations, varieties and utmost point of human culture _as it proceeds from the individual to society, and from that ascends to God_; he suffered expression and character to preponderate over effect and combination of masses, and contriving to unite the opposite wings with the centre by entrance and exit at each extremity, as far as expression could do it, succeeded, to make what in itself is little more than apposition of single figures or detached groups, one grand whole.—I say, as far as expression could satisfy a mind qualified to contemplate and penetrate his principle, however unsatisfied a merely picturesque eye might wander over a scattered assemblage of figures equally illuminated and unconnected by a commanding mass of light and shade.

From this deficiency of effect in the composition we speak of, it is evident, that mere natural light and shade, however separately or individually true, is not always legitimate Chiaroscuro in art. Nature sheds or withholds her ray indiscriminately, and every object has what share it can obtain by place and position, which it is the business of art to arrange by fixing a centre and distributing the rays according to the more or less important claims of the subject: as long as it regulates itself by strict observance of that principle, it matters not whether its principal mass radiate from the middle, wind in undulating shapes, dart in decided beams from the extremities; emanate from one source, or borrow additional effect from subordinate ones: let it mount like flame or descend in lightning; dash in stern tones terrour on the eye, emergent from a dark or luminous medium; through twilight immerse itself in impenetrable gloom or gradually vanish in voluptuous repose, guided by the subject the most daring division of light and shade, becomes natural and legitimate, and the most regular, spurious and illegitimate without it.

To attain in the execution the highest possible and widest expanded effect of light, with equal depth and transparence in the shade, brilliancy of colour is less required than unison: a sovereign tone must pervade the whole, which though arbitrary and dependent on choice, decides all subordinate ones, as the tone of the first instrument in a regular concert tunes all the rest; their effect intirely depends on being in unison with it, and discord is produced whenever they revolt: by thus uniting itself with the whole, the simplest tone well managed may become, not only harmonious, but rich and splendid, it is then the tone of nature: whilst the most brilliant one, if contradicted or disappointed by the detail of the inferiour, may become heavy, leathern, and discordant.

Though every work of Correggio is an illustration of this principle, and none with brighter evidence than his ‘Notte,’ in which the central light of the infant irradiates the whole; perhaps the most decisive, because most appropriate proof of it is in its companion the less known picture of St. Sebastian, at Dresden; in which the central light of a glory, not only surprises the eye with all the splendour of a sun, though its colour is a yellow comparatively faint, and terminates in brown, but tinges the whole, perfectly transparent, with its emanation.

That not before the lapse of two hundred years after the resurrection of Art, the discovery of Chiaroscuro, as a principle of beauty in single figures and of effect in composition, should be awarded to Lionardo da Vinci, a patriarch of that school which time has shewn of all others the least inclined to appreciate its advantages, is at once a proof of the singularity that marks the local distribution of powers, and of the inconceivable slowness which attends human perception in the progress of study: but without generally admitting what has been said with more energy than judgment or regard to truth, that modern art literally sprang from the loins of Lionardo, it must be granted that no work anterior or contemporary with his essays in Chiaroscuro now exist to disprove his claim to the first vision of its harmony; its magic lent the charm, by which his females allure, to forms neither ideal nor much varied; sisters of one family they attract by the light in which they radiate, by the shade that veils them—for the features of Giotto’s or Memmi’s Madonnas or virgin-saints floating in the same medium, would require little more to be their equals.

This principle Lionardo seems seldom if ever to have extended to relieve or recommend his larger compositions and male figures, if we except the group of contending horsemen which made or was intended for some part of his rival cartoon in the Sala del Consiglio: a knot of supreme powers in Composition and Chiaroscuro; though, as we know it chiefly from a copy of P. P. Rubens engraved by Edelinck, the gross evidence of Flemish liberties taken with the style, makes it probable that the original simplicity of light and shade has been invigourated by the artificial contrasts of the copyist. Lionardo’s open scenery, tinged with the glareless evenness of plain day-light, seldom warrants effects so concentrated. Unostentatious gravity marks the characters of his Last Supper, and in sober evening tones marked probably the Chiaroscuro of the groups and scenery, if we may be allowed to form our judgment from the little that remains unimpaired by the ravages of time and the more barbarous ones of renovators.

To the discovery of central radiance the genius of Lionardo with equal penetration added its counterpart, _purity_ of shade and the coalescence of both through imperceptible demi-tints. Whatever tone of light he chose, he never forgot that the shade intended to set it off, was only its absence and not a positive colour, and that both were to be harmonised by demi-tints composed of both; a principle of which no school anterior to him has left a trace.

That the discovery of a principle big with advantages as obvious as important to art should have been reserved for the penetration of Lionardo, however singular, is less strange than that, when discovered and its powers demonstrated, it should, with the exception of one name, have not only met with no imitators, but with an ambiguous and even discouraging reception from the pupils of his own school, and some next allied to it. Vasari, his panegyrist rather than biographer, talks of it more as a singular phænomenon than as an evident principle, and avowing that he introduced a certain depth of shade into oil-painting, which enabled succeeding artists to relieve their figures more forcibly[88], persevered to discolour walls and pannels with washy flat insipidity. Bartolomeo della Porta alone appears to have had sufficient compass of mind to grasp its energy and connect it with colour: from him, through Andrea del Sarto down to Pietro Berettini, who owed his effects rather to opposition of tints than to legitimate Chiaroscuro, the Tuscan school gradually suffered it to dwindle into evanescence. Unless we were to consider its astonishing effects in some of Michael Angelo’s works in the light of imitations rather than as emanations of his own genius; which perhaps we are the less warranted to presume as he seems to have paid no attention to Lionardo’s discovery in its brightest period; for the groups of his celebrated cartoon exhibit little more than individual light and shade.

