AN ANSWER TO THE FOREGOING LETTER, AND A further Explication of the Subject.

I could not presume that so small a treatise as mine would be thought of consequence enough to be brought to a publick trial. As it was written only for a few connoisseurs, it seemed superfluous to give it a learned air, by multiplying quotations. Artists want but hints: their task, according to an ancient Rhetor, is “to perform, not to peruse;” consequently every author, who writes for them, ought to be brief. Being besides convinced, that the beauties of the art are founded rather on a quick sense, and refined taste, than on profound meditation, I cannot help thinking that the principle of Neoptolemus[106], “to philosophize only with the few,” ought to be the chief consideration in every treatise of this kind.

Several passages of my Essay are susceptible of explications, and, having been publickly tried by an anonymous author, should be explained and defended at the same time, if my circumstances would permit me to enlarge[107]. As to his other remarks, the author, I hope, will guess at my answer, without my giving one explicitly.—Indeed they do not require any.

I am not in the least moved by the clamours concerning those pieces of Corregio, which, by undoubted accounts, were not only brought to Sweden[108], but even hung up in the stables at Stockholm. Reasoning is of no use here: arguments of this kind admit of no other evidence but that of Æmilius Scaurus against Valerius of Sucro: “He denies; I affirm: Romans! ’tis yours to judge.”

And why should there be any thing more derogatory to the honour of the Swedes, in my repeating Count Tessin’s relation, than in his giving it? Perhaps, because the learned author of the circumstantial life of Queen Christina omits her indiscreet generosity towards Bourdon, and that bad treatment which the pictures of Corregio met with? or was Härleman[109] himself charged with indiscretion or malice, on his relating that, at Lincöping, he found a college, and seven professors, but not one physician or artificer?

It was my design to explain myself more particularly, concerning the negligences of the Greeks, had I been allowed time. The Greeks, as their criticism on the partridge of Protogenes, and his blotting it[110], evidently shews, were not ignorant in learned negligence. But the Zeus of Phidias was the standard of sublimity, the symbol of the omnipresent Deity; like Homer’s Eris, he stood upon the earth, and reached heaven; he was, in the style of sacred poesy, “What encompasses him? &c.” And the world has been candid enough to excuse, nay, even to justify on such reasons, the disproportions in the Carton of Raphael, representing the fishing of Peter[111]. The criticism on the Diomedes, though solid, is not against me: his action, abstractedly considered, with his noble and expressive contour, are standards of the art; and that was all I advanced[112].

The reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks may be reduced to four heads, viz.

I. The perfect Nature of the Greeks;

II. The Characteristicks of their works;

III. The Imitation of these;

IV. Their manner of Thinking upon the Art; and Allegory.

Probability was all I pretended to, with regard to the first; which cannot be fully demonstrated, notwithstanding all the assistance of history. For, these advantages of the Greeks were, perhaps, less founded on their nature, and the influences of the climate, than on their education.

The happy situation of their country was, however, the basis of all; and the want of resemblance, which was observed between the Athenians and their neighbours beyond the mountains, was owing to the difference of air and nourishment[113].

The manners and persons of the new-settled inhabitants, as well as the natives of every country, have never failed of being influenced by their different natures. The ancient Gauls, and their successors the German Franks, are but one nation: the blind fury, by which the former were hurried on in their first attacks, proved as unsuccessful to them in the times of Cæsar[114], as it did to the latter in our days. They possessed certain other qualities, which are still in vogue among the modern French; and the Emperor Julian[115] tells us, that in his time there were more dancers than citizens at Paris.

Whereas the Spaniards, managing their affairs cautiously, and with a certain frigidity, kept the Romans longer than any other people from conquering the country[116].

And is not this character of the old Iberians re-assumed by the West-Goths, the Mauritanians, and many other people, who over-ran their country?[117]

It is easy to be imagined what advantages the Greeks, having been subject to the same influences of climate and air, must have reaped from the happy situation of their country. The most temperate seasons reigned through all the year, and the refreshing sea-gales fanned the voluptuous islands of the Ionick sea, and the shores of the continent. Induced by these advantages, the Peloponnesians built all their towns along the coast; see Dicearchus, quoted by Cicero[118].

Under a sky so temperate, nay balanced between heat and cold, the inhabitants cannot fail of being influenced by both. Fruits grow ripe and mellow, even such as are wild improve their natures; animals thrive well, and breed more abundantly. “Such a sky, says Hippocrates[119], produces not only the most beautiful of men, but harmony between their inclinations and shape.” Of which Georgia, that country of beauty, where a pure and serene sky pours fertility, is an instance[120]. Among the elements, beauty owes so much to water alone, that, if we believe the Indians, it cannot thrive, in a country that has it not in its purity[121]. And the Oracle itself attributes to the lymph of Arethusa a power of forming beauty[122].

The Greek tongue affords us also some arguments in behalf of their frame. Nature moulds the organs of speech according to the influences of the climate. There are nations that rather whistle than speak, like the Troglodytes[123]; others that pronounce without opening their lips[124]; and the Phasians, a Greek people, had, as has been said of the English[125], a hoarse voice: an unkind climate forms harsh sounds, and consequently the organs of speech cannot be very delicate.

The superiority of the Greek tongue is incontestible: I do not speak now of its richness, but only of its harmony. For all the northern tongues, being over-loaded with consonants[126], are too often apt to offend with an unpleasing austerity; whereas the Greek tongue is continually changing the consonant for the vowel, and two vowels, meeting with but one consonant, generally grow into a diphthong[127]. The sweetness of the tongue admits of no word ending with these three harsh letters Θ, Φ, Χ, and for the sake of Euphony, readily changes letters for their kindred ones. Some seemingly harsh words cannot be objected here; none of us being acquainted with the true Greek or Roman pronunciation. All these advantages gave to the tongue a flowing softness, brought variety into the sounds of its words, and facilitated their inimitable composition. And from these alone, not to mention the measure which, even in common conversation, every syllable enjoyed, a thing to be despaired of in occidental tongues; from these alone, I say, we may form the highest idea of the organs by which that tongue was pronounced, and may more than conjecture, that, by the language of the Gods, Homer meant the Greek, by that of Men, the Phrygian tongue.

It was chiefly owing to that abundance of vowels, that the Greek tongue was preferable to all others, for expressing by the sound and disposition of its words the forms and substances of things. The discharge, the rapidity, the diminution of strength in piercing, the slowness in gliding, and the stopping of an arrow, are better expressed by the sound of these three verses of Homer, Iliad Δ.

than even by the words themselves. You see it discharged, flying through the air, and piercing the belt of Menelaus.

The description of the Myrmidons in battle-array, Iliad Π. v. 215.

is of the same kind, and has never been hit by any imitation: what beauties in one line!

Plato’s periods were, from their harmony, compared[129] to a noiseless smooth-running stream. But we should be mistaken in confining the tongue to the softer harmonies only: it became a roaring torrent, boisterous as the winds by which Ulysses’ sails were torn, split only in three or four places by the words, but rent by the sound into a thousand tatters[130]. This was the “vivida expressio,” the living sound; supremely beautiful, when properly and sparingly used!

How quick, how refined must the organs have been, which were the depositaries of such a tongue! The Roman itself could not attain its excellence: nay, a Greek father, of the second century of the christian æra[131], complains of the horrid sound of the Roman laws.

Nature keeps proportion; consequently the frame of the Greeks was of a fine clay, of nerves, and muscles most sensibly elastic, and promoting the flexibility of the body: hence that easiness, that pliant facility, accompanied with mirth and vigour, which animated all their actions. Imagine bodies most nicely balanced between leanness and corpulency: both extremes were ridiculed by the Greeks, and their poets sneer at the Philesiases[132], Philetases[133], and Agoracrituses[134].

But though they were beautiful, and by their law early initiated into pleasure, they were not effeminate Sybarites. As an instance of which we shall only repeat what Pericles pleaded in favour of the Athenian manners, against those of Sparta, which were as different from those of the rest of Greece, as their public oeconomy was: “The Spartans, says Pericles, employ their youth to get, by violent exercises, manly strength: but we, though living indolently, encounter every danger as well as they; calmly, not anxiously, mindful of its approaches, we meet it with voluntary magnanimity, and without any compulsion of the law. Not disconcerted by its impending threats, we meet its most furious attacks, with no less boldness than they, whom perpetual practice has prepared for its strokes. We are fond of elegance, without loving finery; of genius, without being emasculate. In short, to be fit for every great enterprize, is the characteristic of the Athenians[135].”

