The life and writings of Henry Fuseli Volume II Part 8

[80] The group in the Ludovisi, ever since its discovery, absurdly misnamed Paetus and Arria, notwithstanding some dissonance of taste and execution, may with more plausibility claim the t.i.tle of Haemon and Antigone.

[81] The whole of the gallery of Luxemburg by Rubens is but a branch of its magnificence: general as the elements, universal and permanent as the affections of human nature, allegory breaks the fetters of time, it unites with boundless sway mythologic, feodal, local incongruities, fleeting modes of society and fugitive fashions: thus, in the picture of Rubens, Minerva, who instructs, the Graces that surround the royal maiden at the poetic fount, are not what they are in Homer, the real tutress of Telemachus, the real dressers of Venus, they are the symbols only of the education which the princess received. In that sublime design of Michael Agnolo, where a figure is roused by a descending genius from his repose on a globe, on which he yet reclines, and with surprise discovers the phantoms of the pa.s.sions which he courted, unmasked in wild confusion flitting round him, M. Agnolo was less ambitious to express the nature of a dream, or to bespeak our attention to its picturesque effect and powerful contrasts, than to impress us with the lesson, that all is vanity and life a farce, unless engaged by virtue and the pursuits of mind.

[82] L'Aurora Sonnacchiosa.

[83] Speaking of the figure of Christ by Raphael in the Madonna del Spasimo, he calls it "Una Figura d'un Carattere fra quel di Giove, e quello d'Apollo; quale effettivamente deve esser quello, che corrisponde a Cristo, aggiungendovi soltanto l'espressione accidentale della pa.s.sione, in cui si rappresenta." Opere 11. 83.

[84] It is engraved by Villamena.

[85] The composition, and in some degree the lines, but neither its tone nor effect, may be found among the etchings, of Le Fevre.

[86] I cannot quit this picture without observing, that it presents the most incontrovertible evidence of the incongruities arising from the jarring coalition of the grand and ornamental styles. The group of Lazarus may be said to contain the most valuable relic of the cla.s.sic time of modern, and perhaps the only specimen left of M. Agnolo's oil-painting; an opinion which will scarcely be disputed by him who has examined the manner of the Sistine Chapel, and in his mind compared it with the group of the Lazarus, and that with the style and treatment of the other parts.

[87] In a picture which he painted at Rome for Bindo Altoviti, it represented "Un Cristo quanto il vivo, levato di croce, e posto in terra a' piedi della Madre; e nell' aria Febo, che oscura la faccia del sole, e Diana quella della Luna. Nel paese poi, oscurato da queste Tenebre, si veggiono spezzarsi alcuni monti di pietra, mossi dal terremoto, e certi corpi morti di santi risorgendo, uscire de sepolcri in vari modi; il quale quadro, finito che fu, per sua grazia non dispiacque al maggior pittore, scultore, e architetto, che sia stato a' tempi nostri pa.s.sati?"

The compliment was not paid to M. Agnolo himself, for the word "pa.s.sati"

tells that he was no more, but it levied a tribute on posterity.

Vita di Giorgio Vasari.

FIFTH LECTURE.

COMPOSITION, EXPRESSION.

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ARGUMENT.

Elements of Composition; Grouping; M. Agnolo; Correggio; Raffaello; Breadth;--Expression; its Cla.s.ses, its Limits.

FIFTH LECTURE.

Invention is followed by Composition. Composition, in its stricter sense, is the dresser of Invention, it superintends the disposition of its materials.

Composition has physical and moral elements: those are Perspective and Light with shade; these, Unity, Propriety and Perspicuity; without Unity it cannot span its subject; without Propriety it cannot tell the story; without Perspicuity it clouds the fact with confusion; dest.i.tute of light and shade it misses the effect, and heedless of perspective it cannot find a place.

Composition, like all other parts of style, had a gradual progress; it began in monotony and apposition, emerged to centre and depth, established itself on harmony and ma.s.ses, was debauched by contrast and by grouping, and finally supplanted by machinery, common-place, and manner.

