II. Invention

Now this notion might be very well and even profound in the mind of a distinguished peintre-philosophe like Poussin, whose integrity of intellect, poetic insight, and subtlest inventiveness in composition could transform traditional material into an art of uniquely sophisticated originality. But in the mind of a shallow and uninventive painter of the academic type it might, like the dangerous counsel to imitate ancient art, easily lead to a corruption of Aristotle's theory of imitation; for it could encourage the imitation of famous paintings that had treated brilliantly the most important "histories," rather than of nature itself. And the study of nature, Poussin would have agreed, must always serve as the beginning even for the renewing of time-honored themes.

It was actually the French theorists of the seventeenth century who first declared the noble subject to be a sine qua non of the grand style that aimed at universal truth through the imitation of "la belle nature";[5] for the great events of scripture, or of Greek and Roman fable or history, "which," as Reynolds later observed, "early education and the universal course of reading have made familiar and interesting to all Europe without being degraded by the vulgarism of ordinary life in any country,"[6] easily adapted themselves to ideal representation. But the Italian critics of the sixteenth century had already implied this doctrine [it was better implied than formulated!] in urging the painter, as Quintilian had urged the orator, to acquire at least a competent knowledge of the poets and historians without which, all critics of art and literature were agreed, fine invention is impossible; and to cultivate the acquaintance of learned men.[7] A century before, the humanistic Alberti had [p. 17] already reminded the painters that it was from Homer that Phidias in ancient times had learned to represent Zeus with divine majesty.[8] And for Lomazzo near the end of the sixteenth century the sentiment of history is the nurse of good composition producing gravity and truth; and painters are like poets not only in possessing "il furor d'Apolline," the divine inspiration of which Plato had spoken in the Phaedrus, but also in having as objects of representation the illustrious deeds and glory of heroes; for he cannot be a painter who has not also something of the spirit of a poet.[9] It is, moreover, always implied in the critical writing of this time that the painter, like Horace's poet,[10] should be a profound student of human nature which his knowledge of literature, in providing him with appropriate examples of human action and emotion, will also enrich. But whether it is a question of literary knowledge, or of immediate experience of life, for good painting as for good writing sapere, as Horace had said, est principium et fons; and that eruditio libero digna, that "learning worthy of a free man" of which Cicero had written,[11] is the inspiration equally of painters and of poets.

The French Academy inherited this humanistic point of view; and during the seventeenth century, at least, maintained the superiority of the historical painter over all others. After remarking that the mere representation of things in line and color is a mechanical process, and that you can tell a good painter by a difficult and noble invention, Félibien in an interesting passage arranges painters in hierarchical order according to the kind of subject matter which they prefer. The lowest type is the painter of still-life, and thence one proceeds through painters of landscape, of animals [a better subject than landscape, because animals are living and moving, not dead!], and of portraits to the grand peintre. He, [p. 18] imitating God whose most perfect work is also man, paints groups of human figures and chooses subjects from history and fable. "He must," writes Félibien, "like the historians, represent great events, or like the poets, subjects that will please; and mounting still higher, be skilled to conceal under the veil of fable the virtues of great men, and the most exalted mysteries."[12] Less than forty years later, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, this humanistic point of view had already begun to change and to point towards the still distant Romantic Movement, when the forward-looking critic Roger de Piles daringly extended the meaning of "historical invention" to include any choice of objects that "simply of themselves represent a subject for the painter."[13] It would have been in the interest of clarity had De Piles allowed the term to retain its original connotation of "having to do with fable," and invented a more appropriate category in which to place still-life and landscape painting. But if his new and inclusive use of it is not particularly apt, his desire to extend the welcome of criticism to those essentially pictorial provinces of the painter's art that the Academicians strenuously bred in the tradition of classicism--and of ut pictura poesis --had hitherto considered little more than hack-work, is historically very significant. At the end of the eighteenth century Reynolds, who combined allegiance to the grand style of historical painting with a breadth of outlook that recalls De Piles, said all that it is necessary to say in criticism of the academic hierarchy of the style when he remarked: "Whether it is the human figure, an animal, or even inanimate objects, there is nothing, however unpromising in appearance, but may be raised into dignity, convey sentiment, and produce emotion, in the hands of a painter of genius. What was said of Virgil, that he threw even the dung about the ground with an air of dignity, may be applied to Titian; whatever he touched, however naturally mean, and habitually familiar, by a kind of magic he invested with grandeur and importance."[14] Reynolds' point would have greater force for the modern reader had he chosen Chardin rather than Titian as an illustration, although Chardin would certainly not have been so perfect a pendant to Virgil. But no liberal humanist of today will deny that individual genius is a more important factor than choice of subject matter in producing painting that is humanly significant, even though he will not admit-- [p. 19] and neither, certainly, would Reynolds--that [granting them to be equal in purely pictorial skill] the painter of still-life is in the last analysis the equal of the painter of human action and emotion. For it is one thing to admit that in the minds of the Academicians ut pictura poesis was a doctrine that tended to circumscribe and formalize the art of painting, denying it conditions proper to its own development; it is another to deny with the aesthetic purists of the twentieth century that there is any virtue in the doctrine whatsoever.

