No. 83. A large painting, 5 feet 6 inches high, and 8 feet wide, representing Phineas and his Companions changed into Stones by looking on the Gorgon. Perseus, having rescued Andromeda from the sea monster, obtains her hand from her father Cepheus, who celebrates their nuptials with a magnificent feast. Phineas, to whom Andromeda had been betrothed, rushes in upon the festivity at the head of a troop of armed men. A combat ensues, in which Perseus, being nearly overcome, opposes to his enemies the head of Medusa, by which they are instantly changed to stone. This composition is full of vigor, with brilliant coloring, although somewhat crude. It is nowhere mentioned, and we are not aware of its having been engraved.
No. 91. A charming little drawing, 2 feet 2 inches high, 1 foot 8 inches wide: A sleeping Nymph, surprised by Lore and Satyrs, engraved by Daullé, also in Landon's work.
Passing from the National Gallery to that of Bridgewater, we come upon another phase of Poussin's genius, and encounter not the disciple of Mariai but the disciple of the gospel, the graces of mythology giving way to the austerity and sublimity of Christianity. Such is the account of what we came to see; we looked for much, and found more than we expected.
The Bridgewater Gallery is so named after its founder, the Duke of Bridgewater, by whom it was formed about the middle of the eighteenth century. He bequeathed it to his brother, the Marquis of Stafford, on the condition of his leaving it to his second son, Lord Francis Egerton, now Lord Ellesmere. The best part of this collection was engraved during the life of the Marquis of Stafford, by Ottley, under the title of the Stafford Gallery, in 4 vols. folio.
It occupies the first place in England amongst private collections, on account of the number of masterpieces of the Italian, and Dutch, and French schools. A large number of paintings were added to it from the Orleans Gallery, and we could not repress a feeling of regret to meet at Cleveland Square with so many masterpieces formerly belonging to France, and which have been engraved in the two celebrated works: 1. La Galerie du duc d'Orléans au Palais-Royal, 2 volumes in folio; 2. Recueil d'estampes d'après les plus beaux tableaux et dessins qui sont en France dans le cabinet du roi et celui de Monseigneur le duc d'Orléans, 1729, 2 volumes in folio; a most valuable collection known also under the name of the Cabinet of Crozat. This admirable collection is deposited in a building worthy of it, in a veritable palace, and consists of nearly 300 paintings. The French school is here well represented. The Musical Party, from the Orleans Gallery, and engraved in the Galerie du Palais-Royal, three Bourguignons, four Gaspars, four fine Claudes, described by M. Waagen, vol. i., p. 331, the two former described in the catalogue as Nos. 11 and 41 were painted in 1664 for M. de Bourlemont, a gentleman of Lorraine; the former, Demosthenes by the Sea-side, offers a fine contrast between majestic ruins and nature eternally young and fresh; the second, Moses at the Burning Bush, a third, No. 103, of the year 1657, was likewise painted for a Frenchman, M. de Lagarde, and represents the Metamorphosis of Apuleius into a Shepherd; lastly, there is a fourth, No. 97, the freshest idyll that ever was, a View of the Cascatelles of Tivoli.
The memory of these charming compositions, however, soon fades before the view of the eight grand pictures of Poussin, marked in the catalogue Nos. 62-69, the Seven Sacraments, and Moses striking the Rock with his Rod.
It would be difficult to describe the religious sensations which took possession of us whilst contemplating the Seven Sacraments. Whatever M. Waagen may please to assert, there is certainly nothing theatrical about them. The beauty of ancient statuary is here animated and enlivened by the spirit of Christianity, and the genius of the painter. The moral expression is of the most exalted character, and is left to be noticed less in the details than in the general composition. In fact, it is in composition that Poussin excels, and, in this respect, we do not think he has any superior, not even of the Florentine and Roman school. As each Sacrament is a vast scene in which the smallest details go to enhance the effect of the whole, so the Seven Sacraments form a harmonious entirety, a single work, representing the development of the Christian life by means of its most august ceremonies, in the same way as the twenty-two St. Brunos of Lesueur express the whole monastic life, the intention of the variety being to give a truer conception of its unity. Can any one, in sincerity, say as much as this for the Stanze of the Vatican? Have they a common sentiment? Is the sentiment profound, and, indeed, Christian? No doubt Raphael elevates the soul, whatever is beautiful cannot fail to do that; but he touches only the surface, circum præcordia ludit; he penetrates not deep; moves not the inner fibres of our being: for why? he himself was not so moved. He snatches us from earth, and transports us into the serene atmosphere of eternal beauty; but the mournful side of life, the sublime emotions of the heart, magnanimity, heroism, in a word, moral grandeur, this he does not express; and why was this? because he did not possess it in himself, because it was not to be met with around him in the Italy of the 16th century, in a society semi-pagan, superstitious, and impious, given up to every vice and disorder, which Luther could not even catch a glimpse of without raging with horror, and meditating a revolution. From this corrupt basis, thinly hidden by a fictitious politeness, two great figures, Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna, show themselves. But the noble widow of the Marquis of Pescaria was not of the company of the Fornarina; and what common ground could the chaste lover of the second Beatrice, the Dante of painting and of sculpture, the intrepid engineer who defended Florence, the melancholy author of the Last Judgment and of Lorenzo di Medici, have with such men as Perugino boldly professing atheism, at the same time that he painted, at the highest price possible, the most delicate Madonnas; and his worthy friend Aretino, atheist, and moreover hypocrite, writing with the same hand his infamous sonnets and the life of the Holy Virgin; and Giulio Romano, who lent his pencil to the wildest debaucheries, and Marc' Antonio, who engraved them? Such is the world in which Raphael lived, and which early taught him to worship material beauty, the purest taste in design, if not the strongest, fine drawing, sweet contours, of light, of color, but which always hides from him the highest beauty, that is, moral beauty. Poussin belongs to a very different world. Thanks to God, he had learned to know in France others besides artists without faith or morals, elegant amateurs, rich prelates, and compliant beauties. He had seen with his eyes heroes, saints, and statesmen. He must have met, at the court of Louis XIII., between 1640 and 1642, the young Condé and the voting Turenne, St. Vincent de Paul, Mademoiselle de Vigean, and Mademoiselle de Lafayette; had shaken hands with Richelieu, with Lesueur, with Champagne, and no doubt also with Corneille. Like the last, he is grave and masculine; he has the sentiment of the great, and strives to reach it. If, above every thing, he is an artist, if his long career is an assiduous and indefatigable study of beauty, it is pre-eminently moral beauty that strikes him: and when he represents historic or Christian scenes, one feels he is there, like the author of the Cid, of Cinna, and of Polyeuete, in his natural element. He shows, assuredly, much spirit and grace in his mythologies, and like Corneille in several of his elegies and in the Declaration of Love to Psyche: but also like him, it is in the thoughtful and noble style that Poussin excels: it is on the moral ground that he has a place exalted and apart in the history of art.
