Part 8

My opinion is that perspective in pictures came incidentally from scene-painting, which was already in its perfection. But the applications of its rules to a single smooth surface was evidently no easy matter; for, even in the later paintings found among the antiquities of Herculaneum, there are many and various offences against perspective, which would now hardly be excusable even in a beginner.[125]

But I will spare myself the labor of collecting my desultory observations on a point whereon I may hope to receive complete satisfaction from Winkelmann’s promised “History of Art.”[126]

XX.

To return, then, to my road, if a saunterer can be said to have a road.

What I have been saying of bodily objects in general applies with even more force to those which are beautiful.

Physical beauty results from the harmonious action of various parts which can be taken in at a glance. It therefore requires that these parts should lie near together; and, since things whose parts lie near together are the proper subjects of painting, this art and this alone can imitate physical beauty.

The poet, who must necessarily detail in succession the elements of beauty, should therefore desist entirely from the description of physical beauty as such. He must feel that these elements arranged in a series cannot possibly produce the same effect as in juxtaposition; that the concentrating glance which we try to cast back over them immediately after their enumeration, gives us no harmonious picture; and that to conceive the effect of certain eyes, a certain mouth and nose taken together, unless we can recall a similar combination of such parts in nature or art, surpasses the power of human imagination.

Here again Homer is the model of all models. He says, Nireus was fair; Achilles was fairer; Helen was of godlike beauty. But he is nowhere betrayed into a more detailed description of these beauties. Yet the whole poem is based upon the loveliness of Helen. How a modern poet would have revelled in descriptions of it!

Even Constantinus Manasses sought to adorn his bald chronicle with a picture of Helen. I must thank him for the attempt, for I really should not know where else to turn for so striking an example of the folly of venturing on what Homer’s wisdom forbore to undertake. When I read in him:[127]

ἦν ἡ γυνὴ περικαλλὴς, εὔοφρυς, εὐχρουστάτη, εὐπάρειος, εὐπρόσωπος, βοῶπις, χιονόχρους, ἑλικοβλέφαρος, ἁβρὰ, χαρίτων γέμον ἄλσος, λευκοβραχίων, τρυφερὰ, κάλλος ἄντικρυς ἔμπνουν, τὸ πρόσωπον κατάλευκον, ἡ παρειὰ ῥοδόχρους, τὸ πρόσωπον ἐπίχαρι, τὸ βλέφαρον ὡραῖον, κάλλος ἀνεπιτήδευτον, ἀβάπτιστον, αὐτόχρουν, ἔβαπτε τὴν λευκότητα ῥοδόχροια πυρσίνη, ὡς εἴ τις τὸν ἐλέφαντα βάψει λαμπρᾷ πορφύρᾳ. δειρὴ μακρά, κατάλευκος, ὅθεν ἐμυθουργήθη κυκνογενῆ τὴν εὔοπτον Ἑλένην χρηματίζειν,

it is like seeing stones rolled up a mountain,[128] on whose summit they are to be built into a gorgeous edifice; but which all roll down of themselves on the other side. What picture does this crowd of words leave behind? How did Helen look? No two readers out of a thousand would receive the same impression of her.

But political verses by a monk are, it is true, no poetry. Let us hear Ariosto describe his enchantress Alcina:[129]—

Di persona era tanto ben formata, Quanto mai finger san pittori industri. Con bionda chioma, lunga e annodata, Oro non è, che piu risplenda e lustri. Spargeasi per la guancia delicata Misto color di rose e di ligustri. Di terso avorio era la fronte lieta, Che lo spazio finia con giusta meta.

Sotto due negri, e sottilissimi archi Son due negri, occhi, anzi due chiari soli Pietosi a riguardar, a mover parchi, Intorno a cui par ch’ Amor scherzi, e voli, E ch’ indi tutta la faretra scarchi, E che visibilmente i cori involi. Quindi il naso per mezzo il viso scende Che non trova l’ invidia ove l’ emende.

Sotto quel sta, quasi fra due vallette, La bocca sparsa di natio cinabro, Quivi due filze son di perle elette, Che chiude, ed apre un bello e dolce labro; Quindi escon le cortesi parolette, Da render molle ogni cor rozzo e scabro; Quivi si forma quel soave riso, Ch’ apre a sua posta in terra il paradiso.

