Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 398, December 1848

Passavant's Life of Raphael 15 is by far the most satisfactory account of that great and too short-lived painter. It deservedly engaged the attention of Mr Eastlake, who, in his review, has, in an able summary, connected the genius of this extraordinary man with the influence of his times and the place of his birth. Hitherto the school of Umbria has been too much overlooked. Yet Urbino, at the time of Raphael's birth, more than rivalled in art Rome and Florence. The palace built there by Duke Federigo was not only magnificent in itself, but was adorned with treasures of art. Federigo was to this "Athens of Umbria" what Cosmo and Lorenzo de Medici were to Florence. It is not the least interesting fact, that Raphael's father, Giovanni Santi, was the historian of its greatness, which he celebrates in a poem, in which the painters of fame are not omitted. It is probable that the early mind of Raphael grew there under the influence of classic art, for many were the treasures of Grecian sculpture there collected. The idea is ably combated by Mr Eastlake, that Italian art was independent of this classic influence, as attempted to be proved by the German school, who wrote to establish the entire independence of early Christian art. The classic influence was felt by Raphael, and by him promoted. It was indeed Giotto who, a century before, had set the example of emancipating art from the previous formal types – animating, as it were, the "dead bones" of art.

The young Raphael, an orphan at twelve years of age, had probably been an early scholar with his father, Giovanni Santi, and was, soon after his father's death, placed with Perugino. He must have seen at Urbino a work of Van Eyck's, which Duke Federigo had procured. Giovanni Santi calls the inventor of oil-painting "Il gran Johannes." Among the painters celebrated by Santi is Gentile, of whom Michael-Angelo said, when he had seen a Madonna and Child painted by him, that "he had a hand like his name." The young Raphael was then favourably circumstanced in his earliest years. He remained at Urbino and in Perugia till twenty-one years of age, 1504; was then at Florence till 1508; and from that time to his death, 1520, with the exception of a visit to Florence, he was at Rome.16 A very interesting account of many of the works of this great man is added. The "Raphael ware," so commonly believed to be designed by Raphael, was nevertheless not his work. These designs were executed twenty years after his death. Raffaello del Colla was one employed in these designs. The name probably gave rise to the surmise that they were from the hand of Raphael.

Of the nature of the intercourse between Raphael and the Fornarina, whatever may be the conjectures, not only is no additional information brought forward, but there is every reason to believe the previous statements to be fable, manufactured according to the love for romance so common both to readers and authors. Whether the name La Fornarina implies that she was a potter's or a baker's daughter, there is still a doubt. Nor does it much concern the history of art, nor the real character of the biography, as it should be, of such a man, to sift the gossip of the idle or curious of any age. Passavant clearly vindicates the life of Raphael from the general impurities which such gossip has ever been as busy as desirous to attach to the names of men of genius. The jealousy said to have existed between M. Angelo and Raphael, probably had some origin in the impetuous temper of M. Angelo, who confounded the gentle Raphael with his architectural rival, Bramante. That Raphael owed something to M. Angelo cannot be doubted, but no unfair imitation has been proved – nay, we would venture to assert, that unfair imitation is almost impossible to genius, for it will make its own, whatever, to an indiscriminating eye, it seems only to borrow. It was not possible that Raphael should not be influenced even in his style by that of M. Angelo. No painter can come to any perfection in his art utterly ignorant or uninfluenced by the works of others, whether predecessors or contemporaries. Nor was Raphael slow to express himself as happy in being born in the age of M. Angelo. "Whatever Raphael knew in the art, he knew from me," said M. Angelo. We do not view this as a censure, but a praise; for it shows an admission on the part of that giant of art, that the genius of Raphael was worthy the affiliation. We have sufficient evidence, we think, of the originality, of the greatness, and of the more tender virtue – gentleness – of Raphael in his works. To those who would seek more, we would refer to the letter of Raphael himself, and more especially to the touching pictures of his genius and character as we find them in Vasari, and in the heartfelt regretting, at his death, of his friend Castiglione.

