FOOTNOTES:
[!--Note--] 1 ([return])
In Goethe's Iphigenia.
[!--Note--] 2 ([return])
Over another iron door was writt,
Be not too bold.
Fairy Queen, Book iii. Canto XI.
[!--Note--] 3 ([return])
See Wordsworth's Poems.
[!--Note--] 4 ([return])
Two celebrated antique gems which adorn the relics of the Three Kings.
[!--Note--] 5 ([return])
It is nearly twice the size of the famous and well known Medusa Rondinelli, now in the Glyptothek at Munich.
[!--Note--] 6 ([return])
Professor Wallraff died on the 18th of March, 1824.
[!--Note--] 7 ([return])
Amongst others, Jean Paul, in the "Heidelberger Jahrbücher der Literatur," 1815.
[!--Note--] 8 ([return])
Since the above passage was written, Mrs. Austin has favoured me with the following note: "Goëthe admired, but did not like, still less esteem, Madame de Staël. He begins a sentence about her thus—'As she had no idea what duty meant,' &c.
"However, after relating a scene which took place at Weimar, he adds, 'Whatever we may say or think of her, her visit was certainly followed by very important results. Her work upon Germany, which owed its rise to social conversations, is to be regarded as a mighty engine which at once made a wide breach in that Chinese wall of antiquated prejudices, which divided us from France; so that the people across the Rhine, and afterwards those across the channel, at length came to a nearer knowledge of us; whence we may look to obtain a living influence over the distant west. Let us, therefore, bless that conflict of national peculiarities which annoyed us at the time, and seemed by no means profitable.'"—Tag- und Jahres Hefte, vol. 31, last edit.
To that WOMAN who had sufficient strength of mind to break through a "Chinese wall of antiquated prejudices," surely something may be forgiven.
[!--Note--] 9 ([return])
Johanna Schopenhauer, well known in Germany for her romances and her works on art. Her little book, "Johan van Eyk und seine Nachfolger," has become the manual of those who study the old German schools of painting.
[!--Note--] 10 ([return])
Or Gebhard, for so the name is spelt in the German histories.
[!--Note--] 11 ([return])
For the story of Archbishop Gebhard and Agnes de Mansfeld, see Schiller's History of the Thirty Years' War, and Coxe's History of the House of Austria.
[!--Note--] 12 ([return])
The gardens and plantations round the castle are a favourite promenade of the citizens of Heidelberg, and there are in summer bands of music, &c.
[!--Note--] 13 ([return])
When Gustavus Adolphus took Mayence, during the same war, he presented the whole of the valuable library to his chancellor, Oxenstiern; the chancellor sent it to Sweden, intending to bestow it on one of the colleges; but the vessel in which it was embarked foundered in the Baltic sea, and the whole went to the bottom.
[!--Note--] 14 ([return])
M. Passavant is a landscape-painter of Frankfort, an intelligent, accomplished man, and one of the few German artists who had a tolerably correct idea of the state of art in England. He is the author of "Kunstreise durch England und Belgium."
[!--Note--] 15 ([return])
She was cotemporary with Cleopatra, (B. C. 33,) and was particularly celebrated for her busts in ivory. The Romans raised a statue to her honour, which was in the Guistiniani collection.—V. Pliny.
[!--Note--] 16 ([return])
Lucas Kranach (1472) was one of the most celebrated of the old German painters; from a principle of gratitude and attachment, he shared the imprisonment of the elector John Frederic, during five years.
[!--Note--] 17 ([return])
In September, 1833.
[!--Note--] 18 ([return])
His own expression.
[!--Note--] 19 ([return])
Dannecker has been ennobled; his proper titles run thus—Johan Heinrich von Dannecker, Hofrath, (court counsellor,) knight of the orders of the Wurtemburg crown, and of Wladimir, and professor of sculpture at Stuttgardt.
[!--Note--] 20 ([return])
Rauch is knight of the Red Eagle, and member of the senate.
[!--Note--] 21 ([return])
Christian Rauch was born in 1777, and Christian Frederic Tieck in 1776.