I cannot, nor will I pretend to fix a rule without allowing exceptions. There was a Thersites in the army of the Greeks. But it is worth observing, that the beauty of a nation was always in proportion to their cultivation of the arts. Thebes, wrapt up in a misty sky, produced a sturdy uncouth race[136],[137]according to Hippocrates’s observation on fenny, watry soils[138]; and its sterility in producing men of genius, Pindar only excepted, is an old reproach. Sparta was as defective in this respect as Thebes, having only Alcman to boast of; but the reasons were different: whereas Attica enjoyed a pure and serene sky, which refined the senses[139], and of course shaped their bodies in proportion to that refinement; and Athens was the seat of arts. The same remark may be made with regard to Sicyon, Corinth, Rhodes, Ephesus, &c. all which having been schools of the arts, could not want convenient models. The passage of Aristophanes, insisted on in the letter[140], I take for a joke, as it really is—and thereby hangs a tale: to have the parts, whereon

moderately complete, were Attick beauties. Theseus[141], made prisoner by the Thesprotians, was delivered from his captivity by Hercules, but not without some loss of the parts in question; a loss bequeathed to all his race. This was the true mark of the Thesean pedigree; as a natural mark, representing a spear[142], signified a Spartan extraction; and we find the Greek artists imitating in those places the sparing hand of nature.

But this liberality of nature was confined to Greece, in a narrower sense. Its colonies underwent the same fate, which its eloquence met with when going abroad. “As soon, says Cicero[143], as eloquence set out from the Athenian port, she plumed herself with the manners of all the islands in her way, adopted the Asiatick luxury, and forsaking her sound Attick expression, lost her health.” The Ionians, transplanted by Nileus from Greece into Asia, after the return of the Heraclides, grew still more voluptuous beneath that glowing sky. Heaps of vowels brought wantonness into every word; the neighbouring islands partook of their climate and manners, which a single Lesbian coin may convince us of[144]. No wonder then, if their bodies degenerated as much from those of their ancestors, as their manners.

The remoter the colonies the greater the difference. Those Greeks, who had chosen their abode in Africa, about Pithicussa, fell in with the natives in adoring apes; nay, even gave the names of those animals to their children[145].

The modern Greeks, though composed of various mingled metals, still betray the chief mass. Barbarism has destroyed the very elements of science, and ignorance over-clouds the whole country; education, courage, manners are sunk beneath an iron sway, and even the shadow of liberty is lost. Time, in its course, dissipates the remains of antiquity: pillars of Apollo’s temple at Delos[146], are now the ornaments of English gardens: the nature of the country itself is changed. In days of yore the plants of Crete[147] were famous over all the world; but now the streams and rivers, where you would go in quest of them, are mantled with wild luxuriant weeds, and trivial vegetables[148].

Unhappy country! How could it avoid being changed into a wilderness, when such populous tracts of land as Samos, once mighty enough to balance the Athenian power at sea, are reduced to hideous desarts[149]!

Notwithstanding all these devastations, the forlorn prospect of the soil, the free passage of the winds, stopped by the inextricable windings of entangled shores, and the want of almost all other commodities; yet have the modern Greeks preserved many of the prerogatives of their ancestors. The inhabitants of several islands, (the Greek race being chiefly preserved in the islands), near the Natolian shore, especially the females, are, by the unanimous account of travellers, the most beautiful of the human race[150].

Attica still preserves its air of philanthropy[151]: all the shepherds and clowns welcomed the two travellers, Spon and Wheeler; nay, prevented them with their salutations[152]: neither have they lost the Attick salt, or the enterprising spirit of the former inhabitants[153].

Objections have been made against their early exercises, as rather derogating from, than adding to, the beauteous form of the Greek youths.

Indeed, the continual efforts of the nerves and muscles seem rather to give an angular gladiatorial turn, than the soft Contour of beauty, to youthful bodies. But this may partly be answered by the character of the nation itself: their fancy, their actions, were easy and natural; their affairs, as Pericles says, were managed with a certain carelessness, and some of Plato’s dialogues[154] may give us an idea of that mirth and chearfulness which prevailed in all the Gymnastick exercises of their youth. Hence his desire of having these places, in his commonwealth, frequented by old folks, in order to remind them of the joys of their youth[155].

Their games commonly began at sun rise[156]; and Socrates frequented them at that time. They chose the morning-hours, in order to avoid being incommoded by the heat: as soon as their garments were laid down, the body was anointed with the elegant Attick oil, partly to defend it from the bleak morning-air; as it was usual to practice, even during the severest cold[157]; and partly to prevent a too copious perspiration, where it was intended only to carry off superfluous humours[158]. To this oil they ascribed also a strengthening quality[159]. The exercises being over, they went to bathe, and there submitted to a fresh unction; and a person leaving the bath in this state “appears, says Homer, taller, stronger, and similar to the immortal Gods[160].”

We may form a very distinct idea of the different kinds and degrees of wrestling among the ancients, from a vase once in the possession of Charl. Patin, and, as he guesses, the urn of a gladiator[161].

Had it been a prevailing custom among the Greeks to walk, either barefooted, like the heroes in their performances[162], or with a single sole, as we commonly believe, their feet must have been bruised. But there are many instances of their extreme nicety in this respect; for, they had names for above ten different sorts of shoes[163].

The coverings of the thighs were thrown off at the publick exercises, even before the flourishing of the art[164]; which was a great advantage to the artists. As for the nourishment of the wrestlers in remoter times, I found it more proper to mention milk in general, than soft cheese.

If I remember right, you think it strange, and even undemonstrable, that the primitive church should have dipped their proselytes, promiscuously: consult the note[165].

As I am now entering upon the discussion of my second point, I could wish that these probabilities of a more perfect nature, among the Greeks, might be allowed to have some conclusive weight; and then I should have but a few words to add.

Charmoleos, a Megarian youth, a single kiss of whom was valued at two talents[166], was, no doubt, beautiful enough to serve for a model of Apollo: Him, Alcibiades, Charmides, and Adimanthus[167], the artists could see and study to their wish for several hours every day: and can you imagine those trifling opportunities proposed to the Parisian artists, equivalents for the loss of advantages like these? But granting that, pray, what is there to be seen more in a swimmer than in any other person? The extremities of the body you may see every where. As for that author[168], who pretends to find in France beauties superior to those of Alcibiades, I cannot help doubting his ability to maintain what he asserts.

What has been said hitherto might also answer the objection drawn from the judgment of our academies, concerning those parts of the body which ought to be drawn rather more angular than we find them in the antiques. The Greeks, and their artists, were happy in the enjoyment of figures endowed with youthful harmony; for, we have no reason to doubt their exactness in copying nature, if we only consider the angular smartness with which they drew the wrist-bones. Agasias’s celebrated Gladiator, in the Borghese, has none of the modern angles, nor the bony prominences authorised by our artists: all his angular parts are those we meet with in the other Greek statues. And this statue, which was perhaps one of those that were erected, in the very places where the games were held, to the memory of the several victors, may be supposed an exact copy of nature. The artist was bound to represent any victor in the very attitude, and instantaneous motion, in which he overcame his antagonist, and the Amphictyones were the judges of his performance[169].

Many authors having written on this, and the following point of the treatise, I have contented myself with giving a few remarks of my own. Superficial arguments, in matters of this kind, can neither suit the deeper views of our times, nor lead to general conclusions. Nevertheless we do not want authors whose premature decisions often get the better of their judgment, and that not in matters concerning the art alone. Pray, what decisions of an author may be depended upon, who, when designing to write on the arts in general, shews himself so ignorant of their very elements, as to ascribe to Thucydides, whose concise and energetick style was not without difficulties, even for Tully[170], the character of simplicity?[171] Another of that tribe, seems as little acquainted with Diodorus Siculus, when he describes him as hunting after elegance[172]. Nor want we blockheads enough who admire, in the ancient performances, such trifles as are below any reasonable man’s attention. “The rope, says a travelling scribler, which ties together Dirce and the ox, is to connoisseurs the most beautiful object of the whole groupe of the Toro Farnese[173].”

I am no stranger to those merits of the modern artists which you oppose to the ancients: but at the same time I know, that the imitation of these alone has elevated the others to that pitch of merit; and it would be easy to prove that, whenever they forsook the ancients, they fell into the faults of those, whom alone I intended to blame.

