The life and writings of Henry Fuseli Volume III Part 5

100. Imitation seems to cease, where the ideal part begins.

101. The imitator rises above the copyist by generalizing the individual to a cla.s.s; the idealist mounts above the imitator by uniting cla.s.ses.

102. The imitator, by comparison and taste, unites the scattered limbs of kindred excellence; the idealist, by the "mind's eye," fixes, personifies, embodies possibility: modes and degrees of single powers are the province of the former; the latter unites whatever implies no contradiction in an a.s.semblage of varied excellence.

_Coroll._--This is best explained by the Ilias. Each individual of Homer forms a cla.s.s, and is circ.u.mscribed by one quality of heroic power; Achilles alone unites their different energies.

The height, the strength, the giant-stride and supercilious air of Ajax; the courage, the impetuosity, the never-failing aim, the never-bloodless stroke of Diomedes; the presence of mind, the powerful agility of Ulysses; the velocity of the lesser Ajax; Agamemnon's sense of prerogative and domineering spirit,--a.s.sign to each his separate cla.s.s of heroism, yet lessen not their shades of imperfection. Ajax appears the warrior rather than the leader; Ulysses is too prudent to be more than brave; the hawk more than the eagle predominates in the son of Oileus; Agamemnon has the prerogative of power, but not of heroism; Diomede alone might appear to have been raised too high, had he been endowed with an a.s.suming spirit. So far the poet found, enn.o.bled, cla.s.sified; but all these he sums up, and creates an ideal form from their a.s.semblage, in Achilles:--he is the grandson of Jupiter, the son of a G.o.ddess, the favourite of Heaven--[22]"What arms can fit me but the s.h.i.+eld of Ajax? The lance maddens not in the grasp of Diomede to chase the flames from the s.h.i.+ps. Let him confer with thee, Ulysses, and the rest." Such is his language. Before the pursuer of Hector vanishes the velocity of Ajax; from destroying Agamemnon he is prevented by Minerva; he gives his armour to the son of Mentius, and disperses all but the G.o.ds; his spear none can throw, and none tear from the ground when thrown; a miracle alone can save those that oppose him singly; when else he fights, 'tis not to gain a battle, but to subvert Troy.

What Achilles is to his confederates, the Apollo, the Torso, the statues[23] of the Quirinal, are to all other known figures of G.o.ds, of demi-G.o.ds and heroes.

103. Fancy not to compose an ideal form by mixing up a ma.s.s of promiscuous beauties; for, unless you consulted what was h.o.m.ogeneous and what was possible in Nature, you have hatched only a monster: this, we suppose, was understood by Zeuxis when he collected the beauties of Agrigentum to compose a perfect female.[24]

104. If there be any thing serious in art, it certainly then ought to be exerted when religion is the subject; but idolaters and iconoclasts seem to have conspired, either to banish the author of their faith to the cold sphere of mythology, or to debase him to the dregs of mankind.

_Coroll._--Majesty is the feature of the Supreme Being; no eternal Father of the moderns approaches the majesty of Jupiter.

The G.o.ds of Michael Angelo are stern. The G.o.ds of Raffaelle are affable and weak. The G.o.ds of Guido have the air of ancient courtiers.

In the race of Jupiter, majesty is tempered by emanations of beauty and of grace, but never softened into love.

The Christ of Michael Angelo is severe. The Christ of Raffaelle is poised between the heraldry of church tradition and the dignified mildness of his own character. The Christ of Guido is a well suspended corpse.

"The character corresponding with that of Christ," says a critic and a painter,[25] "is a mixture of the characters of Jupiter and Apollo, allowing only for the accidental expression of the moment." What magic shall amalgamate the superhuman airs of Rhea's and Latona's sons with sufferings and resignation? The critic, in his exultation, forgot the leading feature of his master--humility.

Whatever be the ideal form of Christ, the Saviour of mankind, extending his arm to relieve the afflicted, the hopeless, the dying, is a subject that comes home to the breast of every one who calls himself after his name:--the artist is in the sphere of adoration with the Christian.

