The Life, Studies, and Works of Benjamin West, Esq.

"These facts are not to be denied; but they also lead us to another lesson, which is, that the patronage so generally dispensed was for the protection of living genius, and that they by whom it was so dispensed sought no other collections than the works of native and living artists. On any other ground there can be no such thing as patronage. Nothing else is worthy of that name. The true and generous patron of great works selects those which are produced by the talents existing around him. By collecting from other countries, he may greatly enrich himself, but can never give celebrity to the country in which he lives. The encouragement extended to the genius of a single artist, though it may produce but one original work, adds more to the celebrity of a people, and is a higher proof of true patriotic ardour, and of a generous love for the progress of art, than all the collections that ever were made by the productions of other countries, and all the expenditures that ever were bestowed in making them. Did the habits of our domestic circumstances, like those of Italy, permit the ingenious student to have access to those works of established masters, procured by the spirit of their noble and wealthy possessors, and of many distinguished amateurs on the most liberal terms, and with the honourable purpose of forming the taste, as well as enriching the treasures, of the country, every thing would then be done, which is wanting to complete the public benefit of such collections, and the general gratitude to which they who have made them would be entitled. So abundant are the accomplished examples in art already introduced among us, that there would then be no necessity for students to run to other countries for those improvements which their own can furnish.

"It cannot be improper at any time to make these remarks; while it must also be observed, that the patronage held forth by many great and noble characters needs no spur; and the means projected by other spirited individuals in opulent stations, for extending and perpetuating the works of British masters, fall short in no degree of the most fervid energies and examples, of which any country has been able to boast.

"It is your duty, young gentlemen, to become accomplished in your professions, that you may keep alive those energies and examples of patronage, when you come to draw the attention of the world to your own works. It is by your success that the arts must be carried on and preserved here. Patronage can only be expected to follow what is eminently meritorious, and more especially that general patronage diffused through the more respectable ranks of society, which is to professional merit, what the ocean is to the earth; – the great fund from whence it must ever be refreshed, and without whose abundance, conveyed through innumerable channels, every thing must presently become dry, and all productions cease to exist."

Chap. XII

Discourse. – Introduction. – Of appropriate Character in Historical Composition. – Architecture among the Greeks and Romans. – Of the Athenian Marbles. – Of the Ancient Statues. – Of the Moses and Saviour of Michael Angelo. – Of the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo. – Of Leonardo da Vinci. – Of Bartolomeo. – Of Raphael. – Of Titian, and his St. Peter Martyr. – Of the different Italian Schools. – Of the Effects of the Royal Academy. – Of the Prince Regent's Promise to encourage the Fine Arts.

After a careful examination of all the remaining notes of Mr. West, it appeared to me, that the discourse which he delivered on the 10th of December, 1811, was the only one that required particular notice, after those which I have already introduced. In some respects it will, perhaps, be deemed the most interesting of the whole.

"The few points," said the President, "upon which I mean to touch in the present Discourse, are those which more immediately apply to the students, who are generously striving to attain excellence in the first class of refined art, – historical painting.

"Whether their exertions are directed to painting, or the sister arts, architecture and sculpture, the first thing they must impress upon their minds, and engraft upon every shoot of their fancy, is that of the appropriate character, by which the subject they are about to treat, is distinguished from all other subjects. On this foundation, all the points of refined art which are, in the truest sense, intellectual, invariably rest; for without justness of character the works of the pencil can have but little value, and can never entitle the artist to the praise of a well-governed genius, or of possessing that philosophical precision of judgment, which is the source of excellence in the superior walk of his profession. At the same time, let it be indelibly fixed in your minds, that when decided character is to be given, that character must be accompanied by correctness of outline, whether it be in painting or in sculpture. Any representation of the human figure, in the higher department of art, wanting these requisites, is, to the feelings of the educated artist, deficient in that, for the loss of which no other excellency can compensate.

"Architecture. – This department of art received its decided character from the Greeks. They distinctly fixed the embellishments to the several orders; and, by their adaptation of these embellishments and orders, their buildings obtained a distinct and appropriate character, which declared the uses for which they were erected.

"The Romans, in their best era of taste, copied their Grecian instructors in that appropriate character of embellishment which explained, at a glance, the use of their respective buildings; but, in their latter ages, they declined from this original purity; and it is the fragments of that corruption, in which they lost the characteristic precision of the Greeks, that we have seen of late years employed upon many of our buildings. The want of mental reflection in employing the orders of architectures with a rational precision as to character, produces the same sort of deficiency which we find in an historical picture; where, although each figure, in correct proportion, be well drawn, with drapery elegantly folded, yet, not being employed appropriately to the subject, affords no satisfaction to the spectator.

