The Life, Studies, and Works of Benjamin West, Esq. / Composed from Materials Furnished by Himself

by John Galt

"From the sepulchre, and the Apostles in the centre, to the fore-ground, the third group of figures partly lies in shade, occasioned by the over-shadowing of the Virgin's deep-toned mantle extended by angels. On the other part of the group, on the side where the light enters, the figures are seen in the broad blaze of day; and amongst them is the portrait of the artist.

"When I first saw this picture, my sensations were in unison with its awful character; and I confess that I was touched with the same kind of sensibility as when I heard the inexpressibly harmonious blendings of vocal sounds in the solemn notes of Non nobis Domine. I never felt more forcibly the dignity of music and the dignity of painting, than from these two compositions of art.

"When we consider the combination of excellence requisite to produce the sublime in painting; the union of propriety with dignity of character; the graceful grouping; the noble folding of drapery, and the deep sombrous tones of the clair-obscure, with appropriate colours harmoniously blending into one whole;--if there is a picture entitled to the appellation of sublime, from the union of all these excellences, It is that which I have described: considered in all its parts, it is, perhaps, superior to any work in painting, which has fallen under my observation.

"When these powerful essays in art by Da Vinci, Bartolomeo di St. Marco, and Michael Angelo became celebrated, Raphael, having attained his adult age, made his appearance at Florence; where the influence of the works of those three great artists pervaded all the avenues to excellence in art.

"The gentle sensibility of Raphael's mind was like the softened wax which makes more visible and distinct the form of the engraving with which it is touched. Blest by Nature with this endowment, he became like the heir to the treasured wealth of many families. Enriched by the accumulated experience which was then in Florence, united to the early tuition of delineating from nature under Pietro Perugino, and the subsequent discoveries of the Grecian relics, Raphael's mind became stored with all that was excellent; and he possessed a practised hand, to make his conceptions visible on his tablets. Possessing these powers, he was invited to Rome, and began his picture of The Dispute on the Sacrament. This picture he finished, together with The School of Athens, before he had attained his twenty-eighth year. At Rome he found himself amidst the splendour of a refined court, and in the focus of human endowment. He became sensible of the rare advantages of his situation; he had industry and ardour to combine and to embrace them all; and the effect is visible in his works. The theological arrangement of the disputants on the Sacrament, and the scholastic controversies at Athens, convince us of this truth. In the upper part of the Dispute on the Sacrament, something may be observed of that taste of Bartolomeo in drapery, and of the dryness and hardness of his first master Pietro Perugino; but in the parts which make the aggregate of that work, he has blended the result of his own observations. In his School of Athens, this is still more strikingly the case; and in his Heliodorus we see additional dignity and an enlargement of style.

"At this period of his life, such was the desire of his society by the great, and such the ambition of standing forward amongst his patrons by all who were eminent for rank and taste, that he was seduced into courtly habits, and relaxed from that studious industry, with which he had formerly laboured; and there are evident marks in many of his works in the Vatican, of a decline of excellence, and that he was suffering pleasure and indolence to rob him of his fame. Sensible of this decline in his compositions, the powers of his mind re-assumed their energies; and that re-animation stands marked in his unrivalled compositions of the Cartoons which are in this country, and in the picture of the Transfiguration.

"The transcendant excellence in composition, and in appropriate character to subject, in the cartoon of Paul preaching at Athens, has left us to desire or expect nothing farther to be done in telling this incident of history.

"In the composition of the death of Ananias, and in the single figure of Elymas the sorcerer struck blind, we have the same example of excellence. We have indeed in many of the characters and groups in the cartoons, the various modes of reasoning, speaking, and feeling; but so blended with nature and truth, and so precise and determined in character, that criticism has nothing wherewith in that respect to ask for amendment.

"Had the life of this illustrious painter, which closed on his birth-day in his thirty-seventh year, been prolonged to the period of that of Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, or Titian, when in the space of seventeen years at Rome he has given the world more unrivalled works of art, than has fallen to the lot of any other painter, what an additional excellence might we not have expected in his works for subsequent generations to admire.

"The next distinguished artist who comes under our consideration is Titian. The grandeur which Michael Angelo gave to the human figure, Titian has rivalled in colour, and both were dignified during their lives with the appellation of The Divine.