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REFLECTIONS ON THE PAINTING AND SCULPTURE OF THE _GREEKS_.




                               REFLECTIONS
                                 ON THE
                         PAINTING and SCULPTURE
                                   OF
                               THE GREEKS:
                                  WITH
                    INSTRUCTIONS for the CONNOISSEUR,
                                   AND
                   An ESSAY on GRACE in Works of Art.

                             Translated from
              The _German_ Original of the Abbé WINKELMANN,
               Librarian of the VATICAN, F. R. S. &c. &c.

                         By HENRY FUSSELI, A.M.

                             [Illustration]

                                 LONDON:
           Printed for the TRANSLATOR, and Sold by A. MILLAR,
                          in the Strand, 1765.




TO

The Lord SCARSDALE.


MY LORD,

With becoming gratitude for your Lordship’s condescension in granting
such a noble Asylum to a Stranger, I humbly presume to shelter this
Translation under your Lordship’s Patronage.

If I have been able to do justice to my Author, your Lordship’s accurate
Jugment, and fine Taste, will naturally protect his Work: But I must
rely wholly on your known Candour and Goodness for the pardon of many
imperfections in the language.

I am, with the most profound respect,

    MY LORD,

    Your LORDSHIP’S

          Most obliged, most obedient, and most humble Servant,

                                                           Henry Fusseli.

    LONDON,
    10 April, 1765.




[Illustration: GRAIIS INGENIUM &c.]




    ON THE
    IMITATION
    OF THE
    PAINTING and SCULPTURE of the GREEKS.


I. NATURE.

To the Greek climate we owe the production of TASTE, and from thence
it spread at length over all the politer world. Every invention,
communicated by foreigners to that nation, was but the feed of what it
became afterwards, changing both its nature and size in a country,
chosen, as _Plato_[1] says, by Minerva, to be inhabited by the Greeks, as
productive of every kind of genius.

But this TASTE was not only original among the Greeks, but seemed also
quite peculiar to their country: it seldom went abroad without loss; and
was long ere it imparted its kind influences to more distant climes.
It was, doubtless, a stranger to the northern zones, when Painting and
Sculpture, those offsprings of Greece, were despised there to such a
degree, that the most valuable pieces of _Corregio_ served only for
blinds to the windows of the royal stables at Stockholm.

There is but one way for the moderns to become great, and perhaps
unequalled; I mean, by imitating the antients. And what we are told of
_Homer_, that whoever understands him well, admires him, we find no less
true in matters concerning the antient, especially the Greek arts. But
then we must be as familiar with them as with a friend, to find Laocoon
as inimitable as _Homer_. By such intimacy our judgment will be that
of _Nicomachus_: _Take these eyes_, replied he to some paltry critick,
censuring the Helen of Zeuxis, _Take my eyes, and she will appear a
goddess_.

With such eyes _Michael Angelo_, _Raphael_, and _Poussin_, considered
the performances of the antients. They imbibed taste at its source; and
Raphael particularly in its native country. We know, that he sent young
artists to Greece, to copy there, for his use, the remains of antiquity.

An antient Roman statue, compared to a Greek one, will generally appear
like _Virgil_’s Diana amidst her Oreads, in comparison of the Nausicaa of
_Homer_, whom he imitated.

Laocoon was the standard of the Roman artists, as well as ours; and the
rules of _Polycletus_ became the rules of art.

I need not put the reader in mind of the negligences to be met with in
the most celebrated antient performances: the Dolphin at the feet of
the Medicean Venus, with the children, and the Parerga of the Diomedes
by _Dioscorides_, being commonly known. The reverse of the best Egyptian
and Syrian coins seldom equals the head, in point of workmanship. Great
artists are wisely negligent, and even their errors instruct. Behold
their works as _Lucian_ bids you behold the Zeus of _Phidias_; _Zeus
himself, not his footstool_.

It is not only _Nature_ which the votaries of the Greeks find in their
works, but still more, something superior to nature; ideal beauties,
brain-born images, as _Proclus_ says[2].

The most beautiful body of ours would perhaps be as much inferior to the
most beautiful Greek one, as Iphicles was to his brother Hercules. The
forms of the Greeks, prepared to beauty, by the influence of the mildest
and purest sky, became perfectly elegant by their early exercises. Take
a Spartan youth, sprung from heroes, undistorted by swaddling-cloths;
whose bed, from his seventh year, was the earth, familiar with wrestling
and swimming from his infancy; and compare him with one of our young
Sybarits, and then decide which of the two would be deemed worthy, by
an artist, to serve for the model of a Theseus, an Achilles, or even a
Bacchus. The latter would produce a Theseus fed on roses, the former a
Theseus fed on flesh, to borrow the expression of _Euphranor_.

The grand games were always a very strong incentive for every Greek youth
to exercise himself. Whoever aspired to the honours of these was obliged,
by the laws, to submit to a trial of ten months at Elis, the general
rendezvous; and there the first rewards were commonly won by youths, as
_Pindar_ tells us.[3]_To be like the God-like Diagoras_, was the fondest
wish of every youth.

Behold the swift Indian outstripping in pursuit the hart: how briskly his
juices circulate! how flexible, how elastic his nerves and muscles! how
easy his whole frame! Thus _Homer_ draws his heroes, and his Achilles he
eminently marks for “being swift of foot.”

By these exercises the bodies of the Greeks got the great and manly
Contour observed in their statues, without any bloated corpulency. The
young Spartans were bound to appear every tenth day naked before the
Ephori, who, when they perceived any inclinable to fatness, ordered them
a scantier diet; nay, it was one of _Pythagoras_’s precepts, to beware of
growing too corpulent; and, perhaps for the same reason, youths aspiring
to wrestling-games were, in the remoter ages of Greece, during their
trial, confined to a milk diet.

They were particularly cautious in avoiding every deforming custom; and
_Alcibiades_, when a boy, refusing to learn to play on the flute, for
fear of its discomposing his features, was followed by all the youth of
Athens.

In their dress they were professed followers of nature. No modern
stiffening habit, no squeezing stays hindered Nature from forming easy
beauty; the fair knew no anxiety about their attire, and from their loose
and short habits the Spartan girls got the epithet of Phænomirides.

We know what pains they took to have handsome children, but want to be
acquainted with their methods: for certainly _Quillet_, in his Callipædy,
falls short of their numerous expedients. They even attempted changing
blue eyes to black ones, and games of beauty were exhibited at Elis, the
rewards consisting of arms consecrated to the temple of Minerva. How
could they miss of competent and learned judges, when, as _Aristotle_
tells us, the Grecian youths were taught drawing expressly for that
purpose? From their fine complexion, which, though mingled with a vast
deal of foreign blood, is still preserved in most of the Greek islands,
and from the still enticing beauty of the fair sex, especially at Chios;
we may easily form an idea of the beauty of the former inhabitants, who
boasted of being Aborigines, nay, more antient than the moon.

And are not there several modern nations, among whom beauty is too common
to give any title to pre-eminence? Such are unanimously accounted the
Georgians and the Kabardinski in the Crim.

Those diseases which are destructive of beauty, were moreover unknown to
the Greeks. There is not the least hint of the small-pox, in the writings
of their physicians; and _Homer_, whose portraits are always so truly
drawn, mentions not one pitted face. Venereal plagues, and their daughter
the English malady, had not yet names.

And must we not then, considering every advantage which nature bestows,
or art teaches, for forming, preserving, and improving beauty, enjoyed
and applied by the Grecians; must we not then confess, there is the
strongest probability that the beauty of their persons excelled all we
can have an idea of?

Art claims liberty: in vain would nature produce her noblest offsprings,
in a country where rigid laws would choak her progressive growth, as
in Egypt, that pretended parent of sciences and arts: but in Greece,
where, from their earliest youth, the happy inhabitants were devoted to
mirth and pleasure, where narrow-spirited formality never restrained the
liberty of manners, the artist enjoyed nature without a veil.

The Gymnasies, where, sheltered by public modesty, the youths exercised
themselves naked, were the schools of art. These the philosopher
frequented, as well as the artist. _Socrates_ for the instruction of a
Charmides, Autolycus, Lysis; _Phidias_ for the improvement of his art
by their beauty. Here he studied the elasticity of the muscles, the
ever varying motions of the frame, the outlines of fair forms, or the
Contour left by the young wrestler on the sand. Here beautiful nakedness
appeared with such a liveliness of expression, such truth and variety of
situations, such a noble air of the body, as it would be ridiculous to
look for in any hired model of our academies.

Truth springs from the feelings of the heart. What shadow of it therefore
can the modern artist hope for, by relying upon a vile model, whose soul
is either too base to feel, or too stupid to express the passions, the
sentiment his object claims? unhappy he! if experience and fancy fail him.

The beginning of many of _Plato_’s dialogues, supposed to have been held
in the Gymnasies, cannot raise our admiration of the generous souls
of the Athenian youth, without giving us, at the same time, a strong
presumption of a suitable nobleness in their outward carriage and bodily
exercises.

The fairest youths danced undressed on the theatre; and _Sophocles_, the
great _Sophocles_, when young, was the first who dared to entertain his
fellow-citizens in this manner. _Phryne_ went to bathe at the Eleusinian
games, exposed to the eyes of all Greece, and rising from the water
became the model of Venus Anadyomene. During certain solemnities the
young Spartan maidens danced naked before the young men: strange this may
seem, but will appear more probable, when we consider that the christians
of the primitive church, both men and women, were dipped together in the
same font.

Then every solemnity, every festival, afforded the artist opportunity to
familiarize himself with all the beauties of Nature.

In the most happy times of their freedom, the humanity of the Greeks
abhorred bloody games, which even in the Ionick Asia had ceased long
before, if, as some guess, they had once been usual there. _Antiochus
Epiphanes_, by ordering shews of Roman gladiators, first presented them
with such unhappy victims; and custom and time, weakening the pangs of
sympathizing humanity, changed even these games into schools of art.
There _Ctesias_ studied his dying gladiator, in whom you might descry
“how much life was still left in him[4].”

These frequent occasions of observing Nature, taught the Greeks to go on
still farther. They began to form certain general ideas of beauty, with
regard to the proportions of the inferiour parts, as well as of the whole
frame: these they raised above the reach of mortality, according to the
superiour model of some ideal nature.

Thus _Raphael_ formed his Galatea, as we learn by his letter to Count
Baltazar Castiglione[5], where he says, “Beauty being so seldom found
among the fair, I avail myself of a certain ideal image.”

According to those ideas, exalted above the pitch of material models, the
Greeks formed their gods and heroes: the profile of the brow and nose of
gods and goddesses is almost a streight line. The same they gave on their
coins to queens, &c. but without indulging their fancy too much. Perhaps
this profile was as peculiar to the antient Greeks, as flat noses and
little eyes to the Calmucks and Chinese; a supposition which receives
some strength from the large eyes of all the heads on Greek coins and
gems.

From the same ideas the Romans formed their Empresses on their coins.
Livia and Agrippina have the profile of Artemisia and Cleopatra.

We observe, nevertheless, that the Greek artists in general, submitted to
the law prescribed by the Thebans: “To do, under a penalty, their best in
imitating Nature.” For, where they could not possibly apply their easy
profile, without endangering the resemblance, they followed Nature, as we
see instanced in the beauteous head of Julia, the daughter of Titus, done
by _Euodus_[6].

But to form a “just resemblance, and, at the same time, a handsomer
one,” being always the chief rule they observed, and which _Polygnotus_
constantly went by; they must, of necessity, be supposed to have had in
view a more beauteous and more perfect Nature. And when we are told, that
some artists imitated _Praxiteles_, who took his concubine _Cratina_ for
the model of his Cnidian Venus; or that others formed the graces from
_Lais_; it is to be understood that they did so, without neglecting these
great laws of the art. Sensual beauty furnished the painter with all that
nature could give; ideal beauty with the awful and sublime; from that he
took the _Humane_, from this the _Divine_.

Let any one, sagacious enough to pierce into the depths of art, compare
the whole system of the Greek figures with that of the moderns, by which,
as they say, nature alone is imitated; good heaven! what a number of
neglected beauties will he not discover!

For instance, in most of the modern figures, if the skin happens to be
any where pressed, you see there several little smart wrinkles: when,
on the contrary, the same parts, pressed in the same manner on Greek
statues, by their soft undulations, form at last but one noble pressure.
These master-pieces never shew us the skin forcibly stretched, but softly
embracing the firm flesh, which fills it up without any tumid expansion,
and harmoniously follows its direction. There the skin never, as on
modern bodies, appears in plaits distinct from the flesh.

Modern works are likewise distinguished from the antient by parts; a
crowd of small touches and dimples too sensibly drawn. In antient works
you find these distributed with sparing sagacity, and, as relative to
a completer and more perfect Nature, offered but as hints, nay, often
perceived only by the learned.

The probability still increases, that the bodies of the Greeks, as well
as the works of their artists, were framed with more unity of system, a
nobler harmony of parts, and a completeness of the whole, above our lean
tensions and hollow wrinkles.

Probability, ’tis true, is all we can pretend to: but it deserves the
attention of our artists and connoisseurs the rather, as the veneration
professed for the antient monuments is commonly imputed to prejudice, and
not to their excellence; as if the numerous ages, during which they have
mouldered, were the only motive for bestowing on them exalted praises,
and setting them up for the standards of imitation.

Such as would fain deny to the Greeks the advantages both of a more
perfect Nature and of ideal Beauties, boast of the famous _Bernini_,
as their great champion. He was of opinion, besides, that Nature was
possessed of every requisite beauty: the only skill being to discover
that. He boasted of having got rid of a prejudice concerning the Medicean
Venus, whose charms he at first thought peculiar ones; but, after many
careful researches, discovered them now and then in Nature[7].

He was taught then, by the Venus, to discover beauties in common Nature,
which he had formerly thought peculiar to that statue, and but for it,
never would have searched for them. Follows it not from thence, that the
beauties of the Greek statues being discovered with less difficulty than
those of Nature, are of course more affecting; not so diffused, but more
harmoniously united? and if this be true, the pointing out of Nature as
chiefly imitable, is leading us into a more tedious and bewildered road
to the knowledge of perfect beauty, than setting up the ancients for
that purpose: consequently _Bernini_, by adhering too strictly to Nature,
acted against his own principles, as well as obstructed the progress of
his disciples.

The imitation of beauty is either reduced to a single object, and is
_individual_, or, gathering observations from single ones, _composes of
these one whole_. The former we call copying, drawing a portrait; ’tis
the straight way to Dutch forms and figures; whereas the other leads to
general beauty, and its ideal images, and is the way the Greeks took. But
there is still this difference between them and us: they enjoying daily
occasions of seeing beauty, (suppose even not superior to ours,) acquired
those ideal riches with less toil than we, confined as we are to a few
and often fruitless opportunities, ever can hope for. It would be no easy
matter, I fancy, for our nature, to produce a frame equal in beauty to
that of Antinous; and surely no idea can soar above the more than human
proportions of a deity, in the Apollo of the Vatican, which is a compound
of the united force of Nature, Genius, and Art.

Their imitation discovering in the one every beauty diffused through
Nature, shewing in the other the pitch to which the most perfect Nature
can elevate herself, when soaring above the senses, will quicken the
genius of the artist, and shorten his discipleship: he will learn to
think and draw with confidence, seeing here the fixed limits of human and
divine beauty.

Building on this ground, his hand and senses directed by the Greek rule
of beauty, the modern artist goes on the surest way to the imitation
of Nature. The ideas of unity and perfection, which he acquired in
meditating on antiquity, will help him to combine, and to ennoble the
more scattered and weaker beauties of our Nature. Thus he will improve
every beauty he discovers in it, and by comparing the beauties of nature
with the ideal, form rules for himself.

Then, and not sooner, he, particularly the painter, may be allowed to
commit himself to Nature, especially in cases where his art is beyond the
instruction of the old marbles, to wit, in drapery; then, like _Poussin_,
he may proceed with more liberty; for “a timid follower will never get
the start of his leaders, and he who is at a loss to produce something
of his own, will be a bad manager of the productions of another,” as
_Michael Angelo_ says; Minds favoured by Nature,

              _Quibus Arte benigna,_
    _Et meliore luto, finxit præcordia Titan,_

have here a plain way to become originals.

Thus the account _de Piles_ gives, ought to be understood, that
_Raphael_, a short time before he was carried off by death, intended
to forsake the marbles, in order to addict himself wholly to Nature.
True antient taste would most certainly have guided him through every
maze of common Nature; and whatever observations, whatever new ideas
he might have reaped from that, they would all, by a kind of chymical
transmutation, have been changed to his own essence and soul.

He, perhaps, might have indulged more variety; enlarged his draperies;
improved his colours, his light and shadow: but none of these
improvements would have raised his pictures to that high esteem they
deserve, for that noble Contour, and that sublimity of thoughts, which he
acquired from the ancients.

Nothing would more decisively prove the advantages to be got by imitating
the ancients, preferably to Nature, than an essay made with two youths
of equal talents, by devoting the one to antiquity, the other to Nature:
this would draw Nature as he finds her; if Italian, perhaps he might
paint like _Caravaggio_; if Flemish, and lucky, like _Jac. Jordans_; if
French, like _Stella_: the other would draw her as she directs, and paint
like _Raphael_.


II. CONTOUR.

But even supposing that the imitation of Nature could supply all the
artist wants, she never could bestow the precision of Contour, that
characteristic distinction of the ancients.

The noblest Contour unites or circumscribes every part of the most
perfect Nature, and the ideal beauties in the figures of the Greeks;
or rather, contains them both. _Euphranor_, famous after the epoch of
_Zeuxis_, is said to have first ennobled it.

Many of the moderns have attempted to imitate this Contour, but very few
with success. The great _Rubens_ is far from having attained either its
precision or elegance, especially in the performances which he finished
before he went to Italy, and studied the antiques.

The line by which Nature divides completeness from superfluity is but
a small one, and, insensible as it often is, has been crossed even by
the best moderns; while these, in shunning a meagre Contour, became
corpulent, those, in shunning that, grew lean.

Among them all, only _Michael Angelo_, perhaps, may be said to have
attained the antique; but only in strong muscular figures, heroic frames;
not in those of tender youth; nor in female bodies, which, under his bold
hand, grew Amazons.

The Greek artist, on the contrary, adjusted his Contour, in every
figure, to the breadth of a single hair, even in the nicest and most
tiresome performances, as gems. Consider the Diomedes and Perseus of
_Dioscorides_[8], Hercules and Iole by _Teucer_[9], and admire the
inimitable Greeks.

_Parrhasius_, they say, was master of the correctest Contour.

This Contour reigns in Greek figures, even when covered with drapery, as
the chief aim of the artist; the beautiful frame pierces the marble like
a transparent _Coan_ cloth.

The high-stiled Agrippina, and the three vestals in the royal cabinet
at Dresden, deserve to be mentioned as eminent proofs of this. This
Agrippina seems not the mother of Nero, but an elder one, the spouse
of Germanicus. She much resembles another pretended Agrippina, in the
parlour of the library of St. Marc, at Venice[10]. Ours is a sitting
figure, above the size of Nature, her head inclined on her right hand;
her fine face speaks a soul “pining in thought,” absorbed in pensive
sorrow, and senseless to every outward impression. The artist, I suppose,
intended to draw his heroine in the mournful moment she received the
news of her banishment to Pandataria.

The three vestals deserve our esteem from a double title: as being
the first important discoveries of Herculaneum, and models of the
sublimest drapery. All three, but particularly one above the natural
size, would, with regard to that, be worthy companions of the Farnesian
_Flora_, and all the other boasts of antiquity. The two others seem,
by their resemblance to each other, productions of the same hand, only
distinguished by their heads, which are not of equal goodness. On the
best the curled hairs, running in furrows from the forehead, are tied on
the neck: on the other the hair being smooth on the scalp, and curled on
the front, is gathered behind, and tied with a ribband: this head seems
of a modern hand, but a good one.

There is no veil on these heads; but that makes not against their being
vestals: for the priestesses of Vesta (I speak on proof) were not always
veiled; or rather, as the drapery seems to betray, the veil, which was
of one piece with the garments, being thrown backwards, mingles with the
cloaths on the neck.

’Tis to these three inimitable pieces that the world owes the first hints
of the ensuing discovery of the subterranean treasures of Herculaneum.

Their discovery happened when the same ruins that overwhelmed the
town had nearly extinguished the unhappy remembrance of it: when the
tremendous fate that spoke its doom was only known by the account which
Pliny gives of his uncle’s death.

These great master-pieces of the Greek art were transplanted, and
worshipped in Germany, long before Naples could boast of one single
Herculanean monument.

They were discovered in the year 1706 at Portici near Naples, in a
ruinous vault, on occasion of digging the foundations of a villa, for
the Prince d’Elbeuf, and immediately, with other new discovered marble
and metal statues, came into the possession of Prince Eugene, and were
transported to Vienna.

Eugene, who well knew their value, provided a Sala Terrena to be built
expressly for them, and a few others: and so highly were they esteemed,
that even on the first rumour of their sale, the academy and the artists
were in an uproar, and every body, when they were transported to Dresden,
followed them with heavy eyes.

The famous _Matielli_, to whom

    _His rule Polyclet, his chissel Phidias gave,_

    Algarotti.

copied them in clay before their removal, and following them some years
after, filled Dresden with everlasting monuments of his art: but even
there he studied the drapery of his priestesses, (drapery his chief
skill!) till he laid down his chissel, and thus gave the most striking
proof of their excellence.


III. DRAPERY.

By Drapery is to be understood all that the art teaches of covering the
nudities, and folding the garments; and this is the third prerogative of
the ancients.

The Drapery of the vestals above, is grand and elegant. The smaller
foldings spring gradually from the larger ones, and in them are lost
again, with a noble freedom, and gentle harmony of the whole, without
hiding the correct Contour. How few of the moderns would stand the test
here!

Justice, however, shall not be refused to some great modern artists, who,
without impairing nature or truth, have left, in certain cases, the road
which the ancients generally pursued. The Greek Drapery, in order to help
the Contour, was, for the most part, taken from thin and wet garments,
which of course clasped the body, and discovered the shape. The robe of
the Greek ladies was extremely thin; thence its epithet of Peplon.

Nevertheless the reliefs, the pictures, and particularly the busts of the
ancients, are instances that they did not always keep to this undulating
Drapery[11].

In modern times the artists were forced to heap garments, and sometimes
heavy ones, on each other, which of course could not fall into the
flowing folds of the ancients. Hence the large-folded Drapery, by which
the painter and sculptor may display as much skill as by the ancient
manner. _Carlo Marat_ and _Francis Solimena_ may be called the chief
masters of it: but the garments of the new Venetian school, by passing
the bounds of nature and propriety, became stiff as brass.


IV. EXPRESSION.

The last and most eminent characteristic of the Greek works is a noble
simplicity and sedate grandeur in Gesture and Expression. As the bottom
of the sea lies peaceful beneath a foaming surface, a great soul lies
sedate beneath the strife of passions in Greek figures.

’Tis in the face of Laocoon this soul shines with full lustre, not
confined however to the face, amidst the most violent sufferings. Pangs
piercing every muscle, every labouring nerve; pangs which we almost
feel ourselves, while we consider—not the face, nor the most expressive
parts—only the belly contracted by excruciating pains: these however, I
say, exert not themselves with violence, either in the face or gesture.
He pierces not heaven, like the Laocoon of _Virgil_; his mouth is rather
opened to discharge an anxious overloaded groan, as _Sadolet_ says;
the struggling body and the supporting mind exert themselves with equal
strength, nay balance all the frame.

Laocoon suffers, but suffers like the Philoctetes of _Sophocles_: we
weeping feel his pains, but wish for the hero’s strength to support his
misery.

The Expression of so great a soul is beyond the force of mere nature. It
was in his own mind the artist was to search for the strength of spirit
with which he marked his marble. Greece enjoyed artists and philosophers
in the same persons; and the wisdom of more than one Metrodorus directed
art, and inspired its figures with more than common souls.

Had Laocoon been covered with a garb becoming an antient sacrificer,
his sufferings would have lost one half of their Expression. _Bernini_
pretended to perceive the first effects of the operating venom in the
numbness of one of the thighs.

Every action or gesture in Greek figures, not stamped with this
character of sage dignity, but too violent, too passioniate, was called
“Parenthyrsos.”

For, the more tranquillity reigns in a body, the fitter it is to draw
the true character of the soul; which, in every excessive gesture,
seems to rush from her proper centre, and being hurried away by
extremes becomes unnatural. Wound up to the highest pitch of passion,
she may force herself upon the duller eye; but the true sphere of her
action is simplicity and calmness. In Laocoon sufferings alone had
been Parenthyrsos; the artist therefore, in order to reconcile the
significative and ennobling qualities of his soul, put him into a
posture, allowing for the sufferings that were necessary, the next to a
state of tranquillity: a tranquillity however that is characteristical:
the soul will be herself—this individual—not the soul of mankind; sedate,
but active; calm, but not indifferent or drowsy.

What a contrast! how diametrically opposite to this is the taste of our
modern artists, especially the young ones! on nothing do they bestow
their approbation, but contorsions and strange postures, inspired with
boldness; this they pretend is done with spirit, with _Franchezza_.
Contrast is the darling of their ideas; in it they fancy every
perfection. They fill their performances with comet-like excentric souls,
despising every thing but an Ajax or a Capaneus.

Arts have their infancy as well as men; they begin, as well as the
artist, with froth and bombast: in such buskins the muse of Æschilus
stalks, and part of the diction in his Agamemnon is more loaded with
hyperboles than all Heraclitus’s nonsense. Perhaps the primitive Greek
painters drew in the same manner that their first good tragedian thought
in.

In all human actions flutter and rashness precede, sedateness and
solidity follow: but time only can discover, and the judicious will
admire these only: they are the characteristics of great masters; violent
passions run away with their disciples.

The sages in the art know the difficulties hid under that air of easiness:

                          _ut sibi quivis_
    _Speret idem, sudet multum, frustraque laboret_
    _Ausus idem._

    Hor.

_La Fage_, though an eminent designer, was not able to attain the purity
of ancient taste. Every thing is animated in his works; they demand, and
at the same time dissipate, your attention, like a company striving to
talk all at once.

This noble simplicity and sedate grandeur is also the true
characteristical mark of the best and maturest Greek writings, of the
epoch and school of _Socrates_. Possessed of these qualities _Raphael_
became eminently great, and he owed them to the ancients.

That great soul of his, lodged in a beauteous body, was requisite for the
first discovery of the true character of the ancients: he first felt all
their beauties, and (what he was peculiarly happy in!) at an age when
vulgar, unfeeling, and half-moulded souls overlook every higher beauty.

Ye that approach his works, teach your eyes to be sensible of those
beauties, refine your taste by the true antique, and then that solemn
tranquillity of the chief figures in his _Attila_, deemed insipid by the
vulgar, will appear to you equally significant and sublime. The Roman
bishop, in order to divert the Hun from his design of assailing Rome,
appears not with the air of a Rhetor, but as a venerable man, whose very
presence softens uproar into peace; like him drawn by Virgil:

    _Tum pietate gravem ac meritis, si forte virum quem_
    _Conspexere, silent, adrectisque auribus adstant:_

    Æn. I.

full of confidence in God, he faces down the barbarian: the two Apostles
descend not with the air of slaughtering angels, but (if sacred may be
compared with profane) like Jove, whose very nod shakes Olympus.

_Algardi_, in his celebrated representation of the same story, done in
bas-relief on an altar in St. Peter’s church at Rome, was either too
negligent, or too weak, to give this active tranquillity of his great
predecessor to the figures of his Apostles. There they appear like
messengers of the Lord of Hosts: here like human warriors with mortal
arms.

How few of those we call connoisseurs have ever been able to understand,
and sincerely to admire, the grandeur of expression in the St. _Michael
of Guido_, in the church of the Capuchins at Rome! they prefer commonly
the Archangel of _Concha_, whose face glows with indignation and
revenge[12]; whereas _Guido_’s Angel, after having overthrown the fiend
of God and man, hovers over him unruffled and undismayed.

Thus, to heighten the hero of _The Campaign_, victorious Marlborough, the
British poet paints the avenging Angel hovering over Britannia with the
like serenity and awful calmness.