Bianca neve è il pel collo, e ’l petto latte, Il collo è tondo, il petto colmo e largo; Due pome acerbe, e pur d’ avorio fatte, Vengono e van, come onda al primo margo, Quando piacevole aura il mar combatte. Non potria l’ altre parti veder Argo, Ben si può giudicar, che corrisponde, A quel ch’ appar di fuor, quel che s’ asconde.

Mostran le braccia sua misura giusta, Et la candida man spesso si vede, Lunghetta alquanto, e di larghezza angusta, Dove nè nodo appar, nè vena eccede. Si vede al fin de la persona augusta Il breve, asciutto, e ritondetto piede. Gli angelici sembianti nati in cielo Non si ponno celar sotto alcun velo.

Milton, speaking of Pandemonium, says:—

The work some praise, and some the architect.

Praise of one, then, is not always praise of the other. A work of art may merit great approbation without redounding much to the credit of the artist; and, again, an artist may justly claim our admiration, even when his work does not entirely satisfy us. By bearing this in mind we can often reconcile contradictory judgments, as in the present case. Dolce, in his dialogues on painting, makes Aretino speak in terms of the highest praise of the above-quoted stanzas,[130] while I select them as an instance of painting without picture. We are both right. Dolce admires the knowledge of physical beauty which the poet shows: I consider only the effect which this knowledge, conveyed in words, produces on my imagination. Dolce concludes from this knowledge that good poets are no less good painters: I, judging from the effect, conclude that what painters can best express by lines and colors is least capable of expression in words. Dolce recommends Ariosto’s description to all painters as a perfect model of a beautiful woman: I recommend it to all poets as the most instructive of warnings not to attempt, with still greater want of success, what could not but fail when tried by an Ariosto.

It may be that when the poet says,—

Di persona era tanto ben formata, Quanto mai finger san pittori industri,

he proves himself to have had a complete knowledge of the laws of perspective, such as only the most industrious artist can acquire from a study of nature and of ancient art.[131]

In the words,—

Spargeasi per la guancia delicata Misto color di rose e di ligustri,

he may show himself to be a perfect master of color,—a very Titian.[132] His comparing Alcina’s hair to gold, instead of calling it golden hair, may be taken as proof that he objected to the use of actual gold in coloring.[133] We may even discover in the descending nose the profile of those old Greek noses, afterwards borrowed by Roman artists from the Greek masterpieces.[134] Of what use is all this insight and learning to us readers who want to fancy we are looking at a beautiful woman, and desire to feel that gentle quickening of the pulses which accompanies the sight of actual beauty? The poet may know the relations from which beauty springs, but does that make us know them? Or, if we know them, does he show them to us here? or does he help us in the least to call up a vivid image of them?

A brow that forms a fitting bound, Che lo spazio finia con giusta meta; A nose where envy itself finds nothing to amend, Che non trova l’ invidia, ove l’ emende; A hand, narrow, and somewhat long, Lunghetta alquanto, e di larghezza angusta;

what sort of a picture do these general formulæ give us? In the mouth of a drawing-master, directing his pupils’ attention to the beauties of the academic model, they might have some meaning. For the students would have but to look at the model to see the fitting bounds of the gay forehead, the fine cut of the nose, and the slenderness of the pretty hand. But in the poem I see nothing, and am only tormented by the futility of all my attempts to see any thing.

In this respect Virgil, by imitating Homer’s reticence, has achieved tolerable success. His Dido is only the most beautiful (_pulcherrima_) Dido. Any further details which he may give, have reference to her rich ornaments and magnificent dress.

Tandem progreditur ... Sidoniam picto chlamydem circumdata limbo: Cui pharetra ex auro, crines nodantur in aurum, Aurea purpuream subnectit fibula vestem.[135]

If, on this account, any should apply to him what the old artist said to one of his pupils who had painted a gayly decked Helen,—“Since you could not paint her beautiful, you have painted her rich,”—Virgil would answer: “I am not to blame that I could not paint her beautiful. The fault lies in the limits of my art, within which it is my merit to have kept.”

