Books may be written, and works of art executed, at a very small expence of ideas. A painter may mechanically paint a Madonna, and please; and a professor, in the same manner, may write Metaphysics to the admiration of a thousand students. But would you know whether an artist deserves his name, let him invent, let him do the same thing repeatedly: for as one feature, may modify a mien, so, by changing the attitude of one limb, the artist may give a new hint towards a characteristic distinction of two figures, in other respects exactly the same, and prove himself a man. Plato, in Raphael’s Athenian school, but slightly moves his finger: yet he means enough, and infinitely more than all Zucchari’s meteors. For as it requires more ability to say much in a few words, than to do the contrary; and as good sense delights rather in things than shews, it follows, that one single figure may be the theatre of all an artist’s skill: though, by all that is stale and trivial! the bulk of painters would think it as tyrannical to be sometimes confined to two or three figures, in great only, as the ephemeral writers of this age would grin at the proposal of beginning the world with their own private stock, all public hobby-horses laid aside: for fine cloaths make the beau. ’Tis hence that most young artists,
Enfranchis’d from their tutor’s care,
choose rather to make their entrance with some perplexed composition, than with one figure strongly fancied and masterly executed. But let him, who, content to please the few, wants not to earn either bread or applause from a gaping mob, let him remember that the management of a “little” more or less really distinguishes artist from artist; that the truly sensible produces a multiplicity, as well as quickness and delicacy of feelings, whilst the dashing quack tickles only feeble senses and callous organs; that he may consequently be great in single figures, in, the smallest compositions, and new and various in repeating things the most trite. Here I speak out of the mouth of the ancients: this, their works teach: and both our writers and painters would come nearer them, did not the one busy themselves with their words only, the other with their proportions.
In the face of Apollo pride exerts itself chiefly in the chin and nether lip; anger in the nostrils; and contempt in the opening mouth; the graces inhabit the rest of his divine, head, and unruffled beauty, like the sun, streams athwart the passions. In Laocoon you see bodily pains, and indignation at undeserved sufferings, twist the nose, and paternal sympathy dim the eye-balls. Strokes like these are, as in Homer, a whole idea in one word; he only finds them who is able to understand them. Take it for certain, that the ancients aimed at expressing much in little,
Their ore was rich, and seven times purg’d of lead:
whereas most moderns, like tradesmen in distress, hang out all their wares at once. Homer, by raising all the gods from their seats, on Apollo’s appearing amongst them[325], gives a sublimer idea than all the learning of Callimachus could furnish. If ever a prejudice may be of use, ’tis here; hope largely from the ancient works in approaching them, nor fear disappointments; but examine, peruse, with cool sedateness and silenced passions, lest your disturbed brain find Xenophon flat and Niobe insipid.
To original ideas, we oppose copied, not imitated ones. Copying we call the slavish crawling of the hand and eyes, after a certain model: whereas reasonable imitation just takes the hint, in order to work by itself. Domenichino, the painter of Tenderness, imitated the heads of the pretended Alexander at Florence, and of the Niobe at Rome[326]; but altered them like a master. On gems and coins you may find many a figure of Poussin’s: his Salomon is the Macedonian Jupiter: but whatever his imitation produced, differs from the first idea, as the blossoms of a transplanted tree differ from those that sprung in its native soil.
Another method of copying is, to compile a Madonna from Maratta; a S. Joseph from Barocci; other figures from other masters, and lump them together in order to make a whole. Many such altar-pieces you may find, even at Rome; and such a painter was the late celebrated Masucci of that city.——Copying I call, moreover, the following a certain form, without the least consciousness of one’s being a blockhead. Such was he who, by the command of a certain Prince, painted the nuptials of Psyche, or, if you will, the Queen of Sheba:—’twas a pity there was no other Psyche to be found, but that dangerous one of Raphael. Most of the late great statues of the saints, in St. Peter’s at Rome, are of the same stuff—the block at 500 Roman crowns from the quarry.