On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2)

"It is not ground" (says De Mayerne), "but a drying oil is prepared with litharge, and the pulverized asphaltum mixed with this oil is placed in a glass vessel, suspended by a thread [in a water bath]. Thus exposed to the fire it melts like butter; when it begins to boil it is instantly removed. It is an excellent color for shadows, and may be glazed like lake; it lasts well."—Ib. p. 463.

128. The great advantage of this primary laying in of the darks in brown was the obtaining an unity of shadow throughout the picture, which rendered variety of hue, where it occurred, an instantly accepted evidence of light. It mattered not how vigorous or how deep in tone the masses of local color might be, the eye could not confound them with true shadow; it everywhere distinguished the transparent browns as indicative of gloom, and became acutely sensible of the presence and preciousness of light wherever local tints rose out of their depths. But however superior this method may be to the arbitrary use of polychrome shadows, utterly unrelated to the lights, which has been admitted in modern works; and however beautiful or brilliant its results might be in the hands of colorists as faithful as Van Eyck, or as inventive as Rubens; the principle on which it is based becomes dangerous whenever, in assuming that the ultimate hue of every shadow is brown, it presupposes a peculiar and conventional light. It is true, that so long as the early practice of finishing the under-drawing with the pen was continued, the gray of that preparation might perhaps diminish the force of the upper color, which became in that case little more than a glowing varnish—even thus sometimes verging on too monotonous warmth, as the reader may observe in the head of Dandolo, by John Bellini, in the National Gallery. But when, by later and more impetuous hands, the point tracing was dispensed with, and the picture boldly thrown in with the brown pigment, it became matter of great improbability that the force of such a prevalent tint could afterwards be softened or melted into a pure harmony; the painter's feeling for truth was blunted; brilliancy and richness became his object rather than sincerity or solemnity; with the palled sense of color departed the love of light, and the diffused sunshine of the early schools died away in the narrowed rays of Rembrandt. We think it a deficiency in the work before us that the extreme peril of such a principle, incautiously applied, has not been pointed out, and that the method of Rubens has been so highly extolled for its technical perfection, without the slightest notice of the gross mannerism into which its facile brilliancy too frequently betrayed the mighty master.

