Part 5

Though faithful to history, the painter was nevertheless a poet: in order to represent some circumstances, he filled even the furniture with sentiments. The Sphinxes by the Prince’s bed allude to his problematic sickness, the enquiries of Erasistratus, and his sagacity in discovering its true cause.

I have been told that some young Italian artists, when considering this picture, and perceiving the Prince’s arm perhaps a trifle too big, went off without enquiring into the subject itself. Should even Minerva herself, as she once did to Diomedes, attempt to deliver some people from the mist they labour under, by heaven! the attempt were vain!

——_pauci dignoscere possunt_ _Vera bona, atque illis multum diversa, remota_ _Erroris nebula._

Juv. X.

I have run into this long digression, in order to throw some light on one of the first productions of the art, which is nevertheless but little known.

The idea of noble simplicity and sedate grandeur in Raphael’s figures, might rather, as two eminent authors express it[55], be called “still life.” It is indeed the standard of the Greek art: however, indiscreetly commended to young artists, it might beget as dangerous consequences, as precepts of energetick conciseness in the style; the direct method to make it barren and unpleasing.

“In youths, says Cicero[56], there must be some superfluity, something to be taken off: prematurity spoils the juices, and it is easier to lop the young rank branches of a vine, than to restore its vigour to a worn out trunk.” Not to mention, that figures wanting gesture would, by the bulk of mankind, be received as a speech before the Areopagites, where, by a severe law, the speaker was forbid to raise any passions, though ever so gentle[57]: nay, pictures of this kind would be so many portraits of young Spartans, who, with hands hid under their coats, and down-cast eyes, stalk forth in silent solemnity[58].

Neither am I quite of the author’s opinion with regard to allegory; the applying of which would too frequently do in painting, what was done in geometry by introducing algebra: the one would soon be as difficult as the other, and painting would degenerate into Hieroglyphicks.

The author attempts, in vain, to persuade us, that the majority of the Greeks thought as the Egyptians. There was no more learning in the painting of the platfond of the temple of Juno at Samos, than in that of the Farnese gallery. It represented the love-intrigues of Jupiter and Juno[59]: and, in the front of a temple of Ceres at Eleusis, there was nothing but representations of a ceremony at the rites of that goddess[60].

How to represent abstract ideas I do not yet distinctly conceive. There may be the same difficulties which attend the endeavours of representing to the senses a mathematical point—perhaps nothing less than impossibility; and Theodoretus[61] has some reason in confining painting to the senses. For those Hieroglyphicks which hint at abstract ideas, in such a manner as to express, for instance[62], _youth_ by the number XVI; _impossibility_ by two feet standing on water: those, I say, are monograms, not images: to indulge them in painting is fostering chimæras, is adding to Chinese pictures Chinese explications.

An adversary of allegory believes that Parrhasius, without any help from it, could represent the contradictions in the character of the Athenians; that he did it perhaps in several pictures. Supposing which

_Et sapit, & mecum facit, & Jove judicat æquo._

Hor.

The sentence of death pronounced against the leaders of the Athenian navy, after their victory over the Spartans near the Arginuses, afforded the artist a very sensible and rich image, to represent the Athenians, at the same time, merciful and cruel.

The famous Theramenes, one of the leaders, accused his fellow-chieftains of having neglected to gather and bury the bodies of their slain countrymen: a charge sufficient to rouse the rage of the mob against the victors; only six of whom had returned to Athens, the rest having declined the storm.

Theramenes harangued the people in the most pathetick manner; intermixing his speech with frequent pauses, in order to give vent to the loud plaints of those who, in the battle, had lost their parents or relations. He, at the same time, produced a man, who protested he had heard the last words of the drowned, imprecating the publick revenge on their leaders. In vain did Socrates, then a member of the council, with a few others, oppose the accusation: the brave chieftains, instead of the honours they hoped for, were condemned to die. One of them was the only son of _Pericles_ and _Aspasia_.

Was it not in the power of Parrhasius, who was then alive, to enlarge the meaning of his picture beyond the extent of bare history, only by drawing the true characters of the authors of this scene, without the least help from allegory? It would have been in his power, had he lived in our days.

