The Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli, Volume 2 (of 3)

Imitation is properly divided into Iconic and Ideal. Iconic imitation is confined to an individuum or model, whose parts it delineates according to their character and essence, already distinguishing the native and inherent, from the accidental and adventitious parts. By the first it forms its standard, and either omits or subordinates the second to them, so as not to impede or to affect the harmony of a whole. This is properly the province of the Portrait and the strictly Historic painter, whose chief object and essential requisite is Truth. Portrait in general, content to be directed by the rules of Physiognomy, which shows the animal being it represents at rest, seldom calls for aid on Pathognomy, which exhibits that being agitated, or at least animated and in motion; but when it does – and, though in a gentler manner than History, it always ought to do it – it differs in nothing from that, but in extent and degree, and already proceeds on the firm permanent basis of Nature.

By Nature, I understand the general and permanent principles of visible objects, not disfigured by accident or distempered by disease, not modified by fashion or local habits. Nature is a collective idea, and though its essence exist in each individual of the species, can never in its perfection inhabit a single object: our ideas are the offspring of our senses; without a previous knowledge of many central forms, though we may copy, we can no more imitate, or, in other words, rise to the principle of action and penetrate the character of our model, than we can hope to create the form of a being we have not seen, without retrospect to one we have. Meanness of manner is the infallible consequence that results from the exclusive recourse to one model: why else are those who have most closely adhered to, and most devoutly studied the model, exactly the most incorrect, the most remote from the real human form? Can there be any thing more disgusting to an eye accustomed to harmony of frame, than the starveling forms of Albert Durer, unless it be the swampy excrescences of Rembrandt? the figures of the former, proportions without symmetry; those of the Dutch artist, uniform abstracts of lumpy or meagre deformity: and yet the German was a scientific man, had measured, had in his opinion reduced to principles, the human frame; whilst the Dutchman, form only excepted, possessed every power that constitutes genius in art, seldom excelled in invention and composition, and the creator of that magic combination of colour with chiaroscuro, never perhaps before, and surely never since attained. And did not the greatest master of colour but one, Tintoretto, if we believe his biographer Ridolfi, declare, that "to design from natural bodies, or what is the same, from the model, was the task of men experienced in art, inasmuch as those bodies were generally destitute of grace and a good form." We are informed by the Latin Editor of Albert Durer's book on the Symmetry of the Human Body, that during his stay at Venice he was requested by Andrea Mantegna, who had conceived a high opinion of his execution and certainty of hand, to pay him a visit at Mantoua, for the express purpose of giving him an idea of that form, of which he himself had had a glimpse from the contemplation of the Antique. Andrea was then ill, and expired before Albert could profit by his instructions:95 this disappointment, says the author of the anecdote, Albert never ceased to lament during his life. How fit the Mantouan was to instruct the German, is not the question here; the fact proves that Albert felt a want which he found his model could not supply, and had too just an idea of the importance of the art to be proud of dexterity of finger or facility of execution, when exerted only to transcribe or perpetuate defects – though these defects, almost incredible to tell, soon after invaded Italy, gave a check to the imitation of M. Agnolo, supplanted his forms, and produced a temporary revolution of style in the Tuscan School, of which the frescoes of Andrea del Sarto and Franciabigio in S. Giovanni dei Scholchi, and the latter productions of Jacopo da Puntormo are indisputable proofs. But without recurring to other proofs, the method adopted by the Academy in the process of study, appears to be founded on the insufficiency of the model for attaining correctness. Why has it decreed that the student, before he be permitted to study life, should devote a certain period to the study of the Antique? If you fancy the motive lay in the comparative facility of drawing from a motionless object, you lend your own misconception to the Academy; for, though in general it be undoubtedly more easy to draw an immoveable object than one that, however imperceptibly, is in perpetual motion, and always varies its points of sight, it cannot be the case when applied to the Antique; for where is the great name among the moderns that ever could reach the line and the proportions of the ancients? M. Agnolo filled part of the Capella Sistina with imitations, and sometimes transcripts of the Torso, – will any one stand forth and say that he reached it? Compare the Restoration of Montorsoli, Giacomo della Porta and Bernini, or Baccio Bandinello's Laocoon, with the rest of the figures, or the original, and deplore the palpable inferiority. What was it that the Academy intended by making the Antique the basis of your studies? what? but to lead you to the sources of Form; to initiate you in the true elements of human essence; to enable you to judge at your transition from the marble to life what was substance and possession in the individual, and what excrescence and want, what homogeneous, what discordant, what deformity, what beauty. It intended, by making you acquainted with a variety of figures, to qualify you for classing them according to character and function, what exclusively belongs to some or one, and what is the common law of all; to make you sensible that the union of simplicity and variety produces harmony, and that monotony or confusion commences where either is neglected, or each intrudes upon the other; in short, to supply by its stores, as far as time and circumstances permitted, what the public granted to the artists of Greece; what Zeuxis demanded and obtained from the people of Croton; what Eupompus pointed out to Lysippus; what Raffaello, with better will than success, searched in his own mind; and what Andrea Mantegna, however unqualified to find himself, desired to impress on the mind of Albert Durer – a standard of Form.96