A great and beneficent character, eminently exerting unknown healing powers over the family of disease and pain, claims the partic.i.p.ation of every feeling man, though he be no believer:--the artist is in the sphere of sentiment with the Deist or Mahometan.

But a mean man marked with the features of a mean sect, surrounded by a beggarly ill-shaped rabble and stupid masks--is probably a juggler that claims the attention of no one.

The Resurrection of Christ derives its interest from its rapidity, the Ascension from its slowness.

In the Resurrection, the hero, like a ball of fire, shoots up resistless from the bursting tomb, and scatters terror and astonishment,--what apprehension could not dream of, what the eye had never beheld, and tongue had never uttered, blazes before us,--tumultuous agitation rends the whole. Such is the spirit of the Resurrection by Raffaelle.

The Ascension is the last of many similar scenes: no longer with the rapidity of a conqueror, but with the calm serenity of triumphant power, the hero is borne up in splendour, and gradually vanishes from those who, by repeated visions, had been taught to expect whatever was amazing. Silent and composed, with eyes more absorbed in adoration than wonder, they followed the glorious emanation, till addressed by the white-robed messengers of their departed King.

105. We are more impressed by Gothic than by Greek mythology, because the bands are not yet rent which tie us to its magic: he has a powerful hold of us, who holds us by our superst.i.tion or by a theory of honour.

106. The east expands, the north concentrates images.

107. Disproportion of parts is the element of hugeness,--proportion, of grandeur; all Oriental, all Gothic styles of Architecture, are huge; the Grecian alone, is grand.

108. The female, able to invigorate her taste without degenerating into a pedant, sloven or virago, may give her hand to the man of elegance, who scorns to sacrifice his sense to the presiding phantoms of an effeminate age.

109. The collector who arrogates not to himself the praise bestowed on his collections, and the reader who fancies himself not the author of the beauties he recites to an admiring circle--are not the last of men.

110. The epoch of rules, of theories, poetics, criticisms in a nation, will add to their stock of authors in the same proportion as it diminishes their stock of genius: their productions will bear the stamp of study, not of nature; they will adopt, not generate; sentiment will supplant images, and narrative invention; words will be no longer the dress but the limbs of composition, and feeble elegance will supply the want of nerves.

111. He "lisped not in numbers, no numbers came to him," though he count his verses by thousands, who has not learnt to distinguish the harmony of two lines from that of a period--whom dull monotony of ear condemns to the drowsy psalmody of one returning couplet.

112. Some seek renown as the Parthians sought victory--by seeming to fly from it.

113. He has more than genius--he is a hero--who can check his powers in their full career to glory, merely not to crush the feeble on his road.

114. He who could have the choice, and should prefer to be the first painter of insects, of flowers, or of drapery, to being the second in the ranks of history, though degraded to the last cla.s.s of art, would undoubtedly be in the first of men by the decision of Caesar.

115. Such is the aspiring nature of man, that nothing wounds the copyist more sorely than the suspicion of being thought what he is.

116. He who depends for all upon his model, should treat no other subject but his model.

117. The praises lavished on the sketches of vigorous conception, only sharpen the throes of labour in finis.h.i.+ng.

118. As far as the medium of an art can be taught, so far is the artist confined to the cla.s.s of mere mechanics; he only then elevates himself to talent, when he imparts to his method, or his tool, some unattainable or exclusive excellence of his own.

119. None but the first can represent the first. Genius, absorbed by the subject, hastens to the centre; and from that point disseminates, to that leads back the rays: talent, full of its own dexterities, begins to point the rays before they have a centre, and aggregates a ma.s.s of secondary beauties.

120. The ear absorbed in harmonies of its own creation, is deaf to all external ones.

121. Harmony disposes, melody determines.

122. There is not a bauble thrown by the sportive hand of fas.h.i.+on, which may not be caught with advantage by the hand of art.