129. Yet it remains a question how far, under certain limitations and for certain effects, this system of pure brown shadow may be successfully followed. It is not a little singular that it has already been revived in water-colors by a painter who, in his realization of light and splendor of hue, stands without a rival among living schools—Mr. Hunt; his neutral shadows being, we believe, first thrown in frankly with sepia, the color introduced upon the lights, and the central lights afterwards further raised by body color, and glazed. But in this process the sepia shadows are admitted only on objects whose local colors are warm or neutral; wherever the tint of the illumined portion is delicate or peculiar, a relative hue of shade is at once laid on the white paper; and the correspondence with the Flemish school is in the use of brown as the ultimate representative of deep gloom, and in the careful preservation of its transparency, not in the application of brown universally as the shade of all colors. We apprehend that this practice represents, in another medium, the very best mode of applying the Flemish system; and that when the result proposed is an effect of vivid color under bright cool sunshine, it would be impossible to adopt any more perfect means. But a system which in any stage prescribes the use of a certain pigment, implies the adoption of a constant aim, and becomes, in that degree, conventional. Suppose that the effect desired be neither of sunlight nor of bright color, but of grave color subdued by atmosphere, and we believe that the use of brown for an ultimate shadow would be highly inexpedient. With Van Eyck and with Rubens the aim was always consistent: clear daylight, diffused in the one case, concentrated in the other, was yet the hope, the necessity of both; and any process which admitted the slightest dimness, coldness, or opacity, would have been considered an error in their system by either. Alike, to Rubens, came subjects of tumult or tranquillity, of gayety or terror; the nether, earthly, and upper world were to him animated with the same feeling, lighted by the same sun; he dyed in the same lake of fire the warp of the wedding-garment or of the winding-sheet; swept into the same delirium the recklessness of the sensualist, and rapture of the anchorite; saw in tears only their glittering, and in torture only its flush. To such a painter, regarding every subject in the same temper, and all as mere motives for the display of the power of his art, the Flemish system, improved as it became in his hands, was alike sufficient and habitual. But among the greater colorists of Italy the aim was not always so simple nor the method so determinable. We find Tintoret passing like a fire-fly from light to darkness in one oscillation, ranging from the fullest prism of solar color to the coldest grays of twilight, and from the silver tingeing of a morning cloud to the lava fire of a volcano: one moment shutting himself into obscure chambers of imagery, the next plunged into the revolutionless day of heaven, and piercing space, deeper than the mind can follow or the eye fathom; we find him by turns appalling, pensive, splendid, profound, profuse; and throughout sacrificing every minor quality to the power of his prevalent mood. By such an artist it might, perhaps, be presumed that a different system of color would be adopted in almost every picture, and that if a chiaroscuro ground were independently laid, it would be in a neutral gray, susceptible afterwards of harmony with any tone he might determine upon, and not in the vivid brown which necessitated brilliancy of subsequent effect. We believe, accordingly, that while some of the pieces of this master's richer color, such as the Adam and Eve in the Gallery of Venice, and we suspect also the miracle of St. Mark, may be executed on the pure Flemish system, the greater number of his large compositions will be found based on a gray shadow; and that this gray shadow was independently laid we have more direct proof in the assertion of Boschini, who received his information from the younger Palma: "Quando haveva stabilita questa importante distribuzione, abboggiava il quadro tutto di chiaroscuro;" and we have, therefore, no doubt that Tintoret's well-known reply to the question, "What were the most beautiful colors?" "Il nero, e il bianco," is to be received in a perfectly literal sense, beyond and above its evident reference to abstract principle. Its main and most valuable meaning was, of course, that the design and light and shade of a picture were of greater importance than its color; (and this Tintoret felt so thoroughly that there is not one of his works which would seriously lose in power if it were translated into chiaroscuro); but it implied also that Tintoret's idea of a shadowed preparation was in gray, and not in brown.

130. But there is a farther and more essential ground of difference in system of shadow between the Flemish and Italian colorists. It is a well-known optical fact that the color of shadow is complemental to that of light: and that therefore, in general terms, warm light has cool shadow, and cool light hot shadow. The noblest masters of the northern and southern schools respectively adopted these contrary keys; and while the Flemings raised their lights in frosty white and pearly grays out of a glowing shadow, the Italians opposed the deep and burning rays of their golden heaven to masses of solemn gray and majestic blue. Either, therefore, their preparation must have been different, or they were able, when they chose, to conquer the warmth of the ground by superimposed color. We believe, accordingly, that Correggio will be found—as stated in the notes of Reynolds quoted at p. 495—to have habitually grounded with black, white, and ultramarine, then glazing with golden transparent colors; while Titian used the most vigorous browns, and conquered them with cool color in mass above. The remarkable sketch of Leonardo in the Uffizii of Florence is commenced in brown—over the brown is laid an olive green, on which the highest lights are struck with white.

Now it is well known to even the merely decorative painter that no color can be brilliant which is laid over one of a corresponding key, and that the best ground for any given opaque color will be a comparatively subdued tint of the complemental one; of green under red, of violet under yellow, and of orange or brown therefore under blue. We apprehend accordingly that the real value of the brown ground with Titian was far greater than even with Rubens; it was to support and give preciousness to cool color above, while it remained itself untouched as the representative of warm reflexes and extreme depth of transparent gloom. We believe this employment of the brown ground to be the only means of uniting majesty of hue with profundity of shade. But its value to the Fleming is connected with the management of the lights, which we have next to consider. As we here venture for the first time to disagree in some measure with Mr. Eastlake, let us be sure that we state his opinion fairly. He says:—

