Part 1

REFLECTIONS ON THE PAINTING AND SCULPTURE OF THE _GREEKS_.

REFLECTIONS ON THE PAINTING and SCULPTURE OF THE GREEKS: WITH INSTRUCTIONS for the CONNOISSEUR, AND An ESSAY on GRACE in Works of Art.

Translated from The _German_ Original of the Abbé WINKELMANN, Librarian of the VATICAN, F. R. S. &c. &c.

By HENRY FUSSELI, A.M.

LONDON: Printed for the TRANSLATOR, and Sold by A. MILLAR, in the Strand, 1765.

TO

The Lord SCARSDALE.

MY LORD,

With becoming gratitude for your Lordship’s condescension in granting such a noble Asylum to a Stranger, I humbly presume to shelter this Translation under your Lordship’s Patronage.

If I have been able to do justice to my Author, your Lordship’s accurate Jugment, and fine Taste, will naturally protect his Work: But I must rely wholly on your known Candour and Goodness for the pardon of many imperfections in the language.

I am, with the most profound respect,

MY LORD,

Your LORDSHIP’S

Most obliged, most obedient, and most humble Servant,

Henry Fusseli.

LONDON, 10 April, 1765.

ON THE IMITATION OF THE PAINTING and SCULPTURE of the GREEKS.

I. NATURE.

To the Greek climate we owe the production of TASTE, and from thence it spread at length over all the politer world. Every invention, communicated by foreigners to that nation, was but the feed of what it became afterwards, changing both its nature and size in a country, chosen, as _Plato_[1] says, by Minerva, to be inhabited by the Greeks, as productive of every kind of genius.

But this TASTE was not only original among the Greeks, but seemed also quite peculiar to their country: it seldom went abroad without loss; and was long ere it imparted its kind influences to more distant climes. It was, doubtless, a stranger to the northern zones, when Painting and Sculpture, those offsprings of Greece, were despised there to such a degree, that the most valuable pieces of _Corregio_ served only for blinds to the windows of the royal stables at Stockholm.

There is but one way for the moderns to become great, and perhaps unequalled; I mean, by imitating the antients. And what we are told of _Homer_, that whoever understands him well, admires him, we find no less true in matters concerning the antient, especially the Greek arts. But then we must be as familiar with them as with a friend, to find Laocoon as inimitable as _Homer_. By such intimacy our judgment will be that of _Nicomachus_: _Take these eyes_, replied he to some paltry critick, censuring the Helen of Zeuxis, _Take my eyes, and she will appear a goddess_.

With such eyes _Michael Angelo_, _Raphael_, and _Poussin_, considered the performances of the antients. They imbibed taste at its source; and Raphael particularly in its native country. We know, that he sent young artists to Greece, to copy there, for his use, the remains of antiquity.

An antient Roman statue, compared to a Greek one, will generally appear like _Virgil_’s Diana amidst her Oreads, in comparison of the Nausicaa of _Homer_, whom he imitated.

Laocoon was the standard of the Roman artists, as well as ours; and the rules of _Polycletus_ became the rules of art.

I need not put the reader in mind of the negligences to be met with in the most celebrated antient performances: the Dolphin at the feet of the Medicean Venus, with the children, and the Parerga of the Diomedes by _Dioscorides_, being commonly known. The reverse of the best Egyptian and Syrian coins seldom equals the head, in point of workmanship. Great artists are wisely negligent, and even their errors instruct. Behold their works as _Lucian_ bids you behold the Zeus of _Phidias_; _Zeus himself, not his footstool_.

It is not only _Nature_ which the votaries of the Greeks find in their works, but still more, something superior to nature; ideal beauties, brain-born images, as _Proclus_ says[2].

