Chapter XVII: Part 17

Julio Romano was the most excellent of all Raphael’s disciples. He had conceptions which were more extraordinary, more profound, and more elevated, than even his master himself. He was also a great architect; his gusto was pure and exquisite. He was a great imitator of the ancients; giving a clear testimony in all his productions, that he was desirous to restore to practice the same forms and fabrics which were ancient. He had the good fortune to find great persons, who committed to him the care of edifices, vestibules, and porticos, all tetrastyles, xistes, theatres, and such other places as are not now in use. He was wonderful in his choice of attitudes. His manner was drier and harder than any of Raphael’s school. He did not exactly understand the lights and shadows, or the colours. He is frequently harsh and ungraceful. The folds of his draperies are neither beautiful nor great, easy nor natural; but all extravagant, and too like the habits of fantastical comedians. He was very knowing in human learning. His disciples were Pirro Ligorio, (who was admirable for ancient buildings, as for towns, temples, tombs, and trophies, and the situation of ancient edifices,) Æneas Vico, Bonasone, Georgio Mantuano, and others.

Polydore, a disciple of Raphael, designed admirably well, as to the practical part, having a particular genius for freezes, as we may see by those of white and black which he has painted at Rome. He imitated the ancients; but his manner was greater than that of Julio Romano; nevertheless, Julio seems to be the truer. Some admirable groupes are seen in his works, and such as are not elsewhere to be found. He coloured very seldom, and made landscapes of a reasonable good gusto.

Gio. Bellino, one of the first who was of any consideration at Venice, painted very drily, according to the manner of his time. He was very knowing, both in architecture and perspective. He was Titian’s first master, which may easily be observed in the first painting of that noble disciple; in which we may remark, that propriety of colours which his master has observed.

About this time, Georgione, the contemporary of Titian, came to excel in portraits, or face-painting, and also in great works. He first began to make choice of glowing and agreeable colours, the perfection and entire harmony of which were afterwards to be found in Titian’s pictures. He dressed his figures wonderfully well; and it may be truly said, that, but for him, Titian had never arrived to that height of perfection, which proceeded from the rivalship and jealousy of honour betwixt those two.

Titian was one of the greatest colourists who was ever known. He designed with much more ease and practice than Georgione. There are to be seen women and children of his hand, which are admirable, both for the design and colouring. The gusto of them is delicate, charming, and noble, with a certain pleasing negligence of the head dresses, the draperies, and ornaments of habits, which are wholly peculiar to him. As for the figures of men, he has designed them but moderately well. There are even some of his draperies which are mean, and savour of a little gusto. His painting is wonderfully glowing, sweet, and delicate. He made portraits, which were extremely noble; the attitudes of them being very graceful, grave, diversified, and adorned after a very becoming fashion. No man ever painted landscape with so great a manner, so good a colouring, and with such a resemblance of nature. For eight or ten years space, he copied with great labour and exactness whatsoever he undertook; thereby to make himself an easy way, and to establish some general maxims for his future conduct. Besides the excellent gusto which he had of colours, in which he excelled all mortal men, he perfectly understood how to give every thing the touches which were most suitable and proper to them; such as distinguished them from each other, and which gave the greatest spirit, and the most of truth. The pictures, which he made in his beginning and in the declension of his age, are of a dry and mean manner. He lived ninety-nine years. His disciples were Paulo Veronese, Giacomo Tintoret, Giacomo da Ponte Bassano, and his sons.

Paulo Veronese was wonderfully graceful in his airs of women, with great variety of shining draperies, and incredible vivacity and ease. Nevertheless, his composition is sometimes improper, and his design is incorrect; but his colouring, and whatsoever depends on it, is so very charming in his pictures, that it surprises at the first sight, and makes us totally forget those other qualities which are wanting in him.

Tintoret was the disciple of Titian, great in the practical part of design, but sometimes also sufficiently extravagant. He had an admirable genius for painting, if he had had as great an affection to his art, and as much patience in undergoing the difficulties of it, as he had fire and vivacity of nature. He has made pictures not inferior in beauty to those of Titian. His composition, and his dresses, are, for the most part, improper, and his outlines are not correct; but his colouring, and the dependencies of it, like that of his master, are most admirable.