Your pretensions concerning allegory seem indeed as reasonable an imposition upon the painter, as that of Columella upon his farmer; who wished to find him a philosopher like Democritus, Pythagoras, or Eudoxus[63].

No better success, in my opinion, is to be expected from applying allegory to decorations: the author would, at least, meet with as many difficulties as Virgil, when hammering on the names of a Vibius Caudex, Tanaquil Lucumo, or Decius Mus; to fit them for his Hexameter.

Custom has given its sanction to the use of shells in decorations: and is not there as much nature in them as in the Corinthian capital? You know its origin: a basket set upon the tomb of a young Corinthian girl, filled with some of her play-things, and covered with a large brick, being overgrown with the creeping branches of an acanthus, which had taken root under it, was the first occasion of forming that capital. _Callimachus_[64] the sculptor, surprized at the elegant simplicity of that composition, took thence a hint for enriching architecture with a new order.

Thus this capital, destined to support all the entablature of the column, is but a basket of flowers; something so apparently inconsistent with the ideas of architecture, that there was no use made of it in the time of Pericles: for Pocock[65] thinks it strange that the temple of Minerva at Athens had Doric, instead of Corinthian pillars. But time soon changed this seeming oddity into nature; the basket lost, by custom, all its former offensiveness, and

_Quod fuerat vitium desinit esse mora._

Ovid. Art.

We acknowledge no Egyptian law to forbid arbitrary ornaments; and so fond have the artists of all ages been, both of the growth and form of shells, as to change even the chariot of Venus into an enormous one. The ancile, that Palladium of the Romans, was scooped into the form of a shell[66]: we find them on antique lamps[67]. Nay, nature herself seems to have produced their immense variety, and marvellous sinuations, for the benefit of the art.

I have no mind to plead the bad cause of our unskilful decorators: only let me adduce the arguments used by a whole tribe, (if the artists will forgive the term), in order to prove the reasonableness of their art.

The painters and sculptors of Paris, endeavouring to deprive the decorators of the title of artists, by alledging that they employed neither their own intellectual faculties, nor those of the connoisseurs, upon works not produced by nature, but rather the offsprings of capricious art; the others are said to have defended themselves in the following manner: “We are the followers of nature: like the bark of a tree, variously carved, our decorations grow into various forms: then art joins sportive nature, and corrects her: we do what the ancients did: consult their decorations.”

Variety is the great and only rule to which decorators submit. Perceiving that there is no perfect resemblance between two things in nature, they likewise forsake it in their decorations; and careless of anxious twining, leave it to the parts themselves to find their like, as the atoms of Epicurus did. This liberty we owe to the very nation, which, after having nobly exceeded all the narrow bounds of social formalities, bestows so much pains upon communicating her improvements to her neighbours. This style in decorations got the epithet of _Barroque_ taste, derived from a word signifying pearls and teeth of unequal size[68].

Shells have at least as good a claim for being admitted among our decorations, as the heads of sheep and oxen. You know that the ancients placed those heads, stript of the skin, on the frizes, especially of the Doric order, between the Triglyphs, or on the Metopes. We even meet with them on the Corinthian frise of an old temple of Vesta, at Tivoli[69]; on tombs, as on one of the Metellus-family near Rome, and another of Munatius Plancus near Gaeta[70]; on vases, as on a pair in the royal cabinet at Dresden. Some modern artists, finding them perhaps unbecoming, changed them into thunderbolts, like Vignola, or to roses, like Palladio and Scamozzi[71].

We conclude from all this, that learning never had, nor indeed ought to have, any share in an art so nearly related to what we call _Lusus Naturæ_.

Thus the ancients thought: for, pray, what could be meant by a lizard on Mentor’s cup?[72] The

_Picti squallentia terga lacerti_

Virg. G. IV.

make, to be sure, a lovely image amidst the flowers of a Rachel Ruysch, but a very poor figure on a cup. Of what mysterious meaning are birds picking grapes from vines, on an urn?[73] Images, perhaps, as void of sense, and as arbitrary, as the fable of Ganymede embroidered on the mantle, which Æneas presented to Cloanthus, as a reward of his victory in the naval games[74].

