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Title: Essays towards the history of painting
Author: Lady Maria Callcott
Release date: March 4, 2025 [eBook #75528]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Edward Moxon, 1836
Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS TOWARDS THE HISTORY OF PAINTING ***
ESSAYS
TOWARDS
THE HISTORY OF PAINTING.
ESSAYS
TOWARDS THE
HISTORY OF PAINTING.
BY MRS. CALLCOTT.
LONDON:
EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET.
MDCCCXXXVI.
LONDON:
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS,
WHITEFRIARS.
TO THE MISS WARRENS.
MY DEAR YOUNG FRIENDS,
When your excellent Father suggested to me to engage in some little
work which should afford constant and steady employment, as the best
means of alleviating the wearisomeness of an increasing and incurable
disorder, I hoped to have had the benefit of his advice during its
progress. It has pleased God that it should be otherwise, and I have
had to mourn the premature loss of the most skilful physician and the
kindest friend. Yet I have followed his advice as far as my strength
has permitted. One portion of the task he prescribed to me is done; and
I offer it to _you_ as a token of my gratitude to _him_.
Should I live to go on with the second portion of the work, it will,
perhaps, be more interesting to you in its nature. This, however,
I know you will receive affectionately, when you remember at whose
desire it was begun, and think of the regard I have always felt towards
yourselves since I have known you.
MARIA CALLCOTT.
_June 1st, 1836._
CONTENTS.
ESSAY I.
PAGE.
Introduction.--Lectures on Painting.--History of Art displayed
by its remains.--Object of the present Essays.--Origin of Art.--First
mention of Art in the Book of Genesis.--Egyptian and Chaldean
Colonies.--Art among the Chinese.--Hindoo Art.--Egyptian Art.--Second
Colonization from Egypt.--Egyptian Arts as practised by the
Israelites.--The Ark of the Covenant and the Golden
Calf.--Hieroglyphical Writing; its effects upon Art.--Egyptian
Painting.--Pigments used by the Egyptians 1
ESSAY II.
OF ART IN ANCIENT ITALY.
Italy long a Civilised Nation before the existence of Rome.--The
ancient Etruscans.--The useful Nature of their Works.--Their
Tombs.--Those of Chiusi.--Tarquinii and Vulscii.--Etruscan
Vases.--Painted Tombs.--Early Pictures mentioned
by Pliny.--Etruscan Statues in Rome.--Roman
Pictures.--Fabius Pictor.--Pacuvius.--Triumphal Pictures.--Pictures
used in Law Suits.--Begging Pictures.--Compliment
paid by Augustus to Painting.--First Greek Pictures
brought to Rome by Mummius.--Pictures brought to Italy
by different Conquerors and placed in Temples and Porticos.--New
Italian School of Pottery.--Schools of Painting in Italy.--No
good Roman Painters.--Roman Busts.--Mosaic Pictures.--Miniatures.--Books
first Illustrated with Portraits by
Varro and Atticus.--Antique Pictures found at Pompeii.--Portrait
Painting in Nero’s Time.--Gradual decay of Art
in Italy 44
ESSAY III.
OF PAINTING IN GREECE, FIRST AND SECOND SERIES.
Earliest Painting in Greece.--No relic of Greek Pictures remaining.--The
Arts first cultivated at Sicyon and Corinth.--Their rapid
improvement in Greece.--Art in Asia Minor.--Vases of Clay
and of Metal.--The first Greek Painters.--Progress of Painting up
to the time of Phidias.--The Works of Mycon.--Those of Polygnotus.--The
Battle of Marathon.--The Pictures of Delphi.--Apollodorus.--Improvements
made by him in Art.--Further Improvements made by Pamphilus.--And
still further by Parrhasius.--His Pictures and Character.--Zeuxis,
his Pictures.--Timanthes, his Pictures.--Colotes 85
ESSAY IV.
OF THE THIRD PERIOD OF PAINTING IN GREECE.
Macedonian Kings Encouragers of Art.--Philip.--Alexander.--Pamphilus
and School of Sicyon.--Pictures of Pamphilus.--Apelles.--His
Character.--His Pictures.--His Danger in Egypt.--His Picture
of Calumny.--His Visit to Protogenes.--The Venus
Anadyomene.--Protogenes.--His Pictures.--Aristides of Thebes.--His
Pictures.--Nichomachus.--His Pictures.--Pausias.--His Picture of the
Garland Maker.--Other Pictures.--Euphranor.--Antiphilus.--Familiar Life
Subjects.--Pyreicus.--Interiors, animals, &c.--Minor
Painters.--Nicias.--Timomachus.--His Medea.--Conclusion 137
ESSAY V.
CLASSIFICATION OF PICTURES.
Inconveniences of the present Mode of Classing Pictures.--Proposed
Classification.--Historical Pictures Divisible into
Four Classes.--Further Subdivision.--Present Class of Dramatic
Pictures divided into two.--Three Classes of Portrait
Painting.--Two Classes of Familiar Life Subjects.--Landscape,
its Four Classes.--Two Classes of Animal Painting.--Examples
taken from Ancient and Modern Pictures.--Table of Cebes.--Calumny
of Apelles.--Old Fresco at Sienna.--Allegories of
the Greek Painters.--Of Giotto.--Prophets and Sybils.--Sistine
Chapel.--Works of Polygnotus.--Some Works of
Raffaelle.--Other Pictures of Polygnotus.--Hemelink’s
Three Kings.--Cimabue’s and Giotto’s Lives of St. Francis
and the Virgin.--Raffaelle’s Loggie.--Luini Frescoes.--Andrea
del Sarto.--Domenichino.--Pictures of Single Actions
by the Ancients.--Many Examples by the Moderns.--Dramatic
Pictures of the Ancients.--Of the Moderns.--Historical
Portraits and Examples.--Familiar Life Pictures of the
Ancients.--Of the Moderns.--Examples of the Four Classes
of Landscapes.--Animal Painters Ancient and Modern 169
ESSAY VI.
ON THE MATERIALS USED BY PAINTERS.
Introduction.--Early Pictures, in Egypt and Etruria, on bare
Sandstone.--Painting on fine Plaster or Stucco.--On Wood,
prepared.--Kinds of Wood.--Manner of Preparing it by
Ancients and Moderns.--Painting on Linen.--Its Antiquity.--Its
use.--When revived.--Pigments.--Vulgar Error concerning
the Number of Colours used by the Ancient Greeks.--Its
Refutation.--White Pigments of the Ancients.--Middle
Ages.--Moderns.--Yellows.--Reds, especially vermilion.--Minium.--The
Red Ochres.--Dragons’ Blood.--Blue Colours.--Ultra Marine.--The Blue
of Egypt.--Blues used by Early Modern Painters.--Blue Earths and
Indigo, Ancient and Modern.--Green Colours, Native and
Manufactured.--Blacks of the Ancients and Moderns.--Purples and
Browns.--Vehicles used by Painters.--Difficulty of the
subject.--Asphaltum, Petroleum, Wax, and Oil, used as Varnishes by the
Ancients.--Encaustic Painting.--Vehicles certainly known
to the Ancients.--The Vehicles used in the Tenth Century,
in the Thirteenth, and by the Moderns.--Metal Points
used for Drawing by the Ancients.--The Egyptian Drawings,
made with a Pen or fine Pencil.--The Tools of Hogs’ Bristles
have always been the same.--Fine Pencils made of Squirrels’
hair in the Twelfth Century.--Conclusion 217
ESSAYS.
ESSAYS
TOWARDS
THE HISTORY OF PAINTING.
ESSAY I.
The Historical and Literary knowledge of an Art is, for the learned,
and for Artists, what maps are for the Warrior, the Traveller, and the
Sailor.
RASPE.
To write such a book upon any art as should be eminently useful to
the professors of that art, as instructing them in methods whereby
they may improve their practice, and avoid the difficulties they have
to encounter, or gracefully evade them, would require the hand of a
consummate artist, who, to great practice, should join large knowledge
of his subject, and a minute acquaintance with the materials upon whose
nature more of practical success depends, than enthusiasts in art are
willing to own. Besides, he should possess sufficient learning to
communicate the experience of past ages, for the improvement of this;
and a good taste and acquaintance with general literature, to adorn
his subject with the graces that all arts may borrow from each other,
becoming always richer in proportion as they draw from their common
treasury, Nature.
To write a work of just criticism, upon a peculiar art, the author
should no less be a professor, whose practice might exemplify his
criticism, or at any rate might enable him justly to appreciate the
merits and defects of the peculiar works which he should choose as
subjects on which to found his criticisms.
The lectures of Sir Joshua Reynolds made art popular in this country,
less because they contained excellent precepts and well-chosen
examples, than because, like Johnson’s criticism in the Lives of
the Poets, they laid open the general principles applicable to all
the arts. Poetry and music, painting and sculpture, architecture
and landscape-gardening, may equally profit by them, the passages
peculiarly appropriated to painters being far from the most numerous,
though such as none but a painter could have written.
Fuseli appears to be more exclusively a critic in his own art. He
had prodigious practice in his own wild walk, wherein, however, even
he often mistook the glare of caprice for the light of genius. He had
great learning, the effect of which he injured by affectation and
quaintness, yet there are exquisite passages in his lectures, which
will always be read with profit and delight both by artists and lovers
of art.
The practical lectures delivered or published by other authors, some
living, and some whose loss we have to lament, have not been popular,
chiefly because they were most properly composed for the use of
artists. And when we consider that they have been for the most part the
works of men whose lives were passed in the most laborious department
of a Profession that demands constant application, namely portrait
painting, it is surprising how much they did in those hours which
nature might have claimed as due to rest and relaxation. But such is
the advantage possessed by a professor, when writing on the art be
practises and understands.
I am aware that a certain class of connoisseurs, amateurs, or
enthusiasts have lately put forth, perhaps I should say revived, the
strange opinion that a practical artist is of all men the least fit to
judge of art, and that it belongs to _them_, that is the connoisseurs
only, to judge of his work. I believe this notion to have lurked in
secret in the bosom of many an amateur for centuries back; but it
required the fostering hand of German enthusiasm to publish it, as an
axiom, to the world; and to write books upon the absurd notion, that
those who know nothing practically of a subject, are the best judges
and instructors concerning it.
Apelles had different notions; for while he bade the shoemaker _stick
to his last_, he took his advice about the sandals of his Venus.
In truth, to use the words of the wisest of modern men, “the labours of
speculative men, in active matters, seem to men of experience, little
better than Phormio’s discourses of war; which seemed to Hannibal as
dreams and dotage[1].”
If mere lovers of art will, nevertheless, devote their thoughts and
pens to her enchanting service, I think they may do an acceptable
office, even to painters themselves, by collecting what is, or has been
known of her progress, following up her history from the first faint
traces of her path among savage tribes, to her majestic footsteps in
the flourishing states of Greece; nor losing sight of her entirely in
her sad hours of degradation under Imperial Rome, and finally watching
over her gentle though slow revival under the brilliant sun of Italy.
There is a kind of history of art which has been successfully
cultivated: I mean that which addresses itself directly to the eye
by a chronological display of the remaining works of art in the
great publications of Monfaucon, Dagincourt, Micali, and the various
archæological works of different societies[2]. But these are books
of such price as must always render them difficult of access; and,
unfortunately, the descriptions attached to the prints seldom admit of
separation; and are, in general, written too dully to interest, or so
much in the spirit of controversy as to render them disagreeable.
Such history can never become popular. There remains, however, open, an
unpretending path, yet untrodden, by which those who love art may be
led sufficiently near her temple to enjoy her beauties, understand her
virtues, and be blessed by her happy influence, without encroaching on
the province of her professed servants, or engaging in combat with her
false or mistaken friends, or avowed enemies.
Tis this path that I would pursue, and take along with me those of my
sex and country who love the good and the beautiful, and who likewise
love to look up through them, to the fountain of all goodness, and to
the Author of all beauty.
A great deal of time and much temper have been wasted, in disputes
concerning the native country of the arts. China, Upper India, and
Egypt, have been perhaps the favourites of the learned, though there
have not been wanting champions for the claims of Western Asia, and
even Greece.
But, if we could trace all the arts, whether springing from the primary
wants, or the mere desires and wishes of man, to one original inventor,
we should not be much the forwarder. As mankind increased, and formed
separate nations, these arts would naturally and necessarily vary, in
order to accommodate themselves to climates and circumstances. And we
are as little likely to fix, with any thing like certainty, on the
native country of painting or sculpture, as to discover that of the
various kinds of grain, which in all ages have formed the principal
food of civilized men. The discovery of the great Western World, long
enough after the art of printing, to secure whatever memorials might
be written concerning the state of its inhabitants, opened to us a
monument of the early condition of all mankind, a thousand times more
instructive than pillars of marble or of brass.
The Spaniards found in Florida one species of grain, cultivated and
used for bread, in the same way, and in as much ignorance of its
origin, as wheat in the Old World: and in many provinces, a substitute
for the finer grains was used, requiring infinitely more ingenuity
in its preparation, and of the origin of which the natives knew so
little, as to look upon it as the gift of a benevolent enchanter[3].
In Mexico and Peru they found many arts considerably advanced. The
smelting, casting, embossing, engraving of metals; the making of
very fine pottery; the chiselling of the hardest stones and marbles.
There, too, was painting practised, not as a mere luxury, but as a
matter of prime necessity. For the nations were still so young as not
to have discovered alphabetical writing; therefore, painting, mixed
with a variety of conventional signs, almost amounting to hieroglyphic
characters, was used, to record the history of the nations, the
transactions of the priests and merchants, and the decisions of the
laws[4].
Since that great first discovery, many and various tribes have been
gradually revealed to us, none so savage as not to have discovered some
longing after arts, beyond those absolutely necessary to existence.
The cloth of the Sandwich Islander was stamped with mimic leaves and
branches. The clubs, darts, and hatchets of the New Zealanders were
covered with flowers and foliage; and not unfrequently we find on them
an attempt at the human form.
The fences of the Morais presented, on many of the poles, a human head,
grossly cut indeed, but still bearing the impress of man’s imitative
genius.
Instances of this sort might be multiplied; but for the present I have
named enough for my purpose, which is, to prove that it is unnecessary
to trace the arts from country to country, or from house to house, to
give them, as it were, a formal genealogy; but that we may expect to
find that, circumstances being tolerably alike, the fine arts will
spring up in all nations as they advance in civilization.
The progress of art is a separate question, and must have been
influenced by many circumstances not naturally connected with it. Hence
we see it in one nation beginning in splendour and advancing rapidly
for a time; when suddenly it is stopped as by an enchanter’s wand: the
handicraft may improve, but the form, character, and spirit, remain
for ever fixed. In another, on the contrary, it advances, firm and
free: every age improves it: and its career is only cut short when the
nation itself sinks before a foreign conqueror!
Differently again, but still influenced by the circumstances of
society, we have beheld the arts almost touching upon perfection and
then withering, by slow and sickly decay, till all that ennobled them
has disappeared, and they seem fitted for nothing but to adorn the
ephemeral trophies of fashion or caprice.
Having thus so far cleared the ground, I will endeavour to collect the
scattered notices concerning art, in the most ancient times, and among
the most anciently civilized nations; and so prepare the way for more
connected details, when we reach the period of common history.
The book of Genesis names one of the great grandsons of Cain, as the
first who wrought and graved on metal, and another as the inventor of
musical instruments,--a proof that the arts were cultivated in very
early stages of civilization[5].
Again, within four centuries after the flood, we find that men had made
images of wood, and stone, and metal, to worship. They had not only
built them cities, but they had tasted of the barbarous civilities
of war; they had erected trophies; poets had extolled the exploits of
heroes; and sculptors had already fashioned their images, to adore.
Constant tradition names Terah, the father of Abraham, as a maker of
images; and that the worship of them continued in his family for nearly
two hundred years, notwithstanding the call and conversion of Abraham,
is proved by Rachel’s theft of the images of Laban, when she left her
father’s house to accompany her husband to the land of Canaan.
But, if we may believe Greek and Egyptian tradition, more than a
century before the call of Abraham, a colony had been planted at
Sicyon, by an Egyptian leader, Ægialeus,[6] who brought with him the
knowledge of sculpture and painting, and founded the earliest and
purest school of Greek art.
Another civilized colony, from Egypt, soon settled in Greece. Inachus
founded the city of Argos, while Abraham was still an idolater, in Ur.
At this period, Egypt and Chaldea both seem to have sent out colonies
on every side, and history and tradition alike point to this period
also, as that of the invention of alphabetical writing: or, at any
rate, its establishment in a great part of the then civilized world.
The claims of the Egyptian Memnon and the Phœnician Cadmus to the
invention, appear to be equally and entirely without foundation; and
Pliny’s notion that it had existed from the beginning, in Chaldea and
the adjacent countries, is supported, by a very remarkable passage in
the book of Joshua[7].
On the victorious march of the Israelites, under Joshua himself, to
Palestine, we find he took Debir; i.e. the place of an oracle or wise
discourse. The name of the town was before Kirjath Sepher, or city
of books or of letters; therefore books and letters were ancient, in
that country, in Joshua’s time.[8] That pictures and sculpture were so
likewise, I infer from the command given in Numbers, xxxiii. 52, to
destroy the _pictures_ and molten images of the natives of Palestine.
If any reliance is to be placed on the annals of China and of India,
civilization and its attendant arts were at least as early with them as
with Egypt and Chaldea, each claiming the priority, and each pretending
to have been the teacher of the rest of the world, on equally plausible
grounds.
There is no doubt of the antiquity of Indian civilization. The ancient
Greek writers talk of the Indian philosophers, as belonging to a nation
highly polished, before a grain of corn had been sown in Greece; and
the pretensions of China are supported by the Indians themselves.
I have said thus much of the general civilization of these nations,
because I could not separate it from the cultivation of the arts. I
will now keep closer to my subject, reserving, however, the liberty of
digressing wherever I see occasion, or, in other words, whenever it
suits my humour.
As I take it, the Chinese remain, more nearly than any other people, in
the state in which they were two or three thousand years ago, and are,
for their age, the veriest babes that inhabit the earth. I will begin
with them, and see what their proficiency in art has ever amounted to.
It is plain from their written signs, for alphabet they have none:
that in early times, they, like the Mexicans, exerted their powers of
imitation to represent in painting, events, the memory of which they
wished to preserve. On dissecting the hundred and seventeen elementary
characters, whose endless combinations represent their language, it is
not difficult to trace the rude forms of men, birds, quadrupeds, fish,
houses, trees, hills, and so forth; and in the very oldest writings,
before the circular forms were rejected altogether, these shapes were
still more distinct[9].
We may naturally expect that, as long as painting is thus used,
convenience alone would require the once admitted forms and colours
to be invariable, and that precautions would be taken against
innovation, even for improvement, lest the painted pages should
become unintelligible. But the Chinese had advanced far beyond that.
Their characters approach, even more nearly than hieroglyphics, to
alphabetical writing, and yet their art remained stationary and at
a very low point. It is very difficult to account for this among so
ingenious a people. It was not that the Tartar conquest, by any direct
influence, lessened their civilization or stopped their progress. We
have undeniable witnesses to the contrary, in the Chinese histories, as
interpreted by the missionaries and other learned orientalists; and,
what is still more curious and satisfactory, in the writings of Marco
Paulo, who accompanied the Tartar conqueror on his expedition.
The religion of the Chinese, as Bhuddhists, is assuredly not calculated
to call forth the genius of painting. The insipid Goorus do not, like
the gods of the Hindoo or Greek mythologies, present subjects for
fancy to play with; and the statues of Bhud, while they have all the
stiffness, have none of the grandeur of the Egyptian gods.
Perhaps, as the Chinese have always been a commercial nation, they
contented themselves with cultivating the art of painting, just so far
as to decorate their exquisite porcelain and lacquered ware for the
market, and sought after nothing more.
They had certainly attained to great manual dexterity, and the power
of copying servilely whatever inanimate subjects were before them; and
they had discovered the method of extracting colours from metallic
substances, capable of bearing the furnace, as well as those of more
obvious use, in the chalks and earths of their country: besides some
of the finest varnishes in existence. We ought not to marvel that
they did not attain, in their painting, to common, much less ideal
beauty, when we reflect on the general character of form, in their own
nation or their Tartar conquerors, which is very far below that of the
Indians and their western neighbours. And we have, perhaps, no right
to expect better human shapes than that of the portly mandarin and his
crimp-footed lady, upon their plates and dishes. But their animals,
whether painted, modelled in clay, or cast in metal, are little less
distorted than their men: and as to perspective, linear, or aërial,
they seem to have no sense of either[10]. In flowers and birds, their
pencilling is delicate, and often true to admiration; but, even in
these objects, except in treatises on botany or ornithology, their
peculiar taste breaks out in monstrous combinations of leaves and
flowers, that never grew in the same soil; and of beaks and wings,
that were never hatched in the same nest.
The Japanese appear to have carried many arts to much greater
perfection than the Chinese; and even in painting, the very old Japan
figures approach nearer in style to beauty and a certain sort of
greatness.
But the reading of one Chinese novel or drama, such, for instance,
as the “Fortunate Alliance,” or “The Adventures of the Fair Shuey
Ping Sing, and the Chalk Ring,” or “Le Cercle de Craie,” must satisfy
us that, whatever progress that nation may have made in science, or
whatever sagacity it may have displayed in internal government or
in commerce, a true taste for the liberal arts has never ennobled
its other pursuits, or charmed the leisure of its philosophers and
statesmen.
I do not mean to say that they neither look at pictures nor listen to
music: but those pictures and that music differ so widely in taste and
quality from what the greater number of civilized nations are agreed in
admiring, that I feel justified in considering them as insensible to
that standard of taste which all the rest of the world acknowledges.
Was India then the mother of the arts? and, among her many claims to
distinction can she, with justice, advance that of having instructed
Egypt and anticipated the splendours of Babylon?
It might be expected that the remaining works of art, in that most
ancient nation, might decide the question. But far from it. Nor does
history or tradition throw any trust-worthy light on the subject.
The most ancient monuments of Egypt bear a certain resemblance to some
of those of India, and what we know of the religion of both countries
indicates, that, in some most remote period, their mysteries and rites
had a close resemblance. Yet, on some material points, such as their
funeral ceremonies, the difference seems to have been so decided that
we are forced to conclude that they were of different sects, emanating,
possibly, from a common source.
It is curious, that the figures of Bhud, whether on the continent of
India, or the island of Ceylon, or in China, should present the form,
and curled woolly hair of a Southern African. But the Bhuddhists of
India do not appear to have produced better works, in sculpture, than
those of China. The Brahmins, on the contrary, have left, besides
magnificent architectural monuments, in their caverns, in which
they are rivalled by the Bhuddhists, pieces of sculpture, of a very
different character from theirs, where there is occasionally grandeur,
and, not unfrequently, freedom and grace. No one, who has seen the
colossal head of the Trimurti, in Elephanta, can deny the grandeur,
almost the sublimity, of that strange work; and the compartments of the
same temple-cavern are examples of a gracious feeling of nature. The
sculptured rock, at Mavellipoor, or Mahabalipoor, called the Tapas,
or Penance of Arjoon, is a further example of freedom and taste; and
the figures of the elephants, and other animals, attendant on the holy
penitent, are designed with the greatest truth. The deformities, almost
constant in Egypt, of placing the heads of animals on men’s shoulders,
because the qualities of those animals were figurative of the
attributes of the deities, are added to by the Hindoos, who, regarding
the human hand as the symbol of power, have accordingly multiplied the
hands of the gods.
I shewed the late Mr. Flaxman some drawings of the sculptured rocks of
Mahabalipoor: he was struck with the freedom and expression of several
of the figures, in which there was an evident attempt to imitate
nature, and especially he was pleased with the expression of the
courtiers of Bali, in the design of the Vamuna Avater.
I must observe that at Mavellipoor, within a circuit of less than two
miles, there are, besides the ruins of several large temples, built of
hewn stone, eight Monothelite temples: small[11], but all differing in
form, richly and capriciously ornamented; several caverns, on the walls
of which there are many mythological subjects carved in high relief,
some of the figures being seven feet high; and the sculptured rock of
Arjoon, which I have already mentioned.
Yet, in most of these works, the execution is coarse, as if the
material had been too stubborn for the tools of the workman. I am told
that this defect does not exist in some other of the cavern temples of
India, but it runs through all that I have seen.
Of the painting of the Hindoos, no specimen of anything like ancient
times has been preserved[12]; though, from their undoubtedly ancient
poems and plays, it is certain that they did paint, and that their
pictures were not only single portraits, but compositions, both of what
we call history and familiar life[13].
Who, indeed, can read Sir William Jones’s pleasant abridgement of the
Hindoo mythology, his translation of Sacontala, or the hymn to Camdeo,
and not perceive that the Indians wanted neither imagination, nor
subjects to exercise it upon, in their religion and poetry?
But their florid religion, and exaggerated songs, were of later date,
in all probability, than that grave and philosophical faith which gave
the Brahmins their reputation in Greece and Egypt; and, perhaps, their
more natural pieces of sculpture and their pictures belong to that
later time rather than to the age of the gymnosophists; or if the
Indian arts furnished examples to Egypt or Chaldea, we must seek those
examples in the hewn rocks, which represent figures nearly as large
as the Egyptian Memnon, with their hands attached to their sides, and
their feet planted together, and of which some few still exist, within
the Peninsula, and on the Indian side of the borders of Tartary[14].
What do we know of the arts of Chaldea, in very early times[15]?
Babylon and Nineveh have, for thousands of years, been buried in
utter ruin; and if here and there a bauble, such as the signet of a
Satrap, or the breast-pin of a lady, be picked up, however delicately
the cornelian or the onyx may be chiselled, the forms are stiff and
angular, and nothing displays the freedom and grace that render art
valuable. The great sculptured rocks met with in various parts of
modern Persia, have everywhere the same character. But, upon the whole
however, there is a graver and more majestic air than in the monuments
of India, and a much greater dexterity of hand is displayed in the
workmanship, but there is less nature in the design.
As to painting, in that country, there are neither relics nor
memorials, of earlier date than our æra[16].
It is with reverence, not unmixed with awe, that I approach the subject
of Egyptian art: and here, as in India and the intermediate countries,
I must consider its sculpture as the only satisfactory monument. I am
aware that coloured subjects, by courtesy called pictures, have been
discovered on the walls of tombs and caverns, by persons well qualified
to examine and pronounce, as antiquaries, on their meaning and their
merit.
But they are, in composition, entirely sculpturesque; and many of them
are, in fact, coloured basso-relievos.
Belzoni told me he had seen, in Egypt, figures in relief wrought in
stucco on the walls of some of the catacombs, which were coloured in
simple unbroken colours. To these he ascribed a marvellous effect,
and said, they were the grandest _pictures_ he had seen. Such also,
I remember, was the language used by my enthusiastic friend Kestner,
when, in 1827, he described to me the tombs of Egyptian character,
opened the year before at Tarquinii, in the country of the ancient
Etruscans.
I can imagine readily that in the chambers of the dead, the plain form
shadowed out in a simple colour, and lighted by the glare of torches,
may have had an awful and ghostly character; and if these figures were
of the size of life, or larger, and further aided by the varying tints
afforded by a low relief, as the torches glared upon them, a describer
could hardly be charged with exaggeration, whatever effects he might
impute to them.
Still these are not pictures, though the artists approached nearly to
picturesque design in many of the chiselled figures on the walls of the
temples and tombs of Thebes, where the attacking and defending towns,
the triumphs of a victorious king, the punishment of rebels, and other
historical facts, are rendered with considerable spirit, and convey
a notion that their authors might have become painters, had they not
been restrained by custom from change or progress. These could not,
however, be the beginnings of art. They mark already a very advanced
state of society, since such great works of ornament could be required
and executed; and they, it seems, were ancient when Herodotus visited
Egypt 450 years before our era[17].
But we have more authentic documents in favour of the antiquity of the
arts in Egypt, even than those afforded by the father of Greek history.
Fifteen centuries before Herodotus travelled into Egypt, Abraham had
been entertained there by a powerful king, who gave him gifts, such
as only the head of a people already conversant with many arts could
bestow. The whole history of Joseph’s life in Egypt[18] bears witness
to the progress already made there in civility and the arts of polished
life.
Could we read the inscription freely, which covers the obelisk of
Mataryah, the only remains of the stately Heliopolis, the On of
Scripture, perhaps we might find some record of that high priest who
gave his daughter in marriage to the Hebrew governor.
Both sacred[19] and profane history[20] fix upon the two centuries
between 1600 and 1400 before Christ, as the period when a prodigious
movement took place in Egypt, and when great works were undertaken by
the kings, and important colonies led forth into the western parts of
Asia, and into Greece.
I have already mentioned the foundation of Argos and Sicyon, said to
have taken place nearly 600 years before the period of which I am now
speaking. They were, therefore, flourishing states when Cecrops[21],
the Egyptian, taught the people of Attica to sow corn, instead of
trusting to the precarious chances of the seasons in bringing forth
wild fruits, or the still more uncertain product of the chase; and
chose for the patroness of his new colony the goddess to whom his
native city Saïs was consecrated; Minerva or Bubastis. The rich country
of Asia Minor had not been more backward than Egypt in the earlier
times; nor afterwards less forward than Greece in receiving colonies.
In the time of Abraham, Damascus was a market, where slaves[22] were
sold; and forty years after Cecrops had founded Athens, Scamander
settled a colony in Troy.
Scarcely a hundred years[23] after the Egyptians had carried their
arts and their religion into Attica, we find the first Panathenaic
procession mentioned, when the whole people of Athens solemnly
dedicated themselves to the service of the goddess Athena or Minerva,
and to that of their country, and bore before them to her temple her
banner, or veil, formed of fine linen, and embroidered with subjects
relative to her history or her attributes.
The fine arts were therefore known in Attica at this early time; for
whether the peplos or veil were wrought in Attica, or imported from
Saïs, those who followed the banner could not be blind to the designs
and colours that adorned it. It was about this time that Cadmus brought
from the Eastern countries to Greece the knowledge of alphabetical
writing; at this time, when Minos gave his laws to Crete; while
Danaus, believed to be an Egyptian prince, reigned at Argos, and
Erichthonius in Athens; that Rameses was Phrah, or king of, at least,
Northern Egypt. He had caused the descendants of Abraham to build for
him the treasure cities of Rameses and Pithom[24]; and in his reign
Moses led forth the Israelites, to escape from his tyranny, into the
land promised to their forefathers.
Before I say anything concerning the arts of Egypt alone, or the
changes they underwent in different soils, and under different
circumstances, I must point out the only minute account we have, that
can be relied upon, of any peculiar works executed by any of the
various tribes who at that time separated themselves from their nursing
mother. I mean the ark of the covenant, fashioned by the direction of
Moses in the wilderness, and the contemporary golden calf and brazen
serpent.
And here we have, as far as I know, the names of the two most ancient
artists recorded: Aholiab and Bezaleel, whom the Scripture calls the
wise in heart; but they had many assistants, and it appears that Aaron
himself was a skilful workman.
The arts required for the making of the ark and the erection of the
tabernacle were the preparing and dying of skins; the weaving of fine
linen; the fine dyes, blue, scarlet, red, and purple; designing for
the embroiderers[25], who wrought the pomegranates, the flowers, and
the leaves; every variety of carving in wood; casting and chiselling
of metals; and, finally, the engraving on precious stones, and setting
them according to the jewellers’ art.
When, to quiet the impatient Israelites, Aaron consented to make a god
for them, such as they had been used to in Egypt, he caused them to
bring their jewels of gold to him for the purpose; and, after he had
cast or made a molten image, he finished it with the graver[26]. Now
this is the process of casting figures in metal to this very day.
Here, then, we have the Jews designing, making moulds, casting metals,
and finishing with the graver. They were, therefore, not all mere
brick-makers in Egypt; but some of them, like Moses and Aaron, had been
instructed in the learning, or at least the arts, of the Egyptians.
Again, for the brass and gold ornaments of the tabernacle and the ark,
Bezaleel made the cherubim[27] on the mercy seat of beaten gold; that
is, their faces and wings were embossed and chiselled. So likewise was
the great candlestick, with its flowers and its almonds, its leaves and
its buds.
The whole putting together of the tent of the tabernacle is most
ingenious, and denotes an acquaintance with great magnificence in
architecture and in furniture. The breastplate was composed of twelve
precious stones, from diamond the hardest, down to the most easily
wrought, cornelian; yet each was engraved after the manner of a signet,
with the name of one of the tribes, and set in its own peculiar setting.
Such are the particulars we learn on undoubted authority of the arts at
that early period, as practised in Egypt for convenience and ornament.
But Egypt had another use for the arts. She applied them mainly to the
service of religion.
All nations, however rude, evince a desire to record their own actions
and those of their fathers. Poets, bards, senachies, scalds, or by
whatever name the same class of men may be called, are, like the
traditionary tale-tellers of the American Indians, the earliest of
historians. Their art, which is that of so placing words as to form
sentences, whether distinguished by rhyme or by only a peculiar rhythm,
more easily and pleasantly remembered than the same words would be in
the ordinary arrangement of speech, may be practised by the warrior
or the huntsman, without interfering with his other avocations. It
is, therefore, peculiarly fitted for rude tribes, who cannot afford
that any individual should give himself up exclusively to an inactive
profession.
The rhapsodies of the bards, however, may be forgotten, and will
probably be so in a few generations;[28] and, if a tribe migrate so as
to settle where other tongues are spoken, the songs are sung in the
ears of the deaf, and the beginnings of history are swept wholly away.
How, then, shall the memory of the past be preserved? the propensity
of man to imitation will lead him to attempt to form a likeness of
any great benefactor to the community. The simple stone set up for a
memorial will soon be cut into a rude statue. The face of a rock will
admit of carving figures enough to represent an event of importance;
or the outlines may be scratched upon a board, and the use of colour,
which abounds everywhere, is an easy step towards the beginning of
painting. Such, we have positive proof, it was in Mexico; such, we may
reasonably presume, it must have been in Egypt.
But the heroes and benefactors of a lively and enthusiastic people
soon came to be looked upon as something divine. He, who first in the
sight of his tribe, scattered seed upon the earth, and, trusting to
the certain return of the season, taught how to gather in the harvest
and convert the grain into bread, must have stood in the light of a
Creator. When accident had attracted observation to the fatty nature
of the olive, he who applied oil to the feeding of a lamp would be
celebrated as a benefactor. The tamer of the bull, who brought kine to
labour for men, and from their milk produced such variety of delicious
food, merited still higher gratitude; and those who converted rude
dross and shapeless ore into instruments of agriculture, mechanical
tools, weapons offensive and defensive, almost deserved the divine
honours paid to them.
It is neither my business nor my inclination to discuss the origin or
principles of the mythology of any country, farther than as it affected
the arts.
The pictures and statues of the benefactors, or, as they soon began
to be called, of the gods, were intended to be lasting memorials of
their forms and acts. They were to speak a language independent of the
tongue. Hence it became absolutely necessary, that their representative
type should remain for ever fixed. So that to whatever excellence
the _mechanic_ might attain, or whatever improvement the progress of
science might enable the _artist_ to make, all change was forbidden;
and though the labour and finish became exquisite, it would have been
sacrilege to alter the form. Hence, while the statues of other nations
not under these restrictions, assumed the freedom and grace of nature,
Egypt saw her Osiris and Isis retaining their rigid and unnatural
characters, notwithstanding the sublime style in which they were
conceived.
The basso-relievos, intaglios, and painted stuccoes of the temples and
catacombs, present greater varieties of action and design; but even in
them, the human figure is still monotonous in character.
But whole statues and pictures engraved on rocks and walls of granite
and freestone, are inconvenient registers. Hence one well known form
was soon allowed to stand as the sign of a subject or action; part of
that figure might, in time, be substituted for the whole.
The forms of animals whose qualities were supposed to bear relation
to those of man, were admitted to represent abstract ideas; as, for
instance, in India, the elephant’s head adorned the shoulders of the
god of wisdom, and in Egypt, the watchfulness of the cat procured
her the honour of lending a mask sometimes to the greatest of the
goddesses. Insects whose appearance was constant at particular seasons,
became the types of those seasons, or of the heavenly bodies which
regulate them; so by a natural process, a scheme of hieroglyphic
representation, if we must not say writing, was framed, which long
continued in use among the governing priests of Egypt to preserve the
annals of the country.
