STUDY OF BRAMBLE, 1856
Leighton House Collection[ToList]
Pebble IV.
Statues in Innsbruck.
I take on,
and lay on,
but bottle it up again.
"One of the sights in Innsbruck has left on me a deep and, I hope, a lasting impression: the bronze statues in the Franciscan church; they are the finest specimens of German mediæval sculpture that I ever saw, and grew on me as I gazed at them in a manner which I hardly ever felt before; their great merit consists in combining in the most astounding manner the most consummate knowledge of the art with all the simplicity of nature and the most striking individuality (that first of artistic qualities), and exhibiting at the same time the most elaborate finish in the details, with greatest possible breadth and grandeur of general masses; this quality is particularly conspicuous amongst the women, three, especially, standing side by side, show, by three perfect examples, the whole secret of ornamental economy; the one, whose dress is ornamented with all the richness of which a luxurious imagination and an unparalleled power of execution were capable, recovers its simplicity of outline and mass by having a tightly fitting body and sleeve and a skirt of moderate amplitude; the second, whose ornaments, though richly, are more broadly disposed, retains its balance by a slightly increased amplitude of drapery; while the third, whose dress is altogether without embroidery, acquires a corresponding effect by large, loose sleeves and richly folded skirt, and two large plaits hanging down her back. What an opportunity this would be, backed by these giants of breathing bronze, to make an indignant descent on some paltry and muddle-headed moderns, who don't know how to discriminate between that kind of finish which proceeds from the love of a smooth surface, and makes the artist equally careful of his pumps and of his pictures, and that other kind of minuteness which is the beautiful fruit of a refined love for nature, and proceeds from a feeling of piety towards the mother of art, and who complacently call 'niggling,' a quality above the appreciation of their breadth-mad brains; who, in their art-made-easy system of 'idealising' (forsooth), look for artistic 'beauty' in a facial angle of so and so much. What with the Greeks was an abstract of MAN, and very appropriately applicable in the cases of demi-gods (that the ancients could, and did, 'en tems et lieu,' individualise, may be sufficiently seen in their admirable portraits), becomes with them an absurdly misapplied average of mankind, not a man, or men. The leading feature in Nature is a MANIFOLD INDIVIDUALITY, AN ENDLESS VARIETY; she is like a diamond, that glances with a thousand hues. 'Indeed!' I hear them contemptuously sneering, 'you don't seem to be aware, sir, that ideal beauty is the great centre of all these extreme varieties, and the only thing worthy of a great artist's attention.' 'Well, gentlemen,' say I, 'without inconsistency, you can't get out of the way of the following mouthful: there are (perhaps you will allow) three elementary colours, which in different combinations produce every variety of hue; but, the great centre of these three extremely various colours is grey, non-colour ... the ideal of a bit of colouring, "the only thing worthy of the attention of a great colourist" is a picture with no colour in it at all.' However, Messrs. the Generalisists and Apollinisists 'have every reason to congratulate themselves on the extensive circulation of their views, for their ideal' is visible in every haircutter's window. Never mind, I must contain myself—but the rod is in pickle!