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

The province delegated by the Academy to its teachers must be, – where hope promises success and sparks of genius appear, to foster, to encourage; but where necessity commands, rather to deter than to delude, and thus to check the progress of that compendiary method, which, according to your late President, has ruined the Arts of every country, by reducing execution to a recipè, substituting manner for style, ornament for substance, and giving admission to mediocrity.

If the students of this Academy must be supposed to have overcome the rudiments, and to be arrived at that point from which it may be discovered whether Nature intended them for mere craftsmen or real artists, near that point, where, in the phrase of Reynolds, "genius begins and rules end," it behoves us not to mistake the mere children of necessity, or the pledges of vanity, for the real nurselings of public hope, or the future supporters of the beneficent establishment that rears them. Instruction, it is true, may put them in possession of every attainable part of the Art in a decent degree; they may learn to draw with tolerable correctness, to colour with tolerable effect, to put their figures together tolerably well, and to furnish their faces with a tolerable expression – it may not be easy for any one to pick any thing intolerably bad out of their works; but when they have done all this – and almost all may do all this, for all this may be taught – they will find themselves exactly at the point where all that gives value to Art begins – Genius, which cannot be taught – at the threshold of the Art, in a state of mediocrity. "Gods, men, and fame," says Horace, "reject mediocrity in poets." Why? Neither Poetry nor Painting spring from the necessities of society, or furnish necessaries to life; offsprings of fancy, leisure, and lofty contemplation, organs of religion and government, ornaments of society, and too often mere charms of the senses and instruments of luxury, they derive their excellence from novelty, degree, and polish. What none indispensably want, all may wish for, but few only are able to procure, acquires its value from some exclusive quality, founded on intrinsic or some conventional merit, and that, or an equal substitute, mediocrity cannot reach: hence, by suffering it to invade the province of genius and talent, we rob the plough, the shop, the loom, the school, perhaps the desk and pulpit, of a thousand useful hands. A good mechanic, a trusty labourer, an honest tradesman, are beings more important, of greater use to society, and better supporters of the state, than an artist or a poet of mediocrity. When I therefore say that it is the duty of the Academy to deter rather than to delude, I am not afraid of having advanced a paradox hostile to the progress of real Art. The capacities that time will disclose, genius and talents, cannot be deterred by the exposition of difficulties, and it is the interest of society that all else should.

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME

1

There will be an opportunity to notice that incredible dereliction of reminiscence which prompted him to transfer what he had rightly ascribed to Giorgione, in the Florentine edition, 1550, to the elder Palma in the subsequent ones. See Lecture on Chiaroscuro.

2

It ought not, however, to be disguised, that the history of art, deviating from its real object, has been swelled to a diffuse catalogue of individuals, who, being the nurslings of different schools, or picking something from the real establishers of art, have done little more than repeat or mimic rather than imitate, at second hand, what their masters or predecessors had found in nature, discriminated and applied to art in obedience to its dictates. Without depreciating the merits of that multitude who strenuously passed life in following others, it must be pronounced a task below history to allow them more than a transitory glance; neither novelty nor selection and combination of scattered materials, are entitled to serious attention from him who only investigates the real progress of art, if novelty is proved to have added nothing essential to the system, and selection to have only diluted energy, and by a popular amalgama to have been content with captivating the vulgar. Novelty, without enlarging the circle of fancy, may delight, but is nearer allied to whim than to invention; and an Eclectic system without equality of parts, as it originated in want of comprehension, totters on the brink of mediocrity, sinks art, or splits it into crafts decorated with the specious name of schools, whose members, authorized by prescript, emboldened by dexterity of hand, encouraged by ignorance, or heading a cabal, subsist on mere repetition, with few more legitimate claims to the honours of history than a rhapsodist to those of the poem which he recites.

3

Abstract of the Laws of the Royal Academy, article Professors; page 21.

4

This has been done in a superior manner by J. G. Herder, in his Ideen zur Philosophie der geschichte der Menschheit, Vol. iii. Book 13; a work translated under the title of Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man, 4to.

5

This account is founded on the conjectures of Mr. Riem, in his Treatise on die Malerey der Alten, or the Painting of the Ancients, 4to. Berlin, 1787

6

Pausanias Attic. c. xxviii. The word used by Pausanias καταγραψαι, shows that the figures of Parrhasius were intended for a Bassorelievo. They were in profile. This is the sense of the word Catagrapha in Pliny, xxxv. c. 8, he translates it "obliquas imagines."