To conclude: is there any thing contradictory between trophies and the hunting-house of a Prince? Surely the author, though so zealous a champion for the Greek taste, cannot pretend to propose to us that of King Philip and the Macedonians, who, by the account of Pausanias[75], did not erect their own trophies. Diana perhaps, amidst her nymphs and hunting-equipages,

_Qualis in Eurotæ ripis, aut per juga Cynthi,_ _Exercet Diana choros, quam mille secutæ,_ _Hinc atque hinc glomerantur, Oreades_—

Virg.

might better suit the place; but we know that the antient Romans hung up the arms of their defeated enemies over the out-sides of their doors, to be everlasting monitors of bravery to every succeeding owner of the house. Can trophies, having the same design, ever be misplaced on any building of the Great?

I wish for a speedy answer to this letter. You cannot be angry at seeing it published. The tribe of authors now imitate the conduct of the stage, where the lover, with his soliloquy, entertains the pit. For the same reason I shall receive, with all my heart, an answer,

_Quam legeret tereretque viritim publicus usus:_

Hor.

for

_Hanc veniam petimusque damusque vicissim._

Id.

AN ACCOUNT OF A MUMMY, IN The Royal Cabinet of Antiquities at DRESDEN.

Among the Egyptian Mummies of the royal cabinet, there are two preserved perfectly entire, and not in the least damaged, viz. the bodies of a man and woman. The former, among all those that were brought into, and publickly known in Europe, is perhaps the only one of its kind; on account of an inscription thereon, which none of those who have written on Mummies, except Della Valle alone, discovered on those bodies; and Kircher, among all the drawings of Mummies communicated to him, and published in his Oedipus, has but one, (the same which Della Valle had been possessed of,) with an inscription; though his wooden cut[76] is as faulty as all the copies made afterwards[77]. On that Mummy there are these letters ΕΥ✠ΥΧΙ.

This same inscription is on the royal Mummy, of which I propose to give a brief account, and in examining which I have employed all my attention, that I might be certain of its being genuine, and not drawn by a modern hand from the inscription of Della Valle: for ’tis well known, that those bodies frequently pass through the hands of Jews. But the letters are evidently drawn with the same blackish colour with which the face, hands, and feet are stained. The first letter on our Mummy has the form of a large Greek ϵ, expressed by Della Valle with an E angular, the other not being usual in printing-presses.

All the four Mummies of the royal cabinet being bought at Rome, I proposed to examine whether the Mummy with the inscription, was that which Della Valle was possessed of, and found that both the entire royal Mummies were exact resemblances of those described by him.

Both, besides the linnen bandages, of a Barracan-texture, rolled innumerable times around the bodies, are wrapt up in several (and, according to an observation made in England[78], in three) kinds of coarser linnen; which, by particular bandages of the girdle-kind, is fastened in such a manner as to involve even the smallest prominence of the face. The first covering is a nice bit of linnen, slightly tinged with a certain ground, much gilt, decked with various figures, and with a painted one of the deceased.

On the Mummy marked with the inscription, this figure represents a man, who died in the flower of life, with a thin curled beard, not as represented by Kircher, like an old man with a long pointed one. The colour of the face and hands is brown: the head encircled with gilt diadems, marked with the sockets of jewels. From the gold chain, painted around the neck, a sort of medal hangs down, marked with various characters, crescents, &c. and this over-reaches the neck of a bird, that of a hawk perhaps, as on the breasts of other Mummies[79]. In the right hand of the figure is a dish filled with a red stuff, which being like that used by the sacrificers[80], the deceased may be supposed to have been a priest. The first and last finger of the left hand have rings; and in the hand itself there is something round, of a dark-brown colour; which, as Della Valle pretends, is a well-known fruit. The feet and legs are bare, with sandals; the strings of which appearing between the great toes, are, with a slip, fastened on the foot itself.

The inscription, above-mentioned, is beneath the breast.

