Part 2

These great master-pieces of the Greek art were transplanted, and worshipped in Germany, long before Naples could boast of one single Herculanean monument.

They were discovered in the year 1706 at Portici near Naples, in a ruinous vault, on occasion of digging the foundations of a villa, for the Prince d’Elbeuf, and immediately, with other new discovered marble and metal statues, came into the possession of Prince Eugene, and were transported to Vienna.

Eugene, who well knew their value, provided a Sala Terrena to be built expressly for them, and a few others: and so highly were they esteemed, that even on the first rumour of their sale, the academy and the artists were in an uproar, and every body, when they were transported to Dresden, followed them with heavy eyes.

The famous _Matielli_, to whom

_His rule Polyclet, his chissel Phidias gave,_

Algarotti.

copied them in clay before their removal, and following them some years after, filled Dresden with everlasting monuments of his art: but even there he studied the drapery of his priestesses, (drapery his chief skill!) till he laid down his chissel, and thus gave the most striking proof of their excellence.

III. DRAPERY.

By Drapery is to be understood all that the art teaches of covering the nudities, and folding the garments; and this is the third prerogative of the ancients.

The Drapery of the vestals above, is grand and elegant. The smaller foldings spring gradually from the larger ones, and in them are lost again, with a noble freedom, and gentle harmony of the whole, without hiding the correct Contour. How few of the moderns would stand the test here!

Justice, however, shall not be refused to some great modern artists, who, without impairing nature or truth, have left, in certain cases, the road which the ancients generally pursued. The Greek Drapery, in order to help the Contour, was, for the most part, taken from thin and wet garments, which of course clasped the body, and discovered the shape. The robe of the Greek ladies was extremely thin; thence its epithet of Peplon.

Nevertheless the reliefs, the pictures, and particularly the busts of the ancients, are instances that they did not always keep to this undulating Drapery[11].

In modern times the artists were forced to heap garments, and sometimes heavy ones, on each other, which of course could not fall into the flowing folds of the ancients. Hence the large-folded Drapery, by which the painter and sculptor may display as much skill as by the ancient manner. _Carlo Marat_ and _Francis Solimena_ may be called the chief masters of it: but the garments of the new Venetian school, by passing the bounds of nature and propriety, became stiff as brass.

IV. EXPRESSION.

The last and most eminent characteristic of the Greek works is a noble simplicity and sedate grandeur in Gesture and Expression. As the bottom of the sea lies peaceful beneath a foaming surface, a great soul lies sedate beneath the strife of passions in Greek figures.

’Tis in the face of Laocoon this soul shines with full lustre, not confined however to the face, amidst the most violent sufferings. Pangs piercing every muscle, every labouring nerve; pangs which we almost feel ourselves, while we consider—not the face, nor the most expressive parts—only the belly contracted by excruciating pains: these however, I say, exert not themselves with violence, either in the face or gesture. He pierces not heaven, like the Laocoon of _Virgil_; his mouth is rather opened to discharge an anxious overloaded groan, as _Sadolet_ says; the struggling body and the supporting mind exert themselves with equal strength, nay balance all the frame.

Laocoon suffers, but suffers like the Philoctetes of _Sophocles_: we weeping feel his pains, but wish for the hero’s strength to support his misery.

The Expression of so great a soul is beyond the force of mere nature. It was in his own mind the artist was to search for the strength of spirit with which he marked his marble. Greece enjoyed artists and philosophers in the same persons; and the wisdom of more than one Metrodorus directed art, and inspired its figures with more than common souls.

Had Laocoon been covered with a garb becoming an antient sacrificer, his sufferings would have lost one half of their Expression. _Bernini_ pretended to perceive the first effects of the operating venom in the numbness of one of the thighs.

Every action or gesture in Greek figures, not stamped with this character of sage dignity, but too violent, too passioniate, was called “Parenthyrsos.”

