Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843

Second Lecture.—This lecture comprises a compendious history of modern art; commencing with Massaccio. If religion gave the impulse to both ancient and modern, so has it stamped each with the different characters itself assumed. The conceptions the ancients had of divinity, were the perfection of the human form; thus form and beauty became godlike. The Christian religion wore a more spiritual character. In ancient art, human form and beauty were triumphant; in modern art, the greater triumph was in humility, in suffering; the religious inspiration was to be shown in its influence in actions less calculated to display the powers, the energies of form, than those of mind. Mere external beauty had its accompanying vices; and it was compelled to lower its pretensions considerably, submit to correction, and take a more subordinate part. Thus, if art lost in form it gained in expression, and thus was really more divine. Art in its revival, passing through the barbarity of Gothic adventurers, not unencumbered with senseless superstitions, yet with wondrous rapidity, raised itself to the noblest conceptions of both purity and magnificence. Sculpture had, indeed, preceded painting in the works of Ghiberti Donato and Philippo Brunelleschi, when Massaccio appeared. "He first perceived that parts are to constitute a whole; that composition ought to have a centre; expression, truth; and execution, unity. His line deserves attention, though his subjects led him not to investigation of form, and the shortness of his life forbade his extending those elements, which Raffaelle, nearly a century afterwards, carried to perfection." That great master of expression did not disdain to borrow from him—as is seen in the figure of "St Paul preaching at Athens," and that of "Adam expelled from Paradise." Andrea Mantegna attempted to improve upon Massaccio, by adding form from study of the antique. Mr Fuseli considers his "taste too crude, his fancy too grotesque, and his comprehension too weak, to advert from the parts that remained to the whole that inspired them; hence, in his figures of dignity or beauty, we see not only the meagre forms of common models, but even their defects tacked to ideal torsos." We think, however, he is deserving of more praise than the lecturer was disposed to bestow upon him, and that his "triumphs," the processions, (at Hampton Court,) are not quite justly called "a copious inventory of classic lumber, swept together with more industry than taste, but full of valuable materials." Yet when it is said, that he was "not ignorant of expression," and that "his Burial of Christ furnished Raffaelle with composition, and even "some figures and attitudes," the severity of the opinion seems somewhat mitigated. Luca Signorelli, more indebted to nature than the study of the antique, "seems to have been the first who contemplated with a discriminating eye his object; saw what was accidental, and what essential; balanced light and shade, and decided the motion of his figures. He foreshortened with equal boldness and intelligence." It was thought by Vasari, that in his "Judgment," Michael Angelo had imitated him. At this period of the "dawn of modern art, Leonardo da Vinci broke forth with a splendour which distanced former excellence; made up of all the elements that constitute the essence of genius; favoured by education and circumstances—all ear, all eye, all grasp; painter, poet, sculptor, anatomist, architect, engineer, chemist, machinist, musician, man of science, and sometimes empiric, he laid hold of every beauty in the enchanted circle, but without exclusive attachment to one, dismissed in her turn each." "We owe him chiaroscuro, with all its magic—we owe him caricature, with all its incongruities." His genius was shown in the design of the cartoon intended for the council-chamber at Florence, which he capriciously abandoned, wherein the group of horsemen might fairly rival the greatness of Michael Angelo himself; and in the well-known "Last Supper," in the refectory of the Dominicans at Milan, best known, however, from the copies which remain of it, and the studies which remain. Fra Bartolomeo, "the last master of this period, first gave gradation to colour, form and masses to drapery, and a grave dignity, till then unknown, to execution." His was the merit of having weaned Raffaelle "from the meanness of Pietro Perugino, and prepared for the mighty style of Michael Angelo Buonarotti." Mr Fuseli is inspired by his admiration of that wonderful man, as painter, sculptor, and architect.

