Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843

"Sublimity of conception, grandeur of form, and breadth of manner, are the elements of Michael Angelo's style. By these principles, he selected or rejected the objects of imitation. As painter, as sculptor, as architect, he attempted—and above any other man, succeeded—to unite magnificence of plan, and endless variety of subordinate parts, with the utmost simplicity and breadth. His line is 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 man; his men are a race of giants. This is the 'terribile via' hinted at by Agostino Caracci; though, perhaps, as little understood by the Bolognese as by the blindest of his Tuscan adorers, with Vasari at their head. To give the appearance of perfect ease to the most perplexing difficulty, was the exclusive power of Michael Angelo. He is the inventor of epic in painting, in that sublime circle of the Sistine chapel which exhibits the origin, the progress, and the final dispensations of theocracy. He has personated motion in the groups of the cartoon of Pisa; embodied sentiment on the monuments of St Lorenzo; unraveled the features of meditation in the prophets and sibyls of the Sistine chapel; and in the 'Last Judgment,' with every attitude that varies the human body, traced the master trait of every passion that sways the human heart. Though, as sculptor, he expressed the character of flesh more perfectly than all who went before or came after him, yet he never submitted to copy an individual—Julio the Second only excepted; and in him he represented the reigning passion rather than the man. In painting, he contented himself with a negative colour, and as the painter of mankind, rejected all meretricious ornament. The fabric of St Peter's scattered into infinity of jarring parts by Bramante and his successors, he concentrated; suspended the cupola, and to the most complex, gave the air of the most simple of edifices. Such, take him for all in all, was Michael Angelo, the salt of art; sometimes, no doubt, he had his moments of dereliction, deviated into manner, or perplexed the grandeur of his forms with futile and ostentatious anatomy; both met with armies of copyists, and it has been his fate to have been censured for their folly." This studied panegyric is nevertheless vigorous—emulous as that of Longinus, of showing the author to be—

"Himself, the great sublime he draws."

It hurries away the mind of the reader till it kindles a congenial enthusiasm, we have the more readily given the quotation, as it is not an unfair specimen of Mr Fuseli's power, both of thought and language. Our author is scarcely less eloquent in his eulogy of Raffaelle which follows. He has seized on the points of character of that great painter very happily. "His composition always hastens to the most necessary point as its centre, and from that disseminates, to that leads back, as rays, all secondary ones. Group, form, and contrast are subordinate to the event, and common-place ever excluded. His expression, in strict unison with, and inspired by character; whether calm, agitated, convulsed, or absorbed by the inspiring passion, unmixed and pure, never contradicts its cause, equally remote from tameness and grimace: the moment of his choice never suffers the action to stagnate or expire; it is the moment of transition, the crisis, big with the past, and pregnant with the future."

It is certainly true—the moment generally chosen by Raffaelle, is not of the action completed, the end—but that in which it is doing. You instantly acknowledge the power, while your curiosity is not quenched. For instance, in the cartoon of the "Beautiful Gate," you see the action at the word is just breaking into the miracle—the cripple is yet in his distorted infirmity—but you see near him grace and activity of limb beautifully displayed, in that mother and running child; and you look to the perfection which, you feel sure, the miracle will complete. This is by no means the best instance—it is the case in all his compositions where a story is to be told. It is this action which, united with most perfect character and expression, makes the life of Raffaelle's pictures. We think, however, that even in so summary a history of art as this, the object of which seems to be to mark the steps to its perfection, the influence of Pietro Perugino should not have been omitted. He is often very pure in sentiment, often more than bordering on grace, and in colour perhaps superior to Raffaelle. Notwithstanding Mr Fuseli's eulogy of Raffaelle, we doubt if he fully entered into his highest sentiment. This we may show when we comment on another lecture. While Rome and Tuscany were thus fostering the higher principles of art, the fascination of colour was spreading a new charm to every eye at Venice, from the pencils of Giorgione, and of Titian. Had not Titian been a colourist, his genius was not unequal to the great style; perhaps he has admitted of that style as much as would suit the predominant character of his colouring. He worked less with chiaroscuro than colour, which he endowed with all the sentiment of his subject. Mr Fuseli considers landscape to have originated with Titian.