For, the more tranquillity reigns in a body, the fitter it is to draw the true character of the soul; which, in every excessive gesture, seems to rush from her proper centre, and being hurried away by extremes becomes unnatural. Wound up to the highest pitch of passion, she may force herself upon the duller eye; but the true sphere of her action is simplicity and calmness. In Laocoon sufferings alone had been Parenthyrsos; the artist therefore, in order to reconcile the significative and ennobling qualities of his soul, put him into a posture, allowing for the sufferings that were necessary, the next to a state of tranquillity: a tranquillity however that is characteristical: the soul will be herself—this individual—not the soul of mankind; sedate, but active; calm, but not indifferent or drowsy.

What a contrast! how diametrically opposite to this is the taste of our modern artists, especially the young ones! on nothing do they bestow their approbation, but contorsions and strange postures, inspired with boldness; this they pretend is done with spirit, with _Franchezza_. Contrast is the darling of their ideas; in it they fancy every perfection. They fill their performances with comet-like excentric souls, despising every thing but an Ajax or a Capaneus.

Arts have their infancy as well as men; they begin, as well as the artist, with froth and bombast: in such buskins the muse of Æschilus stalks, and part of the diction in his Agamemnon is more loaded with hyperboles than all Heraclitus’s nonsense. Perhaps the primitive Greek painters drew in the same manner that their first good tragedian thought in.

In all human actions flutter and rashness precede, sedateness and solidity follow: but time only can discover, and the judicious will admire these only: they are the characteristics of great masters; violent passions run away with their disciples.

The sages in the art know the difficulties hid under that air of easiness:

_ut sibi quivis_ _Speret idem, sudet multum, frustraque laboret_ _Ausus idem._

Hor.

_La Fage_, though an eminent designer, was not able to attain the purity of ancient taste. Every thing is animated in his works; they demand, and at the same time dissipate, your attention, like a company striving to talk all at once.

This noble simplicity and sedate grandeur is also the true characteristical mark of the best and maturest Greek writings, of the epoch and school of _Socrates_. Possessed of these qualities _Raphael_ became eminently great, and he owed them to the ancients.

That great soul of his, lodged in a beauteous body, was requisite for the first discovery of the true character of the ancients: he first felt all their beauties, and (what he was peculiarly happy in!) at an age when vulgar, unfeeling, and half-moulded souls overlook every higher beauty.

Ye that approach his works, teach your eyes to be sensible of those beauties, refine your taste by the true antique, and then that solemn tranquillity of the chief figures in his _Attila_, deemed insipid by the vulgar, will appear to you equally significant and sublime. The Roman bishop, in order to divert the Hun from his design of assailing Rome, appears not with the air of a Rhetor, but as a venerable man, whose very presence softens uproar into peace; like him drawn by Virgil:

_Tum pietate gravem ac meritis, si forte virum quem_ _Conspexere, silent, adrectisque auribus adstant:_

Æn. I.

full of confidence in God, he faces down the barbarian: the two Apostles descend not with the air of slaughtering angels, but (if sacred may be compared with profane) like Jove, whose very nod shakes Olympus.

_Algardi_, in his celebrated representation of the same story, done in bas-relief on an altar in St. Peter’s church at Rome, was either too negligent, or too weak, to give this active tranquillity of his great predecessor to the figures of his Apostles. There they appear like messengers of the Lord of Hosts: here like human warriors with mortal arms.

How few of those we call connoisseurs have ever been able to understand, and sincerely to admire, the grandeur of expression in the St. _Michael of Guido_, in the church of the Capuchins at Rome! they prefer commonly the Archangel of _Concha_, whose face glows with indignation and revenge[12]; whereas _Guido_’s Angel, after having overthrown the fiend of God and man, hovers over him unruffled and undismayed.

Thus, to heighten the hero of _The Campaign_, victorious Marlborough, the British poet paints the avenging Angel hovering over Britannia with the like serenity and awful calmness.

The royal gallery at Dresden contains now, among its treasures, one of _Raphael_’s best pictures, witness Vasari, &c. a Madonna with the Infant; St. Sixtus and St. Barbara kneeling, one on each side, and two Angels in the fore-part.