"Sublimity of conception, grandeur of form, and breadth of manner, are the elements of Michael Angelo's style. By these principles, he selected or rejected the objects of imitation. As painter, as sculptor, as architect, he attempted—and above any other man, succeeded—to unite magnificence of plan, and endless variety of subordinate parts, with the utmost simplicity and breadth. His line is uniformly grand. Character and beauty were admitted only as far as they could be made subservient to grandeur. The child, the female, meanness, deformity, were by him indiscriminately stamped with grandeur. A beggar rose from his hand the patriarch of poverty; the hump of his dwarf is impressed with dignity; his women are moulds of generation, his infants teem with man; his men are a race of giants. This is the 'terribile via' hinted at by Agostino Caracci; though, perhaps, as little understood by the Bolognese as by the blindest of his Tuscan adorers, with Vasari at their head. To give the appearance of perfect ease to the most perplexing difficulty, was the exclusive power of Michael Angelo. He is the inventor of epic in painting, in that sublime circle of the Sistine chapel which exhibits the origin, the progress, and the final dispensations of theocracy. He has personated motion in the groups of the cartoon of Pisa; embodied sentiment on the monuments of St Lorenzo; unraveled the features of meditation in the prophets and sibyls of the Sistine chapel; and in the 'Last Judgment,' with every attitude that varies the human body, traced the master trait of every passion that sways the human heart. Though, as sculptor, he expressed the character of flesh more perfectly than all who went before or came after him, yet he never submitted to copy an individual—Julio the Second only excepted; and in him he represented the reigning passion rather than the man. In painting, he contented himself with a negative colour, and as the painter of mankind, rejected all meretricious ornament. The fabric of St Peter's scattered into infinity of jarring parts by Bramante and his successors, he concentrated; suspended the cupola, and to the most complex, gave the air of the most simple of edifices. Such, take him for all in all, was Michael Angelo, the salt of art; sometimes, no doubt, he had his moments of dereliction, deviated into manner, or perplexed the grandeur of his forms with futile and ostentatious anatomy; both met with armies of copyists, and it has been his fate to have been censured for their folly." This studied panegyric is nevertheless vigorous—emulous as that of Longinus, of showing the author to be—

"Himself, the great sublime he draws."

It hurries away the mind of the reader till it kindles a congenial enthusiasm, we have the more readily given the quotation, as it is not an unfair specimen of Mr Fuseli's power, both of thought and language. Our author is scarcely less eloquent in his eulogy of Raffaelle which follows. He has seized on the points of character of that great painter very happily. "His composition always hastens to the most necessary point as its centre, and from that disseminates, to that leads back, as rays, all secondary ones. Group, form, and contrast are subordinate to the event, and common-place ever excluded. His expression, in strict unison with, and inspired by character; whether calm, agitated, convulsed, or absorbed by the inspiring passion, unmixed and pure, never contradicts its cause, equally remote from tameness and grimace: the moment of his choice never suffers the action to stagnate or expire; it is the moment of transition, the crisis, big with the past, and pregnant with the future."

It is certainly true—the moment generally chosen by Raffaelle, is not of the action completed, the end—but that in which it is doing. You instantly acknowledge the power, while your curiosity is not quenched. For instance, in the cartoon of the "Beautiful Gate," you see the action at the word is just breaking into the miracle—the cripple is yet in his distorted infirmity—but you see near him grace and activity of limb beautifully displayed, in that mother and running child; and you look to the perfection which, you feel sure, the miracle will complete. This is by no means the best instance—it is the case in all his compositions where a story is to be told. It is this action which, united with most perfect character and expression, makes the life of Raffaelle's pictures. We think, however, that even in so summary a history of art as this, the object of which seems to be to mark the steps to its perfection, the influence of Pietro Perugino should not have been omitted. He is often very pure in sentiment, often more than bordering on grace, and in colour perhaps superior to Raffaelle. Notwithstanding Mr Fuseli's eulogy of Raffaelle, we doubt if he fully entered into his highest sentiment. This we may show when we comment on another lecture. While Rome and Tuscany were thus fostering the higher principles of art, the fascination of colour was spreading a new charm to every eye at Venice, from the pencils of Giorgione, and of Titian. Had not Titian been a colourist, his genius was not unequal to the great style; perhaps he has admitted of that style as much as would suit the predominant character of his colouring. He worked less with chiaroscuro than colour, which he endowed with all the sentiment of his subject. Mr Fuseli considers landscape to have originated with Titian.