What the Tuscan school treated with neglect the Roman appears not to have been eager to adopt: if Raffaello did not remain a stranger to the theories of Lionardo and Frà. Bartolomeo, he suffered the principle to lie dormant; for no production of his during his intercourse with them is marked by concentration of light or purity of shade or subordinate masses: nor is the interval between his last departure from Florence and his entrance of the Vatican discriminated by any visible progress in massing and illuminating a whole: the upper and lower parts of the dispute on the Sacrament, cut sheer asunder, as a whole, are little relieved in either; and if the Parnassus and the school of Athens have the beginning, middle, and end of legitimate Composition, they owe it to expression and feeling; nor can the more vigorous display of Chiaroscuro in the works of the second stanza, the Deliverance of Peter, the Fall of Heliodorus, the Attila, the Mass of Bolsena be referred to a principle of imitation, when we see it neglected in a subject where it might have ruled with absolute sway, in the Incendio del Borgo, and on the whole in every Composition of the third and fourth stanza; a series of evidence that Raffaello considered Chiaroscuro as a subordinate vehicle, and never suffered its blandishments or energies to absorb meaning or to supplant expression and form[89]: but the harmony which immediately after him Giulio Pipi, and Polydoro only excepted, the rest of his pupils had sacrificed or consecrated to higher beauties, their successors, the subsequent Roman school from the Zuccari through Giuseppo Cesari down to C. Maratta, if they did not entirely lose in a heavy display of academic pedantry, or destroy by the remorseless ‘bravura’ of mannered practice, they uniformly polluted by bastard theories and adulterated methods of shade.

When I say that the Roman school uniformly erred in their principle of shade, I have not forgot M. Angelo da Caravaggio, whose darks are in such perfect unison with the lights of his chiaroscuro, that A. Carracci declared he did not grind colour but flesh itself for his tints (‘che macinava carne’), and whom for that reason and on such authority I choose rather to consider as the head of his own school than as the member of another: in some of his surviving works, but far more frequently in those which without sufficient authenticity are ascribed to him, an abrupt transition from light to darkness, without an intervening demi-tint, has offended the eye and provoked the sarcasm of an eminent critic: but as long as the picture of the entombing of Christ in the Chiesa Nuova at Rome may be appealed to; as long as the Pilgrim’s kneeling before the Madonna with the child in her arms, of St. Agostino at Rome, shall retain their tone; or the Infant Jesus, once in the Spada palace, crushing the Serpent’s head, shall resist the ravages of time—it will be difficult to produce in similar works of any other master or any other school, from Lionardo down to Rembrandt, a system of chiaroscuro which shall equal the severe yet mellow energy of the first; the departing evening ray and veiled glow of the second; or, with unimpaired harmony, the bold decision of masses and stern light and shade of the third.

The homage sparingly granted or callously refused to chiaroscuro by the two schools of design was with implicit devotion paid to it by the nurse of colour, the school of Venice. Whether as tradition on the authority of Vasari maintains, they received it as a principle of imitation from the perspicacity, or as a native discovery from the genius of Giorgione Barbarelli, though from what has been advanced on both sides of the question, it would be presumptuous positively to decide on either, it must be allowed, that if the Venetian received a hint from the Florentine, he extended it through a system, the harmony of which was all his own, and excelled in breadth and amenity the light which it could not surpass in splendour, added transparence to purity of shade, rounded by reflexes and discovered by the contrast of deep with aërial colour, that energy of effect which mere chiaroscuro could not have reached, and which was carried near perfection by Paolo Cagliari.

Among the varied mischief poured into this country by the rapacious sophistry of traders and the ambitious cullibility of wealthy collectors, no hand perhaps has been more destructive to the genuine appreciation of original styles than the baptism of pictures with names not their own: by this prolific method worse ones than those of Luini, Aretusi, Timoteo della Vite, Bonifacio, are daily graced with the honours due to Lionardo, Correggio, Raffaello, Tiziàn; though none have suffered more by the multiplication than Giorgione, whom shortness of life, a peculiar fatality of circumstances, and the ravages of time, have conspired to render one of the scarcest as well as least authenticated artists even in Italy: to whom his earliest and latest biographers have been as critically unjust as chronologically inattentive; Vasari by transferring to another his principal work; Fiorillo by making him paint the portrait of Calvin the Reformer.[90]

To form our opinion therefore of Giorgione’s chiaroscuro from a few portraits or single figures, if legitimate, often restored, or from the crumbling remnants of his decayed frescoes, would be to form an estimate of a magnificent fabric from some loose fragment or stone: to do full justice to his powers we must have recourse to his surprising work in the school of St. Marco at Venice; a composition whose terrific graces Vasari descants on with a fervour inferior only to the artist’s own inspiration, though he unaccountably ascribes it to the elder Palma.[91]

‘In the school of S. Marco he painted the story of the ship
which conducts the body of S. Mark through a horrible tempest,
with other barges assailed by furious winds; and besides,
groups of aërial apparitions, and various forms of fiends
who vent their blasts against the vessels, that by dint of
oars and energy of arms strive to force their way through the
mountainous and hostile waves which threaten to submerge them.
You hear the howling blast, you see the grasp and fiery exertion
of the men, the fluctuation of the waves, the lightning that
bursts the clouds, the oars bent by the flood, the flood broke
by the oars, and dashed to spray by the sinews of the rowers.
What more? In vain I labour to recollect a picture that equals
the terrours of this, whose design, invention, and colour
make the canvass tremble! Often when he finishes, an artist,
absorbed in the contemplation of parts, forgets the main
point of a design, and as the spirits cool, loses the vein
of his enthusiasm; but this man never losing sight of the
subject, guided his conceit to perfection.’

