Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 402, April, 1849
It is curious that even colours were purchased of the "speziali," – the apothecaries. It is well known how much we are indebted to medical science for many of the recipes in art, including those for the purification of oils and the manufacture of varnishes. "Sig. A. told me that, when he was at Venice, he made a point of going to the Piazza San Salvatore, where Titian used to purchase his colours, to see whether there were any "speziali" there still. He found one, and inquired of him if he had any old colours, such as were used by the old painters, and he was shown an orange-coloured pigment, which resembled a colour frequently found on Venetian pictures." We have before us a document of payments so late as 1699, by which it appears that, with us also, the apothecary was the vender of painters' materials. "1699 – Rob. Bayley, apothecary – for oil, gold, and colours, £61." This was for painting a high cross. Blackness has sometimes been objected to in the colouring of the greatest of landscape painters, Gaspar Poussin. If the following statement may be relied upon, the cause of this occasional blemish, if it be one, may be conjectured. Sig. A. showed a black mirror, which he said had been used in painting by Bamboccio, (Peter Van Laer,) and that it had been "bequeathed by Bamboccio to Gaspar Poussin; by the latter to some other painter, until it ultimately came into the hands of Sig. A." In pictures of an early time the darks are thick and substantial, the lights thin. This was reversed afterwards, excepting with regard to some dark blue, and other draperies, of which examples may be seen in Correggio. There is a peculiar impasto, however, of the Bolognese school, which seems to have escaped the notice of Mr Eastlake and Mrs Merrifield: it is mostly observable in Guercino. The paint on the flesh, in heads, arms, &c., is frequently greatly raised, as if modelled. We are curious to know something respecting this method – in what way the manipulation is managed.
We cannot credit the accounts given by all whom Mrs Merrifield consulted, that it was Titian's practice to lay by his pictures, after each painting, for months, and even years. This slow process implies a forbearance which can noways be reconciled with the fervour and usual impatience of genius. Without fastening him down to so systematic a necessity, we can easily believe that his pictures were long under his hand, from the repeated glazings so remarkable in his works. Exposure to the sun and air seems to have been universal. It is well known that, a short time after painting, a portion, probably a deleterious portion, of the oil rises to the surface. The atmosphere certainly takes up this, but the exposure must be frequent, for this greasiness will return. We strongly suspect that it is this deleterious exudation which destroys the purity of colours; and would recommend, from a long experience, the washing the surface of pictures, (we have used common sand for the purpose,) as often as any greasiness returns. A time will be ascertained when none recurs; and we think the picture is then pretty secure from any farther change. In this case, a kind of abrasion does what time would in the end do; but, not waiting for time, we often varnish, and leave this deleterious part of the oil to do its mischief. Much stress has been laid on the grinding of colours. The Venetians were not very careful in this matter, excepting in their glazing colours. It is very evident that, for some purposes of effect, they purposely laid on their colours very coarsely ground, and scraped down for granulation. White lead, however, it is admitted, cannot be too finely ground, or too carefully made. It is the pigment that Titian was most solicitous about. There is a letter of his extant, in which he laments the death of the person who manufactured it for him. "The Italians, and especially the Venetians," says Mrs Merrifield, "were extremely careful in the preparation of their white lead, which was generally purified by washing." A recipe of Fra Fortunato of Rovigo, recommends the grinding it with vinegar and washing it, repeating the operation: "You will then have a white lead, which will be as excellent for miniature painting as for painting in oil." With regard to the glazings of Titian, an almost incredible story is told by an artist, Sig. E. "He says that glazings are never permanent, and that nothing can make them so; and, as a proof, he told me there were in a certain palace several pictures by Titian, which had always been covered with glasses: that he was present when the glasses were removed for the time; when, to the surprise of every one present, the glazings were found to have evaporated from the pictures, and to have adhered to the inside of the glass. I considered this incredible, and it certainly appears to require proof, although it must be recollected that Lionardo da Vinci says, 'Il verde fatto dal rame, ancorchè tal color sia messo a olio, se ne va in fumo,'" &c. If the colour evaporated from the picture, it would certainly be retained by the glass; and this artist distinctly said, that all the glazings were fixed on the inside of the glass, exactly above the painting, and that the effect of the different colours on the glass was very singular. From that time, he added, he had left off glazing his pictures. This is the more strange, because painters of the Flemish school may be said to have commenced their pictures with glazing, and to have continued it throughout; yet we never heard of such a fact, though many of their pictures have been under glass.