Nature undoubtedly misled Bernini: a Carita of his, on the monument of Pope Urban the VIIIth, is said to be corpulent, and another on that of Alexander the VIIth, even ugly[174]. Certain it is, that no use could be made of the Equestrian statue of Lewis XIV. on which he had bestowed fifteen years, and the King immense sums. He was represented as ascending, on horseback, the mount of honour: but the action both of the rider and of the horse was exaggerated, and too violent; which was the cause of baptizing it a Curtius plunging into the gulph, and its having been placed only in the Thuilleries: from which we may infer, that the most anxious imitation of nature is as little sufficient for attaining beauty, as the study of anatomy alone for attaining the justest proportions: these Lairesse, by his own account, took from the skeletons of Bidloo; but, though a professor in his art, committed many faults, which the good Roman school, especially Raphael, cannot be charged with. However, it is not meant that there is no heaviness in his Venus; nor does it clear him from the faults imputed to him in the Massacre of the Innocents, engraved by Marc. Antonio, as has been attempted in a very rare treatise on painting[175]; for there the female figures labour under an exuberance of breasts; whereas the murderers look ghastly with leanness: a contrast not to be admired: the sun itself has spots.

Let Raphael be imitated in his best manner, and when in his prime; those works want no apology: it was to no purpose to produce Parrhasius and Zeuxis in order to excuse Him, and the Dutch proportions! ’Tis true, the passage of Pliny[176], which you quote concerning Parrhasius, meets commonly with the same interpretation, viz. that, shunning corpulency he fell into leanness[177]. But supposing Pliny to have understood what he wrote, we must clear him of contradicting himself. A little before he allowed to Parrhasius a superiority in the contour, or in his own words, in the outlines; and in the passage before us, Parrhasius, compared with himself, seems, in Point of the middle parts, to fall short of himself. The question is, what he means by middle parts? Perhaps the parts bordering on the outlines: but is not the designer obliged to know every possible attitude of the frame, every change of its contour? If so, it is ridiculous to give this explication to our passage: for the middle parts of a full face are the outlines of its profile, and so on. Consequently, there is no such thing as middle parts to be met with by a designer: the idea of a painter, well-skilled in the contour of the outlines, but ignorant of their contents, is an absurd one. Parrhasius perhaps either wanted skill in the Chiaroscuro, or Keeping in the disposition of his limbs, and this seems the only explication, which the words of Pliny can reasonably admit of. Unless we choose to make him another La Fage, who, though a celebrated designer, never failed spoiling his contours with his colours. Or, perhaps, to indulge another conjecture, Parrhasius smoothed the outlines of his contour, where it bordered on the grounds, in order to avoid being rough; a fault committed, as it seems, by his contemporaries, and by the artists who flourished in the beginning of the sixteenth century, who circumscribed their figures, as it were with a knife; but those smooth contours wanted the support of keeping, and of masses gradually rising or sinking, in order to become round, and to strike the eye: by failing in which, his figures got an air of flatness; and thus Parrhasius fell short of himself, without being either too corpulent or too lean.

We cannot conclude, from the Homeric shape which Zeuxis gave his female figures, that he raised them, like Rubens, into flesh-hills. There is some reason to believe, from the education of the Spartan ladies, that they had something of a masculine vigour, though they were the chief beauties of Greece; and such a one is the Helena of Theocritus.

All this makes me doubt of finding among the ancients any companion for Jacob Jordans, though he is so zealously defended in your letter. Nor am I afraid of maintaining what I have said concerning him. Mr. d’Argenville is indeed a very industrious collector of criticisms upon the artists; but as his design is not very extensive, so his decisions are often too general, to afford us characteristical ideas of his heroes.

A good eye must be allowed to be a better judge, in matters of this kind, than all the ambiguous decisions of authors: and to fix the character of Jordans, I might content myself with appealing to his Diogenes, and the Purification, in the royal cabinet at Dresden. But, for the reader’s sake, let me inquire into the meaning of what you call Truth in painting. For if truth, in the general sense, can by no means be excluded from any branch of the arts, we have, in the decision of Mr. d’Argenville, a riddle to unfold, which, if it has any meaning at all, must have the following:

Rubens, enabled by the inexhaustible fertility of his genius, to pour forth fictions like Homer himself, displays his riches even to prodigality: like him he loved the marvellous, as well in thought and grandeur of conception, as in composition, and chiar’-oscuro. His figures are composed in a manner unknown before him, and his lights, jointly darting upon one great mass, diffuse over all his works a bold harmony, and amazing spirit. Jordans, a genius of a lower class, cannot, in the ideal part of painting, by any means be compared with his great master. He had no wings to soar above nature; for which reason he humbly followed, and painted her as he found her: and if this be truth, he, no doubt, had a larger share of it than Rubens.

If the modern artists, with regard to forms and beauty, are not to be directed by antiquity, there is no authority left to influence them. Some, in painting Venus, would give her a Frenchified air[178]; another would present her with an Aquiline nose, the Medicean Venus, as they would say, having such a one[179]: her hands would be provided with spindles instead of fingers; and she would ogle us with Chinese eyes, like the beauties of a new Italian school. Every artist, in short, would, by his performance, betray his country: but, as Democritus says[180], if the artists ought to pray the gods to let them meet with none but auspicious images, those of the ancients will best suit their wishes.

Let us, however, make some exception in favour of Fiamingo’s children. For, lustiness and full health being the common burden of the praises of children, whose infant forms are not strictly susceptible of that beauty, which belongs to the steadiness of riper years; the imitation of his children has reasonably become a fashion among our artists. But neither this, nor the indulgence of the academy at Vienna, can be, or indeed was meant to be decisive, in favour of the modern children; it only leads us to make a distinction. The ancients went beyond nature, even in their children: the moderns only follow her; and, provided their infant forms, exuberant as they are, do not influence their ideas of youthful and riper bodies, they may be allowed to be in the right, though, at the same time, the ancients were not in the wrong.

Our artists are, likewise, at full liberty to dress the hair of their figures as they please: but, being so fond of nature, they, must needs know, that it is nature which shades, with pendant locks, the forehead and temples of all those, whose life is not spent between the comb and the looking-glass: and finding this manner carefully observed in most statues of the ancients, they may take it as a proof of their attachment to simplicity and truth; a proof of the more weight, as they did not want people, busier in adorning their bodies than their minds, and as nice in adjusting their hair, as the most elegant of our European courtiers. But it was commonly looked upon as a mark of an ingenuous and noble extraction, to dress the hair in the manner of the statues[181].

The imitation of the ancient contour has indeed never been rejected, not even by those whose chief want was that of correctness: but we differ about imitating that “noble simplicity and sedate grandeur” in their works. An expression which hath seldom met with general approbation, and never pronounced without hazard of being misunderstood.

In the Hercules of Bandinelli, the idea of it was deemed a fault[182]: an usurpation in Raphael’s Massacre of the Innocents[183].

The idea of “nature at rest,” I own, might, perhaps, produce figures like the young Spartans of Xenophon; nor would the bulk of mankind be better pleased with performances in the taste of my treatise, (supposing even all its precepts authorised by the judges of the art) than with a speech made before the Areopagites. But it is not on the bulk of mankind that we ought to confer the legislative power in the art. And though works of an extensive composition ought certainly to have the support of a vigour and spirit proportioned to their extent, yet there are limits which must not be overleapt: use not so much spirit as to represent the everlasting Father like the cruel God of war, or an ecstasied saint like a priestess of Bacchus.

Indeed, in the eyes of one unacquainted with this characteristick of the sublime, a Madonna of Trevisani will seem preferable to that of Raphael in the royal cabinet at Dresden. I know that even artists were of opinion, that its being placed so near one of the former, was not a little disadvantageous to it. Hence it seemed not superfluous to enquire into the true grandeur of that inestimable picture, as it is the only production of this Apollo of painters, that Germany is possessed of.

No comparison, indeed, is to be made of its composition with that of the transfiguration; which, however, I think fully compensated by its being genuine: whereas Julio Romano might perhaps claim one half of the other as his own. The difference of the hands is visible: but in the Madonna, the spirit of that epoch, in which Raphael performed his Athenian school, shines with so full a lustre, as to make even the authority of Vasari superfluous.

