The life and writings of Henry Fuseli Volume II Part 13

From a head so determined, arose an harmonious system of features. Under a front as full as open, the frontal muscles a.s.sumed the seat of meaning; the cavity of the eyes became deeper, and took a regular and equal distance from the centre of the nose, a feature of which few of the moderns ever had a distinct idea; the mouth and lips were shaped for organs of command and persuasion, rather than appet.i.te; and the apodosis of the whole, resolution and support, was given in the chin.

From a head so regulated, and placed on the most beautiful of all columns, the neck, the thinking artist could not fail to conclude to the rest of the body. As the under parts of the head were subordinate to the front, so was the lower part of the torso to the breast. The organs of mere nutrition, or appet.i.te, and secretion, receded and were subjected to the n.o.bler seats of action and vigour. Such harmony of system was not only the result of numeric proportion, of length and breadth of parts; it was the conception of one indivisibly connected whole, variously uniform:--G.o.d, G.o.ddess, hero, heroine, male, female, infancy, youth, virility and age, majesty, energy, agility, beauty, character, and pa.s.sions, directed the method of treatment, and formed STYLE.

The sculptured monuments left by the ancients, that have escaped the wreck of time and compose the magnificent collections of the Academy and the Museum, amply prove that these a.s.sertions are not the visionary brood of fancy and sanguine wishes, whilst they offer to the student advantages which, perhaps, no ancient, certainly no modern schools ever could or can offer to theirs, not even that of formerly the real and still the nominal metropolis of Art--Rome.

These monuments may be aptly divided into three cla.s.ses:

1st. Imitations, not seldom transcripts of _Essential Nature_.

2nd. h.o.m.ogeneous delineations of _Character_; and

3rd. The highest and last--_Ideal_ Figures.

The first shows to advantage what exists or existed; the second collects in one individual, what is scattered in his cla.s.s; the third subordinates existence and character to beauty and sublimity.

The astonishing remains of G.o.ds, demiG.o.ds, and heroes treasured in the Museum, from the Parthenon and the Temple of Phigalia, const.i.tute the first epoch. They establish the elements of proportion, they show what is essential in the composition and construction of the human frame. The artist's principle remained, however, negative; he understood the best he saw, but did not attempt to add, or conclude from what was, to what might be. These works are commonly considered as the produce of the school of Phidias, and the substantiation of his principles: if they are, and there can be little doubt but they are, it must be owned, that the eulogies lately lavished on them, as presenting, even on their mutilated and battered surfaces, more of the real texture of the human frame, a better discrimination of bone, muscle, and tendon, than most of the works ascribed to more advanced periods, little agree with the verdict of the ancients, as p.r.o.nounced by Pliny, on the real character of Phidias, the architect of G.o.ds, fitter to frame divinities than men, and leave him little more share in the formation of our figures than the conception. In beholding them, we say, such is man, real unsophisticated man, man warm from the hand of Nature, but not yet distinguished by her endless variety and difference of character. The Dioscuri of the Quirinal, the Lapithae in conflict with the Centaurs from the Parthenon, and the heroes from the fabric of Ictinus, are brothers, and only differ in size and finish; whilst the Panathenaic processions offer the unvaried transcript of Athenian youth.

Delineation of character forms the second cla.s.s of the figures in our possession, and the distinguishing feature of its artists. They found that, as _all_ were connected by the genus and a central principle of form, so they were divided into cla.s.ses, and from each other separated by an individual stamp, by _character_: to unite this with the simplicity of the _generic_ principle was their aim; the symmetry prescribed by general proportion was modified and adapted, not sacrificed, to the demands of the peculiar quality which distinguished the attribute they undertook to personify. Thus the Hercules of Glycon, though the symbol of absolute, irresistible, and uniform strength, appears to be swift as a stag and elastic like a ball; and thus Agasias, the author of what the barbarity of custom still continues to misname the "Fighting Gladiator," though its style, evidently Iconic, be more connected with individual than generic nature, has spread over its whole the rapidity of lightning, and substantiated in its _motion_ all Homer says of Hector rushing through the shattered portals of the Grecian wall--that, at that instant, nothing could have stopped him but a G.o.d.

The wounded Cornicularius, known by the name of the Dying Gladiator, the Savage whetting his knife to excoriate Marsyas, the enraged Shepherd Boy ludicrously transformed to a young Patroclus, are too undisguised portraits to deserve being ranked with this higher cla.s.s of characteristic delineation. We with more exultation subjoin to it the Pathetic Groups which, to the historic artist, at once disclose the whole _extent_ and _limits_ of dramatic composition--the agonies of Niobe and her Progeny; the pangs of the Laoc.o.o.n; Menelaus raising Patroclus slain by Hector; the Warrior who deserves to be called Haemon, with Antigone, self-slain, hanging on his arm--the softer and more familiar expression of aethra and Theseus, maternal enquiry and filial simplicity; Orestes and Pylades pouring libations to Agamemnon's shade; Venus expostulating with Amor, Amor embracing Psyche: works of different periods and different styles, but true to the same unerring principles,--principles not abandoned in the lascivious dream of the Hermaphrodite, the gross sonorous repose of the Faun, and the tottering inebriety of Hercules.

The artists of the third epoch concluded from existence to possibility.

