Ernest Govett

Grief—The smile—The open mouth—Contrasts—Representation of death.

The painter has ever to be on his guard against over-emphasis of facial expression. His first object is to present an immediately intelligible composition, and this being accomplished, much has already been done towards providing appropriate expressions for his characters. It has been seen that attitude alone may appear to lend to a countenance suitable expression which is not observed when the head of the figure is considered separately; and while such a condition is not frequent, its possibility indicates that the painter is warranted in relying more or less upon the details of his action for conveying the state of mind of the personages concerned therein. It is not the purpose here to deal with the various forms of expression that may be of use to the painter, nor indeed is it necessary. The work of Raphael alone leaves little to be learned in respect of the expression of emotion so far as it may be exhibited in a painting54; but there are a few matters in relation to the subject which appear to require attention, judging from experience of modern painting, and short notes upon them are here given.

GRIEF

Intense grief is the most difficult expression to depict in the whole art of painting, because in nature it usually results in distortion of the features, which the artist must avoid at all cost. Of the thousands of paintings of scenes relating to the Crucifixion, where the Virgin is presumed to be in great agony at the foot of the Cross, very rarely has an artist attempted to portray this agony in realistic manner.[a] He generally substitutes for grief an expression of sorrow which is produced without contraction of the features. This expression, which is invariably accompanied with extreme pallor, does not prevent the addition of a certain nobility to the countenance, and hence no suggestion of insufficiency arises in the mind of the observer. But the sublime expression which may be given to the Virgin would be out of place in her attendants who are not infrequently made hideous through attempts to represent them as overcome with grief.

A method of avoiding the difficulty is to conceal the face of the personage presumed to be suffering from grief. Timanthes is recorded by Pliny as having painted a picture of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia in which the head of Agamemnon was completely covered by his robe; and a picture of the same subject in a Pompeian fresco represents the Grecian monarch hiding his face with his right hand, while the left gathers up his robe.[b] This invention was the subject of considerable discussion in Europe in the eighteenth century, in which Reynolds, Falconet, Lessing, and others took part. Reynolds said of the device that an artist might use it once, but if he did so a second time, he would be justly suspected of improperly evading difficulties. Falconet compared the action of Timanthes to that of a poet who avoided expressing certain sentiments on the ground that the action of his hero was above anything that could be said[c]; while Lessing held that the grief which overcame Agamemnon could only find expression in distortion, and hence the artist was right in covering the face.[d] Unquestionably Lessing was justified, for nothing more is demanded of the painter than to impress the imagination of the observer with the intensity of the grief depicted, and in this he succeeds. Obviously the poet is in a different position from the painter because he can express deep grief easily enough without suggesting distortion of the features.

The artifice of Timanthes was practically unused during the Renaissance, though Botticelli once conceals the face of a woman lamenting over the body of Christ,[e] and Richardson quotes a drawing by Polidoro where the Virgin hides her face in drapery in a lamentation scene. In Flanders at a little earlier period, Roger van der Weyden used the device,[f] and the MaÎtre de FlÉmalle shows St. John turning his head away and holding his hand to his face in a Crucifixion scene.[g] In the succeeding centuries little was known of the practice, but quite lately it has come into use again. Boecklin painted a PietÀ in which the Virgin has thrown herself over the dead body of Christ in an agony of grief, her whole form being covered by a cloak. Feuerbach has a somewhat similar arrangement, and in a picture of the Departure of Jason, he hides the face of an attendant of Medea, a plan adopted in two or three frescoes of the subject at Pompeii. Prud'hon, in a Crucifixion scene, hides the face of the Magdalene in her hands, and Kaulbach in his Marguerite so bends her head that her face is completely concealed from the observer. Where the face cannot altogether be hidden owing to the character of the design, it is sometimes thrown into so deep a shade that the features are indistinguishable, this being an excellent device for symbolical figures typifying great anguish.[h]

It is not a good plan in a tragic design merely to turn the head away to indicate grief or sorrow, because in such a case the artist is unable to differentiate between a person experiencing intense grief, and one who turns his head from horror of the tragedy.[i] The scheme of half veiling the face is not often successful, since the depth of emotion that would be presumed from such an action may be more than counterbalanced by the very limited feeling which can be indicated by the part of the face remaining exposed. On account of a neutralizing effect of this kind, Loefftz's fine picture of the Dead Christ at Munich is much weakened, for there is no stronger expression on the part of the Virgin than patient resignation. Sorrow may well be displayed by semi-concealment of the features, because here the necessary expression may be produced by the eyes alone.[j] In ancient art, to half conceal the face indicated discretion, as in the case of a Pompeian fresco where a nurse of the young Neptune, handing him over to a shepherd for education, has her mouth and chin covered, the meaning of this being that she is acquainted with the high birth of the boy, but must not reveal it.

