Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 398, December 1848

EASTLAKE'S LITERATURE OF THE FINE ARTS

We are surrounded by an external world, which it has pleased the great Maker of the universe to clothe with infinite beauty, cognisable to us through the senses, yet scarcely ours, until, by a more intimate appropriation through the mind, we have added ourselves to it, made it a part of, and in some no inconsiderable degree subject to, the will of our own nature. The inventive faculties of the mind gather all within their reach, which it is their province to combine, and remodel, and revivify with human feeling; and thus, by becoming to a limited extent creative ourselves, we are the more enabled to look up, and in admiration adore the divine power that has made all things out of nothing, and the divine goodness which has given us a perception of a portion of His works. Through the senses we know indeed but imperfectly – more imperfectly than those who have not considered the subject will allow. They minister first to our actual wants, presenting few charms and enticements but such as barely suffice to refresh the mind under the weariness of its daily experience. The bulk of mankind are under a hard necessity, which limits their senses to the work of life: were they enlarged to a greater capacity, that work would be the more irksome. The senses are then, like the air we breathe, reduced from an extreme fineness and purity, for the temporary use of yet unpolished humanity. But they are not intended to continue ever in this state of imperfection.

The great business – the providing for the first wants of life – done, industry is rewarded not by absolute rest and idleness, but by the succession of new and higher wants, which the growing mind demands; and it accordingly taxes the senses, and gives them command to be purveyors, and cultivates them for the purpose of enlarged gratification. They are thus capable of great extension, and, as it were, of an influx of living power to awaken and spiritualise their dormant or inert matter. All life is in progression: sciences must be discovered; arts must be created; and could we conceive an entirely sluggish and uncultivated social state, how few would see what may be seen, or hear what may be heard! The earth, teeming with sights of wonder, and breathed over with a divine music, would be to its inhabitants, in such a condition, but a waste and thankless wilderness. And which is nature – the bare, the imperceptible, for any beauty it contains, or the riches of the mind's discovery, the imaginative creation? We are inventive, that we may discover what nature is; nor is that the less, but rather the more, nature which is art. Art is but nature discovered – the hidden brought to light, and home to us, and acknowledged and felt – more or less felt as we cultivate reciprocally the mind through the senses, and the senses through the mind. With this view, all the artificial enchantments of life are nature – all arts, all sciences: for how could they be to embellish society, – indeed without which there would be no society– had they not an independent existence somewhere in the great storehouse of infinity, and were they not bountifully thrown out to us as truths to gather, as fruits to nourish and to gratify? We would wish to vindicate all nature, and unfetter it from that petty distinction which many are fond of drawing between nature and art. These make but one whole. For why should we separate ourselves, with all our faculties, perceptive and inventive, from our intimate and purposed connexion with the great universe? It is nature, because it is every where man's doing, to write and act plays, to compose music, and to paint pictures, raise noble edifices, and make marble seem to live in statues. And besides, as man himself is the chief work of nature, so is that which he does, even out of a partial imitation of other nature, the more natural, as it to a certain degree recedes from its model, and participates in and adopts the feeling of him that makes it. It is this nature which makes beauty perfect – which renders the music of Handel better than the sounds of winds and waters, and of a higher nature than they, as it is of a more extensive power, in all variety of movement, to touch our feelings, and stir us at will. And such is poetry, which influences us where fact fails. And all this not by mere imitation, which some are so fond of thrusting forward as the means; for there is nothing quite like to itself. With such means of exquisite enjoyment within our reach – by this enlargement of the boundary of our senses, of entering upon the improved faculties of our minds – it does seem strange that any gifted with leisure and understanding should neglect the cultivation of arts and sciences, which offer in the pursuit and in the attainment such unlimited riches. It is as if an heir to a large and beautiful estate, a mansion opulent in treasures, should willingly turn his back upon his inheritance, and be content to live in a hovel, and habitate with swine that feed him. And so it is when life, that might be thus embellished and enjoyed, is worse than wasted in low pursuits, and in those meaner gratifications which the untutored senses supply.