"The light warm tint which Van Mander assumes to have been generally used in the oil-priming was sometimes omitted, as unfinished pictures prove. Under such circumstances, the picture may have been executed at once on the sized outline. In the works of Lucas van Leyden, and sometimes in those of Albert Dürer, the thin yet brilliant lights exhibit a still brighter ground underneath (p. 389).... It thus appears that the method proposed by the inventors of oil-painting, of preserving light within the colors, involved a certain order of processes. The principal conditions were: first, that the outline should be completed on the panel before the painting, properly so called, was begun. The object, in thus defining the forms, was to avoid alterations and repaintings, which might ultimately render the ground useless without supplying its place. Another condition was to avoid loading the opaque colors. This limitation was not essential with regard to the transparent colors, as such could hardly exclude the bright ground (p. 398).... The system of coloring adopted by the Van Eycks may have been influenced by the practice of glass-painting. They appear, in their first efforts at least, to have considered the white panel as representing light behind a colored and transparent medium, and aimed at giving brilliancy to their tints by allowing the white ground to shine through them. If those painters and their followers erred, it was in sometimes too literally carrying out this principle. Their lights are always transparent (mere white excepted) and their shadows sometimes want depth. This is in accordance with the effect of glass-staining, in which transparency may cease with darkness, but never with light. The superior method of Rubens consisted in preserving transparency chiefly in his darks, and in contrasting their lucid depth with solid lights (p. 408).... Among the technical improvements on the older process may be especially mentioned the preservation of transparency in the darker masses, the lights being loaded as required. The system of exhibiting the bright ground through the shadows still involved an adherence to the original method of defining the composition at first; and the solid painting of the lights opened the door to that freedom of execution which the works of the early masters wanted." (p. 490.)

131. We think we cannot have erred in concluding from these scattered passages that Mr. Eastlake supposes the brilliancy of the high lights of the earlier schools to be attributable to the under-power of the white ground. This we admit, so far as that ground gave value to the transparent flesh-colored or brown preparation above it; but we doubt the transparency of the highest lights, and the power of any white ground to add brilliancy to opaque colors. We have ourselves never seen an instance of a painted brilliant light that was not loaded to the exclusion of the ground. Secondary lights indeed are often perfectly transparent, a warm hatching over the under-white; the highest light itself may be so—but then it is the white ground itself subdued by transparent darker color, not supporting a light color. In the Van Eyck in the National Gallery all the brilliant lights are loaded; mere white, Mr. Eastlake himself admits, was always so; and we believe that the flesh-color and carnations are painted with color as opaque as the white head-dress, but fail of brilliancy from not being loaded enough; the white ground beneath being utterly unable to add to the power of such tints, while its effect on more subdued tones depended in great measure on its receiving a transparent coat of warm color first. This may have been sometimes omitted, as stated at p. 389; when it was so, we believe that an utter loss of brilliancy must have resulted; but when it was used, the highest lights must have been raised from it by opaque color as distinctly by Van Eyck as by Rubens. Rubens' Judgment of Paris is quoted at [p. 388] as an example of the best use of the bright gesso ground:—and how in that picture, how in all Rubens' best pictures, is it used? Over the ground is thrown a transparent glowing brown tint, varied and deepened in the shadow; boldly over that brown glaze, and into it, are struck and painted the opaque gray middle tints, already concealing the ground totally; and above these are loaded the high lights like gems—note the sparkling strokes on the peacock's plumes. We believe that Van Eyck's high lights were either, in proportion to the scale of picture and breadth of handling, as loaded as these, or, in the degree of their thinness, less brilliant. Was then his system the same as Rubens'? Not so; but it differed more in the management of middle tints than in the lights: the main difference was, we believe, between the careful preparation of the gradations of drawing in the one, and the daring assumption of massy light in the other. There are theorists who would assert that their system was the same—but they forget the primal work, with the point underneath, and all that it implied of transparency above. Van Eyck secured his drawing in dark, then threw a pale transparent middle tint over the whole, and recovered his highest lights; all was transparent except these. Rubens threw a dark middle tint over the whole at first, and then gave the drawing with opaque gray. All was opaque except the shadows. No slight difference this, when we reflect on the contrarieties of practice ultimately connected with the opposing principles; above all on the eminent one that, as all Van Eyck's color, except the high lights, must have been equivalent to a glaze, while the great body of color in Rubens was solid (ultimately glazed occasionally, but not necessarily), it was possible for Van Eyck to mix his tints to the local hues required, with far less danger of heaviness in effect than would have been incurred in the solid painting of Rubens. This is especially noticed by Mr. Eastlake, with whom we are delighted again to concur:—

