Chapter VII: Allegory (1)

There is one other important step left towards the atchievement of the art: but the artist, who, boldly forsaking the common path, dares to attempt it, finds himself at once on the brink of a precipice, and starts back dismayed.

The stories of martyrs and saints, fables and metamorphoses, are almost the only objects of modern painters—repeated a thousand times, and varied almost beyond the limits of possibility, every tolerable judge grows sick at them.

The judicious artist falls asleep over a Daphne and Apollo, a Proserpine carried off by Pluto, an Europa, &c. he wishes for occasions to shew himself a poet, to produce significant images, to paint Allegory.

Painting goes beyond the senses: _there_ is its most elevated pitch, to which the Greeks strove to raise themselves, as their writings evince. Parrhasius, like Aristides, a painter of the soul, was able to express the character even of a whole people: he painted the Athenians as mild as cruel, as fickle as steady, as brave as timid. Such a representation owes its possibility only to the allegorical method, whose images convey general ideas.

But here the artist is lost in a desart. Tongues the most savage, which are entirely destitute of abstracted ideas, containing no word whose sense could express memory, space, duration, &c. these tongues, I say, are not more destitute of general signs, than painting in our days. The painter who thinks beyond his palette longs for some learned apparatus, by whose stores he might be enabled to invest abstracted ideas with sensible and meaning images. Nothing has yet been published of this kind, to satisfy a rational being; the essays hitherto made are not considerable, and far beneath this great design. The artist himself knows best in what degree he is satisfied with Ripa’s Iconology, and the emblems of ancient nations, by Van Hooghe.

Hence the greatest artists have chosen but vulgar objects. _Annibal Caracci_, instead of representing in general symbols and sensible images the history of the Farnesian family, as an allegorical poet, wasted all his skill in fables known to the whole world.

Go, visit the galleries of monarchs, and the publick repositories of art, and see what difference there is between the number of allegorical, poetical, or even historical performances, and that of fables, saints, or madonnas.

Among great artists, _Rubens_ is the most eminent, who first, like a sublime poet, dared to attempt this untrodden path. His most voluminous composition, the gallery of Luxembourg, has been communicated to the world by the hands of the best engravers.

After him the sublimest performance undertaken and finished, in that kind, is, no doubt, the cupola of the imperial library at Vienna, painted by _Daniel Gran_, and engraved by _Sedelmayer_. The Apotheosis of Hercules at Versailles, done by _Le Moine_, and alluding to the Cardinal _Hercules de Fleury_, though deemed in France the most august of compositions, is, in comparison of the learned and ingenious performance of the German artist, but a very mean and short-sighted Allegory, resembling a panegyric, the most striking beauties of which are relative to the almanack. The artist had it in his power to indulge grandeur, and his flipping the occasion is astonishing: but even allowing, that the Apotheosis of a minister was all that he ought to have decked the chief cieling of a royal palace with, we nevertheless see through his fig-leaf.

The artist would require a work, containing every image with which any abstracted idea might be poetically inverted; a work collected from all mythology, the best poets of all ages, the mysterious philosophy of different nations, the monuments of the ancients on gems, coins, utensils, &c. This magazine should be distributed into several classes, and, with proper applications to peculiar possible cases, adapted to the instruction of the artist. This would, at the same time, open a vast field for imitating the ancients, and participating of their sublimer taste.

The taste in our decorations, which, since the complaints of _Vitruvius_, hath changed for the worse, partly by the grotesques brought in vogue by _Morto da Feltro_, partly by our trifling house-painting, might also, from more intimacy with the ancients, reap the advantages of reality and common sense.

The Caricatura-carvings, and favourite shells, those chief supports of our ornaments, are full as unnatural as the candle-sticks of _Vitruvius_, with their little castles and palaces: how easy would it be, by the help of Allegory, to give some learned convenience to the smallest ornament!

_Reddere personæ scit convenientia cuique._

Hor.

Paintings of ceilings, doors, and chimney-pieces, are commonly but the expletives of these places, because they cannot be gilt all over. Not only they have not the least relation to the rank and circumstances of the proprietor, but often throw some ridicule or reflection upon him.

’Tis an abhorrence of barrenness that fills walls and rooms; and pictures void of thought must supply the vacuum.

Hence the artist, abandoned to the dictates of his own fancy, paints, for want of Allegory, perhaps a satire on him to whom he owes his industry; or, to shun this Charybdis, finds himself reduced to paint figures void of any meaning.

Nay, he may often find it difficult to meet even with those, ’till at last

——_velut ægri Somnia, vanæ Finguntur Species._

Hor.

Thus Painting is degraded from its most eminent prerogative, the representation of invisible, past and future things.

If pictures be sometimes met with, which might be significant in some particular place, they often lose that property by stupid and wrong applications.

Perhaps the master of some new building

_Dives agris, dives positis in fœnore nummis_

Hor.

may, without the least compunction for offending the rules of perspective, place figures of the smallest size above the vast doors of his apartments and salloons. I speak here of those ornaments which make part of the furniture; not of figures which are often, and for good reasons, set up promiscuously in collections.

The decorations of architecture are often as ill-chosen. Arms and trophies deck a hunting-house as nonsensically, as Ganymede and the eagle, Jupiter and Leda, figure it among the reliefs of the brazen gates of St. Peter’s church at Rome.

Arts have a double aim: to delight and to instruct. Hence the greatest landscape-painters think, they have fulfilled but half their task in drawing their pieces without figures.

