Art Principles Part 5

[b] Virgin with a Turban, Brera, Milan.

[c] As in B. da Bagnacavallo's Holy Family, Bologna; and Boltraffio's Holy Family, Milan.

[d] See t.i.tian's Madonna with SS. Anthony and John, Uffizi Gallery.

[e] Giulio Romano's Holy Family, Dresden.

[f] Holy Family, Hermitage, Petrograd.

[g] Uhde's The Three Magi, Magdeburg Museum.

[h] Madonna enthroned, Sutton Coll., England.

There are no general ideals in Christian art other than those mentioned.

The presumed occupants of the Celestial regions beyond these Personages, are painted as the fancy of the artist may dictate, subject only to the limitations of the accepted Christian doctrines. There are certain conventions in respect of Angels and Saints, but they are by no means strict; and for the Old Testament prophets, Michelangelo's work in the Sistine Chapel is commonly taken as a guide. It is scarcely likely that his examples will ever be exceeded in majestic beauty.

CHAPTER VIII

EXPRESSION. PART III.--CLa.s.sICAL IDEALS

Ideals of the Greeks--Aphrodite--Hera--Demeter--Athena--Apollo-- Diana--Neptune--Mars--Mercury--Bacchus--Vulcan--General cla.s.sical compositions.

What human being can appropriately describe the great ideals in art of ancient Greece? Above us all they stand, seemingly as upon the pinnacle of the universal mind, reflecting the collective human soul, and exhibiting the concentrated essence of human nature. The best of men and women of all ages is combined in these ideal heads, which look from an endless past to an eternal future; which embody every pa.s.sion and every virtue; every religion and every philosophy; all wisdom and all knowledge. They are ideal G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, but are independent of legends and history. They represent no mythological deities except in name, and least of all do they a.s.sort with the deities of Homer and Hesiod. In all other religions the ideals expressed in art fail entirely to reach the height of the general conceptions, and are far below the spiritual beings as depicted in the sacred books; but the Grecian ideals as recorded in stone are so far beyond the legendary G.o.ds of the ancient poets, that we are unable to pa.s.s from the stone to the literature without an overwhelming feeling of astonishment at the contrast. It is unfortunate that we are powerless to re-establish these ideals definitely, for the originals have been mostly lost; nevertheless the ancient copies, a few contemporary complete sculptures, and many glorious fragments; as well as intimate descriptions and repeated eulogies, often reaching to hyperbole, of eminent men, expressed over a succession of centuries when the great works were still exposed to view--all this a.s.sembled evidence indelibly stamps upon our minds the nature of the ideals; gives us a clear impression of the most profound conceptions that have emanated from the human brain.

The people who accomplished these great monuments seem to have thought only in terms of the universe. They did not seek for the embodiment of goodness, n.o.bility, and charity, perfection in which qualities we regard as divine, but they aimed at a majesty which included all these things; which comprehended nothing but the supreme in form and mind; and with an all-reaching knowledge of the human race, stood outside of it, but covered it with reflected glory, as the sun stands ever away from the planets but illumines them all. The wonder is not that these ideals were created in the minds of the Greeks, for there is no boundary to the imagination, but that minds could be found to set them down in design, and hands to mould and shape them in clay and stone; and that many minds and hands could do these things in the same epoch. That these sculptured forms have never been equalled is not wonderful; that they never will be surpa.s.sed is as certain as that death is the penalty of life. So firmly have they become grafted into the minds of men as things unapproachable in beauty, that they have themselves been converted into general ideals towards which all must climb who attempt to scale the heights of art. The greatest artists known to us since the light of Greek intelligence flickered away, have been content to study these marble remains, and to cull from them a suggestion here, and an idea there, with which to adorn their own creations. Indeed it is clear that from the time of Niccolo Pisano, who leaped at one bound to celebrity after studying the antique sculptures at Pisa, through Giotto to the fifteenth and sixteenth century giants, there was hardly a great artist who was not more or less dependent upon Grecian art for his skill, and the most enduring of them all--Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo, t.i.tian, Correggio--were the most deeply versed in the art.[42]

