Infelix operis summâ, quia ponere totum nescit.
Hor.
Design is as certainly the painter’s first, second, and third requisite, as action is that of the orator.
I readily allow the solidity of your remarks, concerning the “reliefs” of the ancients. In my treatise I myself charged them with a want of sufficient skill in perspective; and hence the faults in their reliefs.
The fourth point chiefly concerns Allegory.
In painting we commonly call fiction allegory: for, though imitation arises from the very principles of painting as well as of poetry, it constitutes, by itself, neither of them[192]. A picture, without allegory, is but a vulgar image, and resembles Davenant’s Gondibert, an epopée without fiction.
Colouring and design are to painting what metre and truth, or the fable, are to poetry; a body without soul. Poetry, says Aristotle, was first inspired with its soul, with fiction, by Homer; and with that the painter must animate his work. Design and colouring are the fruits of attention and practice: perspective and composition, in the strictest sense, are established on fixed rules; they are of course but mechanical; and, if I may be allowed the expression, only mechanical souls are wanting to understand and to admire them.
Pleasures in general, save only those which rob the bulk of mankind of their invaluable treasure, time, become durable, and are free from tediousness and disgust, in proportion as they engage our intellectual faculties. Mere sensual sentiments soon languish; they do not influence our reason: such is the delight we take in the common landscape, flower, and fruit paintings: the artist, in performing them, thinks but very little; and the connoisseur, in considering them, thinks no more.
A mere history-piece differs from a landscape only in the object: in the former you draw facts and persons, in the latter, sky, land, seas, &c. both, of course, being founded on the same principle, imitation, are essentially but of one kind.
If it be not a contradiction to stretch the limits of painting, as far as those of poetry, and consequently, to allow the painter the same ability of elevating himself to the pitch of the poet as the musician enjoys; it is clear that history, though the sublimest branch of painting, cannot raise itself to the heighths of tragick or epick poetry, by imitation alone.