Their hieroglyphics were themselves too cumbrous for constant use,
and it appears certain from ancient tradition and modern discovery,
that they produced a variety of steps approaching more or less to
alphabetical writing; and in all probability the learned priests who
could not be ignorant of the existence of such writing, preferred their
own mysterious and obscure characters for the sake of that power which
unusual and exclusive knowledge always confers.
The effect that the use of hieroglyphic painting, whether more or
less near to writing, had upon the art of painting itself was most
disastrous. Those who were permitted to paint at all, were bound to
make no improvement. The art was jealously kept for the adornment of
hideous mummy cases[29] and sepulchral chambers, where the nearest
approaches to what is properly painting were a sort of portraits, drawn
upon the inner coffins, which were composed of folds of linen prepared
with a chalk ground, or basso-relievos either coloured themselves,
or imitated in flat colours upon the walls. The wood upon which the
commoner coffin-painting was executed appears to have been sycamore;
it was prepared with fine lime, mixed with some kind of gum or size
for the colourer. The pigments were ochres for the most part; but the
blues and greens appear to have been prepared from copper. The black
was lamp-black, and the white a very fine lime[30]. These colours when
applied on wood, or cotton, or linen, were probably mixed with gums,
probably gum arabic or the Sarcocolla, which the Egyptians used in
preparing their mummies, and also for glue[31], and that gum probably
formed part of the varnish found on the mummy cases. According to Mr.
Wilkinson’s account, the pictures in the catacombs were executed either
on the bare limestone wall, or on the sandstone prepared with fine
lime. Whether the groups were to be painted or chiselled in intaglio
or relief, they were outlined with red ochre, then corrected with
black. The next step was the carving the intaglios or the reliefs, or
modelling the stucco applications, after which, in some of the tombs,
plain unbroken colour was applied. But even this approach to painting
arose from the desire of distinguishing objects, as tribute of gold
from tribute of silver, prisoners of white, tawny, or black nations,
and so on. But nothing like a picture, as we understand the word, has
ever been found; nothing displaying a knowledge of light and shadow,
perspective either lineal or aërial, nothing which by means of colour
and tint imitates nature: nor have we the name of any Egyptian painter
in the annals of art.
Under some of the Ptolemys, artists from Greece visited the court of
the Grecian kings; and doubtless the merchants of Alexandria may have
been permitted to possess Greek pictures; but the Ptolemys became
Egyptians, and adopted the hieroglyphic manner of recording their acts
and lives; and until the Christian hermits plastered over the mystic
figures of the Egyptian priests, that they might without pollution
erect their simple altars within the shelter of the abandoned temples,
no change appears to have taken place with regard to the practice of
the arts in Egypt.
It was reserved for the followers of Mahomet, who abhorred statuary and
painting, to introduce a gay and florid architecture among the severe
palaces and tombs of the children of Misraim, to use their temples
as quarries for building materials, and to burn their statues for
lime[32].
Egypt, therefore, though once excelling in architecture and religious
sculpture, knowing the use of colour, and conferring innumerable
benefits on other countries in most of the arts of design, has never
herself been the country of painting.
_Extract of a Letter from_ MR. CLIFT _to_ MRS. CALLCOTT.
_November 1835._
I have been present, and assisted in the opening of several mummies,
in which, although there was a general resemblance in the manner, yet
there were palpable differences too, arising probably from difference
of person, time, and price; but in none of them was there any painting
whatever on the inner linen wrappings: they appear to differ chiefly in
the greater or less care taken according to the price; some being much
more laboriously and carefully prepared than others.
Raspe may have been right in the particular to which you allude, of the
inner bandages being painted, if he has not mistaken the inner coffin
for bandaging: as Mr. Pettigrew in his late quarto volume on Mummies,
has given a three-quarter face portrait, which I think he describes as
having been found on the surface of the immediate wrappers of the body
_within_ the second coffin of a specimen in the British Museum, which I
have not seen; and he has, or had, the head of a supposed female mummy,
which had the features of a face and head-dress outlined upon the
exterior wrapper of the body, but I have seen no other example.
It is not unusual, in the more expensively prepared mummies, to find
the _inside_ of the _outer_ or wooden case ornamented with figures
in outline; but I do not recollect any such that were coloured: the
greatest labour appears to have been always bestowed on the second or
internal coffin, or case which immediately contains the body.
The outer, or wooden case, which is generally believed to be made
of sycamore-wood, is sometimes wrought out of the solid, that is,
excavated; and sometimes composed of several pieces joined by _dowels_,
or wooden pegs, instead of nails. I never saw an instance of iron or
metal being employed. This outer case is also usually of considerable
thickness, viz., from two to three or four or more inches, and
generally coated thickly with distemper colour, on which is painted
various emblematical devices in a very inferior manner; the mask or
face sometimes gilded, sometimes red (male), sometimes yellow (female).
I never observed any appearance of varnish having been employed on the
colours of this outer case.
On wrenching open the upper and lower portions of this outer or wooden
case, which are united by flat tenons received in sockets and fastened
by pegs, and apparently glue in the joint, the second or _inner case_
appears. This case has not any wood in its composition, except a small
piece at the bottom, or foot-board, on which the feet of the mummy
rest. This case is composed of at least ten or a dozen layers of linen
of the same quality as that which envelopes the body; these laminæ are
very firmly cemented together by a material apparently glue and lime,
or plaster. This case is originally moulded on a rude mass or model of
clay and straw, of the size and form of the swathed body intended to
be afterwards contained in it, and when sufficiently dry to retain its
form, the clay and straw are scraped or scooped out from the back part
which is left open, or rather apparently cut open for that purpose,
and then the body is introduced, and the edges of the aperture brought
together and secured by a very simple and ingenious method of drum-like
bracing, and the seam and lacing covered afterwards with a strip of
cloth, glued or cemented, over them. This, with the foot-board, which
is braced in or secured in the same manner, rendered the body as it
were, hermetically sealed in its chrysalis case.
The painting on the exterior of the inner case is, I believe, the most
laboured part of the process, and I have seen some which must have
occupied many days, perhaps many weeks, in the very elaborate outlining
and colouring in water-colour or distemper; and finally varnishing
or fixing the subject of this hieroglyph or allegory. The ground of
this painting is of very fine and pure white, resembling stucco. The
parts that are drawn on, and apparently outlined with a pen and then
coloured, are the only parts that are afterwards varnished:--the
blank parts of the white ground remain unvarnished, except where the
varnish-brush has occasionally slipped beyond the outline, and there
the white has become yellow. This white ground may be disturbed by
a wetted finger, which is not the case with the varnished parts.
Their varnish must have been of excellent quality, as it retains
its transparency and gloss in a most extraordinary degree; in some
instances appearing as if executed only a few days. In one that was
opened in Sir Benjamin Brodie’s new theatre in Kinnerton-street,
Knightsbridge, during the last summer, some persons were so deceived as
to believe the varnish to have been duly laid on and not yet dry; and
really it might appear so to an inexperienced eye, without touching.
What the nature of the pigments used were, I have no adequate
knowledge; they generally appear to be earthy or ochreous and opaque:
yet their artists understood the art of representing transparent
objects with them, for example:--in one which was opened about two
years since at the College of Surgeons in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, on
which several figures were introduced, one of them had its limbs
partly naked, partly covered by a thin transparent robe, and a third
degree seen through a double and thicker part of the dress. The body
of this mummy was enveloped in at least fifteen or twenty layers of
linen filet, measuring I think about one hundred and thirty yards of
handbreadth strips, torn the length way of the piece. The only _entire_
piece from one end to the other of the warp, which I could preserve,
measured eighteen feet, which, folded twice, made the length of their
ordinary robe or dress (four feet six inches), of which we met with
several examples. The outer general envelope or winding-sheet was in
one piece, about seven feet in length, and nearly two yards wide, of
excellently regular manufacture, with a very good and uniform selvage:
there were also various pieces of about a yard long, and two yards or
rather more in breadth, folded and placed under the hollow parts of
the body, together with three or four halves (all of the left side) of
robes or dresses, torn lengthwise, that had been much worn and darned,
or strengthened with much ingenuity and neatness. These were folded,
and laid behind or beneath the back as a palliasse. The name of this
mummy, as deciphered by Mr. Wilkinson and Mr. Pettigrew, was “Horseisi,
son of Naspihiniegori, incense bearing Priest in the Temple of Ammon
at Thebes.” This inscription was repeated three or four times on the
bandaging, between the body and the external surface of the wrappers,
but there was no appearance of any painting whatever on them.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Lord Bacon, on the Advancement of Learning.
[2] The prodigious collection of Mexican relics, presented by the
publication of Lord Kingsborough’s splendid work, is among the most
interesting records of an infant civilization ever laid before the
world.
[3] Mandioca, called, in the West Indian islands, Cassava. The
planting, gathering, storing the roots, grinding, and finally
separating the meal from the fine gum called Tapioca, suppose a long
period of experience and great ingenuity.
[4] See Humboldt’s Researches, in one of the plates to which there
is a _picture law-suit_, of mixed realities and symbols. The small
golden figures, thought to be idols, found in some parts of Peru, and
of which I saw one in the possession of T. Bigg, Esq., belong to the
jewellers’ art rather than to legitimate sculpture. That which I saw,
was ingeniously formed of gold wire, various coils and folds of which
were twisted into the form of legs and arms, a body and head, with the
features of the face; very frightful, it is true, but still with a
sufficient degree of imitation to be the likeness of a man. The Terra
Cottas and stone or marble figures of Mexico, are of a higher class.
[5] See some excellent observations of Mr. Wilkinson, as to the
agreement of the book of Genesis and the Egyptian documents on this
point.
[6] Pausanias, in the fifth chapter of the Corinthiacs says, that the
Sicyonians assert that Ægialeus was the first _native_ of the place,
and that he named the country Ægialeus, and the city Ægialea. _Taylor’s
Translation._
[7] Chap. xv. v. 16.
[8] I am obliged to a learned friend, for the above explanation of the
meaning of the names Debir and Kirjath Sepher. To the same friend I owe
many corrections and suggestions of great value to me in the following
pages.
[9] See the figures and inscriptions on the curious cups belonging to
three of the most ancient Chinese dynasties, published in the Journal
of the Royal Asiatic Society.
[10] A change is taking place in Chinese art. The portrait painters of
the celestial empire are beginning to imitate those of Europe. This
year (1836) there is one in the Exhibition at Somerset House that was
taken for the work of a European artist by the academicians who first
saw it.
[11] The account of Mahabalipoor, or Mavellipoor, in the first Volume
of the Asiatic Researches, is erroneous. The author seems to have seen
but two of these temples, and to have mistaken the place of them. The
largest is forty-seven feet long and twenty-five feet high. The second
is twenty-seven feet long and thirty-six feet high.
[12] Unless, indeed, the recently discovered caves, in Northern India
should turn out to be anything more than coloured bas-relief.
[13] See, for examples, in Wilson’s translations of the theatre of
the Hindoos, Malati Madava, act i., scene 2. This play was written by
Bhavabhuti, who flourished about A. D. 720. Here the lover draws his
mistress’ portrait, from memory, on his writing tables.
There is another very pretty example in Retnavali, or the Necklace, by
Sri Hersha Deva, written for the court of Cashmir, about A. D. 1120,
where the young lady sketches her lover in the character of Camdeo, and
her friend finishes the picture by adding her figure as Reti, the bride
of Camdeo.
[14] See plates and descriptions in the early vols. of the Asiatic
Researches, and Lieutenant Burnes’ most interesting travels.
[15] Ezekiel xxiii. 14, 15; a very remarkable passage.
[16] Doubtless such magnificent persons as the Kings of Persia had
painters and sculptors. Persepolis, and the Takht i Rustan prove it.
Pliny says that a Phocean artist, named Telephenes, was in the service
of Xerxes and Darius; therefore the Persian court offered to artists
the prospect of fortune.
In the very interesting narrative of the late Mr. Rich’s residence on
the site of ancient Nineveh (lately published by his widow), mention is
made of the remaining decorations of the decayed Christian churches.
These are of so early a date that the art employed on them must be the
same with that of the times of the fire-worshippers. The figures appear
to have been in relief, like those of the catacombs of Egypt, and
colour remains in various parts.
[17] Curious and interesting as the plates are which adorn the work of
Rosselini, brought to England since this essay was written, they do not
in the slightest degree alter my view of Egyptian painting.
[18] The reign of the Phrah Osirtisen II., Wilkinson says, was that in
which Joseph was carried down into Egypt.
[19] Oxford Bible. Quarto. Chronology at the end.
[20] Arundel Marbles.
[21] B. C. 1582.
[22] Eliezar, Abraham’s servant, was bought there.
[23] B. C. 1495.
[24] Tanis. Lightfoot.
[25] Gold was used in this embroidery; the metal was beat into
exceeding thin plates, then cut as small as wire; this flat gold
embroidery is still used in the East. Exodus, chapter xxxix., verse 3.
[26] Exodus, chapter xxxii., verse 4.
[27] For the supposed figures of the cherubim, see Lightfoot, who
thinks they had the faces of oxen between their wings, not human heads.
[28] The song of Maneros was, however, long sung in Egypt; but that
was accompanied with a strangely melancholy air, which, perhaps,
secured its duration. The few words said of this air by Herodotus, have
furnished Mr. Seymer with the subject of a beautiful tale. See first
series of Romance of Ancient History.
[29] See extract from Mr. Clift’s letter at the end of this Essay.
[30] See Wilkinson.
[31] Herod: Euterpe LXXXVI. Not that they were ignorant, probably, of
glue made from the skins of animals, &c. The Romans had it, and, as
Pliny says, preferred that made of _bulls’_ hides.
[32] See the accounts given by all modern travellers. The extreme
beauty and delicacy of structure of many of the Mosques and the Tombs
of the Caliphs, ornamented, even to profuseness, with everything but
imitations of animated beings, form a contrast almost extravagant, with
the severe, if not sublime, masses of ancient Egypt.
ESSAY II.
OF ART IN ANCIENT ITALY[33].
Arts are advanced not so much by them that dare make a great show of
Art, as by them that know how to find out what there is in Art.
ISOCRATES.
Honour doth nourish Arts, and we are all drawn by glory to take pains;
as are also such things ever neglected, as are little regarded in the
opinion of men.
CICERO.
It is very disagreeable to unlearn the learning of one’s youth, and
to give up belief in certain things that seem, from our long familiar
acquaintance, as if they made up a part of the system of nature itself.
But so it must be, if we will give ourselves fair play in examining
into the history of art or science, polity or commerce, in ancient
Italy. In our early education it is Rome only to which the attention is
directed. Rome is represented as first in arts and arms, as spreading
civilisation along with her dominion: and, in short, Roman virtue and
Roman greatness dazzle our young imaginations, till, seeing nothing but
the glare of her meridian splendour, we forget to look whence and how
it arose.
Yet Italy must have had a long and not inglorious history before the
seven-hilled city could boast of a shepherd’s hut, or the politic
Romulus, if such a king ever reigned, found a village considerable
enough to tempt him to make himself a king contrary to the custom of
the neighbouring federal states, one of which, Cœre, had, not very long
before his time, expelled its Lucumon (Mezentius) for little reason but
that he had sought to change the annual magistracy into a monarchy for
life[34].
This history will probably remain for ever obscure as to the particular
facts relating to it, and the names of those who might have figured
in it; because, the vainglory of the Romans, infecting even their
writers, desired that their own history and their own monuments
should stand foremost in the eyes of posterity; and though the
ancient books existed, and the ancient language was still understood
to a late period[35], no use was made of them by those who recorded
the achievements of the Romans; and it is because they found it so
difficult to conquer the Italian tribes, one by one, that we are led to
form an idea of their strength and importance.
Many men of learning and understanding in Italy, had, from time to
time, thrown doubts on the early portion of the Roman history, some
perhaps feeling that their own native provinces had been wronged by
their gorgeous adversary.
But the fate of Italy,
Servir sempre, o vincitrice o vinta,
had lowered the energies that, under other circumstances, would have
boldly proclaimed these doubts long ago, and have shown Rome as she
was, the destroyer of men and of happiness; a conqueror converting
whole well-peopled and cultivated provinces into deserts, ever which a
few wretched slaves wandered to their task work, instead of the free
peasants who once gathered their own rich harvests; a tyrant at whose
frown the liberal arts withered, and commerce deserted the useless
ports and abandoned storehouses of the subdued merchants and spiritless
artists.
But the pains-taking critics of Germany had no morbid sensibility to
prevent them from attacking Rome; none of the hopeless feeling of those
who would, but must not, vindicate the fame of their ancestors; and
with something of roughness and much of justice, they have taught us
to trample on ancient prejudice, and to dare to look upon Italy as not
dependant entirely upon Rome.
There have not been wanting Italians to join in these views, and to
acknowledge the merit of their trans-alpine critics. Among these
Micali is conspicuous; and, as his late work, with its atlas, throws
considerable light on a very early period of art in Italy, I shall make
use of it in preference to any other in what I have to say of painting
and its kindred arts, before the period of Roman authentic history
begins.
The scattered notices to be found in ancient writers, leave no doubt
as to a few facts: namely, that a rude tribe, or several rude tribes,
called by the various titles of Opicians, Auruncians, Oscans,
Cascans, or Priscan Latins, under the general name of Ausonians, and
all speaking the same language, once possessed, at least, the hill
countries of Italy; that these were succeeded by a race speaking a
different dialect, resembling the Pelasgians, who appear in several
countries as the first people possessing the arts of civilized life,
beginning to build cities, and introducing regular government.
Then we read of Umbrians, Siculi, and colonies from Greece and Phrygia;
and Italy next appears, long before the foundation of Rome, as chiefly
possessed by a people whose native name seems to have been Ra-seni, who
were called generally by the Greeks, Tyrrhenians, and by the Latins,
Tuscans or Etruscans.
It is among this remarkable people, possessed of some of the sciences
and most of the arts of social life, that the fine arts were first
cultivated in Italy; and that they were no mean proficients, will not
be disputed by any one who has beheld even a single Etruscan vase[36].
They had not pyramids or giant temples to boast of. Their works were
not for kings or for the exclusive profit of the governing priests,
like those of Egypt or India, but for the public. They have left walls
of cities, solid quays and ports, drains and sluices, useful even at
the present time, as their monuments.
But in their country, as well as in Egypt, it is in the repositories of
the dead that we are to look for the relics of whatever was beautiful
or ornamental among them[37].
The first steps of art have, doubtless, been the same among all
nations; but the Tyrrhenians had some advantages in their early
cultivation. They were early a maritime people; as merchants or as
pirates they visited whatever ports the Phœnicians traded to, in the
Mediterranean; and the effect of their foreign intercourse is to be
traced in whatever we know of their institutions or see of their arts.
But I must not allow myself to be seduced into more than the very
slightest mention of the resemblance of some of their institutions to
those of Greece, and of others to those of Egypt; and that mention is
only made because the influence of the intercourse with other nations,
upon the arts of Etruria, is so conspicuous, that it is impossible to
give the slightest sketch of them without a reference to it[38].
The relics, confessedly of Etruscan manufacture, that from time to
time have been discovered in various parts of Italy, had convinced
us that the nation was early acquainted with the arts, but there was
little to guide antiquaries as to the age of the relics themselves, or
the sources whence those arts had been derived. The fabulous as well
as the true stories of colonies from Asia, Egypt, and Greece, which
had been left by the ancients, became signals of battle for modern
disputants, and much ink has been shed in support of all manner of
contradictory theories.
The late historical disquisitions of the Germans and Italians cleared
away a good deal of obscurity; the re-opening of the great cemeteries
of Chuisi, Tarquinii, and Vulscii, have, as far as relates to art, done
much more[39]; and we may safely conclude that the Etruscan artists,
not mean in themselves, were improved by the importation of models from
other countries, and probably by the settling of potters and metal
founders from Sicyon, Corinth, and other Greek cities among them.
That they early adopted the deities of other countries is also proved
by the opening of the tombs of Chuisi. It is impossible not to be
struck with the close resemblance to the sculpture and coloured
bas-reliefs of Egypt found there; and, saving that the Tuscans do not
appear to have practised embalming, the mystic ceremonies in honour of
the dead are shown to be the same.
The beautiful vases of different kinds and colours, of clay baked or
unbaked, are covered with designs, in exquisite taste and delicately
touched. They are mostly painted in one single colour, or at most
two or three flat colours, picked out with black or white. Some have
figures in slight relief; and, with few exceptions, the subjects are
from the Greek mysteries of Bacchus, Hercules, and Ceres, when their
attributes coincide with those of the Egyptian deities, Osiris and
his family. The genii, with two or four wings, found in some of the
most ancient, mark a very early intercourse with the priests of both
countries; and though the most offensive particulars belonging to their
mythologies are totally absent, the great Egyptian demon of destruction
is common on cups, pateræ, and vases[40].
Among the great variety of designs found in the newly opened tombs,
I cannot refrain from mentioning one which Micali has published, of
a domestic rural scene, painted in several colours. Under a canopy
there is a grave elderly man seated, and before him his servants are
weighing corn, brought in nets from the field[41]. Below, as if in a
vault, others are stowing sacks of corn, which we may suppose have been
weighed. The resemblance of the subject on this patera or plate to some
of those found by Mr. Wilkinson on the walls of the catacombs of Egypt,
is very remarkable.
Besides the vases of clay, some utensils of wood and metal were found
in the cemeteries. Gems also, with chased ornaments, of beautiful fancy
and excellent workmanship, necklaces, armlets, rings, buckles, signets,
besides armour, all designed with taste, and executed with skill, show,
to our regret, against how civilized a people the Romans made war, and
leave us to lament that the selfish vainglory of the conquerors thought
of preserving no annals but their own.
To describe the painted sides of the tombs at Chuisi and other ruined
Italian cities, would be to repeat what I have already said of those of
Egypt, as far as their colouring is concerned, or their approach to
the nature of a true picture; but I must remark that the designs, if
not so imposing, have more nature and grace, though they are not to be
compared in size, number, or variety, with those of Egypt.
But there is some reason to believe that the ancient Italians had true
painters among them. Indeed I think the evidence for it as good as that
we have for any other facts connected with the arts. Pliny[42], after
refuting the story that painting was brought into Italy from Corinth,
by Cleophantus, a friend of Tarquinius Priscus[43], who had fled from
the tyranny of Cypselus, says expressly[44], “Extant there be at this
day to be seen at Ardea, within the temples there, antique pictures,
and indeed more ancient than the city of Rome. And I assure you no
pictures ever came to my sight which I wonder so much at, namely,
that they should continue so long fresh and as if they were newly
made, considering the places where they be so ruinate and uncovered
over head. Semblably at Lanuvium, there remain two pictures of Lady
Atalanta and Queen Helena, close one to the other, painted naked, by
one and the same hand: both of them are for beauty incomparable, and
yet a man may discern one of them to be a maiden by her modest and
chaste countenance, which pictures, notwithstanding the ruin of the
temple where they stand, are not a whit disfigured or defaced[45];” and
farther on he says, that at Cære there were pictures of still greater
antiquity.
These were of course the works of Etruscan artists, and, as Pliny had
opportunities of seeing and judging of the best Greek pictures which
successive conquerors had brought to Rome before his time, his praises
may be taken as good evidence for the general estimation of the skill
of those early painters.
Happily, although the barbarous Romans had not taste enough to value
and preserve the fame of their Etruscan rivals, they did not disdain
to employ their artists. One of the Roman modes of honouring their
forefathers was to preserve their effigies in plaster, wax, stone, or
metal; and on the death of any member of a family, the figures or heads
of the ancestors were taken from the family treasury to accompany the
body to the place of burial, or to the funeral pyre.
This alone would render the Etruscan sculptors popular. One of the most
ancient remaining works, executed by them for Rome, is the bronze wolf,
“the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome,” preserved in the Capitol, and
of which Micali has given an excellent figure. But this, and also the
most ancient statues of the kings and consuls, must have been cast in
Etruscan towns, and brought to Rome; for Pliny[46] tells us that the
very first bronze statue cast within the city was that of the goddess
Ceres, the expense being defrayed by the forfeited goods of Spurius
Capius, who was put to death for aspiring to the dignity of king[47].
The Romans were so fond of the Tuscan statues that they collected them
from all quarters. At the taking of Volsinum (now Bolsena) alone, they
removed two thousand to their own city; and the practice of setting up
statues, even in the public places, must have become a nuisance, before
the senate made a decree that they should all be removed, excepting
such as had been erected by public vote in honour of great personages.
Thus, when the streets and market-places were cleared of the nameless
crowd, the bronze portraits of Poplicola and of Cornelia became of
double importance.
Among the most ancient of the monumental bronzes were several
equestrian statues in honour of women as well as men. That of Clelia
was especially prized, and there was another of the daughter of
Poplicola held in the highest reverence.
Of colossal figures, there was an Etruscan Apollo, of fifty feet
high, placed in the library of the Temple of Augustus; of which Pliny
says, “But the bigness thereof is not so much as the matter and the
workmanship; for hard it is to say, whether is more admirable the
beautiful figure of the body, or the exquisite temperature of the
metal[48].”
There was also the colossal Jupiter of the Capitol, cast by Corvillius
out of the brazen armour taken from the dead bodies of the conquered
Samnites.
Besides this taste for statues, the Romans were not slow to acquire a
love for ornamented cups and bowls and dishes of the precious metals;
nor were there wanting among the spoils conveyed to Rome from the
Etruscan cities, lamps and candelabra and other furniture of elegant
design, which the more rigid citizens looked upon as tending to the
corrupting of the manners of the ancients, the moderate and aged
dedicated to the gods, but the multitude used and enjoyed.
With all these examples of beautiful forms daily before them, and
familiar enough with the sight of pictures in the neighbouring towns,
the inhabitants of Rome could not long be without painters; indeed,
painting seems to have been highly esteemed at one period, for the
great and noble family of the Fabii cultivated it so fondly, that one
of their distinguishing surnames was Pictor.
Fabius Pictor, the father of that Fabius Pictor who was sent to Delphos
to consult the Oracle of Apollo, on the fate of his country, after the
disaster at Cannæ, appears to have dedicated the first picture publicly
to the gods in Rome. He himself painted the Temple of Salus, in such a
manner as to be esteemed even after the introduction of Greek pictures;
but the painting with the Temple itself was destroyed by fire in the
reign of Claudius Cæsar[49].
Pacuvius, the poet and tragedian, is named as another great painter in
the time of the Republic. He lived about sixty years later than Fabius
Pictor, and was a native of Brundusium. As the nephew of Ennius, his
works would have been sure of a favourable notice from all the wise
and polished Romans of his time; but, by what we are told of them,
they do not appear to have required indulgence. He painted the Temple
of Hercules in the cattle market in Rome, and the pictures are said to
have given dignity to the art itself.
But a singular use was made of painting by the Roman heroes. Their
inordinate love of military fame discovered a mode of feeding that
ruling passion by means of this charming art; and it appears that
Valerius Maximus Messala was the first to adopt a practice of
exhibiting pictures of his own actions, which became afterwards pretty
common, though condemned by some of the chief men of the Republic.
Messala then caused a picture to be hung up in the Portico Hostilia,
representing the Battle of Messana[50], where he had vanquished both
the Carthaginians and Hiero of Syracuse, who had joined his former
enemies to resist the invasion of his country by the Romans.
By means of this picture, Messala kept himself before the eyes of the
people, in the situation best calculated to further his views whenever
he should be a candidate for the magistracy. Instead of sitting himself
in the market-place, dressed in the white robe of humility, and
pointing to his wounds, as Coriolanus says, to
“Show them the scars that I would hide,
As if I had received them for the hire
Of their breath only,”
the picture told the story of his achievements to the best advantage,
and perhaps placed his personal and party enemies in doubtful
situations or in disgrace.
That some injurious effects were occasionally produced by the practice
is certain, from the displeasure entertained by Scipio Africanus
against his brother Lucius Scipio, for placing in the Capitol
a picture of the battle near Sardes, which won him the title of
Asiaticus, but in which, his nephew, the son of Africanus, was taken
prisoner.
Again, Scipio Emilianus was highly offended at the display of a picture
of the taking of Carthage, exhibited in the market-place by Lucius
Hostilius Mancinus. It appears that Mancinus was the first to enter
Carthage on the taking of that city: and, on his return to Rome, being
desirous of the consulship, he had a picture painted representing the
strong situation of the town, with its fortifications, and all the
machines employed in the attack and defence, besides the actions of the
besiegers, in which care was taken that those of Mancinus should be
most conspicuous. This he hung up in the Forum, and, seating himself
by it, he explained to the people all the parts of the picture,
particularly those in which he was concerned, in such a manner, that
he won their good will, and gained the consulship at the very next
election.
The lawyers of Rome also made use of pictures in their pleadings, as we
learn from Quintilian, who censures the practice of hanging pictures
of murders or other atrocious crimes, over the statue of Jupiter, in
the Forum, for the purpose of moving the judges. As an example of the
bad effects of such machinery, he relates the story of a pleader, who,
having undertaken the cause of a young woman whose husband had been
murdered, had a picture of the murder painted, in order to produce it
at the proper moment, and thereby to affect the judges and the audience
in her favour. But his design failed, and the painting produced
excessive mirth instead of tears; for they who had received directions
for showing it, not properly comprehending them, displayed the picture
as often as the orator looked their way. This notice, attracted at a
wrong moment, was mischievous enough; but when the lookers on perceived
that the husband was an ugly old man, the contrast between his figure
and the representation of the pleader was so ludicrous, that the
pleading lost all its merit, and the young woman her cause.
It appears also that pictures of their disasters were hawked about, by
shipwrecked mariners, persons whose houses had been burnt, and other
unfortunate men, in order to move compassion and obtain assistance; and
that painted tablets were also hung up by such persons in the temples
in thankfulness to the gods for their escape.
It is probable that these pictures were but coarse; yet there must
have been in them sufficient individual likeness for the people to
recognise the portrait, and the painters must have had skill enough in
grouping to have rendered their subjects intelligible.
To the early scene-painters the birds of Rome are reputed to have paid
as great a compliment as those of Greece did to the grapes of Zeuxis;
for when Claudius Pulcher, during his edileship, exhibited dramas
publicly in Rome, the scenery representing houses and other buildings
was so natural, that the ravens and other birds, deceived by their
verisimilitude, came to perch there.
But by this time all Italy was merged in Rome the conqueror; and
the posterity of the Etruscan artists was confounded with her other
military Helots. Yet one last compliment was paid to painters in Rome
by Augustus himself. The nephew or grandson of that Pœdius, who had
been appointed by Julius Cæsar his coheir along with Augustus, was born
dumb; and the Emperor consulting with Messala, the child’s maternal
grandfather, determined that he should be brought up a painter. He
displayed considerable talent, but died while yet a youth.
I mention this the more particularly, because some writers have
asserted, that after the time of Pacuvius painting became disreputable,
if not infamous, in Rome. Had that been the case, Augustus would
not have chosen it as a profession for one so nearly allied to
him. Nevertheless, centuries passed before native Italians again
distinguished themselves in the fine arts.
From the time of the Consul Mummius, foreign pictures were daily
brought to Rome. The first publicly exhibited was a Bacchus and
Ariadne, painted by Aristides of Thebes, for which King Attalus had
offered so large a sum, that Mummius suspected there must be some
secret charm attached to the picture, and so broke off the bargain and
took it himself to Rome, where he dedicated it in the Temple of Ceres.
After this example every general seems to have been ambitious of
adorning the city with the finest pictures and statues from Greece,
Asia Minor, and Sicily. Julius Cæsar enshrined the two exquisite
pictures of Medea and Ajax[51] in the temple of Venus, where he had
hung up the shield covered with British pearl.
Augustus hung his forum with pictures of the horrors of war and the
glories of a triumph; and in the temple, which he dedicated to the
deified Julius, he placed many choice pictures, the first and most
beautiful of which was the Venus Anadyomene of Apelles.
Another work of the same painter, namely, Alexander in triumph leading
War bound and manacled, was defaced by Claudius, who caused the face
of Alexander to be erased, and that of Augustus to be painted instead.
Among many pictures of note in the same temple was one of Castor and
Pollux, of especial value.
In the Comitium also Augustus placed some excellent works of Nicias of
Athens, and Philochares his friend, less attractive for their subjects
than for the execution and beauty of the design.
The Temple of Peace was rich in pictures of the highest class. There
was placed the most valued of all the works of Protogenes, namely, the
hunter Ialysus with his dogs and game.
It is said that when Demetrius laid siege to Rhodes, and was upon the
point of taking the city, he abstained from an attack that must have
been successful, on learning that the picture of Ialysus was in the
quarter of the town he might have carried, lest in the confusion the
picture should be injured; and the workshop of the painter, being just
without the walls at that point, was another reason for sparing it.
In the Temple of Peace also were the Cyclops of Timanthes, and the
sea-monster Scylla by Nichomachus.
In the Temple of Concord there was a precious picture by Zeuxis, of
Marsyas bound to a tree; and in private hands, the Muses and the Helen
of the same painter adorned some of the villas of Rome.
In that shrine of Ceres, where Mummius had placed the Bacchus and
Ariadne of Aristides, there were several other pictures by the same
painter, which, having been trusted to a restorer that they might
appear to advantage in some public procession, were utterly ruined. So
ancient was the practice of consulting quack restorers for works of
art!!
In the Temple of Minerva on the Capitol was the Theseus of Parrhasius,
with the Rape of Proserpine and a victory by Nichomachus.
The portico of Octavia was adorned by pictures of Greek Mythology
and History, painted by that finished artist Antiphilus; and that of
Pompey boasted of a rare fragment by Polygnotus. It was a soldier upon
a scaling ladder, and possibly stolen from some of the great battle
pieces which he painted in honour of his countrymen[52].
The Romans were not more ceremonious than modern conquerors in their
robberies; witness the conduct of the general who permitted the tombs
of Corinth to be broken open, and in the sight of the people the urns
containing the ashes of their forefathers torn from their sacred
asylum, and publicly sold to the highest bidder among the Romans, who
became for a time so passionately fond of them, that not a grave was
left unviolated for miles round Corinth; and it was only when the
market was glutted, and the fashion had passed away, that Corinthian
vessels were laid aside.
A new school, if I may so express myself, of pottery was then
established in Italy, where formerly the Etruscan workmen had excelled
all others. But as fashion is all-powerful in all ages, a new rage
for earthen dishes and bowls of enormous size grew to such a pitch,
that the nickname of Patinarius was given to Vitellius, on account
of one large platter which he had made for him, and which cost more
than a fine wrought vessel of chalcedony would have done[53]; and the
satirical poets of that age have named not a few of the lovers of large
dishes.
But to return to our imported pictures. The portico of Pompey was still
farther adorned with pictures by Nicias. There was a large portrait of
Alexander, a figure of Calypso, and some animals painted by him which
were much prized. The same Nicias painted that beautiful picture of
Hyacinthus, which Augustus valued so highly, that, after his death,
Tiberius consecrated it to his memory, in the temple dedicated to him.
But the greatest influx of Greek pictures at any one time into Rome
was during the edileship of Scaurus; when, on account of a real or
pretended debt owing by the people of Sicyon to Rome, the whole of the
pictures of that city were seized and conveyed to Italy. Among these
the most precious appears to have been a sacrifice by Pausius, the
greatest painter of his native town, and one whose playful disposition
and agreeable qualities we may gather from even the short notices we
can at this distance of time collect[54].
Such were a few of the many pictures, the prizes of war, which were
brought to adorn the temples, palaces, and public places of Rome;
not to speak of those with which taste or fashion decorated private
houses[55].
It is not to be doubted that such an influx of excellent statues and
pictures caused a revival of the taste for the arts. And accordingly
there grew up new schools of painting in Italy as a matter of course.
But no name of note has been preserved. Pliny, to be sure, tells us of
one Ludius, in the time of Augustus, who first devised the decoration
of the walls of houses with rural scenery; and nearly at the same time
lived Arellius, a man of talent, but of dissolute manners. These were
followed by Aurelius, Cornelius Pinus, and Actius Priscus, who were
employed by Vespasian to decorate some temples which he rebuilt; but
their pictures are said scarcely to have attained mediocrity, much less
excellence.
In sculpture there is proof still existing that great manual dexterity
had survived the genius that produced the ideal Jupiter of Phidias,
and the Venus of Praxiteles. That dexterity was happily applied to
portraits.