The second Mummy is the still more refined figure of a young woman. Among a great many medals, seemingly gilt, and other figures, there are certain birds, and quadrupeds something analogous to lions; and towards the extremities of the body there is an ox, perhaps an apis: Down from one of the neck-chains hangs a gilt image of the sun. She has ear-rings, and double bracelets on both her arms: rings on each hand, and on every finger of the left one, but two on the first: whereas the right hand has but two: with this hand she holds, like Isis, a small gilt vessel, of the Greek Spondeion-kind, which was a symbol of the fertility of the Nile, when held by the goddess[81]. In the left hand there is a sort of fruit, like an ear of corn, of a greenish cast. The leaden seals, mentioned by Della Valle, still remain on the first Mummy.

Compare this description with that in his travels[82], and you’ll find the Mummies of the royal cabinet to be the same with those, which were taken out of a deep well or cave, covered with sand, and sold to this celebrated traveller by an Egyptian; and I believe they were purchased from his heirs at Rome, though in the manuscript catalogue, joined to that cabinet of antiquities, there is not the least hint of any such purchase.

I have no design to attempt an explication of the ornaments and figures; some remarks of that kind having already been made by Della Valle. The following observations concern only the inscription.

The Egyptians, we know, employed a double character in expressing themselves[83], the _sacred_ and the _vulgar_: the first was what is called hieroglyphick; the other contained the characters of their national language, and this is commonly said to be lost. All we know is confined to the twenty-five letters of their alphabet.[84] Della Valle seems inclined to give an instance of the contrary, in that inscription; which Kircher, pushing his conjectures still farther, endeavours to lay down as a foundation for a new scheme of his; and to support it by two other remains of the same kind. For, he attempts to prove[85], that the dialect was the only difference between the old Egyptian and Greek tongue. According to his talent of finding what no body looks for, he makes free with some ancient historical accounts; upon which he obtrudes a fictitious sense, in order to make them tally with his scheme.

Herodotus, according to him, tells us, that King Psammetichus desired some Greeks, who were perfect masters of their language, to go over to Egypt, in order to instruct his people in the purity of the tongue. Hence he concludes, that there was but one language in both countries. But that Greek historian[86] gives an account entirely opposite: he tells us, that Psammetichus, having received some services from the Carians and Ionians, permitted them to settle in Egypt, for the instruction of youth in the Greek language, in order to bring up interpreters.

There is no solidity in the rest of the Kircherian arguments; such as those deduced from the frequent voyages of the Greek sages into Egypt, and the mutual commerce between the two nations; which have not even the strength of conjectures. For the very skill of Democritus, in the sacred tongue of the Babylonians and Egyptians[87], proves only, that the travelling sages learned the languages of the nations they conversed with.

Nor does the testimony of Diodorus, that Attica was originally an Egyptian colony[88], seem to be here of any weight.

The inscription of the Mummy might indeed admit of Kircherian, or such like conjectures, were the Mummy itself of the antiquity pretended by Kircher. Cambyses, the conqueror of Egypt, partly exiled, and partly killed the priests; from which fact Kircher confidently deduces as consequences, the total abolition of the sacred rites, and from that the ceasing to embalm bodies. He again appeals to a passage of Herodotus[89], which, upon his word alone, others have as confidently quoted. Nay, a certain pedant went so far as to pretend, that the Egyptian custom of painting their dead, upon the varnished linnen of the Mummies, ceased with the epoch of Cyrus[90].

But Herodotus says not a word, either of the total abolition of the sacred rites, or of the abolition of the custom of preserving the dead from putrefaction, after the time of Cambyses; nor does Diodorus Siculus give any such hint: we may, on the contrary, from his account of the funeral rites of the Egyptians, rather conclude, that this custom prevailed even in his time; that is to say, when Egypt was changed into a Roman province.

Hence it cannot be demonstrated that our Mummy was embalmed before the Persian conquest.—But supposing it to be of that date, is it a necessary consequence that a body preserved in the Egyptian manner, or even taken care of by their priests, should be marked with Egyptian words?

