I say in part, for Tiziano perhaps never, Paolo and Tintoretto, though by much too often, yet not always, spread the enchanting nosegay, which is the characteristic of this style, with indiscriminate hand. The style of Tiziano may be divided into three periods: when he copied, when he imitated, when he strove to generalize, to elevate, or invigorate the tones of Nature. The first is anxious and precise, the second beautiful and voluptuous, the third sublime. In the second the parts lead to the whole, in this the whole to the parts; it is that master-style which in discriminated tones imparts to ornament a monumental grandeur. It gave that celestial colour which consideration like an angel spread over the Salutation in St. Rocco; the colour that wafts its wide expanse and elemental purity over the primitive scenes of his Abel, Abraham, and David, in the Salute; the colour that tinged with artless solemn majesty the Apotheosis of the Virgin in the church de' Frati, embodied adoration in its portraits, and changed the robes of pomp and warlike glitter to servants of simplicity. Such is the tone which diffuses its terrors and its glories in Pietro Martyre over the martyred hermits of the mountain forest, and taught the painter's eye to "glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven." If this be ornament, what but the Vatican can the schools of Design oppose to its grandeur and propriety!
If all ornament be allegoric, if it imply something allusive to the place, the person, or the design for which it is contrived, from that of a public building or a temple, to that of a library or the decorations of a toilette, how have the schools of Design, after the demise of M. Agnolo and Raffaello, observed its principle? Annibale Carracci, with the Capella Sistina and the Vatican before his eye, has filled the mansion of Episcopal dignity with a chaotic series of trite fable and bacchanalian revelry, without allegory, void of allusion, merely to gratify the puerile ostentation of dauntless execution and academic skill. And if we advert to a greater name, that of Pellegrino Tibaldi, is it easy to discover what relation exists between the adventures of Ulysses and the purposes and pursuits of the academical Institute of Bologna? and is it sufficient to exculpate him from impropriety of choice in his plan, if we say that the ceiling of Pellegrino Tibaldi is a doctrine of style, and that design and style are the principal pursuit of the students?
But perhaps it is not to Tiziano, but to Tintoretto and Paolo Cagliari, that the debaucheries of Colour and blind submission to fascinating tints, the rage of scattering flowers to no purpose, are ascribed. Let us select from Tintoretto's most extensive work the Scola of St. Rocco, the most extensive composition, and his acknowledged masterpiece, the Crucifixion, and compare its tone with that of Rubens and of Rembrandt for the same subject. What impression feels he, who for the first time casts a glance on the immense scenery of that work? a whole whose numberless parts are connected by a lowering, mournful, minacious tone. A general fearful silence hushes all around the central figure of the Saviour suspended on the cross, his fainting mother, and a group of male and female mourners at his foot:—a group of colours that less imitate than rival Nature, and tinged by grief itself; a scale of tones for which even Tiziano offers to me no parallel: yet all equally overcast by the lurid tone that stains the whole, and like a meteor hangs in the sickly air. Whatever inequality or derelictions of feeling, whatever improprieties of common place, of local and antique costume, the master's rapidity admitted to fill his space, and they are great, all vanish in the power which compresses them into a single point, and we do not detect them till we recover from our terror.
The picture of Rubens, which we oppose to Tintoretto, was painted for the church of St. Walburgha at Antwerp, after his return from Italy, and has been minutely described, and as exquisitely criticised by Reynolds: "Christ," he says, "is nailed to the cross, with a number of figures exerting themselves to raise it. The invention of throwing the cross obliquely from one corner of the picture to the other, is finely conceived; something in the manner of Tintoretto:" so far Reynolds. In Tintoretto it is the cross of one of the criminals that they attempt to raise, who casts his eye on Christ already raised. The body of Christ is the grandest, in my opinion, that Rubens ever painted; it seems to be imitated from the Torso of Apollonius, and that of the Laocoon. How far it be characteristic of Christ, or correspondent with the situation, I shall not here enquire; my object is the ruling tone of the whole, and of this the criticism quoted says not a word, though much of local colour and gray and ochry balance. Would so great a master of tone as Reynolds have forgot this master-key, if he had found it in the picture? The fact is, the picture has no other than the painter's usual tone: Rubens came to his work with gay technic exultation, and, by the magic of his palette, changed the terrors of Golgotha to an enchanted garden and clusters of flowers. Rembrandt, though on a smaller scale of size and composition, concentrated the tremendous moment in one flash of pallid light. It breaks on the body of Christ, shivers down his limbs, and vanishes on the armour of a crucifix; the rest is gloom.
Of Paolo Veronese, who was by far the most intemperate and florid of ornamental masters, the political allegories on the platfonds and compartments of the Ducal Palace, and the religious legends painted in the refectories of the convents, or as altar-pieces in the churches of Venice, differ materially in tone and style. Those were painted for the Senate, these for the people; and the superior orders were supposed to be better judges of real grandeur and propriety, than monastic ignorance and the bigoted and vulgar majority of the crowds that thronged the churches.
If, therefore, I were able to dissent in any thing relative to Colour from the great Master whose classification I comment, I should probably hesitate on the advice of adopting the palette of Rubens for the regulation of the tones that compose the Venetian style, of which his flowery tint formed but a part. What has been said of M. Agnolo in Form, may be said of Rubens in Colour: they had but one. As the one came to Nature, and moulded her to his generic form, the other came to Nature and tinged her with his colour—the colour of gay magnificence. He levelled his subject to his style, but seldom if ever his style with his subject; whatever be the subject of Rubens, legend, allegoric, stem, mournful, martyrdom, fable, epic, dramatic, lyric, grave or gay—the hues that embody, the air that tinges them, is indiscriminate expanse of gay magnificence. If the economy of his colours be that of an immense nosegay, he has not always connected the ingredients with a prismatic eye; the balance of the iris is not arbitrary, the balance of his colour often is. It was not to be expected that correctness of form should be the object of Rubens, though he was master of drawing, and even ambitious in the display of anatomic knowledge; but there is no mode of incorrectness, unless what directly militated against his style, such as meagreness, of which his works do not set an example. His male forms, generally the brawny pulp of slaughtermen; his females, hillocks of roses in overwhelmed muscles, grotesque attitudes, and distorted joints, are swept along in a gulph of colours, as herbage, trees and shrubs are whirled, tossed, and absorbed by inundation.
But whenever a subject comes genially within the vortex of his manner, such as that of the Gallery of Luxembourg, it then is not only characteristically excellent, but includes nearly a superhuman union of powers. In whatever light we consider that astonishing work, whether as a series of the most sublime conceptions, regulated by an uniform comprehensive plan, or as a system of colours and tones, exalting the subject, and seconded by magic execution, whatever may be its Venetian or Flemish flaws of mythology and Christianity, ideal and contemporary costume promiscuously displayed, it leaves all plans of Venetian allegory far behind, and rivals all their execution; if it be not equal in simplicity, or emulate in characteristic dignity, the plans of M. Agnolo and Raffaello, it excels them in the display of that magnificence which no modern eye can separate from the idea of Majesty.
FOOTNOTE
[99] Φθορα.