156. You observe also that in all the three examples the fawn has light on its ears, and face, as well as its breast. In the earliest Greek drawings of animals, bars of white are used as one means of detaching the figures from the ground; ordinarily on the under side of them, marking the lighter colour of the hair in wild animals. But the placing of this bar of white, or the direction of the face in deities of light, (the faces and flesh of women being always represented as white,) may become expressive of the direction of the light, when that direction is important. Thus we are enabled at once to read the intention of this Greek symbol of the course of a day (in the centre-piece of S. 208, which gives you the types of Hermes). At the top you have an archaic representation of Hermes stealing Io from Argus. Argus is here the Night; his grotesque features monstrous; his hair overshadowing his shoulders; Hermes on tip-toe, stealing upon him and taking the cord which is fastened to the horn of Io out of his hand without his feeling it. Then, underneath, you have the course of an entire day. Apollo first, on the left, dark, entering his chariot, the sun not yet risen. In front of him Artemis, as the moon, ascending before him, playing on her lyre, and looking back to the sun. In the centre, behind the horses, Hermes, as the cumulus cloud at mid-day, wearing his petasus heightened to a cone, and holding a flower in his right hand; indicating the nourishment of the flowers by the rain from the heat cloud. Finally, on the right, Latona, going down as the evening, lighted from the right by the sun, now sunk; and with her feet reverted, signifying the reluctance of the departing day.
Finally, underneath, you have Hermes of the Phidian period, as the floating cumulus cloud, almost shapeless (as you see him at this distance); with the tortoise-shell lyre in his hand, barred with black, and a fleece of white cloud, not level but oblique, under his feet. (Compare the "διὰ τῶν κοίλων--πλάγιαι," and the relations of the "αἰγίδος ἡνίοχος Ἀθάνα," with the clouds as the moon's messengers, in Aristophanes; and note of Hermes generally, that you never find him flying as a Victory flies, but always, if moving fast at all, clambering along, as it were, as a cloud gathers and heaps itself: the Gorgons stretch and stride in their flight, half kneeling, for the same reason, running or gliding shapelessly along in this stealthy way.)
157. And now take this last illustration, of a very different kind. Here is an effect of morning light by Turner (S. 301), on the rocks of Otley-hill, near Leeds, drawn long ago, when Apollo, and Artemis, and Athena, still sometimes were seen, and felt, even near Leeds. The original drawing is one of the great Farnley series, and entirely beautiful. I have shown, in the last volume of "Modern Painters," how well Turner knew the meaning of Greek legends:—he was not thinking of them, however, when he made this design; but, unintentionally, has given us the very effect of morning light we want: the glittering of the sunshine on dewy grass, half dark; and the narrow gleam of it on the sides and head of the stag and hind.
158. These few instances will be enough to show you how we may read in the early art of the Greeks their strong impressions of the power of light. You will find the subject entered into at somewhat greater length in my "Queen of the Air;" and if you will look at the beginning of the 7th book of Plato's "Polity," and read carefully the passages in the context respecting the sun and intellectual sight, you will see how intimately this physical love of light was connected with their philosophy, in its search, as blind and captive, for better knowledge. I shall not attempt to define for you to-day the more complex but much shallower forms which this love of light, and the philosophy that accompanies it, take in the mediæval mind; only remember that in future, when I briefly speak of the Greek school of art with reference to questions of delineation, I mean the entire range of the schools, from Homer's days to our own, which concern themselves with the representation of light, and the effects it produces on material form—beginning practically for us with these Greek vase paintings, and closing practically for us with Turner's sunset on the Temeraire; being throughout a school of captivity and sadness, but of intense power; and which in its technical method of shadow on material form, as well as in its essential temper, is centrally represented to you by Dürer's two great engravings of the "Melencolia" and the "Knight and Death." On the other hand, when I briefly speak to you of the Gothic school, with reference to delineation, I mean the entire and much more extensive range of schools extending from the earliest art in Central Asia and Egypt down to our own day in India and China:—schools which have been content to obtain beautiful harmonies of colour without any representation of light; and which have, many of them, rested in such imperfect expressions of form as could be so obtained; schools usually in some measure childish, or restricted in intellect, and similarly childish or restricted in their philosophies or faiths: but contented in the restriction; and in the more powerful races, capable of advance to nobler development than the Greek schools, though the consummate art of Europe has only been accomplished by the union of both. How that union was effected, I will endeavour to show you in my next lecture; to-day I shall take note only of the points bearing on our immediate practice.
