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 LAW XXXI. 
 
 "If any Book be lost, or if, on being returned to the Library, it appears to have 
 been torn or defaced, the Proprietor to whom it has been delivered shall he held 
 responsible to the Institution, and shall immediately replace the Book; or if it he 
 one of a series of volumes, he shall replace the whole work with one of the same 
 edition, or of an edition in no respect inferior." 
 
LECTURES 
 
 ON 
 
 P A I N T I N'G, 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY 
 
 MARCH 1801, 
 
 By HENRY FUSELI, P.P. 
 
 WITH ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS AND NOTES. 
 
 
 LIVERPOOL 
 L1BRARX 
 
 LONDON: 
 TRINTEO FOR J. JOHNSON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-¥ARD» 
 
 1801. 
 
 Luke Hattferd, Frinieri near Lincolu's-lnn FieWs» 
 
JfrC.l 
 
 
 **%► 
 
 
TO 
 
 WILLIAM LOCK, Esq. 
 
 OF 
 
 NORBURY PARK, 
 
 THETOLLOWING SHEETS 
 
 ARE INSCRIBED 
 
 BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 Meae quidem temeritati acceffit hoc quoque, quod 
 Levioris operse hos tibi dedicavi libellos. 
 
 C. Plinji Secundi I, 
 
 A 2 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 ANCIENT" ART. 
 
 Toivrx (j.iv ouv irXxrw xoci y;>xQiuv kxi ttowtuv ttouSis Bgyztrovrxu o fo irxo-iv t7rxi/5u 
 toutoij, n J£<*f'?» p.a.\\ov Si x'wx<7xi X[ax, oTrotrxt %*fiT£f, xxt Wontu Efwi-jf 
 
 AOTKIANOT Zxp. hx m( . 
 
 A 3 
 
ARGUMENT. 
 
 Introduction. Greece the legitimate parent of the Art. — Summary of the local 
 and political caufes. Conjectures on the mechanic procefs of the Art. 
 Period of preparation— Polygnolus— eflential ftyle — Apollodorus— charac- 
 terise ftyle. Period of eftabliflrment — Zeuxis, Parrhafius, Timanthes. 
 Period of refinement— Eupompus— Apelles, Ariftides, Euphranor. 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 The difficulties of the tafk prefcribed to me, 
 if they do not preponderate are at leaft equal to the 
 honour of the fituation. If, to difcourfe on any topic 
 with truth, preciflon, and clearnefs, before a mixed or 
 fortuitous audience, before men neither initiated in the 
 fubject, nor rendered minutely attentive by expectation, 
 be no eafy tafk ; how much more arduous muft it be to 
 fpeak fyftematically on an art, before a felect affembly, 
 compofed of Profejfors whofe life has been divided 
 between theory and practice ; of Critics whofe tafte has 
 been refined by contemplation and comparifon ; and of 
 Students, who bent on the fame purfuit, look for the 
 beft and always moft compendious method of maflering 
 the principles, to arrive at its emoluments and honours. 
 Your lecturer is to inftruct them in the principles of c com- 
 * poiition ; to form their tafte for delign and colouring ; 
 1 to ftrengthen their judgment ; to point out to them 
 1 the beauties and imperfections of celebrated works of art ; 
 
 b l and 
 
2 FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 1 and the particular excellencies and defe&s of great 
 
 * mailers ; and finally, to lead them into the readieft 
 
 * and mofr. efficacious paths of ftudy*.' — If, Gentlemen, 
 thefe directions prefuppofe in the ftudent a fufficient 
 flock of elementary knowledge ; an expertnefs in the 
 rudiments^ not mere wifhes but a peremptory will of 
 improvement and judgment with docility ; how much 
 more do they imply in the perfon felected to addrefs 
 them — knowledge founded on theory, fubftantiated and 
 matured by practice; a mafs of felecl: and well digefted 
 materials ; perfpicuity of method and command of 
 words; imagination to place things in fuch views as 
 they are not commonly feen in ; prefence of mind, and 
 that refolution, the refult of confcious vigour, which in 
 fubmitting to correct miftakes, cannot be eafily dis- 
 countenanced. — As conditions like thefe would dis- 
 courage abilities far fuperior to mine, my hopes of 
 approbation, moderate as they are, mull in a great 
 meafure . depend on that indulgence which may grant 
 to my will what it would refufe to my powers. 
 
 In the arrangement of my plan I fhall prefer a pro- 
 greffive method, that may enable me, on future occaflons, 
 to treat more fully thofe parts which the prefTure of 
 
 others 
 
 £ Abftracl of the Laws of the Royal Academy, article Profeffbrs: page 21 = 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 3 
 
 others feemingly or really more important, has obliged me 
 to difmifs more abruptly or with lefs confideration than 
 they have a right to claim. The fir ft LeBure exhibits a 
 more critical than an hiftoric fketch of the origin and 
 progrefs of our art, confining refearch to that period, 
 when fact, and fubftantial information took place of 
 * conjecture; it naturally divides itfelf into two parts, 
 the art of the ancients, and its reftoration among the 
 moderns : each is divided into three periods, that of 
 preparation, that of full eftablifhment, and that of re~ 
 finement. — The fecond LeElure treats on the real fubjects 
 of painting and the plaftic arts, in contradiftinction to 
 the fubjects exclusively belonging to poetry, endeavour- 
 ing to efbablifh the reciprocal limits of both from the 
 effential difference of their medium and materials. It 
 eflablifhes three principal claffes of painting: the epic, 
 the dramatic, and the hiftoric, with their collateral 
 branches of charactcriftic portrait and landfcape, and 
 the inferior fubdivifions of imitation. — hi the third, 
 deiign, correctness, copy, imitation, ftyle, with its de- 
 grees of ejfential, charaEleriftic, ideal, and deviation 
 into manner, are confidered, and the claffes of the 
 models left us in the remains of ancient fculpture, ar- 
 ranged. — The fourth is devoted to invention, in its moft 
 general and fpeciflc fenfe, as it difcovers, felects, com- 
 bines, the poffible, the probable and the known ma- 
 
 b 2 terials 
 
4 FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 terials of nature, in a mode that drikes with novelty. — 
 The fifth follows with composition and expreflion, the 
 dreffcr and the foul of invention ; the ftxth concludes 
 with obfervations on colour, drapery and execution. 
 
 Such is the regular train of obfervations on an inex- 
 h audible art, which, if life and circumdances fan&ion 
 the wifh, I mean to fubmit to your confideration in a 
 future courfe: at prefent, the exuberance of the fub- 
 jed, the confideration due to each part, the various 
 modes of treatment that prefented themfelves in the 
 courfe of dudy, my neceffary profeffional avocations, 
 and fome obdacles which I could as little forefee as 
 avoid, grant fcarcely more than fragments, to lay before 
 you. The fird lecture, or the critical hidory of ancient 
 and modern dyle, from its extreme richnefs, and as it 
 appears to me, importance, is at prefent divided into 
 two. The third will contain materials of the proper 
 fubjects of the art and of invention, extracted from the 
 fecond and the fourth, and connected by obvious 
 analogy. 
 
 But before I proceed to the hidory of dyle itfelf, it 
 
 feems to be neceffary that we fhould agree about the 
 
 terms which denote its object and perpetually recur in 
 
 treating of it; that my vocabulary of technic expreflion 
 
 i mould 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 5 
 
 mould not clam with the dictionary cf my audience: mine 
 is nearly that of your late preiident. I mall confine 
 myfelf at prefent to a few of the mod important; the 
 words nature, beauty, grace, tafte, copy, imitation, 
 genius, talent. Thus, by nature I underftand the 
 general and permanent principles of vifible objects, not 
 disfigured by accident, or diftempered by difeafe, not 
 modified by fafhion or local habits. Nature is a col- 
 lective idea, and though its effence exift in each indi- 
 vidual of the fpecies, can never in its perfection inhabit 
 a fingle object. On beauty I do not mean to perplex 
 you or myfelf with abftrad; ideas, and the romantic 
 reveries of platonic philofophy, or to inquire whether 
 it be the refult of a fimple or complex principle. As a 
 local idea, beauty is a defpotic princefs, and fubject to 
 the anarchies of defpotifm, enthroned to-day, dethroned 
 to-morrow. The beauty we acknowledge is that har- 
 monious whole of the human frame, that unifon of 
 parts to one end, which enchants us; the refult of the 
 ftandard fet by the great matters of our art, the ancients, 
 and confirmed by the fubmiflive verdid; of modern 
 imitation. By grace I mean that artlefs balance of 
 motion and repofe fprung from character, founded on 
 propriety, which neither falls fhort of the demands nor 
 overleaps the modefly of nature. Applied to execu- 
 tion, it means that dextrous power which hides the 
 a means 
 
6 FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 means by which it was attained, the difficulties it has 
 conquered. When we fay tafte, we mean not crudely 
 the knowledge of what is right in art : tafte eftimates 
 the degrees of excellence, and by comparifon proceeds 
 from juftnefs to refinement. Our language, or rather 
 thofe who ufe it, generally confound, when fpeaking oi 
 the art, copy with imitation, though effentially different 
 in operation and meaning. Precifion of eye and obe- 
 dience of hand are the requifites of the former, without 
 the leaft pretence to choice, what to felect what to re- 
 ject ; whilft choice directed by judgment or tafte confti- 
 tutes the effence of imitation, and alone can raife the 
 moft dextrous copyift to the noble rank of an artift. 
 The imitation of the ancients was, ejjential, charac- 
 teriftic, ideal. The firft cleared nature, of accident, 
 defect, excrefcence ; the fecond found the ftamen which 
 connects character with the central form ; the third 
 raifed the whole and the parts to the higheft degree of 
 unifon. Of genius I fhall fpeak with referve, for no 
 word has been more indifcriminately confounded ; by ge- 
 nius I mean that power which enlarges the circle of 
 human knowledge, which difcovers new materials of 
 nature, or combines the known with novelty ; whilft 
 talent arranges, cultivates, polifties the difcoveries of 
 genius. 
 
 Guided 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 7 
 
 Guided by thefe preliminaries we now approach that 
 happy coaft, where, from an arbitrary hieroglyph, the 
 palliative of ignorance, from a tool of defpotifm, 
 or a ponderous monument of eternal fleep, art emerged 
 into life, motion and liberty ; where fituation, climate, 
 national character, religion, manners and government 
 confpired to raife it on that permanent bails, which after 
 the ruins of the fabric itfelf, ftill fubfifts and bids de- 
 fiance to the ravages of time ; as uniform in the prin- 
 ciple as various in its applications, the art of the Greeks 
 pofTeffed in itfelf and propagated, like its chief object 
 Man, the germs of immortality. 
 
 I mall not detail here the reafons and the coincidence 
 of fortunate circumftances which raifed the Greeks to be 
 the arbiters of form {a). The ftandard they erected, the 
 canon they framed, fell not from Heaven : but as 
 they fancied themfelves of divine origin, and Religion 
 was the firft mover of their art, it followed that they 
 mould endeavour to invert their authors with the moft 
 perfect form; and as Man poffefTes that exclufively, they 
 were led to a complete and intellectual ftudy of his ele- 
 ments 
 
 (a) This has heen done in a fuperior manner by J. G. Herder, in his Ideen zur 
 Philofophie der gefchichte der Menfchheit, vol. iii. Book 13, a work lately tranflated 
 under the title of Outlines of a Pkilofophy of the Hiftory of Man, 4to. 
 
8 F I RST LECTURE. 
 
 merits and conftitution ; this, with their climate, which 
 allowed that form to grow, and to fhew itfelf to the 
 greateft. advantage ; with their civil and political inftitu- 
 tions, which eftablifhed and encouraged exercifej and 
 manners bell calculated to develop its powers ; and 
 above all that iimplicity of their end, that uniformity 
 of purfuit which in all its derivations retraced the great 
 principle from which it fprang, and like a central ftamen 
 drew it out into one immenfe connected web of congenial 
 imitation ; thefe, I fay, are the reafons why the Greeks 
 carried the art to a height which no fubfequent time or 
 race has been able to rival or even to approach. 
 
 Great as thefe advantages were, it is not to be fup- 
 pofed that Nature deviated from her gradual progrefs in 
 the development of human faculties, in favour of the 
 Greeks. Greek Art had her infancy, but the Graces 
 rocked the cradle, and Love taught her to fpeak. If 
 ever legend deferved our belief, the amorous tale of the 
 Corinthian maid, who traced the made of her depart- 
 ing lover by the fecret lamp, appeals to our fympathy, 
 to grant it ; and leads us at the fame time to fome ob- 
 fervations on the firft mechanical elTays of "Painting, and 
 that linear method which, though paiTed nearly unno- 
 ticed by Winkelmann, feems to have continued as the 
 
 balls 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 9 
 
 bafis of execution, even when the inflrument for which 
 it was chiefly adapted, had long been laid afide. 
 
 The etymology of the word ufed by the Greeks to 
 exprefs Painting being the fame with that which they 
 employ for Writings makes the fimilarity of tool, ma- 
 terials, method, almoft certain. The tool was a ftyle 
 or pen of wood or metal ; the materials a board, or a 
 levigated plane of wood, metal, ftone, or fome prepared 
 compound; the method, letters or lines. , 
 
 The flrft eflays of the art were Skiagrams, Ample 
 outlines of a made, fimilar to thofe which have been 
 introduced to vulgar ufe by the ftudents and parafites of 
 Phyfiognomy, under the name of Silhouettes ; without 
 any other addition of character or feature but what the 
 profile of the object thus delineated, could afford. 
 
 The next ftep of the art was the Monogram, out- 
 lines of figures without light or made, but with fome 
 addition of the parts within the outline, and from that to 
 the Monochrom, or paintings of a fingle colour on a plane 
 or tablet, primed with white, and then covered with 
 what they called punic wax, firft amalgamated with a 
 tough refinous pigment, generally of a red, fometimes 
 
 c dark 
 
io FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 dark brown, or black colour. In, or rather through this 
 thin inky ground, the outlines were traced with a firm 
 but pliant ftyle, which they called Ceflrum ; if the 
 traced line happened to be incorrect or wrong, it was 
 gently effaced with the finger or with a fponge, and 
 eafily replaced by a frefh one. When the whole deiign 
 was fettled, and no farther alteration intended, it was 
 fuffered to dry, was covered, to make it permanent,, 
 with a brown encauftic varnifh, the lights were worked 
 over again, and rendered more brilliant with a point ftill! 
 more crelicate, according to the gradual advance from 
 mere outlines to fome indications, and at lafl: to maffes 
 of light and fhade, and from thofe to the fuperinduc- 
 tion of different colours, or the invention of the Poly- 
 chrom, which by the addition of the pencil to the ftyle,. 
 raifed the mezzotinto or ftained drawing to a legitimate 
 picture, and at length produced that vaunted harmony^ 
 the magic fcale of Grecian colour [b). 
 
 If this conjecture, for it is not more, on the procefs 
 of linear painting, formed on the evidence and com- 
 parifon of paffages always unconnected, and frequently 
 contradictory, be founded in fact, the rapturous aftonifh- 
 ment at the fuppofed momentaneous production of the 
 
 Hercu- 
 
 *":(6) This account is founded on the conjectures of Mr. Riem, in his Treatife on 
 . die Makrey der Alien, ox the Painting of the Ancients, 4to. Berlin, 1787- 
 
FIRST LECTURE. n 
 
 Herculanean dancers and the figures on the earthen vafes 
 of the ancients, will ceafe; or rather, we fhall no 
 longer fuffer ourfelves to be deluded by palpable im- 
 poillbility of execution: on a ground of levigated lime 
 or on potters ware, no velocity or certainty attainable 
 by human hands can conduct a full pencil with that 
 degree of evennefs equal from beginning to end with 
 which we fee thofe figures executed, or if it could, 
 would ever be able to fix the line on the glaffy furface 
 without its flowing : to make the appearances we fee, 
 poflible, we muft have recourfe to the linear ^rocefs 
 that has been defcribed, and transfer our admiration, to 
 the perfeverancej the correctnefs of principle, the ele- 
 gance of tafte that conducted the artift's hand, without 
 prefuming to arm it with contradictory powers : the 
 figures he drew and we admire, are not the magic pro- 
 duce of a winged pencil, they are the refult of gradual 
 improvement, exquifitely finimed mo?iochroms \ 
 
 How long the pencil continued only to ailift, when it 
 began to engrofs and when it at laft entirely fupplanted 
 the ceft.ru m cannot, in the perplexity of accidental report 
 be afcertained. Apollodorus in the 93d Olymp. and 
 Zeuxis in the 94th, are faid to haveufed it with freedom 
 and with power. The battle of the Lapithas and the 
 Centaurs, which according to Paufanias, Farrhafius 
 
 c 2 painted 
 
ja FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 painted on the fhield of the Minerva of Phidias, to be 
 chafed by Mys, could be nothing but a monochrom y 
 and was probably defigned with the ceftrum, as an in- 
 flrument of greater accuracy (c). Apelles and Pro- 
 togenes, nearly a century afterwards, drew their contefted 
 lines with the pencil ; and that alone, as delicacy and 
 evanefcent fubtlety were the chara&eriftic of thofe lines, 
 may give an idea of their mechanic excellence. And 
 yet in their time the diagraphic procefs (d), which is 
 the very fame with the linear one we have defcribed, 
 made 41 part of liberal education. And Paufias of 
 Sicyon, the contemporary of Apelles, and perhaps the 
 greateft mafter of compofition amongft the ancients, 
 when employed to repair the decayed pictures of Poly- 
 gnotus at Thefpias, was adjudged by general opinion to 
 
 have 
 
 (c) Paufanias Attic, c. xxviii. The word ufed by Paufanias x«T«yja\J/«t, 
 fliews that the figures of Parrhafius were intended for a BalTorelievo. They were 
 in profile., This is the fenfe of the word Catagrapha in Pliny, xxxv. c. 8. he 
 tranflates it " obliquas imagines." 
 
 , (d) By the authority chiefly of Pamphilus the maftei of Apelles, who taught at 
 Sicyon. * Hujus aucloritate,' fays Pliny, xxxv. 10. ' effecnim eft Sicyone primum, 
 deinde et in tota Grsecia, ut pueri ingenui ante omnia diagraphicen, hoe eft, pic- 
 turam in buxo, docerentur/ 8cc. Harduin, contrary to the common editions, reads 
 indeed, and by the authority, he fays, of all the MSS. graphicen, which he 
 tranflates : ars ' delineandi,' defleigner, but he has not proved that graphice means 
 not more than defign ; and if he had, what was it that Pamphilus taught ? he was 
 not the inventor of what he had been taught himfelf. He eftablifhed or rather 
 renewed a particular method of drawing, which contained the rudiments, and 
 facilitated the method of painting. 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 *3 
 
 have egregioufly failed in the attempt, becaufe he had 
 fubftituted the pencil to the ceftrum, and entered a 
 contefl of fuperiority with weapons not his own. 
 
 . Here it might feem in its place to fay fomething 
 on the Encauftic method ufed by the ancients; were 
 it not a fubject by ambiguity of expreflion and conjectu- 
 ral difpute fo involved in obfcurity that a true account 
 of its procefs muft be defpaired of:, the moft probable 
 idea we can form of it is, that it bore fome refemblance 
 to our oil-painting, and that the name was adopted to 
 denote the ufe of materials, inflammable or prepared by 
 fire, the fuppofed durability of which, whether applied 
 hot or cold, authorifed the terms 3 £vexxu<re and inujjit. 
 
 The flrft great name of that epoch of the preparatory 
 period when facts appear to overbalance conjecture, is 
 that of Polygnotus of Thafos, who painted the poecile 
 at Athens, and the lefche or public hall at Delphi. Of 
 thefe works, but chiefly of the two large pictures at 
 Delphi, which reprefented fcenes fubfequent to the 
 everfion of Troy, and Ulyffes confulting the fpirit of 
 Tireflas in hades, Paufanias (e) gives a minute and 
 •circumftantial detail ; by which we are led to furmife, 
 that what is now called compofition was totally wanting 
 
 in 
 
 («) Paufan. Phocica. c. xxv. feq. 
 
j 4 FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 in them as a whole: for he begins his defcription at one 
 end of the picture, and finifhes it at the oppofite ex- 
 tremity, a fenfelefs method if we fuppofe that a central 
 group, or a principal figure to which the reft were in a 
 certain degree fubordinate, attracted the eye; it appears 
 as plain that they had no perfpectiye, the feries of 
 figures on the fecond or middle ground being defcribed 
 as placed above thofe on the foreground, as the figures 
 in the diftance above the whole : the honeft method 
 too which the painter chofe of annexing to many of his 
 figure^ their names in writing, favours much of the 
 infancy of painting. — We mould however be cautious 
 to^Hipute folely to ignorance or imbecility, what might 
 reft on the firm bafe of permanent principle. The 
 genius of Polygnotus was more than that of any other 
 artift before or after, Phidias perhaps alone excepted, a 
 public genius, his works monumental works, and thefe 
 very pictures the votive offerings of the Gnidians. The 
 art at that fummit, when exerting its powers to record 
 the feats, confecrate the acts, perpetuate the rites, pro- 
 pagate the religion, or to difTeminate the peculiar doc- 
 trines of a nation, heedlefs of the rules prefcribed to 
 inferior excellence and humbler purfuits, returns to its 
 elements, leaps ftrict poilibility, combines remote caufes 
 with prefent effects, connects local diftance and unites 
 feparate moments. — Simplicity, parallelifm, appofition, 
 
 take 
 
FIRST LECTURE. i- 
 
 take place of variety, contraft and compofition. — Such 
 was the lefche painted by Polygnotus, and if we con- 
 fider the variety of powers that diftinguifhed many of the 
 parts, we muft incline to afcribe the primitive arrange- 
 ment of the whole rather to the artift's choice and lofty 
 fimplicity, than want of compreheniion : nature had 
 endowed him with that rectitude of tafte which in the 
 individuum difcovers the ftamen of the genus, hence 
 his ftyle of defign was eflential with glimpfes of gran- 
 deur [f) and ideal beauty. Polygnotus, fays Ariftotle, 
 improves the model. His invention reached the con- 
 ception of undefcribed being, in the daemon Eurynomus ; 
 filled the chafm of defcription in Thefeus and Pirithous, 
 in Ariadne and Phoedra ; and improved its terrors in 
 the fpectre of Tityus ; whilft colour to afiift it, became 
 in his hand an organ of expreilion ; fuch was the pro- 
 phetic glow which ftill crimfoned the cheeks of his 
 CafTandra in the time of Lucian (g). The improve- 
 ments 
 
 (/) This I take to be the fenfe of MiytS-og here, which diftinguifhed him, ac- 
 cording to JElian, Var. Hift. iv. 3. from Dionyfius of Colophon. The word 
 TiAjioij in the fame paflage : x«» 'tv. toi? riXaoi; 'ttgyu^tro tot, '<*$\x, I translate : 
 he aimed at, he fought his praife in the rcprefentaiion of efi'enlial proportion ; which 
 leads to ideal beauty. 
 
 The xffiTTgf, ^Eifaf, ofioiaj; or the (SeXtioi/*? ji y.oA rpixi, w xa» T013T8?, n 
 p^fiflovK?, of Ariftotle, Poetic, c. 2. by which he diftinguiflies Polygnotus, Diony- 
 fius, Paufon, confirms the fenfe given to the paflage of iElian. 
 
 (cr) iroictiuv to IvigwSe;, oHzv t»i/ KoLtrtravSe xv Iv ta ^MrXV froiwe toi? AcXtpoi;. 
 
 Lucian: {ixove?. This, and what Paufanias tells of the colour of Eurynomus in 
 
 the 
 
16 FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 merits in painting which Pliny afcribes to him, of hav- 
 ing drefTed the heads of his females in variegated veils 
 and bandeaus^ and robed them in lucid drapery, of hav- 
 ing gently opened the lips, given a glimpfe of the teeth, 
 and leffened the former monotony of face, fuch im- 
 provements I fay were furely the moft trifling part of a 
 power to which the age of Apelles and that of Quin- 
 tilian paid equal homage: nor can it add much to our 
 efteem for him, to be told by Pliny that there exifted, 
 in the portico of Pompey, a picture of his with the figure 
 of a warrior in an attitude fo ambiguous as to make 
 it a cjueftion whether he were afcending or defcending. 
 Such a figure could only be the offspring of mental or 
 technic imbecility, even if it refembled the celebrated 
 one of a Diomede carrying off the palladium with one 
 and holding a fword in the other hand, on the intaglio 
 inferibed, I think, with the name of Diofcorides. 
 
 With this iimplicity of manner and materials the art 
 feems to have proceeded from Polygnotus, Aglaophon, 
 Phidias, Panasnus, Colotes, and Evenor, the father of 
 
 Parrhafius, 
 
 the fame pielnre, together with the coloured draperies mentioned by Pliny; makes 
 it evident, that the ' fimplex colour' afefibed by Quintiliun to Polygnotus and 
 Aglaophon, implies lei's afmgle colour, as fome have fuppofed, than that simplicity 
 always attendant on the infancy of painting, which leaves every colour unmixed 
 and crudely by itfelf. Indeed the Poecik (n ttoikiA-.? roa) which obtained its 
 name from his pictures, is alone a fufficierit proof of variety of colours. 
 9 
 
•FIRST LECTURE. 17 
 
 Parrhafius, during a period of more or lefe difputed 
 olympiads, to the appearance of Apollodorus the Athenian, 
 who applied the effential principles of Polygnotus to the 
 delineation of the fpecies, by invefligating the leading 
 forms that difcriminate the various clafies of human 
 qualities and paffions. The acutenefs of his tafle led 
 him to difcover that as all men were connected by one 
 general form, fo they were feparated each by fome 
 predominant power, which fixed character and bound them 
 to a claffc : that in proportion as this fpecific power 
 partook of individual peculiarities, the farther it was 
 removed from a {hare in that harmonious fyftem which 
 conftitutes nature, and confifts in a due balance of all its 
 parts : thence he drew his line of imitation, and perfo- 
 nified the central form of the clafs,, to which his object 
 belonged ; and to which the reft of its qualities admini- 
 ftered without being abforbed : agility was not fuffered 
 to deftroy firmnefs, folidity or weight ; nor ftrength and 
 weight agility ; elegance did not degenerate to effemi- 
 nacy, or grandeur fwell to hugenefs j fuch were his 
 principles of ftyle : his expreflion extended them to 
 the mind, if we may judge from the two fubjects 
 mentioned by Pliny, in which he feems to have per- 
 fonified the characters of devotion and impiety ; 
 that, in the adoring figure of a prieft, perhaps of 
 Chryfes, expanding his gratitude at the fhrine of the 
 
 d God 
 
i£ FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 God whofe arrows avenged his wrongs and reftored 
 his daughter : and this^ in the figure of Ajax wrecked, 
 and from the fea-fwept rock hurling defiance unto the 
 murky fky. As neither of thefe fubjeds can prefent 
 themfelves to a painter's mind without a contrail of the 
 mod awful and the moft terrific tones of colour, magic 
 of light and made, and unlimited command over the 
 tools of art, we may with Pliny and with Plutarch 
 confider Apollodorus as the firft afTertor of the pencil's 
 honours, as the firft colourift of his age, and the man 
 who opened the gates of art which the Heracleot Zeuxis 
 entered [h)+ 
 
 From the effential flyle of Polygnotus and the fpecific 
 difcrimination of Apollodorus, Zeuxis, by comparifon 
 
 of 
 
 ifi) Hie primus fpecies exprimere inftituit, Pliny, xxsv. 36, as [pedes in the 
 fenfe Harduin takes it, ' oris et habitus venultas/ cannot be refufed to Polygnotus, 
 and the artifts immediately preceding Apollodorus, it muft mean here the i'ubdivi- 
 fions of generic form ; the clafTes. 
 