I must not forget here the two odes of Anacreon wherein he analyzes the beauty of his mistress and of Bathyllus.[136] The device which he uses entirely justifies the analysis. He imagines that he has before him a painter who is working from his description. “Thus paint me the hair,” he says; “thus the brow, the eyes, the mouth; thus the neck and bosom, the thighs and hands.” As the artist could execute but one detail at a time, the poet was obliged to give them to him thus piecemeal. His object is not to make us see and feel, in these spoken directions to the painter, the whole beauty of the beloved object. He is conscious of the inadequacy of all verbal expression; and for that reason summons to his aid the expression of art, whose power of illusion he so extols, that the whole song seems rather a eulogium of art than of his lady. He sees not the picture but herself, and fancies she is about to open her mouth to speak.

ἀπέχει· βλέπω γὰρ αὐτήν. τάχα, κηρέ, καὶ λαλήσεις.

So, too, in his ode to Bathyllus, the praises of the beautiful boy are so mingled with praises of art and the artist, that we are in doubt in whose honor the song was really written. He selects the most beautiful parts from various pictures, the parts for which the pictures were remarkable. He takes the neck from an Adonis, breast and hands from a Mercury, the thighs from a Pollux, the belly from a Bacchus, until he has the whole Bathyllus as a finished Apollo from the artist’s hand.

μετὰ δὲ πρόσωπον ἔστω, τὸν Ἀδώνιδος παρελθὼν, ἐλεφάντινος τράχηλος· μεταμάζιον δὲ ποίει διδύμας τε χεῖρας Ἑρμοῦ, Πολυδεύκεος δὲ μηρούς, Διονυσίην δὲ νηδύν.

· · · · ·

τὸν Ἀπόλλωνα δὲ τοῦτον καθελών, ποίει Βάθυλλον.

Thus Lucian, to give an idea of the beauty of Panthea, points to the most beautiful female statues by the old sculptors.[137] What is this but a confession that here language of itself is powerless; that poetry stammers, and eloquence grows dumb, unless art serve as interpreter.

XXI.

But are we not robbing poetry of too much by taking from her all pictures of physical beauty?

Who seeks to take them from her? We are only warning her against trying to arrive at them by a particular road, where she will blindly grope her way in the footsteps of a sister art without ever reaching the goal. We are not closing against her other roads whereon art can follow only with her eyes.

Homer himself, who so persistently refrains from all detailed descriptions of physical beauty, that we barely learn, from a passing mention, that Helen had white arms[138] and beautiful hair,[139] even he manages nevertheless to give us an idea of her beauty, which far surpasses any thing that art could do. Recall the passage where Helen enters the assembly of the Trojan elders. The venerable men see her coming, and one says to the others:[140]—

Οὐ νέμεσις Τρῶας καὶ ἐϋκνήμιδας Ἀχαιοὺς τοιῇδ’ ἀμφὶ γυναικὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἄλγεα πάσχειν· αἰνῶς ἀθανάτῃσι θεῇς εἰς ὦπα ἔοικεν.

What can give a more vivid idea of her beauty than that cold-blooded age should deem it well worth the war which had cost so much blood and so many tears?

What Homer could not describe in its details, he shows us by its effect. Paint us, ye poets, the delight, the attraction, the love, the enchantment of beauty, and you have painted beauty itself. Who can think of Sappho’s beloved, the sight of whom, as she confesses, robs her of sense and thought, as ugly? We seem to be gazing on a beautiful and perfect form, when we sympathize with the emotions which only such a form can produce. It is not Ovid’s minute description of the beauties of his Lesbia,—

Quos humeros, quales vidi tetigique lacertos! Forma papillarum quam fuit apta premi! Quam castigato planus sub pectore venter! Quantum et quale latus! quam juvenile femur!

that makes us fancy we are enjoying the same sight which he enjoyed; but because he gives the details with a sensuousness which stirs the passions.