We have elsewhere recommended, without knowing that it was an old practice, the use of white chalk and such substances with the colours, and are therefore pleased to find the following notice, – "White chalk, marble dust, gesso, the bone of cuttle-fish, alumen, and travertine, were occasionally used in white pigments. They were frequently mixed with transparent vegetable colours, to give them body: " it might be added to give them, by a semi-transparency, and that even to colours in their own nature opaque, a luminous quality.
Does "grana in grano," the Spanish term for the scarlet pigment, show the origin of the expression, "a rogue in grain." "Pierce Plowman, whose Vision is supposed to have been written in 1350, in describing the dress of a lady richly clad, says, that her robe was of 'scarlet in grain;' that is, scarlet dyed with grana, the best and most durable red dye. The import of the words 'in grain,' was afterwards changed, and the term was applied generally to all colours with which cloths were dyed, which were considered to be permanent."
"Biadetto," the artificial carbonate of copper, is said to be the blue most resembling that found in Venetian pictures. Mrs Merrifield erroneously places coal among the black pigments. It is a brown, and we know of none so useful; it is deep, but not the hot brown, such as Vandyke brown, resembling that of Teniers: Mr Eastlake has shown that it was used by the Flemish and Dutch painters. We had long used it, before we were acquainted with so authoritative a recommendation.
We find many very useful observations on oils, as to their purification, and the methods of rendering them drying. As Mrs Merrifield offers in a note a new dryer, certainly a desideratum, we quote the passage, that trials of it may be made: —
"The most powerful of all dryers is perhaps chloride of lime in a dry state: a small quantity of this, added to clarified oil, will convert it into a solid. For this reason it must be employed very cautiously: if too much be used, it may burn the brushes, and injure the colours. It has the advantage of not darkening the oil, and its drying property appears to arise from its absorbing the watery particles of the oil. Chloride of calcium is equally efficacious as a dryer, but the small quantity of iron which it contains dissolves in the oil, and darkens it. It seems probable that, if the chloride of lime were judiciously employed, it might prove serviceable as a dryer; but as I am not aware that it has been tried as such by any person but myself, the utmost caution would be required, and some experiments would be necessary, in order to ascertain the smallest possible quantity which would answer the purpose intended."
We are surprised to find, in the Bolognese MS., olive oil mentioned as mixed with linseed oil in equal proportions, because we never yet heard of any successful experiment to render it drying. As it is the property of olive oil to turn lighter, not, as other oils, darker, a proof of successful experiment would be valuable. Pacheco mentions "salad oil" with honey, in a mixture of flour paste for grounds; but this may have been nut-oil. Besides the passages in Vasari and Lomazzo, which attribute to Lionardo the use of distilled oil, there is the recipe in the Secreti of Alessio, which is conclusive as to the fact that linseed-oil was distilled and used to dilute amber varnish. We are aware that Mr Hendrie, in his valuable translation of Theophilus, strongly insists upon the superiority of distilled over other oil, but it does not appear ever to have been in general use.
The recommendation of amber varnish being the chief result of the commission, numerous authorities as well as recipes are given. "It appears to be mentioned in the Marciana MS., under the term 'carbone,' which has undoubtedly been written instead of 'caribe,' the Arabic and Persian term for amber." We would suggest the possibility that "carbone" may still be the right word, and mean amber, if it has been before mentioned in the MS., – for one mode of making the varnish was to burn the amber to a "carbone," and then to grind it, as recommended in the recipe. In speaking of amber varnish as the result of Mrs Merrifield's research, we should be wrong in ascribing it to that alone; nor should we be doing justice to her own liberal and full acknowledgment of the prior recommendation of it by Mr Sheldrake in 1801, whose authority she quotes at much length, with detail of his experiments. "The use of amber varnish as a vehicle for painting, was revived and recommended so long ago as 1801, by Mr Sheldrake, in a paper published in the 19th volume of the Transactions of the Society of Arts. In these papers, Mr Sheldrake endeavours to prove that this varnish was used by the Italian painters; and as his opinion has been in a great measure confirmed by documentary evidence, his papers acquire additional interest from his having recorded the experiments made by himself in painting with this varnish."