The most beautiful body of ours would perhaps be as much inferior to the most beautiful Greek one, as Iphicles was to his brother Hercules. The forms of the Greeks, prepared to beauty, by the influence of the mildest and purest sky, became perfectly elegant by their early exercises. Take a Spartan youth, sprung from heroes, undistorted by swaddling-cloths; whose bed, from his seventh year, was the earth, familiar with wrestling and swimming from his infancy; and compare him with one of our young Sybarits, and then decide which of the two would be deemed worthy, by an artist, to serve for the model of a Theseus, an Achilles, or even a Bacchus. The latter would produce a Theseus fed on roses, the former a Theseus fed on flesh, to borrow the expression of _Euphranor_.

The grand games were always a very strong incentive for every Greek youth to exercise himself. Whoever aspired to the honours of these was obliged, by the laws, to submit to a trial of ten months at Elis, the general rendezvous; and there the first rewards were commonly won by youths, as _Pindar_ tells us.[3]_To be like the God-like Diagoras_, was the fondest wish of every youth.

Behold the swift Indian outstripping in pursuit the hart: how briskly his juices circulate! how flexible, how elastic his nerves and muscles! how easy his whole frame! Thus _Homer_ draws his heroes, and his Achilles he eminently marks for “being swift of foot.”

By these exercises the bodies of the Greeks got the great and manly Contour observed in their statues, without any bloated corpulency. The young Spartans were bound to appear every tenth day naked before the Ephori, who, when they perceived any inclinable to fatness, ordered them a scantier diet; nay, it was one of _Pythagoras_’s precepts, to beware of growing too corpulent; and, perhaps for the same reason, youths aspiring to wrestling-games were, in the remoter ages of Greece, during their trial, confined to a milk diet.

They were particularly cautious in avoiding every deforming custom; and _Alcibiades_, when a boy, refusing to learn to play on the flute, for fear of its discomposing his features, was followed by all the youth of Athens.

In their dress they were professed followers of nature. No modern stiffening habit, no squeezing stays hindered Nature from forming easy beauty; the fair knew no anxiety about their attire, and from their loose and short habits the Spartan girls got the epithet of Phænomirides.

We know what pains they took to have handsome children, but want to be acquainted with their methods: for certainly _Quillet_, in his Callipædy, falls short of their numerous expedients. They even attempted changing blue eyes to black ones, and games of beauty were exhibited at Elis, the rewards consisting of arms consecrated to the temple of Minerva. How could they miss of competent and learned judges, when, as _Aristotle_ tells us, the Grecian youths were taught drawing expressly for that purpose? From their fine complexion, which, though mingled with a vast deal of foreign blood, is still preserved in most of the Greek islands, and from the still enticing beauty of the fair sex, especially at Chios; we may easily form an idea of the beauty of the former inhabitants, who boasted of being Aborigines, nay, more antient than the moon.

And are not there several modern nations, among whom beauty is too common to give any title to pre-eminence? Such are unanimously accounted the Georgians and the Kabardinski in the Crim.

Those diseases which are destructive of beauty, were moreover unknown to the Greeks. There is not the least hint of the small-pox, in the writings of their physicians; and _Homer_, whose portraits are always so truly drawn, mentions not one pitted face. Venereal plagues, and their daughter the English malady, had not yet names.

And must we not then, considering every advantage which nature bestows, or art teaches, for forming, preserving, and improving beauty, enjoyed and applied by the Grecians; must we not then confess, there is the strongest probability that the beauty of their persons excelled all we can have an idea of?

Art claims liberty: in vain would nature produce her noblest offsprings, in a country where rigid laws would choak her progressive growth, as in Egypt, that pretended parent of sciences and arts: but in Greece, where, from their earliest youth, the happy inhabitants were devoted to mirth and pleasure, where narrow-spirited formality never restrained the liberty of manners, the artist enjoyed nature without a veil.

The Gymnasies, where, sheltered by public modesty, the youths exercised themselves naked, were the schools of art. These the philosopher frequented, as well as the artist. _Socrates_ for the instruction of a Charmides, Autolycus, Lysis; _Phidias_ for the improvement of his art by their beauty. Here he studied the elasticity of the muscles, the ever varying motions of the frame, the outlines of fair forms, or the Contour left by the young wrestler on the sand. Here beautiful nakedness appeared with such a liveliness of expression, such truth and variety of situations, such a noble air of the body, as it would be ridiculous to look for in any hired model of our academies.