Bellori affirmed that the Roman school, of which Raphael and Michelangelo were the greatest masters, derived its principles from the study of the statues and other works of the ancients.[a] This is not strictly exact, but it is near the truth, and certain it is that Michelangelo, the first sculptor known to the world since the Dark Age, willingly bowed his head before the ancient triumphs of art presented to his view. And yet he did not see the Parthenon sculptures and other numerous works of the time of Phidias, with the many beautiful examples of the next century which have been made available since his day. What he would have said in the presence of the glories of the Parthenon, with the Hermes of Praxiteles and the rest of the collection from Olympia, is hard to conjecture, though it may well be suggested that they would have prompted him to still higher work than any he accomplished. With these stupendous ideals in front of us, it seems almost unnecessary to talk of the principles of art. Their very perfection indicates that they were built up on eternal principles, so that in fact and in theory they form the surest guide for the sculptor and painter.

[a] _Le Vite de' Pittori, Scultori, e Architteti moderni._

But how is the painter to use these ancient G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, for the time has gone by to gather them together on the heights of Olympus, or to a.s.sociate them with human frailties? Surely he may leave aside the fables of the poets, and try to portray the deities as the Grecian populace saw them in their hearts--n.o.ble forms of adoration, or images of terror, objects of curses veneered with prayer and of offerings wrapped in fear. The artist has not now to be troubled with pangs of dread, nor will his imagination be limited by sacerdotal scruples. The rivalry of Praxiteles need not concern him, for there are wondrous ideals yet to be wrought, which will be comprehended and loved even in these days of hastening endeavour. But the painter must leave alone the Zeus and the variation of this G.o.d in the pictured Christian Deity, for the type is so firmly established in the minds of men that it would be useless to depart from it. The other important Grecian deities with which art is concerned may be shortly considered from the point of view of the painter, though they are naturally of far more importance to the sculptor because it is beyond the power of the painter to suggest an illusion of divine form, since he must a.s.sociate his figures with human accessories.[43]

APHRODITE

Astarte, Aphrodite, Venus, Spirit of Love, or by whatever name we call her; the one eternal divinity recognized by all ages, all races; the universal essence whose fragrance intoxicates every soul: the one queen before whom all must bow: the one imperial autocrat sure of everlasting rule--sure of the devoted allegiance of every living thing to the end of time! Such is Aphrodite, for that is the name under which we seem to love her best--the Aphrodite of the Greeks, without the vague terrifying aspect of Astarte, or the more earthly qualities of the Roman Venus. Who loves not the Aphrodite sprung from the foam of the sea; shading the sun on the Cytheran isle with the light of her glory; casting an eternal hallow over the groves of Cyprus; flooding the G.o.d-like mind of Greece with her sparkling radiance? What conception of her beauty can rise high enough when the gra.s.s in astonishment grows beneath her feet on desert rocks; when lions and tigers gently purr as she pa.s.ses, and the rose and the myrtle throw out their scented blossoms to sweeten the air? Hera and Athena leave the heavens to help man fight and kill: Aphrodite descends to soothe despairing hearts, and kindle kindly flame in the breast of the loveless. The spear and the shield with the crested helmet she knows not, nor the fiery coursers accustomed to the din of strife.

Serenely she traverses s.p.a.ce at the call of a lover's prayer, her car a bower of celestial blooms. From the ends of the earth fly the sparrows to draw it, till their myriads hide the sun, and mortals learn that the time has come when their thoughts may turn to the spirit of love.