The Bassans had a more mean and poor gusto in painting than Tintoret, and their designs were also less correct than his: they had, indeed, an excellent gusto of colours, and have touched all kinds of animals with an admirable manner, but were notoriously imperfect in the composition and design.

Correggio painted at Parma two large cupolas in fresco, and some altar-pieces. This artist found out certain natural and unaffected graces, for his Madonnas, his Saints, and Little Children, which were peculiar to him. His manner is exceeding great, both for the design and for the work, but withal is very incorrect. His pencil was both easy and delightful; and, it is to be acknowledged, that he painted with great strength, great heightning, great sweetness, and liveliness of colours, in which none surpassed him.

He understood how to distribute his lights in such a manner as was wholly peculiar to himself; which gave a great force and great roundness to his figures. This manner consists in extending a large light, and then making it lose itself insensibly in the dark shadowings which he placed out of the masses; and those give them this great roundness, without our being able to perceive from whence proceeds so much of force, and so vast a pleasure to the sight. It is probable, that, in this part, the rest of the Lombard school copied him. He had no great choice of graceful attitudes, nor of distribution for beautiful groupes; his design oftentimes appears lame, and the positions are not much observed in them. The aspects of his figures are many times unpleasing; but his manner of designing heads, hands, feet, and other parts, is very great, and well deserves our imitation. In the conduct and finishing of a picture, he has done wonders; for he painted with so much union, that his greatest works seemed to have been finished in the compass of one day, and appear as if we saw them from a looking-glass. His landscape is equally beautiful with his figures.

At the same time with Correggio, lived and flourished Parmegiano; who, besides his great manner of well colouring, excelled also both in invention and design, with a genius full of gentleness and of spirit, having nothing that was ungraceful in his choice of attitudes, and in the dresses of his figures, which we cannot say of Correggio. There are pieces of his to be seen, which are both beautiful and correct.

These two painters last mentioned had very good disciples, but they are known only to those of their own province; and besides, there is little to be credited of what his countrymen say; for painting is wholly extinguished amongst them.

I say nothing of Leonardo da Vinci, because I have seen but little of his, though he restored the arts at Milan, and had many disciples there.

Ludovico Carrache, cousin of Hannibal and Augustine, studied at Parma after Correggio; and excelled in design and colouring with such a gracefulness, and so much candour, that Guido, the scholar of Hannibal, did afterwards imitate him with great success. There are some of his pictures to be seen, which are very beautiful and well understood. He made his ordinary residence at Bologna; and it was he who put the pencil into the hands of Hannibal his cousin.

Hannibal, in a little time, excelled his master in all parts of painting. He imitated Correggio, Titian, and Raphael, in their different manners as he pleased; excepting only, that you see not in his pictures the nobleness, the graces, and the charms of Raphael; and his outlines are neither so pure nor so elegant as his. In all other things he is wonderfully accomplished, and of an universal genius.

Augustine, brother to Hannibal, was also a very good painter, and an admirable graver. He had a natural son, called Antonio, who died at the age of thirty-five, and who (according to the general opinion) would have surpassed his uncle Hannibal; for by what he left behind him, it appears that he was of a more lofty genius.

Guido chiefly imitated Ludovico Carrache, yet retained always somewhat of the manner which his master, Denis Calvert, the Fleming, taught him. This Calvert lived at Bologna, and was competitor and rival to Ludovico Carrache. Guido made the same use of Albert Durer as Virgil did of old Ennius; borrowed what pleased him, and made it afterwards his own; that is, he accommodated what was good in Albert to his own manner; which he executed with so much gracefulness and beauty, that he alone got more money and more reputation in his time than his own masters and all the scholars of the Carraches, though they were of greater capacity than himself. His heads yield no manner of precedence to those of Raphael.

Sisto Badolocchi designed the best of all his disciples, but he died young.

Domenichino was a very knowing painter, and very laborious, but otherwise of no great natural endowments. It is true, he was profoundly skilled in all the parts of painting, but wanting genius, (as I said,) he had less of nobleness in his works than all the rest who studied in the school of the Carraches.