There is an individual expression, notwithstanding some hardness, in
the Roman portraits in marble down to a very late period, that must
satisfy us that they are genuine likenesses, and that enables us to
read the characters of the men as truly as if we sat in their company.
But the artists that wrought in and for Rome were now Greeks, and with
the exception of some of those who engraved gems[56], their works are
universally of an inferior character.
Under the magnificent Hadrian there was indeed a temporary revival
of art. All that the patronage of a Roman Emperor, ambitious of
distinction as the reviver of art and elegance could do, was done.
The portraits of Antinoüs, which he caused to be executed, whether
with a flowery garland, and beautiful as Adonis, or in the character
of an Egyptian priest, or as a Greek huntsman, rival the youthful gods
and heroes of the sculptors of Greece[57]. But with Hadrian and the
Antonines this prosperity ended[58].
The arts could not flourish where tyranny, vice, and civil war
alternately reigned. They withered almost to death; and had Constantine
not pillaged the monuments of his predecessors his own would have
remained mere masses of deformity, to mark the degradation of art[59].
While such was the fate of sculpture, that of painting was little
better. Some of the Roman conquerors had introduced, from the eastern
provinces, a taste for that gross kind of painting, Mosaic. One of the
finest pieces executed in Italy was the great pavement in the Temple
of Fortune, at Prænesti[60], by Egyptian artists in the service of
Sylla the dictator; and, as a pavement, the coolness and cleanliness
of that kind of work must have had strong recommendations, besides
whatever merit the designs might possess. This luxury soon became so
general, that, even in the remote province of Britain, specimens of
mosaic pavements, of no common beauty, are from time to time discovered
in the neighbourhood of Roman stations. To the workers in mosaic we
are probably indebted for part of what little art outlived the five
dull ages preceding the twelfth century; and for a larger part to the
illuminators of books, whose miniatures certainly preserved much that
was afterwards used to great advantage by the revivers of painting in
Italy and Germany.
Pliny mentions Aterius Labeo, a man of prætorian rank, who in his time
was very skilful in small works of painting, which I conceive to have
been miniature. He exercised his art in Gallia Narboniensis, where he
was vice-consul; and I have sometimes fancied that his works might
have assisted to form the early illuminators of missals in the southern
provinces, nay, perhaps, the Monk of the Golden Isles himself.
I cannot omit to mention here, that the first persons who illustrated
books appear to have been Varro and Atticus. In the books of their
noble libraries, they each of them inserted small portraits of the
authors at the head of their works. This was within a century of our
era; and so diligent had they been in seeking out the portraits of
authors, that M. Varro published a collection of seven hundred[61].
Cornelius Nepos says, that under each of the heads in his collection,
Atticus wrote four or five verses, describing the deeds and honours of
the original. Had but a few of these miniatures come down to our times,
how precious they would have been to the artist and the antiquary.
Among the last names of ancient Italian painters given us by Pliny, is
that of Turpilius, a noble Venetian, who painted at Verona in the first
century, with considerable reputation; and it is remarkable that some
of the earliest of modern painters appear at Verona, and that many of
the most beautiful miniature illuminations extant were executed by very
ancient monks of that city[62].
It was in this first century that the great catastrophe, which buried
several ancient cities in one of the most cultivated parts of Italy,
occurred. It proved fatal, too, to the extraordinary man to whom we
owe not only the greatest part of our knowledge of the painters of
antiquity, but all that is to be depended upon of the practice of
the art. Pompeii with other towns was covered with ashes from Mount
Vesuvius; and in them such works of art as were not portable, remained
fresh as at the day of their disappearance, to gratify our curiosity:
and it was in a visit to Pompeii to observe the phenomena connected
with the eruption that Pliny lost his life.
Every one must be struck with the great disparity between the bronzes
and marbles, and the pictures of Pompeii. Some of the bronze figures
and most of the furniture of that metal are exquisite in taste and
execution, and many of the marbles are not far behind them. But the
pictures are of a very inferior character, generally speaking. Single
figures there are indeed of great beauty, and some arabesques elegantly
designed; but the groups are for the most part more like sculpture than
painting; and the few landscapes are little better than those of the
Chinese.
To account for this in some measure, I would suggest, that the pictures
we have found are merely the decorations of small private houses, and
that they must have been executed late in the decline of art, because
the great earthquake which had destroyed the temples of Pompeii, but
a few years before that eruption of the mountain which buried the
town, must have shaken the stucco from the walls, and with it whatever
specimens of art of a better time might have then existed[63]. Besides,
the inhabitants of Pompeii had most of them time to escape with their
most precious moveables. Now, if any of the residents in that small
provincial town, which was to Rome as Folkestone may be to London,
possessed any Greek pictures, or others of value, they were painted
on light wooden pannels (larch or sycamore), and were easily removed,
so that, if not saved, they must have been consumed in the fields by
the fiery showers, that destroyed more persons without the gates of
the town than within them. Hence I cannot think that the pictures of
Pompeii furnish a fair criterion by which to judge of the real nature
of antique painting, any more than the arabesques that have been found
in the Roman baths and the subterranean chambers of the palaces, which
we cannot suppose to have been the places where the choicest works of
art were placed.
Two very beautiful pieces of antique painting, now in London, which
were found near Rome, seem to corroborate my opinion that the pictures
scattered through the Italian provinces were generally inferior to
those belonging to Rome itself and the immediate neighbourhood. One
of these is the half figure of a boy, with a double flute; broad in
colour and effect, and round and fine in form, reminding one of the
Venetian frescoes, particularly those of Paul Veronese. The other is
a Ganymede, very beautiful in form, and remarkable for the effect of
light and shadow. The light is principally on the body of the Ganymede,
in the centre, and carried into the blue sky on the left; but a low,
light stone altar on the right balances it. Over the altar, the eagle,
with outstretched wings, is dark; and the dark is continued behind the
lower part of the figure of the boy by a purple mantle.
These two pictures have none of the stiff, sculpture-like look of
almost all the other antique pictures I have seen. They are real
pictures, in which the artist has attended to light and shadow, and to
general effect, as well as to colour and form. Whether they were the
works of Greeks settled in Rome, or of their Italian scholars, they
give me the notion of much more skill in painting, as an art quite
distinct from sculpture, than any other antique picture I ever saw[64].
By the existing statues we perceive that the ancient writers did not
exaggerate the merit of their sculptors; why therefore should we doubt
their judgment as to their painters?
But to whatever perfection the art of painting might have arrived in
the bright days of Greece, it is certain that, when Pliny wrote, it
had sunk down to a very low degree in that country: and there is good
reason to believe that under the Empire there were no great Roman
painters; but this was not for want of encouragement. In the towns
preserved by the ashes of Vesuvius there is scarcely a house where some
apartment is not painted, where the precious red walls, varnished with
wax[65], are not decorated with dancing figures and arabesques; and
certainly not one where the doorways or the kitchens are not adorned or
disfigured, as it may be, with portraits of all manner of utensils and
articles of food.
I confess I have been charmed to observe that glass decanters, pretty
like our own, were used for water, wine, and sherbet, at the drinking
houses in those ancient fishing towns; that their sirloins were cut in
true English fashion, as in the picture in what is called the surgeon’s
house, that dog who is gnawing the bones of one could tell; and that
hams and legs of mutton, to say nothing of broiled eels, must have
looked just like our own when brought to table. But above all was my
fancy diverted, when I perceived, by the sign over the school-master’s
door, that the same remedies for dulness were prescribed eighteen
centuries ago, as are found beneficial now.
Numerous, indeed, must the painters of the first century have been to
supply such demands! But not even one name have they left for posterity
to dwell upon.
There is no question but that portrait painters abounded. The numerous
portraits of the period, in marble, attest it, if we had no other
proof. But Nero himself patronised that branch of the art, and ordered
a canvas[66], one hundred and twenty feet high, to be strained, whereon
his colossal portrait might overlook the city, from the gardens of
Marius. But his design was frustrated; the lightning blasted the
portrait ere it was finished, and we have not even the name of the
painter left, who was to have been immortalized along with the emperor!
Some small portraits of this period have been preserved among the
catacombs, and it would be a matter of great interest to examine
carefully those preserved in the cabinets of Christian antiquities,
which fill one long gallery of the Vatican. I had too short a time
when there to make any observations worth setting down. My first visit
to these precious cabinets was in company with Canova, and my second,
after a lapse of eight years, with Maia! They drew my attention to
other objects; and as I then hoped to revisit Rome, I was willing to
be led by such guides, trusting to the future for an opportunity of
forwarding my own particular pursuits. But some other person must
now take my place. Infirmity, not age, binds me to my own fire side.
Happy that I have been permitted to see so much to occupy my thoughts
and time with pleasant retrospect, under circumstances that without
occupation would be dreary indeed.
In the first century of our era, we may consider painting as a merely
decorative art, little better than upholstery, excepting when applied
to portraits, for which human vanity will always create a demand.
There might also be artists employed to copy the ancient pictures of
Greece; and now and then, among that class of painters, one who would,
in some original composition, imitate the style and manner of the older
masters.
This is so natural that it scarcely wants the confirmation of authority
to gain belief. But I think we have authority in the notices scattered
through the dialogues of Lucian[67], and in the descriptions of
pictures by Philostratus[68], who erects his imaginary gallery on the
shores of the bay of Naples.
But a great change was taking place in the world: the gay and poetical,
but licentious belief of Greece and Italy, was fading away. The images
and actions of gods and heroes no longer delighted the multitude. A
graver, purer, yet more impassioned faith, was gradually advancing
through many impediments: and it was long ere its votaries had leisure
to convert to its service the glorious arts that had adorned the
temples of the old religion.
The interval during which the change was going on, could not be
otherwise than hurtful to those arts; and accordingly, the first
efforts of Christian painting, as far as we see in the few relics we
possess, were gross and coarse.
Yet there is in them a certain dignity of expression, which saves them
from contempt. But the revival of art in Christian times belongs rather
to the Greeks than the Italians, as I shall have occasion to point out;
for as the conquest of Greece by Rome brought art and artists into
Italy, so the removal of the seat of government attracted them eastward
again, to the new court, and they left the deserted Capitol of the
Western Empire to seek the patronage of the rising city.
From what I have said in this Essay, it will be seen that the time when
Italy could boast of native artists, equal to those of the surrounding
nations, was before Rome existed.
That after the Roman conquests, native artists gradually disappeared,
and the very few who have left a name seem only placed here and there
as beacons, to show the nakedness of the land.
That the forced luxury of art, fostered by imported pictures and
statues, foreign artists and imperial patronage, produced in Italy
no painter or sculptor of eminence, even in the most flourishing
times of Roman politeness; while the free cities of Greece had
given birth to those men of sublime genius, whose borrowed works
gave to Rome all the lustre she could ever boast of in art[69].
FOOTNOTES:
[33] I am aware that it is unusual to place Italy before Greece in any
ancient historical question; but I am induced to do this because the
real ancient Italian art, namely that of the Etruscans, was coeval
with the oldest Greek schools, if not anterior to them; and that as
the Roman conquests destroyed the arts of old Italy before the most
brilliant periods of Greek painting, I may well look upon Italian or
Etruscan painting as having an earlier life and death than that of
Greece.
[34] Micali, Vol. II., p. 73.
[35] Micali, Vol. I., p. 32, mentions certain books of the ancient
Italians, preserved at Anagni, so late as the time of Fronto.
[36] For whatever notices of ancient or modern authors, before his
own time, that can throw lustre on Etruscan art, I must refer to
Tiraboschi, _Storia delle Lettere Italiane_, Parte Prima, x. to xviii.,
and to Micali’s work generally.
[37] It is a pity that the want of early Italian writers deprives us of
the means of judging of the truth of some of the marvellous traditional
accounts of Etruscan monuments. The cavern sepulchres of Clusium may
possibly have been connected with the labyrinth which Pliny, B. xxxvi.,
c. 13, on the authority of Varro, says, was under that incomprehensible
tomb of Porsenna, the account of which reads like a fairy tale; and has
uselessly employed some modern dreamers in impossible restorations.
The square body of the building, the four pyramids at the corners, and
that in the centre, will remind the traveller of the modest monument,
miscalled that of the Horatii and Curiatii, on the road between Laricia
and Rome. To me it seems to have some resemblance with that raised by
Simon Maccabeus to his family, about three centuries after Porsenna’s
time, 1 Macc. xiii., v. 27, 28, 29, 30.
[38] See the 22nd chapter of Micali for what can be known of the
religion of ancient Italy, its gradual alteration, and the introduction
of Egyptian, Oriental, and Greek mysteries by the Cabiri, who, in their
mixed character of priest and merchant, appear to have influenced the
whole system of worship.
[39] I say the _re-opening_, because it appears that at some former
time or times, now forgotten, the sepulchres have been searched for the
precious metals which, in the form of ornaments of various kinds, were
buried with their owners. Some of the tombs remaining open served as
refuge for robbers, for sheep-pens, &c. See Tiraboschi as above, also
Micali.
[40] This demon, with his huge tusks and his large tongue, might be
taken for the Hindoo demon that is to destroy all mankind at the end
of the world, according to some. Several plates of this destroyer, who
is sometimes to be identified with Siva, sometimes with Kali, are to
be seen in Moore’s Hindoo Pantheon. The resemblance between the two
monsters is very remarkable.
[41] From this it appears that the whole ear of corn was stored in
these nets, as was the custom in Egypt.
[42] Book xxxv., ch. 3.
[43] Cleophantus is said to have used no other colour than pounded
brick. Demaratus, the father of Tarquinius, had been a fugitive, and
settled as a potter at Tarquinii.
[44] I quote the pleasant old translation by Philemon Holland. The 1st
Book of Tiraboschi, to which I have already referred, may be consulted
if any doubts concerning Pliny’s account should arise.
[45] Pliny mentions that, in his time, Pontius, a lieutenant of
Caligula, wished to have removed the pictures from Ardea, but found
that the plaster or stucco upon which they were painted would not bear
removal. These pictures could not have been painted merely in water
colours, for they were not injured by exposure to the weather. Could
they have been painted with the size of oil, mentioned in book xxxvi.,
chap. 24? or were they not rather true frescoes?
[46] Book xxxiv., ch. 4.
[47] Before Christ, 485.
[48] Book xxxiv, ch. 7.
[49] “C. Fabius, a most noble Roman, who, when he had painted the walls
of the Temple of Salus, before dedicated by Julius Bubulcus, he set
his own name to it: as if a consular, sacerdotal, and triumphal family
stood yet in want of this ornament.” Val. Max. book viii., quoted by
Junius.
[50] Modern Messina.
[51] By Timomachus, a Byzantine contemporary with Cæsar, who was his
patron according to one passage in Pliny’s thirty-fifth book; but
other passages, with, as I think, more likelihood, make him older than
Apelles. On carefully comparing such authorities as we have on the
subject, I cannot help thinking that there were two, if not three,
painters of the name. Two seem to have been Thracians.
[52] Most probably from the Pæcile, where the pictures were not painted
in fresco, but on pannel. The portico of Octavia, with its library and
pictures, was burnt in the time of Titus.
[53] The fashion of the fine wrought cups of chalcedony is said by
Pliny to have been introduced into Rome by Pompey. B. xxxvii., c. 11.
[54] For his other various merits, see Fuseli’s first lecture.
[55] Among the pictures taken from Greece, Tiraboschi names, on the
authority of Vitruvius, b. ii. c. 8, some frescoes from Sparta; which,
by orders of the Ediles Murena and Varro, were sawn from the walls they
adorned, and, being tightly wedged in wooden cases, were transported to
Rome.
[56] Dioscorides, whose works came next in beauty to those of
Pyrgoteles, Acmon, Aulus, and some others in the time of Augustus;
Alpheus and Anthon in that of Caligula; Evodus and Necander under
Titus; Ænorus in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, &c.
[57] See the basso-relievo, of the size of life, in the Villa Albani,
and the statues in the Museum of the Capitol and the Galleries of the
Vatican.
[58] Marcus Aurelius was himself a painter: his master was, according
to Julian, Diognetes; whether the same Diognetes, who was his master in
moral philosophy, does not appear.
[59] The arch of Constantine in Rome furnishes a perfect example: such
parts as he stole from the forum of Trajan are of great merit, and do
credit to the artists of the last good school of antique sculpture.
Those portions of the decorative bas-reliefs, executed by Constantine’s
workmen, are mean and deformed--totally worthless in design and
contemptible as sculpture.
[60] Now Palestrina. See Cecconi, Historia di Palestrina.
[61] All Roman families of rank preserved the effigies of their
forefathers, some in wax, others in clay, wood, marble, or bronze.
These were carried in procession at funerals.
The images of Brutus and Cassius were not permitted to appear among
those of seventy of the principal houses of Rome, at the funeral
of Junia the widow of Cassius; but Tacitus says, that “before all
the rest THEY flashed upon men’s thoughts, the more for not being
there.”--Annals, Book iii.
The Athenians set up the statues of Brutus and Cassius along with those
of Harmodius and Aristogiton.--Dion. Cassius, Book xlvii., c. 20,
quoted by Colonel Leake.
[62] Of these, there are beautiful examples in the _Libreria_ at
Sienna, and some in the collection at Munich. The latter had not been
arranged when I saw them in 1827.
[63] In and about the market-place at Pompeii, there are buildings
partly repaired, and also preparations for repairing others. So that
the consequences of the first catastrophe had by no means been fully
removed before the second occurred.
[64] These pictures are now in the possession of Sir Matthew White
Ridley. They were discovered in 1823, in a vineyard belonging to Signor
Santa Amandola, to the right of the Via Appia, near San Sebastiano. The
boy with the flute formed the centre of the vault of a Columbarium,
and was taken down to preserve it. There were, in the same tomb, some
relievos, in stucco, and some painted arabesques, of considerable
merit. The Ganymede was found in the same vineyard, as was likewise a
fine sarcophagus, which has been published in an archæological journal.
[65] See Pliny, Book xxxv., c. 11; and further, see Essay 6.
[66] See Essay 5, also see Pliny, Book xxxv. It is curious to observe
how M. Durand has twisted this passage to suit his own views. It
is only necessary to compare Durand’s paraphrase with the honest
translation of old Philemon Holland, to be convinced of the Frenchman’s
want of fidelity. Tiraboschi has, without his usual care, adopted
Durand’s view of this matter. I think wrongly, for my reasons see Essay
6.
[67] See Franklin’s Lucian. In the dialogue, _Zeuxis_, Lucian says,
that the original picture of the Centaurs was lost at sea; but that he
saw a copy in a picture dealer’s shop, at Athens. It is worth while to
refer to Lucian’s dream, for an account of the customs of the sculptors
of his day,--the pupils crying casts about the streets, while the
masters were labouring themselves.
[68] See the French translation, by Blaise de Vigenere, with its
singular plates and notes, ten times more bulky than the original work.
There is an epigram to each of the plates by D’Embry.
[69] Tiraboschi has laboured hard to convince himself and others that
Zeuxis was a native of the Italian Heraclea. But I think he fails. Even
if he succeeded in establishing his birth-place in Italy, his life was
passed in Greece: there he studied and there he painted. His being
employed by the Sicilians at Agrigentum, and by some towns in Magna
Græcia, only prove their taste for Greek art, not that Zeuxis was an
Italian.
* * * * *
(Additional Note to Essay II.)--It may appear strange that I have not
mentioned Sicily, which abounded in works of art, more particularly
in this Essay. But the truth is, there was no native school of
either sculpture or painting; and whoever will take the trouble to
read Cicero’s fourth oration against Verres, will see in that very
interesting catalogue, that with trifling exceptions, all the statues
and pictures which that guilty Prætor plundered the Sicilians of, were
either imported from Greece, or the works of Greek artists. It is a
pity that Cicero has not named the painters of those pictures which
hung in the temple of Minerva at Syracuse[70], and which he praises so
highly, especially the battle piece, representing Agathocles charging
at the head of his cavalry. It would also be interesting to know the
authors of those twenty-seven portraits of the tyrants and other great
men of Syracuse, which the orator says were so valuable, not only as
likenesses of the persons, but as works of art. Cicero, however, was no
connoisseur, and when he wished to adorn his library, at Tusculum, with
some work of art fit for the place, he employed a friend to choose it.
And well did that friend choose, if the beautiful fragment now in the
monastery, at Grotta Ferrata, and which was found on the site of the
Tusculan Villa, be the very ornament sent from Athens, in compliance
with his request.
[70] Now converted into the cathedral church. It must have been a
beautiful specimen of Greek Doric, but it is hidden and defaced by the
building and walls necessary for its conversion. I saw it in 1818.
ESSAY III.
PAINTING IN GREECE, FIRST AND SECOND PERIODS.
It is no small glory to be made partaker of a great and worthy matter,
however it be but a little you do possess.
COLUMELLA.
To write of the beginning of painting in Greece, one of two theories
must be repeated. Either that all nations, at a certain stage of
civilisation, have discovered a fondness and aptness for the fine arts
without communicating with others; or that painting was brought with
the other arts ready formed from Egypt to Sicyon and Corinth.
For my part I am apt to consider both these views as partly true.
It is not to be supposed that the civilised people, whatever was its
origin, which possessed Greece before the time of the earliest Egyptian
colonies, and which in the massy walls and curious treasure-houses,
which it has left as monuments, proving a considerable advance in the
knowledge of mechanics, had made none in those finer arts that adorn
and sweeten life. Neither are we obliged to believe that the Egyptian
Colonies, whether led by an unfortunate prince, or composed of men
flying from the tyranny of a harsh government, would forget to practise
the arts which flourished in their native soil. They might improve
the nation on whose shores they landed, and in return be improved by
intercourse with it[71].
It is certain, however, that whatever were the first steps of the arts
of Greece, they soon out-stripped those of every other nation, making
their practice the law by which all others were to be tried for ever.
Alas, for the pictures of Greece! they have perished, and are now mere
matter of history, and like the hands that produced them
Poca polvere son, che nulla sente.
But the temples they adorned, the statues that were coeval with them,
the bassi-relievi conceived in the spirit that inspired them, are not
utterly gone; and while we have them before us, the history of the
pictures of Greece may still borrow a momentary reality as we read
over the descriptions of the heroes of Polygnotus, and the Helens and
Venuses of Zeuxis and Apelles.
Of the plastic arts it is scarcely possible to doubt that modelling in
clay must be the earliest that arrived at any degree of perfection. The
very shaping and moulding of vessels for domestic use, must have given
a facility of hand to the potter, highly advantageous when he began to
model his first ornamental foliage, and afterwards in his imitations of
men and animals. It is a pity not to believe that the first portrait
in profile, and the first bust, owed their common origin to love;
and after all it may be true. The potter’s art may have formed the
clumsy likeness of a human head, and many a rude outline may have been
scratched on rocks, or cut in turf, or drawn in the sands before. But
Dibutatis tenderly tracing the shadow of her sleeping lover, may still
have formed the first individual likeness; and her father’s filling up
of that line, the first head in clay that deserved the name of model.
At all events, I would have the poets and the young believe it.
The tale points to Corinth as an early nursery of art; and we have
seen how closely the beautiful vases of that city and those of Etruria
resemble each other. Of late years, vessels almost equally beautiful,
and not dissimilar in form, have been found delineated in the catacombs
of Egypt; but it is remarkable, that although they are ornamented with
many tracings and scrolls like those of Corinth, there is no instance
of their bearing the human form.
The designs on the Corinthian and Etruscan vases, may be considered as
pictures in monochrome, according to Fuseli[72], whose ingenious but
somewhat fanciful account of the process by which the monochromes were
executed, is probably near the truth.
The works of the earliest Greek painters, therefore, which we know
were called monochromes, resembled the Corinthian and Etruscan figured
vases; and, perhaps, it is equally credible that the two, three, and
four-tinted vases represent, with tolerable accuracy, the steps towards
the many coloured pictures which excited the admiration of the Greeks
in the earliest paintings mentioned in authentic history.
But, before we take up the history of painting exclusively, it will
not be uninteresting to name a few of those early productions of the
workers in metal, mentioned by the poets or older historians, and, in
some instances, preserved in the treasures of the Grecian temples,
particularly those of Delphi, to a late period[73]. We must remember
that the Greeks of Europe, Asia, and the Islands, practised the arts
with equal taste and success; that, by trade or by alliance with the
Phœnicians, they maintained an intercourse with Egypt, and also a
direct commerce with the Etruscans; and that their border nations on
the Asiatic side were cultivated and luxurious, drawing their origin
either from the same ancient civilised stock with themselves, or from
Egypt, or its immediate neighbourhood.
The shield of Achilles, that noble piece of chased and inlaid work as
described by Homer, about nine centuries before our era, is an example.
Its rich design could not have been imagined, unless the arts necessary
to produce it had arrived at a high degree of perfection in his country
at the time he wrote[74], though we may doubt if, at the period of the
war of Troy, three hundred years before Homer, there existed artificers
capable of executing it.
Within a century after the taking of Troy, there was a great movement
among the Greek tribes; many new colonies settled in Asia Minor, and
the Heraclidæ finally regained their ancient seats in Peloponnesus. It
is worthy of remark, that at that period Jerusalem was adorned with
her first magnificent temple by Solomon, and that David built his
house of cedar. The chief workman sent by Hiram the king of Tyre, to
assist Solomon in the building of the Temple, but more especially to
superintend the execution of the ornaments, was the son of a Tyrian
artist by a Jewess of the tribe of Naphthali. According to one passage
of scripture he was like his master called Hiram[75].
A little before the building of the temple we must place the
construction of the tomb of Absalom, part hewn in the rock, and part
built; which resembles in those particulars, and, in my mind, surpasses
in taste, many of those described and figured by late travellers in
Asia minor; while I should say, the cavern tombs of the kings of
Judah have a resemblance to those of Egypt, or rather, perhaps, to
the curious excavations discovered by late travellers, at Petra in
Edom[76]. These are surely proofs that the arts were flourishing as
freely in Syria, as in Asia Minor at that time.
But, to return to Greece. About seven centuries before the Christian
era, the temple of Delphi was enriched by a number of most precious
gifts by some of the kings of Asia. Gyges, whose story has served for
the foundation of so many charming tales of enchantment and fairyism,
sent to the god at Delphi the first foreign offering, or, as the
Greeks term it, the first gift from a barbarian[77]. It consisted of
vessels of gold, silver, and brass; among which, six golden goblets,
particularly valued, were afterwards placed, in a chest or cupboard
called the treasury of Corinth, which was presented by Cypselus[78]
to the shrine, some years afterwards. Midas had by a short time
anticipated the gifts of Gyges, consecrating to the Delphian Apollo
the throne whence he dispensed justice, said to be of exquisite
workmanship[79].
Halyatus, the great-grandson of Gyges, sent a vase to Delphi, precious
for its material, but still more precious on account of the workmanship
of the under cup which supported it. The vase was of chased silver, the
under cup of iron curiously inlaid with silver, the work of Glaucus of
Phocis, said to be the inventor of that kind of work in metal. This
was the only one of the gifts of the Lydian kings that remained when
Pausanias visited the temple.
Indeed, the magnificent presents sent by Crœsus, the son of Halyatus,
would have been sufficient to tempt the cupidity of a conqueror, and
perhaps to overcome the honesty of the priests of Delphi themselves. Of
pure gold there were a hundred and seventeen bricks or tiles, forming
the floor for a lion of great size, of the same metal, and the statue
of a woman said to have baked the bread for the king’s household.
These were taken by the Phocians to defray the expenses of the sacred
war. There were also many beautiful chiselled vases of gold and
silver, basins, ewers, fountains, and cisterns. One goblet of silver
was particularly precious; it was said to be the work of Theodorus of
Samos[80], one of the earliest founders in bronze.
Crœsus also enriched other temples with precious gifts. The great
temple at Ephesus possessed three golden heifers and some fine columns
given by him. The shrines of Thebes in Bœotia, were enriched by him;
and to the temples in Miletus, he had sent gifts of equal value with
those he consecrated at Delphi.
In return for a quantity of gold given by Crœsus to the Lacedemonians,
they sent him a large vessel of bronze, round the mouth of which the
figures of all sorts of animals were chased or engraved. The vase,
indeed, never reached Crœsus, who was dethroned by Cyrus while it was
on its way, and it fell into the hands of some merchants who sold
it for a large price. Cyrus had the fortune not only to obtain the
treasure in the precious metals and in the workmanship, of the gorgeous
possessions of Crœsus, more precious than those metals themselves, but
also to restore to Jerusalem the splendid ornaments and rich vessels,
the work of the Tyrian artists, which belonged to the temple, and which
were no doubt saved, by having been consecrated in[81] the temple of
Belus, during the taking of Babylon.
It will perhaps never be known in what degree the taking of the Capital
of the Chaldeans by Cyrus, altered the state of literature and art
in ancient Persia. I have already referred to the passage in the
prophet Ezekiel, which mentions the portraying the figures of men with
vermilion, according to the use of the Chaldeans of Babylon; and, it
should be observed, that their _many-coloured_ head-dresses are also
mentioned; so that the Babylonian pictures, such as they were, were not
monochromes. But this belongs to another place[82].
The Greeks had early adopted or borrowed deities from every nation. The
Syrian Astaroth or Astarte, and Thammuz or Adonis, were not neglected,
but were received as kindly in the temples, as the Tyrian purple and
the fine linen of Egypt, in the ports of Greece; and they were too
intelligent and tasteful, not to adopt whatever of beautiful or elegant
might be found among the artificers and artists of the nations with
which they traded. Perhaps the Greeks were less inventors, than quick
and happy discerners, of what was beautiful. They seem to have wrought
the rough materials of many other nations into the happiest forms;
and, if they borrowed largely from others, they amply repaid them by
the beauty of the works they produced, and the excellent artists they
formed, and these, by seeking employment in foreign countries, refined
no doubt the taste of the great barbaric courts.
The art of inlaying and colouring metals is still possessed in
perfection by many of the descendants of the nations of Asia Minor and
Syria. The Circassians especially pride themselves on colouring silver,
an art in which in ancient times the Egyptians excelled, though it was
practised by the artists of Tyre and Sidon[83].
Figures and sometimes portraits were introduced in the patterns of the
stained metals; and though the damasking or colouring steel[84] is now
confined to swords and fire-arms, the example of the curious under-cup,
seen by Pausanias at Delphi, shows that it was applied to different
purposes by the inventors.
I have dwelt more upon the ornamental and religious vases, whether
in clay or wrought in metal, than upon statues in bronze or marble,
because their subjects, the manner of treating them, and the tools
employed in executing them, seem properly to belong to painting. On
the fictile vases, the subjects being chiefly applicable to funereal
rites, represent the mysteries of Ceres, Bacchus, and Hercules. Any
part of the fables concerning those divinities sufficed to indicate the
mystery. I have seen a beautiful design of Triptolemus with a winged
car, a type surely of the burial of the body in earth, while the living
spirit shall revive, even as the corn sown in the field springeth up
to beauty and use when the winter is gone. The struggles of Bacchus
and Hercules, the death of Linus, the descent of Hercules to Hades,
all these are compositions belonging strictly to picture, and form
the first steps towards it; departing more from the nature of designs
for sculptured friezes or tablets in bas-relief, than those other
Bacchic subjects, where the Menadæ and their companions dance at fixed
distances and independent of each other, or the graver Pyrrhic dancers
that are supposed to be equally emblematical, and are frequently drawn
on the vases or on the sides of altars, consecrated to the service of
the temples.
One of the most interesting works of the kind, of which the knowledge
has come down to us, was the chest of Cypselus already mentioned, in
the temple of Juno at Olympia in Elis[85], it was of cedar, inlaid with
gold, silver, and ivory; it was covered with designs indicative of the
mysteries, or representing funeral games. Whatever relates to Ceres
or Proserpine, to Bacchus or to Hercules, as connected with Dis, is
represented. Pausanias describes many figures, which my very imperfect
knowledge of their mystic meaning would lead me to call miscellaneous;
but they are doubtless connected with the main design. Among these are
some representing the virtues and the arts. It is clear that the woman
called Night, with a black child in one arm and a white one in the
other, called Death and Sleep, has a reference to the usual mysteries
of death.
But the fancy of the artificer has brought together, according to the
description, all the greater gods and older heroes, without any very
perceptible connexion as to their position[86].
In the same temple where that chest was placed, there were statues,
altars, treasures, and vases innumerable. However, there is but one
more that I shall notice on account of the fitness of the figures that
adorned it. It was the table of gold and ivory upon which the crowns
of the victors in the Olympic games were placed, and was the work of
Colotes, who, like his master Phidias, was a painter as well as a
sculptor. That is, they both of them designed, and sometimes carried on
their drawings, so far as to make them real monochrome pictures[87].
This appears to have been sometimes done as a preparation for working
in relief, as on the famous shield of Minerva, designed by Pantænus the
brother of Phidias. On the front of the table or altar were the six
greater gods more particularly patrons of the games; namely, Cybele,
Juno, Jupiter, Mercury, Apollo, and Diana. On the back the Olympic
games were carved or inlaid--it is not very clear which, as the word
used is only _representation_--and we know there were both carving and
inlaying in the chest. One side contained a battle under the direction
of Mars; and close by, were Esculapius and Hygeia; the other side was
filled by Pluto, Proserpine, Bacchus and two nymphs, one of whom held
a globe, the other a key: both symbolical of the mastery of Pluto or
death over the world.
The earliest names of Greek painters, discovered by the indefatigable
Pliny, are those of Dynas, Hygiænon, and Charmas. What their works
might be we can scarcely conjecture; for it is accounted a great
improvement that after them Eumanus the Athenian distinguished man from
woman in his figures[88], and undertook to draw any object he could
see; and Cimon the Cleonian proceeded so far as to place his figures in
different positions, and to give the proper direction to the eyes.
These all preceded Bularchus, whose picture of the battle of the
Magnetes must have very far surpassed the works of those artists. It
was esteemed so highly, that Candaules, the last King of Lydia, of the
race of the Heraclidæ, bought it at a very high price--it is reported,
at its weight in gold--and regarded it as a treasure. This was about
the eighteenth Olympiad, or nearly 730 years before our era.
If the description given by Lucian of the picture in the temple of
Diana in Taurica, and which he ascribes to some very ancient unknown
painter, be anything but imaginary, it must have been painted about
this time[89].
In the half century after Bularchus, the arts of design, and especially
painting, had made large and rapid progress. Somewhere about the
eightieth Olympiad, or between four and five hundred years before
Christ, prizes for painting were instituted at Delphi and at Corinth;
and we find Pantænus, the brother of Phidias, contending at Delphi with
Timagros, among the first of the exhibitors for the prize.
Besides the drawings or pictures, which Pantænus had made in
conjunction with Phidias[90], he had already painted at Athens the
battle of Marathon, in which the portraits of the leaders of both
armies were conspicuous. The two Mycons, and Timarete, the daughter
of the second, were his cotemporaries; his elders, Aglaiophon,
Cephysodorus, and Phylus, were still living. These all employed their
genius upon subjects relating to the religion or the history of their
country. From devotion or patriotism they drew their inspiration. Hence
the grandeur and severity that, according to all authors, distinguished
their works.
Between seven and eight centuries before Christ, about the time
when the Olympic games became fixed, many of the temples and public
buildings of Athens appear to have been improved or rebuilt. At that
period all the states, enjoying any advantages of situation as to
maritime commerce, appear to have been actively employed in domestic
improvements, or in sending out foreign colonies. Syracuse, Corcyra,
Tarentum, Rome, and many other cities were founded. Byzantium, half
a century later; and in the interval Necho’s ships had sailed round
Africa.
By the year 550 before Christ, the Athenians, under the government of
Pisistratus and his sons, had not only improved in all that renders
civilised life delightful, but had extended their commerce, and
acquired a degree of wealth and splendour, that drew upon them, first
the admiration, and not long after the hostile attacks of the Persians,
aided, it must be confessed, by the revenge of the Pisistratidæ, who
had been expelled when the popular government was established.
It was then when the great contest began between Athens and the
Monarchs of the East, who would have oppressed all Greece by the
conquest of her first free people, that the arts were called into
existence. They lent their aid to deepen religion, to animate
patriotism, to reward virtue.
Themistocles rebuilt in purer taste, and with greater magnificence,
some of the temples, and most of the other public buildings injured
by the Persians. But it is said that his works were chiefly those
necessary, or at least most useful to the people.
Cimon, the son of that Miltiades who won the battle of Marathon,
resolved to beautify the city with temples, and statues, and pictures,
part of the expense of which he defrayed out of his private fortune,
and part was provided for by a portion of the Persian spoils.