"Landscape, whether it be considered as the transcript of a spot, or the rich combination of congenial objects, or as the scene of a phenomenon, dates its origin from him:" so of portrait, he says—"He is the father of portrait painting, of resemblance with form, character with dignity, and costume with subordination." The yet wanting charm of art—perfect harmony, was reserved for Correggio. "The harmony and grace of Correggio are proverbial; the medium which, by breadth of gradation, unites two opposite principles, the coalition of light and darkness, by imperceptible transition, are the element of his style." "This unison of a whole predominates in all that remains of him, from the vastness of his cupolas to the smallest of his oil pictures. The harmony of Correggio, though assisted by exquisite hues, was entirely independent of colour; his great organ was chiaroscuro in its most extensive sense—compared with the expanse in which he floats, the effects of Leonardi da Vinci are little more than the dying ray of evening, and the concentrated flash of Giorgione discordant abruptness. The bland, central light of a globe, imperceptibly gliding through lucid demi-tints into rich reflected shades, composes the spell of Correggio, and affects us with the soft emotions of a delicious dream." Here terminates the great, the primal era. Such were the patriarchs of modern art. Here, it may be said, terminated the great discoverers. Mr Fuseli pauses here to observe, that we should consider the characteristic of each of these painters, not their occasional deviations; for not unfrequently did Titian rise to the loftiness of conception of Michael Angelo, and Correggio occasionally "exceeded all competition in expression in the divine features of his Ecce Homo." If Mr Fuseli alludes to the Ecce Homo now in our National Gallery, we cannot go along with him in this praise—but in that picture, the expression of the true "Mater dolorosa" was never equaled. Art now proceeds to its period of "Refinement." The great schools—the Tuscan, the Roman, the Venetian, and the Lombard—from whatever cause, separated. Michael Angelo lived to see his great style polluted by Tuscan and Venetian, "as the ostentatious vehicle of puny conceits and emblematic quibbles, or the palliative of empty pomp and degraded luxuriance of colour." He considers Andrea del Sarto to have been his copyer, not his imitator. Tibaldi seems to have caught somewhat of his mind. As did Sir Joshua, so does Mr Fuseli mention his Polypheme groping at the mouth of his cave for Ulysses. He expresses his surprise that Michael Angelo was unacquainted with the great talent of Tibaldi, but lavished his assistance on inferior men, Sebastian del Piombo and Daniel of Volterra. We think he does not do fair justice to the merits of these undoubtedly great men. We shall have occasion hereafter to notice his criticism on the great work of Sebastian, in our National Gallery. We are surprised that he should consider Sebastian del Piombo deficient in ideal colour, and that the lines of Daniel of Volterra are meagre and sterile of idea—his celebrated Descent from the Cross being in its lines, as tending to perfect the composition, and to make full his great idea, quite extraordinary. Poor Vasari, who can never find favour with our author, is considered the great depravator of the style of Michael Angelo.

At the too early death of Raffaelle, his style fell into gradual decay. Still Julio Romano, and Polidoro da Carravaggio, "deserted indeed the standard of their master, but with a dignity and magnitude of compass which command respect."