The royal gallery at Dresden contains now, among its treasures, one of
_Raphael_’s best pictures, witness Vasari, &c. a Madonna with the Infant;
St. Sixtus and St. Barbara kneeling, one on each side, and two Angels in
the fore-part.

It was the chief altar-piece in the cloister of St. Sixtus at Piacenza,
which was crouded by connoisseurs, who came to see this Raphael, in
the same manner as Thespis was in the days of old, for the sake of the
beautiful Cupid of _Praxiteles_.

Behold the Madonna! her face brightens with innocence; a form above the
female size, and the calmness of her mien, make her appear as already
beatified: she has that silent awfulness which the ancients spread over
their deities. How grand, how noble is her Contour!

The child in her arms is elevated above vulgar children, by a face
darting the beams of divinity through every smiling feature of harmless
childhood.

St. Barbara kneels, with adoring stillness, at her side: but being far
beneath the majesty of the chief figure, the great artist compensated her
humbler graces with soft enticing charms.

The Saint opposite to her is venerable with age. His features seem to
bear witness of his sacred youth.

The veneration which St. Barbara declares for the Madonna, expressed in
the most sensible and pathetic manner, by her fine hands clasped on her
breast, helps to support the motion of one of St. Sixtus’s hands, by
which he utters his extasy, better becoming (as the artist judiciously
thought, and chose for variety’s sake) manly strength, than female
modesty.

Time, ’tis true, has withered the primitive splendour of this picture,
and partly blown off its lively colours; but still the soul, with which
the painter inspired his godlike work, breathes life through all its
parts.

Let those that approach this, and the rest of _Raphael_’s works, in hopes
of finding there the trifling Dutch and Flemish beauties, the laboured
nicety of _Netscher_, or _Douw_, flesh _ivorified_ by _Van der Werf_,
or even the licked manner of some of _Raphael_’s living countrymen; let
those, I say, be told, that _Raphael_ was not a great master for them.


V. WORKMANSHIP IN SCULPTURE.

After these remarks on the Nature, the Contour, the Drapery, the
simplicity and grandeur of Expression in the performances of the Greek
artists, we shall proceed to some inquiries into their method of working.

Their models were generally made of wax; instead of which the moderns
used clay, or such like unctuous stuff, as seeming fitter for expressing
flesh, than the more gluey and tenacious wax.

A method however not new, though more frequent in our times: for we know
even the name of that ancient who first attempted modelling in wet clay;
’twas _Dibutades_ of Sicyon; and _Arcesilaus_, the friend of _Lucullus_,
grew more famous by his models of clay than his other performances.
He made for _Lucullus_ a figure of clay representing _Happiness_, and
received 60,000 sesterces: and _Octavius_, a Roman Knight, paid him a
talent for the model only of a large dish, in plaister, which he designed
to have finished in gold.

Of all materials, clay might be allowed to be the fittest for shaping
figures, could it preserve its moistness; but losing that by time or
fire, its solider parts, contracting by degrees, lessen the bulk of the
mass; and that which is formed, being of different diameters, grows
sooner dry in some parts than in others, and the dry ones being shrunk to
a smaller size, there will be no proportion kept in the whole.

From this inconvenience wax is always free: it loses nothing of its bulk;
and there are also means to give it the smoothness of flesh, which is
refused to modelling; viz. you make your model of clay, mould it with
plaister, and cast the wax over it.

But for transferring their models to the marble, the Greeks seem to
have possessed some peculiar advantages, which are now lost: for you
discover, every where in their works, the traces of a confident hand; and
even in those of inferior rank, it would be no easy matter to prove a
wrong cut. Surely hands so steady, so secure, must of necessity have been
guided by rules more determinate and less arbitrary than we can boast of.

The usual method of our sculptors is, to quarter the well-prepared model
with horizontals and perpendiculars, and, as is common in copying a
picture, to draw a relative number of squares on the marble.

Thus, regular gradations of a scale being supposed, every small square
of the model has its corresponding one on the marble. But the contents
of the relative masses not being determinable by a measured surface, the
artist, though he gives to his stone the resemblance of the model, yet,
as he only depends on the precarious aid of his eye, he shall never cease
wavering, as to his doing right or wrong, cutting too flat or too deep.

Nor can he find lines to determine precisely the outlines, or the Contour
of the inward parts, and the centre of his model, in so fixed and
unchangeable a manner, as to enable him, exactly, to transfer the same
Contours upon his stone.

To all this add, that, if his work happens to be too voluminous for one
single hand, he must trust to those of his journeymen and disciples,
who, too often, are neither skilful nor cautious enough to follow their
master’s design; and if once the smallest trifle be cut wrong, for it is
impossible to fix, by this method, the limits of the cuts, all is lost.

It is to be remarked in general, that every sculptor, who carries on his
chisselings their whole length, on first fashioning his marble, and does
not prepare them by gradual cuts for the last final strokes; it is to be
remarked, I say, that he never can keep his work free from faults.

Another chief defect in that method is this: the artist cannot help
cutting off, every moment, the lines on his block; and though he restore
them, cannot possibly be sure of avoiding mistakes.

On account of this unavoidable uncertainty, the artists found themselves
obliged to contrive another method, and that which the French academy at
Rome first made use of for copying antiques, was applied by many even to
modelled performances.

Over the statue which you want to copy, you fix a well-proportioned
square, dividing it into equally distant degrees, by plummets: by these
the outlines of the figure are more distinctly marked than they could
possibly be by means of the former method: they moreover afford the
artist an exact measure of the more prominent or lower parts, by the
degrees in which these parts are near them, and in short, allow him to go
on with more confidence.

But the undulations of a curve being not determinable by a single
perpendicular, the Contours of the figure are but indifferently indicated
to the artist; and among their many declinations from a straight surface,
his tenour is every moment lost.

The difficulty of discovering the real proportions of the figures, may
also be easily imagined: they seek them by horizontals placed across the
plummets. But the rays reflected from the figure through the squares,
will strike the eye in enlarged angles, and consequently appear bigger,
in proportion as they are high or low to the point of view.

Nevertheless, as the ancient monuments must be most cautiously dealt
with, plummets are still of use in copying them, as no surer or easier
method has been discovered: but for performances to be done from models
they are unfit for want of precision.

_Michael Angelo_ went alone a way unknown before him, and (strange to
tell!) untrod since the time of that genius of modern sculpture.

This Phidias of latter times, and next to the Greeks, hath, in all
probability, hit the very mark of his great masters. We know at least no
method so eminently proper for expressing on the block every, even the
minutest, beauty of the model.

_Vasari_[13] seems to give but a defective description of this method,
viz. _Michael Angelo_ took a vessel filled with water, in which he
placed his model of wax, or some such indissoluble matter: then, by
degrees, raised it to the surface of the water. In this manner the
prominent parts were unwet, the lower covered, ’till the whole at length
appeared. Thus says _Vasari_, he cut his marble, proceeding from the more
prominent parts to the lower ones.

_Vasari_, it seems, either mistook something in the management of his
friend, or by the negligence of his account gives us room to imagine it
somewhat different from what he relates.

The form of the vessel is not determined; to raise the figure from
below would prove too troublesome, and presupposes much more than this
historian had a mind to inform us of.

_Michael Angelo_, no doubt, thoroughly examined his invention, its
conveniencies and inconveniencies, and in all probability observed the
following method.

He took a vessel proportioned to his model; for instance, an oblong
square: he marked the surface of its sides with certain dimensions, and
these he transferred afterwards, with regular gradations, on the marble.
The inside of the vessel he marked to the bottom with degrees. Then he
laid, or, if of wax, fastened his model in it; he drew, perhaps, a bar
over the vessel suitable to its dimensions, according to whose number he
drew, first, lines on his marble, and immediately after, the figure; he
poured water on the model till it reached its outmost points, and after
having fixed upon a prominent part, he drew off as much water as hindered
him from seeing it, and then went to work with his chissel, the degrees
shewing him how to go on; if, at the same time, some other part of the
model appeared, it was copied too, as far as seen.

Water was again carried off, in order to let the lower parts appear; by
the degrees he saw to what pitch it was reduced, and by its smoothness
he discovered the exact surfaces of the lower parts; nor could he go
wrong, having the same number of degrees to guide him, upon his marble.

The water not only pointed him out the heights or depths, but also the
Contour of his model; and the space left free on the insides to the
surface of the water, whose largeness was determined by the degrees of
the two other sides, was the exact measure of what might safely be cut
down from the block.

His work had now got the first form, and a correct one: the levelness of
the water had drawn a line, of which every prominence of the mass was
a point; according to the diminution of the water the line sunk in a
horizontal direction, and was followed by the artist ’till he discovered
the declinations of the prominences, and their mingling with the lower
parts. Proceeding thus with every degree, as it appeared, he finished the
Contour, and took his model out of the water.

His figure wanted beauty: he again poured water to a proper height over
his model, and then numbering the degrees to the line described by the
water, he descried the exact height of the protuberant parts; on these he
levelled his rule, and took the measure of the distance, from its verge
to the bottom; and then comparing all he had done with his marble, and
finding the same number of degrees, he was geometrically sure of success.

Repeating his task, he attempted to express the motion and re-action of
nerves and muscles, the soft undulations of the smaller parts, and every
imitable beauty of his model. The water insinuating itself, even into
the most inaccessible parts, traced their Contour with the correctest
sharpness and precision.

This method admits of every possible posture. In profile especially, it
discovers every inadvertency; shews the Contour of the prominent and
lower parts, and the whole diameter.

All this, and the hope of success, presupposes a model formed by skilful
hands, in the true taste of antiquity.

This is the way by which _Michael Angelo_ arrived at immortality.
Fame and rewards conspired to procure him what leisure he wanted, for
performances which required so much care.

But the artist of our days, however endowed by nature and industry with
talents to raise himself, and even though he perceive precision and truth
in this method, is forced to exert his abilities for getting bread rather
than honour: he of course rests in his usual sphere, and continues to
trust in an eye directed by years and practice.

Now this eye, by the observations of which he is chiefly ruled, being
at last, though by a great deal of uncertain practice, become almost
decisive: how refined, how exact might it not have been, if, from early
youth, acquainted with never-changing rules!

And were young artists, at their first beginning to shape the clay
or form the wax, so happy as to be instructed in this sure method of
_Michael Angelo_, which was the fruit of long researches, they might with
reason hope to come as near the Greeks as he did.


VI. PAINTING.

Greek Painting perhaps would share all the praises bestowed on their
Sculpture, had time and the barbarity of mankind allowed us to be
decisive on that point.

All the Greek painters are allowed is Contour and Expression.
Perspective, Composition, and Colouring, are denied them; a judgment
founded on some bas-reliefs, and the new-discovered ancient (for we dare
not say Greek) pictures, at and near Rome, in the subterranean vaults of
the palaces of Mæcenas, Titus, Trajan, and the Antonini; of which but
about thirty are preserved entire, some being only in Mosaic.

_Turnbull_, to his treatise on ancient painting, has subjoined a
collection of the most known ancient pictures, drawn by _Camillo
Paderni_, and engraved by _Mynde_; and these alone give some value to the
magnificent and abused paper of his work. Two of them are copied from
originals in the cabinet of the late Dr. _Mead_.

That _Poussin_ much studied the pretended _Aldrovandine_ Nuptials; that
drawings are found done by _Annibal Carracci_, from the presumed _Marcius
Coriolanus_; and that there is a most striking resemblance between the
heads of _Guido_, and those on the Mosaic representing _Jupiter_ carrying
off _Europa_, are remarks long since made.

Indeed, if ancient Painting were to be judged by these, and such like
remains of _Fresco_ pictures, Contour and Expression might be wrested
from it in the same manner. For the pictures, with figures as big as
life, pulled off with the walls of the Herculanean theatre, afford but
a very poor idea of the Contour and Expression of the ancient painters.
Theseus, the conqueror of the Minotaur, worshipped by the Athenian
youths; Flora with Hercules and a Faunus; the pretended judgment of the
Decemvir Appius Claudius, are on the testimony of an artist who saw them,
of a Contour as mean as faulty; and the heads want not only Expression,
but those in the Claudius even Character.

But even this is an evident instance of the meanness of the artists: for
the science of beautiful Proportions, of Contour, and Expression, could
not be the exclusive privilege of Greek sculptors alone.

However, though I am for doing justice to the ancients, I have no
intention to lessen the merit of the moderns.

In Perspective there is no comparison between them and the ancients,
whom no earned defence can intitle to any superiority in that science.
The laws of Composition and Ordonnance seem to have been but imperfectly
known by the ancients: the reliefs of the times when the Greek arts were
flourishing at Rome, are instances of this. The accounts of the ancient
writers, and the remains of Painting are likewise, in point of Colouring,
decisive in favour of the moderns.

There are several other objects of Paintings which, in modern times, have
attained greater perfection: such are landscapes and cattle pieces. The
ancients seem not to have been acquainted with the handsomer varieties of
different animals in different climes, if we may conclude from the horse
of M. Aurelius; the two horses in Monte Cavallo; the pretended Lysippean
horses above the portal of St. Mark’s church at Venice; the Farnesian
bull, and other animals of that groupe.

I observe, by the bye, that the ancients were careless of giving to their
horses the diametrical motion of their legs; as we see in the horses at
Venice, and the ancient coins: and in that they have been followed, nay
even defended, by some ignorant moderns.

’Tis chiefly to oil-painting that our landscapes, and especially those
of the Dutch, owe their beauties: by that their colours acquired more
strength and liveliness; and even nature herself seems to have given them
a thicker, moister atmosphere, as an advantage to this branch of the art.

These, and some other advantages over the ancients, deserve to be set
forth with more solid arguments than we have hitherto had.


VII. ALLEGORY.

There is one other important step left towards the atchievement of the
art: but the artist, who, boldly forsaking the common path, dares to
attempt it, finds himself at once on the brink of a precipice, and starts
back dismayed.

The stories of martyrs and saints, fables and metamorphoses, are almost
the only objects of modern painters—repeated a thousand times, and varied
almost beyond the limits of possibility, every tolerable judge grows sick
at them.

The judicious artist falls asleep over a Daphne and Apollo, a Proserpine
carried off by Pluto, an Europa, &c. he wishes for occasions to shew
himself a poet, to produce significant images, to paint Allegory.

Painting goes beyond the senses: _there_ is its most elevated pitch, to
which the Greeks strove to raise themselves, as their writings evince.
Parrhasius, like Aristides, a painter of the soul, was able to express
the character even of a whole people: he painted the Athenians as mild
as cruel, as fickle as steady, as brave as timid. Such a representation
owes its possibility only to the allegorical method, whose images convey
general ideas.

But here the artist is lost in a desart. Tongues the most savage, which
are entirely destitute of abstracted ideas, containing no word whose
sense could express memory, space, duration, &c. these tongues, I say,
are not more destitute of general signs, than painting in our days. The
painter who thinks beyond his palette longs for some learned apparatus,
by whose stores he might be enabled to invest abstracted ideas with
sensible and meaning images. Nothing has yet been published of this
kind, to satisfy a rational being; the essays hitherto made are not
considerable, and far beneath this great design. The artist himself
knows best in what degree he is satisfied with Ripa’s Iconology, and the
emblems of ancient nations, by Van Hooghe.

Hence the greatest artists have chosen but vulgar objects. _Annibal
Caracci_, instead of representing in general symbols and sensible images
the history of the Farnesian family, as an allegorical poet, wasted all
his skill in fables known to the whole world.

Go, visit the galleries of monarchs, and the publick repositories of
art, and see what difference there is between the number of allegorical,
poetical, or even historical performances, and that of fables, saints, or
madonnas.

Among great artists, _Rubens_ is the most eminent, who first, like a
sublime poet, dared to attempt this untrodden path. His most voluminous
composition, the gallery of Luxembourg, has been communicated to the
world by the hands of the best engravers.

After him the sublimest performance undertaken and finished, in that
kind, is, no doubt, the cupola of the imperial library at Vienna, painted
by _Daniel Gran_, and engraved by _Sedelmayer_. The Apotheosis of
Hercules at Versailles, done by _Le Moine_, and alluding to the Cardinal
_Hercules de Fleury_, though deemed in France the most august of
compositions, is, in comparison of the learned and ingenious performance
of the German artist, but a very mean and short-sighted Allegory,
resembling a panegyric, the most striking beauties of which are relative
to the almanack. The artist had it in his power to indulge grandeur, and
his flipping the occasion is astonishing: but even allowing, that the
Apotheosis of a minister was all that he ought to have decked the chief
cieling of a royal palace with, we nevertheless see through his fig-leaf.

The artist would require a work, containing every image with which any
abstracted idea might be poetically inverted; a work collected from
all mythology, the best poets of all ages, the mysterious philosophy
of different nations, the monuments of the ancients on gems, coins,
utensils, &c. This magazine should be distributed into several classes,
and, with proper applications to peculiar possible cases, adapted to the
instruction of the artist. This would, at the same time, open a vast
field for imitating the ancients, and participating of their sublimer
taste.

The taste in our decorations, which, since the complaints of _Vitruvius_,
hath changed for the worse, partly by the grotesques brought in vogue by
_Morto da Feltro_, partly by our trifling house-painting, might also,
from more intimacy with the ancients, reap the advantages of reality and
common sense.

The Caricatura-carvings, and favourite shells, those chief supports of
our ornaments, are full as unnatural as the candle-sticks of _Vitruvius_,
with their little castles and palaces: how easy would it be, by the help
of Allegory, to give some learned convenience to the smallest ornament!

    _Reddere personæ scit convenientia cuique._

    Hor.

Paintings of ceilings, doors, and chimney-pieces, are commonly but the
expletives of these places, because they cannot be gilt all over. Not
only they have not the least relation to the rank and circumstances of
the proprietor, but often throw some ridicule or reflection upon him.

’Tis an abhorrence of barrenness that fills walls and rooms; and pictures
void of thought must supply the vacuum.

Hence the artist, abandoned to the dictates of his own fancy, paints, for
want of Allegory, perhaps a satire on him to whom he owes his industry;
or, to shun this Charybdis, finds himself reduced to paint figures void
of any meaning.

Nay, he may often find it difficult to meet even with those, ’till at last

    ——_velut ægri Somnia, vanæ Finguntur Species._

    Hor.

Thus Painting is degraded from its most eminent prerogative, the
representation of invisible, past and future things.

If pictures be sometimes met with, which might be significant in some
particular place, they often lose that property by stupid and wrong
applications.

Perhaps the master of some new building

    _Dives agris, dives positis in fœnore nummis_

    Hor.

may, without the least compunction for offending the rules of
perspective, place figures of the smallest size above the vast doors
of his apartments and salloons. I speak here of those ornaments which
make part of the furniture; not of figures which are often, and for good
reasons, set up promiscuously in collections.

The decorations of architecture are often as ill-chosen. Arms and
trophies deck a hunting-house as nonsensically, as Ganymede and the
eagle, Jupiter and Leda, figure it among the reliefs of the brazen gates
of St. Peter’s church at Rome.

Arts have a double aim: to delight and to instruct. Hence the greatest
landscape-painters think, they have fulfilled but half their task in
drawing their pieces without figures.

Let the artist’s pencil, like the pen of Aristotle, be impregnated with
reason; that, after having satiated the eye, he may nourish the mind: and
this he may obtain by Allegory; investing, not hiding his ideas. Then,
whether he chuse some poetical object himself, or follow the dictates of
others, he shall be inspired by his art, shall be fired with the flame
brought down from heaven by Prometheus, shall entertain the votary of
art, and instruct the mere lover of it.




    A
    LETTER,
    CONTAINING
    OBJECTIONS
    AGAINST
    The foregoing REFLEXIONS.


SIR,

As you have written on the Greek arts and artists, I wish you had made
your treatise as much the object of your caution as the Greek artists
made their works; which, before dismissing them, they exhibited to
publick view, in order to be examined by everybody, and especially by
competent judges of the art. The trial was held during the grand, chiefly
the Olympian, games; and all Greece was interested on Ætion’s producing
his picture of the nuptials of Alexander and Roxana. You, Sir, wanted a
Proxenidas to be judged by, as well as that artist; and had it not been
for your mysterious concealment, I might have communicated your treatise,
before its publication, to some learned men and connoisseurs of my
acquaintance, without mentioning the author’s name.

One of them visited Italy twice, where he devoted all his time to a most
anxious examination of painting, and particularly several months to each
eminent picture, at the very place where it was painted; the only method,
you know, to form a connoisseur. The judgment of a man able to tell you
which of Guido’s altar-pieces is painted on taffeta, or linnen, what sort
of wood Raphael chose for his transfiguration, &c. the judgment of such a
man, I fancy, must be allowed to be decisive.

Another of my acquaintance has studied antiquity: he knows it by the very
smell;

    _Callet & Artificem solo deprendere Odore._

    Sectan. Sat.

He can tell you the number of knots on Hercules’s club; has reduced
Nestor’s goblet to the modern measure: nay, is suspected of meditating
solutions to all the questions proposed by Tiberius to the grammarians.

A third, for several years past, has neglected every thing but hunting
after ancient coins. Many a new discovery we owe to him; especially some
concerning the history of the ancient coiners; and, as I am told, he is
to rouse the attention of the world by a Prodromus concerning the coiners
of Cyzicum.

What a number of reproaches might you have escaped, had you submitted
your Essay to the judgment of these gentlemen! they were pleased to
acquaint me with their objections, and I should be sorry, for your
honour, to see them published.

Among other objections, the first is surprized at your passing by the
two Angels, in your description of the Raphael in the royal cabinet at
Dresden; having been told, that a Bolognese painter, in mentioning this
piece, which he saw at St. Sixtus’s at Piacenza, breaks into these terms
of admiration: O! what Angels of Paradise[14]! by which he supposes those
Angels to be the most beautiful figures of the picture.

The same person would reproach you for having described that picture in
the manner of Raguenet[15].

The second concludes the beard of Laocoon to be as worthy of your
attention as his contracted belly: for every admirer of Greek works, says
he, must pay the same respect to the beard of Laocoon, which father Labat
paid to that of the Moses of Michael Angelo.

This learned Dominican,

    _Qui mores hominum multorum vidit & urbes_,

has, after so many centuries, drawn from this very statue an evident
proof of the true fashion in which Moses wore his own individual beard,
and whose imitation must, of course, be the distinguishing mark of every
true Jew[16].

There is not the least spark of learning, says he, in your remarks on the
Peplon of the three vestals: he might perhaps, on the very inflection of
the veil, have discovered to you as many curiosities as Cuper himself
found on the edge of the veil of Tragedy in the Apotheosis of Homer[17].

We also want proof of the vestals being really Greek performances: our
reason fails us too often in the most obvious things. If unhappily the
marble of these figures should be proved to be no Lychnites, they are
lost, and your treatise too: had you but slightly told us their marble
was large-grained, that would have been a sufficient proof of their
authenticity; for it would be somewhat difficult to determine the bigness
of the grains with such exactness as to distinguish the Greek marble from
the Roman of Luna. But the worst is, they are even denied the title of
vestals.

The third mentioned some heads of Livia and Agrippina, without that
pretended profile of yours. Here he thinks you had the most lucky
occasion to talk of that kind of nose by the ancients called _Quadrata_,
as an ingredient of beauty. But you no doubt know, that the noses of
some of the most famous Greek statues, viz. the Medicean Venus, and
the Picchinian Meleager, are much too thick for becoming the model of
beauty, in that kind, to our artists.

I shall not, however, gall you with all the doubts and objections
raised against your treatise, and repeated to nauseousness, upon the
arrival of an Academician, the Margites of our days, who, being shewed
your treatise, gave it a slight glance, then laid it aside, offended
as it were at first sight. But it was easy to perceive that he wanted
his opinion to be asked, which we accordingly all did. “The author,
said he very peremptorily, seems not to have been at much pains with
this treatise: I cannot find above four or five quotations, and those
negligently inserted; no chapter, no page, cited; he certainly collected
his remarks from books which he is ashamed to produce.”

Yet cannot I help introducing another gentleman, sharp-sighted enough
to pick out something that had escaped all my attention; viz. that the
Greeks were the first inventors of Painting and Sculpture; an assertion,
as he was pleased to express himself, entirely false, having been told it
was the Egyptians, or some people still more ancient, and unknown to him.

Even the most whimsical humour may be turned to profit: nevertheless, I
think it manifest that you intended to talk only of good Taste in those
arts; and the first Elements of an art have the same proportion to good
Taste in it, as the seed has to the fruit. That the art was still in its
infancy among the Egyptians, when it had attained the highest degree of
perfection among the Greeks, may be seen by examining one single gem:
you need only consider the head of _Ptolomæus Philopator_ by Aulus, and
the two figures adjoining to it done by an Egyptian[18], in order to be
convinced of the little merit this nation could pretend to in point of
art.

The form and taste of their Painting have been ascertained by
Middleton.[19] The pictures of persons as big as life, on two mummies
in the royal cabinet of antiquities at Dresden, are evident instances
of their incapacity. But these relicks being curious, in several other
respects, I shall hereafter subjoin a short account of them.

I cannot, my friend, help allowing some reason for several of these
objections. Your negligence in your quotations was, no doubt, somewhat
prejudicial to your authenticity: the art of changing blue eyes to black
ones, certainly deserved an authority. You imitate Democritus; who
being asked, “What is man?” every body knows what was his reply. What
reasonable creature will submit to read all Greek scholiasts!

    _Ibit eo, quo vis, qui Zonam perdidit_—

    Hor.

Considering, however, how easily the human mind is biassed, either by
friendship or animosity, I took occasion from these objections to examine
your treatise with more exactness; and shall now, by the most impartial
censure, strive to clear myself from every imputation of prepossession in
your favour.

I will pass by the first and second page, though something might
be said on your comparison of the Diana with the Nausicaa, and the
application: nor would it have been amiss, had you thrown some more light
on the remark concerning the misused pictures of Corregio (very likely
borrowed from Count Tessin’s letters), by giving an account of the other
indignities which the pictures of the best artists, at the same time, met
with at Stockholm.

It is well known that, after the surrender of Prague to Count Konigsmark,
the 15th of July 1648, the most precious pictures of the Emperor Rodolph
II. were carried off to Sweden[20]. Among these were some pictures
of Corregio, which the Emperor had been presented with by their first
possessor, Duke Frederick of Mantua; two of them being the famous Leda,
and a Cupid handling his bow[21]. Christina, endowed at that time rather
with scholastic learning than taste, treated these treasures as the
Emperor Claudius did an Alexander of Apelles; who ordered the head to be
cut off, and that of Augustus to fill its place[22]. In the same manner
heads, hands, feet were here cut off from the most beautiful pictures;
a carpet was plastered over with them, and the mangled pieces fitted up
with new heads, &c. Those that fortunately escaped the common havock,
among which were the pieces of Corregio, came afterwards, together with
several other pictures, bought by the Queen at Rome, into the possession
of the Duke of Orleans, who purchased 250 of them, and among those eleven
of Corregio, for 9000 Roman crowns.

But I am not contented with your charging only the northern countries
with barbarism, on account of the little esteem they paid to the arts.
If good taste is to be judged in this manner, I am afraid for our French
neighbours. For having taken Bonn, the residence of the Elector of
Cologne, after the death of Max. Henry, they ordered the largest pictures
to be cut out of their frames, without distinction, in order to serve for
coverings to the waggons, in which the most valuable furniture of the
electoral castle was carried off for France. But, Sir, do not presume
on my continuing with mere historical remarks: I shall proceed with my
objections; after making the two following general observations.

I. You have written in a style too concise for being distinct. Were
you afraid of being condemned to the penalty of a Spartan, who could
not restrain himself to only three words, perhaps that of reading
Picciardin’s Pisan War? Distinctness is required where universal
instruction is the end. Meats are to suit the taste of the guests, rather
than that of the cooks,

          ——_Cœnæ fercula nostræ_
    _Malim convivis quam placuisse coquis._

II. There appears, in almost every line of yours, the most passionate
attachment to antiquity; which perhaps I shall convince you of, by the
following remarks.

The first particular objection I have to make is against your third page.
Remember, however, that my passing by two pages is very generous dealing:

              _non temere a me_
    _Quivis ferret idem:_

    Hor.

but let us now begin a formal trial.