"Landscape, whether it be considered as the transcript of a spot, or the rich combination of congenial objects, or as the scene of a phenomenon, dates its origin from him:" so of portrait, he says—"He is the father of portrait painting, of resemblance with form, character with dignity, and costume with subordination." The yet wanting charm of art—perfect harmony, was reserved for Correggio. "The harmony and grace of Correggio are proverbial; the medium which, by breadth of gradation, unites two opposite principles, the coalition of light and darkness, by imperceptible transition, are the element of his style." "This unison of a whole predominates in all that remains of him, from the vastness of his cupolas to the smallest of his oil pictures. The harmony of Correggio, though assisted by exquisite hues, was entirely independent of colour; his great organ was chiaroscuro in its most extensive sense—compared with the expanse in which he floats, the effects of Leonardi da Vinci are little more than the dying ray of evening, and the concentrated flash of Giorgione discordant abruptness. The bland, central light of a globe, imperceptibly gliding through lucid demi-tints into rich reflected shades, composes the spell of Correggio, and affects us with the soft emotions of a delicious dream." Here terminates the great, the primal era. Such were the patriarchs of modern art. Here, it may be said, terminated the great discoverers. Mr Fuseli pauses here to observe, that we should consider the characteristic of each of these painters, not their occasional deviations; for not unfrequently did Titian rise to the loftiness of conception of Michael Angelo, and Correggio occasionally "exceeded all competition in expression in the divine features of his Ecce Homo." If Mr Fuseli alludes to the Ecce Homo now in our National Gallery, we cannot go along with him in this praise—but in that picture, the expression of the true "Mater dolorosa" was never equaled. Art now proceeds to its period of "Refinement." The great schools—the Tuscan, the Roman, the Venetian, and the Lombard—from whatever cause, separated. Michael Angelo lived to see his great style polluted by Tuscan and Venetian, "as the ostentatious vehicle of puny conceits and emblematic quibbles, or the palliative of empty pomp and degraded luxuriance of colour." He considers Andrea del Sarto to have been his copyer, not his imitator. Tibaldi seems to have caught somewhat of his mind. As did Sir Joshua, so does Mr Fuseli mention his Polypheme groping at the mouth of his cave for Ulysses. He expresses his surprise that Michael Angelo was unacquainted with the great talent of Tibaldi, but lavished his assistance on inferior men, Sebastian del Piombo and Daniel of Volterra. We think he does not do fair justice to the merits of these undoubtedly great men. We shall have occasion hereafter to notice his criticism on the great work of Sebastian, in our National Gallery. We are surprised that he should consider Sebastian del Piombo deficient in ideal colour, and that the lines of Daniel of Volterra are meagre and sterile of idea—his celebrated Descent from the Cross being in its lines, as tending to perfect the composition, and to make full his great idea, quite extraordinary. Poor Vasari, who can never find favour with our author, is considered the great depravator of the style of Michael Angelo.

At the too early death of Raffaelle, his style fell into gradual decay. Still Julio Romano, and Polidoro da Carravaggio, "deserted indeed the standard of their master, but with a dignity and magnitude of compass which command respect."

