Part 15

Ibid. “Ecco, che, quanto alla proporzione, l’ingeniosissimo Ariosto assegna la migliore, che sappiano formar le mani de’ più eccellenti Pittori, usando questa voce industri, per dinotar la diligenza, che conviene al buono artefice.”

NOTE 46, p. 132.

Ibid. “Qui l’Ariosto colorisce, e in questo suo colorire dimostra essere un Titiano.”

NOTE 47, p. 132.

Ibid. “Poteva l’Ariosto nella guisa, che ha detto chioma bionda, dir chioma d’oro: ma gli parve forse, che havrebbe havuto troppo del Poetico. Da che si può ritrar, che ’l Pittore dee imitar l’oro, e non metterlo (come fanno i Miniatori) nelle sue Pitture, in modo, che si possa dire, que’ capelli non sono d’oro, ma par che risplendano, come l’oro.” What Dolce goes on to quote from Athenæus is remarkable, but happens to be a misquotation. I shall speak of it in another place.

NOTE 48, p. 132.

Ibid. “Il naso, che discende giù, havendo peraventura la considerazione a quelle forme de’ nasi, che si veggono ne’ ritratti delle belle Romane antiche.”

NOTE 49, p. 143.

Pliny says of Apelles (lib. xxxv. sect. 36): “Fecit et Dianam sacrificantium Virginum choro mixtam; quibus vicisse Homeri versus videtur id ipsum describentis.” “He also made a Diana surrounded by a band of virgins performing a sacrifice; a work in which he would seem to have surpassed the verses of Homer describing the same thing.” This praise may be perfectly just; for beautiful nymphs surrounding a beautiful goddess, who towers above them by the whole height of her majestic brow, form a theme more fitting the painter than the poet. But I am somewhat suspicious of the word “sacrificantium.” What have the nymphs of Diana to do with offering sacrifices? Is that the occupation assigned them by Homer? By no means. They roam with the goddess over hills and through forest; they hunt, play, dance. (Odyss. vi. 102–106).

οἵη δ’ Ἄρτεμις εἰσὶ κατ’ οὔρεος ἰοχέαιρα ἢ κατὰ Τηΰγετον περιμήκετον, ἢ Ἐρύμανθον τερπομένη κάπροισι καὶ ὠκείῃς ἐλάφοισι· τῇ δὲ θ’ ἅμα Νύμφαι, κοῦραι Διὸς αἰγιόχοιο ἀγρονόμοι παίζουσι·...

As when o’er Erymanth Diana roves Or wide Taygetus’s resounding groves; A sylvan train the huntress queen surrounds, Her rattling quiver from her shoulder sounds; Fierce in the sport along the mountain brow, They bay the boar or chase the bounding roe. High o’er the lawn with more majestic pace, Above the nymphs she treads with stately grace.—POPE.

Pliny, therefore, can hardly have written “sacrificantium,” rather “venantium” (hunting), or something like it; perhaps “sylvis vagantium” (roaming the woods), which corresponds more nearly in number of letters to the altered word. “Saltantium” (bounding), approaches most nearly to the παίζουσι of Homer. Virgil, also, in his imitation of this passage, represents the nymphs as dancing. (Æneid, i. 497, 498.)

Qualis in Eurotæ ripis, aut per juga Cynthi Exercet Diana choros....

Such on Eurotas’ banks or Cynthus’ height Diana seems; and so she charms the sight, When in the dance the graceful goddess leads The choir of nymphs and overtops their heads.—DRYDEN.

Spence gives a remarkable criticism on this passage. (Polymetis, dial. viii.) “This Diana,” he says, “both in the picture and in the descriptions, was the Diana Venatrix, though she was not represented, either by Virgil or Apelles or Homer, as hunting with her nymphs; but as employed with them in that sort of dances which of old were regarded as very solemn acts of devotion.” In a note he adds, “The expression of παίζειν, used by Homer on this occasion, is scarce proper for hunting; as that of “choros exercere,” in Virgil, should be understood of the religious dances of old, because dancing, in the old Roman idea of it, was indecent, even for men, in public, unless it were the sort of dances used in honor of Mars or Bacchus or some other of their gods.” Spence supposes that those solemn dances are here referred to, which, among the ancients, were counted among the acts of religion. “It is in consequence of this,” he says, “that Pliny, in speaking of Diana’s nymphs on this very occasion, uses the word “sacrificare” of them, which quite determines these dances of theirs to have been of the religious kind.” He forgets that, in Virgil, Diana joins in the dance, “exercet Diana choros.” If this were a religious dance, in whose honor did Diana dance it? in her own, or in honor of some other deity? Both suppositions are absurd. If the old Romans did hold dancing in general to be unbecoming in a grave person, was that a reason why their poets should transfer the national gravity to the manners of the gods, which were very differently represented by the old Greek poets? When Horace says of Venus (Od. iv. lib. i.),—

Jam Cytherea choros ducit Venus, imminente luna; Junctæque Nymphis Gratiæ decentes Alterno terram quatiunt pede....