’Tis no easy matter to convince a critick, conceited enough to blame the Jesus of the Madonna, that he is mistaken. Pythagoras, says an antient philosopher[184], and Anaxagoras look at the sun with different eyes: the former sees a God, the latter a stone. We want but experience to discover truth and beauty in the faces of Raphael, without enquiring into their dignity: beauty pleases, but serious graces charm[185]. Such are the beauties of the ancients, which gave that serious air to Antinous, which we generally ascribe to his shading locks. Sudden raptures, or the enticement of a glance, are often momentary; let an attentive eye dwell upon those confused beauties which the transient look conveys, and the paint will vanish. True charms owe their durability to reflection, and hidden graces allure our enquiries: reluctant and unsatisfied we leave a coy beauty, in continual admiration of some new-fancied charm: and such are the beauties of Raphael and the ancients; not agreeably trifling ones, but regular and full of real graces[186]. By that Cleopatra became the beauty of all ensuing ages: nobody[187] was astonished at her face, but her air engaged every eye, and subdued the melted heart. A French Venus at her toilet is much like Seneca’s wit: which, if put to the test, disappears[188].

The comparison of Raphael and some of the most celebrated Dutch, and new Italian painters, concerns only the management, (Trattamento). The endeavours of the former of these, to hide the laborious industry that appears in all their works, gives an additional sanction to my judgment; for, hiding is labour. The most difficult part in performances of the arts, is to spread an air of easiness, the “ut sibi quivis” over them[189]; of which, among the ancients, the pictures of Nicomachus were entirely destitute[190].

All this, however, is not meant to derogate from Vanderwerf’s superior merit: his works give a lustre even to the cabinets of kings. He diffused over them an inconceivable polish; every trace of his pencil, one would think, is molten; and, in the colliquation of his tints, there reigns but one predominant colour. He might be said to have enamelled rather than painted.

His works indeed please. But does the character of painting consist in pleasing alone? Denner’s bald pates please likewise. But what, do you imagine, would the wise ancients think of them? Plutarch, from the mouth of some Aristides or Zeuxis, would tell him, that beauty never dwells in wrinkles[191].

’Tis said, the Emperor Charles VI. when he first saw one of Denner’s pictures, was loud in its praise, and in admiration of his industry. The painter was immediately desired to make a fellow to the first, and was magnificently rewarded: but the Emperor, comparing each of them with some pieces of Rembrandt and Vandyke, declared, “that having now satisfied his curiosity, he would on no account have any more from this artist.” An English nobleman was of the same opinion: for being shewn a picture of Denner’s, “You are in the wrong, said he, if you believe that our nation esteems performances, which owe their merits to industry rather than to genius.”

I am far from applying these remarks to Vanderwerf; the difference between him and Denner is too great: I only joined them in order to prove, that a picture which only pleases can no more pretend to universal approbation than a poem. No; their charms must be durable; but here we meet with causes of disgust in the very parts, where the painter endeavoured to please us.

Those parts of nature that are beyond observation, were the chief objects of these painters: they were particularly cautious of changing the situation even of the minutest hair, in order to surprize the most sharp-sighted eye with all the microcosm of nature. They may be compared to those disciples of Anaxagoras, who placed all human wisdom in the palm of the hand—but mark, as soon as they attempt to stretch their art beyond these limits, to draw larger proportions, or the nudities, the painter appears

Design is as certainly the painter’s first, second, and third requisite, as action is that of the orator.

I readily allow the solidity of your remarks, concerning the “reliefs” of the ancients. In my treatise I myself charged them with a want of sufficient skill in perspective; and hence the faults in their reliefs.

The fourth point chiefly concerns Allegory.

In painting we commonly call fiction allegory: for, though imitation arises from the very principles of painting as well as of poetry, it constitutes, by itself, neither of them[192]. A picture, without allegory, is but a vulgar image, and resembles Davenant’s Gondibert, an epopée without fiction.

Colouring and design are to painting what metre and truth, or the fable, are to poetry; a body without soul. Poetry, says Aristotle, was first inspired with its soul, with fiction, by Homer; and with that the painter must animate his work. Design and colouring are the fruits of attention and practice: perspective and composition, in the strictest sense, are established on fixed rules; they are of course but mechanical; and, if I may be allowed the expression, only mechanical souls are wanting to understand and to admire them.

Pleasures in general, save only those which rob the bulk of mankind of their invaluable treasure, time, become durable, and are free from tediousness and disgust, in proportion as they engage our intellectual faculties. Mere sensual sentiments soon languish; they do not influence our reason: such is the delight we take in the common landscape, flower, and fruit paintings: the artist, in performing them, thinks but very little; and the connoisseur, in considering them, thinks no more.

A mere history-piece differs from a landscape only in the object: in the former you draw facts and persons, in the latter, sky, land, seas, &c. both, of course, being founded on the same principle, imitation, are essentially but of one kind.

If it be not a contradiction to stretch the limits of painting, as far as those of poetry, and consequently, to allow the painter the same ability of elevating himself to the pitch of the poet as the musician enjoys; it is clear that history, though the sublimest branch of painting, cannot raise itself to the heighths of tragick or epick poetry, by imitation alone.

Homer, as Cicero tells us[193], has transformed man into God: which is to say; he not only exceeded truth, but, to raise his fiction, preferred even the impossible, if probable, to the barely possible[194]. In this Aristotle fixes the very essence of poetry, and tells us that the pictures of Zeuxis had that characteristick. The possibility and truth, which Longinus requires of the painter, as opposites to absurdity in poetry, are not contradictory to this rule.

This heighth the history-painter cannot reach, only by a contour above common nature, or a noble expression of the passions: for these are requisite in a good portrait-painter, who is able to execute them without diminishing the likeness of his model. They are but imitation, only prudently managed. The heads of Vandyke are charged with too exact an observation of nature; an exactness that would be faulty in a history-piece.

Truth, lovely as it is in itself, charms more, penetrates deeper, when invested with fiction: fable, in its strictest sense, is the delight of childhood; allegory that of riper years. And the old opinion, that poetry was of earlier date than prose, as unanimously attested by the annals of different people, makes it evident, that even in the most barbarous times, truth was preferred, when appearing in this dress.

Our understanding, moreover, labours under the fault of bestowing its attention chiefly on things, whose beauties are not to be perceived at first sight, and of inadvertently slighting others, because clear as day: images of this kind, like a ship on the waves, leave but momentary traces in our memory. Hence the ideas of our childhood are the most permanent, because every common occurrence then seems extraordinary. Thus, if nature herself instructs us, that she is not to be moved by common things, let art, as the Orator, ad Herennium, advises us, follow her dictates.

Every idea increases in strength, if accompanied by another or more ideas, as in comparisons; and the more still as they differ in kind: for ideas, too analogous to each other, do not strike: as for instance, a white skin compared to snow. Hence the power of discovering a similarity, in the most different things, is what we commonly call wit; Aristotle, “unexpected ideas”: and these he requires in an orator[195]. The more you are surprized by a picture, the more you are affected; and both those effects are to be obtained by allegory, like to fruit hid beneath leaves and branches, which when found surprizes the more agreeably, the less it was thought of. The smallest composition is susceptible of the sublimest powers of art: all depends upon the idea.

Necessity first taught the artists to use allegory. No doubt, they began with the representation of single objects of one class: but as they improved, they attempted to express what was common to many particulars; i. e. general ideas. All the qualities of single objects afford such ideas: but to become general, and at the same time sensible, they cannot preserve the particular shape of such or such an object, but must be submitted to another shape, essential to that object, but a general one.

The Egyptians were the first, who went in search of images of that kind. Such were their hieroglyphicks. All the deities of antiquity, especially those of Greece, nay, their very names, were originally Egyptian[196]. Their personal theology was quite allegorical; and so is ours. But the symbols of these inventors, partly preserved by the Greeks, were often so mysteriously arbitrary, as to make it altogether impossible to find out their meaning, even by the help of those authors that are still extant; and such a discovery was looked upon as a nefarious profanation[197]. Thus sacredly mysterious was the pomegranate[198] in the hand of the Samian Juno: and to divulge the Eleusinian rites, was thought worse than the robbery of a temple[199].

The relation of the sign to the thing signified, was in some measure founded on the known or pretended qualities of the latter. The Egyptian Horsemarten was of that kind; an image of the sun, because his species was said to have no female, and to live six months under and six above ground[200]. In like manner the cat, being supposed to bring forth a number of kittens equal to that of the days in a month, became the symbol of Isis, or the moon[201].

