I. Natural Beauty
Good  taste, which is becoming more prevalent throughout the world, had its origins under the skies of Greece. Every invention of foreign nations which
was brought to Greece was, as it were, only a first seed that assumed new form
and character here. We are told that Minerva chose this land, with its mild seasons, above all others for the Greeks in the knowledge that it would be productive of genius.

The taste which the Greeks exhibited in their works of art was unique
and has seldom been taken far from its source without loss. Under more distant skies it found tardy recognition and without a doubt was completely
unknown in the northern zones during a time when painting and sculpture,
of which the Greeks are the greatest teachers, found few admirers. Th is was
a time when the most valuable works of Correggio were used to cover the
windows of the royal stables in Stockholm.

One has to admit that the reign of the great August3 was the happy period
during which the arts were introduced into Saxony as a foreign element.
Under his successor, the German Titus, they became firmly established in
this country, and with their help good taste is now becoming common.
An eternal monument to the greatness of this monarch is that he furthered
good taste by collecting and publicly displaying the greatest treasures
from Italy and the very best paintings that other countries have produced.
His eagerness to perpetuate the arts did not diminish until authentic works
of Greek masters and indeed those of the highest quality were available for
artists to imitate. Th e purest sources of art have been opened, and fortunate is the person who discovers and partakes of them. Th is search means going to Athens; and Dresden will from now on be an Athens for artists.

The only way for us to become great or, if this be possible, inimitable, is
to imitate the ancients. What someone once said of Homer—that to understand him well means to admire him—is also true for the art works of the ancients, especially the Greeks. One must become as familiar with them
as with a friend in order to find their statue of Laocoon4 just as inimitable
as Homer. In such close acquaintance one learns to judge as Nicomachus
judged Zeuxis’ Helena: ‘Behold her with my eyes’, he said to an ignorant
person who found fault with this work of art, ‘and she will appear a goddess to you.’

With such eyes did Michelangelo, Raphael, and Poussin see the works of
the ancients. They partook of good taste at its source, and Raphael did this
in the very land where it had begun. We know that he sent young artists to
Greece in order to sketch for him the relics of antiquity.
Th e relationship between an ancient Roman statue and a Greek original
will generally be similar to that seen in Virgil’s imitation of Homer’s Nausicaa,
in which he compares Dido and her followers to Diana in the midst of her
Oreads.

Laocoon was for the artist of old Rome just what he is for us—the demonstration of Polyclitus’ rules, the perfect rules of art.
I need not remind the reader that certain negligences can be discovered
in even the most famous works of Greek artists. Examples are the dolphin
which was added to the Medicean Venus  together with the playing children;
and the work of Dioscorides, except the main fi gure, in his cameo of
Diomedes  with the Palladium. It is well known that the workmanship on
the reverse of the fi nest coins of the kings of Syria and Egypt rarely equals
that of the heads of these kings portrayed on the obverse. But great artists
are wise even in their faults. They cannot err without teaching. One should
observe their works as Lucian would have us observe the Jupiter of Phidias:
as Jupiter himself, not his footstool.

In the masterpieces of Greek art, connoisseurs and imitators find not only
nature at its most beautiful but also something beyond nature, namely certain
ideal forms of its beauty, which, as an ancient interpreter of Plato teaches us,
come from images created by the mind alone.

The most beautiful body of one of us would probably no more resemble the
most beautiful Greek body than Iphicles resembled his brother, Hercules.
The first development of the Greeks was influenced by a mild and clear sky;
but the practice of physical exercises from an early age gave this development its noble forms.

Consider, for example, a young Spartan conceived by a hero
and heroine and never confined in swaddling clothes, sleeping on the ground
from the seventh year on and trained from infancy in wrestling and swimming.
Compare this Spartan with a young Sybarite of our time and then
decide which of the two would be chosen by the artist as a model for young
Theseus, Achilles, or even Bacchus. Modelled from the latter it would be a
Theseus fed on roses, while from the former would come a Theseus fed on
flesh, to borrow the terms used by a Greek painter to characterize two different  conceptions of this hero.

The grand games gave every Greek youth a strong incentive for physical exercise, and the laws demanded a ten month preparation period for the Olympic Games, in Elis, at the very place where they were held. The highest prizes were not always won by adults but often by youths, as told in Pindar’s odes.

To resemble the god-like Diagoras was the fondest wish of every young man. Behold the swift Indian who pursues a deer on foot—how briskly his juices must flow, how flexible and quick his nerves and muscles must be, how light the whole structure of his body! Thus did Homer portray his heroes, and his Achilles he chiefly noted as being ‘swift of foot’. These exercises gave the bodies of the Greeks the strong and manly contours which the masters then imparted to their statues without any excess.

