Art Principles Part 10

[b] Bologna Museum.

[c] For example, Rubens's David's Last Song, Frankfort Museum.

It may be observed, however, that in certain cases artificial conditions may render an open mouth in a picture of comparatively little significance. A painted laugh for instance may only become objectionable to the observer when the work is constantly before him; but when it is in a picture gallery and he sees it but rarely, the lasting character of the feature is not presented to his mind. The Laughing Cavalier of Franz Hals, though violating the principle, does not appear in bad taste to the average visitor to the Wallace Collection. In the case of Rembrandt's portrait of himself with Saskia on his knee, where the artist has his lips parted in the act of laughing, there is an additional reason why the transient expression should not tire. Because of the number of self-portraits he painted, the countenance of Rembrandt is quite familiar to most picture gallery visitors, and to these the laugh in the Dresden picture could not possibly pa.s.s as an habitual expression.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 15 (See page 176) Winslow Homer's All's Well (_Boston Museum_)]

CONTRASTS

Designs specially built up for the purpose of contrasting two or more attributes or conditions are almost invariably uninteresting unless the motive be hidden behind a definite action which appears to control the scheme. This is because of the difficulty of otherwise connecting the personages contrasted in a particular action of common understanding. A design of Hercules and Omphale affords a superior contrast of strength and beauty to a composition of Strength and Wisdom. In each case a herculean figure and a lovely woman represent the respective qualities, but in the first the figures are connected by expression and action, and in the second no connection can be established. So in contrasting beauty of mind with that of form, this is much better represented by such a subject as Hippocrates and the Bride of Perdiccas than in the Venetian manner of figures unconnected in the design. And in respect of conditions, Frith's picture of Poverty and Wealth, where a carriage full of fas.h.i.+onable women drives through a poor section of London, has little more than a topographical interest, but in a subject such as The First Visit of Croesus to aesop, the contrast between poverty and wealth would deeply strike the imagination.

In contrasts of good and evil, vice and virtue, and similar subjects, it is inferior art to represent the evil character by an ugly figure. As elsewhere pointed out, deformity of any kind injures the aesthetic value of a picture because it tends to neutralize the pleasurable feeling derived from the beauty present. The poet may join physical deformity with beauty because he can minimize the defect with words, but the painter has no such recourse.[58] A deformed personage in a composition is therefore to be deprecated unless as a necessary accessory in a historical work, in which case he must be subordinated to the fullest extent possible. The figure of Satan, of an exaggerated satyr type, has often been introduced into subjects such as the Temptation of Christ, though not by artists of the first rank.[a] Such pictures do not live as high cla.s.s works of art however they be painted. Correggio makes a contrast of Vice and Virtue in two paintings,[b] representing Vice by a man bound, but usually in the mature time of the Renaissance, Vice was shown as a woman, either beautiful in features, or with her face partly hidden, various accessories indicating her character. A notable exception is Salviati's Justice where a hideous old woman takes the role of Vice.[c] Even in cases where a witch has to be introduced, as in representations of Samuel's Curse, it is not necessary to follow the example of Salvator Rosa, and render her with deformed features, for there are several excellent works where this defect is avoided.[d]

[a] See examples by Ary Scheffer, Luxembourg; and H. Thoma, Burnitz Coll.

[b] Both at the Louvre.

[c] The Bargello, Florence.

[d] As in K. Meyer's picture.

An effective design with the purpose of contrasting the ages of man is not possible, firstly, because the number of ages represented must be very limited, and, secondly, for the reason that the figures cannot be connected together in a free and easy manner. Hence all such pictures have been failures, though a few great artists have attempted the subject. t.i.tian tried it with two children, a young couple, and an old man, a.s.sorting the personages casually in a landscape without attempting to connect them together in action.[a] At about the same time Lotto produced a contrast, also with three ages represented, namely, a boy, a young man, and an elderly man.[b] These personages sit together as if they had been photographed for the purpose, without a ray of intelligence pa.s.sing between them. But this is far better than Grien's Three Ages,[c] for here the artist has strangely confused life and death, exhibiting a grown maiden, a middle-aged woman, and a skin-coated skeleton holding an hour-gla.s.s. The best design of the subject is Van Dyck's Four Ages.[d] He shows a child asleep near a young woman who is selling flowers to a soldier, and an old man is in the background.

There is thus a presumed connection between three of the personages, but naturally the composition is somewhat stiff. The only other design worth mentioning is by Boecklin, who also represents four ages.[e] Two children play in the background of a landscape; a little farther back is a young woman; then a cavalier on horseback; and finally on the top of an arch an old man whom Death in the form of a skeleton is about to strike. But here again there is no connection between the figures, the consequent formality half destroying the aesthetic value of the work.