Yet another way in which poetry surpasses art in the description of physical beauty, is by turning beauty into charm. Charm is beauty in motion, and therefore less adapted to the painter than the poet. The painter can suggest motion, but his figures are really destitute of it. Charm therefore in a picture becomes grimace, while in poetry it remains what it is, a transitory beauty, which we would fain see repeated. It comes and goes, and since we can recall a motion more vividly and easily than mere forms and colors, charm must affect us more strongly than beauty under the same conditions. All that touches and pleases in the picture of Alcina is charm. Her eyes impress us not from their blackness and fire, but because they are—

Pietosi a riguardar, a mover parchi,

they move slowly and with gracious glances, because Cupid sports around them and shoots from them his arrows. Her mouth pleases, not because vermilion lips enclose two rows of orient pearls, but because of the gentle smile, which opens a paradise on earth, and of the courteous accents that melt the rudest heart. The enchantment of her bosom lies not so much in the milk and ivory and apples, that typify its whiteness and graceful form, as in its gentle heavings, like the rise and fall of waves under a pleasant breeze.

Due pome acerbe, e pur d’ avorio fatte, Vengono e van, come onda al primo margo, Quando piacevole aura il mar combatte.

I am convinced that such traits as these, compressed into one or two stanzas, would be far more effective than the five over which Ariosto has spread them, interspersed with cold descriptions of form much too learned for our sensibilities.

Anacreon preferred the apparent absurdity of requiring impossibilities of the artist, to leaving the image of his mistress unenlivened with these mobile charms.

τρυφεροῦ δ’ ἔσω γενείου περὶ λυγδίνῳ τραχήλῳ Χάριτες πέτοιντο πᾶσαι.

He bids the artist let all the graces hover about her tender chin and marble neck. How so? literally? But that is beyond the power of art. The painter could give the chin the most graceful curve and the prettiest dimple, _Amoris digitulo impressum_ (for the ἔσω here seems to me to mean dimple); he could give the neck the softest pink, but that is all. The motion of that beautiful neck, the play of the muscles, now deepening and now half concealing the dimple, the essential charm exceeded his powers. The poet went to the limits of his art in the attempt to give us a vivid picture of beauty, in order that the painter might seek the highest expression in his. Here we have, therefore, a fresh illustration of what was urged above, that the poet, even when speaking of a painting or statue, is not bound to confine his description within the limits of art.

XXII.

Zeuxis painted a Helen, and had the courage to write beneath his picture those famous lines of Homer wherein the elders express their admiration of her beauty. Never did painting and poetry engage in closer rivalry. Victory remained undecided, and both deserved to be crowned.

For as the wise poet showed us only in its effects the beauty which he felt the impossibility of describing in detail, so the equally wise painter exhibited beauty solely through its details, deeming it unworthy of his art to have recourse to any outward aids. His whole picture was the naked figure of Helen. For it was probably the same that he painted for the people of Cortona.[141]

Let us, for curiosity’s sake, compare with this Caylus’s picture as sketched for modern artists from the same lines of Homer.

“Helen, covered with a white veil, appears in the midst of several old men, Priam among the number, who should be at once recognizable by the emblems of his royal dignity. The artist must especially exert his skill to make us feel the triumph of beauty in the eager glances and expressions of astonished admiration on the countenances of the old men. The scene is over one of the gates of the town. The background of the painting may be lost either in the open sky or against the higher buildings of the town. The first would be the bolder, but the one would be as suitable as the other.”

Imagine this picture, executed by the greatest master of our time, and compare it with the work of Zeuxis. Which will show the real triumph of beauty? This, where I feel it myself, or that, where I am to infer it from the grimaces of admiring graybeards? “Turpe senilis amor!” Looks of desire make the most reverend face ridiculous, and an old man who shows the cravings of youth is an object of disgust. This reproach cannot be brought against the Homeric elders. Theirs is but a passing spark of feeling which wisdom instantly stifles; an emotion which does honor to Helen without disgracing themselves. They acknowledge their admiration, but add at once,[142]—

ἀλλὰ καὶ ὣς, τοίη περ ἐοῦσ’, ἐν νηυσὶ νεέσθω, μηδ’ ἡμῖν τεκέεσσί τ’ ὀπίσσω πῆμα λίποιτο.