Of sculpture, as infant painting had borrowed its first theory of forms, so it probably borrowed its method of arranging them; and this is Apposition, a collateral arrangement of figures necessary for telling a single or the scattered moments of a fact. If statuary indulged in the combination of numerous groups, such as those of the Niobe, it might dispose them in composition, it might fix a centre and its rays, and so produce an illusion as far as colourless form is capable of giving it.

But sculpture, when it was first consulted by painting, was not yet arrived at that period which allowed the display of such magnificence; a single figure or a single group could not sufficiently inform the painter; he was reduced to consult ba.s.so-relievo, and of that, Apposition is the element.

And in this light we ought to contemplate a great part of the Capella Sistina. Its plan was monumental, and some of its compartments were allotted to Apposition, not because M. Agnolo was a sculptor, but because it was a more comprehensive medium to exhibit his general plan than the narrower scale of composition. He admitted and like a master treated composition, whenever his subject from the primeval simplicity of elemental nature retreated within the closer bounds of society: his Patriarchs, his Prophets and his Sibyls, singly considered or as groups, the scenery of the Brazen Serpent, of David and of Judith, of Noah and his sons, are models of the roundest and grandest composition. What principle of composition do we miss in the creation of Adam and of Eve?

Can it grasp with more unity, characterise with more propriety, present with brighter perspicuity, give greater truth of place or round with more effect? If collateral arrangement be the ruling plan of the Last Judgment, if point of sight and linear and aerial perspective in what is elevated, comes forward or recedes, if artificial ma.s.ses and ostentatious roundness, on the whole, be absorbed by design or sacrificed to higher principles, what effects has the greatest power of machinery ever contrived to emulate the conglobation of those struggling groups where light and shade administered to terror or sublimity? What, to emulate the boat of Charon disemboguing its crew of criminals, flung in a murky ma.s.s of shade across the pallid concave and bleak blast of light that blows it on us? A meteor in the realms of chiaroscuro which obscures whatever the most daring servants of that power elsewhere produced.

If the plan of M. Agnolo must be estimated by other principles, his process must be settled by other rules than the plan and process of Correggio at Parma. Though the first and greatest, Correggio was no more than a Machinist. It was less the a.s.sumption of the Virgin, less a monument of triumphant Religion he meditated to exhibit by sublimity of conception or characteristic composition, than by the ultimate powers of linear and aerial perspective at an elevation which demanded eccentric and violent fore-shortening, set off and tuned by magic light and shade, to embody the medium in which the actors were to move; and to the splendour and loftiness of that he accommodated the subject and subordinated the agents. Hence his work, though moving in a flood of harmony, is not legitimate Composition. The synod that surrounds the glory, the glory itself that embosoms the Virgin and her angelic choir, Christ who precipitates himself to meet the glory, are equally absorbed in the _bravura_ of the vehicle, they radiate, reflect and ma.s.s, but show us little more than limbs. This makes the cupola of Correggio less epic or dramatic than ornamental. The technic part of Composition alone, though carried to the highest pitch of perfection, if its ostentation absorb the subject, stamps inferiority on the master. Take away Homer's language, and you take much, but you leave the epic poet unimpaired; take it from Virgil, strip him of the majesty, the glow, the propriety of his diction, and the remainder of his claim to epic poetry will nearly be reduced to what he borrowed from Homer's plan. What is it we remember when we leave the cupolas of Correggio? what when we leave the Chapel of Sixtus? There, a man who transferred to a colossal scale the dictates of his draped or naked model, applied them with a comprehensive eye and set them off by magic light and shade and wide expanded harmony of tone; here an epic plan combined and told in simple modes of grandeur. Each man gave what he had: Correggio, limbs and effect; M.

Agnolo, being, form and meaning. If the cupola of Correggio be in its kind unequalled by earlier or succeeding plans, if it leave far behind the effusions of Lanfranchi and Pietro da Cortona, it was not the less their model; the ornamental style of machinists dates not the less its origin from him.