It is not our intention to describe the Seven Sacraments, which has been done by others more competent to the task than ourselves. We will only inquire whether Bossuet himself, in speaking of the sacrament of the Ordination, could have employed more gravity and majesty than Poussin has done in the noble painting, so well preserved, in the gallery of Lord Ellesmere. It is worthy of remark, in this as in the other paintings of Poussin's best period, how admirably the landscape accords with the historic portion. Whilst the foreground is occupied with the great scene in which Christ transmits his power to St. Peter before the assembled apostles,[288] in the distance, and above the heights, are descried edifices rising and in decay. Doubtless, the Extreme Unction is the most pathetic; affects and attracts us most by its various qualities, particularly by a certain austere grace shed around the images of death;[289] but, unhappily, this striking composition has almost totally disappeared under the black tint, which has little by little gained on the other colors, and obscured the whole painting, so that we are well-nigh reduced to the engraving of Pesne, and the beautiful drawing preserved in the museum of the Louvre.[290]
Most unhappily a technical error, into which even the most inconsiderable painter would not now fall, has deprived posterity of one half of Poussin's labors. He was in the habit of covering his canvas with a preparation of red, which has been changed by the effect of time into black, and thus absorbed the other colors, destroying the effect of the etherial perspective. As every one knows, this does not occur with a white preparation, which, instead of destroying the colors, preserves them for a length of time in their original state. This last process Poussin appears to have adopted in the Moses striking the Rock with his Staff, incomparably the finest of all the Strikings of the Rock which proceeded from his pencil. This masterpiece is well known, from the engraving by Baudet, and has passed, with the Seven Sacraments, from the Orleans gallery into the collection at Bridgewater. What unity is in this vast composition, and yet what variety in the action, the pose, the features of the figures! It consists of twenty different pictures, and yet is but one; and not even one of the episodes could be taken away without considerable injury to the ensemble of the piece. At the same time, what fine coloring! The impastation is both solid and light, and the colors are combined in the happiest manner. No doubt they might possess greater brilliancy; but the severity of the subject agrees well with a moderate tone. It is important to remember this. In the first place, every subject demands its proper color: in the second, grave subjects require a certain amount of coloring, which, however, must not be exceeded. Although the highest art does not consist in coloring, it would nevertheless be folly to regard it as of small importance: for, in that case, drawing would be every thing, and color might be altogether dispensed with. In attempting too far to please the eye, the risk is incurred of not going beyond and penetrating to the soul. On the other hand, want of color, or what is perhaps still worse, a disagreeable, crude, and improper coloring, while it offends the eye, likewise impairs the moral effect, and deprives even beauty of its charm. Color is to painting what harmony is to poetry and prose. There is equal defect whether in the case of too much or too little harmony, while one same harmony continued must be looked upon as a serious fault. Is Corneille happily inspired? His harmony, like his words, are true, beautiful, admirable in their variety. The tones differ with his different characters, but are always consistent with the conditions of harmony imposed by poesy. Is he negligent? his style then becomes rude, unpolished, at times intolerable. The harmony of Racine is slightly monotonous, his men talk like women, and his lyre was but one tone, that of a natural and refined elegance. There is but one man amongst us who speaks in every tone and in all languages, who has colors and accents for every subject, naïve and sublime, vividly correct yet unaffectedly simple. Sweet as Racine in his lament of Madame, masculine and vigorous as Corneille or Tacitus when he comes to describe Retz or Cromwell, clear as the battle trumpet when his strain is Roeroy or Condé, suggestive of the equal and varied flow of a mighty river in the majestic harmony of his Discourse on Universal History, a History which, in the grandeur and extent of its composition, in its vanquished difficulties, its depth of art, where art even ceases to appear as such, in its perfect unity, and, at the same time, almost infinite variety of tone and style, is perhaps the most finished work which has ever come from the hand of man.
To return to Poussin. At Hampton Court, where, by the side of the seven cartoons of Raphael, the nine magnificent Montegnas representing the triumph of Cæsar, and the fine portraits of Albert Durer and Holbein, French art makes so small a figure, there is a Poussin[291] of particularly fine color, Satyrs finding a Nymph. The transparent and lustrous body of the nymph forms the entire picture. It is a study of design and color, evidently of the period when Poussin, to perfect himself in every branch of his art, made copies from Titian.