From this censure we ought to except M. Angelo Caravaggi, and Andrea Sacchi, whose works, though else so dissimilar in principle and execution, coincide in reducing colour frequently to little more than chiaroscuro; the one for melancholy and forcible, the other for visionary or devotional effects.
The Pilgrims adoring the Madonna with the Infant in St. Agostino, by the former, seem not painted but tinged in the last golden ray of departing eve; whilst the Vision of St Romualdo, by the latter, surrounds us with gray twilight and gradual evanescence.
A general style of colours thus amalgamated, appears to me a principle much superior to that of corruption of them, which Plutarch mentions as the invention of Apollodorus the Athenian, when painting had scarcely emerged from the linear process, and it required some courage to wield a brush. If the ancients ever possessed the Bolognese corruption of colours, it must have been in periods of refinement. The Φθορα of Apollodorus was probably the invention of demi-tints, the effect of which is produced by "corrupting" or lowering the elemental purity of the two of which it is composed. The axiom, that the less the traces appear of the means by which a work has been produced, the more it resembles the operations of nature,—is not an axiom likely to spring from the infancy of Art.
The even colour, veiled splendour, the solemn twilight, that tone of devotion and cloistered meditation which Lodovico Carracci spread over his works, could arise only from the contemplation of various preceding styles, or their comparison with nature and the object of his choice.
The ideal of his style is a harmony equally remote from affected brilliancy and vulgar resemblance of tints. Its element is gravity, and whenever this inspires not its imitation, it will be less serious than sullen, flat not even, heavy without vigour, and the despatching tool of mediocrity.
If this be that dignified colour of Lombardy, recommended by Agostino Carracci, his own picture of the Communion of St. Jerome, and the Dead Christ among the Maries by Annibale, (which we have seen here,) excepted, its principle was not adopted by that third ruler of the Carracci school, nor any of its pupils.
Annibale, from want of feelings, changed the mild evening ray of his Cousin to the sullen light of a cloudy day, and in the exultation of mechanic power swims on his work like oil: Guido was too gay and affected; Guercino too cutting and vulgar; Albano too airy and insubstantial for it. Under the hand and guided by the sensibility of Lodovico, it communicated itself even to the open silvery tone of Fresco.
In the cloisters of St. Michele in Bosco, it equally moderates the deep-toned tints of the muscular labourers of the hermitage and of the ponderous demon who mocks their toil, the warlike splendour in the homage of Totila, the flash of the nocturnal conflagration, and the three insidious Nymphs in the garden scene, who even now, though nearly in a state of evanescence, seem moulded by the hand and tinged by the breath of Love; all are sainted by this solemn tone.
Its triumph in Oil is the altar-piece of St. John preaching, in a chapel of the Certosa, whose lights seem embrowned by a golden veil, and the shadowy gleam of Valombrosa; but Lodovico sometimes indulged in tones austere, pronounced, and hardy. Such is the Flagellation of Christ in the same church, of which the tremendous depth of flesh-tints contrasts the open, wide-expanded sky, and less conveys, than dashes its terrors on the astonished sense.
The third, or Ornamental style, could scarcely arise in any other state of Italy than Venice. Venice was the centre of commerce, the repository of the riches of the globe, the splendid toy-shop of the time: its chief inhabitants princely merchants, or a patrician race elevated to rank by accumulations from trade or naval prowess; the bulk of the people mechanics or artisans, administering the means, and, in their turn, fed by the produce of luxury. Of such a system, what could the Art be more than the parasite? Religion itself had exchanged its gravity for the allurements of ear and eye, and even sanctity disgusted, unless arrayed by the gorgeous hand of fashion. Such was, such will always be the birth-place and the theatre of Colour; and hence it is more matter of wonder that the first and greatest colourists should so long have foreborne to overstep the modesty of Nature in the use of that alluring medium, than that they sacrificed, in part, propriety to its golden solicitation.