The Greeks, on the contrary, endowed with more wit, and undoubtedly with more sensibility, made use of no signs but such as had a true relation to the thing signified, or were most agreeable to the senses: all their deities they invested with human forms[202]. Wings, among the Egyptians, were the symbol of eager and effectual services; a symbol conformable to their nature, and continued by the Greeks: and if the Attick Victoria had none, it was meant to signify, that she had chosen Athens for her abode[203]. A goose, among the Egyptians, was the symbol of a cautious leader; in consequence of which the prows of their ships were formed like geese[204]. This the Greeks preserved also, and the ancient Rostrum resembled the neck of a goose[205].

Of all the figures, whose relation to their intended meaning is somewhat obscure, the Sphinx perhaps alone was continued by the Greeks. Placed in the front of a temple, it was, among the Greeks, almost as instructive, as it was significant among the Egyptians[206]. The Greek Sphinx was winged[207], its head bare, without that stole which it wears on some Attick coins[208].

It was in general a characteristic of the Greeks, to mark their productions with a certain chearfulness: the muses love not hideous phantoms: and Homer himself, when by the mouth of some god he cites an Egyptian allegory, always cautiously begins with “We are told.” Nay, the elder Pampho[209], though he exceeds the Egyptian oddities, by his description of Jupiter wrapt up in horse-dung, approaches nevertheless the sublime idea of the English poet:

It will be no easy matter to find, among the old Greek coins, an image like that of a snake encircling an egg[210], on a Syrian coin of the third century. None of their monuments are marked with any thing ghastly: of these they were, if possible, still more cautious than of ill-omen’d words. The image of death is not to be seen, perhaps, but on one gem[211], and that in the shape commonly exhibited at their feasts[212]; viz. dancing to a flute, with intent to make them enjoy the present pleasures of life, by reminding them of its shortness. On another gem[213], with a Roman inscription, there is a skeleton, with two butterflies as images of the soul, one of which is caught by a bird; a pretended symbol of the metempsychosis: but the performance is of latter times.

It has been likewise observed, that[214] among those myriads of altars, sacred even to the most whimsical deities, there never was one set apart to death; save only on the solitary coasts, which were deemed the borders of the world[215].

The Romans, in their best times, thought like the Greeks; and always, in adopting the iconology of a foreign nation, traced the footsteps of these their masters. An elephant, one of the latter mysterious symbols of the Egyptians[216] (for there is on the most ancient monuments neither elephant[217] nor hart, ostrich nor cock, to be found), was the image of different things[218], and perhaps of eternity, as on some Roman[219] coins, because of his longevity. But on a coin of the emperor Antoninus, this animal, with the inscription, MUNIFICENTIA, cannot possibly hint at any other thing but the grand games, the magnificence of which was augmented by those animals.

But it is no more my design to attempt an inquiry into the origin of every allegorical symbol among the Greeks and Romans, than to write a system of allegory. All I propose is, to defend what I have advanced concerning it, and at the same time to direct the artist to the images of those ancients, in preference to the iconologies and ill-judged symbols of some moderns.

We may, from a little specimen, form a judgment of the turn of mind of those ancients, and of the possibility of subjecting abstracted ideas to the senses. The symbols of many a gem, coin, and monument, enjoy their fixed and universally received interpretation; but some of the most memorable, not yet brought to a proper standard, deserve a nearer determination.

Perhaps the allegory of the ancients might be divided, like painting and poetry in general, into two classes, viz. the sublime, and the more vulgar. Symbols of the one might be those by which some mythological or philosophical allusion, or even some unknown or mysterious rite, is expressed.

Such as are more commonly understood, viz. personified virtues, vices, &c. might be referred to the other.

The images of the former give to performances of the art the true epick grandeur: one single figure is sufficient to give it: the more it contains, the sublimer it is: the more it engages our attention, the deeper it penetrates, and we of course feel it the more.

The ancients, in order to represent a child dying in his bloom, painted him carried off by Aurora[220]: a striking image! taken, perhaps, from the custom of burying youths at day-break. The ideas of the bulk of our artists, in this respect, are too trivial to be mentioned here.

The animation of the body, one of the most abstracted ideas, was represented by the loveliest, most poetical images. An artist, who should imagine he could express this idea by the Mosaick creation, would be mistaken; for his image would be merely historical, and nothing but the creation of Adam: a history altogether too sacred for being either admitted as the allegory of a mere philosophical idea, or into every place: neither does it seem poetical enough for the flights of the art. This idea appears on coins and gems[221], as described by the most ancient poets and philosophers: Prometheus forming a man of that clay, of which large petrified heaps were found in Phocis in the time of Pausanias[222]; and Minerva holding a butterfly, as an image of the soul, over his head. The snake encircling a tree behind Minerva, on the above coin of Antoninus Pius, is a supposed symbol of his prudence and sagacity.

It cannot be denied that the meaning of many an ancient allegory is merely conjectural, and therefore not to be applied on every occasion. A child catching a butterfly on an altar was pretended to signify Amicitia ad aras, or, “which is not to exceed the borders of justice[223].” On another gem, Love, endeavouring to pull off the branch of an old tree, where a nightingale is perching, is said to allegorize love of wisdom[224]. Eros, Himeros, and Pathos, the symbols of Love, Appetite, and Desire, are represented, they say[225], on a gem, encompassing the sacred fire on an altar; Love behind the fire, his head only over-reaching the flames; Appetite and Desire on both sides of the altar; Appetite with one hand only in the fire, with the other holding a garland; Desire with both his hands in the flames. A Victoria crowning an anchor, on a coin of king Seleucus, was formerly regarded as an image of peace and security procured by victory, till by the help of history we have been enabled to give it its true interpretation. Seleucus is said to have been born with a mark resembling an anchor[226], which not only he himself, but all his descendants, the Seleucidæ, have preserved on their coins[227].

There is another Victoria with butterfly’s wings[228], fastened on a trophy. This, they say, is the symbol of a hero, who, like Epaminondas, died in the very act of conquering. At Athens such a statue[229], and an altar to an unwinged Victoria, was the symbol of their perpetual success in battle: ours may admit of the same explication as Mars in chains at Sparta[230]. Nor was she, as I presume, provided at random with wings usually given to Psyche, her own being those of an eagle: they perhaps signify the soul of the deceased: however, all these conjectures might be tolerable, if a Victoria fastened on trophies of conquered enemies could reasonably correspond with their being vanquished.

Indeed the sublimer allegory of the ancients has not been transmitted to us, without the loss of its most valuable treasures: it is poor, when compared with the second kind, which is often provided with several symbols for one idea. Two different ones, signifying the happiness of the times, are expressed on coins of the emperor Commodus: the one a lady[231], sitting with an apple or ball in her right, and a dial in her left hand, beneath a leafy tree: three children are before her, two in a vase or flower-pot, the usual symbol of fertility: the other represents four children, who, as is clear by the things they bear, are the seasons. Both have the subscription FELICITAS TEMPORVM.

But these, and all the symbols that want inscriptions, are of a lower rank; and some of them might as well be taken for signs of different ideas. Hope[232] and Fertility[233], for instance, might be Ceres, Nobility[234], Minerva. Patience[235], on a coin of Aurelian, wants her true characteristick, as does Erato; and the Parcæ[236] are only by their garments distinguished from the Graces. On the contrary, ideas which are often confounded in morality, as Justice and Equity, are extremely well distinguished by the ancients. The former is represented, as drawn by Gellius[237], with a stern look, a diadem, and dressed hair[238]; the latter with a mild countenance, and waving ringlets; ears of corn arising from her balance, as symbols of the advantages of equity; and sometimes she holds in her other hand[239] a cornu-copia.

Peace, on a coin of the emperor Titus, is to be ranked among those of a more energetick expression. The goddess of Peace leans on a pillar with her left arm, in the hand of which she holds the branch of an olive-tree, whilst the other waves the caduceus over the thigh of a victim on a little altar, which hints at the bloodless sacrifices of that goddess: the victims were slaughtered out of the temple, and nothing but the thighs were offered at the altar, which was not to be stained with blood.

Peace usually appears with the olive-branch and the caduceus, as on another coin of this emperor[240]; or on a stool placed on a heap of arms, as on a coin of Drusus[241]. On some of Tiberius’s and Vespasian’s coins[242] Peace appears in the act of burning arms.