Struck with the heedlessness of the Athenians, who, among their many
shrines, had never erected one in honour of Theseus, their greatest
benefactor, he planned and accomplished the Temple of Theseus[91],
about thirty years before Pericles’ more magnificent structure, the
Parthenon, rose to fix for ever a canon for perfection in architecture
and sculpture[92].
The expedition of Cimon to the Isle of Scyros, to recover the bones of
Theseus, and to punish the islanders for the death of that hero, was
immediately followed by the erection of the venerable temple, still
standing in honour of his remains. Its decorations were more beautiful
than any that had hitherto been seen.
Mycon, who was both a sculptor and a painter, had the direction of
the structure. The sculptured metopes are said to be even finer than
those of the Parthenon[93] in execution, though inferior in taste;
and the same is said of the two friezes that adorn the front and back
vestibules of the temple. As these pieces of sculpture bear marks even
now of having been coloured, I must consider them as works fitted,
in the opinion of one of the greatest painters of that age, to be
considered as pictures.
The friendship that subsisted between Theseus and his cousin Hercules,
and the gratitude so strongly expressed by Theseus for the services
and favours of his friend, rendered it natural that a temple to one of
these heroes should be decorated with the acts of both; and as in life
Theseus had always generously given the first place to Hercules, so in
his monument the Athenians placed the pictures of his actions in the
front of the temple, while those of Theseus occupied the back and sides.
The flat pictures were what we should call frescoes; they were all
painted upon the interior walls of the Theseum, and related solely to
the actions of Theseus.
It is impossible now to know how far Mycon had departed from the
Egyptian style of painting which had prevailed in Athens and elsewhere
before this period.
Where paintings of mythological, or even historical subjects were
required in public places, plain unbroken colours, without much regard
to nature, were applied, so as to produce a dazzling effect at a
distance, much like that of an Eastern bazaar, where separate pieces of
various coloured brocades produce a gorgeous but not unpleasant show.
By the age of Mycon some discrimination was used in the application of
colour. The coloured foliage and meanders which decorated the Theseum,
the Parthenon, and the Panhellenic Temple of Egina[94], were only
internal decorations; and I think the descriptions left of the pictures
contemporary with those of Mycon, justify us in concluding that the
Egyptian practice was already falling into disuse.
The subjects chosen to do honour to Hercules were, of course, his own
actions, not exactly those called the twelve labours of Hercules;
though some of them are mixed with other events in the hero’s life. The
subject of the frieze, over the front entrance, is the war with the
giants, in which the superior gods are only spectators, while Hercules,
Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, and Mercury, are actively engaged in combat with
the giants. The subjects on the metopes, relating to Hercules, are some
of them too much injured to be recognised with certainty; but others
are from his common adventures, such as the Nemean Lion, the Hydra, and
so on.
The frieze, in honour of Theseus, represents the battle of the Centaurs
and Lapithæ. Among the groups there are some of great beauty; but I
cannot help thinking that, like those of the battle of the giants,
there is an affectation of a display of strength. There are too many
figures with legs outstretched and strained, and arms employed without
a visible necessity; very unlike the work of Phidias, where the action
of every figure is directed to its proper purpose.
But it is not as sculpture I speak of them; all these figures were
painted by Mycon and his daughter Timarete, reported by Pliny to have
been a paintress of great reputation. Even yet, Colonel Leake[95] says,
there are traces of bronze or gold coloured armour, garments of various
hues, azure skies, and golden stars. If these artists gave natural
colours to the objects they treated, it was already a great improvement
on the Egyptian notion of pictures; but yet their works must have
resembled those ancient altar-pieces, some by the hand of Albert
Durer himself, which we still meet with occasionally in the German
churches[96].
The description of, and apology for, coloured sculpture in Flaxman’s
seventh lecture, leaves nothing to be said on that side of the
question. On the other I believe there is an universal feeling of
distaste to anything so like waxwork.
The pictures on the inner walls of the Theseum were painted on stucco,
which here and there still retains vestiges of colour.
The subjects were most probably effaced when the temple was converted
into a Christian church.
They were the battle of the Amazons, that of the Centaurs and Lapithæ,
and one of an action performed by Theseus, in Crete, to convince Minos
that he was indeed the son of Neptune. It appears that the king,
offended with Theseus, had taunted him with pretending falsely to a
divine origin, and threw a ring into the sea, desiring him, if he
really had the influence of a son with Neptune, to restore it. Theseus
immediately dived to the bottom, and soon emerging from the tide he
presented the king with his signet, and displayed the golden crown with
which Amphitrite had honoured him while below the waves.
The best work of Mycon, however, according to Pausanias, was Acastus
and his horses, which he painted in the temple of the Dioscuri. His was
also the picture of the Argonauts, in the same temple, where Polygnotus
also painted some excellent pictures.
But leaving these things, I must hasten on to a work of still greater
importance in the history of painting, and which the Athenians likewise
owed to Cimon. I mean the Stoa or Portico, called Pæcile, on account
of its many colours[97]. The painters who adorned it were Polygnotus,
Mycon, and Pantænus. Here, both the patriotism and filial piety of
Cimon were gratified. The memorable acts of the Athenians, from the
time of Theseus, the war of Troy, and other historic subjects were
represented in the Stoa; but the picture that was of most importance,
nay, that almost forced the spectators to forget all the others, was
the battle of Marathon, by Polygnotus.
I must refer to Fuseli for a most beautiful and spirited sketch of the
character of the works of Polygnotus, and confine myself to relate the
little that history tells of them.
Alas! for the ancient painters that no Vasari among them condescended
to collect gossipping anecdotes, and tell us about their houses, their
dress, their labours, and their amusements. We might, indeed, have been
induced to believe a few pleasing fables, but who would not delight
in being brought a little nearer to those master minds, which gave a
character to their age, and to grow into acquaintance with them at the
expense of a little incorrectness.
But I am obliged to take leave of Mycon, well paid as we are told, for
his works, and of his daughter, without knowing more of their lives or
deaths; and in turning to Polygnotus, what can I tell of, before he
painted in the Stoa, but that he was the son and pupil of Aglaiophon,
and was born at Thasos? After he had finished his great pictures in the
Stoa, and the votive pictures of the Gnidians at Delphi, I can indeed
show that his patriotism induced him to refuse all payment for the
public works executed in honour of his country. And that the Greeks,
in return, were so alive to his worth, that the Amphictyonic council
decreed, that wherever he might travel in Greece he should be received
with public honours and provided for at the public expense!
Notwithstanding the coldness of Pausanias’ description, we cannot but
perceive that a true poetical feeling governed the composition of the
battle of Marathon. Presiding over the whole, the hero Marathon, after
whom the plain was named, received Minerva, the patroness of Athens,
accompanied by Hercules, and soon to be joined by Theseus, whose
shade, arising out of the earth, thus claimed Attica as his native
soil. The armies are engaged in combat: some of the Persian chiefs are
distinguished, particularly Mardonius, the insertion of whose portrait
scarcely gratified the Athenians less than that of their own commander,
Miltiades, along with whom were Callimachus, Echetlus, and the poet
Æschylus, who was in the battle that day[98]. In another part of the
field the Persians were routed; and farther on, some were seen hurrying
to their ships to escape, and others flying towards the marshes, where
the Greeks following were slaying them in their flight[99].
I am aware that critics require painters to observe what they call the
unities, not less than dramatic poets; and that to represent different
actions of the same story, or different parts of the same action, on
one and the same canvas, is to sin grievously against their rules. But
Shakspeare gloriously breaks the laws of the drama, and Polygnotus had
a right to break those, if they then existed, of the picture. In a
future Essay I hope to show the great advantages that may be derived
from a disregard of the unities in painting, and to bring forward
examples of its success by more modern artists. Meantime, in some of
the other works of Polygnotus, which I am about to mention, it will be
seen that he used considerable freedom in this respect. But, to go on
with those in Athens. In the temple of the Dioscorides, assisted by
Mycon, he painted the actions of these heroes[100], and their marriage
with the daughters of Leucippus. Two other pictures adorned one of the
buildings of the Acropolis, the subjects being Achilles among the young
women of Scyros, and the meeting of Ulysses and Nausicaa[101].
But the great works of Polygnotus were the story of Troy and the
descent of Ulysses into the infernal regions, painted in the Lesche, or
public hall, at Delphi.
From the very unartistlike description by Pausanias, I think I can make
out, that the back ground of the picture was filled by the town, the
citadel, the surrounding country, and the sea. The hero Epeus, naked,
was visible destroying the walls of the citadel, over the top of which
the head of the famous wooden horse was seen[102]. Scattered about
singly, or in groups, were the dead or the dying. On the margin of the
sea were the Greek ships, on board of which parties of the conquerors
were embarking; while their servants were bearing tents, furniture, and
spoil, to put on board.
Approaching the foreground, and distributed in groups, were the
principal captives, and some of the heroes. Helen was sitting attended
by her maids, one of whom was tying her sandal, and gazed upon by
Briseis, Diomed, and Iphis. Near her, were some of both the nations
whose miseries she had caused. The chief of these were the captive
Trojan princesses: Andromache, with her infant, and one of her sisters,
Priam’s daughter, Medisecasta, veiled; but the poor virgin Polyxena was
bareheaded, with her hair gathered into a knot, as became her years.
In front of the city, the groups were composed of more wretched
captives still, in various attitudes; some thrown upon couches, others
kneeling, some clinging to their native altars, and, chief in misery,
the sad Cassandra, with her arms round the Palladium, crouched upon the
earth as Ajax was drawing nigh the altar, where the Atridæ appeared
ready to receive his oath. Some of the circles of the lower town were
laid open where this was taking place. There, boys were seen clinging
to the altars, or infants to their mothers, while Neoptolemus was
continuing the work of slaughter.
Such were the grand features of the picture. Some touches of common
nature we find there, were, as if to give truth to the scene. For
instance, the horse rolling on the sandy shore, and servants loading a
beast of burden[103].
The other picture was the Descent of Ulysses, described by Pausanias
with even less feeling than the first. It is, however, evident that
the reedy Acheron, with Charon’s boat, occupied the foreground; and
that one of the figures in the boat was a person initiated into the
Eleusinian rites, by the covered basket she held, thus signifying
the mysterious passage between life and death. Beyond the river, the
demon Eurynomus, of an unearthly hue, was fitly placed, sitting on the
skin of a vulture, and gnawing the bones of the dead[104]. Ulysses,
performing the incantation, was properly conspicuous; and the rest of
the picture was filled with the women and heroes whom he saw or spoke
to while in the kingdom of Pluto.
The clumsy way in which these pictures, and those in the Temple of
Minerva, in Bœotia, are described by Pausanias, who saw them six
hundred years after they were painted, has led even Fuseli to fancy
that all the figures were of equal size and at equal distance from
the spectator. But the inference is surely not just; for an ignorant
man would probably (especially if the horizon were placed high in the
picture) thus speak of one group as _above_ another instead of _beyond_
it.
Any one who has had the good fortune to examine, at leisure, Hemelink’s
epic picture of the three kings, formerly in the Boiserée collection,
and now at Munich, will at once comprehend the possibility of arranging
the most complicated subject, without confusion of parts or division
of interest; and I cannot comprehend why we are to suppose Polygnotus
incapable of such arrangement[105]. There are two pictures in the Pitti
palace, by Andrea del Sarto, of the history of Joseph, arranged as
I suppose the great works of the Pæcile and at Delphi to have been;
which, to such as admire only Italian art of the best time, will afford
proof, if it were wanting, of the excellent effect that a departure
from vulgar rules may sometimes produce.
I must not omit to say that Polygnotus, like the painters of the vases,
wrote the names of the principal figures near them.
I have now repeated the account Pausanius has left us of the pictures
of Polygnotus. It remains to consider what has been said, particularly
by Pliny, of the change he effected in the art.
Before his time the faces had all one grave set expression; something,
as we may presume, like that of the marbles and bronzes of the Eginetic
and Etruscan schools.
Polygnotus first parted the lips, varied the appearance and expression
of the eyes, dimpled the cheeks with smiles, or deformed the brow and
nostrils with the expression of passion, however imperfectly rendered.
He also it was who introduced the use of veils and other light and
becoming ornaments in his female figures, and adorned their heads
with fillets and coronals, thus adding delicacy and grace to his high
poetical conceptions. In the brides of Castor and Pollux, in the
captive Trojan princesses, and in the shades of celebrated and unhappy
women in the descent of Ulysses, these qualities were particularly
admired. Polygnotus, then, must be looked upon as the painter, who,
leaving the practice of making mere coloured bas-reliefs, rendered
painting a separate art, and established the difference between statues
and groups in marble or bronze, and true pictures.
The name of Polygnotus is the greatest that adorns what we may consider
as the first great epocha of Greek art. When, having nearly attained
perfection, sculpture in the hands of Phidias produced the perfectly
sublime in his Jupiter Olympias and his Minerva of the Parthenon, and
formed a model which has never been safely departed from, for the
composition of basso-relievo in the Panathenaic procession. But in
painting, Polygnotus, though he had attained to great grandeur and
majesty, had still left much to his successors to add in correctness,
in expression, and in grace.
Contemporary with Polygnotus was Evenor, the master as well as father
of Parrhasius[106]. But before Parrhasius began to distinguish himself,
Apollodorus of Athens had made a great and rapid stride in art, and
had painted at least two pictures that for six centuries commanded the
admiration of all men of taste and understanding. He therefore may be
considered as the first of the second epocha of Greek painting.
It was Apollodorus who first gave the niceties of character and
expression to his figures; strength and force without exaggeration,
and tenderness without insipidity. He added also to the mechanical
powers of the painter, by breaking the colours, and showing the value
of light and shade, of harmony and contrast. Pliny says, “I may well
and truly say, that none before him brought the pencil into a glorious
name and especial credit[107].” The only two pictures of which we know
the subjects, were preserved at Pergamos, at least until the end of
the first century of the Christian era. In one the chief figure was
a kneeling priest in fervent adoration. The other represented Ajax
Oileus on a rock, stricken by the thunderbolt after escaping from his
perishing fleet.
It is evident that the effects of such subjects must have depended in
great measure on light, and shadow, and colour. Accordingly, the school
of Apollodorus produced the painter of most note among the ancients
for those qualities. I mean the Heracleot Zeuxis; but Zeuxis had also
the advantage of being a contemporary of the Ephesian Parrhasius, and
was thus able to avail himself of the improvements introduced by that
extraordinary man.
Parrhasius no doubt made use of the studies of the Macedonian Pamphilus
who painted at Sicyon, and greatly improved that famous school, whence,
half a century after the time of Apollodorus, proceeded Apelles and
other painters of note. This Pamphilus taught his pupils arithmetic and
geometry, without which he maintained that it was impossible to paint.
Linear perspective was thus improved, and some general rules, acted
upon intuitively before, were now fixed; but the delicacy of eye, which
demanded a finer perspective, belonged to Parrhasius. He introduced
the magic of aërial perspective; and the description by Pliny, of the
manner in which the objects in his pictures seemed to shadow somewhat
behind, and yet showed what they seemed to hide, may lead us to imagine
that he was not ignorant of the effect of reflected lights.
He is praised for the beauty of his features, and peculiarly the
sweetness and “lovely grace about the mouth and lips;”[108] the
softness and fulness of the hair; the blended tints that melted away
the outline, in some instances perhaps too much, as we gather from the
painter Euphranor’s observation, that the Theseus of Parrhasius looked
as if he fed on roses, while his own had evidently fed on flesh.
Two ancient writers on painting, Antigonus and Xenocrates, now lost,
praised Parrhasius especially for the delicacy with which he finished
the extremities of his figures. They quoted many pictures on pannel,
and drawings on parchment, which served as examples for other painters,
and as proofs of his wonderful skill in this part of his art.
It is to these authors that Pliny ascribes the criticism that the
interior drawings were not quite equal to the outlines of his figures:
not that they were inferior to those of other men, but only as one part
of Parrhasius’ work might be inferior to another: Parrhasius, compared
with Parrhasius[109], who, as Horace says,
---- bade the breathing colours flow,
To imitate in every line
The forms, or human, or divine[110].
We have a pretty considerable list of the works of this great painter
which were in existence when Pliny wrote; one of these indeed, which
was at Rhodes, was held in great reverence, because, although the
pannel on which it was painted had been thrice struck with lightning,
yet the painting remained uninjured; the subject was a story of
Meleager, Perseus, and Hercules. There is scarcely any class of
subjects which Parrhasius does not appear to have chosen occasionally.
One of the most celebrated of his pictures was a personification of the
Demos, or people of Athens, in which he is said to have embodied the
virtues, talents, humours, and inconstancy of that witty, capricious
democracy.
He is praised for the majesty of his demi-gods and heroes, the beauty
and expression of his women and young men, and the grace and simplicity
of his children. In short, to use the words of Quintilian, “Parrhasius
was so exact in every particular, that he is looked upon even to this
day as the lawgiver of painters; because the paintings of gods and
heroes, such as he has left behind him, are held as so many models,
which they make it a rule to follow invariably[111].”
Of the life of Parrhasius we know nothing, but of his manners we have
a curious picture preserved by Pliny. His vanity appears to have been
almost insufferable. He clothed himself in a purple robe, and wore a
chaplet of golden flowers; his staff was entwined with tendrils of
gold, and his sandals were clasped at the instep and ankle with golden
latchets. He affected the name of Abrodrœtus, or the delicate[112],
assumed the title of Prince of Painters, and pretended to have had
Apollo himself for his forefather. There was something like insanity
in the assertion that Hercules appeared to him in the visions of the
night, that he might delineate his form with exactness[113]; and,
perhaps, his insolent demeanour to other painters might spring from an
unsound mind.
Two anecdotes concerning him are well known. His contest with Zeuxis,
in which, though the grapes on the head of the boy of Zeuxis had
deceived the birds, the curtain painted by Parrhasius deceived Zeuxis
himself[114]. The second story is, that having lost the prize in a
contest with Timanthes of Samos, for a picture of the contest between
Ajax and Ulysses for the armour of Achilles, he affected to pity Ajax
for being thus a second time foiled by a worthless rival.
The most celebrated of the contemporaries of Parrhasius was Zeuxis of
Heraclea, who began to attract public notice soon after Parrhasius
himself had established his reputation. He was the pupil either of
Demophiles the Nemerian, or Niceas the Thracian, perhaps of both.
Quintilian says[115], that “he painted bodies with greater than real
proportions, thinking such a form to be more august; and in this it is
thought he followed Homer’s manner, who took pleasure in representing
all his characters, even his women, of large and strong size.”
Apollodorus, of whose extraordinary powers I have already spoken, paid
the same generous tribute to the rising merit of Zeuxis, as Michael
Angelo did to that of Raffaelle; and even wrote some verses, which have
been lost, in praise of his works.
Zeuxis’ works were so eagerly sought after, that he very soon made
a fortune equal to his wishes, after which he refused to work for
money, but gave away his pictures; for instance, to the people of
Agrigentum he presented his great picture of Alcmena; and to Archelaus,
King of Macedon, a large painting of Pan. We are obliged to Pliny
for preserving the subjects of several of his best works. Jupiter,
surrounded by the other gods, is praised for its majesty; and the
picture of the infant Hercules strangling the serpents in his cradle,
for the expression of the bystanders, especially of Amphitryon and
Alcmena. Of his Penelope it is said that he had not only painted the
outward charms and features of her person, but the inward qualities and
affections of her mind.
Of his famous Helen, and of the story of his choosing her several
perfections from several beautiful women sent to him by the
Agrigentines for the purpose, when they entreated him to paint their
votive picture for the temple of Juno, it is unnecessary to remind
the reader, as the story, true or false, is in every collection of
anecdotes. We know not Zeuxis’ own estimation of that picture, but
with another of his works he was so satisfied, that he is said to
have written under it, “It will be easier to envy than to imitate
me.” The subject was a wrestler. Some writers, however, say that
the inscription, which was a Greek Iambic verse, was written by
Apollodorus, his master and friend. And this is most natural; for what
man of genius was ever entirely satisfied with his own work?
I have already mentioned the contest of Zeuxis with Parrhasius, for the
nicest power of imitation in painting. The picture of the Muses, which
was carried to Rome, demanded qualities of a different kind; so did the
Marsyas, which Pliny likewise saw in Italy. His drawings in a single
colour, relieved with white, appear to have been numerous and greatly
valued[116]. Like Raffaelle, Zeuxis is said to have painted sometimes
on earthen ware, and that vases and cups adorned by him were much
prized. Possibly he only furnished the designs for these.
Zeuxis was not quite free from the same love of show which
distinguished his great rival, Parrhasius. He is reported to have shown
himself, magnificently attired, at the Olympic games, and to have
caused his name to be embroidered in gold upon his upper garments, of
which he displayed an unusual number of changes during the games.
Another of the great men who flourished in this second period, was
Timanthes. His celebrated picture of Iphigenia, in Aulis, has been
the subject of much criticism. The ancient writers, with one accord,
praise the feeling which led the painter to conceal the father’s
face; and though it is probable that most of them either mistook, or
were ignorant of, the principle on which Timanthes, as an artist,
proceeded, they were still right as to human nature. Reynolds and some
other modern critics, especially Falconet, have reprobated the idea of
Timanthes; but Fuseli has, in my opinion, set the matter at rest in a
very beautiful piece of criticism[117], which I shall give below.
The picture itself was painted in competition with Colotes of Teos,
whom I have already mentioned as the sculptor of the table of the
Coronets at Delphi. The work of Timanthes gained the prize, as his Ajax
had done, when exhibited in competition with that of Parrhasius.
There was a celebrated portrait of a prince by him, of which Pliny
says, “It was thought to be most absolute: the majesty is such that
all the art of painting a man seemeth comprised in that one portrait.”
Timanthes did not always confine himself, however, to the grand and the
pathetic. There is an account of a little picture where he represented
a Cyclops asleep, and a number of little satyrs peeping out of the
woods; some of whom, astonished at his size, are measuring the thumb of
the unconscious giant with wands.
At the same time with the four great painters, Apollodorus, Parrhasius,
Zeuxis, and Timanthes, lived Euxenidas, Eupompus, Echion, Therimachus,
and some others not unworthy of their fellowship. They were remarkable
also as having formed the men who flourished in the third and most
brilliant epoch of painting in Greece.
As this essay is already longer than I intended, I will close it
here; and endeavour, in another, to sketch the history of the highest
prosperity and gradual decline of art in Greece. The consideration
of the causes of that decline belongs to the philosophy of general
history. I will only remark, that painting in Greece rose to its
highest excellence by individual exertions, exciting the sympathy, and
therefore the patronage, of the public generally; that it flourished
under the encouragement of Alexander; but that the unnatural fostering
of power appears to have weakened the spirit of art, which faded
after his time, as those delicate plants which are cherished into
extraordinary beauty by the heat of the stove, after a season languish
and die, even of the effort that seemed to contribute to their
luxuriance.
FOOTNOTES:
[71] I have heard it objected that the Americans of the United States,
though they built towns and established civil governments and so on,
thought little of the fine arts for 200 years. That is true. But it
should be remembered that the fine arts formed part of the religion of
the Egyptian emigrants. The British emigrants, on the contrary, had
just quitted a most gorgeous communion, which had employed all the arts
in its service, and thus rendered them an abomination to the severe
puritans who were in fact flying from the persecutions of the great
patrons of art in their days.
[72] Lecture 1.
[73] Pausanias, to whom we owe the largest catalogue of antique works
of art, travelled about the year 170 of our era; and the objects he
describes could not have been suddenly dispersed even after his time.
[74] Contemporary with Homer was Jeroboam, who set up the two calves or
heifers in two cities of Palestine.
[75] 1 Kings, ch. vii., v. 13. In 2 Chron. ch. ii., v. 14, he is not
named, and his mother is said to have been of the daughters of Dan;
his qualifications were, that he was “skilful to work in gold and in
silver, in brass, in iron, in stone and in timber, in purple, in blue,
in fine linen, and in crimson; also to grave any manner of graving,
and to find out every device which shall be put to him.” Scripture
tell us likewise, that Solomon built or repaired many cities. Balbec
and Palmyra are both named. Now, the columns and lighter parts of the
temples at Balbec look very like architecture of the Roman time; while
the massy substructures resemble works that are always said to be of
Pelasgic origin. Again, the temples of Palmyra are of Roman taste; but
the tombs and watercourses, like the works in Palestine ascribed to
Solomon, are massy and durable.
[76] The Dutch traveller, Cornelis de Bruyn, in his 1st folio vol.,
published in 1698, was among the first to publish a figure of the tomb
of Absalom; Pocock has given a very faithful representation of it;
Meyer, who travelled with Sir Robert Ainsley, also gave a faithful
likeness of it and the tombs of the kings. The most agreeable points
of view of these subjects are however to be found in the Landscape
Illustrations of the Bible, published by Mr. Murray, with descriptions
by the Rev. Hartwell Horne. For the excavations and buildings of Petra,
see M. Leon de Laborde’s works. If quite authentic, they, like Palmyra,
show _very_ ancient excavations and buildings, overlaid with Roman
additions.
[77] Unless that of Arimnus, a Tyrrhene king, preceded it, which is
doubtful.
[78] This is that Cypselus, from whose tyranny Demaratus is reported
to have fled and taken refuge at Tarquinii, and to have settled in
Etruria, and carried on his former occupation of a potter. His son,
under the name of Tarquin, became king of Rome.
[79] The description of the fabulous horse of brass, which makes so
conspicuous a figure in the tale of Gyges, supposes the maker to have
been an ingenious mechanic, as well as an artist of talent.
[80] Pliny, besides extolling the statues this Theodorus cast in
bronze, praises some exquisitely minute works of his. Contemporary with
the gifts of Crœsus to the Delphic Apollo, was the golden image set up
by Nebuchadnezzar at Babylon; and, within fifty years, Perillus made
the brazen bull for Phalaris, tyrant of Syracuse, who with a cruel
justice consumed the artist himself in it.
[81] Ezra, ch. vi., v. 14. The vessels returned by Cyrus were 5400 in
number. Ezra, ch. i., v. 11.
[82] By the time of Cyrus, Athens had for ever shaken off the kingly
government: and a polished Greek city, Marseilles, had been founded in
barbarous Gaul.
[83] See M. Tausch on the Circassians, in the first Number of the
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.
[84] _Damasking_, evidently from Damascus. As silks and linen, with
rich varied surfaces, often of different colours, are also called
damask.
[85] Pausanias, b. v. ch. 17. The chest is said to be that in which
the tyrant was concealed by his mother when the Bacchidæ would have
slain him: some say it was in the family meal chest that he was hidden.
I have seen in very old English houses, and some Italian ones, meal
chests curiously adorned.
[86] Pausanias, in the beginning of the eighteenth chapter of the
Laconics, names the statues of Sleep and Death, believed to be
brothers; and farther on, in the same chapter, the throne of Amyclæs,
made by Bathycles, the ornaments of which were as various and chosen
with as much apparent caprice as those on the chest of Cypselus.
[87] Fuseli.
[88] An improvement almost equivalent to that made by Dædalus in
sculpture. He, it is said, first detached the arms from the sides,
varied the positions of the limbs, and gave true relief to the
features. Hence the fable that he endowed his figures with motion.
There are some curious Mexican figures in the possession of Capt.
Veitch, they are in high relief upon slabs; holes are drilled for the
arm-pits, the fore arms are crossed upon the stomach, the legs only
indicated, and to give the appearance of relief to the nose, the cheeks
are hollowed on each side.
[89] “On the walls of the temple is painted, by ancient artists, the
whole history as engraved on the pillar. There you see Orestes sailing
with his friend, his ship split on the rock, himself taken, and
Iphigenia preparing to sacrifice him: in another part he is represented
freed from his chains, slaying Thoas and several other Scythians;
they are setting sail with Iphigenia and the goddess; the Scythians
attempting to board the ship, and hanging on the rudder; some wounded
and repulsed, others frightened and swimming back to the shore. On the
opposite side of the wall is pourtrayed the mutual affection of the
two friends in their battle with the Scythians; the painter has drawn
one of them driving away the enemies who attacked the other, without
regarding those who fell on himself, as if careless of his own life, if
he could but preserve that of his friend, covering him on every side,
and receiving the strokes that were aimed at him.”
FRANKLIN’S LUCIAN.
[90] Pliny, b. xxxv. ch. 8, says “it is for certain reported that
Phidias himself was a painter at the beginning.”
[91] Before Christ, 465. _Leake’s Topography of Athens._
[92] The architect of the Parthenon was Ictinus, who wrote a treatise,
now lost, upon its construction.
[93] There are casts in the British Museum.
[94] I am not aware that any _pictures_ adorned this temple, though the
statues were painted. The Egina marbles, which might have been, but
which, alas! are not in England, form an interesting link between the
free finished works of Phidias, and the stiffer and more conventional
figures of early Corinth and Etruria. _See Mr. Cockerell’s interesting
Essay, with the etchings, in the 6th Vol. of the Quarterly Journal of
Science and Art._
[95] Topography of Athens.
[96] The approach to common life in the German compositions, renders
their colour less offensive perhaps to our feelings, than colour
applied to the ideal forms of Greek sculpture would be.
[97] _And painted Stœa next._--MILTON. It was from this portico that
the stoics derived their name.
Colonel Leake quotes Synesius to show that the pictures of Polygnotus,
in the Pæcile, were painted on pannels, and that they were not removed
till the 4th century.
[98] In the 15th chapter of Pausanias’ Attics, I know that he does not
name Æschylus as one of the persons introduced in the picture; but in
chapter 21, after speaking of some other tragic poets, he says, “with
respect to the image of Æschylus and the _picture_ in which his valour
at Marathon is represented, I am of opinion that these were produced a
long time after his death.” What picture, if not that of the battle of
Marathon?
[99] Polygnotus neglected nothing that could flatter the Athenians.
Into this great epic picture he introduced a dog, which having followed
a soldier to Marathon, returned unhurt after the battle, and became a
pet with the people. Dogs seem to have been in favour at Athens. There
is a story of a white dog which trotted through the temple of Minerva
Polias down into that of Pandrosus, and placed himself in comfort on
the altar, that stood under Minerva’s own olive tree. Another white dog
acquired fame by tasting of the meat offered in sacrifice to Apollo.
There is also a white dog referred to in the catalogue of monuments of
Hercules. The numerous statues of dogs, in bronze and marble, attest
the gratitude of the ancients to those friends and guardians of man.
[100] Castor and Pollux, as the preservers of seamen, were very early
worshipped by the Athenians.
[101] It was near this building that the Graces in marble by Socrates
stood: they were veiled as became the Graces, fashioned by the hand of
wisdom. The veil on the work of Socrates was a real veil; but a friend
has observed, that “the veil was a remarkable part of the mythology of
the Graces, but it is described as invisible, and having only the moral
effect of a veil.”
[102] I think that as Epeus is said to have invented the wooden horse,
an allegory was intended in this part of the picture. Indeed, I have
somewhere seen it remarked, I think in Pausanias, that to suppose that
the horse of Epeus was anything but a warlike machine, is to suppose
the Trojans very stupid indeed.
[103] There are in this part of the picture some verses, by Simonides,
to the following effect:--
The artist Polygnotus, for his sire
Who claims Aglaiophon, in Thasos born,
painted the captured tower of Troy.
_Taylor’s Translation_ (of 1794)
[104] I cannot help considering the figure of Ocnus, who was
represented as twisting a rope of rushes for a she ass to devour, as an
emblem of the inactivity--the doing of nothing in the grave. We have a
single picture, by another painter of the same subject, as an emblem
of idleness, mentioned by Pliny. Pausanias, however, calls the ass of
Ocnus the emblem of a thriftless wife.
[105] No one can be more sensible than I am of the great merits of the
modern German artists. Yet I think they have carried their admiration
of the ancients to excess in some points, and I cannot but consider
the outlines of Riepenhausen, intended to illustrate the descent of
Ulysses, by Polygnotus, a proof of it. Surely a German should have
looked at Hemelink, and at the history of St. Paul, at Augsburg, by the
elder Holbein, where he would have found that a double story, or even
one of many parts, can be treated without violating common sense, or
the rules of painting.
[106] Olymp. 93.
[107] Holland’s Translation, b. xxxv.
[108] Pliny, b. xxxv. ch. 10.
[109] See Fuseli’s first lecture.
[110] B. iv. Ode 8.
[111] Institutes, b. xii. ch. 10.
[112] Ælian.
[113] This picture was at Lindos in Pliny’s time.
[114] It is a pity that this anecdote has come down to us bald as it
is, because it seems to infer that the lowest kind of excellence was
what these great men aimed at, that is, mere deceptive imitation. But
we should remark that we have not the writings of a single painter or
artist of any kind preserved, and that the relators of the story were
notoriously ignorant of art. It is impossible that the painter of the
Helen of Agrigentum, and he who conceived the Demos of Athens, could
have had such narrow views of art.
[115] Institutes, b. xii. ch. 10.
[116] I cannot help subjoining, as a note, Lucian’s description of one
of the pictures of Zeuxis:--“I will tell you a story of Zeuxis. That
famous painter seldom chose to handle trite or common subjects, such
as heroes, gods, and battles, but always endeavoured to strike out
something new, and exerted all his art and skill upon it. Amongst other
things, he painted a female centaur, with two young ones; there is an
exact copy of it now at Athens; the original was said to have been sent
into Italy, by Sylla, the Roman general, and lost at sea, with the
whole cargo, somewhere, I believe, near Malta. The copy, however, 1
have seen, and will describe to you; not that I pretend to be a judge
of pictures, but because, when I saw it in a painter’s collection
there, it made a strong impression on me, and I perfectly recollect
every part of it.
“The centaur is lying down on a smooth turf; that part which represents
a mare, is stretched on the ground, with the hind feet extended
backwards; the fore feet not reaching out as if she had laid on her
side, but one of them as kneeling with the hoof bent under, the other
raised up and trampling on the grass, like a horse prepared to leap;
she holds one of her young ones in her arms, and suckles it like a
child at a woman’s breast; and the other at her dugs like a colt. In
the farther part of the picture is seen a male centaur, as watching
from a place of observation, supposed to be the father; he is behind,
and discovers only the horse part of the figure, and appears smiling,
showing a lion’s cub, which he lifts up, as if to frighten the young
ones in sport.
“With regard to correctness in drawing, the colouring, light, and
shade, symmetry, proportion, and other beauties, of this picture, as
I am not a sufficient judge of the art, I leave it to painters whose
business it is to explain and illustrate them. What I principally
admire in Zeuxis is, his showing so much variety, and all the riches
of his art, in the management of one subject, representing a man so
fierce and terrible, the hair so nobly dishevelled, rough, and flowing
over the shoulders, where it joins the horse, and the countenance,
though smiling, amazingly wild and savage. The female centaur is a most
beautiful mare, of Thessalian breed, such as had been never ridden or
tamed; all the upper part resembling a very handsome woman, except
the ears, which are like a satyr’s: that part of the figure where
the body of the woman joins to that of the horse, incorporating, as
it were, insensibly and by slow degrees, so that you can scarce mark
the transition, deceiving the sight most agreeably. The ferocity that
appears in the young ones is moreover admirably expressed; as well as
the childish innocence in their countenances when they look towards the
young lion, clinging at the same time to the breast, and getting as
close as possible to their mother.
“When Zeuxis produced this work, he expected undoubtedly to meet with
universal approbation from the spectators; every body indeed praised
and admired it; and how could they do otherwise? Above all, they
commended, as my friends did with regard to me, the novelty of the
invention; said it was a most uncommon subject, and unattempted by any
of his predecessors. But, when Zeuxis understood that their admiration
was confined entirely to the novelty of it, and that they passed over
all the art which he had exerted in it, ‘Cover up the picture,’ said he
to his pupil, ‘and let it be carried home, for these people are only in
love with the dregs, as it were, of the art, and take no notice of the
real merit of the picture; the novelty of the performance alone runs
away with all the praise and admiration.”
_Franklin’s Lucian._
It is ever the same with the vulgar. As soon as any art seems to have
arrived at something approaching to perfection, the incessant craving
for novelty forces artists to seek new ways of gratifying their
patrons;--sometimes by exaggerating form, sometimes by exaggerating
colour, or light and shadow. The painter by degrees loses sight of
nature, and produces monsters. The sculptor attempts to make marble
flow and flutter in the wind; the musician drowns expression in noise;
and the poet either sickens his reader with blood and murder, or sends
him to sleep over daisies and daffodils.