7

By the authority chiefly of Pamphilus the master of Apelles, who taught at Sicyon. 'Hujus auctoritate,' says Pliny, xxxv. 10, 'effectum est Sicyone primum, deinde et in tota Græcia, ut pueri ingenui ante omnia diagraphicen, hoc est, picturam in buxo, docerentur,' &c. Harduin, contrary to the common editions, reads indeed, and by the authority, he says, of all the MSS. graphicen, which he translates: ars 'delineandi,' desseigner, but he has not proved that graphice means not more than design; and if he had, what was it that Pamphilus taught? he was not the inventor of what he had been taught himself. He established or rather renewed a particular method of drawing, which contained the rudiments, and facilitated the method of painting.

8

Pausan. Phocica, c. xxv. seq.

9

This I take to be the sense of Μεγεθος here, which distinguished him, according to Ælian, Var. Hist. iv. 3, from Dionysius of Colophon. The word Τελειοις in the same passage: και ἐν τοις τελειοις εἰργαζετο τα ἀθλα, I translate: he aimed at, he sought his praise in the representation of essential proportion; which leads to ideal beauty.

The κρειττους, χειρους, ὁμοιους; or the βελτιονας ἠ καθ' ἡμας, ἠ και τοιουτους, ἠ χειρονας, of Aristotle, Poetic. c. 2, by which he distinguishes Polygnotus, Dionysius, Pauson, confirms the sense given to the passage of Ælian.

10

Παρειῶν το ἐνερευθες, ὁιαν την Κασσανδραν ἐν τη λεσχη ἐποιησε τοις Δελφοις. Lucian: εἰκονες. This, and what Pausanias tells of the colour of Eurynomus in the same picture, together with the coloured draperies mentioned by Pliny; makes it evident, that the 'simplex color' ascribed by Quintilian to Polygnotus and Aglaophon, implies less a single colour, as some have supposed, than that simplicity always attendant on the infancy of painting, which leaves every colour unmixed and crudely by itself. Indeed the Poecile (ἡ ποικιλη στοα) which obtained its name from his pictures, is alone a sufficient proof of variety of colours.

11

Hic primus species exprimere instituit, Pliny xxxv. 36, as species in the sense Harduin takes it, 'oris et habitus venustas,' cannot be refused to Polygnotus, and the artists immediately preceding Apollodorus, it must mean here the subdivisions of generic form; the classes.

At this period we may with probability fix the invention of local colour, and tone; which, though strictly speaking it be neither the light nor the shade, is regulated by the medium which tinges both. This, Pliny calls 'splendour.' To Apollodorus Plutarch ascribes likewise the invention of tints, the mixtures of colour and the gradations of shade, if I conceive the passage rightly: Ἀπολλοδωρος ὁ Ζωγραφος Ἀνθρωπων πρωτος ἐξευρων φθοραν και ἀποχρωσιν Σκιας, (Plutarch, Bellone an pace Ath., &c. 346.) This was the element of the ancient Ἁρμογη, that imperceptible transition, which, without opacity, confusion, or hardness, united local colour, demitint, shade, and reflexes.

12

'Pinxit et monochromata ex albo.' Pliny, xxxv. 9. This Aristotle, Poet. c. 6, calls λευκογραφειν.

13

In lineis extremis palmam adeptus – minor tamen videtur, sibi comparatus, in mediis corporibus exprimendis. Pliny, xxxv. 10. Here we find the inferiority of the middle parts merely relative to himself. Compared with himself, Parrhasius was not all equal.

14

Theseus, in quo dixit, eundem apud Parrhasium rosa pastum esse, suum vero carne. Plin. xxxv. 11.

15

The epithet which he gave to himself of Ἁβροδιαιτος, the delicate, the elegant, and the epigram he is said to have composed on himself, are known: See Athenæus, l. xii. He wore, says Ælian, Var. Hist. ix. 11. a purple robe and a golden garland; he bore a staff wound round with tendrils of gold, and his sandals were tied to his feet and ankles with golden straps. Of his easy simplicity we may judge from his dialogue with Socrates in Xenophon; ἀπομνημονευατων, 1. iii. Of his libidinous fancy, besides what Pliny says, from his Archigallus, and the Meleager and Atalanta mentioned by Suetonius in Tiberio, c. 44.

16

In the portico of the Piræus by Leochares; in the hall of the Five-hundred, by Lyson; in the back portico of the Ceramicus there was a picture of Theseus, of Democracy and the Demos, by Euphranor. Pausan. Attic. i. 3. Aristolaus, according to Pliny, was a painter, 'è severissimis.'

