Part 3

But even this is an evident instance of the meanness of the artists: for the science of beautiful Proportions, of Contour, and Expression, could not be the exclusive privilege of Greek sculptors alone.

However, though I am for doing justice to the ancients, I have no intention to lessen the merit of the moderns.

In Perspective there is no comparison between them and the ancients, whom no earned defence can intitle to any superiority in that science. The laws of Composition and Ordonnance seem to have been but imperfectly known by the ancients: the reliefs of the times when the Greek arts were flourishing at Rome, are instances of this. The accounts of the ancient writers, and the remains of Painting are likewise, in point of Colouring, decisive in favour of the moderns.

There are several other objects of Paintings which, in modern times, have attained greater perfection: such are landscapes and cattle pieces. The ancients seem not to have been acquainted with the handsomer varieties of different animals in different climes, if we may conclude from the horse of M. Aurelius; the two horses in Monte Cavallo; the pretended Lysippean horses above the portal of St. Mark’s church at Venice; the Farnesian bull, and other animals of that groupe.

I observe, by the bye, that the ancients were careless of giving to their horses the diametrical motion of their legs; as we see in the horses at Venice, and the ancient coins: and in that they have been followed, nay even defended, by some ignorant moderns.

’Tis chiefly to oil-painting that our landscapes, and especially those of the Dutch, owe their beauties: by that their colours acquired more strength and liveliness; and even nature herself seems to have given them a thicker, moister atmosphere, as an advantage to this branch of the art.

These, and some other advantages over the ancients, deserve to be set forth with more solid arguments than we have hitherto had.

VII. ALLEGORY.

There is one other important step left towards the atchievement of the art: but the artist, who, boldly forsaking the common path, dares to attempt it, finds himself at once on the brink of a precipice, and starts back dismayed.

The stories of martyrs and saints, fables and metamorphoses, are almost the only objects of modern painters—repeated a thousand times, and varied almost beyond the limits of possibility, every tolerable judge grows sick at them.

The judicious artist falls asleep over a Daphne and Apollo, a Proserpine carried off by Pluto, an Europa, &c. he wishes for occasions to shew himself a poet, to produce significant images, to paint Allegory.

Painting goes beyond the senses: _there_ is its most elevated pitch, to which the Greeks strove to raise themselves, as their writings evince. Parrhasius, like Aristides, a painter of the soul, was able to express the character even of a whole people: he painted the Athenians as mild as cruel, as fickle as steady, as brave as timid. Such a representation owes its possibility only to the allegorical method, whose images convey general ideas.

But here the artist is lost in a desart. Tongues the most savage, which are entirely destitute of abstracted ideas, containing no word whose sense could express memory, space, duration, &c. these tongues, I say, are not more destitute of general signs, than painting in our days. The painter who thinks beyond his palette longs for some learned apparatus, by whose stores he might be enabled to invest abstracted ideas with sensible and meaning images. Nothing has yet been published of this kind, to satisfy a rational being; the essays hitherto made are not considerable, and far beneath this great design. The artist himself knows best in what degree he is satisfied with Ripa’s Iconology, and the emblems of ancient nations, by Van Hooghe.

Hence the greatest artists have chosen but vulgar objects. _Annibal Caracci_, instead of representing in general symbols and sensible images the history of the Farnesian family, as an allegorical poet, wasted all his skill in fables known to the whole world.

Go, visit the galleries of monarchs, and the publick repositories of art, and see what difference there is between the number of allegorical, poetical, or even historical performances, and that of fables, saints, or madonnas.

Among great artists, _Rubens_ is the most eminent, who first, like a sublime poet, dared to attempt this untrodden path. His most voluminous composition, the gallery of Luxembourg, has been communicated to the world by the hands of the best engravers.