 At this period we may with probability fix the invention of local colour, and 
 tone; which, though ftrictly fpeaking.it be neither the light nor the fhade, is regu- 
 lated by the medium which tinges both. This, Pliny calls ' fplendour.' To Apol- 
 lodorus Plutarch afcribes likewife the invention of tints, the mixtures of colour 
 and the gradations of fhade, if I conceive the paffage rightly : AttoAAoJWo? * 
 Zwyg afo? A»d£U7rwy vourt; sfcivguv tpSog&v xai UTrowuo-tv Xxia?. Plutarch, Bellone 
 an pace Ath. &c. 346. This was the element of the ancient Aeuoyn, that imper- 
 ceptible transition, which, without opacity, confufion or hardnefs, united local 
 colour, demitint, fhade and reflexes. 
 
FIRST LECTURE; i 9 
 
 -of what belonged to the genus and what to the clafs, 
 framed at lafl that ideal form, which in his opinion, 
 conftituted the fupreme degree of human beauty, or in 
 other words, embodied pofflbility, by uniting the va- 
 rious but homogeneous powers fcattered among many, in 
 one object, to one end. Such a fyftem, if it originated 
 in genius, was the conliderate refult of tafle refined by 
 the unremitting perfeverance with which he obferved, 
 confuked, compared, felected the congenial but 
 fcattered forms of nature. Our ideas are the offspring 
 of our fenfes, we are not more able to create the form 
 of a being, we have not feen, without retrofpect to one 
 we know, than we are able to create a new fenfe. He 
 whofe fancy has conceived an idea of the moft beautiful 
 form mull have compofed it from actual exiflence, and 
 he alone can comprehend what one degree of beauty 
 wants to become equal to another, and at lafl fuperla- 
 tive. He who thinks the pretty handfome, will think 
 the handfome a beauty, and fancy he has met an ideal 
 form in a merely handfome one, whilft he who has com- 
 pared beauty with beauty, will at lafl improve form 
 upon form .to a perfect image ; this was the method of 
 Zeuxis, and this he learnt from Homer, whofe mode of 
 ideal compofition, according to Quintiiian, he confi- 
 dered as his model. Each individual of Homer forms 
 , a clafs, expreffes and is circumfcribed by one quality of 
 
 n 2 heroic 
 
20 FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 heroic power, Achilles alone unites their various but con- 
 genial energies. The grace of Nireus, the dignity of 
 Agamemnon, the impetuofity of Heclor, the magnitude, 
 the fteady prowefs of the great, the velocity of the leffer 
 Ajax, the perfeverance of TJlyffes, the intrepidity of 
 Diomede, arc emanations of energy that reunite in 
 one fplendid centre fixed in Achilles. This ftandard of 
 the unifon of homogeneous powers exhibited mfuccejfive 
 a&ion by the poet, the painter, invigorated no doubt by 
 the contemplation of the works of Phidias, transferred 
 to his own art and fubftantiated by form y when he fe- 
 le&ed the congenial beauties of Croton to compofe 
 a perfect female. Like Phidias too, he appears to have 
 been lefs pathetic than fublime, and even in his female 
 forms more ample and auguft than elegant or captivat- 
 ing : his principle was epic, and this Arifiotle either 
 considered not or did not comprehend, when he refufes 
 him the expreffion of character in adtion and feature': 
 Jupiter on his throne encircled by the celeflial fynod, 
 and Helen, the arbitrefs of Troy, were no doubt the 
 principal elements of his ftyle; but he could trace the 
 mother's agitation in Alcmena, and in Penelope the pangs 
 of wedded love. 
 
 On thofe powers of his invention which Lucian re- 
 lates in the memoir infcribed with the name of Zeuxis, 
 
 I {hall 
 
FIRST LE CT UR E. 2r 
 
 I' mall referve my obfervations for a fitter moment. Of 
 Bis colour we know little, but it is not unreafonable to 
 fuppofe that it emulated the beauties and the grandeur 
 of his delign ; and that he extended light and made to 
 maffes, may be implied from his peculiar method of 
 painting monochroms on a black ground, adding the 
 lights in white (*). . 
 
 The correctnefs of Parrhaflus fucceeded to the genius 
 of Zeuxis. He eircumfcribed his ample ftyle, and by 
 fubtle examination of outline eflablifhed that ftandard 
 of divine and heroic form which railed him to the au^- 
 thority of a legiflator from whofe deeifions there was no 
 appeal. He gave to the divine and heroic character t in 
 painting, what Polycletus had given to the human in 
 fculpture, by his Doryphorus ; a canon of proportion* 
 Phidias had difcovered in the nod of the. Homeric Ju- 
 piter the- character iftic of majefty, inclination of the head,: 
 this hinted to him a higher elevation of the neck be- 
 hind, a bolder protrufion of the front, and the increafed 
 perpendicular of the profile. To this conception Parrha- 
 fius fixed a maximum ; that point from which defcends 
 the ultimate line of celeftial beauty, the angle within which. 
 
 moves 
 
 (i) ' Pinxit et monochromata ex albo.' Pliny, xxxv. Q... This Ariftotle^ 
 Poet, c, 6. calls Kivxoyg »(pin 9 
 
22 FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 moves what is inferior, beyond which what is porten- 
 tous. From the head conclude to the proportions of 
 the neck, the limbs, the extremities ; from the father 
 to the race of gods ; all, the fons of one, Jupiter ; 
 derived from one fource of tradition, Homer ; formed 
 by one artift, Phidias : on him meafured and decided by 
 Parrhafius. In the simplicity of this principle, adhered 
 to by the fucceeding periods, lies the uninterrupted pro- 
 grefs and the unattainable fuperiority of Grecian arL 
 With this prerogative, which evidently implies a pro- 
 found as well as general knowledge of the parts, how 
 are we to reconcile the criticifm paffed on the interme- 
 diate parts of his forms as inferior to their outline ? or 
 how could Winkelmann, in contradiction with his own 
 principles, explain it> by a want of anatomic know- 
 ledge (k) ? how is it poflible to fuppofe that he who 
 decided his outline with fuch intelligence that it ap- 
 peared ambient, and pronounced the parts that efcaped 
 the eye, mould have been uninformed of its contents ? 
 let us rather fuppofe that the defect afcribed to the inter- 
 mediate forms of his bodies, if fuch a fault there was, 
 coniifted in an affectation of fmoothnefs bordering on 
 
 iniipidity, 
 
 (k) In lineis extremis palraam adeptus ■ minor tamen videtur, fibi com- 
 
 paratus, in mediis eorporibus exprimendis. Pliny, xxxv. 10. Here we find the 
 inferiority of the middle parts merely relative to himfelf. Compared with himfelf, 
 Parrhafius was not all equal. 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 23. 
 
 inflpidity, in fomething effeminately voluptuous, which 
 abforbed their character and the idea of elaftic vigour ; 
 and this Euphranor feems to have hinted at, when in 
 comparing his own Thefeus with that of Parrhafius, he 
 pronounced the Ionian's to have fed on rofes, his own 
 on flefh '/) : emafculate foftnefs was not in his opinion,, 
 the proper companion of the contour, or flowery frefh- 
 nefs of colour an adequate fubftitute for the fterner tints 
 of heroic form. 
 
 None of the ancients feem to have united or wifhed 
 to combine as man and artift, more qualities feemingly 
 incompatible than Parrhafius. — The volubility and 
 oftentatious infolence of an Afiatic with Athenian fim- 
 plicity and urbanity of manners ; punctilious cor- 
 re£tnefs with blandifhments of handling and luxurious 
 colour, and with fublime and pathetic conception, a 
 fancy libidinoufly fportive (m). If he was not the 
 
 inventor, 
 
 (7) Thefeus, in quo dixit, eumdem. apud Parrliafium rofa paftum effe, fumn 
 ycio came. Plin. xxxv. 11. 
 
 (m) The epithet which he gave to himfelf of A|3fo<i , iaiTosythe dainty,, the ele- 
 gant, and the epigram he is fuid to have compofed on himfelf, are known : See 
 Athenseus, 1. xii. He wore fays JElian, Var. Hift. ix. n. a purple robe and a 
 • golden garland ; he bore a ftafF wound round with tendrils of gold, and his fandals 
 ■were tied to his feet and ancles with golden ftraps. Of his eafy (implicit v we rrrey 
 judge from his dialogue with Socrates in Xenophon ; «7ro,an) y uo«u«Twv, 1- iii- Of 
 his libidinous fancy, befide what Pliny fays, from his Archigallus, - and the Meleci- 
 ger andAtaianta mentioned by Suetonius in-Tiberio^ c. 44.. 
 
-24 7IRST LECTU. RE. 
 
 inventor, he furely was the greater!, matter of allegory, 
 iiippofing that he really embodied by figns univerfally 
 icompreh ended that image of the Athenian AHMOS or 
 people, which was to combine and to exprefs at once its 
 contradictory qualities. Perhaps he traced the jarring 
 branches to their fource, the aboriginal moral principle 
 of the Athenian character, which he made intuitive. 
 This fuppofition alone can fhed a dawn of poflibility on 
 what elfe appears impoilible. We know that the per- 
 sonification of the Athenian Ajjjko£, was an objecl of 
 fculpture, and that its images by Lyfon acid Leochares {n) 
 were publicly fet up^ but there is no clue to decide 
 whether they preceded or followed the conceit of 
 Parrhafius. It was repeated by Ariftolaus, the fon of 
 is. 
 
 The decided forms of Parrhafius, Timanthes the 
 Cythnian, his competitor for fame, attempted to infpire 
 with mind and to animate with paflions. No picture 
 of antiquity is more celebrated than his immolation of 
 Iphigenia in Aulis, painted, as Quintilian informs us, 
 in conteft with Colotes of Teos^ a painter and fculptor 
 
 from 
 
 (») In the portico of the Pyraeeus by Leochares : in tbe hall of the rive-hun- 
 dred, by Lyfon: in the back portico of the Ceramicus there was a picture of The- 
 feus, of Democracy and the Demos, by Euphranor. Paufan. Attic, i. 3. Arifto- 
 laus, according to Pliny was a painter, ' e feveriflimis.' 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 25 
 
 from the fchool of Phidias ; crowned with vi&ory at 
 its rival exhibition, and fince, the theme of unlimited 
 praife from the orators and hiflorians of antiquity, 
 though the folidity or juflice of their praife relatively to 
 our art,, has been queftioned by modern criticifm. On 
 this fubject., wnich not only contains the gradations of 
 affection from the moil: remote to the clofeft link of 
 humanity, but appears to me to ofler the faired fpeci- 
 men of the limits which the theory of the ancients had 
 prefcribed to the expreffion of pathos, I think it my 
 duty the more circumftantially to expatiate, as the 
 cenfure paffed on the method of Timanthes, has been 
 fanctioned by the higher!: authority in matters of art, 
 that of your late Prefident, in his eighth difcourfe at 
 the delivery of the academic prize for the beft pi&ure 
 painted from this very fubjecl:. 
 
 How did Timanthes treat it ? Iphigenia, the victim 
 ordained by the oracle, to be offered for the fuccefs 
 of the Greek expedition againft Troy, was reprefented 
 {landing ready for immolation at the altar, the prieft, 
 the inftruments of death at her fide $ and around her, 
 an affembly of the moll important agents or witneffes 
 of the terrible folemnity, from Ulyffes, who had dif- 
 engaged her from the embraces of her mother at My cense, 
 to her neareft male relations, her uncle Menelaus, and 
 
 -e her 
 
26 FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 her own father, Agamemnon. Timanthes, fay Pliny 
 and Quintilian with furprifing fimilarity of phrafe,. 
 when, in gradation he had confumed every image of 
 grief within the reach of art, from the unhappy prielt, 
 to the confcious remorfe of Ulyfles, and from that to the 
 pangs of kindred lympathy in Menelaus, unable to 
 exprefs with dignity the father's woe, threw a veil, or 
 
 if you will, a mantle over his face. This mantle, the 
 
 pivot of objection, indifcriminately borrowed, as might 
 eahly be fuppofed, by ail the concurrents for the prize, 
 gave rife to the following feries of criticifms : 
 
 c Before I conclude, I cannot avoid making one ob- 
 fervation on the pictures now before us. I have ob- 
 ferved, that every candidate has copied the celebrated 
 invention of Timanthes in hiding the face of Aga- 
 memnon in his mantle ; indeed fuch lavifh encomiums 
 have been beftowed on this thought, and that too by 
 men of the higheft character in critical knowledge, — 
 Cicero, Quintilian, Valerius Maximus, and Pliny,— 
 and have been fince re-echoed by almoft every modern 
 that has written on the Arts, that your adopting it 
 can neither be wondered at, nor blamed. It appears 
 now to be fo much connected with the fubject, that 
 the fpectator would perhaps be difappointed in not 
 finding united in the picture what he always united 
 
 «in 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 27 
 
 in his mind, and confidered as indifpenfably belong- 
 ing to the fubjed:. But it may be obferved, that 
 thofe who praife this circumftance were not painters. 
 They ufe it as an illuftration only of their own art; 
 it ferved their purpofe, and it was certainly not their 
 bufinefs to enter into the objections that lie againft it 
 in another Art. I fear we have but very fcanty means 
 of exciting thofe powers over the imagination, which 
 make fo very considerable and refined a part of poetry. 
 It is a doubt with me, whether we mould even make 
 the attempt. The chief, if not the only occafion 
 which the painter has for this artifice, is, when the 
 fubject is improper to be more fully reprefented, 
 either for the fake of decency, or to avoid what 
 would be difagreeable to be feen ; and this is not to 
 raife or increafe the paflions, which is the reafon that 
 is given for this practice, but on the contrary to di- 
 minim their effect.' 
 
 ' Mr. Falconet has obferved, in a note on this paffage 
 in his tranflation of Pliny, that the circumftance of 
 covering the face of Agamemnon was probably not in 
 confequence of any fine imagination of the painter, — - 
 which he confiders as a difcovery of the critics, — • 
 but merely copied from the defcription of the facri- 
 fice, as it is found in Euripides, 
 
 e 2 * The 
 
28 FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 * The words from which the picture is fuppofed to be 
 
 * taken, are thefe : Agamemnon faw Iphigenia advance 
 
 * towards the fatal altar ; he groaned, he turned afide 
 
 * his head r he Jhed tears, and covered his face with 
 
 * his robe. 
 
 ' Falconet does not at all acquiefce in the praife that 
 
 * is bellowed on Timanthes ; not only becaufe it is not 
 '• his invention, but becaufe he thinks meanly of this 
 
 * trick of concealing, except in inftances of blood, 
 
 * where the objects would be too horrible to be feen j 
 e but, fays he, " in an afflicted Father, in a King, in 
 
 * Agamemnon, you, who are a painter, conceal from 
 
 * me the moll interefting circumflance, and then put 
 
 * me off with fophiflry and a veil. You are (he adds) 
 
 * a feeble painter, without refources : you do not know 
 ' even thole of your Art: I care not what veil it is? 
 
 * whether clofed hands, arms raifed, or any other 
 1 acHon that conceals from me the countenance of the 
 r Hero. You think of veiling Agamemnon; you have 
 5 unveiled your own ignorance." 
 
 * To what Falconet has faid, we may add, that fup- 
 
 * poling this method of leaving the expreflion of grief 
 
 * to the imagination, to be, as it was thought to be, 
 
 s the invention of the painter, and that it deferves all 
 
 * * the 
 
 me 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 29 
 
 the praife that has been given it, ftill it is a trick that 
 will ferve but once ; whoever does it a fecond time, 
 will not only want novelty, but be juftly fufpecled of 
 ufing artifice to evade difficulties. If difficulties over- 
 come make a great part of the merit of Art, difficul- 
 ties evaded can deferve but little commendation.' 
 
 To this firing of animadverfions, of which what 
 belongs to the Englifh critic, excels the flippant 
 petulance of the Frenchman's fophiitry as much as 
 his infant Hercules in real magnitude the ridiculous 
 ColofTus of Peter the great (at), I fubjoin with diffidence 
 the following obfervations : 
 
 The fubjecl of Timanthes was the immolation of 
 Iphigenia ; Iphigenia was the principal figure, and her 
 form, her resignation, or her anguifh the painter's prin- 
 cipal tafk ; the figure of Agamemnon, however impor- 
 tant, is merely accefTory, and no more necenary to 
 make the fubjecl: a completely tragic one, than that of 
 Clytemneftra the mother, no more than that of Priam, 
 to imprefs us with fympathy at the death of Polyxena. 
 It is therefore a mifnomer of the French critic, to call 
 Agamemnon * the hero' of the fubjecl:. 
 
 Neither the French nor the Englifh critic appear to 
 me to have comprehended the real motive of Timanthes, 
 
 as 
 
 (?) The Equeftrian ftatue of Peter the Great, at St. Peterfburgh, by Mr. Falconet 
 
3 o FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 as contained in the words c decere, pro dignitate, and 
 digne, in the paffages of Tully, Quintilian, and 
 Pliny (o) ; they afcribe to impotence what was the for- 
 bearance of judgment; Timanthes felt like a father: 
 he did not hide the face of Agamemnon, becaufe it was 
 beyond the power of his art, not becaufe it was beyond 
 the gojfibility-, but becaufe it was beyond the dignity of 
 
 expreiTion, 
 
 (o) Cicero Orators, 73, feq.— In alioque ponatur, aliudque totum lit, utrum 
 decere an oportere dicas; oportere enim, perfeCtionem declarat officii, quo et fcm- 
 ■per utendum eft, et omnibus : decere, quafi aptum efle, confentaneumque tempori 
 & perfonce ; quod cum in factis faspifiime, turn in didtis valet, in vultu denique, 
 &, geftu, et incefiu. Contraque item dede cere. Quod fi poeta fugit, ut maximum 
 vitium, qui peccat, etiam, cum probam orationem affingit improbo, ftultove fa-y . 
 pientis: fi denique piftor ille vidit, cum immolanda Iphigenia triftis Calchas eflet, 
 moeftior Ulyffes, moereret Menelaus, obvolverdum caput Agamemnonis efle, 
 quoniam fummum ilium lucrum penicillo non poflet imitari : fi denique hiftrio, 
 quid deceat quterit: quid faciendum oratori putemus ? 
 
 M. P. Quintilianus, 1. ii. c. 14. — Operienda font qua;dam, five oftendi non 
 debent, five exprimi pro diguitate non poflunt: ut fecit Timanthes, ut opinor, 
 Cithnius, in ea tabula qua Coloten tejum vicit, Nam cum in Iphigeniae immola- 
 tione pinxiflet triftem Calchantem, triftiorem Ulyflem, addidiffet Menelao quem 
 fummum poterat ars efficere Moerorem, confumptis afleclibus, non reperiens quo 
 dig?il modo Patris vultum poffit exprimere, velavit ejus caput, et foi cuique 
 aiiimo dedit seftimandum. 
 
 It is evident to the flighted; confideration, that both Cicero and Quintilian lofe 
 fight of their premifes, and contradict themfelves in the motive they afcribe to 
 Timanthes. Their want of acquaintance with the nature of plaftic expreflion made 
 them imagine the face of Agamemnon beyond the power of the artift. They were 
 not aware that by making him wafte expreflion on inferior actors at the expence of 
 a principal one, they call him an improvident fpendthrift and not a wife 
 ceconomift. 
 
 From Valerius Maximus, who calls the fubjecl; ' Lucluofum immolate Iphigeniae 
 facrificium' inftead of immolanda, little can be expected to the purpofe. Pliny, 
 with the dignl of Quintilian has the fame confufion of motive, 
 
FIRST LECTURE, $1 
 
 expreffion, becaufe the infpiring feature of paternal af- 
 fection at that moment, and the adtion which of neceffity 
 muft have accompanied it, would either have deftroyed 
 the grandeur of the charader and the folemnity of the 
 feene, or fubjecled the painter with the majority of his 
 judges to the imputation of infenfibiliy. He muft 
 either have reprefented him in tears, or convulfed at the 
 flafh of the raifed dagger, forgetting the chief in the 
 father, or {hewn him abforbed by defpair, and in that 
 ftate of ftupefaction, which levels all features and 
 deadens expreffion ; he might indeed have chofen a 
 fourth mode, he might have exhibited him fainting and 
 palried in the arms of his attendants, and by this con- 
 fufion of male and female \chara&:er, merited the ap- 
 plaufe of every theatre at Paris. But Timanthes had 
 too true a fenfe of nature to expofe a father's feelings or 
 to tear a paffion to rags; nor had the Greeks yet learnt 
 of Rome to fteel the face. If he made Agamemnon 
 bear his calamity as a man, he made him alfo feel it as 
 a man. It became the leader of Greece to fanction 
 the ceremony with his prefence, it did not become the 
 father to fee his daughter beneath the dagger's point: 
 the fame nature that threw a real mantle over the 
 face of Timoleon, when he affifted at the punimment 
 of his brother, taught Timanthes to throw an imaginary 
 
 one 
 
3 2 - FIRST LECTUR E. 
 
 one over the face of Agamemnon; neither height nor 
 depth, propriety of expreffion was his aim. 
 
 The critic grants that the expedient of Timanthes . 
 may be allowed in l inftances of blood,' the fupported 
 afpedt of which would change a fcene of commiferation 
 and terror into one of abomination and horror, which 
 ought for ever to be excluded from the province of art, 
 of poetry as well as painting; and would not the face of 
 Agamemnon, uncovered, have had this effect? was not 
 the fcene he muft have witnefled a fcene of blood? and 
 whofe blood was to be fhed ? that of his own daughter — ■ 
 and what daughter ? young, beautiful, helplefs, inno- 
 cent, refigned — the very idea of refignation in fuch a 
 vidtim, mufl either have adted irrefiftibly to procure her 
 relief, or thrown a veil over a father's face. A man who 
 is determined to fport wit at the expence of heart 
 alone could call fuch an expedient ridiculous — l as ri- 
 
 * diculous,' Mr. Falconet continues ' as a poet would be, 
 
 * who in a pathetic fituation, inftead of fatisfying my ex- 
 
 * pe&ation, to rid himfelf of the bufinefs, mould fay 5 
 ' that the fentiments of his hero are fo far above what- 
 
 * ever can be faid on the occafion, that he fhall fay 
 4 nothing.' And has not Homer, though he does not 
 tell us this, acted upon a fimilar principle ? has he not, 
 
 when 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 35 
 
 when UlyiTes addreffes Ajax in Hades, in the moft 
 pathetic and conciliatory manner, inflead of furnifhing 
 him with an anfwer, made him remain in indignant 
 filence during the addrefs, then turn his ftep and 
 ftalk away ? has not the univerfal voice of genuine 
 criticifm with Longinus told us, and if it had not, 
 would not Nature's own voice tell us, that that iilence 
 was characteristic, that it precluded, - included, and 
 foaring above all anfwer, configned UlyfTes for ever to a 
 fenfe of inferiority ? Nor is it necelTary to render fuch 
 criticifm contemptible to mention the filence of Dido in 
 Virgil, or the Niobe of iEfchylus, who was introduced 
 veiled, and continued mute during her prefence on the 
 ftage. 
 
 But in hiding Agamemnon's face Timanthes lofes the 
 'honour of invention, as he is merely the imitator of 
 Euripides, who did it before him [p) ? I am not pre- 
 pared 
 
 (p) It is obferved by an ingenious Critic, that in the tragedy of Euripides, 
 the proceffion is defcribed, and upon Iphigenia's looking back on her father, he 
 groans, and hides his face to conceal his tears; whilft the picture gives the moment 
 that precedes the facrifice, and the hiding has a different object and arifes from 
 another impreffion. 
 
 ■ wf S iTuhv Ayocptfww ava% 
 Itri <rtpxyx{ rfip^sirai/ ti? d\<ro; xoj»jv 
 uvirtvxfy. K«f*7r«Au/ rps4 /a ? **?* 
 ,A«xfu« TTgonyev. lyy.onm imrXov irpoStot- 
 
 F 
 
34 FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 pared with chronologic proofs to decide whether Euri- 
 pides or Timanthes, who were contemporaries, about the 
 period of the Peloponnelian war, fell firft on this expe- 
 dient; though the filence of Pliny and Quintilian on 
 that head, feems to be in favour of the painter, neither 
 of whom could be ignorant of the celebrated drama of 
 Euripides, and would not willingly have fuffered the 
 honour of this mafter-ftroke of an art they were fo much 
 better acquainted with than painting, to be transferred 
 to another from its real author, had the poet's claim 
 been prior : nor mail I urge that the picture of Timan- 
 thes was crowned with victory by thofe who were in 
 daily habits of aflifting at the dramas of Euripides, 
 without having their verdict impeached by Colotes or 
 his friends, who would not have failed to avail them- 
 felves of lo flagrant a proof of inferiority as the want 
 of invention, in the work of his rival: — I mail onlv 
 afk, what is invention? if it be the combination of 
 the moll important moment of a fact with the moft 
 varied effects of the reigning paflion on the characters 
 introduced — the invention of Timanthes confifted in 
 mewing, by the gradation of that paflion in the faces of 
 the afliftant mourners, the reafon why that of the prin- 
 cipal one, was hid. This he performed, and this the 
 poet, whether prior or fubfequent, did not and could 
 not do, but left it with a filent appeal to our own mind 
 3 and 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 3S 
 
 and fancy. The cart, of Agamemnon's features might 
 be gueffed at from thofe of his brother Menelaus, which 
 were fhewn, but the degree of fympathy which pal- 
 pitated in the breaft and agitated the features of the 
 uncle, without deftroying dignity, fixed the limits of 
 pathos; whilfr. the pangs that rent the heart and con- 
 vulfed or abforbed the features of the father, the prey 
 of momentary defpair and horrour, overleapt thofe limits, 
 and could only have fhocked us by being admitted to 
 our eye. ~t~~ 
 
 In prefuming to differ on the propriety of this mode 
 of exprefiion in the picture of Timanthes from the 
 refpe&able authority I have quoted, I am far from a 
 wiih to invalidate the equally pertinent and acute re- 
 marks made on the danger of its imitation, though I 
 am decidedly of opinion that it is ftrictly within the 
 limits of our art. If it be a ' trick' it is certainly one 
 that ■ has ferved more than once.' — We find it adopted 
 to exprefs the grief of a beautiful female figure on a 
 bafTorelievo formerly in the palace Valle at Rome, and 
 preferved in the Admiranda of S. Bartoli ; it is ufed, 
 though with his own originality, by Michael Angelo in 
 the figure of Abijam to mark unutterable woe. Raphael, 
 to {hew that he thought it the beft poffible mode of ex- 
 prefiing remorfe and the deepeft fenfe of repentance, 
 
 f 2 borrowed 
 
c6 FIRSTLECTURE. 
 
 borrowed it in the expulsion from Paradife, without any 
 alteration, from Mafaccio; and like him turned Adam 
 out with both his hands before his face. And how has 
 he reprefented Mofes at the burning bum, to exprefs 
 the aftonimed awe of human in the vifible prefence of 
 divine nature? by a double repetition of the fame ex- 
 pedient; once in the ceiling of a Stanza, and again in 
 the loggia of the Vatican, with both his hands before 
 his face, or rather with his face immerfed in his 
 hands. As we cannot fufped: in the mailer of ex- 
 prefTion the unworthy motive of making ufe of this 
 mode merely to avoid a difficulty, or to denote the in- 
 fupportable fplendour of the vifion, which was fo far 
 from being the cafe, that according to the facred re- 
 cord, Mofes flept out of his way to examine the inef- 
 fectual blaze: we muft conclude that nature herfelf 
 dictated to him. this method as fuperior to all he could 
 exprefs by features ; and that he recognized the fame 
 dictate in Mafaccio, who can no more be fuppofed to 
 have been acquainted with the precedent of Timanthes, 
 than Shakfpeare with that of Euripides, when he made 
 Macduff draw his hat over his face. 
 