It was the chief altar-piece in the cloister of St. Sixtus at Piacenza, which was crouded by connoisseurs, who came to see this Raphael, in the same manner as Thespis was in the days of old, for the sake of the beautiful Cupid of _Praxiteles_.

Behold the Madonna! her face brightens with innocence; a form above the female size, and the calmness of her mien, make her appear as already beatified: she has that silent awfulness which the ancients spread over their deities. How grand, how noble is her Contour!

The child in her arms is elevated above vulgar children, by a face darting the beams of divinity through every smiling feature of harmless childhood.

St. Barbara kneels, with adoring stillness, at her side: but being far beneath the majesty of the chief figure, the great artist compensated her humbler graces with soft enticing charms.

The Saint opposite to her is venerable with age. His features seem to bear witness of his sacred youth.

The veneration which St. Barbara declares for the Madonna, expressed in the most sensible and pathetic manner, by her fine hands clasped on her breast, helps to support the motion of one of St. Sixtus’s hands, by which he utters his extasy, better becoming (as the artist judiciously thought, and chose for variety’s sake) manly strength, than female modesty.

Time, ’tis true, has withered the primitive splendour of this picture, and partly blown off its lively colours; but still the soul, with which the painter inspired his godlike work, breathes life through all its parts.

Let those that approach this, and the rest of _Raphael_’s works, in hopes of finding there the trifling Dutch and Flemish beauties, the laboured nicety of _Netscher_, or _Douw_, flesh _ivorified_ by _Van der Werf_, or even the licked manner of some of _Raphael_’s living countrymen; let those, I say, be told, that _Raphael_ was not a great master for them.

V. WORKMANSHIP IN SCULPTURE.

After these remarks on the Nature, the Contour, the Drapery, the simplicity and grandeur of Expression in the performances of the Greek artists, we shall proceed to some inquiries into their method of working.

Their models were generally made of wax; instead of which the moderns used clay, or such like unctuous stuff, as seeming fitter for expressing flesh, than the more gluey and tenacious wax.

A method however not new, though more frequent in our times: for we know even the name of that ancient who first attempted modelling in wet clay; ’twas _Dibutades_ of Sicyon; and _Arcesilaus_, the friend of _Lucullus_, grew more famous by his models of clay than his other performances. He made for _Lucullus_ a figure of clay representing _Happiness_, and received 60,000 sesterces: and _Octavius_, a Roman Knight, paid him a talent for the model only of a large dish, in plaister, which he designed to have finished in gold.

Of all materials, clay might be allowed to be the fittest for shaping figures, could it preserve its moistness; but losing that by time or fire, its solider parts, contracting by degrees, lessen the bulk of the mass; and that which is formed, being of different diameters, grows sooner dry in some parts than in others, and the dry ones being shrunk to a smaller size, there will be no proportion kept in the whole.

From this inconvenience wax is always free: it loses nothing of its bulk; and there are also means to give it the smoothness of flesh, which is refused to modelling; viz. you make your model of clay, mould it with plaister, and cast the wax over it.

But for transferring their models to the marble, the Greeks seem to have possessed some peculiar advantages, which are now lost: for you discover, every where in their works, the traces of a confident hand; and even in those of inferior rank, it would be no easy matter to prove a wrong cut. Surely hands so steady, so secure, must of necessity have been guided by rules more determinate and less arbitrary than we can boast of.

The usual method of our sculptors is, to quarter the well-prepared model with horizontals and perpendiculars, and, as is common in copying a picture, to draw a relative number of squares on the marble.

Thus, regular gradations of a scale being supposed, every small square of the model has its corresponding one on the marble. But the contents of the relative masses not being determinable by a measured surface, the artist, though he gives to his stone the resemblance of the model, yet, as he only depends on the precarious aid of his eye, he shall never cease wavering, as to his doing right or wrong, cutting too flat or too deep.