[117] Neither the French nor the English critics appear to me to
have comprehended the real motive of Timanthes, as contained in the
words “_decere_, _pro dignitate_, and _digne_,” in the passages of
Tully, Quintilian, and Pliny; they ascribe to impotence what was the
forbearance of judgment; Timanthes felt like a father; he did not
hide the face of Agamemnon because it was beyond the power of his
art, not because it was beyond the _possibility_, but because it was
beyond the _dignity_ of expression; because the inspiring feature of
paternal affection at that moment, and the action which of necessity
must have accompanied it, would either have destroyed the grandeur of
the character and the solemnity of the scene, or subjected the painter,
with the majority of his judges, to the imputation of insensibility. He
must either have represented him in tears, or convulsed at the flash
of the raised dagger, forgetting the chief in the father, or shown him
absorbed by despair, and in that state of stupefaction which levels all
features and deadens expression. He might indeed have chosen a fourth
mode; he might have exhibited him fainting and palsied in the arms of
his attendants, and by this confusion of male and female character,
merited the applause of every theatre at Paris. But Timanthes had too
true a sense of nature to expose a father’s feelings, or to tear a
passion to rags; nor had the Greeks yet learnt of Rome to steel the
face. If he made Agamemnon bear his calamity as a man, he made him
also feel it as a man. It became the leader of Greece to sanction the
ceremony with his presence, it did not become the father to see his
daughter beneath the dagger’s point: the same nature that threw a real
mantle over the face of Timoleon, when he assisted at the punishment of
his brother, taught Timanthes to throw an imaginary one over the face
of Agamemnon; neither height nor depth, propriety of expression was his
aim.
The critic grants that the expedient of Timanthes may be allowed in
“instances of blood,” the supported aspect of which would change a
scene of commiseration and terror into one of abomination and horror,
which ought for ever to be excluded from the province of art, of poetry
as well as painting: and would not the face of Agamemnon, uncovered,
have had this effect? was not the scene he must have witnessed a scene
of blood? and whose blood was to be shed? that of his own daughter--and
what daughter? young, beautiful, helpless, innocent, resigned--the
very idea of resignation in such a victim, must either have acted
irresistibly to procure her relief, or thrown a veil over a father’s
face. A man who is determined to sport wit, at the expense of heart,
alone could call such an expedient ridiculous; “as ridiculous,” Mr.
Falconet continues, “as a poet would be, who in a pathetic situation,
instead of satisfying my expectation, to rid himself of the business,
should say, that the sentiments of his hero are so far above whatever
can be said on the occasion, that he shall say nothing.”
And has not Homer, though he does not tell us this, acted upon a
similar principle? has he not, when Ulysses addresses Ajax in Hades,
in the most pathetic and conciliatory manner, instead of furnishing
him with an answer, made him remain in indignant silence during the
address, then turn his step and stalk away? has not the universal voice
of genuine criticism with Longinus told us, and if it had not, would
not Nature’s own voice tell us, that that silence was characteristic;
that it precluded, included, and, soaring above all answer, consigned
Ulysses for ever to a sense of inferiority? nor is it necessary to
render such criticism contemptible to mention the silence of Dido
in Virgil, or the Niobe of Æschylus, who was introduced veiled, and
continued mute during her presence on the stage.
But in hiding Agamemnon’s face, Timanthes loses the honour of
invention, as he is merely the imitator of Euripides, who did it before
him. I am not prepared with chronologic proofs to decide whether
Euripides or Timanthes, who were cotemporaries about the period of the
Peloponnesian war, fell first on this expedient, though the silence
of Pliny and Quintilian on that head seems to be in favour of the
painter, neither of whom could be ignorant of the celebrated drama of
Euripides, and would not willingly have suffered this master-stroke of
an art they were so much better acquainted with than painting, to be
transferred to another from its real author, had the poet’s claim been
prior: nor shall I urge that the picture of Timanthes was crowned with
victory by those who were in daily habits of assisting at the dramas
of Euripides, without having their verdict impeached by Colotes or his
friends, who would not have failed to avail themselves of so flagrant
a proof of inferiority as the want of invention in the work of his
rival:--I shall only ask what is invention? if it be the combination
of the most important moment of a fact with the most varied effects of
the reigning passion on the characters introduced, the invention of
Timanthes consisted in showing, by the gradation of that passion in the
faces of the assistant mourners, _the reason why that of the principal_
one _was hid_. This he performed, and this the poet, whether prior or
subsequent, did not and could not do, but left it with a silent appeal
to our own mind and fancy.
In presuming to differ on the propriety of this mode of expression
in the picture of Timanthes from the respectable authority I have
quoted, I am far from a wish to invalidate the equally pertinent
and acute remarks made on the danger of its imitation; though I am
decidedly of opinion that it is strictly within the limits of our art.
If it be a “trick,” it is certainly one that has served more than
once. We find it adopted to express the grief of a beautiful female
figure on a basso-relievo formerly in the palace Valle at Rome, and
preserved in the Admiranda of St. Bartoli; it is used, though with
his own originality, by Michael Angelo in the figures of Abijam,
to mark unutterable woe; Raffaelle, to show that he thought it the
best possible mode of expressing remorse and the deepest sense of
repentance, borrowed it in the expulsion from Paradise, without any
alteration, from Masaccio; and, like him, turned Adam out with both his
hands before his face. And how has he represented Moses at the burning
bush, to express the astonished awe of human in the visible presence of
Divine nature? by a double repetition of the same expedient; once in
the ceiling of a stanza, and again in the loggia of the Vatican, with
both his hands before his face, or rather with his face immersed in his
hands. As we cannot suspect in the master of expression the unworthy
motive of making use of this mode merely to avoid a difficulty, or to
denote the insupportable splendour of the vision, which was so far from
being the case, that, according to the sacred record, Moses stepped
out of his way to examine the ineffectual blaze; we must conclude
that Nature herself dictated to him this method as superior to all he
could express by features; and that he recognised the same dictate in
Masaccio, who can no more be supposed to have been acquainted with the
precedent of Timanthes, than Shakspeare with that of Euripides, when he
made Macduff draw his hat over his face.
ESSAY IV.
OF THE THIRD PERIOD OF PAINTING IN GREECE.
The Poets bring the Gods upon the stage, and all that is pompous,
grave, and delightful. The Painters likewise do design as many things
upon a board as the Poets possibly can utter.
PHILOSTRATUS, _Preface to the Picture Gallery_.
In the fantasies of Painters nothing is so commendable as that there
be both possibility and truth.
LONGINUS.
Among the nations bordering upon European Greece, Macedonia was most
like it in manners, language, and physical circumstances; yet the
Macedonians were generally looked upon as barbarians by those proud
Republicans, who claimed the exclusive name of Greeks.
Alexander, the eldest son of Amyntas, King of Macedon, desirous of
distinction in Greece, proposed himself as a competitor in some of
the Olympic games; but the Greeks rejected him at first with scorn as
a Barbarian[118]. However, he brought proofs of his descent from an
Argive family, and was thereupon admitted by the Hellanodicæ[119] to
an equal participation with other Greeks in those sacred games. He
obtained a victory in one of the races, and dedicated a golden statue
in the temple of Olympia.
The title of the Macedonians to appear as Greeks at the Olympic games,
was asserted by the successors of Alexander in person or by proxy, and
Philip received the news that his horses had won the prize in the race
at Olympus, on the very day when the tidings reached him of the birth
of Alexander the Great.
In truth, the kings of Macedon had been for many generations eager
to civilise their people, by introducing among them some of the
refinements of Greece, when they could snatch an interval of peace
from the wars they were continually forced to wage against their rude
neighbours to the north. They had employed the sculptors and painters
of Athens and Sicyon; and the forced residence of Philip with the
Thebans during the civil wars in Macedon, had rendered _him_ at least
intimate with the literature and philosophy of Greece.
In choosing Aristotle for one of the tutors of his son, Philip probably
had a view to improving his taste, as well as cultivating those higher
qualities, which, though they may exist without it, derive from it a
grace and a spirit which double their value.
The same feeling which led “the stern Emathian conqueror” to
spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tow’r
Went to the ground,
made him the friend of Apelles and the patron of Lysippus and
Pyrgoteles[120].
I am not certain whether it was to Alexander or to his father, though
probably to the latter, that Pamphilus the Macedonian, a disciple of
Eupompus, owed the protection which enabled him to re-establish the
school of Sicyon, with such enlargement as suited the time. In the
public course of instruction he procured painting to be ranked in the
first degree of liberal sciences[121]; and, consequently, all youths
of honourable birth were understood to learn at least the elements of
drawing as part of their education[122].
Pamphilus had cultivated the severe sciences as well as the agreeable
ones, including music and poetry. I have already mentioned that he
required from his pupils a knowledge of arithmetic and geometry. His
course of study, besides, appears to have been exact, if not severe.
“No day without a line,” was a precept learnt by Apelles in his school,
where he studied for ten years, paying a silver talent for each
year[123], according to some, while others imagine the talent was paid
for the whole ten years[124]. At any rate, Pamphilus set a high value
upon his art, and maintained that none but the free could practise it.
His own pictures were much prized: Pliny names one of the battle of
Phlius; another, of Ulysses in a small vessel at sea; and a third
picture, containing, as I imagine, several family portraits. Quintilian
praises the beautiful designs of Pamphilus; and as many of his original
works were in Rome when Quintilian wrote, he had an opportunity of
judging of them for himself. But it is Apelles whose name spreads
lustre over the most refined and polished æra of painting in Greece.
Admired, beloved, and consulted in his own time, and praised by every
writer among the ancients, we have to lament not only that no picture
of his has come down to us, but that those letters to his pupils, and
those more connected works in which he is said to have laid down all
the rules and principles--nay, the very secrets of art, have perished.
Apelles was born in Cos, though Lucian, in one of his dialogues, talks
of him as a native of Ephesus[125]. He seems to have been endowed with
the sweetest temper and disposition, as well as the finest genius.
He was generously eager to set forth the merits of others, and the
urbanity of his manners was such, that while he used perfect freedom,
he could not give offence.
As an instance of this, Pliny relates that Alexander, who frequently
visited his workshop, allowed himself great licence and liberty of
jesting. Apelles gently reproved him, entreating him to forbear, lest
his pupils and the boys who ground his colours should repeat his words
and make a jest of the king.
The freedom of the painter was so far from displeasing, that Alexander
appears to have cultivated an intimacy with him, little usual between a
king and conqueror, and an artist.
Besides employing him to paint his own portrait, and forbidding any
other painter to attempt it, he took so great an interest in the Venus
Anadyomene, which Apelles was at work upon when he arrived at Athens,
that he sent him the most beautiful of his Theban captives, named
Campaspe, with whom he is reported to have been deeply in love, to
serve as a model. Apelles, moved by her misfortunes and her loveliness,
conceived a passion for her which could not be concealed, and Alexander
perceiving that his captive returned the painter’s affection, instantly
resigned her to him[126].
But the favour of Apelles with Alexander seems to have procured him
the ill-will of some of the courtiers, particularly of Ptolemy, as
was shown some years afterwards, when Apelles, being on a voyage to
Rhodes, was shipwrecked at the mouth of the Nile; and on getting ashore
repaired to Alexandria, where Ptolemy, who had become King of Egypt on
Alexander’s death, then held his court. It appears that several Greek
painters had already established themselves there, and that jealous
of the motives of Apelles’ visit, they, in conjunction with a painter
of Alexandria, named Antiphilus, planned his ruin by the following
artifice.
They bribed the court jester to invite Apelles formally to sup with
the king. On his presenting himself, Ptolemy, remembering his ancient
enmity, was extremely enraged, and threatened him with death, unless he
instantly informed him of the name and quality of his inviter. Apelles
being entirely ignorant of both, and unacquainted with any person at
court, took a piece of charcoal and drew the face of the jester, which
was recognised instantly; the life of the painter was spared; but his
treatment was such that he hastened to escape from Egypt, and soon
after painted, in memorial of his danger, the allegory of Calumny,
which has been highly praised by the ancients, and has furnished
several modern painters with a theme[127].
Apelles’ first voyage to Rhodes was expressly to visit Protogenes, at
that time extremely poor, and living in obscurity. Some of his works
having been brought to Athens for sale, and publicly exhibited, Apelles
instantly resolved to make acquaintance with the painter, and embarked
accordingly. On landing, he ran eagerly to the house of Protogenes,
and, finding that he was abroad, took up his pencil, and drew a fine
pure line, such as he thought only himself could draw. He left it and
returned, when he hoped Protogenes might be found; but he had been
obliged to leave home again, not, however, without acknowledging the
line of Apelles, for he drew another still finer within it. Apelles
now added a third finer than either, which Protogenes seeing, now made
it his business to discover the stranger, with whom he contracted a
lasting friendship[128].
The proverb that a prophet is not honoured in his own country, was not,
it seems, falsified in the case of Protogenes, whose fellow-townsmen,
the Rhodians, esteemed his pictures but lightly, and paid him a very
inadequate price for them. Apelles, however, on inquiring the cost of
some works he was engaged upon, declared he thought the sum much too
small, and immediately engaged to give fifty talents for them[129]. The
Rhodians, astonished at the price, imagined that Apelles had purchased
them for the purpose of selling again as his own. They therefore began
to open their eyes to his merit, and the reputation of Protogenes rose
nearly to an equality with that of Apelles himself.
In a former Essay I have mentioned the compliment paid to Protogenes
by Demetrius, who refused to attack the quarter of the city of Rhodes,
where his famous picture of Ialysus then hung. It is of that painting
that we are told that accident produced one of its greatest beauties.
Protogenes, being anxious to represent the foam from the mouth of one
of the overtired dogs, found it so difficult, that, losing patience,
he threw his sponge at it. The softness of the sponge just obliterated
so much of the form as the foam might naturally have hidden, and the
painter, improving the accident, rendered the picture perfect[130].
But Apelles, however he might admire and assist Protogenes, used to
find one fault with him, he said he never knew when to have done, and
that he sometimes injured his works by over-anxiety. In this matter he
preferred himself to his friend, as of better judgment.
Yet Apelles was careful beyond what we know of modern painters, as
we learn from the well known story of his publicly exhibiting his
pictures, and hiding himself behind them, that he might profit by the
unrestrained criticism of the multitude. On one occasion, a shoemaker
passing, remarked that something was wanting to the sandal of the
principal figure. In the evening, Apelles altered the faulty sandal,
and when the shoemaker passed the next morning, he was so charmed with
the attention paid to his observations, that he extended them farther,
and began to find fault with the limbs; upon which, Apelles broke out
of his hiding place, exclaiming, “Let not the shoemaker go beyond his
last,” which words have passed into a proverb.
The most noted work of Apelles was his Venus Anadyomene, which was
afterwards carried to Rome, and so greatly injured in the carriage,
that it could not be restored.
He had undertaken to make a duplicate of this celebrated figure, but
died before it was finished, and the imperfect work is said to have
been valued as highly as his more perfect paintings, because it was the
last thing upon which that skilful hand had rested.
In the Greek Anthology there are the following lines of Leonidas, which
inform us how the painter had treated the subject:
When from the bosom of her parent flood
She rose refulgent with the encircling brine,
Apelles saw Cytherea’s form divine,
And fixed her breathing image, where it stood.
Those graceful hands entwined, that wring the spray
From her ambrosial hair, proclaim the truth;
Those speaking eyes where amorous lightnings play,
Those swelling heavens, the harbingers of youth:
The rival flowers behold with fond amaze,
And yield submission in the conscious gaze.
After the Venus, the ancient critics seem to have prized the famous
portrait of Alexander, in the character of Jupiter the Thunderer,
which was hung in the temple of Diana of Ephesus, and cost no less
than twenty talents of gold, according to Pliny. This picture is
praised as much for grandeur and majesty as the Venus for loveliness.
Nor was it the only portrait of Alexander he painted, for we are told
that he represented him in every action and character, and that the
pictures of King Philip, by Apelles, were almost equally numerous. The
portrait of Clytus he painted in armour, and that of Megabyzus, the
priest of Diana, in his priestly robes, performing a sacrifice. Of
other remarkable portraits by him, we have the names of Antiochus, the
king, whom he painted in profile to conceal the want of an eye, which
disfigured him; of Menander, king of the Rhodians; of Gorgosthenes, the
tragedian; and of one Ancæus, a Samian.
At Rome there was an allegorical picture painted by him, in which
Castor and Pollux, Alexander, and a winged victory were introduced; and
also that picture of war in chains, which was afterwards so cruelly
defaced by Claudius, who, as I have already mentioned, had the head of
Alexander scraped out, and that of Augustus substituted for it[131].
Other subjects on which he employed his pencil have been named by
various authors: for instance, a Hercules nearly turned from the
spectator; a Hero and Leander; Archelaus with his wife and daughter;
and a most beautiful picture of Diana, with her attendant virgins
preparing a sacrifice. This last was esteemed by the connoisseurs
of Greece as one of his very finest works, though a few preferred a
picture of Antigonus on horseback. He had painted the same king in
armour, on foot, with his horse led by a soldier, but this work was
not esteemed nearly so much as the other. He seems to have been fond
of painting horses, and carried away the prize from several rivals in
subjects where they were treated, either alone, or along with their
riders. I am not clear whether it were a solitary horse, or one on
which he had mounted Neoptolemus armed, and charging some Persian
soldiers, that, according to Pliny, procured him the compliment of a
greeting from a real horse that was passing by[132].
It is evident, I think, from what the ancients have related concerning
his works, that he never painted in fresco, nor do I find any mention
made of drawings on parchment, like those of Zeuxis and Parrhasius. He
must then have painted upon pannel with the usual preparation of chalk
or carbonate of lime, with size. Of the peculiar glaze or varnish,
which he is said to have first used, I shall have occasion to speak in
a future Essay.
Protogenes, the friend and rival of Apelles, was born at Caunus, in
Cilicia; but Rhodes was his adopted country. His poverty was such, that
he was a ship painter during the early part of his life. Now the ships
of the ancients, though coloured generally red or black, laid on with
pitch, wax, and oil, at the bottoms and the seams, had always a figure
painted at the prow, representing the tutelary deity, or hero of the
vessel, much after the manner of our figure-heads. On the stern it was
customary to paint marine subjects, such as Neptune and Amphitrite,
the Tritons, the birth of Venus, and so on[133]. In the course of this
practice Protogenes acquired great knowledge and skill in shipping, and
became a considerable marine painter.
Perhaps the sight of some of the ships painted by him might have
induced the Athenians to invite him to paint some of their favourite
ships of war, in the Portico near Minerva’s temple. The great praises
bestowed on his pictures by Apelles, was another temptation to a
people so eager after every kind of elegance, to engage him in the
service of the city. Accordingly, about the fiftieth year of his age,
he accepted an invitation to work for the Republic, and having painted
the Thesmothetæ of the time[134] in the chamber of the council of five
hundred, he painted the two galleys, Paralus and Hemionis, in the
portico near Minerva’s Temple. The Greek painters were occasionally
in the habit of surrounding their pictures with a border of subjects,
executed on a smaller scale than the main action of the picture; this
they called Parerga[135]. The parerga to the Paralus and Hemionis
consisted of small vessels, of various kinds and dimensions. Pliny says
that the painter intended thereby to show from what small beginnings,
he, a painter of ships and boats, had arisen to eminence. But I think
it more likely that he only made his border to suit his subject, which
was dedicated to the service of the state and commerce of Athens[136].
It is said that while Protogenes remained in Athens, Aristotle urged
him, without success, to paint the triumphs of Alexander. But he
painted some portraits which were highly esteemed, particularly one of
Aristotle’s mother. He also painted Antigonus and some other men of
note in his time. None of his pictures, however, were so much admired
as his Ialysus; though the Anapomenes or Satyrs at rest, the Cydippe,
the Tlepolemus, and the Pan, were greatly esteemed. Protogenes acquired
as great a reputation for his bronze statues as his pictures.
Aristides of Thebes is the next great name in the third era of Greek
painting. He was remarkable for the intense expression he threw into
his figures. His battle pieces, his hunting scenes, and his chariot
races, painted for foreign kings and public halls, though highly
prized, were far below the pathetic groups of his smaller pictures, in
general esteem. There was a suppliant sueing so earnestly for grace
that his very voice seemed to be heard; there was Byblis expiring
for love; also a tragic actor, with his attendant on the scene, and
some other pictures, which were carried to Rome, and hung in the most
honourable places[137]. His great merit seems to have been a close
attention to nature, not only in form but in action and expression;
else, whence arose the strong attraction of his Dying Man? But the most
touching of all his works was that picture of the storming of a town,
in which the foremost group consisted of a dying mother and her infant.
The child was creeping towards the breast, she anxiously watching its
weak movements, and endeavouring to guide it aright. None could look on
this painting without a tender horror; few without shedding tears. It
was found in Thebes, when the place was sacked by Alexander. He took it
for his own, and sent it to Pella. The following lines, by Emilianus
Nicœus, convey the sentiments of the painter.
Suck, little wretch, while yet thy mother lives!
Suck the last drop her fainting bosom gives!
She dies--her tenderness survives her breath,
And her fond love is provident in death[138].
Nichomachus was a painter, formed in the same school with Aristides.
But his mind had a freer and more cheerful turn; and we find in Pliny’s
list of his pictures some of even a playful cast. For instance, one
of a procession of the priestesses of Bacchus, in their habits, which
having attracted the notice of the sylvan deities, they are peeping
from the woods, and creeping as near as they dare. The rape of
Proserpine was another of his subjects. The sea monster Scylla another.
He is also known to have painted Ulysses on his raft; several pictures
of the gods, an Apotheosis, and other works, which were carried to Rome.
He had the reputation of painting with greater celerity than any other
man of his time, in proof of which, we have the following anecdote. He
had undertaken to paint, for a certain sum of money, the tomb which
Anstrœtus, tyrant of Sicyon, had built in memory of Telestes the poet.
The work was to be finished by a certain day; but four days before the
time appointed, the painter had not even arrived at Sicyon to begin.
Upon learning this, Anstrœtus threatened him with exemplary punishment.
But, to the tyrant’s surprise, when the day came round, instead of
punishment, he had to bestow both the promised reward and the highest
praise, for the excellency of the work.
I come now to the last great painters of Greece, Pausias and Euphranor,
who were a little after the time of Apelles and Aristides.
Timomachus, of Byzantium; Nicias, of Athens; and Theon of Samos,
indeed, attained to considerable fame; and there were some painters of
familiar life and other subjects, that appear to deserve notice for
their reputation, even were it less curious to observe how ancient and
modern art have followed the same paths.
Pausias was the son and pupil of Brietes, of Sicyon, and appears to
have been dexterous in the use of every kind of material and tool then
known. He was particularly celebrated for his pictures in encaustic,
of the origin of which method of painting Pliny himself was in doubt.
His skill in the more ancient methods of painting was such, that he
was chosen to repair the pictures of Polygnotus, at Thespiæ, which
had suffered greatly from time and damp. It is true that his work
was considered greatly inferior to that of the original picture;
not, indeed, as Fuseli says, because he used a different method and
different tools, but because he wrought in a manner to which he
was unaccustomed. May we not also say, because his gay, cheerful
disposition, delighting in painting children and flowers, did not and
could not enter into the high and solemn feelings which seem to have
constantly guided the pencil of Polygnotus?
The exceeding beauty of colour which is said to have distinguished
the pictures of Pausias, he owed to love. There lived in Sicyon an
exceedingly beautiful girl, called Glycera, a garland maker, celebrated
for the taste and elegance with which she wove the coronals, then worn
universally at religious festivals and banquets, public and private.
At first, Pausias resorted to her for the sake of painting the fresh
flowers, and catching their combinations of colour and form; but he
soon began to love Glycera more than her flowers; and the picture that
he painted of her, while wreathing a garland, was the finest work that
ever came from his hand[139].
Akin to this, was his Hemerosis, a small picture of a child, reported
to have been painted in a single day, though executed with the greatest
care and nicety, to prove how falsely those accused him of idleness
who said his love of painting children arose from the little necessity
there was for care and diligence in such subjects.
A very remarkable picture of his is mentioned, representing a
sacrifice, in which a number of oxen are introduced. The foreshortening
of one of these is said to have been imitated, though without success,
by many rivals; the manner of casting the shadows also, upon the more
distant groups, was a distinguishing excellence of Pausias.
This sacrifice, and other works of this most eminent man, were carried
to Rome, when all the pictures at Sycyon were seized during the
Edileship of Scaurus, as I have already mentioned.
Euphranor, the Isthmean, was the most accomplished of all the ancient
painters after the time of Pausias. He was equally celebrated as a
sculptor in marble and bronze, and the bowls and vases of his embossing
always fetched a high price.
The great public work of Euphranor was a portico, in that part of
Athens called the Ceramicus. One of the subjects was an allegorical
picture of the early political state of Athens.
The Athenian people, Theseus, and the personage of Democracy, were
introduced; but Pausanias, who mentions the subject, gives no account
of its treatment, though he says it signified that Theseus first
established equal rights of citizenship among the Athenians. In the
same portico, Euphranor also painted the battle of Mantinea, in which
the most remarkable group was an encounter of cavalry. Epaminondas was
at the head of the Bœotians, and Gryllus, the son of Xenophon, led the
Athenian horse.
One end of the portico Euphranor sanctified by paintings of the twelve
superior gods. Perhaps some slight judgment of the tone of these
pictures may be formed from the expression of Euphranor himself--that,
while the Theseus of Parrhasius looked as if he had fed upon roses, his
own showed that he lived upon flesh.
The other principal pictures of Euphranor appear to have belonged to
the temple of Diana at Ephesus, the most remarkable of which was the
feigned madness of Ulysses, who was harnessing a horse and an ox to the
same yoke.
Before I proceed to the painters of less note, I will use the words of
Quintillian to sum up the general character of some of the greatest men
who distinguished the third period of Greek art.
“Protogenes distinguished himself by his accuracy: Pamphilus and
Melanthus by beauty of design: Antiphilus by the easy and natural
strokes of his pencil: Theon of Samos by his lively imagination: and
Apelles by his ingenuity, and the graces which he boasted he had
excelled in: Euphranor made himself admirable by being possessed of
these different qualities in as eminent a degree as the best masters.”
The great encouragement of art about the time of Philip, and in the
reign of Alexander and his immediate successors, called out abundance
of talent of various kinds and degrees; from that of the Egyptian, or
rather Alexandrian Antiphilus, whose attention to nature must have been
of singular use to him in those scenes for the theatre on which he
loved to employ himself, to that pupil of Apelles to whom his master
said sarcastically, “As you have not been able to paint your Venus
beautiful, you have made her fine;” in allusion to a profusion of gold
chain and other ornaments with which he had loaded her. The serious
pictures of Antiphilus which were carried to Rome, were the death of
Hippolytus; several votive pictures of Greek divinities, and some
few heroes. He painted grotesques so perfectly, that from one of his
figures, a fool named Gryllus, with a cap and bells, such subjects got
the name of Grylli.
Antiphilus is, besides, the first painter, whose name has come down
to us, who painted fire-light effects. His most famous work of this
kind was a boy blowing a fire with his mouth, in which the natural
character of the boy, and the effect of the light throughout the room,
were greatly admired. Another favourite picture represented a number of
women spinning and gossiping, highly valued for its truth.
Pliny seems doubtful whether it be not beneath the dignity of painting
to praise Pyreicus, who loved to paint interiors, especially the shops
of tailors, shoemakers, and sempstresses; giving every thing its true
nature and character, to a degree that attracted much admiration and
many purchasers; and as he delighted in making pictures of the houses
of the humble classes of men, he loved also to paint the animals that
especially belong to them. The nickname of _Rhyparographus_, was given
him, on account of his skill in painting asses bringing vegetables and
fruit to market. These pictures were of small size, and very highly
finished, and were sold for large prices. Serapion, the contemporary of
Pyreicus, on the contrary, painted nothing but play-house scenes, mock
architecture, and other things of enormous size, but was incapable of
drawing either men or animals.
Heraclides the Macedonian was celebrated as a marine painter. His
friend Metrodorus, I conjecture to have been a scene painter, and as he
combined considerable knowledge of the arts, with the science requisite
for a tutor to young men, he was employed by Lucius Paulus both to
bring up his sons, and to paint his triumphs.
But I will close my account of the painters of Greece with two names
of greater eminence, Nicias and Timomachus, who lived in the time of
Julius Cæsar. Nicias was an Athenian of considerable private fortune,
so that having painted a picture of the descent of Ulysses to the
infernal regions, he refused to sell it at a very high price to a
foreign prince, and presented it to his native city. He was famous
above all for the beauty of his women, and the bold relief of his
figures, which are said to have appeared ready to leave the ground they
were painted upon, and to walk out of their frames. I have mentioned
in the last Essay the subjects of some of his principal pictures which
were carried to Rome, and highly prized by Augustus Cæsar. There seems
to have been another painter of the same name[140], who was also a
sculptor and pupil of Praxiteles, who esteemed him highly on account of
the exquisite finish of his works.
Timomachus of Byzantium seems to have delighted most in tragic
subjects, though a picture of his, containing excellent portraits of
several generations of one and the same family, is mentioned. His
most successful work is said to have been a Gorgon’s head. He painted
Iphigenia in Aulis, Orestes and Clytæmnestra; and, for Julius Cæsar, an
Ajax and a Medea. The treatment of the latter we may gather from the
following lines, by Antiphilus, preserved in the Greek anthology.
ON THE MEDEA OF TIMOMACHUS.
When bold Timomachus essayed to trace
The soul’s emotions in the varying face,
With patient thought, and faithful hand, he strove
To blend with jealous rage maternal love.
Behold Medea! Envy must confess
In both the passions his complete success;
Tears in each threat--a threat in every tear;
The mind with pity warm, or chill with fear.
The dread suspense I praise, the critic cries,
Here all the judgment, all the pathos lies;
To stain with filial blood the guilty scene
Had marr’d the artist, but became the queen[141].
I think it best to close my account of ancient Greek painting here,
while it was still practised by great masters in their own land, not
yet quite enslaved. From the time of Augustus, Italy attracted the best
artists of all kinds, but, as I have already shown, it was not under
the Cæsars that the liberal arts flourished most.
I have now given a sketch of the history of painting and painters in
Greece--very imperfect, I acknowledge, but such as I can collect from
the authors who either treat on the subject of pictures and artists, or
who have left incidental remarks on them, in such works as have come
down to us.
The first efforts of painting in Greece appear to have been as rude as
we found them among the savages of Polynesia. The earliest steps of
art in Egypt and Etruria elude our observation, but the nature of the
improvements attributed to Eumanus of Athens, teach us what they were
in Greece.
The art once exercised, however, neither halted nor tarried. It
was sublime in its simplicity in the hands of Polygnotus and his
cotemporaries. It served their gods and their country. Much improved in
beauty, but still grave and dignified, it grew popular in the time of
Parrhasius and Zeuxis. Under Apelles and his followers it was devoted
to the graces, revelled in beauty, and ministered to the refined
pleasures of taste, rather than as at first, to the gratification of
higher moral feelings.
Brought down thus to the commoner tone of general society, more
various subjects were thought worthy of it. Pyreicus anticipated
the subjects of the modern Dutch painters, and it should seem with
kindred success. The natural desire for novelty, and the anxiety for
individual distinction, produced fire-light scenes, pictures of still
life and other varieties. Fashion, rather than taste, became the guide
of purchasers, and it may truly be said, that the decline of painting
began with the Macedonian conquests, which altered the character of the
Greeks, and, consequently, of their arts.
FOOTNOTES:
[118] Herodotus, Terpsichore, c. 22.
[119] The judges of the Games.
[120] Pausanias does not mention the name of the sculptors who executed
either of the three statues of Alexander which were at Olympia. One was
raised to him as conqueror in that race called _Hemerodromos_, because
a great space is run through in one day; another, dedicated to him by
a certain Corinthian, represented him in the character of the son of
Jupiter; and the third was an Equestrian statue, a votive offering of
the Eleans.--_See the Lists of Votive Statues in the V. and VI. Books._
Lysippus of Sicyon was originally a coppersmith; afterwards a pupil of
Eupompus. He cast many statues of Alexander, one of which Nero caused
to be gilt, but afterwards washed off the gold. A large composition,
representing Alexander hunting with his horses and dogs, was dedicated
in the temple of Apollo at Delphi; and Lysippus executed many other
statues of Alexander, and of his friends, especially Hephæstion, which
were placed in various temples as compliments to the conqueror.
Pyrgoteles was of all the Greeks the most renowned engraver of gems.
[121] It was unlawful to teach a slave painting, engraving, or
embossing.--(Pliny, b. xxxv. 10.)
[122] Box tablets, properly prepared, were used for these
_diagraphice_. In a future essay I propose to compare these with the
tablets used by the school of Giotto, of which we have a minute account
in Cennino Cennini’s curious work.
[123] It appears that Pamphilus would not undertake to instruct a pupil
for a less term of years.
[124] If the talent be rightly computed at 193_l._ 15_s._, the pay, in
the first case, is enormous; in the last very small.
[125] Dr. Franklin, the translator of Lucian, without citing any
authority, says, there was a second Apelles, and that the Apelles of
Alexander and the Apelles of Ptolemy were different persons. It is
evident that Lucian himself meant _the_ great Apelles. And the picture
of Calumny has always been ascribed to him; I cannot find any mention
elsewhere of a second.
[126] In Lilly’s pleasing play of Alexander and Campaspe there is so
pretty a song put into the mouth of Apelles that I cannot help copying
it.
“Cupid and my Campaspe played
At cards for kisses, Cupid paid;
He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows;
His mother’s doves, and team of sparrows;
Loses them too; then down he throws
The coral of his lip, the rose
Growing on ’s cheek (but none knows how),
With these the crystal of his brow,
And then the dimple of his chin;
All these did my Campaspe win.
At last he set her both his eyes,
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
O, Love! has she done this to thee?
What shall, alas! become of me?”
[127] Lucian’s description of the Calumny is as follows: “On the right
hand side sits a man with ears almost as long as Midas’s, stretching
forth his hand towards the figure of Calumny, who appears at a distance
coming up to him; he is attended by two women, who, I imagine,
represent Ignorance and Suspicion. From the other side approaches
Calumny, in the form of a woman, to the last degree beautiful, but
seeming warmed and inflamed, as full of anger and resentment; bearing
a lighted torch in her left hand, and with her right dragging by the
hair of his head a young man, who lifts up his eyes to Heaven, as
calling the gods to witness his innocence. Before her stands a pale
ugly figure, with sharp eyes, and emaciated, like one worn down with
disease, which we easily perceive is meant for Envy; and behind are two
women, who seem to be employed in dressing, adorning, and assisting
her, one of whom, as my interpreter informed me, was Treachery, and the
other Deceit; at some distance, in the back part of the picture, stands
a woman in a mourning habit, all torn and ragged, which we were told
represented Penitence; as she turned her eyes back she blushed and wept
at the sight of Truth, who was approaching towards her.” It is evident
that Botticelli first, and afterwards Raffaelle, followed this account
of Lucian. Albert Durer also, in his decorative picture, on the walls
of the town hall at Neurembourg, drew from the same source.
Lucian says that Apelles had been held in esteem by Ptolemy, until the
rivals of Apelles made the king believe that he had conspired at Tyre,
with one Theodotus, against him, and that the defection of Tyre and
the loss of Pelusium were owing to the advice of Apelles. Now nothing
could be more false, Apelles never was at Tyre. But Ptolemy, without
considering this, was about to order him to be beheaded. Afterwards,
when convinced of his innocence, he is said to have given him a hundred
talents, and likewise his accuser for a slave.
[128] The antique vulgar was no more exempt from the love of the
marvellous rather than the beautiful, than the modern. When the pannel
on which the rival lines were drawn, was afterwards carried to Rome, it
attracted more visitors than the finest works of art which hung along
with it in the palace of the Cæsars, where they and it were burned in
one of those calamitous fires which destroyed the choicest libraries
of Rome, as well as the most precious works of art, collected from the
conquered countries.
[129] If these were Attic talents, the sum was 9687_l._ 10_s._,
certainly a prodigious sum for one painter to expend upon the works of
another.
[130] The story is repeated and applied to several other painters in
their horses and dogs; but I believe Protogenes has the prior claim,
and it seems his friend Nealces was his first imitator. He dashed his
sponge at a horse’s month, and produced foam in imitation of that of
Protogenes’ dog.