 Mafaccio and Raphael proceeded on the principle, 
 Gherard LairefTe copied only the image of Timanthes, 
 and has perhaps incurred by it the charge of what Lon- 
 
 ginus 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 37 
 
 ginus calls parenthyrfos, in the ill-timed application or 
 fupreme pathos, to an inadequate call. Agamemnon is 
 introduced covering his face with his mantle, at the 
 death of Polyxena, the captive daughter of Priam, fa- 
 crificed to the manes of Achilles, her betrothed lover, 
 treacherouily flain in the midft of the nuptial ceremony, 
 by her brother Paris. The death of Polyxena, whofe 
 charms had been productive of the greater! difafter that 
 could befal the Grecian army, could not perhaps pro- 
 voke in its leader emotions iimilar to thofe which he 
 felt at that of his own daughter: it muft however be 
 owned that the figure of the chief is equally dignified 
 and pathetic ; and that, by the introdu&ion of the 
 fpe&re of Achilles at the immolation of the damfel to his 
 manes, the artifl's fancy has in fome degree atoned for 
 the want of difcrimination in the profeiTor. 
 
 Such were the artifta, who according to the mofl cod- 
 refponding data formed the ftyle of that fecond period, 
 which fixed the end and eftablifhed the limits of art, on 
 whofe firm bafis arofe the luxuriant fabric of the third 
 or the period of refinement, which added grace and 
 polifh to the forms, it could not furpafs ; amenity or 
 truth to the tones, it could not invigourate ; magic and 
 imperceptible transition to the abrupt division of mafles ; 
 gave depth and roundnefs to compojktion, at the breaft 
 
 of 
 
i8 FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 j 
 
 of nature herfelf caught the paffions as they rofe, and 
 familiarized expreffion : The period of Apelles, Proto- 
 genes, Ariftides, Euphranor, Paufias, the pupils of 
 Pamphilus and his mafter Eupompus, whofe authority 
 obtained what had not been granted to his great prede- 
 cefibr and countryman Polycletus, the new eftablifhment 
 of the fchool of S icy on {q). 
 
 The leading principle of Eupompus may be traced in 
 the advice which he gave to Lyfippus, (as preferved by 
 Pliny) whom, when confulted on a ftandard of imita- 
 tion, he directed to the contemplation of human variety 
 in the multitude of the characters that were palling by, 
 with the axiom, ' that nature herfelf was to be imitated, 
 not an artift.' Excellence, faid Eupompus, is thy aim, 
 fuch excellence as that of Phidias and Polycletus ; but 
 it is not obtained by the fervile imitation of works, how- 
 ever perfect, without mounting to the principle which 
 raifed them to that height ; that principle apply to thy 
 purpofe, there fix thy aim. He who with the fame 
 freedom of accefs to nature as another man, contents 
 himfelf to approach her only through his medium, has 
 refigned his birth-right and originality together ; his 
 mailer's manner will be his ftyle. If Phidias and Poly- 
 cletus 
 
 (a) Pliny, 1. xxxv. c. 18, 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 3 g 
 
 cletus have difcovered the fubftance and eftablifhed the 
 permanent principle of the human frame, they have not 
 exhausted the variety of human appearances and human 
 character ; if they have abftracted the forms of majefty 
 and thofe of beauty, nature compared with their works 
 will point out a grace that has been left for thee; if they 
 have pre-occupied man as he is, be thine to give him 
 that air with which he actually appears (r). 
 
 Such was the advice of Eupompus: lefs lofty lefs am- 
 bitious than what the departed epoch of genius would 
 have dictated, but better fuited to the times, and better 
 to his pupil's mind. When the fpirit of liberty forfook 
 the public, grandeur had left the private mind of Greece : 
 fubdued by Philip, the gods of Athens and Olympia had 
 migrated to Pella, and Alexander was become the 
 reprefentative of Jupiter ; ftill thofe who had loft the 
 fubftance fondled the fhadow of liberty ; rhetoric mi- 
 micked the thunders of oratory, fophiftry and meta- 
 phyftc debate that philofophy, which had guided life, 
 and the grand tafte that had dictated to art the monu- 
 mental 
 
 (r) Lyfippum Sicyonium— audendi rationem cepifle pi&oris Eupompi refponfo. 
 Eum enim interrogatum, quem fequeretur antecedentium, dixiffe demonflrata ho- 
 . minum multitudine, naturam ipfam imitandam effe, non artificem. Non habet 
 Lalinum nomen fymmetria, quam diligentiflime cuftodivit, nova intaclaque ratione 
 quadratas veterum daturas permutando : Vulgoque dicebat, ab illis fa&os, quales 
 client, homines: a k, quales viderentur effe. Plin. xxxiv. 8, 
 
4 o FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 mental Ryle, inverted gods with human form and raifed 
 individuals to heroes, began to give way to refinements 
 in appreciating the degrees of elegance or of refem- 
 blance in imitation : the advice of Eupompus however, 
 far from implying the abolition of the old fyftem, re- 
 called his pupil to the examen of the great principle on 
 which it had efrablifhed its excellence, and to the re- 
 fources which its inexhauftible variety offered for new 
 combinations. 
 
 That Lyfippus confidered it in that light, his devo- 
 tion to the Doryphorus of Polycletus, known even to 
 Tully, fufficiently proved. That figure which com- 
 prifed the pure proportions of juvenile vigour, furnifhed 
 the readieft application for thofe additional refinements 
 of variety, character, and flefhy charms, that made the 
 bafe of his invention : its fymmetry directing his re- 
 fearches amid the inlidious play of accidental charms, 
 and the claims of inherent grace, never fuffered imita- 
 tion to deviate into incorrectnefs ; whilft its fquarenefs 
 and elemental beauty melted in more familiar forms on 
 the eye, and from an object of cold admiration became 
 the glowing one of fympathy. Such was the method 
 formed by Lyfippus on the advice of Eupompus, more 
 perplexed than explained by the fuperficial extract and 
 the rapid phrafe of Pliny. 
 
 From 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 41 
 
 From the ftatuary's we may form our idea of the 
 painter's method. The doclrine of Eupompus was 
 adopted by Pamphilus the Amphipolitan, the moft 
 fcientific artift of his time, and by him communicated 
 to Apelles of Cos, or as Lucian will have it, of 
 Ephefus *, his pupil ; in whom, if we believe tradition, 
 nature exhibited, once, a fpecimen what her union with 
 education and circumftances could produce. The name 
 of Apelles in Pliny is the fynonime of unrivalled and 
 unattainable excellence, but the enumeration of his 
 works points out the modification which we ought to 
 apply to that fuperiority ; it neither comprifes exclusive 
 fublimity of invention, the moft acute difcrimination of 
 character, the wideft fphere of comprehension, the moft 
 judicious and beft balanced compofition, nor the deeped 
 pathos of expreilion : his great prerogative confifted 
 more in the unifon than in the extent of his powers ; he 
 knew better what he could do, what ought to be done, 
 at what point he could arrive, and what lay beyond his 
 reach than any other artift. Grace of conception and 
 refinement of tafte were his elements, and went hand in 
 hand with grace of execution and tafte in flnifh, pow- 
 erful 
 
 * MocXXov S\ 'ArsAAtK o ItpuTio; ttccXcci recurs wgouXotBt tyiu ttKona' K«j yza «u 
 >c«t sure; J'i«j3AnS , £if TTjoy U.ToXey.<xioV' 
 
 A0VY.l»VV 7T££ i TOV (*■• 'f . H. T. A. 
 
 G 
 
4 ; FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 erful and feldom poiTeffed ftngly, irrefiftible when united: 
 that he built both on the firm bafis of the former fyftem,. 
 not on its fubverflon, his well known conteft of lines 
 with Protogenes, not a legendary tale, but a well 
 attefted fact, irrefragably proves: what thofe lines were,, 
 drawn with nearly miraculous iubtlety in different co- 
 lours, one upon the other or rather within each other, 
 it would be equally unavailing and ufelefs, to inquire : 
 but the corollaries we may deduce from the conteft, are 
 obvioufly thefe : that the fchools of Greece recognized- 
 all one elemental principle ; that acutenefs and fidelity of 
 eye and obedience of hand form precision, precifion pro- 
 portion, proportion, beauty; that it is the l little more 
 1 or lefs,' imperceptible to vulgar eyes, which confti- 
 tutes grace and eftablifhes the fuperiority of one artift 
 over another; that the knowledge of the degrees of 
 things, or tafte, prefuppofes a perfect knowledge of the 
 things themfelves ; that colour, grace, and tafte are 
 ornaments not fubftitutes of form, expreiTion and cha- 
 racter, and when they ufurp that title, degenerate into- 
 fplendid faults, 
 
 Such were the principles on which Apelles formed his 
 Venus, or rather the perfonification of the birth- day of 
 Love, the wonder of art, the defpair of artifts ; whofe 
 outline baffled every attempt at emendation, whilft 
 
 imitation 
 
FIRST LECTURE, 45 
 
 imitation fhrunk from the purity, the force, the bril- 
 liancy, the evanefcent gradations of her tints (s). 
 
 The refinements of the art were by Ariftides of Thebes 
 applied to the mind. The paflions which hiftory had 
 organized for Timanthes, Ariftides caught as they rofe 
 from the breaft or efcaped from the lips of nature her- 
 felf ; his volume was man, his fcene fociety : he drew 
 the fubtle difcriminations of mind in every ftage of life, 
 the whifpers, the fimple cry of pailion and its moft 
 complex accents. Such, as hiftory informs us, was the 
 fuppliant whofe voice you feemed to hear, fuch his lick 
 man's half extinguifhed eye and labouring breaft, fuch 
 the fifter dying for her brother, and above all the half- 
 flain mother fhuddering left the eager babe fhould fuck 
 the blood from her pallied nipple. This pidture was 
 probably at Thebes, when Alexander lacked that town ; 
 what his feelings were when he faw it, we may guefs 
 from his fending it to Pella. Its expreilion, poifed be- 
 tween the anguilh of maternal affection and the pangs 
 of death, gives to commiferation an image, which neither 
 the infant piteoufly carefting his llain mother in the 
 group of Epigonus (t), nor theabforbed feature of the 
 
 Niobe, 
 
 (s) .Apelies was probably tlie inventor of what artifts call glaring. See Rey- 
 nolds on Du Frefnoy, note 37, vol iii. 
 (t) In-matri interfectae infante mifeiabiliter blandiente. Vim. I. xxxiv. c. 9. 
 
 G 2 
 
44- FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 Niobe, nor the ftruggle of the Laocoon, excite. Timan- 
 thes had marked the limits that difcriminate terrour from 
 the excefs of horrour; Ariftides drew the line that fepa- 
 rates it from difgufl. His fubjecl: is one of thofe that 
 touch the ambiguous line of a fqueamiih fenfe. — Tafte 
 and fmell, as fources of tragic emotion, and in confe- 
 quence of their power, commanding gefture, feem 
 fcarcely admiilible in art or on the theatre, becaufe their 
 extremes are nearer allied to difguft, and loathfome or 
 riftble ideas, than to terrour. The prophetic trance of 
 Caffandra, who fcents the prepared murder of Agamem- 
 non at the threfhold of the ominous hall; the defperate 
 moan of Macbeth' s queen on feeing the vilionary fpot 
 ftill uneffaced infecl her hand — are images matched 
 from the lap of terrour — but foon would ceafe to be (o i 
 were the artift or the adtrefs to inforce the dreadful hint 
 with indifcreet exprellion or gefture. This, completely 
 underftood by Ariftides, was as completely miffed by his 
 imitators, Raphael (v) in the Morbetto^ and Pouffin in his 
 plague of the Philiftines. In the group of Ariftides 
 our fympathy is immediately interefted by the mother, 
 ftill alive though mortally wounded, helplefs, beauti- 
 ful, and forgetting herfelf in the anguifh for her child, 
 whofe lituation ftill fuffers hope to mingle with our 
 fears ; he is only approaching the nipple of the mother. 
 
 In 
 
 (v) A defign of Raphael^ reprefenting the lues of the Trojans in Creta, known 
 hy Ihe print of Marc Antonio Raymondi. 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 45 
 
 In the group of Raphael, the mother dead of the plague, 
 herfelf an object, of apathy, becomes one of difguft, by 
 the action of the man, who bending over her, at his ut- 
 moft reacli of arm, with one hand removes the child 
 from the breaft, whilft the other, applied to his noftrils, 
 bars the effluvia of death. Our feelings alienated 
 from the mother, come too late even for the child, who 
 by his languor already betrays the mortal fymptoms of 
 the poifon he imbibed at the parent corpfe. It is curious 
 to obferve the permutation of ideas which takes place, 
 as imitation is removed from the fources of nature : 
 Pouflin, not content with adopting the group of Raphael, 
 once more repeats the loathfome attitude in the fame 
 fcene; he forgot, in his eagernefs to render the idea of 
 contagion frill more intuitive, that he was averting our 
 feelings with ideas of difguft. 
 
 The refinements of expreflion were carried frill farther 
 by the difciple of Ariftides, Euphranor the Ifthmian, 
 who excelled equally as painter and ftatuary, if we may 
 form our judgment from the Thefeus he oppofed to that 
 of Parrhafius and the bronze figure of Alexander Paris, 
 in whom, fays Pliny (w), the umpire of the goddeffes, 
 the lover of Helen, and yet the murderer of Achilles 
 
 might 
 
 (w) Reynold's Dffc. V. vol. i. p. 1<20. Euphranoris Alexander Paris eft: in quo 
 laudator quod omnia fimul hiteBignnta-r, judex dearmn, amator I Ideate, et t&± 
 menAchillis interfector. Plin. l.xxxiv. 8. 
 
46 FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 might be traced. This account, which is evidently a 
 quotation of Pliny's and not the affumed verdict of a 
 connoiffeur, has been tranflated with an emphafis it 
 does not admit of, to prove that an attempt to exprefs 
 different qualities or pafiions at once in the fame object, 
 muft naturally tend to obliterate the effect of each. 
 
 * Pliny, fays our critic, obferves, that in a ftatue of 
 ' Paris by Euphranor you might difcover at the fame 
 
 * time, three different characters: the dignity of a 
 
 * judge of the goddeffes, the lover of Helen and the 
 c conqueror of Achilles. A ftatue in which you en- 
 1 deavour to unite (lately dignity, youthful elegance 
 £ and ftern valour, muft furely poftefs none of thefe to 
 
 * any eminent degree.' The paraphrafe, it is firft to 
 ■be obferved, lends itfelf the mixtures to Pliny it dif- 
 appoves of, we look in vain for the coalition of ' ftately 
 
 * dignity, ftern valour, and youthful elegance' in the 
 Paris, he defcribes : the murderer of Achilles was 
 •not his conqueror. But may not dignity, elegance, and 
 valour, or any other legitimate qualities, be viiible at once 
 in a figure without deftroying the primary feature of 
 its character, or impairing its expreilion? Let us appeal to 
 the Apollo. Is he not a figure of character and expreilion, 
 and does he not pofTefs all three in a fupreme degree? 
 will it imply mediocrity of conception or confufion of 
 character, if we were to fay that his countenance, atti- 
 tude, and form combines divine majefty, enchanting 
 
 grace. 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 47 
 
 grace, and lofty indignation? yet not all three, one 
 ideal whole irradiated the mind of the artift who con- 
 ceived the divine femblance. He gave, no doubt, the 
 preference of expreflion to the action in which the god 
 is engaged, or rather, from the accomplifhment of which 
 he recedes with lofty and contemptuous eafe. — This was 
 the firft impreflion he meant to make upon us ; but 
 what contemplation flops here? what hinders us when 
 we confider the beauty of thefe features, the harmony of 
 thefe forms, to find in them the abflract of all his other 
 qualities, to roam over the whole hiftory of his achieve- 
 ments? we fee him enter the celeftial fynod and all the 
 gods rife at his auguft appearance (j>); we fee him 
 fweep the plain after Daphne ; precede Hector with the 
 segis and difperfe the Greeks ; ftrike Patroclus with his 
 palm and decide his deftiny. — And is the figure frigid 
 becaufe its great idea is inexhauftible? might we not fay 
 the fame of the infant Hercules of Zeuxis or of Rey- 
 nolds? did not the idea of the man infpire the hand that 
 framed the mighty child? his magnitude, his crufhing 
 grafp, his energy of will, are only the germ, the prelude 
 of the power that rid the earth of monfters, and which our 
 mind purfues. Such was no doubt the Paris of Euphra- 
 nor: he made his character fo pregnant, that thofe who 
 knew his hiftory might trace in it the origin of all his 
 future feats, though firft impreffed by the expreflion al- 
 lotted 
 
 (y) See the Hymn (afcribed to Homer) on Apollo. 
 
48 FIRSTLECTURE. 
 
 lotted to the predominant quality and moment. The 
 acute infpector, the elegant umpire of female form re- 
 ceiving the contefted pledge with a dignified paufe, or 
 with enamoured eagernefs prefenting it to the arbitrefs 
 of his deftiny, was probably the predominant idea of 
 the figure: whilft the deferter of Oenone, the feducer 
 of Helen, the fubtle archer, that future murderer of 
 Achilles, lurked under the infidious eyebrow, and in the 
 penetrating glance of beauty's chofen minion. Such ap- 
 peared to me the character and expreflion of the fitting 
 Paris in the voluptuous Phrygian drefs, formerly in the 
 cortile of the palace Altheims, at Rome. A figure nearly 
 colofTal, which many of you may remember, and a faint 
 idea of whom may be gathered from the print among thole 
 in the collection published of the Mufcum Clementinum. 
 A work, in my opinion, of the highelt ftyle and worthy 
 of Euphranor, though I fhall not venture to call it a 
 repetition in marble of his bronze. 
 
 From thefe obfervations on the collateral and unfoli- 
 cited beauties which muft branch out from the primary 
 expreilion of every great idea, it will not, I hope, be 
 fufpected, that I mean to invalidate the necefllty of its 
 unity, or to be the advocate of pedantic fubdivifion. 
 All fuch divifion diminifhes, all fuch mixtures impair the 
 fimplicity and clearnefs of expreflion : in the group of 
 the Laocoon the frigid ecftacies of German criticifm have 
 3 difcovered 
 
FIRST LECTURE, 49 
 
 difcovered pity like a vapour fwimming on the father's 
 eyes ; he is feen to fupprefs in the groan for his children 
 the fhriek for himfelf — his noftrils are drawn upward to 
 exprefs indignation at unworthy fufferings, whilfl he is 
 faid at the fame time to implore celeftial help. To thefe 
 are added the winged effects of the ferpent-poilbn, the 
 writhings of the body, the fpafms of the extremities : 
 to the miraculous organization of fuch expreflion, Age- 
 fander, the fculptor of the Laocoon, was too wife to lay 
 claim. His figure is a clafs, it characterizes every beauty 
 of virility verging on age; the prince, the prieft, the 
 father are vifible, but abforbed in the man ferve only to 
 dignify the vi£tim of one great expreflion \ though poifed 
 by the artift, for us to apply the compafs to the face of 
 the Laocoon, is to meafure the wave fludluating in the 
 ftormi this tempeftuous front, this contracted nofe, the 
 immerfion of thefe eyes, and above all that longdrawn 
 mouth, are, feparate and united, feats of convulflon, fea- 
 tures of nature ftruggling within the jaws of death. 
 
 H 
 

 
 -X 
 
SECOND LECTURE, 
 
 ART OF THE MODERNS, 
 
 "OITINES HTEMONES KAI KOIPANOI HSAN. 
 ITAHQTN. A' OTK AN Em MT0H2QMAI OTA' ONOMHNXi 
 QTA' EI MOI AEKA MEN TAilSSAI, AEKA AE 2TOMAT' EIEN, 
 $,QNH A' APPHKT02. 
 
 Homer. Iliad. B. 487. 
 
ARGUMENT. 
 
 iatrodu&ion—different direction of the art. Preparative fiyle— Mafaccio— * 
 Lionardo da Vinci. Style of eftablifhment— Michael Angelo, Raphael, Titiano 
 Correggio. Style of .refinement, and depravation. Schools— of Tufcany, Rome, 
 Venice, Lombardy. The Eccledic fchool. Machinifts. The German fchool— 
 Albert Durer. The Flemilh fchool — Rubens. The Dutch fchool — Rembrant. 
 Obfervations on art in -Switzerland. The French School. The Spanifh fchool 
 England— Concluiion . 
 
E 53 3 
 
 SECOND LECTURE: 
 
 In the preceding difcourfe I have endea- 
 voured to imprefs you with the general features of an- 
 cient art in its different periods of preparation, efta- 
 blifhment, and refinement. We are now arrived at the 
 epoch of its reftoration in the fifteenth century of our 
 sera, when religion and wealth roufing emulation, re- 
 produced its powers, but gave to their exertion a very 
 different direction. The reigning church found itfelf 
 indeed under the neceflity of giving more fplendour to 
 the temples and manfions deftined to receive its votaries, 
 of fubduing their fenfes with the charm of appropriate 
 images and the exhibition of events and actions, which 
 might flimulate their zeal and inflame their hearts : but 
 the facred myfteries of divine being, the method adopted 
 by revelation, the duties its doctrine impofed, the vir- 
 tues it demanded from its followers, faith, refignation, 
 humility, fufferings, fubflituted a medium of art as 
 much inferiour to the refources of Paganifm in a phyfical 
 
 fenfe 
 
54 SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 fenfe as incomparably fuperiour in a fpiritual one. 
 Thofe public cuftoms, that perhaps as much tended to 
 fpread the infections of vice as they facilitated the means 
 of art, were no more; the heroifm of the chriftian and 
 his beauty were internal, and powerful or exquiflte 
 forms allied him no longer exclufively to his god. The 
 chief repertory of the artift, the facred records, furnifhed 
 indeed a fublime cofmogony, fcenes of patriarchal fim- 
 plicity and a poetic race, which left nothing to regret 
 in the lofs of heathen mythology; but the ftem of the 
 nation whofe hiftory is its exclufive theme, if it 
 abounded in characters and powers fit for the exhibition 
 of paffions, did not teem with forms fufriciently- 
 exalted, to inform the artift. and elevate the art. In- 
 gredients of a bafer caft mingled their alloy with the 
 materials of grandeur and of beauty. Monaftic legend. 
 and the rubric of martyrolcgy claimed more than- a 
 legitimate fhare from the labours of the pencil and the 
 chifel; made nudity the exclufive property of emaciated 
 hermits or decrepit age ; and if the breaft of manhood 
 was allowed to bare its vigour, or beauty to expand her 
 bofom, the antidotes of terrour and of horrour were 
 ready at their fide to ftem the apprehended infection 
 of their charms. When we add to this the hetero- 
 geneous flock on which the reviving fyftem of arts was 
 grafted, a race indeed inhabiting a genial climate, but 
 2 itfelf 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 55 
 
 itfelf the fceces of barbarity, the remnants of gothic 
 adventurers, humanized only by the crofs, mouldering 
 amid the ruins of the temples they had' demolished, the 
 battered fragments of the images their rage had cruihed 
 * — when we add this, I fay, we fhall lefs wonder at the 
 languor of modern art in its rife and progrefs, than be 
 aftoniihed at the vigour by which it adapted and raifed 
 materials partly fo unfit and defective,: partly fo conta- 
 minated, to the magnificent fyflem which we are to 
 contemplate. 
 
 Sculpture had already produced refpeclable fpecimens 
 of its reviving powers in the bafforelievos of Lorenzo 
 Ghiberti, fome works of Donato, and the Chrift of 
 Philippo Brunellefchi (a), when the firft fymptoms of 
 imitation appeared in the frefco's of Tommafo da St. 
 Giovanni, commonly called Mafaccio, from the total 
 neglect of his appearance and perfon (b) : Mafaccio firft 
 conceived that parts are to conftitute a whole , that com- 
 
 pofition 
 
 («) Seethe account of this in Vafari; vita diP. Brunelefchi, torn. ii. 114. It is 
 of wood, and ftill exifts in the chapel of the family Gondi, in the church of S, 
 •Maria Novella. I know that near a century before Donato, Giotto is faid to have 
 worked in marble two baflbrelievos on the campanile of the cathedral of Florence ; 
 they probably excel the fiyle of his pictures, as much as the bronze works executed 
 by Andrea Pifani, from his defigns, at the door of the Battifterio. 
 
 (b) Mafaccio da S. Giovanni di Valdarno was born in 1402, died in 1443. He 
 was the pupil of Mafolino da Panicale. 
 
56 SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 portion ought to have a centre ; expreffion, truth ; and 
 execution, unity : his line deferves attention, though 
 his fubjects led him not to inveftigation of form, and the 
 fhortnefs of his life forbade his extending thofe elements 
 which Raphael, nearly a century afterward, carried to 
 perfection — it is fufficiently glorious for him to have 
 been more than once copied by that great mafter of 
 expreilion, and in fome degree to have been the herald 
 of his ftyle : Mafaccio lives more in the figure of Paul 
 preaching on the areopagus, of the celebrated cartoon in 
 our pofTeffion, and in the borrowed figure of Adam ex- 
 pelled from paradife in the loggia of the Vatican, than 
 in his own mutilated or retouched remains. 
 
 The effays of Mafaccio in imitation and expreilion, 
 Andrea Mantegna (c) attempted to unite with form ; led 
 by the contemplation of the antique, fragments of 
 which he ambitioufly fcattered over his works : though 
 a Lombard, and born prior to the difcovery of the beft 
 ancient ftatues, he feems to have been acquainted with 
 a variety of characters, from forms that remind us of 
 the Apollo, Mercury or Meleager, down to the fauns 
 and fatyrs : but his tafte was too crude, his fancy too 
 grotefque, and his comprehension too weak to advert 
 from the parts that remained to the whole that infpired 
 
 them : 
 
 (c) Andrea Mantegna died at Mautoua, 1517^ aged 66, 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 57 
 
 them : hence in his figures of dignity or beauty we fee 
 not only the meagre forms of common models, but even 
 their defects tacked to ideal Torfo's ; and his fauns and 
 fatyrs, inftead of native luxuriance of growth and the 
 fportive appendages of mixed being, are decorated with 
 heraldic excrefcences and arabefque abfurdity. His 
 triumphs are known to you all ; they are a copious in- 
 ventory of clailic lumber, fwept together with more 
 induftry than tafte, but full of valuable materials. Of 
 expreffion he was not ignorant : his burial of Chrifr. 
 furniihed Raphael with the composition, and fome of the 
 features and attitudes in his picture on the fame fubject 
 in the palace of the Borghefe's — the figure of St. John, 
 however, left out by Raphael, proves that Mantegna 
 fometimes miftook grimace for the higheft degree of 
 grief. His oil-pictures exhibit little more than the ela- 
 borate anguifh of miffal-painting ; his frefcoes deftroyed 
 at the conftruction of the Clementine mufeum, had 
 frefhnefs, freedom and imitation. 
 
 To Luca Signorelli, of Cortona (d), nature more than 
 atoned for the want of thofe advantages which the ftudy 
 of the antique had offered to Andrea Mantegna. He 
 feems to have been the firft who contemplated with a 
 difcriminating eye his object, faw what was accident and 
 
 what 
 
 (d) Luca Signorelli died al Cortona 1521, aged 82. 
 
53 SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 what effential ; balanced light and made, and decided 
 the motion of his figures. He forefhortened with equal 
 boldnefs and intelligence, and thence it is, probably, 
 that Vafari fancies to have difcovered in the laft judg- 
 ment of Michael Angelo traces of imitation from the 
 Lunetta, painted by Luca, in the church of the Ma- 
 donna, at Orvieto ; but the powers which animated him 
 there, and before at Arezzo, are no longer vifible in the 
 gotbic medley with which he filled two compartments 
 in the chapel of Sixtus IV. at Rome. 
 