On a coin of the Emperor Philip there is a noble image; a sleeping Victory: which, with better reason, may be taken for the symbol of confidence in conquest, than for that in the security of the world as the inscription pretends. Of an analogous idea was the picture, by which the Athenian General Timotheus was ridiculed, for the blind luck with which he obtained his victories: he was represented asleep, with Fortune catching Towns in her Net[243].

The Nile, with his sixteen children, is of this same class[244]. The child that reaches the ears of corn, and the fruits, in his Cornu, is the symbol of the highest fertility; but those that over-reach them are signs of miscarrying seasons. Pliny explains the whole[245]. Egypt is at the height of its fertility, when the Nile rises sixteen feet: but if it either falls short of, or exceeds that measure, it equally blasts the land with unfruitfulness. Rossi, in his collection, neglected the children.

Satyrical pictures belong also to this class: the Ass of Gabrias, for instance[246], which imagines itself worshipped by the people, as they bow to the statue of Isis on its back. It is impossible to give a livelier image of the pride of the Vulgar-Great.

The sublimer allegory might be supplied by the lower class, had it not met with the same fate. We are, for instance, not acquainted with the figure of Eloquence, or Peitho; or that of the Goddess of Comfort, Parergon, represented by Praxiteles, as Pausanias tells us[247]. Oblivion had an altar among the Romans[248], and perhaps a figure: as may also be supposed of Chastity, whose altar is to be found on coins[249]; and of Fear, to which Theseus offered sacrifices[250].

However, the remains of ancient allegory are not yet worn out: there are still many secret stores: the poets, and other monuments of antiquity, afford numbers of beautiful images. Those, who in our time, and that of our fathers, were busy in improving allegory, and in facilitating the endeavours of the artists; those, I say, should reasonably have had recourse to so rich and pure a fountain. But there was an epoch to appear, in which a shocking croud of pedants should, with downright madness, conspire in an universal uproar against every the lead glimpse of good taste. Nature, in their eyes, was puerile, and ought to be fashioned: blockheads, both young and old, vied in painting devices and emblems, for the benefit of artists, philosophers, and divines; and woe to him who made a compliment, without dressing it up in an emblem! Symbols void of sense were illustrated with inscriptions, giving an account of what they meant, and meant not: these are the treasures which are dug for, even in our times, and which, being then in high fashion, out-shone all antiquity had left.

The ancients, for instance, represented Munificence by a woman holding a Cornucopia in one hand, and the table of the Roman Congiarium in the other[251]: an image which looked too parsimonious for modern liberality; another therefore was contrived[252], with two horns; one of them inverted, the better to pour out its contents; an eagle, the meaning of which is too hard for me to guess at, was set upon her head; others painted her with a pot in each hand[253]. Eternity was, by the ancients, drawn either sitting on a Globe, or rather Sphere[254], with a Hasta in her hand; or standing[255], with the Sphere in one hand, and the Hasta in the other; or with the Sphere in her hand, and no Hasta; or else covered with a floating Veil[256]. These are the images of Eternity on the coins of the Empress Faustina: but there was not gravity enough in them for the modern artists. Eternity, so frightful to many, required a frightful image[257]; a form female down to the breast, with Globes in each hand; the rest of the Body a circling star-marked Snake turning into itself.

Providence very often has a Globe at her feet, and a Hasta in her left hand[258]. On a coin of the Emperor Pertinax[259], she stretches out both her hands, towards a Globe falling from the clouds. A female figure, with two heads, seemed more expressive to the moderns[260].

Constancy, on some of Claudius’s coins[261], is either fitting or standing, with a Helmet on her head, and a Hasta in her left hand; or without Helmet and Hasta, but always with a finger pointing to her face, as if closely debating some point. For distinction sake the moderns joined a couple of pillars[262].

It is very probable, that Ripa was often at a loss with his own figures. Chastity, in his Iconology, holds in one hand a Whip[263], (a strange incitement to virtue) in the other a Sieve: The first inventor, perhaps, hinted at Tuccia the vestal; which Ripa not remembring, indulges the most absurd whims, not worth repeating.

By thus contrasting ancient and modern allegory, I mean not to divert our times of their right of settling new allegories: but from the different manners of thinking, I shall draw some rules, for those that are to tread these paths.

The character of noble simplicity was the chief aim of the Greeks and Romans: of which Romeyn de Hooghe has given the very contrast. His book, in general, may very fitly be compared to the elm in Virgil’s hell:

The distinctness of the ancient allegory was owing to the individuation of its images. Their rule, (if we except only a few of those above-mentioned), was to avoid every ambiguity; a rule slightly observed by the moderns: the Hart, for instance, symbolizing[264] baptism, revenge, remorse, and flattery; the Cedar, a preacher, worldly vanities, a scholar, and a woman dying in the pangs of child-birth.

That simplicity and distinctness were always accompanied by a certain decency. A hog signifying, among the Egyptians, a scrutator of mysteries[265], together with all the swine of Cæsar Ripa and some of the moderns, would have been thought, by the Greeks, too indecent a symbol of any thing whatever: save only where that animal made part of the arms of a place, as it appears to be on the Eleusinian coins[266].

The last rule of the ancients was to beware of signs too near a-kin to the thing signified. Let the young allegorist observe these rules, and study them, jointly with mythology, and the remotest history.

Indeed some modern allegories, (if those ought to be called modern that are entirely in the taste of antiquity), may perhaps be compared with the sublimer class of the ancient.

Two brothers of the Barbarigo-family, immediately succeeding each other[267], in the dignity of Doge of Venice, are allegorized by Castor and Pollux[268]; one of whom, as the fable tells us, gave the other part of that immortality which Jupiter had conferred on him alone. Pollux, in the allegory, presents his brother, represented by a skull, with a circling snake, as the symbol of eternity; on the reverie of a fictitious coin, beneath the described figures, there drops a broken branch from a tree, with the Virgilian inscription,

Another idea on one of Lewis XIVth’s coins, is as worthy of notice; being struck[269] on occasion of the Duke of Lorrain’s quiting his dominions, after the surrender of Marsal, for having betrayed both the French and Austrian courts. The Duke is Proteus overcome by the arts of Menelaus, and bound, after having, in vain, tried all his different forms. At a distance the conquered citadel is to be seen, and the year of its surrender marked in the inscription. There was no occasion for the superfluous epigraph: Protei Artes delusæ.

Patience, or rather a longing earnest desire[270], represented by a female figure, with folded hands, gazing on a watch, is a very good image of the lower class. It must indeed be owned, that the inventors of the most picturesque allegories have contented themselves with the remains of antiquity; none having been authorised to establish images of their own fancy, for the general imitation of the artists. Neither has any attempt of latter times deferred the honour: for in the whole Iconology of Ripa, of two or three that are tolerable ones,

an Ethiopian washing himself, as an allusion to labour lost[271], is perhaps the best. There are indeed images, and useful hints, dispersed in some books of greater note, (as for instance, The Temple of Stupidity in the Spectator[272],) which ought to be collected, and made more general. Thus, were the treasures of science joined to those of art, the time might come, when a painter would be able to represent an ode, as well as a tragedy.

I shall myself submit to the publick some images: for rules instruct, but examples still more. Friendship, I find every where pitifully represented, and its emblems are not worth mentioning: their flying scribbled labels shew us the depth of their inventors.

This noblest of human virtues I would paint in the figures of those two immortal friends of heroic times, Theseus and Pirithous. The head of the former is said to be on gems[273]: he likewise appears with the club[274] won from Periphetes, a son of Vulcan, on a gem of Philemon. Theseus consequently might be drawn with some resemblance. Friendship, at the brink of danger, might be taken from the idea of an old picture at Delphos, as described by Pausanias[275]. Theseus was painted in the action of defending himself and his friend against the Thesprotians, with his own sword in one hand, and another drawn from the side of his friend, in the other. The beginning of their friendship, as described by Plutarch[276], might also be an image of that idea. I am astonished not to have met, among the emblems of the great men of the Barbarigo-family, with an image of a good man and eternal friend. Such was Nicolas Barbarigo, who contracted with Marco Trivisano a friendship worthy of immortality;

a little rare treatise alone has preserved their memory[277].

A little hint of Plutarch’s might furnish an image of Ambition: he mentions[278] the sacrifices of Honour, as being performed bareheaded, whereas all other sacrifices, save only those of Saturn[279], were offered with covered heads. This custom he believes to have taken its rise from the usual salutation in society; though it may as well be vice versa: perhaps it sprung from the Pelasgian rites[280], which were performed bareheaded. Honour is likewise represented by a female figure, crowned with laurels, a Cornucopia and Hasta in her hands[281]. Accompanied by Virtue, a male figure with a helmet, she is to be found on a coin of Vitellius[282]: and the heads of both on those of Gordian and Galien[283].