The authority of Gerard Lairesse, given in a note, we think little of; for the work bearing his name was not written by him, but after his death, by some who professed to give an account of his instructions. There is an amusing anecdote, which is introduced for the purpose of showing that varnish was in use; we insert it for its pleasantry: —
"As an indirect proof, but not the less valuable on that account, is the following anecdote, related by Luigi Crespi of his father, Guiseppe Maria Crespi, called Lo Spagnuolo. 'One day, Cardinal Lambertini was in our house, sitting for his portrait, which my father was painting, when one of my brothers entered the room, bringing a letter, just arrived by post, from another brother who was at Modena on business. The Cardinal took the letter, and, on opening it, said to my father, 'Go on painting, and I will read it.' Having opened the letter, he began to read quickly, inventing an imaginary letter, in which the absent son, with the greatest expressions of shame and humiliation, prostrated himself at the feet of his father, begging his pardon, and saying that he had found it impossible to disengage himself from a stringent promise of marrying a certain Signora Apollonia, whence… But he had hardly proceeded thus far, when my father leaped on to his feet, knocking over palette, pencils, and chair; and upsetting oil, varnish, and everything else which was on the little bench; and uttering all kinds of exclamations. The Cardinal jumped at the same time, to quiet and pacify him, telling him, as well as he could for laughing, that it was all nonsense, and entirely an invention of his own. Meanwhile, my father was running round the room in despair, the Cardinal following him, and thus pleasantly ended the morning's work. After this time, whenever his eminence came to see my father, before getting out of the carriage, he would whisper, That he had no doubt Signora Apollonia was at home, and with him.'"
We refer the artist-reader to the work itself, for valuable matter on the subject of grounds; we have already trespassed too far to allow of our here entering minutely into the subject. Mr Eastlake and Mrs Merrifield, however, think a knowledge of grounds of the first importance. The evidence is in favour of white grounds, of size and gesso. De Piles thinks them, however, liable to crack. And in this place Mrs Merrifield narrates, on the authority of the French painter, M. Camille Rogier, to Sig. Cigogna, who inserted it in his Inscrizeoni Veneziane, a circumstance which strongly savours of the astute exchange of armour in the Iliad– brass for gold. Owing to the gesso or white tempera ground, it is said that the celebrated Nozze di Cana, by Paolo Veronese, was in such a condition as to render it necessary to line it very carefully, to prevent the paint scaling from the canvass. "But when, in 1815, the picture was about to be restored to Venice, according to the treaty, it was perceived that the colours crumbled off and fell into dust at the slightest movement. To continue the operation, therefore, was to expose one of the finest works of the Venetian school to certain destruction; and the committee decided that the picture of Paolo should remain at Paris, and that a painting of Lebrun's should be sent to Venice in its stead." "Credat Judæus!" If this were so – if the picture was really in that condition, how could it have been lined? and if it could, by any care, bear the necessary rough usage and removals of lining, would it not have borne careful conveyance? The French are able diplomatists. We think Mr Peel, and much less experienced liners, must laugh at the simplicity of the committee. Were they a committee on the Fine Arts? We have heard of valuable pictures having been smuggled into this country, with other pictures painted over them – if the proof which satisfied the committee, (if the story have any real foundation of truth,) had been a free pass through the custom-house, we have not the slightest doubt our picture-dealers would have readily supplied it, and have skilfully so attached dry colours as to peel off on the slightest shaking. We should rather give credence to the glazings of Titian flying off to the glass, than to this supposed danger of removal from the cause ascribed.
In now taking leave of Mrs Merrifield, we express our hope that, having so ably and so faithfully done the work confided to her by the Commission on the Fine Arts, she will not think her labours at an end; for we are quite sure that her judicious mind and clear style may be most profitably employed in the service of art, to whose practical advancement she has contributed so much.