Let the artist’s pencil, like the pen of Aristotle, be impregnated with reason; that, after having satiated the eye, he may nourish the mind: and this he may obtain by Allegory; investing, not hiding his ideas. Then, whether he chuse some poetical object himself, or follow the dictates of others, he shall be inspired by his art, shall be fired with the flame brought down from heaven by Prometheus, shall entertain the votary of art, and instruct the mere lover of it.

A
LETTER,
CONTAINING
OBJECTIONS
AGAINST
The foregoing REFLEXIONS.

SIR,

As you have written on the Greek arts and artists, I wish you had made your treatise as much the object of your caution as the Greek artists made their works; which, before dismissing them, they exhibited to publick view, in order to be examined by everybody, and especially by competent judges of the art. The trial was held during the grand, chiefly the Olympian, games; and all Greece was interested on Ætion’s producing his picture of the nuptials of Alexander and Roxana. You, Sir, wanted a Proxenidas to be judged by, as well as that artist; and had it not been for your mysterious concealment, I might have communicated your treatise, before its publication, to some learned men and connoisseurs of my acquaintance, without mentioning the author’s name.

One of them visited Italy twice, where he devoted all his time to a most anxious examination of painting, and particularly several months to each eminent picture, at the very place where it was painted; the only method, you know, to form a connoisseur. The judgment of a man able to tell you which of Guido’s altar-pieces is painted on taffeta, or linnen, what sort of wood Raphael chose for his transfiguration, &c. the judgment of such a man, I fancy, must be allowed to be decisive.

Another of my acquaintance has studied antiquity: he knows it by the very smell;

_Callet & Artificem solo deprendere Odore._

Sectan. Sat.

He can tell you the number of knots on Hercules’s club; has reduced Nestor’s goblet to the modern measure: nay, is suspected of meditating solutions to all the questions proposed by Tiberius to the grammarians.

A third, for several years past, has neglected every thing but hunting after ancient coins. Many a new discovery we owe to him; especially some concerning the history of the ancient coiners; and, as I am told, he is to rouse the attention of the world by a Prodromus concerning the coiners of Cyzicum.

What a number of reproaches might you have escaped, had you submitted your Essay to the judgment of these gentlemen! they were pleased to acquaint me with their objections, and I should be sorry, for your honour, to see them published.

Among other objections, the first is surprized at your passing by the two Angels, in your description of the Raphael in the royal cabinet at Dresden; having been told, that a Bolognese painter, in mentioning this piece, which he saw at St. Sixtus’s at Piacenza, breaks into these terms of admiration: O! what Angels of Paradise[14]! by which he supposes those Angels to be the most beautiful figures of the picture.

The same person would reproach you for having described that picture in the manner of Raguenet[15].

The second concludes the beard of Laocoon to be as worthy of your attention as his contracted belly: for every admirer of Greek works, says he, must pay the same respect to the beard of Laocoon, which father Labat paid to that of the Moses of Michael Angelo.

This learned Dominican,

_Qui mores hominum multorum vidit & urbes_,

has, after so many centuries, drawn from this very statue an evident proof of the true fashion in which Moses wore his own individual beard, and whose imitation must, of course, be the distinguishing mark of every true Jew[16].

There is not the least spark of learning, says he, in your remarks on the Peplon of the three vestals: he might perhaps, on the very inflection of the veil, have discovered to you as many curiosities as Cuper himself found on the edge of the veil of Tragedy in the Apotheosis of Homer[17].

We also want proof of the vestals being really Greek performances: our reason fails us too often in the most obvious things. If unhappily the marble of these figures should be proved to be no Lychnites, they are lost, and your treatise too: had you but slightly told us their marble was large-grained, that would have been a sufficient proof of their authenticity; for it would be somewhat difficult to determine the bigness of the grains with such exactness as to distinguish the Greek marble from the Roman of Luna. But the worst is, they are even denied the title of vestals.

The third mentioned some heads of Livia and Agrippina, without that pretended profile of yours. Here he thinks you had the most lucky occasion to talk of that kind of nose by the ancients called _Quadrata_, as an ingredient of beauty. But you no doubt know, that the noses of some of the most famous Greek statues, viz. the Medicean Venus, and the Picchinian Meleager, are much too thick for becoming the model of beauty, in that kind, to our artists.

I shall not, however, gall you with all the doubts and objections raised against your treatise, and repeated to nauseousness, upon the arrival of an Academician, the Margites of our days, who, being shewed your treatise, gave it a slight glance, then laid it aside, offended as it were at first sight. But it was easy to perceive that he wanted his opinion to be asked, which we accordingly all did. “The author, said he very peremptorily, seems not to have been at much pains with this treatise: I cannot find above four or five quotations, and those negligently inserted; no chapter, no page, cited; he certainly collected his remarks from books which he is ashamed to produce.”

Yet cannot I help introducing another gentleman, sharp-sighted enough to pick out something that had escaped all my attention; viz. that the Greeks were the first inventors of Painting and Sculpture; an assertion, as he was pleased to express himself, entirely false, having been told it was the Egyptians, or some people still more ancient, and unknown to him.

Even the most whimsical humour may be turned to profit: nevertheless, I think it manifest that you intended to talk only of good Taste in those arts; and the first Elements of an art have the same proportion to good Taste in it, as the seed has to the fruit. That the art was still in its infancy among the Egyptians, when it had attained the highest degree of perfection among the Greeks, may be seen by examining one single gem: you need only consider the head of _Ptolomæus Philopator_ by Aulus, and the two figures adjoining to it done by an Egyptian[18], in order to be convinced of the little merit this nation could pretend to in point of art.

