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The third class, or those who mix up a motley assemblage of ideal beauty and common nature, such as was pounded together by Pietro Testa and Gherard Lairesse, and from which neither Guido nor Poussin were entirely free – though perhaps not strictly chargeable with the absolute impropriety of the first and the lowness of the second class, must be content with what we can spare of disapprobation from either: they surprise us into pleasure by glimpses of character and form, and as often disappoint us by the obtrusion of heterogeneous or vulgar forms. But this disappointment is not so general, because we want that critical acquaintance with the principles of ancient art which can assign each trunk its head, each limb its counterpart: a want even now so frequent, notwithstanding the boasted refinements of Roman and German criticisms, that a Mercury, if he have left his caduceus, may exchange his limbs with a Meleager, and he with an Antinous; perhaps a Jupiter on Ida his torso with that of a Hercules anapauomenos, an Ariadne be turned into the head of a hornless Bacchus, and an Isis be substituted for every ideal female.
EIGHTH LECTURE
COLOUR. – IN FRESCO PAINTING
EIGHTH LECTURE
The Painter's art may be considered in a double light, either as exerting its power over the senses to reach the intellect and heart, or merely as their handmaid, teaching its graces to charm their organs for their amusement only: in the first light, the senses, like the rest of its materials, are only a vehicle; in the second, they are the principal object and the ultimate aim of its endeavours.
I shall not enquire here whether the Arts, as mere ministers of sensual pleasure, still deserve the name of liberal, or are competent exclusively to fill up the time of an intellectual being. Nature, and the masters of Art, who pronounce the verdicts of Nature in Poetry and Painting, have decided, that they neither can attain their highest degree of accomplishment, nor can be considered as useful assistants to the happiness of society, unless they subordinate the vehicle, whatever it be, to the real object, and make sense the minister of mind.
When this is their object, Design, in its most extensive as in its strictest sense, is their basis; when they stoop to be the mere playthings, or debase themselves to be the debauchers of the senses, they make Colour their insidious foundation.
The greatest master of Colour in our time, the man who might have been the rival of the first colourists in every age, Reynolds, in his public instruction uniformly persisted to treat Colour as a subordinate principle. Though fully aware that, without possessing at least a competent share of its numberless fascinating qualities, no man, let his style of design or powers of invention be what they may, can either hope for professional success, or can even properly be called a painter, and giving it as his opinion, on the authority of tradition, the excellence of the remaining monuments in sculpture, and the discovered though inferior relics of ancient painting, that, if the coloured masterpieces of antiquity had descended to us in tolerable preservation, we might expect to see works designed in the style of the Laocoon, painted in that of Titian; – he still persisted in the doctrine that even the colour of Titian, far from adding to the sublimity of the Great style, would only have served to retard, if not to degrade, its impression. He knew the usurping, the ambitious principle inseparable from Colour, and therefore thought it his duty, by making it the basis of ornamental styles, not to check its legitimate rights, but to guard against its indiscriminate demands.
It is not for me, (who have courted and still continue to court Colour as a despairing lover courts a disdainful mistress,) to presume, by adding my opinion, to degrade the great one delivered; but the attachments of fancy ought not to regulate the motives of a teacher, or direct his plan of art: it becomes me therefore to tell you, that if the principle which animates the art gives rights and privilege to Colour not its own; if from a medium, it raises it to a representative of all; if what is claimed in vain by form and mind, it fondly grants to colour; if it divert the public eye from higher beauties to be absorbed by its lures – then the art is degraded to a mere vehicle of sensual pleasure, an implement of luxury, a beautiful but trifling bauble, or a splendid fault.
To Colour, when its bland purity tinges the face of innocence and sprouting life, or its magic charm traces in imperceptible transitions the forms of beauty; when its warm and ensanguined vigour stamps the vivid principle that animates full-grown youth and the powerful frame of manhood, or in paler gradations marks animal decline; when its varieties give truth with character to individual imitation, or its more comprehensive tone pervades the scenes of sublimity and expression, and dictates the medium in which they ought to move, to strike our eye in harmony; – to Colour, the florid attendant of form, the minister of the passions, the herald of energy and character, what eye, not tinged by disease or deserted by Nature, refuses homage?