TENNYSON'S POEMS.11
There is no living poet who more justly demands of the critic a calm and accurate estimate of his claims than Alfred Tennyson; neither is there one whom it is more difficult accurately and dispassionately to estimate. Other living and poetical reputations seem tolerably well settled. The older bards belong already to the past. Wordsworth all the world consents to honour. Living, he already ranks with the greatest of our ancestors. His faults even are no longer canvassed; they are frankly admitted, and have ceased to disturb us. Every man of original genius has his mannerism more or less disagreeable; once thoroughly understood, it becomes our only care to forget it. No one now thinks of discovering that Wordsworth is occasionally, and especially when ecclesiastical themes overtake him, sadly prosaic; no one is now more annoyed by this than he is at the school divinity of Milton, or the tangled, elliptical, helter-skelter sentences into which the impetuous imagination of Shakspeare sometimes hurries him. Moore, another survivor of the magnates of the last generation, has judgment passed upon him with equal certainty and universality. He, with a somewhat different fate, has seen his fame collapse. He no longer stalks a giant in the land, but he has dwindled down to the most delightful of minstrel-pages that ever brought song and music into a lady's chamber. So exquisite are his songs, men willingly forget he ever attempted anything higher. We have no other remembrance of his Lalla Rookh than that he has embedded in it some of those gems of song – some of those charming lyrics which scarcely needed to be set to music; they are melody and verse in one. They sing themselves. If his fame has diminished, it has not tarnished. It has shrunk to a little point, but that little point is bright as the diamond, and as imperishable. Of the poets more decidedly of our own age and generation, there are but few whom it would be thought worth while to estimate according to a high standard of excellence. The crowd we in general consent to praise with indulgence, because we do not look upon them as candidates for immortality, but merely for the honours of the day – a social renown, the applause of their contemporaries, the palm won in the race with living rivals.
Poetry of the very highest order, coupled with much affectation, much defective writing, many wilful blunders, renders Alfred Tennyson a very worthy and a very difficult subject for the critic. The extreme diversity and unequal merit of his compositions, make it a very perplexing business to form any general estimate of his writings. The conclusion the critic comes to at one moment he discards the next. He finds it impossible to satisfy himself, nor can ever quite determine in what measure praise and censure should be mixed. At one time he is so thoroughly charmed, so completely delighted with the poet's verse, that he is disposed to extol his author to the skies; he is as little inclined to any captious and disparaging criticism as lovers are, when they look, however closely, into the fair face which has enchanted them. At other times, the page before him will call up nothing but vexation and annoyance. Even the gleams of genuine poetry, amongst the confusion and elaborate triviality that afflict him, will only add to his displeasure. A heap of rubbish never looks so vile, or so disagreeable, as when a fresh flower is seen thrown upon it. Were Tennyson to be estimated by some half-dozen of his best pieces, he would be the compeer of Coleridge and of Wordsworth – if by a like number of his worst performances, he would be raised very little above that nameless and unnumbered crowd of dilettanti versifiers, whose utmost ambition seems to be to see themselves in print, and then, as quickly as possible, to disappear —
"One moment black, then gone for ever."
This diversity of merit is not to be accounted for by the diverse nature of the subject-matter which the poet has at different times treated; for Mr Tennyson has given us the happiest specimens of the most different styles of composition, employed on a singular variety of topics. He has been grave and graceful, playful and even broadly comic, with complete success. As a finished portraiture of a peculiar state of mind – conceived with philosophic truth, and embellished with all the fascinating associations which it is the province of poetry to call around us – nothing could surpass the poem of the Lotos Eaters. For playfulness, and tender, amorous fancy – warm, but not too warm – spiritual, but not too spiritual – we shall go far before we find a rival to the Talking Oak, or to the Day Dream: what better ballad can heart desire than the Lord of Burleigh? And how well does a natural indignation speak out in the clear ringing verse of Lady Clara Vere de Vere! Specimens of the richly comic, as we have hinted, may here and there be found: we have one in our eye which we shall seek an opportunity for quoting. In harmonising metaphysic thought with poetic imagery and expression, he does not always succeed; on the contrary, some of his saddest failures arise from the abortive attempt; yet there are some admirable passages even of this description of writing.