The doubts raised a few years since respecting the place of Raphael's burial have been removed. The tomb has been found, as described by Vasari, behind the altar of the church of Sta Maria Bella Rotonda, (the Pantheon,) "in a chapel which he himself had built and endowed, and near the spot where his betrothed bride had been laid." The tomb was opened in the presence of the members of the academy of St Luke, who were not a little interested in the investigation, having been long in possession of a supposed skull of Raphael, which the character-casting phrenologists had, in their zeal for their theory, held up to admiration, and as a test of the accuracy of their science. It must have been to their no small mortification that their relic was discovered to have "belonged to an individual of no celebrity." We reluctantly pass over the interesting notes from Kugler's Hand-Book "on the subjects of the paintings in the Capella Sistina."

To the artist, the "Extracts from the translation of Goethe's Theory of Colours will be most valuable. The usual diagrams of the chromatic circle are shown to have one great defect. "The opposite colours – red and green, yellow and purple, olive and orange – are made equal in intensity; whereas the complemental colour, pictured on the retina, is always less vivid, and always darker or lighter than the original colour. This variety undoubtedly accords more with harmonious effects in painting." To indirect opposition of colours – the opposition should not only be of the colours, the hues, but in their intensity – "the opposition of two pure hues of equal intensity, differing only in the abstract quality of colour, would immediately be pronounced crude and inharmonious. It would not, however, be strictly correct to say that such a contrast is too violent; on the contrary, it appears that the contrast is not carried far enough, for, though differing in colour, the two hues may be exactly similar in purity and intensity. Complete contrast, on the other hand, supposes dissimilarity in all respects. In addition to the mere difference of hue, the eye, it seems, requires difference in the lightness or darkness of the hue." Artists who are so partial to extreme light – a white light – and, at the same time, of exhibiting vivid, strong, and crude colours, are far more unnatural in their effects than those who prefer altogether the lower scale. In fact, it is the lower scale which can alone truly show colours, – very vivid light and colour cannot co-exist. Colour is called by Kircher "lumen opacatum." That increase of colour supposes increase of darkness, so often stated by Goethe, may be granted without difficulty. To what extent, on the other hand, increase of darkness – or rather diminution of light – is accompanied by increase of colour, is a question which has been variously answered by various schools. The reconcilement of Goethe's theory with the practice of the best of the great Venetian colourists, is shown with much critical discrimination.

Leonardo da Vinci, the obscurity and want of arrangement of whose treatises are so much to be regretted, had, as is shown by the juxtaposition of passages, borrowed largely from Aristotle. It is agreed by both, that when light is overspread with obscurity, a red colour appears; the why remains for the more accurate investigation of philosophers. The blue of the sky arises from the interposition of white against the black. The following from Leonardo is curious, – "This (effect of transparent colours on various grounds) is evident in smoke, which is blue when seen against black, but when it is opposed to the light, (blue sky), it appears brownish and reddening."