This was the Aphrodite of Grecian legend and poetry, if we except Homer and Hesiod. It is the type of the G.o.ddess whom Sappho implored, and must be accepted as the general ideal of the Grecian worshippers who desired divine mediation when troubled with pangs of the heart. But it was not the type of Phidias and his school, for Phidias pa.s.sed over Hesiod and purified Homer, representing Aphrodite with the stately mien and lofty bearing of a queen of heaven, daughter of the all-powerful Dione: G.o.ddess of beauty and love certainly, but so far above the human understanding of these terms that all efforts to a.s.sociate her with mundane ideas and aspirations must signally fail.[44]

So far as we know it was Praxiteles who first attempted to realize in stone the popular ideal of the G.o.ddess, and certainly the Cnidian Aphrodite was better understood by the people of Greece as a type of this ideal than any work that preceded it. We can attach to it in our minds but very few of the Homeric and other legends surrounding the history of the G.o.ddess, but we can well imagine that a deity who was the subject of so much attention and so much prayer, could rest in the hearts of the people only as one with every supreme earthly charm, combined with a divine bearing and dignity. These qualities the Aphrodite of Praxiteles appears to have possessed, though it lacked the majesty and exclusiveness of the Parthenon G.o.ds.[45]

Thus there was formed a type of beauty acceptable to the average human mind as an unsurpa.s.sable representation of an ideal woman: to the worshipper at the ancient shrines, a comprehensible G.o.ddess; to all other men the personification of sublime beauty. The fifth century G.o.ddess was left aside as beyond mortal reach, and from the time it left the sculptor's hands to this day, the Cnidian Venus has been regarded as a model for all that is true and beautiful in women. To the sculptor it is an everlasting beacon; to all men a crowning glory of human handiwork. And this notwithstanding that so far as we know, the original figure has long been lost, and we have preserved little more than records of its renown, a fair copy of it, and a single authentic example of the other work of the sculptor. But if we had the actual Aphrodite before us, it could not occupy a higher place in our minds than the G.o.ddess which our imagination builds upon this framework.

As in all cases where a supreme artist rises above his fellows and creates works of which emulation appears hopeless, the period succeeding the time of Praxiteles seems to mark a decline in the art of sculpture, and though the decline was more apparent than real for about half a century, there was naturally a depreciation in the representation of the deities of whom the great man had fashioned masterpieces. This was so in the case of Aphrodite. Whoever the sculptor it seemed impossible to approach the Cnidian ideal, and the result was a series of variations stamped with artificial devices as if to emphasize the departure. But meanwhile the painter's art had developed upon much the same lines as sculpture, and Apelles produced an Aphrodite, which, considering the limitation of the painter, appears to have been almost, if not quite, as marvellous as the stone model of Praxiteles. Nearly two thousand years have pa.s.sed since the painting was last known to exist, but its fame was so great that the reverberations from the thunder of praise accorded it have scarcely yet died away. No close description of the painting remains, but from certain references to it by ancient authors we know that it represented the sea-born G.o.ddess walking towards the sh.o.r.e to make her first appearance on earth, holding in each hand a tress of hair as if in the act of wringing out the water therein.[46] These are practically all the written details we have of the famous Venus Anadyomene, but we really know much more of it from the existence of certain pre-Roman sculptures. All but one are broken, with parts missing, but the exception, which dates from about the beginning of the third century B.C., enables us to gain a good idea of the picture. The figure represents the G.o.ddess with her lower limbs cut off close to the hips; that is to say, it produces the whole of that part of the figure in the picture of Apelles which is visible above the water.[a] Clearly a subject in which Venus is shown to be walking in the sea, so foreign to the art of the sculptor, could not have suggested itself independently to a Grecian artist, nor would we expect to find one attempting a work which necessitated amputation of the lower limbs, unless a very special occasion warranted the design. The special occasion in this case was the picture of Apelles, which was at the time renowned through the whole of Greece as an extraordinary masterpiece, and with this work in their minds the sculptured head and torso would appear quite appropriate to those Greeks interested in the arts, that is to say, the entire citizen population.

[a] See Plate 4.