159. A certain number of you, by faculty and natural disposition,—and all, so far as you are interested in modern art,—will necessarily have to put yourselves under the discipline of the Greek or chiaroscuro school, which is directed primarily to the attainment of the power of representing form by pure contrast of light and shade. I say, the "discipline" of the Greek school, both because, followed faithfully, it is indeed a severe one, and because to follow it at all is, for persons fond of colour, often a course of painful self-denial, from which young students are eager to escape. And yet, when the laws of both schools are rightly obeyed, the most perfect discipline is that of the colourists; for they see and draw everything, while the chiaroscurists must leave much indeterminate in mystery, or invisible in gloom: and there are therefore many licentious and vulgar forms of art connected with the chiaroscuro school, both in painting and etching, which have no parallel among the colourists. But both schools, rightly followed, require first of all absolute accuracy of delineation. This you need not hope to escape. Whether you fill your spaces with colours, or with shadows, they must equally be of the true outline and in true gradations. I have been thirty years telling modern students of art this in vain. I mean to say it to you only once, for the statement is too important to be weakened by repetition.
Without perfect delineation of form and perfect gradation of space, neither noble colour is possible, nor noble light.
160. It may make this more believable to you if I put beside each other a piece of detail from each school. I gave you the St. John of Cima da Conegliano for a type of the colour school. Here is my own study of the sprays of oak which rise against the sky of it in the distance, enlarged to about its real size (Edu. 12). I hope to draw it better for you at Venice; but this will show you with what perfect care the colourist has followed the outline of every leaf in the sky. Beside, I put a chiaroscurist drawing (at least, a photograph of one), Dürer's from nature, of the common wild wall-cabbage (Edu. 32). It is the most perfect piece of delineation by flat tint I have ever seen, in its mastery of the perspective of every leaf, and its attainment almost of the bloom of texture, merely by its exquisitely tender and decisive laying of the colour. These two examples ought, I think, to satisfy you as to the precision of outline of both schools, and the power of expression which may be obtained by flat tints laid within such outline.
161. Next, here are two examples of the gradated shading expressive of the forms within the outline, by two masters of the chiaroscuro school. The first (S. 12) shows you Lionardo's method of work, both with chalk and the silver point. The second (S. 302), Turner's work in mezzotint; both masters doing their best. Observe that this plate of Turner's, which he worked on so long that it was never published, is of a subject peculiarly depending on effects of mystery and concealment, the fall of the Reuss under the Devil's Bridge on the St. Gothard; (the old bridge; you may still see it under the existing one, which was built since Turner's drawing was made). If ever outline could be dispensed with, you would think it might be so in this confusion of cloud, foam, and darkness. But here is Turner's own etching on the plate (Edu. 35 F), made under the mezzotint; and of all the studies of rock outline made by his hand, it is the most decisive and quietly complete.
162. Again; in the Lionardo sketches, many parts are lost in obscurity, or are left intentionally uncertain and mysterious, even in the light, and you might at first imagine some permission of escape had been here given you from the terrible law of delineation. But the slightest attempts to copy them will show you that the terminal lines are inimitably subtle, unaccusably true, and filled by gradations of shade so determined and measured that the addition of a grain of the lead or chalk as large as the filament of a moth's wing, would make an appreciable difference in them.
This is grievous, you think, and hopeless? No, it is delightful and full of hope: delightful, to see what marvellous things can be done by men; and full of hope, if your hope is the right one, of being one day able to rejoice more in what others have done, than in what you can yourself do, and more in the strength that is for ever above you, than in that you can never attain.