The form and taste of their Painting have been ascertained by Middleton.[19] The pictures of persons as big as life, on two mummies in the royal cabinet of antiquities at Dresden, are evident instances of their incapacity. But these relicks being curious, in several other respects, I shall hereafter subjoin a short account of them.

I cannot, my friend, help allowing some reason for several of these objections. Your negligence in your quotations was, no doubt, somewhat prejudicial to your authenticity: the art of changing blue eyes to black ones, certainly deserved an authority. You imitate Democritus; who being asked, “What is man?” every body knows what was his reply. What reasonable creature will submit to read all Greek scholiasts!

_Ibit eo, quo vis, qui Zonam perdidit_—

Hor.

Considering, however, how easily the human mind is biassed, either by friendship or animosity, I took occasion from these objections to examine your treatise with more exactness; and shall now, by the most impartial censure, strive to clear myself from every imputation of prepossession in your favour.

I will pass by the first and second page, though something might be said on your comparison of the Diana with the Nausicaa, and the application: nor would it have been amiss, had you thrown some more light on the remark concerning the misused pictures of Corregio (very likely borrowed from Count Tessin’s letters), by giving an account of the other indignities which the pictures of the best artists, at the same time, met with at Stockholm.

It is well known that, after the surrender of Prague to Count Konigsmark, the 15th of July 1648, the most precious pictures of the Emperor Rodolph II. were carried off to Sweden[20]. Among these were some pictures of Corregio, which the Emperor had been presented with by their first possessor, Duke Frederick of Mantua; two of them being the famous Leda, and a Cupid handling his bow[21]. Christina, endowed at that time rather with scholastic learning than taste, treated these treasures as the Emperor Claudius did an Alexander of Apelles; who ordered the head to be cut off, and that of Augustus to fill its place[22]. In the same manner heads, hands, feet were here cut off from the most beautiful pictures; a carpet was plastered over with them, and the mangled pieces fitted up with new heads, &c. Those that fortunately escaped the common havock, among which were the pieces of Corregio, came afterwards, together with several other pictures, bought by the Queen at Rome, into the possession of the Duke of Orleans, who purchased 250 of them, and among those eleven of Corregio, for 9000 Roman crowns.

But I am not contented with your charging only the northern countries with barbarism, on account of the little esteem they paid to the arts. If good taste is to be judged in this manner, I am afraid for our French neighbours. For having taken Bonn, the residence of the Elector of Cologne, after the death of Max. Henry, they ordered the largest pictures to be cut out of their frames, without distinction, in order to serve for coverings to the waggons, in which the most valuable furniture of the electoral castle was carried off for France. But, Sir, do not presume on my continuing with mere historical remarks: I shall proceed with my objections; after making the two following general observations.

I. You have written in a style too concise for being distinct. Were you afraid of being condemned to the penalty of a Spartan, who could not restrain himself to only three words, perhaps that of reading Picciardin’s Pisan War? Distinctness is required where universal instruction is the end. Meats are to suit the taste of the guests, rather than that of the cooks,

——_Cœnæ fercula nostræ_
_Malim convivis quam placuisse coquis._

II. There appears, in almost every line of yours, the most passionate attachment to antiquity; which perhaps I shall convince you of, by the following remarks.

The first particular objection I have to make is against your third page. Remember, however, that my passing by two pages is very generous dealing:

_non temere a me_
_Quivis ferret idem:_

Hor.

but let us now begin a formal trial.

The author talks of certain negligences in the Greek works, which ought to be considered suitably to Lucian’s precepts concerning the Zeus of Phidias: “Zeus himself, not his footstool;”[23] though perhaps he could not be charged with any fault in the foot-stool, but with a very grievous one in the statue.

Is it no fault that Phidias made his Zeus of so enormous a bulk, as almost to reach the cieling of the temple, which must infallibly have been thrown down, had the god taken it in his head to rise?[24] To have left the temple without any cieling at all, like that of the Olympian Jupiter at Athens, had been an instance of more judgment[25].

’Tis but justice to claim an explication of what the author means by “negligences”. He perhaps might be pleased to get a passport, even for the faults of the ancients, by sheltering them under the authority of such titles; nay, to change them into beauties, as Alcæus did the spot on the finger of his beloved boy. We too often view the blemishes of the ancients, as a parent does those of his children:

_Strabonem_
_Appellat pætum pater, & pullum, male parvus_
_Si cui filius est._

Hor.

If these negligences were like those wished for in the Jalysus of Protogenes, where the chief figure was out-shone by a partridge, they might be considered as the agreeable negligée of a fine lady; but this is the question. Besides, had the author consulted his interest, he never would have ventured citing the Diomedes of Dioscorides: but being too well acquainted with that gem, one of the most valued, most finished monuments of Greek art; and being apprehensive of the prejudice that might arise against the meaner productions of the ancients, on discovering many faults in one so eminent as Diomedes; he endeavoured to keep matters from being too nearly examined, and to soften every fault into negligence.

How! if by argument I shall attempt to shew that Dioscorides understood neither perspective, nor the most trivial rules of the motion of a human body; nay, that he offended even against possibility? I’ll venture to do it, though

_incedo per ignes_
_Suppositos cineri doloso._

Hor.

And perhaps I am not the first discoverer of his faults: yet I do not remember to have seen any thing relative to them.

The Diomedes of Dioscorides is either a sitting, or a rising figure; for the attitude is ambiguous. It is plain he is not sitting; and rising is inconsistent with his action.

Our body endeavouring to raise itself from a seat, moves always mechanically towards its sought-for centre of gravity, drawing back the legs, which were advanced in sitting[26]; instead of which the figure stretches out his right leg. Every erection begins with elevated heels, and in that moment all the weight of the body is supported only by the toes, which was observed by Felix[27], in his Diomedes: but here all rests on the sole.

