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

by John Galt

"I will pass over the many appropriate portraits which he painted of men, and the portraits of women, though not the most distinguished for beauty, in the character of Venus, to meet the fashion of the age in which he lived; and notice only those works of mental power, which have raised him to eminence in the class of refined artists. On this point, you will find that his picture of St. Peter Martyr will justify the claim he has to that rank.

"St. Peter the Martyr was the head of a religious sect: when on his way from the confines of Germany to Milan with a companion, he was attacked by one in opposition to his religious principles while passing through a wood, and murdered. This is the subject of the picture. The prostrate figure of the Saint, just fallen by a blow from the assassin, raises one of his hands towards heaven, with a countenance of confidence in eternal reward for the firmness of his faith; while the assassin grasps with his left hand the mantle of his victim, the better to enable him, by his uplifted sword in the other hand, to give the fatal blow to the fallen saint. The companion is flying off in frantic dismay, and has received a wound in the head from the assassin.

"The ferocious and determined action of the murderer bestriding the body of the fallen saint, completes a group of figures which have not a rival in art. The majestic trees, as well as the sable and rugged furze, form an awful back-ground to this tragical scene, every way appropriate to the subject. The heavenly messengers seen in the glory above, bearing the palm branches as the emblem of reward for martyrdom, form the second light; the first being the sky and cloud, which gives relief to the black drapery of the wounded companion; while the rays of light from the emanation above, sparkling on the dark branches of the trees as so many diamonds, tie together by their light all the others from the top to the bottom of the picture. The terror which the act of the murderer has spread, is denoted by the speed of the horseman passing into the gloomy recesses of a distant part of the forest.

"This picture, taken in the aggregate, is the first work in art in which the human figure and landscape are combined as an historical landscape, and where all the objects are the full size of nature.

"When I saw this picture at Venice in 1761, it was then in the same state of purity as when the Bologna artists saw and studied it; and it is recorded that Caracci declared this picture to be without fault. But we have to lament the fatal effects which the goddess Bellona has ever occasioned to the fine arts when she mounts her iron chariot of destruction. When this picture fell under her rapacious power, on board a French vessel passing down the Adriatic sea from Venice, one of our cruisers chased the vessel into the port of Ancona, and a cannon-shot pierced the pannel on which the picture was painted, and shivered a portion of it into pieces.

"On its arrival at Paris, the committee of the fine arts found it necessary to remove the painting from the pannel, and place it on canvass; but the picture has lost the principal light.

"But to sum up Titian's powers of conception, no one has equalled him in the propriety and fitness of colour. His pictures of St. Peter Martyr; the David and Goliah; and the Last Supper, which is in the Escurial, stand in the very highest rank in art. On the latter of these pictures being finished, Titian in his letter to the King, announcing the circumstance, says that it had been the labour of seven years. But by his original sketch in oil colours, which I have the good fortune to possess, and by which we may form an estimate, although the general effect and composition are unrivalled, the characters of the heads of the apostles are not equal to those of Leonardo da Vinci on the same subject.

"Antonio Allegri da Correggio is the sixth source, whose emanating powers have illuminated the fine arts in the modern world. A superstitious mind, on seeing his works, would suppose that he had received his tuition in painting from the angels; as his figures seem to belong to another race of being than man, and to have something too celestial for the forms of earth to have presented to his view. Such have been the sayings of many on seeing his works at Parma, but, to my conception, he painted from the nature with which he was surrounded. His pictures of the Note, St. Gierolimo, and the St. George, are evident proofs of the observation. In the first of these pictures his mental conception shines supreme. It is the idea of illuminating the child in the subject of our Saviour's nativity. This splendid thought of giving light to the infant Christ, whose divine mission was to illuminate the human mind from Pagan darkness, no painter has since been so bold as to omit in any composition on the same subject. The two latter pictures have all the beauties seen in the paintings of this master, but they are deficient in appropriate character.

"The inspiring power of Correggio's works illuminated the genius of Parmegiano, the energetic movements of whose graceful figures have never been equalled, nor are they deficient in the moral influence of the art. His Moses breaking the tables in a church at Parma, and his picture of the vision of St. Gierolimo, now in England, are filled with the impress of his intellectual powers, and stand pre-eminent over all his works.

"I have thus taken a survey of the works of art, which stand supreme among the productions of Grecian and Italian genius, and which are the sources from which the subsequent schools have derived most of the principles of their celebrity.