The taste of Julio Romano was not pure enough to detach him from "deformity and grimace" and "ungenial colour." Primaticcio and Nicolo dell Abate propagated the style of Julio Romano on the Gallic side of the Alps, in mythologic and allegoric works. These frescoes from the Odyssea at Fontainbleau are lost, but are worthy admiration, though in the feeble etchings of Theodore van Fulden. The "ideal light and shade, and tremendous breadth of manner" of Michael Angelo Amerigi, surnamed Il Caravaggi, are next commended. "The aim and style of the Roman school deserve little further notice here, till the appearance of Nicolo Poussin." His partiality for the antique mainly affected his style. "He has left specimens to show that he was sometimes sublime, and often in the highest degree pathetic." Mr Fuseli takes occasion, by contrasting "the classic regularity" of Poussin with the "wildness of Salvator Rosa"—we think unnecessarily, because there seems to be no true point of comparison, and unjustly to censure that great, we may say, that original painter. We have noticed occasionally a capricious dislike in our author to some artists, for which we are at a loss to account. That Salvator should "hide by boldness of hand his inability of exhibiting her (Nature) impassioned," is a sentence that will scarcely meet with an assenting critic. The wealth and luxury of Venice soon demanded of art, to sacrifice the modesty of nature to ostentation. The principle of Titian was, however, followed by Tintoretto, Bassan, Paul Veronese, and then passed to Velasquez the Spaniard, in Italy. From him "Rubens and Vandyck attempted to transplant it to Flanders, France, and England, with unequal success." The style of Correggio scarcely survived him, for he had more imitators of parts than followers of the whole. His grace became elegance under the hand of Parmegiano. "That disengaged play of delicate forms, the 'saltezza' of the Italians, is the prerogative of Parmegiano, though nearly always obtained at the expense of proportion." We cannot agree with the lecturer, that the Moses of Parmegiano—if he speaks of the Moses referred to in the Discourses of Sir Joshua, of which Mr Burnet, in his second edition, has given a plate—loses "the dignity of the lawgiver in the savage." Such was the state of art to the foundation of the Eclectic School by the Caracci—an attempt to unite the excellences of all schools. The principles are perpetuated in a sonnet by Agostino Caracci. The Caracci were, however, in their practice above their precepts. Theirs, too, was the school of the "Naturalists." Ludovico is particularly praised for his solemnity of hue, most suited to his religious subjects—"that sober twilight, the air of cloistered meditation, which you have so often heard recommended as the proper tone of historic colour." If the recommendation has at our Academy been often heard, it has entirely lost its influence; our English school is—with an ignorance of the real object of colour, or with a very bad taste as to its harmony—running into an opposite extravagance, destructive of real power, glaring and distracting where it ought to concentrate through vision the ideas of the mind. Annibal Caracci had more power of execution, but not the taste of Agostino. In their immediate scholars, the lecturer seems little disposed to see fairly their several excellences. They are out of the view of his bias. They are not Michael Angelesque. His judgment of Domenichino—a painter who greatly restored the simplicity and severity of the elder schools, and greatly surpassed his masters—is an instance of blindness to a power in art which we would almost call new, that is very strange to see. "Domenichino, more obedient than the rest to his masters, aimed at the beauty of the antique, the expression of Raphael, the vigour of Annibal, the colour of Ludovico; and mixing something of each, fell short of all." Nor do we think him just with regard to Guercino, or even at all describing his characteristic style, when he speaks of his "fierceness of chiaroscuro, and intrepidity of hand." We readily give up to him "the great but abused talents of Pietro da Cortona," a painter without sentiment, and the "fascinating but debauched and empty facility of Luca Giordano."