THE SMILE

A pronounced smile in nature is always transitory, and hence should be avoided when possible in a painting. The only smile that does not tire is that which is so faint as to appear to be permanent in the expression, and it has been the aim of many painters to produce this smile. An examination of numerous pictures where a smile is expressed in the countenance has convinced the writer that when either the eyes alone, or the eyes and mouth together, are used to indicate a smile, it is invariably over-pronounced as a suggestive permanent feature, and that in every case of such permanence, success arises from work on the mouth alone.

The permanent smile was not studied in Europe till the Milanese school was founded, and in this nearly every artist gave his attention to it, following the example of Lionardo. This great master, who was well acquainted with the principles of art, is not likely to have had in his mind an evanescent expression when he experimented with the smile, and one can hardly understand therefore why this feature is almost invariably over-emphasized in his works. In his portrayal of women he used both eyes and mouth to bring about the smile,[k] and more commonly than not paid most attention to the eyes. Perhaps he had in view the production of a permanent smile solely by means of the eyes, which play so great a part in general expression. In nature it is physically impossible for a smile to be produced without a faint variation in the mouth line, while the lower eyelids may remain perfectly free from any change in light and shade, even with a smile more pronounced than is necessary for apparent permanence. In the Mona Lisa at Boston,56 the smile is very faintly indicated by the eyes, and most pronounced at the mouth, while in the famous Paris picture, the eyes are chiefly responsible for the smile, the mouth only slightly assisting.57 Many smiling faces were produced by others of the Milanese school, and as a rule the mouth only was used, often with complete success, notably by B. Luini,[l] Pedrini,[m] and Ferrari.[n] Raphael never used the eyes to assist in producing a smile, except with the Child Christ,[o] and in all cases where he exhibits a smile in a Madonna[p] or portrait,[q] it appears definitely permanent. As a rule the great artists of the Renaissance other than the disciples of Lionardo, rarely produced a smile with the intention of suggesting a permanently happy expression, and in the seventeenth century little attention was given to it.

The great French portraitists of the eighteenth century frequently made the smile a feature in expression, and a few of them, notably La Tour, seldom produced a countenance without one. In most cases the smile is a little too pronounced for permanence, but there are many examples of a faint and delicate smile which may well suggest an habitual condition. Rigaud's Louis XV. as a Boy is an instance,[r] though here the illusion quickly passes when we bring to mind the other portraits of the monarch. Nattier,[s] Boucher,[t] Dumont le Romain,[u] Perronneau,[v] Chardin, Roslin, and others, sometimes succeeded, but the French master of the smile was La Tour who executed quite a dozen examples which Lionardo might have envied.[w] Of British artists Romney was the most adept in producing a permanent smile,[x] but strange to say there is no instance of one in his many portraits of Lady Hamilton, beyond her representation as a bacchante.[y] Here the smile is far too pronounced for a plain portrait, but a bacchante may reasonably be supposed to be ever engaged in scenes of pleasure, and hence the feature does not seem to be out of place. Reynolds commonly used both eyes and mouth in creating his smiles,[z] but Raeburn was nearly equal to Romney in the number of his felicitous smiles, while he seldom exceeded the minimum expression required for permanence.[aa] Gainsborough produced a few portraits of women with a vague furtive smile, sweet and expressive beyond degree.[ab] They are invariably brought about by a faint curvature of the mouth line.