From these examples than which there is none better, it may be gauged that it is hopeless to expect a good design from a subject where the ages of man are contrasted. If represented at all, the ages should be contrasted in separate pictures, as Lancret painted them.

[a] Bridgewater Coll., England.

[b] Pitti Palace, Florence.

[c] The Prado, Madrid.

[d] Vincenza Museum.

[e] Vita somnium breve.

The practice of presenting nude with clothed figures where the subject does not absolutely compel it, is commonly supposed to be for the purpose of contrast. This may have been the object in some cases, but in very few is the interest in the contrast not outweighed by the bizarre appearance of the work. As a rule in these pictures there is nothing in the expressions or actions of the personages depicted to suggest a reason for the absence of clothes from some of them, and so to the average observer they form a "problem" cla.s.s of painting. The first important work of the kind executed was Sebastiano del Piombo's Concert, in which the group consists of two nude women, one with a reed pipe, and two men attired in Venetian costume, of whom one handles a guitar.[a]

The figures are very beautiful and the landscape is superb, but as one cannot account for the nude figures in an open-air musical party, the aesthetic value of the work is largely diminished. This painting has suggested several designs to modern artists, the most notable being Manet's Dejeuner sur l'Herbe, where a couple of nude women with two men dressed in modern clothes are shown in a picnic on the gra.s.s. Not only is the scheme inexplicable, but the invention is so extravagant as to provoke the lowest of suggestions. In a composition of this kind only a great artist can build up a harmonious design.

[a] At the Louvre. Formerly attributed to Giorgione.

t.i.tian's picture known as Sacred and Profane Love,[a] where the figure of a nude woman is opposed to one clothed, may really signify any of a dozen ideas, but the artist probably had no other scheme in his mind than to represent different types of beautiful women. Crowe and Cavalcaselli's suggested t.i.tle of L'Amour ingenu et l'Amour satisfait, was certainly never conceived by t.i.tian, nor is Burckhardt's proposal, Love and Prudery, possible in view of the flowers in the hand of the draped figure. In any case this picture is the greatest of its kind, for the composition is so delicate and harmonious, and the art so perfect, as to render its precise meaning a matter of little consideration.

Another picture of Sacred and Profane Love was painted by Grien.[b] He shows a nude woman from whom Cupid has just drawn the drapery, and another woman concealing her figure with loose drapery. The effect is weak. The nude figures in the well-known Drinkers of Velasquez[c] are undisturbing because they are not very prominent in the picture, but their significance is not apparent.

[a] Borghese Gallery, Rome.

[b] Frankfort Museum.

[c] The Prado, Madrid.

No one has yet properly explained the meaning of the nude male figures standing at ease in the background of Michelangelo's celebrated Holy Family.[a] They are apparently pagan G.o.ds, and it is suggested that the artist intended to signify the overthrow of the Grecian deities by the coming of Christ. Such an explanation might be possible with another painter, but it does not accord with our conception of the mind of Michelangelo. A still greater puzzle is offered by Luca Signorelli who, in the landscape background of the bust portrait of a man, shows two nude men to the right of the portrait, and two attired women at the left.[b] It is impossible to suggest any meaning of this extraordinary invention.

[a] Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

[b] Berlin Gallery.

THE REPRESENTATION OF DEATH

Death is a subject inappropriate to the art of painting except where it is dealt with symbolically or as an historical incident. Naturally in either of these cases any realistic representation of death, or of distortion connected therewith, should be studiously avoided. For while many aspects of death may not be unpleasant to the senses, its actual presence--the cold immobility; the pulseless soulless, decaying thing; the appalling mirror of our own fate--these things are most unpleasant, and hence should have no place in painting. In sculpture, represented in a certain way, death is admissible, for in marble or bronze a body may be carved indicating only the eternal composure of a beautiful form.

This is how the Greeks showed death, whether in the case of a warrior fallen on the battlefield, or as the twin brother of Sleep. But the painter is less fortunate: for him death is decay.

The presence of so many scenes of death in the paintings of the past was the result of accident. For a long while after the dawn of the Renaissance, those controlling churches and other religious inst.i.tutions of the Christians were the chief and almost the only patrons of art, and they required paintings as well for didactic purposes as for decoration.

For some time pictures often took the place of writing, where comparatively few could read, in the inculcation of Christian doctrines and history, and they were largely used as images before which people could kneel in prayer. The most important facts bearing upon Christian faith are concerned with death, and so there have been acc.u.mulated thousands of paintings of scenes of the Crucifixion, the death-beds of saints, instances of martyrdom, and so on. While these paintings have been highly useful as tending to invite reverence for a sublime creed, it would be injurious to suggest that generally they take a high place in art. Some of them do, but the very large number of them which indicate dying agony, or recent death with all its mortal changes, must not be approved from a strict art point of view, for any beauty which may be present apart from the subject is instantly neutralized by the pain and horror arising from the invention. But it is evidently unnecessary to produce such pictures, even in the case of the Crucifixion, for there are ample works in existence to show that the face and body of Christ can be so presented as to be free from indications of physical suffering or decay.