These two works then, the Cnidian Venus and the Venus Anadyomene of Apelles, const.i.tute the models upon which the world relies for its conceptions of the G.o.ddess of beauty. Both models depend more or less upon the imagination for completion, but they are sufficiently definite for the artist, who, of course, desires general rather than particular ideas for his purpose.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 11 (See page 139) The Pursuit, by Fragonard (_Frick Collection_)]

It must be confessed that the attempts to rival Apelles in the creation of a Venus Anadyomene have not been very successful. Raphael painted a small picture of the subject, introducing the figure of Time putting an end to the power of the t.i.tans.[a] Venus stands in the water with one foot on a sh.e.l.l, while holding a tress of hair with her left hand. As may be expected the execution is perfect, but the design is less attractive than that of Apelles. The only important work of the Renaissance directly based upon the Greek design, is from the hand of t.i.tian.[b] He represents the G.o.ddess walking out of the water, the surface of which only reaches half way up the thighs, with the result that considerably more action is indicated than is necessary. But the great artist was evidently at a loss to know how to give the figure the size of life or thereabouts, while indicating from the depth of water that she had an appreciable distance to go before touching dry land. He solved the problem by placing the line of the front leg to which the water rises, at the bottom of the canvas, so that the picture suggests an accident which has necessitated the cutting away of the lower portion of the work. The master also varies the scheme of Apelles by crossing the left hand over the breast. This inferior device was imitated by Rubens, who, however, exhibits the G.o.ddess rising from the water amongst a group of nymphs and tritons.[c] Modern artists in designs of the birth of Venus, usually represent her as having reached the sh.o.r.e,[d] the best work of this scheme being perhaps that of Cabanel who shows the G.o.ddess lying at the water's edge and just awaking, suggesting a state of unconsciousness while she floated on the waves.[e] Another exception is by Thoma, who exhibits the G.o.ddess walking in only a few inches of water, reminding one of the old Roman bronze workers who imitated the form as painted by Apelles, but modelled the whole figure.

[a] In the bathroom of Cardinal Bibiena, Vatican. There is a drawing for the figure of the G.o.ddess at the Munich Gallery.

[b] Bridgewater Coll., England. See Plate 5.

[c] Birth of Venus, at Potsdam.

[d] Notable examples are those of Ingres and Bouguereau.

[e] At the Luxembourg, Paris. There are several replicas of this picture.

Repose being the first compulsory quality in the representation of Aphrodite, it is not surprising to find that the greatest picture of the G.o.ddess extant--the masterpiece of Giorgione--shows her asleep.[a] She rests on a verdure couch in a landscape of which the signs indicate a soft and tranquil atmosphere, with no suggestion to disturb the repose or remove the illusion of life so strongly marked by the skilful drawing. Only the calm sleeping beauty is there without appearance of fatigue or recovery from it: no expression save of perfect dreamless unconsciousness. The work is the nearest approach to a cla.s.sical ideal that exists in Venetian painting. t.i.tian in his various pictures of Venus reposing never reached the excellence of his master. In all, he painted the G.o.ddess in a resting position, sometimes radiant and brilliant, and invariably with a contented expression which precludes sensual suggestions: still there is ever a distinctly earthy tone about the figures. His Venuses in fact are pure portraits. He did not seek to represent profound repose. His most important example is at the Uffizi Gallery,[b] the design of which was taken from Giorgione's work. The G.o.ddess is a figure of glowing beauty, but the pose indicates consciousness of this fact and calls the model to mind. Perhaps the surroundings tend to accentuate the drawback, for in this, as in most of his other pictures of Venus, the artist has introduced Venetian accessories of the period. Palma Vecchio also took Giorgione's work as a guide for his reposing Venus, but he represents her fully awake with Cupid present.[c] An exceptional work of the subject was designed by Michelangelo, and painted by Pontormo[d] and others. It represents the G.o.ddess reclining with Cupid at her head; but the form is entirely opposed to all our conceptions of Venus, for she is seen as a broad ma.s.sive woman with a short neck, and a strongly formed head--a fit companion for some of the figures in the Sistine Chapel. Proud dignity and a certain majesty are suggested in the expression, but the figure is without the grace and charm usually a.s.sociated with the G.o.ddess. The only other early Italian reposing Venus of interest is Botticelli's, where he shows her in deep thought with two cupids by her side.[e]