The author talks of certain negligences in the Greek works, which ought
to be considered suitably to Lucian’s precepts concerning the Zeus of
Phidias: “Zeus himself, not his footstool;”[23] though perhaps he could
not be charged with any fault in the foot-stool, but with a very grievous
one in the statue.

Is it no fault that Phidias made his Zeus of so enormous a bulk, as
almost to reach the cieling of the temple, which must infallibly have
been thrown down, had the god taken it in his head to rise?[24] To have
left the temple without any cieling at all, like that of the Olympian
Jupiter at Athens, had been an instance of more judgment[25].

’Tis but justice to claim an explication of what the author means by
“negligences”. He perhaps might be pleased to get a passport, even for
the faults of the ancients, by sheltering them under the authority of
such titles; nay, to change them into beauties, as Alcæus did the spot
on the finger of his beloved boy. We too often view the blemishes of the
ancients, as a parent does those of his children:

                      _Strabonem_
    _Appellat pætum pater, & pullum, male parvus_
    _Si cui filius est._

    Hor.

If these negligences were like those wished for in the Jalysus of
Protogenes, where the chief figure was out-shone by a partridge, they
might be considered as the agreeable negligée of a fine lady; but
this is the question. Besides, had the author consulted his interest,
he never would have ventured citing the Diomedes of Dioscorides: but
being too well acquainted with that gem, one of the most valued, most
finished monuments of Greek art; and being apprehensive of the prejudice
that might arise against the meaner productions of the ancients, on
discovering many faults in one so eminent as Diomedes; he endeavoured to
keep matters from being too nearly examined, and to soften every fault
into negligence.

How! if by argument I shall attempt to shew that Dioscorides understood
neither perspective, nor the most trivial rules of the motion of a human
body; nay, that he offended even against possibility? I’ll venture to do
it, though

              _incedo per ignes_
    _Suppositos cineri doloso._

    Hor.

And perhaps I am not the first discoverer of his faults: yet I do not
remember to have seen any thing relative to them.

The Diomedes of Dioscorides is either a sitting, or a rising figure; for
the attitude is ambiguous. It is plain he is not sitting; and rising is
inconsistent with his action.

Our body endeavouring to raise itself from a seat, moves always
mechanically towards its sought-for centre of gravity, drawing back the
legs, which were advanced in sitting[26]; instead of which the figure
stretches out his right leg. Every erection begins with elevated heels,
and in that moment all the weight of the body is supported only by the
toes, which was observed by Felix[27], in his Diomedes: but here all
rests on the sole.

Nor can Diomedes, (if we suppose him to be a sitting figure, as he
touches with his left leg the bottom of his thigh) find, in raising
himself, the centre of his gravity, only by a retraction of his legs, and
of course cannot rise in that posture. His left hand resting upon the
bended leg, holds the palladion, whilst his right touches negligently the
pedestal with the point of a short sword; consequently he cannot rise,
neither moving his legs in the natural and easy manner required in any
erection, nor making use of his arms to deliver himself from that uneasy
situation.

There is at the same time a fault committed against the rules of
perspective.

The foot of the left bended leg, touching the cornice of the pedestal,
shews it over-reaching that part of the floor, on which the pedestal
and the right foot are situated, consequently the line described by the
hinder-foot is the fore on the gem, and _vice versa_.

But allowing even a possibility to that situation, it is contrary to the
Greek character, which is always distinguished by the natural and easy.
Attributes neither to be met with in the contortions of Diomedes, nor in
an attitude, the impossibility of which every one must be sensible of, in
endeavouring to put himself in it, without the help of former sitting.

Felix, supposed to have lived after Dioscorides, though preserving the
same attitude, has endeavoured to make its violence more natural, by
opposing to him the figure of Ulysses, who, as we are told, in order to
bereave him of the honour of having seized the Palladion, offered to rob
him of it, but being discovered, was repulsed by Diomedes; which being
his supposed action on the gem, allows violence of attitude[28].

Diomedes cannot be a sitting figure, for the Contour of his buttock and
thigh is free, and not in the least compressed: the foot of the bent leg
is visible, and the leg itself not bent enough.

The Diomedes represented by Mariette is absurd; the left leg resembling a
clasped pocket-knife, and the foot being drawn up so high as to make it
impossible in nature that it should reach the pedestal[29].

Faults of this kind cannot be called negligences, and would not be
forgiven in any modern artist.

Dioscorides, ’tis true, in this renowned performance did but copy
Polycletus, whose Doryphorus (as is commonly agreed) was the best rule
of human proportions[30]. But, though a copyist, Dioscorides escaped
a fault which his master fell into. For the pedestal, over which the
Diomedes of Polycletus leans, is contrary to the most common rules
of perspective; its cornices, which should be parallel, forming two
different lines.

I wonder at Perrault’s omitting to make objections against the ancient
gems.

I mean not to do any thing derogatory to the author, when I trace some of
his particular observations to their source.

The food prescribed to the young wrestlers, in the remoter times of
Greece, is mentioned by Pausanias[31]. But if the author alluded to the
passage which I have in view, why does he talk in general of milk-food,
when Pausanias particularly mentions soft cheese? Dromeus of Stymphilos,
we learn there, first introduced flesh meat.

My researches, concerning their mysterious art of changing blue eyes to
black ones, have not succeeded to my wish. I find it mentioned but once,
and that only by the bye by Dioscorides[32]. The author, by clearing up
this art, might perhaps have thrown a greater lustre over his treatise,
than by producing his new method of statuary. He had it in his power to
fix the eyes of the Newtons and Algarotti’s, on a problem worth their
attention, and to engage the fair sex, by a discovery so advantageous to
their charms, especially in Germany, where, contrary to Greece, large,
fine, blue eyes are more frequently met with than black ones.

There was a time when the fashion required to be green eyed:

    _Et si bel oeil vert & riant & clair:_

    Le Sire de Coucy, chans.

But I do not know whether art had any share in their colouring. And as to
the small-pox, Hippocrates might be quoted, if grammatical disquisitions
suited my purpose.

However, I think, no effects of the small-pox on a face can be so
much the reverse of beauty, as that defect which the Athenians were
reproachfully charged with, viz. a buttock as pitiful as their face was
perfect[33]. Indeed Nature, in so scantily supplying those parts, seemed
to derogate as much from the Athenian beauty, as, by her lavishness, from
that of the Indian Enotocets, whose ears, we are told, were large enough
to serve them for pillows.

As for opportunities to study the nudities, our times, I think, afford
as advantageous ones as the Gymnasies of the ancients. ’Tis the fault of
our artists to make no use of that[34] proposed to the Parisian artists,
viz. to walk, during the summer season, along the Seine, in order to have
a full view of the naked parts, from the sixth to the fiftieth year.

’Tis perhaps to Michael Angelo’s frequenting such opportunities that
we owe his celebrated Carton of the Pisan war[35], where the soldiers
bathing in a river, at the sound of a trumpet leap out of the water, and
make haste to huddle on their cloaths.

One of the most offensive passages of the treatise is, no doubt, the
unjust debasement of the modern sculptors beneath the ancients. These
latter times are possessed of several Glycons in muscular heroic figures,
and, in tender youthful female bodies, of more than one Praxiteles.
Michael Angelo, Algardi, and Sluter, whose genius embellished Berlin,
produced muscular bodies,

    ——_Invicti membra Glyconis,_

    Hor.

in a style rivalling that of Glycon himself; and in delicacy the
Greeks are perhaps even outdone by _Bernini_, _Fiammingo_, _Le Gros_,
_Rauchmüller_, _Donner_.

The unskilfulness of the ancients, in shaping children, is agreed upon
by our artists, who, I suppose, would for imitation choose a Cupid of
Fiammingo rather than of Praxiteles himself. The story of M. Angelo’s
placing a Cupid of his own by the side of an antique one, in order to
inform our times of the superiority of the ancient art, is of no weight
here: for no work of Michael Angelo can bring us so near perfection as
Nature herself.

I think it no hyperbole to advance, that Fiammingo, like a new
Prometheus, produced creatures which art had never seen before him. For,
if from almost all the children on ancient gems[36] and reliefs[37], we
may form a conclusion of the art itself, it wanted the true expression
of childhood, as looser forms, more milkiness, and unknit bones. Faults
which, from the epoch of Raphael, all children laboured under, till the
appearance of _Francis Quesnoy_, called Fiammingo, whose children having
the advantages of suitable innocence and nature, became models to the
following artists, as in youthful bodies Apollo and Antinous are: an
honour which _Algardi_, his contemporary, may be allowed to share.

Their models in clay are, by our artists, esteemed superior to all the
antique marble children; and an artist of genius and talents assured me,
that during a stay of seven years at Vienna, he saw not one copy taken
from an ancient Cupid in that academy.

Neither do I know on what singular idea of beauty, the ancient artists
founded their custom, of hiding the foreheads of their children and
youths with hair. Thus a Cupid was represented by Praxiteles[38]; thus a
Patroclus, in a picture mentioned by Philostratus[39]: and there is no
statue nor bust, no gem nor coin of Antinous, in which we do not find him
thus dressed. Hence, perhaps, that gloom, that melancholy, with which all
the heads of this favourite of Hadrian are marked.

Is not there in a free open brow more nobleness and sublimity? and does
not _Bernini_ seem to have been better acquainted with beauty than the
ancients, when he removed the over-shadowing locks from the forehead
of young Lewis XIV. whose bust he was then executing? “Your Majesty,
said Bernini, is King, and may with confidence shew your brow to all
the world.” From that time King and court dressed their hair à la
Bernini[40].

His judgment of the bas-reliefs on the monument of Pope Alexander VI[41].
leads us to some remarks on those of antiquity. “The skill in bas-relief,
said he, consists in giving the air of relief to the flat: the figures of
that monument seem what they are indeed, not what they are not.”

The chief end of bas-relief is to deck those places that want historical
or allegorical ornaments, but which have neither cornices sufficiently
spacious, nor proportions regular enough to allow groupes of entire
statues: and as the cornice itself is chiefly intended to shelter the
subordinate parts from being directly or indirectly hurt, no bas-relief
must exceed the projection thereof; which would not only make the cornice
of no use, but endanger the figures themselves.

The figures of ancient bas-reliefs shoot commonly so much forward as to
become almost round. But bas-relief being founded on fiction, can only
counterfeit reality; its perfection is well to imitate; and a natural
mass is against its nature: if flat, it ought to appear projected, and
_vice versa_. If this be true, it must of course be allowed that figures
wholly round are inconsistent with it, and are to be considered as solid
marble pillars built upon the theatre, whose aim is mere illusion; for
art, as is said of tragedy, wins truth from fiction, and that by truth.
To art we often owe charms superior to those of nature: a real garden and
vegetating trees, on the stage, do not affect us so agreeably, as when
well expressed by the imitating art. A rose of _Van Huisum_, mallows of
_Veerendal_, bewitch us more than all the darlings of the most skilful
gardener: the most enticing landscape, nay, even the charms of the
Thessalian Tempe, would not, perhaps, affect us with that irresistible
delight which, flowing from _Dietrick_’s pencil, enchants our senses and
imagination.

By such instances we may safely form a judgment of the ancient
bas-reliefs: the royal cabinet at Dresden is possessed of two eminent
ones: a Bacchanal on a tomb, and a sacrifice to Priapus on a large marble
vase.

The bas-relief claims a particular kind of sculpture; a method that
few have succeeded in, of which _Matielli_ may be an instance. The
Emperor Charles VI. having ordered some models to be prepared by the
most renowned artists, in bas-relief, intended for the spiral columns
at the church of S. Charles Borromæo; _Matielli_, already famous, was
principally thought of; but however refused the honour of so considerable
a work, on account of the enormous bulk of his model, which requiring
too great cavities, would have diminished the mass of the stone, and of
course weakened the pillars. _Mader_ was the artist, whose models were
universally applauded, and who by his admirable execution proved that he
deserved that preference. These bas-reliefs represent the story of the
patron of this church.

It is in general to be observed, first, that this kind of sculpture
admits not indifferently of every attitude and action; as for instance,
of too strong projections of the legs. Secondly, That, besides disposing
of the several modelled figures in well-ranged groupes, the diameter of
every one ought to be applied to the bas-relief itself, by a lessened
scale: as for instance, the diameter of a figure in the model being one
foot, the profile of the same, according to its size, will be three
inches, or less: the rounder a figure of that diameter, the greater the
skill. Commonly the relief wants perspective, and thence arise most of
its faults.

Though I proposed to make only a few remarks on the ancient bas-relief,
I find myself, like a certain ancient Rhetor, almost under a necessity
of being new-tuned. I have strayed beyond my limits; though at the same
time I remembered that there is a law among commentators, to content
themselves with bare remarks on the contents of a treatise: and also
sensible that I am writing a letter, not a book, I consider that I may
draw some instructions for my own use,

    ——_ut vineta egomet cædam mea,_

    Hor.

from some peoples impetuosity against the author; who, because they are
hired for it, seem to think that writing is confined to them alone.

The Romans, though they worshipped the deity Terminus (the guardian God
of limits and borders in general; and, if it please these gentlemen, of
the limits in arts and sciences too), allowed nevertheless an universal
unrestrained criticism: and the decisions of some Greeks and Romans,
in matters of an art, which they did not practise, seem nevertheless
authentick to our artists.

Nor can I find, that the keeper of the temple of peace at Rome, though
possessed of the register of the pictures there, pretended to monopolize
remarks and criticisms upon them; Pliny having described most of them.

    _Publica materies privati juris sit_—

    Hor.

’Tis to be wished, that, roused by a Pamphilus and an Apelles, artists
would take up the pen themselves, in order to discover the mysteries of
the art to those that know how to use them,

    _Ma di costor’, che à lavorar s’accingono,_
    _Quattro quinti, per Dio, non sanno leggere._

    Salvator Rosa, Sat. III.

Two or three of these are to be commended; the rest contented themselves
with giving some historical accounts of the fraternity. But what could
appear more auspicious to the improvement of the art, even by the
remotest posterity, than the work attempted by the united forces of the
celebrated Pietro da Cortona[42] and Padre Ottonelli? Nevertheless this
same treatise, except only a few historical remarks, and these too to be
met with in an hundred books, seems good for nothing, but

    _Ne scombris tunicæ desint, piperique cuculli._

    Sectan. Sat.

How trivial, how mean are the great _Poussin_’s reflexions on painting,
published by Bellori, and annexed to his life of that artist[43]?

Another digression!—let me now again resume the character of your
Aristarchus.

You are bold enough to attack the authority of _Bernini_, and to
challenge a man, the bare mention of whose name would do honour to any
treatise. It was _Bernini_, you ought to recollect, Sir, who at the
same age in which Michael Angelo performed his _Studiolo_[44], viz. in
his eighteenth year, produced his Daphne, as a convincing instance of
his intimacy with the ancients, at an age in which perhaps the genius of
Raphael was yet labouring under darkness and ignorance!

_Bernini_ was one of those favourites of nature, who produce at the same
time vernal blossoms and autumnal fruits; and I think it by no means
probable, that his studying nature in riper years misled either him
or his disciples. The smoothness of his flesh was the result of that
study, and imparted to the marble the highest possible degree of life
and beauty. Indeed ’tis nature which endows art with life, and “vivifies
forms,” as Socrates says[45], and Clito the sculptor allows. The great
Lysippus, when asked which of his ancestors he had chosen for his
master, replied, “None; but nature alone.” It is not to be denied, that
the too close imitation of antiquity is very often apt to lead us to a
certain barrenness, unknown to those who imitate nature: various herself,
nature teaches variety, and no votary of her’s can be charged with a
sameness: whereas Guido, Le Brun, and some other votaries of antiquity,
repeated the same face in many of their works. A certain ideal beauty was
become so familiar to them, as to slide into their figures even against
their will.

But as for such an imitation of nature, as is quite regardless of
antiquity, I am entirely of the author’s opinion; though I should have
chosen other artists as instances of following nature in painting.

_Jordans_ certainly has not met with the regard due to his merit; let
me appeal to an authority universally allowed. “There is, says Mr.
d’Argenville, more expression and truth in Jordans, than even in Rubens.

“Truth is the basis and origin of perfection and beauty; nothing, of any
kind whatever, can be beautiful or perfect, without being truly what it
ought to be, without having all it ought to have.”

The solidity of this judgment presupposed, _Jordans_, according to
Rochefoucault’s maxims, ought rather to be ranked among the greatest
originals, than among the mimicks of common nature, where _Rembrandt_
may fill up his place, as _Raoux_ or _Vatteau_ that of _Stella_; though
all these painters do nothing but what Euripides did before them; they
draw man _ad vivum_. There are no trifles, no meannesses in the art, and
if we recollect of what use the _Caricatura_ was to Bernini, we should
be cautious how we pass judgment even on the Dutch forms. That great
genius, they say[46], owed to this monster of the art, a distinction for
which he was so eminent, the “Franchezza del Tocco.” When I reflect on
this, I am forced to alter my former opinion of the _Caricatura_, so far
as to believe that no artist ever acquired a perfection therein without
gaining a farther improvement in the art itself. “It is, says the author,
a peculiar distinction of the ancients to have gone beyond nature:” our
artists do the same in their _Caricaturas_: but of what avail to them are
the voluminous works they have published on that branch of the art?

The author lays it down, in the peremptory style of a legislator, that
“Precision of Contour can only be learned from the Greeks:” but our
academies unanimously agree, that the ancients deviate from a strict
Contour in the clavicles, arms, knees, &c. over which, in spite of
apophyses and bones, they drew their skin as smooth as over mere flesh;
whereas our academies teach to draw the bony and cartilaginous parts,
more angularly, but the fat and fleshy ones more smooth, and carefully to
avoid falling into the ancient style. Pray, Sir, can there be any error
in the advices of academies _in corpore_?

_Parrhasius_ himself, the father of Contour, was not, by Pliny’s
account[47], master enough to hit the line by which completeness is
distinguished from superfluity: shunning corpulency he fell into
leanness: and _Zeuxis_’s Contour was perhaps like that of Rubens, if it
be true that, to augment the majesty of his figures, he drew with more
completeness. His female figures he drew like those of Homer[48], of
robust limbs: and does not even the tenderest of poets, Theocritus, draw
his Helen as fleshy and tall[49] as the Venus of Raphael in the assembly
of the gods in the little Farnese? Rubens then, for painting like Homer
and Theocritus, needs no apology.

The character of Raphael, in the treatise, is drawn with truth and
exactness: but well may we ask the author, as Antalcidas the Spartan
asked a sophist, ready to burst forth in a panegyrick on Hercules, “Who
blames him?” The beauties however of the Raphael at Dresden, especially
the pretended ones of the Jesus, are still warmly disputed.

    _What you admire, we laugh at._

Why did not he rather display his patriotism against those Italian
connoisseurs, whose squeamish stomachs rise against every Flemish
production?

    _Turpis Romano Belgicus ore color._

    Propert. L. II. Eleg. 8.

And indeed are not colours so essential, that without them no picture
can aspire to universal applause? Do not their bewitching charms cover
the most grievous faults? They are the harmonious melody of painting;
whatever is offensive vanishes by their splendor, and souls animated with
their beauties are absorbed in beholding, as the readers of Homer are
by his flowing harmony, so as to find no faults. These, joined to that
important science of Chiaro-Oscuro, are the characteristicks of Flemish
painting.

Agreeably to affect our eye is the first thing in a picture[50], which
to obtain, obvious charms are wanted; not such as spring only from
reflection. Colouring moreover belongs peculiarly to pictures; whereas
design ought to be in every draught, print, &c. and indeed seems easier
to be attained than colouring.

The best colourists, according to a celebrated writer[51], have always
come _after_ the inventors and contourists; we all know the vain attempts
of the famous Poussin. In short, all those

    _Qui rem Romanam Latiumque augescere student,_

    Ennius.

must here acknowledge the superiority of the Flemish art; the painter
being really but nature’s mimick, is the more perfect the better he
mimicks her.

    _Ast heic, quem nunc tu tam turpiter increpuisti,_

    Ennius.

the delicate _Van der Werf_, whose performances, worth their weight
in gold, are the ornaments of royal cabinets only, has made nature
inimitable to every Italian pencil; he allures the connoisseur’s eye
as well as that of the clown; and, as an English poet says, “that no
pleasing poet ever wrote ill,” surely the Flemish painter obtained that
applause which was denied to Poussin.

I should be glad to see many pictures as happily fancied, as well
composed, as enticingly painted as some of _Gherard Lairesse_: let me
appeal to every unprepossessed artist at Paris, acquainted with the
_Stratonice_, the most eminent, and no doubt the first ranked picture in
the cabinet of Mr. de la Boixieres[52].

The subject is of no trivial choice: King Seleucus I.[53] resigned
his wife Stratonice, a daughter of Demetrius Poliorcetes, to his son
Antiochus, whom a violent passion for his mother-in-law had thrown into
a dangerous sickness: after many unsuccessful inquiries, the physician
Erasistratus discovered the true cause, and found that the only means of
restoring the prince’s health, was, the condescension of the father to
the love of his son: the King resigned his Queen, and at the same time
declared Antiochus King of the East.

Stratonice, the chief person, is the noblest figure, a figure worthy
Raphael himself. The charming Queen,

    _Colle sob idæo vincere digna deas,_

    Ovid. Art.

with slow and hesitating steps, approaches the bed of her new lover; but
still with the countenance of a mother, or rather of a sacred vestal.
In the profile of her face you may read shame mingled with gentle
resignation to the will of her lord. She has the softness of her sex,
the majesty of a queen, an awful submission to the sacred ceremony, and
all the sageness required in so extraordinary and delicate a situation.
Dressed with a masterly skill, the artist, from the colour of her
cloaths, may learn how to paint the purple of the ancients; for it is not
generally known that it resembled fadeing, ruddy, vine-leaves[54].

Behind her stands the King, dressed in a darker habit, in order to give
the more relief to the Queen, to spare confusion to her, shame to the
Prince, and not to interrupt his joy. Expectation and acquiescence are
blended in his face, which is taken from the profile of his best coins.

The Prince, a beautiful half-naked youth, sitting in his bed, has some
resemblance of his father; his pale face bears witness of the fever,
that lately had raged in his veins; but fancy sees returning health, not
shame, in that soft-rising ruddiness diffused over his cheeks.

The physician and priest Erasistratus, venerable like the Calchas of
Homer, standing before the bed, is the only speaker, authorised by the
King, whose will he declares to the Prince; and whilst, with one hand, he
leads the Queen to the embraces of her lover, with the other he presents
him with the diadem. Joy and astonishment flash from the Prince’s face
on the approach of his Queen

    ——_darting all the soul in missive love_:

though nobly restrained by reverence, he bends his head, and seems to
comprise his happiness in a single thought.

The characters indeed are distributed with so much ingenuity, that they
seem to give a lustre and energy to each other.

The largest share of light is displayed on Stratonice: she claims our
first regard. The priest, though in a weaker light, is raised by his
gesture: he is the speaker, and around him reign solemn stillness and
attention.

The Prince, the second person, has a larger share of light; and though
the artist, led by his skill, chose rather to make a beautiful Queen the
chief support of his groupe than a sick Prince, He nevertheless maintains
his due rank, and becomes the most eminent person of the whole, by his
expression. His face contains the greatest secrets of the art,

    _Quales nequeo monstrare & sentio tantum._

    Juvenal. Sat. VII.

Even those motions of the soul, which otherwise seem opposite to each
other, mingle here with peaceful harmony; a timid red spreading over his
sickly face, announces health, like the faint glimmerings of the morn,
which, though veiled by night, announce the day, and even a bright one.

The genius and taste of the artist shines forth in every part of his
work: even the vases are copied from the best antique ones; the table
before the bed, is, like Homer’s, of ivory.

The distances behind the figures represent a magnificent Greek building,
whose decorations seem allegorical. The roof of a portal is supported
by Cariatides embracing each other, as images of the tender friendship
between father and son, and alluding, at the same time, to the nuptial
ceremony.

Though faithful to history, the painter was nevertheless a poet: in
order to represent some circumstances, he filled even the furniture with
sentiments. The Sphinxes by the Prince’s bed allude to his problematic
sickness, the enquiries of Erasistratus, and his sagacity in discovering
its true cause.

I have been told that some young Italian artists, when considering this
picture, and perceiving the Prince’s arm perhaps a trifle too big, went
off without enquiring into the subject itself. Should even Minerva
herself, as she once did to Diomedes, attempt to deliver some people from
the mist they labour under, by heaven! the attempt were vain!

                ——_pauci dignoscere possunt_
    _Vera bona, atque illis multum diversa, remota_
    _Erroris nebula._

    Juv. X.

I have run into this long digression, in order to throw some light on one
of the first productions of the art, which is nevertheless but little
known.

The idea of noble simplicity and sedate grandeur in Raphael’s figures,
might rather, as two eminent authors express it[55], be called “still
life.” It is indeed the standard of the Greek art: however, indiscreetly
commended to young artists, it might beget as dangerous consequences, as
precepts of energetick conciseness in the style; the direct method to
make it barren and unpleasing.

“In youths, says Cicero[56], there must be some superfluity, something
to be taken off: prematurity spoils the juices, and it is easier to lop
the young rank branches of a vine, than to restore its vigour to a worn
out trunk.” Not to mention, that figures wanting gesture would, by the
bulk of mankind, be received as a speech before the Areopagites, where,
by a severe law, the speaker was forbid to raise any passions, though
ever so gentle[57]: nay, pictures of this kind would be so many portraits
of young Spartans, who, with hands hid under their coats, and down-cast
eyes, stalk forth in silent solemnity[58].

Neither am I quite of the author’s opinion with regard to allegory; the
applying of which would too frequently do in painting, what was done in
geometry by introducing algebra: the one would soon be as difficult as
the other, and painting would degenerate into Hieroglyphicks.

The author attempts, in vain, to persuade us, that the majority of the
Greeks thought as the Egyptians. There was no more learning in the
painting of the platfond of the temple of Juno at Samos, than in that
of the Farnese gallery. It represented the love-intrigues of Jupiter
and Juno[59]: and, in the front of a temple of Ceres at Eleusis, there
was nothing but representations of a ceremony at the rites of that
goddess[60].

How to represent abstract ideas I do not yet distinctly conceive.
There may be the same difficulties which attend the endeavours of
representing to the senses a mathematical point—perhaps nothing less than
impossibility; and Theodoretus[61] has some reason in confining painting
to the senses. For those Hieroglyphicks which hint at abstract ideas,
in such a manner as to express, for instance[62], _youth_ by the number
XVI; _impossibility_ by two feet standing on water: those, I say, are
monograms, not images: to indulge them in painting is fostering chimæras,
is adding to Chinese pictures Chinese explications.

An adversary of allegory believes that Parrhasius, without any help from
it, could represent the contradictions in the character of the Athenians;
that he did it perhaps in several pictures. Supposing which

    _Et sapit, & mecum facit, & Jove judicat æquo._

    Hor.

The sentence of death pronounced against the leaders of the Athenian
navy, after their victory over the Spartans near the Arginuses, afforded
the artist a very sensible and rich image, to represent the Athenians, at
the same time, merciful and cruel.

The famous Theramenes, one of the leaders, accused his fellow-chieftains
of having neglected to gather and bury the bodies of their slain
countrymen: a charge sufficient to rouse the rage of the mob against
the victors; only six of whom had returned to Athens, the rest having
declined the storm.

Theramenes harangued the people in the most pathetick manner; intermixing
his speech with frequent pauses, in order to give vent to the loud
plaints of those who, in the battle, had lost their parents or relations.
He, at the same time, produced a man, who protested he had heard the last
words of the drowned, imprecating the publick revenge on their leaders.
In vain did Socrates, then a member of the council, with a few others,
oppose the accusation: the brave chieftains, instead of the honours
they hoped for, were condemned to die. One of them was the only son of
_Pericles_ and _Aspasia_.

Was it not in the power of Parrhasius, who was then alive, to enlarge the
meaning of his picture beyond the extent of bare history, only by drawing
the true characters of the authors of this scene, without the least help
from allegory? It would have been in his power, had he lived in our days.