17

Cicero Oratore, 73. seq. – In alioque ponatur, aliudque totum sit, utrum decere an oportere dicas; oportere enim, perfectionem declarat officii, quo et semper utendum est, et omnibus: decere, quasi aptum esse, consentaneumque tempori et personæ; quod cum in factis sæpissime, tum in dictis valet, in vultu denique, et gestu, et incessu. Contraque item dedecere. Quod si poeta fugit, ut maximum vitium, qui peccat, etiam, cum probam orationem affingit improbo, stultove sapientis: si denique pictor ille vidit, cum immolanda Iphigenia tristis Calchas esset, mæstior Ulysses, mæreret Menelaus, obvolvendum caput Agamemnonis esse, quoniam summum illum luctum penicillo, non posset imitari: si denique histrio, quid deceat quærit: quid faciendum oratori putemus?

M. F. Quintilianus, l. ii. c. 14. – Operienda sunt quædam, sive ostendi non debent, sive exprimi pro dignitate non possunt: ut fecit Timanthes, ut opinor, Cithnius, in ea tabula qua Coloten Tejum vicit. Nam cum in Iphigeniæ immolatione pinxisset tristem Calchantem, tristiorem Ulyssem, addidisset Menelao quem summum poterat ars efficere mærorem, consumptis affectibus, non reperiens quo dignè modo Patris vultum possit exprimere, velavit ejus caput, et sui cuique animo dedit æstimandum.

It is evident to the slightest consideration, that both Cicero and Quintilian lose sight of their premises, and contradict themselves in the motive they ascribe to Timanthes. Their want of acquaintance with the nature of plastic expression made them imagine the face of Agamemnon beyond the power of the artist. They were not aware that by making him waste expression on inferior actors at the expence of a principal one, they call him an improvident spendthrift and not a wise œconomist.

From Valerius Maximus, who calls the subject 'Luctuosum immolatæ Iphigeniæ sacrificium' instead of immolandæ, little can be expected to the purpose. Pliny, with the dignè of Quintilian has the same confusion of motive.

18

It is observed by an ingenious Critic, that in the tragedy of Euripides, the procession is described, and upon Iphigenia's looking back on her father, he groans, and hides his face to conceal his tears; whilst the picture gives the moment that precedes the sacrifice, and the hiding has a different object and arises from another impression.

– ὡς δ' εσειδεν Αγαμεμνων αναξ ἐπι σφαγας στειχουσαν εἰς ἀλσος κορην ἀνεστεναξε. Καμπαλιν στρεψας καρα Δακρυα προηγεν. ὀμματων πεπλον προθεις.

19

Pliny, l. xxxv. c. 18.

20

Lysippum Sicyonium – audendi rationem cepisse pictoris Eupompi responso. Eum enim interrogatum, quem sequeretur antecedentium, dixisse demonstrata hominum multitudine, naturam ipsam imitandam esse, non artificem. Non habet Latinum nomen symmetria, quam diligentissime custodivit, nova intactaque ratione quadratas veterum staturas permutando: Vulgoque dicebat, ab illis factos, quales essent, homines: à se, quales viderentur esse. Plin. xxxiv. 8.

21

Μαλλον δε Ἀπελλης ὁ Ἐφεσιος παλαι ταυτην προῦλαβε την εἰκονα· Και γαρ αὐ και οὑτος διαβληθεις προς Πτολεμαιον —

Λουκιανού περι του μ. ῥ. Π. Τ. Δ.

22

Apelles was probably the inventor of what artists call glazing. See Reynolds on Du Fresnoy, note 37. vol. iii.

23

In matri interfectæ infante miserabiliter blandiente. Plin. l. xxxiv. c. 9.

24

A design of Raphael, representing the lues of the Trojans in Creta, known by the print of Marc Antonio Raymondi.

25

Reynolds' Disc. V. vol. i. p. 120. Euphranoris Alexander Paris est: in quo laudatur quod omnia simul intelligantur, judex dearum, amator Helenæ, et tamen Achillis interfector. Plin. l. xxxiv. 8.

26

See the Hymn (ascribed to Homer) on Apollo.

27

See the account of this in Vasari; vita di P. Brunelleschi, tom. ii. 114. It is of wood, and still exists in the chapel of the family Gondi, in the church of S. Maria Novella. I know that near a century before Donato, Giotto is said to have worked in marble two basso-relievoes on the campanile of the cathedral of Florence; they probably excel the style of his pictures as much as the bronze works executed by Andrea Pisani, from his designs, at the door of the Battisterio.

