The Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli, Volume 2 (of 3)

by Henry Fuseli

But to the rules which art prescribes to Chiaroscuro, to round each figure of a composition with truth, to connect it with the neighbouring groups, and both with the whole—it adds, that all this should be done with strict adherence to propriety, at the least possible expense of the subordinate parts, and with the utmost attainable degree of effect and harmony—demands which it is not my duty to inquire, whether they entered ever with equal evidence the mind of any one artist, ancient or modern: whether, if it be granted possible that they did, they were ever balanced with equal impartiality; and grant this, whether they ever were or could be executed with equal felicity. A character of equal universal power is not a human character—and the nearest approach to perfection can only be in carrying to excellence one great quality with the least alloy of defects. Thus in the School of Athens, Raffaello's great aim being to embody on the same scene the gradations, varieties and utmost point of human culture as it proceeds from the individual to society, and from that ascends to God; he suffered expression and character to preponderate over effect and combination of masses, and contriving to unite the opposite wings with the centre by entrance and exit at each extremity, as far as expression could do it, succeeded, to make what in itself is little more than apposition of single figures or detached groups, one grand whole.—I say, as far as expression could satisfy a mind qualified to contemplate and penetrate his principle, however unsatisfied a merely picturesque eye might wander over a scattered assemblage of figures equally illuminated and unconnected by a commanding mass of light and shade.

From this deficiency of effect in the composition we speak of, it is evident, that mere natural light and shade, however separately or individually true, is not always legitimate Chiaroscuro in art. Nature sheds or withholds her ray indiscriminately, and every object has what share it can obtain by place and position, which it is the business of art to arrange by fixing a centre and distributing the rays according to the more or less important claims of the subject: as long as it regulates itself by strict observance of that principle, it matters not whether its principal mass radiate from the middle, wind in undulating shapes, dart in decided beams from the extremities; emanate from one source, or borrow additional effect from subordinate ones: let it mount like flame or descend in lightning; dash in stern tones terror on the eye, emergent from a dark or luminous medium; through twilight immerse itself in impenetrable gloom or gradually vanish in voluptuous repose, guided by the subject the most daring division of light and shade becomes natural and legitimate, and the most regular, spurious and illegitimate without it.

To attain in the execution the highest possible and widest expanded effect of light, with equal depth and transparence in the shade, brilliancy of colour is less required than unison: a sovereign tone must pervade the whole, which, though arbitrary and dependent on choice, decides all subordinate ones, as the tone of the first instrument in a regular concert tunes all the rest; their effect entirely depends on being in unison with it, and discord is produced whenever they revolt: by thus uniting itself with the whole, the simplest tone well managed may become, not only harmonious, but rich and splendid, it is then the tone of Nature: whilst the most brilliant one, if contradicted or disappointed by the detail of the inferior, may become heavy, leathern, and discordant.

Though every work of Correggio is an illustration of this principle, and none with brighter evidence than his "Notte," in which the central light of the infant irradiates the whole; perhaps the most decisive, because the most appropriate proof of it, is in its companion the less known picture of St. Sebastian, at Dresden; in which the central light of a glory, not only surprises the eye with all the splendour of a sun, though its colour is a yellow comparatively faint, and terminates in brown, but tinges the whole, perfectly transparent, with its emanation.

That not before the lapse of two hundred years after the resurrection of Art, the discovery of Chiaroscuro, as a principle of beauty in single figures and of effect in composition, should be awarded to Lionardo da Vinci, a patriarch of that school which time has shown of all others the least inclined to appreciate its advantages, is at once a proof of the singularity that marks the local distribution of powers, and of the inconceivable slowness which attends human perception in the progress of study: but without generally admitting what has been said with more energy than judgment or regard to truth, that modern art literally sprang from the loins of Lionardo, it must be granted that no work anterior or contemporary with his essays in Chiaroscuro now exists to disprove his claim to the first vision of its harmony; its magic lent the charm, by which his females allure, to forms neither ideal nor much varied; sisters of one family, they attract by the light in which they radiate, by the shade that veils them—for the features of Giotto's or Memmi's Madonnas or virgin-saints floating in the same medium, would require little more to be their equals.

This principle Lionardo seems seldom if ever to have extended to relieve or recommend his larger compositions and male figures, if we except the group of contending horsemen which made or was intended for some part of his rival Cartoon in the Sala del Consiglio: a knot of supreme powers in Composition and Chiaroscuro: though, as we know it chiefly from a copy of P. P. Rubens engraved by Edelinck, the gross evidence of Flemish liberties taken with the style, makes it probable that the original simplicity of light and shade has been invigorated by the artificial contrasts of the copyist. Lionardo's open scenery, tinged with the glareless evenness of plain daylight, seldom warrants effects so concentrated. Unostentatious gravity marks the characters of his Last Supper, and in sober evening tones marked probably the Chiaroscuro of the groups and scenery, if we may be allowed to form our judgment from the little that remains unimpaired by the ravages of time and the more barbarous ones of renovators.

To the discovery of central radiance the genius of Lionardo with equal penetration added its counterpart, purity of shade and the coalescence of both through imperceptible demi-tints. Whatever tone of light he chose, he never forgot that the shade intended to set it off was only its absence, and not a positive colour, and that both were to be harmonized by demi-tints composed of both; a principle of which no school anterior to him has left a trace.

That the discovery of a principle big with advantages as obvious as important to art should have been reserved for the penetration of Lionardo, however singular, is less strange than that, when discovered and its powers demonstrated, it should, with the exception of one name, have not only met with no imitators, but with an ambiguous and even discouraging reception from the pupils of his own school, and some next allied to it. Vasari, his panegyrist rather than biographer, talks of it more as a singular phænomenon than as an evident principle, and avowing that he introduced a certain depth of shade into oil-painting, which enabled succeeding artists to relieve their figures more forcibly,[90] persevered to discolour walls and pannels with washy flat insipidity. Bartolomeo della Porta alone appears to have had sufficient compass of mind to grasp its energy and connect it with colour: from him, through Andrea del Sarto down to Pietro Berettini, who owed his effects rather to opposition of tints than to legitimate Chiaroscuro, the Tuscan school gradually suffered it to dwindle into evanescence. Unless we were to consider its astonishing effects in some of Michael Angelo's works in the light of imitations rather than as emanations of his own genius; which perhaps we are the less warranted to presume, as he seems to have paid no attention to Lionardo's discovery in its brightest period; for the groups of his celebrated cartoon exhibit little more than individual light and shade.