Your pretensions concerning allegory seem indeed as reasonable an
imposition upon the painter, as that of Columella upon his farmer;
who wished to find him a philosopher like Democritus, Pythagoras, or
Eudoxus[63].

No better success, in my opinion, is to be expected from applying
allegory to decorations: the author would, at least, meet with as many
difficulties as Virgil, when hammering on the names of a Vibius Caudex,
Tanaquil Lucumo, or Decius Mus; to fit them for his Hexameter.

Custom has given its sanction to the use of shells in decorations: and
is not there as much nature in them as in the Corinthian capital? You
know its origin: a basket set upon the tomb of a young Corinthian girl,
filled with some of her play-things, and covered with a large brick,
being overgrown with the creeping branches of an acanthus, which had
taken root under it, was the first occasion of forming that capital.
_Callimachus_[64] the sculptor, surprized at the elegant simplicity of
that composition, took thence a hint for enriching architecture with a
new order.

Thus this capital, destined to support all the entablature of the column,
is but a basket of flowers; something so apparently inconsistent with the
ideas of architecture, that there was no use made of it in the time of
Pericles: for Pocock[65] thinks it strange that the temple of Minerva at
Athens had Doric, instead of Corinthian pillars. But time soon changed
this seeming oddity into nature; the basket lost, by custom, all its
former offensiveness, and

    _Quod fuerat vitium desinit esse mora._

    Ovid. Art.

We acknowledge no Egyptian law to forbid arbitrary ornaments; and so
fond have the artists of all ages been, both of the growth and form of
shells, as to change even the chariot of Venus into an enormous one. The
ancile, that Palladium of the Romans, was scooped into the form of a
shell[66]: we find them on antique lamps[67]. Nay, nature herself seems
to have produced their immense variety, and marvellous sinuations, for
the benefit of the art.

I have no mind to plead the bad cause of our unskilful decorators: only
let me adduce the arguments used by a whole tribe, (if the artists will
forgive the term), in order to prove the reasonableness of their art.

The painters and sculptors of Paris, endeavouring to deprive the
decorators of the title of artists, by alledging that they employed
neither their own intellectual faculties, nor those of the connoisseurs,
upon works not produced by nature, but rather the offsprings of
capricious art; the others are said to have defended themselves in the
following manner: “We are the followers of nature: like the bark of a
tree, variously carved, our decorations grow into various forms: then art
joins sportive nature, and corrects her: we do what the ancients did:
consult their decorations.”

Variety is the great and only rule to which decorators submit. Perceiving
that there is no perfect resemblance between two things in nature,
they likewise forsake it in their decorations; and careless of anxious
twining, leave it to the parts themselves to find their like, as the
atoms of Epicurus did. This liberty we owe to the very nation, which,
after having nobly exceeded all the narrow bounds of social formalities,
bestows so much pains upon communicating her improvements to her
neighbours. This style in decorations got the epithet of _Barroque_
taste, derived from a word signifying pearls and teeth of unequal
size[68].

Shells have at least as good a claim for being admitted among our
decorations, as the heads of sheep and oxen. You know that the ancients
placed those heads, stript of the skin, on the frizes, especially of the
Doric order, between the Triglyphs, or on the Metopes. We even meet with
them on the Corinthian frise of an old temple of Vesta, at Tivoli[69];
on tombs, as on one of the Metellus-family near Rome, and another of
Munatius Plancus near Gaeta[70]; on vases, as on a pair in the royal
cabinet at Dresden. Some modern artists, finding them perhaps unbecoming,
changed them into thunderbolts, like Vignola, or to roses, like Palladio
and Scamozzi[71].

We conclude from all this, that learning never had, nor indeed ought
to have, any share in an art so nearly related to what we call _Lusus
Naturæ_.

Thus the ancients thought: for, pray, what could be meant by a lizard on
Mentor’s cup?[72] The

    _Picti squallentia terga lacerti_

    Virg. G. IV.

make, to be sure, a lovely image amidst the flowers of a Rachel Ruysch,
but a very poor figure on a cup. Of what mysterious meaning are birds
picking grapes from vines, on an urn?[73] Images, perhaps, as void of
sense, and as arbitrary, as the fable of Ganymede embroidered on the
mantle, which Æneas presented to Cloanthus, as a reward of his victory in
the naval games[74].

To conclude: is there any thing contradictory between trophies and
the hunting-house of a Prince? Surely the author, though so zealous a
champion for the Greek taste, cannot pretend to propose to us that of
King Philip and the Macedonians, who, by the account of Pausanias[75],
did not erect their own trophies. Diana perhaps, amidst her nymphs and
hunting-equipages,

    _Qualis in Eurotæ ripis, aut per juga Cynthi,_
    _Exercet Diana choros, quam mille secutæ,_
    _Hinc atque hinc glomerantur, Oreades_—

    Virg.

might better suit the place; but we know that the antient Romans hung up
the arms of their defeated enemies over the out-sides of their doors,
to be everlasting monitors of bravery to every succeeding owner of the
house. Can trophies, having the same design, ever be misplaced on any
building of the Great?

I wish for a speedy answer to this letter. You cannot be angry at seeing
it published. The tribe of authors now imitate the conduct of the stage,
where the lover, with his soliloquy, entertains the pit. For the same
reason I shall receive, with all my heart, an answer,

    _Quam legeret tereretque viritim publicus usus:_

    Hor.

for

    _Hanc veniam petimusque damusque vicissim._

    Id.




    AN
    ACCOUNT
    OF A
    MUMMY,
    IN
    The Royal Cabinet of Antiquities at DRESDEN.


Among the Egyptian Mummies of the royal cabinet, there are two preserved
perfectly entire, and not in the least damaged, viz. the bodies of a
man and woman. The former, among all those that were brought into, and
publickly known in Europe, is perhaps the only one of its kind; on
account of an inscription thereon, which none of those who have written
on Mummies, except Della Valle alone, discovered on those bodies; and
Kircher, among all the drawings of Mummies communicated to him, and
published in his Oedipus, has but one, (the same which Della Valle had
been possessed of,) with an inscription; though his wooden cut[76] is as
faulty as all the copies made afterwards[77]. On that Mummy there are
these letters ΕΥ✠ΥΧΙ.

This same inscription is on the royal Mummy, of which I propose to give a
brief account, and in examining which I have employed all my attention,
that I might be certain of its being genuine, and not drawn by a modern
hand from the inscription of Della Valle: for ’tis well known, that those
bodies frequently pass through the hands of Jews. But the letters are
evidently drawn with the same blackish colour with which the face, hands,
and feet are stained. The first letter on our Mummy has the form of a
large Greek ϵ, expressed by Della Valle with an E angular, the other not
being usual in printing-presses.

All the four Mummies of the royal cabinet being bought at Rome, I
proposed to examine whether the Mummy with the inscription, was that
which Della Valle was possessed of, and found that both the entire royal
Mummies were exact resemblances of those described by him.

Both, besides the linnen bandages, of a Barracan-texture, rolled
innumerable times around the bodies, are wrapt up in several (and,
according to an observation made in England[78], in three) kinds of
coarser linnen; which, by particular bandages of the girdle-kind, is
fastened in such a manner as to involve even the smallest prominence of
the face. The first covering is a nice bit of linnen, slightly tinged
with a certain ground, much gilt, decked with various figures, and with
a painted one of the deceased.

On the Mummy marked with the inscription, this figure represents a
man, who died in the flower of life, with a thin curled beard, not
as represented by Kircher, like an old man with a long pointed one.
The colour of the face and hands is brown: the head encircled with
gilt diadems, marked with the sockets of jewels. From the gold chain,
painted around the neck, a sort of medal hangs down, marked with various
characters, crescents, &c. and this over-reaches the neck of a bird, that
of a hawk perhaps, as on the breasts of other Mummies[79]. In the right
hand of the figure is a dish filled with a red stuff, which being like
that used by the sacrificers[80], the deceased may be supposed to have
been a priest. The first and last finger of the left hand have rings; and
in the hand itself there is something round, of a dark-brown colour;
which, as Della Valle pretends, is a well-known fruit. The feet and legs
are bare, with sandals; the strings of which appearing between the great
toes, are, with a slip, fastened on the foot itself.

The inscription, above-mentioned, is beneath the breast.

The second Mummy is the still more refined figure of a young woman.
Among a great many medals, seemingly gilt, and other figures, there are
certain birds, and quadrupeds something analogous to lions; and towards
the extremities of the body there is an ox, perhaps an apis: Down from
one of the neck-chains hangs a gilt image of the sun. She has ear-rings,
and double bracelets on both her arms: rings on each hand, and on every
finger of the left one, but two on the first: whereas the right hand has
but two: with this hand she holds, like Isis, a small gilt vessel, of the
Greek Spondeion-kind, which was a symbol of the fertility of the Nile,
when held by the goddess[81]. In the left hand there is a sort of fruit,
like an ear of corn, of a greenish cast. The leaden seals, mentioned by
Della Valle, still remain on the first Mummy.

Compare this description with that in his travels[82], and you’ll find
the Mummies of the royal cabinet to be the same with those, which were
taken out of a deep well or cave, covered with sand, and sold to this
celebrated traveller by an Egyptian; and I believe they were purchased
from his heirs at Rome, though in the manuscript catalogue, joined to
that cabinet of antiquities, there is not the least hint of any such
purchase.

I have no design to attempt an explication of the ornaments and figures;
some remarks of that kind having already been made by Della Valle. The
following observations concern only the inscription.

The Egyptians, we know, employed a double character in expressing
themselves[83], the _sacred_ and the _vulgar_: the first was what is
called hieroglyphick; the other contained the characters of their
national language, and this is commonly said to be lost. All we know is
confined to the twenty-five letters of their alphabet.[84] Della Valle
seems inclined to give an instance of the contrary, in that inscription;
which Kircher, pushing his conjectures still farther, endeavours to lay
down as a foundation for a new scheme of his; and to support it by two
other remains of the same kind. For, he attempts to prove[85], that
the dialect was the only difference between the old Egyptian and Greek
tongue. According to his talent of finding what no body looks for, he
makes free with some ancient historical accounts; upon which he obtrudes
a fictitious sense, in order to make them tally with his scheme.

Herodotus, according to him, tells us, that King Psammetichus desired
some Greeks, who were perfect masters of their language, to go over to
Egypt, in order to instruct his people in the purity of the tongue. Hence
he concludes, that there was but one language in both countries. But that
Greek historian[86] gives an account entirely opposite: he tells us, that
Psammetichus, having received some services from the Carians and Ionians,
permitted them to settle in Egypt, for the instruction of youth in the
Greek language, in order to bring up interpreters.

There is no solidity in the rest of the Kircherian arguments; such as
those deduced from the frequent voyages of the Greek sages into Egypt,
and the mutual commerce between the two nations; which have not even
the strength of conjectures. For the very skill of Democritus, in the
sacred tongue of the Babylonians and Egyptians[87], proves only, that the
travelling sages learned the languages of the nations they conversed with.

Nor does the testimony of Diodorus, that Attica was originally an
Egyptian colony[88], seem to be here of any weight.

The inscription of the Mummy might indeed admit of Kircherian, or such
like conjectures, were the Mummy itself of the antiquity pretended by
Kircher. Cambyses, the conqueror of Egypt, partly exiled, and partly
killed the priests; from which fact Kircher confidently deduces as
consequences, the total abolition of the sacred rites, and from that the
ceasing to embalm bodies. He again appeals to a passage of Herodotus[89],
which, upon his word alone, others have as confidently quoted. Nay, a
certain pedant went so far as to pretend, that the Egyptian custom of
painting their dead, upon the varnished linnen of the Mummies, ceased
with the epoch of Cyrus[90].

But Herodotus says not a word, either of the total abolition of the
sacred rites, or of the abolition of the custom of preserving the
dead from putrefaction, after the time of Cambyses; nor does Diodorus
Siculus give any such hint: we may, on the contrary, from his account of
the funeral rites of the Egyptians, rather conclude, that this custom
prevailed even in his time; that is to say, when Egypt was changed into a
Roman province.

Hence it cannot be demonstrated that our Mummy was embalmed before the
Persian conquest.—But supposing it to be of that date, is it a necessary
consequence that a body preserved in the Egyptian manner, or even taken
care of by their priests, should be marked with Egyptian words?

Perhaps it is the body of some naturalised Ionian or Carian. We know that
Pythagoras entered into the Egyptian confession; nay, even consented to
be circumcised[91], in order to shorten his way to the mysteries of their
priests. The Carians themselves observed the sacred solemnities of Isis,
and even went so far in their superstition, as to mangle their faces
during the sacrifices offered to that deity[92].

Change the letter ι, in the inscription, into the diphthong ει, and you
have a Greek word: such negligences are often to be met with in Greek
marbles[93], and still more in Greek manuscripts; and with the same
termination it is to be found on a gem, and signifies, “FAREWELL”[94],
which was the usual ejaculation addressed by the living to the deceased;
the same we meet with on ancient epitaphs[95]; public decrees[96]; and
of letters it was the final conclusion[97].

There is on an ancient epitaph the word ΕΥΨΥΧΙ[98]; the form of the Ψ on
ancient stones and manuscripts is exactly the same[99] with the third
letter of ΕΥ✠ΥΧΙ, which was perhaps confounded with it.

But supposing the Mummy to be of later times, the adoption of a Greek
word becomes yet easier. The round form of the ϵ might be something
suspicious, with regard to its pretended antiquity; that form being never
found on the gems or coins before Augustus[100]. But this suspicion
becomes of no weight, by supposing that the Egyptians continued their
embalming, even after the time of that Emperor.

However, the word cannot be an Egyptian one, being inconsistent with the
remains of that ancient tongue in the modern Coptick, as well as with
their manner of writing; which was from the right to the left, as the
Etrurians did[101]; whereas the word in question (like some Egyptian
characters[102],) is traced from the left to the right. As for the
inscription discovered by Maillet[103], no interpreter has yet been
found. The Grecians, on the contrary, wrote in the occidental manner,
for six hundred years before the christian æra, witness the Sigæan
inscription, which is said to be of that date[104].

What has been said relates also to an inscription upon a piece of
stone[105], with Egyptian figures, communicated to Kircher by Carolo
Vintimiglia, a Palerman patrician. The letters ΙΤΙΨΙΧΙ are two words,
and signify, “Let the soul come.” This stone has met with the same fate
as the gem engraved with the head of Ptolomæus Philopator: for here an
Egyptian has joined two random figures, and there the inscription may be
of a Greek hand. The litterati know what little change it wants to be
orthographical.




    AN
    ANSWER
    TO THE FOREGOING
    LETTER,
    AND
    A further EXPLICATION of the SUBJECT.


I could not presume that so small a treatise as mine would be thought
of consequence enough to be brought to a publick trial. As it was
written only for a few _connoisseurs_, it seemed superfluous to give it
a learned air, by multiplying quotations. Artists want but hints: their
task, according to an ancient Rhetor, is “to perform, not to peruse;”
consequently every author, who writes for them, ought to be brief. Being
besides convinced, that the beauties of the art are founded rather on a
quick sense, and refined taste, than on profound meditation, I cannot
help thinking that the principle of Neoptolemus[106], “to philosophize
only with the few,” ought to be the chief consideration in every treatise
of this kind.

Several passages of my Essay are susceptible of explications, and,
having been publickly tried by an anonymous author, should be explained
and defended at the same time, if my circumstances would permit me to
enlarge[107]. As to his other remarks, the author, I hope, will guess at
my answer, without my giving one explicitly.—Indeed they do not require
any.

I am not in the least moved by the clamours concerning those pieces of
_Corregio_, which, by undoubted accounts, were not only brought to
_Sweden_[108], but even hung up in the stables at _Stockholm_. Reasoning
is of no use here: arguments of this kind admit of no other evidence but
that of _Æmilius Scaurus_ against _Valerius_ of _Sucro_: “He denies; I
affirm: Romans! ’tis yours to judge.”

And why should there be any thing more derogatory to the honour of the
Swedes, in my repeating Count _Tessin_’s relation, than in his giving
it? Perhaps, because the learned author of the circumstantial life of
Queen _Christina_ omits her indiscreet generosity towards _Bourdon_,
and that bad treatment which the pictures of _Corregio_ met with? or
was _Härleman_[109] himself charged with indiscretion or malice, on his
relating that, at _Lincöping_, he found a college, and seven professors,
but not one physician or artificer?

It was my design to explain myself more particularly, concerning the
negligences of the Greeks, had I been allowed time. The Greeks, as their
criticism on the partridge of Protogenes, and his blotting it[110],
evidently shews, were not ignorant in learned negligence. But the Zeus
of Phidias was the standard of sublimity, the symbol of the omnipresent
Deity; like Homer’s Eris, he stood upon the earth, and reached heaven;
he was, in the style of sacred poesy, “_What encompasses him?_ &c.” And
the world has been candid enough to excuse, nay, even to justify on such
reasons, the disproportions in the Carton of Raphael, representing the
fishing of Peter[111]. The criticism on the _Diomedes_, though solid,
is not against me: his action, abstractedly considered, with his noble
and expressive contour, are standards of the art; and that was all I
advanced[112].

The reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks may be
reduced to four heads, viz.

    I. The perfect Nature of the Greeks;

    II. The Characteristicks of their works;

    III. The Imitation of these;

    IV. Their manner of Thinking upon the Art; and Allegory.

Probability was all I pretended to, with regard to the first; which
cannot be fully demonstrated, notwithstanding all the assistance of
history. For, these advantages of the Greeks were, perhaps, less founded
on their nature, and the influences of the climate, than on their
education.

The happy situation of their country was, however, the basis of all; and
the want of resemblance, which was observed between the Athenians and
their neighbours beyond the mountains, was owing to the difference of
air and nourishment[113].

The manners and persons of the new-settled inhabitants, as well as the
natives of every country, have never failed of being influenced by their
different natures. The ancient Gauls, and their successors the German
Franks, are but one nation: the blind fury, by which the former were
hurried on in their first attacks, proved as unsuccessful to them in the
times of Cæsar[114], as it did to the latter in our days. They possessed
certain other qualities, which are still in vogue among the modern
French; and the Emperor Julian[115] tells us, that in his time there were
more dancers than citizens at Paris.

Whereas the Spaniards, managing their affairs cautiously, and with a
certain frigidity, kept the Romans longer than any other people from
conquering the country[116].

And is not this character of the old Iberians re-assumed by the
West-Goths, the Mauritanians, and many other people, who over-ran their
country?[117]

It is easy to be imagined what advantages the Greeks, having been subject
to the same influences of climate and air, must have reaped from the
happy situation of their country. The most temperate seasons reigned
through all the year, and the refreshing sea-gales fanned the voluptuous
islands of the Ionick sea, and the shores of the continent. Induced by
these advantages, the Peloponnesians built all their towns along the
coast; see Dicearchus, quoted by Cicero[118].

Under a sky so temperate, nay balanced between heat and cold, the
inhabitants cannot fail of being influenced by both. Fruits grow ripe
and mellow, even such as are wild improve their natures; animals thrive
well, and breed more abundantly. “Such a sky, says Hippocrates[119],
produces not only the most beautiful of men, but harmony between their
inclinations and shape.” Of which Georgia, that country of beauty,
where a pure and serene sky pours fertility, is an instance[120]. Among
the elements, beauty owes so much to water alone, that, if we believe
the Indians, it cannot thrive, in a country that has it not in its
purity[121]. And the Oracle itself attributes to the lymph of Arethusa a
power of forming beauty[122].

The Greek tongue affords us also some arguments in behalf of their
frame. Nature moulds the organs of speech according to the influences
of the climate. There are nations that rather whistle than speak, like
the Troglodytes[123]; others that pronounce without opening their
lips[124]; and the Phasians, a Greek people, had, as has been said of the
English[125], a hoarse voice: an unkind climate forms harsh sounds, and
consequently the organs of speech cannot be very delicate.

The superiority of the Greek tongue is incontestible: I do not speak now
of its richness, but only of its harmony. For all the northern tongues,
being over-loaded with consonants[126], are too often apt to offend
with an unpleasing austerity; whereas the Greek tongue is continually
changing the consonant for the vowel, and two vowels, meeting with but
one consonant, generally grow into a diphthong[127]. The sweetness of the
tongue admits of no word ending with these three harsh letters Θ, Φ, Χ,
and for the sake of Euphony, readily changes letters for their kindred
ones. Some seemingly harsh words cannot be objected here; none of us
being acquainted with the true Greek or Roman pronunciation. All these
advantages gave to the tongue a flowing softness, brought variety into
the sounds of its words, and facilitated their inimitable composition.
And from these alone, not to mention the measure which, even in common
conversation, every syllable enjoyed, a thing to be despaired of in
occidental tongues; from these alone, I say, we may form the highest idea
of the organs by which that tongue was pronounced, and may more than
conjecture, that, by the language of the _Gods_, Homer meant the Greek,
by that of _Men_, the Phrygian tongue.

It was chiefly owing to that abundance of vowels, that the Greek tongue
was preferable to all others, for expressing by the sound and disposition
of its words the forms and substances of things. The discharge, the
rapidity, the diminution of strength in piercing, the slowness in
gliding, and the stopping of an arrow, are better expressed by the sound
of these three verses of Homer, Iliad Δ.

    125. Λίγξε βιὸς, νευρὴ δε μέγ’ ἴαχεν, ἆλτο δ’ ὀϊστὸς[128]

    135. Διὰ μέν ἂρ’ ζωστῆρος ἐλήλατο δαιδαλέοιο,

    136. Καὶ διὰ θωρηκος πολυδαιδάλου ἠρήρειστο,

than even by the words themselves. You see it discharged, flying through
the air, and piercing the belt of Menelaus.

The description of the Myrmidons in battle-array, Iliad Π. v. 215.

    Ἀσπὶς ἄρ’ ἀσπίδ’ ἔρειδε, κόρυς κόρυν ἀνέρα δ’ ἀνήρ.

is of the same kind, and has never been hit by any imitation: what
beauties in one line!

Plato’s periods were, from their harmony, compared[129] to a noiseless
smooth-running stream. But we should be mistaken in confining the tongue
to the softer harmonies only: it became a roaring torrent, boisterous as
the winds by which Ulysses’ sails were torn, split only in three or four
places by the words, but rent by the sound into a thousand tatters[130].
This was the “_vivida expressio_,” the living sound; supremely beautiful,
when properly and sparingly used!

How quick, how refined must the organs have been, which were the
depositaries of such a tongue! The Roman itself could not attain its
excellence: nay, a Greek father, of the second century of the christian
æra[131], complains of the horrid sound of the Roman laws.

Nature keeps proportion; consequently the frame of the Greeks was of a
fine clay, of nerves, and muscles most sensibly elastic, and promoting
the flexibility of the body: hence that easiness, that pliant facility,
accompanied with mirth and vigour, which animated all their actions.
Imagine bodies most nicely balanced between leanness and corpulency:
both extremes were ridiculed by the Greeks, and their poets sneer at the
Philesiases[132], Philetases[133], and Agoracrituses[134].

But though they were beautiful, and by their law early initiated into
pleasure, they were not effeminate Sybarites. As an instance of which
we shall only repeat what Pericles pleaded in favour of the Athenian
manners, against those of Sparta, which were as different from those
of the rest of Greece, as their public oeconomy was: “The Spartans,
says Pericles, employ their youth to get, by violent exercises, manly
strength: but we, though living indolently, encounter every danger as
well as they; calmly, not anxiously, mindful of its approaches, we meet
it with voluntary magnanimity, and without any compulsion of the law. Not
disconcerted by its impending threats, we meet its most furious attacks,
with no less boldness than they, whom perpetual practice has prepared for
its strokes. We are fond of elegance, without loving finery; of genius,
without being emasculate. In short, to be fit for every great enterprize,
is the characteristic of the Athenians[135].”

I cannot, nor will I pretend to fix a rule without allowing exceptions.
There was a Thersites in the army of the Greeks. But it is worth
observing, that the beauty of a nation was always in proportion to their
cultivation of the arts. Thebes, wrapt up in a misty sky, produced a
sturdy uncouth race[136],[137]according to Hippocrates’s observation on
fenny, watry soils[138]; and its sterility in producing men of genius,
Pindar only excepted, is an old reproach. Sparta was as defective in this
respect as Thebes, having only Alcman to boast of; but the reasons were
different: whereas Attica enjoyed a pure and serene sky, which refined
the senses[139], and of course shaped their bodies in proportion to that
refinement; and Athens was the seat of arts. The same remark may be made
with regard to Sicyon, Corinth, Rhodes, Ephesus, &c. all which having
been schools of the arts, could not want convenient models. The passage
of Aristophanes, insisted on in the letter[140], I take for a joke, as
it really is—and thereby hangs a tale: to have the parts, whereon

    _Sedet æternumque sedebit_
    _Infelix Theseus,_

    Virg.

moderately complete, were Attick beauties. Theseus[141], made prisoner by
the Thesprotians, was delivered from his captivity by Hercules, but not
without some loss of the parts in question; a loss bequeathed to all his
race. This was the true mark of the Thesean pedigree; as a natural mark,
representing a spear[142], signified a Spartan extraction; and we find
the Greek artists imitating in those places the sparing hand of nature.

But this liberality of nature was confined to Greece, in a narrower
sense. Its colonies underwent the same fate, which its eloquence met with
when going abroad. “As soon, says Cicero[143], as eloquence set out from
the Athenian port, she plumed herself with the manners of all the islands
in her way, adopted the Asiatick luxury, and forsaking her sound Attick
expression, lost her health.” The Ionians, transplanted by Nileus from
Greece into Asia, after the return of the Heraclides, grew still more
voluptuous beneath that glowing sky. Heaps of vowels brought wantonness
into every word; the neighbouring islands partook of their climate and
manners, which a single Lesbian coin may convince us of[144]. No wonder
then, if their bodies degenerated as much from those of their ancestors,
as their manners.

The remoter the colonies the greater the difference. Those Greeks, who
had chosen their abode in Africa, about _Pithicussa_, fell in with the
natives in adoring apes; nay, even gave the names of those animals to
their children[145].

The modern Greeks, though composed of various mingled metals, still
betray the chief mass. Barbarism has destroyed the very elements of
science, and ignorance over-clouds the whole country; education, courage,
manners are sunk beneath an iron sway, and even the shadow of liberty is
lost. Time, in its course, dissipates the remains of antiquity: pillars
of Apollo’s temple at Delos[146], are now the ornaments of English
gardens: the nature of the country itself is changed. In days of yore the
plants of Crete[147] were famous over all the world; but now the streams
and rivers, where you would go in quest of them, are mantled with wild
luxuriant weeds, and trivial vegetables[148].

Unhappy country! How could it avoid being changed into a wilderness, when
such populous tracts of land as Samos, once mighty enough to balance the
Athenian power at sea, are reduced to hideous desarts[149]!

Notwithstanding all these devastations, the forlorn prospect of the soil,
the free passage of the winds, stopped by the inextricable windings of
entangled shores, and the want of almost all other commodities; yet have
the modern Greeks preserved many of the prerogatives of their ancestors.
The inhabitants of several islands, (the Greek race being chiefly
preserved in the islands), near the Natolian shore, especially the
females, are, by the unanimous account of travellers, the most beautiful
of the human race[150].

Attica still preserves its air of philanthropy[151]: all the shepherds
and clowns welcomed the two travellers, Spon and Wheeler; nay, prevented
them with their salutations[152]: neither have they lost the Attick salt,
or the enterprising spirit of the former inhabitants[153].

Objections have been made against their early exercises, as rather
derogating from, than adding to, the beauteous form of the Greek youths.

Indeed, the continual efforts of the nerves and muscles seem rather to
give an angular gladiatorial turn, than the soft Contour of beauty, to
youthful bodies. But this may partly be answered by the character of the
nation itself: their fancy, their actions, were easy and natural; their
affairs, as Pericles says, were managed with a certain carelessness, and
some of Plato’s dialogues[154] may give us an idea of that mirth and
chearfulness which prevailed in all the Gymnastick exercises of their
youth. Hence his desire of having these places, in his commonwealth,
frequented by old folks, in order to remind them of the joys of their
youth[155].