28

Masaccio da S. Giovanni di Valdarno born in 1402, is said to have died in 1443. He was the pupil of Masolino da Panicale.

29

Andrea Mantegna died at Mantoua, 1505. A monument erected to his memory in 1517, by his sons, gave rise to the mistake of dating his death from that period.

30

Luca Signorelli died at Cortona 1521, aged 82.

31

Lionardo da Vinci is said to have died in 1517, aged 75, at Paris.

32

The flying birds of paste, the lions filled with lilies, the lizards with dragons' wings, horned and silvered over, savour equally of the boy and the quack. It is singular enough that there exists not the smallest hint of Lorenzo de Medici having employed or noticed a man of such powers and such early celebrity; the legend which makes him go to Rome with Juliano de Medici at the access of Leo X., to accept employment in the Vatican, whether sufficiently authentic or not, furnishes a characteristic trait of the man. The Pope passing through the room allotted for the pictures, and instead of designs and cartoons, finding nothing but an apparatus of distillery, of oils and varnishes, exclaimed, Oimè, costui non è per far nulla, da che comincia a pensare alla fine innanzi il principio dell' opera! From an admirable sonnet of Lionardo, preserved by Lomazzo, he appears to have been sensible of the inconstancy of his own temper, and full of wishes, at least, to correct it.

Much has been said of the honour he received by expiring in the arms of Francis I. It was indeed an honour, by which destiny in some degree atoned to that monarch for his future disaster at Pavia.

33

Frà Bartolomeo died at Florence 1517, at the age of 48.

34

Michael Angelo Buonarotti, born at Castel-Caprese in 1474, died at Rome 1564, aged 90.

35

Like Silanion – 'Apollodorum fecit, fictorem et ipsum, sed inter cunctos diligentissimum artis et inimicum sui judicem, crebro perfecta signa frangentem, dum satiare cupiditatem nequit artis, et ideo insanum cognominatum. Hoc in eo expressit, nec hominem ex ære fecit sed Iracundiam.' Plin. l. xxxiv. 7.

36

When M. Angelo pronounced oil-painting to be Arte da donna e da huomini agiati e infingardi, a maxim to which the fierce Venetian manner has given an air of paradox, he spoke relatively to fresco: it was a lash on the short-sighted insolence of Sebastian del Piombo, who wanted to persuade Paul III. to have the Last Judgement painted in oil. That he had a sense for the beauties of oil-colour, its glow, its juice, its richness, its pulp, the praises which he lavished on Titiano, whom he called the only painter, and his patronage of Frà Sebastian himself, evidently prove. When young, M. Angelo attempted oil-painting with success; the picture painted for Angelo Doni is an instance, and probably the only entire work of the kind that remains. The Lazarus, in the picture destined for the cathedral at Narbonne, rejects the claim of every other hand. The Leda, the cartoon of which, formerly in the palace of the Vecchietti at Florence, is now in the possession of W. Lock, Esq. was painted in distemper (a tempera); all small or large oil-pictures shown as his, are copies from his designs or cartoons, by Marcello Venusti, Giacopo da Pontormo, Battista Franco, and Sebastian of Venice.

37

Raphael Sanzio, of Urbino, died at Rome 1520, at the age of 37.

38

Giorgio Barbarelli, from his size and beauty called Giorgione, was born at Castel Franco, in the territory of Venice, 1478, and died at Venice, 1511.

39

Titiano Vecelli, or, as the Venetians call him, Tiziàn, born at Cador in the Friulese, died at Venice, 1576, aged 99.

40

The birth and life of Antonio Allegri, or, as he called himself, Læti, surnamed Correggio, is more involved in obscurity than the life of Apelles. Whether he was born in 1490 or 1494 is not ascertained; the time of his death in 1534 is more certain. The best account of him has undoubtedly been given by A. R. Mengs in his Memorie concernenti la vita e le opere di Antonio Allegri denominato il Correggio. Vol. ii. of his works, published by the Spaniard D. G. Niccola d'Azara.

41

Pelegrino Tibaldi died at Milano in 1592, aged 70.

42

Sebastiano, afterwards called Del Piombo from the office of the papal signet, died at Rome in 1547, aged 62.

43

Daniel Ricciarelli, of Volterra, died in 1566, aged 57.

44

Now the first ornament of the exquisite collection of J. J. Angerstein, Esq. – Since purchased for the National Gallery. – Editor.

45

Giorgio Vasari, of Arezzo, died in 1584, aged 68.

46

Julio Pipi, called Romano, died at Mantoua in 1546, aged 54.