Albani was excellent in all that belonged to painting, and adorned with variety of learning.

Lanfranc, a man of a great and sprightly wit, supported his reputation for a long time with an extraordinary gusto of design and colouring. But his foundation being only on the practical part, he at length lost ground in point of correctness; so that many of his pieces appear extravagant and fantastical. And after his decease the school of the Carraches went daily to decay in all the parts of painting.

Gio. Viola was very old before he learned landscape; the knowledge of which was imparted to him by Hannibal Carrache, who took pleasure to instruct him, so that he painted many of that kind, which are wonderfully fine, and well coloured.

If we cast our eyes towards Germany and the Low Countries, we may there behold Albert Durer, Lucas Van Leyden, Holbein, Aldegrave, &c. who were all contemporaries. Amongst these, Albert Durer and Holbein were both of them wonderfully knowing, and had certainly been of the first form of painters, had they travelled into Italy; for nothing can be laid to their charge, but only that they had a Gothic gusto. As for Holbein, he performed yet better than Raphael; and I have seen a portrait of his painting, with which one of Titian’s could not come in competition.

Amongst the Flemings, we had Rubens, who derived from his birth, a lively, free, noble, and universal genius: a genius which was capable not only of raising him to the rank of the ancient painters, but also to the highest employment in the service of his country; so that he was chosen for one of the most important embassies of our age. His gusto of design savours somewhat more of the Fleming than of the beauty of the antique, because he staid not long at Rome. And though we cannot but observe in all his paintings somewhat of great and noble, yet, it must be confessed, that, generally speaking, he designed not correctly; but, for all the other parts of painting, he was as absolute a master of them, and possessed them all as thoroughly as any of his predecessors in that noble art. His principal studies were made in Lombardy, after the works of Titian, Paul Veronese, and Tintoret; whose cream he has skimmed, (if you will allow the phrase,) and extracted from their several beauties many general maxims and infallible rules, which he always followed, and by which he has acquired in his works a greater facility than that of Titian; more of purity, truth, and science, than Paul Veronese; and more of majesty, repose, and moderation, than Tintoret. To conclude: his manner is so solid, so knowing, and so ready, that it may seem this rare accomplished genius was sent from heaven to instruct mankind in the art of painting.

His school was full of admirable disciples, amongst whom, Van Dyck was he who best comprehended all the rules and general maxims of his master; and who has even excelled him in the delicacy of his colouring, and in his cabinet-pieces; but his gusto, in the designing part, was nothing better than that of Rubens.

FOOTNOTES:

[112] Fresnoy employed above twenty years in finishing this poem.

[113] Our author began his translation of Virgil in the preceding year, 1694.—MALONE.

[114] In May 1664, Gio. Pietro Bellori read a discourse in the Academy of St Luke at Rome, (Carlo Maratti being then president,) entitled—_L’Idea del Pittore, dello Scultore, e dell’ Architetto, scelta dalle bellezze naturali superiore alla Natura_. This discourse, from which the following extract is taken, was afterwards prefixed to _Le Vite de Pittore_, &c. by the same author, printed at Rome in 4to, 1672.—MALONE.

[115] The ΕΙΚΟΝΕΣ of Flavius Philostratus, who flourished in the beginning of the third century, was first printed by Aldus in 1502.—MALONE.

[116] _i.e._ Merchant vessels. The passage seems to be so worded, as to contain a sneer at the negligence of King William’s government in protecting the trade. Perhaps Dryden alluded to the misfortune of Sir Francis Wheeler, in 1693, who, being sent with a convoy into the Mediterranean, was wrecked in the bay of Gibraltar.

[117] The principal female character in “Tyrannic Love, or The Royal Martyr.” See Vol. III. page 343.

[118] In the epistle in which he describes our Saviour’s person and manners.

[119] In his treatise on Epic Poetry.

[120] This line is a little misquoted. The couplets run,

Reject that vulgar error, which appears
So fair, of making perfect characters;
There’s no such thing in nature, and you’ll draw
A faultless monster, which the world _ne’er saw_.