We hold that a real taste for the Fine Arts is the acme of a nation's civilisation, and a greater, a more general happiness, the certain result. We hold, too, that it is a creature of growth – that it may spring up where once sown and tended with care, in apparently the most unpromising soils. The revival of arts and of letters took place in "Agresti Latio." And how is the whole world benefited by that era of cultivation! There is no country under the sun that so much stands in need of an education in the Arts as our own. With energy to produce, and wealth at command, where shall we look for more favouring national circumstances? This country has been the mart where the finest productions of the genius of other times have found the most liberal purchasers, neglected sadly by our governments; individual collectors have enriched the nation. If we have suffered too many of the finest works – the purchase of which would have been as nothing out of the public purse – to leave our shores, and now to be the ornament of foreign galleries; yet our private collectors are so numerous, that at least a love for the arts has been more generally disseminated. But we have had no previous education to qualify us for the taste which we would possess. There have been no great works, to which the public eye could be directed, growing up amongst us. Hitherto we have had no Vaticans to embellish, and our temples have been closed against the hand of genius; yet are we now, as it were, upon the turning-point of the character of our cultivation: there is a general stir, a common talk about art, an expressed interest, an almost universal appetence in that direction. We are perfectly surprised at the very large sums which have been recently given for works of even moderate pretensions. There is much to observe that indicates the general desire, but less that indicates a general knowledge. There is an incipient taste, but there is a great want, – education – education for art and in art. How is this to be promoted? The lectures of academies are thought to be exclusively for the professors or rather students, and are too often neglected by them. The lectures of Sir Joshua, of Fuseli, and others, contain much valuable matter, but they scarcely reach the public. The most interesting foreign publications remain untranslated. Vasari is as yet unknown in our language. Transcripts, in outline or in more full engraving, of the finest works, exist not among us: these are the things that should be before the eyes of all, together with a systematic reading education upon the principles. Whatever has been done that is great, that is ennobling, should be, as far as is possible, seen and known. As yet, in all this, there is a great deficiency. The public is left to, at best, an incipient taste; which, to judge from the kind of productions that find the readiest market, is not good – at all events is not high, and scarcely improving. The love is at present for picture imitation, that lowest condition in which art may be said to flourish. We want an education in its principles, that its just aim and proper influence may be understood. The Fine Arts should be a part of our literature, and thus become a branch of general education. We hail with pleasure every work of the kind we see announced; we rejoice in the publication of our "hand-books," and the many volumes on the arts, as they flourished in other countries, which now begin in some measure to interest the reading public. But is nothing done towards a foundation for education in the principles of the arts? We are happy to say there is much done. If the commission on the Fine Arts had done nothing more than the drawing up their "reports" by their secretary, in that they have done much. Valuable, however, as these "reports" are, they were nearly a dead letter: the title was not enticing; few looked to reports as other than statistical accounts; whereas, in reality, they contained deep research, accurate knowledge, and clearly set forth the principles upon which, as a foundation, true taste must rest. We are happy that these most able essays have been rescued from the common fate of "reports," by their being now preserved in a collected form, together with other most valuable treatises from the pen of the secretary to the commission, under the title of Contributions to the Literature of the Fine Arts. Mr Eastlake has conscientiously imposed upon himself an arduous undertaking, beyond the implied condition of his secretaryship. In so doing, he deserves the greatest commendation, for he has greatly increased the utility of the commission. Not content with promoting the arts by these excellent theoretical treatises, he has addressed the artists themselves, and led them to the best practical views. He has, with great industry, labour, and patient investigation, cleared away the common errors respecting the "Old Masters." We have already noticed his History of Painting in Oil– that is, the first volume, which treats of the practice of the Flemish school. It is now no matter of conjecture what colours or what vehicles were in use – we have sure documentary evidence before us. It remains to make known the alterations and additions to that practice by the Italian schools, and this will be the subject of his forthcoming volume. In the first work, indeed, we have glimpses of the Italian method, and recipes of the varnish supposed to be used by Correggio; but we look to certain information, which is the fair promise of the second volume.

In the Contributions to the Literature of the Fine Arts, in addition to the essays on painting, sculpture, and architecture, taken from the "reports," we have Mr Eastlake's review of Passavant's Life of Raphael, extracted from the Quarterly Review; notes from Kugler's Hand-Book, on the subject of the paintings in the Capella Sistina; extracts from the translation of Goethe's Theory of Colours, on the Decoration of a Villa; and, perhaps the most interesting of all, if we may not say the most important, a fragment on "The Philosophy of the Fine Arts," not noticed in the chapter of contents. To this last, being so entirely speculative upon the very cause of beauty, and so new in matter, we should feel disposed to invite discussion on the side of doubt – partly because, it being professedly a fragment, by suggesting the difficulties attending his theory, a clearer exposition in the further prosecution of it may be the result.

