The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 3 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Hegel · en
_Thirdly_, we have a similar question with regard to the definite
character of the artistic conception and presentation, which
corresponds to the different character of the content thus itself
similarly differentiated, producing thereby different _types_ or
schools of painting.
(_a_) I have already at an earlier stage recalled the fact that the
ancients have had excellent painters, but added thereto the statement
that the function of painting is only completely satisfied by the way
of looking at things and the type of art which is referable to the
emotional life and which is actively asserted in the romantic type of
art. What appears, however, to contradict this from the point of view
of content is the fact that at the very culminating point of Christian
painting, during the age of Raphael, Rubens, Correggio, and others,
we find that mythological subjects are used and portrayed in part on
their own merits, and in part for the decoration and allegorization of
great exploits, triumphs, royal weddings, and so forth. In this sense
Goethe, for example, has once more borrowed from the descriptions
of Philostratus of the pictures of Polygnotus, and, assisted by his
imaginative powers as a poet, has added a novel freshness to such
subjects for the painter's benefit. If, however, such contributions
further imply the demand that subjects of Greek mythology and saga, or
scenes, too, from the Roman world, for which the French at a certain
period of their painting have evinced a great inclination, should
be conceived and portrayed in the definitive mood and significance
attached to them by the ancient world we can only object generally
that it is impossible to recall to life this past history, and what is
peculiarly appropriate to the antique is not wholly compatible with
the art of painting. The painter must consequently create from such
material an entirely different result, must import therein a totally
different spirit, other emotions and modes of seeing things than those
present to the ancients, in order to bring such a content into accord
with the real problems and aims of painting. For this reason also the
circle of antique material and situations is not that which painting
has elaborated in a consequential process; rather it is an aspect of
it which has been passed over as alien to its material, and which has
first to be essentially remodelled. I have several times insisted that
painting has before all to seize that, the presentment of which it can,
in deliberate contrast to sculpture, music, and poetry, master by means
of external form. And this is preeminently the self-concentration of
Spirit, which is denied to sculpture, while music again is unable to
make the passage to the external appearance of ideality, and poetry
itself can merely render visible the bodily presence in an incomplete
way. Painting, on the contrary, is still in a position to unite both
aspects. It can express the entire content of soul-life in an external