The German schools here come under consideration, which, simultaneously with those of Italy, and without visible communication, spread the principles of art. "Towards the decline of the fifteenth century, the uncouth essays of Martin Schön, Michael Wolgemuth, and Albrecht Altorfer, were succeeded by the finer polish and the more dexterous method of Albert Durer." His well-known figure of "Melancholy" would alone entitle him to rank. The breadth and power of his wood engravings are worthy of admiration. Mr Fuseli thinks "his colour went beyond his age, and as far excelled, in truth and breadth of handling, the oil-colour of Raphael, as Raphael excels him in every other quality. His influence was not unfelt in Italy. It is visible in the style of even the imitators of Michael Angelo—Andrea del Sarto, particularly in the angular manner of his draperies. Though Albert Durer had no scholars, he was imitated by the Dutch Lucas of Leyden. Now it was that the style of Michael Angelo, spread by the graver of Giorgio Mantuano, brought to Italy "those caravans of German, Dutch, and Flemish students, who, on their return from Italy, at the courts of Prague and Munich, in Flanders and the Netherlands, introduced the preposterous manner, the bloated excrescence of diseased brains, which, in the form of man, left nothing human; distorted action and gesture with insanity of affectation, and dressed the gewgaws of children in colossal shapes." But though such as Golzius, Spranger, Heyntz, and Abach, "fed on the husks of Tuscan design, they imbibed the colour of Venice, and spread the elements of that excellence which distinguished the succeeding schools of Flanders and of Holland." So it was till the appearance of Rubens and Rembrandt—"both of whom, disdaining to acknowledge the usual laws of admission to the temple of Fame, boldly forged their own keys, entered, and took possession, each of a most conspicuous place, by his own power." Rubens, with many advantages, acquired in his education at Antwerp, and already influenced by the gorgeous pomp of Austrian and Spanish superstition, arrived in Italy rather as the rival than pupil of the masters whom he travelled to study. Whatever he borrowed from the Venetian school—the object of his admiration—he converted into a new manner of florid magnificence. It is just the excellence of Rubens—the completeness, the congruity of his style—that has raised him to the eminence in the temple of fame which he will ever occupy. A little short of Rubens is intolerable: the clumsy forms and improprieties of his imitators are not to be endured. Mr Fuseli excepts Vandyck and Abraham Drepenbeck from the censure passed upon the followers of Rubens. As Drepenbeck is not so well known, we quote the passage respecting him:—"The fancy of Drepenbeck, though not so exuberant, if I be not mistaken, excelled in sublimity the imagination of Rubens. His Bellerophon, Dioscuri, Hippolytus, Ixion, Sisyphus, fear no competitor among the productions of his master." Rembrandt he considers a genius of the first class in all but form. Chiaroscuro and colour were the elements, in fact, in which Rembrandt reveled. In these he was the poet—the maker. He made colour and chiaroscuro throw out ideas of sublimity: that he might throw himself the more into these great elements of his art, and depend solely on their power, he seems purposely not to have neglected form, but to have selected such as, without beauty to attract, should be merely the objects of life, the sensitive beings in his world of mystery. That such was his intention we cannot doubt; because we cannot imagine the beautiful but too attractive figures of the Apollo or the Venus adopted into one of his pictures. Excepting in a few instances, we would not wish Rembrandt's forms other than they are. They appear necessary to his style. Mr Fuseli speaks very favourably of art in Switzerland; but says there are only two painters of name—Holbein, and Francis Mola. The designs of the Passion and Dance of Death of the former, are instanced as works of excellence. Mola, we are surprised to find ranked as Swiss; for he is altogether, in art, Italian. The influence of the school and precepts of the Caracci, produced in France an abundant harvest of mediocrity. In France was the merit of Michael Angelo first questioned. There are, however, names that rescue France from the entire disgrace of the abandonment of the true principles of art: Nicolo Poussin, Le Sueur, Le Brun, Sebastian Bourdon, and Pierre Mignard. The Seven Works of Charity, by Seb. Bourdon, teem with surprising, pathetic, and always novel images; and in the Plague of David, by Pierre Mignard, our sympathy is roused by energies of terror and combinations of woe, which escaped Poussin and Raphael himself." Of Spanish art he says but little, but that "the degree of perfection attained by Diego Velasquez, Joseph Ribera, and Murillo, in pursuing the same object by means as different as successful, impresses us with deep respect for the variety of their powers." Art, as every thing else, has its fashion. The Spanish school have, of later years, been more eagerly sought for; and a strange whim of the day has attached a very extraordinary value to the works of Murillo—a painter in colour generally monotonous, and in form and expression almost always vulgar.

Art in England is the next subject of the lecture. He takes a view of it from the age of Henry VIII. to our own. No great encouragement was here given to art till the time of Charles I.: Holbein, indeed, and Zucchero, under Elizabeth, were patronized, but "were condemned to Gothic work and portrait painting." The troubles and death of Charles I. were a sad obstacle to art. "His son, in possession of the Cartoons of Raphael, and with the magnificence of Whitehall before his eyes, suffered Verio to contaminate the walls of his palaces, or degraded Lely to paint the Cymons and Iphigenias of his court; whilst the manner of Kneller swept completely what might yet be left of taste under his successors. Such was the equally contemptible and deplorable state of English art, till the genius of Reynolds first rescued from the mannered depravation of foreigners his own branch; and, soon extending his view to the higher departments of art, joined that select body of artists who addressed the ever open ear, ever attentive mind, of our royal founder with the first idea of this establishment." After this little parade of our artists as a body, but four are mentioned by name—"Reynolds, Hogarth, Gainsborough, and Wilson."

We are surprised that, in this summary history of art, no notice has been taken of Van Eyck, and the influence of his discovery on art. Nor are we less surprised that so important a branch as landscape painting should have been omitted; Claude and Gaspar Poussin not mentioned; yet, in the English school, Wilson is spoken of, whose sole merit rested upon his landscape. He should more distinctly have stated his purpose to treat only of high and historical art.