 Such was the dawn of modern art, when Lionardo da 
 Vinci (e) broke forth with a fplendour which diftanced 
 former excellence : made up of all the elements that 
 conftitute the efTence of genius, favoured by education 
 and circumftances, all ear, all eye, all grafp ; painter, 
 poet, fculptor, anatomift, architect:, engineer, chemifr, 
 machinift, mufician, man of fcience, and fometimes 
 emoiric ('/), he laid hold of every beauty in the en- 
 chanted 
 
 (e) Lionardo da Vinci is faid to have died in 1517, aged 73, at Paris. 
 
 (f) The flying birds of pafte, the lions filled with lilies, the lizards with dragons 
 wings, horned and filvered over, favour equally of the boy and the quack. It is 
 lingular enough that there exifts not the fmalleft hint of Lorenzo de Medici 
 having employed or noticed a man of fuch powers and fuch early celebrity; the 
 legend which makes him go to Rome with Juliano de Medici at the accefs of 
 Leo X, to accept employment in the Vatican, whether fufficiently authentic or 
 not, furnifhes a chara&eriftic trait of the man. The Pope palling throngh the 
 loom allotted for the pictures, and inftead of defigns and cartoons, finding nothing 
 
 but 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 59 
 
 chanted circle, but without exclufive attachment to one, 
 difmiffed in her turn each. Fitter to fcatter hints than 
 to teach by example, he wafted life, infatiate in experi- 
 ment. To a capacity which at once penetrated the prin- 
 ciple and real aim of the art, he joined an inequality of 
 fancy that at one moment lent him wings for the purfuit 
 of beauty, and the next flung him on the ground to 
 crawl after deformity : we owe him chiarofcuro with 
 all its magic, we owe him caricature with all its incon^ 
 gruities. His notions of the moft elaborate fmifli and 
 his want of perfeverance were at leaft equal : — want of 
 perfeverance alone could make him abandon his cartoon 
 deftined for the great council-chamber at Florence, of 
 which the celebrated conteft of horfemen was but one 
 group ; for to him who could organize that composition, 
 Michael Angelo himfelf ought rather to have been an 
 objecl: of emulation than of fear : and that he was able 
 to organize it, we may be certain from the remaining 
 fketch in the c Etruria Pittrice' lately publifhed, but ftill 
 more from the admirable print of it by Edelinck, after 
 
 a drawing 
 
 but an apparatus of diftillery, of oils and varnifhes, exclaimed, Oiiue, co/lui non c 
 pa- far nulla, da die comiucia a peusare alia fiw hinanzi il principio dell' opera ! 
 From an admirable fonnet of Lionardo, preferred by Lomazzo, be appears to have 
 been fenfible of the inconftancy of his own temper, and full of wifhes, at leaft, to 
 correct it. 
 
 Much has been faid of the honour he received by expiring in the arms of 
 Francis I. It was indeed an honour, by which defriny in fome degree atoned to 
 that monarch for his future difuftcrat Pavia. 
 
 I a 
 
60 SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 a drawing' of Rubens, who was Lionardo's great ad- 
 mirer, and has faid much to imprefs us with the beauties 
 of his laR fupper in the refectory of the Dominicans at 
 Milano, which he abandoned likewife without finifhing 
 the head of Chrift, exhaufted by a wild chace after 
 models for the heads and hands of the apoftles : had he 
 been able to conceive the centre, the radii muft have 
 followed of courfe. 
 
 Bartolomeo della Porta, or di S. Marco, the laft 
 mafter of this period (g), firft gave gradation to colour, 
 form and mafTes to drapery, and a grave dignity, till then 
 unknown, to execution. If he was not endowed with 
 the verfatility and comprehenfion of Lionardo, his prin- 
 ciples were lefs mixed with bafe matter and lefs apt to 
 miflead him. As a member of a religious order, he 
 confined himfelf to fubjects and characters of piety, but 
 the few nudities which he allowed himfelf to exhibit, 
 fliew fufficient intelligence and ftill more ftyle : he fore- 
 fhortened with truth and boldnefs, and whenever the 
 figure did admit of it, made his drapery the vehicle of 
 the limb it invefts. He was the true mafter of Ra- 
 phael, whom his tuition weaned from the meannefs of 
 
 Pietro 
 
 (g) Fra. Bartolomeo died at Florence 1517, at the age of 43. 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 61 
 
 Pietro Perugino, and prepared for the mighty ftyle of 
 Michael Angelo Buonarroti. ^_ 
 
 Sublimity of conception, grandeur of form, and 
 breadth of manner are the elements of Michael Angelo's 
 ityle (h). By thefe principles he fele&ed or reje&ed the 
 objects of imitation. As painter, as fculptor, as ar- 
 chitect, he attempted, and above any other man fucceeded 
 to unite magnificence of plan and endlefs variety of 
 fubordinate parts with the utmoft fimplicity and breadth. 
 His line is uniformly grand : chara&er and beauty were 
 admitted only as far as they could be made fubfervient to 
 grandeur. The child, the female, meannefs, deformity, 
 were by him indifcriminately ftamped with grandeur. 
 A beggar rofe from his hand the patriarch of poverty ; 
 the hump of his dwarf is imprefTed with dignity ; his 
 women are moulds of generation •, his infants teem with 
 the man ; his men are a race of giants. This is the 
 ' terribil via' hinted at by A goftino Carracci, though per- 
 haps as little underftood by the Bolognefe as by the 
 blindeft of his Tufcan adorers, with Vafari at their head. 
 To give the appearance of perfect eafe to the moft per- 
 plexing difficulty, was the exclufive power of Michael 
 
 Angelo. 
 
 (jk) Michael Angelo Buonarroti born at Caftel-Cnprefe iu 1-174, died at Rome 
 1504;, aged 90. 
 
62 SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 Angelo. He is the inventor of epic painting, in that 
 fublime circle of the Sifline chapel, which exhibits the 
 origin, the progrefs, and the final difpenfations of 
 theocracy. He has perfonified motion in the groups of 
 the cartoon of Pifa; embodied fentiment on the monu- 
 ments of St. Lorenzo, unravelled the features of medi- 
 tation in the prophets and iibylsof the chapel ofSixtus; 
 and in the laft judgment, with every attitude that varies 
 the human body, traced the mafter- trait of every paflion 
 that fways the human heart. Though as fculptor, he 
 expreffed the character of flefh. more perfectly than all 
 who went before or came after him, yet he never fub- 
 mitted to copy an individual ; Julio the fecond only 
 excepted, and in him he reprefented the reigning paflion 
 rather than the man (z). In painting he contented him- 
 felf with a negative colour, and as the painter of mankind, 
 rejected all meretricious ornament (£). The fabric of 
 
 St. 
 
 (i) Like Silanion — c Apollodorum fecit, fi&orem et ipfum, fed inter cunftos dili- 
 ' gentiflimum artis & inimicum fui judicem, crebro perfedta figna frangentem, dum 
 ' fatiare cupiditatem nequit artis, et ideo infanum cognominatum. Hoc in eo ex- 
 ' pr€ffit_, nee hominem ex sere fecit fed Iracundiam.' Plin. I. xxxiv. 7. 
 
 (k) Whea M. Angelo pronounced oil-painting to be Arte da donna e da huomini 
 agiatie injingardi, a maxim to which the fierce Venetian manner has given an air 
 of paradox, he fpoke relatively to frefco : it was a lain on the fhort-fighted info- 
 lence of Sebaftian del Piombo, who wanted to perfuade Paul III. to have the laft 
 judgment painted in oil. That he bad a fenfe for the beauties of oil colour, its 
 glow, its juice, its richnefs, its pulp, thepraifes which he lavifhed on Titiano, whom 
 
 he 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 6 
 
 3 
 
 St. Peter, fcattered into infinity of jarring parts by Bra- 
 man te and his fucceffors, he concentrated ; fufpended 
 the cupola, and to the moft complex gave the air of the 
 mod fimple of edifices. Such, take him all in all, was 
 M. Angelo, the fait of art : fometimes he no doubt had 
 his moments of dereliction, deviated into manner, or 
 perplexed the grandeur of his forms with futile and often- 
 tatious anatomy : both met with armies of copyifts, and 
 it has been his fate to have been cenfured for their folly. 
 
 The infpiration of Michael Angelo was followed by 
 the milder genius of Raphael Sanzio (/),. the father of 
 dramatic painting, the painter of humanity; lefs ele- 
 vated, lefs vigorous, but more infinuating, more preffin<y 
 on our hearts, the warm matter of our fympathies. 
 What effecT: of human connexion, what feature of the 
 mind, from the gentleft emotion to the moft fervid burft 
 
 of 
 
 he called the only painter, and his patronage of Fra. Sebaftian himfelf, evidently 
 prove. When young, M. Angelo attempted oil-painting with fuccefs ; the piclure 
 painted for Angelo Doni is an inftance, and probably the only intire work of the 
 kind that remains. The Lazarus, in the pidure deftined for the cathedral at Nar- 
 bonne, reje&s the claim of every other hand. The Leda, the cartoon of which, 
 formerly in the palace of the Vecchietti at Florence, is now in the poffeffion of 
 W. Lock, Efq. the firft judge of this age in whatever relates to the grand tafte ; 
 the Leda was painted in diftemper ; (a tempera) ; all fmall or large oil pi&ures 
 fhewn as his, are copies from his defigns or cartoons, by Marcello Venufli, Gia- 
 copo da Pontormo, Battifta Franco, and Sebaftian of Venice. 
 
 U) Raphael Sanzio, ofUrbino, died at Rome 1520, at the age of 37. 
 
 1* 
 
€4 SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 of paflion, lias been left unobferved, has not received a 
 characteristic llamp from that examiner of man ? M. 
 Angelo came to nature, nature came to Raphael — he 
 tranfmitted her features like a lucid glafs unftained, un- 
 modified. We ftand with awe before M. Angelo, and 
 tremble at the height to which he elevates us — we em- 
 brace Raphael, and follow him wherever he leads us. 
 Energy, with propriety of character and modeft grace 
 poife his line and determine his correctnefs. Perfect 
 human beauty he has not reprefented ; no face of Raphael's 
 is perfectly beautiful ; no figure of his, in the abftract, 
 poffeffes the proportions that could raife it to a frandardof 
 imitation : form to him was only a velijcle of character 
 or pathos, and to thofe he adapted it in a mode and with 
 a truth which leaves all attempts at emendation hopelefs. 
 His invention connects the utmoft ftretch of poflibility, 
 with the moft plauiible degree of probability, in a manner 
 that equally furprizes our fancy, perfuades our judgment 
 and affects our heart. His composition always haftens 
 to the moft neceffary point as its centre, and from that 
 diffeminates, to that leads back as rays, all fecondary 
 ones. Group, form, and contraft are fubordinate to the 
 event, and common- place ever excluded. His expref- 
 iion, in ftrict unifon with and decided by character, 
 whether calm, animated, agitated, convulfed, or ab- 
 sorbed by the infpiring paflion, unmixed and pure, 
 4 never 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 65 
 
 never contradicts its caufe, equally remote from tame- 
 nefs and grimace : the moment of his choice never fuf- 
 fers the a&ion to ftagnate or to expire; it is the moment 
 of tranfition, the crifis big with the pad: and pregnant 
 with the future. — If, feparately taken, the line of 
 Raphael has been excelled in corre&nefs, elegance, and 
 energy; his colour far furpaffed in tone and truth, and 
 harmony; his maffes in roundnefs, and his chiarofcuro 
 in effect — confidered as inftruments of pathos, they 
 have never been equalled; and in compofition, inven- 
 tion, expreflion, and the power of telling a ftory, he 
 has never been approached. 
 
 Whilff. the fuperiour principles of the art were re- 
 ceiving the homage of Tufcany and Rome, the infe- 
 riour but more alluring charm of colour began to fpread 
 its fafcination at Venice, from the pallet of Giorgione 
 da Caftel Franco (;/z), and irrefiftibly entranced every eye 
 that approached the magic of Titiano Vecelli of Cador ( n ) . 
 To no colourift before or after him, did nature unveil 
 herfelf with that dignified familiarity in which fhe ap- 
 peared to Titiano. His organ, univerfal and equally fit 
 
 for 
 
 (m) Giorgio, from his fize and beauty called Giorgione, was born at Caftel 
 Franco in the territory of Venice, 1478, and died at Venice, 1511. 
 
 (n) Titiano Vecelli, or as the Venetians call him, Tizian, born at Cador in the 
 Friulefe, died at Venice, 1576, aged 99- 
 
66 SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 for all her exhibitions, rendered her fimplefl to her moll 
 compound appearances with equal purity and truth. 
 He penetrated the effence and the general principle of 
 the fubflances before him, and on thefe eftabliffied his 
 theory of colour. He invented that breadth of local 
 tint which no imitation has attained; and firft exprefTed 
 the negative nature of made: his are the charms of 
 glazing, and the myftery of reflexes, by which he de- 
 tached, rounded, connected, or enriched his objects. 
 His harmony is lefs indebted to the force of light and 
 made, or the artifices of contrail:, than to a due balance 
 of colour, equally remote from monotony and fpots. 
 His backgrounds feem to be dictated by nature. Land- 
 fcape, whether it be confidered as the tranfcript of a 
 fpot, or the rich combination of congenial objects, or as 
 the fcene of a phenomenon, dates its origin from him: 
 he is the father of portrait painting, of refemblance 
 with form, character with dignity, and coftume with 
 fubordination. 
 
 Another charm was yet wanting to complete the round 
 of art — harmony: it appeared with Antonio Laeti (o) 
 
 called 
 
 • 
 
 (o) The birth and life of Antonio Allegri, or as he called himfelf Lseth furnamed 
 'Correggio, is more involved m obfeurity than the life of Anelles. Whether he was 
 born in 1490 or 94 is not afcertained ,■ the time of his death in 1534 is more cer- 
 tain. The beft account of him has undoubtedly been given by A. R. Mengs in his 
 Memorie concernenti la vita t It optre di Antonio Allegvi denominato il Correggio. 
 YoL ii. of bis works^ publiflied by the Spaniard D. G, Niccola d-Azara. 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 67 
 
 called Correggio, whofe works it attended like an en- 
 chanted fpirit. The harmony and the grace of Cor- 
 reggio are proverbial: the medium which by breadth of 
 gradation unites two oppofite principles, the coalition 
 of light and darknefs by imperceptible transition, are 
 the element of his ftyle. — This infpires his figures with 
 grace, to this their grace is fubordinate: the moll ap- 
 propriate, the mod elegant attitudes were adopted, re- 
 jected, perhaps facrificed to the moff. awkward ones, in 
 compliance with this imperious principle : parts vanifhed, 
 were abforbed, or emerged in obedience to it. This 
 unifon of a whole, predominates over all that remains of 
 him, from the vaftnefs of his cupolas to the fmalleft 
 of his oil-pictures. — -The harmony of Correggio, though 
 aflifted by exquifite hues, was entirely independent of 
 colour: his great organ was chiarofcuro in its moft ex- 
 tenfive fenfe; compared with the expanfe in which he 
 floats, the effects of Lionardo da Vinci are little more 
 than the dying ray of evening, and the concentrated 
 flam of Giorgione difcordant abruptnefs. The bland 
 central light of a globe, imperceptibly gliding through 
 lucid demitints into rich reflected fhades, compofes the 
 ipell of Correggio, and affects us with the foft emotions 
 of a delicious dream t 
 
 k 2 Such 
 
, v 68 'SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 Such was the ingenuity that prepared, and fuch the 
 genius that raifed to its height the fabric of modern 
 art. Before we proceed to the next epoch, let us make 
 an obfervation: 
 
 Form not your judgment of an artift from the ex- 
 ceptions which his conduct may furnifh, from the exer- 
 tions of accidental vigour, fome deviations into other 
 walks, or fome unpremeditated flights of fancy, but from 
 the predominant rule of his fyftem, the general principle 
 of his works. The line and ftyle of Titian's defign, fome- 
 times expand themfelves like thofe of Michael Angelo. 
 His Abraham prevented from facrificing Ifaac ; his 
 David adoring over the giant-trunk of Goliah; the 
 Friar efcaping from the murderer of his companion in 
 the foreft, equal in loftinefs of conception and ftyle of 
 defign, their mighty tone of colour and daring execu- 
 tion: the heads and groups of Raphael's frefco's and 
 portraits fometimes glow and palpitate with the tints of 
 Titian, or coalefce in maffes of harmony, and undulate 
 with graces fuperiour to thofe of Correggio; who in his turn 
 once reached the higheft fummit- of invention, when he 
 embodied iilence and perfonified the myfteries of love in 
 the voluptuous group of Jupiter and Ioj and again ex- 
 ceeded all competition of expreffion in the divine fea- 
 tures of his Ecce-Homo. But thefe fudden irradiations, 
 4 thefe 
 
SECOND LECTURE. &g 
 
 thefe flames of power are only exceptions from their 
 wonted principles ; pathos and character own Raphael 
 for their mafter, colour remains the domain of Titian,, 
 and harmony the fovereign miftrefs of Correggio. 
 
 The refemblance which marked the two firft periods 
 of ancient and modern art, vanifhes altogether as we 
 extend our view to the confideration of the third, or 
 that of refinement, and the origin of fchools. The 
 pre-eminence of ancient art, as we have obferved, was 
 lefs the refult of fuperiour powers, than of fimplicity 
 of aim and uniformity of purfuit. The Helladic and 
 the Ionian fchools appear to have concurred in directing 
 their instruction to the grand principles of form and 
 expreffion : this was the ftamen which they drew ou£ 
 into one immenfe connected web. The talents that 
 fucceeded genius, applied and directed their induftry and 
 polim to decorate the eftabliilied fyflem, the refinements 
 of tafle, grace, fentiment, colour, adorned beauty, 
 grandeur and expreffion. The Tufcan, the Roman, 
 the Venetian, and the Lombard fchools, whether from 
 incapacity, want of education, of adequate or dignified 
 encouragement, meannefs of conception, or all thefe 
 together, feparated, and in amort time fubftituted the me- 
 dium for the end. Michael Angelo lived to fee the electric 
 fhock which his defign and flyle had given to art, pro- 
 pagated. 
 
7 o SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 pagated by the Tufcan and Venetian fchools, as the 
 oftentatious vehicle of puny conceits and emblematic 
 quibbles, or the palliative of empty pomp and degraded 
 luxuriance of colour. He had been copied but was not 
 imitated by Andrea Vannucchi, furnamed del Sarto, who 
 in his feries of pictures on the life of John the Baptift, 
 in preference adopted the meagre ftyle of Albert Durer, 
 The artift who appears to have penetrated deepeft to his 
 mind, \? as Pelegrino Tibaldi, of Bologna [p] ; celebrated 
 as the painter of the frefco's in the academic inftitute 
 of that city, and as the architect of the Efcurial under 
 Philip II. The compofitions, groups, and fingle figures 
 of the inftitute exhibit a fingular mixture of extraordi- 
 nary vigour and puerile imbecility of conception, of 
 character and caricature, of ftyle and manner. Poly- 
 pheme groping at the mouth of his cave for UlyfTes, and 
 JEolus granting him favourable winds, are ftriking in- 
 ftances of both : than the cyclops, Michael Angelo him- 
 felf never conceived a form of favage energy, with 
 attitude and limbs more in unifon ; whilft the god of 
 winds is degraded to a fcanty and ludicrous femblance of 
 Theriites, and UlyfTes with his companions traveftied 
 by the femibarbarous look and coflume of the age of 
 Conftantine or Attila ; the manner of Michael Angelo 
 
 is 
 
 i(p) Pelegrino Tibaldi died at Milano in 1592, aged 10. 
 
SECOND LECTURE. ji 
 
 is the ftyle of Pelegrino Tibaldi ; from him Gol- 
 zius, Hemfkerk, and Spranger borrowed the com- 
 pendium of the Tufcan's peculiarities. With this 
 mighty talent however, Michael Angelo feems not to 
 have been acquainted, but by that unaccountable weak- 
 nefs incident to the greater! powers, and the fevere remem- 
 brancer of their vanity, he became the fuperintendant and 
 afliftant tutor of the Venetian Sebaftiano [q) 3 and of 
 Daniel Ricciarelli, of Volterra (r) ; the firft of whom, 
 with an exquiflte eye for individual, had no fenfe for 
 ideal colour, whilft the other rendered great diligence 
 and much anatomical erudition, ufelefs by meagrenefs of 
 line and fterility of ideas : how far Michael Angelo fuc- 
 ceeded in initiating either in his principles, the far-famed 
 pictures of the refufcitation of Lazarus, by the firft, 
 once in the cathedral of Narbonne, and fince infpeded 
 by us all at the Lyceum here *, and the frefco of the de- 
 fcent from the crofs, in the church of La Trinita del 
 Monte, at Rome, by the fecond, fufficiently evince : 
 pictures which combine the mofl heterogeneous prin- 
 ciples. The group of Lazarus in Sebaftian del Piombo's, 
 
 and 
 
 (<?) Sebaftiano, afterwards called del Piombo from the office of the papal fignety 
 died at Rome in 1547, aged 6C. 
 
 (r) Daniel Ricciarelli, of Volterra, died in 1566, aged 57. 
 
 * Now the firft ornament of the exciuifite collection of J. J. Angerfrein, E^* 
 
yi SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 and that of the women, with the figure of Chrift, in 
 Daniel Ricciarelli's, not only breathe the fublime con- 
 ception that infpired, but the mafter-hand that fhaped 
 them : offsprings of Michael Angelo himfelf, models 
 of expreilion, ftyle, and breadth, they caft on all the 
 reft an air of inferiority, and only ferve to prove the 
 incongruity of partnerfhip between unequal powers; 
 this inferiority however is refpectable, when compared 
 with the depravations of Michael Angelo's ftyle by the 
 remainder of the Tufcan fchool, efpecially thofe of 
 Giorgio Vafari (.$•), the moft fuperficial artift and the 
 moft abandoned mannerift of his time, but the moft 
 acute obferver of men and the moft dextrous flatterer of 
 princes. He overwhelmed the palaces of the Medici and 
 of the popes, the convents and churches of Italy, with 
 a deluge of mediocrity, commended by rapidity and 
 fhamelefs £ bravura' of hand : he alone did more work 
 than all the artifts of Tufcany together, and to him 
 may be truly applied, what he had the infolence to fay 
 of Tintoretto, that he turned the art into a boy's toy. 
 
 Whilft Michael Angelo was doomed to lament the 
 perverfion of his ftyle, death prevented Raphael from 
 witnefling the gradual decay of his. The exuberant 
 
 fertility 
 
 (s) Giorgio Vafari, of Arezzo, died in 1584, aged 68. 
 
SECOND LECTURE- 73 
 
 fertility of Julio Pipi called Romano (t), and the lefs 
 extenfive but clafTic tafte of Polydoro da Caravagio de- 
 ferted indeed the flandard of their matter, but with a 
 dignity and magnitude of compafs which command 
 refpecl. It is lefs from his tutored works in the Vatican, 
 than from the coloffal conceptions, the pathetic or fub- 
 lime allegories, and the voluptuous reveries which en- 
 chant the palace del T, near Mantoua, that we muft 
 form our eftimate of Julio's powers ; they were of a 
 iize to challenge all competition, had he united purity 
 of tafte and delicacy of mind with energy and loftinefs 
 of thought ; as they are, they referable a mighty 
 ftream, fometimes flowing in a full and limpid vein, but 
 oftener turbid with rubbim. He has left models for 
 compofttion from the mod extenfive to its mofl compact 
 fpe.cies ; to a primeval fimplicity of conception in his 
 mythologic fubjects, which transports us to the golden 
 age of Heliod, he joined a rage for the grotefque ; to 
 uncommon powers of expreflion a decided attachment 
 to deformity and grimace, and to the warrneft and moft 
 genial imagery, the mofc ungenial colour. 
 
 With nearly equal, but . frill more mixed • fertility, 
 Francefco Primaticcio {ti) propagated the flyle and the 
 
 conceptions 
 
 (t) Julio Pipi, called Romano, died at Mantoua in 1546, aged 54. 
 
 (u) Francefco Primaticcio, made Abbe dc St. Martin de Troves, by Francis I. dice) 
 
 in Fiance 1570, aged SO. 
 
 L 
 
74 SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 conceptions of his mailer Julio on the gallic fide of the 
 Alps, and with the afliftance of Nicolo, commonly 
 called Dell' Abbate after him, filled the palaces of 
 Francis I. with mythologic and allegoric works, in 
 frefcoes of an energy and depth of tone till then un- 
 known. Theirs is the cycius of piclures from the 
 OdyfTea of Homer at Fontainbleau, a mine of clailic 
 and pichirefque materials : they are decayed, and we 
 may eflimate their lofs, even through the difguife of the 
 mannered and feeble etchings of Theodore Van Tulden, 
 
 The compact flyle of Polydoro (x), formed on the 
 antique, fuch as it is exhibited in the beft feries of the 
 Roman military baffrelievos, is more monumental, than 
 .imitative or character iflic. But the virility of his tafte, 
 the impaffioned motion of his groups, the iimplicity, 
 breadth, and never excelled elegance and probability of 
 hie drapery, with the forcible chiarofcuro of his compo- 
 sitions, make us regret the narrownefs of the walk, to 
 which he confined his powers. 
 
 No painter ever painted his own mind fo forcibly as Mi- 
 chael Angel o Amerigi, furnamed IlCaravaggi (y). To none 
 
 nature 
 
 (,r) Polydoro da Caravaggio was affaffinatecT at Meffina in 1.543, aged 51. 
 
 (y) Michael Angelo Amerigij furnamed II Caravaggi, knight of Malta, died 
 1609, aged 40. 
 
SECOND LECTURE. y S 
 
 nature ever fet limits with a more decided hand. Dark-" 
 nefs gave him light ; into his melancholy cell light 
 ftole only with a pale reluctant ray, or broke on it, as 
 flames on a ftormy night. The moft vulgar forms he 
 recommended by ideal light and made, and a tremens 
 dous breadth of manner. 
 
 The aim and manner of the Roman fchool deferve 
 little further notice here, till the appearance of Nicolas 
 Pouflin {z) a Frenchman, but grafted on the Roman 
 flock. Bred under Simon Varin a French painter 
 of mediocrity, he found on his arrival in Italy that 
 he had more to unlearn than to follow of his matter's 
 principles, renounced the national character, and not 
 only with the utmoft ardour adopted, but fuffered 
 himfelf to be wholly abforbed by the antique. Such 
 was his attachment to the ancients, that it may be 
 faid he lefs imitated their fpirit than copied their 
 relics and painted fculpture ; the coftume, the my- 
 thology, the rites of antiquity were his element ; 
 his fcenery, his landfcape are pure claflic ground. He 
 has left fpecimens to fhew that he was fometimes 
 fublime, and often in the higheft degree pathetic, but 
 
 hiftory 
 
 (z) Nicolas Pouflin, of Andilly, died at Rome \GQ5, aged 71- 
 
 h 2 
 
76 SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 i 
 
 hifiory in the ftri&eff. fenfe, was his property, and in that 
 he ought to be followed, His agents only appear, to 
 tell the fad:, they are fubordinate to the ftory. Some- 
 times he attempted to tell a ftory that cannot be told : 
 of his hiiioric dignity the celebrated feries of Sacra- 
 ments, of his fublimity, the viiion he gave to Coriola- 
 nus; of his pathetic power, the infant Pyrrhus; and of 
 the vain attempt to tell by figures what words alone can 
 tell, the teftament of Eudaniidas, are funking in- 
 ftances. His eye, though imprened with the tint, and 
 breadth, and imitation of Titiano, feldom infpired him 
 to charm with colour, crudity and patches frequently 
 deform his effects. He is unequal in his ftyle of deiign ; 
 fometimes his comprehenfion fails him, he fupplies like 
 Pietro Tefla, ideal heads and torfo's with limbs and ex- 
 tremities tranfcribed from the model. Whether from 
 choice or want of power he has feldom executed his 
 conceptions on a larger fcale than that which bears his 
 name, and which has perhaps as much contributed to 
 make him the darling of this country, as his merit. 
 