Their games commonly began at sun rise[156]; and Socrates frequented
them at that time. They chose the morning-hours, in order to avoid being
incommoded by the heat: as soon as their garments were laid down, the
body was anointed with the elegant Attick oil, partly to defend it from
the bleak morning-air; as it was usual to practice, even during the
severest cold[157]; and partly to prevent a too copious perspiration,
where it was intended only to carry off superfluous humours[158]. To
this oil they ascribed also a strengthening quality[159]. The exercises
being over, they went to bathe, and there submitted to a fresh unction;
and a person leaving the bath in this state “appears, says Homer, taller,
stronger, and similar to the immortal Gods[160].”

We may form a very distinct idea of the different kinds and degrees of
wrestling among the ancients, from a vase once in the possession of
Charl. Patin, and, as he guesses, the urn of a gladiator[161].

Had it been a prevailing custom among the Greeks to walk, either
barefooted, like the heroes in their performances[162], or with a single
sole, as we commonly believe, their feet must have been bruised. But
there are many instances of their extreme nicety in this respect; for,
they had names for above ten different sorts of shoes[163].

The coverings of the thighs were thrown off at the publick exercises,
even before the flourishing of the art[164]; which was a great advantage
to the artists. As for the nourishment of the wrestlers in remoter times,
I found it more proper to mention milk in general, than soft cheese.

If I remember right, you think it strange, and even undemonstrable, that
the primitive church should have dipped their proselytes, promiscuously:
consult the note[165].

As I am now entering upon the discussion of my second point, I could wish
that these probabilities of a more perfect nature, among the Greeks,
might be allowed to have some conclusive weight; and then I should have
but a few words to add.

_Charmoleos_, a Megarian youth, a single kiss of whom was valued at two
talents[166], was, no doubt, beautiful enough to serve for a model of
_Apollo_: Him, _Alcibiades_, _Charmides_, and _Adimanthus_[167], the
artists could see and study to their wish for several hours every day:
and can you imagine those trifling opportunities proposed to the Parisian
artists, equivalents for the loss of advantages like these? But granting
that, pray, what is there to be seen more in a swimmer than in any other
person? The extremities of the body you may see every where. As for that
author[168], who pretends to find in France beauties superior to those
of _Alcibiades_, I cannot help doubting his ability to maintain what he
asserts.

What has been said hitherto might also answer the objection drawn from
the judgment of our academies, concerning those parts of the body which
ought to be drawn rather more angular than we find them in the antiques.
The Greeks, and their artists, were happy in the enjoyment of figures
endowed with youthful harmony; for, we have no reason to doubt their
exactness in copying nature, if we only consider the angular smartness
with which they drew the wrist-bones. _Agasias_’s celebrated _Gladiator_,
in the _Borghese_, has none of the modern angles, nor the bony
prominences authorised by our artists: all his angular parts are those we
meet with in the other Greek statues. And this statue, which was perhaps
one of those that were erected, in the very places where the games were
held, to the memory of the several victors, may be supposed an exact
copy of nature. The artist was bound to represent any victor in the very
attitude, and instantaneous motion, in which he overcame his antagonist,
and the _Amphictyones_ were the judges of his performance[169].

Many authors having written on this, and the following point of the
treatise, I have contented myself with giving a few remarks of my own.
Superficial arguments, in matters of this kind, can neither suit the
deeper views of our times, nor lead to general conclusions. Nevertheless
we do not want authors whose premature decisions often get the better of
their judgment, and that not in matters concerning the art alone. Pray,
what decisions of an author may be depended upon, who, when designing to
write on the arts in general, shews himself so ignorant of their very
elements, as to ascribe to _Thucydides_, whose concise and energetick
style was not without difficulties, even for _Tully_[170], the character
of simplicity?[171] Another of that tribe, seems as little acquainted
with _Diodorus Siculus_, when he describes him as hunting after
elegance[172]. Nor want we blockheads enough who admire, in the ancient
performances, such trifles as are below any reasonable man’s attention.
“The rope, says a travelling scribler, which ties together Dirce and the
ox, is to connoisseurs the most beautiful object of the whole groupe of
the Toro Farnese[173].”

    _Ah miser ægrota putruit cui mente salillum!_

I am no stranger to those merits of the modern artists which you oppose
to the ancients: but at the same time I know, that the imitation of these
alone has elevated the others to that pitch of merit; and it would be
easy to prove that, whenever they forsook the ancients, they fell into
the faults of those, whom alone I intended to blame.

Nature undoubtedly misled Bernini: a _Carita_ of his, on the monument
of Pope Urban the VIIIth, is said to be corpulent, and another on that
of Alexander the VIIth, even ugly[174]. Certain it is, that no use
could be made of the Equestrian statue of Lewis XIV. on which he had
bestowed fifteen years, and the King immense sums. He was represented
as ascending, on horseback, the mount of honour: but the action both of
the rider and of the horse was exaggerated, and too violent; which was
the cause of baptizing it a Curtius plunging into the gulph, and its
having been placed only in the Thuilleries: from which we may infer,
that the most anxious imitation of nature is as little sufficient for
attaining beauty, as the study of anatomy alone for attaining the justest
proportions: these Lairesse, by his own account, took from the skeletons
of Bidloo; but, though a professor in his art, committed many faults,
which the good Roman school, especially Raphael, cannot be charged with.
However, it is not meant that there is no heaviness in his Venus; nor
does it clear him from the faults imputed to him in the Massacre of the
Innocents, engraved by Marc. Antonio, as has been attempted in a very
rare treatise on painting[175]; for there the female figures labour
under an exuberance of breasts; whereas the murderers look ghastly with
leanness: a contrast not to be admired: the sun itself has spots.

Let Raphael be imitated in his best manner, and when in his prime; those
works want no apology: it was to no purpose to produce Parrhasius and
Zeuxis in order to excuse Him, and the Dutch proportions! ’Tis true, the
passage of Pliny[176], which you quote concerning Parrhasius, meets
commonly with the same interpretation, viz. _that, shunning corpulency
he fell into leanness_[177]. But supposing Pliny to have understood what
he wrote, we must clear him of contradicting himself. A little before
he allowed to Parrhasius a superiority in the contour, or in his own
words, _in the outlines_; and in the passage before us, _Parrhasius,
compared with himself, seems, in POINT OF THE MIDDLE PARTS, to fall short
of himself_. The question is, what he means by middle parts? Perhaps
the parts bordering on the outlines: but is not the designer obliged to
know every possible attitude of the frame, every change of its contour?
If so, it is ridiculous to give this explication to our passage: for
the middle parts of a full face are the outlines of its profile, and
so on. Consequently, there is no such thing as middle parts to be met
with by a designer: the idea of a painter, well-skilled in the contour
of the outlines, but ignorant of their contents, is an absurd one.
Parrhasius perhaps either wanted skill in the Chiaroscuro, or Keeping
in the disposition of his limbs, and this seems the only explication,
which the words of Pliny can reasonably admit of. Unless we choose to
make him another La Fage, who, though a celebrated designer, never
failed spoiling his contours with his colours. Or, perhaps, to indulge
another conjecture, Parrhasius smoothed the outlines of his contour,
where it bordered on the grounds, in order to avoid being rough; a fault
committed, as it seems, by his contemporaries, and by the artists who
flourished in the beginning of the sixteenth century, who circumscribed
their figures, as it were with a knife; but those smooth contours wanted
the support of keeping, and of masses gradually rising or sinking, in
order to become round, and to strike the eye: by failing in which,
his figures got an air of flatness; and thus Parrhasius fell short of
himself, without being either too corpulent or too lean.

We cannot conclude, from the Homeric shape which Zeuxis gave his female
figures, that he raised them, like Rubens, into flesh-hills. There is
some reason to believe, from the education of the Spartan ladies, that
they had something of a masculine vigour, though they were the chief
beauties of Greece; and such a one is the Helena of Theocritus.

All this makes me doubt of finding among the ancients any companion for
Jacob Jordans, though he is so zealously defended in your letter. Nor am
I afraid of maintaining what I have said concerning him. Mr. d’Argenville
is indeed a very industrious collector of criticisms upon the artists;
but as his design is not very extensive, so his decisions are often too
general, to afford us characteristical ideas of his heroes.

A good eye must be allowed to be a better judge, in matters of this kind,
than all the ambiguous decisions of authors: and to fix the character
of Jordans, I might content myself with appealing to his Diogenes,
and the Purification, in the royal cabinet at Dresden. But, for the
reader’s sake, let me inquire into the meaning of what you call _Truth_
in painting. For if truth, in the general sense, can by no means be
excluded from any branch of the arts, we have, in the decision of Mr.
d’Argenville, a riddle to unfold, which, if it has any meaning at all,
must have the following:

Rubens, enabled by the inexhaustible fertility of his genius, to
pour forth fictions like Homer himself, displays his riches even to
prodigality: like him he loved the marvellous, as well in thought and
grandeur of conception, as in composition, and chiar’-oscuro. His
figures are composed in a manner unknown before him, and his lights,
jointly darting upon one great mass, diffuse over all his works a bold
harmony, and amazing spirit. Jordans, a genius of a lower class, cannot,
in the ideal part of painting, by any means be compared with his great
master. He had no wings to soar above nature; for which reason he humbly
followed, and painted her as he found her: and if this be _truth_, he, no
doubt, had a larger share of it than Rubens.

If the modern artists, with regard to forms and beauty, are not to be
directed by antiquity, there is no authority left to influence them.
Some, in painting Venus, would give her a Frenchified air[178]; another
would present her with an Aquiline nose, the Medicean Venus, as they
would say, having such a one[179]: her hands would be provided with
spindles instead of fingers; and she would ogle us with Chinese eyes,
like the beauties of a new Italian school. Every artist, in short, would,
by his performance, betray his country: but, as Democritus says[180],
if the artists ought to pray the gods to let them meet with none but
auspicious images, those of the ancients will best suit their wishes.

Let us, however, make some exception in favour of Fiamingo’s children.
For, lustiness and full health being the common burden of the praises of
children, whose infant forms are not strictly susceptible of that beauty,
which belongs to the steadiness of riper years; the imitation of his
children has reasonably become a fashion among our artists. But neither
this, nor the indulgence of the academy at Vienna, can be, or indeed was
meant to be decisive, in favour of the modern children; it only leads us
to make a distinction. The ancients went beyond nature, even in their
children: the moderns only follow her; and, provided their infant forms,
exuberant as they are, do not influence their ideas of youthful and riper
bodies, they may be allowed to be in the right, though, at the same time,
the ancients were not in the wrong.

Our artists are, likewise, at full liberty to dress the hair of their
figures as they please: but, being so fond of nature, they, must needs
know, that it is nature which shades, with pendant locks, the forehead
and temples of all those, whose life is not spent between the comb and
the looking-glass: and finding this manner carefully observed in most
statues of the ancients, they may take it as a proof of their attachment
to simplicity and truth; a proof of the more weight, as they did not want
people, busier in adorning their bodies than their minds, and as nice
in adjusting their hair, as the most elegant of our European courtiers.
But it was commonly looked upon as a mark of an ingenuous and noble
extraction, to dress the hair in the manner of the statues[181].

The imitation of the ancient contour has indeed never been rejected, not
even by those whose chief want was that of correctness: but we differ
about imitating that “noble simplicity and sedate grandeur” in their
works. An expression which hath seldom met with general approbation, and
never pronounced without hazard of being misunderstood.

In the Hercules of Bandinelli, the idea of it was deemed a fault[182]: an
usurpation in Raphael’s Massacre of the Innocents[183].

The idea of “nature at rest,” I own, might, perhaps, produce figures like
the young Spartans of Xenophon; nor would the bulk of mankind be better
pleased with performances in the taste of my treatise, (supposing even
all its precepts authorised by the judges of the art) than with a speech
made before the Areopagites. But it is not on the bulk of mankind that
we ought to confer the legislative power in the art. And though works of
an extensive composition ought certainly to have the support of a vigour
and spirit proportioned to their extent, yet there are limits which must
not be overleapt: use not so much spirit as to represent the everlasting
Father like the cruel God of war, or an ecstasied saint like a priestess
of Bacchus.

Indeed, in the eyes of one unacquainted with this characteristick of
the sublime, a Madonna of Trevisani will seem preferable to that of
Raphael in the royal cabinet at Dresden. I know that even artists were
of opinion, that its being placed so near one of the former, was not a
little disadvantageous to it. Hence it seemed not superfluous to enquire
into the true grandeur of that inestimable picture, as it is the only
production of this Apollo of painters, that Germany is possessed of.

No comparison, indeed, is to be made of its composition with that of the
transfiguration; which, however, I think fully compensated by its being
genuine: whereas Julio Romano might perhaps claim one half of the other
as his own. The difference of the hands is visible: but in the Madonna,
the spirit of that epoch, in which Raphael performed his Athenian school,
shines with so full a lustre, as to make even the authority of Vasari
superfluous.

’Tis no easy matter to convince a critick, conceited enough to blame the
Jesus of the Madonna, that he is mistaken. Pythagoras, says an antient
philosopher[184], and Anaxagoras look at the sun with different eyes: the
former sees a God, the latter a stone. We want but experience to discover
truth and beauty in the faces of Raphael, without enquiring into their
dignity: beauty pleases, but serious graces charm[185]. Such are the
beauties of the ancients, which gave that serious air to Antinous, which
we generally ascribe to his shading locks. Sudden raptures, or the
enticement of a glance, are often momentary; let an attentive eye dwell
upon those confused beauties which the transient look conveys, and the
paint will vanish. True charms owe their durability to reflection, and
hidden graces allure our enquiries: reluctant and unsatisfied we leave a
coy beauty, in continual admiration of some new-fancied charm: and such
are the beauties of Raphael and the ancients; not agreeably trifling
ones, but regular and full of real graces[186]. By that Cleopatra became
the beauty of all ensuing ages: nobody[187] was astonished at her face,
but her air engaged every eye, and subdued the melted heart. A French
Venus at her toilet is much like Seneca’s wit: which, if put to the test,
disappears[188].

The comparison of Raphael and some of the most celebrated Dutch, and
new Italian painters, concerns only the management, (_Trattamento_).
The endeavours of the former of these, to hide the laborious industry
that appears in all their works, gives an additional sanction to my
judgment; for, hiding is labour. The most difficult part in performances
of the arts, is to spread an air of easiness, the “UT SIBI QUIVIS” over
them[189]; of which, among the ancients, the pictures of Nicomachus were
entirely destitute[190].

All this, however, is not meant to derogate from Vanderwerf’s superior
merit: his works give a lustre even to the cabinets of kings. He diffused
over them an inconceivable polish; every trace of his pencil, one would
think, is molten; and, in the colliquation of his tints, there reigns but
one predominant colour. He might be said to have enamelled rather than
painted.

His works indeed please. But does the character of painting consist in
pleasing alone? Denner’s bald pates please likewise. But what, do you
imagine, would the wise ancients think of them? Plutarch, from the mouth
of some Aristides or Zeuxis, would tell him, that beauty never dwells in
wrinkles[191].

’Tis said, the Emperor Charles VI. when he first saw one of Denner’s
pictures, was loud in its praise, and in admiration of his industry.
The painter was immediately desired to make a fellow to the first, and
was magnificently rewarded: but the Emperor, comparing each of them
with some pieces of Rembrandt and Vandyke, declared, “that having now
satisfied his curiosity, he would on no account have any more from this
artist.” An English nobleman was of the same opinion: for being shewn
a picture of Denner’s, “You are in the wrong, said he, if you believe
that our nation esteems performances, which owe their merits to industry
rather than to genius.”

I am far from applying these remarks to Vanderwerf; the difference
between him and Denner is too great: I only joined them in order to
prove, that a picture which only pleases can no more pretend to universal
approbation than a poem. No; their charms must be durable; but here
we meet with causes of disgust in the very parts, where the painter
endeavoured to please us.

Those parts of nature that are beyond observation, were the chief
objects of these painters: they were particularly cautious of changing
the situation even of the minutest hair, in order to surprize the most
sharp-sighted eye with all the microcosm of nature. They may be compared
to those disciples of Anaxagoras, who placed all human wisdom in the palm
of the hand—but mark, as soon as they attempt to stretch their art beyond
these limits, to draw larger proportions, or the nudities, the painter
appears

    _Infelix operis summâ, quia ponere totum nescit._

    Hor.

Design is as certainly the painter’s first, second, and third requisite,
as action is that of the orator.

I readily allow the solidity of your remarks, concerning the “reliefs”
of the ancients. In my treatise I myself charged them with a want of
sufficient skill in perspective; and hence the faults in their reliefs.

The fourth point chiefly concerns _Allegory_.

In painting we commonly call fiction allegory: for, though imitation
arises from the very principles of painting as well as of poetry,
it constitutes, by itself, neither of them[192]. A picture, without
allegory, is but a vulgar image, and resembles Davenant’s Gondibert, an
epopée without fiction.

Colouring and design are to painting what metre and truth, or the fable,
are to poetry; a body without soul. Poetry, says Aristotle, was first
inspired with its soul, with fiction, by Homer; and with that the painter
must animate his work. Design and colouring are the fruits of attention
and practice: perspective and composition, in the strictest sense, are
established on fixed rules; they are of course but mechanical; and, if
I may be allowed the expression, only mechanical souls are wanting to
understand and to admire them.

Pleasures in general, save only those which rob the bulk of mankind
of their invaluable treasure, time, become durable, and are free from
tediousness and disgust, in proportion as they engage our intellectual
faculties. Mere sensual sentiments soon languish; they do not influence
our reason: such is the delight we take in the common landscape, flower,
and fruit paintings: the artist, in performing them, thinks but very
little; and the connoisseur, in considering them, thinks no more.

A mere history-piece differs from a landscape only in the object: in the
former you draw facts and persons, in the latter, sky, land, seas, &c.
both, of course, being founded on the same principle, imitation, are
essentially but of one kind.

If it be not a contradiction to stretch the limits of painting, as far as
those of poetry, and consequently, to allow the painter the same ability
of elevating himself to the pitch of the poet as the musician enjoys; it
is clear that history, though the sublimest branch of painting, cannot
raise itself to the heighths of tragick or epick poetry, by imitation
alone.

Homer, as Cicero tells us[193], has transformed man into God: which is
to say; he not only exceeded truth, but, to raise his fiction, preferred
even the impossible, if probable, to the barely possible[194]. In this
Aristotle fixes the very essence of poetry, and tells us that the
pictures of Zeuxis had that characteristick. The possibility and truth,
which Longinus requires of the painter, as opposites to absurdity in
poetry, are not contradictory to this rule.

This heighth the history-painter cannot reach, only by a contour above
common nature, or a noble expression of the passions: for these are
requisite in a good portrait-painter, who is able to execute them
without diminishing the likeness of his model. They are but imitation,
only prudently managed. The heads of Vandyke are charged with too
exact an observation of nature; an exactness that would be faulty in a
history-piece.

Truth, lovely as it is in itself, charms more, penetrates deeper, when
invested with fiction: fable, in its strictest sense, is the delight of
childhood; allegory that of riper years. And the old opinion, that poetry
was of earlier date than prose, as unanimously attested by the annals
of different people, makes it evident, that even in the most barbarous
times, truth was preferred, when appearing in this dress.

Our understanding, moreover, labours under the fault of bestowing its
attention chiefly on things, whose beauties are not to be perceived at
first sight, and of inadvertently slighting others, because clear as
day: images of this kind, like a ship on the waves, leave but momentary
traces in our memory. Hence the ideas of our childhood are the most
permanent, because every common occurrence then seems extraordinary.
Thus, if nature herself instructs us, that she is not to be moved by
common things, let art, as the Orator, ad Herennium, advises us, follow
her dictates.

Every idea increases in strength, if accompanied by another or more
ideas, as in comparisons; and the more still as they differ in kind: for
ideas, too analogous to each other, do not strike: as for instance, a
white skin compared to snow. Hence the power of discovering a similarity,
in the most different things, is what we commonly call wit; Aristotle,
“unexpected ideas”: and these he requires in an orator[195]. The more you
are surprized by a picture, the more you are affected; and both those
effects are to be obtained by allegory, like to fruit hid beneath leaves
and branches, which when found surprizes the more agreeably, the less it
was thought of. The smallest composition is susceptible of the sublimest
powers of art: all depends upon the idea.

Necessity first taught the artists to use allegory. No doubt, they began
with the representation of single objects of one class: but as they
improved, they attempted to express what was common to many particulars;
_i. e._ general ideas. All the qualities of single objects afford such
ideas: but to become general, and at the same time sensible, they cannot
preserve the particular shape of such or such an object, but must be
submitted to another shape, essential to that object, but a general one.

The Egyptians were the first, who went in search of images of that kind.
Such were their hieroglyphicks. All the deities of antiquity, especially
those of Greece, nay, their very names, were originally Egyptian[196].
Their personal theology was quite allegorical; and so is ours. But the
symbols of these inventors, partly preserved by the Greeks, were often so
mysteriously arbitrary, as to make it altogether impossible to find out
their meaning, even by the help of those authors that are still extant;
and such a discovery was looked upon as a nefarious profanation[197].
Thus sacredly mysterious was the pomegranate[198] in the hand of the
Samian Juno: and to divulge the Eleusinian rites, was thought worse than
the robbery of a temple[199].

The relation of the sign to the thing signified, was in some measure
founded on the known or pretended qualities of the latter. The Egyptian
Horsemarten was of that kind; an image of the sun, because his species
was said to have no female, and to live six months under and six above
ground[200]. In like manner the cat, being supposed to bring forth a
number of kittens equal to that of the days in a month, became the symbol
of Isis, or the moon[201].

The Greeks, on the contrary, endowed with more wit, and undoubtedly with
more sensibility, made use of no signs but such as had a true relation
to the thing signified, or were most agreeable to the senses: all their
deities they invested with human forms[202]. Wings, among the Egyptians,
were the symbol of eager and effectual services; a symbol conformable to
their nature, and continued by the Greeks: and if the Attick _Victoria_
had none, it was meant to signify, that she had chosen Athens for her
abode[203]. A goose, among the Egyptians, was the symbol of a cautious
leader; in consequence of which the prows of their ships were formed like
geese[204]. This the Greeks preserved also, and the ancient _Rostrum_
resembled the neck of a goose[205].

Of all the figures, whose relation to their intended meaning is somewhat
obscure, the Sphinx perhaps alone was continued by the Greeks. Placed in
the front of a temple, it was, among the Greeks, almost as instructive,
as it was significant among the Egyptians[206]. The Greek Sphinx was
winged[207], its head bare, without that stole which it wears on some
Attick coins[208].

It was in general a characteristic of the Greeks, to mark their
productions with a certain chearfulness: the muses love not hideous
phantoms: and Homer himself, when by the mouth of some god he cites an
Egyptian allegory, always cautiously begins with “WE ARE TOLD.” Nay,
the elder Pampho[209], though he exceeds the Egyptian oddities, by his
description of Jupiter wrapt up in horse-dung, approaches nevertheless
the sublime idea of the English poet:

    _As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;_
    _As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,_
    _As the rapt seraph, that adores and burns._

    Pope.

It will be no easy matter to find, among the old Greek coins, an image
like that of a snake encircling an egg[210], on a Syrian coin of the
third century. None of their monuments are marked with any thing
ghastly: of these they were, if possible, still more cautious than of
ill-omen’d words. The image of death is not to be seen, perhaps, but
on one gem[211], and that in the shape commonly exhibited at their
feasts[212]; _viz._ dancing to a flute, with intent to make them enjoy
the present pleasures of life, by reminding them of its shortness. On
another gem[213], with a Roman inscription, there is a skeleton, with two
butterflies as images of the soul, one of which is caught by a bird; a
pretended symbol of the metempsychosis: but the performance is of latter
times.

It has been likewise observed, that[214] among those myriads of altars,
sacred even to the most whimsical deities, there never was one set apart
to death; save only on the solitary coasts, which were deemed the
borders of the world[215].

The Romans, in their best times, thought like the Greeks; and always,
in adopting the iconology of a foreign nation, traced the footsteps of
these their masters. An elephant, one of the latter mysterious symbols of
the Egyptians[216] (for there is on the most ancient monuments neither
elephant[217] nor hart, ostrich nor cock, to be found), was the image of
different things[218], and perhaps of eternity, as on some Roman[219]
coins, because of his longevity. But on a coin of the emperor Antoninus,
this animal, with the inscription, MUNIFICENTIA, cannot possibly hint
at any other thing but the grand games, the magnificence of which was
augmented by those animals.

But it is no more my design to attempt an inquiry into the origin of
every allegorical symbol among the Greeks and Romans, than to write a
system of allegory. All I propose is, to defend what I have advanced
concerning it, and at the same time to direct the artist to the images of
those ancients, in preference to the iconologies and ill-judged symbols
of some moderns.

We may, from a little specimen, form a judgment of the turn of mind of
those ancients, and of the possibility of subjecting abstracted ideas
to the senses. The symbols of many a gem, coin, and monument, enjoy
their fixed and universally received interpretation; but some of the
most memorable, not yet brought to a proper standard, deserve a nearer
determination.

Perhaps the allegory of the ancients might be divided, like painting and
poetry in general, into two classes, _viz._ the _sublime_, and the _more
vulgar_. Symbols of the one might be those by which some mythological
or philosophical allusion, or even some unknown or mysterious rite, is
expressed.

Such as are more commonly understood, _viz._ personified virtues, vices,
_&c._ might be referred to the other.

The images of the former give to performances of the art the true epick
grandeur: one single figure is sufficient to give it: the more it
contains, the sublimer it is: the more it engages our attention, the
deeper it penetrates, and we of course feel it the more.

The ancients, in order to represent a child dying in his bloom, painted
him carried off by Aurora[220]: a striking image! taken, perhaps, from
the custom of burying youths at day-break. The ideas of the bulk of our
artists, in this respect, are too trivial to be mentioned here.

The animation of the body, one of the most abstracted ideas, was
represented by the loveliest, most poetical images. An artist, who
should imagine he could express this idea by the Mosaick creation, would
be mistaken; for his image would be merely historical, and nothing
but the creation of Adam: a history altogether too sacred for being
either admitted as the allegory of a mere philosophical idea, or into
every place: neither does it seem poetical enough for the flights of
the art. This idea appears on coins and gems[221], as described by the
most ancient poets and philosophers: Prometheus forming a man of that
clay, of which large petrified heaps were found in Phocis in the time
of Pausanias[222]; and Minerva holding a butterfly, as an image of the
soul, over his head. The snake encircling a tree behind Minerva, on the
above coin of Antoninus Pius, is a supposed symbol of his prudence and
sagacity.

It cannot be denied that the meaning of many an ancient allegory
is merely conjectural, and therefore not to be applied on every
occasion. A child catching a butterfly on an altar was pretended to
signify _Amicitia ad aras_, or, “which is not to exceed the borders of
justice[223].” On another gem, Love, endeavouring to pull off the branch
of an old tree, where a nightingale is perching, is said to allegorize
love of wisdom[224]. _Eros_, _Himeros_, and _Pathos_, the symbols of
Love, Appetite, and Desire, are represented, they say[225], on a gem,
encompassing the sacred fire on an altar; Love behind the fire, his head
only over-reaching the flames; Appetite and Desire on both sides of the
altar; Appetite with one hand only in the fire, with the other holding a
garland; Desire with both his hands in the flames. A _Victoria_ crowning
an anchor, on a coin of king Seleucus, was formerly regarded as an image
of peace and security procured by victory, till by the help of history we
have been enabled to give it its true interpretation. Seleucus is said to
have been born with a mark resembling an anchor[226], which not only he
himself, but all his descendants, the Seleucidæ, have preserved on their
coins[227].

There is another Victoria with butterfly’s wings[228], fastened on a
trophy. This, they say, is the symbol of a hero, who, like Epaminondas,
died in the very act of conquering. At Athens such a statue[229], and an
altar to an unwinged Victoria, was the symbol of their perpetual success
in battle: ours may admit of the same explication as Mars in chains at
Sparta[230]. Nor was she, as I presume, provided at random with wings
usually given to Psyche, her own being those of an eagle: they perhaps
signify the soul of the deceased: however, all these conjectures might be
tolerable, if a Victoria fastened on trophies of conquered enemies could
reasonably correspond with their being vanquished.

