The critic grants that the expedient of Timanthes may be allowed in ‘instances of blood,’ the supported aspect of which would change a scene of commiseration and terror into one of abomination and horror, which ought for ever to be excluded from the province of art, of poetry as well as painting: and would not the face of Agamemnon, uncovered, have had this effect? was not the scene he must have witnessed a scene of blood? and whose blood was to be shed? that of his own daughter—and what daughter? young, beautiful, helpless, innocent, resigned—the very idea of resignation in such a victim, must either have acted irresistibly to procure her relief, or thrown a veil over a father’s face. A man who is determined to sport wit at the expence of heart alone could call such an expedient ridiculous—‘as ridiculous,’ Mr. Falconet continues, ‘as a poet would be, who in a pathetic situation, instead of satisfying my expectation, to rid himself of the business, should say, that the sentiments of his hero are so far above whatever can be said on the occasion, that he shall say nothing.’ And has not Homer, though he does not tell us this, acted upon a similar principle? has he not, when Ulysses addresses Ajax in Hades, in the most pathetic and conciliatory manner, instead of furnishing him with an answer, made him remain in indignant silence during the address, then turn his step and stalk away? has not the universal voice of genuine criticism with Longinus told us, and if it had not, would not Nature’s own voice tell us, that that silence was characteristic, that it precluded, included, and soaring above all answer, consigned Ulysses for ever to a sense of inferiority? Nor is it necessary to render such criticism contemptible to mention the silence of Dido in Virgil, or the Niobe of Æschylus, who was introduced veiled, and continued mute during her presence on the stage.
But in hiding Agamemnon’s face Timanthes loses the honour of invention, as he is merely the imitator of Euripides, who did it before him[18]? I am not prepared with chronologic proofs to decide whether Euripides or Timanthes, who were contemporaries, about the period of the Peloponnesian war, fell first on this expedient; though the silence of Pliny and Quintilian on that head, seems to be in favour of the painter, neither of whom could be ignorant of the celebrated drama of Euripides, and would not willingly have suffered the honour of this master-stroke of an art they were so much better acquainted with than painting, to be transferred to another from its real author, had the poet’s claim been prior: nor shall I urge that the picture of Timanthes was crowned with victory by those who were in daily habits of assisting at the dramas of Euripides, without having their verdict impeached by Colotes or his friends, who would not have failed to avail themselves of so flagrant a proof of inferiority as the want of invention, in the work of his rival:—I shall only ask, what is invention? if it be the combination of the most important moment of a fact with the most varied effects of the reigning passion on the characters introduced—the invention of Timanthes consisted in shewing, by the gradation of that passion in the faces of the assistant mourners, the reason why that of the principal one, was hid. This he performed, and this the poet, whether prior or subsequent, did not and could not do, but left it with a silent appeal to our own mind and fancy.
In presuming to differ on the propriety of this mode of expression in the picture of Timanthes from the respectable authority I have quoted, I am far from a wish to invalidate the equally pertinent and acute remarks made on the danger of its imitation, though I am decidedly of opinion that it is strictly within the limits of our art. If it be a ‘trick,’ it is certainly one that ‘has served more than once.’ We find it adopted to express the grief of a beautiful female figure on a bassorelievo formerly in the palace Valle at Rome, and preserved in the Admiranda of S. Bartoli; it is used, though with his own originality, by Michael Angelo in the figure of Abijam, to mark unutterable woe; Raphael, to shew that he thought it the best possible mode of expressing remorse and the deepest sense of repentance, borrowed it in the expulsion from Paradise, without any alteration, from Masaccio; and like him, turned Adam out with both his hands before his face. And how has he represented Moses at the burning bush, to express the astonished awe of human in the visible presence of divine nature? by a double repetition of the same expedient; once in the ceiling of a Stanza, and again in the loggia of the Vatican, with both his hands before his face, or rather with his face immersed in his hands. As we cannot suspect in the master of expression the unworthy motive of making use of this mode merely to avoid a difficulty, or to denote the insupportable splendour of the vision, which was so far from being the case, that, according to the sacred record, Moses stept out of his way to examine the ineffectual blaze: we must conclude that nature herself dictated to him this method as superior to all he could express by features; and that he recognized the same dictate in Masaccio, who can no more be supposed to have been acquainted with the precedent of Timanthes, than Shakspeare with that of Euripides, when he made Macduff draw his hat over his face.
