Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad with Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected Volume I Part 14

We then enter the range of galleries, devoted to the later Greek, and the Roman sculpture. The first, corresponding in size and situation with the Hall of Niobe, contains nothing peculiarly interesting, except the famous figure of the young warrior anointing himself after the bath, and called the Alexander.

The next gallery is the Roman Hall, about one hundred and thirty feet in length, and forms a glorious _coup d'oeil_. The utmost luxury of architectural decoration has been lavished on the ceilings; and the effect of the marble pavement, with the disposition of the busts, candelabrae, altars, as seen in perspective, is truly and tastefully magnificent. I particularly admired the ceiling, which is divided into three domes, adorned with bas-reliefs, taken from the Roman history and manners: these were designed by Schwanthaler. I cannot remember any thing remarkable in this gallery; or rather, there were too many things deserving of notice, for me to note all. The standing Agrippina has, however, dwelt on my mind; and an exceeding fine bust of Octavius Caesar, crowned with the oak leaves.

A small room contains the sculpture in coloured marble, porphyry, and bronze; and the last is the hall of modern sculpture. In the centre of the ceiling is a phoenix, rising from its ashes, and around it the heads of four distinguished sculptors--Nicolo da Pisa, the restorer of the art in the fourteenth century; Michael Angelo, Canova, and Thorwaldson.

Two of the most celebrated productions of modern sculpture are here:--the Paris of Canova, and the Adonis of Thorwaldson. As they are placed near to each other, and the aim is alike in both to exhibit the utmost perfection of youthful and effeminate beauty, the merits of the two artists were fairly brought into comparison. Thorwaldson's statue reminded me of the Antinous; Canova's recalled the young Apollo. I hardly know which to prefer as a conception; but the material and workmans.h.i.+p of the Paris pleased me most. The marble of Thorwaldson's statue, though faultless in purity of tint, has a coa.r.s.e _gritty_ grain, and glitters disagreeably in certain lights, as if it were spar or lump-sugar; whereas the smooth close compact grain of Canova's marble, which is something of a creamy white, seemed to me infinitely preferable to the eye. This, however, is hyper-criticism: in both, the feeling is cla.s.sically and beautifully true. The soft melancholy of the countenance and att.i.tude of Adonis, as if antic.i.p.ative of his early death, and the languid self-sufficiency of Paris, appeared to me equally admirable.

There is also in this room a duplicate by Canova of his Venus, in the Pitti palace; a girl tying her sandal, by Rodolph Schadow--a pendant, I presume, to his charming Filatrice, now at Chatsworth; and some fine busts. I looked round in vain for a single specimen of English art.

I thought it just possible that some work of Flaxman, or Chantrey, or Gibson, might have found its way hither--but no!--

_Oct. 12._--Last night to the opera with a pleasant party; but, tired and over-excited with my morning at the Glyptothek, I wanted soothing, and was not in a humour for the noisy florid music of Wilhelm Tell.

It is an opera which, as it becomes familiar, tires, and does not attach--just like some clever people I have met with. Pellegrini (not the Pelligrini we had in England, but a fixture here, and their best male singer--a fine _ba.s.so cantante_) acted Tell. I say _acted_, because he did not merely sing his part--he acted it, and well; so well, that once I felt my eyes moisten. Madame Spitzeder sang in Matilda von Hapsburg tolerably. Their first tenor, Bayer, I do not like; his intonation is defective. The decorations and dresses are beautiful. As for the dancing, it is not fair to say any thing about it. Unfortunately the first bars of the Tyrolienne brought Taglioni before my mind's eye, and who or what could stand the comparison? How she leapt like a stag!

bounded like a young faun! floated like the swan-down on the air! Yet even Taglioni, though she makes the nearest approach to it, does not complete my idea of a poetical dancer; but as she improved upon Herbelet, we may find another to improve upon _her_. One more such _artist_--I use the word in the general and German sense, not in the French meaning--one more such artist, who should bring modesty, and sense, and feeling, into this lovely and most desecrated art, might do something to retrieve it--might introduce the necessity for dancers having heads as well as heels, and in time revolutionize the whole _corps de ballet_.