[!--Note--] 22 ([return])
Formerly Madame Jageman, the principal actress of the theatre at Weimar. Her talents were developed under the auspices of Goethe and Schiller. She was the original Thekla of the Wallenstein, and the original Princess Leonora of the Tasso. In these two characters she has never yet been equalled. The quietness, amounting to passiveness, in the external delineation of the Princess in Tasso, affords so little material for the stage, that Madame Wolff, then the first actress, preferred the character of Leonora Sanvitale, and Madame Jageman was supposed to derogate in accepting that of the Princess. Such is the consummate, but evanescent delicacy of the conception, that Goethe never expected to see it developed on the stage; and at the rehearsal he threw himself back in his chair, and shut his eyes, that the image which lived in his imagination might not be profaned by any tasteless exaggeration of action or expression. He soon opened them, however, and before the rehearsal was finished, started off the chair, and nearly embraced the actress. She looked and felt the part as only a woman of exceeding taste and delicacy would have done; the very tone of her mind, and the character of her beauty, fitted her to represent the fair, gentle, fragile, but dignified Leonora.
[!--Note--] 23 ([return])
Lessing.
[!--Note--] 24 ([return])
Characteristics of Goethe, vol. i. p. 29.
[!--Note--] 25 ([return])
I believe it was in allusion to this distinction, and her own noble birth, that her father-in-law used to call her playfully, "die kleine Ahnfrau," (the little ancestress.)
[!--Note--] 26 ([return])
M. Besle, otherwise the Comte de Stendhal, and, I believe, he has half a dozen other aliases.
[!--Note--] 27 ([return])
Alfred Tennyson.
[!--Note--] 28 ([return])
"Thro' Erin's isle, to sport awhile," &c.
[!--Note--] 29 ([return])
In the German maps, Zweibrücken; the capital of those provinces of the kingdom of Bavaria, which lie on the left bank of the Rhine.
[!--Note--] 30 ([return])
The entire grouping of these figures is from the design of Mr. Robert Cockerell, one of the original discoverers, who in ascertaining their relative position has been guided in some measure by the situation in which their fragments were found strewed in front of the temple, and overwhelmed with masses of the frieze and pediment; but has been much more indebted to his own artist-like feeling, and architectural skill. He is of opinion that the western pediment contained several other figures besides the ten which have been restored.
[!--Note--] 31 ([return])
The character of the Emperor Rodolph would be one of the most interesting speculations in philosophical history. He was evidently a fine artist, degraded into a bad sovereign—a man whose constructive and imaginative genius was misplaced upon a throne. The melancholy, and incipient madness which hovered over him, was possibly the result of the natural faculties suppressed or perverted.
[!--Note--] 32 ([return])
The celebrated traveller, natural philosopher, and botanist. He has the direction of most of the scientific institutions at Munich.
[!--Note--] 33 ([return])
I remember Madame Devrient, in describing the effect which music had upon herself, pressing her hand upon her bosom, and saying, with simple but profound feeling, "Ah! cela use la vie!"
[!--Note--] 34 ([return])
"A l'exposition de Paris (1822) on a vu un millier de tableaux représentant des sujets de l'Ecritoire Sainte, peints par des peintres qui n'y croient pas du tout: admirés et jugés par des gens qui n'y croient pas beaucoup, et enfin payés par des gens qui, apparemment, n'y croient pas, non plus.
"L'on cherche après cela le pourquoi de la décadence de l'art!"
[!--Note--] 35 ([return])
Of this celebrated picture, Sir Joshua Reynolds says, that it is miscalled, and certainly does not contain the portraits of the Earl and Countess of Arundel. Perhaps he is mistaken. It appears that the Earl of Arundel, of James the First's time, (the collector of the Arundelian marbles,) with his Countess, sat to Rubens in 1620, and that "Robin the Dwarf" was introduced into this picture, which was not painted in England, but at Brussels. Rubens was at this time at the height of his reputation, and when requested to paint the portrait of the Countess of Arundel, he replied, "Although I have refused to execute the portraits of many princes and noblemen, especially of his lordship's rank yet from the Earl I am bound to receive the honour he does me in commanding my services, regarding him as I do, in the light of an evangelist to the world of art, and the great supporter of our profession."—(See Tierney's History and Antiquities of the Castle and Town of Arundel.)
[!--Note--] 36 ([return])
In Southey's Thalaba.
[!--Note--] 37 ([return])
Now removed with the other Vandykes to Chatsworth.
[!--Note--] 38 ([return])
See a curious letter of Pirkheimer on the death of Albert Durer, quoted in the Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 21. "In Albert I have truly lost one of the best friends I had in the whole world, and nothing grieves me deeper than that he should have died so painful a death, which, under God's providence, I can ascribe to nobody but his huswife, who gnawed into his very heart, and so tormented him that he departed hence the sooner; for he was dried up to a faggot, and might nowhere seek him a jovial humour or go to his friends." (After much more, reflecting on this intolerable woman, he concludes with edifying naïveté;) "She and her sister are not queans; they are, I doubt not, in the number of honest, devout, and altogether God-fearing women, but a man might better have a quean who was otherwise kindly, than such a gnawing, suspicious, quarrelsome, good woman, with whom he can have no peace or quiet neither by day nor by night."