 The wildnefs of Salvator Rofa (a) oppofes a powerful 
 contrail to the claflic regularity of Pouiiin. Terrific and 
 grand in his conceptions of inanimate nature, he was 
 
 reduced 
 
 (a) Salvator Eofa, furnamed Salvatoriello, died at Rome l6?3> aged 59- 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 77 
 
 reduced to attempts of hiding by boldnefs of hand, his 
 inability of exhibiting her impailioned, or in the dig- 
 nity of character : his line is vulgar : his magic virions 
 lefs founded on the principles of terrcur than on mytho- 
 logic trafh. and caprice, are to the probable combinations 
 of nature, what the paroxyfms of a fever are to the 
 flights of vigorous fancy. Though fo much extolled 
 and fo ambitioufly imitated, his banditti are a medley 
 made up of ftarveling models, flireds and bits of armour 
 from his lumber room, brufhed into notice by a daring 
 pencil. Salvator was a fatyrift and a critic, but the rod 
 which he had the infolence to lift againft the nudities of 
 Michael Angelo, and the anachronifm of Raphael, 
 would have been better employed in chaftizing his own 
 mifconceptions. 
 
 The principle of Titiano, lefs pure in itfelf and lefs 
 decided in its object of imitation, did not fufFer fo much 
 from its more or lefs appropriate application by his fuc- 
 ceflbrs, as the former two. Colour once in a very high 
 degree attained, difdains fubordination and engroffes the 
 whole. Mutual fimilarity attracts. Body tends to body 
 as mind to mind, and he, who has once gained fupreme 
 dominion over the eye, will hardly refign it to court the 
 more coy approbation of mind, of a few oppofed to 
 nearly all. Add to this the character of the place and 
 
 the 
 
7 8 SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 the nature of the encouragement held out to the Vene- 
 tian artifts. Venice was the centre of commerce, the 
 repository of the riches of the globe, the fplendid toy- 
 fliop of the time : its chief inhabitants princely mer- 
 chants, or a patrician race elevated to rank by accu- 
 mulations from trade, or naval prowefs ; the bulk of the 
 people mechanics or artifans, administering the means, 
 and in their turn fed by the produce of luxury. Of fuch 
 a fyftem, what could the art be more than the paraflte ? 
 Religion itfelf had exchanged its gravity for the allure- 
 ments of ear and eye, and even fandHty difgufted, unlefs 
 arrayed by the gorgeous hand of fafhion — Such was, fuch 
 will always be the birth-place and the theatre of colour : 
 and hence it is more matter of wonder that the firft and 
 greatefl colourifts mould fo long have forborne to over- 
 ftep the modefty of nature in the ufe of that alluring 
 medium, than that they yielded by degrees to its golden 
 folicitations [b). 
 
 The 
 
 (6) Of the portraits which Raphael in frefco Scattered over the compofitions of 
 the Vatican, we fliall find an opportunity to fpeak. But in oil the real ftyle of 
 portrait began at Venice with Giorgione, flourifhed in Sebaftian del Piombo, and 
 was carried to perfection by Titiano, who filled the maffes of the firft without en- 
 tangling himfelf in the minute details of the fecond. Tintoretto, Baffan, and 
 Paolo of Verona, followed the principle of Titiano. After thefe, it migrated from 
 Italy to refide with the Spaniard Diego Velafquez ; from whom Rubeus and Van- 
 clyck attempted to tranfplant it to Flanders, France and Englaud, with unequal 
 3 fticcefs 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 79 
 
 The principle of Correggio vaniiTied with its author, 
 though it found numerous imitators of its parts. Si-nee 
 him, no eye has conceived that expanfe of harmony with 
 which the voluptuous feniibility of his mind arranged 
 and enchanted all virible nature. His grace, £0 much 
 vaunted and fo little underftood, was adopted and im- 
 proved to elegance by Francefco Mazzuoli, called Par- 
 megiano (c), but inftead of making her the meafure of 
 
 propriety 
 ■ 
 
 fuccefs. France feized Iefs on the delicacy than on the affectation of Vandyck, 
 and ibon turned the art of reprefenting men and women into a mere remembrancer 
 of fafhions and airs. England had poffeffed Holbein, but it was rcferved for the 
 German Lely, and his fucceffor Kneller, to lay the foundation of a manner, which, 
 by pretending to unite portrait with hiftory, gave a retrogade direction for near a. 
 century, to both. A mob of fhepherds and fhepherdeffes in flowing wigs and. 
 d re ffed curls, ruffled Endymion's, humble Juno's, withered Hebe's, furly Allegroes 
 and fmirking Penlierofa's ufurped the place of truth, propriety and character. Even 
 the lamented powers of the greateft painter, whom this country and perhaps our 
 age produced, long vainly ftiuggled, and fcarccly in the eve of life fucceeded to 
 emancipate us from this daftard tafle. 
 
 (c) Francefco Mazzuoli, called il Parmegiano, died at Cafal Maggiore in 1540, 
 at the age of 36. The magnificent picture of the St. John, we fpeak of, was begun 
 by order of the Lady Maria Bufalina, and deftined for the church of St. Salvadore 
 del Lauro at Citta di Caftello. It probably never received the laft hand of the 
 nvafter, who tied from Rome, where he painted it, at the facking of that city, 
 under Charles Bourbon, in 1527 ; it remained in the refectory of the convent 
 della Pace for feveral years, was carried to Citta di Caftello by Meffer Giulio Bu- 
 falini, and is now in England. The Mofes, a figure in frefco at Parma, together 
 with Raphael's figure of God in the virion of Ezekiel, is faid, by Mr. Mafon, to 
 havefurmfhed Gray with the head and action of his bard : if that was the cafe, ha 
 would have done well, to acquaint us with the poet's method, of making ' Pla- 
 ' cidis coire imnritia.' 
 
8o SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 propriety he degraded her to afrecTration : iii Parmegiano's 
 figures adiion is the adje&ive of the pofture ; the acci- 
 dent of attitude ; they l make themfelves air, into 
 which they vanifh.' That difengaged play of delicate 
 forms, the c Sueltezza' of the Italians, is the preroga- 
 tive of Parmegiano, though nearly always obtained at 
 the expence of proportion. His grandeur as confcious 
 as his grace, facrifices the motive to the mode, Simpli- 
 city to contract, : his St. John lofes the fervour of the 
 apoftle in the orator ; his Mofes the dignity of the law- 
 giver in the favage. With incredible force of chiarof- 
 curo, he united bland effects and fafcinating hues, but 
 their frequent ruins teach the important lefTon, that the 
 mixtures which anticipate the beauties of time, are big 
 with the feeds of premature decay. 
 
 Such was the ftate of the art, when, towards the 
 decline of the Sixteenth century, Lodovico Carracci (</), 
 with his coulins Agoftino and Annibale, founded at 
 
 Bologna 
 
 (.</) Lodovico Carrftcci died at Bologna IG19, aged 64. 
 
 Agoftino Carracci died at Parma in 16Q2, at the yge of 44. His is the St. Gi- 
 rolamo in the Certofa, near Bologna, his, the Thetis with the nereids, cupids, and 
 tritons, in the gallery of the palace Farnefe. Why, as an engrayer, he fhould 
 have wafted his powers on the .large plate from the crucifixion, painted by Tinto- 
 retto, in the hofpitio of the fchool of St. Rocco, a picture, of which he could not 
 exprefs the tone, itsgreateft merit, is noteafily unriddled. Annibale Carracci died 
 at Rome in 1609, at the age of 49, 
 
SECOND LECTURE. Si 
 
 Bologna that eccledtic fchool which by felec~ting the 
 beauties, correcting the faults, fupplying the defects and 
 avoiding the extremes of the different ftyles, attempted 
 to form a perfect fyftem. But as the mechanic part 
 was their only obje£t, they did not perceive that the 
 projected union was incompatible with the leading prin- 
 ciple of each mafter. Let us hear this plan from Agof- 
 tino Carracci himfelf, as it is laid down in his fonnet (e) 
 
 on 
 
 (0 SONNET OF AGOSTINO CARRACCI. 
 
 Chi farfi un buon Pittor cerca, e defia, 
 II difegno di Roma habbia alia mano, 
 La mofla coll' ombrar Veneziano, 
 E il degno colorir di Lornbardia. 
 
 Di Michel' Angiol la terribil via, 
 II vero natu?£l di Tiziano, 
 Del Correggio lo ftil puro, e fovrano, 
 E di un Rafel la giufta fimetria. 
 
 Del Tibaldi il decoro, e il fondamento, 
 Del dotto Priniaticcio l'inventare, 
 E un po di gratia del Parmigiariino. 
 
 Ma fenza tanti ftudi, e tan to ftento, 
 Si ponga 1 opre folo ad imitare, 
 Che qui lafciocci il noftro Niccolino. 
 
 Malvafia, author of the Felfina Pittrice, has made this fonnet the text to his 
 drowfy rhapfody on the frefcoes of Lodovico Carracci and fome of his fcholars, in 
 the cloifters of St. Michele, in Bofco, by Bologna. He circumfcribes the ' Mofla 
 ' Veneziana,' of the fonnet, by ' Queljlrepitofo motivo § quel divincolamento,' pe- 
 culiar to Tintoretto. 
 
 M 
 
82 SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 on the ingredients required to form a perfedt, painter, if 
 that may be called a fonnet, which has more the air of 
 medical prefcription. c Take,' fays Ago (lino, * the de- 
 4 fign of Rome, Venetian motion and made, the dig- 
 
 * nified tone of Lombardy's colour, the terrible manner 
 
 * of Michael Angelo, the juft fymmetry of Raphael, 
 
 * Titiano's truth of nature, and the fovereign purity of 
 4 Gorreggio's ftyle : add to thefe the decorum and foli- 
 c dity of Tibaldi, the learned invention of Primaticcio, 
 
 * and a little of Parmegiano's grace : but to fave fo 
 { much ftudy, fuch weary labour, apply your imitation 
 
 * to the works which our dear Nicolo has left us here/ 
 Of fuch advice, balanced between the tone of regular 
 breeding and the cant of an empiric, what could be 
 the refuit ? excellence or mediocrity ? who ever ima- 
 gined that a multitude of diflimilar threads could com- 
 pofe an uniform texture, that diflemination of fpots 
 would make mafles, or a little of many things produce 
 a legitimate whole ? indifcriminate imitation muft end in 
 the extinction of character, #nd that in mediocrity — the 
 cypher of art. 
 
 And were the Carracci fuch ? feparate the precept 
 fjrom the practice, the artift from the teacher ; and the 
 Carracci are in pofleflion of my fubmiflive homage. 
 Lodovico, far from implicitly fubfcribing to a mafter's 
 
 dictates, 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 83 
 
 dictates, was the fwo'rn pupil of nature.- To a modeft 
 ftyle of form, to a fimplicity eminently fitted for thofe 
 fubje&s of religious gravity which his tafte preferred, he 
 joined that folemnity of hue, that fober twilight, the 
 air of cloiftered meditation, which you have fo often 
 heard recommended as the proper tone of hiftoric co- 
 lour. Too often content to rear the humbler graces of 
 his fubjed:, he feldom courted elegance, but always, 
 when he did, with enviable fuccefs. Even now, though 
 nearly in a ftate of evanefcence, the three nymphs in 
 the garden fcene of St. Michele in Bofco, feem moulded 
 by the hand, infpired by the breath of love. Agoftino, 
 with a lingular modefty which prompted him rather to 
 propagate the fame of others by his graver, than by 
 fteady exertion to rely on his own power for perpetuity 
 of name, combined with fome learning a cultivated 
 tafte, corre&nefs, though not elegance of form, and a 
 corregiefque colour. Annibale, fuperiour to both in 
 power of execution and academic prowefs, was inferiour 
 to either in tafte and fenfibility and judgment ; for the 
 moft ftriking proof of this inferiority I appeal to his 
 mafter-work, the work on which he refts his fame, the 
 gallery of the Farnefe palace : a work whofe uniform 
 vigour of execution, nothing can equal but its imbeci- 
 lity and incongruity of conception. If impropriety of 
 ornament were to be fixed by definition, the fubjecls of 
 
 m 2 the 
 
84 SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 the Farnefe gallery might be quoted as the moil decifive 
 inftances. Criticifm has attempted to difmifs Paolo 
 Veronefe and Tintoretto from the province of legitimate 
 hiftory with the contemptuous appellation of ornamental 
 painters, not for having painted fubje&s inapplicable to 
 the public and private palaces, the churches and con- 
 vents, which they were employed to decorate, but be- 
 caufe they treated them fometimes without regard to 
 coftume, or the ilmplicity due to facred, heroic or alle- 
 goric fubjects : if this be juft, where fhall we clafs him, 
 who with the Capella Siftina, and the Vatican before 
 his eye, fills the manfion of religious aufterity and epif- 
 copal dignity, with a chaotic feries of trite fable and 
 bacchanalian revelry, without allegory, void of allufion, 
 merely to gratify the puerile orientation of dauntlefs 
 execution and academic vigour ? if the praife given to a 
 work be not always transferable to its mailer; if, as 
 Milton fays, ' the work fome praife and fome the ar- 
 * chitecl,' let us admire the fplendour, the exuberance, 
 the concentration of powers difplayed in the Farnefe 
 gallery, whilft we lament their mifapplication by Anni- 
 bale Carracci. 
 
 The heterogeneous principle of the eccleclic fchool 
 
 foon operated its own dhTolution : the great talents 
 
 which the Carracci had tutored, foon found their own 
 
 * bias s 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 85 
 
 bias, and abandoned themfelves to their own peculiar 
 tafte. Barto. Schidone, Guido Reni (f) y Giovanni 
 Lanfranco, Francefco Albani, Domenico Zampieri, and 
 Francefco Barbieri, called Guercino, differed as much 
 in their objects of imitation as their names. Schidone, 
 all of whofe mind was in his eye, embraced, and often 
 to meaner fubjects applied the harmony and colour of 
 Correggio, whilft Lanfrancho ftrove, but ftrove without 
 fuccefs, to follow him through the expanfe of his crea- 
 tion and maffes. Grace attracted Guido, but it was the 
 fludied grace of theatres : his female forms are abstracts 
 of antique beauty, attended by languifhing attitudes, 
 arrayed by voluptuous famions. His male forms, tran- 
 fcripts of models, fuch as are found in a genial climate, 
 are fometimes highly characteriftic of dignified manhood 
 or apoftolic fervour, like his Peter and Paul, formerly 
 in the Zampieri at Bologna : fometimes ftately, cour- 
 teous, infipid, like his Paris attending Helen, more with 
 the air of an ambafladour, by proxy, than carrying her 
 off with a lover's fervour. His Aurora deferved to 
 precede a more majeftic fun, and hours lefs clumfy : 
 his colour varies with his ftyle, fometimes bland and 
 
 harmonious, 
 
 (/) Guido Reni died in 1642, aged 68. Giov. Lanfranco died at Naples in 
 1647, aged 66. Franc. Albani died in 1660, aged 82. Domenico Zampieri, called 
 il Domenichino, died in 1641, aged 60. Franc. Barbieri, of. Cento, called il 
 Guercino, from a caftin his eye, died in 1667, aged 76. 
 
$6 SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 harmonious, fometimes vigorous and ftern, fometimes 
 flat and infipid. Albani, chiefly attracted by foft my- 
 thologic conceits, formed nereids and oreads on plump 
 Venetian models, and contrafted their pearly hues with 
 the rofy tints of loves, the juicy brown of fauns and 
 fatyrs, and rich marine or fylvan fcenery, Domeni- 
 chino, more obedient than the reft to his mafters, aimed 
 at the beauty of the antique, the expreflion of Raphael, 
 the. vigour of Annibale, the colour of Lodovico, and 
 mixing fomething of each, fell fhort of all ; whilft 
 Guercino broke like a torrent over all academic rules, 
 and with an ungovernable itch of copying whatever lay 
 in his way, facrificed mind, form and coftume, to effects 
 of colour, fiercenefs of chiarofcuro, and intrepidity of 
 hand. 
 
 Such was the ftate of art, when the fpirit of machi- 
 nery, in fubmiftion to the vanities and upftart pride of 
 papal nepotifm, deftroyed what yet was left of mean- 
 ing ; when equilibration, contrail, grouping, engroffed 
 compolition, and poured a deluge of gay common-place 
 over the platfonds, pannels, and cupolas of palaces and 
 temples. Thofe who could not conceive a figure ftngly, 
 fcattered multitudes ; to count, was to be poor. The 
 rainbow and the feafons were ranfacked for their hues, 
 and every eye became the .tributary of the great, but 
 
 abufed 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 87 
 
 abufed talents of Pietro da Cortona, and the fafci- 
 nating but debauched and empty facility of Luca Gior- 
 dano (g). 
 
 The fame revolution of mind that had organized the 
 arts of Italy, fpread, without vifible communication, 
 to Germany, and towards the decline of the fifteenth 
 century, the uncouth efTays of Martin Schon, Michael 
 Wolgemuth, and Albrecht Altorfer, were fucceeded by 
 the finer polifh and the more dextrous method of. Al- 
 bert Durer. The indifcriminate ufe of the words ge- 
 nius and talent has perhaps no where caufed more con- 
 fufion than in the clafTification of artifts. - Albert Durer 
 was in my opinion a man of great ingenuity, without 
 being a genius. He ftudied, and, as far as his pene- 
 tration reached, eftablifhed certain proportions of the 
 human frame, but he did not invent a ftyle : every 
 work of his is a proof that he wanted the power 
 of imitation, of concluding from what he faw, to what 
 he did not fee, that he copied rather than felected the 
 forms that furrounded him, and fans remorfe tacked 
 
 deformity 
 
 (g) Pietro Berretini, of Cortona, the painter of the cieling in the Barberinihall, 
 and of the gallery in the leffer Pamphili palace; the vernal fuavity of whofe frefco- 
 tiats no pencil ever equalled, died at Rome in 1569, aged 73. Luca Giordano, 
 nick-named Fa-prefto, or Difpatch, from the rapidity of his execution, the greater! 
 machinift of his time, died in 1705, aged 76. 
 
33 SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 deformity and meagrenefs to fulnefs, and fometimes to 
 beauty (>}. Such is his defign ; in compofition copious 
 without tafte, anxioufly precife in parts, and unmindful 
 of the whole, he has rather fhewn us what to avoid 
 than what to follow. He fometimes had a glimpfe of 
 the fublime, but it was only a glimpfe : the expanded 
 agony of Chrift on the mount of Olives, and the myftic 
 conception of his figure of Melancholy, are thoughts of 
 
 fublimity 
 
 (Jk) We are informed by the Editor of the Latin tranflation of Albert Durer's 
 book, on the fymmetry of the parts of the human frame, (Parifiis, in officina Ca- 
 roli Pcrier in vico Bellovaco, fub Bellerophonte, 1557, fob) that, during Albert's ftay 
 at Venice, where he refided for a fliort time, to procure redrefs from the Signoria, 
 for the forgery of Marc Antonio, he became familiar with Giovanni Bellini : and 
 that Andrea Mantegna, -who had heard of his arrival in Italy, and had conceived 
 an high opinion of his execution and fertility, fent him a mellage of invitation to 
 Mantoua, for the exprefs purpofe of giving him an idea of that form of which he 
 himfelf had obtained a glimpfe from the contemplation of the antique. Andrea 
 was then ill, and expired (1517) before Albert, who immediately prepared to fet 
 out for Mantoua, could profit by his inftrudlions. This difappointment, favs my 
 author, Albert never ceafed to lament during his life. How fit the Mantouan was 
 to inftrucl the German, is not the queftion here ; but Albert's regret feemsto prove 
 that he felt a want which his model could not fupply; and that he had too juft an 
 idea of the importance of the art to be proud of dexterity of finger or facility of 
 execution, when employed on objects effentially defective or comparatively trifling. 
 The following perfonal account of Albert deferves to be given in the Latin Editor's 
 . own words : ' E Pannonia oriundum accepimus — Erat caput argutum, oculi mi- 
 ' cantes, nafus honeftus & quern Gracci Tngdyuvov vocant; proceriufculum 
 
 * collum, pedhis amplum, caftigatus venter, femora nervofa, crura ftabilia: fed di- 
 
 * gitis nihil dixifies vidifle elegantius.' 
 
 Albert Durer was the fcholar of Martin Schon and Michael Wplgeniuth, and 
 ■died at Nuremberg in 1528, aged £7. 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 89 
 
 fublimity, though the expreillon of the lad is weak- 
 ened by the rubbifh he has thrown about her. His 
 Knight, attended by Death and the Fiend, is more ca- 
 pricious than terrible ; and his Adam and Eve are two 
 common models fhut up in a rocky dungeon. If he 
 approached genius in any part of art, it was in colour. 
 His colour went beyond his age, and as far excelled in 
 truth and breadth and handling the oil colour of Ra- 
 phael, as Raphael excels him in every other quality. I 
 fpeak of eafel-pi&ures — his drapery is broad though 
 much too angular, and rather fnapt than folded. Albert 
 is called the father of the German fchool, though he 
 neither reared fcholars, nor was imitated by the German 
 artifls of his or the fucceeding century. That the ex- 
 portation of his works to Italy fhould have effected a 
 temporary change in the principles of fome Tufcans 
 who had ftudied Michael Angelo, of Andrea del Sarto, 
 and Jacopo da Pontormo, is a fact which proves that minds 
 at certain periods may be fubjed: to epidemic influence as 
 well as bodies. 
 
 Lucas of Leyden (/) was the Dutch caricature of 
 Albert ; but the forms of Aldegraver, Sebald Beheim, 
 
 and 
 
 (i) Lucas Jacob, called Lucas of Leyden, and by the Italians, Luca d'.Gilarula, 
 died at Leyden in 1533. 
 
 N 
 
. 
 
 9o SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 and George Pentz, appear to have been the refill t of 
 careful infpedion of Marc Antonio's prints from Ra- 
 phael, of whom Pentz was a fcholar ; and ere long the 
 fryle of Michael Angelo, as adopted by Pelegrino Ti- 
 baldi, and fpread by the graver of Giorgio Mantuano, 
 provoked thofe caravans of German, Dutch and Flemifli 
 iludents, who on their return from Italy, at the courts 
 of Prague and Munich, in Flanders and the Netherlands, 
 introduced that prepofterous manner J the bloated ex- 
 crefcence of fwampy brains, which in the form of man 
 left nothing human, diftorted action and gefture with 
 infanity of affectation, and dreffed the gewgaws of chil- 
 dren in coloffal fhapes ; the ftyle of Golzius and Spran- 
 ger, Heynz and ab Ach : but though content to feed on 
 the hulks of Tufcan defign, they imbibed the colour of 
 Venice, and fpread the elements of that excellence which 
 diftinguifhed the fucceeding fchools of Flanders and of 
 Holland. 
 
 This frantic pilrimage to Italy ceafed at the appari- 
 tion of the two meteors of art, Peter Paul Rubens (k), and 
 Rembrandt Van Rhyn ; both of whom difdaining to 
 
 acknowledge 
 
 (lc) Peter Paul Rubens, of Cologne, the difciple of Adam Van Ort and Otho 
 Venius, died at or near x\ntwerp in 1641, aged 63. 
 
 See the admirable character given of hirn by Sir Jofhua Reynolds, annexed to 
 his journey to Flanders, vol. ii. of his works. 
 
SECOND LECTURE. gi 
 
 acknowledge the ufual laws of admifTion to the temple 
 of fame, boldly forged their own keys, entered and 
 took poffeflion, each, of a moil confpicuous place by his 
 own power. Rubens, born at Cologne, in Germany, 
 but brought up at Antwerp, then the depoiitory ot 
 weflern commerce, a fchool of religious and claflic 
 learning, and the pompous feat of Austrian and Spanim. 
 fuperftition, met thefe advantages with an ardour and 
 fuccefs of which ordinary minds can form no idea, if we 
 compare the period at which he is faid to have ferioufly 
 applied himfelf to painting, under the tuition of Otho 
 Van Veen, with the unbounded power he had acquired 
 over the inflruments of art when he fet out for Italy ; 
 where we inftantly difcover him not as the pupil, but as 
 the fuccefsful rival of the makers whofe works he had 
 felected for the objects of his emulation. Endowed with 
 a full comprehenfion of his own character, he wafted, 
 not a moment on the acquisition of excellence incom- 
 patible with its fervour, but flew to the centre of his 
 ambition, Venice, and foon compounded from the fplen- 
 dour of Paolo Veronefe and the glow of Tintoretto, 
 that florid fyftem of mannered magnificence which is the 
 element of his art and the principle of his fchool. He 
 firft fpread that ideal pallet, which reduced to its 
 ftandard the variety of nature, and once methodized, 
 whilft his mind tuned the method, fhortened or fuper- 
 
 n 2 feded 
 
 .-te 
 
9 2 SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 feded individual imitation. His fcholars, however difli- 
 milar in themfelves, faw with the eye of their mafter ; 
 the eye of Rubens was become the fubfKtute of nature : 
 ftill the mind alone that had balanced thefe tints, and 
 weighed their powers, could apply them to their objects, 
 and determine their ufe in the pompous difplay of his- 
 toric and allegoric magnificence ; for that they were 
 felefted, for that the gorgeous nofegay fwelled: but when 
 in the progrefs of depraved practice they became the mere 
 palliatives of mental impotence, empty reprefentatives 
 of themfelves, the fupporters of nothing but clumfy 
 forms and clumiier conceits, they can only be considered 
 as fplendid improprieties, as the fubftitutes for wants 
 which no colour can palliate and no tint fupply. 
 
 In this cenfure I am under no apprehenfion of being 
 fufpe&ed to include either the illuftrious name of Van- 
 dyck (/)jor that of Abraham Diepenbeck. Vandyck, more 
 elegant, more refined, to graces which the genius of 
 Rubens difpenfed him from courting, joined that ex- 
 quifite tafte, which in following the general principle of 
 his mailer, moderated, and adapted its application to his 
 
 own 
 
 (l) Anthony Vandyck died in London, 1641, at the age of 42. — The poetic con- 
 ception of Abraham Diepenbeck may be eftimated from the Temple des Mufes of 
 Mr. de Marolles ; re-edited but not improved by Bernard Picart. 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 93 
 
 c 
 
 own purfuits. His fphere was portrait, and the imita- 
 tion of Titiano infured him the fecond place in that. 
 The fancy of Diepenbeck,- though not fo exuberant, if 
 I be not miftakenj excelled in fublimity the imagination 
 of Rubens : his Bellerophon, Hippolytus, Ixion, Si- 
 fyphus, fear no competitor among the productions of his 
 mafter. 
 
 Rembrandt (m) was in my opinion, a genius of the 
 firfi; clafs in whatever relates not to form. In fpite of 
 the raoft portentous deformity, and without confidering 
 the fpell of his chiarofcuro, fuch were his powers of 
 nature, fuch the grandeur, pathos, or iimplicity of his 
 compofition, from the moft elevated or extenfive ar- 
 rangement to the meanefl and moil homely, that the 
 beft cultivated eye, the purer! fenfibility, and the moll 
 refined tafte dv/ell on them, equally enthralled. 
 Shakfpeare alone excepted, no one combined with fo 
 much tranfcendent excellence, fo many, in all other 
 men unpardonable faults — and reconciled us to them. 
 He pofTeffed the full empire of light and made, and of 
 all the tints that float between them : he tinged his 
 pencil with equal fuccefs in the cool of dawn, in the noon 
 day ray, in the livid flam, in evanefcent twilight, and 
 
 rendered 
 
 (m) Rembrandt died, at Amfterdam ? in 1674, aged 68. 
 