Nor can Diomedes, (if we suppose him to be a sitting figure, as he touches with his left leg the bottom of his thigh) find, in raising himself, the centre of his gravity, only by a retraction of his legs, and of course cannot rise in that posture. His left hand resting upon the bended leg, holds the palladion, whilst his right touches negligently the pedestal with the point of a short sword; consequently he cannot rise, neither moving his legs in the natural and easy manner required in any erection, nor making use of his arms to deliver himself from that uneasy situation.

There is at the same time a fault committed against the rules of perspective.

The foot of the left bended leg, touching the cornice of the pedestal, shews it over-reaching that part of the floor, on which the pedestal and the right foot are situated, consequently the line described by the hinder-foot is the fore on the gem, and _vice versa_.

But allowing even a possibility to that situation, it is contrary to the Greek character, which is always distinguished by the natural and easy. Attributes neither to be met with in the contortions of Diomedes, nor in an attitude, the impossibility of which every one must be sensible of, in endeavouring to put himself in it, without the help of former sitting.

Felix, supposed to have lived after Dioscorides, though preserving the same attitude, has endeavoured to make its violence more natural, by opposing to him the figure of Ulysses, who, as we are told, in order to bereave him of the honour of having seized the Palladion, offered to rob him of it, but being discovered, was repulsed by Diomedes; which being his supposed action on the gem, allows violence of attitude[28].

Diomedes cannot be a sitting figure, for the Contour of his buttock and thigh is free, and not in the least compressed: the foot of the bent leg is visible, and the leg itself not bent enough.

The Diomedes represented by Mariette is absurd; the left leg resembling a clasped pocket-knife, and the foot being drawn up so high as to make it impossible in nature that it should reach the pedestal[29].

Faults of this kind cannot be called negligences, and would not be forgiven in any modern artist.

Dioscorides, ’tis true, in this renowned performance did but copy Polycletus, whose Doryphorus (as is commonly agreed) was the best rule of human proportions[30]. But, though a copyist, Dioscorides escaped a fault which his master fell into. For the pedestal, over which the Diomedes of Polycletus leans, is contrary to the most common rules of perspective; its cornices, which should be parallel, forming two different lines.

I wonder at Perrault’s omitting to make objections against the ancient gems.

I mean not to do any thing derogatory to the author, when I trace some of his particular observations to their source.

The food prescribed to the young wrestlers, in the remoter times of Greece, is mentioned by Pausanias[31]. But if the author alluded to the passage which I have in view, why does he talk in general of milk-food, when Pausanias particularly mentions soft cheese? Dromeus of Stymphilos, we learn there, first introduced flesh meat.

My researches, concerning their mysterious art of changing blue eyes to black ones, have not succeeded to my wish. I find it mentioned but once, and that only by the bye by Dioscorides[32]. The author, by clearing up this art, might perhaps have thrown a greater lustre over his treatise, than by producing his new method of statuary. He had it in his power to fix the eyes of the Newtons and Algarotti’s, on a problem worth their attention, and to engage the fair sex, by a discovery so advantageous to their charms, especially in Germany, where, contrary to Greece, large, fine, blue eyes are more frequently met with than black ones.

There was a time when the fashion required to be green eyed:

_Et si bel oeil vert & riant & clair:_

Le Sire de Coucy, chans.

But I do not know whether art had any share in their colouring. And as to the small-pox, Hippocrates might be quoted, if grammatical disquisitions suited my purpose.

However, I think, no effects of the small-pox on a face can be so much the reverse of beauty, as that defect which the Athenians were reproachfully charged with, viz. a buttock as pitiful as their face was perfect[33]. Indeed Nature, in so scantily supplying those parts, seemed to derogate as much from the Athenian beauty, as, by her lavishness, from that of the Indian Enotocets, whose ears, we are told, were large enough to serve them for pillows.

As for opportunities to study the nudities, our times, I think, afford as advantageous ones as the Gymnasies of the ancients. ’Tis the fault of our artists to make no use of that[34] proposed to the Parisian artists, viz. to walk, during the summer season, along the Seine, in order to have a full view of the naked parts, from the sixth to the fiftieth year.

’Tis perhaps to Michael Angelo’s frequenting such opportunities that we owe his celebrated Carton of the Pisan war[35], where the soldiers bathing in a river, at the sound of a trumpet leap out of the water, and make haste to huddle on their cloaths.

One of the most offensive passages of the treatise is, no doubt, the unjust debasement of the modern sculptors beneath the ancients. These latter times are possessed of several Glycons in muscular heroic figures, and, in tender youthful female bodies, of more than one Praxiteles. Michael Angelo, Algardi, and Sluter, whose genius embellished Berlin, produced muscular bodies,

——_Invicti membra Glyconis,_

Hor.

in a style rivalling that of Glycon himself; and in delicacy the Greeks are perhaps even outdone by _Bernini_, _Fiammingo_, _Le Gros_, _Rauchmüller_, _Donner_.

The unskilfulness of the ancients, in shaping children, is agreed upon by our artists, who, I suppose, would for imitation choose a Cupid of Fiammingo rather than of Praxiteles himself. The story of M. Angelo’s placing a Cupid of his own by the side of an antique one, in order to inform our times of the superiority of the ancient art, is of no weight here: for no work of Michael Angelo can bring us so near perfection as Nature herself.

