The Fine Arts
Kaulbach has just finished the cartoon of his Homer. This is the second in the series of great frescoes with which he is to adorn the new Museum at Berlin. The first, the Dispersion, at Babel, and the third, the Destruction of Jerusalem, are completed upon the walls, and have already been described in these pages. The Homer possesses the same richness of artistic combinations, and the same daring sweep of thought and imagination, which undeniably place Kaulbach at the head of the artists of this age. He represents in Homer the culture and the religion of Greece; the idea he depicts is, that Homer gave Greece her gods, and the peculiar tendency of her intellectual development. The poet is, of course, the central figure in the picture. The Ionic bard sits upon the prow of a ship that is just approaching the Grecian shore. His right arm is raised in the excitement of poetic inspiration; a lyre rests upon his left. Behind him, partly veiled, lost in profound revery, sits a female form, in whose lofty, intellectual features we recognise the impersonation of the traditional source of all early poetry; it is the impersonation of the Saga or Myth. She recalls those sybils who came from Asia to Greece to proclaim the oracles of the gods. In her hand the helm is still resting, in token that her guidance has brought Homer to Greece. A group of unclad nymphs, mingled with swans, swim around the vessel; one of them rises wholly from the water to listen to the strains of the singer. This is Thetis; she knows that he is chanting the praise of her son Achilles, and has left her crystal abode with the Nereids to follow him. At the left of the picture, on the land, stand groups of grave, manly forms, the representatives of Greece, assembled to receive the poet and his teachings. There are three of these groups, connected by subordinate figures. In front is a lofty figure, crowned with laurel, a beaker in his hand, and a charming cup-bearer at his side; this is the poet Alcaeus. Behind him stands Mnesicles, the architect of the Propylæ, with a plan of that work in his hand; next him is Solon, the lawgiver. On the other side stand Herodotus, Pindar, Sophocles, Æschylus, and Pythagoras, their features all marked with attention and interest; while a priest of a more ancient faith looks on in gloomy displeasure at the new singer and the impression he produces; and Bakis, the old soothsayer, hides his Golden Proverbs beneath the rocks. A second group, more toward the centre of the picture, is composed of country people, shepherds, huntsmen, and cultivators, with here and there a warrior, hearkening eagerly to the bard; among them a faun, with pointed ears and mocking mein, listens to the unaccustomed tones. On an elevation at the left, this division of the picture is completed by a group which represents the atelier of a sculptor—the master, with two youths and a maiden about him, is at work on a statue of Achilles—but the songs of Homer call his attention to other and grander subjects of his art. These are the Olympian gods themselves, who sit, some of them aloft in the clouds, over a sacrificial altar, around which warriors are dancing a martial dance, while others are moving along a rainbow to enter temples just dedicated to them—Eros leading with the Graces, and Apollo, with the Muses, following. A temple, in process of erection, and distant mountains, occupy the background. It will be noticed that the artist has omitted many very important elements of Greek history and culture from this composition. It contains no hint of Thermopylæ or Marathon, nor any allusion to Plato or Pericles. No doubt the learned artist has designedly avoided making his work too exact and didactic, but it certainly would seem that these were too prominent in themselves not to be wholly overlooked. It will also be observed that there is no action and no dramatic effect in the whole; but those who have seen the cartoon lack words to describe the noble beauty of the figures. Nearly all are men, but such majesty and harmony of form and feature, of outline and movement, well befit an age and people that produced the very ideal of manly beauty. The nymphs in the foreground are also said to be unspeakably lovely, and endowed with the most intimate charm of maidenly innocence. Of course it is impossible to appreciate the full effect of the picture, until it is executed in colors; but in that respect Kaulbach is certain of a perfection in nowise behind the other departments of his work.
A picture by the Belgian artist, Gallait, has produced a great excitement at Vienna, where it formed the most prominent feature in the January exhibition of the Art Union. The subject is the Last Moments of Egmont. The Count is represented in prison, standing upon a bench to look out of the grated window upon the place where his own execution is about to happen. On the bench beside him sits a priest, who seeks to recall him from earthly contemplations.
The Emperor of Austria has ordered a monument of Metastasio to be erected in Vienna,—where the poet passed the greatest part of his life, and composed all his works. Metastasio, it will be remembered, was attached to the court of Austria in quality of Imperial poet. The monument is to be executed by Lucciardi, a young German.
The Bulletin of the New-England Art Union contains an etching of Allston's Witch of Endor, in anticipation of the large engraving of it, which is to be distributed among the subscribers. This is expected to be of a much higher order than any thing that has yet appeared from any Art Union in the world.