_Wednesday._--This morning, M. Herman Stuntz, the King's chapel-master, called on me. I had heard of him as a fine composer, and also much of his opera, produced for the Scala at Milan, the Costantino il Grande.

I was pleased to find him not a musician only, like most musicians, but intelligent and enthusiastic on other subjects, and with that childlike simplicity of mind and manner, so often combined with talent. We touched upon every thing from the high sublime to the deep absurd--ran round the whole circle of art in a sort of touch-and-go style, and his _navete_ and originality pleased me more and more. He said some true and delightful things about music; but would insist that of all languages the English is the most difficult to ally to musical sounds--infinitely worse than German. He complained of the shut mouth, the _claquement des dents_, and the predominance of aspirates in our p.r.o.nunciation.

I objected to the guttural sounds, and the open mouths, and the _yaw yaw_ of the Germans. Then followed an animated discussion on vocal sounds and musical expression, and we parted, I believe, mutually pleased.

The father of Stuntz is a Swiss--a man of letters, an enthusiast, a philosopher, an artist; in short, a most extraordinary and eccentric character. He entirely educated his two children, of whom the son, Herman Stuntz, takes a high rank as a composer; and the daughter is a distinguished female artist, but, being n.o.bly married, she now only paints pictures to give them away, and those who possess them are, with reason, extremely proud of the possession.

In the evening, Madame Meric, _prima-donna aus London_, as the play-bills set forth, made her first appearance in the Gazza Ladra. She is engaged here for a limited time, and takes the _gast-rolles_--that is, she plays the first parts as a matter of course--in short, she is a STAR. The regular prima-donna is Madame Scheckner-Wagen. Meric has talent, voice, style, and unwearied industry; but she has not _genius_, neither is her organ first-rate. Comparisons in some cases are unjust as well as odious. Yet was it my fault that I remembered in the same part the syren Sontag, and the enchantress Malibran? Meric, besides being a fine singer, is an amiable woman;--married to an extravagant, dissipated husband, and working to provide for her child--a common fate among the women of her profession.

----Sat up late reading, for the third or fourth time, a chance volume of Madame Roland's works. What a complete French woman! but then, what a mind! how large in capacity! how stored with knowledge! how strong in conscious truth! how finely toned! how soft, and yet how firm! What wonderful industry united to the quickest talent! Some things written at eighteen and twenty have most surprised me; some pa.s.sages in the "Vie privee," and the "Appel," have most charmed me. She is not very eloquent, and I should think had not a playful or poetic fancy. There is an almost total want of imagery in her style; but great power, unaffected elegance, with a sort of negligence at times, which adds to its beauty. Then, to remember that all I have just read was written in a prison, in daily, hourly expectation of death! but _that_ excites more interest than surprise, for a situation of strong excitement of mind and pa.s.sion, with external repose and solitude, must be favourable to this development of the faculties, where there is character as well as talent. Some of her disclosures are a little too _nave_. I am amused by the quant.i.ty of feminine vanity which is mixed up with all this loftiness of spirit, this real independence of soul. Madame de Stael had not _more_ vanity, whatever they may say; but it was less balanced by self-esteem--it required more sympathy. Then we have those two admirable women * * and * *. What exquisite feminine vanity is there! Yet, happily, in both instances how far removed from all ill-nature and presumption, and how unconsciously betrayed! I should think Joanna Baillie, among our great women, must be most exempt from this failing, perhaps, because, of all the five, she has the most profound sense of religion. Lavater said, that "the characteristic of _every_ woman's physiognomy was vanity."

A phrenologist would say that it was the characteristic of every woman's head. How far, then, may a woman be vain with a good grace and betray it without ridicule? By vanity, I mean _now_, a great wish to please, mingled with a consciousness of the powers of pleasing, and not what Madame Roland describes,--"cette ambition constante, ce soin perpetuel d'occuper de soi, et de paraitre autre ou meilleur que l'on n'est en effet," for this is diseased vanity.

