Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843. Various
the ceremony with his presence: it did not become the father to see his daughter beneath the dagger's point: the same nature that threw a real mantle over the face of Timoleon, when he assisted at the punishment of his brother, taught Timanthes to throw an imaginary one over the face of Agamemnon; neither height nor depth, propriety of expression was his aim.' It is a question whether Timanthes took the idea from the text of Euripides, or whether it is his invention, and was borrowed by the dramatist. The picture must have presented a contrast to that of his rival Parrhasius, which exhibited the fury of Ajax.
Whether the invention was or was not the merit of Euripides, certainly this is not the only instance wherein he has turned it to dramatic advantage. No dramatist was so distinct a painter as Euripides; his mind was ever upon picture. He makes Hecuba, in the dialogue with Agamemnon, say, "Pity me, and, standing apart as would a painter, look at me, and see what evils I have,"
Οιχτειρον ημας, ως γραφευς τ αποοταθεις,
Ιδα με χαναθρησον, οι εχω χαχα.
And this Hecuba, when Talthybius comes to require her presence for the burial of Polyxena, is found lying on the ground, her face covered with her robe:—
Αυτη πελας σα, νωτ εχασ επι χθονι,
Ταλθυβιε, κειται σνγκχλεισμενη πεπλοις.
And in the same play, Polyxena bids Ulysses to cover her head with a robe, as he leads her away, that she might not see her mother's grief.
Κομιζ, Οδνσσευ, μ'αμφιθεις πεπλοις χαρα.
But in the instance in question, in the Iphigenia, there is one circumstance that seems to have been overlooked by the critics, which makes the action of Agamemnon the more expressive, and gives it a peculiar force: the dramatist takes care to exhibit the more than common parental and filial love; when asked by Clytemnestra what would be her last, her dying request, it is instantly, on her father's account, to avert every feeling of wrath against him:—
Πατερα γε τον εμον μη στυγει, ποσιν τε σον.
And even when the father covers his face, she is close beside him, tells him that she is beside him, and her last words are to comfort him. Now, whether Timanthes took the scene from Euripides or Euripides from Timanthes, it could not be more powerfully, more naturally conceived; for this dramatic incident, the tender movement to his side, and speech of Iphigenia, could not have been imagined, or at least with little effect, had not the father first covered his face. Mr Fuseli has collected several instances of attempts something similar in pictures, particularly by Massaccio, and Raffaelle from him; and he well remarks—"We must conclude that Nature herself dictated to him this method, as superior to all he could express by features; and that he recognized the same dictate in Massaccio, who can no more be supposed to have been acquainted with the precedent of Timanthes than Shakspeare with that of Euripides, when he made Macduff draw his hat over his face." From Timanthes Mr Fuseli proceeds to eulogize Aristides; whom history records as, in a peculiar excellence, the painter of the passions of nature. "Such, history informs us, was the suppliant whose voice you seemed to hear, such his sick man's half-extinguished eye and labouring breast, such Byblis expiring in the pangs of love, and, above all, the half-slain mother shuddering lest the eager babe should suck the blood from her palsied nipple."—"Timanthes had marked the limits that discriminate terror from the excess of horror; Aristides drew the line that separates it from disgust." Then follows a very just criticism upon instances in which he considered that Raffaelle himself and Nicolo Poussin had overstepped the bounds of propriety, and averted the feelings from their object, by ideas of disgust. In the group of Raffaelle, a man is removing the child from the breast of the mother with one hand, while the other is applied to his nostrils. Poussin, in his plague of the Philistines, has copied the loathsome action—so, likewise, in another picture, said to be the plague of Athens, but without much reason so named, in the collection of J. P. Mills, Esq. Dr Waagen, in his admiration for the executive part of art, speaks of it as "a very rich masterpiece of Poussin, in which we are reconciled by his skill to the horrors of the subject."
In the commencement of the lecture, there are offered some definitions of the terms of art, "nature, grace, taste, copy, imitation, genius, talent." In that of nature, he seems entirely to agree with Reynolds; that of beauty leaves us pretty much in the dark in our search for it, "as that harmonious whole of the human frame, that unison of parts to one end, which enchants us. The result of the standard set by the great masters of our art, the ancients, and confirmed by the submissive verdict of modern imitation." This is unphilosophical, unsatisfactory; nor is that of grace less so—"that artless balance of motion and repose, sprung from character, founded on propriety, which neither falls short of the demands, nor overleaps the modesty of nature. Applied to execution it means that dexterous power which hides the means by which it was attained, the difficulties it has conquered." We humbly suggest, that both parts of this definition may be found where there is little grace. It is evident that the lecturer did not subscribe to any theory of lines, as per se beautiful or graceful, and altogether disregarded Hogarth's line of beauty. Had Mr Hay's very admirable short works—his "Theory of Form and Proportion"—appeared in Mr Fuseli's day, he would have taken a new view of beauty and grace. By taste, he means not only a knowledge of what is right in art, but a power to estimate degrees of excellence, "and by comparison proceeds from justness to refinement." This, too, we think inadequate to express what we mean by taste, which appears to us to have something of a sense, independent of knowledge. Using words in a technical sense, we may define them to mean what we please, but certainly the words themselves, "copy" and "imitation," do not mean very different things. He thinks "precision of eye, and obedience of hand, are the requisites for copy, without the least pretence to choice, what to select, what to reject; whilst choice, directed by judgment or taste, constitutes the essence of imitation, and alone can raise the most dexterous copyist to the noble rank of an artist." We do not exactly see how this judgment arises out of his definition of "taste." But it may be fair to follow him still closer on this point. "The imitation of the ancients was, essential, characteristic, ideal. The first cleared nature of accident, defect, excrescence, (which was in fact his definition of nature, as so cleared;) the second found the stamen which connects character with the central form; the third raised the whole and the parts to the highest degree of unison." This is rather loose writing, and not very close reasoning. After all, it may be safer to take words in their common acceptation; for it is very difficult in a treatise of any length, to preserve in the mind or memory the precise ideas of given definitions. "Of genius, I shall speak with reserve; for no word has been more indiscriminately confounded. By genius, I mean that power which enlarges the circle of human knowledge, which discovers new materials of nature, or combines the known with novelty; whilst talent arranges, cultivates, polishes the discoveries of genius." Definitions, divisions, and subdivisions, though intended to make clear, too often entangle the ground unnecessarily, and keep the mind upon the stretch to remember, when it should only feel. We think this a fault with Mr Fuseli; it often renders him obscure, and involves his style of aphorisms in the mystery of a riddle.
Second Lecture.—This lecture comprises a compendious history of modern art; commencing with Massaccio. If religion gave the impulse to both ancient and modern, so has it stamped each with the different characters itself assumed. The conceptions the ancients had of divinity, were the perfection of the human form; thus form and beauty became godlike. The Christian religion wore a more spiritual character. In ancient art, human form and beauty were triumphant; in modern art, the greater triumph was in humility, in suffering; the religious inspiration was to be shown in its influence in actions less calculated to display the powers, the energies of form, than those of mind. Mere external beauty had its accompanying vices; and it was compelled to lower its pretensions considerably, submit to correction, and take a more subordinate part. Thus, if art lost in form it gained in expression, and thus was really more divine. Art in its revival, passing