After him the sublimest performance undertaken and finished, in that kind, is, no doubt, the cupola of the imperial library at Vienna, painted by _Daniel Gran_, and engraved by _Sedelmayer_. The Apotheosis of Hercules at Versailles, done by _Le Moine_, and alluding to the Cardinal _Hercules de Fleury_, though deemed in France the most august of compositions, is, in comparison of the learned and ingenious performance of the German artist, but a very mean and short-sighted Allegory, resembling a panegyric, the most striking beauties of which are relative to the almanack. The artist had it in his power to indulge grandeur, and his flipping the occasion is astonishing: but even allowing, that the Apotheosis of a minister was all that he ought to have decked the chief cieling of a royal palace with, we nevertheless see through his fig-leaf.

The artist would require a work, containing every image with which any abstracted idea might be poetically inverted; a work collected from all mythology, the best poets of all ages, the mysterious philosophy of different nations, the monuments of the ancients on gems, coins, utensils, &c. This magazine should be distributed into several classes, and, with proper applications to peculiar possible cases, adapted to the instruction of the artist. This would, at the same time, open a vast field for imitating the ancients, and participating of their sublimer taste.

The taste in our decorations, which, since the complaints of _Vitruvius_, hath changed for the worse, partly by the grotesques brought in vogue by _Morto da Feltro_, partly by our trifling house-painting, might also, from more intimacy with the ancients, reap the advantages of reality and common sense.

The Caricatura-carvings, and favourite shells, those chief supports of our ornaments, are full as unnatural as the candle-sticks of _Vitruvius_, with their little castles and palaces: how easy would it be, by the help of Allegory, to give some learned convenience to the smallest ornament!

_Reddere personæ scit convenientia cuique._

Hor.

Paintings of ceilings, doors, and chimney-pieces, are commonly but the expletives of these places, because they cannot be gilt all over. Not only they have not the least relation to the rank and circumstances of the proprietor, but often throw some ridicule or reflection upon him.

’Tis an abhorrence of barrenness that fills walls and rooms; and pictures void of thought must supply the vacuum.

Hence the artist, abandoned to the dictates of his own fancy, paints, for want of Allegory, perhaps a satire on him to whom he owes his industry; or, to shun this Charybdis, finds himself reduced to paint figures void of any meaning.

Nay, he may often find it difficult to meet even with those, ’till at last

——_velut ægri Somnia, vanæ Finguntur Species._

Hor.

Thus Painting is degraded from its most eminent prerogative, the representation of invisible, past and future things.

If pictures be sometimes met with, which might be significant in some particular place, they often lose that property by stupid and wrong applications.

Perhaps the master of some new building

_Dives agris, dives positis in fœnore nummis_

Hor.

may, without the least compunction for offending the rules of perspective, place figures of the smallest size above the vast doors of his apartments and salloons. I speak here of those ornaments which make part of the furniture; not of figures which are often, and for good reasons, set up promiscuously in collections.

The decorations of architecture are often as ill-chosen. Arms and trophies deck a hunting-house as nonsensically, as Ganymede and the eagle, Jupiter and Leda, figure it among the reliefs of the brazen gates of St. Peter’s church at Rome.

Arts have a double aim: to delight and to instruct. Hence the greatest landscape-painters think, they have fulfilled but half their task in drawing their pieces without figures.

Let the artist’s pencil, like the pen of Aristotle, be impregnated with reason; that, after having satiated the eye, he may nourish the mind: and this he may obtain by Allegory; investing, not hiding his ideas. Then, whether he chuse some poetical object himself, or follow the dictates of others, he shall be inspired by his art, shall be fired with the flame brought down from heaven by Prometheus, shall entertain the votary of art, and instruct the mere lover of it.

A LETTER, CONTAINING OBJECTIONS AGAINST The foregoing REFLEXIONS.