THE OPEN MOUTH

If there be one transient feature more than another which should be avoided in a painting, and particularly in the principal figure, it is a wide-open mouth. Necessarily, after a short acquaintance with a picture containing such a feature, either the mouth appears to be kept open by a wedge, or, as in the case of a laugh, the face is likely to wear an abnormal expression approaching to idiocy, for it is altogether contrary to experience of normal persons in real life, for a mouth to be kept open longer than for an instant or two. Hence the first artists have studiously refrained from exhibiting a wide-open mouth, or indeed one that is open at all except to such an extent that the parted lips appear a permanent condition. But a few great men have erred in the matter. Thus, Mantegna shows the child Christ with the mouth widely open in a half-vacant and half-startled expression, which is immediately repelling.[ac] Dosso Dossi has several pictures much injured by the feature,[ad] and in Ercole di Roberti's Concert, no less than three mouths are wide open.[ae] One of the figures in Velasquez's Three Musicians opens his mouth far too widely,[af] while Hals has half a dozen pictures with the defect.[ag] A rare mistake was made by Carlo Dolci when showing Christ with His mouth open wide in the act of utterance,[ah] and Mengs erred similarly in St. John Baptist Preaching.[ai] In more modern times the fault is seldom noticeable among artists of repute, though occasionally a bad example occurs, as in Winslow Homer's All's Well.[aj] Even when an open mouth seems unavoidable, the effect is by no means neutralized.[ak]

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When the blemish is in an accessory figure, it is of lesser importance as there it becomes an incidental circumstance on the mind of the observer. Thus, in Reynolds's Infant Hercules, where Alcmena, on seeing the child holding the snakes, opens her mouth with surprise and alarm, the action of the central figure is so strong that the importance of the others present is comparatively insignificant.[al] Nevertheless in a Pompeian fresco of the same subject, care has been taken to close the mouth of Alcmena. Where the design represents several persons singing, it is well possible to indicate the action without showing the mouths open, as in Raphael's St. Cecilia.[am] In a picture of a like subject, with the Saint in the centre of a group of five singers, Domenichino shows only the two outside figures with open mouths, and one of these is in profile. There are several works where David is seen singing to the accompaniment of a harp, but though his mouth is open, the figure is in profile, and the lips are hidden by moustache and beard.[an]

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

CONTRASTS

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

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

An effective design with the purpose of contrasting the ages of man is not possible, firstly, because the number of ages represented must be very limited, and, secondly, for the reason that the figures cannot be connected together in a free and easy manner. Hence all such pictures have been failures, though a few great artists have attempted the subject. Titian tried it with two children, a young couple, and an old man, assorting the personages casually in a landscape without attempting to connect them together in action.[as] At about the same time Lotto produced a contrast, also with three ages represented, namely, a boy, a young man, and an elderly man.[at] These personages sit together as if they had been photographed for the purpose, without a ray of intelligence passing between them. But this is far better than Grien's Three Ages,[au] for here the artist has strangely confused life and death, exhibiting a grown maiden, a middle-aged woman, and a skin-coated skeleton holding an hour-glass. The best design of the subject is Van Dyck's Four Ages.[av] He shows a child asleep near a young woman who is selling flowers to a soldier, and an old man is in the background. There is thus a presumed connection between three of the personages, but naturally the composition is somewhat stiff. The only other design worth mentioning is by Boecklin, who also represents four ages.[aw] Two children play in the background of a landscape; a little farther back is a young woman; then a cavalier on horseback; and finally on the top of an arch an old man whom Death in the form of a skeleton is about to strike. But here again there is no connection between the figures, the consequent formality half destroying the Æsthetic value of the work. From these examples than which there is none better, it may be gauged that it is hopeless to expect a good design from a subject where the ages of man are contrasted. If represented at all, the ages should be contrasted in separate pictures, as Lancret painted them.

The practice of presenting nude with clothed figures where the subject does not absolutely compel it, is commonly supposed to be for the purpose of contrast. This may have been the object in some cases, but in very few is the interest in the contrast not outweighed by the bizarre appearance of the work. As a rule in these pictures there is nothing in the expressions or actions of the personages depicted to suggest a reason for the absence of clothes from some of them, and so to the average observer they form a "problem" class of painting. The first important work of the kind executed was Sebastiano del Piombo's Concert, in which the group consists of two nude women, one with a reed pipe, and two men attired in Venetian costume, of whom one handles a guitar.[ax] The figures are very beautiful and the landscape is superb, but as one cannot account for the nude figures in an open-air musical party, the Æsthetic value of the work is largely diminished. This painting has suggested several designs to modern artists, the most notable being Manet's DÉjeuner sur l'Herbe, where a couple of nude women with two men dressed in modern clothes are shown in a picnic on the grass. Not only is the scheme inexplicable, but the invention is so extravagant as to provoke the lowest of suggestions. In a composition of this kind only a great artist can build up a harmonious design.