"The Greeks were in architecture what they were in sculpture; and it is to them you must look for the original purity of both. We feel rejoiced, that the exertions recently made by a noble personage to enrich our studies in both of these departments of art are such, that we may say, London has become the Athens for study. It is the mental power displayed in the Elgin marbles that I wish the juvenile artist to notice. Look at the equestrian groups of the young Athenians in this collection, and you will find in them that momentary motion which life gives on the occasion to the riders and their horses. The horse we perceive feels that power which the impulse of life has given to his rider; we see in him the animation of his whole frame; in the fire of his eyes, the distention of his nostrils, and in the rapid motion of his feet, yielding to the guidance of his rider, or in the speeding of his course: they are, therefore, in perfect unison with the life in each. At this moment of their animation, they appear to have been turned into stone by some majestic power, and not created by the human hand. The single head of the horse, in the same collection, seems as if it had, by the same influence, been struck into marble, when he was exerting all the energy of his motion.

"These admirable sculptures, which now adorn our city, are the union of Athenian genius and philosophy, and illustrate my meaning respecting the mental impression which is so essentially to be given to works of refined art. It was this point which the Grecian philosophers wished to impress on the minds of their sculptors, not to follow their predecessors the Egyptians in sculpture, who represented their figures without motion, although nearly perfect in giving to them the external form. 'It is the passions,' said they, 'with which man is endowed, that we wish to see in the movements of your figures.' This advice of the philosophers was felt by the sculptors, and the Athenian marbles are the faithful records of the efficacy of that advice.

"That you may distinctly perceive and invariably distinguish what we mean by appropriate character in art, particularly in sculpture, I would class with these sculptures, the Hercules, the Apollo, the Venus, the Laocoon, and the Gladiator. In these examples you will find what is appropriate in character to subject, united with correctness of outline; and it is this combination of truths which has arrested the attention of an admiring world, ever since they were produced; and which will attract to them the admiration of after ages, so long as the workings of the mind on the external form can be contemplated and understood.

"Now let us see what works there are since the revival of art in the modern world, which rest on the same basis of appropriate character and correctness of outline, with those of the ancient Greeks.

"The Moses which the powers of Michael Angelo's mind has presented to our view, claims our first attention. In this statue the points of character, in every mode of precise, determinate, and elevated expression, have been carried to a pitch of grandeur which modern art has not since excelled. In this figure of Moses, Michael Angelo has fixed the unalterable standard of the Jewish lawgiver, – a character delineated and justified by the text in inspired sculpture. The character of Moses was well suited to the grandeur of the artist's conceptions, and to the dreadful energy of his feelings. Accordingly, in mental character, this figure holds the first station in modern art; and I believe we may venture to say, had no competitor in ancient, except those of the Jupiter and Minerva by Phidias. But the Saviour, all meekness and benevolence, which Michael Angelo made to accompany the Moses, was not in unison with his genius. The figure is mean, but slightly removed from an academical figure, and in no point appropriate to the subject: so are most of the single figures of the artist, in his great work on the Day of Judgment; but his groups in that composition are every where in character, and have not their rivals either in painting or sculpture. His Bacchus claims our admiration, as being appropriate to the subject, by the same excellence in delineation which distinguish the groups in the Day of Judgment. No person can have a higher veneration than I have for that grandeur of character impressed on the figures by Michael Angelo; but it is the fitness of the characters and of the action to the subject, to which I wish to draw your attention, and not to pour out praise on those points, in which he and other eminent masters are deficient. On this occasion, I must therefore be permitted to repeat, that most of the single figures in his great work of the Day of Judgment, are deficient in the fitness of appropriate character, and in the fitness of appropriate action to the subject; although as single figures they demand our admiration. But excellent as they are, they are but the ingenious adaptation of legs, arms, and heads, to the celebrated Torso, which bears his name, and which served as the model to most of his figures. All figures in composition, however excellent they may be in delineation, which have not their actions and expressions springing from the subject in which they are the actors, can only be considered as academical efforts, without the impress of mental power, and without any philosophical attention to the truth of the subject which the artist intended to illustrate.

"Leonardo da Vinci is the first who had a full and right conception of the principle which I wish to inculcate, and he has shown it in his picture of the Last Supper. But it is necessary to distinguish what parts of the picture deserve consideration. It is the decision, the appropriate character of the apostles to the subject; the significance of expression in their several countenances, and the diversity of action in each figure; their actions seemingly in perfect unison with their minds, and their figures individually in unison with their respective situations; some are confused at the words spoken by our Saviour: "There is one amongst you who shall betray me;" others are thrown under impressions of a different feeling. In this respect the picture has left us without an appeal, either to nature or to art. But Da Vinci failed in the head of our Saviour. He has failed in his attempt to combine the almost incompatible qualities of dignity and meekness which are demanded in the countenance of the Saviour. He had exhausted his powers of characteristic discrimination in the heads of the apostles; and in his attempt to give meekness to the countenance of Jesus, he sank into insipience. He had the prudence, therefore, to leave the face unfinished, that the imagination of the beholder might not be disappointed by an imperfect image, but form one in his mind more appropriate to his feelings and to the subject. The ruin of this picture, the report of which I understand is true, has deprived the world and the arts of one of the mental eyes of painting. But pleasing as the works of Leonardo da Vinci are in general, had he not produced this picture of the Last Supper, and the cartoon of the equestrian combatants for the standard of victory, he would scarcely have emerged, as a painter of strong character, above mediocrity. Indeed the back-ground, and general distribution of this picture, sufficiently mark their Gothic origin. But his pictures, generally speaking, are more characterised by their laborious finishing, gentleness, and sweetness of character, than by the energies of a lively imagination.

