XIX.
The objections brought against Homer’s shield by the elder Scaliger, Perrault, Terrasson, and others, are well known, as are also the answers of Madame Dacier, Boivin, and Pope. But these latter, it seems to me, have gone somewhat too far, and confiding in the justness of their cause have asserted things incorrect in themselves and contributing little to the poet’s justification.
In answer to the chief objection, that Homer had burdened his shield with more figures than there could possibly have been room for, Boivin undertook to show in a drawing how the necessary space might be obtained. His idea of the various concentric circles was very ingenious, although there is no foundation for it in the poet’s words and nothing anywhere to indicate that shields divided in this way were known to the ancients. Since Homer calls it (σάκος πάντοσε δεδαιλωμένον) a shield, artistically wrought on all sides, I should prefer to gain the required space by turning to account the concave surface. A proof that the old artists did not leave this empty is furnished in the shield of Minerva by Phidias.[[119]] But not only does Boivin fail to seize this advantage, but, by separating into two or three pictures what the poet evidently meant for one, he unnecessarily multiplies the representations while diminishing the space by one-half. I know the motive which led him to this, but it was one by which he should not have allowed himself to be influenced. He should have shown his opponents the unreasonableness of their demands, instead of trying to satisfy them.
An example will make my meaning clear. When Homer says of one of the two cities:[[120]]
λαοὶ δ’ εἰν ἀγορῇ ἔσαν ἀθρόοι· ἔνθα δὲ νεῖκος
ὠρώρει δύο δ’ ἄνδρες ἐνείκεον εἵνεκα ποινῆς
ἀνδρὸς ἀποφθιμένου· ὁ μὲν εὔχετο πάντ’ ἀποδοῦναι,
δήμῳ πιφαύσκων, ὁ δ’ ἀναίνετο μηδὲν ἑλέσθαι·
ἄμφω δ’ ἱέσθην ἐπὶ ἴστορι πεῖραρ ἑλέσθαι.
λαοὶ δ’ ἀμφοτέροισιν ἐπήπυον, ἀμφὶς ἀρωγοί.
κήρυκες δ’ ἄρα λαὸν ἐρήτυον· οἱ δὲ γέροντες
εἵατ’ ἐπὶ ξεστοῖσι λίθοις ἱερῷ ἐνὶ κύκλῳ,
σκῆπτρα δὲ κηρύκων ἐν χέρσ’ ἔχον ἠεροφώνων·
τοῖσιν ἔπειτ’ ἤϊσσον, ἀμοιβηδὶς δὲ δίκαζον.
κεῖτο δ’ ἄρ’ ἐν μέσσοισι δύω χρυσοῖο τάλαντα,
he refers, as I understand him, to but a single picture, that of a public lawsuit about the contested payment of a considerable fine for the committal of a murder. The artist, who is to execute this design, can use but a single moment of the action,—that of the accusation, of the examination of witnesses, of the pronouncing of the sentence, or any other preceding or following or intervening moment which may seem to him most fitting. This single moment he makes as pregnant as possible, and reproduces it with all that power of illusion which in the presentation of visible objects art possesses above poetry. Left far behind in this respect, what remains to the poet, if his words are to paint the same design with any degree of success, but to avail himself of his peculiar advantages? These are the liberty of extending his representation over what preceded, as well as what was to follow, the artist’s single point of time, and the power of showing not only what the artist shows, but what he has to leave to our imagination. Only by using these advantages can the poet raise himself to a level with the artist. Their works most resemble each other when their effect is equally vivid; not when one brings before the imagination through the ear neither more nor less than the other presents to the eye. Had Boivin defended the passage in Homer according to this principle, he would not have divided it into as many separate pictures as he thought he detected distinct points of time. All that Homer relates could not, indeed, be united in a single picture. The accusation and the denial, the summoning of the witnesses and the shouts of the divided populace, the efforts of the heralds to quiet the tumult and the sentence of the judges, are things successive in time, not coexistent in space. But what is not actually in the picture is there virtually, and the only true way of representing an actual picture in words is to combine what virtually exists in it with what is absolutely visible. The poet who allows himself to be bound by the limits of art may furnish data for a picture, but can never create one of his own.