“Now Cytherean Venus leads the bands, under the shining moon, and the fair graces, joined with the nymphs, beat the ground with alternate feet,”—were these, likewise, sacred, religious dances? But it is wasting words to argue against such a conceit.

NOTE 50, p. 145.

Plinius, lib. xxxiv. sect. 19. “Ipse tamen corporum tenus curiosus, animi sensus non expressisse videtur, capillum quoque et pubem non emendatius fecisse, quam rudis antiquitas instituisset.

“Hic primus nervos et venas expressit, capillumque diligentius.”

NOTE 51, p. 162.

The Connoisseur, vol. i. no. 21. The beauty of Knonmquaiha is thus described. “He was struck with the glossy hue of her complexion, which shone like the jetty down on the black hogs of Hessaqua; he was ravished with the prest gristle of her nose; and his eyes dwelt with admiration on the flaccid beauties of her breasts, which descended to her navel.” And how were these charms set off by art? “She made a varnish of the fat of goats mixed with soot, with which she anointed her whole body as she stood beneath the rays of the sun; her locks were clotted with melted grease, and powdered with the yellow dust of Buchu; her face, which shone like the polished ebony, was beautifully varied with spots of red earth, and appeared like the sable curtain of the night bespangled with stars; she sprinkled her limbs with wood-ashes, and perfumed them with the dung of Stinkbingsem. Her arms and legs were entwined with the shining entrails of an heifer; from her neck there hung a pouch composed of the stomach of a kid; the wings of an ostrich overshadowed the fleshy promontories behind; and before she wore an apron formed of the shaggy ears of a lion.”

Here is further the marriage ceremony of the loving pair. “The Surri, or Chief Priest, approached them, and, in a deep voice, chanted the nuptial rites to the melodious grumbling of the Gom-Gom; and, at the same time (according to the manner of Caffraria), bedewed them plentifully with the urinary benediction. The bride and bridegroom rubbed in the precious stream with ecstasy, while the briny drops trickled from their bodies, like the oozy surge from the rocks of Chirigriqua.”

NOTE 52, p. 166.

The Sea-Voyage, act iii. scene 1. A French pirate ship is thrown upon a desert island. Avarice and envy cause quarrels among the men, and a couple of wretches, who had long suffered extreme want on the island, seize a favorable opportunity to put to sea in the ship. Robbed thus of their whole stock of provisions, the miserable men see death, in its worst forms, staring them in the face, and express to each other their hunger and despair as follows:—

_Lamure._ Oh, what a tempest have I in my stomach! How my empty guts cry out! My wounds ache, Would they would bleed again, that I might get Something to quench my thirst!

_Franville._ O Lamure, the happiness my dogs had When I kept house at home! They had a storehouse, A storehouse of most blessed bones and crusts. Happy crusts! Oh, how sharp hunger pinches me!

_Lamure._ How now, what news?

_Morillar._ Hast any meat yet?

_Franville._ Not a bit that I can see. Here be goodly quarries, but they be cruel hard To gnaw. I ha’ got some mud, we’ll eat it with spoons; Very good thick mud; but it stinks damnably. There’s old rotten trunks of trees, too, But not a leaf nor blossom in all the island.

_Lamure._ How it looks!

_Morillar._ It stinks too.

_Lamure._ It may be poison.

_Franville._ Let it be any thing, So I can get it down. Why, man, Poison’s a princely dish!

_Morillar._ Hast thou no biscuit? No crumbs left in thy pocket? Here is my doublet, Give me but three small crumbs.

_Franville._ Not for three kingdoms, If I were master of ’em. Oh, Lamure, But one poor joint of mutton we ha’ scorned, man!

_Lamure._ Thou speak’st of paradise; Or but the snuffs of those healths, We have lewdly at midnight flung away.

_Morillar._ Ah, but to lick the glasses!

But this is nothing, compared with the next scene, when the ship’s surgeon enters.

_Franville._ Here comes the surgeon. What Hast thou discovered? Smile, smile, and comfort us.

_Surgeon._ I am expiring, Smile they that can. I can find nothing, gentlemen, Here’s nothing can be meat without a miracle. Oh, that I had my boxes and my lints now, My stupes, my tents, and those sweet helps of nature! What dainty dishes could I make of them!

