But the power of Raphael’s invention exerts itself chiefly in subjects where the drama, divested of epic or allegoric fiction, meets pure history, and elevates, invigourates, impresses the pregnant moment of a real fact, with character and pathos: The summit of these is that magnificent series of coloured designs commonly called the cartoons, so well known to you all, part of which we happily possess; formerly when complete and united, and now, in the copies of the tapestry annually exhibited in the colonnade of the Vatican, they represent in thirteen compositions the origin, sanction, œconomy and progress of the Christian religion. In whatever light we consider their invention, as parts of one whole relative to each other, or independent each of the rest, and as single subjects, there can be scarcely named a beauty or a mystery of which the cartoons furnish not an instance or a clue; they are poised between perspicuity and pregnancy of moment; we shall have opportunities to speak of all or the greater part of them, but that of Paul on the areopagus, will furnish us at present with conclusions for the remainder.
It represents the Apostle announcing his God from the height of the areopagus. Enthusiasm and curiosity make up the subject; simplicity of attitude invests the speaker with sublimity; the parallelism of his action invigorates his energy; situation gives him command over the whole; the light in which he is placed, attracts the first glance; he appears the organ of a superior Power. The assembly, though selected with characteristic art for the purpose, are the natural offspring of place and moment. The involved meditation of the Stoic, the Cynic’s ironic sneer, the incredulous smile of the elegant Epicurean, the eager disputants of the Academy, the elevated attention of Plato’s school, the rankling malice of the Rabbi, the Magician’s mysterious glance, repeat in louder or in lower tones the novel doctrine; but whilst curiosity and meditation, loud debate and fixed prejudice, tell, ponder on, repeat, reject, discuss it, the animated gesture of conviction in Dionysius and Damaris, announce the power of its tenets, and hint the established belief of immortality.
But the powers of Raphael in combining the drama with pure historic fact, are best estimated when compared with those exerted by other masters on the same subject. For this we select from the series we examine that which represented the massacre, as it is called, of the innocents, or of the infants at Bethlem; an original, precious part of which still remains in the possession of a friend of art among us. On this subject Baccio Bandinelli, Tintoretto, Rubens, Le Brun, and Poussin, have tried their various powers.
The massacre of the infants by Baccio Bandinelli, contrived chiefly to exhibit his anatomic skill, is a complicated tableau of every contorsion of human attitude and limbs that precedes dislocation; the expression floats between a studied imagery of frigid horrour and loathsome abomination.
The stormy brush of Tintoretto swept individual woe away in general masses. Two immense wings of light and shade divide the composition, and hide the want of sentiment in tumult.
To Rubens magnificence and contrast dictated the actors and the scene. A loud lamenting dame, in velvet robes, with golden locks dishevelled, and wide extended arms, meets our first glance. Behind, a group of steel-clad satellites open their rows of spears to admit the nimble, naked ministers of murder, charged with their infant prey, within their ranks, ready to close again against the frantic mothers who pursue them: the pompous gloom of the palace in the middle ground is set off by cottages and village scenery in the distance.
Le Brun surrounded the allegoric tomb of Rachel with rapid horsemen, receiving the children whom the assassins tore from their parents arms, and strewed the field with infant-slaughter.
Poussin tied in one vigorous group what he conceived of blood-trained villany and maternal frenzy. Whilst Raphael, in dramatic gradation, disclosed all the mother through every image of pity and of terrour; through tears, shrieks, resistance, revenge, to the stunned look of despair; and traced the villain from the palpitations of scarce initiated crime to the sedate grin of veteran murder.
History, strictly so called, follows the drama: fiction now ceases, and invention consists only in selecting and fixing with dignity, precision, and sentiment, the moments of reality. Suppose that the artist choose the death of Germanicus—He is not to give us the highest images of general grief which impresses the features of a people or a family at the death of a beloved chief or father; for this would be epic imagery: we should have Achilles, Hector, Niobe. He is not to mix up characters which observation and comparison have pointed out to him as the fittest to excite the gradations of sympathy; not Admetus and Alceste, not Meleager and Atalanta; for this would be the drama. He is to give us the idea of a Roman dying amidst Romans, as tradition gave him, with all the real modifications of time and place, which may serve unequivocally to discriminate that moment of grief from all others. Germanicus, Agrippina, Caius, Vitellius, the legates, the centurions at Antioch; the hero, the husband, the father, the friend, the leader, the struggles of nature and sparks of hope must be subjected to the phisiognomic character and the features of Germanicus, the son of Drusus, the Cæsar of Tiberius. Maternal, female, connubial passion must be tinged by Agrippina, the woman absorbed in the Roman, less lover than companion of her husband’s grandeur: even the bursts of friendship, attachment, allegiance, and revenge, must be stamped by the military, ceremonial, and distinctive costume of Rome.