But of Colour, when equally it overwhelms the forms of infancy, the milky germ of life, and the defined lines of manhood and of beauty with lumpy pulp; when from the dresser of the Graces it becomes the handmaid of deformity, and with their spoils decks her limbs – shakes hands with meanness, or haunts the recesses of loathsomeness and horror97– when it exchanges flesh for roses, and vigour for vulgarity – absorbs character and truth in hues of flattery, or changes the tone demanded by sublimity and pathos into a mannered medium of playful tints; – of Colour the slave of fashion and usurper of propriety, if still its charms retain our eye, what mind unseduced by prejudice or habit can forbear to lament the abuse?
The principles of Colour, as varied, are as immutable as those of Nature. The gradations of the system that connects light with shade are immense, but the variety of its imitation is regulated by the result of their union, Simplicity – Clearness if obtained by Harmony!
Simplicity represents of every individual its unity, its whole. Light, and its organ the eye, show us the whole of a being before its parts, and then diffuse themselves in visual rays over the limbs. Light with its own velocity fixes a point, the focus of its power; but as no central light can be conceived without radiation, nor a central form without extension, their union produces that immutable law of harmony which we call breadth.
One point is the brightest in the eye as on the object; this is the point of light: from it in all directions the existent parts advance or recede, by, before, behind each other; the two extremes of light and shade make a whole, which the local or essential colour defines, – its coalition with the demi-tint, the shade and reflexes, rounds, – and the correspondence of each colour with all, tunes.
The principles that regulate the choice of colours are in themselves as invariable as the light from which they spring, and as the shade that absorbs them. Their economy is neither arbitrary nor phantastic. Of this every one may convince himself who can contemplate a prism. Whatever the colours be, they follow each other in regular order; they emerge from, they flow into each other. No confusion can break or thwart their gradations, from blue to yellow, from yellow to red; the flame of every light, without a prisma, establishes this immutable scale.
From this theory you will not expect that I should enter into chemic disquisitions on the materials, or into technic ones on the methods of painting. When you are told that simplicity and keeping are the basis of purity and harmony, that one colour has a greater power than a combination of two, that a mixture of three impairs that power still more, you are in possession of the great elemental principles necessary for the economy of your palette. Method, handling, and the modes of execution are taught by trial, comparison, and persevering practice, but chiefly by the nature, of the object you pursue. The lessons of repetition, disappointment, and blunder, impress more forcibly than the lessons of all masters. Not that I mean to depreciate or to level the comparative value or inferiority of materials, or that instruction which may shorten your road to the essential parts of study; but he is as far from Nature who sees her only through the medium of his master, as he from colour who fancies it lies in costly, scarce, or fine materials, in curious preparations, or mouldy secrets, in light, in dark, in smooth, in rough, or in absorbent grounds: it may be in all, but is in none of these. The masters of ancient colour had for their basis only four, and this simplicity made Reynolds conclude that they must have been as great in colour as in form. He who cannot make use of the worst must disgrace the best materials; and he whose palette is set or regulated by another's eye, renounces his own, and must become a mannerist. There is no compendious method of becoming great; the price of excellence is labour, and time that of immortality.
Colour, like Design, has two essential parts, Imitation and Style. It begins in glare, is caught by deception, emerges to imitation, is finished by style, and debauched by manner.
Glare is always the first feature of a savage or an infant taste. The timid or barbarous beginner, afraid of impairing the splendour by diminishing the mass, exults in the Egyptian glare which he spreads over a surface unbroken by tint and not relieved by shade. Such are in general the flaming remnants of feudal decoration. This is the stage of missal painting; what Dante called "alluminar," the art of Cimabue; its taste continued, though in degrees less shocking, to the time of M. Agnolo and Raffaello. Gods, and mothers of Gods, Apostles and Martyrs, attracted devotion in proportion to the more or less gaudy colours in which they were arrayed. It was for this reason that Julius the Second wished M. Agnolo had added to the majesty of the Patriarchs and Sibyls by gold and lapis lazuli.
