XII.—ANTONELLO DA MESSINA, Portrait of a Man. Louvre, Paris.
In the first exercise of the imagination (that is, by division) we shall find that the mind conceives a part of an object, for instance, as of sufficient value to stand by itself. This is separated from the whole, magnified by emphasis, and finally handed forth as an entity—a new creation, if you please. We can see this well exemplified in poetry, where Keats, for instance, not wishing to describe the entire winter landscape on the Eve of St. Agnes, isolates a few features of the scene and makes them do service for all.
“Ah, bitter chill it was—
The owl for all his feathers was a-cold,
The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold.”
Here we have an owl, a hare, and a flock of sheep magnified out of all proportion as regards their importance in the landscape, and standing by themselves as symbols of a cold winter night. But the suggestiveness of these features is very effective, very complete—much more so than if an elaborate description had been given of snow and icicle, moonlight and sleigh-bells. Claude Monet, when he wishes to show a winter morning on the Seine, does it with very few objects. There are silent ranks of trees, a foggy air congealed to hoar-frost, the swollen river with floating ice crunching and jostling its way; and that is all. But again what an effective winter morning! The heat of summer he describes just as summarily by cutting off a square of vivid sunshine falling on a wheatstack, exaggerating it in brilliancy of color and light, and allowing it to stand in lieu of a whole landscape. Corot is not different in thought and method. He throws all his strength upon light along the hills of morning or evening, and every detail of grass and tree and human being is sacrificed to it (Plate [9]).
There are many ways in which the dividing imagination deals with the figure in painting. The model may be treated as part of a group, as an object in landscape, as a whole-length portrait in a room, as a knee-piece, as a half-length, as a bust, or as a head alone. Nothing could be further removed from the actual than a man’s head shown in profile on a coin, but what imaginative art the Greeks made of their coinage! And what superb heads—superb in their character—the Pisani put upon their medals! How well each head suggested the whole man! And was there ever a more virile, living personality, ever a man with a more lion-hearted look, than Antonello da Messina pictured in the head and shoulders of that unknown Italian in the Louvre (Plate [12])? Byron’s ghost portrait of Nimroud as he appears to Sardanapalus in a dream is more colossal, but it is not more intense or forceful than Antonello’s, save as language is always more definite than pigment. Here it is:
“The features were a giant’s and the eye