47

Francesco Primaticcio, made Abbé de St. Martin de Troyes, by Francis, I., died in France 1570, aged 80.

48

Polydoro Caldara da Caravaggio was assassinated at Messina in 1543, aged 51.

49

Michael Angelo Amerigi, surnamed Il Caravaggi, knight of Malta, died 1609, aged 40.

50

Nicolas Poussin, of Andely, died at Rome 1665, aged 71.

51

Salvator Rosa, surnamed Salvatoriello, died at Rome 1673, aged 59.

52

Of the portraits which Raphael in fresco scattered over the compositions of the Vatican, we shall find an opportunity to speak. But in oil the real style of portrait began at Venice with Giorgione, flourished in Sebastian del Piombo, and was carried to perfection by Titiano, who filled the masses of the first without entangling himself in the minute details of the second. Tintoretto, Bassan, and Paolo of Verona, followed the principle of Titiano. After these, it migrated from Italy to reside with the Spaniard Diego Velasquez; from whom Rubens and Vandyck attempted to transplant it to Flanders, France, and England, with unequal success. France seized less on the delicacy than on the affectation of Vandyck, and soon turned the art of representing men and women into a mere remembrancer of fashions and airs. England had possessed Holbein, but it was reserved for the German Lely, and his successor Kneller, to lay the foundation of a manner, which, by pretending to unite portrait with history, gave a retrograde direction for near a century to both. A mob of shepherds and shepherdesses in flowing wigs and dressed curls, ruffled Endymions, humble Junos, withered Hebes, surly Allegroes, and smirking Pensierosas, usurped the place of truth, propriety and character. Even the lamented powers of the greatest painter whom this country and perhaps our age produced, long vainly struggled, and scarcely in the eve of life succeeded to emancipate us from this dastard taste.

53

Francesco Mazzuoli, called Il Parmegiano, died at Casal Maggiore in 1540, at the age of 36. The magnificent picture of the St. John, we speak of, was begun by order of the Lady Maria Bufalina, and destined for the church of St. Salvadore del Lauro at Città di Castello. It probably never received the last hand of the master, who fled from Rome, where he painted it, at the sacking of that city, under Charles Bourbon, in 1527; it remained in the refectory of the convent della Pace for several years, was carried to Città di Castello by Messer Giulio Bufalini, and is now in England. The Moses, a figure in Fresco at Parma, together with Raphael's figure of God in the vision of Ezekiel, is said, by Mr. Mason, to have furnished Gray with the head and action of his bard: if that was the case, he would have done well to acquaint us with the poet's method of making 'Placidis coire immitia.'

54

Lodovico Carracci died at Bologna 1619, aged 64.

55

Agostino Carracci died at Parma in 1602, at the age of 44. His is the St. Girolamo in the Certosa, near Bologna; his, the Thetis with the nereids, cupids, and tritons, in the gallery of the palace Farnese. Why, as an engraver, he should have wasted his powers on the large plate from the Crucifixion, painted by Tintoretto, in the hospitio of the school of St. Rocco, a picture, of which he could not express the tone, its greatest merit, is not easily unriddled. Annibale Carracci died at Rome in 1609, at the age of 49.

56

SONNET OF AGOSTINO CARRACCI.

Chi farsi un buon Pittor cerca, e desia, Il disegno di Roma habbia alla mano, La mossa coll' ombrar Veneziano, E il degno colorir di Lombardia,

Di Michel' Angiol la terribil via, Il vero natural di Tiziano, Del Correggio lo stil puro, e sovrano, E di un Rafel la giusta simetria.

Del Tibaldi il decoro, e il fondamento, Del dotto Primaticcio l'inventare, E un po di gratia del Parmigianino.

Ma senza tanti studi, e tanto stento, Si ponga l'opre solo ad imitare, Che qui lasciocci il nostro Niccolino.

Malvasia, author of the Felsina Pittrice, has made this sonnet the text to his drowsy rhapsody on the frescoes of Lodovico Carracci and some of his scholars, in the cloisters of St. Michele in Bosco, by Bologna. He circumscribes the 'Mossa Veneziana,' of the sonnet, by 'Quel strepitoso motivo e quel divincolamento' peculiar to Tintoretto.

57

Guido Reni died in 1642, aged 68. Giov. Lanfranco died at Naples in 1647, aged 66. Franc. Albani died in 1660, aged 82. Domenico Zampieri, called Il Domenichino, died in 1641, aged 60. Franc. Barbieri of Cento, called Il Guercino, from a cast in his eye, died in 1667, aged 76.