Truth springs from the feelings of the heart. What shadow of it therefore can the modern artist hope for, by relying upon a vile model, whose soul is either too base to feel, or too stupid to express the passions, the sentiment his object claims? unhappy he! if experience and fancy fail him.

The beginning of many of _Plato_’s dialogues, supposed to have been held in the Gymnasies, cannot raise our admiration of the generous souls of the Athenian youth, without giving us, at the same time, a strong presumption of a suitable nobleness in their outward carriage and bodily exercises.

The fairest youths danced undressed on the theatre; and _Sophocles_, the great _Sophocles_, when young, was the first who dared to entertain his fellow-citizens in this manner. _Phryne_ went to bathe at the Eleusinian games, exposed to the eyes of all Greece, and rising from the water became the model of Venus Anadyomene. During certain solemnities the young Spartan maidens danced naked before the young men: strange this may seem, but will appear more probable, when we consider that the christians of the primitive church, both men and women, were dipped together in the same font.

Then every solemnity, every festival, afforded the artist opportunity to familiarize himself with all the beauties of Nature.

In the most happy times of their freedom, the humanity of the Greeks abhorred bloody games, which even in the Ionick Asia had ceased long before, if, as some guess, they had once been usual there. _Antiochus Epiphanes_, by ordering shews of Roman gladiators, first presented them with such unhappy victims; and custom and time, weakening the pangs of sympathizing humanity, changed even these games into schools of art. There _Ctesias_ studied his dying gladiator, in whom you might descry “how much life was still left in him[4].”

These frequent occasions of observing Nature, taught the Greeks to go on still farther. They began to form certain general ideas of beauty, with regard to the proportions of the inferiour parts, as well as of the whole frame: these they raised above the reach of mortality, according to the superiour model of some ideal nature.

Thus _Raphael_ formed his Galatea, as we learn by his letter to Count Baltazar Castiglione[5], where he says, “Beauty being so seldom found among the fair, I avail myself of a certain ideal image.”

According to those ideas, exalted above the pitch of material models, the Greeks formed their gods and heroes: the profile of the brow and nose of gods and goddesses is almost a streight line. The same they gave on their coins to queens, &c. but without indulging their fancy too much. Perhaps this profile was as peculiar to the antient Greeks, as flat noses and little eyes to the Calmucks and Chinese; a supposition which receives some strength from the large eyes of all the heads on Greek coins and gems.

From the same ideas the Romans formed their Empresses on their coins. Livia and Agrippina have the profile of Artemisia and Cleopatra.

We observe, nevertheless, that the Greek artists in general, submitted to the law prescribed by the Thebans: “To do, under a penalty, their best in imitating Nature.” For, where they could not possibly apply their easy profile, without endangering the resemblance, they followed Nature, as we see instanced in the beauteous head of Julia, the daughter of Titus, done by _Euodus_[6].

But to form a “just resemblance, and, at the same time, a handsomer one,” being always the chief rule they observed, and which _Polygnotus_ constantly went by; they must, of necessity, be supposed to have had in view a more beauteous and more perfect Nature. And when we are told, that some artists imitated _Praxiteles_, who took his concubine _Cratina_ for the model of his Cnidian Venus; or that others formed the graces from _Lais_; it is to be understood that they did so, without neglecting these great laws of the art. Sensual beauty furnished the painter with all that nature could give; ideal beauty with the awful and sublime; from that he took the _Humane_, from this the _Divine_.

Let any one, sagacious enough to pierce into the depths of art, compare the whole system of the Greek figures with that of the moderns, by which, as they say, nature alone is imitated; good heaven! what a number of neglected beauties will he not discover!

For instance, in most of the modern figures, if the skin happens to be any where pressed, you see there several little smart wrinkles: when, on the contrary, the same parts, pressed in the same manner on Greek statues, by their soft undulations, form at last but one noble pressure. These master-pieces never shew us the skin forcibly stretched, but softly embracing the firm flesh, which fills it up without any tumid expansion, and harmoniously follows its direction. There the skin never, as on modern bodies, appears in plaits distinct from the flesh.

