To this earliest type of conception it is that for the most part the miracle-working pictures belong. To such as to something stupendous man is merely placed in a relation of stupidity, from which the aspect of their artistic merit vanishes, so that they are not brought nearer to his conscious life in friendly guise in accordance with their vital humanity and beauty, and the very pictures which are most revered in a religious sense are from an artistic standpoint the most execrable.
If, however, isolated figures of this type do not supply an object for devotion or interest as being already complete and independent personality, their execution, carried out as it is in consonance with the principle of statuesque conception, has no meaning at all. Portraits, for example, are of interest to relatives who know the man thus portrayed and his individuality. But where the personages thus depicted are forgotten or unknown the sympathy which is excited by their portraiture in a given action or situation, which gives definite content to a particular character, is of a wholly different kind to that which we find in the entirely simple type of conception above referred to. Really great portraits, when they face us in the fullest wealth of life all the means of art can display, possess in this wealth itself the power to stand forth from and step out of their frames. In looking at the portraits of Van Dyck, for example, more particularly when the pose of the figure is not wholly full face, but slightly turned away, the frame has struck me like the door of the world, which the man before me enters. When consequently individuals do not possess, as saints, angels and the like do, a characterization which is in itself sufficiently complete and acknowledged, and are only interesting by virtue of the definite character of a given situation, some single circumstance or particular action, it is not suitable to present them as independent figures. As an example of this the last work of Kügelchen in Dresden was a composition of four heads, half figures, namely, Christ, John the Evangelist, John the Baptist, and the Prodigal Son. So far as Christ and John the Evangelist are concerned I found the conception quite appropriate. But in the case of the Baptist, and in every respect in that of the Prodigal Son, I failed to connect with them the authentic character which could justify a treatment of them as half-length portraits. In such cases it is essential to place the figures in a condition of action or incident, or at least to show them in situations, by means of which, in vital association with external environment, they can assert the individuality which marks an essentially exclusive whole. The head of the Prodigal Son in the above picture expresses no doubt, very finely too, pain, profound repentance and remorse, but the only indication we have given us that this is the repentance of the Prodigal Son is a very diminutive herd of swine in the foreground. Instead of a symbolical reference of this kind we ought to see him among his swine, or at least in some other scene of his life. The Prodigal Son, in short, does not possess for us any further general characterization complete as such in our minds and only exists, in so far as he is not purely allegorical, in the well-known scenes of Biblical narrative. He should be depicted to us as leaving his father's house, or in his misery, his repentance and return, that is, in the concrete facts of the tale. Those swine put in the foreground do not carry us much further than a label with "The Prodigal Son" written on it.
(ββ) And generally it is obvious that painting, for the reason that its function is to accept as its content the wealth of soul-life in all its detail, is, to a yet greater extent than sculpture, unable to rest satisfied with that repose on itself which is without defined situation and the conception of a character taken by itself and alone simply. It is bound to make the effort to exhibit such self-subsistency and its content in specific situation, variety, and distinction of character viewed in their mutual relations and in association with their environment. It is, in fact, just this departure from purely eclectic and traditional types, from the architectonic composition of figures and the statuesque mode of conception; it is just this liberation from all that is devoid of movement and action, this striving after a living human expression, a characteristic individuality; it is this investment of a content with all the detail of the ideal and external condition that affects it which constitutes the advance of the art, in virtue of which it secures its own unique point of view. Consequently to painting as to no other plastic art is it not merely permitted, but it is even required from it, that it should unfold dramatic realization, and by the composition of its figures display their activity in a distinctly emphasized situation.
(γγ) And, in the third place, closely connected with this absorption in the complete wealth of existing life and the dramatic movement of circumstance and character, we are aware of the importance which is increasingly attached, both in conception and execution, to the individuality and the vital wealth of the colour aspect of all objects, in so far as in painting we attain to the supremest effects of vital truth which are capable of being expressed purely by colour.