_Morillar._ Hast ne’er an old suppository?

_Surgeon._ Oh, would I had, sir!

_Lamure._ Or but the paper where such a cordial Potion, or pills hath been entombed!

_Franville._ Or the best bladder, where a cooling glister?

_Morillar._ Hast thou no searcloths left? Nor any old poultices?

_Franville._ We care not to what it hath been ministered.

_Surgeon._ Sure I have none of these dainties, gentlemen.

_Franville._ Where’s the great wen Thou cut’st from Hugh the sailor’s shoulder? That would serve now for a most princely banquet.

_Surgeon._ Ay, if we had it, gentlemen. I flung it overboard, slave that I was.

_Lamure._ A most improvident villain!

NOTE 53, p. 177.

Æneid, lib. ii. 7, and especially lib. xi. 183. We might safely, therefore, add such a work to the list of lost writings by this author.

NOTE 54, p. 179.

Consult the list of inscriptions on ancient works of art in Mar. Gudius. (ad Phædri fab. v. lib. i.), and, in connection with that, the correction made by Gronovius. (Præf. ad Tom. ix. Thesauri Antiq. Græc.)

NOTE 55, p. 182.

He at least expressly promises to do so: “quæ suis locis reddam” (which I shall speak of in their proper place). But if this was not wholly forgotten, it was at least done very cursorily, and not at all in the way this promise had led us to expect. When he writes (lib. xxxv. sect. 39), “Lysippus quoque Æginæ picturæ suæ inscripsit, ἐνέκαυσεν; quod profecto non fecisset, nisi encaustica inventa,” he evidently uses ἐνέκαυσεν to prove something quite different. If he meant, as Hardouin supposes, to indicate in this passage one of the works whose inscription was written in definite past time, it would have been worth his while to put in a word to that effect. Hardouin finds reference to the other two works in the following passage: “Idem (Divus Augustus) in Curia quoque, quam in Comitio consecrabat, duas tabulas impressit parieti: Nemeam sedentem supra leonem, palmigeram ipsam, adstante cum baculo sene, cujus supra caput tabula bigæ dependet. Nicias scripsit se inussisse; tali enim usus est verbo. Alterius tabulæ admiratio est, puberem filium seni patri similem esse, salva ætatis differentia, supervolante aquila draconem complexa. Philochares hoc suum opus esse testatus est.” (Lib. xxxv. sect. 10.) Two different pictures are here described which Augustus had set up in the newly built senate-house. The second was by Philochares, the first by Nicias. All that is said of the picture by Philochares is plain and clear, but there are certain difficulties in regard to the other. It represented Nemea seated on a lion, a palm-branch in her hand, and near her an old man with a staff: “cujus supra caput tabula bigæ dependet.” What is the meaning of that? “over his head hung a tablet on which was painted a two-horse chariot.” That is the only meaning the words will bear. Was there, then, a smaller picture hung over the large one? and were both by Nicias? Hardouin must so have understood it, else where were the two pictures by Nicias, since the other is expressly ascribed to Philochares? “Inscripsit Nicias igitur geminæ huic tabulæ suum nomen in hunc modum: Ὁ ΝΙΚΙΑΣ ΕΝΕΚΑΥΣΕΝ: atque adeo e tribus operibus, quæ absolute fuisse inscripta, ILLE FECIT, indicavit Præfatio ad Titum, duo hæc sunt Niciae.” I should like to ask Hardouin one question. If Nicias had really used the indefinite, and not the definite past tense, and Pliny had merely wished to say that the master, instead of γράφειν, had used ἐγκαίειν, would he not still have been obliged to say in Latin, “Nicias scripsit se inussisse?” But I will not insist upon this point. Pliny may really have meant to indicate here one of the three works before referred to. But who will be induced to believe that there were two pictures, placed one above the other? Not I for one. The words “cujus supra caput tabula bigæ dependet” must be a corruption. “Tabula bigæ,” a picture of a two-horse chariot, does not sound much like Pliny, although Pliny does elsewhere use “biga” in the singular. What sort of a two-horse chariot? Such as were used in the races at the Nemæan games, so that this little picture should, from its subject, be related to the chief one? That cannot be; for not two but four horse chariots were usual in the Nemæan games. (Schmidius in Prol. ad Nemeonicas, p. 2.) At one time, I thought that Pliny might, instead of “bigæ,” have written a Greek word, πτυχίον, which the copyists did not understand. For we know, from a passage in Antigonus Carystius, quoted by Zenobius (conf. Gronovius, T. ix. Antiquit. Græc. Præf. p. 7), that the old artists did not always put their name on the work itself, but sometimes on a separate tablet, attached to the picture or statue, and this tablet was called πτυχίον. The word “tabula, tabella,” might have been written in the margin in explanation of the Greek word, and at last have crept into the text. πτυχίον was turned into “bigæ,” and so we get “tabula bigæ.” This πτυχίον agrees perfectly with what follows; for the next sentence contains what was written on it. The whole passage would then read thus: “cujus supra caput πτυχίον dependet, quo Nicias scripsit se inussisse.” My correction is rather a bold one, I acknowledge. Need a critic feel obliged to suggest the proper reading for every passage that he can prove to be corrupted? I will rest content with having done the latter, and leave the former to some more skilful hand. But to return to the subject under discussion. If Pliny be here speaking of but a single picture by Nicias, on which he had inscribed his name in definite past time, and if the second picture thus inscribed be the above-mentioned one of Lysippus, where is the third? That I cannot tell. If I might look for it elsewhere among the old writers, the question were easily answered. But it ought to be found in Pliny; and there, I repeat, I am entirely unable to discover it.

