——?a??t?? ?e?? f???? ?e??? f?t??. Grace is the harmony of agent and action. It is a general idea: for whatever reasonably pleases in things and actions is gracious. Grace is a gift of heaven; though not like beauty, which must be born with the possessor: whereas nature gives only the dawn, the capability of this. Education and reflection form it by degrees, and custom may give it the sanction of nature. As water, That least of foreign principles partakes, Is best: So Grace is perfect when most simple, when freest from finery, constraint, and affected wit. Yet always to trace nature through the vast realms of pleasure, or through all The criticisms on Grace in nature, and on its imitation by art, seem to differ: for many are not shocked at those faults in the latter, that certainly would incur their displeasure Grace, in works of art, concerns the human figure only; it modifies the attitude and countenance, dress and drapery. And The attitude and gestures of antique figures are such as those have, who, conscious of merit, claim attention as their due, when appearing among men of sense. Their motions always shew the motive; clear, pure blood, and settled spirits; nor does it signify whether they stand, sit, or lie; the attitudes of Bacchanals only are violent, and ought to be so. In quiet situations, when one leg alone supports the other which is free, this recedes only as far as nature requires for putting the figure out of its perpendicular. Nay, in the Fauni, the foot has been observed to have an inflected direction, as a token of savage, regardless nature. To the modern artists a quiet attitude seemed insipid and spiritless, and therefore they drag the leg at rest forwards, and, to make the attitude ideal, remove part of the body’s weight from the In the countenances of antique figures, joy bursts not into laughter; ’tis only the representation of inward pleasure. Through the face of a Bacchanal peeps only the dawn of luxury. In sorrow and anguish they resemble Those of the moderns, that either were ignorant of antiquity, or neglected to enquire into Grace in nature, have expressed, not only what nature feels, but likewise what she feels not. A Venus at Potzdam, by Pigal ——hath that within, which passeth shew: These, but the trappings, and the suits of woe. The gestures of the hands of antique figures, and their attitudes in general, are those of people that think themselves alone and unobserved: and though the hands of but very few statues have escaped destruction, yet may you, from the direction of the arm, guess at the easy and natural motion of the hand. Some moderns, indeed, that have supplied statues with hands or fingers, have too often given them their own favourite attitudes—that of a Venus at her toilet, displaying to her levee the graces of a hand, ——far lovelier when beheld. The action of modern hands is commonly like the gesticulation of a young preacher, piping-hot from the college. Holds a figure her cloths? You would think them cobweb. Nemesis, who, on antique gems, lifts her peplum softly from her bosom, would be thought too griping for any new performance—how can you be so unpolite to think any thing may be held, without Grace, in the accidental parts of antiques, consists, like that of the essential ones, in what becomes nature. The drapery of the most ancient works is easy and slight: hence it was natural to give the folds beneath the girdle an almost perpendicular direction.—Variety indeed was sought, in proportion to the increase of art; but drapery still remained a thin floating texture, with folds gathered up, not lumped together, or indiscreetly scattered. That these were the chief principles of ancient drapery, you may convince yourself from the beautiful Flora in the Campidoglio, a work of Hadrian’s times. Bacchanals and dancing figures had, indeed, even if statues, more waving garments, such as played upon the air; such a one is in the Palazzo Riccardi at Florence; but even then the artists did not neglect appearances, nor exceed the nature of the materials. Gods and heroes are represented As meditation swift, swift as the thoughts of love. Grace extends to garments, as such were given to the Graces by the ancients. How would you wish to see the Graces dressed? Certainly not in birth-day robes; but rather like a beauty you loved, still warm from the bed, in an easy negligÉe. The moderns, since the epoch of Raphael and his school, seem to have forgot that drapery participates of Grace, by their giving the preference to heavy garments, which might not improperly be called the wrappers of ignorance in beauty: for a thick large-folded drapery may spare the artists the pains of tracing the Contour under it, as the ancients did. Some of the modern He that would give a History of Grace, after the revolution of the arts, would perhaps find himself almost reduced to negatives, especially in sculpture. In sculpture, the imitation of one great man, of Michael Angelo, has debauched the artists from Grace. He, who valued himself upon his being “a pure intelligence” despised all that could please humanity; his exalted learning disdained to stoop to tender feelings and lovely grace. There are poems of his published, and in manuscript, that abound in meditations on sublime beauty: but you look in vain for it in his works.—Beauty, even the beauty of a God, wants Grace, and Moses, without it, from awful as he was, becomes only terrible. Immoderately fond of all that Laissant le vray pour prendre la grimace, Il fut toujours au delÀ de la Grace, Et bien plus loin que les commandements. He was blindly imitated by his disciples, and in them the want of Grace shocks you still more: for as they were far his inferiors in science, you have no equivalent at all. How little Guilielmo della At last Lorenzo Bernini appeared, a man of spirit and superior talents, but whom Grace had never visited even in dreams. He aimed at encyclopÆdy in art; painter, architect, statuary, he struggled, chiefly as such, to become original. In his eighteenth year he produced his Apollo and Daphne; a work miraculous for those years, and promising that sculpture by him should attain perfection. Soon after he made his David, which fell short of Apollo. Proud of general applause, and sensible of his impotency, either to equal or to offuscate the antiques; he seems, encouraged by the dastardly taste of that age, to have formed From Italy, reader, I leave you to guess at other countries. A celebrated Puget, Girardon, with all his brethren in On, are worse. Judge of the connoisseurs of France by Watelet, and of its designers, by Mariette’s gems. At Athens the Graces stood eastward, in a sacred place. Our artists should place them over their work-houses; wear them in their rings; seal with them; sacrifice to them; and, court their sovereign charms to their last breath. |