The effect of this work, when it drew such a stream of eulogy from lips else so frugal in Venetian praise, may be guessed at from the impression it makes in its present decay—for even now, it might defy the competition of the most terrific specimens in chiaroscuro, the boat of Charon in M. Angelo’s Last Judgment, perhaps only excepted. Yet its master was defrauded of its glory by his panegyrist, whilst it was exciting the wonder and curiosity of every beholder: Lanzi is the only historian who notices its remains, and the real author[92]; we look in vain for it in Ridolfi, who in his Life of Giorgione treats us instead of it with a delectable account of a night-piece which he painted, exhibiting the tragi-comedy of castrating a cat.

It has been treated as a mistake to confine the chiaroscuro of a subject exclusively to one source; nor can it be doubted that often it is and has been proved to be both necessary and advantageous to admit more; this is however a licence to be granted with considerable caution, and it appears to be the privilege of superiour powers to raise a subject, by the admission of subordinate, sometimes diverging, sometimes opposite streams of light, to assist and invigourate the effect of the primary one, without impairing that unity which, alone can ensure a breadth of effect, without which each part, for mastery striving, soon would be lost in confusion, or crumble into fragments. The best instances of the advantages gained by the superinduction of artificial light, appear to be the Pietro Martire and the S. Lorenzo of Tiziano; if selection can be made from the works of a master, where to count is to choose. In the first, the stern light of evening far advanced in the back-ground, is commanded by the celestial emanation bursting from above, wrapping the summit in splendour, and diffusing itself in rays more or less devious over the scenery. The subject of S. Lorenzo, a nocturnal scene, admits light from two sources—the fire beneath the saint, and a raised torch: but receives its principal splendour from the aërial reflex of the vision on high, which sheds its mitigating ray on the martyr.

The nocturnal studies of Tintoretto from models and artificial groups have been celebrated: these, prepared in wax or clay, he arranged, raised, suspended, to produce masses, foreshortening, and variety of effect: it was thence he acquired that decision of chiaroscuro unknown to more expanded day-light, by which he divided his bodies, and those wings of obscurity and light by which he separated the groups of his composition, though the mellowness of his eye nearly always instructed him to connect the two extremes by something intermediate that partook of both, as the extremes themselves by reflexes with the back-ground or the scenery. The general rapidity of his process, by which he baffled his competitors and often overwhelmed himself, did not indeed always permit him to attend deliberately to this principle, and often hurried him into an abuse of practice, which in the lights turned breadth into mannered or insipid flatness, and in the shadows into total extinction of parts: of all this, he has in the schools of S. Rocco and Marco given the most unquestionable instances; the Resurrection of Christ and the Massacre of the Innocents, comprehend every charm by which chiaroscuro fascinates its votaries: in the vision, dewy dawn melts into deep but pellucid shade, itself rent or reflected by celestial splendor and angelic hues: whilst in the Infant-massacre at Bethlehem alternate sheets of stormy light, and agitated gloom, dash horrour on the astonished eye.

He pursued, however, another method to create, without more assistance from chiaroscuro than individual light and shade, an effect equivalent and perhaps superiour to what the utmost stretch of its powers could have produced, in the crucifixion of the Albergo, or guest-room of S. Rocco, the largest and most celebrated of his works. The multitudinous rabble dispersed over that picture, (for such, rather than composition, one group excepted, that assemblage of accidental figures deserves to be called), he connected by a sovereign tone, ingulphing the whole in one mass of ominous twilight, an eclipse, or what precedes a storm, or hurricane, or earthquake; nor suffering the captive eye to rest on any other object than the faint gleam hovering over the head of the Saviour in the centre, and in still fainter tones dying on the sainted group gathered beneath the cross. Yet this nearly superhuman contrivance which raises above admiration a work whose incongruous parts else must have sunk it beneath mediocrity, Agostino Carracci in his print, with chalcographic callus, has totally overlooked; for notwithstanding the iron sky that overhangs the whole, he has spread, if not sunshine, the most declared day-light from end to end, nor left the eye uninformed of one motley article, or one blade of grass.

With Iacopo Robusti may be named, though adopted by another school, Belisario Corenzio an Achæan Greek, his pupil, his imitator in the magic of chiaroscuro, and with still less compunction his rival in dispatch and rapidity of hand: the immense compositions in which he overflowed, he encompassed, and carried to irresistible central splendour by streams of shade, and hemmed his glories in with clouds, or showery, or pregnant with thunder. The monasteries and churches of Naples and its dependencies abound in his frescos.

The more adscititious effects of chiaroscuro produced by the opposition of dark to lucid, opaque to transparent bodies, and cold to warm tints, though fully understood by the whole Venetian school, were nearly carried to perfection by Paolo Cagliari. There is no variety of harmonious or powerful combination in the empire of colour, as a substitute of light and shade, which did not emanate from his eye, variegate his canvas, and invigourate his scenery. Many of his works, however, and principally the masses scattered over his suppers, prove that he was master of that legitimate chiaroscuro which, independent of colour, animates composition: but the gaiety of his mind which inspired him with subjects of magnificence and splendour, of numerous assemblies canopied by serene skies or roving lofty palaces, made him seek his effects oftener in opposed tints, than in powerful depths of light and shade.