Dr. Martius[32] lent me two pretty little volumes of "Poems, by Louis I. king of Bavaria," the present king--the first royal author we have had, I believe, since Frederic of Prussia--the best since James I. of Scotland. These poems are chiefly lyrical, consisting of odes, sonnets, epigrams. Some are addressed to the queen, others to his children, others to different ladies of the court, whom he is said to have particularly admired, and a great number were composed during his tour in Italy in 1817. Of the merit of these poems I cannot judge; and when I appealed to two different critics, both accomplished men, one a.s.sured me they were admirable; the other shrugged up his shoulders--"Que voulez vous? c'est un Roi!" The earnest feeling and taste in some of these little poems pleased me exceedingly--of that alone I could judge: for instance, there is an address to the German artists, which contains the following beautiful lines: he is speaking of art--

"In der Stille muss es sich gestalten, Wenn es kraftig wirkend soll ersteh'n; Aus dem Herzen nur kann sich entfalten, Das was wahrhaft wird zum Herzen geh'n.

Ja! ihr nehmet es aus reinen Tiefen, Fromm und einfach, wie die Vorweit war, Weckend die Gefuhle, welche schliefen, Ehrend zeugt's von Euch und immerdar.

Sklavisch an das Alte euch zu halten, Eures Strebens Zweck ist dieses nicht Seyd gefa.s.st von himmlischen Gewalten, Dringet rastlos zu dem hehren Licht!"

Which may be thus literally rendered--

"To rise into vigorous, active influence, it (art) must spring up and develop itself in secrecy and in silence; out of the heart alone can that unfold itself which shall truly go to the heart again.

"Yes! pious and simple as the old world was, ye draw it (art) from the same pure depths, awakening the feelings which slumber!

and it shall bear honourable witness of ye--and for ever!

"Slavishly to cling to antiquity, this is not the end of your labours! Be ye, therefore, upheld by heavenly power; press on, and rest not, to the high and holy light!"

Methinks this magnificent prince deserves, even more than his ancestor, Maximilian I., to be styled the Lorenzo de' Medici of Bavaria. The power to patronize, the sentiment to feel, the genius to celebrate art, are rarely united, even in individuals. He must be a n.o.ble being--a genius _born in the purple_, on whose laurels there rests not a bloodstain, perhaps not even a tear!

This is a holiday. I was sitting at my window, translating some of these poems, when I saw a crowd round the doors of the new palace; for it is a day of public admission. Curiosity tempted me to join this crowd;--no sooner thought than done. I had M. de Klenze's general order for admittance in my pocket-book, but wished to see how this was managed, and mingled with the crowd, which was waiting to be admitted _en ma.s.se_.

I was at once recognized as a stranger, and every one with simple civility made way for me. Groups of about twenty or thirty people were admitted at a time, at intervals of a quarter of an hour, and each group placed under the guidance of one of the workmen as cicerone. He led them through the unfinished apartments, explaining to his open-mouthed auditors the destination of each room, the subjects of the pictures on the walls and ceilings, &c. &c. There were peasants from the south, in their singular dresses, mechanics and girls of Munich, soldiers, travelling students. I was much amused. While the cicerone held forth, some merely wondered with foolish faces, some admired, some looked intelligent, and asked various questions, which were readily answered--all seemed pleased. Every thing was done in order: two groups were never in the same apartment; but as one went out, another entered. Thus many hundreds of these poor people were gratified in the course of the day. It seemed to me a wise as well as benevolent policy in the king thus to appeal to the sympathy, and gratify the pride, of his subjects of all cla.s.ses, by allowing them--inviting them, to take an interest in his magnificent undertakings, to consider them _national_ as well as royal. I am informed that these works are carried on without any demands on the Staatska.s.se, (the public treasury,) and without any additional taxes: so far from it, that the Bavarian House of Representatives curtailed the supplies by 300,000 florins only last year, and refused the king an addition to the civil list, which he had requested for the travelling expenses of two of his sons. The king is said to be economical in the _extreme_ in his domestic expenses, and not very generous in money to those around him--unlike his open-hearted, open-handed father, Max-Joseph; in short, there are grumblers here as elsewhere, but strangers and posterity will not sympathize with them.

This is the fourth time I have seen this splendid and truly royal palace, but will make no memoranda till I have gone over the whole with Leo von Klenze. He has promised to be my cicerone himself, and I feel the full value of the compliment. Count V---- told me last night, that he (De Klenze) has made for this building alone upwards of seven hundred drawings and designs with his own hand.

