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I will not be so hard as to expect that any one man shall be an excellent sky painter, an admirable figurist, a landscape, tree and water painter, a painter of ruined picturesque architecture, of ornaments and foliage, and of straight lines. Claude Lorraine was never capable of this, Clarisso cannot; Bartolozzi is not, and Cypriani far from being able; Mr. Robert Strange is capable of no part of it. I will give them leave to take all the help that they can get, and I will choose three drawings in the King’s collection and two of my own, and defy them to produce the equal in the term of two years.
Mr. Robert Strange, now Sir Robert Strange, knows well I have been at least an indifferent draughtsman in ruined architecture near these forty years, for about that time he himself recommended me my second drawing master, poor Bonneau, then teaching Lady Louisa Greville, daughter of my Lord Brock, afterwards Lord Warwick. Till then I had only been used to drawing military architecture; and with a ruler and compass I have ever since mostly drawn; I wish to make every part of my work as perfect as possible. You and Dr. Douglas will both testify how willingly I seek, and thankfully and openly I embrace every assistance. This I think doing justice to the public and to posterity, from whom, after ten days’ abuse from people that I despise, I shall receive the commendation or blame that appears ex facie of my work.
The famous Piranese, the best draughtsman of broken architecture that I know, is of another opinion; that perfection in every part he disdains; his figures are just untouched and done with little, as he calls it; he knows he is no figurist, and therefore, in place of that agreeable ornament to design, he has placed figures in convulsions upon the points of stones and of rocks, with long legs and arms, and no bodies, but monstrous heads, and liker demons of another world than inhabitants of this. This the connoisseurs call freedom in design, masterly manner, and indeed it is so; it is freedom, just as great an one taken with the public as it would be for an individual in private life to walk in company with a long beard, nightgown and slippers.
The two great requisites in travelling are to see well and record faithfully what we have seen. I hope I may have succeeded in the first, but I am very certain I have done so in the last.
Thus, then, we see that according to Bruce’s own account the drawings were made by himself, with the aid of the camera obscura, and with such assistance as he could obtain from his young artist, Luigi Balugani. That they were done on the spot admits of no doubt whatever. During our late expedition my companion, the Earl of Kingston, took most successful photographs of every building drawn by Bruce throughout Tunis, with the single exception of Hydra; and though time, and the more destructive hand of man, have dealt hardly with some of the ancient monuments, others are almost unchanged, and a comparison of the original drawing and the photograph must satisfy the most sceptical on this point.
One of the most striking instances of accuracy of detail is in the case of the triumphal arch giving access to the Hieron of the three temples at Spaitla ([Plate XIV.]). In the attic of this building the first course of stones is entire; in the second only four stones are represented as remaining; two of these are in place, and two others have fallen on their sides, and are projecting beyond the surface of the façade. In our photograph these four stones now occupy exactly the same position as in Bruce’s sketch.
The drawings themselves furnish abundant proof, that two people worked simultaneously at delineating the ruins. Nearly every monument is drawn in duplicate, but no two sketches are ever from the same point of view. In some instances the difference of angle is very slight, as if the two companions had chosen positions sufficiently close to be able to converse together. A glance at the itinerary ([page 21]) will show that they never remained long enough in one place for either of them to have repeated his view of the object designed. Most of the measurements are written in Italian, as if Bruce had taken the actual dimensions and called them out to Balugani, who had recorded them. At the same time Bruce wrote Italian with as much facility as English, and many remarks in the former language occur in his own handwriting.
Sometimes, instead of only two copies of the same monument, there are several; but the same difference is always observable.
One of these sketches, or sets of sketches, is done with the most perfect accuracy and good taste. Generally there is no attempt at accessories of any kind, but where such are inevitable they are always true to nature. The other, as far as its architecture is concerned, is also accurate, but it is marred by the introduction of grotesque figures and impossible landscapes, such as it was the custom of that age to consider, and which Bruce himself has described, as ‘that agreeable ornament to design.’ My impression is that the former are the production of Bruce himself, the latter perhaps in part his sketches, but finished up and ‘agreeably ornamented’ by Luigi Balugani.