_Coroll._--Shakspeare has been excused for seeking in the Roman senate what he knew all senates could furnish--a buffoon. Paulo of Verona, with equal strength of argument, may be excused for cramming on the foreground of an a.s.sembly or a feast, what he knew a feast or a.s.sembly could furnish--a dog, an ape, a scullion, a parrot, or a dwarf.

123. He has done much in art who raises your curiosity--he has done all who has raised it and keeps it up restless and uniform; prostrate yourself before the genius of Homer.

124. Difficulties surmounted to obtain what in itself is of no real value, deserve pity or contempt: the painted catalogue of wrinkles by Denner are not offsprings of art, but fac-similes of natural history.

125. Love for what is called deception in painting, marks either the infancy or decrepitude of a nation's taste.

126. Indiscriminate execution, like the monkey's rasor, cuts shear asunder the parts it meant to polish.

_Coroll._--Frances...o...b..rbieri broke like a torrent over the academic rules of his masters. As the desire of disseminating character over every part of his composition made Raphael less attentive to its general effect, so an ungovernable itch of copying all that lay in his way made this man sacrifice order, costume, mind, to mere effects of colour: a map of flesh, a pile of wood, a sleeve, a hilt, a feathered hat, a table-cloth, or a gold-tissued robe, were for Guercino what a quibble was for Shakspeare. The countenance of his Dido has that sublimity of woe which affects us in the aeneis, but she is pierced with a toledo and wrapped in brocade; Anna is an Italian Duenna; the scene, the Mole of Ancona or of Naples, the spectators a brace of whiskered Spaniards, and a deserting Amorino winds up the farce. In his St. Petronilla the rags and brawny limbs of two gigantic porters crush the effect which the saint ought to have, and all the rest is frittered into spots. Yet is that picture a tremendous instance of mechanic powers and intrepidity of hand. As a firm base supports, pervades, unites the tones of harmony, so a certain stern virility inspires, invigorates and gives a zest to all Guercino's colour. The gayer tints of Guido vanish before his as insipid,[26] Domenichino appears laboured, and the Carracci dim. Nor was Guercino a stranger to the genuine expressions of untaught nature, and there is more of pathos in the dog which he introduced caressing the returned prodigal, than in all the Farnese gallery; as the Argus of Ulysses, looking up at his old master, then dropping his head and dying, moves more than all the metamorphoses of Ovid. If his male figures be brought to the test of style, it may be said, that he never made a man; their virility is tumour or knotty labour; to youth he gave emaciated lankness, and to old age little besides decrepitude and beards--meanness to all: and though he was more cautious in female forms, they owe the best part of their charms to chiaroscuro.

127. Execution has its cla.s.ses.

_Coroll._--Satan summoning the Princes of h.e.l.l stretched over the fiery flood; or the giant snake of the Norway seas hovering over a storm-vexed vessel, by Gerard Douw, or Vanderverf--are incongruous ideas; would be incongruous though Michael Angelo had planned their design and Rembrandt ma.s.sed their light and shade.

128. It has been said, but let us repeat it: the proportion of will and power is not always reciprocal. A copious measure of will is sometimes a.s.signed to ordinary and contracted minds; whilst the greatest faculties as frequently evaporate in indolence and languor.

129. Mighty execution of impotent conception, and vigour of conception with trembling execution, are coalitions equally deplorable.

130. He is a prince of artists and of men who knows the moment when his work is done. On this Apelles founded his superiority over his contemporaries; the knowledge when to stop, left Sylla nothing to fear, though disarmed; the want of knowing this, exposed Caesar to the dagger of Brutus.

131. Next to him who can finish, is he who has hid from you that he cannot.

132. If finis.h.i.+ng be to terminate all the parts of a performance in an equal degree, no artist ever finished his work. A great part of conception or execution is always sacrificed to some individual excellence which either he possesses or thinks he possesses. The colourist makes lines only the vehicle of colour; the designer subordinates hue to his line; the man of breadth or chiaroscuro overwhelms sometimes both, and the subject itself to produce effect.