[131] See Essay II. This practice of defacing ancient pictures
continues even to our own times. During the civil wars in England it
was very notorious. Canova kept two faces for the sitting statue of
Maria Louisa, one for her family, and one for the world of taste. The
modern changes are generally confined to prints of the heroes of the
day, whose faces, like their names, drive one another out of the market.
[132] This story is a charge upon the Grapes of Zeuxis, and furnished
the French with the hint for that of the ass attempting to eat some
thistles, in a picture of Le Sueur, or Le Brun, I forget which.
[133]
The mariner, when storms around him rise,
No longer on a _painted stern_ relies.
FRANCIS’ HORACE, B. I. ODE 14.
[134] These Magistrates chiefly superintended the police of Athens.
[135] _Parerga._ This bordering remained in use among the Greek
painters till the revival of art. There is, in the collection of
the _Belle Arti_, at Florence, a Greek picture of Mary Magdalene,
the _parerga_ of which is made up of small groups, representing her
history, from the raising of Lazarus to her death. Among the early
Fleming or Burgundian painters, the Van Eyks followed this practice
with good effect, and the earlier miniature painters, in the borders of
the pages of their missals, did the same.
[136] Some modern writers have thought that a picture of shipping was
beneath the dignity of the Portico of Minerva; and have laboured hard
to prove that Paralus was a hero; Hemionis a heroine. But Paralus
invented long ships, and the Athenians named their favourite galley,
which was a trireme, after him. Hemionis is another name for Nausicaa,
a sea nymph, or the daughter of a sea king. The vessel named after her
was a long ship, a trireme also; and as the vessels of war of Athens
were sacred to Minerva, what could be a more appropriate ornament for
her portico, than a picture of ships?
The triremes Paralus and Salamina are mentioned by Thucydides, in
his 3rd book, as performing an eminent service to Athens, in the
Lacedæmonian war. It seems that Paralus, or Paralia, was the name of
the vessel that brought the news of the defeat of Ægospotamos to Athens.
So much for the opinion that Paralus _may_ be a hero, but _cannot_ be a
ship.
[137] See Essay II.
[138] See Greek Anthology.
[139] This picture was called Stephanopolis, the flower seller, and was
bought at Athens by Lucullus, for two talents of silver, £387. 10_s._
Whoever has seen the beautiful picture called Titian’s Flora, in the
Florence Gallery, must be reminded of it while reading of the garland
maker of Pausias.
[140] Some think they were the same; but there seems to have been
an older Nicias than either. Perhaps a Thracian, or a Macedonian.
Omphalion, who was employed by the Messenians to paint a long series of
supposed portraits of their ancient kings in the temple of Æsculapius,
at Messene, was the pupil of a Nicias, I suppose of Nicias of Athens.
_Pausanias Messenics_, ch. 21.
[141] In Lucian’s Dialogue of the Encomium of a House, there is a
description of this picture, in which he says, “the little ones,
unconscious of their fate, sit with smiling countenances, and whilst
they see her holding the sword over them, seem pleased and happy.”
_Franklin’s Lucian._
But surely if they saw their mother brandishing a sword or dagger over
them, her aspect must have frightened them.
ESSAY V.
OF THE CLASSIFICATION OF PICTURES.
The more general any word is in its signification, it is the more
liable to be abused by an improper or unmeaning application. A
very general term is applicable alike to a multitude of different
individuals, a particular term is applicable but to a few. The
latitude of a word, though different from its ambiguity, hath often a
similar effect.
CAMPBELL. _Philosophy of Rhetoric._
It will be useful to pause a little, between the historic sketch I have
already made of antique painting, and that which is to follow, of the
entire decay, and first faint revival of the Art; and to consider what
branches of painting had been chiefly cultivated by the ancients, and
whether the ordinary classification of pictures can be satisfactorily
applied to their works, or even correctly to the productions of
modern painters. It will not be uninteresting either, to consider the
materials and colours used by the ancient artists, as compared with
those known to the moderns.
I have already shown the probable origin of painting, its earliest
application to the service of religion, and its use as a method
of recording events among some nations, before the invention of
alphabetical writing. While it was confined chiefly to the latter
purpose, it remained fixed, and incapable of improvement; but as soon
as alphabetical writing was either invented or adopted in any country,
the imitative arts became free, and improved in feeling, spirit, and
expression, as well as in execution.
While the Grecian states and cities were struggling for national
independence and civil freedom, the arts maintained a severe and almost
awful character, devoted exclusively to religion and patriotism. But
those great objects once attained, society became more polished; a
larger space was allotted to the exercise of the imagination. Various
sects of Philosophers sprang up: a new race of Poets arose; and the
arts losing part of their grandeur with their austerity, began to
partake of the blandishments of those luxurious times, that succeeded
to the great political struggles of the country.
Painting was capable of assisting the task of the moral teachers, by
her power of expressing passion. She illustrated the dreams of the
poets with graceful compositions, formed no less of imaginary beings
than of real personages; and, for a long period, the Virtues and the
Graces equally presided over the painter’s study.
But it was natural that, in the great diversity of tastes, some should
seek after the mere ornament that the arts could furnish. Hence the
minor walks of painting began to be cultivated apart from the greater.
And something was found to gratify every spectator in the various
departments of this enchanting art.
It has been the custom to distribute all the various works of art
into three or four classes, each comprehending a most incongruous
variety[142].
The first place is always allowed to HISTORIC PAINTING, which, as now
understood, means everything that is not portrait, or domestic scenery,
or landscape, or flowers, or caricature, from the Last Judgment of
Michael Angelo, down to a sleeping nymph, or a weeping Magdalene[143].
PORTRAIT comes next, and even those who have seen Giulio II. are not
ashamed to place in the same class, the _Lord Henrys_ and _Lady Janes_,
Les _Barons de T._, or Les _Comtesses de V._, that annually adorn the
walls of the London and Paris exhibitions.
With the FAMILIAR LIFE class, as now understood, I do not quarrel;
if the Dutch and Flemings, two centuries ago, far exceeded all we do
in execution, we moderns are much above them in sense and feeling;
in having a story to tell and telling it well. Besides, the words
_familiar life_ admit at once every variety of subject, from genteel
comedy to broad farce. It appears to have been cultivated with some
success by the ancients.
But the LANDSCAPE class! Surely it is strange to put the Enchanted
Castle of Claude, and the Deluge of Poussin, together with views on
Hounslow Heath, and scenes in the Waterloo tea gardens! Landscape
painting, indeed, seems to be a modern art, as considered by itself;
though it must have been practised for the sake of backgrounds by the
ancients, as I shall have occasion to notice.
It has pleased the writers upon painting to make a class apart of
ANIMAL PAINTING, and to consider the class as an inferior one. It is
right to separate it: but the inferiority will scarcely be allowed
by those who know the works of Rubens and Snyders. At any rate, the
ancients did not consider it mean, by their praise of the animals of
Nicias and Pausias generally, of the horses of Apelles, and the dogs of
Protogenes, in particular.
In FRUIT, and FLOWERS, and STILL LIFE, we have again the ancients to
support us. How lovely were the fresh flowers in the Stephanopolis of
Pausias! Then the grapes of Zeuxis, and the curtain of Parrhasius, how
exquisitely finished!
As to the delineations of animals, plants, minerals, &c., for the
purposes of natural history, they must be considered as combining the
original uses of the graphic art; namely, history writing, with the
practical improvement of modern times; and I shall not make any further
mention of them[144].
It is evident that this classification is as absurd and inconvenient,
as it would be in poetry to place under the same head, Homer’s Iliad
and the ballad of Colin and Lucy, because both tell a story.
If, however, in conformity with long usage, we must preserve these
classes, they ought to be subdivided, so as to dispose works really of
the same order apart from the masses in which they are now confounded.
I am aware that, however decided the distinction may be between the
great works that must form the example for each subdivision, it will
be difficult to keep the limits so clear, that the exact place of any
particular work may be known and fixed at once; but that is surely a
small evil compared with the present confusion.
The class HISTORY, has been felt to be so indefinite, that some of
the best writers on art have tacitly divided it into the strictly
Historical and the Dramatic[145]. As far as it goes, the division is
excellent; but it still leaves such masses to be separated, that I
cannot but wish for farther distinctions. For instance, I should wish
not to place in the same class, the taking of Troy by Polygnotus, the
sacrifice of Iphigenia in Aulis by Timanthes, and the single figure of
Ajax by Apollodorus, but to allow each of those to be the example of a
separate division; and quite apart from those, I should wish to place
all allegorical and didactic subjects, as well as those in which the
machinery of superior or inferior natures is introduced.
Thus, those subjects now clumsily thrown together, under the name of
HISTORY, would come naturally to form four distinct classes, each of
which ought, in strictness, to be again broken into subdivisions.
The four classes I should propose to call,
1st. ETHIC or DIDACTIC.
2nd. EPIC.
3rd. HISTORICAL.
4th. DRAMATIC.
Each of these will admit of farther subdivision. The Ethical subjects
should be distributed into--
The PURELY DIDACTIC;
The EMBLEMATIC;
And SATIRE, or the HIGHER CARICATURE.
Of the EPIC class I should make but two great divisions, each, however,
capable of very marked partition.
1st. The CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS SUBJECTS.
2nd. The ANTIQUE MYTHOLOGICAL SUBJECTS, whether painted by ancients or
moderns.
1st. The CHRISTIAN division depending upon the introduction of Saints,
Angels, and even more awful natures, but _not_ comprehending Christ
while on earth.
2nd. The ANTIQUE upon the introduction of the deified heroes and gods
of Paganism.
The really HISTORICAL class of pictures may be divided into those in
which a whole history is treated in a single picture.
Those in which a history is treated in a series of pictures.
Those in which a single point of history forms the picture.
The DRAMATIC class might comprehend the familiar life subjects; but I
have thought it better to leave those as they have hitherto stood, by
themselves; and to reckon only in this class
The single actions of higher tragedy:
Single actions of a mixed character.
In PORTRAIT painting it will be readily allowed that there are strongly
marked distinctions between
The HISTORICAL PORTRAIT;
The SCENIC PORTRAIT subjects;
And Portraits of common characters.
The FAMILIAR LIFE class naturally divides into,
Grave Comedy;
Light Comedy, or Farce.
Of Landscape, the distinct varieties are,
The EPIC LANDSCAPE;
The HISTORIC LANDSCAPE;
The Imaginary, or POETIC LANDSCAPE;
And the mere PORTRAIT LANDSCAPE.
Animal painters have naturally made two classes:
The Dramatic;
And the mere Portrait.
Of each of these subdivisions, I will point out specimens, which I hope
will support what I have said as to the propriety of a more precise
classification than has hitherto been adopted. Not that I mean to make
a catalogue for every class, though I believe such a thing would have
its use.
The difficulty of making such a catalogue would be very great, because
the subjects so often force the painter into a greater degree of
relation with neighbouring classes than can be reconciled with any
thing like a strict classification.
OF THE ETHIC CLASS.
At the head of the first, or purely didactic division of this class, I
shall place the picture, or “Table of Cebes,” as it is commonly called.
The picture may have been painted, or it may have existed only in the
imagination of that amiable disciple of Socrates. In either case his
description shows the importance which was attached to painting by the
ancients as an instrument of public instruction[146].
He says there was a picture hung in a certain temple, and that one of
the persons attached to the temple was always at hand to exhibit it
to visiters, and to explain its meaning; and he gives the dialogue
between the exhibitor and a visiter at length, that he may introduce
a description of the whole composition, as well as an account of the
moral end of the picture. The action represented is Human Life as a
whole; and the parts are the vicissitudes to which it is subject.
The ground-work of the table seems to have been a landscape in various
parts, of which the different situations occur most proper for the
purpose of the painter. The landscape is subdivided into separate
enclosures, at the first gate of which is placed the Genius of Human
Life, ushering in those who are about to begin their pilgrimage. They
first meet upon their road with Deception, who offers them the Cup
of Error and of Ignorance; then come Opinions, and Appetites, and
Pleasures to delude them.
The next great object in the picture is Fortune, who, with her
followers, occupies a considerable space, near which are the Vices, who
naturally lead to the den of Punishment, where they meet with Sorrow,
Anguish, Lamentation, and Despair.
Some, however, happily reach the dwelling of Repentance, and thence set
forth to seek Education.
Here again some go astray and entangle themselves with False Education,
by whom they are once more betrayed to the Passions and to wrong
Opinions; but the Happy, by the assistance of Self Command and
Perseverance, reach the mansion of True Education, whom they find with
her daughters, Truth and Persuasion. These introduce them to Knowledge
and the Virtues, who conduct them to the palace of their mother,
Happiness, by whom they are crowned as victors in the race of life.
The Calumny of Apelles, of which I have copied Lucian’s description in
a note to a former essay, is another example of this kind of painting
among the ancients.
I shall cite one modern fresco work, now nearly effaced from the walls
upon which it was painted by Lorenzetti, one of the earliest restorers
of painting in the fourteenth century.
In the palace of government, in the city of Sienna, this remarkable
picture is still to be traced. In the time of the freedom of the city,
the magistrates could not go daily to their public duties without
passing through the hall where it was painted, to remind them of the
blessings of peace and good government, and the curse of war and
misrule.
The part that is sufficiently preserved for the design to be
intelligible, is immediately opposite the window. In the centre,
the Almighty Ruler sits, holding a globe; over his head are Faith,
Hope, and Charity; on his left hand are Magnanimity and Justice; on
his right, Prudence, Fortitude, and Peace, each with her several
attributes. Beyond Peace, sits Diligence; above whom is Wisdom. Two
scales hang, one on each side of Diligence, from which angels are
distributing riches and honour to the followers of Diligence and
Wisdom. On the side where Justice and Magnanimity are placed, enough
of the design remains to show the punishment of Crime--the absolving
of Innocence, and generous forgiveness where lenity is possible.
Below these figures a procession of the citizens of Sienna appears to
be moving towards the Almighty Ruler and Protector of their state.
Upon the wall to the left are traced the effects of good government
and public security; on one side cultivated fields, with a busy and
cheerful peasantry, and hard by, a flourishing city, with persons
engaged in trade and commerce, and other occupations of peace. The
rest of the wall is filled up with cheerful landscape, in various
parts of which the social amusements of dancing, hawking, riding, &c.,
are enjoyed. The opposite wall did contain a representation of all
the evils of bad government, Vain Glory, War, Famine, Beggary, and
Cruelty[147].
The second division of the Ethical class of pictures comprises emblems
and allegories.
I have already mentioned two remarkable emblematical pictures of the
ancients: the Demos of Athens by Parrhasius, and Euphranor’s popular
estate. To these I will add the allegories of the shield of Achilles,
and the emblems so beautifully imagined on medals, coins, and gems,
besides the innumerable pictures chiefly upon vases referring to the
mysteries of the Pagan worship, particularly as connected with the
passage of the soul from this life, through death, to another.
The modern painters have also dealt largely in allegory. Not to go
farther back among Christian painters than Giotto, his marriage of St.
Francis with Poverty at Assisi is a striking example; and so are the
figures of the Virtues and Vices, so beautifully designed by him in the
chapel of the Nunziata dell’ Arena, at Padua.
But passing over innumerable pictures of the kind, I will go at once to
the Sistine Chapel, where Michael Angelo’s Prophets and Sybils demand,
at the first view, a class apart from ordinary historical subjects,
and, as moderns, to stand at the head of that class. Then follow
Prophets and Sybils by Raffaelle; Peruzzi’s all but sublime Sybil at
Sienna, and a thousand more, among which the Allegories of Rubens claim
a distinguished place[148]; not, indeed, for refinement of thought, but
for skill in composition.
The third division into which I desire to break the class of Ethical
pictures comprehends the higher caricature.
The ancients certainly practised this species of painting, but I do not
know that the description of any has been preserved.
There is, however, in Fortefiocca’s life of Cola di Rienzi a very
remarkable account of some which that extraordinary man caused to be
painted, in order to stir up the Romans of his time to a sense of their
degradation[149]. One was painted upon the wall of the palace of the
Capitol, looking towards the Forum; the other near St. Angelo. In both,
the nobles and magistrates of Rome were treated with bitter satire, and
the city and commonwealth represented as in the lowest state of misery.
The effect these caricatures had upon the people may be read in the
original life of Rienzi, written in the vernacular idiom of Rome in his
own time.
It would be most unjust not to consider, as preeminent in this walk of
art, Hogarth, whose satirical pencil was employed in the chastisement
of vice, and the promotion of virtue. His works are a school in
themselves; and are as far removed, as a “greatest is from least,” from
the mean and filthy caricatures that libel private life, and from the
evanescent exaggerations of political squibs.
EPIC PICTURES.
The examples for the first division of this class, containing
supernatural agents of a Christian character, must, of course, be taken
exclusively from modern works.
First of these, the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo will occur to every
imagination. With it I will name a work that he himself looked upon
with the highest admiration; the chapel, painted by Luca Signorelli,
at Orvieto, many of the figures of which were adopted by Buonarotti
himself, who, perhaps scarcely ever surpassed in expression the group
of blasphemers struck by the thunderbolt[151].
Nor can I omit Raffaelle’s Heliodorus in the Temple: these are
instances of the terrible in this class.
Of that sublime, the key to which is stillness[152], Raffaelle’s
dispute of the Sacrament is the most perfect example. Though in the
Spanish Chapter-House of St. Maria Novella, in Florence, that elder
painter, Taddeo Gaddi, in a subject of the same kind, has in one or two
figures reached the grand and the awful.
To the Christian division of the Epic class also belong all those
magnificent pictures which represent the Ascension of Christ, the
Assumption of the Virgin, the Martyrdoms and the Miracles of Saints,
with their supernatural appearances, and also many of the subjects
taken from the Old Testament.
Michael Angelo’s Creator, in the several acts of calling light out of
darkness, and enduing man with life; and the other great conceptions
in the roof of the Sistine chapel, occupy the first rank among these
works of genius. Raffaelle’s Vision of Ezekiel is conceived in the
same spirit, and his Madonna of San Sisto[153], in my mind, far
exceeds all other Madonnas in glory, though the place is a high one,
which may justly be claimed for Titian’s Assumption[154]. The same
painter’s Peter Martyr[155], Domenichino’s Saint Jerome[156], Francia’s
Saint Sebastian[157], may be named as some of the most important
works which form this grand and very distinct division of the Epic
class of pictures; it also comprehends Raffaelle’s lovely Madonna del
Pesce[158], Christ’s Agony in the Garden by Correggio[159], and all
those pictures where angelic natures are introduced.
Of examples for the second division, the best and greatest, as far as
we may judge from description, were the works of Polygnotus. When he
introduced the tutelary deity and protecting heroes of Athens into
the battle of Marathon, he was inspired by the same genius that led
Raffaelle in the Stanze to send forth Saint Peter and Saint Paul to
turn back the host of barbarians from Rome.
The descent of Ulysses to the kingdom of Pluto, is another example of
which I have already spoken. The Wars with the Giants of Mycon, and
some other artists, and all subjects of apotheosis belong to this class.
I cannot cite the Wars of the Giants by Julio Romano, in Mantua, as a
successful example of a modern rendering of the subject. And, in truth,
after the Pagan gods ceased to be objects of devotion, the Greek and
Roman mythologies were of infinitely too gay a character to inspire a
painter with any but the most jocund and graceful compositions.
The Parnassus of Raffaelle, and his Psyche of the Farnesina[160],
are charming examples of this. But these should form the chief of a
very delightful class of pictures which cannot justly be called Epic,
but which have fully as little title to their old name of historical
pictures.
Reynolds called his exquisite pictures of children, fancy subjects.
But the term FANCY, in this sense is grown, very undeservedly, as I
think, into disrepute; or I should say it would designate perfectly
the pictures I am now seeking a name for. Among them are Titian’s whole
families of Dianas and Venuses, of Loves and Graces; the rival Auroras
of Guido and Guercino; Paulo Veronese’s and Luini’s Europas; Annibale
Caracci’s Farnese; Poussin’s classical compositions, and some others
which seem to deserve a place very near the Venus Anadyomene of Apelles
and Zeuxis’ Helen.
I am aware that I am not adhering strictly to my own classification,
but I have not the presumption to propose an absolute rule. That must
be for some one who, with the authority of a critic and an artist, can
command attention and reverence enough to enforce a new arrangement.
I must therefore be content to leave the FANCIES as an appendix to the
mythological division of the epic class, and proceed to cite examples
of the three great branches of legitimate historical pictures.
HISTORICAL PICTURES.
Here I know that in the very outset I shall shock all the sticklers for
the unities; for my very first section must consist of whole histories
represented in the same picture; admitting not only a variety of
actions belonging to the history, but even a repetition of the persons
engaged in it when it is essential, or even when it is convenient for
the narrative.
The second section contains those histories which are related in
a series of compositions, each forming a whole in itself, though
belonging to a cycle.
And the third section includes those works in which a single point in
history makes the picture.
First of the first section, I must name the taking of Troy by
Polygnotus, painted in fresco on the walls of the Lesche, at Delphi.
The description I have already given after Pausanias renders any
further account of it unnecessary.
The next example I shall cite is of the highest character and of the
highest authority. It is the most glorious justification of the breach
of the cold rules of critics, and shows that in some cases to abide by
the unities would destroy the spirit and sublimity of the work.
I speak now of the transgression and chastisement of man in the roof of
the Sistine chapel, by Michael Angelo.
In that composition there are not only two parts of the same history
told in the same picture, but the principal figures themselves are
repeated with equal force; and rendered, as to the picture, of equal
importance. And in what other way could the crime and its punishment
have been so closely, so awfully connected?
It is impossible to go into that chapel without feeling that the
pictures there are formed to make the rule for art, not to receive it;
and that the folly of confining genius by the flimsy laws of ordinary
criticism, is only equalled by that of the tyrant of old, who is
reported to have paved the bed of the ocean where it rolled beneath his
capital with gilded tiles, and to have expected it to reverence the
boundaries of his work.
But a number of those great men who had laboured in the long neglected
field of painting, and had stirred and loosened the soil, and prepared
it for the hands of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle, appear to have
disregarded the unities whenever the nature of the subject rendered it
convenient, and with excellent effect, as I hope to show when I come to
give an account of their works.
There is one picture of this kind by an ancient Flemish artist of such
transcendant merit, that I shall endeavour to describe it as a model
for this treatment of historical subjects. The picture is by Hemelink,
and is now in the possession of the King of Bavaria[161].
The shape of the picture is long and narrow, and the horizon is placed
very high, by which means room is given for the different actions
represented. One rich and varied landscape fills the whole picture,
forming the back ground to the groupes of actors in the history, which
are placed with consummate skill, and so ordered by means of linear and
aërial perspective, as to produce a most attractive whole, while each
part is carefully dealt with.
The subject is usually called the Journey of the Three Kings or Wise
Men to worship the Infant Jesus; but the picture has two episodes, the
Adoration of the Shepherds, and the Resurrection and Ascension, one of
which occupies the right side, and the other the left.
The extreme distance is formed of a ridge of hills, a little in
advance of which three mounts are distinguished, and the ridge is
farther broken by an inlet of the sea, over which the sun is rising
in splendour. The shape of the bay is graceful, and it is enlivened
by ships; the shore has wood and sand, and the termination of a great
road to diversify it. One of the mounts forms a promontory to the left
of the mouth of the bay, which is on the right of the picture. Between
it and the second mount is seen the star, not interfering with the
splendour of the sun, but having a bright distinct light of its own.
We may suppose it discovered at once by three groupes, apparently
engaged in worship, on the summits of the three mounts. On account
of their great distance, they are just indicated; the only thing
distinguishable in each, being a coloured banner.
At the foot of the first mount a river winds through the country, and
appears as if it found an outlet to the bay behind a rising ground
near the middle of the picture, on the slope of which, forming also
the middle distance, stands the city of Bethlehem; and outside of the
gates, quite in the foreground, is the place of the Nativity.
From the country of the kings, a road which crosses the river by a
bridge, leads to Bethlehem, and along this road the kings are seen
advancing, each with his proper attendants, armour, and banner.
Baldassar, the Moor, has a white banner, on which a negro in red is
painted; Melchior, the eldest king, has a blue banner, distinguished by
a golden moon; and Caspar, the third king, has a banner also blue, but
speckled with white stars.
These, with their retinue, all meet near the bridge, which they cross,
and enter Bethlehem together. The figures are repeated at the meeting
and at the city gates. While in the town, the train of the wise men
disperse themselves through the streets, mixing with the inhabitants,
while in an open corridor, the three kings are seen eagerly conversing
with Herod. Once more they are seen taking leave of him before they
are finally brought to the feet of the infant Saviour, who, seated on
the lap of his virgin mother, receives them with a benignity and grace
worthy of the pencil of Raffaelle himself.
Of the skilful grouping of the central subject, commonly called the
Wise Men’s Offering, of the beautiful and true action of each person,
the rich dresses of the attendants, the drawing of the figures, and
also that of the horses and camels, it is not my province to speak any
more than of the exquisitely finished execution. Yet all these assist
the history powerfully, and we might have been satisfied that all was
told.
But the painter did not rest here. On a broad road, winding along a
rocky valley, the kings are once more seen, after having paid their
homage to the Christ, going to their own land by a different way. Some
of their attendants have already reached the shores of the distant bay,
and are preparing the ships to receive their masters.
Meantime, the effects of Herod’s disappointment are discoverable.
On the other side of the town of Bethlehem, towards the bridge, the
murder of the innocents takes place; it is distant enough to veil its
horrors, near enough to distinguish the facts. But we are assured that
the child, and his mother, and Joseph, are safe; for we see them on the
road to Egypt, on the same side of the picture whence the southern king
arrived. As they pass, an idol, placed upon a column, bows and falls,
While each peculiar power foregoes his wonted seat.
And thus the history of the Adoration of the Three Kings, or Wise Men,
with its immediate consequences, is completed.
Of the two episodes, the smaller preparatory one to the left contains
three scenes, divided from each other by portions of woody landscape.
The most distant is the Annunciation; the middle is the Angel appearing
to the Shepherds; and the nearest, the Adoration of the Shepherds. All
composed and finished, as carefully as the scenes of the main action,
but by skilful management never interfering with it.
The greater or supplementary episode begins near the foreground, in a
recess of the hills through which the road leads, by which the kings
depart from Bethlehem. Christ is risen, and appears with the banner of
salvation, freed from the garments of the dead! Farther off he appears
to Mary Magdalene in the garden, and then to his mother; and farther
still he walks with the disciples towards Emmaus, where he breaks bread
and blesses it. Hard by, on the mount of the Ascension, the disciples
are kneeling, while the form of Christ is faintly seen through the
glory that mingles with the sky. But the purpose of his being on earth
would not be shown, were not the descent of the Holy Spirit seen on
the right hand. The event in itself has produced a beautiful picture,
and taken, as it should be, along with the great whole to which it
belongs, completes and perfects the history.
To the three remarkable works I have quoted as examples of histories,
with a variety of events treated in one and the same picture, I might
add many more; but I will content myself with naming a work, too much
neglected by modern travellers, in the chapel of San Felice, in the
great church of St. Anthony, at Padua. It is by Aldighieri, a pupil
of Giotto, and is, unfortunately, darkened by the erection of a huge
insulated marble altar-piece before it. The subject is the Crucifixion.
The journey of Christ to Calvary forms one great preparatory incident,
the crucifixion itself, and its attendant miracles, the main action:
and the casting lots for the sacred vestments, is the concluding
scene.--This is not the place to speak of the pathos Aldighieri has
thrown into the first division, the dignity amounting to grandeur in
the main action, or the skilful grouping and expression of the last
scene. But I think it will be allowed that the painter has done well
to unite the two minor actions with the greater, and thus complete the
history. The examples of one history carried on through a series of
pictures, are so numerous that the difficulty lies in choosing the
most striking. Cimabue’s and Giotto’s lives of Saint Francis at Assisi,
where each event is the subject of a separate picture; and Giotto’s
life of Christ and of the Virgin at Padua, may be thought by some
readers too antiquated to form authorities for the practice.
To such, therefore, I will recommend the example of Raffaelle in the
Loggie, where the history of the Old Testament is carried on in that
beautiful series of designs which ranges in order along the ceiling of
those magnificent corridors[162].
Luini’s series of pictures at Saronno, Andrea del Sarto’s at Florence,
and those of Domenichino at Grotto Ferrata, are among the finest works
of these great masters. Every series contains a history.
Luini’s are the life of the Virgin.
Those of Andrea del Sarto relate to the life of Saint John the Baptist,
and are among the most admired of his compositions.
In one of the pictures at Grotto Ferrata, where Saint Nilus, the
hero of the series, casts out the evil spirit from the demoniac boy,
Domenichino strives not unsuccessfully against the demoniac in the
Transfiguration, where, for once, it must be allowed, that Raffaelle
has fallen below Domenichino in truth of expression.
My third section of historical paintings is acknowledged by even those
who object to the others. It contains such pictures as show a single
action complete in itself.
I shall name a few examples among the antique painters, such as the
Ajax struck with the thunderbolt by Apollodorus, and the Infant
Hercules of Zeuxis. I am not sure whether to place the Contest of
Ulysses and Ajax for the Armour of Achilles, in this or the next class.
The pictures of Apelles appear to have been all either portraits
or belonging to the fancies. The Battle of Alexander and Darius,
by Philoxenus, seems, from description, to belong strictly to this
section, and no doubt there are very many others; but, as we are no
where told how many of the subjects were treated, it is impossible to
class them.
Of modern pictures belonging to this section, the first and greatest
is the Raising of Lazarus by Sebastian del Piombo[163], one of
the finest oil pictures in the world; Raffaelle’s Entombment of
Christ[164]; his Spassimo[165]; Titian’s Christ scourged[166];
Correggio’s Nativity[167]; Fra Bartolomeo’s Presentation of Christ in
the Temple[168]; Daniel da Volterra’s Descent from the Cross[169];
Albertinelli’s Salutation[170]; Spagnoletto’s Entombment[171]; the
small picture by Rembrandt of the Adoration of the Shepherds[172];
Rubens’ famous Descent from the Cross at Antwerp; and a thousand
others, that a moment’s recollection will bring to every body’s
remembrance. There are also a number of profane subjects treated so
as to bring them under this class; particularly Poussin’s Death of
Germanicus, and his Testament of Eudamidas. The great rival designs
of Leonardo da Vinci and Michael Angelo, namely, the Battle of the
Standard and the Surprise at the Bridge, now lost, were, if we may
trust descriptions, and some few remaining fragments, so treated, as
to bring them also into this section[173]; and I think no German would
forgive me if I were to omit Albert Durer’s Massacre of the Christian
Legions by Sapor the second[174].
Connected with this class, in the same manner as the Fancies are
with the Epic pictures, is a whole class composed of single figures
of an historical character. Among the first of these is Bellini’s
Christ[175]: several of Raffaelle’s Madonnas find their place here.
His Apostles certainly do[176], as well as his Saint Margaret[177].
There are many beautiful examples of this kind of picture by Giotto
at Florence, by Luini at Milan and Soronno, and by Bellini at Venice,
especially one in the little church of Santa Maria del Fiore. The
Judith of Allori is likewise a fine specimen[178]; but among the very
finest are Fra Bartolomeo’s Christ, and his Saint Mark[179]. These will
not belong to the pictures where supernatural beings are introduced,
they have too much the character of portraits, and might indeed be
called imaginary portraits; and no doubt the feeling intended to be
excited by the earliest of them was, the belief in their being true
representations of the objects of veneration. Among pictures of this
character are many _Ecce Homos_, of which the most afflicting to look
upon is that of Cigoli[180]; and we must also class here Coreggio’s
beautiful Magdalene[181].
The imaginary heads called Sybils, by Domenichino, Guido, and Guercino,
the Magdalenes of Guido, the Cleopatras, Sophonisbas, and Lucretias,
are surely left near enough to their old dignity of historical
pictures, when ranged under the same head with those I have just named.
DRAMATIC PICTURES.
This class is naturally divided into two sections: the higher Tragedy,
and Drama of a mixed character.
The ancients, from what we learn by description, cultivated both kinds.
For examples of the first we have the Iphigenia of Timanthes; the
Theban mother of Aristides, and the Medea of Timomachus.
Of the second kind, there were the Feigned Madness of Ulysses by
Euphranor; the Great Sacrifice by Pausias, and several others, which we
can now never know but by description.
When I speak of the higher tragedy, I do not mean such only where blood
is shed before the spectator, but that grave kind which brings all the
inmost serious thoughts together, and prepares the mind for the sublime
and the terrible.
I do not fear to name the Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci first in
this class. Seen only in its decay, and only to be studied in separate
drawings of the heads, or in Uggione’s copy[182], it still obtains
a power over the imagination that few other works of art ever reach.
The sublime calmness of the Saviour in pronouncing that one of them
shall betray him, allows us for the moment to sympathise with the
heart-struck apostles, who, according to their various characters,
self-confident, or self-doubting, are ready with the words, “Lord! is
it I?” or, “though I die with thee I will not betray thee.” Never was
expression more intense, or action more true. Again we turn to the
Saviour, and feel that in his soul the sacrifice was already complete,
the bitterness of death had been tasted, and the full agony of the
cross endured[183].
At Viterbo there is in the church of the Franciscans an altar-piece,
designed by Michael Angelo, and painted by Sebastian del Piombo. It is
composed of two figures only. A very pale moonlight shows the figure of
the Virgin seated on the earth, and pressed close to the body of her
crucified son, which is extended on a white linen cloth before her: her
face is turned upwards in the attitude of prayer. Words cannot convey
an idea of the awful and reverential feelings excited by this picture.
But Raffaelle is above all others a Dramatic painter. The Miracle of
Bolsena in the Stanze is a marvellous scene. The officiating priest;
the self-convicted, and now convinced, doubter; the reasoning,
calculating spectators on one side; the enthusiastic believers on the
other, all conduce to the great event which is to produce a further and
permanent effect.
The Incendio del Borgo is another strikingly tragic composition, and
were this a proper place, it would be easy to prove the claims of the
Cartoons to a high rank in the class, but for my purpose it is enough
to name them as belonging to it.
The Crucifixion by Tintoret is among the grandest Dramatic pictures
I have seen[184]; and there is a picture at Venice which accident
prevented my seeing, but which, if it deserves Vasari’s description,
ranks among the first of this class. “A picture (by Giorgione) in the
college of San Marco, where the turbid sky thunders, the very canvass
trembles, and the figures start and disperse themselves through the
scene in the darkness of the shadow[185].” The subject was the bringing
of the body of Saint Mark to Venice on board of ship.
A picture by Caravaggio, less seen than it deserves to be, must be
named here. It is in the chapel of Saint John the Baptist attached to
the great church at Malta, and represents the decollation of the saint.
Saint John and the executioner occupy the immediate foreground: a woman
leaving the court of the prison, where the scene is placed, applies her
hands to her ears that she may not hear the fall of the axe; while two
prisoners are looking, with the curiosity of terror, from the grated
window of the gaol. The composition, colour, and expression are all
terrible and highly dramatic.
To the second, or mixed class of Dramatic pictures, belong many of
Paul Veronese’s great works, such as the Great Supper of Saint Gregory
in the Refectory of the Servites, at Santa Maria del Monte, near
Vicenza: his Marriage at Cana; the pictures in the church of Saint
Sebastian at Venice, and many others. A great number of Tintoret’s
pictures also find their proper place here[186]. Here also I would
place Titian’s Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple[187]; and here
some of Bonifaccio’s beautiful pictures, particularly the Feasting of
the Prodigal Son, a work that, for composition, colour, and expression,
is among the most beautiful I know[188]. I must not omit Andrea
Mantegna’s Triumphs[189], nor Rubens’ imitations of them. Poussin’s
Triumphs of David[190] are certainly dramatic, and so, perhaps, are his
Sacraments[191].
But it is time to consider the variety of character among the
Portraits, and to endeavour to class them.
OF PORTRAIT.
By historical portrait, I do not mean merely the likenesses of persons
whose names are to be found in history, or Lely’s and Kneller’s
works would have a chance of overpowering Raffaelle and Titian.
