[94] A la Scuola di S. Marco la Tempestà Sedata dal Santo, ove fra le altre cose sono tre remiganti ignudi, pregiatissimi pel disegno, e per le attitudini. Lanzi Storia, &c. Tomo II. parte prima. Scuola Veneta.
SEVENTH LECTURE.
ON DESIGN.
SEVENTH LECTURE.
It is perhaps unnecessary to premise, that by the word Design I mean here not what that word denotes in a general sense, the plan of a whole, but what it applies in its narrowest and most specific sense, the drawing of the figures and component parts of the subject. The Arts of Design have been so denominated from their nearly exclusive power of representing Form, the base and principal object of plastic in contradistinction to vocal imitation. In forms alone the idea of existence can be rendered intuitive and permanent. Languages perish; words succeed each other, become obsolete and die; even colours, the dressers and ornaments of bodies, fade; Lines alone can neither be obliterated nor misconstrued; by application to their standard alone, discrimination takes place, and description becomes intelligible. Here is the only ostensible seat of corporeal Beauty; here only it can strictly exist; for, as the notion of Beauty arises from the pleasure we feel in the harmonious co-operation of the component forms of some favourite object towards one end at once—it implies their immediate co-existence in the mass they compose; and as that immediately and at once can be perceived and conveyed to the mind by the eye alone,—Figure is the legitimate vehicle of Beauty, and Design the physical element of the Art.
Of Design, the element is correctness and style; its extinction, incorrectness and manner. On the first principle of correctness, or the power of copying and drawing with precision the proportions of any object singly, or in relation with others,—as it may be considered in the light of an elementary qualification without which none would presume to enter himself a student of the Academy,—I should perhaps forbear to speak, did I not consider it as the basis of Design, and were I not apprehensive that from the prevalent bend of the reigning taste, you do not lay on it all the stress you ought, and that, if you neglect the acquisition of the power to copy with purity and precision any given object, you will never acquire that of imitating what you have chosen for your model.