Prayers might be personified from an idea of Homer. Phœnix, the tutor of Achilles, endeavouring to reconcile him to the Greeks, makes use of an allegory. “Know Achilles, says he, that prayers are the daughters of Zeus[284]; they are bent with kneeling; their faces sorrowful and wrinkled, with eyes lifted up to heaven. They follow Ate; who, with a bold and haughty mien marches on, and, light of foot as she is, runs over all the world, to seize and torment mankind; for ever endeavouring to escape the Prayers, who incessantly press upon her footsteps, in order to heal those whom she hath hurt. Whoever honours these daughters of Zeus, on their approach, may obtain much good from them; but meeting with repulse, they pray their fire to punish by Ate the hard-hearted wretch.”

The following well-known old fable might also furnish a new image. Salmacis, and the youth beloved by her, were changed to a fountain, unmanning to such a degree, that

The fountain was near Halicarnassus in Caria. Vitruvius[285] thought he had discovered the truth of that fiction: some inhabitants of Argos and Trœzene, says he, going thither with a mind to settle, dispossessed the Carians and Leleges; who, sheltering themselves among the mountains, began to harass the Greeks with their excursions: but one of the inhabitants having discovered some particular qualities in that fountain, erected a building near it, for the convenience of those who had a mind to make use of its water. Greeks and Barbarians mingled there; and these at length, accustomed to the Greek civility, lost their savageness, and were insensibly moulded into another nature. The fable itself is well known to the artists: but the narrative of Vitruvius might instruct them how to draw the allegory of a people taught humanity and civilised, like the Russians by Peter the First. The fable of Orpheus might serve the same purpose. Expression only must decide the choice.

Supposing the above general observations upon allegory insufficient to evince its necessity in painting, the examples will at least demonstrate, that painting reaches beyond the senses.

The two chief performances in allegorical painting, mentioned in my treatise, viz. the Luxemburg gallery, and the cupola of the Imperial Library at Vienna, may shew how poetical, how happy an use their authors made of allegory.

Rubens proposing to paint Henry IV. as a humane victor, with lenity and goodness prevailing, even in the punishment of unnatural rebels, and treacherous banditti, represents him as Jupiter ordering the gods to overthrow and punish the vices: Apollo and Minerva let fly their darts upon them, and the vices, hideous monsters, in a tumultuous uproar tumble over each other: Mars, entering in a fury, threatens total destruction; but Venus, image of celestial love, gently lays hold of his arm:—you fancy you hear her blandishing petition to the mailed god: “rage not with cruel revenge against the vices—they are punished.”

The whole performance of Daniel Gran[286] is an allegory, relative to the Imperial Library, and all its figures are as the branches of one single tree. ’Tis a painted Epopee, not beginning from the eggs of Leda; but, as Homer chiefly rehearses the anger of Achilles, this immortalizes only the Emperor’s care of the sciences. The preparations for the building of the library are represented in the following manner:

Imperial majesty appears as a lady fitting, her head sumptuously dressed, and on her breast a golden heart, as a symbol of the Emperor’s generosity. With her sceptre the gives the summons to the builders; at her feet sits a genius with an angle, palette, and chissel; another hovers over her with the figures of the Graces, as symbols of that good taste which prevailed in the whole. Next to the chief figure sits general Liberality, with a purse in her hand; below her a genius, with the table of the Roman Congiarius, and behind her the Austrian Liberality, her mantle embroidered with larks. Several Genii gather the treasures that flow from her Cornucopia, in order to distribute them among the votaries of the arts and sciences, chiefly those, whose good offices to the library had entitled them to regard. The execution of the Imperial orders personified, directs her face to the commanding figure, and three children present the model of the house. Next her an old man, the image of Experience, measures on a table the plan of the building, a genius standing beneath him with a plummet, as ready to begin. Next the old man sits Invention, with a statue of Isis in her right, and a book in her left hand, signifying, that Nature and Science are the fathers of Invention, the puzzling schemes of which are represented by a Sphinx lying before her.

This performance was compared to the great platfond of Le Moine at Versailles, with an eye to the newest productions of France and Germany alone: for the great gallery of the same palace, painted by Charles le Brun, is, without doubt, the sublimest performance of poetick painting, since the time of Rubens; and being possessed of this, as well as of the gallery of Luxemburg, France may boast of the two most learned allegorical performances.

The gallery of Le Brun contains the history of Louis XIV. from the Pyrenæan peace, to that of Nimeguen, in nine large, and eighteen smaller pieces: that in which the King determines war against Holland, contains, in itself alone, an ingenious and sublime application of almost the whole mythology[287]: its beauties are too exuberant for this treatise; let the artist’s ideas be judged only by two of the smaller compositions. He represents the famous passage over the Rhine: his hero sits in a chariot, a thunderbolt in his hand, and Hercules, the image of heroism, drives him through the midst of tempestuous waves. The figure representing Spain is borne down by the current: the river god, aghast, lets fall his oar: the victories, approaching on rapid wings, present shields, marked with the names of the towns conquered after the passage. Europa astonished beholds the scene.

Another represents the conclusion of the peace. Holland, though with-held by the Imperial Eagle, snatching her robe, runs to meet peace, descending from heaven, surrounded by the Genii of gaiety and pleasure, scattering flowers all around her. Vanity, crowned with peacocks feathers; endeavours to with-hold Spain and Germany from following their associate: but perceiving the cavern where arms are forged for France and Holland, and hearing same threatening in the skies, they likewise follow her example. Is not the former of these two performances comparable, in sublimity, to the Neptune of Homer, and the strides of his immortal horses?

But let examples be never so striking, allegory will still have adversaries: they rose in times of old, against that of Homer himself. There are people of too delicate a conscience, to bear truth and fiction in one piece: they are scandalized at a poor river-god in some sacred story. Poussin met with their reproaches, for personifying the Nile in his Moses[288]. A still stronger party has declared against the obscurity of allegory; for which they censured, and still continue to censure, Le Brun. But who is there so little experienced as not to know, that perspicuity and obscurity depend often upon time and circumstances? When Phidias first added a tortoise[289] to his Venus, ’tis likely that few were acquainted with his design in it, and bold was the artist who first dared to fetter her: time, however, made the meaning as clear as the figures themselves. Allegory, as Plato says[290] of poetry in general, has something enigmatick in itself, and is not calculated for the bulk of mankind. And should the painter, from the fear of being obscure, adapt his performance to the capacity of those, who look upon a picture as upon a tumultuous mob, he might as well check every new and extraordinary idea. The design of the famous Fred. Barocci, in his Martyrdom of St. Vitalis, by drawing a little girl alluring a magpye with a cherry, must have been very mysterious to many; the cherry[291] alluding to the season, in which that saint suffered.

The painting of the greater machines, and of the larger parts of publick buildings, palaces, &c. ought to be allegorical. Grandeur is relative to grandeur; and heroick actions are not to be sung in elegiack strains. But is every fiction allegorical in every place? The Venetian Doge might as well pretend to enjoy his superiority in Terra firma. I am mistaken if the Farnesian gallery is to be ranked among the allegorical performances. Nevertheless Annibal, perhaps not having it in his power to choose his subject, may have been too roughly used in my treatise: it is known that the Duke of Orleans desired Coypel to paint in his gallery the history of Æneas[292].

The Neptune of Rubens[293], in the gallery at Dresden, painted on purpose to adorn the magnificent entry of the Infant Ferdinand of Spain into Antwerp, as governor of the Netherlands, was there, on a triumphal arch, allegorical[294]. The god of the ocean frowning his waves into peace, was a poetick image of the Princes escaping the storm, and arriving safe at Genoa. But now he is nothing more than the Neptune of Virgil.

Vasari, when pretending to find allegory in the Athenian school of Raphael[295], viz. a companion of philosophy and astronomy with theology, seems to have required, and, by the common opinion of his time, to have been authorised to require something grand and above the vulgar, in the decorations of a grand apartment: though indeed there be nothing but what is obvious at first look, and that is, a representation of the Athenian academy[296].

But in ancient times, there was no story in a temple, that was not, at the same time, allegorical; allegory being closely interwoven with mythology: the gods of Homer, says an ancient, are the most lively images of the different powers of the universe; shadows of elevated ideas: and the gallantries of Jupiter and Juno, in the platfond of a temple of that goddess at Samos, were looked on as such; air being represented by Jupiter, and earth by Juno[297].