94 SEC ON D LECTURE. 
 
 rendered darknefsvifible. Though made to bend a iledfafl 
 eye on the bolder phenomena of nature, yet he knew 
 how to follow her into her calmeft abodes, gave intereft. 
 to iniipidity or baldnefs, and plucked a flower in every 
 defart. None ever like Rembrandt knew to improve 
 an accident into a beauty, or give importance to a trifle. 
 If ever he had a mailer he had no followers ; Holland 
 was not made to comprehend his power. The fuc- 
 ceeding fchool of colourifls were content to tip the 
 cottage, the hamlet, the boor, the ale-pot, the fhambles 
 and the haze of winter, with orient hues, or the glow 
 of fetting fummer funs. 
 
 In turning our eye to Switzerland we mail find great 
 powers without great names, thofe of Hans Holbein [n) 
 and Francis Mola only excepted. But the fcrupulous 
 precision, the high finim*, and the tizianefque colour of 
 Hans Holbein, would make the leall part of his excel- 
 lence, if his right to that feries of emblematic groups 
 known under the name of Holbein's Dance of Death, 
 had not, of late, been too fuccefsfully difputed. From 
 Belinzona to Bafle, invention appears to have been the 
 
 characleriftic 
 
 (11) Hans Holbein, of Bafil, died in London, 1544, at the age of 46. Peter 
 Francis Mola, the icholar of Giufeppe d'Arpino and Franc. Albani, was born at 
 the village of Coldre, of the diocefe of Balerna, in the bailliage of Mendrifio, in 
 1621, and died at Rome in 1666. 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 95 
 
 characleriftic of Helvetic art : the works of Tobias 
 Stimmer, Chriilopher Murer, Jofeph Amman, Gottbard 
 Ringgli, are mines of invention ; and exhibit a ffyle 
 of defign, equally poifed between the emaciated dry- 
 nefs of Albert Durer and the bloated corpulence of 
 Golzius. 
 
 The feeds of mediocrity which the Carracci had at- 
 tempted to fcatter over Italy, found a more benign 
 foil, and reared an abundant harveft in France ; to 
 mix up a compound from fomething of every excellence 
 in the catalogue of art, was the principle of their theory 
 and their aim in execution. It is in France where 
 Michael Angelo's right to the title of a painter was flrfl: 
 queftioned. The fiercenefs of his line, as they call it, 
 the purity of the antique, and the characleriftic forms 
 of Raphael are only the road to the academic vigour 
 the librated ftyle of Annibale Carracci, and from that 
 they appeal to the model ; in compofition they confult 
 more the artifice of grouping, contrail and richnefs, 
 than the fubjecl: or propriety^ their expreffion is dictated 
 by the theatre. From the uniformity of this procefs, 
 not to allow that the fchool of France offers refpedtable 
 exceptions, would be unjuft ; without recurring again to 
 the name of Nicolas Pouffin, the works of Euftache 
 
 le 
 
96 SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 Ie Sueur (o^, Charles le Brun, Sebaftien Bourdon, and 
 fometimes Pierre Mignard, contain original beauties 
 and rich materials. Le Sueur's feries of pictures 
 in the Chartreux exhibit the features of contemplative 
 piety, in a purity of ftyle and a placid breadth of 
 manner that moves the heart. His dignified martyr- 
 dom of St. Laurence and the burning of the magic 
 books at Ephefus, breathe the fpirit of Raphael. The 
 powerful comprehension of a whole, only equalled by 
 the lire which pervades every part of the battles of 
 Alexander, by Charles le Brun, would entitle him to the 
 higheft rank in hifrory, had the characters been lefs 
 mannered, had he not exchanged the Argyrafpids and 
 the Macedonian phalanx for the compact legionaries of 
 the Trajan pillar ; had he diftinguifhed Greeks from 
 barbarians, rather by national feature and form than by 
 accoutrement and armour. The feven works of cha- 
 rity by Seb. Bourdon teem with furprifing pathetic and 
 always novel images ; and in the plague of David, by 
 Pierre Mignard, our fympathy is roufed by energies of 
 terrour and combinations of woe, v/hich efcaped Pouilin 
 and Raphael himfelf. 
 
 The 
 
 (o) Euflaehe le Sueur, bred under Simon vduet, died at Paris iri 1655, at the 
 age of 38. Hi* fellow fcholar and overbearing rival Charles le Brun, died in lf)Q0 3 
 aged 7 1 . 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 97 
 
 The obftinacy of national pride (/>), perhaps more than 
 the neglecl of government or the frown of fuperftition, 
 confined the labours of the Spanifh fchool, from its ob- 
 fcure origin at Sevilla to its brightefl period, within the 
 narrow limits of individual imitation. But the degree 
 of perfection attained by Diego Velafquez, Jofeph Ri- 
 bera, and Morillo, in purfuing the fame object, by means 
 as different as fuccefsful, impreffes us with deep refpecl: 
 for the variety of their powers. 
 
 That the great ftyle ever received the homage of 
 Spanifh genius, appears not ; neither Allonfo Berruguette, 
 nor Peilegrino Tibaldi left followers : but that the eyes 
 and the tafte fed by the fubftance of Spagnuoletto and 
 Morillo, fhould without relu dance have fubmited to the 
 gay volatility of Luca Giordano, and the oftentatious 
 ilimfmefs of Sebaftian Conca, would be matter of fur- 
 prize, did we not fee the fame principles fuccefsfully 
 purfued in the platfonds of Antonio Raphael Meno-s, 
 the painter of philofophy, as he is (tiled by his biogra- 
 pher D'Azara. The cartoons of the frefcoes painted for 
 the royal palace at Madrid, reprefenting the apotheofis 
 
 of 
 
 (p) For the beft account of Spanifh ait, fee Lettera di A. R. Men^s a Don 
 Antonio Ponz. Opere di Mengs, vol. ii. Mengs was born at Aufig, in Boemia. 
 in 17'1B, and died at Rome in 1779- 
 
 O 
 
9 S SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 of Trajan and the temple of Renown, exhibit lefs the 
 ftyle of Raphael in the nuptials of Cupid and Pfyche in 
 the Farnefina, than the gorgeous but empty buftle of 
 Pietro da Cortona. 
 
 From this view of art on the continent, let us cart a glance 
 on its ftate in this country, from the age of Henry VIII. to 
 our own. — From that period to this Britain never ceafed 
 pouring its caravans of noble and wealthy pilgrims over 
 I taly , Greece and Ionia, to pay their devotions at the fhrines 
 of virtu and tafte: not content with adoring the ob- 
 fcure fcholo, they have ranfacked their temples, and 
 none returned without fomefhare in the fpoil: in plaifter 
 or in marble, on canvas or in gems, the arts of Greece 
 and Italy were tranfported to England, and what Pe- 
 tronius faid of Rome, that it was eafier to meet there 
 with a god than a man, might be faid of London. 
 Without enquiring into the permanent and accidental 
 caufes of the inefficacy of thefe efforts with regard to 
 public tafte and fupport of art, it is obfervable, that, 
 whilft Francis I. was bufied, not to aggregate a mafs of 
 painted and chifelled treafures merely to gratify his own 
 vanity, and brood over them with flerile avarice, but to 
 fcatter the feeds of tafte over France, by calling, employ- 
 ing enriching Andrea del Sarto, Ruftici, RofTo, Prima- 
 ticcio s Cellini, Niccolo ; in England, Holbein and Tor- 
 
 regiano 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 99 
 
 regiano under Henry, and Federigo Zucchero under 
 Elizabeth, were condemned to gothic work and portrait 
 painting. Charles indeed called Rubens and his fcholars 
 to provoke the latent Englifh fpark, but the effect was 
 intercepted by his deftiny. His fon, in pofTeflion of the 
 cartoons of Raphael, and with the magnificence of 
 Whitehall before his eyes, fuffered Verio to contaminate 
 the walls of his palaces, or degraded Lely to paint the 
 Cymons and Iphigenias of his court ; whilft the manner 
 of Kneller fv/ept completely what yet might be left of 
 tafte, under his fucceffors : fuch was the equally con- 
 temptible and deplorable ftate of Englifh art, till the 
 genius of Reynolds fir ft refcued from the mannered de- 
 pravation of foreigners his own branch, and foon extend- 
 ing his view to the higher departments of art, joined that 
 felect body of artifts who addrefTed the ever open ear, 
 ever attentive mind of our Royal Founder, with the firft 
 idea of this eftablifhment. His beneficence foon gave it 
 a place and a name, his auguft patronage, function, and 
 individual encouragement : Lie annually increafed merits 
 of thirty exhibitions in this place, with the collateral 
 ones contrived by the fpeculations of commerce, have 
 told the furprifing effects : a mafs of felf-taught and 
 tutored powers burft upon the general eye, and unequi- 
 vocally told the world what might be expected from the 
 concurrence of public encouragement — how far this 
 
 o 2 have 
 
ico SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 have been or may be granted or withheld, it is not here 
 my province to furmife : the plans lately adopted and 
 now organizing within thefe walls for the dignified pro- 
 pagation and fupport of art, whether foftered by the 
 great, or left to their own energy, muft foon decide 
 what may be produced by the unifon of Britifh genius 
 and talent, and whether the painters fchool of that nation 
 which claims the foremoft honours of modern poetry, 
 which has produced with Reynolds, Hogarth, Gainfbo- 
 rough and Wilfon, fhall fubmit to content themfelves 
 with a fubordinate place among the fchools we have 
 enumerated. 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 INVENTION. 
 
 ■ TI T' AP AT $0ONEEI2, EPIHPON AOIAON 
 
 TEPIIEIN, OnnH OI. NO02 OPNTTAI ; OT NT T' AOIAOi 
 AITIOI, AAAA nOGI ZET2 AITI02, '02TE AIAfi2IN 
 ANAPA2IN AA$H2H2IN, OIIfiE E0EAH2IN EKA2T.fi!. 
 
 Homer. Odyls. A. 34G. 
 
ARGUMENT. 
 
 Introduction. Discrimination of Poetry and Painting. General idea of In- 
 vention—its right to felect. a fubject from nature itfelf. Vifiones — Tlieon — 
 Agafias. — Cartoon of Pifa — Incendio del Borgo. Specific idea of Invention; 
 Epic fubjects — Michael Angelo. Dramatic fubjects — Raphael. Hiftoric fub- 
 jects — Pouffin, &c. Invention has a right to adopt ideas — examples. Du- 
 plicity of fubjeft- and moment inadmiffible. Transfiguration of Raphael. 
 
[ i°3 ] 
 
 THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 The brilliant antithefis afcribed to Simonides, 
 that c painting is mute poefy and poetry fpeaking paint- 
 ing,' made, I apprehend, no part of the technic fyftems 
 of antiquity: for this we may depend on the general 
 practice of its artifts, and ftill more fafely on the phi- 
 lofophic difcrimination of Plutarch (<z), who tells us, 
 that as poetry and painting referable each other in 
 their uniform addrefs to the fenfes, for the impreflion they 
 mean to make on our fancy and by that on our mind, 
 fo they differ as effentially in their materials and their 
 modes of application, which are regulated by the diver- 
 sity of the organs they addrefs, ear and eye. Succejfroe 
 aEiion communicated by founds, and time, are the me- 
 dium 
 
 (a) 'YAtj xai T£07roi? f*i | «.nc-£W? JWp££2<ri. 
 
 UXxra.^. w. A3-, kzto. 
 n. » xz$. E. £i/<J&£, 
 See Lefiiri2;s Laokoon. Berlia 1766. Svo. 
 
104 THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 dium of poetry; form difplayed in fpace^ and momen- 
 taneous energy, are the element of painting. 
 
 As, if thefe premifes be true, the diftindfc reprefenta- 
 tion of continued action is refufed to an art which can- 
 not exprefs even in a feries of fubjects, but by a fuppofed 
 mental effort in the fpedtator's mind, the regular fuc- 
 ceffion of their moments, it becomes evident, that 
 inftead of attempting to imprefs us by the indifcriminate, 
 ufurpation of a principle out of its reach, it ought 
 chiefly to rely for its effect on its great chara&eriftics 
 fpace and form., fingly or in apportion. In forms alone 
 the idea of exiftence can be rendered permanent. Sounds 
 die, words perifh or become obfolete and obfcure, even 
 colours fade, forms alone can neither be extinguished 
 nor mifconftrued ; by application to their ftandard alone 
 defcription becomes intelligible and diftindh Thus the 
 effectual idea of corporeal beauty can ftriclly exifl. only in 
 the plafiic arts: for as the notion of beauty arifes from 
 the pleafure we feel in the harmonious co-operation of 
 the various parts of fome favourite object to one end at 
 once, it implies their immediate co-exiflence in the mafs 
 they compofe; and therefore can be diftindlly perceived 
 and conveyed to the mind by the eye alone: hence the 
 representation of form in figure is the fhyjical element 
 of the Art. 
 
 8 But 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 105 
 
 But as bodies exift in time as well as in fpace; as the 
 pleafure arifing from the mere fymmetry of an object is 
 as tranfient as it is immediate ; as harmony of parts, if 
 the body be the agent of an internal power, depends for 
 its proof on their application, it follows, that the exclufive 
 exhibition of inert and unemployed form, would be a 
 miftake of the medium for the end, and that charader or 
 adtion is required to make it an interefting object of 
 imitation. And this is the moral element of the art. 
 
 Thofe important moments then which exhibit the 
 united exertion of form and character in a fingle object 
 or in participation with collateral beings, at once, and 
 which with equal rapidity and pregnancy give us a 
 glimpfe of the part and lead our eye to what follows, 
 furniih the true materials of thofe technic powers, that 
 felect, direct, and fix the objects of imitation to their 
 centre. 
 
 The moft eminent of thefe, by the explicit ac- 
 knowledgment of all ages, and the filent teftimony of 
 every breaft, is invention. He whofe eye athwart the 
 outward cruft of the rock penetrates into the composition 
 of its materials, and difcovers a goldmine, is furely fu- 
 periour to him who afterwards adapts the metal for ufe. 
 Colombo, when he from afhonomic and phyfical in- 
 
 p duclions 
 

 io6 THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 duciions concluded to the exiftence of land in the op- 
 pofite hemifphere, was furely fuperiour to Amerigo 
 Vefpucci who took poffeffion of its continent ; and 
 when Newton improving accident by meditation, dis- 
 covered and eflablifhed the laws of attraction, the pro- 
 jectile and centrifuge qualities of the fyftem, he gave the 
 clue to all who after him applied it to the various 
 branches of philofophy, and was in fact the author of 
 all the benefits accruing from their application to fociety. 
 Homer, when he means to give the principal feature of 
 man, calls him inventor (ftA^nif.) 
 
 From what we have faid it is clear that the term inven- 
 tion never ought to be fo far mifconftrued as to be con- 
 founded with that of creation, incompatible with our 
 notions of limited being, an idea of pure aftoniifiment,. 
 and admiilible only when we mention Omnipotence : to 
 btvent is to find: to find fomething, prefuppofes its. 
 exiftence fo me where, implicitly or explicitly, fcattered 
 or in a mafs: nor mould I have prefumed to fay fo much 
 on a word of a meaning fo plain, had it not been, and 
 were it not daily confounded, and by fafhionable. au- 
 thorities too, with the term creation. 
 
 Form in its wideft meaning, the vifible univerfe that 
 envelops our fenfes, and its counterpart the invisible one 
 
 that 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 107 
 
 that agitates our mind with virions bred on fenfe by fancy, 
 are the element and the realm of invention; it difcovers, 
 felects, combines the poffible, the probable, the known, 
 in a mode that (hikes with an air of truth and no- 
 velty, at once. Pollible ftrittly means an effect de- 
 rived from a caufe, a body compofed of materials, a 
 coalition of forms, whofe union or co-agency imply in 
 themfelves no abfurdity, no contradiction : applied to 
 our art it takes a wider latitude; it means the repre- 
 fentation of effects derived from caufes, or forms com- 
 pounded from materials, heterogeneous and incompatible 
 among themfelves, but rendered fo plaufible to our 
 fenfes, that the transition of one part to another feems 
 to be accounted for by an air of organization, and the 
 eye glides imperceptibly or with fatisfadtion from one to 
 the other and over the whole: that this was the condi- 
 tion on which, and- the limits within which alone the 
 ancients permitted invention to reprefent what was ftrictly 
 fpeaking impoflible, we may with plaufibility furmife 
 from the picture of Zeuxis, defcribed by Lucian in the 
 memoir to which he has prefixed that painter's name, who 
 was probably one of the firft adventurers in this fpecies 
 of imagery. — Zeuxis had painted a family of centaurs; 
 the dam a beautiful female to the middle, with the lower 
 parts gradually Aiding into the moft exquifite forms of a 
 young ThefTalian mare half reclined in playful repofe 
 
 p 2 and 
 
io8 THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 and gently pawing the velvet ground, offered her hu- 
 man nipple to one infant centaur, whilft another greedily 
 fucked the ferine udder below, but both with their 
 eyes turned up to a lyon-whelp held over them by the 
 male centaur their father, riling above the hillock on 
 which the female reclined, a grim feature, but whofe 
 ferocity was fomewhat tempered by a fmile. The 
 fcenery, the colour, the chiarofcuro, the fmifli of the 
 whole was no doubt equal to the ftyle and the con- 
 ception. This picture the artift exhibited, expecting 
 that juftice from the penetration of the public which 
 the genius deferved that taught him to give plaufibility 
 to a compound of heterogeneous forms, to infpire them 
 with fuitable foul, and to imitate the laws of exiftence : 
 he was miftaken. The novelty of the conceit eclipfed 
 the art that had embodied it, the artift was abforbed in 
 his fubjedt, and the unbounded praife beftowed, was that 
 of idle refllefs curiofity, gratified. Sick of gods and 
 goddeffes, of demigods and pure human combinations, 
 the Athenians panted only for what was new. The 
 artift, as haughty as irritable, ordered his picture to be 
 withdrawn; cover it, Micchio, faid he to his attendant, 
 cover it and carry it home, for this mob ftick only to the 
 clay of our art. — Such were the limits fet to invention 
 by the ancients ; fecure within thefe, it defied the ridi- 
 cule thrown on that grotefque conglutination, which 
 k Horace 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 109 
 
 Horace expofes ; guarded by thefe, their mythology 
 fcattered its metamorphofes, made every element its tri- 
 butary, and tranfmitted the privilege to us, on equal 
 conditions : their Scylla and the Portrefs of Hell, their 
 daemons and our fpedtres, the made of Patroclus and 
 the ghofr. of Hamlet, their naiads, nymphs, and 
 oreads, and our fylphs, gnomes, and fairies, their furies 
 and our witches, differ lefs in effence, than in local, 
 temporary, focial modifications : their common origin 
 was fancy, operating on the materials of nature, ailiited 
 by legendary tradition and the curiofity implanted 
 in us of diving into the invifible [b) ; and they are fuf- 
 fered or invited to mix with or fuperintend real agency, 
 in proportion of the analogy which we difcover between 
 them and ourfelves. Pindar praifes Homer lefs for 
 that c winged power' which whirls incident on incident 
 with fuch rapidity, that abforbed by the whole, and. 
 drawn from the impollibility of fingle parts,, we 
 fwallow a tale too grofs to be believed in a dream; 
 than for the greater power by which he contrived to 
 conned; his imaginary creation with the realities of 
 
 nature 
 
 (0) All minute detail tends to deftroy terrour, as all minute ornament, grandeur. 
 The catalogue of the cauldron's ingredients in Macbeth, deftroys the terrour at- 
 tendant on the myfterious darknei's of preternatural agency; and the feraglio 
 trappings of Rubens, annihilate his heroes. 
 
no THIRD LECTURE. ' 
 
 nature and human pafllons (c); -without this the fi&ion 
 of the poet and the painter will leave us ftupified rather 
 by its infolence than impreffed by its power, it will be 
 confidered only as a fuperiour kind of legerdemain, an 
 exertion of ingenuity to no adequate end. 
 
 Before we proceed to the procefs and the methods of 
 invention, it is not fuperfluous to advert to a queftion 
 which has often been made, and by fome has been an- 
 fwered in the negative ; whet ho' it be within the artiJP s 
 province or not, to find or to combine a fubjeSl from him- 
 felf-i without having recourfe to tradition or the Ji ores of 
 hijlory and poetry? 1 Why not, if the fubjedt be within 
 the limits of art and the combinations of nature, 
 though it mould have efcaped obfervation? mall the im- 
 mediate avenues of the mind, open to all its obfervers, 
 from the poet to the novelift, be {hut only to the artift ? 
 mall he be reduced to receive as alms from them what 
 he has a right to (hare as common property? affertions 
 like thefe, fay in other words, that the Laocoon owes 
 
 the 
 
 (<f) 'Eyu S: ttXiov i\iroy.xi 
 
 Aoyov OjW<T£Cj, J) ttccSiv, 
 Aicc roi/ ccaxisirn ysturS' OfAr.pcv 
 JL-?ri\ i\/t\>$u<my o» ttoto-vo. ys fAx^uya. 
 1.iu.vcv STrsft ti. copia. Si 
 KA£7tt£» -rrapxyoTix juv^oic. 
 
THIRD LECTURE. nt 
 
 the impreffion he makes on us to his name alone, and 
 that if tradition had not told a ftory and Pliny fixed it 
 to that work, the artift's conception of a father with 
 his fons, furprifed and entangled by two ferpents within 
 the receffes of a cavern or lonefome dell, was inad- 
 miilible and tranfgrefTed the laws of invention. I am 
 much miflaken, if, (o far from lofing its power over us 
 with its traditional fanction, it would not roufe our 
 fy mpathy more forcibly, and prefs the fubecl: clofer to 
 our bread, were it considered only as the reprefentation 
 of an incident common to humanity. The ancients 
 were fo convinced of their right to this difputed prero- 
 gative that they ailigned it its own clafs, and Theon 
 the Samian is mentioned by Quintilian, whom none will, 
 accufe or fufpect of confounding the limits of the arts, 
 in his lift of primary painters, as owing his celebrity 
 to that intuition into the fudden movements of nature, 
 which the Greeks called (poivrocaiotQ^ the Romans viJio7ies< i 
 and we might circumfcnbe by the phrafe of ' unpre- 
 meditated conceptions' the reproduction of aflociated 
 ideas; he explains what he under flood by it in the follow- 
 ing pafTage adapted to his own profeflion, rhetoric (d). 
 
 < We 
 
 (d) M. F. QuintilianuSj 1. xii. 10. — Concipiendis vifionibus (quas <E>ANTA2IA£ 
 vocant) Theon Samius — eft praeftuntiffinius. 
 
 At quomodo fiet ut afficiamur? neque enim funt motus in noftra poteftate, 
 Tentabo etiam de hoc diceie. Quas $«>T«ri«f graeci vocant, nos fan£ vifiones 
 
 appellamus ■-, 
 
ii2 THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 c We give, fays he, the name of vifions to what the 
 
 ' Greeks call phantafies; that power by which the 
 
 c images of abfent things are reprefented by the mind 
 
 c with the energy of objects moving before our eyes: 
 
 ' he who conceives thefe rightly will be a mafter ©f 
 
 1 paffions ; his is that well-tempered fancy which can 
 
 ' imagine things, voices, acts, as they really exift, a 
 
 * power perhaps in a great meafure dependent on our 
 c will. For if thefe images fo purfue us, when our 
 
 * minds are in a ftate of reft, or fondly fed by hope, 
 4 or in a kind of waking dream; that we feem to 
 1 travel, to fail, to fight, to harangue in public, or to 
 
 difpofe 
 
 appellamus; per quas imagines rerum abfentium ita repraefentan Lur anitno, ut cas 
 cernere oculis ac pracfentes habere videamur : lias quifquis bene conceperit, is erit 
 in affeclibus potentiffimus. Huncquidam dicunt ivtput/Tamarov, qui fibi res, voces, 
 aelus, fecundum verum optume finget: quod quidem nobis volentibus facile 
 continget. 
 
 Nam ut inter otia animorum &, fpes inanes, & vehitfomnia qua;dam vigilantinm, 
 ita nos hae de quibus loquimur, imagines perfequuntur, ut peregrinari, navigare, 
 praeliari, populos alloqui, divitiarumquas non habemus, ufum videamur difponere ; 
 nee cogitare, fed facere: hoc animi vitium ad utilitatem non transferenius ? at 
 hominem occifum querar, non omnia quae in re praefcnti accidifle credibile eft, i^i 
 oculis habebo? non percuffor ille fubitus erumpet ? non expavefcet circumventus ? 
 exclamabit, vel rogabit, vel fugiet ? non ferientem, non concidentem videbo ? non 
 animo fanguis, .& pallor & gemitus, extremus denique expirantis hiatus infidebit ? 
 
 Ideml. vi. c. 11. 
 
 Theon numbered with the ' Proeeres' by Quintilian, by Pliny with lefs discri- 
 mination is placed among the ' Primis Proximos ;' and in fome paffage of Plutarch, 
 unaccountably cenfurcel for impropriety of fubjett, ctToincc. in reprefenting the 
 madnefs of defies. 
 
THIRD LECTURE. ir 3 
 
 difpofe of riches we pofTefs not, and all this with an 
 air of reality, why fhould we not turn to ufe this 
 vice of the mind ? — Suppofe I am to plead the cafe 
 of a murdered man, why fhould not every fuppofable 
 circumftance of the a6t float before my eyes ? mall I 
 not fee the murderer unawares ruin in upon him, in 
 vain he tries* to efcape — fee how pale he turns — hear 
 you not his fhrieks, his entreaties ? do you not fee 
 him flying, /truck, falling ? will not his blood, his 
 amy femblance, his groans, his laft expiring gafp, 
 feize on my mind ?' 
 
 Permit me to apply this organ of the orator for one 
 moment to the poet's procefs : by this radiant recol- 
 lection of afTociated ideas, the fpontaneous ebullitions of 
 nature, fele&ed by obfervation, treafured by memory, 
 clafTed by fenfibility and judgment, Shakfpeare became 
 the fupreme mafter of paffions and the ruler of our 
 hearts ; this embodied his FalftafF and his Shylock, 
 Hamlet and Lear, Juliet and Rofalind. By this power 
 he faw Warwick uncover the corpfe of Glofter, and 
 fwear to his affafTination and his tugs for life ; by this 
 he made Banquo fee the weird fitters bubble up from 
 earth, and in their own air vanifh ; this is the hand that 
 .{truck upon the bell when Macbeth's drink was ready, 
 
 Q_ and 
 
j i 4 • THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 and from her chamber pufhed his dreaming wife, once 
 more to methodize the murder of her gueft. — 
 
 And this was the power of Theon (e) \ ' fuch was the 
 unpremeditated conception that infpired him with the 
 idea of that warriour, who in the words of JElian, feemed* 
 to embody the terrible graces and the enthufiaftic furor 
 of the god of war. Impetuous he rufhed onward to op- 
 pofe the fudden incurfion of enemies j with fhield 
 thrown forward and high brandifhed faulchion, his ftep 
 as he fwept on, feemed to devour the ground : his eye 
 flamed defiance ; you fancied to hear his voice, his look 
 denounce perdition and flaughter without mercy. This 
 figure, fingle and without other accompaniments of war 
 than what the havock of the diftance fhewed, Theon 
 deemed fufHcient to anfwer the impreffion he intended 
 to make on thofe whom he had fele&ed to infpeft it. 
 He kept it covered, till a trumpet, prepared for the pur- 
 pofe, after a prelude of martial fymphonies, at once, 
 by his command, blew with invigourated fiercenefs, a 
 fignal of attack — the curtain dropped, the terrific figure 
 appeared to ftart from the canvas, and irrefiflibly affailed 
 the aftoniflied eyes of the afTembly. 
 