Indeed the sublimer allegory of the ancients has not been transmitted to
us, without the loss of its most valuable treasures: it is poor, when
compared with the second kind, which is often provided with several
symbols for one idea. Two different ones, signifying the happiness of
the times, are expressed on coins of the emperor Commodus: the one a
lady[231], sitting with an apple or ball in her right, and a dial in her
left hand, beneath a leafy tree: three children are before her, two in a
vase or flower-pot, the usual symbol of fertility: the other represents
four children, who, as is clear by the things they bear, are the seasons.
Both have the subscription FELICITAS TEMPORVM.

But these, and all the symbols that want inscriptions, are of a lower
rank; and some of them might as well be taken for signs of different
ideas. Hope[232] and Fertility[233], for instance, might be Ceres,
Nobility[234], Minerva. Patience[235], on a coin of Aurelian, wants her
true characteristick, as does Erato; and the Parcæ[236] are only by their
garments distinguished from the Graces. On the contrary, ideas which are
often confounded in morality, as Justice and Equity, are extremely well
distinguished by the ancients. The former is represented, as drawn by
_Gellius_[237], with a stern look, a diadem, and dressed hair[238]; the
latter with a mild countenance, and waving ringlets; ears of corn arising
from her balance, as symbols of the advantages of equity; and sometimes
she holds in her other hand[239] a cornu-copia.

Peace, on a coin of the emperor Titus, is to be ranked among those of a
more energetick expression. The goddess of Peace leans on a pillar with
her left arm, in the hand of which she holds the branch of an olive-tree,
whilst the other waves the caduceus over the thigh of a victim on a
little altar, which hints at the bloodless sacrifices of that goddess:
the victims were slaughtered out of the temple, and nothing but the
thighs were offered at the altar, which was not to be stained with blood.

Peace usually appears with the olive-branch and the caduceus, as on
another coin of this emperor[240]; or on a stool placed on a heap of
arms, as on a coin of Drusus[241]. On some of Tiberius’s and Vespasian’s
coins[242] Peace appears in the act of burning arms.

On a coin of the Emperor Philip there is a noble image; a sleeping
Victory: which, with better reason, may be taken for the symbol of
confidence in conquest, than for that in the security of the world as
the inscription pretends. Of an analogous idea was the picture, by which
the Athenian General Timotheus was ridiculed, for the blind luck with
which he obtained his victories: he was represented asleep, with Fortune
catching Towns in her Net[243].

The Nile, with his sixteen children, is of this same class[244]. The
child that reaches the ears of corn, and the fruits, in his Cornu, is
the symbol of the highest fertility; but those that over-reach them are
signs of miscarrying seasons. Pliny explains the whole[245]. Egypt is at
the height of its fertility, when the Nile rises sixteen feet: but if
it either falls short of, or exceeds that measure, it equally blasts
the land with unfruitfulness. Rossi, in his collection, neglected the
children.

Satyrical pictures belong also to this class: the Ass of Gabrias, for
instance[246], which imagines itself worshipped by the people, as they
bow to the statue of Isis on its back. It is impossible to give a
livelier image of the pride of the Vulgar-Great.

The sublimer allegory might be supplied by the lower class, had it not
met with the same fate. We are, for instance, not acquainted with the
figure of Eloquence, or _Peitho_; or that of the Goddess of Comfort,
_Parergon_, represented by Praxiteles, as Pausanias tells us[247].
Oblivion had an altar among the Romans[248], and perhaps a figure: as may
also be supposed of Chastity, whose altar is to be found on coins[249];
and of Fear, to which Theseus offered sacrifices[250].

However, the remains of ancient allegory are not yet worn out: there are
still many secret stores: the poets, and other monuments of antiquity,
afford numbers of beautiful images. Those, who in our time, and that
of our fathers, were busy in improving allegory, and in facilitating
the endeavours of the artists; those, I say, should reasonably have
had recourse to so rich and pure a fountain. But there was an epoch to
appear, in which a shocking croud of pedants should, with downright
madness, conspire in an universal uproar against every the lead glimpse
of good taste. Nature, in their eyes, was puerile, and ought to be
fashioned: blockheads, both young and old, vied in painting devices and
emblems, for the benefit of artists, philosophers, and divines; and woe
to him who made a compliment, without dressing it up in an emblem!
Symbols void of sense were illustrated with inscriptions, giving an
account of what they meant, and meant not: these are the treasures which
are dug for, even in our times, and which, being then in high fashion,
out-shone all antiquity had left.

The ancients, for instance, represented Munificence by a woman holding
a Cornucopia in one hand, and the table of the Roman Congiarium in the
other[251]: an image which looked too parsimonious for modern liberality;
another therefore was contrived[252], with two horns; one of them
inverted, the better to pour out its contents; an eagle, the meaning
of which is too hard for me to guess at, was set upon her head; others
painted her with a pot in each hand[253]. Eternity was, by the ancients,
drawn either sitting on a Globe, or rather Sphere[254], with a Hasta in
her hand; or standing[255], with the Sphere in one hand, and the Hasta in
the other; or with the Sphere in her hand, and no Hasta; or else covered
with a floating Veil[256]. These are the images of Eternity on the coins
of the Empress Faustina: but there was not gravity enough in them for
the modern artists. Eternity, so frightful to many, required a frightful
image[257]; a form female down to the breast, with Globes in each hand;
the rest of the Body a circling star-marked Snake turning into itself.

Providence very often has a Globe at her feet, and a Hasta in her left
hand[258]. On a coin of the Emperor Pertinax[259], she stretches out both
her hands, towards a Globe falling from the clouds. A female figure,
with two heads, seemed more expressive to the moderns[260].

Constancy, on some of Claudius’s coins[261], is either fitting or
standing, with a Helmet on her head, and a Hasta in her left hand; or
without Helmet and Hasta, but always with a finger pointing to her face,
as if closely debating some point. For distinction sake the moderns
joined a couple of pillars[262].

It is very probable, that Ripa was often at a loss with his own figures.
Chastity, in his Iconology, holds in one hand a Whip[263], (a strange
incitement to virtue) in the other a Sieve: The first inventor, perhaps,
hinted at Tuccia the vestal; which Ripa not remembring, indulges the most
absurd whims, not worth repeating.

By thus contrasting ancient and modern allegory, I mean not to divert our
times of their right of settling new allegories: but from the different
manners of thinking, I shall draw some rules, for those that are to tread
these paths.

The character of noble simplicity was the chief aim of the Greeks and
Romans: of which Romeyn de Hooghe has given the very contrast. His book,
in general, may very fitly be compared to the elm in Virgil’s hell:

          _Hanc sedem somnia vulgo_
    _Vana tenere ferunt, foliisque sub omnibus hærent._

    Æn. VI.

The distinctness of the ancient allegory was owing to the individuation
of its images. Their rule, (if we except only a few of those
above-mentioned), was to avoid every ambiguity; a rule slightly observed
by the moderns: the Hart, for instance, symbolizing[264] baptism,
revenge, remorse, and flattery; the Cedar, a preacher, worldly vanities,
a scholar, and a woman dying in the pangs of child-birth.

That simplicity and distinctness were always accompanied by a certain
decency. A hog signifying, among the Egyptians, a scrutator of
mysteries[265], together with all the swine of Cæsar Ripa and some of the
moderns, would have been thought, by the Greeks, too indecent a symbol of
any thing whatever: save only where that animal made part of the arms of
a place, as it appears to be on the Eleusinian coins[266].

The last rule of the ancients was to beware of signs too near a-kin to
the thing signified. Let the young allegorist observe these rules, and
study them, jointly with mythology, and the remotest history.

Indeed some modern allegories, (if those ought to be called modern that
are entirely in the taste of antiquity), may perhaps be compared with
the sublimer class of the ancient.

Two brothers of the Barbarigo-family, immediately succeeding each
other[267], in the dignity of Doge of Venice, are allegorized by Castor
and Pollux[268]; one of whom, as the fable tells us, gave the other part
of that immortality which Jupiter had conferred on him alone. Pollux,
in the allegory, presents his brother, represented by a skull, with a
circling snake, as the symbol of eternity; on the reverie of a fictitious
coin, beneath the described figures, there drops a broken branch from a
tree, with the Virgilian inscription,

    _Primo avulso non deficit alter._

Another idea on one of Lewis XIVth’s coins, is as worthy of notice;
being struck[269] on occasion of the Duke of Lorrain’s quiting his
dominions, after the surrender of Marsal, for having betrayed both the
French and Austrian courts. The Duke is Proteus overcome by the arts
of Menelaus, and bound, after having, in vain, tried all his different
forms. At a distance the conquered citadel is to be seen, and the year of
its surrender marked in the inscription. There was no occasion for the
superfluous epigraph: _Protei Artes delusæ_.

Patience, or rather a longing earnest desire[270], represented by a
female figure, with folded hands, gazing on a watch, is a very good image
of the lower class. It must indeed be owned, that the inventors of the
most picturesque allegories have contented themselves with the remains of
antiquity; none having been authorised to establish images of their own
fancy, for the general imitation of the artists. Neither has any attempt
of latter times deferred the honour: for in the whole Iconology of Ripa,
of two or three that are tolerable ones,

    _Nantes in gurgite vasto_;

an Ethiopian washing himself, as an allusion to labour lost[271], is
perhaps the best. There are indeed images, and useful hints, dispersed in
some books of greater note, (as for instance, The Temple of Stupidity in
the Spectator[272],) which ought to be collected, and made more general.
Thus, were the treasures of science joined to those of art, the time
might come, when a painter would be able to represent an ode, as well as
a tragedy.

I shall myself submit to the publick some images: for rules instruct,
but examples still more. Friendship, I find every where pitifully
represented, and its emblems are not worth mentioning: their flying
scribbled labels shew us the depth of their inventors.

This noblest of human virtues I would paint in the figures of those
two immortal friends of heroic times, Theseus and Pirithous. The head
of the former is said to be on gems[273]: he likewise appears with the
club[274] won from Periphetes, a son of Vulcan, on a gem of Philemon.
Theseus consequently might be drawn with some resemblance. Friendship,
at the brink of danger, might be taken from the idea of an old picture
at Delphos, as described by Pausanias[275]. Theseus was painted in the
action of defending himself and his friend against the Thesprotians,
with his own sword in one hand, and another drawn from the side of his
friend, in the other. The beginning of their friendship, as described by
Plutarch[276], might also be an image of that idea. I am astonished not
to have met, among the emblems of the great men of the Barbarigo-family,
with an image of a good man and eternal friend. Such was Nicolas
Barbarigo, who contracted with Marco Trivisano a friendship worthy of
immortality;

    _Monumentum ære perennius_:

a little rare treatise alone has preserved their memory[277].

A little hint of Plutarch’s might furnish an image of Ambition: he
mentions[278] the sacrifices of Honour, as being performed bareheaded,
whereas all other sacrifices, save only those of Saturn[279], were
offered with covered heads. This custom he believes to have taken its
rise from the usual salutation in society; though it may as well be _vice
versa_: perhaps it sprung from the Pelasgian rites[280], which were
performed bareheaded. Honour is likewise represented by a female figure,
crowned with laurels, a _Cornucopia_ and _Hasta_ in her hands[281].
Accompanied by Virtue, a male figure with a helmet, she is to be found on
a coin of Vitellius[282]: and the heads of both on those of Gordian and
Galien[283].

Prayers might be personified from an idea of Homer. Phœnix, the tutor
of Achilles, endeavouring to reconcile him to the Greeks, makes use of
an allegory. “Know Achilles, says he, that prayers are the daughters
of Zeus[284]; they are bent with kneeling; their faces sorrowful and
wrinkled, with eyes lifted up to heaven. They follow Ate; who, with a
bold and haughty mien marches on, and, light of foot as she is, runs over
all the world, to seize and torment mankind; for ever endeavouring to
escape the Prayers, who incessantly press upon her footsteps, in order
to heal those whom she hath hurt. Whoever honours these daughters of
Zeus, on their approach, may obtain much good from them; but meeting with
repulse, they pray their fire to punish by Ate the hard-hearted wretch.”

The following well-known old fable might also furnish a new image.
Salmacis, and the youth beloved by her, were changed to a fountain,
unmanning to such a degree, that

    _Quisquis in hos fontes vir venerit, exeat inde_
    _Semivir: & tactis subito mollescat in undis,_

    Ovid. Metam. L. IV.

The fountain was near Halicarnassus in Caria. Vitruvius[285] thought he
had discovered the truth of that fiction: some inhabitants of Argos and
Trœzene, says he, going thither with a mind to settle, dispossessed the
Carians and Leleges; who, sheltering themselves among the mountains,
began to harass the Greeks with their excursions: but one of the
inhabitants having discovered some particular qualities in that fountain,
erected a building near it, for the convenience of those who had a mind
to make use of its water. Greeks and Barbarians mingled there; and these
at length, accustomed to the Greek civility, lost their savageness, and
were insensibly moulded into another nature. The fable itself is well
known to the artists: but the narrative of Vitruvius might instruct them
how to draw the allegory of a people taught humanity and civilised, like
the Russians by Peter the First. The fable of Orpheus might serve the
same purpose. Expression only must decide the choice.

Supposing the above general observations upon allegory insufficient to
evince its necessity in painting, the examples will at least demonstrate,
that painting reaches beyond the senses.

The two chief performances in allegorical painting, mentioned in my
treatise, viz. the Luxemburg gallery, and the cupola of the Imperial
Library at Vienna, may shew how poetical, how happy an use their authors
made of allegory.

Rubens proposing to paint Henry IV. as a humane victor, with lenity and
goodness prevailing, even in the punishment of unnatural rebels, and
treacherous banditti, represents him as Jupiter ordering the gods to
overthrow and punish the vices: Apollo and Minerva let fly their darts
upon them, and the vices, hideous monsters, in a tumultuous uproar tumble
over each other: Mars, entering in a fury, threatens total destruction;
but Venus, image of celestial love, gently lays hold of his arm:—you
fancy you hear her blandishing petition to the _mailed_ god: “rage not
with cruel revenge against the vices—they are punished.”

The whole performance of Daniel Gran[286] is an allegory, relative to the
Imperial Library, and all its figures are as the branches of one single
tree. ’Tis a painted Epopee, not beginning from the eggs of Leda; but, as
Homer chiefly rehearses the anger of Achilles, this immortalizes only the
Emperor’s care of the sciences. The preparations for the building of the
library are represented in the following manner:

Imperial majesty appears as a lady fitting, her head sumptuously
dressed, and on her breast a golden heart, as a symbol of the Emperor’s
generosity. With her sceptre the gives the summons to the builders;
at her feet sits a genius with an angle, palette, and chissel; another
hovers over her with the figures of the Graces, as symbols of that good
taste which prevailed in the whole. Next to the chief figure sits general
Liberality, with a purse in her hand; below her a genius, with the
table of the Roman Congiarius, and behind her the Austrian Liberality,
her mantle embroidered with larks. Several Genii gather the treasures
that flow from her Cornucopia, in order to distribute them among the
votaries of the arts and sciences, chiefly those, whose good offices to
the library had entitled them to regard. The execution of the Imperial
orders personified, directs her face to the commanding figure, and three
children present the model of the house. Next her an old man, the image
of Experience, measures on a table the plan of the building, a genius
standing beneath him with a plummet, as ready to begin. Next the old
man sits Invention, with a statue of Isis in her right, and a book in
her left hand, signifying, that Nature and Science are the fathers of
Invention, the puzzling schemes of which are represented by a Sphinx
lying before her.

This performance was compared to the great platfond of Le Moine at
Versailles, with an eye to the newest productions of France and Germany
alone: for the great gallery of the same palace, painted by Charles le
Brun, is, without doubt, the sublimest performance of poetick painting,
since the time of Rubens; and being possessed of this, as well as of
the gallery of Luxemburg, France may boast of the two most learned
allegorical performances.

The gallery of Le Brun contains the history of Louis XIV. from the
Pyrenæan peace, to that of Nimeguen, in nine large, and eighteen
smaller pieces: that in which the King determines war against Holland,
contains, in itself alone, an ingenious and sublime application of almost
the whole mythology[287]: its beauties are too exuberant for this
treatise; let the artist’s ideas be judged only by two of the smaller
compositions. He represents the famous passage over the Rhine: his hero
sits in a chariot, a thunderbolt in his hand, and Hercules, the image of
heroism, drives him through the midst of tempestuous waves. The figure
representing Spain is borne down by the current: the river god, aghast,
lets fall his oar: the victories, approaching on rapid wings, present
shields, marked with the names of the towns conquered after the passage.
Europa astonished beholds the scene.

Another represents the conclusion of the peace. Holland, though with-held
by the Imperial Eagle, snatching her robe, runs to meet peace, descending
from heaven, surrounded by the Genii of gaiety and pleasure, scattering
flowers all around her. Vanity, crowned with peacocks feathers;
endeavours to with-hold Spain and Germany from following their associate:
but perceiving the cavern where arms are forged for France and Holland,
and hearing same threatening in the skies, they likewise follow her
example. Is not the former of these two performances comparable, in
sublimity, to the Neptune of Homer, and the strides of his immortal
horses?

But let examples be never so striking, allegory will still have
adversaries: they rose in times of old, against that of Homer himself.
There are people of too delicate a conscience, to bear truth and fiction
in one piece: they are scandalized at a poor river-god in some sacred
story. Poussin met with their reproaches, for personifying the Nile
in his Moses[288]. A still stronger party has declared against the
obscurity of allegory; for which they censured, and still continue to
censure, Le Brun. But who is there so little experienced as not to know,
that perspicuity and obscurity depend often upon time and circumstances?
When Phidias first added a tortoise[289] to his Venus, ’tis likely that
few were acquainted with his design in it, and bold was the artist who
first dared to fetter her: time, however, made the meaning as clear
as the figures themselves. Allegory, as Plato says[290] of poetry in
general, has something enigmatick in itself, and is not calculated for
the bulk of mankind. And should the painter, from the fear of being
obscure, adapt his performance to the capacity of those, who look upon
a picture as upon a tumultuous mob, he might as well check every new
and extraordinary idea. The design of the famous Fred. Barocci, in his
Martyrdom of St. Vitalis, by drawing a little girl alluring a magpye
with a cherry, must have been very mysterious to many; the cherry[291]
alluding to the season, in which that saint suffered.

The painting of the greater machines, and of the larger parts of publick
buildings, palaces, &c. ought to be allegorical. Grandeur is relative to
grandeur; and heroick actions are not to be sung in elegiack strains. But
is every fiction allegorical in every place? The Venetian Doge might as
well pretend to enjoy his superiority in _Terra firma_. I am mistaken if
the Farnesian gallery is to be ranked among the allegorical performances.
Nevertheless Annibal, perhaps not having it in his power to choose his
subject, may have been too roughly used in my treatise: it is known that
the Duke of Orleans desired Coypel to paint in his gallery the history
of Æneas[292].

The Neptune of Rubens[293], in the gallery at Dresden, painted on purpose
to adorn the magnificent entry of the Infant Ferdinand of Spain into
Antwerp, as governor of the Netherlands, was there, on a triumphal arch,
allegorical[294]. The god of the ocean frowning his waves into peace, was
a poetick image of the Princes escaping the storm, and arriving safe at
Genoa. But now he is nothing more than the Neptune of Virgil.

Vasari, when pretending to find allegory in the Athenian school of
Raphael[295], _viz._ a companion of philosophy and astronomy with
theology, seems to have required, and, by the common opinion of his time,
to have been authorised to require something grand and above the vulgar,
in the decorations of a grand apartment: though indeed there be nothing
but what is obvious at first look, and that is, a representation of the
Athenian academy[296].

But in ancient times, there was no story in a temple, that was not,
at the same time, allegorical; allegory being closely interwoven with
mythology: the gods of Homer, says an ancient, are the most lively images
of the different powers of the universe; shadows of elevated ideas: and
the gallantries of Jupiter and Juno, in the platfond of a temple of
that goddess at Samos, were looked on as such; air being represented by
Jupiter, and earth by Juno[297].

Here I think it incumbent upon me to clear up what I have said concerning
the contradictions in the character of the Athenians, as represented
by Parrhasius. This you think an easy matter; the painter having done
it either in the historical way, or in several pictures: which latter
is absurd. Has not there been even a statue of that people, done by
Leochares, as well as a temple[298]? The composition of the picture in
question, has still eluded all probable conjectures[299]; and the help of
allegory having been called in, has produced nothing but Tesoro’s[300]
ghastly phantoms. This fatal picture of Parrhasius, I am afraid, will of
itself be a perpetual instance of the superior skill of the ancients in
allegory.

What has been said already of allegory, in general, contains likewise
what remarks may be made upon its being applied to decorations;
nevertheless as you insist upon that point particularly, I shall lightly
mention it too.

There are two chief laws in decoration, viz. to adorn suitably to
the nature of things and places, and with truth; and not to follow an
arbitrary fancy.

The first, as it concerns the artists in general, and dictates to them
the adjusting of things in such a manner, as to make them relative to
each other, claims especially a strict propriety in decorations:

    ——_Non ut placidis coeant immitia_—

    Hor.

The sacred shall not be mixed with the profane, nor the terrible with the
sublime: this was the reason for rejecting the sheeps-heads[301], in the
Doric Metopes, at the chapel of the palace of Luxemburg at Paris.

The second law excludes licentiousness; nay circumscribes the architect
and decorator within much narrower limits than the painter; who sometimes
must, in spite of reason, subject his own fancy, and Greece, to fashion,
even in history-pieces: but publick buildings, and such works as are made
for futurity, claim decorations that will outlast the whims of fashion;
like those that, by their dignity and superior excellence, bore down the
attacks of many a century: otherwise they fade away, grow insipid and out
of fashion, perhaps before the finishing of the very work to which they
are added.

The former law directs the artist to allegory: the latter to the
imitation of antiquity; and this concerns chiefly the smaller decorations.

Such I call those that make not up of themselves a whole, or those
that are additional to the larger ones. The ancients never applied
shells, when not required by the fable; as in the case of Venus and the
Tritons; or by the place, as in the temples of Neptune: and lamps decked
with shells[302] are supposed to have made part of the implements of
those temples. For the same reason they may give lustre; and be very
significant, in proper places; as in the festoons of the Stadthouse at
Amsterdam[303].

Sheep and ox-heads stripped of their skin, so far from justifying a
promiscuous use of shells, as the author seems inclined to think, are
plain arguments to the contrary: for they not only were relative to
the ancient sacrifices, but were thought to be endowed with a power
of averting lightning[304]; and Numa pretended to have been secretly
instructed about them by Jupiter[305]. Nor can the Corinthian capital
serve for an instance of a seemingly absurd ornament, authorised and
rendered fashionable by time alone: for it seems of an origin more
natural and reasonable than Vitruvius makes it; which is, however, an
enquiry more adapted to a treatise on architecture. Pocock believed that
the Corinthian order had not much reputation in the time of Pericles, who
built a temple to Minerva: but he should have been reminded, that the
Doric order belonged to the temples of that goddess, as Vitruvius informs
us[306].

These decorations ought to be treated like architecture in general, which
owes its grandeur to simplicity, to a system of few parts, which being
not complex themselves, branch out into grace and splendour. Remember
here the channelled pillars of the temple of Jupiter, at Agrigentum,
(Girgenti now) which were large enough to contain, in one single gutter,
a man at full length[307]. In the same manner these decorations must not
only be few, but those must likewise consist of few parts, which are to
appear with an air of grandeur and ease.

The first law (to return to allegory) might be lengthened out into many a
subaltern rule: but the nature of things and circumstances is, and ever
must be, the artist’s first aim; as for examples, refutation promises
rather more instruction than authority.

Arion riding on his dolphin, as unmeaningly represented upon a
Sopra-porta, in a new treatise on architecture[308], though a significant
image in the apartments of a French Dauphin, would be a very poor one
in any place where Philanthropy, or the protection of artists like him,
could not immediately be hinted at. On the contrary, he would even to
this day, though without his lyre, be an ornament to any publick building
at Tarentum, because the ancient Tarentines, stamped on their coins the
image of Taras, one of the sons of Neptune, riding on a dolphin, on a
supposition of his being their first founder.

The allegorical decorations of a building, raised by the contributions
of a whole nation, I mean the Duke of Marlborough’s palace at Blenheim,
are absurd: enormous lions of massy stone, above two portals, tearing to
pieces a little cock[309]. The hint sprung from a poor pun.

Nor can it be denied that antiquity furnishes some ideas seemingly
analogous to this: as for instance, the lioness on the tomb of Leæna, the
mistress of Aristogiton, raised in honour of her constancy amidst the
torments applied by the tyrant, in order to extort from her a confession
of the conspirators against him. But from this, I am afraid, nothing can
arise in behalf of the above pitiful decoration: that mistress of the
martyr of liberty having been a notorious woman, and whose name could
not decently stand a publick trial. Of the same nature are the lizards
and frogs on a temple[310], alluding to the names of the two architects,
Saurus and Batrachus[311]: the above-mentioned lioness having no tongue,
made the allegory still more expressive. The lioness on the tomb of the
famous Lais[312], holding with her fore-paws a ram, as a symbol of her
manners[313], was perhaps an imitation of the former. The lion was, in
general, set upon the tombs of the brave.

It is not indeed to be pretended that every ornament and image of the
ancient vases, tools, &c. should be allegorical; and to explain many
of them, in that way, would be equally difficult and conjectural. I am
not bold enough to maintain, that an earthen lamp[314], in the shape
of an ox’s-head, means a perpetual remembrance of useful labours, on
account of the perpetuity of the fire; nor to decypher here a mysterious
sacrifice to Pluto and Proserpine[315]. But the image of a Trojan Prince,
carried off by Jupiter, to be his favourite, was of great and honourable
signification in the mantle of a Trojan. Birds pecking grapes seem as
suitable to an urn, as the young Bacchus brought by Mercury to be nursed
by Leucothea, on a large marble vase of the Athenian Salpion[316]. The
grapes may be a symbol of the pleasures the deceased enjoy in Elysium:
the pleasures of hereafter being commonly supposed to be such; as the
deceased chiefly delighted in when alive. A bird, I need not say, was the
image of the soul. A Sphinx, on a cup sacred to Bacchus, is supposed to
be an allusion to the adventures of Oedipus at Thebes, Bacchus’s birth
place[317]; as a Lizard on a cup of Mentor, may hint at the possessor,
whose name perhaps was Saurus.

There is some reason to search for allegory, in most of the ancient
performances, when we consider, that they even built allegorically.
Such an allusive building was a gallery at Olympia[318], sacred to the
seven liberal arts, and re-echoing seven times a poem read aloud there.
A temple of Mercury, supported, instead of pillars, by Herms, or, as
we now spell, Terms, on a coin of Aurelian[319], is of the same kind:
there is on its front a dog, a cock, and a tongue; figures that want no
explication.

Yet the temple of Virtue and Honour, built by Marcellus, was still more
learnedly executed: having consecrated his Sicilian spoils to that
purpose, he was disappointed by the priests, whom he first consulted
on that design; who told him, that no single temple could admit of
two divinities. Marcellus therefore ordered two temples to be built,
adjoining to each other, in such a manner that whoever would be admitted
to that of Honour must pass through that of Virtue[320]; thus publickly
indicating, that virtue alone leads to true honour: this temple was near
the Porta Capena[321]. And here I cannot help remembering those hollow
statues of ugly satyrs[322], which, when opened, were found replete with
little figures of the graces, to teach, that no judgment is to be formed
from outward appearances, and that a fair mind makes amends for a homely
body.

Perhaps, Sir, some of your objections may have been omitted: if so, it
was against my will——and at this instant, I remember one concerning the
Greek art of changing blue eyes to black ones. Dioscorides is the only
writer that mentions it[323]. Attempts of this kind have been made in our
days: a certain Silesian countess was the favourite beauty of the age,
and universally acknowledged to be perfect, had it not been for her blue
eyes, which some of her admirers wished were black. The lady, informed of
the wishes of her adorers, by repeated endeavours overcame nature; her
eyes became black,—and she blind.