_Essay on Poetry._

[121] Our author had previously quoted the lines here alluded to, in defence of the indecencies of one of his comedies. Vol. VI. p. 10.

——_castum esse decet pium poetam_
_Ipsum. Versiculos nihil necesse est:_
_Qui tum denique habent salem ac leporem_
_Si sint molliculi et parum pudici._

[122] The celebrity of that action, which is generally called the continence of Scipio, gives us a woeful idea of the gross barbarity of the age in which he lived. What would now be said of a general, who did not act as Scipio is said to have done? Assuredly, his refusing the ransom would be thought more wonderful, than his dismissing, uninjured, the betrothed princess.

[123] There is a fallacy in this, which a moment’s consideration may detect. Painting does not present in one moment what tragedy shews in many hours, and cannot, on the contrary, shew more than one scene, at one minute and point of time. Doubtless, by presenting to us one striking situation, the painting recals, if we know the story, all that has preceded and is to follow; but this arises from association, and happens equally if we come suddenly into a theatre where a well-known tragedy is performing.

[124] A Dutch fair. Dryden probably recollected the pieces of Teniers.

[125] The passage alluded to is in Aristotle’s “Treatise on Poetry,” in which he accounts for the pleasure afforded by the imitative arts, by observing, that “to _learn_ is a natural pleasure.” “To the same purpose (says Mr Twining,) in his ‘Rhetorick,’ lib. i. cap. xi. p. 537. edit. Duval. Επει δε το μανθανειν, κ. τ. λ. ‘And as it is by nature delightful to _learn_, to _admire_, and the like, hence we necessarily receive pleasure from imitative arts, as PAINTING, SCULPTURE, and POETRY, and from whatever is well imitated, even though the original may be disagreeable; but our pleasure does not arise from the beauty of the thing itself, but from the _inference_, the _discovery_ that THIS IS THAT, &c. so that we seem to learn something.’

“Μανθανειν—to _learn_, to _know_, i.e. merely to _recognize_, _discover_, &c.,” See Harris, On Music, Painting, &c. ch. iv. note (_b_). The meaning is sufficiently explained by what follows.

“Dryden, who scarce ever mentions Aristotle without discovering that he had looked only at the wrong side of the tapestry, (a translation,) says, ‘Aristotle tells us, that imitation pleases, because it affords matter for a reasoner to inquire into the truth or falsehood of imitation,’ &c. But Aristotle is not here speaking of _reasoners_, or _inquiry_, but, on the contrary, of the vulgar, the generality of mankind, whom he expressly opposes to philosophers, or reasoners: and his συλλογιζεσθαι is no more than that rapid, habitual, and imperceptible act of the mind, that ‘_raisonnement aussi prompt que le coup d’œil_,’ (as it is well paraphrased by M. Batteux,) by which we _collect_ or infer, from a comparison of the picture with the image of the original in our minds, that it was intended to represent that original.

“The fullest illustration of this passage is to be found in another work of Aristotle, his ‘Rhetoric,’ lib. iii. cap. x. where he applies the same principle to metaphorical language, and resolves the pleasure we receive from such language, into that which arises from the μαθησις ΤΑΧΕΙΑ, the exercise of our understandings in _discovering_ the meaning by a _quick_ and _easy_ perception of some quality, or qualities, common to the thing expressed, and the thing intended; to a mirror, for example, and to the theatre, when the latter is called metaphorically, _the mirror of human life_.

“Dryden (Mr Twining further observes) seems to have taken his idea from Dacier’s note on this place, (in the ‘Treatise on Poetry,’) which is extremely confused, and so expressed, as to leave it doubtful whether he misunderstood the original, or only explained himself awkwardly. The use that Dryden made of French critics and translators is well known.” _Aristotle’s Treatise on Poetry, translated, with Notes. &c. by THOMAS TWINING, A. M._ 4to, 1789, p. 186.—MALONE.

[126] This is hardly accurate. Lopez de Vega did indeed despise the rules laid down by others, but he made no new regulations.