The simple purity of the first, and the energetic harmonious variety of the second period, were its bases; it amalgamated their artless angular line and rigid precision with the suavity of undulating contours, elegance of att.i.tude, the soft inflexions of flesh: and created a standard of ideal beauty which regulated the whole, from the most prominent, conspicuous, and interesting, to the most remote and minute parts. The Apollo, the Venus, the Torso, arose to prove that in the same degree as in an image of art the idea of _simplicity_, or of _one_, predominates, it will partake of _grandeur_; and that in the degree as the idea of _variety_ prevails, it will partake of _beauty_: variety leads to simplicity in images of beauty, simplicity to variety in images of grandeur, and the union of both produces the sublime.

Such are the splendid, and I repeat it, unparalleled advantages that surround you; but lest, by their specious display, I should be suspected of more enthusiasm than becomes the sober office of a teacher, and you be led to delusive expectations and false conclusions, remember that, though even the best directed labour cannot supply what Nature has refused, still it remains an experiment uniformly sanctioned by time, that without unwearied toil, obstinate perseverance, and submissive resignation, neither the theory nor the practice of the art can be fully acquired, and that without them genius is a bubble and talent a trifle.

And now permit me to finish this fragment of observations on Design with a few remarks on our mutual situation, as teachers and as pupils of this Inst.i.tution: if the advancement of art be the cause and the ultimate aim of its foundation.

When in recommending the antique as the student's guide in copying the life, I comparatively might have seemed to depreciate the servile adherence to the model, I was perfectly aware that the use of life alone can supply the artist with the real expression, and consequently the real appearances of bones and muscles in varied action. It will not be suspected, I trust, that I meant to recommend the frigid introduction of that marble style, that pedantic stiffness, which, under the abused name of correctness, frequently disfigures the labours of those who, at too late a period for successful attempts at changing their manner, abjure or lose the courage to use what they had learnt before, and content themselves with being the tame transcribers of the dead letter, instead of the spirit of the ancients, and importers of nothing but forms and att.i.tudes of stone.

It is to life we must recur,--to warm, fleshy, genial life,--for animated forms. To Nature and life Zeuxis applied, to embody the forms of Polycletus and Alcamenes: and what was the prerogative of Lysippus, but to give the air, the "morbidezza," the soft transitions, the illusions of palpitating life, to bronze and marble? The pedantry of geometrically _straight_ lines is not only no idealism, it is a solecism in Nature. _Organization_, your object, is inseparable from _life_; _motion_ from organization: where organization and life are, there is a seat of life, a _punctum saliens_, acting through veins and branching arteries, consequently with _pulsation_, and by that, undulating and rounding the pa.s.sages of parts to parts. Of the milliards of commas, or points, that Nature mediately or immediately produces, no two are alike: how, then, could she produce straight lines, which are all similar, and by their nature cut, divide, interrupt, destroy?

The province delegated by the Academy to its teachers must be,--where hope promises success and sparks of genius appear, to foster, to encourage; but where necessity commands, rather to deter than to delude, and thus to check the progress of that compendiary method, which, according to your late President, has ruined the Arts of every country, by reducing execution to a recipe, subst.i.tuting manner for style, ornament for substance, and giving admission to mediocrity.

If the students of this Academy must be supposed to have overcome the rudiments, and to be arrived at that point from which it may be discovered whether Nature intended them for mere craftsmen or real artists, near that point, where, in the phrase of Reynolds, "genius begins and rules end," it behoves us not to mistake the mere children of necessity, or the pledges of vanity, for the real nurselings of public hope, or the future supporters of the beneficent establishment that rears them. Instruction, it is true, may put them in possession of every attainable part of the Art in a decent degree; they may learn to draw with tolerable correctness, to colour with tolerable effect, to put their figures together tolerably well, and to furnish their faces with a tolerable expression--it may not be easy for any one to pick any thing intolerably bad out of their works; but when they have done all this--and almost all may do all this, for all this may be taught--they will find themselves exactly at the point where all that gives value to Art begins--Genius, which cannot be taught--at the threshold of the Art, in a state of mediocrity. "G.o.ds, men, and fame," says Horace, "reject mediocrity in poets." Why? Neither Poetry nor Painting spring from the necessities of society, or furnish necessaries to life; offsprings of fancy, leisure, and lofty contemplation, organs of religion and government, ornaments of society, and too often mere charms of the senses and instruments of luxury, they derive their excellence from novelty, degree, and polish. What none indispensably want, all may wish for, but few only are able to procure, acquires its value from some exclusive quality, founded on intrinsic or some conventional merit, and that, or an equal subst.i.tute, mediocrity cannot reach: hence, by suffering it to invade the province of genius and talent, we rob the plough, the shop, the loom, the school, perhaps the desk and pulpit, of a thousand useful hands. A good mechanic, a trusty labourer, an honest tradesman, are beings more important, of greater use to society, and better supporters of the state, than an artist or a poet of mediocrity.

When I therefore say that it is the duty of the Academy to deter rather than to delude, I am not afraid of having advanced a paradox hostile to the progress of real Art. The capacities that time will disclose, genius and talents, cannot be deterred by the exposition of difficulties, and it is the interest of society that all else should.

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.