Titian's picture known as Sacred and Profane Love,[ay] where the figure of a nude woman is opposed to one clothed, may really signify any of a dozen ideas, but the artist probably had no other scheme in his mind than to represent different types of beautiful women. Crowe and Cavalcaselli's suggested title of L'Amour ingÉnu et l'Amour satisfait, was certainly never conceived by Titian, nor is Burckhardt's proposal, Love and Prudery, possible in view of the flowers in the hand of the draped figure. In any case this picture is the greatest of its kind, for the composition is so delicate and harmonious, and the art so perfect, as to render its precise meaning a matter of little consideration. Another picture of Sacred and Profane Love was painted by Grien.[az] He shows a nude woman from whom Cupid has just drawn the drapery, and another woman concealing her figure with loose drapery. The effect is weak. The nude figures in the well-known Drinkers of Velasquez[ba] are undisturbing because they are not very prominent in the picture, but their significance is not apparent.

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

THE REPRESENTATION OF DEATH

Death is a subject inappropriate to the art of painting except where it is dealt with symbolically or as an historical incident. Naturally in either of these cases any realistic representation of death, or of distortion connected therewith, should be studiously avoided. For while many aspects of death may not be unpleasant to the senses, its actual presence—the cold immobility; the pulseless soulless, decaying thing; the appalling mirror of our own fate—these things are most unpleasant, and hence should have no place in painting. In sculpture, represented in a certain way, death is admissible, for in marble or bronze a body may be carved indicating only the eternal composure of a beautiful form. This is how the Greeks showed death, whether in the case of a warrior fallen on the battlefield, or as the twin brother of Sleep. But the painter is less fortunate: for him death is decay.

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

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

How easy it is for the Æsthetic value of a picture to be lowered by the representation of a corpse, is shown in three celebrated paintings—the anatomical works of Rembrandt[bd] and De Keyser.[be] Probably these works were ordered to honour the surgeons or schools concerned, but the object would have been better served by a composition such as Eakin's Dr. Cross's Surgical Clinic.[bf] Here the leading figure is also giving a lesson to students, and practical demonstration is proceeding, but there is no skeleton or corpse to damage the picture. Fromentin said that the Tulp work left him very cold,[bg] and although he endeavoured to find technical ground for this, it is more than likely that the principal reason lay in the involuntary mental disturbance brought about by the corpse. Another fine design largely injured by corporeal evidence of death is Ingres's Œdipus and the Sphinx,[bh] where a foot rises out of a hole in the rock near the Sphinx, the presumption of course being that the body of a man who had failed with the riddle had lately been thrown there. The invention is most deplorable in such a picture.

The use of a skeleton as a symbol of death in painting seems to have been unusual during the Renaissance till towards the end of the fifteenth century. The earliest artist of note in this period to adopt it, was Jean Prevost who represented a man taking a letter from a skeleton without seeing the messenger.[bi] Then came Grien who painted three works of the kind. In the first Death holds an hour-glass at the back of a woman, and points to the position of the sand[bj]; in the second the bony figure has clutched a girl by the hair[bk]; and the third represents a skeleton apparently kissing a girl.[bl] They are all hideous works, and might well have acted as a warning to succeeding artists. After Grien the use of a skeleton in design was practically confined to the smaller German masters till the middle of the second half of the sixteenth century, when it disappeared from serious work. From this time on, for the next three centuries artists of repute rarely introduced a skeleton into a painting, though it is to be found occasionally in engravings. One might have supposed that the unsightly form had been abandoned with the imps, evil spirits, and other crudities of past days, but it was not to be. The search for novelties in recent times has only resulted in the resuscitation of bygone eccentricities, and we must not be surprised that the skeleton is amongst them.

Modern artists have displayed considerable ingenuity in the use of the skeleton, but the results have necessarily only succeeded in degrading the art. Rethel figures a skeleton in the costume of a monk who is ringing a bell at a dance.[bm] Several of the dancers have fallen dead, apparently from plague, and the whole scene is ghastly. Henneberg has a Fortune allegory in which Death is about to seize a horseman who is chasing a nude woman,[bn] this design being a slight modification of a variety of prints executed in the sixteenth century. Thoma uses a skeleton in a most bizarre manner. He substitutes it for the serpent in a picture of Adam and Eve,[bo] and in another work associates it with Cupid.[bp] Two lovers are talking, and Death stands behind the woman whose hat Cupid is lifting. A terrible picture with a political bearing was painted by Uhde.[bq] It represents a crowd of revolutionists rushing towards a bridge, while a skeleton in modern costume waves a sword and cheers them on. These instances suffice to indicate the difficulty in the production of a fine work of art with so hideous a form as a skeleton thrown into prominence.How simply one may avoid the introduction of a skeleton in a design concerned with death, is shown by an example where three artists deal with the same motive—Death, the Friend. The first composition shows an old man sitting dead in a chair while a skeleton costumed as a monk, tolls a bell[br]: in the second there is also an old man in a chair, but an Angel with a scythe is substituted for the skeleton[bs]: in the third an Angel with huge folded wings forming an oval framework for her figure, leans over the body of a child which has its face hidden.[bt] The second design is a vast improvement over the first, but the third is incomparably the best of the three. It may be remarked that a scythe is too trivial an emblem for the Angel of Death, for whom indeed an emblem of any kind is only admissible when Death is represented as the result of eternal justice, in which case a flaming sword is appropriate.