The taste of Julio Romano was not pure enough to detach him from "deformity and grimace" and "ungenial colour." Primaticcio and Nicolo dell Abate propagated the style of Julio Romano on the Gallic side of the Alps, in mythologic and allegoric works. These frescoes from the Odyssea at Fontainbleau are lost, but are worthy admiration, though in the feeble etchings of Theodore van Fulden. The "ideal light and shade, and tremendous breadth of manner" of Michael Angelo Amerigi, surnamed Il Caravaggi, are next commended. "The aim and style of the Roman school deserve little further notice here, till the appearance of Nicolo Poussin." His partiality for the antique mainly affected his style. "He has left specimens to show that he was sometimes sublime, and often in the highest degree pathetic." Mr Fuseli takes occasion, by contrasting "the classic regularity" of Poussin with the "wildness of Salvator Rosa"—we think unnecessarily, because there seems to be no true point of comparison, and unjustly to censure that great, we may say, that original painter. We have noticed occasionally a capricious dislike in our author to some artists, for which we are at a loss to account. That Salvator should "hide by boldness of hand his inability of exhibiting her (Nature) impassioned," is a sentence that will scarcely meet with an assenting critic. The wealth and luxury of Venice soon demanded of art, to sacrifice the modesty of nature to ostentation. The principle of Titian was, however, followed by Tintoretto, Bassan, Paul Veronese, and then passed to Velasquez the Spaniard, in Italy. From him "Rubens and Vandyck attempted to transplant it to Flanders, France, and England, with unequal success." The style of Correggio scarcely survived him, for he had more imitators of parts than followers of the whole. His grace became elegance under the hand of Parmegiano. "That disengaged play of delicate forms, the 'saltezza' of the Italians, is the prerogative of Parmegiano, though nearly always obtained at the expense of proportion." We cannot agree with the lecturer, that the Moses of Parmegiano—if he speaks of the Moses referred to in the Discourses of Sir Joshua, of which Mr Burnet, in his second edition, has given a plate—loses "the dignity of the lawgiver in the savage." Such was the state of art to the foundation of the Eclectic School by the Caracci—an attempt to unite the excellences of all schools. The principles are perpetuated in a sonnet by Agostino Caracci. The Caracci were, however, in their practice above their precepts. Theirs, too, was the school of the "Naturalists." Ludovico is particularly praised for his solemnity of hue, most suited to his religious subjects—"that sober twilight, the air of cloistered meditation, which you have so often heard recommended as the proper tone of historic colour." If the recommendation has at our Academy been often heard, it has entirely lost its influence; our English school is—with an ignorance of the real object of colour, or with a very bad taste as to its harmony—running into an opposite extravagance, destructive of real power, glaring and distracting where it ought to concentrate through vision the ideas of the mind. Annibal Caracci had more power of execution, but not the taste of Agostino. In their immediate scholars, the lecturer seems little disposed to see fairly their several excellences. They are out of the view of his bias. They are not Michael Angelesque. His judgment of Domenichino—a painter who greatly restored the simplicity and severity of the elder schools, and greatly surpassed his masters—is an instance of blindness to a power in art which we would almost call new, that is very strange to see. "Domenichino, more obedient than the rest to his masters, aimed at the beauty of the antique, the expression of Raphael, the vigour of Annibal, the colour of Ludovico; and mixing something of each, fell short of all." Nor do we think him just with regard to Guercino, or even at all describing his characteristic style, when he speaks of his "fierceness of chiaroscuro, and intrepidity of hand." We readily give up to him "the great but abused talents of Pietro da Cortona," a painter without sentiment, and the "fascinating but debauched and empty facility of Luca Giordano."