It is not, therefore, the difference of style aimed at, or subject-matter adopted, which determines whether Tennyson shall be successful or not. Perhaps it will be said that the marked inequality in his compositions is sufficiently accounted for by the simple fact, that some were written at an earlier age than others; that some are the productions of his youth, and others of his maturity – that, in short, it is a mere question of dates. There is indeed a very striking difference between those poems which commence the volume, and bear the date of 1830, and the other and greater number, which bear the date of 1832: the difference is so great, that we question whether, upon the whole, the fame of Mr Tennyson would not have been advanced by the omission altogether from his collected works of this first portion of his poems; for though much beauty would be lost, far more blemish would be got rid of. Still, however, as the same inequality pursues us in his later writings, and is evident even in his last production —The Princess– there remains something more to be explained than can be quite accounted for by the mere comparison of dates. This something more we find explained in a bad school of taste, under the influence of which Mr Tennyson commenced his poetic authorship. Above this influence he often rises, but he has never quite liberated himself from it. To this source we trace the affectations of many kinds which deface his writings – affectation of a super-refinement of meaning, ending in mere obscurity, or in sheer nonsense; affectation of antique simplicity ending in the most jejune triviality; experimental metres putting the ear to torture; or an utter disregard of all metre, of all the harmonies of verse, together with an incessant toil after originality of phrase; as if no new idea could be expressed unless each separate word bore also an aspect of novelty.
At the time when Tennyson commenced his career, poetry and poets were in a somewhat singular position. Never had there been so great a thirst for poetry – never had there existed so large a reading public with so decided a predilection for this species of literature; and rarely, if ever, has there arisen – at once the cause and effect of this public taste – so noble a band of contemporary poets as those who were just then retiring from the stage. The success which attended metrical composition was quite intoxicating. Poems, now gradually waning from the sight of all mankind, were rapturously welcomed as masterpieces. It seemed that the poet might dare anything. Meanwhile, the novelty to which he was emboldened was rendered urgent and necessary; for, in addition to the old rivals of times long past, there was this band of poets, whose echoes were still ringing in the theatre, to be competed with. Was it any wonder that at such an epoch we should have Keats writing his Endymion, or Tennyson elaborating his incomprehensible ode To Memory, or inditing his foolish songs To the Owl, or torturing himself to unite old balladry with modern sentiment in his Lady of Shalott, for ever rhyming with that detested town of Camelot; or that he should have been stringing together fulsome, self-adulatory nonsense about The Poet and the Poet's Mind– or, in short, committing any conceivable extravagance in violation of sense, metre, and the English language? The young poet of this time was evidently carried off his feet. He had drank so deep of those springs about Parnassus, that he had lost his footing on the solid ground. It did not follow that he and his compeers always soared above us because they could no longer walk on a level with us. Men, in a dream, think they are flying when they are only falling. They reeled much, these intellectual revellers. It is true that sober men discountenanced them, rebuked them, reminded them that liberty was not license, nor imagination another name for insanity; but there was still a considerable crowd of indiscriminate admirers to cheer and encourage them in their wildest freaks.
One tendency, gathered from these times, seems, all along and throughout his whole progress, to have beset our author – the reluctance to subside for a moment to the easy natural level of cultivated minds. He has a morbid horror of commonplace. He will be grotesque, if you will; absurd, infantine – anything but truly simple: when he girds himself for serious effort, he would give you the very essence of poetry, and nothing else. This wish to have it all blossoms, no stem or leaves, has perhaps been one cause why he has written no long work. It is a tendency which is, in some measure, honourable to him. Though it has assisted in betraying him into the errors we have already noticed, it must be allowed that we are never in danger of being wearied with the monotony of commonplace.
It may be worth while to consider for a moment this characteristic – the wish to seize upon the essence, and the essence only, of poetry.