_Oct. 13._--Called on my English friends, the C * * s, and found them pleasantly settled in a beautiful furnished lodging near the Hofgarten, for which they pay twenty-four florins (or about two pounds) a month.

We had some conversation about music, (they are all musicians,) and the opera, and Malibran, whom they have lately seen in Italy; and Pasta, whom they had visited at Como; and they confirmed what Mr. J. M. Stuntz and M. K. had all told me of her benevolence and excellent character.

I could not find that any new genius had arisen in Italy to share the glory of our three queens of the lyrical drama,--Pasta, Malibran, and Schroder Devrient. Other singers have more or less talent and feeling, more or less compa.s.s of voice, facility, or agility; but these three women possess _genius_, and stamp on every thing they do their own individual character. Of the three, Pasta is the grandest and most finished artist; Malibran the most versatile in power and pa.s.sion; while Schroder Devrient has that energy of heart and soul--that capacity for exciting, and being excited, which gives her such unbounded command over the feelings and senses of her audience.[33] So far we were agreed; but as the conversation went on, I was doomed to listen to a torrent of commonplace and sarcastic criticism on the private habits of these and other women of the same profession: one was accused of vulgarity, another of bad temper, and another of violence and caprice: one was suspected of a _penchant_ for porter, another had been heard to swear, or--something very like it. Even pretty lady-like Sontag was reproached with some trifling breach of mere conventional manner,--she had used her fingers where she should have taken a spoon, or some such nonsense.

My G.o.d! to think of the situation of these women! and then to look upon _those_ women, who, fenced in from infancy by all the restraints, the refinements, the comforts, the precepts of good society,--the one arranging a new cap, the other embroidering a purse, the third reading a novel, all satisfied with petty occupations and amus.e.m.e.nts, "far, far removed from want and grief and fear,"--now sitting in judgment, and pa.s.sing sentence of excommunication on others of their s.e.x, who have been steeped in excitement from childhood, their nerves for ever in a state of tension between severest application and maddening flattery; cast on the world without chart or compa.s.s--with energies misdirected, pa.s.sions uncontrolled, and all the inflammable and imaginative part of their being cultivated into excess as a part of their profession--of their material! O when will there be charity in the world? When will human beings, women especially, show mercy and justice to each other, and not judge of results, without a reference to causes? and when will reflection upon these causes lead to their removal? They are evils which press upon few, but are reflected on many, inasmuch as they degrade art and the pursuit of art;--but all can sneer, and few can think.

I begin at length to feel my way among the pictures here. Hitherto I have been bewildered. I have lounged away morning after morning at the gallery of the Hofgarten, at Schleissheim, and at the Duc de Leuchtenberg's; and returned home with dazzled eyes and a mind overflowing, like one "oppressed with wealth, and with abundance sad," unable to recall or to methodize my own impressions.

Professor Zimmermann tells me that the king of Bavaria possesses upwards of three thousand pictures: of these about seventeen hundred are at Schleissheim; nine hundred in the Munich gallery; and the rest distributed through various palaces. The national gallery, or Pinakothek, which is now building under the direction of Leo von Klenze, is destined to contain a selection from these multifarious treasures, of which the present arrangement is only temporary.

The king of Bavaria unites in his own person the three branches of the House of Wittelsbach: the palatines of the Rhine, the dukes of Deuxponts, and the electors of Bavaria, all sovereign houses, and descended from Otto von Wittelsbach, who received the invest.i.ture of the dukedom of Bavaria in 1180. Thus it is that the celebrated gallery once at Dusseldorf, formed under the auspices of the elector John William; the various collections at Manheim, Deuxponts, and Heidelberg, are now concentrated at Munich, where, from the days of Duke Albert V. (1550) up to the present time, works of art have been gradually acc.u.mulated by successive princes.

Somebody calls the gallery at Munich, the court of Rubens; and Sir Joshua Reynolds says that no one should judge of Rubens who had not studied him at Antwerp and Dusseldorf. I begin to feel the truth of this. My devoted wors.h.i.+p of the Italian school of art rendered me long--I will not say _blind_ to the merits of the Flemish painters--for that were to be "sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing!" but, in truth, without that full feeling of their power which I have since acquired.