SIR,

As you have written on the Greek arts and artists, I wish you had made your treatise as much the object of your caution as the Greek artists made their works; which, before dismissing them, they exhibited to publick view, in order to be examined by everybody, and especially by competent judges of the art. The trial was held during the grand, chiefly the Olympian, games; and all Greece was interested on Ætion’s producing his picture of the nuptials of Alexander and Roxana. You, Sir, wanted a Proxenidas to be judged by, as well as that artist; and had it not been for your mysterious concealment, I might have communicated your treatise, before its publication, to some learned men and connoisseurs of my acquaintance, without mentioning the author’s name.

One of them visited Italy twice, where he devoted all his time to a most anxious examination of painting, and particularly several months to each eminent picture, at the very place where it was painted; the only method, you know, to form a connoisseur. The judgment of a man able to tell you which of Guido’s altar-pieces is painted on taffeta, or linnen, what sort of wood Raphael chose for his transfiguration, &c. the judgment of such a man, I fancy, must be allowed to be decisive.

Another of my acquaintance has studied antiquity: he knows it by the very smell;

_Callet & Artificem solo deprendere Odore._

Sectan. Sat.

He can tell you the number of knots on Hercules’s club; has reduced Nestor’s goblet to the modern measure: nay, is suspected of meditating solutions to all the questions proposed by Tiberius to the grammarians.

A third, for several years past, has neglected every thing but hunting after ancient coins. Many a new discovery we owe to him; especially some concerning the history of the ancient coiners; and, as I am told, he is to rouse the attention of the world by a Prodromus concerning the coiners of Cyzicum.

What a number of reproaches might you have escaped, had you submitted your Essay to the judgment of these gentlemen! they were pleased to acquaint me with their objections, and I should be sorry, for your honour, to see them published.

Among other objections, the first is surprized at your passing by the two Angels, in your description of the Raphael in the royal cabinet at Dresden; having been told, that a Bolognese painter, in mentioning this piece, which he saw at St. Sixtus’s at Piacenza, breaks into these terms of admiration: O! what Angels of Paradise[14]! by which he supposes those Angels to be the most beautiful figures of the picture.

The same person would reproach you for having described that picture in the manner of Raguenet[15].

The second concludes the beard of Laocoon to be as worthy of your attention as his contracted belly: for every admirer of Greek works, says he, must pay the same respect to the beard of Laocoon, which father Labat paid to that of the Moses of Michael Angelo.

This learned Dominican,

_Qui mores hominum multorum vidit & urbes_,

has, after so many centuries, drawn from this very statue an evident proof of the true fashion in which Moses wore his own individual beard, and whose imitation must, of course, be the distinguishing mark of every true Jew[16].

There is not the least spark of learning, says he, in your remarks on the Peplon of the three vestals: he might perhaps, on the very inflection of the veil, have discovered to you as many curiosities as Cuper himself found on the edge of the veil of Tragedy in the Apotheosis of Homer[17].

We also want proof of the vestals being really Greek performances: our reason fails us too often in the most obvious things. If unhappily the marble of these figures should be proved to be no Lychnites, they are lost, and your treatise too: had you but slightly told us their marble was large-grained, that would have been a sufficient proof of their authenticity; for it would be somewhat difficult to determine the bigness of the grains with such exactness as to distinguish the Greek marble from the Roman of Luna. But the worst is, they are even denied the title of vestals.

The third mentioned some heads of Livia and Agrippina, without that pretended profile of yours. Here he thinks you had the most lucky occasion to talk of that kind of nose by the ancients called _Quadrata_, as an ingredient of beauty. But you no doubt know, that the noses of some of the most famous Greek statues, viz. the Medicean Venus, and the Picchinian Meleager, are much too thick for becoming the model of beauty, in that kind, to our artists.

I shall not, however, gall you with all the doubts and objections raised against your treatise, and repeated to nauseousness, upon the arrival of an Academician, the Margites of our days, who, being shewed your treatise, gave it a slight glance, then laid it aside, offended as it were at first sight. But it was easy to perceive that he wanted his opinion to be asked, which we accordingly all did. “The author, said he very peremptorily, seems not to have been at much pains with this treatise: I cannot find above four or five quotations, and those negligently inserted; no chapter, no page, cited; he certainly collected his remarks from books which he is ashamed to produce.”