I shall not here recapitulate the reasons and the coincidence of fortunate circumstances which raised the Greeks to the legislation of form: the standard they erected, the canon they set, fell not from heaven; but as they fancied themselves of divine origin, and religion was the first mover of their art, it followed that they should endeavour to invest their authors with the most perfect forms, and finding that the privilege of man, they were led to a complete and reasoned study of his elements and constitution; this with their climate, which allowed that form to grow and to show itself to the greatest advantage, with their civil and political institutions, which established and encouraged exercises, manners, and opportunities, of all others best calculated to rear, accomplish, and produce that form, gave in successive periods birth to that style which beginning with the essence, proportion, proceeded to character, and rose to its height by uniting both with Beauty. Of all three classes specimens in sufficient numbers have survived the ravages of time, the most considerable of which, accumulated within these walls, form the ample stores of information which the Academy displays before its students; but – I say it with reluctance, though as teacher my office, as your reader my duty, demand it – displays not always with adequate success. Too often the precipitation with which admission from the Plaster to the Life-room is solicited; the total neglect of the Antique after they have once invaded the model, and the equally slovenly, authoritative, and uninformed manner of drawing from it, prove the superficial impression of the forms previously offered to their selection. The reason of all this lies perhaps in a too early admission to either room. They enter without elements, and proceed without success; they are set to arrange and polish before they are acquainted with the rough materials. To one or both of these causes it is probably owing, that some consider it still as an undecided question whether the student, when admitted to draw from the living model, should confine himself to drawing punctiliously what he sees before him, or exercise that judgment which his course in the Antique Academy has matured, and draw forms corresponding with each other. To me, after considering carefully what has been advanced on either side, it appears demonstrated, that the student is admitted to the life to avail himself of the knowledge he acquired from the previous study of classic forms. Here the office and the essential duties of the visitor, I speak with deference, begin, to confirm him where he is right, to check presumption, to lend him his own eyes, and, if it be necessary, to convince him by demonstration and example. But the human system cannot be comprehended by mere contemplation, or even the copy of the surface. The centre of its motion must be fixed, justly to mark the emanation of the rays. The uninterrupted undulation of outward forms, the waves of life, originate within, and, without being traced to that source, instruct less than confound. The real basis of sight is knowledge, and that knowledge is internal; for though, to speak with Milton, in Poetry gods and demigods, "vital in every part, all heart, all eye, all ear, as they please limb themselves, and colour, shape, and size assume as likes them best;" in Art their substance is built on the brittle strength of bones, they act by human elements, and to descend must rise: hence, though a deep and subtle knowledge of anatomy be less necessary to the painter than to the physician or surgeon; though the visible be his sphere and determine his limits, a precise and accurate acquaintance with the skeleton, the basis of the machine, is indispensable; he must make himself master of the muscles, tendons, and ligaments that knit the bones or cover and surround them, their antagonismus of action and reaction, their issues, their insertions, and the variety of shapes which they assume, when according to their relative foreshortenings, laxity, position, they indicate energy or slackness of action or of frame, its greater or less elasticity, furnish the characters of the passions, and by their irritability in louder or fainter tones become the echoes of every impression.