Certainly we have in these days mean ideas about painting--mean and false ideas! It has become a mere object of luxury and connoisseurs.h.i.+p, or _virtu_: unless it be addressed to our personal vanity, or to the puerile taste for ornament, show, furniture,--it is nothing. The n.o.ble art which was once recognized as the priestess of nature, as a great moral power capable of acting on the senses and the imagination of a.s.sembled human beings--as such applied by the lawgivers of Greece, and by the clergy of the Roman Catholic church,--how is it now vulgarized in its objects! how narrowed in its application! And if it be said, that in the present state of society, in these calculating, money-making, political, intellectual times, we are acted upon by far different influences, rendering us infinitely less sensible to the power of painting, then I think it is _not true_, and that the cultivated susceptibility to other moral or poetical excitements--as politics or literature--does not render us less sensible to the moral influence of painting; on the contrary: but she has fallen from her high estate, and there are none to raise her. The public--the national spirit, is wanting; individual patronage is confined, is misdirected, is arbitrary, demanding of the artist any thing rather than the highest and purest intellectual application of his art, and affording nor s.p.a.ce nor opportunity for him to address himself to the grand universal pa.s.sions, principles, and interests of human nature! Suppose a Michael Angelo to be born to us in England: we should not, perhaps, set him to make a statue of snow, but where or how would his gigantic genius, which revelled in the great deeps of pa.s.sion and imagination, find scope for action? He would struggle and gasp like a stranded Leviathan!

But this is digressing: the question is, may not the moral effect of painting be still counted on, if the painter be himself imbued with the right spirit?[34]

There is, in the academy at Antwerp, a picture by Rubens, which represents St. Theresa kneeling before Christ, and interceding for the souls in purgatory. The treatment of the subject is exceedingly simple; the upper part of the picture is occupied by the Redeemer, with his usual attributes, and the saint, habited as a nun. In the lower part of the picture, instead of a confused mob of tormented souls, and flames, and devils with pitchforks, the painter has represented a few heads as if rising from below. I remember those of Adam, Eve, and Mary Magdalene. I remember--and never shall forget--the expression of each! The extremity of misery in the countenance of Adam; the averted, disconsolate, repentant wretchedness of Eve, who hides her face in her hair; the mixture of agony, supplication, hope, in the face of the Magdalene, while a cherub of pity extends his hand to her, as if to aid her to rise, and at the same time turns an imploring look towards the Saviour. As I gazed upon this picture, a feeling sank deep into my heart, which did not pa.s.s away with the tears it made to flow, but has ever since remained there, and has become an abiding principle of action. This is only one instance out of many, of the _moral_ effect which has been produced by painting.

To me it is amusing, and it cannot but be interesting and instructive to the philosopher and artist, to observe how various people, uninitiated into any of the technicalities of art, unable to appreciate the amount of difficulties overcome, are affected by pictures and sculpture. But in forming our judgment, our taste in art, it is unsafe to listen to opinions springing from this vague kind of enthusiasm; for in painting, as in music--"just as the soul is pitched, the _eye_ is pleased."

I amuse myself in the gallery here with watching the countenances of those who look at the pictures. I see that the uneducated eye is caught by subjects in which the individual mind sympathizes, and the educated taste seeks abstract excellence. Which has the most enjoyment? The last, I think. Sensibility, imagination, and quick perception of form and colour, are not alone necessary to feel a work of art; there must be the power of a.s.sociation; the mind trained to habitual sympathy with the beautiful and the good; the knowledge of the meaning, and the comprehension of the object of the artist.