Modern works are likewise distinguished from the antient by parts; a crowd of small touches and dimples too sensibly drawn. In antient works you find these distributed with sparing sagacity, and, as relative to a completer and more perfect Nature, offered but as hints, nay, often perceived only by the learned.

The probability still increases, that the bodies of the Greeks, as well as the works of their artists, were framed with more unity of system, a nobler harmony of parts, and a completeness of the whole, above our lean tensions and hollow wrinkles.

Probability, ’tis true, is all we can pretend to: but it deserves the attention of our artists and connoisseurs the rather, as the veneration professed for the antient monuments is commonly imputed to prejudice, and not to their excellence; as if the numerous ages, during which they have mouldered, were the only motive for bestowing on them exalted praises, and setting them up for the standards of imitation.

Such as would fain deny to the Greeks the advantages both of a more perfect Nature and of ideal Beauties, boast of the famous _Bernini_, as their great champion. He was of opinion, besides, that Nature was possessed of every requisite beauty: the only skill being to discover that. He boasted of having got rid of a prejudice concerning the Medicean Venus, whose charms he at first thought peculiar ones; but, after many careful researches, discovered them now and then in Nature[7].

He was taught then, by the Venus, to discover beauties in common Nature, which he had formerly thought peculiar to that statue, and but for it, never would have searched for them. Follows it not from thence, that the beauties of the Greek statues being discovered with less difficulty than those of Nature, are of course more affecting; not so diffused, but more harmoniously united? and if this be true, the pointing out of Nature as chiefly imitable, is leading us into a more tedious and bewildered road to the knowledge of perfect beauty, than setting up the ancients for that purpose: consequently _Bernini_, by adhering too strictly to Nature, acted against his own principles, as well as obstructed the progress of his disciples.

The imitation of beauty is either reduced to a single object, and is _individual_, or, gathering observations from single ones, _composes of these one whole_. The former we call copying, drawing a portrait; ’tis the straight way to Dutch forms and figures; whereas the other leads to general beauty, and its ideal images, and is the way the Greeks took. But there is still this difference between them and us: they enjoying daily occasions of seeing beauty, (suppose even not superior to ours,) acquired those ideal riches with less toil than we, confined as we are to a few and often fruitless opportunities, ever can hope for. It would be no easy matter, I fancy, for our nature, to produce a frame equal in beauty to that of Antinous; and surely no idea can soar above the more than human proportions of a deity, in the Apollo of the Vatican, which is a compound of the united force of Nature, Genius, and Art.

Their imitation discovering in the one every beauty diffused through Nature, shewing in the other the pitch to which the most perfect Nature can elevate herself, when soaring above the senses, will quicken the genius of the artist, and shorten his discipleship: he will learn to think and draw with confidence, seeing here the fixed limits of human and divine beauty.

Building on this ground, his hand and senses directed by the Greek rule of beauty, the modern artist goes on the surest way to the imitation of Nature. The ideas of unity and perfection, which he acquired in meditating on antiquity, will help him to combine, and to ennoble the more scattered and weaker beauties of our Nature. Thus he will improve every beauty he discovers in it, and by comparing the beauties of nature with the ideal, form rules for himself.

Then, and not sooner, he, particularly the painter, may be allowed to commit himself to Nature, especially in cases where his art is beyond the instruction of the old marbles, to wit, in drapery; then, like _Poussin_, he may proceed with more liberty; for “a timid follower will never get the start of his leaders, and he who is at a loss to produce something of his own, will be a bad manager of the productions of another,” as _Michael Angelo_ says; Minds favoured by Nature,

_Quibus Arte benigna,_ _Et meliore luto, finxit præcordia Titan,_

have here a plain way to become originals.

Thus the account _de Piles_ gives, ought to be understood, that _Raphael_, a short time before he was carried off by death, intended to forsake the marbles, in order to addict himself wholly to Nature. True antient taste would most certainly have guided him through every maze of common Nature; and whatever observations, whatever new ideas he might have reaped from that, they would all, by a kind of chymical transmutation, have been changed to his own essence and soul.