Perhaps it is the body of some naturalised Ionian or Carian. We know that Pythagoras entered into the Egyptian confession; nay, even consented to be circumcised[91], in order to shorten his way to the mysteries of their priests. The Carians themselves observed the sacred solemnities of Isis, and even went so far in their superstition, as to mangle their faces during the sacrifices offered to that deity[92].

Change the letter ι, in the inscription, into the diphthong ει, and you have a Greek word: such negligences are often to be met with in Greek marbles[93], and still more in Greek manuscripts; and with the same termination it is to be found on a gem, and signifies, “FAREWELL”[94], which was the usual ejaculation addressed by the living to the deceased; the same we meet with on ancient epitaphs[95]; public decrees[96]; and of letters it was the final conclusion[97].

There is on an ancient epitaph the word ΕΥΨΥΧΙ[98]; the form of the Ψ on ancient stones and manuscripts is exactly the same[99] with the third letter of ΕΥ✠ΥΧΙ, which was perhaps confounded with it.

But supposing the Mummy to be of later times, the adoption of a Greek word becomes yet easier. The round form of the ϵ might be something suspicious, with regard to its pretended antiquity; that form being never found on the gems or coins before Augustus[100]. But this suspicion becomes of no weight, by supposing that the Egyptians continued their embalming, even after the time of that Emperor.

However, the word cannot be an Egyptian one, being inconsistent with the remains of that ancient tongue in the modern Coptick, as well as with their manner of writing; which was from the right to the left, as the Etrurians did[101]; whereas the word in question (like some Egyptian characters[102],) is traced from the left to the right. As for the inscription discovered by Maillet[103], no interpreter has yet been found. The Grecians, on the contrary, wrote in the occidental manner, for six hundred years before the christian æra, witness the Sigæan inscription, which is said to be of that date[104].

What has been said relates also to an inscription upon a piece of stone[105], with Egyptian figures, communicated to Kircher by Carolo Vintimiglia, a Palerman patrician. The letters ΙΤΙΨΙΧΙ are two words, and signify, “Let the soul come.” This stone has met with the same fate as the gem engraved with the head of Ptolomæus Philopator: for here an Egyptian has joined two random figures, and there the inscription may be of a Greek hand. The litterati know what little change it wants to be orthographical.

AN ANSWER TO THE FOREGOING LETTER, AND A further EXPLICATION of the SUBJECT.

I could not presume that so small a treatise as mine would be thought of consequence enough to be brought to a publick trial. As it was written only for a few _connoisseurs_, it seemed superfluous to give it a learned air, by multiplying quotations. Artists want but hints: their task, according to an ancient Rhetor, is “to perform, not to peruse;” consequently every author, who writes for them, ought to be brief. Being besides convinced, that the beauties of the art are founded rather on a quick sense, and refined taste, than on profound meditation, I cannot help thinking that the principle of Neoptolemus[106], “to philosophize only with the few,” ought to be the chief consideration in every treatise of this kind.

Several passages of my Essay are susceptible of explications, and, having been publickly tried by an anonymous author, should be explained and defended at the same time, if my circumstances would permit me to enlarge[107]. As to his other remarks, the author, I hope, will guess at my answer, without my giving one explicitly.—Indeed they do not require any.

I am not in the least moved by the clamours concerning those pieces of _Corregio_, which, by undoubted accounts, were not only brought to _Sweden_[108], but even hung up in the stables at _Stockholm_. Reasoning is of no use here: arguments of this kind admit of no other evidence but that of _Æmilius Scaurus_ against _Valerius_ of _Sucro_: “He denies; I affirm: Romans! ’tis yours to judge.”

And why should there be any thing more derogatory to the honour of the Swedes, in my repeating Count _Tessin_’s relation, than in his giving it? Perhaps, because the learned author of the circumstantial life of Queen _Christina_ omits her indiscreet generosity towards _Bourdon_, and that bad treatment which the pictures of _Corregio_ met with? or was _Härleman_[109] himself charged with indiscretion or malice, on his relating that, at _Lincöping_, he found a college, and seven professors, but not one physician or artificer?