History of Sculpture, Painting, and Architecture

by J. S. Memes

These observations lead to, while they are confirmed by, another view, which yet remains to be taken of the genius of Raphael. It is only in the individuality and profoundness of expression, that he reaches the sublimities of art. In the abstract conception of form he is inferior; hence, in the representations of mythological existences, he becomes feeble in proportion as he generalizes. It is this that discriminates between the Roman and the Florentine. The former is the painter of men as they live, and feel, and act; the latter delineates man in the abstract. The one embodies sentiment—feeling—passion; the other pourtrays the capacities, energies, and idealities of form. Raphael excels in resemblance; he walks the earth, but with dignity, and is seen to most advantage in relations of human fellowship. Michael Angelo can be viewed only in his own world; with ours he holds no farther communion than is necessary to obtain a common medium of intelligence. In the grand, the venerable, the touching realities of life, the first is unrivalled; his fair, and seeming true, creations cause us to reverence humanity and ourselves. Over the awful and the sublime of fiction, the second extends a terrible sway; he calls spirits from their shadowy realms, and they come at his bidding, in giant shapes, to frown upon the impotency of man.

To contend here for superiority is futile—each has his own independent sphere. The style of Raphael has justly been characterised as the dramatic, that of Michael Angelo as the epic, of painting. The distinction is accurate, in as far as the former has made to pass before us character in conflict with passion—in all its individualities of mode; while the latter represented and generalized both character and passion. The first leads us from natural beauty to divine—the second elevates us at once into regions which his own lofty imaginations have peopled. Hence, than Michael Angelo's prophets, and other beings that just hover on the confines of human and spiritual existence, the whole range of art and poetry never has, and never will, produce more magnificent and adventurous creations. This is his true power—here he reigns alone, investing art with a mightiness unapproachable by any other pencil. But when the interest is to be derived from known forms, and natural combinations, he fails almost utterly; never can his line want grandeur—but grandeur so frequently substituted for feeling, and when the subject cannot sustain it, presents only gorgeous caricature. Human affection mingles in every touch of Raphael, and he carries our nature to its highest moral, if not physical, elevation. Hence, his supernatural forms may want abstract majesty and overawing expression; but they display a community in this world's feelings, without its weaknesses or imperfections, by which the heart is perhaps even more subdued.

If this be a true estimate of the powers of these great men, and we have drawn our inferences from impressions often felt, and long studied, no comparison can be more unjust, nor less apt, than the one so frequently repeated, that Michael Angelo is the Homer, Raphael the Virgil, of modern painting. The Florentine may justly take his place by the side of the Greek. Not so the Roman and the Mantuan. The copyist of Homer, nay, frequently his translator, whose nature is taken at second-hand—whose characters, in the mass, have about as much individuality as the soldiers of a platoon, and little more intellectual discrimination than brave, braver, and bravest, must occupy a lower seat at the banquet of genius than the original, the ever varied, and graphic artist. The great error in estimating the merits of these masters appears to have arisen from not considering them separately, and as independent minds. Michael Angelo, indeed, created, while Raphael may be said to have composed; but he discovered and collected—he did not derive his materials. Michael Angelo found the art poor in means, undignified and powerless in composition; he assumed it in feebleness, and bore it at once to maturity of strength. Of these improvements Raphael profited by novel application; but the advantage was nothing more than necessarily occurs in the spread of intelligence. Massaccio had, in like manner, prepared the previous change; Da Vinci first, then Buonarotti, took it up. The pupil of Perugino made availment of this new path to a commanding height, whence the whole prospect of the empire of art might be surveyed, but over this his genius soared in guideless, independent flight. Than the invention, and at such a time, of Michael Angelo's mighty system, there is to be found no greater evidence of talent, nor of greater talent; but from the mind that could conceive that system, scarcely an exertion was demanded to maintain supremacy therein, guarded as were its claims against all rivalry by the very novelty and peculiarity of the style, where each adopter would be degraded into an imitator. On the other hand, if the perfection of Raphael's manner appear to be more in the ordinary course of genius, it is to be remembered, that its very perfectness depends upon those qualities of mind which most rarely assemble in the constitution of inventive genius—exquisite taste, sound judgment, patient study, and profound knowledge of the human heart. Be it also recollected, that to support the mastery here, in a style founded on no peculiar habitudes of intellect, but embracing the general and intrinsic principles of art, where all good artists would consequently be rivals, without incurring the imputation of copying, required unabating effort, diligence, and originality,—more liberal and varied excellence, than in the preceding system. Here we at length discover the real and abiding superiority of Raphael. It is not that he pre-eminently surpasses in one of the faculties of genius, but he has embodied in his labours more of the requisites of perfection than any other of the modern masters. In grandeur of invention and form, he is inferior to Michael Angelo. Titian surpasses him in coloring, Corregio in gradation of tone. This superiority, however, becomes visible only where each of the qualities becomes the ruling sentiment of the work. For when we view in itself a composition of Raphael, where the style of design so exquisitely accords with the forms, the coloring corresponding with each, the chiar' oscuro just adequate to the degree of perception meditated; the whole harmonized by innate and unerring propriety, animated with his own peculiar grace and sentiment, while each separate quality becomes yet more perfect in the combination,—the pencil seems justly to have attained its unrivalled utmost.

