Thus is the modesty and diffidence of the artist, who, in the midst of the most glorious success, always sought and wished for more, brought as evidence against him by all his pretended judges and critics, if we except the single Bottari, who finds in it, with the highest finish, all the fortitude of mind characteristic of the Saviour, united to lively consideration of the suffering that awaited him – though even that is, in my opinion, below the conception of Lionardo.
Lest those who have read and recollect the character of Lionardo which I have submitted to the public, should, from the predilection with which I have dwelt on what I think the principal feature of his performance, the face and attitude of the hero, suspect I shift my ground, or charge me with inconsistency, I repeat what I said then, when I was nearly unacquainted with this work, that the distinguishing feature of his powers lay in the delineation of character, which he often raised to a species, and not seldom degraded to caricature. The triumphant proof of both is the great performance before us; the same mind that could unite divine power with the purest humanity, by an unaccountable dereliction, not only of the dignity due to his subject, but of sound sense, thought it not beneath him to haunt the recesses of deformity to unkennel a villain. Did he confine villainy to deformity? If he had, he would have disdained to give him two associates in feature; for the face of him who holds up his finger, and his who argues on the left extremity of the table, seem to have proceeded, if not absolutely from the same, from a very similar mould, yet they are in the number of the elect, and, though on the brink of caricature, have the air of good men. Expression alone separates them from the traitor, whom incapacity of remorse, hatred, rage at being discovered, and habitual meanness, seem to have divided into equal shares.
The portrait of Cesar Borgia, by Giorgione, now hung up for your study in the Academy for Painting, proves that the most atrocious mind may lurk under good, sedate, and even handsome features. Though his hand were not drawing a dagger, who would expect mercy or remorse from the evil methodized villainy of that eye? But Judas was capable of remorse; intolerant of the dreadful suffering with which the horrid act had overwhelmed him, he rushed on confession of his crime, restitution, and suicide.
To the countenance and attitude of St. John, blooming with youth, innocent, resigned, partaking perhaps somewhat too much of the feminine, and those of the two James's invigorated by the strength of virility, energetic and bold, none will refuse a competent praise of varied beauty; but they neither are nor ought to be ideal, and had they been so, they could neither compete nor interfere with the sublimity that crowns the Saviour's brow, and stamps his countenance with the God.
The felicity, novelty, and propriety of Lionardo's conception and invention, are powerfully seconded by every part of execution: – the tone which veils and wraps actors and scene into one harmonious whole, and gives it breadth; the style of design, grand without affectation, and, if not delicate or ideal, characteristic of the actors; the draperies folded with equal simplicity, elegance, and costume, with all the propriety of presenting the highest finish, without anxiety of touch, or thronging the eye.
So artless is the assemblage of the figures, that the very name of composition seems to degrade what appears arranged by Nature's own hand. That the nearest by relation, characters and age, should be placed nearest the master of the feast, and of course attract the eye soonest, was surely the most natural arrangement; but if they are conspicuous, they are not so at the expense of the rest: distance is compensated by action; the centre leads to all, as all lead to the centre. That the great restorer of light and shade sacrificed the effects and charms of chiaroscuro at the shrine of character, raised him at once above all his future competitors; changes admiration to sympathy, and makes us partners of the feast.
As expression sprang from the subject, so it gave rise to competition. That Raffaello was acquainted with Lionardo's work, and felt its power, is evident from his composition, engraved by M. Antonio: finding invention anticipated, he took refuge in imitation, and filled it with sentiments of his own; whether, beyond the dignity of attitude, he attempts to approach the profundity of Lionardo's Christ, cannot, from a print of very moderate dimensions, be decided. In the listening figure of Judas, with equal atrocity of guilt he appears to have combined somewhat more of apostolic consequence.
The well-known Last Supper of the Loggia, painted, or what is more probable, superintended by Raffaello, is, by being made a night scene, by contrast and chiaroscuro, become an original conception; but as it presents little more than groups busy to arrange themselves for sitting down or breaking up, it cannot excite more interest than what is due to contrast and effect, and active groups eager to move yet not tumultuary.
But if Lionardo disdained to consult the recesses of composition and the charms of artificial chiaroscuro, he did not debase his work to mere apposition: uniting the whole by tone, he gave it substance by truth of imitation, and effect by the disposition of the characters; the groups flanking each side of the Saviour, emerge, recede, and support each other with a roundness, depth, and evidence which leave all attempts at emendation or improvement hopeless. But why should I attempt to enumerate beauties which are before you, and which if you do not perceive yourselves, no words of mine can ever make you feel?
The universality of Lionardo da Vinci is become proverbial: but though possessed of every element, he rather gave glimpses than a standard of form; though full of energy, he had not powers effectually to court the various graces he pursued. His line was free from meagreness, and his forms presented volume, but he appears not to have ever been much acquainted, or to have sedulously sought much acquaintance, with the Antique. Character was his favourite study, and character he has often raised from an individual to a species, and as often depressed to caricature. The strength of his execution lay in the delineation of male heads; those of his females owe nearly all their charms to chiaroscuro, of which he is the supposed inventor: they are seldom more discriminated than the children they fondle; they are sisters of one family. The extremities of his hands are often inelegant, though timorously drawn, like those of Christ among the Doctors in the picture we lately saw exhibited. Lionardo da Vinci touched in every muscle of his forms the master-key of the passion he wished to express, but he is ideal only in chiaroscuro.
Such was the state of the Art before the appearance of M. Agnolo and Raffaello, and the establishment of style.
Of M. Agnolo it is difficult to decide who have understood less, his encomiasts or his critics, though both rightly agree in dating from him an epoch – those of the establishment, these of the subversion of Art.
It is the lot of Genius to be opposed, and to be invigorated by opposition. All extremes touch each other: frigid praise and frigid censure wait on easily attainable or common powers: but the successful adventurer in the realms of Discovery, in spite of the shrugs, checks, and sneers of the timid, the malign, and the envious, leaps on an unknown or long lost shore, ennobles it with his name, and grasps immortality.
M. Agnolo appeared, and soon discovered that works worthy of perpetuity could neither be built on defective and unsubstantial forms, nor on the transient whim of fashion and local sentiment; that their stamina were the real stamina of Nature, the genuine feelings of humanity; and planned for painting what Homer had planned for poetry, the epic part, which, with the utmost simplicity of a whole, should unite magnificence of plan and endless variety of subordinate parts. His line became generic, but perhaps too uniformly grand: character and beauty were admitted only as far as they could be made subservient to grandeur. The child, the female, meanness, deformity, were by him indiscriminately stamped with grandeur. A beggar rose from his hand the patriarch of poverty; the hump of his dwarf is impressed with dignity; his women are moulds of generation; his infants teem with the man; his men are a race of giants. This is the "terribil via," this is that "magic circle," in which we are told that none durst move but he. No, none but he who makes sublimity of conception his element of form. M. Agnolo himself offers the proof: for the lines that bear in a mass on his mighty tide of thought in the Gods and Patriarchs and Sibyls of the Sistine Chapel, already