 (f) AiXiavou 7T0IH. itTTOP. 1. H. C. 44' ©EMKif tou Zciypxtpz ttoXXci, jji.iv xat aXXoc. 
 
 iy.oXoyu rnv p^sicxpyi/x.v uya.S'yv Wai>, a tup su xcci to$e to ypa,^[ji(x.. Kosi Iiu7£? 
 
 an avrov Ii'Sucnaii, uuztip i% 'Affoj pav^ra. K«i vqci-ruv fiXnru)!/, km wweiAwk 
 
 4i eXa T8 {r^pixTOS; oti fj.v)$ii/o$ <£>£S0"£TGU. 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 115 
 
 To prove the relation of iElian no hyperbolic legend, 
 I need not infift on the magac effect which the union of 
 two fifter powers muft produce on the fenfes : of what 
 our art alone and unaflifted may perform, the moft une- 
 quivocal proof exifta within thefe walls ; your eyes, your 
 feelings, and your fancy have long anticipated it : whofe 
 mind has not now recalled that wonder of a figure, the 
 mifnomed gladiator of Agafias, a figure whofe tremen- 
 dous energy embodies every element of motion, whilfl 
 its pathetic dignity of character enforces fympathies, 
 which the undifguifed ferogity of Theon's warriour in vain 
 folicits. But the fame irradiation which fhewed the 
 foldier to Theon, fhewed to Agafias the leader : Theon 
 faw the paffion, Agafias (f) its rule. 
 
 But 
 
 (f) The name of Agafias, the fcholar or fori of Dofitheos, the Ephefian, occurs 
 not in ancient record ; and whether he be the Egefias of Quintilian and Pliny, or 
 thefe the fame, cannot be afcertained ; though the ftyle of fculpture, and the form 
 of the letters in the infeription are not much at variance with the character which 
 the former gives to the age and ftyle of Calon and Egefias ; ' Signa — duriora et 
 Tufcanicis proxima.' The impropriety of calling this figure a gladiator has been 
 fliewn by Winkelmann, and on his remark, that it probably exhibits the attitude of 
 a foldier, who fignalized himfelf in fome moment of clanger, Leffing has founded 
 a conjecture, that it is the figure of Chabrias, from the following paffage of Corn. 
 Nepos : ' elucet maxime inventum ejus in proelio, quod apud Thebas fecit, cum 
 ' Boeotiis fubfidio veniffet. Namque in eo victoria? fidente furamo duce Agefilao, 
 ' fugatis jam ab eo condiictitiis catervis, reliquam phalangem loco vetuit cedere; 
 ' obnixoque genu fcuto, projectaque hafla, impetum excipere hoftium docuit. Id 
 ' novum Agefilaus intuens, progredi non eft aufus, fuofque jam incurrentes tuba. 
 s revocavit. Hoc ufque eo in Greecia fama celebratum eft, ut illo ftatu Chabrias 
 
 Q2 < fibi 
 
u6 THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 But the moll fbiking inftance of the eminent place 
 due to this intuitive faculty among the principal organs 
 
 ° of 
 
 ' fibi ftatuam fieri voluerit, qute publice ei ab Athenienfibus in foro conftituta eft. 
 ' Ex quo factum eft, ut pofteaathletas, caterique artifices his ftatibus in flatuis po- 
 ' nendis uterentur, in quibus vidtoriam eflent adepti ?' 
 
 On this paffage, fimple and unperplexed, if we except the words ' caeterique 
 ' artifices/ where fomething is evidently dropped or changed, there can, I truft, 
 be but one opinion — that the manoeuvre of Chabrias was defenfive, and confifted in 
 giving the phalanx a ftationary, and at the fame time — impenetrable pofture, to check 
 the progrcfs of the enemy ; a repulfe, not a victory was obtained ; the Thebans were 
 content to maintain their ground, and not a word is faid by the hiftorian, of a piir- 
 fuit, when Agefilaus, ftartled at the contrivance, called off his troops : but the 
 warriour of Agafias ruflies forward in an afl'ailing attitude, whilft with his head and 
 fhield turned upwards he feems to guard himfelf from fome attack above him. 
 Lefiing, aware of this, to make the paffage fquare with his conjecture, is reduced 
 to a change of punctuation, and accordingly tranfpofes the decifive comma-after 
 ' fcuto,' to ' genu,' and reads ' obnixo genu,' fcuto projeetaque hafta, — docuit.' 
 This altme might warrant us to difmifs his conjecture as lefs folid than daring and 
 acute. 
 
 The ftatue erected to Chabrias in the Athenian forum was probably of brafs, for 
 ' ftatua' and ' ftatuarius,' in Pliny at leaft, will I believe always be found relative 
 to figures and arlifts in metal; fuch were thofe which at an early period the Athe- 
 nians dedicated to Harmodios and Ariftogiton : from them the cuftom fpread in 
 every direction, and iconic figures in metal, began, fays Pliny, to be the ornaments 
 of every municipal forum. 
 
 From another paffage in Nepos, I was once willing to find in our figure an Al 
 cibiades in Phrygia, rufhing from the flames of the cottage fired to deftroy him, and 
 guarding himfelf againft the javelins and arrows which the gang of Syfamithres and 
 Bagoas fhowered on him at a diftauce. ' Me,' fays the hiftorian, ' fonitu fiamma; 
 ' excitatus, quod gladins ei erat fubductus, familiaris fui fubalare telumeripuit — et 
 ' — flammas vim tranfit. Quern, ut Barbari incendium efTugiffe viderunt, telis 
 ' eminus miffis, interfecerunt. Sic Alcibiades annos circiter quadraginta natus, 
 * etiem obiil fupremum.' 
 
 Such is the age of our figure ; and it is to be noticed that the right arm and hand, 
 now armed with a lance, are modern ; if it be objected, that the figure is iconic, and 
 
 thai 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 117 
 
 of invention, is that celebrated performance, which by 
 the united tefKmony of cotemporary writers, and the 
 evident traces of its imitation, fcattered over the works 
 of cotemporary artifts, contributed alone more to the 
 reftoration of art and the revolution of ftyle, than the 
 united effort of the two centuries that preceded it : I 
 mean the aftonifhing deflgn commonly called the cartoon 
 of Pifa, the work of Michael Agnolo Buonarroti, begun 
 in competition with Lionardo da Vinci, and at intervals 
 finimed at Florence. This work, whofe celebrity fub- 
 jedled thofe who had not feen it, to the fupercilious 
 contempt of the luckier ones who had ; which was the 
 common centre of attraction to all the ftudents of Tuf- 
 
 cany 
 
 that the head ofAlcibiades, cut off after his death, was carried to Pharnabazus, and 
 his body burned by his miftrefs; it might be obferved in reply, that bulls and figures 
 of Alcibiades muft have been frequent in Greece, and that the expreflion found its 
 fource in the mind of Agafia's. On this conjecture however I fhall not infift: let 
 us only obferve that the character, forms and altitude, might be turned to better ufe 
 than what Pouffin made of it. It might form an admirable Uiyffes beftricling the 
 deck of his fhip to defend his companions from the defcending claws of Scylla, or 
 father, with indignation and anguiih, feeing them already fnatched up and writhing 
 in the myfieiious gripe : 
 
 Aut»£ lyu xa-TOLoug xXvrtx T£UV£», xa\ ivo oaje 
 
 MciXg' ill ^ipTIV eAwp, si? Ixpux. lino; Ifixii/ov 
 
 Tlpuows ixccuov $e fxoi ior<Tt 
 
 n«>T» ircnrJa.u/01/Tt Trcoq 'iUpoititci impy 
 
 2xt$/xptiic<; Si ■ 
 
 'H:?>i run horiTcc 7>o$a,s hcu ytipot<; 'vrriftiv 
 
 'T\j/»?' unp ofniwv — — — — Od\fs. M. 328,. feq, 
 
u8 THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 cany and Romagna, from Raphael Sanzio to Baftian da 
 St. Gallo, called Ariftotile, from his loquacious defcants 
 on its beauties ; this ineftimable work itfelf is loft, and 
 its deftrudHon is with too much appearance of truth 
 fixed on the mean villany of Baccio Bandinelli, who, 
 in poffeflion of the key to the apartment where it was 
 kept, during the revolutionary troubles of the Florentine 
 republic, after making what ufe he thought proper of 
 it, is faid to have torn it in pieces. Still we may form 
 an idea of its principal groups from fome ancient prints 
 and drawings ; and of its compoiition from a fmall copy 
 now exifting at Holkham, the outlines of which have 
 been lately etched. Crude, difguifed, or feeble, as thefe 
 fpecimens are, they will prove better guides than the 
 half-informed rhapfodies of Vafari, the meagre account 
 of Afcanio Condivi, better than the mere anatomic ver- 
 dict of Benvenuto Cellini, who denies that the powers 
 afterward exerted in the Capella Siftina, arrive at * half 
 its excellence (g).' 
 
 i. it 
 
 (g) Sebbene il divino Michel Agnolo fece la gran Cappella di Papa Julio, dappoi 
 non arrivo a quefto fegno mai alia meta, la fua virtu non aggiunfe mai alia forza di 
 quei primi ftudi. Vita di Benvenuto Cellini, p. 13. — Vafari, as appears from his 
 own account, never himfelf faw the cartoon: he talks of an 'infinity of com- 
 batants on horfeback,' of which there neither remains nor ever can have exifted a 
 trace, if the piclure at Holkham be the work of Baftiano da St. Gallo. This 
 he faw, for it was painted, at his own defire, by that mailer, from his fmall cartoon 
 6 in 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 119 
 
 It reprefents an imaginary moment relative to the war 
 carried on by the Florentines againft Pifa : and exhibits 
 a numerous group of warriours, roufed from their bath- 
 ing in the Arno, by the fudden fignal of a war-horn, 
 and ruining to arms. This composition may without 
 exaggeration be faid to perfonify with unexampled va- 
 riety that motion, which Agafias and Theon embodied 
 in Jingle figures : in imagining this tranfient moment 
 from a ftate of relaxation to a ftate of energy, the ideas 
 
 of 
 
 in 1542, and by means of Monfignor Jovio tranfinitted to Francis I. who highly 
 efteemed it; from his collection it however difappeared, and no mention is made 
 of it by the French writers for near two centuries. It was probably difcovered at 
 Paris, bought and carried to England by the late Lord Leicefter. That Vafari, on 
 infpe&ing the copy, fliould not have corrected the confufed account he gives of 
 the cartoon from hearfay, can be wondered at, only by thofe, who are unac- 
 quainted with his character as a writer. He tells us himfelf that he copied every 
 figure in the ftanze of Raphael; yet his memory was either fo treacherous or his 
 rapidity in writing fo inconfiderate, that his account of them is a mere heap 
 of errours and unpardonable confuiion, and one might almoft fancy that he had 
 never entered the Vatican. Even Bottari, the learned editor of his work, his 
 countryman and advocate againft the complaints of Agoftino Carracci and 
 Federigo Zucchero, though ever ready to fight his battles, is here at a lot's to ac- 
 count for his miftakes. The hiftory of modern art owes, no doubt, much to 
 Vafari, he leads us from its cradle to its. maturity, with anxious diligence. But 
 more loquacious than ample, and lefs discriminating than eager to defcribe, he is, 
 at an early period, exhaufted by the fuperlatives lavifhed on infcriour claims, and 
 forced into frigid rhapfodies and aftrologic nonfenfe to do juftice to the greater. 
 He has been called the Herodotus of our art, and if the main Simplicity of his 
 narrative, and the defire of accumulating anecdotes, intitle him in fome degree to 
 that appellation, we ought not to forget, that every day adds Something to the au- 
 thenticity of the Greek hiftorian, whilft every day furniflies matter to qneniou 
 the credibility of the Tufcan. 
 
izo THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 of motion, to ufe the bold figure of Dante, feem to 
 have fhowered into the artift's mind. From the chief, 
 nearly placed in the centre, who precedes, and whofe 
 war-voice accompanies the trumpet, every age of human 
 agility, every attitude, every feature of alarm, hafte, 
 hurry, exertion, eagernefs, burft into fo many rays, 
 like the fparks flying from a red-hot iron. Many have 
 reached, fome boldly ftep, fome have leaped on the 
 rocky more ; here two arms emerging from the water 
 grapple with the rock, there two hands cry for help, 
 and their companions bend over or rum. on to aflift 
 them ; often imitated, but inimitable is the ardent fea- 
 ture of the grim veteran whofe every ilnew labours to 
 force over the dripping limbs his cloaths, whilft gnafhing 
 he puflies the foot through the rending garment. He 
 is contrafted by the (lender elegance of a half averted 
 youth, who feduloufly eager buckles the armour to his 
 thigh, and methodizes hafte ; another fwings the high- 
 raifed hauberk on his moulder, whilft one who feems a 
 leader, mindlefs of drefs, ready for combat, and with 
 brandifhed fpear, overturns a third, who crouched to 
 grafp a weapon — one naked himfelf buckles on the mail 
 of his companion, and he, turned toward the enemy, 
 feems to ftamp impatiently the ground. — Experience 
 and rage, old vigour, young velocity, expanded or con- 
 traded, vie in exertions of energy. Yet in this fcene 
 
 of 
 
THIRD LECTURE. Hi 
 
 of tumult one motive animates the whole, eagernefs to 
 engage with fub ordination to command ; this preferves 
 the dignity of action, and from a ftfaggling rabble 
 changes the figures to men whofe legitimate conteft in- 
 terefts our wifhes. 
 
 This intuition into the pure emanations of nature, 
 Raphael Sanzio poffeffed in the moft enviable degree, 
 from the utmoft conflict of pallions, to the enchant- 
 ing round of gentler emotion, and the nearly filent 
 hints of mind and character. To this he devoted the 
 tremendous fcenery of that magnificent frefco, known to 
 you all under the name of the Incendio del Borgo, 
 in which he facrificed the hiftoric and myftic part of his 
 fubjedr. to the effufion of the various paffions roufed by 
 the fudden terrours of nocturnal conflagration. It is 
 not for the faint appearance of the miracle which ap- 
 proaches with the pontiff and his train in the back- 
 ground, that Raphael befpeaks our eyes 5 the pertur- 
 bation, neceffity, hope, fear, danger, the pangs and 
 efforts of affection grappling with the enraged elements 
 of wind and fire, difplayed on the foreground, furnifh 
 the pathetic motives that prefs on our hearts. That 
 mother, who but half awake or rather in a waking 
 trance, drives her children inftinctively before her; that 
 profhate female half covered by her dreaming hair, 
 
 r with 
 
iaa THIRD LECTURE, 
 
 with elevated arms imploring heaven ; that other who 
 over the flaming tenement, heedlefs of her own danger,, 
 abforbed in maternal agony, cautioufly reaches- over to< 
 drop the babe into the outftretched arms of its father; 
 that common fon of nature, who heedlefs of another's 
 woe, intent on his own fafety, librates a leap from the 
 burning wall ; the vigorous youth who followed by an 
 aged mother bears the palfied father on his fhoulder 
 from the rufhing wreck ; the nimble grace of thofe 
 helplefs damfels that vainly ftrive to adminifter relief 
 — thefe are the real objects of the painter's aim, and 
 leave the pontiff and the miracle, with taper, bell and 
 clergy — unheeded in the diftance., 
 
 I fhall not at prefent expatiate in tracing from this 
 fource the novel combinations of affecliion by which 
 Raphael contrived to intereft us in his numerous repe- 
 titions of Madonnas and holy Families, fele£ted from 
 the warmeft effufions of domeftic endearment, or in 
 Milton's phrafe, from * all the charities of father, fon,. 
 and mother.' Nor fhall I follow it in its more contami- 
 nated defcent, to thofe reprefentations of local manners 
 and national modifications of foeiety, whofe charac- 
 teristic difcrimination and humorous exuberance, for 
 inftance, we admire in Hogarth, but which, like the 
 fleeting faihlons of the day, every hour contributes 
 
 fome thing 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 127 
 
 fomething to obliterate, which foon become, unintelli- 
 gible by time, or degenerate into caricature, the chro- 
 nicle of fcandal, the hiftory-book of the vulgar. 
 
 Invention in its more fpecific fenfe receives its fub- 
 jects from poetry or authenticated tradition; they are 
 epic or fublime, dramatic or impaflioned, hijloric or 
 circumfcribed by truth. The firft aftonifoes ; the fecond 
 moves, the third informs. 
 
 The aim of the epic painter is to imprefs one general 
 idea, one great quality of nature or mode of fociety, 
 fome great maxim, without defcending to thofe fub- 
 divifions, which the detail of character prefcribes : he 
 paints the elements with their own fimplicity, height, 
 depth, the vaft, the grand, darknefs, light; life, 
 death; the part, the future; man, pity, love, joy, fear, 
 terrour, peace, war, religion, government : and the 
 vifible agents are only engines to force one irrefiftible 
 idea upon the mind and fancy, as the machinery of 
 Archimedes ferved only to convey deft ruction, and the 
 wheels of a watch ferve only to tell time. 
 
 Such is the firft and general fenfe of what is called 
 the fublime, epic, allegoric, lyric fubftance. Homer, to 
 imprefs one forcible idea of war, its crigin, its progrefs, 
 
 r 2 and 
 
12$ THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 and its end, fet to work innumerable engines of various 
 magnitude, yet none but what uniformly tends to en- 
 force this and only this idea ; gods and demigods are 
 only actors, and nature but the fcene of war - r no cha- 
 racter is difcriminated but where difcrimination difcovers 
 a new look of war ; no paflion is raifed but what is 
 blown up by the breath of war, and as foon abforbed in; 
 its univerfal blaze : — As in a conflagration we fee. 
 turrets, fpires, and temples illuminated only to propa- 
 gate the horrours of deflruction, fo through the ftormy 
 page of Homer, we fee his heroines and heroes, but by 
 the light that blafta them. 
 
 This is the principle of that divine leries of freicoes 5 . 
 with which under the pontificates of Julius II. and, 
 Paul III. Michael Angelo adorned the lofty compart- 
 ments of the Cap ell a Sijlina, and from a modefty or a 
 pride for ever to be lamented, only not occupied the 
 whole of its ample fides. Its fubject is theocracy or the 
 empire of religion, confidered as the parent and queen 
 of man ; the origin, the progrefs, and final difpenfation 
 of Providence, as taught by the faered records*. Amid 
 this imagery of primeval fimplicity, whofe fole object is 
 the relation of the race to its Founder, to look for 
 minute difcrimination of character, is to invert the 
 principle of the artifVs inventioa: here is only God with 
 
 man. 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 125- 
 
 man. The veil of eternity is rent; time, fpace, and 
 matter teem in the creation of the elements and of 
 earth ; life klues from God and adoration from man, in 
 the creation of Adam and his mate ; tranfgreffion of the 
 precept at the tree of knowledge proves the origin of 
 evil, and of expulfion from the immediate intercourfe 
 with God; the ceconomy of juftice and grace com- 
 mences in the revolutions of the deluge, and the co- 
 venant made with Noah ;: and the germs of focial cha- 
 racter are traced in the fubfequent fcene between him 
 and his fons ; the awful fynod of prophets and fibyls 
 are the heralds of the Redeemer ; and the hoft of pa^- 
 triachs the pedigree of the Son of Man ; the brazen, 
 ferpent and the fall of Haman, the giant fubdued by 
 the {tripling in Goliah and David, and the conquerour 
 deftroyed by female weaknefs in Judith, are types of 
 his myfterious progrefs, till Jonah pronounces him im- 
 mortal ; and the magnificence of the laft judgment 
 by mewing the Saviour in the judge of man, fums up 
 the whole,, and reunites the founder and the race. 
 
 Such is the fpirit of the Siftine chapel, and the outline 
 of its general invention, with regard to the cycle of its 
 fubjeds — as in their choice they lead to each other with- 
 out intermediate chafms in the transition ; as each pre- 
 ceding one prepares and directs the conduct of the next, 
 
 this 
 
126 THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 this the following ; and as the intrinnc variety of all, 
 confpires to the Simplicity of one great end. The fpecijic 
 invention of the pictures feparate, as each conftitutes an 
 independent whole, deferves our consideration next : each 
 lias its centre, from which it diffeminates, to which it 
 leads back all fecondary points ; arranged, hid, or dif- 
 played, as they are more or lefs organs of the infpiring 
 plan : each rigoroufly is circumfcribed by its generic 
 character, no inferiour merely conventional, temporary, 
 local, or difparate beauty, however in itfelf alluring, is 
 admitted ; each finally turns upon that tranfient mo- 
 ment, the moment of fufpenfe, big with the paft, and 
 pregnant with the future ; the action no where expires, 
 for action and intereft terminate together. Thus in the 
 creation of Adam, the Creator borne on a group of at- 
 tendant fpirits, the perfonifled powers of omnipotence, 
 moves on toward his laft, beft work, the lord of his 
 creation : the immortal fpark, iffuing from his extended 
 arm, electrifies the new-formed being, who tremblingly 
 alive, half raifed half reclined, haftens to meet his 
 Maker. In the formation of Eve the aftonifhment of 
 life, jufl organized, is abforbed in the fublimer fenti- 
 ment of adoration ; perfect, though not all difengaged 
 from the fide of her dreaming mate, {lie moves with 
 folded hands and humble dignity towards the majeitic 
 Form whofe half raifed hand attracts her — what words 
 o can 
 
TH I RD LECTURE. 127 
 
 can exprefs the equally bland and irrefiftible velocity of 
 that myfterious Being, who forms the fun and moon, and 
 already paft, leaves the earth, compleatly formed, behind 
 him ? who can be fo frigid to mifconftrue this double 
 image of Omniprefence, into mere apportion ? Here is 
 the meafure of immeniity(i>). 
 
 From thefe fpecimens of invention exerted in the more 
 numerous compositions of this fublime cycle, let me fix 
 your attention for a few moments on the powers it dif- 
 plays in the fingle figures of the Prophets, thofe organs 
 of embodied fentiment : their expreffion and attitude, 
 whilft it exhibits the unequivocal marks of infpired 
 contemplation in all ; and with equal variety, energy, and 
 delicacy, ftamps character on each ; exhibits in the 
 occupation of the prefent moment the traces of the paft 
 and hints of the future. Eiaiah, the image of infpira* 
 tiorif fublime and lofty,, with an attitude expreilive of 
 the facred trance in which meditation on the MeiTiah had 
 immerfed him, ftarts at the voice of an attendant genius, 
 who feems to pronounce the words c to us a child is born, 
 * to us a fon is given.' Daniel, the humbler image of 
 eager dilige?ice^ tranferibes from a volume held by a 
 
 tripling, 
 
 (h) 'O St, iru; [Aty&vijii rx Aai/xcna ; Tnv 
 
 Oppw 'txurmi )w!r ( «fxu Jiar^aTi x«t«/a£T£ei. 
 
 LonginuSj § a, 
 
128 THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 .{tripling j with a gefture natural to thofe who, abforbed in 
 the progrefs of their fubjedt, are heedlefs of convenience ; 
 liis pofture fhews that he had infpected the volume from 
 which now he is turned, and mail return to & immediately. 
 Zachariah perfonifies confideration^ he has read, and 
 ponders on what he reads. Inquiry moves in the dig- 
 nified activity of Joel ; hafteningto open a facred fcrowl, 
 and to compare the fcriptures with each other. Ezechiel, 
 the fervid feature of fancy , the feer of refurrection, 
 reprefented as on the field ftrewn with bones of the 
 dead, points downward and afks, c can thefe bones live ?' 
 the attendant angel, borne on the wind that agitates his 
 locks and the prophet's veftments, with raifed arm 
 and finger, pronounces, they mall rife ; lair, Jeremiah, 
 fubdued by grief and exhaufted by lamentation, finks 
 in filent woe over the ruins of Jerufalem. Nor are 
 the fibyls, thofe female oracles, lefs exprefiive, lefs indi- 
 vidually marked — they are the echo, the counterpart of 
 the prophets. If the artift, who abforbed by the uni- 
 form power and magnitude of execution, faw only 
 breadth and nature in their figures, muft be told that 
 he has difcovered the leaft part of their excellence ; the 
 critic who charges them with affectation, can only be 
 difmiffed with our contempt. 
 
 On 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 129 
 
 On the immenfe plain of the laft judgment, Michael 
 Angelo has wound up the deftiny of man, limply con- 
 sidered as the fubjecT: of religion, faithful or rebellious ; 
 and in one generic manner has diftributed happinefs and 
 mifery, the general feature of pailions is given, and no 
 more. — -But had Raphael meditated that fubjecT:, he 
 would undoubtedly have applied to our fympathies for 
 his choice of imagery ; he would have combined all 
 poilible emotions with the utmofl variety of probable 
 or real character : a father meeting his fon, a mother 
 torn from her daughter, lovers flying into each others 
 arms, friends for ever feparated, children accufing their 
 parents, enemies reconciled ; tyrants dragged before the 
 tribunal by their fubjects, conquerors hiding themfelves 
 from their victims of carnage ; innocence declared, hy- 
 pocrify unmafked, atheifm confounded, detected fraud, 
 triumphant reiignation; the moft prominent features of 
 connubial, fraternal, kindred connexion. — In a word, 
 the heads of that infinite variety which Dante has mi- 
 nutely fcattered over his poem — all domeftic, politic, reli- 
 gious relations ; whatever is not local in virtue and in vice : 
 and the fublimity of the greaterl of all events, would have 
 
 been merely the minifler of fympathies and pafiions(/J. 
 
 If 
 
 (i) Much has been laid of the lolls we have fuffered in the marginal drawings 
 which Michael Angelo drew in his Dante. Invention may have fullered in being 
 deprived of them ; they can, however, have been little more than hints of a fize 
 
 S too 
 
i 3 o THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 If opinions be divided on the refpeclive advantages 
 and difadvantages of thefe two modes; if to fome it fhould 
 appear, though from confideration of the plan which 
 
 guided 
 
 too minute to admit of much difcrimination. The true terrours of Dante depend 
 as much upon the medium in which he fhews, or gives us a glimpfe of his figures, 
 as on their form. The characleriftic outlines of his fiends, Michael Angelo pep- 
 fonified in the daemons of the laft judgment, and invigourated the undifguifed 
 appetite, ferocity or craft of the brute, by traits of human malignity, cruelty, 
 or haft. The Minos of Dante, in Miffer Biagio da Cefena, and his Charon, have- 
 been recognized by all ; but lefs the fhivering wretch held over the barge by a hook, 
 and evidently taken from the following paiTage in the xxiid of the Inferno : 
 
 Et grafhacan, che gli era piu di contra 
 Gii aironciglib l'impegolate chiome ; 
 E trafle '1 fu, che mi parve una lontra. 
 
 None has noticed as imitations of Dante in the xxivthbook, the aftonifhing groups- 
 in the Lunetta of the brazen ferpent ; none the various hints from the Inferno 
 and Purgatorio fcattered over the attitudes and expreffions of the figures riving 
 from their graves. In the Lunetta of Haman, we owe the fublime conception of 
 his figure to the fubfequent paffage : 
 
 Poi piobbe dentro nell' alta phantafia 
 Un Crucififfo, difpettofo e fiero moria 
 Nella fua vifta, e lo qual fi moria. 
 
 The bafforelievo on the border of the fecond rock, in Purgatory, furniihed the idea 
 of the Annunziata, painted by Marcello Venufti from his defign, in the facrifty of 
 St. Giov. Lateran, by order of Tommafo de' Cavalieri, the felecl; friend and fa- 
 vourite of Michael Angelo. 
 
