The second characteristic of works of art is Beauty. The highest object of meditation for man is man, and for the artist there is none above his own frame. ’Tis by moving your senses that he reaches your soul: and hence the analysis of the bodily system has no less difficulties for him, than that of the human mind for the philosopher. I do not mean the anatomy of the muscles, vessels, bones, and their different forms and situations; nor the relative measure of the whole to its parts, and vice versa: for the knife, exercise, and patience, may teach you all these. I mean the analysis of an attribute, essential to man, but fluctuating with his frame, allowed by all, misconstrued by many, known by few:—the analysis of beauty, which no definition can explain, to him whom heaven hath denied a soul for it. Beauty consists in the harmony of the various parts of an individual. This is the philosopher’s stone, which all artists must search for, though a few only find it: ’tis nonsense to him, who could not have formed the idea out of himself. The line which beauty describes is elliptical, both uniform and various: ’tis not to be described by a circle, and from every point changes its direction. All this is easily said; but to apply it—there is the rub. ’Tis not in the power of Algebra to determine which line, more or less elliptic, forms the divers parts of the system into beauty—but the ancients knew it; I attest their works, from the gods down to their vases. The human form allows of no circle, nor has any antique vase its profile semicircular.
After this, should any one desire me to assist him more sensibly in his inquiries concerning beauty, by setting down some rules (a hard task), I would take them from the antique models, and in want of these, from the most beautiful people I could meet with at the place where I lived. But to instruct, I would do it in the negative way; of which I shall give some instances, confining myself however to the face.
The form of real beauty has no abrupt or broken parts. The ancients made this principle the basis of their youthful profile; which is neither linear nor whimsical, though seldom to be met with in nature: the growth, at least, of climates more indulgent than ours. It consists in the soft coalescence of the brow with the nose. This uniting line so indispensably accompanies beauty, that a person wanting it may appear handsome full-faced; but mean, nay even ugly, when taken in profile. Bernini, that destroyer of art, despised this line, when legislator of taste, as not finding it in common nature, his only model; and therein was followed by all his school. From this same principle it necessarily follows, that neither chin nor cheeks, deep-marked with dimples, can be consistent with true beauty. Hence the face of the Medicean Venus is to be degraded from the first rank. Her face, I dare say, was taken from some celebrated fair one, contemporary with the artist. Two other Venuses, in the garden behind the Farnese, are manifestly portraits.
The form of real beauty has neither the projected parts obtuse, nor the vaulted ones sharp. The eye-bone is magnificently raised, the chin thoroughly vaulted. Thus the best ancients drew: though, when taste declined amongst them, and the arts were trampled on in modern times, these parts changed too: then the eye-bone became roundish and obtusely dull, and the chin mincingly pretty. Hence we may safely affirm, that what they call Antinous, in the Belvedere, whose eye-bone is rather obtuse, cannot be a work of the highest antiquity, any more than the Venus.
As these remarks are general, they likewise concern the features of the face, the form only. There is another charm, that gives expression and life to forms, which we call Grace; and we shall give some loose reflexions on it separately, leaving it to others to give us systems.
The figure of a man is as susceptible of beauty as that of a youth: but as a various one, not the various alone, is the Gordian knot, it follows, that a youthful figure, drawn at large, and in the highest possible degree of beauty, is, of all problems that can be proposed to the designer, the most difficult. Every one may convince himself of this: take the most beautiful face in modern painting, and it will go hard, but you shall know a still more beautiful one in nature.——I speak thus, after having considered the treasures of Rome and Florence.
If ever an artist was endowed with beauty, and deep innate feelings for it; if ever one was versed in the taste and spirit of the ancients, ’twas certainly Raphael: yet are his beauties inferior to the most beautiful nature. I know persons more beautiful than his unequalled Madonna, in the Palazzo Petti at Florence, or the Alcibiades in his academy. The Madonna in the Christmas-night of Corregio, (a piece justly celebrated for its chiar’-oscuro) is no sublime idea; still less so is that of Maratta at Dresden: Titian’s celebrated Venus[327] in the Tribuna at Florence is common nature. The little heads of Albano have an air of beauty; but it is a different thing to express beauty in little, and in great. To have the theory of navigation, and to guide a ship through the ocean, are two things. Poussin, who had studied antiquity more than his predecessors, knew perfectly well what his shoulders could bear, and never ventured into the great.
The Greeks alone seem to have thrown forth beauty, as a potter makes his pot. The heads on all the coins of their Free-states have forms above nature, which they owe to the line that forms their profile. Would it not be easy to hit that line? Yet have all the numismatic compilers deviated from it. Might not Raphael, who complained of the scarcity of beauty, might not he have recurred to the coins of Syracuse, as the best statues, Laocoon alone excepted, were not yet discovered?
Farther than those coins no mortal idea can go. I wish my reader an opportunity of seeing the beautiful head of a genius in the Villa Borghese, and those images of unparalleled beauty, Niobe and her daughters. On the western side of the Alps he must be contented with gems and pastes. Two of the most beautiful youthful heads are a Minerva of Aspasius, now at Vienna, and a young Hercules in the Museum of the late Baron Stosch, at Florence.