Rome, November 7, 1786.
The more I become acquainted with Tischbein's talents, as well as his principles and views of art, the higher I appreciate and value them. He has laid before me his drawings and sketches; they have great merit, and are full of high promise. His visit to Bodmer led him to fix his thoughts on the infancy of the human race, when man found himself standing on the earth, and had to solve the problem, how he must best fulfil his destiny as the Lord of Creation.
As a suggestive introduction to a series of illustrations of this subject, he has attempted symbolically to vindicate the high antiquity of the world. Mountains overgrown with noble forests,—ravines worn out by watercourses,—burnt out volcanoes still faintly smoking. In the foreground the mighty stock of a patriarchal oak still remains in the ground, on whose half-bared roots a deer is trying the strength of his horns,—a conception as fine as it is beautifully executed.
In another most remarkable piece he has painted man yoking the horse, and by his superior skill, if not strength, bringing all the other creatures of the earth, the air, and the water under his dominion. The composition is of an extraordinary beauty; when finished in oils it cannot fail of producing a great effect. A drawing of it must, at any cost, be secured for Weimar. When this is finished, he purposes to paint an assembly of old men, aged and experienced in council,—in which he intends to introduce the portraits of living personages. At present, however, he is sketching away with the greatest enthusiasm on a battle-piece. Two bodies of cavalry are fighting with equal courage and resolution; between them yawns an awful chasm, which but few horses would attempt to clear. The arts of defensive warfare are useless here. A wild resolve, a bold attack, a successful leap, or else to be hurled in the abyss below! This picture will afford him an opportunity to display, in a very striking manner, the knowledge winch he possesses of horses, and of their make and movements.
Now it is Tischbein's wish to have these sketches, and a series of others to follow, or to be intercalated between them, connected together by a poem, which may serve to explain the drawings, and, by giving them a definite context, may lend to them both a body and a charm.
The idea is beautiful, only the artist and the poet must be many years together, in order to carry out and to execute such a work.
Rome, November 7, 1786.
Rome—Raffaele.