I think it no hyperbole to advance, that Fiammingo, like a new Prometheus, produced creatures which art had never seen before him. For, if from almost all the children on ancient gems[36] and reliefs[37], we may form a conclusion of the art itself, it wanted the true expression of childhood, as looser forms, more milkiness, and unknit bones. Faults which, from the epoch of Raphael, all children laboured under, till the appearance of _Francis Quesnoy_, called Fiammingo, whose children having the advantages of suitable innocence and nature, became models to the following artists, as in youthful bodies Apollo and Antinous are: an honour which _Algardi_, his contemporary, may be allowed to share.

Their models in clay are, by our artists, esteemed superior to all the antique marble children; and an artist of genius and talents assured me, that during a stay of seven years at Vienna, he saw not one copy taken from an ancient Cupid in that academy.

Neither do I know on what singular idea of beauty, the ancient artists founded their custom, of hiding the foreheads of their children and youths with hair. Thus a Cupid was represented by Praxiteles[38]; thus a Patroclus, in a picture mentioned by Philostratus[39]: and there is no statue nor bust, no gem nor coin of Antinous, in which we do not find him thus dressed. Hence, perhaps, that gloom, that melancholy, with which all the heads of this favourite of Hadrian are marked.

Is not there in a free open brow more nobleness and sublimity? and does not _Bernini_ seem to have been better acquainted with beauty than the ancients, when he removed the over-shadowing locks from the forehead of young Lewis XIV. whose bust he was then executing? “Your Majesty, said Bernini, is King, and may with confidence shew your brow to all the world.” From that time King and court dressed their hair à la Bernini[40].

His judgment of the bas-reliefs on the monument of Pope Alexander VI[41]. leads us to some remarks on those of antiquity. “The skill in bas-relief, said he, consists in giving the air of relief to the flat: the figures of that monument seem what they are indeed, not what they are not.”

The chief end of bas-relief is to deck those places that want historical or allegorical ornaments, but which have neither cornices sufficiently spacious, nor proportions regular enough to allow groupes of entire statues: and as the cornice itself is chiefly intended to shelter the subordinate parts from being directly or indirectly hurt, no bas-relief must exceed the projection thereof; which would not only make the cornice of no use, but endanger the figures themselves.

The figures of ancient bas-reliefs shoot commonly so much forward as to become almost round. But bas-relief being founded on fiction, can only counterfeit reality; its perfection is well to imitate; and a natural mass is against its nature: if flat, it ought to appear projected, and _vice versa_. If this be true, it must of course be allowed that figures wholly round are inconsistent with it, and are to be considered as solid marble pillars built upon the theatre, whose aim is mere illusion; for art, as is said of tragedy, wins truth from fiction, and that by truth. To art we often owe charms superior to those of nature: a real garden and vegetating trees, on the stage, do not affect us so agreeably, as when well expressed by the imitating art. A rose of _Van Huisum_, mallows of _Veerendal_, bewitch us more than all the darlings of the most skilful gardener: the most enticing landscape, nay, even the charms of the Thessalian Tempe, would not, perhaps, affect us with that irresistible delight which, flowing from _Dietrick_’s pencil, enchants our senses and imagination.

By such instances we may safely form a judgment of the ancient bas-reliefs: the royal cabinet at Dresden is possessed of two eminent ones: a Bacchanal on a tomb, and a sacrifice to Priapus on a large marble vase.

The bas-relief claims a particular kind of sculpture; a method that few have succeeded in, of which _Matielli_ may be an instance. The Emperor Charles VI. having ordered some models to be prepared by the most renowned artists, in bas-relief, intended for the spiral columns at the church of S. Charles Borromæo; _Matielli_, already famous, was principally thought of; but however refused the honour of so considerable a work, on account of the enormous bulk of his model, which requiring too great cavities, would have diminished the mass of the stone, and of course weakened the pillars. _Mader_ was the artist, whose models were universally applauded, and who by his admirable execution proved that he deserved that preference. These bas-reliefs represent the story of the patron of this church.

It is in general to be observed, first, that this kind of sculpture admits not indifferently of every attitude and action; as for instance, of too strong projections of the legs. Secondly, That, besides disposing of the several modelled figures in well-ranged groupes, the diameter of every one ought to be applied to the bas-relief itself, by a lessened scale: as for instance, the diameter of a figure in the model being one foot, the profile of the same, according to its size, will be three inches, or less: the rounder a figure of that diameter, the greater the skill. Commonly the relief wants perspective, and thence arise most of its faults.

Though I proposed to make only a few remarks on the ancient bas-relief, I find myself, like a certain ancient Rhetor, almost under a necessity of being new-tuned. I have strayed beyond my limits; though at the same time I remembered that there is a law among commentators, to content themselves with bare remarks on the contents of a treatise: and also sensible that I am writing a letter, not a book, I consider that I may draw some instructions for my own use,

——_ut vineta egomet cædam mea,_

Hor.

from some peoples impetuosity against the author; who, because they are hired for it, seem to think that writing is confined to them alone.

The Romans, though they worshipped the deity Terminus (the guardian God of limits and borders in general; and, if it please these gentlemen, of the limits in arts and sciences too), allowed nevertheless an universal unrestrained criticism: and the decisions of some Greeks and Romans, in matters of an art, which they did not practise, seem nevertheless authentick to our artists.

Nor can I find, that the keeper of the temple of peace at Rome, though possessed of the register of the pictures there, pretended to monopolize remarks and criticisms upon them; Pliny having described most of them.

_Publica materies privati juris sit_—

Hor.