The picture of the beleaguered city[[121]] Boivin divides likewise into three. He might as well have made twelve out of it as three. For since he has once for all failed to grasp the spirit of the poet, and requires him to be bound by the unities of a material picture, he might have discovered many more violations of these unities. In fact he ought almost to have devoted a separate space on the shield to every separate touch of the poet. In my opinion Homer has but ten different pictures on the whole shield, every one of which he introduces with ἐν μὲν ἔτευξε, or ἐν δὲ ποίησε, or ἐν δ’ ἐτίθει, or ἐν δὲ πόικιλλε Ἀμφιγυήεις, “on it he wrought,” “on it he placed,” “on it he formed,” “on it Vulcan skilfully fashioned.”[[122]] In the absence of these introductory words we have no right to suppose a distinct picture. On the contrary every thing which they cover must be regarded as a single whole, wanting in nothing but the arbitrary concentration into one moment of time, which the poet was in no way bound to observe. Had he observed this, and, by strictly limiting himself to it, excluded every little feature which in the material representation would have been inconsistent with this unity of time; had he in fact done what his cavillers require,—these gentlemen would indeed have had no fault to find with him, but neither would any person of taste have found aught to admire.
Pope not only accepted Boivin’s drawing, but thought he was doing a special service by showing that every one of these mutilated pieces was in accordance with the strictest rules of painting, as laid down at the present day. Contrast, perspective, the three unities, he found, were all observed in the best possible manner. And although well aware that, according to the testimony of good and trustworthy witnesses, painting at the time of the Trojan war was still in its cradle, he supposes either that Homer, instead of being bound by the achievements of painting at that time or in his own day, must in virtue of his godlike genius have anticipated all that art should in future be able to accomplish, or else that the witnesses could not have been so entirely worthy of faith that the direct testimony of this artistic shield should not be preferred to theirs. Whoever will, may accept the former supposition: the latter, surely, no one will be persuaded to adopt who knows any thing more of the history of art than the date of the historians. That painting in the time of Homer was still in its infancy he believes, not merely on the authority of Pliny, or some other writer, but chiefly because, judging from the works of art mentioned by the ancients, he sees that even centuries later no great progress had been made. The pictures of Polygnotus, for instance, by no means stand the test which Pope thinks can be successfully applied to Homer’s shield. The two great works by this master at Delphi, of which Pausanias has left a circumstantial description,[[123]] were evidently wholly wanting in perspective. The ancients had no knowledge of this branch of art, and what Pope adduces as proof that Homer understood it, only proves that he has a very imperfect understanding of it himself.[[124]]
“That Homer,” he says, “was not a stranger to aerial perspective appears in his expressly marking the distance of object from object. He tells us, for instance, that the two spies lay a little remote from the other figures, and that the oak under which was spread the banquet of the reapers stood apart. What he says of the valley sprinkled all over with cottages and flocks appears to be a description of a large country in perspective. And, indeed, a general argument for this may be drawn from the number of figures on the shield, which could not be all expressed in their full size; and this is therefore a sort of proof that the art of lessening them according to perspective was known at that time.” The mere representing of an object at a distance as smaller than it would be if nearer the eye, by no means constitutes perspective in a picture. Perspective requires a single point of view; a definite, natural horizon; and this was wanting in the old pictures. In the paintings of Polygnotus the ground, instead of being level, rose so decidedly at the back that the figures which were meant to stand behind seemed to be standing above one another. If this was the usual position of the various figures and groups,—and that it was so may fairly be concluded from the old bas-reliefs, where those behind always stand higher than those in front, and look over their heads,—then we may reasonably take it for granted in Homer, and should not unnecessarily dismember those representations of his, which according to this treatment might be united in a single picture. The double scene in the peaceful city, through whose streets a joyous marriage train was moving at the same time that an important trial was going on in the market-place, requires thus no double picture. Homer could very well think of it as one, since he imagined himself to be overlooking the city from such a height as to command at once a view of the streets and the market.
My opinion is that perspective in pictures came incidentally from scene-painting, which was already in its perfection. But the applications of its rules to a single smooth surface was evidently no easy matter; for, even in the later paintings found among the antiquities of Herculaneum, there are many and various offences against perspective, which would now hardly be excusable even in a beginner.[[125]]
But I will spare myself the labor of collecting my desultory observations on a point whereon I may hope to receive complete satisfaction from Winkelmann’s promised “History of Art.”[[126]]