The German schools here come under consideration, which, simultaneously with those of Italy, and without visible communication, spread the principles of art. "Towards the decline of the fifteenth century, the uncouth essays of Martin Schön, Michael Wolgemuth, and Albrecht Altorfer, were succeeded by the finer polish and the more dexterous method of Albert Durer." His well-known figure of "Melancholy" would alone entitle him to rank. The breadth and power of his wood engravings are worthy of admiration. Mr Fuseli thinks "his colour went beyond his age, and as far excelled, in truth and breadth of handling, the oil-colour of Raphael, as Raphael excels him in every other quality. His influence was not unfelt in Italy. It is visible in the style of even the imitators of Michael Angelo—Andrea del Sarto, particularly in the angular manner of his draperies. Though Albert Durer had no scholars, he was imitated by the Dutch Lucas of Leyden. Now it was that the style of Michael Angelo, spread by the graver of Giorgio Mantuano, brought to Italy "those caravans of German, Dutch, and Flemish students, who, on their return from Italy, at the courts of Prague and Munich, in Flanders and the Netherlands, introduced the preposterous manner, the bloated excrescence of diseased brains, which, in the form of man, left nothing human; distorted action and gesture with insanity of affectation, and dressed the gewgaws of children in colossal shapes." But though such as Golzius, Spranger, Heyntz, and Abach, "fed on the husks of Tuscan design, they imbibed the colour of Venice, and spread the elements of that excellence which distinguished the succeeding schools of Flanders and of Holland." So it was till the appearance of Rubens and Rembrandt—"both of whom, disdaining to acknowledge the usual laws of admission to the temple of Fame, boldly forged their own keys, entered, and took possession, each of a most conspicuous place, by his own power." Rubens, with many advantages, acquired in his education at Antwerp, and already influenced by the gorgeous pomp of Austrian and Spanish superstition, arrived in Italy rather as the rival than pupil of the masters whom he travelled to study. Whatever he borrowed from the Venetian school—the object of his admiration—he converted into a new manner of florid magnificence. It is just the excellence of Rubens—the completeness, the congruity of his style—that has raised him to the eminence in the temple of fame which he will ever occupy. A little short of Rubens is intolerable: the clumsy forms and improprieties of his imitators are not to be endured. Mr Fuseli excepts Vandyck and Abraham Drepenbeck from the censure passed upon the followers of Rubens. As Drepenbeck is not so well known, we quote the passage respecting him:—"The fancy of Drepenbeck, though not so exuberant, if I be not mistaken, excelled in sublimity the imagination of Rubens. His Bellerophon, Dioscuri, Hippolytus, Ixion, Sisyphus, fear no competitor among the productions of his master." Rembrandt he considers a genius of the first class in all but form. Chiaroscuro and colour were the elements, in fact, in which Rembrandt reveled. In these he was the poet—the maker. He made colour and chiaroscuro throw out ideas of sublimity: that he might throw himself the more into these great elements of his art, and depend solely on their power, he seems purposely not to have neglected form, but to have selected such as, without beauty to attract, should be merely the objects of life, the sensitive beings in his world of mystery. That such was his intention we cannot doubt; because we cannot imagine the beautiful but too attractive figures of the Apollo or the Venus adopted into one of his pictures. Excepting in a few instances, we would not wish Rembrandt's forms other than they are. They appear necessary to his style. Mr Fuseli speaks very favourably of art in Switzerland; but says there are only two painters of name—Holbein, and Francis Mola. The designs of the Passion and Dance of Death of the former, are instanced as works of excellence. Mola, we are surprised to find ranked as Swiss; for he is altogether, in art, Italian. The influence of the school and precepts of the Caracci, produced in France an abundant harvest of mediocrity. In France was the merit of Michael Angelo first questioned. There are, however, names that rescue France from the entire disgrace of the abandonment of the true principles of art: Nicolo Poussin, Le Sueur, Le Brun, Sebastian Bourdon, and Pierre Mignard. The Seven Works of Charity, by Seb. Bourdon, teem with surprising, pathetic, and always novel images; and in the Plague of David, by Pierre Mignard, our sympathy is roused by energies of terror and combinations of woe, which escaped Poussin and Raphael himself." Of Spanish art he says but little, but that "the degree of perfection attained by Diego Velasquez, Joseph Ribera, and Murillo, in pursuing the same object by means as different as successful, impresses us with deep respect for the variety of their powers." Art, as every thing else, has its fashion. The Spanish school have, of later years, been more eagerly sought for; and a strange whim of the day has attached a very extraordinary value to the works of Murillo—a painter in colour generally monotonous, and in form and expression almost always vulgar.

