Johann Joachim Winckelmann

“ Contrast is the darling of their ideas; in it they fancy every perfection. They fill their performances with comet-like excentric souls, despising every thing but an Ajax or a Capaneus.
Arts have their infancy as well as men; they begin, as well as the artist, with froth and bombast: in such buskins the muse of Æschilus stalks, and part of the diction in his Agamemnon is more loaded with hyperboles than all Heraclitus’s nonsense. Perhaps the primitive Greek painters drew in the same manner that their first good tragedian thought in. ”

“ Two of the most beautiful youthful heads are a Minerva of Aspasius, now at Vienna, and a young Hercules in the Museum of the late Baron Stosch, at Florence.
But let no man, who has not formed his taste upon antiquity, take it into his head to act the connoisseur of beauty: his ideas must be a parcel of whims. Of modern beauties I know none that could vie with the Greek female dancer of Mr. Mengs, big as life, painted in Crayons on wood, for the Marquis Croimare at Paris, or with his Apollo amidst the muses, in the Villa Albano, to whom that of Guido in the Aurora, compared, is but a mortal. ”

“ Never admire either the marble’s radiant polish, or the picture’s glossy surface. For that the journeyman sweated; for this the painter vegetated only. Bernini’s Apollo is as polished as HE in the Belvedere; and there is much more labour hid in one of Trevisani’s Madonnas, than in that of Corregio. Whenever trusty arms and laborious industry prevail, we defy all the ancients. We are not their inferiors even in managing porphyry, though a mob of scriblers, with Clarencas in their rear-guard, deny it. ”

“ The little heads of Albano have an air of beauty; but it is a different thing to express beauty in little, and in great. To have the theory of navigation, and to guide a ship through the ocean, are two things. Poussin, who had studied antiquity more than his predecessors, knew perfectly well what his shoulders could bear, and never ventured into the great.
The Greeks alone seem to have thrown forth beauty, as a potter makes his pot. The heads on all the coins of their Free-states have forms above nature, which they owe to the line that forms their profile. ”

“ Their imitation discovering in the one every beauty diffused through Nature, shewing in the other the pitch to which the most perfect Nature can elevate herself, when soaring above the senses, will quicken the genius of the artist, and shorten his discipleship: he will learn to think and draw with confidence, seeing here the fixed limits of human and divine beauty.
Building on this ground, his hand and senses directed by the Greek rule of beauty, the modern artist goes on the surest way to the imitation of Nature. ”

“ From that time the Graces entirely forsook him: how could they abide with a man who begun his career from the end opposite to the ancients? His forms he compiled from common nature, and his ideas from the inhabitants of climates unknown to him; for in Italy’s happiest parts nature differs from his figures. He was worshipped as the genius of art, and universally imitated; for, in our days, statues being erected to piety only, none to wisdom, a statue à la Bernini is likelier to make the kitchen prosper than a Laocoon. ”

“ The decorations of architecture are often as ill-chosen. Arms and trophies deck a hunting-house as nonsensically, as Ganymede and the eagle, Jupiter and Leda, figure it among the reliefs of the brazen gates of St. Peter’s church at Rome.
Arts have a double aim: to delight and to instruct. Hence the greatest landscape-painters think, they have fulfilled but half [64] their task in drawing their pieces without figures.
Let the artist’s pencil, like the pen of Aristotle, be impregnated with reason; that, after having satiated the eye, he may nourish the mind: and this he may obtain by Allegory ”

“ The Drapery of the vestals above, is grand and elegant. The smaller foldings spring gradually from the larger ones, and in them are lost again, with a noble freedom, and gentle harmony of the whole, without hiding the correct Contour. How few of the moderns would stand the test here!
Justice, however, shall not be refused to some great modern artists, who, without impairing nature or truth, have left, in certain cases, the road which the ancients generally pursued. ”

“ Myriads, you say, the bulk of mankind, have not even the least notion of Grace—but what do they know of beauty, taste, generosity, or all the higher luxuries of the soul? These flowers of the human mind were not intended for universal growth, though their seeds lie in every breast.
Grace, in works of art, concerns the human figure only; it modifies the attitude and countenance, dress and drapery. ”

“ It is not to be denied, that the too close imitation of antiquity is very often apt to lead us to a certain barrenness, unknown to those who imitate nature: various herself, nature teaches variety, and no votary of her’s can be charged with a sameness: whereas Guido, Le Brun, and some other votaries of antiquity, repeated the same face in many of their works. A certain ideal beauty was become so familiar to them, as to slide into their figures even against their will. ”

