understand one another. If the former, from his insight into the intention of art, maintains that the ancient artists could not have produced this or that work, i. e., not as artists, not voluntarily; the latter extends this into an assertion that neither religion nor any other external cause, lying outside the region of art, could have had it executed by an artist, i. e., not as an artist, but as a mere artisan. Thus he believes he can refute the connoisseur with the first statue that comes to hand, but which the latter, without the least scruple, though to the great scandal of the learned world, condemns again to the heap of rubbish from which it had been extracted (25). On the other hand, too much importance may be attributed to the influence, exercised by religion upon art. Spence affords us a curious example of this. He found in Ovid that Vesta was not worshipped in her temple under any personal image; and this seemed to him a sufficient ground for concluding that, as an universal rule, there were no statues of this goddess, and that all, which had hitherto been considered such, represent, not Vesta, but one of her priestesses. A curious conclusion! Had the artist lost his right to personify a being, to whom the poets give so definite a personality that they represent her as the daughter of Saturn and Ops, and as being in danger of falling under the brutality of Priapus, besides relating several other myths concerning * Polymetis, Dial. vii. page 81. a her? Had, I say, the artist lost his right to personify, in his own manner, this being, because, in a single temple, she was only worshipped under the symbol of fire? For Spence here further commits the error of extending what Ovid states only of one particular temple of Vesta, viz. the one at Rome(26), to all her temples without distinction, and to her worship universally. It does not necessarily follow that she was worshipped everywhere, as she was in this temple at Rome; nay, before Numa built it, she was not thus worshipped, even in Italy. Numa did not wish to have any divinity represented by either the human or the brutish form; and the improvement, which he effected in the worship of Vesta, without doubt, consisted in the rejection of all personal representation of her. Ovid himself informs us that, before the time of Numa, there were statues of Vesta in her temple, which, from shame, when her priestess became a mother, covered their eyes with maiden hands(27). That even in the temples, which the goddess possessed, outside the city, in the Roman provinces, her worship was not precisely that established by Numa appears to be proved by several old inscriptions, in which mention is made of a Pontifex of Vesta. At Corinth, too, there was a temple of Vesta, without any image at all, but with a simple altar, upon which sacrifices were offered to b Lipsius de Vesta et Vestalibus, cap. 13. her. But does this shew that the Greeks had no statues of Vesta? At Athens there was one in the d Prytaneum near the statue of peace. The people of Iasos boasted that they possessed one, upon which, although it stood in the open air, neither snow nor rain ever fell. Pliny mentions one, in a sitting posture, from the hand of Scopas, which, in his time, might be seen in the Servilian garden, at Rome(28). And, allowing that it is not easy for us to distinguish a mere Vestal priestess from the goddess herself, does this prove that the ancients could not, much more did not wish to, draw this distinction? Certain emblems of art are manifestly more in favour of the one than of the other. The sceptre, the torch, the palladium can only be presumed to be in the hand of a goddess. The cymbal, which Codinus attributes to her, might perhaps belong to her, only as the Earth; or Codinus may not have really known what it was he saw (29). c Pausanias Corinth, Lib. ii. cap. 35. sect. 1. d Pausanias Attic, Lib. i. cap. 18. sect. 3. Polyb. Hist. Lib. xvi. ii. Oper. vol. ii. p. 443, Edit. Ernesti. CHAPTER X. I go on to notice an expression of surprise in Spence, which most significantly proves how little reflection he can have bestowed upon the nature of the limits of Art and Painting. "As to the muses in general, he says, it is re"markable that the poets say but little of them in "a descriptive way; much less than might indeed "be expected for deities, to whom they were so "particularly obliged." What does this mean, if not that he feels surprised that, when the poet speaks of the deities, he does not do it in the dumb speech of the painter? Urania, with the poets, is the muse of astronomy; from her name and her performances we at once recognise her office. The artist, in order to render it palpable, represents her pointing with a wand to a globe of the heavens. This wand, this celestial globe, and this posture, are, as it were, his type, from which he leaves us to collect the name Urania. But when the poet wishes to say that "Urania had a Polymetis, Dial viii. p. 91. long ago foreseen his death in the aspect of the stars, Ipsa diu positis lethum prædixerat astris why should he, out of respect to the painter, subjoin, "Urania, wand in hand, and heavenly globe before her? Would it not be as though a man, who could and might speak clearly, should still make use of those signs, upon which the mutes in the Seraglios of the Turks, from an inability to articulate, have agreed among themselves? c Spence again expresses the same surprise at the moral beings, or those divinities, to whom the ancients allotted the superintendence of virtues, or whom they supposed to preside over the conduct and events of human life. "It is observable," he says, “that the Roman poets say less of the best "of these moral beings, than might be expected. "The artists are much fuller on this head; and "one, who would settle what appearances each of "them made, should go to the medals of the Roman "emperors. The poets, in fact, speak of them 'very often as persons; but of their attributes, "their dress, and the rest of their figure they "generally say but little." d c b Statius, Theb. viii. 551. © Polymetis, Dial. x. p. 137. |