Art in England is the next subject of the lecture. He takes a view of it from the age of Henry VIII. to our own. No great encouragement was here given to art till the time of Charles I.: Holbein, indeed, and Zucchero, under Elizabeth, were patronized, but "were condemned to Gothic work and portrait painting." The troubles and death of Charles I. were a sad obstacle to art. "His son, in possession of the Cartoons of Raphael, and with the magnificence of Whitehall before his eyes, suffered Verio to contaminate the walls of his palaces, or degraded Lely to paint the Cymons and Iphigenias of his court; whilst the manner of Kneller swept completely what might yet be left of taste under his successors. Such was the equally contemptible and deplorable state of English art, till the genius of Reynolds first rescued from the mannered depravation of foreigners his own branch; and, soon extending his view to the higher departments of art, joined that select body of artists who addressed the ever open ear, ever attentive mind, of our royal founder with the first idea of this establishment." After this little parade of our artists as a body, but four are mentioned by name—"Reynolds, Hogarth, Gainsborough, and Wilson."

We are surprised that, in this summary history of art, no notice has been taken of Van Eyck, and the influence of his discovery on art. Nor are we less surprised that so important a branch as landscape painting should have been omitted; Claude and Gaspar Poussin not mentioned; yet, in the English school, Wilson is spoken of, whose sole merit rested upon his landscape. He should more distinctly have stated his purpose to treat only of high and historical art.

Third Lecture.—In the commencement, there is an unnecessary, and rather affectedly written disquisition of the old question, or rather comparison between poetry and painting, from which nothing is to be learned; nor does it suggest any thing. Nor do we now-a-days want to read pages to tell us what invention is, and how it differs from creation—nor is it at all important in matters of art, that we should draw any such distinction at all. It is far better to go at once "in medias res," and take it for granted that the reader both knows and feels, without metaphysical discussion, what that invention is which is required to make a great painter. Nor are we disposed to look upon otherwise than impertinent, while we are waiting for didactic rules, the being told that "he who discovers a gold mine, is surely superior to him who afterwards adapts the metal for use;" especially when it is paraded with comparisons between "Colombo" and "Amerigo Vespucci," and a misplaced panegyric on Newton. And much of this is encumbered with language that fatigues and makes a plain matter obscure. There is a little affectation sometimes in Mr Fuseli's writing of Ciceronic ambages, that is really injurious to the good sense and just thoughts, which would without this display, come free, open, and with power. Some pages, too, are taken up with a preliminary argument—"whether it be within the artist's province or not, to find or to combine a subject from himself, without having recourse to tradition, or the stores of history and poetry." We have a display of learning to little purpose, quotations from Latin and Greek, really "nihil ad rem;" the "φαντασιας" of the Greek, and "visiones" of the Romans. Who that ever saw even one work of Hogarth, the "Marriage à la Mode," would for a moment think the question worth a thought. "The misnamed gladiator of Agasias," seems forced into this treatise, for the sole purpose of showing Mr Fuseli's reading, and after all, he leaves the figure as uncertain as he finds it. He once thought it might have been an Alcibiades rushing from the flames, when his house was fired; but is more satisfied that "it might form an admirable Ulysses bestriding the deck of his ship to defend his companions from the descending fangs of Scylla, or rather, with indignation and anguish, seeing them already snatched up, and writhing in the mysterious gripe." In such fanciful humours, it might be made to mean any thing or any body. And we are, after all, quite at a loss to know whether the conjecture is offered as a specimen of "invention." He considers the cartoon of Pisa "the most striking instance, of the eminent place due to this intuitive faculty among the principal organs of invention"—we mark these words in italics, not quite certain of their meaning. The work is engraved for Foster, by Schiavonetti; and a wonderful work it is—the work of Michael Angelo begun in competition with Leonardo da Vinci. The original is said to have been destroyed by Baccio Bandinelli; still there are the ancient prints and drawings which show the design, and there is a small copy at Holkham. Benvenuto Cellini—and could there be a better authority?