Various are the shapes in which Composition embodies its subject and presents it to our eye. The cone or pyramid, the globe, the grape, flame and stream, the circle and its segments, lend their figure to elevate, concentrate, round, diffuse themselves or undulate in its ma.s.ses. It towers in the Apollo, it darts its flame forward in the warrior of Agasias, its lambent spires wind upward with the Laoc.o.o.n; it inverts the cone in the Hercules of Glycon, it doubles it or undulates in Venus and the Graces. In the bland central light of a globe imperceptibly gliding through lucid demi-tints into rich reflected shades, it composes the spell of Correggio, and entrances like a delicious dream; whilst like a torrent it rushes from the hand of Tintorett over the trembling canva.s.s in enormous wings of light and shade, and sweeps all individual importance in general effects. But whether its groups be imbrowned on a lucid sky, or emerge from darkness, whether it break like a meridian sun on the reflected object with Rubens, or from Rembrandt, flash on it in lightning, whatever be its form or its effect, if it be more or less than what it ought to be--a vehicle, if it branch not out of the subject as the produce of its root, if it do not contain all that distinguishes it from other subjects, if it leave out aught that is characteristic and exclusively its own, and admit what is superfluous or common-place--it is no longer composition, it is grouping only, an ostentatious or useless scaffolding about an edifice without a base; such was not the Composition of Raffaello.

The leading principle of Raffaello's composition is that simple air, that artlessness which persuades us that his figures have been less composed by skill than grouped by Nature; that the fact must have happened as we see it represented. Simplicity taught him to grasp his subject, propriety to give it character and form, and perspicuity to give it breadth and place. The School of Athens in the Vatican, the Death of Ananias, and the Sacrifice at Lystra, among the Cartoons, may serve as instances.

A metaphysical composition, if it be numerous, will be oftener mistaken for dilapidation of fragments than regular distribution of materials.

The School of Athens communicates to few more than an arbitrary a.s.semblage of speculative groups. Yet if the subject be the dramatic representation of Philosophy, as it prepares for active life, the parts of the building are not connected with more regular gradation than those groups. Archimedes and Pythagoras, Plato and Socrates, Aristotle and Democritus, Epictetus, Diogenes and Aristippus, in different degrees of characteristic modes, tell one great doctrine, that, fitted by physical and intellectual harmony, man ascends from himself to society, from society to G.o.d. For this, group balances group, action is contrasted by repose, each weight has its counterpoise; unity and variety shed harmony over the whole.

In the Cartoon of Ananias, at the first glance, and even before we are made acquainted with the particulars of the subject, we become partners of the scene. The disposition is amphitheatric, the scenery a s.p.a.cious hall, the heart of the action is the centre, the wings a.s.sist, elucidate, connect it with the ends. The apoplectic man before us is evidently the victim of a supernatural power, inspiring the apostolic figures, who on the raised platform with threatening arm p.r.o.nounced, and with the word enforced his doom. The terror occasioned by the sudden stroke is best expressed by the features of youth and middle age on each side of the sufferer; it is instantaneous, because its shock has not yet spread beyond them, a contrivance not to interrupt the dignity due to the sacred scene, and to stamp the character of devout attention on the a.s.sembly. What preceded and what followed is equally implied in their occupation, and in the figure of a matron entering and absorbed in counting money, though she approaches the fatal centre, and whom we may suppose to be Sapphira, the accomplice and the wife of Ananias, and the devoted partner of his fate. In this composition of near thirty figures, none can be pointed out as a figure of common place or mere convenience; legitimate offsprings of one subject, they are linked to each other and to the centre by one common chain, all act and all have room to act; repose alternates with energy.

The Sacrifice at Lystra, though as a whole it has more of collateral arrangement than depth of Composition, as it traces in the moment of its choice the motive that produced and shows the disappointment that checks it, has collected actors and faces the most suitable to express both: actors and features of G.o.dlike dignity, superst.i.tious devotion and eager curiosity: the scene is the vestibule of the temple of Hermes, and Paul, the supposed representative of that deity, though not placed in the centre or a central light, by his elevation, gesture, and the whole of the composition streaming toward him, commands the first glance. At the very onset of the ceremony the sacrificer is arrested in the act of smiting the victim, by the outstretched arm of a young man bursting through the hymning throng of priests and victimarii, observing Paul indignant rending his garment in horror of the idolatrous perversion of his miracle.[88] The miracle itself is personified in that characteristic figure of the healed man, who with eyes flashing joy and grat.i.tude on the Apostle, and hands joined in adoration, rushes in, accompanied by an aged man of gravity and rank, who, lifting up part of the garment that covered his thigh, attests him to have been the identic owner of those crutches that formerly supported him, though now as useless thrown on the pavement.

