_Coroll._--Of all the eclectics, Domenichino alone composed for
expression; but his expression compared with Raffaello's is the
expression of Theocritus compared with that of Homer. A detail of pretty
images is rather calculated to diminish than to enforce energy with the
whole: a lovely child taking refuge in the bosom of a lovely mother is
an idea of nature, and pleasing in a lowly or domestic subject; but
amidst the terrors of martyrdom, it is a shred tacked to a purple robe.
In touching the circle that surrounds the Ananias of Raffaelle, you
touch the electric chain; an irresistible spark darts from the last as
from the first, and penetrates and subdues. At the Martyrdom of St.
Agnes,[20] you saunter amidst the mob of a lane, where the silly chat of
neighbouring gossips announces a topic as silly, till you find, with
indignation, that instead of a broken pot, or a petty theft, you are to
witness a scene for which Heaven opens, the angels descend, and Jesus
rises from his throne.
99. Expression alone can invest beauty with supreme and lasting command
over the eye.
_Coroll._--On beauty, unsupported by vigour and expression, Homer dwells
less than on active deformity; he tells us, in three lines, that Nireus
led three ships, his parentage, his form, his effeminacy; but opens in
Thersites a source of comedy and entertainment.
Raffaelle not only subjected beauty to expression, but, at the command
of invention, degraded it into a handmaid of deformity: thus the flowers
of infancy and youth, virility and age, are scattered round the
temple-gate, to impress us more by comparison with the distorted beings
that crawl before and defy the powers of every other hand but the one
delegated by Omnipotence.[21]
100. Imitation seems to cease, where the ideal part begins.
101. The imitator rises above the copyist by generalizing the individual
to a class; the idealist mounts above the imitator by uniting classes.
102. The imitator, by comparison and taste, unites the scattered limbs
of kindred excellence; the idealist, by the "mind's eye," fixes,
personifies, embodies possibility: modes and degrees of single powers
are the province of the former; the latter unites whatever implies no
contradiction in an assemblage of varied excellence.
_Coroll._--This is best explained by the Ilias. Each individual of Homer
forms a class, and is circumscribed by one quality of heroic power;
Achilles alone unites their different energies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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