“Dort, sich, am Horizont lüpft sich der Vorhang schon!
Es träumt der Tag, nun sei die Nacht entfloh’n;
Die Purperlippe, die geschlossen lag,
Haucht, halbgeöffnet, süsse Athemzüge;
Auf einmal blitzt das Aug’ und wie ein Gott, der Tag
Beginnt im Sprung die königlichen Flüge!”[111]
The human longing for light is so strong that it becomes for him the natural symbol for divinity, a fact on which we have not time to dwell, except to note the significance of the heavenly bodies and of fire in religion. The self-devised Nature worship of young Goethe, who greeted the rising sun with an offering, is interesting, and still more so is the statement of the deaf-mute Ballard that, as a boy of eight years, he arrived by his own unaided efforts at some sort of metaphysical and religious thought, and felt a kind of reverence for the sun and moon.[112] This is the effect of light which has so great a part in the mythology of all peoples. Even in the Old Testament account of the creation light is the first thing which God called out of chaos. “And God saw that the light was good.”
We find brightness of aspect especially affected in the industrial arts and in painting, and the employment of shining and glowing substances in decoration is too familiar to need comment. They are found in the ornaments of the Stone period, such as necklaces of animals’ teeth, bits of ivory and shells, as well as among savage tribes of the present day. Grosse says: “The ornaments of these people may be called brilliant not in a figurative, but in a literal sense, and there is hardly any quality which contributes so much to the decorative effect of an object in savage estimation as brightness. The natives of Fire Island frequently hang fragments of a glass bottle on their neck band, considering them very superior adornments, and Bushmen are happy when they are made the proud possessors of iron or brass rings. However, they are by no means dependent on such windfalls from a higher race, and when the ornaments of civilized man and barbarian are both wanting and precious stones are not available they betake themselves to Nature, who can well supply their needs. The sea tosses up polished shells upon the beach, vegetation furnishes bright seeds and shining stalks, and animals give their shining teeth, as well as fur and feathers.”[113]
In painting, light effects in connection with colour are of the greatest importance, and are skilfully managed by many masters of the art. Rembrandt may be said to possess the highest genius for their treatment. Without going into particulars of technique, I may note that the pleasure which we derive from light effects in painting may be referred to two opposite extremes. We know that it is out of the question for the painter to transfer to his canvas Nature’s extremes of light and shade, only about half of the eight hundred ascertained degrees of brilliancy being available to him.[114] Helmholtz has shown in an interesting manner how the artist may triumph over this difficulty. It proves to be a special case for the application of Weber’s law; the adjustment of intensities is not in proportion to the actual force of the stimuli, but to their relative force. Thus, when the painter tempers the brilliance of Nature he actually gives a more faithful representation, because the toned-down light against the deepened shadows of a picture produces the same effect on the senses as the clear beams of sunlight in contrast with its luminous shadows.[115] This so-called normal technique is objected to on diametrically opposite grounds. Some painters, refusing to darken and falsify Nature, seek to make their shadows as bright as are those in the diffused light of day. As it is impossible, however, to represent the actual intensity of the light, their attempt to reproduce the actual is only half realized. The true contrast between light and dark fails, and the result is the faded, obscure, hazy appearance which characterizes the work of extremists of this school. In the other direction the attempt is sometimes made to darken the shadows so excessively as actually to make the difference between light and shade greater than it is in Nature. Caravaggio and Ribera, Lenbach and Samberger, furnish examples of this kind of painting. Their work is done on the principle of darkening the shade, in order to bring out the light more sharply; eyes, brow, and hands in their pictures seem to surpass the clearness of Nature because of this difference, which is greater than that of reality. These artists are true lovers of light.