Yet cannot I help introducing another gentleman, sharp-sighted enough to pick out something that had escaped all my attention; viz. that the Greeks were the first inventors of Painting and Sculpture; an assertion, as he was pleased to express himself, entirely false, having been told it was the Egyptians, or some people still more ancient, and unknown to him.

Even the most whimsical humour may be turned to profit: nevertheless, I think it manifest that you intended to talk only of good Taste in those arts; and the first Elements of an art have the same proportion to good Taste in it, as the seed has to the fruit. That the art was still in its infancy among the Egyptians, when it had attained the highest degree of perfection among the Greeks, may be seen by examining one single gem: you need only consider the head of _Ptolomæus Philopator_ by Aulus, and the two figures adjoining to it done by an Egyptian[18], in order to be convinced of the little merit this nation could pretend to in point of art.

The form and taste of their Painting have been ascertained by Middleton.[19] The pictures of persons as big as life, on two mummies in the royal cabinet of antiquities at Dresden, are evident instances of their incapacity. But these relicks being curious, in several other respects, I shall hereafter subjoin a short account of them.

I cannot, my friend, help allowing some reason for several of these objections. Your negligence in your quotations was, no doubt, somewhat prejudicial to your authenticity: the art of changing blue eyes to black ones, certainly deserved an authority. You imitate Democritus; who being asked, “What is man?” every body knows what was his reply. What reasonable creature will submit to read all Greek scholiasts!

_Ibit eo, quo vis, qui Zonam perdidit_—

Hor.

Considering, however, how easily the human mind is biassed, either by friendship or animosity, I took occasion from these objections to examine your treatise with more exactness; and shall now, by the most impartial censure, strive to clear myself from every imputation of prepossession in your favour.

I will pass by the first and second page, though something might be said on your comparison of the Diana with the Nausicaa, and the application: nor would it have been amiss, had you thrown some more light on the remark concerning the misused pictures of Corregio (very likely borrowed from Count Tessin’s letters), by giving an account of the other indignities which the pictures of the best artists, at the same time, met with at Stockholm.

It is well known that, after the surrender of Prague to Count Konigsmark, the 15th of July 1648, the most precious pictures of the Emperor Rodolph II. were carried off to Sweden[20]. Among these were some pictures of Corregio, which the Emperor had been presented with by their first possessor, Duke Frederick of Mantua; two of them being the famous Leda, and a Cupid handling his bow[21]. Christina, endowed at that time rather with scholastic learning than taste, treated these treasures as the Emperor Claudius did an Alexander of Apelles; who ordered the head to be cut off, and that of Augustus to fill its place[22]. In the same manner heads, hands, feet were here cut off from the most beautiful pictures; a carpet was plastered over with them, and the mangled pieces fitted up with new heads, &c. Those that fortunately escaped the common havock, among which were the pieces of Corregio, came afterwards, together with several other pictures, bought by the Queen at Rome, into the possession of the Duke of Orleans, who purchased 250 of them, and among those eleven of Corregio, for 9000 Roman crowns.

But I am not contented with your charging only the northern countries with barbarism, on account of the little esteem they paid to the arts. If good taste is to be judged in this manner, I am afraid for our French neighbours. For having taken Bonn, the residence of the Elector of Cologne, after the death of Max. Henry, they ordered the largest pictures to be cut out of their frames, without distinction, in order to serve for coverings to the waggons, in which the most valuable furniture of the electoral castle was carried off for France. But, Sir, do not presume on my continuing with mere historical remarks: I shall proceed with my objections; after making the two following general observations.