NOTE 56, p. 186.

Thus Statius says “obnixa pectora” (Thebaid. lib. vi. v. 863):

... rumpunt obnixa furentes Pectora.

which the old commentator of Barths explains by “summa vi contra nitentia.” Thus Ovid says (Halievt. v. ii.), “obnixa fronte,” when describing the “scarus” trying to force its way through the fish-trap, not with his head, but with his tail.

Non audet radiis obnixa occurrere fronte.

NOTE 57, p. 192.

Geschichte der Kunst, part ii. p. 328. “He produced the Antigone, his first tragedy, in the third year of the seventy-seventh Olympiad.” The time is tolerably exact, but it is quite a mistake to suppose that this first tragedy was the Antigone. Neither is it so called by Samuel Petit, whom Winkelmann quotes in a note. He expressly puts the Antigone in the third year of the eighty-fourth Olympiad. The following year, Sophocles went with Pericles to Samos, and the year of this expedition can be determined with exactness. In my life of Sophocles, I show, from a comparison with a passage of the elder Pliny, that the first tragedy of this author was probably Triptolemus. (Lib. xviii. sect. 12.) Pliny is speaking of the various excellence of the fruits of different countries, and concludes thus: “Hæ fuere sententiæ, Alexandro magno regnante, cum clarissima fuit Græcia, atque in toto terrarum orbe potentissima; ita tamen ut ante mortem ejus annis fere CXLV. Sophocles poeta in fabula Triptolemo frumentum Italicum ante cuncta laudaverit, ad verbum translata sententia:

Et fortunatam Italiam frumento canere candido.”

He is here not necessarily speaking of the first tragedy of Sophocles, to be sure. But the date of that, fixed by Plutarch, the scholiast, and the Arundelian marbles, as the seventy-seventh Olympiad, corresponds so exactly with the date assigned by Pliny to the Triptolemus, that we can hardly help regarding that as the first of Sophocles’ tragedies. The calculation is easily made. Alexander died in the hundred and fourteenth Olympiad. One hundred and forty-five years cover thirty-six Olympiads and one year, which subtracted from the total, gives seventy-seven. The Triptolemus of Sophocles appeared in the seventy-seventh Olympiad; the last year of this same Olympiad is the date of his first tragedy: we may naturally conclude, therefore, that these tragedies are one. I show at the same time that Petit might have spared himself the writing of the whole half of the chapter in his “Miscellanea” which Winkelmann quotes (xviii. lib. iii.). In the passage of Pliny, which he thinks to amend, it is quite unnecessary to change the name of the Archon Aphepsion into Demotion, or ἀνεψιός. He need only have looked from the third to the fourth year of the seventy-seventh Olympiad to find that the Archon of that year was called Aphepsion by the ancient authors quite as often as Phædon, if not oftener. He is called Phædon by Diodorus Siculus, Dionysius Halicarnassus, and the anonymous author of the table of the Olympiads; while the Arundelian marbles, Apollodorus, and, quoting him, Diogenes Laertius, call him Aphepsion. Plutarch calls him by both names; Phædon in the life of Theseus and Aphepsion in the life of Cimon. It is therefore probable, as Palmerius supposes, “Aphepsionem et Phædonem Archontas fuisse eponymos; scilicet, uno in magistratu mortuo, suffectus fuit alter.” (Exercit. p. 452.) This reminds me that Winkelmann, in his first work on the imitation of Greek art, allowed an error to creep in with regard to Sophocles. “The most beautiful of the youths danced naked in the theatre, and Sophocles, the great Sophocles, was in his youth the first to show himself thus to his fellow-citizens.” Sophocles never danced naked on the stage. He danced around the trophies after the victory of Salamis, according to some authorities naked, but according to others clothed. (Athen. lib. i. p. m. 20.) Sophocles was one of the boys who was brought for safety to Salamis, and on this island it pleased the tragic muse to assemble her three favorites in a gradation typical of their future career. The bold Æschylus helped gain the victory; the blooming Sophocles danced around the trophies; and on the same happy island, on the very day of the victory, Euripides was born.