But if we are to protest against designs exhibiting forbidding aspects of death in sacred works, what can we say of the pictures of executions, ma.s.sacres, plagues, and so on, which ever and again have been produced since the middle of the nineteenth century? Deeds of heroism or self-sacrifice on the battlefield where bodies of the fallen may be outlined are well, but simple wholesale murders as presented by Benjamin-Constant, Heim, and fifty others, where the motive does not pretend to be anything else than ma.s.sacre or other ghastly event, can only live as examples of degraded art. There may be something said for Verestchagin, who painted heaps of heads and skulls, and scattered corpses, in order to show the evils of war, but if the arts are to be used at all for such a purpose, the poet or orator would be much more impressive because he could veil the hideous side of the subject with pathos and imagery, and further differentiate between just and unjust wars. The painter is powerless to do these things. He can only represent the horrors of war by depicting horrible things which is entirely beyond the province of his art. The purpose of art is to give pleasure, and if the design descend below the line where displeasure begins, then the art is no more.

How easy it is for the aesthetic value of a picture to be lowered by the representation of a corpse, is shown in three celebrated paintings--the anatomical works of Rembrandt[a] and De Keyser.[b] Probably these works were ordered to honour the surgeons or schools concerned, but the object would have been better served by a composition such as Eakin's Dr.

Cross's Surgical Clinic.[c] Here the leading figure is also giving a lesson to students, and practical demonstration is proceeding, but there is no skeleton or corpse to damage the picture. Fromentin said that the Tulp work left him very cold,[d] and although he endeavoured to find technical ground for this, it is more than likely that the princ.i.p.al reason lay in the involuntary mental disturbance brought about by the corpse. Another fine design largely injured by corporeal evidence of death is Ingres's Oedipus and the Sphinx,[e] where a foot rises out of a hole in the rock near the Sphinx, the presumption of course being that the body of a man who had failed with the riddle had lately been thrown there. The invention is most deplorable in such a picture.

[a] Lesson in Anatomy of Professor Tulp, and the fragment of a similar work, both at The Hague.

[b] Rijks Museum, Amsterdam.

[c] Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia.

[d] Masters of Other Days.

[e] At the Louvre.

The use of a skeleton as a symbol of death in painting seems to have been unusual during the Renaissance till towards the end of the fifteenth century. The earliest artist of note in this period to adopt it, was Jean Prevost who represented a man taking a letter from a skeleton without seeing the messenger.[a] Then came Grien who painted three works of the kind. In the first Death holds an hour-gla.s.s at the back of a woman, and points to the position of the sand[b]; in the second the bony figure has clutched a girl by the hair[c]; and the third represents a skeleton apparently kissing a girl.[d] They are all hideous works, and might well have acted as a warning to succeeding artists.

After Grien the use of a skeleton in design was practically confined to the smaller German masters till the middle of the second half of the sixteenth century, when it disappeared from serious work. From this time on, for the next three centuries artists of repute rarely introduced a skeleton into a painting, though it is to be found occasionally in engravings. One might have supposed that the unsightly form had been abandoned with the imps, evil spirits, and other crudities of past days, but it was not to be. The search for novelties in recent times has only resulted in the resuscitation of bygone eccentricities, and we must not be surprised that the skeleton is amongst them.

[a] Old Man and Death, Bruges.

[b] Imperial Gallery, Vienna.

[c] Girl and Death, Basle Museum.

[d] Basle Museum.

Modern artists have displayed considerable ingenuity in the use of the skeleton, but the results have necessarily only succeeded in degrading the art. Rethel figures a skeleton in the costume of a monk who is ringing a bell at a dance.[a] Several of the dancers have fallen dead, apparently from plague, and the whole scene is ghastly. Henneberg has a Fortune allegory in which Death is about to seize a horseman who is chasing a nude woman,[b] this design being a slight modification of a variety of prints executed in the sixteenth century. Thoma uses a skeleton in a most bizarre manner. He subst.i.tutes it for the serpent in a picture of Adam and Eve,[c] and in another work a.s.sociates it with Cupid.[d] Two lovers are talking, and Death stands behind the woman whose hat Cupid is lifting. A terrible picture with a political bearing was painted by Uhde.[e] It represents a crowd of revolutionists rus.h.i.+ng towards a bridge, while a skeleton in modern costume waves a sword and cheers them on. These instances suffice to indicate the difficulty in the production of a fine work of art with so hideous a form as a skeleton thrown into prominence.

[a] Death at a Masked Ball.

[b] Race for Fortune.

[c] Sin and Death.