In the mid-eighteenth century Lessing was in the curious position of objecting not only to ut pictura poesis as it was exemplified in the historical painters, but also to those critics of the doctrine who, like De Piles, approved an enlargement of the painter's legitimate sphere of activity. Looking backward like the theorists of the Italian Renaissance to the authority of Aristotle, and opposed to romantic tendencies in eighteenth-century criticism, he was, moreover, influenced by the rather narrow purism of Winckelmann's tendency to identify beauty with Greek statuary. Believing that bodily beauty is the end of painting ["the highest bodily beauty is, therefore," he said, "the highest end"] he could only think of landscape painting and still-life, whether painted by an artist of genius or not, as inferior forms of art. But he had an even lower opinion, as he himself remarks, of historical painting wherein he thought that painters showed their cleverness in mere expression without subordinating the latter to bodily beauty. Lessing and Félibien would have argued violently concerning the scope and importance of historical painting; nevertheless it is possible that Lessing had the French critic in mind when he wrote a series of preparatory notes for the Laokoön in which, much like Félibien, he arranges painters in hierarchical order from those who paint landscape and still-life to those who paint mankind; the important difference being that for Félibien the highest ranking painter is the historical painter who paints significant human actions, whereas for Lessing he is the painter who subordinates everything to "körperliche schönheit."[15]

These notes of Lessing epitomize the rigorous classicism of his attitude towards the figure arts, but they also indicate how little he understood the nature and possibilities of the art of painting. Apropos of his statement that "the highest bodily beauty exists only in man and even in him only by virtue of the ideal," a modern critic has made the following pertinent comment: "For Lessing, as for the classicist in general, beauty does not consist primarily in expression, but in a certain informing symmetry and proportion that, like true plot in tragedy, points the way to some human end."[16] This is undoubtedly true, and one will admire the fundamental humanist in Lessing and the objective clarity of his method of arguing from first principles. One will also admit that the stupid or blatant rhetoric of much academic art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and a disproportionate emphasis on expression among the critics, justified to a very great extent his dislike of historical painting wherein he saw bodily beauty, for him the chief raison d'être of painting, sacrificed to expression which might legitimately predominate in poetry but in [p. 20] painting should remain strictly subordinate.[17] Yet it must be admitted that Félibien's definition of the greatest painting as that which represents serious actions, or delightful fables, or significant allegory-in short his allegiance to the doctrine ut pictura poesis --affords far wider and richer scope to the pictorial art than Lessing's austere and circumscribing definition. For although Lessing's avowed purpose in the Laokoön was to dispel a confusion between the temporal art of poetry and the spatial art of painting, in defining the end of painting as the representation of bodily beauty he unconsciously confused painting with sculpture. Seeking to destroy a confusion that originated in the Renaissance, he fell into another that originated in the antiquarian and archaeological research of the eighteenth century and was, in a sense, "hoist with his own petard."

Thus the fate of ut pictura poesis was various among critics of painting in the eighteenth century. De Piles and Reynolds, both of whom adhered to the spirit of the doctrine, could nevertheless implicitly criticize its exclusive character by welcoming within the painter's legitimate precincts matter that the French Academicians of an earlier day had considered profane. Lessing, far more conservative, would have agreed with Félibien that without subject matter drawn from human life, no painting is worthy of the name. But in his effort to purify the art of those elements that encouraged it, in the name of expression, to go beyond the limits of an art of figures coexistent in space, he tended to minimize the importance for the painter of human emotion and psychology. Instead, he adopted a narrow conception of formal beauty as the goal of painting--"beautiful shapes in graceful attitudes"; these alone, he remarked, among the "pictures" or Homer, the painters had found suitable to their proper powers. Had Lessing's conception of formal beauty been less restricted, critics of paintng and aestheticians would be less inclined to quarrel with him, for no one will deny the general rightness of his contention that the greatest painting, like the greatest poetry, observes the limitations of its medium; or that it is dangerous for a spatial art like painting to attempt the progressive effects of a temporal art like poetry. Where Lessing went astray as a critic of painting was in defining its limits too strictly, and this appears no where more clearly than in his failure to take sufficiently into account that great middle-ground of human content on which both poetry and painting, as arts of expression, are equally free to draw. He was not unaware of this ground, but his reasonable objection to painting with literary intentions, his utter lack of understanding of the pictorial significance of the development of modern painting, and the dominant influence of the antique all combined to narrow his conception of formal beauty to a point that could allow the painter little room for the expression of human emotion.[18] [p. 21]