Deception follows glare; attempts to substitute by form or colour the image for the thing, always mark the puerility of taste, though sometimes its decrepitude. The microscopic precision of Denner, and even the fastidious, though broader detail of Gherard Douw, were symptoms of its dotage. The contest of Zeuxis and Parrhasius, if not a frolic, was an effort of puerile dexterity. But Deception, though at its ultimate pitch never more than the successful mimicry of absent objects, and for itself below the aim of art, is the mother of Imitation. We must penetrate the substances of things, acquaint ourselves with their peculiar hue and texture, and colour them in detail, before we can hope to seize their principle and give their general air.
Tiziano laboured first to make facsimiles of the stuffs he copied, before he changed them into drapery, and gave them local value and a place; he learnt first to distinguish tint from tint, and give the skeleton of colour, before he emboldened himself to take the greatest quantity of colour in an object for the whole; to paint flesh which abounded in demi-tints, entirely in demi-tints, and to deprive of all, that which had but a few. It was in the school of Deception he learnt the difference of diaphanous and opaque, of firm and juicy colour; that this refracts and that absorbs the light, and hence their place; those that cut and come forward, first, and those which more or less partake of the surrounding medium in various degrees of distance. It was here he learnt the contrast of the tints, of what is called warm and cold, and by their balance, diffusion, echo, to poise a whole. His eye as musical, if I may be allowed the metaphor, as his ear, abstracted here, that colour acts, affects, delights, like sound; that stern and deep-toned tints rouse, determine, invigorate the eye, as warlike sound or a deep bass the ear; and that bland, rosy, gray, and vernal tints soothe, charm, and melt like a sweet melody.
Such were the principles whose gradual evolution produced that coloured imitation which, far beyond the fascination of Giorgione, irresistibly entranced every eye that approached the magic of Tiziano Vecelli. To no colourist before or after him, did Nature unveil herself with that dignified familiarity in which she appeared to Tiziano. His organ, universal and equally fit for all her exhibitions, rendered her simplest to her most compound appearances with equal purity and truth. He penetrated the essence and the general principle of the substances before him, and on these established his theory of colour. He invented that breadth of local tint which no imitation has attained, and first expressed the negative nature of shade: his are the charms of glazing, and the mystery of reflexes, by which he detached, rounded, corrected or enriched his objects. His harmony is less indebted to the force of light and shade, or the artifices of contrast, than to a due balance of colour equally remote from monotony and spots. His tone springs out of his subject, solemn, grave, gay, minacious, or soothing; his eye tinged Nature with gold without impairing her freshness: she dictated his scenery. Landscape, whether it be considered as the transcript of a spot, or the rich combination of congenial objects, or as the scene of a phenomenon, as subject and as background, dates its origin from him. He is the father of portrait-painting, of resemblance with form, character with dignity, and costume with subordination.
Colour may be considered relatively to the whole or the detail of the parts that compose a picture. In that point of view it depends on the choice of a sovereign tone; in this on the skilful disposition, gradation, rounding, and variety of the subordinate tones, their principal light, the local colour, the half tints, the shades, and the reflexes.
The general regulation of the primary tone, and the specific arrangement of the subordinate ones for the rounding of every figure, is the same. In both, the attention is to be directed to obtain a principal mass of light, and a predominant colour. This is to be supported by the mutual assistance and reciprocal relief of secondary ones, must be associated with the demi-tint and the shades, and recalled and relieved by the reflexes.
When treating on Chiaroscuro, we have observed what may now be applied to Colour, that the primary tone depends on choice, and is arbitrary; but it decides all the rest, as the tone of the first violin in a regular concert tunes all the voices and all the instruments. Its effect entirely depends on the union of the surrounding tones with it, and has no other value but what it derives from contrast. By this the simplest tone, well managed, may become rich, splendid, and harmonious; it is then the tone of nature; whilst the most brilliant colour, if contradicted or disappointed by the detail of inferior ones, may become heavy, leathern, and discordant.