In the gallery here there are eighty-eight pictures of Rubens--some among the very finest he ever painted; for instance, that splendid picture, Castor and Pollux carrying off the daughters of Leucippus, so full of rich life and movement; the destruction of Sennacherib's host; Rubens and his wife, full lengths, seated in a garden; that wonderful picture of the defeat of the Amazons; the meeting of Jacob and Laban; the picture of the Earl of Arundel and his wife, with other figures, full lengths;[35] and a series of the designs for the large paintings of the history of Marie de' Medici, now in the Louvre. His group of boys with fruits and flowers, exhibits the richest, loveliest combination of colours ever presented to the eye; and on that wonderful picture of the fallen (or rather _falling_) angels, he has lavished such endless variety of form, att.i.tude, and expression, that it would take a day to study it. It is not a large picture: the eye, or rather the imagination, easily takes in the general effect of tumult, horror, destruction, but the understanding dwells on the detail with still increasing astonishment and admiration. These are a few that struck me, but it is quite in vain to attempt to particularize.

One may begin by disliking Rubens in general, (I think I did,) but one must end by standing before him in ecstacy and wonder. It is true, that always luxuriant, he is often gross and sensual--he can sometimes be brutally so. His baccha.n.a.lian scenes are not like those of Poussin, cla.s.sical, G.o.dlike debauchery, but the abandoned drunken revelry of animals--the very sublime of brute licentiousness; and painted with a breadth of style, a magnificent luxuriance of colour, which renders them more revolting. The _physique_ predominates in all his pictures, and not only to grossness, even to ferocity. His picture here of the slaughter of the Innocents, makes me sick--it has absolutely polluted my imagination. Surely this is not the vocation of high art.--And as for his martyrdoms--they are worse than Spagnoletto's.

For all this, he is the t.i.tAN of painting: his creations are "of the earth and earthy," but he has called down fire and light from heaven, wherewith to animate and to illumine them.

Rubens is just such a painter as Dryden is a poet, and _vice versa_: his women are just like Dryden's women, gross, exaggerated, unrefined animals: his men, like Dryden's men, grand, thinking, acting animals.

Like Dryden, he could clothe his genius in thunder, dip his pencil in the lightning and the sunbeams of heaven, and rush fearlessly upon a subject which others had trembled to approach. In both we see a singular and extraordinary combination of the plainest, coa.r.s.est realities of life, with the loftiest imagery, the most luxurious tints of poetry.

Both had the same pa.s.sion for allegory, and managed it with equal success. "The thoughts that breathe and words that burn" of Dryden, may be compared to the living, moving forms, the glowing, melting, dazzling hues of Rubens, under whose pencil

"Desires and adorations, Winged persuasions and wild destinies, Splendours, and glooms, and glimmering incarnations Of hopes, and fears, and twilight fantasies,--"

took form and being--became palpable existences: and yet with all this inventive power, this love of allegorical fiction, it is _life_, the spirit of animal life, diffused through and over their works; it is the blending of the plain reasoning with splendid creative powers;--of wonderful fertility of conception with more wonderful facility of execution; it is the combination of truth, and grandeur, and masculine vigour, with a general coa.r.s.eness of taste, which may be said to characterise both these great men. Neither are, or can be, favourites of the women, for the same reasons.

There must have been something a.n.a.logous in the genius of Rubens and t.i.tian. The distinction was of climate and country. They appear to have looked at nature under the same aspect, but it was a different nature,--the difference between Flanders and Venice. They were both painters of flesh and blood: by nature, poets; by conformation, colourists; by temperament and education, magnificent spirits, scholars, and gentlemen, lovers of pleasure and of fame. The superior sentiment and grace, the refinement and elevation of t.i.tian he owed to the poetical and chivalrous spirit of his age and country. The delicacy of taste which reigned in the Italian literature of that period influenced the arts of design. As to the colouring--we see in the pictures of Rubens the broad daylight effects of a northern climate, and in those of t.i.tian, the burning fervid sun of a southern clime, necessarily modified by shade, before the objects could be seen: hence the difference between the _glow_ of Rubens, and the _glow_ of t.i.tian: the first "i' the colours of the rainbow lived," and the other bathed himself in the evening sky; the one dazzles, the other warms. I can bring before my fancy at this moment, the Helen Forman of Rubens, and t.i.tian's "La Manto;" the "man with a hawk" of Rubens, and t.i.tian's "Falconer;" can any thing in heaven or earth be more opposed? Yet in all alike, is it not the intense feeling of life and individual nature which charms, which fixes us? I know not which I admire most; but I adore t.i.tian--his men are all made for power, and his women for love.

And Rembrandt--king of shadows!