“ Books may be written, and works of art executed, at a very small expence of ideas. A painter may mechanically paint a Madonna, and please; and a professor, in the same manner, may write Metaphysics to the admiration of a thousand students. But would you know whether an artist deserves his name, let him invent, let him do the same thing repeatedly: for as one feature, may modify a mien, so, by changing the attitude of one limb, the artist may give a new hint towards a characteristic distinction of two figures, in other respects exactly the same, and prove himself a man. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The ancients took such care of appearances, that you will hardly find a figure with crossed legs, if not a Bacchus, Paris, or Nireus; and in these they mean to express effeminate indolence.
In the countenances of antique figures, joy bursts not into laughter; ’tis only the representation of inward pleasure. Through the face of a Bacchanal peeps only the dawn of luxury. In sorrow and anguish they resemble [278] the sea, whose bottom is calm, whilst the surface raves. Even in the utmost pangs of nature, Niobe continues still the heroine, who disdained yielding to Latona. ”

“ This is the way by which Michael Angelo arrived at immortality. Fame and rewards conspired to procure him what leisure he wanted, for performances which required so much care.
But the artist of our days, however endowed by nature and industry with talents to raise himself, and even though he perceive precision and truth in this method, is forced to exert his abilities for getting bread rather than honour: he of course rests in his usual sphere, and continues to trust in an eye directed by years and practice. ”

“ I observe, by the bye, that the ancients were careless of giving to their horses the diametrical motion of their legs; as we see in the horses at Venice, and the ancient coins: and in that they have been followed, nay even defended, by some ignorant moderns.
’Tis chiefly to oil-painting that our landscapes, and especially those of the Dutch, owe their beauties: by that their colours acquired more strength and liveliness; and even nature herself seems to have given them a thicker, moister atmosphere, as an advantage to this branch of the art. ”

“ Is best: So Grace is perfect when most simple, when freest from finery, constraint, and affected wit. Yet always to trace nature through the vast realms of pleasure, or through all [274] the windings of characters, and circumstances infinitely various, seems to require too pure and candid a taste for this age, cloyed with pleasure, in its judgments either partial, local, capricious, or incompetent. Then let it suffice to say, that Grace can never live where the passions rave; that beauty and tranquillity of soul are the centre of its powers. ”

“ If ever an artist was endowed with beauty, and deep innate feelings for it; if ever one was versed in the taste and spirit of the ancients, ’twas certainly Raphael: yet are his beauties inferior to the most beautiful nature. I know persons more beautiful than his unequalled Madonna, in the Palazzo Petti at Florence, or the Alcibiades in his academy. The Madonna in the Christmas-night of Corregio, (a piece justly celebrated for its chiar’-oscuro) is no sublime idea; still less so is that of Maratta at Dresden: Titian’s celebrated Venus [327] in the Tribuna [264] at Florence is common nature. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Art claims liberty: in vain would nature produce her noblest offsprings, in a country where rigid laws would choak her progressive growth, as in Egypt, that pretended parent of sciences and arts: but in Greece, where, from their earliest youth, the happy inhabitants were devoted to mirth and pleasure, where narrow-spirited formality never restrained the liberty of manners, the artist enjoyed nature without a veil.
The Gymnasies, where, sheltered by public modesty, the youths exercised themselves naked, were the schools of art. These the philosopher frequented, as well as the artist. ”

“ 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 the profile of her face you may read shame mingled with gentle resignation to the will of her lord. She has the softness of her sex, the majesty of a queen, an awful submission to the sacred ceremony, and all the sageness required in so extraordinary and delicate a situation. Dressed with a masterly skill, the artist, from the colour of her cloaths, may learn how to paint the purple of the ancients ”

“ The ancients made this principle the basis of their youthful profile; which is neither linear nor whimsical, though seldom to be met with in nature: the growth, at least, of climates more indulgent than ours. It consists in the soft coalescence of the brow with the nose. This uniting line so indispensably accompanies beauty, that a person wanting it may appear handsome full-faced; but mean, nay even ugly, when taken in profile. Bernini, that destroyer of art, despised this line, when legislator of taste, as not finding it [261] in common nature, his only model ”

“ Let any one, sagacious enough to pierce into the depths of art, compare the whole system of the Greek figures with that of the moderns, by which, as they say, nature alone is imitated; good heaven! what a number of neglected beauties will he not discover! ”

“ This heighth the history-painter cannot reach, only by a contour above common nature, or a noble expression of the passions: [192] 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 ”

“ Bernini and Peter of Cortona introduced this drapery. For ourselves, we choose light easy dresses; why do we grudge our figures the same advantage?
He that would give a History of Grace, after the revolution of the arts, would perhaps find himself almost reduced to negatives, especially in sculpture.
In sculpture, the imitation of one great man, of Michael Angelo, has debauched the artists from Grace. He, who valued himself upon his being “a pure intelligence” despised all that could please humanity; his exalted learning disdained to stoop to tender feelings and lovely grace. ”