Nor can he find lines to determine precisely the outlines, or the Contour of the inward parts, and the centre of his model, in so fixed and unchangeable a manner, as to enable him, exactly, to transfer the same Contours upon his stone.

To all this add, that, if his work happens to be too voluminous for one single hand, he must trust to those of his journeymen and disciples, who, too often, are neither skilful nor cautious enough to follow their master’s design; and if once the smallest trifle be cut wrong, for it is impossible to fix, by this method, the limits of the cuts, all is lost.

It is to be remarked in general, that every sculptor, who carries on his chisselings their whole length, on first fashioning his marble, and does not prepare them by gradual cuts for the last final strokes; it is to be remarked, I say, that he never can keep his work free from faults.

Another chief defect in that method is this: the artist cannot help cutting off, every moment, the lines on his block; and though he restore them, cannot possibly be sure of avoiding mistakes.

On account of this unavoidable uncertainty, the artists found themselves obliged to contrive another method, and that which the French academy at Rome first made use of for copying antiques, was applied by many even to modelled performances.

Over the statue which you want to copy, you fix a well-proportioned square, dividing it into equally distant degrees, by plummets: by these the outlines of the figure are more distinctly marked than they could possibly be by means of the former method: they moreover afford the artist an exact measure of the more prominent or lower parts, by the degrees in which these parts are near them, and in short, allow him to go on with more confidence.

But the undulations of a curve being not determinable by a single perpendicular, the Contours of the figure are but indifferently indicated to the artist; and among their many declinations from a straight surface, his tenour is every moment lost.

The difficulty of discovering the real proportions of the figures, may also be easily imagined: they seek them by horizontals placed across the plummets. But the rays reflected from the figure through the squares, will strike the eye in enlarged angles, and consequently appear bigger, in proportion as they are high or low to the point of view.

Nevertheless, as the ancient monuments must be most cautiously dealt with, plummets are still of use in copying them, as no surer or easier method has been discovered: but for performances to be done from models they are unfit for want of precision.

_Michael Angelo_ went alone a way unknown before him, and (strange to tell!) untrod since the time of that genius of modern sculpture.

This Phidias of latter times, and next to the Greeks, hath, in all probability, hit the very mark of his great masters. We know at least no method so eminently proper for expressing on the block every, even the minutest, beauty of the model.

_Vasari_[13] seems to give but a defective description of this method, viz. _Michael Angelo_ took a vessel filled with water, in which he placed his model of wax, or some such indissoluble matter: then, by degrees, raised it to the surface of the water. In this manner the prominent parts were unwet, the lower covered, ’till the whole at length appeared. Thus says _Vasari_, he cut his marble, proceeding from the more prominent parts to the lower ones.

_Vasari_, it seems, either mistook something in the management of his friend, or by the negligence of his account gives us room to imagine it somewhat different from what he relates.

The form of the vessel is not determined; to raise the figure from below would prove too troublesome, and presupposes much more than this historian had a mind to inform us of.

_Michael Angelo_, no doubt, thoroughly examined his invention, its conveniencies and inconveniencies, and in all probability observed the following method.

He took a vessel proportioned to his model; for instance, an oblong square: he marked the surface of its sides with certain dimensions, and these he transferred afterwards, with regular gradations, on the marble. The inside of the vessel he marked to the bottom with degrees. Then he laid, or, if of wax, fastened his model in it; he drew, perhaps, a bar over the vessel suitable to its dimensions, according to whose number he drew, first, lines on his marble, and immediately after, the figure; he poured water on the model till it reached its outmost points, and after having fixed upon a prominent part, he drew off as much water as hindered him from seeing it, and then went to work with his chissel, the degrees shewing him how to go on; if, at the same time, some other part of the model appeared, it was copied too, as far as seen.

Water was again carried off, in order to let the lower parts appear; by the degrees he saw to what pitch it was reduced, and by its smoothness he discovered the exact surfaces of the lower parts; nor could he go wrong, having the same number of degrees to guide him, upon his marble.