—denies that the powers afterwards exerted in the Capella Sistina, arrive at half its excellence. Mr Fuseli's description is so good, that we give it entire. "It represents an imaginary moment relative to the war carried on by the Florentines against Pisa; and exhibits a numerous group of warriors, roused from their bathing in the Arno, by the sudden signal of a trumpet, and rushing to arms. This composition may, without exaggeration, be said to personify with unexampled variety, that motion which Agasias and Theon embodied in single figures. In imagining this transient moment from state of relaxation to a state of energy, the ideas of motion, to use the bold figure of Dante, seem to have showered into the artist's mind. From the chief, nearly placed in the centre, who precedes, and whose voice accompanies the trumpet, every age of human agility, every attitude, every feature of alarm, haste, hurry, exertion, eagerness, burst into so many rays, like sparks flying from the hammer. Many have reached, some boldly step, some have leaped on the rocky shore; here two arms emerging from the water, grapple with the rock, there two hands cry for help, and their companions bend over or rush on to assist them: often imitated, but inimitable, is the ardent feature of the grim veteran, whose every sinew labours to force over the dripping limbs his clothes, whilst gnashing, he pushes the foot through the rending garment. He is contrasted by the slender elegance of a half-averted youth, who, though eagerly buckling the armour to his thigh, methodizes haste; another swings the high-raised hauberk on his shoulder; whilst one, who seems a leader, mindless of his dress, ready for combat, and with brandished spear, overturns a third, who crouched to grasp a weapon; one, naked himself, buckles on the mail of his companion, and he, turned toward the enemy, seems to stamp impatiently the ground. Experience and rage; old vigour, young velocity; expanded or contracted, vie in exertions of energy. Yet in this scene of tumult, one motive animates the whole—eagerness to engage, with subordination to command. This preserves the dignity of the action, and from a strangling rabble, changes the figures to men, whose legitimate contest interests our wishes." Another example is given—Raffaelle's "Incendio del Borgo"—a good description follows: "the enraged elements of wind and fire," we do not see in the original, not even in the drapery of the woman with her back to us in the foreground. Speaking of this power of "invention," he says—after having, as we conceive, mistaken the aim of Raffaelle in his Madonnas, and Holy families, which was somewhat beyond even the "charities of father, son, and mother"—"Nor shall I follow it in its more contaminated descent, to those representations of local manners and national modifications of society, whose characteristic discrimination and humorous exuberance, for instance, we admire in Hogarth, but which, like the fleeting passions of the day, every hour contributes something to obliterate, which soon become unintelligible by time, or degenerate into caricature, the chronicle of scandal, the history-book of the vulgar." It seems, strangely enough, to have been the fashion among the, in comparison with Hogarth, puny academicians of that day, to underrate that great painter, that moral painter. We really should pity the infatuated prejudice of the man, who could see in the deep tragedy, the moral tragedy, "Marriage à la Mode," any humorous exuberance; or not understand that the passions set forth, and for a moral end, are not "the fleeting passions of the day," but as permanent as human nature—who could see, in such series of pictures, any "caricature," or that their object is to "chronicle scandal." That it is the "history of the vulgar," we dispute not. For it is drama of the vulgar as of the unvulgar—a deep tragedy of human nature; alas! time has not made "unintelligible" these not "fleeting passions of the day." As long as man is man, will Hogarth be true to nature; and nothing in art is more strange, than that such opinions should emanate from an Academy, and be either ventured upon or received ex cathedra.