[!--Note--] 39 ([return])
Schleissheim is a country palace of the king of Bavaria, about six miles from Munich; it has originally been a beautiful building, but is not now inhabited, and looks forlorn and dilapidated. The pictures are distributed, without any attempt at arrangement, through forty-five rooms.
[!--Note--] 40 ([return])
Natives, I believe, of Cologne.
[!--Note--] 41 ([return])
Albert Durer was the scholar of Wohlgemuth.
[!--Note--] 42 ([return])
I particularly recollect a picture, containing many hundred figures, all painted with the elaborate finish of a miniature, and representing the victory of Alexander over Darius. All the Persians are dressed like Turks, while Alexander and his host are armed to the teeth, in the full costume of chivalry, with heraldic banners, displaying the different devices of the old Germanic nobles, the cross, the black eagle, &c. &c.
[!--Note--] 43 ([return])
The observations of Mr. Phillips, (Lectures on the History and Principles of Painting,) on Giotto, and the earliest Italian school, apply in a great measure to the early German painters, and I cannot refuse myself the pleasure of quoting them.—"As it appears to me, that painting at the present time, is swerving among us from the true point of interest, tending to ornament, to the loss of truth and sentiment, I think I cannot do better than endeavour to restrain the encroachment of so insidious a foe, to prevent, if possible, our advance in so erroneous and fatal a course, by showing how strong is the influence of art where truth and simplicity prevail; and that, where no ornament is to be found—nay, where imperfections are numerous; where drawing is frequently defective, perspective violated, colouring employed without science, and chiaro-scuro rarely, if ever thought of. The natural question then is, what can excite so much interest in pictures, where so much is wanting to render them perfect? I answer, that which leads to the forgetfulness of the want of those interesting and desirable qualities in the pictures of Giotto, is the excitation caused by their fulness of feeling—well-directed, ardent, concentrated feeling! by which his mind was engaged in comprehending the points most worthy of display in the subject he undertook to represent, and led to the clearness and intelligence with which he has selected them; add to this the simplicity and ability with which he has displayed that feeling." * * * "This is the first true step in the natural system of the art, or of the application of it, and this was Giotto's more especially. The rest is useful, as it assists the influence of this, the indispensable. This, to continue the figure, taken from the stage, (in a previous part of the Lecture,) is as Garrick acting Macbeth or Lear in a tie-wig and a general's uniform of his day; the passion and the character reaching men's hearts, notwithstanding the absurd costume. If the art be found thus strong to attract the mind, to excite feeling and thought, and to engage the heart, by the mere force of unadorned truth in the important points, and without the aid of the valuable auxiliaries I have above alluded to, is it not manifest that in its basis it is correct? and that the utmost force of historical painting is to be sought by continual emendation of this system, maintaining the spirit of its simplicity, supplying its wants, calling in the aid of those auxiliaries within reasonable bounds, not permitting them to usurp the throne of taste and attraction, but rather requiring them to assist in humbler guise to maintain and strengthen the legitimate authority of feeling.
After reading these beautiful passages, written by a man who unites the acute discriminative judgment of a practical artist with the finest feeling of the ultimate object and aim of high poetical art, I felt almost tempted to expunge my own superficial and imperfect notes, (above written,) and should have done so, but for the hope that my deficiencies will induce some one more competent in taste and knowledge to take up the subject of the early German painters. It is certain that the modern historical painters of Germany are working on the principle here laid down by Mr. Phillips, particularly Overbeck and Wach, which they have derived from a study of their national school of art; but other enthusiasts should remember that the redeeming excellence of this school was feeling, and that feeling can never be a matter of mere imitation. I cannot understand why the omissions of ignorance should be confounded with the achievements of native genius, by those for whom "knowledge has unlocked her ample stores," and to whom the recovery of those "rich spoils of time," the antique marbles, must have revealed the wide difference between "the simplicity of elegance" and "the simplicity of indigence."
[!--Note--] 44 ([return])
See p. [56].
[!--Note--] 45 ([return])
See p. [66].
Transcriber's Note: Errata as given in the original have been applied to the text. Other than the most exceedingly obvious typographical errors, all inconsistent spelling, hyphenation, diacriticals, archaic usage, etc. have been preserved as printed in the original. The boldface used for the signature on [page 238] indicates characters in a Fraktur typeface.