[a] Dresden Gallery. See Plate 6. t.i.tian added a Cupid to this picture, but the little G.o.d was subsequently painted out by a restorer. (L. Venturi, _Giorgione e il Giorgionismo_, 1913.)

[b] The sitter is supposed to have been the model also for La Bella in the Uffizi, and the Woman in Fur at the Vienna Gallery.

[c] Dresden Gallery.

[d] Hampton Court Palace, England.

[e] National Gallery, London.

In the seventeenth century Venus was rarely represented reposing.

Nicholas Poussin has a fine picture on the subject, but unfortunately for the repose a couple of cupids are in action beside the sleeping G.o.ddess, while the heads of two satyrs are dimly seen.[a] In the Sleeping Venus of Le Sueur, which was much praised in former times, Cupid is present with a finger to his mouth to indicate silence, but Vulcan is seen in an adjoining room wielding a heavy hammer, the suggestion of repose being thus destroyed. No reposing Venus of importance has since been produced, though a few French artists have treated the subject in a light vein, notably Boucher in his Sleeping Venus, and Fragonard in a delicate composition of Venus awakened by Aurora.

[a] Dresden Gallery.

Venus cannot be represented as conscious of her beauty, or the design would immediately suggest vanity. Consequently when shown looking into a mirror, she should be engaged at her toilet, or at least the reflection should be accidental. t.i.tian painted the first great picture of the G.o.ddess at her toilet, but this is just completed and her hands are at rest.[a] The att.i.tude would be extravagant were it not that any suggestion of satisfaction is overcome by the artist making Cupid hold the mirror, and giving Venus an expression of unconcern as she glances at her reflection. The work suggested to Rubens a similar design, but he shows the G.o.ddess dressing her hair, this being apparently the only definite action which may be properly introduced into such a composition.[b] Albani has a delightful picture in which Cupid compels Venus to hold a mirror,[c] and some later artists have represented her adorning her tresses with the aid of a water reflection. The only notable _faux pas_ in a painting of this subject is in the Venus and Cupid a.s.signed to Velasquez, in which Venus lies on her side and looks into a mirror held by Cupid at her feet.[d] There is no suggestion of toilet or accident, and hence the att.i.tude is quite inapplicable to a G.o.ddess.

[a] The Hermitage, Petrograd.

[b] Hofmuseum, Vienna.

[c] The Louvre.

[d] National Gallery, London.

It should be remembered that the province of Aphrodite is to infuse the gentle warmth of love into the human race, and not to attract love to herself. The rays are presumed to proceed from her only, for a mortal having no divine powers would be incapable of reflecting them. Zeus was required to bring about the adventure with Anchises. Hence a voluptuous form should never be given to the G.o.ddess, and if an artist err at all in the matter, it should be on the side of restraint lest the art be affected by a suggestion of the sensuous. The surest means of preventing this is to represent the G.o.ddess in an att.i.tude of repose, with perfect contentment as a feature in expression. If any action be indicated, it must be light and purely accidental in its nature. To introduce an action involving an apprehension of human failings tends to bring the G.o.ddess down to the human level, and thus to destroy the ideal. The Venus de' Medici is a superb sculpture of a woman, but an inferior representation of Venus, for modesty is a human attribute arising from purely artificial circ.u.mstances of life, its meaning varying with race conditions and customs. To depict a G.o.ddess in an action suggestive of modesty or other antidote to the coa.r.s.er effects of natural instincts, is therefore an anomaly.