But such portraits as Apelles painted of Alexander, or Protogenes
of the tragic writer, Philiscus, sitting musing in his study, or as
Raffaelle painted of Giulio II[192], and Cæsar Borgia[193], or Titian
of Charles V.[194], and the Doge Grimani[195], or Andrea del Sarto of
the astute Machiavelli[196], or Velasquez of Pope Innocent X[197],
and King Philip[198], to say nothing of Rembrandt’s Burgomasters, or
Rubens’ Duke of Alva, or Vandyke’s Charles I. and his unhappy Queen,
and scarcely less unhappy courtiers. These are all single portraits
historically treated.
The second division of portraits must comprehend those so treated,
and composed of more than one figure. Such are the Leo X. and his
secretaries at Florence by Raffaelle; Titian’s unfinished Leo with his
two attendants at Naples, and his Cornaro family[199]; Paul Veronese’s
Pisani family in the characters of the family of Darius[200]; Rubens’
Conversation piece, composed of Grotius, Muersins, Lipsius, and
himself; Vandyke’s Charles I. with his Children; and such is also
Holbein’s family of Sir Thomas Moore.
But even the nameless persons painted by great men have often a
character and style which belong to historic treatment, and must not
be confounded with what Fuseli aptly calls “the remembrancers of
insignificance,” a class, however, not without merit, for it often
gratifies the affection of friendship, recals pleasing recollections,
and at worst, affords the painter occasions for the study of nature.
PICTURES OF FAMILIAR LIFE
Admit of being distributed into
Grave familiar subjects;
And subjects of Farce or Caricature.
That the ancients cultivated this branch of painting, I have already
mentioned, and given an example in Pyreicus, nick-named Rhyparographus,
on account of his pictures of shops and booths, of markets, and those
who supplied them, along with their beasts of burden. Callicles and
Calaces were both painters of little pictures, exhibited along with
plays and interludes, and no small number of painters caricatured the
remarkable public and private men of their times, by representing them
under the forms of animals and insects of different kinds.
Of the graver familiar life painters among the moderns, Ostade, Jan
Stein, Gerard Dow, Metzu, Terburg, have left innumerable examples, nor
have they failed in the class where Teniers holds the pre-eminence of
broader farce.
Had I not resolved against naming our own living artists, I should have
great examples to place in both these classes. In caricature, from the
days of Patch and Bunbury to the present time, we have exceeded all
times and nations.
LANDSCAPE.
Of the four distinct kinds of landscape, the Epic landscape in the
hands of Titian or Poussin unites with the grandest subjects of
painting. How admirably the landscape in the Peter Martyr aids the
subject! and in Sebastian del Piombo’s altar-piece at Viterbo, how
grand is the effect of that low horizon and rocky barren distance seen
faintly by the moonlight! Poussin’s Deluge is of the same sublime
character and hue, and as in the other two examples lends force to the
figures to which it is subordinate.
Of a more cheerful character other landscapes of Titian, some of
Mola, and many of Poussin, which I should call historical, divide the
interest with the figures, or rather the figures gain by being placed
in such scenes; Poussin’s Burial of Phocion[201], his two Israelites
bearing the Bunch of Grapes from the promised Land[202], the Exposure
and the Finding of Moses[203], are but a few of those he has painted of
this character, in which he is the great master.
The Antique landscapes must sometimes have resembled these, or they
would have been unsuitable to the subjects to which they formed
backgrounds. Rocky, wild, and terrible must have been the island,
and lurid the colour of the sea and sky, in which Apollodorus placed
his Ajax. When gayer subjects peopled the scene, such as the young
Satyrs watching the sleeping Cyclops, we learn that woody scenery was
imitated, and painting for the theatre had accustomed the ancients to
represent buildings and open country.
In the Imaginative, or poetic landscape, Titian claims the first place.
It is enough to name the Feast of the Gods, began by John Bellini,
but finished, and the whole landscape added, by Titian[204], or the
landscape of the Bacchus and Ariadne[205], and those of the fine
pictures in the Bridgewater Gallery, impressed as they are with the
grandeur of the wild forests and bold mountains of his native province.
Poussin follows him closely in this department, but his excellences are
owing to careful choice and study, combining much of antique feeling
with the rich sources he found in nature. His Calisto[206] is a very
fine example: his Arcadia[207] another, and so, generally speaking, are
all those where he has introduced Bacchanalian subjects.
Where the landscape itself without accompanying figures is considered,
Claude Lorraine is unrivalled, whether he chooses the sober hue of the
Enchanted Castle[208], or the glowing sunsets seen from the shores of
Italy, with all the riches of architecture and shipping, or softened by
inland landscape such as only Italy can suggest[209].
Highly imaginative also are the landscapes of Salvator Rosa, who
is among painters, like the writers of romance among poets, bold,
wild, and interesting. But I must only name Gaspar Poussin, Annibale
Caracci, and Domenichino among the Italian landscape painters, and
then hasten to Rembrandt, whose grand and characteristic landscapes
equal in sentiment and effect his historical works and his portraits.
Nor is Rubens less remarkable: witness his Saint George[210], and the
landscapes of the Munich Gallery. Cuyp, whether representing the cattle
and grazing grounds, or the busy river and canal scenes of his native
country, is inimitable; and Ruysdael and Vanderveldt each stand at the
head of a class far above the painters of mere views.
Yet views in some hands acquire value, if not dignity. The very truth
of Canaletti’s Venice becomes poetical. And now and then Vernet has
made a seaport fit to gratify the vanity of his master, Louis XIII., in
more senses than one.
Thus have I endeavoured to distribute into classes that charming
department of the art which the poet loved who hung his bower of
enchantment with
Whate’er Lorraine light touch’d with soft’ning hue,
Or savage Rosa dashed, or learned Poussin drew.
It now only remains to speak of the painters of animals. Every body
will at once feel, that if the Greeks counted Apelles, and Pausias,
and Nicias, among their best animal painters, that if Polygnotus chose
to introduce a dog even into the Battle of Marathon, and that if
part of the great fame of Protogenes arose from the manner in which
he painted the dogs and the game in his Ialysus, the moderns have to
boast of Rubens, whose various excellences would have been incomplete
without his hunts of the lion and the boar; and Snyders, though
professing little else, raised his animals to the dignity of history,
by his manner of treating them. I might quote the pampered lap-dogs of
Titian[211], and the graceful favourites of Paul Veronese[212], and
even the tame partridge of the grave John Bellini[213], as well as the
horses of Vandyke and Velasquez, as instances of occasional success in
these things.
But I cannot regard the diligent Paul Potter as more than a very
excellent cattle portrait painter, so unequal are his choice of subject
and his treatment to his exquisite execution. Of Cuyp’s animals, I can
only repeat what I have said as to his landscape, with which they are
so intimately connected, that they form a part of it; and the same is
true of Adrian Vanderveldt’s.
This essay has grown to great length, because I have been tempted to a
larger list of instances and examples than I intended; but yet I have
abstained from naming many others well suited to my purpose. Of those I
have quoted, with the exception of antique works, there are not six of
which I have not myself seen the originals.
FOOTNOTES:
[142] Fuseli felt the incongruity and inconvenience of throwing
together all the variety of pictures which commonly take the name of
historical paintings, and has judiciously divided, and eloquently
supported the division of that class of pictures into nearly the same
sections as I have proposed. But he looked too disdainfully on all
art which he did not practise, to have great weight; and is on that
account, as well as on some others, less followed than he deserves; he
has not condescended to notice any other branch of painting except the
historical portrait.
[143] For the truth of this, see any catalogue of either ancient or
modern masters.
[144] Pliny says, b. xxv. ch. 2, that the Greek authors on Physic,
Cratevus, Dionysius, and Metrodorus, painted every herb in colours; and
under their portraits they couched and subscribed their several names
and effects.--_Holland’s Trans._
[145] Reynolds for instance. But Fuseli more particularly, as I have
mentioned in a former note.
[146] It is worth the reader’s while to turn to an abridged account of
this curious table in Moor’s three Essays. Cebes himself, seated by
the death-bed of Socrates, and learning to hope with something like
confidence for the immortality of the soul, furnishes a beautiful moral
picture, which even the disagreeable translation of the Phædo, by
Taylor, cannot spoil.
[147] From MS. notes on the old pictures of Italy. Of this class,
there is a magnificent early Flemish picture, of which I never saw the
original: it is Van Eyck’s worship of the Lamb. There is an excellent
description of it in Madame Schopfenhauer’s pleasant volumes on the
ancient Flemish schools of art; and one in a periodical work published
at Brussels, in which there is an etching of the whole subject.
[148] If painting were not exclusively my subject, I might here mention
a number of ingenious allegorical prints, especially the various dances
of death.
[149] About the year 1345. I shall have occasion hereafter to notice
these pictures again. But I here subjoin a literal translation of the
description of the first of them. “In the second place the aforesaid
[150]Cola admonished the governors and people to do well by an
allegory, which he caused to be painted on the Palace of the Capitol
opposite the market, on the outer wall above the chamber; the painted
allegory was in this form. There was painted a vast sea, the waves
horrid and much troubled; in the midst thereof was a ship little less
than foundered, without a rudder, without a sail; in this ship, so
dangerously placed, there was a widow woman, clad in black, girded
with the girdle of grief; loose her scarf from her bosom, and her hair
dishevelled as if she wept; she was on her knees, her hands crossed and
pressed to her breast as in prayer, as she were perishing, for such was
her danger; above was written THIS IS ROME. Around this ship, below the
water, there were four sunken ships, their sails fallen, their masts
broken, their rudders lost; in every one a drowned woman, dead. The
first was called Babylon; the second, Carthage; the third, Troy; the
fourth, Jerusalem. The superscription bore, that these cities had been
brought by injustice, first to danger and then to destruction. A label
from the mouths of these four women was inscribed--
Thou wast raised high above every sovereignty,
Now we await thy final wreck.
On the left hand were two islands, on the one a woman sitting in a
posture of shame, with the superscription, THIS IS ITALY; her label of
speech bore--
Thou tookest the guardianship of all lands,
And only me thou ownedst for a sister.
In the other island were four women, their cheeks on their hands, their
elbows on their knees, in most sorrowful action, and saying,--
Thou wast accompanied by every virtue,
Now thou art abandoned on the wide sea.
These were the four cardinal virtues, Temperance, Prudence, Justice,
and Fortitude.
On the right was a little island in which was a kneeling woman; her
hand stretched to heaven, as in prayer; she was dressed in white, her
name was Christian Faith, and her verse was--
Oh! highest father, my lord and conductor,
If Rome perish what becomes of me?
Above all this, on the right hand, were four orders of animals, with
horns at their mouths, blowing like winds and causing tempests on the
sea, and helping to increase the danger of the ship. The first order
was of lions, wolves, and bears. The inscription bore, _these are the
potent Barons and unjust Governors_.
The second order were dogs, pigs, and he-goats; their inscription was,
These are evil councillors, the parasites of the nobles. The third
order were rams, dragons, and foxes; their inscription was, These are
the false officers, judges, and notaries. The fourth order consisted of
hares, cats, goats, and apes; their superscription bore, that they were
the populace, thieves, murderers, adulterers, and spoilers.
Above all was painted heaven; in the midst of which was the divine
Majesty coming to judgment; out of his mouth proceeded two swords, one
pointing one way, the other, the other: on one hand was St. Peter, on
the other St Paul, in prayer.
And when the people saw this allegory every one marvelled.”
[150] Rienzi’s nick-name, from Nicolo Rienzi.
[151] Reynold’s, in his Fifth Discourse, says that Michael Angelo
“never needed, or seemed to disdain, to look abroad for foreign help,”
and contrasts this _originality_ with Raffaelle’s practice of using
occasionally the inventions of his predecessors. But Reynolds, if he
had been acquainted with the work of Signorelli, would have seen that
Michael Angelo took from him, not only single figures of great power,
but at least one group of importance, which he used with little change
in the Last Judgment.
[152] “BE STILL, AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD.”
[153] At Dresden.
[154] In Venice.
[155] In Venice.
[156] In Rome.
[157] At Bologna.
[158] In Spain.
[159] In the possession of the Duke of Wellington.
[160] Raffaelle’s engraved designs of the same subject are still more
charming than those of the Farnesina. The decorations of his own villa,
near the Porta del Popolo, and those still existing in Mr. M----’s
villa, on the Palatine Hill, yield to neither.
[161] Hans Hemelink is said to have been a soldier, who, after
receiving a severe wound, was cured in the hospital at Bruges; and
that the first of his pictures that attracted public attention, he
painted in consequence of a vow made while under cure. Having recovered
his health, and fulfilled his vow at home, he went on a pilgrimage to
Saint Jago de Compostella, in Spain, and was heard no more of. The fine
picture described formed part of the Boiserée collection. There are two
exquisite heads in the Florence Gallery, by Hemelink.
[162] These designs are the originals of the set of prints usually
called Raffaelle’s Bible.
[163] In our National Gallery.
[164] At Rome in the Borghese.
[165] In Spain.
[166] At Paris.
[167] At Dresden.
[168] At Vienna.
[169] At Rome, in the church of the Trinità del Monte.
[170] Florence Gallery.
[171] At Naples, in the church of San Martino.
[172] In the National Gallery. The expression in this picture makes
me prefer it to the Woman taken in Adultery. I should have named the
Blinding of Sampson in the Schœnborn collection at Vienna, but for the
atrocious choice of the painter as to the time and action.
[173] A picture in brown and white, after Michael Angelo’s cartoon,
exists at Holkham. A drawing was made by Rubens of part of the Battle
of the Standard, from which the print published by Edelink was taken.
[174] This very beautiful work is in the Belvedere Gallery at Vienna.
An excellent copy, by Rottenhamer, is in the King of Bavaria’s
collection.
[175] At Dresden. When the Russian army was at Dresden, in 1814, this
picture was borrowed for an altar-piece for Alexander’s temporary
chapel: on removing, the picture was packed up and carried off as
lawful plunder, but the curator of the Gallery chose his time and place
of remonstrance so well that it was restored.
[176] In the church of St Paul’s, without the walls of Rome.
[177] Now in Russia.
[178] In the Florence Gallery.
[179] Both in the Pitti Palace, Florence.
[180] In the Pitti Palace.
[181] At Dresden.
[182] Marco Uggione, a contemporary, made an oil copy, thought very
inferior at the time, but it is now the best memorial of the picture:
it belongs to the Royal Academy. Some works in fresco, of great merit,
by Uggione, are collected in the Brera at Milan.
[183] Of the innumerable “Last Suppers” painted after this, none
reached this sublimity of expression. Gravity and dignity are the
highest characteristics of the best, such as that of Andrea del Sarto.
Many degenerated into the pure picturesque: and once in the hands of
Tintoret, the subject became almost absurd.
[184] At Schleissheim.
[185] The picture was rolled up as it had come from Paris. The
description is from the preface to the third book of the Lives of the
Painters, where in many of the later editions the picture has been
given to Palma.
[186] Particularly those in the Scuola di San Marco.
[187] Painted for the Carità, now in the Gallery of the Fine Arts,
Venice.
[188] Gallery at Venice.
[189] Several of these are at Hampton Court, others at Munich.
[190] At Dulwich.
[191] In the Bridgewater collection.
[192] At Florence.
[193] Borghese palace, Rome.
[194] Vienna, and in Spain.
[195] Grimani palace, Venice.
[196] Doria palace, Rome.
[197] Doria palace, Rome. This pope was of the Panfili Doria family.
[198] Often repeated.
[199] Belonging to His Grace of Northumberland, who allows nobody to
see it. The copy by Gainsborough is fine; and is in more liberal hands.
[200] Pisani palace, Venice.
[201] In France.
[202] In the possession of Earl Spencer.
[203] In the Louvre.
[204] In the collection of Camuccini, at Rome.
[205] In the National Gallery.
[206] In the possession of the Marquis of Westminster.
[207] In the possession of the Duke of Devonshire.
[208] In the possession of Mr. Wells of Redleaf.
[209] Some very fine ones of this description are in the National
Gallery, and some in the Bridgewater Collection.
[210] In our National Gallery.
[211] Particularly in the picture of the Child in the Strozzi Palace at
Florence.
[212] Those pretty greyhounds, which appear under the table in the
Supper at the house of Simon, the study for which Mr. Rogers has, and
which are often, repeated.
[213] The pretty bird is picking up the crumbs under the table at
Emmaus.
ESSAY VI.
ON THE MATERIALS USED BY PAINTERS.
However admirable his taste may be, he is but half a painter who can
only conceive his subject, and is without knowledge of the mechanical
part of his art.
REYNOLDS’ NOTES ON DU FRESNOY.
When first scholars began to study the works of the ancients, at that
busy period distinguished by the revival of letters and the arts, the
discoveries they made were so new and so surprising, that a kind of
enchanted mist overspread every object in their eyes, and all they
looked back upon was magnified or distorted.
They found so much wisdom and knowledge in the writings of the
ancients, that they, as is natural, thought that all antiquity was
wise and knowing; and in proportion to their exaggerated esteem for
the ancients, they encouraged a contempt for their contemporaries and
countrymen, at least as extravagant.
A little consideration would have told them, however, that many
things must continue unaltered in nature, though fashion or accident
should vary the form in all societies, after the first conveniences,
comforts, and luxuries of civilised life have been invented. But here
the pride of unusual learning stepped in, and it would have mortified
the scholar to think that what he pored over by his midnight lamp in
the books of Greece and Rome, could have anything in common with the
manners and occupations of his vulgar neighbours. Thus an ignorance
founded on prejudice was begotten, and has been maintained in part even
to the present day, notwithstanding the stores of common knowledge
opened to us by the discovery of Pompeii and its neighbouring towns.
Scholars and antiquaries rejoiced indeed at the finding of those towns,
because their position, long matter of controversial speculation, was
ascertained; but I very much doubt if they did not also feel something
like mortification, on beholding open proof that the materials and
contrivances of the cooks of these our degenerate days continue
like those of the ancients, and that there is no Greek method of
eating[214].
Every day is adding something to the conviction of those who required
proof, that where the end to be answered is the same, the tools and
materials, employed in different ages and countries, cannot choose but
be wonderfully alike.
This homely way of considering such matters is not, I know, agreeable
to the moderately learned, who think much of small acquirements; but,
to real scholars and philosophers, truth is at all times, and under
every form, acceptable.
I purpose in this essay to give such an account as I can collect, of
the materials used by painters; the substances upon which they painted,
the pigments they coloured with, the vehicles by means of which the
colours were applied, and the tools employed in painting.
It would appear, from the judiciously conducted researches of some late
travellers, that some of the earliest coloured work in Egypt is upon
bare sand-stone. Where that rock is of very fine grit the water-colours
seem to have answered well, but where the grit was coarse the work
became gross and uneven. A remedy was therefore applied; a plaster of
very fine lime and some kind of size was spread over the stone, and
the colour applied most probably before the plaster was dry, and so
approaching to fresco painting, which doubtless grew out of that older
manner. The lately opened Etruscan tombs show the same variety; colour
upon the bare sand-stone and colour upon thin fine plaister.
The advantage of applying colour upon a damp or even wet ground must
have been abundantly apparent, from the success of the painted vases so
early brought to perfection in Greece and Tuscany; and accordingly, in
the earliest pictures of any magnitude described as painted in either
country, we recognise genuine fresco painting[215].
But walls were not always at hand for the painter; and many were eager
to have pictures which they might transport to other countries than
those of the painter, either for the religious purposes of decorating
temples and fulfilling vows, or purely for the pleasure of possessing
works of art, or, finally, for the purposes of trade.
A substitute easily occurred. Wooden panels, well seasoned, and smeared
over with plaster, smoothed either with pumice, or some substance
answering the same purpose, were found to answer admirably. Yet even
here it would seem that the Egyptians led the way; for in order to
prepare the coffins of their mummies for their painted decorations,
they were in like manner prepared with a fine plaster of lime or chalk,
exceedingly thin[216].
The mummy cases were made of various woods; among others the
Egyptian fig, which is often translated sycamore[217]. From Pliny’s
description[218] it is not certain which of the known figs was the
Egyptian sycamore. The grain is light, close, and tough, and the timber
is best seasoned in water.
The wood usually employed for panels for large pictures was the heart
of the female larch. Pliny says, that painters have found by experiment
that it is smooth and clean, and not apt to split or warp; he adds that
it will last for ever[219]. Theophrastus speaks of the same wood for
the same purposes, and also of the cornel[220]. The cedar and cypress
appear also to have been used. For smaller pictures it is probable
that a greater variety of trees furnished tables for the painter.
The tablets used in the schools at Sicyon are said to have been of
box-wood. Holly was also particularly fitted for the purpose, by the
closeness of its grain and its durability. The earliest modern Italians
used also the wood of the fig tree well dried and seasoned[221],
besides the larch, ilex, sycamore, and walnut tree.
The ancients prepared their boards or tablets with a thin ground of
chalk and size of some kind[222], whether a size of flour paste, or
weak carpenter’s glue, does not appear. In the thirteenth century
the painters took the trouble to make the white for laying grounds
themselves. Cennino’s directions on the subject are curious on more
accounts than one. He says, “Take the pinion bones and ribs of
chickens, the staler the better, and, just as you find them under the
table[223], put them into the fire till they become whiter than the
ashes themselves.” After this he gives directions to pound, wash and
dry them thoroughly, and to keep them in a dry paper for use; he allows
certain bones of the sheep also to be used, but, as he always insists
on staleness, I suppose he wishes them to be free from grease[224].
Cennino’s boards were prepared with great care, washed with many
waters, and pumiced to perfect smoothness; the ground to be laid on
thin and rendered smooth and even with the hand, or, as he says, the
fat part of the thumb.
So far the boards for the school of Sicyon and those for the school
of Giotto appear to have been much alike. The next step seems to me
also the same. The pupils were to draw very lightly with a metal
point--Fuseli calls the antique one a cestrum--upon the white ground,
and if anything was amiss it was easily effaced. Cennino directs
that the tool should be tipped with silver, whatever metal the main
part might be made of, that it should be moderately sharp, and very
smooth[225].
We have not any direct evidence that linen cloth or canvass was used to
paint upon before the reign of Nero, who ordered an immense portrait
of himself to be painted on a linen cloth one hundred and twenty feet
in height. Pliny, who relates the fact, does not say whether it were
stretched on a frame, or whether it covered planks, to prevent, in
some degree, the warping and splitting, to which so many joinings as
would have been necessary in a table of that size must have rendered
them liable.
Several writers, and particularly Monsieur Durand[226], have imagined
that Pliny says, painting on linen had never till then been heard of.
I think, however, that it is the colossal size of the picture that
had not been heard of because we find that, at that very time, it
was no uncommon thing to decorate the places for the exhibition of
prize-fighters with hangings, on which were pictures of remarkable
fights; these, Pliny expressly says, were painted cloths[227], and,
were it of consequence, I think passages might be collected to show
the great probability that linen cloth was used by painters where works
of little durability were required. The preparation with chalk and size
must have been the same as that for painting on panel.
The use of linen books, for the registering private affairs is
mentioned as common, before paper made of the papyrus came into general
use[229]. Fronto saw many books of linen preserved in the ancient
archives of Anagni[230]. And even after the papyrus and parchment came
into use, Pliny mentions that several Eastern nations still made their
letters on woven cloth.
But is your worship’s folly less than mine,
When I with wonder view some rude design
In crayons or in charcoal, to invite
The crowd to see the gladiators fight?
Methinks in very deed they mount the stage,
And seem in real combat to engage:
Now in strong attitude they dreadful bend,
Wounded they wound, they parry and defend.
FRANCIS’ HORACE, Book ii. Sat. 7.
We are told that both Parrhasius and Zeuxis were in the habit of making
drawings on parchment[231]. We know also that Greek herbalists drew and
coloured the plants they wrote of in books. It is therefore improbable
that they should have overlooked the light, pliable, yet tough
material, linen cloth. It might seem less lasting than panel; but for
small subjects it was surely preferable either to paper or parchment,
and as the use of it was not unknown for writing upon, why should we
suppose painters so long neglected it?
The Mexicans, though certainly acquainted with the use of painting
on wood, used also the prepared skin of a small deer, and the paper
made from the Agave Americana; but they preferred cotton cloth, which
they prepared with a white shining earth, as they did their paper and
parchment, and as the Egyptians prepared their coffins, and the Greek
planters their tablets.
Vasari, whose carelessness is so notorious that nobody now thinks of
depending on anything he says, beyond what it is certain he could
have seen, attributes to Margaritone, about A.D. 1270, the first
use of fine linen cloth, which he says he pasted over his panels to
prevent cracks and rents. But there are many examples of Italian
pictures before Margaritone, where the panel is covered with linen,
whether for the purpose above mentioned, or for the sake of securing
a more equal ground, is of no importance. It is enough if we find the
practice established among those most likely to have inherited at least
the mechanical part of ancient painting. Cennino gives particular
directions for laying down cloth upon panel, and he professes to
teach the practice of Giotto. But Giotto’s first works go back to the
thirteenth century[232], and he adopted the practice of his master,
Cimabue, and learned whatever his friend Gaddo Gaddi could teach him
of the methods of the Greek painters, in company with whom Gaddo had
been employed in decorating Saint Mark’s, in Venice, and Santa Maria
Maggiore, in Rome; and we may hence conclude that Margaritone only did
what older painters had done before.
Indeed from his personal character it is unlikely that he should have
set the example of a new practice, for he is said to have been weary of
life on account of the new fashions in art that were obtaining towards
the end of his career, and to have envied the younger painters for
their success[233].
As the ancient painting on marble appears to have been merely for the
sake of capricious additions to the beautiful variegated veins of
nature, it is not worth naming.
With regard to the pigments used by the ancients, the greater number
are employed still. All the ochres, the vermilion, white lead,
lamp-black, and so on, appear to have been prepared and applied either
in fresco or distemper, as they are now. With regard to the colours for
pictures on panel also, there appears to be only the difference that
modern improvements in chemistry have introduced.
It may not be without interest to compare Pliny’s account of colouring
substances in the first century with that of Cennino in the fourteenth,
and these with the list of pigments now employed. It will be more
difficult to collect information as to the vehicles used in painting;
but I do not despair of suggesting to the consideration of the
antiquarian artist a few points which may lead to farther knowledge.
But, before I proceed, I must notice the common belief, founded, it is
true, upon an expression of Pliny’s, that the ancient painters, even
Apelles himself, used but four colours, and that these were white and
black; and red and yellow ochres.
The absurdity of the thing ought of itself to have awakened the
spirit of criticism, apt enough sometimes to detect errors. But
this was so marvellous a thing, and raised the ancients so far
above all contemporaries in skill, that the seduction to moderns
was irresistible, so one after another, scholars and critics, have
repeated the four-coloured passage, without regard to the context,
without comparing one assertion of the author with another.
If the whole passage where the famous sentence is found be read, it
will appear that Pliny is declaiming after his accustomed manner
against the luxury of the Romans, of his time, and particularly their
indulgence in fine colours, their very walls, and ships, and funeral
cars being coloured, as he says, with blue and scarlet of the most
costly kind; while the ancient painters produced their fine works with
only four colours, naming the commonest and coarsest he can recollect
for the sake of contrast; and produces as witnesses, the works of the
painters, Apelles, Echion, Melanthus, and Nichomachus.
Now, whoever will take the trouble to read a little farther, will find
that Pliny exclaims with as much bitterness against the use of large
earthen dishes as against the luxury of colour; and brings examples
equally forcible to prove that it was wise and virtuous to love little
cups.
And, again, if the nineteenth book be referred to, what pathetic
complaints of the decline of cabbage eating will be found, and how
monstrous he thought it that a man should buy a fish or a fowl at
market when his forefathers fed upon salad! Then the enormity committed
by Apicius in teaching young Drusus not to like cabbage sprouts so well
as broccoli, and the reprimand of Tiberius addressed to the youth on
the occasion, are good specimens of Pliny’s love for the “wisdom of
his ancestors,” and his little consideration for the great benefits he
himself enjoyed from more modern improvements. Then he laments that
asses may eat thistles while the common people of Rome are debarred
from cardoons and artichokes; and I verily believe, that were his
respect for Cato not in the way, we should have had a philippic against
those who presumed to eat asparagus larger than wheat-straw; but Cato,
it seems, was among the first who had asparagus beds near Rome; so with
one growl at such as devoured the monstrous plants from Ravenna, he
allows that cultivated asparagus may be eaten.
But Pliny himself contradicts the story of the four colours. In the
instance of Apelles, how could the Venus Anadyomene, she who was rising
from the _green_ or _azure_ ocean, under a bright _blue_ sky, have
been painted with lamp-black, white chalk, ruddle, and yellow ochre
only? Then Apelles lived after Zeuxis; and if Zeuxis painted grapes,
whence got he the green and purple, if none but the four chaste, grave,
and solemn colours were known? What becomes of the monochromes, which
Pliny himself says preceded by far the time of Apelles, yet they were
painted, according to him, with dragon’s blood, a pigment by no means
resembling any of the four orthodox colours?
But such instances occur at every page. I will point out one more, in
which we have other authority for contradicting him besides his own. He
tells us that Micon painted the temple of Theseus. Pausanias and others
say the same. Now Micon was contemporary with Polygnotus, consequently,
at least 150 years before Apelles’ time. Some of his pictures were
painted flat on stucco within the temple; the rest were coloured
bas-reliefs. But the stucco, though the traces of pictures and subjects
are gone, retains the marks, or rather stains of the colours--so does
the sculpture; and among those colours we find vestiges of bronze
and gold-coloured arms, of a _blue_ sky, and of blue, green, and red
drapery[234].
In the catacombs of Egypt, in times long anterior to the great painters
of Greece, blues and greens are as commonly found as yellows and reds.
In the ancient sepulchres of Etruria, blue and green are employed along
with other colours, and sometimes capriciously enough, for there is a
very conspicuous blue horse in one of the chambers.
But we have an authority far above these. Moses expressly mentions
the colours, scarlet, red, blue, and purple, when he describes the
furniture of the ark of the covenant, and the vestments of the priests.
With these facts before them, it appears incomprehensible that a single
hasty expression of an author, however respectable, should have been
dwelt upon and adopted almost as an article of faith by painters and
critics in Italy, France, and England.
If, instead of the expressions of Pliny, writers upon colours had
adopted the words Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates about midway
between the times of Polygnotus and Apelles, we should have had the
orthodox number of colours increased to twelve.
In the Phædo, in that last beautiful fable which Socrates relates to
comfort his friends, just before he bathes and prepares to drink the
poison, he tells of a world inhabited by the immortals, to whom the
guidance of human affairs is given, as well as of a world prepared for
the spirits of good men; and says, this superior “world, if surveyed
from on high, appears like a globe covered with twelve skins, various
and distinguished with colours, a pattern of which are the colours
found among us, and which our painters use[235].”
But there would have been nothing marvellous, nothing out of the reach
of other men, in admitting that the greatest painters of antiquity were
provided with a good palette of colours. It was more agreeable to make
them execute extraordinary works with inadequate means, and so keep
them as a race apart, and far excelling what these degenerate days can
produce.
It would not have been worth while to notice Pliny’s splenetic sentence
on the four colours, had it not been rendered important by the use,
or rather abuse, of it in modern times, and I could not let it pass
unnoticed and uncontradicted, when so many proofs of its want of
foundation were to be found in his own book, and in numberless facts
connected with the most ancient works of art in existence.
I will now proceed to give such an account as I have been able to glean
from writers in different ages, of the pigments either formerly or now
in use.
Of the white colouring matters, that most used by modern painters
could not have been of great value to the ancients, unless they had
some oils, or vehicles equivalent, wherewith to apply it; for it turns
black when used in water or fresco painting. I mean ceruse, or white
lead[236]. Pliny speaks of that from Spain as the best for painters;
and he also names calcined ceruse, the use of which was discovered by
the accident of a ship taking fire in the port of Piræus, when the
ceruse in pots which was on board was consequently calcined. It is
remarkable that these pots of ceruse had been brought from Spain for
the use of the Greek ladies, who painted their faces with it.
Cennino praises the same white highly; but warns fresco painters
against it[237]; and our modern artists use it to temper most of their
colours in oil.
Next to the ceruse, the ancients valued as white a natural earth from
Egypt, Crete, and Cyrene, which Pliny tells us is said to be hardened
sea foam mixed with mud, and that accordingly minute shells were found
in it. This should be the _meerschaum_, so valued for the bolls of
tobacco-pipes in Germany, but the meerschaum has no shells. He calls it
Parætonum, and says it made the best and finest wash for walls and fine
stucco. There was also a very fine white pigment, made of chalk, ground
with the white glass of which rings and other ornaments were made; it
was therefore called annulare.
Next to this, as a natural earth, that called Eretria, both raw and
calcined, was valued; and then Melinum, from the isle of _Melos_; which
last was, however, often too unctuous for painters’ use, in which case
it suited the fullers better.
Giotto’s white was called Bianco di San Giovanni, and seems to have
been composed of the finest lime, repeatedly washed and beaten to
purify it, and then made into small cakes, and dried in the sun. The
natural white earths were also used, especially in fresco painting.
In modern practice many white earths and some preparations of shells
are used. Besides these, and white lead, there are also preparations of
zinc, tin, and barytes, which are available in different departments of
art.
Of yellows, it was impossible for any one seeking to miss them, as they
abound in most countries; and those of the most durable and best kinds,
namely the ochres.
The Attic and Gallic sils or ochres were pale, and were used for lights
by Polygnotus and Micon; but there were many ochres found in Campania
and in the hills not far from Rome, which were used both raw and burnt.
The burning of ochres generally renders the colours more transparent
and darker, so that some of the ochres assume a reddish hue, especially
the Sienna earth. Common yellow ochre, when burnt, is the colour called
light-red, admirable for flesh tints; and so indeed are many of the
other red ochres, whether natural, or artificially coloured by fire.
The ancients used the ochres of Scyros and Lydia for shadows. The dark
earths from those countries resemble that called umber, produced in
Umbria, the use of which might be unknown to the Greeks[238].
These different ochres continue even now to be used, and to them are
added varieties of modern discovery, produced in England, Spain, and
other countries.
Orpiment, or the sulphuretted oxide of arsenic, was known as a pigment
to the ancients. Its hue, approaching to gold, induced Caligula to
attempt to extract gold from it; and it is said that he succeeded
in procuring a small quantity from some brought from Syria. We are
ignorant how the ancient painters applied it. Cennino says, it is
neither good nor lasting in fresco or distemper; but that with glue or
size, it may be used in other pictures. It is still used by painters,
but is an uncertain colour[239].
The most brilliant and most valued red was vermilion. I suppose also
that it was one of the most ancient pigments. Homer says, in the
catalogue of the ships, the twelve galleys of Ulysses were painted
with it[240]; and I suspect that there was some mystical sacredness
attached to it, because it was the custom in Rome, that the first
act of a Censor on entering into office, was to rouge Jupiter’s face
with vermilion[241]. They painted all the gods’ faces with it. Horace
flatters Augustus by making him received among the gods, and drinking
nectar between Hercules and Pollux, with a vermilion face. At Athens,
cords stained with powdered vermilion were employed to drive the
people to the public meetings. The dramatic poets introduced this
custom frequently on the scene; and it would appear that the hindmost
had the worst, those who were caught with their robes stained by the
cords, were fined for non-attendance at their public duties. This same
vermilion was certainly early used by painters, and was much improved,
as Theophrastus says[242], by Callias, an Athenian, who calcined it,
and brought it to its very fine colour. In its rough state it is known
as cinnabar; and hence, both in ancient and modern times, it has been
taken for other mineral reds; and, what is worse, often adulterated
with them. In its pure state, it is a lasting colour. Cennino calls it
_cinabro_. His _cinabrese_ is a red used for flesh when mixed with
white in fresco works; it is made from sinopia, or red bole or ochre,
native in Cappadocia, and of the Bianco San Giovanni[243].
Minium, or red lead[244], seems to have been confounded by the writers
on colours with native cinnabar; though the painter would soon have
reason to regret using minium for vermilion, as minium blackens on
exposure to light and air, unless secured by strong varnishes or coats
of wax.
Of the red earths or ochres Pliny places the sinopia, of which I have
already spoken, first. It is now sold in the shops as Armenian bole,
and is used in some manufactures. Mattioli, quoting from Dioscorides,
says, that the best was considered to be that of a deep liver colour,
smooth, and heavy. Akin to this is the common ruddle or red earth, used
by the ancients as well as the moderns, in the process of gilding; and,
being properly ground and washed, useful in most kinds of painting, but
especially fresco.