If it were not, so to speak, for the genius of materials – or if genius be not allowed, we may say the characteristics of materials – poetry, painting, and sculpture would be subject but to one order of criticism, under one set of rules. But though each has its agreement with the others in the same leading principles – the foundation of general taste, and mostly arising from moral considerations – yet have they, individually, their own diverging points, from which they seem freed from the "commune vinculum." It requires a nice discrimination to ascertain for each art these points of deviation from the general rules. These rules are, from observation and from books, more easily comprehended, and the common scope of all the arts understood; but, to an inquiring mind, difficulties will often present themselves, when seeming differences and contradictions occur; for undoubtedly all these arts must be reconciled with each other, and made akin. It becomes, therefore, an important step in the education of taste, to learn the necessarily different modes by which they each approach their ends – the same as far as the general principles are concerned, but with a variance according to the characteristics of each. Mr Eastlake has been very successful in pointing to these distinctions, in showing the rules which guide all, and those which necessitate the differences. We were particularly struck with this discrimination in his Treatise on Sculpture, than which we have never read any thing more clear and convincing. We quote a passage with this bearing: —

"The first question, then, in examining the style of a given art, is, in what does this difference of means, as compared with nature, consist? The answer may for the present be confined to sculpture. It is agreed, then, or it is a convention, that a colourless hard substance shall be the material with which the sculptor shall imitate the perfection of life. His means are, by the primary condition, effectually distinguished from those of nature; and it remains for him to cheat the imagination (not the senses) into the pleasing impression that an equivalent to nature can be so produced. He may, therefore, imitate the characteristics of life closely. His select representation, however faithful, is in no danger of being literally confounded with reality, because of the original conventions, viz., the absence of colour, and the nature of his material. But it is not the same with the imitation, in this art, of many other surfaces. As already observed, a rock in sculpture and a rock in nature can be identical; it may, therefore, be sometimes necessary to imitate the reality less closely, or even, in extreme cases, like that now adduced, to depart from nature. The reason is obvious: the degree of resemblance to reality which is attainable in the principal object of imitation – the surface of the living figure – is, from the established convention, limited; and it is desirable that the spectator should forget this restriction. He is, therefore, by no means to be reminded of it by greater reality in other, and necessarily inferior, parts of the work. In painting, it is sometimes objected that inferior objects are more real than the flesh. The defect is great; but there is this difference between the two cases – in painting, the inferiority in the imitation of the flesh may be only from want of power in the artist; in sculpture, the perfect resemblance of the flesh to nature is impossible, in consequence of the absence of colour. The literal imitation of subordinate objects is, for this reason, more offensive in sculpture than in painting. A manifest defect in the art seems more hopeless than a defect in the artist."

"In pursuing the analogies here I considered, it is necessary to compare mere art with art – the form, as such, of the one, with the form of the other. Thus, in comparing sculpture and poetry together, the parallel conditions are to be sought in the strictly corresponding departments. As sculpture, in reference to nature, (to repeat an observation before made,) gives substance for substance, so poetry gives words for words. Accordingly, the form of poetry is by agreement or convention (similar in principle to that which dictates the conditions of sculpture) effectually distinguished from the form of ordinary language. And it will now be seen that the limitations of poetry, in such outward characteristics, are more definite and more comprehensive than those of sculpture; for whereas the material of marble may sometimes coincide literally with that of substances in nature, the form of poetry never can entirely coincide with that of ordinary language. This greater liability of sculpture to be confounded with reality certainly adds to its difficulty, since the doubtful cases, which may be left to the taste of the sculptor, are often settled by an immutable rule for the poet."

Whoever would desire a knowledge of the original causes of the differences of alto, basso, and mezzo relievo, should read the admirable treatise on the subject. They are not to be confounded as arising from the same conditions, and subject to the same rules. The differences of position and light, by their distinct requirements, separate the three styles of relievo, the alto, basso, and mezzo. It is not, as many suppose, that the basso, the lower relief, is less finished than the alto, or high relief; the finish of each is differently placed. "In the highest relief, however decided the shadows may, and must of necessity be, on the plane to which the figure is attached, the light on the figure itself is kept as unbroken as possible; and this can only be effected by a selection of open attitudes; that is, such an arrangement of the limbs as shall not cast shadows on the figure itself. In basso-relievo, the same general effect of the figure is given, but by very different means: the attitude is not selected to avoid shadows on the figure, because, while the extreme outline is strongly marked, the shadows within it may be in a great measure suppressed; so that the choice of attitudes is greater. Mezzo-relievo differs from both; it has neither the limited attitudes of the first, nor the distinct outline and suppressed internal markings of the second: on the contrary, the outline is often less distinct than the forms within it, and hence it requires, and is fitted for, near inspection. Its imitation may thus be more absolute, and its execution more finished, than those of the other styles."