The water not only pointed him out the heights or depths, but also the Contour of his model; and the space left free on the insides to the surface of the water, whose largeness was determined by the degrees of the two other sides, was the exact measure of what might safely be cut down from the block.

His work had now got the first form, and a correct one: the levelness of the water had drawn a line, of which every prominence of the mass was a point; according to the diminution of the water the line sunk in a horizontal direction, and was followed by the artist ’till he discovered the declinations of the prominences, and their mingling with the lower parts. Proceeding thus with every degree, as it appeared, he finished the Contour, and took his model out of the water.

His figure wanted beauty: he again poured water to a proper height over his model, and then numbering the degrees to the line described by the water, he descried the exact height of the protuberant parts; on these he levelled his rule, and took the measure of the distance, from its verge to the bottom; and then comparing all he had done with his marble, and finding the same number of degrees, he was geometrically sure of success.

Repeating his task, he attempted to express the motion and re-action of nerves and muscles, the soft undulations of the smaller parts, and every imitable beauty of his model. The water insinuating itself, even into the most inaccessible parts, traced their Contour with the correctest sharpness and precision.

This method admits of every possible posture. In profile especially, it discovers every inadvertency; shews the Contour of the prominent and lower parts, and the whole diameter.

All this, and the hope of success, presupposes a model formed by skilful hands, in the true taste of antiquity.

This is the way by which _Michael Angelo_ arrived at immortality. Fame and rewards conspired to procure him what leisure he wanted, for performances which required so much care.

But the artist of our days, however endowed by nature and industry with talents to raise himself, and even though he perceive precision and truth in this method, is forced to exert his abilities for getting bread rather than honour: he of course rests in his usual sphere, and continues to trust in an eye directed by years and practice.

Now this eye, by the observations of which he is chiefly ruled, being at last, though by a great deal of uncertain practice, become almost decisive: how refined, how exact might it not have been, if, from early youth, acquainted with never-changing rules!

And were young artists, at their first beginning to shape the clay or form the wax, so happy as to be instructed in this sure method of _Michael Angelo_, which was the fruit of long researches, they might with reason hope to come as near the Greeks as he did.

VI. PAINTING.

Greek Painting perhaps would share all the praises bestowed on their Sculpture, had time and the barbarity of mankind allowed us to be decisive on that point.

All the Greek painters are allowed is Contour and Expression. Perspective, Composition, and Colouring, are denied them; a judgment founded on some bas-reliefs, and the new-discovered ancient (for we dare not say Greek) pictures, at and near Rome, in the subterranean vaults of the palaces of Mæcenas, Titus, Trajan, and the Antonini; of which but about thirty are preserved entire, some being only in Mosaic.

_Turnbull_, to his treatise on ancient painting, has subjoined a collection of the most known ancient pictures, drawn by _Camillo Paderni_, and engraved by _Mynde_; and these alone give some value to the magnificent and abused paper of his work. Two of them are copied from originals in the cabinet of the late Dr. _Mead_.

That _Poussin_ much studied the pretended _Aldrovandine_ Nuptials; that drawings are found done by _Annibal Carracci_, from the presumed _Marcius Coriolanus_; and that there is a most striking resemblance between the heads of _Guido_, and those on the Mosaic representing _Jupiter_ carrying off _Europa_, are remarks long since made.

Indeed, if ancient Painting were to be judged by these, and such like remains of _Fresco_ pictures, Contour and Expression might be wrested from it in the same manner. For the pictures, with figures as big as life, pulled off with the walls of the Herculanean theatre, afford but a very poor idea of the Contour and Expression of the ancient painters. Theseus, the conqueror of the Minotaur, worshipped by the Athenian youths; Flora with Hercules and a Faunus; the pretended judgment of the Decemvir Appius Claudius, are on the testimony of an artist who saw them, of a Contour as mean as faulty; and the heads want not only Expression, but those in the Claudius even Character.