[127]

O Powers divine,
Take my last thanks! no longer I repine.
I might have lived my own mishaps to mourn,
While some would pity me, but more would scorn;
For pity only on fresh objects stays,
But with the tedious sight of woes decays.
Still less and less my boiling spirits flow,
And I grow stiff, as cooling metals do.—
Farewell, Almeria.—Vol. II. p. 371.

[128] Nothing can be more hazardous for a dramatist than the introduction of many inferior characters. In proportion to the numbers of the _Dramatis Personæ_, the difficulty of _getting up_ a piece is increased in a tremendous ratio; since even the awkwardness of a domestic, or the ridiculous gait of a guard, may throw the audience into a tone of feeling very inconsistent with tragic effect. Undoubtedly, could the expence be supported, something might be gained by drilling underlings to such inferior characters, and teaching even the mutes to look, as it they took some interest in what is going forward; but, at present, the entrance and exit of a hero, _cum suis_, has something in it irresistibly ludicrous. Here the painter has a decisive advantage over the dramatist, since it costs him nothing to finish his inferior personages in a style as correspondent to truth as the principal.

[129] I retain Mr Malone’s excellent note. “This description seems at the first view to be intended for Congreve, to whom it is certainly sufficiently applicable, and who had produced his ‘Double Dealer’ in the preceding year, and his ‘Love for Love’ in 1695. But beside that Dryden’s high admiration of Congreve, which he had so strongly manifested in the admirable verses addressed to that poet on the former play, will not admit of such an application, the words—‘I _knew_,’ clearly denote a _dead_ poet, and consequently will exclude Wycherley also. The person meant therefore, I think, was Sir George Etherege, who died a few years before. In Dryden’s Epilogue to that author’s ‘Man of Mode,’ he says,

“Sir Fopling is a _fool_ so nicely writ,
Most ladies would mistake him for a _wit_.”

[130] Nat. Lee.

[131] Dryden probably recollected, particularly, Lee’s famous rant at the conclusion of the fourth act of Œdipus:

Fall darkness then, and everlasting night
Shadow the globe; may the sun never dawn,
The silver moon be blotted from her orb!
And for an universal rout of nature,
Through all the inmost chambers of the sky
May there not be a glimpse, one starry spark,
But gods meet gods, and jostle in the dark;
That jars may rise, and wrath divine be hurled,
Which may to atoms shake the solid world!

Vol. VI. p. 206.

[132] “Pericles, Prince of Tyre,” which has been generally imputed to Shakespeare, though the internal evidence is not in favour of the supposition. Dryden believed it to be one of his earliest pieces:

Shakespeare’s own muse his Pericles first bore,
The Prince of Tyre was elder than the Moor.

This order was probably assigned from the confessed inferiority of Pericles to Shakespeare’s later plays. But that apology cannot be received; for if Shakespeare had any hand in Pericles at all, it was at a late period of his dramatic career.—See Vol. X. p. 335, and the remarks on Pericles in Malone’s Shakespeare.

[133] Morecraft is an usurer in Beaumont and Fletcher’s comedy of the “Scornful Lady,” who, having been cheated and discomfited, as usurers commonly are in the drama, (I suppose to compensate their success in real life,) at the end of the play suddenly changes his character for that of an extravagant gallant, and assumes the denomination of _cutting_, or as we would now say _dashing_, Morecraft.—See Vol. IV. p. 241.

[134] Mr Malone thinks this alludes to the translation of Virgil, in which Dryden was now engaged. But I conceive it has a general reference to his situation as a suspected and discountenanced person; restrained from free exertion of his genius, by the necessity of considering that he was exposed to misconstruction. He must have recollected the suppression of “Cleomenes,” and the offence taken by government at the prologue to the “Prophetess.” In truth, the very expression in the text is elsewhere hitched into rhyme:

The labouring bee, when his sharp sting is gone,
Forgets his golden work, and turns a drone;
Such is a satire when you take away
That rage in which his noble vigour lay.
...
How can he show his manhood if you bind him,
To box like boys with one hand tied behind him?

_Prologue to Amphitryon_, Vol. VIII. p. 12.