"Fra. Bartolomeo di St. Marco, of Florence, was one of the first who became enamoured of that superiority which grandeur and decision of character gives to art; and, indeed, of all those higher excellences which the philosophical mind of Da Vinci had accomplished. In the pictures of Bartolomeo we behold, for the first time, that breadth of the clair-obscure-the deep tones of colour, with their philosophical arrangement, united to that noble folding of drapery appropriate to, and significant of, every character it covered; a point of excellence in this master, from which Raphael caught his first conception of that noble simplicity which distinguishes the dignity of his draperies, and which it became his pride through life to imitate.

"Bartolomeo, in his figure of St. Mark, has convinced us how important and indispensable is the union of mental conception with truth of observation, in order to give a decided and appropriate character to an Evangelist of the Gospel. None of the pictures of this artist possess the excellence of his St. Mark except one, which is in the city of Lucca, the capital of the republic of that name; and, as that picture is but little known to travellers, and almost unknown to many artists who have visited Italy, a description of it may not be unacceptable.

"The picture is on pannel, and its dimensions somewhat about twenty feet in height by fourteen in width. The subject is the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The composition is divided into three groups; the Apostles and the sepulchre form the centre group, from the midst of which the Virgin ascends; her body-drapery is of a deep ruby colour, which is the only decided red in the picture, and her mantle blue, but in depth of tone approaching to black, and extended by angels to nearly each side of the picture. This mantle is relieved by a light, in tone resembling that of the break of day, seen over the summit of a dark mountain, which gives an awful grandeur to the effect of the picture on entering the chapel, in which it is placed over the altar. That awful light of the morning is contrasted with the golden effulgence above; in the midst of which, our Saviour is seen with extended arms, to receive and welcome his mother.

"From the sepulchre, and the Apostles in the centre, to the fore-ground, the third group of figures partly lies in shade, occasioned by the over-shadowing of the Virgin's deep-toned mantle extended by angels. On the other part of the group, on the side where the light enters, the figures are seen in the broad blaze of day; and amongst them is the portrait of the artist.

"When I first saw this picture, my sensations were in unison with its awful character; and I confess that I was touched with the same kind of sensibility as when I heard the inexpressibly harmonious blendings of vocal sounds in the solemn notes of Non nobis Domine. I never felt more forcibly the dignity of music and the dignity of painting, than from these two compositions of art.

"When we consider the combination of excellence requisite to produce the sublime in painting; the union of propriety with dignity of character; the graceful grouping; the noble folding of drapery, and the deep sombrous tones of the clair-obscure, with appropriate colours harmoniously blending into one whole; – if there is a picture entitled to the appellation of sublime, from the union of all these excellences, It is that which I have described: considered in all its parts, it is, perhaps, superior to any work in painting, which has fallen under my observation.

"When these powerful essays in art by Da Vinci, Bartolomeo di St. Marco, and Michael Angelo became celebrated, Raphael, having attained his adult age, made his appearance at Florence; where the influence of the works of those three great artists pervaded all the avenues to excellence in art.

"The gentle sensibility of Raphael's mind was like the softened wax which makes more visible and distinct the form of the engraving with which it is touched. Blest by Nature with this endowment, he became like the heir to the treasured wealth of many families. Enriched by the accumulated experience which was then in Florence, united to the early tuition of delineating from nature under Pietro Perugino, and the subsequent discoveries of the Grecian relics, Raphael's mind became stored with all that was excellent; and he possessed a practised hand, to make his conceptions visible on his tablets. Possessing these powers, he was invited to Rome, and began his picture of The Dispute on the Sacrament. This picture he finished, together with The School of Athens, before he had attained his twenty-eighth year. At Rome he found himself amidst the splendour of a refined court, and in the focus of human endowment. He became sensible of the rare advantages of his situation; he had industry and ardour to combine and to embrace them all; and the effect is visible in his works. The theological arrangement of the disputants on the Sacrament, and the scholastic controversies at Athens, convince us of this truth. In the upper part of the Dispute on the Sacrament, something may be observed of that taste of Bartolomeo in drapery, and of the dryness and hardness of his first master Pietro Perugino; but in the parts which make the aggregate of that work, he has blended the result of his own observations. In his School of Athens, this is still more strikingly the case; and in his Heliodorus we see additional dignity and an enlargement of style.