Nor can Physiognomy, the companion of Anatomy, which from the measure of the solid parts ascertains the precise proportion of the moveable, be dispensed with. There have been, perhaps there are, teachers of art, who, whilst they admit physiognomy in the mass, refuse to acknowledge it in detail, or in other words, who admit a language, and reject its elements: as if the whole harmony of every proportionate object did not consist in the correspondence of singly imperceptible, or seemingly insignificant elements, and would not become a deformed mass without them. Let the twelfth part of an inch be added to, or taken from, the space between the upper lip of the Apollo, and the God is lost.

The want of this necessary qualification is one of the chief causes of Manner, the capital blemish of Design, in contradistinction to Style: Style pervades and consults the subject, and co-ordinates its means to its demands; Manner subordinates the subject to its means. A Mannerist is the paltry epitomist of Nature's immense volume; a juggler, who pretends to mimic the infinite variety of her materials by the vain display of a few fragments of crockery. He produces, not indeed the monster which Horace recommends to the mirth of his friends, the offspring of grotesque fancy, and rejected with equal disdain or incredulity by the vulgar and refined, but others not less disgusting, though perhaps confined to a narrower circle of judges.

Mannerists may be divided into three classes:

1st. Those who never consult Nature, but at second hand; only see her through the medium of some prescription, and fix her to the test of a peculiar form.

2ndly. Those who persevere to look for her or to place her on a spot where she cannot be found, some individual one or analogous models; and

3rdly. Those who, without ascending to the principle, content themselves with jumbling together an aggregate of style and model, tack deformity to beauty, and meanness to grandeur.

Of all Taste, the standard lies in the middle between extravagance and scantiness; the best becomes a flaw, if carried to an extreme, or indiscriminately applied. The Apollo, the Hercules of Glycon, and the figure misnamed Gladiator, are each models of style in their respective classes; but their excellence would become a flaw if indiscriminately applied to the distinct demand of different subjects. Neither the Apollo, the Hercules, nor the Gladiator, can singly supply the forms of a Theseus, Meleager, or Achilles, any more than the heroes on Monte Cavallo theirs. It must however be owned, that he would commit a more venial error, and come nearer to the form we require in the Achilles of Homer, who should substitute the form of the Apollo or Hercules with the motion of the Gladiator to the real form, than he who should copy him from the best individual he could meet with: the reason is clear, there is a greater analogy between their form and action and that of Achilles, than between him and the best model we know alive. From the same principle, he who in a subject of pure history would attempt to introduce the generic and patriarchal forms in the Capella Sistina would become ludicrous by the excess of contrast; for to him the organic characteristics of national proportion are little less essential than to the draughtsman of natural history or the portrait painter. The skull of an European, though tinged with African hues, will not assimilate with the legitimate skull of a negro, nor can the foot of Meleager, or even of the Laocoon, ever be exchanged for that of a Mongul or Chinese; and he has probably mistaken his information, who fancies that the expression, gait, and limbs of the Apollo can find their counterpart on the Apalachian mountains, or are related to the unconquered tribes of Florida.

