whom his works are addressed. I doubt not that experience will prove the correctness of my views. I believe it will be found that the painter will feel grateful to the Count for his good intentions, but that he will make use of his work less frequently than he has expected. But grant it were otherwise, and what would be the consequence? Why, that every century another Caylus will be required to recall the old subjects from oblivion, and to lead the artist back into the field where others before him have gathered such immortal laurels. Or is it expected that the public should be as deeply read as the booklearned critic, and be familiarly acquainted with all those scenes of history and fable, which are calculated to produce fine pictures? Protogenes painted the mother of Aristotle. I know not what the philosopher paid him for the picture; but whether by way of remuneration, or over and above the price, he gave him a piece of advice worth more than any sum he could have bestowed; for I cannot imagine that his counsel was intended as a mere courtly compliment, but rather that it proceeded from his conviction of the necessity for every subject being as intelligible as possible. He recommended him to paint the deeds of Alexander; deeds which were at that time the theme of the whole world, and of which he could foresee that generations then unborn would not be forgetful. But Protogenes had neither the providence nor the firmness to follow this advice. 66 Impetus animi," says Pliny, "et quædam artis libido," a certain wantonness of art, a longing after whatever was singular and unknown, led him to the selection of totally different subjects. He preferred painting the story of Jalysus, † or Cydippe, and similar tales, the meaning of which we are now-a-days unable to discover. * Lib. xxxv., sect. 36, p. 700. Edit. Hard. TWELFTH SECTION. Further Misapprehensions of Caylus.-Visible and invisible Actions. This HOMER delineates two kinds of beings and actions; the visible and the invisible. distinction is beyond the power of painting, where everything is necessarily visible, and that, too, only in one particular way. Yet the Comte de Caylus does not scruple to arrange the pictures of the invisible actions in a uniform series along with the visible; nay, he even gives the pictures of the mixed actions, in which both visible and invisible beings partake, without attempting to explain,—what perhaps it was beyond his power to do,—how the latter are to be introduced so as to appear to be visible to the spectator alone, and not to the other actors in the picture. Thus it is evident that the whole series, as well as many individual portions of it, must necessarily be extremely confused, inconsistent and incomprehensible. But a reference to the book itself will be sufficient to correct this fault; the worst effect of which is simply this, that by the pictorial annihilation of the distinction between the visible and invisible beings, all those characteristic traits are at once lost by which the latter class are elevated above the standard of the former. For example, when the gods, divided in opinion regarding the fate of the Trojans, at length come to personal conflict with each other, the whole action is represented by the poet * as invisible, and this very circumstance leaves room for the imagination to enlarge the scene, and to picture the persons, as well as the deeds, of the gods, as great and as far elevated above those of mortals as may be desired. The painter, however, is compelled to place his actors on a visible scene, the several parts of which necessarily become the standard for their * Iliad. . v. 385. measurement, and this standard being always present to the eye, its natural effect will be to give to those beings of a higher order, which in the poet were of large dimensions, a stature comparatively gigantic. Minerva, whom Mars first attacked in this contention, drew back, we are told, and with a mighty hand lifted from the ground a large, black, rough stone, which had in former times been set up as a land-mark by the combined efforts of men :— "Then heaved the goddess in her mighty hand A stone, the limit of the neighboring land, In order to estimate properly the size of this stone, it must be borne in mind that Homer makes his heroes as strong again as the strongest * It is necessary that I should here remark that though, for the sake of those of my readers who may be unacquainted with Greek, I have preferred referring to the Iliad through the medium of Pope's version, yet the lines here quoted do not bear out the observations of Lessing so strongly as the original. The words of Homer are "Tov ävdges wgórego θέσαν,” "Which ancient men had placed." Note of the Translator. |