’Tis to be wished, that, roused by a Pamphilus and an Apelles, artists would take up the pen themselves, in order to discover the mysteries of the art to those that know how to use them,

_Ma di costor’, che à lavorar s’accingono,_
_Quattro quinti, per Dio, non sanno leggere._

Salvator Rosa, Sat. III.

Two or three of these are to be commended; the rest contented themselves with giving some historical accounts of the fraternity. But what could appear more auspicious to the improvement of the art, even by the remotest posterity, than the work attempted by the united forces of the celebrated Pietro da Cortona[42] and Padre Ottonelli? Nevertheless this same treatise, except only a few historical remarks, and these too to be met with in an hundred books, seems good for nothing, but

_Ne scombris tunicæ desint, piperique cuculli._

Sectan. Sat.

How trivial, how mean are the great _Poussin_’s reflexions on painting, published by Bellori, and annexed to his life of that artist[43]?

Another digression!—let me now again resume the character of your Aristarchus.

You are bold enough to attack the authority of _Bernini_, and to challenge a man, the bare mention of whose name would do honour to any treatise. It was _Bernini_, you ought to recollect, Sir, who at the same age in which Michael Angelo performed his _Studiolo_[44], viz. in his eighteenth year, produced his Daphne, as a convincing instance of his intimacy with the ancients, at an age in which perhaps the genius of Raphael was yet labouring under darkness and ignorance!

_Bernini_ was one of those favourites of nature, who produce at the same time vernal blossoms and autumnal fruits; and I think it by no means probable, that his studying nature in riper years misled either him or his disciples. The smoothness of his flesh was the result of that study, and imparted to the marble the highest possible degree of life and beauty. Indeed ’tis nature which endows art with life, and “vivifies forms,” as Socrates says[45], and Clito the sculptor allows. The great Lysippus, when asked which of his ancestors he had chosen for his master, replied, “None; but nature alone.” It is not to be denied, that the too close imitation of antiquity is very often apt to lead us to a certain barrenness, unknown to those who imitate nature: various herself, nature teaches variety, and no votary of her’s can be charged with a sameness: whereas Guido, Le Brun, and some other votaries of antiquity, repeated the same face in many of their works. A certain ideal beauty was become so familiar to them, as to slide into their figures even against their will.

But as for such an imitation of nature, as is quite regardless of antiquity, I am entirely of the author’s opinion; though I should have chosen other artists as instances of following nature in painting.

_Jordans_ certainly has not met with the regard due to his merit; let me appeal to an authority universally allowed. “There is, says Mr. d’Argenville, more expression and truth in Jordans, than even in Rubens.

“Truth is the basis and origin of perfection and beauty; nothing, of any kind whatever, can be beautiful or perfect, without being truly what it ought to be, without having all it ought to have.”

The solidity of this judgment presupposed, _Jordans_, according to Rochefoucault’s maxims, ought rather to be ranked among the greatest originals, than among the mimicks of common nature, where _Rembrandt_ may fill up his place, as _Raoux_ or _Vatteau_ that of _Stella_; though all these painters do nothing but what Euripides did before them; they draw man _ad vivum_. There are no trifles, no meannesses in the art, and if we recollect of what use the _Caricatura_ was to Bernini, we should be cautious how we pass judgment even on the Dutch forms. That great genius, they say[46], owed to this monster of the art, a distinction for which he was so eminent, the “Franchezza del Tocco.” When I reflect on this, I am forced to alter my former opinion of the _Caricatura_, so far as to believe that no artist ever acquired a perfection therein without gaining a farther improvement in the art itself. “It is, says the author, a peculiar distinction of the ancients to have gone beyond nature:” our artists do the same in their _Caricaturas_: but of what avail to them are the voluminous works they have published on that branch of the art?

The author lays it down, in the peremptory style of a legislator, that “Precision of Contour can only be learned from the Greeks:” but our academies unanimously agree, that the ancients deviate from a strict Contour in the clavicles, arms, knees, &c. over which, in spite of apophyses and bones, they drew their skin as smooth as over mere flesh; whereas our academies teach to draw the bony and cartilaginous parts, more angularly, but the fat and fleshy ones more smooth, and carefully to avoid falling into the ancient style. Pray, Sir, can there be any error in the advices of academies _in corpore_?

_Parrhasius_ himself, the father of Contour, was not, by Pliny’s account[47], master enough to hit the line by which completeness is distinguished from superfluity: shunning corpulency he fell into leanness: and _Zeuxis_’s Contour was perhaps like that of Rubens, if it be true that, to augment the majesty of his figures, he drew with more completeness. His female figures he drew like those of Homer[48], of robust limbs: and does not even the tenderest of poets, Theocritus, draw his Helen as fleshy and tall[49] as the Venus of Raphael in the assembly of the gods in the little Farnese? Rubens then, for painting like Homer and Theocritus, needs no apology.

The character of Raphael, in the treatise, is drawn with truth and exactness: but well may we ask the author, as Antalcidas the Spartan asked a sophist, ready to burst forth in a panegyrick on Hercules, “Who blames him?” The beauties however of the Raphael at Dresden, especially the pretended ones of the Jesus, are still warmly disputed.

_What you admire, we laugh at._

Why did not he rather display his patriotism against those Italian connoisseurs, whose squeamish stomachs rise against every Flemish production?

_Turpis Romano Belgicus ore color._

Propert. L. II. Eleg. 8.

And indeed are not colours so essential, that without them no picture can aspire to universal applause? Do not their bewitching charms cover the most grievous faults? They are the harmonious melody of painting; whatever is offensive vanishes by their splendor, and souls animated with their beauties are absorbed in beholding, as the readers of Homer are by his flowing harmony, so as to find no faults. These, joined to that important science of Chiaro-Oscuro, are the characteristicks of Flemish painting.