The least pardonable of all Mannerists appears to be he who applies to meanness to furnish him with the instruments to dignity and grandeur. He who relies for all upon his model, should treat no other subject but his model; and I will venture to say, that even the extravagant forms, and, if you will, caricatures of Goltzius seduced by Spranger are preferable to those of Albert Durer or Caravaggio, though recommended by the precision of the one and the chiaroscuro of the other, when applied to a pure heroic or symbolic subject; for though eccentric and extreme, they are eccentricities and extremes of the great style, in which meanness of conception is of all other blemishes the least excusable. From this blemish the mighty genius of Raffaello, before it emerged from the dregs of Pietro Perugino, was not entirely free; – whether from timidity or languor of conception, the Christ in the Dispute on the Sacrament, though the principal figure, the centre from which all the rest like radii emanate and ought to emanate in due subordination, is a tame, mean figure, and, the placidity of the face perhaps excepted, for even that has a tincture of meanness, inferior to all the patriarchs and doctors of that numerous composition.

The third class, or those who mix up a motley assemblage of ideal beauty and common nature, such as was pounded together by Pietro Testa and Gherard Lairesse, and from which neither Guido nor Poussin were entirely free – though perhaps not strictly chargeable with the absolute impropriety of the first and the lowness of the second class, must be content with what we can spare of disapprobation from either: they surprise us into pleasure by glimpses of character and form, and as often disappoint us by the obtrusion of heterogeneous or vulgar forms. But this disappointment is not so general, because we want that critical acquaintance with the principles of ancient art which can assign each trunk its head, each limb its counterpart: a want even now so frequent, notwithstanding the boasted refinements of Roman and German criticisms, that a Mercury, if he have left his caduceus, may exchange his limbs with a Meleager, and he with an Antinous; perhaps a Jupiter on Ida his torso with that of a Hercules anapauomenos, an Ariadne be turned into the head of a hornless Bacchus, and an Isis be substituted for every ideal female.

EIGHTH LECTURE

COLOUR. – IN FRESCO PAINTING

EIGHTH LECTURE

The Painter's art may be considered in a double light, either as exerting its power over the senses to reach the intellect and heart, or merely as their handmaid, teaching its graces to charm their organs for their amusement only: in the first light, the senses, like the rest of its materials, are only a vehicle; in the second, they are the principal object and the ultimate aim of its endeavours.

I shall not enquire here whether the Arts, as mere ministers of sensual pleasure, still deserve the name of liberal, or are competent exclusively to fill up the time of an intellectual being. Nature, and the masters of Art, who pronounce the verdicts of Nature in Poetry and Painting, have decided, that they neither can attain their highest degree of accomplishment, nor can be considered as useful assistants to the happiness of society, unless they subordinate the vehicle, whatever it be, to the real object, and make sense the minister of mind.

When this is their object, Design, in its most extensive as in its strictest sense, is their basis; when they stoop to be the mere playthings, or debase themselves to be the debauchers of the senses, they make Colour their insidious foundation.

The greatest master of Colour in our time, the man who might have been the rival of the first colourists in every age, Reynolds, in his public instruction uniformly persisted to treat Colour as a subordinate principle. Though fully aware that, without possessing at least a competent share of its numberless fascinating qualities, no man, let his style of design or powers of invention be what they may, can either hope for professional success, or can even properly be called a painter, and giving it as his opinion, on the authority of tradition, the excellence of the remaining monuments in sculpture, and the discovered though inferior relics of ancient painting, that, if the coloured masterpieces of antiquity had descended to us in tolerable preservation, we might expect to see works designed in the style of the Laocoon, painted in that of Titian; – he still persisted in the doctrine that even the colour of Titian, far from adding to the sublimity of the Great style, would only have served to retard, if not to degrade, its impression. He knew the usurping, the ambitious principle inseparable from Colour, and therefore thought it his duty, by making it the basis of ornamental styles, not to check its legitimate rights, but to guard against its indiscriminate demands.

It is not for me, (who have courted and still continue to court Colour as a despairing lover courts a disdainful mistress,) to presume, by adding my opinion, to degrade the great one delivered; but the attachments of fancy ought not to regulate the motives of a teacher, or direct his plan of art: it becomes me therefore to tell you, that if the principle which animates the art gives rights and privilege to Colour not its own; if from a medium, it raises it to a representative of all; if what is claimed in vain by form and mind, it fondly grants to colour; if it divert the public eye from higher beauties to be absorbed by its lures – then the art is degraded to a mere vehicle of sensual pleasure, an implement of luxury, a beautiful but trifling bauble, or a splendid fault.