I. You have written in a style too concise for being distinct. Were you afraid of being condemned to the penalty of a Spartan, who could not restrain himself to only three words, perhaps that of reading Picciardin’s Pisan War? Distinctness is required where universal instruction is the end. Meats are to suit the taste of the guests, rather than that of the cooks,

——_Cœnæ fercula nostræ_ _Malim convivis quam placuisse coquis._

II. There appears, in almost every line of yours, the most passionate attachment to antiquity; which perhaps I shall convince you of, by the following remarks.

The first particular objection I have to make is against your third page. Remember, however, that my passing by two pages is very generous dealing:

_non temere a me_ _Quivis ferret idem:_

Hor.

but let us now begin a formal trial.

The author talks of certain negligences in the Greek works, which ought to be considered suitably to Lucian’s precepts concerning the Zeus of Phidias: “Zeus himself, not his footstool;”[23] though perhaps he could not be charged with any fault in the foot-stool, but with a very grievous one in the statue.

Is it no fault that Phidias made his Zeus of so enormous a bulk, as almost to reach the cieling of the temple, which must infallibly have been thrown down, had the god taken it in his head to rise?[24] To have left the temple without any cieling at all, like that of the Olympian Jupiter at Athens, had been an instance of more judgment[25].

’Tis but justice to claim an explication of what the author means by “negligences”. He perhaps might be pleased to get a passport, even for the faults of the ancients, by sheltering them under the authority of such titles; nay, to change them into beauties, as Alcæus did the spot on the finger of his beloved boy. We too often view the blemishes of the ancients, as a parent does those of his children:

_Strabonem_ _Appellat pætum pater, & pullum, male parvus_ _Si cui filius est._

Hor.

If these negligences were like those wished for in the Jalysus of Protogenes, where the chief figure was out-shone by a partridge, they might be considered as the agreeable negligée of a fine lady; but this is the question. Besides, had the author consulted his interest, he never would have ventured citing the Diomedes of Dioscorides: but being too well acquainted with that gem, one of the most valued, most finished monuments of Greek art; and being apprehensive of the prejudice that might arise against the meaner productions of the ancients, on discovering many faults in one so eminent as Diomedes; he endeavoured to keep matters from being too nearly examined, and to soften every fault into negligence.

How! if by argument I shall attempt to shew that Dioscorides understood neither perspective, nor the most trivial rules of the motion of a human body; nay, that he offended even against possibility? I’ll venture to do it, though

_incedo per ignes_ _Suppositos cineri doloso._

Hor.

And perhaps I am not the first discoverer of his faults: yet I do not remember to have seen any thing relative to them.

The Diomedes of Dioscorides is either a sitting, or a rising figure; for the attitude is ambiguous. It is plain he is not sitting; and rising is inconsistent with his action.

Our body endeavouring to raise itself from a seat, moves always mechanically towards its sought-for centre of gravity, drawing back the legs, which were advanced in sitting[26]; instead of which the figure stretches out his right leg. Every erection begins with elevated heels, and in that moment all the weight of the body is supported only by the toes, which was observed by Felix[27], in his Diomedes: but here all rests on the sole.

Nor can Diomedes, (if we suppose him to be a sitting figure, as he touches with his left leg the bottom of his thigh) find, in raising himself, the centre of his gravity, only by a retraction of his legs, and of course cannot rise in that posture. His left hand resting upon the bended leg, holds the palladion, whilst his right touches negligently the pedestal with the point of a short sword; consequently he cannot rise, neither moving his legs in the natural and easy manner required in any erection, nor making use of his arms to deliver himself from that uneasy situation.

There is at the same time a fault committed against the rules of perspective.

The foot of the left bended leg, touching the cornice of the pedestal, shews it over-reaching that part of the floor, on which the pedestal and the right foot are situated, consequently the line described by the hinder-foot is the fore on the gem, and _vice versa_.

But allowing even a possibility to that situation, it is contrary to the Greek character, which is always distinguished by the natural and easy. Attributes neither to be met with in the contortions of Diomedes, nor in an attitude, the impossibility of which every one must be sensible of, in endeavouring to put himself in it, without the help of former sitting.