INDEX.

Achilles, sceptre of, 98; shield of, 113.

Action, culminating point of an, not the point to be represented by the artist, 16.

Albani, Cardinal Alexander, his discovery of a vase which illustrated the date of the Laocoon, 178 _et seq._

Anacreon, two odes of, 133, 139.

Apelles, his picture of Diana, 143.

Ariosto, his description of Alcina, 128, 138.

Aristophanes, element of disgust used by, 161.

Aristotle, advice of, to Protogenes, 76; his reason why we receive pleasure from a faithful copy of the disagreeable, 154.

Art should express nothing essentially transitory, 17.

Arts among the ancients, subject to the control of law, 10.

Bacchus, how represented in poetry and painting, 56 _et seq._

Beauty, the supreme law of the imitative arts, 11; subordinated in modern art to other ends, 16; representations of physical, the province of painting, not of poetry, 126.

Boivin, his explanations of Homer, 118, 121.

Calaber, Quintus, his rendering of the story of Laocoon, 34; his account of the death of Thersites, 150.

Callimachus, his picture of famine, 165.

Caricature, law against, among the Thebans, 9.

Caylus, Count, some points in his work considered, 71, 77, 80, 82, 86, 87, 93; his sketch for a picture of Helen, 140.

Chateaubrun, his representation of Philoctetes, 25.

Cicero, his views in regard to bodily pain, 28.

Cleyn, Francis, illustrations by, 39.

Constancy, how represented in art, 68 _et seq._

Dacier, Madame, her translation of Homer, 113.

Dante, his description of the starvation of Ugolino, 166.

Deformity, physical, in art, produces disgust, 159.

Disgust produced more through the other senses than through that of sight, 160; object of, in painting, 167.

Disgusting, the, its use in expressing the horror of famine, 164.

Dolce, his dialogue on Painting, 131.

Drama, expression of suffering in the, 21 _et seq._

Dryden, his Ode on Cecilia’s Day, 89.

Flaccus, Valerius, his description of an angry Venus, 57 _et seq._

French language, not adapted to translation of Homer, 112.

German language, compared to the Greek, 113.

Gladiator, Borghese, the author’s theory in regard to the, 184 _et seq._

Gladiatorial shows, effect of, 29.

Haller, Von, description quoted from his “Alps,” 103.

Hercules, as represented by Sophocles, 6; the, of Sophocles, 31.

Hogarth, his criticism of the Apollo Belvidere, 145.

Homer, expressions of pain in his heroes, 4; representation of his heroes, 79 _et seq._; his descriptions not generally available for pictures, 83, 143; his picture of Pandarus, 89; style of, 93; his description of the chariot of Juno, 94; his description of the sceptre of Agamemnon, 95; of the shield of Achilles, 98, 113, 118; of the bow of Pandarus, 99; his indebtedness to the flexibility of the Greek language, 112; his description of the beleaguered city, 121; avoids detailed description, 127; his representation of Helen, 136; his Thersites, 148 _et seq._

Imitations of the poet by the artist and the reverse, 49 _et seq._

Invention required less of the artist than of the poet, 72 _et seq._

Junius, Francis, an unsafe authority, 188.

Juno, how represented in ancient art, 57.

Kleist, Von, his own judgment of his poem “Spring,” 108.

Klotzius, on the effects of different forms of the disagreeable in art, 158.

Laocoon, of Virgil, 20 _et seq._; compared with the statue, 36 _et seq._; contains traits unavailable for the artist, 42; the group of, possibly suggested by Virgil’s description, 43 _et seq._; the, probable date of, 170 _et seq._

Longinus, his remarks in regard to eloquence and poetry, 188.

Lucian represents physical beauty by comparison with statues, 135.

Manasses, Constantinus, his pictures of Helen, 127.

Martiani, his opinion in regard to the date of the Laocoon, 34 _et seq._

Mazzuoli, his “Rape of the Sabines,” 109.

Mengs, his criticism on Raphael’s drapery, 110.

Milton furnishes few subjects for a painter, 87.

Minerva, how represented in ancient art, 57, 78.

Montfaucon, his want of taste, 14; his opinions in regard to the date of the Laocoon, 33 _et seq._