This magical result of appearance can, however, be carried to such a pitch, that in contrast to it the exhibition of content becomes a matter of indifference, and painting tends to pass over, in the mere charm and perfume of its colour tones, and the contrast, fusion, and play of their harmonies, into the art of music, precisely as sculpture, in the elaboration of its reliefs, tends to associate itself with painting.
(β) What we have in the first instance now to pass in review are the particular lines[312] that pictorial composition is constrained to adhere to in its productions when presenting to us a definite situation and the more immediate motives referable to it by virtue of the way it concentrates and groups together various figures and natural objects in one self-exclusive whole.
(αα) What is of fundamental and pre-eminent importance here is the happy selection of a situation adapted to the art.
In this respect the imaginative powers of the painter possess an immeasurable field to select from, a field whose limits extend from the simplest situation[313] of an object insignificant in itself, such as a wreath of flowers, or a wineglass composed with plates, bread, and certain fruits, to rich compositions of important public events, political actions, coronation fêtes, battles, or even the Last Judgment, in which God the Father, Christ, his apostles, the heavenly legions, nay, our entire humanity, and earth, heaven, and hell are brought together. And here a closer inspection will show us that we must clearly distinguish what is truly pictorial on the one hand from that which is sculpturesque, and on the other from what is poetical in the sense that it is only poetry that can fully express it.
The essential difference between a pictorial, and sculpturesque situation consists, as we have already seen, in this, that the main function of sculpture is to place before us that which is self-subsistent in its tranquillity, without conflict under conditions that do not affect it, in which distinctness of definition is not the main demand, it is only in the relief that it really begins to approach a group composition, and an epic expanse of figures begins to represent actions involving motion, and which imply collision of opposing forces. The art of painting, on the contrary, only thoroughly takes up its proper task, when it moves away from figures composed independently of their more concrete relations, moves away from a situation that is deficient in its elaboration, in order that it may thus pass into the sphere of living movement, human conditions, passions, conflicts, actions in persistent association with external environment, and even in its composition of natural landscape is able to retain firmly this definite structure of a given situation and its most lifelike individuality. It was for this reason that from the first we maintained that painting was called upon to effect the exposition of character, soul, and ideal qualities, not in the way that this spiritual world enables us to recognize it directly in its external shape, but in the way it evolves and expresses its actual substance by means of actions.
And the truth we have just mentioned is that which brings painting into closer relation with poetry. Both arts have in this respect an advantage[314], and from another point of view, also a disadvantage. Painting is unable to give us the development of a situation, event, or action, as poetry or music, that is to say, in a series of changes; it can only embody one moment of time. A simple reflection is deducible from this, namely, that we must in this one moment have placed before us the substance of the situation or action in its entirety, the very bloom of it; consequently, that moment should be selected in which all that preceded and followed it is concentrated in one point. In the case of a battle, for example, this moment will be that of victory. The conflict is still apparent, but its decisive conclusion is equally so. The artist is able, therefore, to retain as it were the residue of the Past, which, in the very act of withdrawal and disappearance, still asserts itself in the Present, and furthermore can suggest what has yet to be evolved as the immediate result of a given situation. I cannot, however, here enlarge further on this head. The painter, however, together with this disadvantage as against the poet, is to this extent advantaged in that he can bring the precise scene before our vision in all the appearance of its reality, can depict it perfectly in all its detail. "Ut pictura poesis erit" is no doubt a favourite saying which is particularly and pertinaciously advanced by theorists, and is no doubt actually accepted and exemplified by narrative poetry in its descriptions of the seasons, its flowers, and its landscapes. Detailed transcription of such objects and situations is, however, not only a very dry and tedious affair, and indeed, so far from being exhaustive, always leaves something more to say. It is, further, contrasted with painting, only a confusing result, because it is forced to present as a successive series of ideas what painting sets before our vision once and for all, so that we constantly tend to forget what has gone before and lose it from our minds, despite the fact that it should be held in essential relation with that which follows, inasmuch as under the spatial condition it is in fact a part of it, and only is significant in this association and this immediacy. It is, however, just in this contemporaneous exposition of detail that the painter can restore that which, in respect to the progressive series of past and future events, he fails to secure.