I am not satisfied with myself, nor perhaps have given you satisfaction:
but the art is inexhaustible, and all cannot be written. I only wanted
to amuse myself agreeably at my leisure hours; and the conversation of
my friend FREDERIC OESER, a true imitator of Aristides, the painter of
the soul, was not a little favourable to my purpose: the name of which
worthy friend and artist[324] shall spread a lustre over the end of my
treatise.




    INSTRUCTIONS
    FOR THE
    CONNOISSEUR.


    ——_Non, si quid turbida ROMA_
    _Elevet, accedas: examenve improbum in illa_
    _Castiges trutina: nec te quæsiveris extra._
    _Nam Romæ est Quis non?_——

You call yourself a _Connoisseur_, and the first thing you gaze at,
in considering works of art, is the workmanship, the delicacy of the
pencilling, or the polish given by the chissel.——It was the idea however,
its grandeur or meanness, its dignity, fitness, or unfitness, that ought
first to have been examined: for industry and talents are independent of
each other. A piece of painting or sculpture cannot, merely on account
of its having been laboured, claim more merit than a book of the same
sort. To work curiously, and with unnecessary refinements, is as little
the mark of a great artist, as to write learnedly is that of a great
author. An image anxiously finished, in every minute trifle, may be fitly
compared to a treatise crammed with quotations of books, that perhaps
were never read. Remember this, and you will not be amazed at the laurel
leaves of _Bernini_’s Apollo and Daphne, nor at the net held by _Adams_’s
statue of water at Potzdam: you will only be convinced that workmanship
is not the standard which distinguishes the antique from the modern.

Be attentive to discover whether an artist had ideas of his own, or only
copied those of others; whether he knew the chief aim of all art, Beauty,
or blundered through the dirt of vulgar forms; whether he performed like
a man, or played only like a child.

Books may be written, and works of art executed, at a very small expence
of ideas. A painter may mechanically paint a Madonna, and please; and a
professor, in the same manner, may write Metaphysics to the admiration of
a thousand students. But would you know whether an artist deserves his
name, let him invent, let him do the same thing repeatedly: for as one
feature, may modify a mien, so, by changing the attitude of one limb, the
artist may give a new hint towards a characteristic distinction of two
figures, in other respects exactly the same, and prove himself a man.
Plato, in _Raphael_’s Athenian school, but slightly moves his finger:
yet he means enough, and infinitely more than all _Zucchari_’s meteors.
For as it requires more ability to say much in a few words, than to do
the contrary; and as good sense delights rather in things than shews, it
follows, that one single figure may be the theatre of all an artist’s
skill: though, by all that is stale and trivial! the bulk of painters
would think it as tyrannical to be sometimes confined to two or three
figures, in great only, as the ephemeral writers of this age would grin
at the proposal of beginning the world with their own private stock, all
public hobby-horses laid aside: for fine cloaths make the beau. ’Tis
hence that most young artists,

    _Enfranchis’d from their tutor’s care_,

choose rather to make their entrance with some perplexed composition,
than with one figure strongly fancied and masterly executed. But let
him, who, content to please the few, wants not to earn either bread or
applause from a gaping mob, let him remember that the management of a
“_little_” more or less really distinguishes artist from artist; that the
truly sensible produces a multiplicity, as well as quickness and delicacy
of feelings, whilst the dashing quack tickles only feeble senses and
callous organs; that he may consequently be great in single figures, in,
the smallest compositions, and new and various in repeating things the
most trite. Here I speak out of the mouth of the ancients: this, their
works teach: and both our writers and painters would come nearer them,
did not the one busy themselves with their words only, the other with
their proportions.

In the face of Apollo pride exerts itself chiefly in the chin and nether
lip; anger in the nostrils; and contempt in the opening mouth; the
graces inhabit the rest of his divine, head, and unruffled beauty, like
the sun, streams athwart the passions. In Laocoon you see bodily pains,
and indignation at undeserved sufferings, twist the nose, and paternal
sympathy dim the eye-balls. Strokes like these are, as in Homer, a whole
idea in one word; he only finds them who is able to understand them. Take
it for certain, that the ancients aimed at expressing much in little,

    _Their ore was rich, and seven times purg’d of lead_:

whereas most moderns, like tradesmen in distress, hang out all their
wares at once. Homer, by raising all the gods from their seats, on
Apollo’s appearing amongst them[325], gives a sublimer idea than all the
learning of Callimachus could furnish. If ever a prejudice may be of
use, ’tis here; hope largely from the ancient works in approaching them,
nor fear disappointments; but examine, peruse, with cool sedateness and
silenced passions, lest your disturbed brain find Xenophon flat and Niobe
insipid.

To original ideas, we oppose copied, not imitated ones. Copying we
call the slavish crawling of the hand and eyes, after a certain model:
whereas reasonable imitation just takes the hint, in order to work by
itself. _Domenichino_, the painter of Tenderness, imitated the heads of
the pretended Alexander at Florence, and of the Niobe at Rome[326]; but
altered them like a master. On gems and coins you may find many a figure
of _Poussin_’s: his Salomon is the Macedonian Jupiter: but whatever his
imitation produced, differs from the first idea, as the blossoms of a
transplanted tree differ from those that sprung in its native soil.

Another method of copying is, to compile a Madonna from _Maratta_; a S.
Joseph from _Barocci_; other figures from other masters, and lump them
together in order to make a whole. Many such altar-pieces you may find,
even at Rome; and such a painter was the late celebrated _Masucci_ of
that city.——Copying I call, moreover, the following a certain form,
without the least consciousness of one’s being a blockhead. Such was he
who, by the command of a certain Prince, painted the nuptials of Psyche,
or, if you will, the Queen of Sheba:—’twas a pity there was no other
Psyche to be found, but that dangerous one of _Raphael_. Most of the late
great statues of the saints, in St. Peter’s at Rome, are of the same
stuff—the block at 500 Roman crowns from the quarry.

The second characteristic of works of art is Beauty. The highest object
of meditation for man is man, and for the artist there is none above his
own frame. ’Tis by moving your senses that he reaches your soul: and
hence the analysis of the bodily system has no less difficulties for
him, than that of the human mind for the philosopher. I do not mean the
anatomy of the muscles, vessels, bones, and their different forms and
situations; nor the relative measure of the whole to its parts, and _vice
versa_: for the knife, exercise, and patience, may teach you all these.
I mean the analysis of an attribute, essential to man, but fluctuating
with his frame, allowed by all, misconstrued by many, known by few:—the
analysis of beauty, which no definition can explain, to him whom heaven
hath denied a soul for it. Beauty consists in the harmony of the various
parts of an individual. This is the philosopher’s stone, which all
artists must search for, though a few only find it: ’tis nonsense to
him, who could not have formed the idea out of himself. The line which
beauty describes is elliptical, both uniform and various: ’tis not to be
described by a circle, and from every point changes its direction. All
this is easily said; but to apply it—_there is the rub_. ’Tis not in the
power of Algebra to determine which line, more or less elliptic, forms
the divers parts of the system into beauty—but the ancients knew it; I
attest their works, from the gods down to their vases. The human form
allows of no circle, nor has any antique vase its profile semicircular.

After this, should any one desire me to assist him more sensibly in his
inquiries concerning beauty, by setting down some rules (a hard task), I
would take them from the antique models, and in want of these, from the
most beautiful people I could meet with at the place where I lived. But
to instruct, I would do it in the negative way; of which I shall give
some instances, confining myself however to the face.

The form of real beauty has no abrupt or broken parts. The ancients made
this principle the basis of their youthful profile; which is neither
linear nor whimsical, though seldom to be met with in nature: the
growth, at least, of climates more indulgent than ours. It consists in
the soft coalescence of the brow with the nose. This uniting line so
indispensably accompanies beauty, that a person wanting it may appear
handsome full-faced; but mean, nay even ugly, when taken in profile.
_Bernini_, that destroyer of art, despised this line, when legislator of
taste, as not finding it in common nature, his only model; and therein
was followed by all his school. From this same principle it necessarily
follows, that neither chin nor cheeks, deep-marked with dimples, can
be consistent with true beauty. Hence the face of the Medicean Venus
is to be degraded from the first rank. Her face, I dare say, was taken
from some celebrated fair one, contemporary with the artist. Two other
Venuses, in the garden behind the Farnese, are manifestly portraits.

The form of real beauty has neither the projected parts obtuse, nor
the vaulted ones sharp. The eye-bone is magnificently raised, the chin
thoroughly vaulted. Thus the best ancients drew: though, when taste
declined amongst them, and the arts were trampled on in modern times,
these parts changed too: then the eye-bone became roundish and obtusely
dull, and the chin mincingly pretty. Hence we may safely affirm, that
what they call Antinous, in the Belvedere, whose eye-bone is rather
obtuse, cannot be a work of the highest antiquity, any more than the
Venus.

As these remarks are general, they likewise concern the features of
the face, the form only. There is another charm, that gives expression
and life to forms, which we call Grace; and we shall give some loose
reflexions on it separately, leaving it to others to give us systems.

The figure of a man is as susceptible of beauty as that of a youth:
but as a various one, not the various alone, is the Gordian knot, it
follows, that a youthful figure, drawn at large, and in the highest
possible degree of beauty, is, of all problems that can be proposed to
the designer, the most difficult. Every one may convince himself of this:
take the most beautiful face in modern painting, and it will go hard,
but you shall know a still more beautiful one in nature.——I speak thus,
after having considered the treasures of Rome and Florence.

If ever an artist was endowed with beauty, and deep innate feelings for
it; if ever one was versed in the taste and spirit of the ancients, ’twas
certainly _Raphael_: yet are his beauties inferior to the most beautiful
nature. I know persons more beautiful than his unequalled Madonna, in
the _Palazzo Petti_ at Florence, or the Alcibiades in his academy. The
Madonna in the Christmas-night of _Corregio_, (a piece justly celebrated
for its chiar’-oscuro) is no sublime idea; still less so is that of
_Maratta_ at Dresden: _Titian_’s celebrated Venus[327] in the Tribuna
at Florence is common nature. The little heads of _Albano_ have an air
of beauty; but it is a different thing to express beauty in little, and
in great. To have the theory of navigation, and to guide a ship through
the ocean, are two things. _Poussin_, who had studied antiquity more than
his predecessors, knew perfectly well what his shoulders could bear, and
never ventured into the great.

The Greeks alone seem to have thrown forth beauty, as a potter makes his
pot. The heads on all the coins of their Free-states have forms above
nature, which they owe to the line that forms their profile. Would it not
be easy to hit that line? Yet have all the numismatic compilers deviated
from it. Might not _Raphael_, who complained of the scarcity of beauty,
might not he have recurred to the coins of Syracuse, as the best statues,
Laocoon alone excepted, were not yet discovered?

Farther than those coins no mortal idea _can_ go. I wish my reader
an opportunity of seeing the beautiful head of a genius in the Villa
Borghese, and those images of unparalleled beauty, Niobe and her
daughters. On the western side of the Alps he must be contented with gems
and pastes. Two of the most beautiful youthful heads are a Minerva of
Aspasius, now at Vienna, and a young Hercules in the Museum of the late
Baron Stosch, at Florence.

But let no man, who has not formed his taste upon antiquity, take it into
his head to act the connoisseur of beauty: his ideas must be a parcel
of whims. Of modern beauties I know none that could vie with the Greek
female dancer of Mr. _Mengs_, big as life, painted in _Crayons_ on wood,
for the Marquis Croimare at Paris, or with his Apollo amidst the muses,
in the Villa Albano, to whom that of _Guido_ in the Aurora, compared, is
but a mortal.

All the modern copies of ancient gems give us another proof of the
decisive authority of beauty in criticisms on works of art. _Natter_ has
dared to copy that head of Minerva mentioned above, in the same size
and smaller, but fell short. The nose is a hair too big, the chin too
flat, and the mouth mean. And this is the case of modern imitators in
general. What can we hope then of self-fancied beauties? Conclude not,
however, from this, against the possibility of a perfect imitation of
antique heads: ’tis enough to say, that it has not yet existed: ’twas
probably the fault of the imitators themselves. _Natter_’s treatise on
ancient gems is rather shallow; and what he wrought and wrote, even on
that single branch of engraving, for which he was chiefly celebrated, has
neither the strength nor the ease of genius.

To this consciousness of inferiority we owe the scarcity of modern
supposititious gems and coins. Any man of taste may, upon comparison,
distinguish even the best modern coin from the antique original.—I speak
of the best antiques: for as to the lower Imperial coins, where the cheat
was easier, the artists have been liberal enough. _Padoano_’s stamps, for
copying antique coins, are in the Barberini Collection at Rome, and those
of one _Michel_, a Frenchman, and false coiner in taste, at Florence, in
that of the late Baron Stosch.

The third characteristic of works of art is Execution; or, the sketch
being made, the method of finishing. And even here we commend good sense
above industry. As in judging of styles, we distinguish the good writer
by the clearness, fluency, and nervousness of his diction; so in works
of art, we discover the master by the manly strength, freedom, and
steadiness of his hand. The august contour, and easiness of mien, in the
figures of Christ, St. Peter, and the other apostles, on the right side
of the Transfiguration, speak the classic hand of _Raphael_, as strongly
as the smooth, anxious nicety of some of _Julio Romano_’s figures, on the
left, the more wavering one of the disciple.

Never admire either the marble’s radiant polish, or the picture’s glossy
surface. For that the journeyman sweated; for this the painter vegetated
only. _Bernini_’s Apollo is as polished as HE in the Belvedere; and there
is much more labour hid in one of _Trevisani_’s Madonnas, than in that of
_Corregio_. Whenever trusty arms and laborious industry prevail, we defy
all the ancients. We are not their inferiors even in managing porphyry,
though a mob of scriblers, with _Clarencas_ in their rear-guard, deny it.

Nor (whatever _Maffei_ thinks[328],) did the ancients know a peculiar
method of giving a nicer polish to the figures of their concave gems
(_Intagli_.) Our artists polish as nicely: but statues and gems may be
detestable, for all their polish, as a face may be ugly, with the softest
skin.

This however is not meant to blame a statue for its polish, as it is
conducive to beauty: though Laocoon informs us, that the ancients knew
the secret of finishing statues, merely with the chissel. Nor does the
cleanness of the pencil, on a picture, want its merit: yet it ought to
be distinguished from enamelled tints. A barked statue, and a bristly
picture are alike absurd. Sketch with fire, and execute with phlegm. We
blame workmanship only as it claims the first rank; as in the marbles _à
la Bernini_, and the linnen of _Scybold_ and _Denner_.

Friend, these instructions may be of use. For as the bulk of mankind
amuse themselves with the shells of things only, your eye may be
captivated by polish and glare, as they are the most obvious; to put
you on your guard against which, is leading you the first step to true
knowledge. For daily observation, during several years, in Italy, has
taught me how lamentably most young travellers are duped by a set of
blind leaders. To see them skip about in the temple of art and genius,
all quite sober and cool, puts me in mind of a swarm of new-fledged
grashoppers wantoning in the spring.




    ON
    GRACE.


    ——Χαριτων ἱμερο φωνων ἱερον φυτον.

Grace is the harmony of agent and action. It is a general idea: for
whatever reasonably pleases in things and actions is gracious. Grace is
a gift of heaven; though not like beauty, which must be born with the
possessor: whereas nature gives only the dawn, the capability of this.
Education and reflection form it by degrees, and custom may give it the
sanction of nature. As water,

    _That least of foreign principles partakes,_
    _Is best:_

So Grace is perfect when most simple, when freest from finery,
constraint, and affected wit. Yet always to trace nature through the
vast realms of pleasure, or through all the windings of characters,
and circumstances infinitely various, seems to require too pure and
candid a taste for this age, cloyed with pleasure, in its judgments
either partial, local, capricious, or incompetent. Then let it suffice
to say, that Grace can never live where the passions rave; that beauty
and tranquillity of soul are the centre of its powers. By this Cleopatra
subdued Cæsar; Anthony slighted Octavia and the world for this; it
breathes through every line of Xenophon; Thucydides, it seems, disdained
its charms; to Grace Apelles and Corregio owe immortality; but Michael
Angelo was blind to it; though all the remains of ancient art, even those
of but middling merit, might have satisfied him, that Grace alone places
them above the reach of modern skill.

The criticisms on Grace in nature, and on its imitation by art, seem to
differ: for many are not shocked at those faults in the latter, that
certainly would incur their displeasure in the former. This diversity
of feelings lies either in imitation itself, which perhaps affects the
more the less it is akin to the thing imitated; or in the senses being
little exercised, and in the want of attention, and of clear ideas of
the objects in question. But let us not from hence infer that Grace is
wholly fictitious: the human mind advances by degrees; nor are youth, the
prejudices of education, boiling passions, and their train of phantoms,
the standard of its real delight—remove some of these, and it admires
what it loathed, and spurns what it doted on. Myriads, you say, the bulk
of mankind, have not even the least notion of Grace—but what do they know
of beauty, taste, generosity, or all the higher luxuries of the soul?
These flowers of the human mind were not intended for universal growth,
though their seeds lie in every breast.

Grace, in works of art, concerns the human figure only; it modifies the
_attitude_ and _countenance_, _dress_ and _drapery_. And here I must
observe, that the following remarks do not extend to the comic part of
art.

The attitude and gestures of antique figures are such as those have, who,
conscious of merit, claim attention as their due, when appearing among
men of sense. Their motions always shew the motive; clear, pure blood,
and settled spirits; nor does it signify whether they stand, sit, or lie;
the attitudes of Bacchanals only are violent, and ought to be so.

In quiet situations, when one leg alone supports the other which is free,
this recedes only as far as nature requires for putting the figure out
of its perpendicular. Nay, in the _Fauni_, the foot has been observed to
have an inflected direction, as a token of savage, regardless nature. To
the modern artists a quiet attitude seemed insipid and spiritless, and
therefore they drag the leg at rest forwards, and, to make the attitude
ideal, remove part of the body’s weight from the supporting leg, wring
the trunk out of its centre, and turn the head, like that of a person
suddenly dazzled with lightning. Those to whom this is not clear, may
please to recollect some stage-knight, or a conceited young Frenchman.
Where room allowed not of such an attitude, they, lest unhappily the leg
that has nothing to do might be unemployed, put something elevated under
its foot, as if it were like that of a man who could not speak without
setting his foot on a stool, or stand without having a stone purposely
put under it. The ancients took such care of appearances, that you will
hardly find a figure with crossed legs, if not a Bacchus, Paris, or
Nireus; and in these they mean to express effeminate indolence.

In the countenances of antique figures, joy bursts not into laughter;
’tis only the representation of inward pleasure. Through the face of
a Bacchanal peeps only the dawn of luxury. In sorrow and anguish they
resemble the sea, whose bottom is calm, whilst the surface raves. Even
in the utmost pangs of nature, Niobe continues still the heroine, who
disdained yielding to Latona. The ancients seem to have taken advantage
of that situation of the soul, in which, struck dumb by an immensity
of pains, she borders upon insensibility; to express, as it were,
characters, independent of particular actions; and to avoid scenes too
terrifying, too passionate, sometimes to paint the dignity of minds
subduing grief.

Those of the moderns, that either were ignorant of antiquity, or
neglected to enquire into Grace in nature, have expressed, not only what
nature feels, but likewise what she feels not. A Venus at Potzdam, by
_Pigal_[329], is represented in a sentiment which forces the liquor to
flow out at both sides of her mouth; seemingly gasping for breath; for
she was intended to pant with lust: yet, by all that’s desperate! was
this very Pigal several years entertained at Rome to study the antique.
A _Carita_ of _Bernini_, on one of the papal monuments in St. Peter’s,
ought, you’ll think, to look upon her children with benevolence and
maternal fondness; but her face is all a contradiction to this: for the
artist, instead of real graces, applied to her his nostrum, dimples, by
which her fondness becomes a perfect sneer. As for the expression of
modern sorrow, every one knows it, who has seen cuts, hair torn, garments
rent, quite the reverse of the antique, which, like Hamlet’s,

    ——_hath that within, which passeth shew:_
    _These, but the trappings, and the suits of woe._

The gestures of the hands of antique figures, and their attitudes in
general, are those of people that think themselves alone and unobserved:
and though the hands of but very few statues have escaped destruction,
yet may you, from the direction of the arm, guess at the easy and natural
motion of the hand. Some moderns, indeed, that have supplied statues
with hands or fingers, have too often given them their own favourite
attitudes—that of a Venus at her toilet, displaying to her levee the
graces of a hand,

    ——_far lovelier when beheld._

The action of modern hands is commonly like the gesticulation of a
young preacher, piping-hot from the college. Holds a figure her cloths?
You would think them cobweb. Nemesis, who, on antique gems, lifts her
peplum softly from her bosom, would be thought too griping for any new
performance—how can you be so unpolite to think any thing may be held,
without the three last fingers genteely stretched forth?

Grace, in the accidental parts of antiques, consists, like that of the
essential ones, in what becomes nature. The drapery of the most ancient
works is easy and slight: hence it was natural to give the folds beneath
the girdle an almost perpendicular direction.—Variety indeed was sought,
in proportion to the increase of art; but drapery still remained a
thin floating texture, with folds gathered up, not lumped together, or
indiscreetly scattered. That these were the chief principles of ancient
drapery, you may convince yourself from the beautiful Flora in the
Campidoglio, a work of Hadrian’s times. Bacchanals and dancing figures
had, indeed, even if statues, more waving garments, such as played upon
the air; such a one is in the Palazzo Riccardi at Florence; but even then
the artists did not neglect appearances, nor exceed the nature of the
materials. Gods and heroes are represented as the inhabitants of sacred
places; the dwellings of silent awe, not like a sport for the winds, or
as wafting the colours: floating, airy garments are chiefly to be met
with on gems—where Atalanta flies

    _As meditation swift, swift as the thoughts of love._

Grace extends to garments, as such were given to the Graces by the
ancients. How would you wish to see the Graces dressed? Certainly not in
birth-day robes; but rather like a beauty you loved, still warm from the
bed, in an easy negligée.

The moderns, since the epoch of _Raphael_ and his school, seem to have
forgot that drapery participates of Grace, by their giving the preference
to heavy garments, which might not improperly be called the wrappers
of ignorance in beauty: for a thick large-folded drapery may spare the
artists the pains of tracing the Contour under it, as the ancients did.
Some of the modern figures seem to be made only for lasting. _Bernini_
and _Peter_ of _Cortona_ introduced this drapery. For ourselves, we
choose light easy dresses; why do we grudge our figures the same
advantage?

He that would give a History of Grace, after the revolution of the arts,
would perhaps find himself almost reduced to negatives, especially in
sculpture.

In sculpture, the imitation of one great man, of _Michael Angelo_, has
debauched the artists from Grace. He, who valued himself upon his being
“a pure intelligence” despised all that could please humanity; his
exalted learning disdained to stoop to tender feelings and lovely grace.

There are poems of his published, and in manuscript, that abound in
meditations on sublime beauty: but you look in vain for it in his
works.—Beauty, even the beauty of a God, wants Grace, and Moses, without
it, from awful as he was, becomes only terrible. Immoderately fond of
all that was extraordinary and difficult, he soon broke through the
bounds of antiquity, grace, and nature; and as he panted for occasions
of displaying skill only, he grew extravagant. His lying statues, on
the ducal tombs of St. Lorenzo at Florence, have attitudes, which life,
undistorted, cannot imitate: so careless was he, provided he might dazzle
you with his mazy learning, of that decency, which nature and the place
required, that to him we might apply, what a poet says of St. Lewis in
hell:

    _Laissant le vray pour prendre la grimace,_
    _Il fut toujours au delà de la Grace,_
    _Et bien plus loin que les commandements._

He was blindly imitated by his disciples, and in them the want of Grace
shocks you still more: for as they were far his inferiors in science,
you have no equivalent at all. How little _Guilielmo della Porta_, the
best of them all, understood grace and the antique, you may see in that
marble groupe, called the Farnese-bull; where Dirce is his to the girdle.
_John di Bologna_, _Algardi_, _Fiammingo_, are great names, but likewise
inferior to the ancients, in Grace.

At last _Lorenzo Bernini_ appeared, a man of spirit and superior talents,
but whom Grace had never visited even in dreams. He aimed at encyclopædy
in art; painter, architect, statuary, he struggled, chiefly as such,
to become original. In his eighteenth year he produced his Apollo and
Daphne; a work miraculous for those years, and promising that sculpture
by him should attain perfection. Soon after he made his David, which
fell short of Apollo. Proud of general applause, and sensible of his
impotency, either to equal or to offuscate the antiques; he seems,
encouraged by the dastardly taste of that age, to have formed the
project of becoming a legislator in art, for all ensuing ages, and he
carried his point. From that time the Graces entirely forsook him: how
could they abide with a man who begun his career from the end opposite
to the ancients? His forms he compiled from common nature, and his ideas
from the inhabitants of climates unknown to him; for in Italy’s happiest
parts nature differs from his figures. He was worshipped as the genius of
art, and universally imitated; for, in our days, statues being erected to
piety only, none to wisdom, a statue _à la Bernini_ is likelier to make
the kitchen prosper than a Laocoon.

From Italy, reader, I leave you to guess at other countries. A celebrated
_Puget_, _Girardon_, with all his brethren in _On_, are worse. Judge
of the connoisseurs of France by _Watelet_, and of its designers, by
_Mariette_’s gems.

At Athens the Graces stood eastward, in a sacred place. Our artists
should place them over their work-houses; wear them in their rings; seal
with them; sacrifice to them; and, court their sovereign charms to their
last breath.




FOOTNOTES


[1] Plato in Timæo. Edit. Francof. p. 1044.

[2] In Timæum Platonis.

[3] Vide Pindar. Olymp. Od. VII. Arg. & Schol.

[4] Some are of opinion, that the celebrated Ludovisian gladiator, now in
the great sallon of the capitol, is this same whom Pliny mentions.

[5] Vide Bellori Descriz delle Imagini dipinte da Raffaelle d’Vrbino, &c.
Roma. 1695 fol.

[6] Vide Stosch Pierres grav. pl. XXXIII.

[7] Baldinucci Vita del Cav. Bernini.

[8] Vide Stosch Pierres Grav. pl. XXIX. XXX.

[9] Vide Mus. Flor. T. II. t. V.

[10] Vide Zanetti Statue nell’ Antisala della libraria di S. Marco.
Venez. 1740. fol.

[11] Among the busts remarkable for that coarser Drapery, we may reckon
the beauteous Caracalla in the royal cabinet at Dresden.

[12] Vide Wright’s Travels.

The victorious St. Michael of Guido, treads on the body of his
antagonist, with all the precision of a dancing-master. Webb’s Inquiry,
&c.

[13] Vasari vite de Pittori, Scult. et Arch. edit. 1568. Part III. p.
776.——“Quattro prigioni bozzati, che possano insegnare à cavare de’ Marmi
le figure con un modo sicuro da non istorpiare i sassi, che il modo è
questo, che s’ e’ si pigliassi una figura di cera ò d’ altra materia
dura, e si metessi à giacere in una conca d’ acqua, la quale acqua
essendo per la sua natura nella sua sommità piana et pari, alzando la
detta figura à poco del pari, cosi vengono à scoprirsi prima le parti piu
relevate e à nascondersi i fondi, cioè le parti piu basse della figura,
tanto che nel fine ella cosi viene scoperta tutta. Nel medesimo modo si
debbono cavare con lo scarpello le figure de’ Marmi, prima scoprendo le
parti piu rilevate, e di mano in mano le piu basse, il quale modo si
vede osservato da Michael Angelo ne’ sopra detti prigioni, i quali sua
Eccellenza vuole, che servino per esempio de suoi Academici.”

[14] Lettere d’alcuni Bolognesi, Vol. I. p. 159.

[15] Compare a description of a St. Sebastian of Beccafumi, another of
a Hercules and Antæus of Lanfranc, &c. in Raguenet’s Monumens de Rome,
Paris, 12mo.

[16] Labat voyage en Espagne & en Ital. T. III. p. 213.——“Michel Ange
étoit aussi savant dans l’antiquité que dans l’anatomie, la sculpture,
la peinture, et l’architecture; et puisqu’ il nous a representé Moyse
avec une si belle et si longue barbe, il est sûr, et doit passer pour
constant, que le prophete la portoit ainsi; et par une consequence
necessaire les Juifs, qui pretendent le copier avec exactitude, et qui
font la plus grande partie de leur religion de l’observance des usages
qu’ il a laissé, doivent avoir de la barbe comme lui, ou renoncer à la
qualité de Juifs.”