Dragon’s-blood was known to the ancients as a pigment; but, from
Pliny’s account of it, they were clearly ignorant of its nature.
Cennino names it but with contempt, and it is not much valued by the
moderns[245].
With the ancients, who do not appear to have known any of the lakes, it
was different; they valued it much, and, it is said, used it for their
monochrome pictures[246]. If they did so, it confirms Fuseli’s account
of the process of painting, or rather of drawing, those pictures. It
is a resin of a warm semi-transparent, dullish red colour; and is best
used as a varnish which darkens on exposure to the air. If this varnish
were laid over the white ground of the monochromes, after the first
process of drawing with the point, the outline would be seen through,
and the indentation made by the point upon the tender chalk ground
being filled up with the varnish, would present a dark outline, the
point being then applied, would cut down to the white ground, and so
produce the light reliefs[247].
The other reds known to the ancients appear to have been mostly opaque.
Cennino mentions Lac or Lake. But it appears that in his days it
was principally procured by discharging the colour from shreds of
scarlet and purple cloths. His editor imagines that he also knew and
recommended gum lac. Be that as it may, neither the ancients nor the
school of Giotto seem to have known anything of the fine lakes; whether
prepared from the Indian gums, from madder, or from other substances,
that enrich the palette of painters, both in oil and water-colours now.
Sir Humphrey Davy, however, seems to think that lake made from madder
may have been known to the ancients[248].
Of blue colouring substances, the most beautiful known to the
ancients, as to us, was ultramarine. Pliny says the best of azures
came from Egypt, the second kind from Scythia, and a third from
Cyprus. It is not possible to determine accurately whether all these
were true ultramarine, for it appears that then, as now, it was often
adulterated, and even imitated, by boiling native blue earths with
woad, or by grinding smalt with it. That manufactured in Spain, and at
Puteoli, was entirely artificial[249].
It is said, on the authority of Theophrastus, that one of the kings
of Egypt invented the method of making the beautiful Armenian blue,
so precious that kings sent presents of it to each other. And this
corresponds with the value of ultramarine at all times. The Lapis
Lazuli, from which the colour is made, is found in Siberia, and on the
borders of Persia, as well as in China, where the preparation of the
colour has long been known. It is probable that the superiority of the
colour brought from Egypt was owing to the method of preparing it, for
the most genuine kinds were certainly likely to be those of Scythia
and Armenia[250].
Of that brought from Scythia there were four preparations of different
degrees of beauty and intensity of colour; and shortly before Pliny
wrote, one Nestor had invented a new preparation from the lightest part
of the Egyptian blue.
The earliest Christian painters appropriated it to painting the robes
of the Virgin Mary, and called it after her name, and it is much more
probable that those artists inherited the mode of preparing it, than
that it was invented in the still rude times in which the arts began
to revive. I saw in the middle church of the sacred convent at Assisi,
a large jar which had been sent to the painters, Cimabue, Giotto, and
their pupils, full of ultramarine by the Queen of Cyprus[251], for the
purpose of painting that magnificent church.
Some of the ancient imitations were, as I have said, composed of earth
boiled with woad, those of Cennino’s time were boiled with indigo
instead of woad.
The blue earths from Germany appear to have been long known, indeed the
cobalt, though that name had not then been given to it, was necessary
for colouring the glasses and pastes used for fictitious gems by the
ancient artists[252].
Indigo had been introduced into the west from India not long before
Pliny’s time. Painters had, however, immediately adopted it for shadows
and for strong lines.
The green colours were procured in great part by the ancients as they
were in the middle ages, and are now, by the mixture of blues with
yellows. There were, however, several green earths in use, and many
oxides of copper, sometimes used in a fluid, sometimes in a solid
state. The principal green earth used by the ancients was chrysocolla,
or borax. Macedonia, Armenia, and Spain, furnished the best raw
material; but the best manufactory appears to have been in Cyprus. One
kind of it, by boiling with dyers’ weed, assumed a golden yellow hue,
and was then called orobites. The best method of using it was, to lay
first a ground of the white earth, parætonum, then to wash that over
with vitriol, and so lay on the chrysocolla, which is very brilliant,
over that ground. The green made from orobites mixed with azure is not
durable, though bright[253].
The borax is, doubtless, the terra verde of Cennino, the terre verte of
the moderns; the best is now procured from Holland, where the art of
preparing it is understood. For some ages this art was in the hands of
the Venetians, who imported the borax from India, Persia, and China,
where it is produced at the bottom of some lakes. It is also found in
similar situations in Tuscany[254].
But verdigris, variously prepared, was used both by painters and the
manufacturers of glass for ornamental purposes, as well as by surgeons
and physicians for potions and plasters among the ancients. In Giotto’s
time, it entered into the composition of many tints, several of which,
however, faded easily. With the moderns it is not much used, as being
apt to disagree with some other pigments, and difficult of application.
It was an ingredient in the painter’s black, called atramentum[255].
However, most of the blacks used were of the soot collected from
burning various substances, such as resin, or pitch, very little
different from common lamp-black, which, mixed with copperas, was
mostly used for writing ink.
Polygnotus and Mycon made their black of the refuse of the wine-press,
burnt. Apelles used burnt ivory. Of the Indian black[256] the nature or
manufacture was unknown to Pliny, as it is to us. An excellent black
was procured both from the soot and ashes of torch-wood, the soot
adhering to the dyers’ coppers was also sought after, and some painters
imagined that the ashes from a funeral pile were preferable to all.
This is properly treated by Pliny as mere superstition.
When any of these blacks were used as ink, gum of some kind was added.
For painting on walls size was the necessary vehicle. But vinegar was
in all cases found to be the best ingredient to mix the colour properly.
Dioscorides says that the soot from glass furnaces was used for ink.
To these blacks, Cennino adds the burnt stones of peaches, and shells
of almonds, or burnt vine twigs. They were to be mixed with various
vehicles according to the work required. In India a fine black is made
from burnt cocoa-nut shells.
There was a colour very much used by the ancients for glazing. It was
roset, or purple-red, procured by throwing Tripoli stone into the
vats where fine purple dyes were boiling[257]. To make a fine red in
painting, the ground was laid with sandyx[258], and then glazed with
roset mixed with white of egg. When a fine purple was required the
ground was laid with blue, over which the roset was applied with the
same vehicle. The roset of Puteoli was reckoned the best, though finer
dyes were produced by the Tyrians, Getulians, and Lacedemonians.
The colour mentioned by Cennino most akin to this, is his _ametisto_,
which he describes as a native mineral colour.
Armenino talks of a pavonazzo still more like it in its properties.
We have a purple mineral, found in the Forest of Deane, but in general
our purples and purple browns are now produced from madder, or from
metallic oxides.
Such is the scanty information I am able to give concerning the ancient
pigments, with any degree of certainty. Various earths were brought
into the market from Germany and Gaul; and it is improbable that the
Cologne, and other rich brown earths, should have been neglected.
Cyprus appears to have furnished the painters’ shops with the greatest
number and variety, both of native and manufactured colours, and no
doubt the Venetians succeeded to her knowledge and skill in this
matter, as they did to her commerce and maritime power[259].
I have spoken with more confidence on the subjects of most of the
antique colours than I should otherwise have done, from having a clear
recollection of a conversation I had with Sir Humphrey Davy, just after
he had been engaged in examining several jars of antique pigments
that had been discovered on an estate belonging to the Archbishop
of Tarentum[260]. He told me that not one of those he had examined
differed in substance from those now used for the same purposes.
It will be very difficult indeed to point out with tolerable
probability the vehicles used for painting by the ancient painters;
certainty, excepting to a very limited extent, is impossible.
Time, which has in some instances spared colours so as to permit a
satisfactory examination into their nature, has uniformly dried up
the substances of the vehicles with which they were laid on; so that
it is only where such things are actually named by ancient authors,
and that is very sparingly, that we can feel any confidence as to the
matter[261].
There is, however, a source of probable conjecture which ought not to
be neglected. The use of oils, resins and gums in medicine has been
recorded; and the mixtures of those incidentally named, are so nearly
what we find used among the earliest painters, of whose works we have
any technical account, that it is scarcely possible to believe that
they were overlooked by the ancients.
For the early pictures on walls, whether the ground were of stone or
stucco, lime-water was doubtless found to be a sufficient binder.
But to adorn the mummy coffins something more than water must have
been required. The Egyptians had the advantage of several native
gum-bearing trees. The Acacia Nilotica, which produces the Gum Arabic;
the Sarcocolla[262], the gum of which Pliny expressly says is used by
painters as well as physicians; and the tree or shrub producing the Gum
Senegal; the Terebinth, yielding the manna thuris, Gum Ammoniac[263]
and Sandarach[264], were likewise all to be found on the borders of
Egypt; and some of these, we know from Herodotus, were employed in
embalming, and therefore very probably as vehicles for the colours with
which they honoured and ornamented the dead.
The desire of showing respect to the remains of those we have once
loved is a blessed principle of our nature. It is at once the cause
and the effect of that tender care of human life which becomes one
of the first principles of civilisation. It is respect and duty,
bestowed where no selfishness can ever expect a return, and by the very
occupation it forces upon us, breaks the first overwhelming violence of
grief, when the day of death, of which no preparation ever took away
the bitterness, arrives, and allows us time and occasion to exert that
moral resolution necessary to a due submission to the will of HIM, who
knoweth best when to give and when to take away.
The solemn death-rites of the Egyptians were practised by priests and
physicians, aided by professional embalmers; and their daily practice
must have led to a knowledge of many physiological facts advantageous
to the science of medicine. The search after substances calculated to
preserve the body could not fail to lead to chemical discoveries of
equal value to the arts. The country itself furnished some of these
substances, but Arabia and the neighbouring nations still more.
Among these, the asphaltum, pissasphaltum, and petroleum, brought from
the Dead Sea, from Babylon, and from the province of Mazenderan, appear
to have been most generally used; and it is a curious fact, that a
substance arising from the partial decomposition of the bodies, mixed
with these mineral substances, should, very early under the name of
mummy, have been employed by Arabian and Jewish physicians in medicine.
It is still stranger that it should have kept its place in the materia
medica of most nations till very lately, and I question whether it be
yet entirely expunged from them.
As a colouring matter, the same mummy was highly esteemed, and is
still often used. But it is giving way to other preparations of
asphaltum with wax, oil, or some equivalent substance. The prejudice
which led to the seeking among the costly embalmed bodies of Egypt a
remedy for disease, is akin to that which is not yet quite exploded
even in England, and which leads the vulgar to pass the hand of a
hanged man over scrophulous swellings as a certain cure. From this
strange superstition even Boyle was not so free, but that, in giving
a recipe for some preparation, he mentions the calcined arm bone of a
_hanged_ man reduced to powder as an ingredient! This same prejudice,
or something like it, led the painters of antiquity to rake, as Pliny
says, among the ashes of a funeral pile for a superior black pigment,
and induced more modern artists to use mummy brown.
The common bitumen or asphaltum, was known by the early physicians to
mix readily with oil, and was much used as an external application;
very ancient artists also varnished their statues of wood or metal with
that mixture, to preserve them from the action of the air[265].
But there was a finer substance, called by Pliny an earth, ampelitis,
which being softened in oil worked like wax. Besides the use of the
ampelitis for plasters, the antique men of the world used it to blacken
their eyebrows and colour their hair[266].
With these uses of asphaltum and ampelitis, softened or dissolved in
oil, the antique painters must have been familiar, and it is difficult
to imagine that they did not avail themselves of so agreeable a colour
and varnish. It answers, in a great degree, to the account given of
the dark fluid with which Apelles varnished his pictures. It would
certainly preserve them from the effects of dust and wet; it would make
the colours richer, and, at the same time, soften the harshness of the
more glaring ones.
Pliny enumerates many resins which were to be dissolved in oil before
they could be used as liniments. They are such as flow from the
terebinth, larch, lentisk or mastic, and cypress; besides the pine
or pitch trees. He also names many gums which might be dissolved in
water, or wine, or vinegar, or a mixture of vinegar and wax. Some
of these gums he occasionally names as useful to painters; and it is
not unreasonable to conclude, that those preparations of them with
oil, which would render them so peculiarly convenient as vehicles for
colour, or varnishes for preserving pictures, were not overlooked.
Such must have been the varnish employed by the Egyptian painters;
the brilliant appearance of which is mentioned in Mr. Clift’s letter,
printed at the end of the first Essay.
There is the authority of Vitruvius for the ancient use of oil in
painting doors and other wood-work exposed to the weather.
With regard to ships, it appears that their colours--and we know from
Homer that they were painted in very ancient times--could not have been
laid on with water. I am ignorant how far petroleum, which was known
to Herodotus, was calculated to resist weather, or whether any of the
resins or juices from the various kinds of fir and pine might, by being
mixed with it, render it fit for the purpose.
Pliny mentions the substance scraped off the bottoms of ships, as a
mixture of pitch and wax, of which a plaster of great efficacy for some
kinds of sores was made. It is clear, therefore, that pitch and wax
were both used to defend the bottoms and seams of the ships from the
effects of the water, and, probably, also to render them smoother, and
so to offer less resistance to the waves.
But the vermilion-prowed ships must have been painted, and very
probably in the encaustic manner; that is, by laying on the colour or
the wax to defend it, hot; this would answer the double purpose of
shielding the colour, and sending the wax or pitch farther into the
substance of the wood, which would thus be better preserved. Indeed,
until the general adoption of oil as a vehicle for colour, nothing
but the encaustic process could have preserved the figure-heads and
the designs on the sterns of the ancient ships during the shortest
voyage[267].
It is a pity that Pliny has not left us a more minute account of the
process of encaustic painting; but it appears to have been so commonly
known and practised in his time, that he has not considered it worth
while to describe it particularly.
He mentions the doubtfulness of its origin and of its inventor, but
speaks of most of the beautiful works of Pausias as having been
executed in that manner. In a subsequent passage, writing of vermilion
and minium, and of the great luxury at which the Romans of his time had
arrived in fine colours, he mentions that walls coloured with those
expensive pigments were apt to blacken unless defended by a varnish of
wax, for which he gives the following recipe:--
“Take white Punic wax, melt it with oil, and while it is hot wash the
painting over with pencils, or fine brushes of bristles, dipped in the
same varnish. When laid on it must be well rubbed, and heated again
with red-hot coals of gall-nuts, held close to it, till the wall may
sweat and fry again, then rub it well with waxed cloths, and then with
clean linen cloths[268].”
This, I believe, is the longest and clearest account we have of this
method of painting or rather varnishing. But there is another passage
in the same author, from which it would appear that colours were made
up with wax for use. For that case the above varnish would be most
appropriate, and without the inconveniences of such varnishes as are
composed of matters which do not correspond with the nature of the
colours and vehicles they cover. The passage is as follows: “If one
be disposed to make black wax, let him put thereto--i. e. to bleached
Punic wax--ashes of paper, like as with an addition of orchanet, it
will be red. Moreover, wax may be brought to all manner of colours for
_painters_, _limners_, and enamellers, and such curious artificers,
to represent the form and similitude of anything they list. And for
a thousand other purposes men have used thereof, but principally to
preserve their walls and armours withal[269].”
We know, then, that the ancients used water, white of egg, solutions
of various gums, vinegar and wax, with or without oil. We may infer
also that they used solutions of resinous substances in oil, asphaltum,
and petroleum, because they were well acquainted with preparations of
these, and their application to a variety of purposes. But it would be
rash as useless to assert that they painted with this or that material,
having no positive information on the subject, and no examples of
antique pictures, which can do more than indicate the nature of their
works in fresco or distemper.
Mr. Raspe, in his ingenious essay on oil painting, as known to the
ancients, has laboured to prove too much, and has therefore not
received all the credit he deserves[270]; but his printing the text
of the monk Theophilus, and of part of Heraclius on the arts of the
Romans, deserves our gratitude[271].
Both these authors direct, that colours for painting doors, and for
preparing panel for pictures, should be ground in linseed oil; and they
observe, that all kinds of colours bear grinding in oil. But all cannot
be ground with gum, and therefore white and red lead and carmine must
be ground with white of egg, where oil is not used. When a transparent
painting was required over a ground of oil, then colour mixed with
linseed oil was absolutely necessary[272].
The next period at which we know from a contemporary writer what
vehicles were used, is the end of the fourteenth century, or the
beginning of the fifteenth, when Cennino wrote; but he professes to
give the exact process of Giotto, a century earlier, being himself very
old when he composed his work, and having been the apprentice of Taddeo
Gaddi, the immediate pupil, assistant, and, in some particulars, the
rival, of Giotto.
The usual vehicle or _tempora_ appears to have been the whole egg beat
up with a gill of pure water to each egg, and mixed with the milky
juice of the fig-tree, where it was procurable.
Several colours, however, could not be used with this ordinary vehicle,
because of the yellow colour of the yolk, which turned the blues green,
and injured some other pigments. In that case, the white of egg
clarified was used, or fine size made of the clippings of parchment, or
even flour paste well, but not too much, boiled. A vehicle of the yolk
of egg alone, for such colours as were not injured by the yellow, was
found to answer equally well in fresco, in distemper, and on panel.
Though Cennino knew, and perhaps occasionally practised painting in
oil, it is evident that the oil was used by him and his masters chiefly
as a varnish. He directs it to be prepared nearly according to the
recipe of the monk Theophilus; the difference being, that the oil is to
be simmered till one half is evaporated, and the pure resin is to be
added, in the proportion of an ounce to every pound of the raw linseed
oil.
Armenino, in A. D. 1600, repeats nearly all Cennino says of vehicles;
he adds several compositions, one of which only I shall notice,
because he tells us that he had heard from the scholars of Corregio,
that it was used by that great man. A varnish composed of the purest
turpentine[273], made hot, to which was added an equal measure of
petroleum, was spread over the picture, previously warmed in the sun
or otherwise. This is said to have been thin, lucid, and durable.
As to modern vehicles, there is no new oil discovered by chemists that
has not been tried, nor any combinations of gums and resins, with oils,
whether fixed or essential. The desire of quickly drying substances
has also produced a variety of vehicles and varnishes, all of which,
in particular cases, and for certain purposes, seem to have answered.
But their use has disappointed the artist in others. Perhaps so great
a variety by tempting to injudicious mixtures, may have caused the
partial failure.
This is a question, however, for practical artists; my business is only
to relate historically what has been done, not to comment on what is
actually doing, or should be done.
And now we must inquire what tools were used by antique artists. Here
again Mr. Wilkinson is our best informant. In the unfinished pictures
in some of the catacombs, he saw traces of the use of charcoal points,
and also of red outlines, corresponding not only with the practice
recommended by Cennino, but with what I saw in the Campo Santo at Pisa,
where, the upper stucco having fallen off, upon which the pictures
themselves had been painted while wet, a line drawn in red earth, like
the bole of Sinope, appeared upon the coarser ground, and had evidently
been corrected preparatory to laying the true ground and colour. The
metal points used for drawing by the early Greeks, were most likely
used also by the Egyptians, where required; but the paintings we are
best acquainted with, namely, those on the mummy cases, are outlined,
if not with a pen or reed, with a fine pencil.
In the curious collection of Egyptian furniture, tools, &c., brought
together by Mr. Sams, there were some palettes; they were oblong, and
had a sort of case at one end for the pencils and brushes, and at the
other a handle. The plates in Rossellini’s Egypt show the manner in
which these were used.
D’Agincourt gives some tracings from an illuminated MS. Dioscorides,
in the library at Vienna, in two of which we find an artist’s study;
in one, a paintress is at work upon a picture sketched upon a moveable
frame, not unlike those used for needle-work; her colours appear to be
in a box, as water colours would be, and she has a small palette held
in the palm of her left hand.
The other is a painter employed in drawing a plant; his easel is
three-legged, his paper is pinned or tacked to a widish board, his
palette is like that of the paintress, and his colour box the same; the
pencils seem as fine as pens in both.
Cennino directs that pencils shall be made either of the tails of grey
squirrels, called Vair[274], answering to sable, or of hogs’ bristles.
He points out with minuteness how to select the longest hairs of the
vair, and how many tails must contribute the longest, in order to make
a good pencil; what is more, he mentions that these soft brushes were
to be used of all sizes, from those which were drawn into the hollow
of a pigeon’s feather, to those requiring a vulture’s quill. As to the
bristle tools, they appear to be exactly what we now use; and the art
of making which appears to be one of those handed down from the Greeks
and Romans, without any change worth notice.
I have thus endeavoured to bring together what is to be known
historically of the mechanical part of painting. Dry and wet plaster,
that is, distemper and fresco, have been employed in all countries,
from Egypt to Mexico, for grounds. Pannel, prepared with a thin coat
of chalk or plaster and size, has been the next general material. The
painted inner mummy cases, where the linen was prepared with plaster,
are the earliest pictures on linen, so far as we can judge. The linen
painted hangings for prize fighters, and Nero’s famous canvas, show
that the practice of painting pictures on linen was not unknown to the
ancients; but when it was first used as a ground, or if its use ever
became general until modern times, we do not know.
The early Italian painters used it at first to strengthen and smooth
their pannel; and, I think, the Venetian painters were they who
rendered its use general.
The most important pigments of the ancients appear to have been
identical with our own.
The vehicles for colour have afforded matter for very needless
controversy. The ancients generally used water, gums, and white of egg;
they frequently, especially in the later schools of painting, used wax,
often mixed with oil of some kind. They were acquainted with the use of
oil as a varnish, and may have used both it and naphtha to paint with
occasionally.
As early as the tenth century, oil was often used for particular
kinds of painting; by the fourteenth, attempts were made (I need not
say, without success) to paint with it on plaster; by the end of the
fifteenth century, it had pretty well superseded other vehicles for all
but fresco and distemper upon walls.
As to the tools, a palette, colour box, soft and hard brushes,
scrapers, &c., of forms and materials differing but little, with a
sponge and pumice stone, were used by all; and very few required more,
when their pigments were once prepared. But the ancient painters,
like the old Italians and Germans, had their colours ground in their
own work-rooms: for this purpose, slabs of porphyry, or some other
hard stone, with mullers to correspond; mortars of marble, or brass,
or iron, with pestles of wood or metal, were requisite; and, in some
cases, the very furnaces for calcining their ochres, or dissolving
their gums, were of their own construction.
Hence the frequent mention of apprentice boys, who never reached
higher in the art than colour-grinders. Others became mere mechanical
copyists, multiplying in ancient times the actual patterns of
certain gods and heroes, and in later times, favourite saints, or
even whole compositions. But the better sort either equalled or
excelled their masters. Apelles surpassed Pamphilus, Giotto excelled
Cimabue, Raffaelle and Michael Angelo left their masters Perugino and
Ghirlandaio far behind.
FOOTNOTES:
[214] I have mentioned the antique picture before, that proves that the
ancient Italians _horsed_ the boys and used the rod, just as was done
ten years ago in England (and may be still in remote counties), as the
best way of improving the memory. I have the authority of Pausanias,
that boys used strings to set off their tops, and that young ladies
played at what Scotch children call chuckie stanes, in Old Greece.
[215] Pantænus, the brother of Phidias, used a plaster or stucco in the
Temple of Minerva at Elis, mixed with milk. This should be something
like the beautiful marble-like stucco or _chunam_-work of India. I once
saw a floor laid at Madras, among the materials of which were jaggree,
or coarse sugar water and milk. Ram Raz, in his treatise on Hindu
Architecture, says:
“_Chunam_, intended for fine plastering and ornamental works, is
ground by women on an oblong granite stone, and a cylindrical upper
stone about four inches in diameter; the mixture is sometimes ground
two, three, and four times, to bring it to the required fineness and
purity. In all the operations of _chunam_-work, _jaggery_ water, i.
e. a solution of molasses or coarse sugar, is invariably added by the
builders, and its use appears to have prevailed from the remotest ages.
There are various opinions among the modern practitioners regarding
its usefulness, but those who have had the most extensive practice in
building hold it as an indispensable ingredient in the formation of a
durable and hard cement; and it is stated that the operator evidently
perceives the dissolvent property of the _jaggery_ water, on its being
tempered with the prepared mortar.”
[216] I must make an undignified, though I believe an intelligible,
comparison--the plaster is very like that applied to wooden dolls of
the old school, and which children used to call _alabaster_. I believe
it was made of finely pounded marble, and was largely used in the
manufacture of Saints for Roman Catholic churches.
[217] Our sycamore is a maple, and its fruit is not eatable.
[218] Book xiii. ch. 7.
[219] Book xvi. ch. 39.
[220] Theophrastus died B.C. 208 years, at the age of 107.
[221] Cennino Cennini trattato della Pittura, ch. 6.
[222] In the 13th book and 12th chapter of Pliny’s Natural History,
he tells us the size or paste used by bookbinders was made with fine
wheaten flour, boiling water, and a little vinegar, which is our common
shoemaker’s paste. And in book xi., chapter 39, we learn that the
stronger glue was made, as now, of the hides of cattle boiled down.
He says _bull’s_ hide makes the strongest glue. The ancients seem
to take some strange things for granted. A bull is stronger than a
cow--therefore--his hide makes stronger glue. An English mechanic would
have tried the experiment.
[223] This tallies with Erasmus’ description of English houses at
nearly the same period, in one of his letters.
[224] This white is phosphate of lime.
[225] The tool, and the outline produced by it, were no doubt
legitimately descended from the antique CESTRUM and SKIAGRUM of Fuseli.
There is an unfinished picture by Giovanni Bellini, in the Florence
Gallery, in which the white ground on the board is visible. The marks
of the tool are also distinct, a little indented, and the shadowed
part is hatched. Over this there is a brown transparent colour, which
has thickened in the indented lines and hatchings, rendering the
lines darker; had he hatched again through the transparent ground to
the white ground in the lights, we should have had, as I conceive, a
perfect monochrome.
[226] In his Histoire de la Peinture Ancienne, wherein he has printed
what he calls the thirty-fifth book of Pliny, with his translation; but
he has left out what pleased him, and inserted other parts of the work,
and omitted the numbering of the chapters, so as to render it difficult
to detect his want of fidelity.
[227] Book XXXV. ch. 7. A passage in one of Horace’s Satires describes
pictures, whether on cloth or wood, suspended at the entrances to the
public shows at Rome, nearly as we should now describe the pictures
exhibited for the same purposes by Gingel and his ingenious brethren,
to invite spectators to their itinerant playhouses, and such as the
lamented Pidcock used to allure them to the shows of elephants and
tigers.
If some fam’d piece the painter’s art displays,
Transfix’d you stand, with admiration gaze[228];
[228] In the original the painter’s name is mentioned; it is Pausias of
Sicyon.
[229] Pliny, Natural History, Book xiii. ch. 11.
[230] Libri sacri scritti in tela di lino, sorta di volumi antichissimi
molte di quali vide Frontone custoditi in Anagni.--MICALI. _Storia
degli Antichi Popoli Italiani, page 32._
In Wilks’ History of the South of India, there is an account of the
cudduttum, curruthum, or currut, used as books in that province. It
is a strip of cotton cloth, covered on both sides with a mixture of
paste and charcoal. The writing is done with a pencil of lapis ollaris,
called balopium, and may be rubbed out like that on a slate; the cloth
is folded in leaves like a pocket-map, and tied up between thin boards
painted and ornamented. This mode of writing was anciently used for
records and other public papers, and in some parts of the country
is still employed by merchants and shopkeepers. It is very durable,
indeed probably more so than either paper, parchment, or the palm leaf.
Colonel Wilks supposes it to be the linen or cotton cloth on which
Arrian states that the Indians wrote.
[231] Pliny contradicts himself on the subject of parchment. In b.
xxxv. he says that Parrhasius painted or drew upon it; but b. xii. c.
10, he ascribes the invention of it to Eumenes, king of Pergamos, who
lived after the time of Parrhasius, saying that he invented parchment
because Ptolemy, king of Egypt, had prohibited the exportation of paper
made of the papyrus. I cannot help believing that parchment was known
before the time of Eumenes. He may have improved it, and hit upon a
method of rendering it more fit for writing upon.
[232] Giotto was born in 1276; his master, Cimabue, in 1240; his
gigantic Madonnas are painted on wood. I had no opportunity of
examining whether there was linen under the plaster ground. Margaritone
was born about 1250; Gaddo Gaddi, 1239, or thereabouts.
[233] The Venetians, owing to their commerce with the East, are the
most likely of all the Italians to have been influenced by the practice
handed down by the Greek painters; and we first find the general use of
canvass, especially of very large size, at Venice.
[234] Colonel Leake’s Topography of Athens. Additional notes on the
temple of Theseus, p. 400.
[235] Taylor’s Plato--Phædo. The twelve colours are not named, but
further on there is the expression, “all the objects are rendered
beautiful through various colours--_purple_ of wonderful beauty,
_golden hue_, pure _white_, _emerald_,” &c.
[236] Carbonate of lead, with a proportion of oxide.
[237] Some of the pictures in the Campo Santo at Pisa have suffered
lamentably from the neglect of this caution. The high lights have
become absolutely black.
[238] See Pliny, book xxxiii. end of ch. 12, and the whole of ch. 13.
[239] In the manufactory of porcelain, japan-ware, &c., it is much
used. Perhaps Caligula’s chemists flattered him, by pretending to find
gold in the orpiment.
[240]
---- Twelve galleys with vermilion prores,
Beneath his conduct sought the Phrygian shores.
Pope’s Iliad, book ii.
[241] I have seen the poor gods of the Hindoos of low caste thus rouged.
[242] About the year of Rome 249.
[243] Cinabrese is praised by Armenino, who wrote in 1600. I do not
always mention Armenino when I might; 1st, because I prefer Cennino’s
authority; 2nd, because Armenino is a coxcomb whose work I have no
pleasure in; and 3rd, because it is useless to multiply quotations.
However, he is a writer of value on these matters.
[244] Minium--red oxide of lead.
[245] The ancients believed that it was really the blood of dragons,
which had sucked the blood of elephants, and had died, crushed under
the weight of that enormous quadruped.
[246] Dragon’s blood is the resin of the “Dracæna draco” of Linnæus.
The resin itself is opaque and brittle. The powder is of a crimson
colour, insoluble in water. With us it is soluble both in alcohol and
in the fixed oils; the ancients, as they had not alcohol, may have used
it with oil.
This was probably the crimson colour which the Frenchman, mentioned
in the little account of Pompeii, published by the Society for the
Diffusion of Knowledge, bought of the workmen employed in excavating
the town, and used with success as a body colour. He does not appear to
have analysed it, or in any way endeavoured to ascertain its nature,
for the benefit of art. See vol. ii., p. 56.
[247] See note to p. 8.
[248] The colour of the mantle of the Ganymede in the ancient fresco
belonging to Sir M. W. Ridley looks like discoloured lake.
[249] Sir Humphrey Davy, in his paper in the first part of the volume
of the Philosophical Transactions for 1815, on the colours used in
painting by the ancients, says, that the artificial blue found in the
baths of Titus is a frit made by means of soda, and coloured with oxide
of copper. He imagines it to have been the blue invented by an ancient
king of Egypt mentioned in the text, and the same also with that
cœrulium, the art of making which was brought from Egypt to Puteoli, by
Vestorius. That was made by heating together sand, flower of nitre, _i.
e._ soda, and filings of copper.
[250] Certain balls of a fine blue colour have been brought from the
Egyptian tombs since Sir Humphrey Davy’s paper was written. I do not
know whether they have been analysed, but their appearance is like that
of the frit found in the baths of Titus.
[251] She was of the Lusignan family, and is buried at Assisi.
[252] It is to be regretted that Baron Bertholdy did not live to
complete and publish his essay on the glass and paste of the ancients,
as applied to the production of cameos, intaglios, &c., in imitation
of true gems. He had collected a great mass of materials, and had had
some very beautiful specimens engraved. Among other fragments, I saw in
his possession, in 1819, several handles of drinking-cups, on which the
maker’s name and place of residence, namely, Sidon, were stamped before
the glass was cold, some in Greek, some in Roman letters.
Mr. Hatchet has analysed many of the ancient glasses and pastes; but he
did not find cobalt in any of them. In some very ancient beads found
in one of the oldest tombs of Egypt, he found the colouring matter
was manganese. Yet Davy speaks of a blue glass which appeared to him
to be tinged with cobalt as common among the ruins of Rome; and says,
moreover, that on analysing different ancient transparent blue glasses,
he had found cobalt in all of them.
[253] Pliny, book xxxiii. ch. 5.
[254] Borax is a salt with excess of soda. The ancients used it as we
do, as a flux, and a solder for metals.
[255] Also used by shoemakers to blacken leather shoes.
[256] Most probably Indian ink.
[257] Purple dye, the purple of Puteoli, was not procured simply from
the shell-fish, but was mixed with the juice of madder and the megalob
berries. Hence, probably, the superior quality of the pigment.
[258] Sandyx is a colour procured by calcining common ruddle and
sandarach together. Sandarach is a red substance found near, and in
silver mines. An island in the Red Sea produced a great deal. Sandarach
is also gum from the juniper, but Pliny means the mineral.--Book xxxv.
ch. 6. Virgil, however, must mean the juniper when he says, that
browsing upon sandarach rendered the fleeces of the sheep red.
[259] The early establishment of the manufacture of glass and the
beautifully coloured Venetian beads in Murano, where a remnant of
the art still exists, I think warrants my supposition. The Queen of
Cyprus’s gift of ultramarine to the church of Assisi, may be taken
as a proof, that so late as 1300 the island had not lost its colour
manufactures.
[260] This was later by four years than his examination of the colours
found in the baths of Titus, the paper upon which in the Philosophical
Transactions I have quoted.
[261] The word vernix (varnish) was entirely unknown to the ancients.
Lyttleton, in his Latin Dictionary, says it is derived from the fact,
that in the spring, _ver_, the juniper, begins to yield its resin; and
that juniper, or gum sandarach, was the first substance from which true
varnish was prepared. He ought to have added in Europe: for certainly
true varnish was used in China long before the period at which he
places the first use of the word vernix, and, as will appear by the
text, I have no doubt that the thing, if not the name, was known by our
ancients in Europe also.
[262] Supposed the Penæa sarcocolla; the gum is in the form of small
whitish grains, of a bitter sweetish taste; it is almost entirely
soluble in water.
[263] Supposed to be produced by a species of ferula. It is soluble in
water and in vinegar.
[264] The resin of the juniper.
[265] Pliny, b. xxxv. ch. 15.
[266] Pliny’s account of ampelitis appears to agree with that given by
Field, in his Book on Colours, of some specimens of native asphaltum,
brought to him direct from Persia. It did not dissolve with oil or
turpentine, but ground well with drying oil, and made a fine colour.
For ampelitis, see Pliny, b. xxxv. c. 16.
[267] A boat, or ship-builder, when he _pays_ the bottoms of his
vessels with boiling pitch, is really painting in the encaustic manner.
[268] B. xxxii. ch. 7. The word here translated _waxed cloths_, is
literally _candles_; but, as candles were made of wax, I adhere to
Holland’s expression, as giving Pliny’s meaning.
[269] B. xxi. ch. 14. The wax so coloured was the finest white punic
wax; we must not forget that waxen images were among those exhibited in
funeral processions.
[270] In his quotations from Vitruvius and Pliny he unaccountably
translates _red wax_ for _Punic wax_. Now Pliny says expressly that
Punic wax was the whitest of all, and particularly describes the manner
of bleaching it.
[271] The work of Theophilus was composed certainly not later than A.
D. 1000, probably earlier; that of Heraclius, de Artibus Romanorum, was
written about the same period. Raspe published Theophilus under the
title of “Theophilus Monacus de omni scientia artis pingendi, e codice
manuscripto Collegii Trinitatis Cantabrigiensis.”
[272] Linseed oil does not dry well without management, any more than
the nut oils. Theophilus directs that it should be simmered in a new
pipkin over a slow fire (but by no means boil), till one-third was
evaporated; then powdered fornice, _i.e._ resin from the pitch-tree,
stirred in; and observes, that every kind of painting glazed with this
becomes glossy and durable. Thus the simple oil varnish was known and
used at least as early as the eleventh century, four hundred years
before the Van Eycks.
A ground, named by Theophilus, and afterwards by Cennino, for
cementing panel, was composed of powdered lime and cheese,--the chief
ingredients, if I am not mistaken, of Vancouver’s and other strong
cements.
[273] Venice turpentine, perhaps.
[274] A term now, I believe, only used in heraldry, either in English
or French. In Rome they now make pencils of the fine hair of kids.
THE END.
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