With their respective founders, the schools of Rome and Florence may be said to have terminated; at least the mantle of their teacher rested with very unequal inspiration upon the disciples of both. The death of Raphael, in 1520, proved an irremediable loss to the arts, the extent of which never can indeed be known. His pure and natural style, had it been more firmly engrafted by longer life, would probably have delayed, perhaps prevented, the sudden extravagance and mannerism which overspread the united schools of Tuscany and Rome, at the head of which Michael Angelo survived upwards of forty years.

Among the various pursuits of taste, painting alone exhibits this singular fortune, that the noblest and most intellectual of its principles, as also those which speak most directly to sense, and are merely alluring, were invented at the same time, but in different places, and separately practised. It is worthy of remark, also, that in each respect the first inventors remained the most accomplished professors of their own discoveries. While in Rome and Florence, design and expression were receiving their perfection, forming the almost exclusive subjects of study, in Venice, the seductions of coloring, in Lombardy, the illusions of light and shadow, were adding unknown pomp and magic to the art.

The school of Venice, though one of the earliest in Europe to cherish reviving arts, has added little of intellectual or noble to their progressive culture. Here they have never flourished in the genial soil of popular institutions. A haughty and jealous, yet luxurious and unpatriotic aristocracy, converted the arts into instruments of private gratification—instead of turning them to national ornament. Hence sculpture has been little cultivated, architecture more, though in peculiar style, and painting most of all. But while the sacredness of religion, or the manliness of history, has occupied the Italian pencil generally, of the older masters especially, Venice has sent forth her lordly senators, splendid banquets, and naked beauties. From the twelfth century, we have already seen, a movement might be discerned in the arts of Venice. Her school of painting begins to attract notice under Antonello da Messina, who introduced oil colors. The Bellinis carried out his improvements; and as pupils of the youngest, we discover Giorgione and Titian, who, with Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, Sebastian del Piombo, Schiavone, and Bassano, were the chief masters of this school.

