CHIAROSCURO.
Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dare lucem.
Horat. de Arte Poet. L. 143.
ARGUMENT.
Definition.—Lionardo da Vinci.—Giorgione.—Antonio da Correggio.
SIXTH LECTURE.
The term Chiaroscuro, adopted from the Italian, in its primary and simplest sense means the division of a single object into light and shade, and in its widest compass comprises their distribution over a whole composition: whether the first derive its splendour by being exposed to a direct light, or from colours in its nature luminous; and whether the second owe their obscurity directly to the privation of light, or be produced by colours in themselves opaque. Its exclusive power is, to give substance to form, place to figure, and to create space. It may be considered as legitimate or spurious: it is legitimate when, as the immediate offspring of the subject, its disposition, extent, strength or sweetness are subservient to form, expression, and invigorate or illustrate character, by heightening the primary actor or actors, and subordinating the secondary; it is spurious when from an assistant aspiring to the rights of a principal, it becomes a substitute for indispensable or more essential demands. As such, it has often been employed by the machinists of different schools, for whom it became the refuge of ignorance, a palliative for an incurable disease, and the asylum of emptiness; still, as even a resource of this kind proves a certain vigour of mind, it surprises into something like unwilling admiration and forced applause.
Of every subject Unity is the soul: unity, of course, is inseparable from legitimate chiaroscuro: hence the individual light and shade of every figure that makes part of a given or chosen subject, whether natural or ideal, as well as the more compound one of the different intermediate groups, must act as so many rays emanating from one centre and terminate, blazing, evanescent, or obscured, in rounding it to the eye.
Truth is the next requisite of chiaroscuro, whatever be the subject. Some it attends without ambition, content with common effects; some it invigorates or inspires: but in either case, let the effect be that of usual expanded day-light, or artificial and condensed, it ought to be regulated by truth in extent, strength, brilliancy, softness, and above all, by simplicity in its positive and purity in its negative parts. As shade is the mere absence of light, it cannot, except from reflexes, possess any hue or colour of its own, and acquires all its charms from transparency.