"At this period of his life, such was the desire of his society by the great, and such the ambition of standing forward amongst his patrons by all who were eminent for rank and taste, that he was seduced into courtly habits, and relaxed from that studious industry, with which he had formerly laboured; and there are evident marks in many of his works in the Vatican, of a decline of excellence, and that he was suffering pleasure and indolence to rob him of his fame. Sensible of this decline in his compositions, the powers of his mind re-assumed their energies; and that re-animation stands marked in his unrivalled compositions of the Cartoons which are in this country, and in the picture of the Transfiguration.

"The transcendant excellence in composition, and in appropriate character to subject, in the cartoon of Paul preaching at Athens, has left us to desire or expect nothing farther to be done in telling this incident of history.

"In the composition of the death of Ananias, and in the single figure of Elymas the sorcerer struck blind, we have the same example of excellence. We have indeed in many of the characters and groups in the cartoons, the various modes of reasoning, speaking, and feeling; but so blended with nature and truth, and so precise and determined in character, that criticism has nothing wherewith in that respect to ask for amendment.

"Had the life of this illustrious painter, which closed on his birth-day in his thirty-seventh year, been prolonged to the period of that of Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, or Titian, when in the space of seventeen years at Rome he has given the world more unrivalled works of art, than has fallen to the lot of any other painter, what an additional excellence might we not have expected in his works for subsequent generations to admire.

"The next distinguished artist who comes under our consideration is Titian. The grandeur which Michael Angelo gave to the human figure, Titian has rivalled in colour, and both were dignified during their lives with the appellation of The Divine.

"I will pass over the many appropriate portraits which he painted of men, and the portraits of women, though not the most distinguished for beauty, in the character of Venus, to meet the fashion of the age in which he lived; and notice only those works of mental power, which have raised him to eminence in the class of refined artists. On this point, you will find that his picture of St. Peter Martyr will justify the claim he has to that rank.

"St. Peter the Martyr was the head of a religious sect: when on his way from the confines of Germany to Milan with a companion, he was attacked by one in opposition to his religious principles while passing through a wood, and murdered. This is the subject of the picture. The prostrate figure of the Saint, just fallen by a blow from the assassin, raises one of his hands towards heaven, with a countenance of confidence in eternal reward for the firmness of his faith; while the assassin grasps with his left hand the mantle of his victim, the better to enable him, by his uplifted sword in the other hand, to give the fatal blow to the fallen saint. The companion is flying off in frantic dismay, and has received a wound in the head from the assassin.

"The ferocious and determined action of the murderer bestriding the body of the fallen saint, completes a group of figures which have not a rival in art. The majestic trees, as well as the sable and rugged furze, form an awful back-ground to this tragical scene, every way appropriate to the subject. The heavenly messengers seen in the glory above, bearing the palm branches as the emblem of reward for martyrdom, form the second light; the first being the sky and cloud, which gives relief to the black drapery of the wounded companion; while the rays of light from the emanation above, sparkling on the dark branches of the trees as so many diamonds, tie together by their light all the others from the top to the bottom of the picture. The terror which the act of the murderer has spread, is denoted by the speed of the horseman passing into the gloomy recesses of a distant part of the forest.

"This picture, taken in the aggregate, is the first work in art in which the human figure and landscape are combined as an historical landscape, and where all the objects are the full size of nature.

"When I saw this picture at Venice in 1761, it was then in the same state of purity as when the Bologna artists saw and studied it; and it is recorded that Caracci declared this picture to be without fault. But we have to lament the fatal effects which the goddess Bellona has ever occasioned to the fine arts when she mounts her iron chariot of destruction. When this picture fell under her rapacious power, on board a French vessel passing down the Adriatic sea from Venice, one of our cruisers chased the vessel into the port of Ancona, and a cannon-shot pierced the pannel on which the picture was painted, and shivered a portion of it into pieces.

"On its arrival at Paris, the committee of the fine arts found it necessary to remove the painting from the pannel, and place it on canvass; but the picture has lost the principal light.

"But to sum up Titian's powers of conception, no one has equalled him in the propriety and fitness of colour. His pictures of St. Peter Martyr; the David and Goliah; and the Last Supper, which is in the Escurial, stand in the very highest rank in art. On the latter of these pictures being finished, Titian in his letter to the King, announcing the circumstance, says that it had been the labour of seven years. But by his original sketch in oil colours, which I have the good fortune to possess, and by which we may form an estimate, although the general effect and composition are unrivalled, the characters of the heads of the apostles are not equal to those of Leonardo da Vinci on the same subject.