"The practice of using compound tints has not been approved by colorists; the method, as introduced by the early masters, was adapted to certain conditions, but, like many of their processes, was afterwards misapplied. Vasari informs us that Lorenzo di Credi, whose exaggerated nicety in technical details almost equaled that of Gerard Dow, was in the habit of mixing about thirty tints before he began to work. The opposite extreme is perhaps no less objectionable. Much may depend on the skillful use of the ground. The purest color in an opaque state and superficially light only, is less brilliant than the foulest mixture through which light shines. Hence, as long as the white ground was visible within the tints, the habit of matching colors from nature (no matter by what complication of hues, provided the ingredients were not chemically injurious to each other) was likely to combine the truth of negative hues with clearness."—Ib. p. 400.

132. These passages open to us a series of questions far too intricate to be even cursorily treated within our limits. It is to be held in mind that one and the same quality of color or kind of brilliancy is not always the best; the phases and phenomena of color are innumerable in reality, and even the modes of imitating them become expedient or otherwise, according to the aim and scale of the picture. It is no question of mere authority whether the mixture of tints to a compound one, or their juxtaposition in a state of purity, be the better practice. There is not the slightest doubt that, the ground being the same, a stippled tint is more brilliant and rich than a mixed one; nor is there doubt on the other hand that in some subjects such a tint is impossible, and in others vulgar. We have above alluded to the power of Mr. Hunt in water-color. The fruit-pieces of that artist are dependent for their splendor chiefly on the juxtaposition of pure color for compound tints, and we may safely affirm that the method is for such purpose as exemplary as its results are admirable. Yet would you desire to see the same means adopted in the execution of the fruit in Rubens' Peace and War? Or again, would the lusciousness of tint obtained by Rubens himself, adopting the same means on a grander scale in his painting of flesh, have been conducive to the ends or grateful to the feelings of the Bellinis or Albert Dürer? Each method is admirable as applied by its master; and Hemling and Van Eyck are as much to be followed in the mingling of color, as Rubens and Rembrandt in its decomposition. If an award is absolutely to be made of superiority to either system, we apprehend that the palm of mechanical skill must be rendered to the latter, and higher dignity of moral purpose confessed in the former; in proportion to the nobleness of the subject and the thoughtfulness of its treatment, simplicity of color will be found more desirable. Nor is the far higher perfection of drawing attained by the earlier method to be forgotten. Gradations which are expressed by delicate execution of the darks, and then aided by a few strokes of recovered light, must always be more subtle and true than those which are struck violently forth with opaque color; and it is to be remembered that the handling of the brush, with the early Italian masters, approached in its refinement to drawing with the point—the more definitely, because the work was executed, as we have just seen, with little change or play of local color. And—whatever discredit the looser and bolder practice of later masters may have thrown on the hatched and penciled execution of earlier periods—we maintain that this method, necessary in fresco, and followed habitually in the first oil pictures, has produced the noblest renderings of human expression in the whole range of the examples of art: the best works of Raphael, all the glorious portraiture of Ghirlandajo and Masaccio, all the mightiest achievements of religious zeal in Francia, Perugino, Bellini, and such others. Take as an example in fresco Masaccio's hasty sketch of himself now in the Uffizii; and in oil, the two heads of monks by Perugino in the Academy of Florence; and we shall search in vain for any work in portraiture, executed in opaque colors, which could contend with them in depth of expression or in fullness of recorded life—not mere imitative vitality, but chronicled action. And we have no hesitation in asserting that where the object of the painter is expression, and the picture is of a size admitting careful execution, the transparent system, developed as it is found in Bellini or Perugino, will attain the most profound and serene color, while it will never betray into looseness or audacity. But if in the mind of the painter invention prevail over veneration,—if his eye be creative rather than penetrative, and his hand more powerful than patient—let him not be confined to a system where light, once lost, is as irrecoverable as time, and where all success depends on husbandry of resource. Do not measure out to him his sunshine in inches of gesso; let him have the power of striking it even out of darkness and the deep.