Invention, according to Mr Fuseli, receives its subjects from poetry or tradition—"they are epic or sublime, dramatic or impassioned, historic or circumscribed by truth. The first astonishes, the second moves, the third informs." We confess ourselves weary of this sort of classification. They only tend to hamper the writer, painter, and critic. It is possible for a work to admit all three, and yet preserve its unity. And such we believe to be the case with Homer. He is epic and dramatic in one, and certainly historic. It is more ingenious than unquestionable, that Homer's purpose was to "impress one forcible idea of war—its origin, its progress, and its end." Nor will the "Iliad" be read with greater delight, by the reader's reception of such an idea. The drawing forth the purpose of Michael Angelo's design—his invention, in the series of frescoes in the Sistine Chapel—is more happy. That theocracy is the subject—the dispensations of Providence to man—the Creation—life and adoration in Adam and Eve, their sin, their punishment, their separation from God—justice and grace in the Deluge and covenant with Noah—prophets, sibyls, herald the Redeemer—and the patriarchs—the Son of Man—the brazen serpent—and the Fall of Haman—the giant subdued by the stripling in Goliah and David—and the conqueror destroyed by female weakness in Judith, are types of his mysterious progress, till Jonah pronounces him immortal. The Last Judgment, and the Saviour the Judge of man, complete the whole—and the Founder and the race are reunited. Such is the spirit of the general invention. "The specific invention of the pictures separate, as each constitutes an independent whole, deserves our consideration next: each has its centre, from which it disseminates, to which it leads back all secondary points, arranged, hid, or displayed, as they are more or less organs of the inspiring plan; each rigorously is circumscribed by its generic character." The more particular criticism on this great work of Michael Angelo, is very good, and we earnestly refer the reader to it. He thinks the genius of Michael Angelo more generic in its aim—that of Raffaelle more specific. That as M. Angelo's aim was the "destiny of man, simply considered as the subject of religion, faithful or rebellious," admitting only a "general feature of the passions;" so, in the hands of Raffaelle, the subject would have teemed with a choice of imagery to excite our sympathies; "he would have combined all possible emotions with the utmost variety of probable or real character; all domestic, politic, religious relations—whatever is not local in virtue and in vice; and the sublimity of the greatest events would have been merely the minister of sympathies and passions." The latter mode of representing the subject, that of Raffaelle, he considers dramatic. The distinction is, however, doubtful: we do not see why the mode of M. Angelo may not be held to be equally dramatic. The criticism on the comparison between Raffaelle's and Michael Angelo's Adam and Eve, if not quite just, is striking. "The elevation of Michael Angelo's soul, inspired by the operation of creation itself, furnished him at once with the feature that stamped on human nature its most glorious prerogative; whilst the characteristic subtility, rather than sensibility, of Raffaelle's mind, in this instance, offered nothing but a frigid succedaneum—a symptom incident to all, when, after the subsided astonishment on a great and sudden event, the mind, recollecting itself, ponders on it with inquisitive surmise. In Michael Angelo, all self-consideration is absorbed in the sublimity of the sentiment which issues from the august presence that attracts Eve; 'her earthly,' in Milton's expression, 'by his heavenly overpowered,' pours itself in adoration; whilst, in the inimitable cast of Adam's figure, we trace the hint of that half-conscious moment, when sleep began to give way to the vivacity of the dream inspired. In Raffaelle, creation is complete—Eve is presented to Adam, now awake; but neither the new-born charms, the submissive grace, and virgin purity, of the beauteous image; nor the awful presence of her Introductor, draw him from his mental trance, into effusions of love or gratitude; at ease reclined, with fingers pointing at himself and his new mate, he seems to methodize the surprising event that took place during his sleep, and to whisper the words—'flesh of my flesh.'" Not subscribing to any criticism which concludes insensibility of mind to Raffaelle, and which is rather inconsistent with the judgment made by Mr Fuseli, that he was the painter of expression, from the utmost conflict of passions, to the enchanting round of gentler emotion, and the nearly silent hints of mind and character—we look to the object of the painter in this his series of works called his Bible. The first five pictures represent only the act of creation—the Deity, the Creator—all nature, is as yet passive—even adoration, the point chosen by Michael