In all relievo, as the shadows fall upon the background, the peculiar adaptation to architecture is manifest. As they are intended for minute inspection, gems are generally in mezzo-relievo. The workers in bronze and the goldsmiths – the former from the facility in casting, the latter for the minuteness and less distinctness of their works – adopting the flattest kind of mezzo-relievo, fancifully deviated from the original purity of the style, by introducing landscape and building backgrounds. An artist of the greatest genius fell into this error – Lorenzo Ghiberti, in the beautiful bronze doors of the baptistery of San Giovanni at Florence. In these celebrated compositions he attempted the union of basso-relievo with the principles of painting. His excellent workmanship and skill in composition was such as led the sculptors of the fifteenth century to consider this innovation upon the old simplicity an improvement. In inferior hands the failure would have been manifest, for the practice is in violation of the principle which the character of the material should determine. That Ghiberti was led into the error is not surprising, as he learned his art from a goldsmith. In his case it was a singular instance of ill-constituted judges choosing well. The judges who selected Ghiberti from his many competitors, were goldsmiths, painters, and sculptors – the majority were likely to favour that which approached nearest to their own practice. It is to the credit of our Flaxman that he revived the purer taste. This whole essay on relievo should be read attentively: it is so connected in all its parts that it is impossible to give its true character by either a few quotations or an at tempt at analysis.

In the essay entitled "Painting," Mr Eastlake keeps in view throughout the main object of the commission – the decoration of public buildings. He has to show how certain principles of art adjust themselves to the conditions imposed by the dimensions, light, and general character of the buildings for which works are required. At first view it might appear that, whether a picture be large or small, there should be no difference in the manner of painting it – that the small magnified, or the large reduced, could answer every purpose. But not so: a moment's consideration will show that the spectator's eye must be consulted, which sees not minutiæ of form or colour at the distance from which large works are to be seen, and that it seeks for those as the objects are brought nearer. It becomes necessary, then, in large works, lest they be indistinct, that masses be strongly preserved, and, accordingly, that neither forms nor colours be much broken. Hence, the larger the work, in general, the lighter, for the sake of distinctness, it should be: and such is the character of the great fresco works, which are, besides, in this respect, mainly aided by the materials of fresco, which is non-absorbent of light. We believe this also to be true to nature; for if we reduce any scene of nature by a diminishing glass to very small dimensions, the quantity of colour, which is never lost, becomes concentrated, and therefore more intense. The Flemish masters were great observers of nature; and we find in their smallest pictures the greatest depth and intensity of colour. Colour, in this view, even contends powerfully with perspective itself, and is often in distance, by being to the eye reduced, of an intensity that would seem to contradict aërial influence. The phenomenon of the strength of bright colour in distance is extremely curious: every one must have noticed that a lighted candle may be seen miles off, where, according to perspective rules, it would not be possible to draw its dimensions; nay, it shall appear larger than when at a moderate distance, and that not from its being a magnified light reflected from the walls of a room, for the same effect will be observed if we see the single light in the midst of a dark wood, where it is reflected not at all, and even seen in a space which, without the candle, would be too small to be discernible. But the contrary effect takes place with regard to form, which becomes indistinct at a very small distance. A bright colour is frequently very distinct, where the form to which it belongs is lost. But to return to the essay. Mr Eastlake clearly shows the principles, with regard to colour, upon which the great Venetian masters worked – how, by what artificial means, they preserved colour without losing light. To their practice and modelling in fresco were the Venetians indebted for the largeness of their system of colouring, and probably to the rich specimens of painted glass, for which Venice was celebrated, for their brilliancy and illumination. This little treatise is peculiarly useful to those who would aspire to undertake public works of large dimensions, and could not have been offered to their notice by a more fit person than the Secretary to the Commission of the Fine Arts. The following is excellent: – "To conclude: the resources, whether abundant or limited, of the imitative arts, are, in relation to nature, necessarily incomplete; but it appears that, in the best examples, the very means employed to compensate for their incompleteness are, in each case, the source of a characteristic perfection, and the foundation of a specific style. As it is with the arts, compared with each other, so it is with the various applications of a given art: the methods employed to correct the incompleteness or indistinctness, which may be the result of particular conditions, are, in the works of the great masters, the cause of excellencies not attainable to the same extent by any other means. In the instance last mentioned – the school of the Netherlands – it is apparent that no indirect contrivances or conventions are necessary to counteract the effects of indistinctness; on the contrary, all that would be indistinct in other modes of representation is here admissible, with scarcely any restriction. The incompleteness to be overcome, which is here the cause of peculiar attractions, therefore resides solely in conditions and imperfections of the art itself, which, on near inspection, are in greater danger of being remembered. These are – a flat surface, and material pigments; and these are precisely the circumstances which, by the skill of the artists in the works referred to, are forgotten by the spectator. The consequences of the difficulty overcome are, as usual, among the characteristic perfections of the style."