IV. Noble Simplicity and Quiet Grandeur

The general and most distinctive characteristics of the Greek masterpieces are, finally, a noble simplicity and quiet grandeur, both in posture and expression. Just as the depths of the sea always remain calm however much the surface may rage, so does the expression of the figures of the Greeks reveal a great and composed soul even in the midst of passion. Such a soul is reflected in the face of Laocoon—and not in the face alone—despite his violent suffering. The pain is revealed in all the muscles and sinews of his body, and we ourselves can almost feel it as we observe the painful contraction of the abdomen alone without regarding the face and other parts of the body. This pain, however, expresses itself with no sign of rage in his face or in his entire bearing. He emits no terrible screams such as Virgil’s Laocoon, for the opening of his mouth does not permit it; it is rather an anxious and troubled sighing as described by Sadoleto. The physical pain and the nobility of soul are distributed with equal strength over the entire body and are, as it were, held in balance with one another. Laocoon suffers, but he suffers like Sophocles’ Philoctetes; his pain touches our very souls, but we wish that we could bear misery like this great man.

The expression of such nobility of soul goes far beyond the depiction of

beautiful nature. The artist had to feel the strength of this spirit in himself and then impart it to his marble. Greece had artists who were at once philosophers, and there was more than one Metrodorus. Wisdom extended its hand to art and imbued its figures with more than common souls.

If the artist had clothed him, as would indeed befit his station as a priest, Laocoon’s pain would have lost half its expression. Bernini even claimed to detect in the rigidity of one of Laocoon’s thighs the first effects of the snake’s venom.

All movements and poses of Greek figures not marked by such traits of

wisdom, but instead by passion and violence, were the result of an error of conception which the ancient artists called parenthyrsos.

The more tranquil the state of the body the more capable it is of portraying the true character of the soul. In all positions too removed from this tranquillity, the soul is not in its most essential condition, but in one that is agitated and forced. A soul is more apparent and distinctive when seen in violent passion, but it is great and noble when seen in a state of unity and calm.

The portrayal of suffering alone in Laocoon would have been parenthyrsos; therefore the artist, in order to unite the distinctive and the noble qualities of soul, showed him in an action that was closest to a state of tranquillity for one in such pain. But in this tranquillity the soul must be distinguished by traits that are uniquely its own and give it a form that is calm and active at the same time, quiet but not indifferent or sluggish. The common taste of artists of today, especially the younger ones, is in complete opposition to this. Nothing gains their approbation but contorted postures and actions in which bold passion prevails. This they call art executed with spirit, or franchezza. Their favorite term is contrapposto, which represents for them the essence of a perfect work of art. In their figures they demand a soul which shoots like a comet out of their midst; they would like every figure to be an Ajax or a Capaneus.

The arts themselves have their infancy as do human beings, and they begin as do youthful artists with a preference for amazement and bombast. Such was the tragic muse of Aeschylus; his hyperbole makes his Agamemnon in part far more obscure than anything that Heraclitus wrote. Perhaps the first Greek painters painted in the same manner that their first good tragedian wrote. Rashness and volatility lead the way in all human actions; steadiness and composure follow last. The latter, however, take time to be discovered and are found only in great matters; strong passions can be of advantage to their students. The wise artist knows how difficult these qualities are to imitate.

ut sibi quivis

Speret idem, sudet multum frustraque laboret

Ausus idem.

(Horace)

La Fage, the great draughtsman, was unable to match the taste of the ancients. His works are so full of movement that the observer’s attention is at the same time attracted and distracted, as at a social gathering where everyone tries to talk at once.

The noble simplicity and quiet grandeur of the Greek statues is also the true hallmark of Greek writings from their best period, the writings of the  Socratian school. And these are the best characteristics of Raphael’s greatness, which he attained through imitation of the Greeks.

So great a soul in so handsome a body as Raphael’s was needed to first feel and to discover in modern times the true character of the ancients. He had, furthermore, the great good fortune to achieve this at an age when ordinary and undeveloped souls are still insensitive to true greatness.

We must approach his works with the true taste of antiquity and with eyes

that have learned to sense these beauties. Then the calm serenity of the main figures in Raphael’s ‘Attila’, which seem lifeless to many, will be for us most significant and noble. The Roman bishop here, who dissuaded the king of the Huns from attacking Rome, does not make the gestures and movements of an orator but is shown rather as a man of dignity whose mere presence calms a violent spirit, as in Virgil’s description:

Tum pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem

Conspexere, silent arrectisque auribus adstant.

(Aen. I)

Full of confidence he faces the raging tyrant, while the two apostles hovering in the clouds are not like avenging angels but, if I may compare the sacred with the profane, like Homer’s Jupiter, who makes Mount Olympus quiver with a blink of his eyes.

Algardi, in his famous representation of this same story in bas-relief on an altar of St Peter’s in Rome, did not give or know how to give the figures of his two apostles the active tranquillity of his great predecessor. There they appeared like messengers of the lord of hosts, but here they are like mortal warriors with human weapons.

How few experts have been able to understand the grandeur of expression which Guido Reni gave his beautiful painting of Archangel Michael in the Church of the Capuchins in Rome. Concha’s St Michael is preferred because his face shows anger and revenge, whereas Guido’s archangel, after casting down the enemy of God and man, hovers over him without bitterness, his expression calm and serene.

