The life and writings of Henry Fuseli Volume III Part 7

Sebastian Bourdon, sublime in his conceptions, filled cla.s.sic ground and eastern vests with local limbs and Gallic actors.

Poussin renounced his national character to follow the antique; but could not separate the spirit from the stone.

152. The imitator seldom mounts to the investigation of the principles that formed his model; the copier probably never.

153. Many beauties in art come by accident, that are preserved by choice.

_Coroll._--Neither the froth formed on the mouth of Jalysus' hound by a lucky dash from the sponge of Protogenes, nor the modern experiments of extracting composition from an ink-splashed wall, are relatives of the beauties alluded to in this aphorism.

154. The praise due to a work, reflects not always on its master; and superiority may beam athwart the blemishes that we despise or pity; some, says Milton, praised the work and some the master: would you prefer him who is able to finish the image which he was unable to conceive, to its inventor?

155. It is the privilege of Nature alone to be equal. Man is the slave of a part; the most equal artist is only the first in the list of mediocrity.

156. He who seeks the grand, will find it in a trifle: but some seem made to find it only there. Rosel saw man like an insect, and insects as Michael Angelo men.

157. Physiognomy teaches what is h.o.m.ogeneous and what is heterogeneous in forms.

158. The solid parts of the body are the base of physiognomy, the muscular that of pathognomy; the former contemplates the animal at rest, this its action.

159. Pathognomy allots expression to character.

160. Those who allow physiognomy to regulate the great outlines of character, and reject its minute discriminations, admit a language and reject its elements.

161. The difficulty of physiognomy is to separate the essence from accident, growth from excrescence.

162. He who aims at the sublime, consults the cla.s.ses a.s.signed to character by physiognomy, not its anatomy of individuals; the oak in its full majesty, and not the thwarted pollard.

163. None ever escaped from himself by crossing seas; none ever peopled a barren fancy and a heart of ice with images or sympathies by excursions into the deserts of mythology or allegory.

164. The principles of allegory and votive composition are the same; they unite with equal right the most distant periods of time and the most opposite modes of society: both surround a real being, or allude to a real act, with symbols by long general consent adopted, as expressive of the qualities, motives, and circ.u.mstances that distinguished or gave evidence to the person or the transaction. Such is the gallery of the Luxembourg, such the Attila of the Vatican.

165. Pure history rejects allegory.

_Coroll._--The armed figure of Rome, with Fortune behind her frowning at Coriola.n.u.s, surrounded by the Roman matrons in the Volscian camp (by Poussin), is a vision seen by that warrior, and not an allegory; it is a sublime image, which, without diminishing the credibility of the fact, adds to its importance, and raises the hero, by making him submit, not to the impulse of private ties, but to the destiny of his country.

166. All ornament ought to be allegoric.

167. Dignity is the salt of art.

_Coroll._--In the Salutation of Michael Angelo,[35] the angelic messenger emerges from solitary twilight, his countenance seems to labour with the awful message, and his knees to bend as he approaches the mysterious personage: with virgin majesty and humble grace Mary bows to the extended arm of the lucid herald, as if waked from sacred meditation, and appears entranced by celestial sounds.

The Madonnas of Raffaelle, whether hailed parents of a G.o.d, or pressing the divine offspring to their breast, whether receiving him from his slumbers, or contemplating his infant motions, are uniformly transcripts from the daily domestic images of common life and of some favourite face matronized: the eyes of his Fornarina beamed with other fires than those of sanct.i.ty; the sense and native dignity of her lover could veil their fierceness, but not change their language.

The Madonna of t.i.tiano receives her celestial visitant under an open portico of Palladian structure, and skirted by gay gardens; the usual ray precedes the floating angel; gold-ringleted and in festive attire, he waves a lily wand: in sable weeds the Virgin receives the gorgeous homage, proudly devout, like a young abbess amidst her cloistered lambs.

Tintoretto has turned salutation into irruption. The angel bursts through the shattered cas.e.m.e.nt and terrifies a vulgar female; but his wings are tipped in heaven.[36]

168. Dignity gives probability to the impossible: we listen to the monstrous tale of Ulysses with all the devotion due to a creed. By dignity, even deformity becomes an instrument of art: Vulcan limps like a G.o.d at the hand of Homer: the hump and withered arm of Richard are engines of terror or persuasion in Shakspeare; the crook-back of Michael Angelo strikes with awe.