Among the Cartoons which we do not possess, and probably exist only in the tapestries of Rome and Madrid, and engravings copied from them, the Resurrection of Christ and his Ascension, equally mark Raphael's discriminative powers in their contrasted compositions. The Resurrection derives its interest from the convulsive rapidity, the Ascension from its calmness of motion. In that, the hero like a ball of fire shoots up from the bursting tomb and sinking cerements, and scatters astonishment and dismay. What apprehension dared not to suspect, what fancy could not dream of, no eye had ever beheld and no tongue ever uttered, blazes before us: the pa.s.sions dart in rays resistless from the centre. Fear, terror, conviction, wrestle with dignity and courage in the centurion; convulse brutality, overwhelm violence, enervate resistance, absorb incredulity in the guard. The whole is tempestuous. The Ascension is the majestic 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 follow the glorious emanation; till addressed by the white-robed messengers of their departed king, they relapse to the feelings of men.

We have considered hitherto the mental part of Raffaello's composition, let us say a word of the technic. His excellence in this is breadth of ma.s.ses, and of positive light and shade.

Breadth, or that quality of execution which makes a whole so predominate over the parts as to excite the idea of uninterrupted unity amid the greatest variety, modern art, as it appears to me, owes to M. Agnolo.

The breadth of M. Agnolo resembles the tide and ebb of a mighty sea: waves approach, arrive, retreat, but in their rise and fall, emerging or absorbed, impress us only with the image of the power that raises, that directs them; whilst the discrepance of obtruding parts in the works of the infant Florentine, Venetian and German schools, distracts our eye like the numberless breakers of a shallow river, or as the brambles and creepers that entangle the paths of a wood, and instead of showing us our road, perplex us only with themselves. By breadth the artist puts us into immediate possession of the whole, and from that, gently leads us to the examination of the parts according to their relative importance: hence it follows, that in a representation of organized surfaces, breadth is the judicious display of fullness, not a subst.i.tute of vacuity. Breadth might be easily obtained if emptiness could give it.

Yet even in that degraded state, if gratification of the eye be a first indispensable duty of an art that can impress us only by that organ, it is preferable to the laboured display of parts ambitiously thronging for admittance at the expense of the whole; to that perplexed diligence which wearies us with impediment before we can penetrate a meaning or arrive at the subject, whose clear idea must be first obtained before we can judge of the propriety or impropriety of parts. The principle which const.i.tutes the breadth of Raphael was neither so absolute nor so comprehensive as that of M. Agnolo's. But his perspicacity soon discovered, that great, uninterrupted ma.s.ses of light and shade, bespeak, satisfy, conduct and give repose to the eye; that opposition of light and shade gives perspicuity. Convinced of this, he let their ma.s.s fall as broad on his figures as their importance, att.i.tude and relation to each other permitted, and as seldom as possible, interrupted it.

Ma.s.ses of shade he opposed to light, and lucid ones to shade. The strict observation of this rule appears to be the cause why every figure of Raffaello, however small, even at a considerable distance, describes itself, and strikes the eye with distinctness; so that even the comparatively diminutive figures of his Loggia are easily discriminated from the Cortile below. To this maxim he remained faithful in all his works, a few instances excepted, when instead of light and shade he separated figures by reflexes of a different colour; exceptions more dictated by necessity than choice, and which serve rather to confirm than to impair the rule.

It cannot be denied that, if this positive opposition gave superior distinctness, it occasioned sometimes abruptness. Each part is broad, but separation is too visible. Reflexes he uniformly neglects, and, from whatever cause, is often inattentive to transition; he does not sufficiently connect with breadth of demi-tint the two extremes of his ma.s.ses; and, though much less in fresco than in oil, seems not always to have had a distinct idea of the gradations required completely to round as well as to spread a whole; to have been more anxious to obtain breadth itself than its elemental harmony.

It does not appear that the great masters of legitimate composition in the sixteenth century attended to or understood the advantages which elevation of site and a low horizon are capable of giving to a subject.