 We are told that Michael Angelo reprefented the Ugolino of Dante, inclofed in 
 the tower of Pifa; if he did, his own work is loft : but if, as fome fuppofe, the 
 bafforelievo of that fubjed by Pierino da Vinci, be taken from his idea, notwithr 
 Handing the greater latitude, which the fculptor might claim, in diverting the 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 131 
 
 guided Michael Ano;elo, I am far from fubfcribing to their 
 notions, that the fcenery of the laff, judgment, might 
 have gained more btf the dramatic introduction of varied 
 pathos, than it would have loft by the dereliction of its 
 generic Simplicity : there can, I believe, be but one opi- 
 nion with regard to the methods adopted by him and 
 Raphael in the invention of the moment that characterifes 
 the creation of Eve : both artifts applied for it to their 
 own minds, but with very different fuccefs : the eleva- 
 tion of Michael Angelo's foul, infpired by the operation of 
 creation itfelf, furnifhed him at once with the feature 
 that ftamps on human nature its moft glorious preroga- 
 tive : whilft the characteriftic fubtilty, rather than fen- 
 fibility of Raphael's mind, in this inftance, offered 
 nothing but a frigid fuccedaneum; a fymptom incident to 
 all, when after the fubfided aftonifhment on a great and 
 Ibdden event, the mind recollecting itfelf, ponders on 
 with inquifitive furmife. In Michael Angelo, the in- 
 f eriour fenfe of budding life reflected on itfelf, is abforbed 
 3 1 the fublimity of the fentiment which iffues from the 
 
 auguft 
 
 - } iues of drapery apd coftufne ; he appears to me, to have erred in the means 
 * uployed to roufe our fympathy. A fullen but mufcular character, with groups of 
 lufcular bodies and forms of iirength, about him, with the allegoric figure of the 
 "uno at their feet, and that of Famine hovering over their heads, are not the fierce 
 ? «othie chief, deprived of revenge, brooding over defpair in the ftony cage; are not 
 the exhaufted agonies of a father, petrified by the helplefs groans of an expiring 
 family, offering their own bodies -for his food, to prolong his life. 
 
 S 2 
 
13* THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 auguft Prefence that attracts Eve ; * her earthly,' in Mil- 
 ton's expreflion, l by his heavenly overpowered/ pours 
 itfelf in adoration : whiifY in the inimitable caft of 
 Adam's figure, we trace the hint §f that half confeious. 
 moment when fleep began to give way to the vivacity. ©f 
 the dream infpired. In Raphael, creation is complete — 
 Eve is prefented to Adam, now awake ; but neither the 
 new-born charms, the fubmifiive grace and virgin pu- 
 rity of the beauteous image ; nor the awful pre- 
 fence of her Introductory draw him from his mental 
 trance into efTufions of love or gratitude; at eafe reclined,, 
 with fingers pointing at himfelf and his new mate, he 
 feems to methodize the furprifing event that took place 
 during his fleep, and to whifper the words ' flefh. of 
 c my flefli*' 
 
 Thus, but far better adapted, has Raphael perfonified 
 Dialogue , moved the lips of Soliloquy, unbent or 
 wrinkled the features, and arranged the limbs and 
 gefture of Meditation, in the pictures of the ParnafTus 
 and of the fchool of Athens, parts of the immenfe 
 allegoric drama that fills the ftanzas, and difplays the 
 brighter! ornament of the Vatican ; the immortal monu- 
 ment of the towering ambition, unlimited patronage, and 
 refined tafle of Julius II. and Leo X. ; its cycle reprefents 
 the origin, the progrefs, extent, and final triumph of 
 
 church 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 133 
 
 church empire, or ecclefiafKc government; in the firft fub- 
 je£t,of theParnaflus, Poetry led back to its origin and rirft 
 duty, the herald and interpreter of a firfr. Caufe, in the 
 univerfal language of imagery addreffed to the fenfes, 
 unites man, icattertd and favage, in focial and religious 
 bands. What was the furmife of the eye and the wifh 
 of hearts, is gradually made the refult of reafon, in the 
 characters of the fchool of Athens, by the refearches of 
 philofophy, which from bodies to mind, from corporeal 
 harmony to moral fitnefs, and from the duties of fociety, 
 afcends to the doctrine of God and hopes of immortality. 
 Here revelation in its ftricler fenfe commences, and con- 
 jecture becomes a glorious reality : in the compofition of 
 the difpute on the facrament, the Saviour after afceniion 
 feated on his throne, the attefted fon of God and Man, 
 furrounded by his types, the prophets, patriarchs, apof- 
 tles and the hofts of heaven, inftitutes the myfteries and 
 initiates in his facrament the heads and prefbyters of 
 the church militant, who in the awful prefence of their 
 Mafter and the celeftial fynod, difcufs, explain, propound 
 his doctrine. That the facred myftery (hall clear all 
 doubt and fubdue all herefy, is taught in the miracle of 
 the blood-ftained wafer ; that without arms, by the arm 
 of Heaven itfelf, it fhall releafe its votaries, and defeat 
 its enemies, the deliverance of Peter, the overthrow of 
 Heliodorus, the flight of Attila, the captive Saracens, 
 
 bear 
 
134 THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 bear teSHmony ; that nature itfelf Shall fubmit to its 
 power and the elements obey its mandates, the checked 
 conflagration of the Borgo, declares : till haftening to 
 its ultimate triumphs, its union with the State, it is 
 proclaimed by the vifion of Conflantine, confirmed by 
 the rout of Maxentius, eitablifhed by the imperial pu- 
 pil's receiving baptifm, and fubmitting to accept his 
 crown at the feet of the mitred pontiff. 
 
 Such is the rapid outline of the cycle painted or de- 
 signed by Raphael on the compartments of the Stanzas 
 facred to his name. Here is the mafs of his powers in 
 poetic conception and execution, here is every period 
 of his Style, his emancipation from the narrow fhackles 
 of Pietro Perugino, his discriminations of characteristic 
 form, on to the heroic grandeur of his line. Here is that 
 mailer-tone of frefco painting, the real instrument of 
 hiStory, which with its Silver purity and breadth unites 
 the glow of Titiano and Corregio's tints. Every where 
 we meet the fuperiority of genius, but more or lefs 
 impreSIive, with more or lefs felicity in proportion as 
 each fubject was more or lefs fufceptible of dramatic 
 treatment. From the bland enthuSiafm of the Par- 
 naSTus, and the fedate or eager features of medita- 
 tion in the fchool of Athens, to the Sterner traits of 
 dogmatic controverfy in the difpute of the facrament, 
 
 and 
 
THIRD LECTURE. j 35 
 
 and the fymptoms of religious conviction or inflamed zeal 
 at the mafs of Bolfena. Not the miracle, as we have 
 obferved, the fears and terrours of humanity infpire and 
 feize us at the conflagration of the Borgo : if in the 
 Heliodorus the fublimity of the virion balances fympathy 
 with aflonifhment, we follow the rapid minifters of grace 
 to their revenge, lefs to refcue the temple from the gripe 
 of facrilege, than infpired by the palpitating graces, the 
 helplefs innocence, the defencelefs beauty of the females 
 and children Scattered around ; and thus we forget the. 
 virion of the labarum, the angels and Conftantine in the 
 battle, to plunge in the wave with Maxentius, or tQa 
 fhare the agonies of the father who recognizes his own 
 fon in the enemy he flew. 
 
 With what propriety Raphael introduced portrait,, 
 though in its moft. dignified and elevated fenfe, into fome 
 compofitions of the great work we are contemplating;, 
 I fhall not now difcufs ; the allegoric part of the work 
 may account for it : he has, however, by its admiflion, 
 ftamped that branch of painting at once with its- efTen- 
 tial feature, character, and has affigned it its place and 
 rank ; ennobled by character, it rifes to dramatic dignity, 
 deftitute of that, it finks to mere mechanic dexterity, or 
 floats, a bubble of fafhion, Portrait is to hifloric paint- 
 ing in art, what phyfiognomy is to pathognomy. in 
 
 fcience £ 
 
i 3 6 THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 fcience , that fhews the character and powers of the 
 being which makes its fubject, in its formation and at 
 reft : this fhews it in exertion. Bembo, Bramante, 
 Dante, Gonzaga, Savonarola, Raphael himfelf may be 
 considered in the inferior light of mere chara&eriftic or- 
 nament ; but Julius the fecond authenticating the mi- 
 racle at the mafs of Boifena, or borne into the 
 temple, rather to authorize than to witnefs the pu- 
 nishment inflicted on its fpoiler ; Leo with his train 
 calmly facing Attila, or deciding on his tribunal the 
 late of the captive Saracens, tell us by their prefence 
 that they are the heroes of the drama, that the action 
 has been contrived for them, is fubordinate tq them, and 
 has been compofed to illuftrate their character. For as 
 in the epic, act and agent are fubordinate to the maxim, 
 and in pure hiftory are mere organs of the fact ; fo the 
 drama fubordinates both fact and maxim to the agent, 
 his character and paffion : what in them was end is but 
 the medium here. 
 
 "Such were the principles on which he treated the 
 beautiful tale of Amor and Pfyche : the allegory of 
 Apuleius became a drama under the hand of Raphael, 
 though it muft be owned, that with every charm of 
 fcenic gradation and lyric imagery, its characters, as 
 exquifitely chofen as acutely difcriminated, exhibit lefs 
 * the 
 
THIRD LECTURE. i 37 
 
 the obftacles and real object of affection, and its final 
 triumph over mere appetite and fexual inftinct, than the 
 voluptuous hiftory of his own favourite paflion. The 
 faint light of the maxim vanifhes in the fplendour which 
 expands before our fancy the enchanted circle of wanton 
 dalliance and amorous attachment. 
 
 But the power of Raphael's invention exerts itfelf 
 chiefly in fubjects where the drama, diverted of epic or 
 allegoric fiction, meets pure hiftory, and elevates, invi- 
 gourates, impreffes the pregnant moment of a real fact, 
 with character and pathos. The fummit of thefe is that 
 magnificent feries of coloured defigns commonly called 
 the cartoons, fo well known to you all, part of which we 
 happily pofiefs; formerly when complete and united, 
 and now, in the copies of the tapeftry annually exhibited 
 in the colonnade of the Vatican, they reprefent in thir- 
 teen compositions the origin, fanction, csconomy and 
 progrefs of the Chriftian religion. In whatever light we 
 confider their invention, as parts of one whole relative 
 to each other, or independent each of the reft^ and as 
 flngle fubjects, there can be fcarcely named a beauty or 
 a myftery of which the cartoons furnifh not an inftance 
 or a clue ; theyare poifed between perfpicuity and preg- 
 nancy of moment ; the death of Ananias, the facrifice 
 
 t at 
 
i 3 8 THIRD LECTURE, 
 
 at Lyftra, Paul on the areopagus, will furnim us with 
 conclufions for the remainder. 
 
 In the cartoon of Ananias, at the firfl glance, and 
 even before we are made acquainted with the particu- 
 lars of the fubject, we become partners of the fcene. 
 The difpofition is amphitheatric, the fcenery a fpacious 
 hall, the heart of the action is the centre, the wings 
 aflift, elucidate, connect it with the ends. The apo- 
 plectic figure before us is evidently the victim of a 
 Supernatural Power infpiring the apbftolic figure, who 
 on the raifed platform with threatening arm pronounced, 
 and with the word enforced his doom. The terrour 
 occasioned by the fudden ftroke, is beft exprelfed by the 
 features of youth and middle age on each fide of the 
 fufferer ; it is inftantaneous, becaufe its fhock has not 
 yet fpread beyond them, and this is done not to interrupt 
 •the dignity due to the facred fcene, and to ftamp the 
 character of devout attention on the afTembly : what 
 preceded and what followed is equally implied in their 
 occupation, and the figure of a matron, entering and 
 abforbed in counting money, whilffc {he approaches the 
 fatal centre, and whom we may fuppofe to be Sapphira, 
 the accomplice and the wife of Ananias, and the 
 devoted partner of his fate ;- in this compofition, of near 
 thirty figures, none can be pointed out as a figure of 
 
 common 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 139 
 
 common place or mere convenience ; they are linked to 
 each other, and to the centre, by one common chain ; 
 all a£t, and all have room to adt, repofe alternates with 
 energy. Pouflin, in his death of Sapphira, has imitated 
 the moment, but has altogether miffed the awful dignity 
 due to the expreflion of the miracle, by fubftituting for 
 the folemn hall and the devout affembly chofen by Ra- 
 phael, the outride of a portico, and a few accidental 
 fpectators ; and Peter, whilft he pronounces death, feems 
 as much to be furprifed at the effect, of the word that 
 iffues from his lips, as the by-ftanders, or the novice of 
 an apoftle at his fide, whom, I hope, he did not defign 
 for John. 
 
 The cartoon of the ikcrifice at Lyftra, traces, in the 
 moment of its choice, which is the ceremony attendant 
 on the apotheolis of Paul and Barnabas, the motive that 
 produced, and ihews the difappointment that checks it : 
 the facriflcer is arretted in the adtion of fmiting the bull, 
 by the gefture of the young man, who obferves Paul 
 rending his garment in horrour of the idolatrous cere- 
 mony his miracle occafloned. The miracle itfelf is 
 prefent in that charadteriftic figure of recovery, the man 
 who rufhes in with eyes fixed on the apoftle and adoring 
 hands ; whilft it is recognized by a man of gravity and 
 rank, lifting up part of the garment that covered his 
 
 t 2 thigh, 
 
i 4 o THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 thigh, and by this acT: attefts him to have been the 
 identic bearer of thofe ufelefs crutches thrown on the 
 pavement before him. 
 
 The fame invention predominates in the cartoon of 
 Paul announcing his God from the height of the areo- 
 pagus. Enthufiafm and curiosity make up the fubjed: ; 
 flmplicity of attitude inverts the fpeaker with fublimity ; 
 the parallelifm of his adion invigorates his energy ; 
 fituation gives him command over the whole ; the light 
 in which he is placed, attracts the firft glance ; he ap- 
 pears the organ of a Superior Power. The affembly, 
 though fele&ed with charadt.erift.ic art for the purpofe, 
 are the natural offspring of place and moment. The 
 involved meditation of the Stoic, the Cynic's ironic 
 fneer, the incredulous fmile of the elegant Epicurean^ 
 the eager difputants of the Academy, the elevated 
 attention of Plato's fchool, the rankling malice of the 
 Rabbi, the Magician's myfterious glance, repeat in 
 louder or in lower tones the novel doctrine ; but whilft 
 curioflty and meditation, loud debate and fixed pre- 
 judice, tell, ponder on, repeat, reject, difcufs it, the 
 animated gefture of conviction in Dionyfius and 
 Damaris, announce the power of its tenets, and what 
 the artift chiefly aimed at, the eftablifhed belief of 
 immortality. 
 
 m But 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 141 
 
 But the powers of Raphael in combining the drama 
 with pure hiftoric fad, are beft eftimated when com- 
 pared with thofe exerted by other matters on the fame 
 fubjec"t. For this we felect from the feries we examine, 
 that which reprefented the maflacre, as it is calied, of 
 the innocents, or of the infants at Betjilem ; an original, 
 precious part of which ftilt remains in the pofleflion of 
 a friend of art among us. On this fubjeft Baccio Ban- 
 dinelli, Tintoretto, Rubens, Le Brun, and Pouflln, have 
 tried their various powers. 
 
 The maflacre of the infants by Baccio Bandinelli, 
 contrived chiefly to exhibit his anatomic fkill, is a com- 
 plicated tableau of every contortion of human attitude 
 and limbs that precedes diflocation ; the expreflion 
 floats between a ftudied imagery of frigid horrour and 
 loathfome abomination. 
 
 The ftormy brufh of Tintoretto fwept individual 
 woe away in general mafTes. Two immenfe wings of 
 light and fhade divide the compofltion, and hide the 
 want of fentiment in tumult. 
 
 To Rubens magnificence and contraft dictated the 
 actors and the fcene. A loud lamenting dame, in vel- 
 vet robes, with golden locks difhevelled, and wide ex- 
 tended 
 
H2 THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 tended arms, meets our firft glance. Behind, a group 
 of fteel-clad fatellites open their rows of fpears to admit 
 the nimble, naked minifters of murder, charged with 
 their infant prey, within their ranks, ready to clofe 
 again againft the frantic mothers who purfue them : 
 the pompous gloom of the palace in the middle ground 
 is fet off by cottages and village fcenery in the 
 diflance. 
 
 Le Brun furrounded the allegoric tomb of Rachel 
 with rapid horfemen, receiving the children whom the 
 aflailins tore from their parents arms, and ftrewed the 
 field with infant- flaughter. 
 
 Pouflln tied in one vigorous group what he conceived 
 of blood-trained villany and maternal frenzy. Whilft 
 Raphael, in dramatic gradation, difclofed all the mother 
 through every image of pity and of terrour ; through 
 tears, mrieks, refiftance, revenge, to the dunned look 
 of defpair ; and traced the villain from the palpitations 
 of fcarce initiated crime to the fedate grin of veteran 
 murder; 
 
 Hiftory, ftri&ly fo called, follows the drama : fiction 
 
 now ceafes, and invention conflfts only in feledting and 
 
 fixing with dignity, precision, and fentiment, the mo- 
 
 6 me*\t 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 143 
 
 merits of reality. Suppofe that the artift choofe the 
 death of Germanicus — He is not to 2:1 ve us the higherl 
 images of general grief which imprelTes the features of 
 a people or a family at the death of a beloved chief or 
 father; for this would' be epic imagery: we mould 
 have Achilles, Hector, Niobe. He is not to mix up 
 characters which obfervation and comparifon have 
 pointed out to him as the fitteft' to excite the gradations 
 of fympathy ; not Admetus and Alcefte, not Meleager ; 
 and Atalanta ; for this would be the drama. He is to 
 give us the idea of a Roman dying amidft Romans, as 
 tradition gave, him, with all the real modifications of 
 time and place, which may ferve unequivocally to dis- 
 criminate that moment of grief from all others. Ger- 
 manicus, Agrippina, Caius, Vitellius, the legates, the* 
 centurions at Antioch ; the hero, the hufband, the 
 father, the friend, the leader, the ftruggles of nature 
 and fparks of hope mull: be fubjedted to the phiiiognomic ; 
 character and the features of Germanicus, the fon of 1 
 Drufus, the Csfar of Tiberius. Maternal, female, con- 
 nubial paffion muft be tinged by Agrippina, the woman 
 abforbed in the Roman, le'fs lover than companion of 
 her hufband's grandeur: even the burlts of friendihip,- 
 attachment, allegiance, and revenge, mult be ftamped- 
 by the military, ceremonial, and distinctive coflume of 
 Rome. 
 
 The 
 
144 T H I R D L E C T U R E. 
 
 The judicious obfervation of all this does not reduce 
 the hiftoric painter to the anxioufly minute detail of a 
 copyift. Firm he refts on the true bafis of art, imita- 
 tion : the fixed character of things determines all in 
 his choice, and mere floating accident, tranfient modes 
 and whims of fafhion, are ftill excluded. If defe&s, 
 if deformities are reprefented, they muft be permanent, 
 they muft be inherent in the character. Edward the firft 
 and Richard the third muft be marked, but marked, to 
 ftrengthen rather than to diminifh the intereft we take 
 in the man ; thus the deformity of Richard, will add to 
 his terrour, and the enormous ftride of Edward, to his 
 dignity. If my limits permitted, your own recollec- 
 tion would difpenfe me from expatiating in examples on 
 this more familiar branch of invention. The hiftory of 
 our own times and of our own country has produced a 
 fpecimen, in the death of a military hero, as excellent 
 as often imitated, which, though refpedt forbids me to 
 name it, cannot, I truft, be abfent from your mind. 
 
 Such are the ftri&er outlines of general and fpecific in- 
 vention in the three principal branches of our art j but 
 as their near alliance allows not always a ftricl: difcrimi- 
 nation of their limits ; as the mind and fancy of men, 
 upon the whole, coniift of mixed qualities, we feldom 
 2 meet 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 145 
 
 meet with a human performance exclusively made up 
 of epic, dramatic, or pure hiftoric materials. 
 
 Novelty and feelings will make the rigid hiftorian 
 fometimes launch out into the marvellous, or warm his 
 bofom and extort a tear ; the dramatift, in gazing at 
 fome tremendous feature, or the pomp of fuperiour 
 agency, will drop the chain of fympathy and be ab- 
 sorbed in the fublimc; whilft the epic or lyric painter 
 forgets his folitary grandeur, fometimes defcends and 
 mixes with his agents. Thus Homer gave the feature 
 of the drama in Hector and Andromache, in Irus and 
 UlyiTes; the fpirit from the prifon houfe italics like 
 the fhade of Ajax, in Shakfpeare ; the daughter of 
 Soranus pleading for her father, and O&avia encircled 
 by centurions, melt like Ophelia and Alcefte, in Tacitus ; 
 thus Raphael perfonified the genius of the river in 
 Jofhua's pafTage through the Jordan, and again at the 
 ceremony of Solomon's inauguration ; and thus Pouffin 
 raifed before the feared eye of Coriolanus, the frowning 
 vifion of Rome, all armed, with her attendant, Fortune. 
 
 Thefe general excursions from one province of the 
 art into thofe of its congenial neighbours, granted by 
 judicious invention to the artift, let me apply to the 
 
 u grant 
 
14S third lecture. 
 
 grant of a more fpeciflc licence [k)\ Horace, the moil 
 judicious of critics, when treating on the ufe of poetic 
 words, tells his pupils, that the adoption of an old 
 word, rendered novel by a fkilful conftruction with 
 others, will entitle the poet to the praife of original 
 diction. The fame will be granted to the judicious 
 adoption of figures in painting. 
 
 Far from impairing the originality of invention, the 
 unpremeditated difcovery of an appropriate attitude or 
 figure in the works of antiquity, or of the great old. 
 mailers after the revival, and its adoption, or the apt 
 tranfpontion of one mifplaced in fome inferiour work, 
 will add luftre to a performance of commenfurate or 
 fuperiour power, by a kind coalition with the reft, im- 
 mediately furnifhed by nature and the fubjecl:. In fuch 
 a cafe it is eafily difcovered whether a fubjecl: have been 
 chofen merely to borrow an idea, an attitude or figure, 
 or whether their eminent fitnefs procured them their 
 place. An adopted idea or figure in a work of genius 
 is a foil or a companion of the reft ; but an idea of 
 genius borrowed by mediocrity, tears all afTociate fhreds, 
 it is the giant's thumb by which the pigmy offered the 
 
 meafure 
 
 (k) Dixeris egregie, notum fi callida verbura 
 Eeddiderit jun&ura novum. 
 
 Q, Horat. Flacci de A. P. v. 47.. 
 
THIRD LECT U RE. H7 
 
 meafure of his own littlenefs. We (lamp the plagiary 
 on the borrower, who, without fit materials or adequate 
 conceptions of his own, feeks to fhelter impotence 
 under purloined vigour ; we leave him with the full praife 
 of invention, who by the harmony of a whole proves 
 that what he adopted might have been his own off- 
 fpring though anticipated by another. If he take now, 
 he foon may give. Thus Michael Angelo fcattered the 
 Torfo of Apollonius in every view, in every direction, in 
 groups and fingle figures, over the compofition of the laft 
 judgment ; and borrowed the attitude of Judith and her 
 maid from an antique gem, but added an expreilion 
 and a grace unknown to the original : if the figure of 
 Adam difmifTed from Paradife, by Raphael, ftill own 
 Mafaccio for its inventor, he can fcarcely be faid to have 
 furnifhed more than the hint of that enthufiafm and 
 energy which we admire in Paul on the areopagus : in 
 the picture of the covenant with Noah, the fublimity of 
 the virion, and the graces of the mother entangled by 
 her babes, find their originals in the Siftine chapel, but 
 they are equalled by the fervour which conceived the 
 Patriarch who, with the infant prefTed to his bofom, 
 with folded hands, and proftrate on his knees, adores. 
 What figure or what gefture in the cartoon of Pifa, has 
 not been imitated? Raphael, Parmegiano, Pouilin, are 
 
 u 2 equally 
 
i 4 8 THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 equally indebted to it ; in the facrament of baptifm, 
 the laft did little more than tranfcribe that knot of 
 powers, the fierce feature of the veteran who, eager to 
 pull on his cloaths, pufhes his foot through the rending 
 garment. — Such are the indulgences which invention 
 grants to fancy, tafte, and judgment. 
 
 But a limited fragment of obfervations muft not pie- 
 fume to exhauft what in itfelf is inexhauftible ; the fea- 
 tures of invention are multiplied before me as my powers 
 decreafe : I fhall therefore no longer trefpafs on your 
 patience, than by fixing your attention for a few mo- 
 ments on one of its boldefl flights, the transfiguration 
 of Raphael ; a performance equally celebrated and cen- 
 fured ; in which the moft judicious of inventors, the 
 painter of propriety, is faid to have not only wreftled 
 for extent of information with the hiftorian, but at- 
 tempted to leap the boundaries, and, with a lefs difcri- 
 minating than daring hand, to remove the eftablifhed 
 limits of the art, to have arbitrarily combined two 
 actions, and confequently two different moments. 
 
 Were this charge founded, I might content myfelf 
 with obferving, that the transfiguration, more than any 
 other of Raphael's oil-pictures, was a public perform- 
 ance, deftined by Julio de Medici, afterward Clement VI L 
 
 for 
 
THIRD LECT#RB. H9 
 
 for his archiepifcopal church at Narbonne ; tfcat it was 
 painted in conteft with Sebaftian del Piombo, afkftcd in. 
 his rival- pictu re of Lazarus by Michael Angelo ; and 
 thujs, coniidering it as framed on the fimple principles 
 of the monumental ftyle, eftablifhed in my firft dif- 
 courfe, on the pidures of Polygnotus at Delphi, I might 
 frame a plaufible excufe for the modern artift ; but 
 Raphael is above the afliftance of fubterfuge, and it is 
 fufficient to examine the picture, in order to prove the 
 futility of the charge. Raphael has connected with the 
 transfiguration not the cure of the maniac, but his pre- 
 fentation for it ; if, according to the (I) Gofpel record, 
 this happened at the foot of the mountain, whilft the 
 apparition took place at the top, what improbability is 
 there in afligning the fame moment to both ? 
 
 Raphael's defign was to reprefent Jefus as the Son of 
 God, and at the fame time as the reliever of human 
 mifery, by an unequivocal fact. The transfiguration on 
 Tabor, and the miraculous cure which followed the 
 defcent of Jefus, united, furnifhed that fact. The dif- 
 ficulty was how to combine two fucceflive actions in one 
 moment : he overcame it by facrificing the moment of 
 the cure to that of the apparition, by implying the lefTer 
 
 miracle 
 
 (/) Matth. 17- 5. 6. See Fiorillo, gefchichtc, &c. 10-1. fcq. 
 
i 5 o THIRD LECTUR E. 
 
 miracle in the greater. In fubordinating the cure to the 
 virion he obtained fublimity, in placing the crowd and 
 the patient on the foreground, he gained room for the 
 full exertion of his dramatic powers ; it was not hecef- 
 fary that the dasmoniac mould be reprefented in the 
 moment of recovery, if its certainty could be expreffed 
 by other means : it is implied, it is placed beyond all 
 doubt by the glorious apparition above ; it is made nearly 
 intuitive by the uplifted hand and finger of the apoftle 
 in the centre, who without hefitation, undifmayed by 
 the obftinacy of the daemon, unmoved by the clamour 
 of the crowd and the pufillanimous fcepticifm of fome 
 of his companions, refers the father of the maniac in an 
 authoritative manner for certain arid fpeedy help to his 
 mafter f #zy* on the mountain above, whom, though unfeen, 
 his attitude at once connects with all that paffes below, 
 even if it had not been aflifled by the parallel gefture of 
 another difciple, referring to the fame fource of afliftance 
 his feemingly doubting companion - } here is the point of 
 
 contact, 
 
 (m) Thevifion on Tabor, as reprefented here, is the moft characteriftic' produced 
 by modern art. Whether we confider the action of the apoftles overpowered by 
 the divine effulgence and divided between adoration and yftonifhment ; or the 
 forms of the prophets afcending like flame, and attracted by the lucid centre, or 
 the majefty of Jefus himfelf, whofe countenance, is the only one we know, ex- 
 preflive of his fuperhuman nature. That the unifon of fuch powers, fliould not, 
 for once> have difarmed the burlefque of the Trench critic, roufes equal furprife 
 and indignation. 
 
i H I R D LEO T U R E 
 
 tontacT:, here is that union of the two parts of the 
 faft in one moment, which the purblind criticifm of 
 Richardfon, and the flimfy petulance of Falconet could 
 not difcover. 
 
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