The letter "On the decoration of a villa" comes very opportunely. Architecture, with all its accompanying decoration of furniture and ornament, has been with us for nearly two centuries in abeyance. The taste is reviving, and with it knowledge. The science is studied, and with the extension of the science, convenience, which had long been the sole aim, and inadequately pursued, is in advance. There is much to be done, not only in villas and mansions, the houses of the rich, but in those of the moderate citizens. It too often happens that families are weary of their homes, they know not why – fly off to watering-places for a little novelty – establish themselves in inconvenient lodging-houses – all, in reality, because they lack a little variety at home. We have seen houses, where most of the rooms are not only of the same dimensions, but are, as near as possible, coloured, papered, painted and furnished alike: the eye is wearied with the perpetually obtruding sameness, and the eye faithfully conveys this disgust to the mind. We may be thought to have whimsical notions in this respect, yet we venture to the confession of a somewhat singular taste. Had we wealth at command, we would borrow something from every country and climate under the sun. We would enter subterranean palaces with the ancient Egyptians, all artificially lighted. Arabians, Greeks, and Romans should contribute architectural designs. Our house should represent, in this sense, a map of the world: we would inhabit Europe, Asia, Africa, America – (no, scarcely the latter) – yet without being shocked by too sudden transitions; though we would retain somewhat of this electrifying source of revivifying the too slumbering spirits. We would be able to walk "the great circle, and be still at home." We would create every gradation of light, and every gradation of darkness, to suit or to make every humour of the mind. We would have gardens such as few but Aladdin saw; and who less than a genie, or most consummate of geniuses, should complete our last unfinished window? – unfinished; for, with all this, it would still be a blessing to have something to do. And a pleasant thing to be the lord, master, emperor, in an architectural world of acres. Who does not love the lordly spirit of Wolsey? but we would go beyond him – would, as well as the imperial palace, have the poet's house, the painter's house; and in their works, all their works, (we are becoming as ambitious as Alnaschar,) be in daily familiarity with the great and wise of every age. Our libraries – we speak plurally, in the magnificence of the great idea – our picture-galleries, statue-galleries, should tax the skill of purveyors and architectural competitors without end. None that have ever yet been built or supplied with treasures would suffice, for they are for cramped positions. We would have no lack of space, and would not mind building a room for a single work. The idea of magic to construct, only shows the real want of man. Magic is but a prenomen to genius. Did we learn all this extravagance from our early story-books of princes and princesses, and their fairy palaces – from Arabian tales, and, in later time, from the enchantments of Boyardo and Ariosto? Whatever were the sources – though it should turn out to have been but an old nurse – we are heartily thankful for these variable, fanciful treasures; and, had we the riches, in reality would add a further extravagance of cost and fancy – a mausoleum to her bewitching bones. We remember thinking Menelaus, as pictured in the Agamemnon of Æschylus, happy even in his grief for the loss of Helen, in that he paced his galleries gazing upon her statues.

"Ma ritorniamo al nostro usato canto."

For more practical views and uses, we refer those who would build and decorate houses of pretensions and taste to the good sense contained in Mr Eastlake's Reply.

It seems to be scarcely a fable that beauty (as often personified in romantic poetry) is hid in an enchanted castle that few can reach; and those fortunate few either see but the skirts of her robe, as she majestically passes from corridor to corridor, or are so bewildered with the sight, that, having worshipped with downward eyes, they can give but a poor account of that "vultus nimium lubricus aspici;" while many of the adventurers are at once overcome by the monsters of error that in every shape sentinel the bridge and turret; while others, scarcely on the verge of the precincts, gather a few flowers, and come away under the delusion that they have entered the true garden of all enchantment. Some are fascinated with the "false Duennas" that assume a shape of beauty, and lead them far away, to their utter bewilderment; and these never return to the real pursuit. – There are who meet with fellow adventurers, accompany each other but a short way, dispute about the route they should take, breathe a combative atmosphere in the byepaths of error, and had rather slaughter each other than continue the adventure. Such seems to have been the thought of Mr Eastlake, in the commencement of his fragment "On the Philosophy of the Fine Arts," which he has clothed in more sober prose becoming the combatant for Truth – for Truth and Beauty are one. He has been out upon the adventure – yet scarcely thinks himself safe from the weapons of combatants, old or new, the discomfited or the aspirant, and expects little credit will be given to the discoveries he professes to have made. "To hint at theories of taste," he asserts, "is to invite opposition. The reader who gives his attention to them at all is eager to be an objector; he sets out by fancying that his liberty is in danger, and instinctively prepares to resist the supposed aggression." We would by no means break a lance with one so skilful, and of such proof-armour, as that which this accomplished combatant wears; but we may venture to gather up the fragments of the broken lances that strew the field, and patch them up for other hands – nay, offer them, with the humility of a runner in the field, to Mr Eastlake himself, who will, on good occasion, show of what wood and metal they are made. To carry on this idea of enchantment, it is possible that Mr Eastlake may resemble the happy prince in search of the ninth statue. Eight had been set up (we are not quite sure of the number): there they stood on their pedestals of finest marble, but they were cold to the touch. The prince in the tale found the ninth he was commanded to discover to be a living beauty. If we mistake not, Mr Eastlake considers beauty but the type of life. "Life is pre-eminently an element of beauty: the word itself presents at once to the imagination the ideas of movement, of energy, and of bloom: the fact itself constitutes the greatest and most admirable attribute of nature." Again, establishing the curve, though not the precise curve of Hogarth, as the line of beauty, "a variously undulating curve may therefore be proposed as the visible type of life: such a form is constantly found in nature, as the indication and concomitant of life itself. It was this which Hogarth detected in various examples, without tracing it to its source. His illustrations are often excellent, but the type itself he adopted was singularly unfortunate. His "line of beauty" constantly repeats itself, and is therefore devoid of variety or elasticity – the never-failing accompaniments of perfect vitality." Variation, whether of line or of other elements, has on all hands been admitted as an ingredient of beauty. Mr Burke's illustration of the dove is good: "Here we see the head increasing insensibly to the middle, from whence it lessens gradually until it mixes with the neck; the neck loses itself in a larger swell, which continues to the middle of the body, when the whole decreases again to the tail. The tail takes a new direction, but it soon varies its new course; it blends again with the other parts, and the line is perpetually changing above, below, upon every side." Burke adds to this the other element – softness – which, we suspect, Mr Eastlake will admit only in a minor degree; for Mr Burke considers not only softness, but a certain degree of weakness – a delicacy almost amounting to it, at least – as necessary to the idea of beauty; and they would ill agree with the perfect "vitality" of our author.