To Colour, when its bland purity tinges the face of innocence and sprouting life, or its magic charm traces in imperceptible transitions the forms of beauty; when its warm and ensanguined vigour stamps the vivid principle that animates full-grown youth and the powerful frame of manhood, or in paler gradations marks animal decline; when its varieties give truth with character to individual imitation, or its more comprehensive tone pervades the scenes of sublimity and expression, and dictates the medium in which they ought to move, to strike our eye in harmony; – to Colour, the florid attendant of form, the minister of the passions, the herald of energy and character, what eye, not tinged by disease or deserted by Nature, refuses homage?

But of Colour, when equally it overwhelms the forms of infancy, the milky germ of life, and the defined lines of manhood and of beauty with lumpy pulp; when from the dresser of the Graces it becomes the handmaid of deformity, and with their spoils decks her limbs – shakes hands with meanness, or haunts the recesses of loathsomeness and horror97– when it exchanges flesh for roses, and vigour for vulgarity – absorbs character and truth in hues of flattery, or changes the tone demanded by sublimity and pathos into a mannered medium of playful tints; – of Colour the slave of fashion and usurper of propriety, if still its charms retain our eye, what mind unseduced by prejudice or habit can forbear to lament the abuse?

The principles of Colour, as varied, are as immutable as those of Nature. The gradations of the system that connects light with shade are immense, but the variety of its imitation is regulated by the result of their union, Simplicity – Clearness if obtained by Harmony!

Simplicity represents of every individual its unity, its whole. Light, and its organ the eye, show us the whole of a being before its parts, and then diffuse themselves in visual rays over the limbs. Light with its own velocity fixes a point, the focus of its power; but as no central light can be conceived without radiation, nor a central form without extension, their union produces that immutable law of harmony which we call breadth.

One point is the brightest in the eye as on the object; this is the point of light: from it in all directions the existent parts advance or recede, by, before, behind each other; the two extremes of light and shade make a whole, which the local or essential colour defines, – its coalition with the demi-tint, the shade and reflexes, rounds, – and the correspondence of each colour with all, tunes.

The principles that regulate the choice of colours are in themselves as invariable as the light from which they spring, and as the shade that absorbs them. Their economy is neither arbitrary nor phantastic. Of this every one may convince himself who can contemplate a prism. Whatever the colours be, they follow each other in regular order; they emerge from, they flow into each other. No confusion can break or thwart their gradations, from blue to yellow, from yellow to red; the flame of every light, without a prisma, establishes this immutable scale.

From this theory you will not expect that I should enter into chemic disquisitions on the materials, or into technic ones on the methods of painting. When you are told that simplicity and keeping are the basis of purity and harmony, that one colour has a greater power than a combination of two, that a mixture of three impairs that power still more, you are in possession of the great elemental principles necessary for the economy of your palette. Method, handling, and the modes of execution are taught by trial, comparison, and persevering practice, but chiefly by the nature, of the object you pursue. The lessons of repetition, disappointment, and blunder, impress more forcibly than the lessons of all masters. Not that I mean to depreciate or to level the comparative value or inferiority of materials, or that instruction which may shorten your road to the essential parts of study; but he is as far from Nature who sees her only through the medium of his master, as he from colour who fancies it lies in costly, scarce, or fine materials, in curious preparations, or mouldy secrets, in light, in dark, in smooth, in rough, or in absorbent grounds: it may be in all, but is in none of these. The masters of ancient colour had for their basis only four, and this simplicity made Reynolds conclude that they must have been as great in colour as in form. He who cannot make use of the worst must disgrace the best materials; and he whose palette is set or regulated by another's eye, renounces his own, and must become a mannerist. There is no compendious method of becoming great; the price of excellence is labour, and time that of immortality.