Agreeably to affect our eye is the first thing in a picture[50], which to obtain, obvious charms are wanted; not such as spring only from reflection. Colouring moreover belongs peculiarly to pictures; whereas design ought to be in every draught, print, &c. and indeed seems easier to be attained than colouring.

The best colourists, according to a celebrated writer[51], have always come _after_ the inventors and contourists; we all know the vain attempts of the famous Poussin. In short, all those

_Qui rem Romanam Latiumque augescere student,_

Ennius.

must here acknowledge the superiority of the Flemish art; the painter being really but nature’s mimick, is the more perfect the better he mimicks her.

_Ast heic, quem nunc tu tam turpiter increpuisti,_

Ennius.

the delicate _Van der Werf_, whose performances, worth their weight in gold, are the ornaments of royal cabinets only, has made nature inimitable to every Italian pencil; he allures the connoisseur’s eye as well as that of the clown; and, as an English poet says, “that no pleasing poet ever wrote ill,” surely the Flemish painter obtained that applause which was denied to Poussin.

I should be glad to see many pictures as happily fancied, as well composed, as enticingly painted as some of _Gherard Lairesse_: let me appeal to every unprepossessed artist at Paris, acquainted with the _Stratonice_, the most eminent, and no doubt the first ranked picture in the cabinet of Mr. de la Boixieres[52].

The subject is of no trivial choice: King Seleucus I.[53] resigned his wife Stratonice, a daughter of Demetrius Poliorcetes, to his son Antiochus, whom a violent passion for his mother-in-law had thrown into a dangerous sickness: after many unsuccessful inquiries, the physician Erasistratus discovered the true cause, and found that the only means of restoring the prince’s health, was, the condescension of the father to the love of his son: the King resigned his Queen, and at the same time declared Antiochus King of the East.

Stratonice, the chief person, is the noblest figure, a figure worthy Raphael himself. The charming Queen,

_Colle sob idæo vincere digna deas,_

Ovid. Art.

with slow and hesitating steps, approaches the bed of her new lover; but still with the countenance of a mother, or rather of a sacred vestal. In the profile of her face you may read shame mingled with gentle resignation to the will of her lord. She has the softness of her sex, the majesty of a queen, an awful submission to the sacred ceremony, and all the sageness required in so extraordinary and delicate a situation. Dressed with a masterly skill, the artist, from the colour of her cloaths, may learn how to paint the purple of the ancients; for it is not generally known that it resembled fadeing, ruddy, vine-leaves[54].

Behind her stands the King, dressed in a darker habit, in order to give the more relief to the Queen, to spare confusion to her, shame to the Prince, and not to interrupt his joy. Expectation and acquiescence are blended in his face, which is taken from the profile of his best coins.

The Prince, a beautiful half-naked youth, sitting in his bed, has some resemblance of his father; his pale face bears witness of the fever, that lately had raged in his veins; but fancy sees returning health, not shame, in that soft-rising ruddiness diffused over his cheeks.

The physician and priest Erasistratus, venerable like the Calchas of Homer, standing before the bed, is the only speaker, authorised by the King, whose will he declares to the Prince; and whilst, with one hand, he leads the Queen to the embraces of her lover, with the other he presents him with the diadem. Joy and astonishment flash from the Prince’s face on the approach of his Queen

——_darting all the soul in missive love_:

though nobly restrained by reverence, he bends his head, and seems to comprise his happiness in a single thought.

The characters indeed are distributed with so much ingenuity, that they seem to give a lustre and energy to each other.

The largest share of light is displayed on Stratonice: she claims our first regard. The priest, though in a weaker light, is raised by his gesture: he is the speaker, and around him reign solemn stillness and attention.

The Prince, the second person, has a larger share of light; and though the artist, led by his skill, chose rather to make a beautiful Queen the chief support of his groupe than a sick Prince, He nevertheless maintains his due rank, and becomes the most eminent person of the whole, by his expression. His face contains the greatest secrets of the art,

_Quales nequeo monstrare & sentio tantum._

Juvenal. Sat. VII.

Even those motions of the soul, which otherwise seem opposite to each other, mingle here with peaceful harmony; a timid red spreading over his sickly face, announces health, like the faint glimmerings of the morn, which, though veiled by night, announce the day, and even a bright one.

The genius and taste of the artist shines forth in every part of his work: even the vases are copied from the best antique ones; the table before the bed, is, like Homer’s, of ivory.

The distances behind the figures represent a magnificent Greek building, whose decorations seem allegorical. The roof of a portal is supported by Cariatides embracing each other, as images of the tender friendship between father and son, and alluding, at the same time, to the nuptial ceremony.

Though faithful to history, the painter was nevertheless a poet: in order to represent some circumstances, he filled even the furniture with sentiments. The Sphinxes by the Prince’s bed allude to his problematic sickness, the enquiries of Erasistratus, and his sagacity in discovering its true cause.

I have been told that some young Italian artists, when considering this picture, and perceiving the Prince’s arm perhaps a trifle too big, went off without enquiring into the subject itself. Should even Minerva herself, as she once did to Diomedes, attempt to deliver some people from the mist they labour under, by heaven! the attempt were vain!

——_pauci dignoscere possunt_
_Vera bona, atque illis multum diversa, remota_
_Erroris nebula._

Juv. X.

I have run into this long digression, in order to throw some light on one of the first productions of the art, which is nevertheless but little known.