Here I think it incumbent upon me to clear up what I have said concerning the contradictions in the character of the Athenians, as represented by Parrhasius. This you think an easy matter; the painter having done it either in the historical way, or in several pictures: which latter is absurd. Has not there been even a statue of that people, done by Leochares, as well as a temple[298]? The composition of the picture in question, has still eluded all probable conjectures[299]; and the help of allegory having been called in, has produced nothing but Tesoro’s[300] ghastly phantoms. This fatal picture of Parrhasius, I am afraid, will of itself be a perpetual instance of the superior skill of the ancients in allegory.

What has been said already of allegory, in general, contains likewise what remarks may be made upon its being applied to decorations; nevertheless as you insist upon that point particularly, I shall lightly mention it too.

There are two chief laws in decoration, viz. to adorn suitably to the nature of things and places, and with truth; and not to follow an arbitrary fancy.

The first, as it concerns the artists in general, and dictates to them the adjusting of things in such a manner, as to make them relative to each other, claims especially a strict propriety in decorations:

The sacred shall not be mixed with the profane, nor the terrible with the sublime: this was the reason for rejecting the sheeps-heads[301], in the Doric Metopes, at the chapel of the palace of Luxemburg at Paris.

The second law excludes licentiousness; nay circumscribes the architect and decorator within much narrower limits than the painter; who sometimes must, in spite of reason, subject his own fancy, and Greece, to fashion, even in history-pieces: but publick buildings, and such works as are made for futurity, claim decorations that will outlast the whims of fashion; like those that, by their dignity and superior excellence, bore down the attacks of many a century: otherwise they fade away, grow insipid and out of fashion, perhaps before the finishing of the very work to which they are added.

The former law directs the artist to allegory: the latter to the imitation of antiquity; and this concerns chiefly the smaller decorations.

Such I call those that make not up of themselves a whole, or those that are additional to the larger ones. The ancients never applied shells, when not required by the fable; as in the case of Venus and the Tritons; or by the place, as in the temples of Neptune: and lamps decked with shells[302] are supposed to have made part of the implements of those temples. For the same reason they may give lustre; and be very significant, in proper places; as in the festoons of the Stadthouse at Amsterdam[303].

Sheep and ox-heads stripped of their skin, so far from justifying a promiscuous use of shells, as the author seems inclined to think, are plain arguments to the contrary: for they not only were relative to the ancient sacrifices, but were thought to be endowed with a power of averting lightning[304]; and Numa pretended to have been secretly instructed about them by Jupiter[305]. Nor can the Corinthian capital serve for an instance of a seemingly absurd ornament, authorised and rendered fashionable by time alone: for it seems of an origin more natural and reasonable than Vitruvius makes it; which is, however, an enquiry more adapted to a treatise on architecture. Pocock believed that the Corinthian order had not much reputation in the time of Pericles, who built a temple to Minerva: but he should have been reminded, that the Doric order belonged to the temples of that goddess, as Vitruvius informs us[306].

These decorations ought to be treated like architecture in general, which owes its grandeur to simplicity, to a system of few parts, which being not complex themselves, branch out into grace and splendour. Remember here the channelled pillars of the temple of Jupiter, at Agrigentum, (Girgenti now) which were large enough to contain, in one single gutter, a man at full length[307]. In the same manner these decorations must not only be few, but those must likewise consist of few parts, which are to appear with an air of grandeur and ease.

The first law (to return to allegory) might be lengthened out into many a subaltern rule: but the nature of things and circumstances is, and ever must be, the artist’s first aim; as for examples, refutation promises rather more instruction than authority.

Arion riding on his dolphin, as unmeaningly represented upon a Sopra-porta, in a new treatise on architecture[308], though a significant image in the apartments of a French Dauphin, would be a very poor one in any place where Philanthropy, or the protection of artists like him, could not immediately be hinted at. On the contrary, he would even to this day, though without his lyre, be an ornament to any publick building at Tarentum, because the ancient Tarentines, stamped on their coins the image of Taras, one of the sons of Neptune, riding on a dolphin, on a supposition of his being their first founder.

The allegorical decorations of a building, raised by the contributions of a whole nation, I mean the Duke of Marlborough’s palace at Blenheim, are absurd: enormous lions of massy stone, above two portals, tearing to pieces a little cock[309]. The hint sprung from a poor pun.

Nor can it be denied that antiquity furnishes some ideas seemingly analogous to this: as for instance, the lioness on the tomb of Leæna, the mistress of Aristogiton, raised in honour of her constancy amidst the torments applied by the tyrant, in order to extort from her a confession of the conspirators against him. But from this, I am afraid, nothing can arise in behalf of the above pitiful decoration: that mistress of the martyr of liberty having been a notorious woman, and whose name could not decently stand a publick trial. Of the same nature are the lizards and frogs on a temple[310], alluding to the names of the two architects, Saurus and Batrachus[311]: the above-mentioned lioness having no tongue, made the allegory still more expressive. The lioness on the tomb of the famous Lais[312], holding with her fore-paws a ram, as a symbol of her manners[313], was perhaps an imitation of the former. The lion was, in general, set upon the tombs of the brave.

It is not indeed to be pretended that every ornament and image of the ancient vases, tools, &c. should be allegorical; and to explain many of them, in that way, would be equally difficult and conjectural. I am not bold enough to maintain, that an earthen lamp[314], in the shape of an ox’s-head, means a perpetual remembrance of useful labours, on account of the perpetuity of the fire; nor to decypher here a mysterious sacrifice to Pluto and Proserpine[315]. But the image of a Trojan Prince, carried off by Jupiter, to be his favourite, was of great and honourable signification in the mantle of a Trojan. Birds pecking grapes seem as suitable to an urn, as the young Bacchus brought by Mercury to be nursed by Leucothea, on a large marble vase of the Athenian Salpion[316]. The grapes may be a symbol of the pleasures the deceased enjoy in Elysium: the pleasures of hereafter being commonly supposed to be such; as the deceased chiefly delighted in when alive. A bird, I need not say, was the image of the soul. A Sphinx, on a cup sacred to Bacchus, is supposed to be an allusion to the adventures of Oedipus at Thebes, Bacchus’s birth place[317]; as a Lizard on a cup of Mentor, may hint at the possessor, whose name perhaps was Saurus.

There is some reason to search for allegory, in most of the ancient performances, when we consider, that they even built allegorically. Such an allusive building was a gallery at Olympia[318], sacred to the seven liberal arts, and re-echoing seven times a poem read aloud there. A temple of Mercury, supported, instead of pillars, by Herms, or, as we now spell, Terms, on a coin of Aurelian[319], is of the same kind: there is on its front a dog, a cock, and a tongue; figures that want no explication.

Yet the temple of Virtue and Honour, built by Marcellus, was still more learnedly executed: having consecrated his Sicilian spoils to that purpose, he was disappointed by the priests, whom he first consulted on that design; who told him, that no single temple could admit of two divinities. Marcellus therefore ordered two temples to be built, adjoining to each other, in such a manner that whoever would be admitted to that of Honour must pass through that of Virtue[320]; thus publickly indicating, that virtue alone leads to true honour: this temple was near the Porta Capena[321]. And here I cannot help remembering those hollow statues of ugly satyrs[322], which, when opened, were found replete with little figures of the graces, to teach, that no judgment is to be formed from outward appearances, and that a fair mind makes amends for a homely body.

Perhaps, Sir, some of your objections may have been omitted: if so, it was against my will——and at this instant, I remember one concerning the Greek art of changing blue eyes to black ones. Dioscorides is the only writer that mentions it[323]. Attempts of this kind have been made in our days: a certain Silesian countess was the favourite beauty of the age, and universally acknowledged to be perfect, had it not been for her blue eyes, which some of her admirers wished were black. The lady, informed of the wishes of her adorers, by repeated endeavours overcame nature; her eyes became black,—and she blind.

I am not satisfied with myself, nor perhaps have given you satisfaction: but the art is inexhaustible, and all cannot be written. I only wanted to amuse myself agreeably at my leisure hours; and the conversation of my friend Frederic Oeser, a true imitator of Aristides, the painter of the soul, was not a little favourable to my purpose: the name of which worthy friend and artist[324] shall spread a lustre over the end of my treatise.