[135] A comedy written by Sir Robert Stapylton, and acted by the Duke of York’s servants, at their theatre in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, in 1663. Dryden has elsewhere undervalued this play, Vol. X. p. 336:

Your Ben and Fletcher, in their first young flight,
Did no Volpone, nor no Arbaces write;
But hopped about, and short excursions made }
From bough to bough, as if they were afraid; }
And each was guilty of some “Slighted Maid.” }

Sir Robert Stapylton, the author of the “Slighted Maid,” translated Juvenal and Musæus, and wrote other two plays, called “The Step-mother,” and “Hero and Leander.”

[136] “Otway,” says Pope, “has written but two tragedies, out of six, that are pathetic. I believe he did it without much design, as Lillo has done in his ‘Barnwell.’ It is a talent of nature, rather than an effect of judgment, to write so movingly.”—SPENCE’S _Anecdotes_, quoted by Malone. Dryden, at an early period, is said to have set no high value upon Otway in other respects, while he allowed he excelled him in the art of affecting the passions.

[137] “Aristotle, in the place referred to, (περι ποιητ. κ. μς.) does not mention any third dramatic poet by name. He does indeed put the case of a third poet, who might pursue a method different from the practice either of Sophocles or Euripides, and represent things _as they are said, and believed, to be_. In the same passage, (which is manifestly corrupt,) he mentions an observation of Xenophanes, who, I believe, was the person here in our author’s thoughts.”—MALONE.

[138] The first and third Acts.

[139] Our author has already compared the first of the lines alluded to—

_Quæ superimposito moles geminata Colosso—_

with the first line of Virgil’s Eclogues.

[140] Theb. vi. 400, 401.

Our author’s confession of the difficulty of translating these lines, probably induced Pope to transplant them into his “Windsor Forest,” where they are thus beautifully paraphrased:

The impatient courser pants in every vein,
And pawing seems to beat the distant plain;
Hills, vales, and floods, appear already crost,
And, ere he starts, a thousand steps are lost.

Our author trusted, as usual, to memory; for the first of the lines, quoted from Statius, runs differently:

_Stare adeò_ miserum est——

but he was thinking on a passage in the Third Georgic:

_——tum, si qua sonum procul arma dedere,_
_Stare loco ~nescit~: micat auribus, et tremit artus;_
_Conlectumque premens volvit sub naribus ignem._—MALONE.

[141] See Volume XIII. p. 320. There are good grounds for disbelieving this beautiful anecdote. See Malone’s note on this passage.

[142] The French translator here, as well as Mr Dryden, is unintelligible; which happened by their mistaking the meaning of the word _opaca_, which is not put for _dark_; but _opaque_, in opposition to _transparent_: for a white garment may be _opaque_, &c.

[143] M. Le Brun.

[144] M. Colbert.

[145] Pliny, xxxv. 10.

[146] Quinc. x. 3.

[147] Declam. xix.

[148] Lib. ii. Sat. 7.

[149] Lib. x. Ep. xxii.

[150] _De Opt. Gen. Orat._

[151] Tableaux.

[152] That is to the eye, by diagrams and sketches, &c.

[153] In _Œconomico._

[154] _Comm. Vetus._

[155] Art of Poetry.

[156] _Pro lege Man._

[157] This depends on the age and quality of the persons. The Apollo and Venus of Medicis have more than ten faces.

[158] The Apollo has a nose more.

[159] The Apollo has half a nose more; and the upper half of the Venus de Medicis is to the lower part of the belly, and not to the privy parts.

[160] Polydorus, Athenodorus, and Agesander, all Rhodians.

[161] Lib. ii. Pædag. cap. 12.

[162] Plutarch

[163] A figure made of wood, or cork, turning upon joints.

[164] Lib. xxv. 12.

[165] Lib. viii. 20.

[166] Lib. v. 8.

[167] Tuscul. lib. v.

[168] Georg. iii. l. 5.

[169] Ep. xvi.

[170] 1 Off.

[171] Diss. 34.

[172] Lib. xxxv. 10.

[173] Petron. Arbiter.

[174] Veget. de Re Milit. lib. 2.

[175] Lib. 1. de fin.

END OF THE SEVENTEENTH VOLUME.

EDINBURGH:
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