The idea of noble simplicity and sedate grandeur in Raphael’s figures, might rather, as two eminent authors express it[55], be called “still life.” It is indeed the standard of the Greek art: however, indiscreetly commended to young artists, it might beget as dangerous consequences, as precepts of energetick conciseness in the style; the direct method to make it barren and unpleasing.

“In youths, says Cicero[56], there must be some superfluity, something to be taken off: prematurity spoils the juices, and it is easier to lop the young rank branches of a vine, than to restore its vigour to a worn out trunk.” Not to mention, that figures wanting gesture would, by the bulk of mankind, be received as a speech before the Areopagites, where, by a severe law, the speaker was forbid to raise any passions, though ever so gentle[57]: nay, pictures of this kind would be so many portraits of young Spartans, who, with hands hid under their coats, and down-cast eyes, stalk forth in silent solemnity[58].

Neither am I quite of the author’s opinion with regard to allegory; the applying of which would too frequently do in painting, what was done in geometry by introducing algebra: the one would soon be as difficult as the other, and painting would degenerate into Hieroglyphicks.

The author attempts, in vain, to persuade us, that the majority of the Greeks thought as the Egyptians. There was no more learning in the painting of the platfond of the temple of Juno at Samos, than in that of the Farnese gallery. It represented the love-intrigues of Jupiter and Juno[59]: and, in the front of a temple of Ceres at Eleusis, there was nothing but representations of a ceremony at the rites of that goddess[60].

How to represent abstract ideas I do not yet distinctly conceive. There may be the same difficulties which attend the endeavours of representing to the senses a mathematical point—perhaps nothing less than impossibility; and Theodoretus[61] has some reason in confining painting to the senses. For those Hieroglyphicks which hint at abstract ideas, in such a manner as to express, for instance[62], _youth_ by the number XVI; _impossibility_ by two feet standing on water: those, I say, are monograms, not images: to indulge them in painting is fostering chimæras, is adding to Chinese pictures Chinese explications.

An adversary of allegory believes that Parrhasius, without any help from it, could represent the contradictions in the character of the Athenians; that he did it perhaps in several pictures. Supposing which

_Et sapit, & mecum facit, & Jove judicat æquo._

Hor.

The sentence of death pronounced against the leaders of the Athenian navy, after their victory over the Spartans near the Arginuses, afforded the artist a very sensible and rich image, to represent the Athenians, at the same time, merciful and cruel.

The famous Theramenes, one of the leaders, accused his fellow-chieftains of having neglected to gather and bury the bodies of their slain countrymen: a charge sufficient to rouse the rage of the mob against the victors; only six of whom had returned to Athens, the rest having declined the storm.

Theramenes harangued the people in the most pathetick manner; intermixing his speech with frequent pauses, in order to give vent to the loud plaints of those who, in the battle, had lost their parents or relations. He, at the same time, produced a man, who protested he had heard the last words of the drowned, imprecating the publick revenge on their leaders. In vain did Socrates, then a member of the council, with a few others, oppose the accusation: the brave chieftains, instead of the honours they hoped for, were condemned to die. One of them was the only son of _Pericles_ and _Aspasia_.

Was it not in the power of Parrhasius, who was then alive, to enlarge the meaning of his picture beyond the extent of bare history, only by drawing the true characters of the authors of this scene, without the least help from allegory? It would have been in his power, had he lived in our days.

Your pretensions concerning allegory seem indeed as reasonable an imposition upon the painter, as that of Columella upon his farmer; who wished to find him a philosopher like Democritus, Pythagoras, or Eudoxus[63].

No better success, in my opinion, is to be expected from applying allegory to decorations: the author would, at least, meet with as many difficulties as Virgil, when hammering on the names of a Vibius Caudex, Tanaquil Lucumo, or Decius Mus; to fit them for his Hexameter.

Custom has given its sanction to the use of shells in decorations: and is not there as much nature in them as in the Corinthian capital? You know its origin: a basket set upon the tomb of a young Corinthian girl, filled with some of her play-things, and covered with a large brick, being overgrown with the creeping branches of an acanthus, which had taken root under it, was the first occasion of forming that capital. _Callimachus_[64] the sculptor, surprized at the elegant simplicity of that composition, took thence a hint for enriching architecture with a new order.

Thus this capital, destined to support all the entablature of the column, is but a basket of flowers; something so apparently inconsistent with the ideas of architecture, that there was no use made of it in the time of Pericles: for Pocock[65] thinks it strange that the temple of Minerva at Athens had Doric, instead of Corinthian pillars. But time soon changed this seeming oddity into nature; the basket lost, by custom, all its former offensiveness, and

_Quod fuerat vitium desinit esse mora._

Ovid. Art.

We acknowledge no Egyptian law to forbid arbitrary ornaments; and so fond have the artists of all ages been, both of the growth and form of shells, as to change even the chariot of Venus into an enormous one. The ancile, that Palladium of the Romans, was scooped into the form of a shell[66]: we find them on antique lamps[67]. Nay, nature herself seems to have produced their immense variety, and marvellous sinuations, for the benefit of the art.

I have no mind to plead the bad cause of our unskilful decorators: only let me adduce the arguments used by a whole tribe, (if the artists will forgive the term), in order to prove the reasonableness of their art.

The painters and sculptors of Paris, endeavouring to deprive the decorators of the title of artists, by alledging that they employed neither their own intellectual faculties, nor those of the connoisseurs, upon works not produced by nature, but rather the offsprings of capricious art; the others are said to have defended themselves in the following manner: “We are the followers of nature: like the bark of a tree, variously carved, our decorations grow into various forms: then art joins sportive nature, and corrects her: we do what the ancients did: consult their decorations.”