This decision saves them from being the old coxcombs which they look like in Caylus’s picture. And what is the sight that fixes their eager looks? A veiled, muffled figure. Is that Helen? I cannot conceive what induced Caylus to make her wear a veil. Homer, to be sure, expressly gives her one,

αὐτίκα δ’ ἀργεννῇσι καλυψαμένη ὀθόνῃσιν ὡρμᾶτ’ ἐκ θαλάμοιο,

“She left her chamber, robed and veiled in white,”

but only to cross the street in. And although he makes the elders express their admiration before she could have had time to take it off or throw it back, yet they were not seeing her then for the first time. Their confession need not therefore have been caused by the present hasty glance. They might often have felt what, on this occasion, they first acknowledged. There is nothing of this in the picture. When I behold the ecstasy of those old men, I want to see the cause, and, as I say, am exceedingly surprised to perceive nothing but a veiled, muffled figure, at which they are staring with such devotion. What of Helen is there? Her white veil and something of her outline, as far as outline can be traced beneath drapery. But perhaps the Count did not mean that her face should be covered. In that case, although his words—“Hélène couverte d’un voile blanc”—hardly admit of such an interpretation, another point excites my surprise. He recommends to the artist great care in the expression of the old men’s faces, and wastes not a word upon the beauty of Helen’s. This modest beauty, approaching timidly, her eyes moist with repentant tears,—is, then, the highest beauty so much a matter of course to our artists, that they need not be reminded of it? or is expression more than beauty? or is it with pictures as with the stage, where we are accustomed to accept the ugliest of actresses for a ravishing princess, if her prince only express the proper degree of passion for her.

Truly this picture of Caylus would be to that of Zeuxis as pantomime to the most sublime of poetry.

Homer was unquestionably more read formerly than now, yet we do not find mention of many pictures drawn from him even by the old artists.[143] They seem diligently to have availed themselves of any individual physical beauties which he may have pointed out. They painted these, well knowing that in this department alone they could vie with the poet with any chance of success. Zeuxis painted besides Helen a Penelope, and the Diana of Apelles was the goddess of Homer attended by her nymphs.

I will take this opportunity of saying that the passage in Pliny referring to this picture of Apelles needs correcting.[144] But to paint scenes from Homer merely because they afforded a rich composition, striking contrasts, and artistic shading, seems not to have been to the taste of the old artists; nor could it be, so long as art kept within the narrow limits of its own high calling. They fed upon the spirit of the poet, and filled their imagination with his noblest traits. The fire of his enthusiasm kindled theirs. They saw and felt with him. Thus their works became copies of the Homeric, not in the relation of portrait to original, but in the relation of a son to a father,—like, but different. The whole resemblance often lies in a single trait, the other parts being alike in nothing but in their harmony with that.

Since, moreover, the Homeric masterpieces of poetry were older than any masterpiece of art, for Homer had observed nature with the eye of an artist before either Phidias or Apelles, the artists naturally found ready made in his poems many valuable observations, which they had not yet had time to make for themselves. These they eagerly seized upon, in order that, through Homer, they might copy nature. Phidias acknowledged that the lines,[145]—

Ἦ καὶ κυανέῃσιν ἐπ’ ὀφρύσι νεῦσε Κρονίων· ἀμβρόσιαι δ’ ἄρα χαῖται ἐπεῤῥώσαντο ἄνακτος κρατὸς ἀπ’ ἀθανάτοιο· μέγαν δ’ ἐλέλιξεν Ὄλυμπον,

served him as the model of his Olympian Jupiter, and that only through their help had he succeeded in making a godlike countenance, “propemodum ex ipso cœlo petitum.” Whoever understands by this merely that the imagination of the artist was fired by the poet’s sublime picture, and thus made capable of equally sublime representations, overlooks, I think, the chief point, and contents himself with a general statement where something very special and much more satisfactory is meant. Phidias here acknowledges also, as I understand him, that this passage first led him to notice how much expression lies in the eyebrows, “quanta pars animi” is shown in them. Perhaps it further induced him to bestow more attention upon the hair, in order to express in some degree what Homer calls ambrosial curls. For it is certain that the old artists before Phidias had very little idea of the language and significance of the features, and particularly neglected the hair. Even Myron was faulty in both these respects, as Pliny observes,[146] and, according to the same authority, Pythagoras Leontinus was the first who distinguished himself by the beauty of his hair. Other artists learned from the works of Phidias what Phidias had learned from Homer.