Very rarely indeed can a good picture be made out of a funeral scene. Such a scene attending the death of a great man may be fitly produced, so long as the imagination can be used in the composition; that is to say, if there are few or no records of the actual funeral[bu]; but paintings relating to the modern burial of unnamed persons are of little value as works of art, for the imagination of the artist cannot extend beyond unpleasant prosaic incidents of common acquaintance. The purpose of the funeral scenes of Courbet[bv] and Anne Ancher[bw] has never been explained; and the various interiors, each with a coffin and distracted relatives of the dead, by Wiertz,[bx] Dalsgaard,[by] and other modern artists, are capable of bringing only misery instead of pleasure to the observer.

But while funerals are unsuitable for the painter, interior scenes where death has occurred and friends are watching the body, offer special inducements to artists, because the perfect stillness of the living persons represented may be properly assumed, and so the illusion of life is little likely to be disturbed through the non-completion of an indicated action. On this account these works appear very impressive when well executed, and they may take high rank even when the artist is limited in his scope by the conditions of an actual scene. Very little is required however to destroy the illusion of continuity. In Kampf's picture of the lying-in-state of William I.,[bz] where many watchers are shown who are presumed to be motionless, a boy in the middle distance in the act of walking, is a most disturbing element. An example where an illusion of continuity is perfectly maintained is Orchardson's Borgia, where CÆsar Borgia stands in contemplation over the body of his poisoned victim. The silence indicated appears practically as permanent as the painted design, for any reasonable time spent by the observer in examining the picture, is not likely to be longer than that during which CÆsar may be presumed to have remained still at the actual occurrence. Scenes of approaching death may be arranged to produce a similar illusion, as for instance where those present are praying, or a single figure is waiting for the life to pass from the sick person.

Little attention has been paid in art to the expression of dying persons. There are many pictures representing celebrated men and women in their dying moments, but very few of them exhibit an expression of noble resignation and fearlessness, qualities which are naturally associated with a great man as his end draws near. No doubt the artist is often limited in his invention by the actual circumstances of the death scene, as in Copley's Death of Chatham,[ca] for the statesman was unconscious at the moment of representation. Other than this the best known works of the kind relate to the death of Seneca,[cb] Queen Elizabeth,[cc] and General Wolfe.[cd] In the last instance only is there a fine expression. How it was that Rubens missed his opportunity with Seneca is hard to understand. The presence of a clerk taking down the utterances of a philosopher as he bleeds to death, gives the design a theatrical appearance, and removes any suggestion of unconcerned resignation which might have arisen. One of the most powerful designs in existence relating to approaching death, is a sculptured figure in bronze of Hercules contemplating death.[ce] The demi-god is represented standing on an altar. His left foot is raised upon the skull of an ox; his head is slightly bent, and the whole attitude suggests a few moments of rest while he contemplates his coming fate. The conception is as fine as the subject is rare.

The artist should glorify death if possible, but he can only do this when the subject has a general application. Many painters have introduced the Angel of Death into scenes where death has occurred, and have thus converted them into work of pathos and beauty. Notable examples of this are Watts's Death, the Friend, already referred to, and H. Levy's Young Girl and Death, where the Angel gently clasps the body of a girl whose face is hidden. One of the finest designs of the kind is Lard's Glory Forgets not Obscure Heroes. On a battlefield, where all else has gone, lies the body of a soldier over whom stoops a lovely winged figure who raises the head of the hero, and seems to throw a halo of glory over him.[cf] In historical paintings the appearance of sleep is often given to a dead body, as in Cogniet's Tintoretto Painting his Dead Daughter, a pathetic picture, bringing to mind the story of Luca Signorelli painting his dead son.[cg]