But all preceding, contemporary, and subsequent schools, with their united powers of chiaroscuro, were far excelled both in compass and magnitude of its application by the genius of Antonio Allegri from the place of his nativity, surnamed Correggio. To them light and shade was only necessary as the more or less employed, or obedient attendant on design, composition and colour: but design, composition and colour, were no more than the submissive vehicles, or inchanted ministers of its charms to Correggio. If, strictly speaking, he was not the inventor of its element, he fully spanned its measure, and expanded the powers of its harmony through Heaven and earth; in his eye and hand it became the organ of sublimity; the process of his cupolas made it no longer a question whether an art circumscribed by lines and figure could convey ideas of reality and immensity at once. Entranced by his spell, and lap’d in his elysium, we are not aware of the wide difference between the conception of the medium, the place, space and mode in which certain beings ought, or may be supposed to move, and that of those beings themselves; and forget, though fully adequate to the first, that Correggio was unequal to the second; that though he could build Heaven he could not people it. If M. Agnolo found in the depth of his mind and in grandeur of line the means of rendering the immediate effect of will and power intuitive in the creation of Adam, by darting life from the finger of Omnipotence, the coalition of light and darkness opened to the entranced eye of Correggio the means of embodying the Mosaic. ‘Let there be light,’ and created light in that stream of glory which, issuing from the divine infant in his Notte, proclaims a god. If Thought be personified in the prophets and Sybils of the Sistine chapel, he has made silence audible in the slumbering twilight that surrounds the Zingara; and filled the gloom which enbosoms Jupiter and Io, with the whispers of Love.

And though perhaps we should be nearer truth by ascribing the cause of Correggio’s magic to the happy conformation of his organs, and his calm serenity of mind, than to Platonic ecstacies, a poet might at least be allowed to say ‘that his soul, absorbed by the contemplation of infinity, soared above the sphere of measurable powers, knowing that every object whose limits can be distinctly perceived by the mind, must be within its grasp; and however grand, magnificent, beautiful or terrific, fall short of the conception itself, and be less than sublime.’—In this, from whatever cause, consists the real spell of Correggio—which neither Parmegiano nor Annibale Carracci seem to have been able to penetrate: the Bolognese certainly not; for if we believe himself in his letters to Ludovico, expressive of his emotions at the first sight of Correggio’s cupolas, he confines his admiration to the foreshortening and grace of forms, the successful imitation of flesh, and rigorous perspective.

Of Correggio’s numerous pretending imitators Lodovico Carracci appears to be the only one who penetrated his principle: the axiom, that the less the traces appear of the means, by which a work has been produced, the more it resembles the operations of nature, is not an axiom likely to spring from the infancy of art. The even colour, veiled splendour, the solemn twilight; that tone of devotion and cloistered meditation, which Lodovico Carracci spread over his works could arise only from the contemplation of some preceding style, analogous to his own feelings and its comparison with nature, and where could that be met with in a degree equal to what he found in the infinite unity and variety of Correggio’s effusions? They inspired his frescos in the cloisters of St. Michele in Bosco: the foreshortenings of the muscular labourers at the Hermitage, and of the ponderous dæmon that mocks their toil, the warlike splendour in the homage of Totila, the nocturnal conflagration of Monte Cassino, the wild graces of deranged beauty, and the insidious charms of the sister nymphs in the garden scene, equally proclaim the pupil of Correggio.

His triumph in oil is the altar piece of St. John preaching in a chapel of the Certosa at Bologna, whose lights seem embrowned by a golden veil, and the shadowy gleam of Vallombrosa; though he sometimes indulged in tones austere, pronounced and hardy: such is the Flagellation of Christ in the same church, whose tremendous depth of flesh-tints contrasts the open wide-expanded sky, and less conveys than dashes its terrours on the astonished sense.

The Schools of Bologna, Parma, Milano, with more or less geniality, imitated their predecessors, but added no new features to the theory of light and shade.—As to its progress on this side of the Alps, it is better to say nothing than little on the wide range of Rubens and the miracles of Rembrandt.

FOOTNOTES

[1] There will be an opportunity to notice that incredible dereliction of reminiscence which prompted him to transfer what he had rightly ascribed to Giorgione, in the Florentine edition, 1550, to the elder Palma in the subsequent ones. See Lecture on Chiaroscuro.

[2] It ought not, however, to be disguised, that the history of art, deviating from its real object, has been swelled to a diffuse catalogue of individuals, who, being the nurslings of different schools, or picking something from the real establishers of art, have done little more than repeat or mimic rather than imitate, at second hand, what their masters or predecessors had found in nature, discriminated and applied to art in obedience to its dictates. Without depreciating the merits of that multitude who strenuously passed life in following others, it must be pronounced a task below history to allow them more than a transitory glance; neither novelty nor selection and combination of scattered materials, are entitled to serious attention from him who only investigates the real progress of art, if novelty is proved to have added nothing essential to the system, and selection to have only diluted energy, and by a popular amalgama to have been content with captivating the vulgar. Novelty, without enlarging the circle of fancy, may delight, but is nearer allied to whim than to invention; and an Ecclectic system without equality of parts, as it originated in want of comprehension, totters on the brink of mediocrity, sinks art, or splits it into crafts decorated with the specious name of schools, whose members, authorised by prescript, emboldened by dexterity of hand, encouraged by ignorance, or heading a cabal, subsist on mere repetition, with few more legitimate claims to the honours of history than a rhapsodist to those of the poem which he recites.