Lessing's well-known objection to allegory offers further interesting comment on the puristic character of his attitude towards painting. Commenting in his preface to the Laokoön on the famous aphorism of Simonides,[19] he remarks with a large measure of truth that the modern fashion of allegorical pictures is the result of the mistaken effort on the part of painters to turn their art into mute poetry "without having considered to what extent painting can express universal ideas without giving up its proper mÚtier and becoming an arbitrary method of writing" [zu ener willkührlichen Schriftart zu werden ]. In condemning allegory on the grounds of its arbitrary character, Lessing was anticipated by the Abbé du Bos, who though willing to admit that traditional allegorical figures have acquired the rights of solid citizenship in the arts, cannot tolerate their younger brethren that have issued from the fertile brains of modern painters. "Ils sont des chiffres," writes Du Bos, "dont personne n'a la clef, et même peu de gens la cherchent."[20] He goes on to say that the mingling of real and allegorical figures destroys verisimilitude [Aristotle's dramatic probability], and that Rubens' painting of the birth of Louis XIII, which he admits to be magnificent, would give more pleasure had the painter substituted for his allegorical personages women of that time who, in assisting Marie de'Medici during her travail, might have shown the various human emotions that such an event would cause. "Painters are poets," adds Du Bos, "but their poetry does not consist so much in inventing idle fancies [cheimères ] or 'jeux d'esprits,' as in conceiving what passions and what sentiments one should give to people according to their character and the condition of life in which one supposes them to be, just as it consists in discovering the expressions that will suitably render these passions apparent to the eye and enable one to perceive what these sentiments are."[21] Lessing would have agreed with Du Bos in detesting the obscurity of much allegorical painting--an obscurity that resulted from what, as we have seen, he called "an arbitrary manner of writing"; and although he does not develop the implications of this phrase, one may be certain that he means the idiosyncratic use of allegorical figures to serve as a kind of extended literary comment on the action in a painting. He would, however, have objected to the way in which Du Bos identifies the poetical element in painting with expression; for, as we have seen, Lessing considered expression far more appropriate to poetry than to painting, believing that in the latter it tended seriously to interfere with the all-important depiction of bodily beauty. Now no one will deny that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries produced a host of obscure, vapid, and thoroughly tiresome allegories that would drive anyone at moments to espouse the "probability" of a Du Bos, or the purism of a Lessing. One may, in fact, go so far as to say that in allegory the art of painting , for reasons of which Du Bos may have been more aware than Lessing, has never achieved its most profound interpretation of human life. Nevertheless Lessing's downright objection to allegory is another clear indication of the one-sidedness of his criticism, and of his insensitiveness to the purely pictorial, as well as to certain imaginative, capacities of the painter's [p. 22] art. Of these Reynolds was fully aware when he wrote his opinion of the Marie de' Medici series; for although he agreed with Du Bos that Rubens was at fault in mixing allegorical figures with real personages, he also insisted that in sacrificing truth to nature, Rubens gained another kind of truth that was more significant. "If," says Reynolds, "the artist considered himself as engaged to furnish this gallery with a rich, various and splendid ornament, this could not be done, at least in an equal degree, without peopling the air and water with these allegorical figures; he therefore accomplished all that he purposed. In this case all lesser considerations, which tend to obstruct the great end of the work, must yield and give way."[22] Reynolds would have been the first to admit that painting can have a greater end than Rubens here fulfilled--such an end he discerned in the profound and overpowering invention of Michelangelo on the Sistine ceiling[23] the greatness of which, Reynolds knew, is no mere matter of rhetoric, or of pictorial brilliance, or, pace Lessing, of bodily beauty either; nevertheless, on the subject of pictorial allegory Reynolds spoke a more decisive word than Lessing when he continued his criticism of the Luxembourg paintings as follows: "It must always be remembered that the business of a great painter is to produce a great picture; he must therefore take special care not to be cajoled by specious arguments out of his materials.

"What has been so often said to the disadvantage of allegorical poetry,--that it is tedious, and uninteresting,--cannot with the same propriety be applied to painting, where the interest is of a different kind. If allegorical painting produces a greater poetry,--that it is tedious, and uninteresting,--cannot with the same propriety be applied to painting, where the interest is of a different kind. If allegorical painting produces a greater variety of ideal beauty, a richer, a more various and delightful composition, and gives to the artist a greater opportunity of exhibiting his skill, all the interest he wishes for is accomplished; such a picture not only attracts, but fixes the attention."

Lessing would certainly have retorted that Rubens, like all painters of allegory, had been cajoled out of his main argument by specious materials. And in so saying, he would have again displayed that uncompromising dialectic that resulted in vital distinctions in his criticism of poetry and painting, but which, because he did not understand painting, and had adopted a narrow conception of her scope of imitation, left her, in reality, not a sister of poetry at all, but a kind of lesser sister of sculpture bereft of her proper sensuousness and of her proper range of expression. Lessing had excellent reasons both as a humanist and aesthetician for objecting probably to the bulk of allegorical painting. But he would not have been able to distinguish between the pictorial and imaginative brilliance of the Luxembourg series, and the "icily regular, splendidly null" allegorical histories, say, of Le Brun.

[pp. 15-23]

* Symbol for the phonetic accent in this word not available on the computer.