They place us in the gallery to behold their scenes; but, from want of keeping, the horizontal line becomes a perpendicular, and drops the distance on the foreground; the more remote groups do not approach, but fall or stand upon the foremost actors. As this impedes the principles of unity and grandeur in numerous compositions, so it impairs each individual form; which, to be grand, ought to rise upward in moderate foreshortening, command the horizon, or be in contact with the sky.

Reverse this plan in the composition of Pietro Martyre by Tizian, let the horizontal line be raised above the friar on the fore-ground, s.p.a.ce, loftiness, and unity, vanish together. What gives sublimity to Rembrandt's Ecce h.o.m.o more than this principle?--a composition, which though complete, hides in its grandeur the limits of its scenery. Its form is as a pyramid whose top is lost in the sky, as its base in tumultuous murky waves. From the fluctuating crowds who inundate the base of the tribunal, we rise to Pilate, surrounded and perplexed by the varied ferocity of the sanguinary synod, to whose remorseless gripe he surrenders his wand; and from him we ascend to the sublime resignation of innocence in Christ, and regardless of the roar below, securely repose on his countenance. Such is the grandeur of a conception, which in its blaze absorbs the abominable detail of materials too vulgar to be mentioned; had the materials been equal to the conception and composition, the Ecce h.o.m.o of Rembrandt, even unsupported by the magic of its light and shade, or his spell of colours, would have been an a.s.semblage of superhuman powers.

Far, too far, from having answered all the demands of composition, my limits force me, and my subject requires, to give a faint sketch of the most prominent features of Expression, its a.s.sistant and interpreter.

They interweave themselves so closely with each other, and both with Invention, that we can scarcely conceive one without supposing the presence of the rest, and applying the principles of each to all; still they are separate powers, and may be possessed singly. The figure of Christ by M. Agnolo in the Minerva, embracing his cross and the instruments of suffering, is sublimely conceived, powerfully arranged; but neither his features nor expression are those of Christ.

Expression is the vivid image of the pa.s.sion that affects the mind; its language, and the portrait of its situation. It animates the features, att.i.tudes, and gestures, which Invention selected, and Composition arranged; its principles, like theirs, are simplicity, propriety, and energy.

It is important to distinguish the materials and the spirit of expression. To give this we must be masters of the forms and of the hues that embody it. Without truth of line no true expression is possible; and the pa.s.sions, whose inward energy stamped form on feature, equally reside, fluctuate, flash or lower on it in colour, and give it energy by light and shade.

To make a face speak clearly and with propriety, it must not only be well constructed, but have its own exclusive character. Though the element of the pa.s.sions be the same in all, they neither speak in all with equal energy, nor are circ.u.mscribed by equal limits. Though joy be joy, and anger anger, the joy of the sanguine is not that of the phlegmatic, nor the anger of the melancholy that of the fiery character; and the discriminations established by complexion are equally conspicuous in those of climate, habit, education, and rank. Expression has its cla.s.ses. Decebalus and Syphax, though both determined to die, meet death with eye as different as hues. The tremulous emotion of Hector's breast when he approaches Ajax, is not the palpitation of Paris when he discovers Menelaus; the frown of the Hercynian Phantom may repress the ardour, but cannot subdue the dignity of Drusus; the fear of Marius cannot sink to the panic of the Cimber, who drops the dagger at entering his prison, nor the astonishment of Hamlet degenerate into the fright of vulgar fear.

Le Sueur was not aware of this when he painted his Alexander. Perhaps no picture is, in spite of common sense, oftener quoted for its expression than Alexander sick on his bed, with the cup at his lips, observing the calumniated physician. The manner in which he is represented is as inconsistent with the story as injurious to the character of the Macedonian hero. The Alexander of Le Sueur has the prying look of a spy.

He who was capable of that look would no more have ventured on quaffing a single drop of the suspected medicine, than on the conquest of the Persian empire. If Alexander, when he drank the cup, had not the most positive faith in the incorruptibility of Philippus, he was more than an idiot, he was a felon against himself and a traitor to his army, whose safety depended on the success of the experiment. His expression ought to be open and unconcerned confidence--as that of his physician, a contemptuous smile, or curiosity suspended by indignation, or the indifference of a mind conscious of innocence, and fully relying on its being known to his friend. Le Sueur, instead of these, has given him little more than a stupid stare and vulgar form.