[3] Abstract of the Laws of the Royal Academy, article _Professors_: page 21.

[4] This has been done in a superior manner by J. G. Herder, in his _Ideen zur Philosophie der geschichte der Menschheit_, Vol. iii. Book 13, a work translated under the title of _Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man_, 4to.

[5] This account is founded on the conjectures of Mr. _Riem_, in his Treatise on _die Malerey der Alten_, or the _Painting of the Ancients_, 4to. Berlin, 1787.

[6] Pausanias Attic, c. xxviii. The word used by Pausanias καταγραψαι, shews that the figures of Parrhasius were intended for a Bassorelievo. They were in profile. This is the sense of the word _Catagrapha_ in Pliny, xxxv. c. 8. he translates it “obliquas imagines.”

[7] By the authority chiefly of Pamphilus the master of Apelles, who taught at Sicyon. ‘Hujus auctoritate,’ says Pliny, xxxv. 10. ‘effectum est Sicyone primum, deinde et in tota Græcia, ut pueri ingenui ante omnia _diagraphicen_, hoc est, picturam in buxo, docerentur,’ &c. _Harduin_, contrary to the common editions, reads indeed, and by the authority, he says, of all the MSS. _graphicen_, which he translates: ars ‘delineandi,’ desseigner, but he has not proved that graphice means not more than design; and if he had, what was it that Pamphilus taught? he was not the inventor of what he had been taught himself. He established or rather renewed a particular method of drawing, which contained the rudiments, and facilitated the method of painting.

[8] Pausan. Phocica, c. xxv. seq.

[9] This I take to be the sense of Μεγεθος here, which distinguished him, according to Ælian, Var. Hist. iv. 3. from Dionysius of Colophon. The word Τελειοις in the same passage: και ἐν τοις τελειοις ἐιργαζετο τα ἀθλα, I translate: _he aimed at, he sought his praise in the representation of essential proportion_; which leads to ideal beauty.

The κρειττους, χειρους, ὁμοιους; or the βελτιονας ἦ καθ’ ἡμας, ἦκαι τοιουτους, ἠ χειρονας, of Aristotle, Poetic. c. 2. by which he distinguishes Polygnotus, Dionysius, Pauson, confirms the sense given to the passage of Ælian.

[10] παρειῶν το ἐνερευθες, ὁιαν την Κασσανδραν ἐν τη λεσχη ἐποιησε τοις Δελφοις. Lucian: ειχονες. This, and what Pausanias tells of the colour of Eurynomus in the same picture, together with the coloured draperies mentioned by Pliny; makes it evident, that the ‘simplex color’ ascribed by Quintilian to Polygnotus and Aglaophon, implies less a single colour, as some have supposed, than that simplicity always attendant on the infancy of painting, which leaves every colour unmixed and crudely by itself. Indeed the _Poecile_ (ἡ ποικιλη στοα) which obtained its name from his pictures, is alone a sufficient proof of variety of colours.

[11] Hic primus species exprimere instituit, Pliny, xxxv. 96. as _species_ in the sense Harduin takes it, ‘oris et habitus venustas,’ cannot be refused to Polygnotus, and the artists immediately preceding Apollodorus, it must mean here the subdivisions of generic form; the classes.

At this period we may with probability fix the invention of local colour, and tone; which, though strictly speaking it be neither the light nor the shade, is regulated by the medium which tinges both. This, Pliny calls ‘splendour.’ To Apollodorus Plutarch ascribes likewise the invention of tints, the mixtures of colour and the gradations of shade, if I conceive the passage rightly: Ἀπολλοδωρος ὁ Ζωγραφος Ἀνθρωπων πρωτος ἐξευρων φθοραν και ἀποχρωσιν Σκιας, (Plutarch, Bellone an pace Ath, &c. 346.) This was the element of the ancient Αρμογη, that imperceptible transition, which, without opacity, confusion or hardness, united local colour, demi-tint, shade and reflexes.

[12] ‘Pinxit et monochromata ex albo.’ Pliny, xxxv. 9. This Aristotle, Poet. c. 6. calls λευκογραφειν.

[13] In lineis extremis palmam adeptus——minor tamen videtur, sibi comparatus, in mediis corporibus exprimendis. Pliny, xxxv. 10. Here we find the inferiority of the middle parts merely relative to himself. Compared with himself, Parrhasius was not all equal.

[14] Theseus, in quo dixit, eundem apud Parrhasium rosa pastum esse, suum vero carne. Plin. xxxv. 11.

[15] The epithet which he gave to himself of Ἀβροδιαιτος, the delicate, the elegant, and the epigram he is said to have composed on himself, are known: See Athenæus, l. xii. He wore, says Ælian, Var. Hist. ix. 11. a purple robe and a golden garland; he bore a staff wound round with tendrils of gold, and his sandals were tied to his feet and ancles with golden straps. Of his easy simplicity we may judge from his dialogue with Socrates in Xenophon; ἀπομνημονευατων, 1. iii. Of his libidinous fancy, beside what Pliny says, from his Archigallus, and the Meleager and Atalanta mentioned by Suetonius in Tiberio, c. 44.

[16] In the portico of the Piræus by Leochares; in the hall of the Five-hundred, by Lyson: in the back portico of the Ceramicus there was a picture of Theseus, of Democracy and the Demos, by Euphranor. Pausan. Attic. i. 3. Aristolaus, according to Pliny was a painter, ‘e severissimis.’

