[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:—
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.