But of Venetian painting the great ornament is Titian, whose name is synonymous with the characteristic of the native school—fine coloring. From this, however, we are not to suppose, as is too frequently done, that he was wanting in the higher principles of his profession. The alleged imperfection of his design will not often be detected, and only in momentary action of the parts; for in the more common modifications of form, it is faultless, and of inanimate nature the drawing and painting of his landscapes is unrivalled. In expression he is the most historical of all painters, his portraits being second only to those of Raphael. In careful imitation of natural effect, he is equal to the most pains-taking of the Dutch school; yet, with such grandeur and breadth in the masses, that, as has been justly remarked, the most imperfect sketch in which the original disposition in this respect is preserved, will present a character of high art. The chief defect of Titian was in composition and poetical fancy; he penetrated the very secrets of nature in all her varied effects and minutest shades of tone and hue—but he neither made selections of her forms, nor possessed the power of correcting her defects, by an ideal standard. In this mastery of coloring, three principles may be remarked; first, the interposing medium between the eye and the object is supposed to be a mellow golden light; secondly, the most glowing and gorgeous lights are produced, not so much by rich local tints as by the general conduct of the whole piece, in which the gradations of tone are almost evanescent, yet in their strongest hues powerfully contrasted. Hence the final splendor is effected rather by painting in under-tones, than by lavishing on particular spots the whole riches of the palette. The shadows and under-tones, also, are enlivened by a thousand local hues and flickering lights, and his masses by innumerable varieties and play of parts; yet all softened, and blended, and combined by an undefinable harmony. Hence, nothing more easy than apparently to copy Titian—nothing more difficult than really to imitate his faithfulness and splendor. The third principle refers to his practice; the colors are laid on pure, without mixing, in tints by reiterated application, and apparently with the point of the pencil.

Titian died in 1576, at the venerable age of 96 or 99, having survived the glory of the Venetian school, the last disciple of decided eminence being Tintoretto, called the lightning of the pencil, from his miraculous despatch. The Bassans are powerful colorists, and wonderfully true to nature. Paul Veronese wantons in all the luxuriance of fresh and magnificent coloring, but is correct neither in taste nor drawing. Giorgione, of all the early Venetian masters, gave greatest promise of uniting purity with splendor, but died in 1511, at the age of 33;—thus leaving Titian, to whom he had in some measure been instructer, to reap an undivided harvest of fame.

In the annals of genius, no name bears more strongly on the popular sense attached to the term of a heaven-born inspiration, superior to circumstances and independent of tuition, than that of Antonio Leti—better known as Corregio. This artist, who was born about 1494, and died at the age of 40, is the model rather than the founder of the Lombard school. From the bosom of poverty, without master, without patron, without even the commonest appliances of his art, he bursts at once upon the view in all the blaze of original talent—unpraised, unknown—in an age of knowledge, to sink unmarked like the meteor of the desert, leaving but the memorials of his graceful pencil—in his own phrase, 'anch' io son pittore'—to cry aloud that he also was a painter,—that such a man, contemporary with Raphael and Michael Angelo, and their nearest compeer, should have lived in ignorance of them, of Rome, of the antique, of all but nature—to die at last unrewarded in Parma—is utterly inexplicable. The principal works of this master are the two noble cupolas of the cathedral churches of Parma, painted in fresco—one subject the Assumption of the Virgin, the other the Ascension of the Saviour. Of his easel paintings, the most precious, representing a Holy Family, and called the 'Night,' is in the Dresden gallery. The beauties of Corregio are grace and exquisite management of light and color, united with inexpressible harmony,—'thus was completed the round of art.' 'Everything I see,' says Annibale Caracci, on beholding fifty years afterwards these works of Corregio,'astonishes me, particularly the coloring and beauty of the children, who live, breathe, and smile, with so much sweetness and vivacity, that we are constrained to sympathize in their enjoyment.' The clearness and relief, the sweetness and freedom of pencil, in the works before us, have indeed never been exceeded, but correctness is not one of their elements. Neither the most beautiful forms, nor the most pleasing groupings, are preferred to the most ungraceful upon any principle of abstract elegance, but the whole composed and selected in obedience to the distribution of light and the gradation of tone. In expression, the same system is pursued; for here Corregio has endeavored habitually to impress the soft hues and undulating lines which rapture and joy leave on the countenance. Beyond these, of ideal, he appears to have had no conception. Every form wears the stamp of living nature, and his coloring is the very reflection of natural bloom. He wanted force, which, with the defect of elevation, renders the whole effect, though delightfully soft and graceful, sometimes effeminate and monotonous. Yet Raphael alone united a greater variety of different excellences.