[17] Cicero Oratore, 73, seq.—In alioque ponatur, aliudque totum sit, utrum _decere_ an _oportere_ dicas; _oportere_ enim, perfectionem declarat officii, quo et semper utendum est, et omnibus: _decere_, quasi aptum esse, consentaneumque tempori et personæ; quod cum in factis sæpissime, tum in dictis valet, in vultu denique, et gestu, et incessu. Contraque item _dedecere_. Quod si poeta fugit, ut maximum vitium, qui peccat, etiam, cum probam orationem affingit improbo, stultove sapientis: si denique pictor ille vicit, cum immolanda Iphigenia tristis Calchas esset, mæstior Ulysses, moereret Menelaus, obvolvendum caput Agamemnonis esse, quoniam summum ilium luctum penicillo, non posset imitari: si denique histrio, quid deceat quærit: quid faciendum oratori putemus?

M. F. Quintilianus, 1. ii. c. 14.—Operienda sunt quædam, sive ostendi non debent, sive exprimi _pro dignitate_ non possunt: ut fecit Timanthes, ut opinor, Cithnius, in ea tabula qua Coloten tejum vicit. Nam cum in Iphigeniæ immolatione pinxisset tristem Calchantem, tristiorem Ulyssem, addidisset Menelao quem summum poterat ars efficere Moerorem, consumptis affectibus, non reperiens quo _digne_ modo Patris vultum possit exprimere, velavit ejus caput, et sui cuique animo dedit æstimandum.

It is evident to the slightest consideration, that both Cicero and Quintilian lose sight of their premises, and contradict themselves in the motive they ascribe to Timanthes. Their want of acquaintance with the nature of plastic expression made them imagine the face of Agamemnon beyond the power of the artist. They were not aware that by making him waste expression on inferior actors at the expence of a principal one, they call him an improvident spendthrift and not a wise œconomist.

From Valerius Maximus, who calls the subject ‘Luctuosum _immolatæ_ Iphigeniæ sacrificium’ instead of _immolandæ_, little can be expected to the purpose. Pliny, with the _digne_ of Quintilian has the same confusion of motive.

[18] It is observed by an ingenious Critic, that in the tragedy of Euripides, the procession is described, and upon Iphigenia’s looking back on her father, he groans, and hides his face to conceal his tears; whilst the picture gives the moment that precedes the sacrifice, and the hiding has a different object and arises from another impression.

——————ὡς δ’ εσειδεν Αγαμεμνων αναξ
ἐπι σφαγας στειχουσαν ἐις ἀλσος κορην
ἀνεστεναξε. Καμπαλιν στρεψας καρα
Δακρυα προηγεν. ὀμματων πεπλον προθεις.

[19] Pliny, l. xxxv. c. 18.

[20] Lysippum Sicyonium—audendi rationem cepisse pictoris Eupompi responso. Eum enim interrogatum, quem sequeretur antecedentium, dixisse demonstrata hominum multitudine, naturam ipsam imitandam esse, non artificem. Non habet Latinum nomen symmetria, quam diligentissime custodivit, nova intactaque ratione quadratas veterum staturas permutando: Vulgoque dicebat, ab illis factos, quales essent, homines: a se, quales viderentur esse. Plin. xxxiv. 8.

[21] Μαλλον δε Ἀπελλης ὁ Ἐφεσιος παλαι ταυτην προῦλαβε την ἐικονα· Και γας ἀυ και ὁυτος διαβληθεις προς Πτολεμαιον——

Λουκιανου περι του μ. ῤ. Π. Τ. Δ.

[22] Apelles was probably the inventor of what artists call _glazing_. See Reynolds on Du Fresnoy, note 37. vol. iii.

[23] In matri interfectæ infante miserabiliter blandiente. Plin. 1. xxxiv. c. 9.

[24] A design of Raphael, representing the lues of the Trojans in Creta, known by the print of Marc Antonio Raymondi.

[25] Reynolds’ Disc. V. vol. i p. 120. Euphranoris Alexander Paris est: in quo laudatur quod omnia simul intelligantur, judex dearum, amator Helenæ, et tamen Achillis interfector. Plin. 1. xxxiv. 8.

[26] See the Hymn (ascribed to Homer) on Apollo.

[27] See the account of this in Vasari; vita di P. Brunelleschi, tom. ii. 114. It is of wood, and still exists in the chapel of the family Gondi, in the church of S. Maria Novella. I know that near a century before Donato, Giotto is said to have worked in marble two bassorelievos on the campanile of the cathedral of Florence; they probably excel the style of his pictures, as much as the bronze works executed by Andrea Pisano, from his designs, at the door of the Battisterio.

[28] Masaccio da S. Giovanni di Valdarno born in 1402, is said to have died in 1443. He was the pupil of Masolino da Panicale.

[29] Andrea Mantegna died at Mantoua, 1505. A monument erected to his memory in 1517, by his sons, gave rise to the mistake of dating his death from that period.

[30] Luca Signorelli died at Cortona 1521, aged 82.

[31] Lionardo da Vinci is said to have died in 1517, aged 75, at Paris.

