[NOTE 53. PAGE 161]
The term "grace" as applied in art has so many significations that it is difficult to deal with one of them without confusion. What is here specially referred to is the grace of pose designed by the artist. The object of the portrait painter is to pose his sitter so that the grace indicated shall appear natural and habitual, a feature as important now in the appearance of women as it was twenty-five centuries ago when Sappho asked[a]:
What country maiden charms thee,
However fair her face,
Who knows not how to gather
Her dress with artless grace?
But the grace of pose never appears to be artless, after the first inspection, unless there is something in the expression to hold the mind. Without this appeal to the mind the portrait must soon tire, and the pose become artificial and stiff, that is to say, in representations of life size, for in miniature portraiture the countenance seldom or never crosses the vision involuntarily.
In the ancient Greek forms, Winckelmann distinguishes four kinds of grace—lofty, pleasing, humble, and comic—but the grace exhibited by sculptured forms necessarily depends upon the harmony of expression, character of form, and pose. This should be the case with painted portraits also, but drapery restrictions and accessories commonly compel a limitation in the design of the artist. In three quarter and full length portraits it is impossible to depart from the dress customary at the period of execution, unless the sitter assume a classical character, and this is only possible in comparatively few instances. In any case the pose should always be subordinated to the expression.
[a] Free translation (quoted by Wharton), the term "artless grace" being implied but not expressed by Sappho.
[NOTE 54. PAGE 167]
The remarkable range of Raphael in expression has been commented upon by many critics, and practically all agree with Lanzi in his eloquent summary[a]:
There is not a movement of the soul, there is not a character of passion known to the ancients and capable of being expressed in art, that he (Raphael) has not caught, expressed, and varied in a thousand different ways, and always within the bounds of propriety.... His figures are passions personified; and love, hope, fear, desire, anger, placability, humility, and pride, assume their places by turns as the subject changes; and while the spectator regards the countenances, the air, and the gestures of the figures, he forgets that they are the work of art, and is surprised to find his own feelings excited, and himself an actor in the scene before him.
[a] History of Painting in Italy, vol. i., Roscoe translation.