Masaccio and Raphael proceeded on the principle, Gherard Lairesse copied only the image of Timanthes, and has perhaps incurred by it the charge of what Longinus calls parenthyrsos, in the ill-timed application of supreme pathos, to an inadequate call. Agamemnon is introduced covering his face with his mantle, at the death of Polyxena, the captive daughter of Priam, sacrificed to the manes of Achilles, her betrothed lover, treacherously slain in the midst of the nuptial ceremony, by her brother Paris. The death of Polyxena, whose charms had been productive of the greatest disaster that could befal the Grecian army, could not perhaps provoke in its leader emotions similar to those which he felt at that of his own daughter: it must however be owned that the figure of the chief is equally dignified and pathetic; and that, by the introduction of the spectre of Achilles at the immolation of the damsel to his manes, the artist’s fancy has in some degree atoned for the want of discrimination in the professor.
Such were the artists, who according to the most corresponding data formed the style of that second period, which fixed the end and established the limits of art, on whose firm basis arose the luxuriant fabric of the third or the period of refinement, which added grace and polish to the forms it could not surpass; amenity or truth to the tones it could not invigourate; magic and imperceptible transition to the abrupt division of masses; gave depth and roundness to composition; at the breast of nature herself caught the passions as they rose, and familiarized expression: The period of Apelles, Protogenes, Aristides, Euphranor, Pausias, the pupils of Pamphilus and his master Eupompus, whose authority obtained what had not been granted to his great predecessor and countryman Polycletus, the new establishment of the school of Sicyon.[19]
The leading principle of Eupompus may be traced in the advice which he gave to Lysippus, (as preserved by Pliny,) whom, when consulted on a standard of imitation, he directed to the contemplation of human variety in the multitude of the characters that were passing by, with the axiom, ‘that nature herself was to be imitated, not an artist.’ Excellence, said Eupompus, is thy aim, such excellence as that of Phidias and Polycletus; but it is not obtained by the servile imitation of works, however perfect, without mounting to the principle which raised them to that height; that principle apply to thy purpose, there fix thy aim. He who, with the same freedom of access to nature as another man, contents himself to approach her only through his medium, has resigned his birth-right and originality together; his master’s manner will be his style. If Phidias and Polycletus have discovered the substance and established the permanent principle of the human frame, they have not exhausted the variety of human appearances and human character; if they have abstracted the forms of majesty and those of beauty, nature compared with their works will point out a grace that has been left for thee; if they have pre-occupied man as he is, be thine to give him that air with which he actually appears.[20]
Such was the advice of Eupompus: less lofty, less ambitious than what the departed epoch of genius would have dictated, but better suited to the times, and better to his pupil’s mind. When the spirit of liberty forsook the public, grandeur had left the private mind of Greece: subdued by Philip, the gods of Athens and Olympia had migrated to Pella, and Alexander was become the representative of Jupiter; still those who had lost the substance fondled the shadow of liberty; rhetoric mimicked the thunders of oratory, sophistry and metaphysic debate that philosophy, which had guided life, and the grand taste that had dictated to art the monumental style, invested gods with human form and raised individuals to heroes, began to give way to refinements in appreciating the degrees of elegance or of resemblance in imitation: the advice of Eupompus however, far from implying the abolition of the old system, recalled his pupil to the examen of the great principle on which it had established its excellence, and to the resources which its inexhaustible variety offered for new combinations.
That Lysippus considered it in that light, his devotion to the Doryphorus of Polycletus, known even to Tully, sufficiently proved. That figure which comprised the pure proportions of juvenile vigour, furnished the readiest application for those additional refinements of variety, character, and fleshy charms, that made the base of his invention: its symmetry directing his researches amid the insidious play of accidental charms, and the claims of inherent grace, never suffered imitation to deviate into incorrectness; whilst its squareness and elemental beauty melted in more familiar forms on the eye, and from an object of cold admiration became the glowing one of sympathy. Such was probably the method formed by Lysippus on the advice of Eupompus, more perplexed than explained by the superficial extract and the rapid phrase of Pliny.
From the statuary’s we may form our idea of the painter’s method. The doctrine of Eupompus was adopted by Pamphilus the Amphipolitan, the most scientific artist of his time, and by him communicated to Apelles of Cos, or as Lucian will have it, of Ephesus[21], his pupil; in whom, if we believe tradition, nature exhibited, once, a specimen what her union with education and circumstances could produce.