The best illustration of these principles is in the celebrated Notte of Correggio, where the Infant from the centre tinges the whole with his rays; but perhaps still more in its companion at Dresden, the less known picture of St. Sebastian; for to produce union and tone in the nearly equilateral composition of a votive picture, required a deeper comprehension and a steadier eye. Like the picture of Raffaello at Foligno, it represents the Madonna with the Infant in her arms, throned on clouds, in a central glory of sunny radiance, attended by angels, and surrounded by angelic forms: below are St. Geminian with a maiden by his side, St. Rocco and Sebastian tied to a tree. The first surprise is caused by the central light of the glory, which has all the splendour of a sun, though its colour is a yellow comparatively faint, and terminates in brown. The Madonna, dressed in a robe of glowing lake and a dark blue mantle, seems to start from this body of light as from a sombre ground, and as the Infant from her. The carnation of both is of a low tint, to support the keeping of their distance. The two angels at her side, in tints reflected from the centre, address the Saints below, and connect the upper with the lower part of the picture, which emerges from the darksome clouds on which they stand, and gathers its tones of light from the emanations of the central one, but in subordinate flashes, vanishing from twilight into massy shade. By those who have not seen this picture, a faint idea of its tone may be formed from the votive one of Parmegiano, at the Marquis of Abercorn's, which, had it received its last harmony, would probably have emulated the principle of that we have described.
The tones fit for Poetic painting are like its styles of design, generic or characteristic. The former is called negative, or composed of little more than chiaroscuro; the second admits, though not ambitiously, a greater variety and subdivision of tint. The first is the tone of M. Agnolo, the second that of Raffaello. The sovereign instrument of both is undoubtedly the simple, broad, pure, fresh, and limpid vehicle of Fresco. Fresco, which does not admit of that refined variety of tints that are the privilege of oil painting, and from the rapidity with which the earths, its chief materials, are absorbed, requires nearly immediate termination, is for those very reasons the immediate minister and the aptest vehicle of a great design. Its element is purity and breadth of tint. In no other style of painting could the generic forms of M. Agnolo have been divided, like night and day, into that breadth of light and shade which stamps their character. The silver purity of Correggio is the offspring of Fresco; his oil paintings are faint and tainted emanations of the freshness and "limpidezza" in his Frescoes. Oil, which rounds and conglutinates, spreads less than the sheety medium of Fresco, and if stretched into breadth beyond its natural tone, as the spirits which are used to extenuate its glue escape, returns upon itself, and oftener forms surfaces of dough, or wood, or crust, than fleshy fibre. Oil impeded the breadth even of the elemental colours of Tiziano in the Salute. The minute process inseparable from oil, is the reason why M. Agnolo declared oil painting to be a woman's method, or of idle men. The master of the colour we see in the Sistina could have no other: for though colour be the least considerable of that constellation of powers that blaze in its compartments, it is not the last or least accomplishment of the work. The flesh of the academic figures on the frames of the ceiling is a flesh even now superior to all the flesh of Annibale Carracci in the Farnese, generally pale though not cold, and never bricky though sometimes sanguine. The Jeremiah among the Prophets, glows with the glow of Tiziano, but in a breadth unknown to Giorgione and to him. The Eve under the Tree has the bland pearly harmony of Correggio; and some of the bodies in air on the lower part of the Last Judgement, less impaired by time or accident than the rest, for juice and warmth may still defy all competition. His colour sometimes even borders on characteristic variety, as in the composition of the Brazen Serpent. That a man who mastered his materials with such power, did reject the certain impediments and the precarious and inferior beauties of oil, which Sebastian del Piombo proposed for the execution of the Last Judgement, and who punished him for the proposal with his disdain for life, cannot be wondered at. If I have mentioned particular beauties of colour, it was more for others than to express what strikes me most. The parts, in the process of every man's work, are always marked with more or less felicity; and great as the beauties of those which I distinguished are, they would not be beauties in my eye, if obtained by a principle discordant from the rest.
