But though right and wrong are thus found broadly opposed in works
severally so mean and so mighty as the roof of Milan and that of the
Sistine, there are works neither so great nor so mean, in which the
limits of right are vaguely defined, and will need some care to
determine; care only, however, to apply accurately the broad principle
with which we set out, that no form nor material is to be _deceptively_
represented.
XV. Evidently, then, painting, confessedly such, is no deception: it
does not assert any material whatever. Whether it be on wood or on
stone, or, as will naturally be supposed, on plaster, does not matter.
Whatever the material, good painting makes it more precious; nor can it
ever be said to deceive respecting the ground of which it gives us no
information. To cover brick with plaster, and this plaster with fresco,
is, therefore, perfectly legitimate; and as desirable a mode of
decoration as it is constant in the great periods. Verona and Venice are
now seen deprived of more than half their former splendor; it depended
far more on their frescoes than their marbles. The plaster, in this
case, is to be considered as the gesso ground on panel or canvas. But to
cover brick with cement, and to divide this cement with joints that it
may look like stone, is to tell a falsehood; and is just as contemptible
a procedure as the other is noble.
It being lawful to paint then, is it lawful to paint everything? So long
as the painting is confessed--yes; but if, even in the slightest degree,
the sense of it be lost, and the thing painted be supposed real--no. Let
us take a few instances. In the Campo Santo at Pisa, each fresco is
surrounded with a border composed of flat colored patterns of great
elegance--no part of it in attempted relief. The certainty of flat
surface being thus secured, the figures, though the size of life, do not
deceive, and the artist thenceforward is at liberty to put forth his
whole power, and to lead us through fields and groves, and depths of
pleasant landscape, and to soothe us with the sweet clearness of far off
sky, and yet never lose the severity of his primal purpose of
architectural decoration.
In the Camera di Correggio of San Lodovico at Parma, the trellises of
vine shadow the walls, as if with an actual arbor; and the troops of
children, peeping through the oval openings, luscious in color and faint
in light, may well be expected every instant to break through, or hide
behind the covert. The grace of their attitudes, and the evident
greatness of the whole work, mark that it is painting, and barely redeem
it from the charge of falsehood; but even so saved, it is utterly
unworthy to take a place among noble or legitimate architectural
decoration.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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