This decision saves them from being the old coxcombs which they look like in Caylus’s picture. And what is the sight that fixes their eager looks? A veiled, muffled figure. Is that Helen? I cannot conceive what induced Caylus to make her wear a veil. Homer, to be sure, expressly gives her one,
αὐτίκα δ’ ἀργεννῇσι καλυψαμένη ὀθόνῃσιν
ὡρμᾶτ’ ἐκ θαλάμοιο,
“She left her chamber, robed and veiled in white,”
but only to cross the street in. And although he makes the elders express their admiration before she could have had time to take it off or throw it back, yet they were not seeing her then for the first time. Their confession need not therefore have been caused by the present hasty glance. They might often have felt what, on this occasion, they first acknowledged. There is nothing of this in the picture. When I behold the ecstasy of those old men, I want to see the cause, and, as I say, am exceedingly surprised to perceive nothing but a veiled, muffled figure, at which they are staring with such devotion. What of Helen is there? Her white veil and something of her outline, as far as outline can be traced beneath drapery. But perhaps the Count did not mean that her face should be covered. In that case, although his words—“Hélène couverte d’un voile blanc”—hardly admit of such an interpretation, another point excites my surprise. He recommends to the artist great care in the expression of the old men’s faces, and wastes not a word upon the beauty of Helen’s. This modest beauty, approaching timidly, her eyes moist with repentant tears,—is, then, the highest beauty so much a matter of course to our artists, that they need not be reminded of it? or is expression more than beauty? or is it with pictures as with the stage, where we are accustomed to accept the ugliest of actresses for a ravishing princess, if her prince only express the proper degree of passion for her.
Truly this picture of Caylus would be to that of Zeuxis as pantomime to the most sublime of poetry.
Homer was unquestionably more read formerly than now, yet we do not find mention of many pictures drawn from him even by the old artists.[[143]] They seem diligently to have availed themselves of any individual physical beauties which he may have pointed out. They painted these, well knowing that in this department alone they could vie with the poet with any chance of success. Zeuxis painted besides Helen a Penelope, and the Diana of Apelles was the goddess of Homer attended by her nymphs.
I will take this opportunity of saying that the passage in Pliny referring to this picture of Apelles needs correcting.[[144]] But to paint scenes from Homer merely because they afforded a rich composition, striking contrasts, and artistic shading, seems not to have been to the taste of the old artists; nor could it be, so long as art kept within the narrow limits of its own high calling. They fed upon the spirit of the poet, and filled their imagination with his noblest traits. The fire of his enthusiasm kindled theirs. They saw and felt with him. Thus their works became copies of the Homeric, not in the relation of portrait to original, but in the relation of a son to a father,—like, but different. The whole resemblance often lies in a single trait, the other parts being alike in nothing but in their harmony with that.
Since, moreover, the Homeric masterpieces of poetry were older than any masterpiece of art, for Homer had observed nature with the eye of an artist before either Phidias or Apelles, the artists naturally found ready made in his poems many valuable observations, which they had not yet had time to make for themselves. These they eagerly seized upon, in order that, through Homer, they might copy nature. Phidias acknowledged that the lines,[[145]]—
Ἦ καὶ κυανέῃσιν ἐπ’ ὀφρύσι νεῦσε Κρονίων·