The object of my admiration in M. Agnolo's colour is the tone, that comprehensive union of tint and hue spread over the whole, which seems less the effect of successive labour than a sudden and instantaneous exhalation, one principle of light, local colour, demi-tint and shade. Even the colours of the draperies, though perhaps too distinct, and often gayer than the gravity of their wearers or the subject allowed, are absorbed by the general tone, and appear so only on repeated inspection or separation from the rest. Raffaello did not come to his great work with the finished system, the absolute power over the materials, and the conscious authority of M. Agnolo. Though the august plan which his mind had conceived, admitted of lyric and allegoric ornament, it was, upon the whole, a drama and characteristic: he could not therefore apply to its mass the generic colour of the Sistina. Hence we see him struggling at the onset between the elements of that tone which the delineation of subdivided character and passions demanded, and the long imbibed habits and shackles of his master. But one great picture decided the struggle. This is evident from the difference of the upper and lower part of the Dispute on the Sacrament. The upper is the summit of Pietro Perugino's style, dignified and enlarged; the lower is his own. Every feature, limb, motion, the draperies, the lights and shades of the lower part, are toned and varied by character. The florid bloom of youth tinged with the glow of eagerness and impatience to be admitted; the sterner and more vigorous tint of long initiated and authoritative manhood; the inflamed suffusion of disputative zeal; the sickly hue of cloistered meditation; the brown and sun-tinged hermit, and the pale decrepit elder, contrast each other; but contrasted as they are, their whole action and colour remain subordinate to the general hue diffused by the serene solemnity of the surrounding medium, which is itself tinctured by the effulgence from above. A sufficient balance of light and shade maintains the whole, though more attention be paid to individual discrimination than masses. In the economy of the detail we find the lights no longer so white, the local colour no longer so crude, the passages to the demi-tints not so much spotted with red, nor the demi-tints themselves of so green a cast as in the four Symbolic Pictures on golden grounds of the ceiling.
It appears to me upon the whole, that for a general characteristic tone, Raffaello has never exceeded the purity of this picture. If in the School of Athens he has excelled it in individual tints, in tints that rival less than challenge the glow and juice of Titian, they are scattered more in fragments than in masses, and at the expense or with neglect of general unison, if we except the central and connecting figure of Epictetus. The predominance of tender flesh, and white or tinted drapery on the foreground, whilst the more distant groups are embrowned by masculine tints and draperies of deeper hue, prove, that if Raffaello could command individual colour, he had not penetrated its general principle.
The Parnassus in the same room has a ruling tone, but not the tone of a poetic fancy. Aërial freshness was his aim, and he is only frigid. Its principal actors are ideals of divine nature, and ought to move in a celestial medium, and Raffaello had no more an adequate colour than adequate forms for either. But whatever is characteristic, from the sublimity of Homer to the submissive affable courtesy of Horace and the directing finger of Pindar, is inimitable and in tune.
The ultimate powers of Raffaello, and, as far as I can judge, of Fresco, appear to me collected in the astonishing picture of the Heliodorus. This is not the place to dwell on the loftiness of conception, the mighty style of design, the refined and appropriate choice of character, the terror, fears, hopes, palpitation of expression, and the far more than Corregiesque graces of female forms; the Colour only, considered as a whole or in subordination, is our object. Though by the choice of the composition the back-ground, which is the sanctuary of the temple, embrowned with gold, diffuses a warmer gleam than the scenery of the foreground, its open area, yet by the dexterous management of opposing to its glazed cast a mass of vigorous and cruder flesh tints, a fiercer ebullition of impassioned hues, – the flash of steel and iron armour, and draperies of indigo, deep black and glowing crimson, the foreground maintains its place, and all is harmony.
Manifold as the subdivisions of character are, angelic, devout, authoritative, violent, brutal, vigorous, helpless, delicate; and various as the tints of the passions that sway them appear, elevated, warmed, inflamed, depressed, appalled, aghast, they are all united by the general tone that diffuses itself from the interior repose of the sanctuary, smoothens the whirlwind that fluctuates on the foreground, and gives an air of temperance to the whole.