Just as calm and serene is the avenging hovering angel with whom the English poet compares the victorious commander at Blenheim as protector

of Britannia. The Royal Gallery of Paintings in Dresden now contains among its treasurers one of Raphael’s best works, as Vasari and others have noted. It is a Madonna and Child with St Sixtus and St Barbara kneeling on each side, and two angels in the foreground. Th is picture was the central altar-piece at the monastery of St Sixtus in Piacenza. Art lovers and connoisseurs went to see this Raphael just as people traveled to Thespiae solely to see Praxiteles’ beautiful statue of Cupid.

Behold this Madonna, her face filled with innocence and extraordinary greatness, in a posture of blissful serenity! It is the same serenity with which the ancients imbued the depictions of their deities. How awesome and noble is her entire contour! The child in her arms is a child elevated above ordinary children; in its face a divine radiance illuminates the innocence of childhood. St Barbara kneels in worshipful stillness at her side, but far beneath the majesty of the main figure—in a humility for which the great master found compensation in the gentle charm of her expression. St Sixtus, kneeling opposite her, is a venerable old man whose features bear witness to his youth devoted to God.

St Barbara’s reverence for the Madonna, which is made more vivid and moving by the manner in which she presses her beautiful hands to her breast, helps to support the gesture which St Sixtus makes with his hand. This gesture of ecstasy was chosen by the artist to add variety to his composition and is more appropriate to masculine strength than to feminine modesty.

Time has, to be sure, robbed this painting of much of its glory, and its color has partially faded, but the soul which the artist breathed into the work of his hands still makes it live.

All those who approach this and other works of Raphael in the hope of finding there the trifling beauties that make the works of Dutch painters so popular: the painstaking diligence of a Netscher or a Dou, the ivory flesh tones of a van der Werff , or the tidy manner of some of Raphael’s countrymen in our times—those, I say, will never find in Raphael the great Raphael.

VI. Painting

Everything that can be said in praise of Greek sculpture should in all likelihood also hold true for Greek painting. But time and human barbarity have robbed us of the means to make sure judgments.

It is conceded only that Greek painters had knowledge of contour and expression; they are given no credit for perspective, composition, or coloring.

This judgment is based partly on bas-reliefs, partly on the paintings of antiquity (one cannot say that they are Greek) discovered in and near Rome, in subterranean vaults of the palaces of Maecenas, of Titus, Trajan, and the Antonini. Of these, barely thirty have been preserved intact, and some only in the form of mosaics.

Turnbull included in his work on ancient paintings a collection of the best-known items, drawn by Camillo Paderni and engraved by Mynde, which  give the magnificent but misused paper of his book its only value. Among them are two copies from originals in the collection of the famous physician Richard Mead of London.

Others have already noted that Poussin made studies of the so-called ‘Aldobrandini Marriage’, that there are drawings by Annibale Carracci of apresumed ‘Marcius Coriolanus’, and that there is a great similarity between the heads of Guido Reni’s fi gures and those of the well-known mosaic ‘The Abduction of Europa’.

If such remnants of frescos provided the only basis for judging the ancient paintings, one might be inclined even to deny that their artists knew contour and expression. We are informed that the paintings with life-sized figures taken, together with the walls, from the theater in Herculaneum give a poor impression of their skills: Theseus as the conqueror of the Minotaur, with the young Athenians embracing his knees and kissing his hands; Flora with Hercules and a faun; an alleged ‘Judgment of the Decemvir Appius Claudius’—all are, according to the testimony of an artist, either mediocre or poor. Not only do most of the faces lack expression but those in the ‘Appius Claudius’ lack even character. But this very fact proves that they are paintings by very mediocre artists; for the knowledge of beautiful proportion, of bodily contour, and expression found in Greek sculptors must also have been possessed by their good painters.

Although the ancient painters deserve recognition of their accomplishments, much credit is also due the moderns. In the science of perspective modern painters are clearly superior despite all learned defense of the ancients. The laws of composition and arrangement were imperfectly known to antiquity as evidenced by bas-reliefs dating from the times when Greek art .flourished in Rome.

As for the use of color, both the accounts of ancient writers and the remains of ancient paintings testify in favor of the moderns.

Various other objects of painting have likewise been raised to a higher

degree of perfection in more modern times, for example, landscapes and animal species. The ancient painters seem not to have been acquainted with more handsome species of animals in other regions, if one may judge from individual cases such as the horse of Marcus Aurelius, the two horses in Monte Cavallo, the horses above the portal of San Marco’s Church in Venice, presumably by Lysippus, or the Farnesian Bull and the other animals of this group.

It should be mentioned in passing that in the portrayal of horses theancients did not observe the diametrical movements of the legs as seen in the Venetian horses and those depicted on old coins. Some modern artists have, in their ignorance, followed their example and have even been defended for doing so.

Our landscapes, especially those of the Dutch, owe their beauty mainly to

the fact that they are painted in oil; their colors are stronger, more lively and vivid. Nature itself, under a thicker and moister atmosphere, has contributed not a little to the growth of this type of art. These and other advantages of modern painters over the ancients deserve to be better demonstrated, with more thorough proof than heretofore.

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