169. Luxuriance of ornament destroys simplicity and repose, the attendants of dignity.

_Coroll._--"Simon Mosca, one of the most distinguished sculptors of ornament and foliage in the sixteenth century, when proposed by Vasari to embellish by his designs the monument of the Cardinal di Monte, was discountenanced by Michael Angelo on this principle." Vasari, vita de Simone Mosca.

170. Judge not an artist from the exertions of accidental vigour or some unpremeditated flights of fancy, but from the uniform tenor, the never-varying principle of his works: the line and style of t.i.tian sometimes expand themselves like those of Michael Angelo; the heads and groups of Raphael sometimes glow and palpitate with t.i.tiano's tints; and there are ma.s.ses of both united in Correggio: but if you aim at character, let Raphael be your guide; if at colour, Tiziano; if harmony allure, Correggio: they indulged in alternate excursions, but never lost sight of their own domain.

_Coroll._--No one, of whatever period of art, of whatever eminence or school, out-told Rembrandt in telling the story of a subject, in the choice of its real crisis, in simplicity, in perspicuity: still, as the vile crust that involves his ore, his local vulgarity of style, the ludicrous barbarity of his costume, prepossess eyes less penetrating than squeamish against him, it requires some confidence to place him with the cla.s.sics of invention. Yet with all these defects, with every prejudice or superiority of taste and style against him, what school has produced a work (M. Angelo's Creation of Adam, and the Death of Ananias by Raffaelle excepted,) which looks not pale in the superhuman splendour that irradiates his conception of Christ before Pilate, unless it be the raising of Lazarus by Lievens, a name comparatively obscure, whose awful sublimity reduces the same subject as treated by Rembrandt and Sebastian of Venice, to artificial parade or common-place?

171. Tone is the moral part of colour.

172. If tone be the legitimate principle of colour, he who has not tone, though he should excel in individual imitation, colours in fragments and produces discord.

173. Harmony of colour consists in the due balance of all, equally remote from monotony and spots.

174. The eye tinges all nature with its own hue. The eye of the Dutch and Flemish schools, though shut to forms, tipped the cottage, the boor, the ale-pot, the shambles, and even the haze of winter, with orient hues and the glow of setting suns.

175. Clearness, freshness, force of colour, are produced by simplicity; one pure, is more than a mixture of many.

176. Colour affects or delights like sound. Scarlet or deep crimson rouses, determines, invigorates the eye, as the war-horn or the trumpet the ear; the flute soothes the ear, as pale celestial blue or rosy red the eye.

177. The colours of sublimity are negative or generic--such is the colouring of Michael Angelo.

178. The pa.s.sions that sway features and limbs equally reside, fluctuate, flash and lower in colour.

179. The colours of pleasure and love are hues.

180. The colour of gravity, reverie, solemnity, approaches to twilight.

181. Colour in Raffaelle was the a.s.sistant of expression; to t.i.tian it was the vehicle of truth; Correggio made it the minister of harmony. It was sometimes seized, and though reluctant held, but oftener neglected by the first; it was embraced, it domineered over, it coalesced with the second; it attended the third like an enchanted spirit.

182. Lodovico Carracci was the first who gave in oil the colours of gravity, the dignified twilight of cloistered meditation.

183. Annibale Carracci, from want of feelings, though impressed by a grave principle, changed the mild evening-ray of his master to the bleak light of a sullen day.

184. Colour owes its effect sometimes more to position and gradation than to its intrinsic value.[37]

185. The colour of t.i.tian is the most independent of surrounding objects; their union may a.s.sist, but their discrepance cannot destroy it.

186. The harmony of Correggio is independent of colour.

187. Historic colour imitates, but copies not.

188. The portrait-painter copies the colour of his object, but chooses the medium through which that object is seen.

189. The mixtures that antic.i.p.ate the beauties of time are big with the seeds of premature decay.

190. The colours of health are neither cadaverous nor flushed like meteors.

191. There are works whose effect is entirely founded on the contrast of tints, of what is termed warm and cold colour, and on reflected hues: strip them of this charm, reduce them to the principles of light and shade and ma.s.ses, and as far as the want of those can degrade a picture, they will be fit to take their places on sign-posts.