[32] The flying birds of paste, the lions filled with lilies, the lizards with dragons wings, horned and silvered over, savour equally of the boy and the quack. It is singular enough that there exists not the smallest hint of Lorenzo de Medici having employed or noticed a man of such powers and such early celebrity; the legend which makes him go to Rome with Juliano de Medici at the access of Leo X, to accept employment in the Vatican, whether sufficiently authentic or not, furnishes a characteristic trait of the man. The Pope passing through the room allotted for the pictures, and instead of designs and cartoons, finding nothing but an apparatus of distillery, of oils and varnishes, exclaimed, _Oimè costui non è per far nulla, da che comincia a pensare alla fine innanzi il principio dell’ opera!_ From an admirable sonnet of Lionardo, preserved by Lomazzo, he appears to have been sensible of the inconstancy of his own temper, and full of wishes, at least, to correct it.

Much has been said of the honour he received by expiring in the arms of Francis I. It was indeed an honour, by which destiny in some degree atoned to that monarch for his future disaster at Pavia.

[33] Frà. Bartolomeo died at Florence 1517, at the age of 48.

[34] Michael Angelo Buonarroti born at Castel-Caprese in 1474, died at Rome 1564, aged 90.

[35] Like Silanion—‘Apollodorum fecit, fictorem et ipsum, sed inter cunctos diligentissimum artis & inimicum sui judicem, crebro perfecta signa frangentem, dum satiare cupiditatem nequit artis, et ideo insanum cognominarum. Hoc in eo expressit, nec hominem ex ære fecit sed Iracundiam.’ Plin. 1. xxxiv. 7.

[36] When M. Angelo pronounced oil-painting to be _Arte da donna e da huomini agiati e infingardi_, a maxim to which the fierce Venetian manner has given an air of paradox, he spoke relatively to fresco: it was a lash on the short-sighted insolence of Sebastian del Piombo, who wanted to persuade Paul III. to have the last judgment painted in oil. That he had a sense for the beauties of oil colour, its glow, its juice, its richness, its pulp, the praises which he lavished on Titiano, whom he called the only painter, and his patronage of Frà. Sebastian himself, evidently prove. When young, M. Angelo attempted oil-painting with success; the picture painted for Angelo Doni is an instance, and probably the only intire work of the kind that remains. The Lazarus, in the picture destined for the cathedral at Narbonne, rejects the claim of every other hand. The Leda, the cartoon of which, formerly in the palace of the Vecchietti at Florence, is now in the possession of W. Lock, Esq., was painted in distemper; (a tempera); all small or large oil pictures shown as his, are copies from his designs or cartoons, by Marcello Venusti, Giacopo da Pontormo, Battista Franco, and Sebastian of Venice.

[37] Raphael Sanzio, of Urbino, died at Rome 1520, at the age of 37.

[38] Giorgio Barbarelli, from his size and beauty called Giorgione, was born at Castel Franco, in the territory of Venice, 1478, and died at Venice, 1511.

[39] Titiano Vecelli, or as the Venetians call him, Tiziàn, born at Cador in the Friulese, died at Venice, 1576, aged 99.

[40] The birth and life of Antonio Allegri, or as he called himself Læti, surnamed Correggio, is more involved in obscurity than the life of Apelles. Whether he was born in 1490 or 94 is not ascertained; the time of his death in 1534 is more certain. The best account of him has undoubtedly been given by A. R. Mengs in his _Memorie concernenti la vita e le opere di Antonio Allegri denominato il Correggio_. Vol. ii. of his works, published by the Spaniard D. G. Niccola d’Azara.

[41] Pelegrino Tibaldi died at Milano in 1592, aged 70.

[42] Sebastiano, afterwards called Del Piombo from the office of the papal signet, died at Rome in 1547, aged 62.

[43] Daniel Ricciarelli, of Volterra, died in 1566, aged 57.

[44] Now the first ornament of the exquisite collection of J. J. Angerstein, Esq.

[45] Giorgio Vasari, of Arezzo, died in 1584, aged 68.

[46] Julio Pipi, called Romano, died at Mantoua in 1546, aged 54.

[47] Francesco Primaticcio, made Abbé de St. Martin de Troyes, by Francis I., died in France 1570, aged 80.

[48] Polydoro Caldara da Caravaggio was assassinated at Messina in 1543, aged 51.

[49] Michael Angelo Amerigi, surnamed Il Caravaggi, knight of Malta, died 1609, aged 40.

[50] Nicolas Poussin, of Andely, died at Rome 1665, aged 71.

[51] Salvator Rosa, surnamed Salvatoriello, died at Rome 1673, aged 59.

[52] Of the portraits which Raphael in fresco scattered over the compositions of the Vatican, we shall find an opportunity to speak. But in oil the real style of portrait began at Venice with Giorgione, flourished in Sebastian del Piombo, and was carried to perfection by Titiano, who filled the masses of the first without entangling himself in the minute details of the second. Tintoretto, Bassan, and Paolo of Verona, followed the principle of Titiano. After these, it migrated from Italy to reside with the Spaniard Diego Velasquez; from whom Rubens and Vandyck attempted to transplant it to Flanders, France and England, with unequal success. France seized less on the delicacy than on the affectation of Vandyck, and soon turned the art of representing men and women into a mere remembrancer of fashions and airs. England had possessed Holbein, but it was reserved for the German Lely, and his successor Kneller, to lay the foundation of a manner, which, by pretending to unite portrait with history, gave a retrograde direction for near a century, to both. A mob of shepherds and shepherdesses in flowing wigs and dressed curls, ruffled Endymion’s, humble Juno’s, withered Hebe’s, surly Allegroes, and smirking Pensierosa’s, usurped the place of truth, propriety and character. Even the lamented powers of the greatest painter, whom this country and perhaps our age produced, long vainly struggled, and scarcely in the eve of life succeeded to emancipate us from this dastard taste.