But simply as to lines, we are inclined to believe with Burke, that though the varied line is that in which beauty is found most complete, there is no particular line which constitutes it. Mr Eastlake, in referring that line to its resemblance to life, or to the antagonistic principles that make and destroy life, if we mistake not, cautiously abstracts this line of beauty from ideas of association; whereas his whole argument, in form and matter, appears to be one of association only. But such an association of life may be, if it existed, often destructive of that impression which a beautiful object is intended to make. Lassitude, death itself, may be beautiful in form. When Virgil compares Euryalus dying to the flower cut down – to the poppies drooping, weighed down with rain – he has in his eye objects beautiful in themselves; rather than life, they express Burke's idea of a certain weakness and faintness.

Inque humeros cervix collapsa recumbit.Purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratro,Languescit moriens; lassove papavera collo,Demisere caput, pluviâ cùm fortè gravantur.

Perhaps Mr Eastlake may reply, that the simile expresses privation of life, and therefore shows the matter capable of receiving it; but this appears further to involve the necessity of association, which denies the beauty of the line per se. The idea of privation is a sentiment; but the question is, if there be a line of beauty independent of sentiment or association. Let us attempt to answer it by another – the opposite. Is there a line of ugliness? We think there is not: if there be, what line? certainly not a straight line, (we must not here refer any to an object.) Perhaps we may not be very wrong in saying that a line per se is one of "indifference" – similar to that state of the mind before, as Burke says, we receive either pain or pleasure. May we not further say that, very strictly speaking, there is no one line but the straight – that every figure is made up of its inclinations, which are other or equivalent to other lines? If there be any truth in this, the "line of beauty" (here adopting for a moment the word) is not a single but a complicated thing: the straight line has no parts, until we make them by divisions: the curved line has parts by its deviations, which constitute a kind of division, without the abruptness which the divided straight line would have. The organ of sight requires a moving instinct: that instinct is curiosity; but that is of an inquiring, progressive nature. Without some variety, therefore, in the object, it would die ere it could give birth to pleasurable sensation. It is too suddenly set to rest by a straight line per se; but when that line is combined with others, the sense is kept awake, is exercised; and it is from the exercise of a sense that pleasure arises. Too sudden divisions, by multiplying one object, distract; but in the curve, in the very variety, the unity of the object is preserved. A real cause may possibly here exist for what we will still call a "line of beauty," without referring it at all to so complicated a machinery of thought as that of life, with its antagonistic principle, with which it continually contends. This is, doubtless, physically and philosophically true; but it is altogether a thought which gives beauty to the idea of the line after we have contemplated it – not before. The line may rather give rise to and illustrate the philosophical thought, than be made what it is by that thought, which it altogether precedes.