He, perhaps, might have indulged more variety; enlarged his draperies; improved his colours, his light and shadow: but none of these improvements would have raised his pictures to that high esteem they deserve, for that noble Contour, and that sublimity of thoughts, which he acquired from the ancients.

Nothing would more decisively prove the advantages to be got by imitating the ancients, preferably to Nature, than an essay made with two youths of equal talents, by devoting the one to antiquity, the other to Nature: this would draw Nature as he finds her; if Italian, perhaps he might paint like _Caravaggio_; if Flemish, and lucky, like _Jac. Jordans_; if French, like _Stella_: the other would draw her as she directs, and paint like _Raphael_.

II. CONTOUR.

But even supposing that the imitation of Nature could supply all the artist wants, she never could bestow the precision of Contour, that characteristic distinction of the ancients.

The noblest Contour unites or circumscribes every part of the most perfect Nature, and the ideal beauties in the figures of the Greeks; or rather, contains them both. _Euphranor_, famous after the epoch of _Zeuxis_, is said to have first ennobled it.

Many of the moderns have attempted to imitate this Contour, but very few with success. The great _Rubens_ is far from having attained either its precision or elegance, especially in the performances which he finished before he went to Italy, and studied the antiques.

The line by which Nature divides completeness from superfluity is but a small one, and, insensible as it often is, has been crossed even by the best moderns; while these, in shunning a meagre Contour, became corpulent, those, in shunning that, grew lean.

Among them all, only _Michael Angelo_, perhaps, may be said to have attained the antique; but only in strong muscular figures, heroic frames; not in those of tender youth; nor in female bodies, which, under his bold hand, grew Amazons.

The Greek artist, on the contrary, adjusted his Contour, in every figure, to the breadth of a single hair, even in the nicest and most tiresome performances, as gems. Consider the Diomedes and Perseus of _Dioscorides_[8], Hercules and Iole by _Teucer_[9], and admire the inimitable Greeks.

_Parrhasius_, they say, was master of the correctest Contour.

This Contour reigns in Greek figures, even when covered with drapery, as the chief aim of the artist; the beautiful frame pierces the marble like a transparent _Coan_ cloth.

The high-stiled Agrippina, and the three vestals in the royal cabinet at Dresden, deserve to be mentioned as eminent proofs of this. This Agrippina seems not the mother of Nero, but an elder one, the spouse of Germanicus. She much resembles another pretended Agrippina, in the parlour of the library of St. Marc, at Venice[10]. Ours is a sitting figure, above the size of Nature, her head inclined on her right hand; her fine face speaks a soul “pining in thought,” absorbed in pensive sorrow, and senseless to every outward impression. The artist, I suppose, intended to draw his heroine in the mournful moment she received the news of her banishment to Pandataria.

The three vestals deserve our esteem from a double title: as being the first important discoveries of Herculaneum, and models of the sublimest drapery. All three, but particularly one above the natural size, would, with regard to that, be worthy companions of the Farnesian _Flora_, and all the other boasts of antiquity. The two others seem, by their resemblance to each other, productions of the same hand, only distinguished by their heads, which are not of equal goodness. On the best the curled hairs, running in furrows from the forehead, are tied on the neck: on the other the hair being smooth on the scalp, and curled on the front, is gathered behind, and tied with a ribband: this head seems of a modern hand, but a good one.

There is no veil on these heads; but that makes not against their being vestals: for the priestesses of Vesta (I speak on proof) were not always veiled; or rather, as the drapery seems to betray, the veil, which was of one piece with the garments, being thrown backwards, mingles with the cloaths on the neck.

’Tis to these three inimitable pieces that the world owes the first hints of the ensuing discovery of the subterranean treasures of Herculaneum.

Their discovery happened when the same ruins that overwhelmed the town had nearly extinguished the unhappy remembrance of it: when the tremendous fate that spoke its doom was only known by the account which Pliny gives of his uncle’s death.