Angelo, might be said scarcely to have begun—the plan is developed, not put in action. As yet, the Deity is all in all—Eve, his gift to Adam, is the last of this division of the series. As in Genesis, there is the bare, short statement, grand from its simplicity, and our knowledge of its after consequences; but in the words unimpassioned—so Raffaelle, that he might make his pictorial language agree with the written book, with utmost forbearance, lest he should tell more, and beyond his authority, in this portion of the series manifestly avoids expression, or the introduction of any feeling that would make the creatures more than the most passive recipients of the goodness of their Maker. Nor is there authority to show, that as yet they were fully, perfectly conscious of the nature of the gifts of life and companionship; and we certainly do not agree with Mr Fuseli, that it was a moment for Adam to show his sensibility to the personal charms of Eve—the pure Adam—nor was he—the as yet untransgressing Adam—to feel fear, in "the awful presence of the Introductor." Raffaelle's aim seems to have been, to follow the text in its utmost simplicity, that the unlettered might read—and this justifies in him the personality of the Creator, and the apparently manual act of his creation, corresponding with the words—"God made." The "allegoric drama" of the Church empire, that fills the stanzas of the Vatican, is praised by Mr Fuseli, with a full understanding of the purpose of the painter, and feeling for its separate parts. He does not cavil, as some have done, at the anachronisms. "When," says an able, reflecting, and very amusing author,² "Aristotle, Plato, Leo X., and Cardinal Bembo, are brought together in the school of Athens, every person must admit, that such offences as these, against truths so obvious, if they do not arise from a defect of understanding, are instances of inexcusable carelessness." Here we think this writer has missed the key of explanation. The very picture is the history of the progress of mind, through science and philosophy, to the acknowledgment of an immortal being. The very subject amalgamates, in one moral idea, times, epochs, localities. It treats of that which passes over time, and embodies only its results. Mr Fuseli notices not these anachronisms, but says aptly of the picture—"What was the surmise of the eye and wish of hearts, is gradually made the result of reason, in the characters of the school of Athens, by the researches of philosophy, which, from bodies to mind, from corporeal harmony to moral fitness, and from the duties of society, ascends to the doctrine of God and hopes of immortality." The very entertaining author whom we have quoted above, we must here, somewhat out of place, observe, has, with Mr Fuseli, mistaken the character of Hogarth's works. He says—"Hogarth has painted comedy!" and what is very strange, he seems to rank him as a comedian with "Pope, Young and Crabbe"—the last, the most tragic in his pathos of any writer. The invention in the Cartoons comes next under Mr Fuseli's observation. "In whatever light we consider their invention, as parts of one whole, relative to each other, or independent each of the rest, and as single subjects, there can be scarcely named a beauty or a mystery, of which the Cartoons furnish not an instance or a clue; they are poised between perspicuity and pregnancy of moment." We believe we understand the latter sentence; it is, however, somewhat affected, and does not rightly balance the perspicuity. We must go back, however, to a passage preceding the remarks on the Cartoons; because we wish, above all things, to vindicate the purest of painters from charges of licentiousness. He sees in Cupid and Psyche a voluptuous history: this may or may not be so—we think it is far from being such; but when he adds, "the voluptuous history of his (Raffaelle's) own favourite passion," he is following a prejudice, an unfounded story—one which we think, too, has in no slight degree influenced his general criticism and estimation of Raffaelle. We would refer the reader to "Passavant's Life of Raffaelle," where he will see this subject investigated, and the tale refuted. It is surprising, but good men affect to speak of amorous passion as if it were a crime; by itself it may disgust, but surely coldness is not the better nature. Insensibilities of all kinds must be avoided, even where "Amor," as Mr Fuseli calls him, and Psyche are the subjects. It is the happiest genius that shall signify without offence the necessary existence of passion, and leave purity in its singleness and innocence. How exquisitely is this done by Shakspeare in his "Romeo and Juliet!" He keeps the lovers free from every grosser particle of love, while he throws it all upon the subordinate characters, particularly the nurse, whose part in the drama, in no small degree, tends to naturalise to our sympathy the youth, the personal beauty, and whole loveliness, of the unhappy Romeo and Juliet.