[17] Apotheos. Homeri, p. 81, 82.

[18] Stosch Pierr. Grav. pl. XIX.

[19] Monum. Antiquit. p. 255.

[20] Puffendorf Rer. Suec. L. XX. §. 50. p. 796.

[21] Sandrart Acad. P. II. L. 2. c. 6. p. 118. Conf. St. Gelais descr.
des Tabl. du Palais Royal, p. 12. & seq.

[22] Plin. Hist. Nat. L. 35. c. 10.

[23] Lucian de Hist. Scrib.

[24] Strabo Geogr. L. VIII. p. 542.

[25] Vitruv. L. III. c. 1.

[26] Borell. de motu animal. P. I. c. 18. prop. 142. p. 142. edit.
Bernoull.

[27] Stosch. Pierr. Grav. pl. XXXV.

[28] Stosch Pierr. Grav. pl. XXXV.

[29] Mariette Pierr. Grav. T. II. n. 94.

[30] Stosch Pierr. Grav. pl. LIV.

[31] Pausanias, L. VI. c. 7. p. 470.

[32] Dioscorid. de Re Medica, L. V. c. 179. Conf. Salmas. Exercit. Plin.
c. 15. p. 134. b.

[33] Aristoph. Nub. v. 1178. ibid. v. 1363. Et Scholiast.

[34] Observat. sur les arts, sur quelques morceaux de peint. & sculpt.
exposés au Louvre en 1748, p. 18.

[35] Riposo di Raffaello Borghini, L. I. p. 46.

[36] See the Cupid by SOLON, Stosch. 64. the Cupid leading the Lioness,
by SOSTRATUS, Stosch. 66. and a Child and Faun, by AXEOCHUS, Stosch 20.

[37] Vide Bartoli Admiranda Rom. fol. 50, 51, 61. Zanetti Stat. Antich.
P. II. fol. 33.

[38] Vide Callistrat. p. 903.

[39] Vide Philostrati Heroic.

[40] Vide Baldinucci vita del Caval. Bernin. p. 47.

[41] Vide Baldinucci vita del Caval. Bernin. p. 72.

[42] Trattato della pittura e scultura, uso et abuso loro, composto da un
theologo e da un pittore. Fiorenza, 1652. 4.

[43] Bellori vite de’ pittori, &c. p. 300.

[44] Richardson, Tom. III. p. 94.

[45] Xenophon Memorab. L. III. c. 6, 7.

[46] Vide Baldinucci vita del Cav. Bernini, p. 66.

[47] Plin. Hist. Nat. L. 35. c. 10.

[48] Quintilian. Instit. Or. L. 12. c. 19.

[49] Idyll. 18. v. 29.

[50] De Pile’s Conversat. sur la peint.

[51] Du Bos Refl. sur la poesie & sur la peint.

[52] The Stratonice was twice painted by Lairesse. The picture we talk of
is the smallest of the two: the figure is about one foot and a half, and
differs from the other in the disposition of the Parerga.

[53] See Plutarch. in Demetr. & Lucian. de Dea Syria.

[54] Vide Lettre de Mr. Huet sur la Pourpre: dans les Dissertat. de
Tilladet. Tom. II. p. 169.

[55] St. Real Cæsarion, T. II. Le Blanc Lettre sur l’Expos. des Ouvrages
de Peint, &c. 1747.

[56] De Oratore, L. II. c. 21.

[57] Aristot. Rhet. L. I. c. 1. §. 4.

[58] Xenophon Resp. Laced. c. 3. §. 5.

[59] Origines Contra Cels. L. IV. p. 196. Edit. Cantabr.

[60] Perrault sur Vitruve Explic. de la Planche IX. p. 62.

[61] Dialog. Inconfus. p. 76.

[62] Horapoll. Hierogl. c. 33. Conf. Blackwell’s Enq. into Hom. p. 170.

[63] De Re rust. præf. ad L. I. §. 32. p. 392. Edit. Gesn.

[64] Vitruv. L. IV. c. 1.

[65] Travels, T. II.

[66] Plutarch. Numa. p. 149. L. 14. Edit. Bryani.

[67] Passerii Lucern.

[68] Menage Diction. Etymol. v. Barroque.

[69] Vide Desgodez Edifices antiq. de Rome, p. 91.

[70] Bartoli Sepolcri Antichi, p. 67. ibid. fig. 91.

[71] Perrault notes sur Vitruv. L. IV. ch. 2. n. 21. p. 118.

[72] Martial, L. III. Ep. 41. 1.

[73] Bellori Sepolchri ant. f. 99.

[74] Virgil, Æn. V. v. 250. & seq.

[75] Pausanias, L. IX. c. 40. p. 794. Conf. Spanhem. Not. sur les Cæesars
de l’Emp. Julien. p. 240.

[76] Kircheri Oedip. Ægypt. T. III. p. 405, & 433.

[77] Bianchini Istor. Univ. p. 412.

[78] Nehem. Grew Musæum Societ. Reg. Lond. 1681. fol. p. 1.

[79] Vide Gabr. Bremond Viaggi nell’Egitto. Roma. 1579. 4. L. I. c. 15.
p. 77.

[80] Clemens Alex. Strom. L. VI. p. 456.

[81] Shaw, Voyage, T. II. p. 123.

[82] Della Valle Viaggi. Lettr. 11. §. 9. p. 325. & seq.

[83] Herodot. L. II. c. 36. Diod. Sic.

[84] Plutarch. de Isid. & Osirid. p. 374.

[85] Kircher Oed. I. c. ej. Prodrom. Copt. c. 7.

[86] Herodot. L. II. c. 153.

[87] Diogen. Laert. v. Democr.

[88] Diodor. Sic. L. I. c. 29. Edit. Wessel.

[89] Kircher Oedip. I. c.—it. ejusd. China illustrata. III. c. 4. p. 151.

[90] Alberti Englische Briefe, B——.

[91] Clem. Alex. Strom. L. I. p. 354. Edit. Pott.

[92] Herodot. L. II. c. 61.

[93] Montfaucon Palæogr. Græc. L. III. c. 5. p. 230. Kuhn. Not. ad
Pausan. L. II. p. 128.

[94] Augustin. Gem. P. II. l. 32.

[95] Gruter. Corp. Inscr. p. DCCCLXI. ἐυτυχειτε, χαιρετε, &c.

[96] Prideaux Marm. Oxon. 4. & 179.

[97] Demosth. Orat. pro Corona, p. 485, 499. Edit. Frc. 1604.

[98] Gruter, Corp. Inscript. p. DCXLI. 8.

[99] Montfaucon Palæogr. L. IV. c. 10. p. 336, 338.

[100] Montf. L. I. c. 4. II. c. 6. p. 152.

[101] Herod. L. II.

[102] Descript. de l’Egypte, par Mascriere, Lettr. VII. 23.

[103] Descript. de l’Eg. L. c.

[104] Chishul. Inscr. Sig. p. 12.

[105] Kircher. Obelisc. Pamph. c. 8. p. 147.

[106] Cicero de Oratore, L. II. c. 37.

[107] The author was then preparing for a journey to Rome.

[108] Argenville abregé de la V. d. P. T. II. p. 287.

[109] Reise, p. 21.

[110] Strabo, L. XIV. p. 652. al. 965. l. 11.

[111] Richardson Essay, &c. p. 38, 39.

[112] Diomedes, for ought I can see, is neither a sitting nor a standing
figure, in both which cases the critick must be allowed to be just. He
descends. _Remark of the T. L._

[113] Cicero de Fato, c. 4.

[114] Strabo, L. IV. p. 196. al. 299. l. 22.

[115] Misopog. p. 342. l. 13.

[116] Strabo, L. III. p. 158. al. 238.

[117] Du Bos Reflex. sur la Poesie et s. l. P. II. 144.

[118] Herodot. L. III. c. 106. Cicero ad Attic. L. VI. cp. 2.

[119] Περὶ τοπων. p. 288. edit. Foesii. Galenus ὁτι τα τῆς Ψυχῆς Ἠθη τοις
του Σωματος κρασεσι ἑπεται. fol. 171. B. I. 43. edit. Ald. T. I.

[120] Chardin voyage en Perse, T. II. p. 127. & seq.

[121] Journal des Sçavans l’An. 1684. Aur. p. 153.

[122] Apud Euseb. Præpar. Evang. L. V. c. 29. p. 226. edit. Colon.

[123] Plin. Hist. Nat. L. V. c. 8.

[124] Lahontan Memoir. T. II. p. 217. Cons. Wöldike de ling. Grönland, p.
144, & seq. Act. Hafn. T. II.

[125] Clarmont de Ære, Locis, & aquis Angliæ. Lond. 1672. 12.

[126] Wotton’s Reflex, upon ancient and modern Learning, p. 4. Pope’s
Letter to Mr. Walsh, T. I. 74.

[127] Lakemacher Observ. Philolog. P. III. Observ. IV. p. 250, &c.

[128]

    Th’ impatient weapon whizzes on the wing;
    Sounds the tough horn, and twangs the quiv’ring string, &c.

    POPE.

[129] Longin. Περι ὑψ. Sect. 13. §. 1.

[130] Odyss. λ. v. 71. Conf. Iliad, Γ. v. 363. & Eustath. ad h. l. p.
424. L. 10. edit. Rom.

[131] Gregor. Thaumat. Orat. Paneg. ad Origen. 49.

[132] Aristoph. Ran. v. 1485.

[133] Athen. Deipnos. L. XII. c. 13. Ælian, V. H. I. ix. 14.

[134] Aristoph. Equit.

[135] Thucyd. L. II. c. 39.

[136] Horat. L. II. Ep. I. v. 244.

[137] Cicero de fato. c. 4.

[138] Περι τοπων. p. 204.

[139] Cicero Orat. c. 8. Conf. Dicæarch, Geogr. edit. H. Steph. c. 2. p.
16.

[140] Nubes, v. 1365.

[141] Schol. ad Aristoph. Nub. v. 1010.

[142] Plutarch, de Sera Numin. Vindicta, p. 563. 9.

[143] Cicero de Orat.

[144] Golzius, Tab. XIV. T. II.

[145] Diodorus Sic. L. XX. p. 763. al. 449.

[146] Stukely’s Itinerar. III. p. 32.

[147] Theophrast. Hist. Pl. L. IX. c. 16. p. 1131. l. 7. ed. Amst. 1644.
fol. Galen de Antidot. I. fol. 63. B. I. 28. Idem de Theriac. ad Pison.
fol. 85. A. I. 20.

[148] Tournefort Voyage, Lett. I. p. 10. edit. Amst.

[149] Belon. Observ. L. II. ch. 9. p. 151. a.

[150] Idem. L. III. ch. 34. p. 350. b. Corn. le Brun. V. fol. p. 169.

[151] Dicæarch. Geogr. c. 1. p. 1.

[152] Voyage de Spon et Wheeler, T. II. p. 75, 76.

[153] Wheeler’s Journey into Greece, p. 347.

[154] Conf. Lysis, p. 499. Edit. Fref. 1602.

[155] De Republ.

[156] De Leg. L. VII. p. 892, l. 30-6. Conf. Petiti Leg. att. p. 296.
Maittaire Marm. Arund. p. 483. Gronov. ad Plaut. Bacchid. v. Ante Solem
Exorientem.

[157] Galen, de Simpl. Medic. Facult. L. II. c. 5. fol. 9. A. Opp. Tom.
II. Frontin. Stratag. L. I. c. 7.

[158] Lucian Gymn. p. 907. Opp. T. II. Edit. Reitz.

[159] Dion. Halic. A. R. c. 1. §. 6. de vi dicendi in Demost. c. 29.
Edit. Oxon.

[160] Ψ. v. 163.

[161] Numism. Imp. p. 160.

[162] Philostrat. Epist. 22. p. 922. Conf. Macrob. Sat. L. V. c. 18. p.
357. Edit. Lond. 1694. 8. Hygin. Sat. 12.

[163] Conf. Arbuthnot’s Tabl. of Anc. Coins, ch. 6. p. 116.

[164] Thucyd. L. I. c. 6. Eustath. ad Iliad. Ψ. p. 1324. l. 16.

[165] Cyrilli Hieros. Catech. Mystag. II. c. 2, 3, 4. p. 284. ed. Thom.
Miles, Oxon. 1703. fol. 305. Vice Comitis Observ. de Antiq. Baptismi rit.
L. IV. c. 10. p. 286-89. Binghami Orig. Eccles. T. IV. L. XI. c. 11.
Godeau Hist. de l’Eglise, T. I. L. III. p. 623.

[166] Lucian. Dial. Mort. X. §. 3.

[167] Idem. Navig. E. 2. p. 248.

[168] De la Chambre Discours; où il est prouvé que les François font les
plus capables de tous les peuples de la perfection de l’éloquence, p. 15.

[169] Lucian, pro Imagin. p. 490. Edit. Reitz. T. II.

[170] Cic. Brut. c. 7. & 83.

[171] Considerations sur les Revolutions des Arts. Paris, 1755, p. 33.

[172] Pagi. Discours sur l’Histoire Grecque, p. 45.

[173] Nouveau Voyage d’Hollande, de l’Allem., de Suisse & d’Italie, par
M. de Blainville.

[174] Richardson’s Account, &c. 294, 295.

[175] Chambray Idée de la Peint. p. 46. au Mans, 1662. 4to.

[176] Plin. Hist. Nat. L. XXXV. c. 10.

[177] (Durand) Extrait de l’Histoire de la Peint. de Pline. p. 56.

[178] Observat. sur les Arts & sur quelques morceaux de Peint. & de
Sculpt. exposés au Louvre, 1748. p. 65.

[179] Nouvelle Division de la Terre par les différentes Espèces d’Hommes,
&c. dans le Journ. des Sçav. 1704. Avr. 152.

[180] Plutarch. Vit. Æmil. p. 147. ed. Bryani. T. II.

[181] Lucian. Navig. S. Votum. c. 2. p. 249.

[182] Borghini Riposo, L. II. p. 129.

[183] Chambray Idée de la Peint. p. 47.

[184] Maxim. Tyr. Diss. 25. p. 303. Edit. Markl.

[185] Vide Spectator, N. 418.

[186] Philostrat. Icon. Anton. p. 91.

[187] Plutarch. Ant.

[188] Observat. sur les Arts, &c., p. 65.

[189] Quintil. L. IX. c. 14.

[190] Plutarch, Timoleon. P. 142.

[191] Plutarch. Adul. & Amici discrim. p. 53. D.

[192] Aristot. Rhet. L. I. c. 11. p. 61. Edit. Lond. 1619. 4to. Plato
Phæd. p. 46. I. 44.

[193] Cicero Tusc. L. I. c. 28.

[194] Aristot. Poet. c. 28.

[195] Aristot. Rhet. III. c. 2. §. 4.

[196] Herodot. L. II. c. 50.

[197] Herodot. L. II. c. 3. c. 47. Conf. L. II. c. 61. Pausan. L. II. p.
71. l. 45. p. 114. l. 57. L. V. p. 317. l. 6.

[198] Pausan. L. II. c. 17. p. 149. l. 24.

[199] Arrian. Epict. L. III. c. 21. p. 439. Edit. Upton.

[200] Plutarch, de Isid. & Osir. p. 355. Clem. Alex. Strom. L. V. p. 657,
58. Edit. Potteri. Ælian. Hist. Anim. L. 10. c. 15.

[201] Plut. L. C. p. 376. Androvand. de Quadr. digit. Vivipar. L. III. p.
574.

[202] Strabo, L. XVI. p. 760. al. 1104.

[203] Pausan. L. III. p. 245. l. 21.

[204] Kircher Oedip. Æg. T. III. p. 64. Lucian. Nav. 3 Vol. c. 1. Bayf.
de re Nav. p. 130. edit. Bas. 1537. 4.

[205] Schaffer de re Nav. L. III. c. 3. p. 196. Passerii Luc. T. II. tab.
93.

[206] Lactant. ad v. 253. L. VII. Thebaid.

[207] Beger. Thes. Palat. p. 234. Numism. Musell. Reg. et Pop. T. 8.

[208] Haym. Tesoro Britt. T. I. p. 168.

[209] Ap. Philostr. Heroic. p. 693.

[210] Vaillant Num. Colon. Rom. T. II. p. 136. Conf. Bianchini Istor.
Unic. p. 74.

[211] Mus. Flor. T. I. Tab. 91. p. 175.

[212] Petron. Sat. c. 34.

[213] Spon. Miscell. Sect. I. Tab. 5.

[214] Kircher Oedip. T. III. p. 555. Cuper de Elephant. Exercit. c. 3. p.
32.

[215] In Extremis Gadibus. v. Eustath. ad II. A. p. 744. l. 4. ad. Rom.
Id. ad Dionys. Περιηγ. ad v. 453. p. 84. Ed. Oxon. 1712.

[216] Kircher Oed. Æg. T. III. p. 555.

[217] Horapoll. Hierogl. L. II. c. 84.

[218] Cuper. l. c. Spanh. Diss. T. I, p. 169.

[219] Agost, Dialog. II. p. 68.

[220] Homer. ΟΔ. Ε., v. 121. Conf. Heraclid. Pontic. de Allegoria Homeri.
p. 492. Meurs. de funere. c. 7.

[221] Venuti Num. max. moduli. T. 25. Rom. 1739. fol. Bellori Admir. fol.
30.

[222] Pausan. L. X. p. 806. l. 16.

[223] Licet. Gem. Anul. c. 48.

[224] Beger. Theo. Brand. T. 1. p. 182.

[225] Ibid. p. 281.

[226] Justin. L. XV. c. 4. p. 412. edit. Gronov.

[227] Spanh. Diss. T. I. p. 407.

[228] Ap. D. C. de Moezinsky.

[229] Paus. L. V. p. 447. l. 22.

[230] Ibid. L. 1. p. 52. l. 4.

[231] Pausan. L. III. p. 245. l. 20. Morel Specim. Rei. N. XII.

[232] Spanhem. Diss. T. I. p. 154.

[233] Spanhem. Obs. ad Juliani Imp. Orat. I. p. 282.

[234] Montfaucon Ant. expl. T. III.

[235] Morell. Specim. Rei Num. T. VIII. p. 92.

[236] Artemidor. Oneirocr. L. II. c. 49.

[237] Noct. Attic. L. XIV. c. 4.

[238] Agost. Dialog. II. p. 45. Rom. 1650. fol.

[239] Tristan. Comm. hist. de l’Emp. T. I. p. 297.

[240] Numism. Musell. Imp. R. tab. 38.

[241] Ibid. Tab. II.

[242] Ibid. Tab. XXIX. Erisso Dichiaraz. di Medagl. ant. P. II. p. 130.

[243] Plutarch Syll. p. 50, 51.

[244] Conf. Philostrat. Imag. p. 737.

[245] Plin. Hist. N. L. XVIII. c. 47. Agost. Dial. III. p. 104.

[246] Gabriæ Fab. p. 169. in Æsop. Fab. Venet. 1709. 8.

[247] Pausan. L. I. c. 43. p. 105. L. 7.

[248] Plutarch. Sympos. L. IX. qu. 6.

[249] Vaillant Numism. Imp. T. II. p. 133.

[250] Plutarch. Vit. Thes. p. 26.

[251] Agost. Dial. II. p. 66, 67. Numism. Musell. Imp. Rom. Tab. 115.

[252] Ripa Iconol. n. 87.

[253] Thesaur. de Arguta Dict.

[254] Numism. Musell. Imp. R. Tab. 107.

[255] Ibid. Tab. 106.

[256] Ibid. Tab. 105.

[257] Ripa Iconol. P. I. n. 53.

[258] Agost. Dial. II. p. 57. Numism. Musell. l. c. Tab. 68.

[259] Agost. l. c.

[260] Ripa Ic. P. I. n. 135.

[261] Agost. Dial. II. p. 47.

[262] Ripa Iconol. P. I. n. 31.

[263] Ibid. P. I. n. 25.

[264] Vide Picinelli Mund. Symb.

[265] Shaw Voyag. T. I.

[266] Hayman Tesoro Brit. T. I. p. 219.

[267] Egnatius de exempl. illustr. Vir. Venet. L. V. p. 133.

[268] Numism. Barbar. Gent. n. 37. Padova. 1732. fol.

[269] Medailles de Louis le Grand, a. 1663. Paris 1702. fol.

[270] Thesaur. de Argut. Dict.

[271] Ripa Iconol. P. II. p. 166.

[272] Spectator, Edit. 1724. Vol. II. p. 201.

[273] Canini Imag. des Heros. N. I.

[274] Stoch Pier. Grav. Pl. LI.

[275] Pausan. L. X. p. 870. 871.

[276] Vit. Thesei. p. 29.

[277] De Monstrosa Amicitia respectu perfectionis inter Nic. Barbar. &
Marc. Trivisan. Venet. apud Franc. Baba. 1628. 4.

[278] Vita Marcelli. Ortelii Capita Deor. L. II. fig. 41.

[279] Thomasin. Donar. Vet. c. 5.

[280] Plutarch. Quæst. Rom. P. 266. F.

[281] Vulp. Latium. T. I. L. I. c. 27. p. 406.

[282] Agostin. Dialog. II. p. 81.

[283] Ibid. & Beger Obs. in Num. p. 56.

[284] Iliad, i. v. 498. Conf. Heraclides Pontic. de Allegoria Homeri, p.
457, 58.

[285] Architect. L. II. c. 8.

[286] Vide Representatio Bibliothecæ Cesareæ Viennæ 1737. fol. obt.

[287] This piece is engraved by Simmoneau Senior Cons. Lepicié Vies des
p. P. de R. T. I. p. 64.

[288] Another representation of that story, and one of Poussin’s best
originals, is in the gallery of Dresden, in which the river god is
extremely advantageous to the composition of the whole.

[289] Plin.

[290] Plato Alcibiad. II. P. 457. l. 30.

[291] Baldinucci, Notiz. de’ P. d. D. P. 118. Argenville seems not to
have understood the word, _Ciliegia_: he saw that it should be a symbol
of spring, and changed the cherry to a butterfly; the chief object of the
picture he omits, and talks only of the girl.

[292] Lepiciè Vies des P. R. P. II. p. 17, 18.

[293] Recueil d’Estamp. de la Gall. de Dresd. fol. 48.

[294] Pompa & Introitus Ferdinandi Hisp. Inf. p. 15. Antv. 1641. fol.

[295] Vasari vite. P. III. Vol. I. p. 76.

[296] Chambray Idée de la P. p. 107, 108. Bellori Descriz. delle Imagini
dip. da Raffaello, &c.

[297] Heraclid. Pontic. de Allegoria Homeri, p. 443.

[298] Josephi Antiq. L. XIV. c. 8. Edit. Haverc.

[299] Dati vite de’ Pittori. p. 73.

[300] Thesaur. Idea Arg. Dict. C. III. p. 84.

[301] Blondel Maisons de Plaisance, T. II. p. 26.

[302] Passerii Lucernæ fict. Tab. 51.

[303] Quellinus Maison de la Ville d’Amst. 1655. fol.

[304] Arnob., adv. Gentes L. V. p. 157. Edit. Lugd. 1651. 4.

[305] An ox-head on the reverse of an Attick gold coin, stamped with the
head of Hercules and his club, is supposed to allude to his labours,
(Haym. Tesoro Britt. l. 182.) and to be, in general, a symbol of
strength, industry, or patience, (Hypnerotomachia Polyphili. Venet. Ald.
fol.)

[306] Vitruv. L. I. c. 2.

[307] Diodor. Sic. L. XIII. p. 375. al. 507.

[308] Blondel Maisons de Plaisance.

[309] Vide Spectator, No. 51.

[310] Pausan. L. I. c. 43. l. 22.

[311] Plin. Hist. N. L. XXXVI. c. 5.

[312] Paus. L. II. c. 2. P. 115. l. 11.

[313] Idem. L. IX. c. 40. P. 795. l. 11.

[314] Aldrovand. de Quadrup. bisulc. p. 141.

[315] Bellori Lucern. Sepulcr. P. I. fig. 17.

[316] Spon. Misc. Sect. II. Art. I. P. 25.

[317] Vide Buonarotti Osserv. sopra alcuni Medagli. Proem. p. XXVI. Roma.
1693. 4.

[318] Plutarch. de Garrulit. p. 502.

[319] Tristan Comment. Hist. des Emper. T. I. p. 632.

[320] Plutarch. Marcell. p. 277.

[321] Vulpii Latium, T. II. L. II. c. 20. p. 175.

[322] Banier Mythol. T. II. L. I. ch. 11. p. 181.

[323] Dioscorid. de Re Med. L. V. c. 179.

[324] Fred. Oeser, one of the most extensive geniuses which the present
age can boast of, is a German, and now lives at Dresden; where, to
the honour of his country, and the emolument of the art, he gets his
livelihood by teaching young blockheads, of the Saxon-race, the elements
of drawing; and by etching after the Flemish painters. N. of Transl.

[325] Hymn. in Apoll.

[326] Alexander, in his S. John, in _St. Andrea della Valle_ at Rome;
Niobe, in a picture belonging to the _Tesoro di S. Gennaro_, at Naples.

[327] So are the goddesses of the Theopægnia at Blenheim, in Oxfordshire;
and hence it is clear, that another Venus, analogous to that in the
Tribuna, among the pictures of a gentleman in London, cannot be the
production of that genius-in-flesh only. This daughter of the Idalian
graces seems to thrill with inward pleasure, and to recollect a night of
bliss——

    There is language in her eye, her cheek, her lip:
    Nay, her foot speaks——

    SHAKESPEAR.

[328] Veron. illustr. P. III. c. 7. p. 269.

[329] “Et toi, rival des Praxiteles & des Phidias; toi dont les anciens
auroient employé le ciseau à leur faire des dieux capables d’excuser à
nos yeux leur idolatrie; inimitable Pigal, ta main se résoudra a vendre
des magots, ou il faudra qu’elle demeure oisive.” J. J. Rousseau Disc.
sur le Retabl. d. A. S. &c.

This, my dear countryman! is the only passage of thine, where posterity
will find the orator forgot the philosopher. N. of Tr.


THE END.




ERRATA.


    Page 20. Line 13. _for_ comma _after_ says, _place_ semi-colon.

    P. 61. L. 7. _for_ Morte _read_ Morto.

    P. 83. Note, _for_ Bernoue _read_ Bernoull.

    P. 94. L. 3. _after_ Nature _add a_ colon—_after_ flat _add_ it.

    P. 105. L. 10. _dele_ Lucian, Ep. I.

    P. 166. Note f. _instead of_ ὈΔ. Τ. v. 230. _read_ Ψ. v. 163.

    P. 181. L. 13. _for_ on _read_ in.

    P. 189. L. 20. _for_ or _read_ on.

    P. 197. Note d. _for_ adv. _read_ ad v.

    P. 227. L. 12. _for_ the _read_ her.


Transcriber’s Note

The errata have been corrected. The notes referenced above are, with the
new numbering in this e-text, notes 26, 160 and 206.

List of other changes made to the text:

    Page 5, repeated “a” removed (Take a Spartan youth)

    Page 48, “hindred” changed to “hindered” (as much water as
    hindered)

    Page 62, “barenness” changed to “barrenness” (’Tis an
    abhorrence of barrenness)

    Page 89, “celelebrated” changed to “celebrated” (his celebrated
    Carton of the Pisan war)

    Page 174, “Parrhabasius” changed to “Parrhasius” (Parrhasius,
    compared with himself)

    Page 187, “Rembrant” changed to “Rembrandt” (some pieces of
    Rembrandt and Vandyke)

    Page 229, “born” changed to “borne” (Spain is borne down by the
    current)

    Page 259, repeated “a” removed (though a few only find it)

    Page 270, repeated “the” removed (in the temple of art and
    genius)

    Footnote 7, “Barnini” changed to “Bernini” (Vita del Cav.
    Bernini)

    Footnote 329, “si” changed to “sur” (Rousseau Disc. sur le
    Retabl. d. A. S. &c.)

Archaic spellings remain as printed. Amendments to punctuation are not
otherwise noted.