In our high intellectual industry, there goes on a certain division and subdivision of labour analogous to that which marks the progress of our commercial and manufacturing industry. The first men of genius were historians, poets, philosophers, all in one. If they wrote verse, they found a place in it for whatever could in any manner interest their contemporaries, whether it was matter of knowledge, or matter of passion. The theology of a people, and the agriculture of a people – chaos and night, and how to sow the fields – the progeny of gods, and the breeding of bulls – were alike materials for the poem. A Hesiod or a Gower chant all they know – science, or religion, or morality. The first epic is the first history. But the narrative here becomes too engrossing to admit of large admixtures of didactic matter. This is relegated to some other form of composition, and handed over to some other master of the art. The dramatic form carries on this division still further. The representation of the narrative relieves the poem of its historic character, and a dialogue which is to accompany action becomes necessarily devoted to the passions of life, or such strains of reflection as result from, and harmonise with, those passions. The lyric minstrel seizes upon these eliminated elements of passion and reflection, and adds thereto a greater liberty of imagination. At length comes that mere intellectual luxury Of imaginative thought – that gathering in of beauty and emotion from all sources – that subtle blending of a thousand pleasing allusions and flitting images – exquisite for their own sake, and constituting what is considered as pre-eminently the poetical description of natural scenery, or the poetical delineation of human feeling.
But it is possible that this intellectual division of labour may be carried too far. This luxury of imaginative thought may be found supporting itself on the slenderest base imaginable of either incident or reflection, may be almost divorced from those first natural sources of interest which affect all mankind. Now, although this may be the most poetical element of the poem – though this subtle play of imagination may constitute, more than anything else, the difference between poetry and prose, it does not follow that a good poem can be constructed wholly of such materials. It does not even follow that, in a good poem, this is really the most essential part; for that which constitutes the specific distinction between prose and poetry may not be an ingredient so important as others which both prose and poetry have in common. It is the hilt, and its peculiar formation, which more particularly distinguishes the sword from any other cutting instrument; but the blade – the faculty of cutting which it shares in common with the most domestic knife – is, after all, the most important part, the most requisite property of the sword. A peculiar play of imagination is pre-eminently poetic, but thought, reflection, the genuine passions of man – these must still constitute the greater elements of the composition, whether it be prose or poem.
If, therefore, we carry this division of labour too far, we shall be in danger of carving elegant and elaborate hilts that have no blades, or but a sham one. We ask no one to write didactic or philosophic poems – we should entreat of them to abstain; we call on no man to describe again the culture of the sugarcane, (though it bids fair to become amongst us one of the lost arts,) or the breeding of sheep, in numerous verse; we hope no one will again fall into that singular error of imagining that the "art of poetry" must be a peculiarly appropriate subject for a poem, and the very topic that the spirit of a poetic reader was thirsting for. Art of poetry! what poetic nutriment will you extract from that? As well think to dine a man upon the art of cookery! It is quite right that what is best said in prose should be confined to prose; but neither must we divorce substantial thought, the broad passions of mankind, or a deep reflection, from the poetic form. This would be to build nothing but steeples, and minarets, and all the filigree of architecture. We should have pillars and porticoes enough, but not a temple of any kind to enter into.
We often hear it asserted, on the one hand, that the taste for poetry has declined. We hear this, on the other hand, vigorously contested and denied. No, says the indignant champion of the muse, verse may have sunk much in estimation, and the ingenious labours of the rhymist may be put on a par, if you will, with the tricks of the juggler or the caprices of art. Difficulties conquered! Nonsense. We want good things executed. It is your folly if you do not choose the best means. The man who plays on his fiddle with one string only, shall have thanks if he plays well, but not because he plays on one string; if he could have played better, using the four, his thanks shall be diminished by so much. Yes, verse may be depreciated, but poetry– which grows perennial from the very heart of humanity – you may plough over the soil deep as you please, you will only make it grow the faster, and strike the deeper root. The answer is well, and yet there may be something left unexplained. If poetry has been deserting the highroads of human thought – if it has grown more limited as it has grown more subtle – there may be some ground for suspecting that the public will desert it. Without wishing to detract anything from the high merit of his best performances, we should refer to a great portion of the poetry of Shelley as an illustration of these remarks, and also to a considerable part of the poetry of Keats.