Had he? Had he indeed? His own story would be different, I fancy. Dannecker, like every patronized artist I ever met with, would execrate patronage if he dared. Good old man! The thought of what he might have done, and could have done, breaks out sometimes in the midst of all his self-complacent naïve exultation over what he has done. I will endeavour to give you a correct idea of the Ariadne, and then I will tell you something of Dannecker himself. His history is a good commentary upon royal patronage.
I had heard so much of this statue, that my curiosity was strongly excited. A part of its fame may be owing to its situation, and the number of travellers who go to visit Bethmann's Museum, as a matter of course. I used to observe that all travellers, who were on the road to Italy, praised it, and all who were on their way home criticised it. As I ascended the steps of the pavilion in which it is placed, the enthusiasm of expectation faded away from my mind: I said to myself, "I shall be disappointed!"—Yet I was not disappointed.
The Ariadne occupied the centre of a cabinet, hung with a dark grey colour, and illuminated by a high lateral window, so that the light and shade, and the relief of the figure, were perfectly well managed and effective. Dannecker has not represented Ariadne in her more poetical and picturesque character, as, when betrayed and forsaken by Theseus, she stood alone on the wild shore of Naxos, "her hair blown by the winds, and all about her expressing desolation." It is Ariadne, immortal and triumphant, as the bride of Bacchus. The figure is larger than life. She is seated, or rather reclined, on the back of a panther. The right arm is carelessly extended: the left arm rests on the head of the animal, and the hand supports the drapery, which appears to have just dropped from her limbs. The head is turned a little upwards, as if she already anticipated her starry home; and her tresses are braided with the vine leaves. The grace and ease of the attitude, so firm, and yet so light; the flowing beauty of the form, and the position of the head, enchanted me. Perhaps the features are not sufficiently Greek: for, though I am not one of those who think all beauty comprised in the antique models, and that nothing can be orthodox but the straight nose and short upper lip, still to Ariadne the pure classical ideal of beauty, both in form and face, are properly in character. A cast from that divine head, the Greek Ariadne, is placed in the same cabinet, and I confess to you, that the contrast being immediately brought before the eye, Dannecker's Ariadne seemed to want refinement, in comparison. It is true, that the moment chosen by the German sculptor required an expression altogether different. In the Greek bust, though already circled by the viny crown, and though all heaven seems to repose on the noble arch of that expanded brow, yet the head is declined, and a tender melancholy lingers round the all-perfect mouth, as if the remembrance of a mortal love—a mortal sorrow—yet shaded her celestial bridal hours, and made pale her immortality. But, Dannecker's Ariadne is the flushed queen of the Bacchante, and, in the clash of the cymbals and the mantling cup, she has already forgotten Theseus. There is a look of life, an individual truth in the beauty of the form, which distinguishes it from the long-limbed vapid pieces of elegance called nymphs and Venuses, which
"Stretch their white arms, and bend their marble necks,"
in the galleries of our modern sculptors. One objection struck me, but not till after a second or third view of the statue. The panther seemed to me rather too bulky and ferocious. It is true, it is not a natural, but a mythological panther, such as we see in the antique basso-relievos, and the arabesques of Herculaneum: yet, methinks if he appeared a little more conscious of his lovely burthen, more tamed by the influence of beauty, it would have been better. However, the sculptor may have had a design, a feeling, in this very point, which has escaped me: I regret now that I did not ask him. One thing is certain, that the extreme massiveness of the panther's limbs serves to give a firmness to the support of the figure, and sets off to advantage its lightness and delicacy. It is equally certain that if the head of the animal had been ever so slightly turned, the pose of the right arm, and with it the whole attitude, must have been altered.
The window of the cabinet is so contrived, that by drawing up a blind of stained glass, a soft crimson tint is shed over the figure, as if the marble blushed. This did not please me: partly from a dislike to all trickery in art; partly because, to my taste, the pale colourless purity of the marble is one of the beauties of a fine statue.
It is true that Dannecker has been unfortunate in his material. The block from which he cut his figure is imperfect and streaky; but how it could possibly have suggested the idea of Stilton cheese I am at a loss to conceive. It is not worse than Canova's Venus, in the Pitti palace, who has a terrible black streak across her bosom. M. Passavant,[ 14] who was standing by when I paid my last visit to the Ariadne, assured me, that when the statue was placed on its pedestal, about sixteen years ago, these black specks were scarcely visible, and that they seemed to multiply and grow darker with time. This is a lamentable, and, to me, an unaccountable fact.
MEDON.
And, I am afraid, past cure: but now tell me something of the sculptor himself. After looking on a grand work of art, we naturally turn to look into the mind which conceived and created it.