Mr Eastlake objects to Hogarth's line that it repeats itself. We are not quite satisfied of the validity of this objection: for we find a certain repetition the constant rule of nature – a repetition not of identity, but similarity – an imitation rather, which constitutes symmetry – which, again, is a kind of correspondence, or, to clothe it with a moral term, a sympathy. To this symmetry, when a freedom of action is given, it but makes a greater variety; for we never lose sight of the symmetry, the balancing quantity always remaining. Thus, though a man move one arm up, the other down, the balance of the symmetry is not destroyed by the motion. We know that the alternation may take place, – that the arms may shift positions: we never lose sight of the correspondence, of the similarity. Every exterior swell in the limb has its corresponding interior swell. The enlargement by a joint is not one-sided. Every curve has its opposite. The face exemplifies it, which, as it is the most beautiful part, has the least flexible power of shifting its symmetry. Mark how the oval is completed by the height of the forehead and the declination of the chin. In nature it will be mostly found that, when one line rises, there is an opposite that falls, – that where a line contracts to a point, its opposite contracts to meet it. And this is the pervading principle of the curve carried out, and is most complete when the circle or oval is formed, for then the symmetrical or sympathetic line is perfected. Let us see how nature paints herself. Let us suppose the lake a mirror, as her material answering to our canvass. We see this repetition varied only by a faintness or law of perspective, which, to the eye, in some degree changes the line from its perfect exactness. As we see, we admire. There is no one insensible to this beauty. Nay, we would go further, and say that the artist cannot at random draw any continuous set of lines that, as forms, shall be ugly, if he but apply to them this imitation principle of nature, which, as it is descriptive of the thing, may be termed the principle of Reflexion, and which we rather choose, because it seems to include two natural propensities not very unlike each other – imitation and sympathy. We say "not very unlike each other," because they strictly resemble each other only in humanity. The brute may have the one – imitation, as in the monkey; but he imitates without sympathy, therefore we love him not: and it is this lack which makes his imitation mostly mischievous, for evil acts are the more visible, – the good discernible by feeling, by sympathy. The sympathy of the symmetry of nature is its sentiment, and may therefore be at least an ingredient in beauty, and thus exhibited in lines. Lines similar, that approach or recede from each other, do so by means of their similarity in a kind of relation to each other; and by this they acquire a purpose, a meaning, as it were, a sentient feeling, or, as we may say, a sympathy. A line of itself is nothing – it has no vital being, no form, until it bear relation to some other, or, by its combination with another, becomes a figure; and because it is a figure, it pleases, and we in some degree sympathise with it, as a part, with ourselves, of things created. Thus the curve, or Hogarth's line of beauty, which we assume to be made up of straight lines, whose joining is imperceptible, is the first designated figure of such lines, and in it we first recognise form, the first essential of organic being and beauty. It is like order dawning through chaos, – life not out of death, but out of that unimaginable nothing, before death was or could be. It is the Aphrodite discarding the unmeaning froth and foam, and rising altogether admirable. Now again as to Hogarth's line – carried but a little further, it would be strictly according to this principle of Reflexion. Divide it by an imaginary line, and you see it as in a mirror. If the serpentine line, then, as Hogarth called it, be a line of beauty, let us see in what that line is rendered most beautiful. Let us take the caduceus of Hermes as the mystic symbol of beauty. Here we see strictly the principle of reflexion, (for it matters not whether lateral or perpendicular,) and here, as a separation, how beautiful is the straight line! Take away either serpent, where is the beauty? We have a natural love of order as well as of variety, – of balancing one thing with another. If we remember, Hogarth falls into the error of making it a principle of art to shun regularity, and recommends a practice, which painters of architectural subjects have, as we think, erroneously adopted, of taking their views away from a central point. The principle of reflexion of nature would imply that they lose thereby more than they gain, for they lose that complete order which was in the design of the architect, and which, by not disturbing, so aids the sense of repose – a source of greatness as well as beauty. But to return to this Reflexion. It has its resemblance to Memory, which gives pleasure simply by reflecting the past, – by imitating through sympathy. We are pleased with similitudes, when placed in opposition. They are, like the two sides of Apollo's lyre, divided only by lines that, through them, discourse music, – harmony or agreement making one out of many things. The painter knows well that he requires his balancing lines to bring all intermediate parts into the idea of an embracing whole. If any of Hogarth's lines, as given examples in his plate, (though he gives the preference to one,) had its corresponding, as in the caduceus, it would at once become a beautiful line.