133. If human life were endless, or human spirit could fit its compass to its will, it is possible a perfection might be reached which should unite the majesty of invention with the meekness of love. We might conceive that the thought, arrested by the readiest means, and at first represented by the boldest symbols, might afterwards be set forth with solemn and studied expression, and that the power might know no weariness in clothing which had known no restraint in creating. But dilation and contraction are for molluscs, not for men; we are not ringed into flexibility like worms, nor gifted with opposite sight and mutable color like chameleons. The mind which molds and summons cannot at will transmute itself into that which clings and contemplates; nor is it given to us at once to have the potter's power over the lump, the fire's upon the clay, and the gilder's upon the porcelain. Even the temper in which we behold these various displays of mind must be different; and it admits of more than doubt whether, if the bold work of rapid thought were afterwards in all its forms completed with microscopic care, the result would be other than painful. In the shadow at the foot of Tintoret's picture of the Temptation, lies a broken rock-bowlder.19 The dark ground has been first laid in, of color nearly uniform; and over it a few, not more than fifteen or twenty, strokes of the brush, loaded with a light gray, have quarried the solid block of stone out of the vacancy. Probably ten minutes are the utmost time which those strokes have occupied, though the rock is some four feet square. It may safely be affirmed that no other method, however laborious, could have reached the truth of form which results from the very freedom with which the conception has been expressed; but it is a truth of the simplest kind—the definition of a stone, rather than the painting of one—and the lights are in some degree dead and cold—the natural consequence of striking a mixed opaque pigment over a dark ground. It would now be possible to treat this skeleton of a stone, which could only have been knit together by Tintoret's rough temper, with the care of a Fleming; to leave its fiercely-stricken lights emanating from a golden ground, to gradate with the pen its ponderous shadows, and in its completion, to dwell with endless and intricate precision upon fibers of moss, bells of heath, blades of grass, and films of lichen. Love like Van Eyck's would separate the fibers as if they were stems of forest, twine the ribbed grass into fanciful articulation, shadow forth capes and islands in the variegated film, and hang the purple bells in counted chiming. A year might pass away, and the work yet be incomplete; yet would the purpose of the great picture have been better answered when all had been achieved? or if so, is it to be wished that a year of the life of Tintoret (could such a thing be conceived possible) had been so devoted?

134. We have put in as broad and extravagant a view as possible the difference of object in the two systems of loaded and transparent light; but it is to be remembered that both are in a certain degree compatible, and that whatever exclusive arguments may be adduced in favor of the loaded system apply only to the ultimate stages of the work. The question is not whether the white ground be expedient in the commencement—but how far it must of necessity be preserved to the close? There cannot be the slightest doubt that, whatever the object, whatever the power of the painter, the white ground, as intensely bright and perfect as it can be obtained, should be the base of his operations; that it should be preserved as long as possible, shown wherever it is possible, and sacrificed only upon good cause. There are indeed many objects which do not admit of imitation unless the hand have power of superimposing and modeling the light; but there are others which are equally unsusceptible of every rendering except that of transparent color over the pure ground.