[53] Francesco Mazzuoli, called il Parmegiano, died at Casal Maggiore in 1540, at the age of 36. The magnificent picture of the St. John, we speak of, was begun by order of the Lady Maria Bufalina, and destined for the church of St. Salvadore del Lauro at Città di Castello. It probably never received the last hand of the master, who fled from Rome, where he painted it, at the sacking of that city, under Charles Bourbon, in 1527; it remained in the refectory of the convent della Pace for several years, was carried to Città di Castello by Messer Giulio Bufalini, and is now in England. The Moses, a figure in fresco at Parma, together with Raphael’s figure of God in the vision of Ezekiel, is said, by Mr. Mason, to have furnished Gray with the head and action of his bard: if that was the case, he would have done well, to acquaint us with the poet’s method, of making ‘Placidis coire immitia.’

[54] Lodovico Carracci died at Bologna 1619, aged 64.

Agostino Carracci died at Parma in 1602, at the age of 44. His is the St. Girolamo in the Certosa, near Bologna; his, the Thetis with the nereids, cupids, and tritons, in the gallery of the palace Farnese. Why, as an engraver, he should have wasted his powers on the large plate from the crucifixion, painted by Tintoretto, in the hospitio of the school of St. Rocco, a picture, of which he could not express the tone, its greatest merit, is not easily unriddled. Annibale Carracci died at Rome in 1609, at the age of 49.

[55] _SONNET OF AGOSTINO CARRACCI._

Chi farsi un buon Pittor cerca, e desia,
Il disegno di Roma habbia alla mano,
La mossa coll’ ombrar Veneziano,
E il degno colorir di Lombardia.

Di Michel’ Angiol la terribil via
Il vero natural di Tiziano,
Del Correggio lo stil puro, e sovrano,
E di un Rafel la giusta simetria.

Del Tibaldi il decoro, e il fondamento,
Del dotto Primaticcio l’inventare,
E un po di gratia del Parmigianino.

Ma senza tanti studi, e tanto stento,
Si ponga l’opre solo ad imitare,
Che qui lasciocci il nostro Niccolino.

Malvasia, author of the _Felsina Pittrice_, has made this sonnet the text to his drowsy rhapsody on the frescoes of Lodovico Carracci and some of his scholars, in the cloisters of St. Michele in Bosco, by Bologna. He circumscribes the ‘_Mossa Veneziana_,’ of the sonnet, by ‘_Quel strepitoso motivo & quel divincolamento_’ peculiar to Tintoretto.

[56] Guido Reni died in 1642, aged 68. Giov. Lanfranco died at Naples in 1647 aged 66. Franc. Albani died in 1660, aged 82. Domenico Zampieri, called il Domenichino, died in 1641, aged 60. Franc. Barbieri of Cento, called il Guercino, from a cast in his eye, died in 1667, aged 76.

[57] Pietro Berretini, of Cortona, the painter of the cieling in the Barberini hall, and of the gallery in the lesser Pamphili palace; the vernal suavity of whose fresco-tints no pencil ever equalled, died at Rome in 1669, aged 73. Luca Giordano, nick-named Fa-presto, or Dispatch, from the rapidity of his execution, the greatest machinist of his time, died in 1705, aged 76.

[58] We are informed by the Editor of the Latin translation of Albert Durer’s book, on the symmetry of the parts of the human frame, (Parisiis, in officina Caroli Perier in vico Bellovaco, sub Bellerophonte, 1557, fol.) that, during Albert’s stay at Venice, where he resided for a short time, to procure redress from the Signoria, for the forgery of Marc Antonio, he became familiar with Giovanni Bellini: and that Andrea Mantegna, who had heard of his arrival in Italy, and had conceived an high opinion of his execution and fertility, sent him a message of invitation to Mantoua, for the express purpose of giving him an idea of that form of which he himself had obtained a glimpse from the contemplation of the antique. Andrea was then ill, and expired before Albert, who immediately prepared to set out for Mantoua, could profit by his instructions. This disappointment, says my author, Albert never ceased to lament during his life. How fit the Mantouan was to instruct the German, is not the question here; but Albert’s regret seems to prove that he felt a want which his model could not supply; and that he had too just an idea of the importance of the art to be proud of dexterity of finger or facility of execution, when employed on objects essentially defective or comparatively trifling. The following personal account of Albert deserves to be given in the Latin Editor’s own words: ‘E Pannonia oriundum accepimus—Erat caput argutum, oculi micantes, nasus honestus & quern Greci Τετράγωνον vocant; proceriusculum collum, pectus amplum, castigatus venter, femora nervosa, crura stabilia: sed digitis nihil dixisses vidisse elegantius.’

Albert Durer was the scholar of Martin Schön and Michael Wolgemuth, and died at Nuremberg in 1528, aged 57.

[59] Lucas Jacob, called Lucas of Leyden, and by the Italians, Luca d’Ollanda, died at Leyden in 1533.

[60] Peter Paul Rubens, of Cologne, the disciple of Adam Van Ort and Otho Venius, died at or near Antwerp in 1641, aged 63.

See the admirable character given of him by Sir Joshua Reynolds, annexed to his journey to Flanders, vol. ii. of his works.

[61] Anthony Vandyck died in London, 1641, at the age of 42.—The poetic conception of Abraham Diepenbeck may be estimated from the Temple des Muses of Mr. de Marolles; re-edited but not improved by Bernard Picart.

[62] Rembrandt died, at Amsterdam? in 1674, aged 68.