Читать книгу A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools - National Gallery (Great Britain) - Страница 13

"The eclectic school endeavoured to unite opposite partialities and weaknesses. They trained themselves under masters of exaggeration, and tried to unite opposite exaggerations. That was impossible. They did not see that the only possible eclecticism had been already accomplished; – the eclecticism of temperance, which, by the restraint of force, gains higher force; and by the self-denial of delight, gains higher delight" (Ruskin: Two Paths, § 59).

The typical painters, with whom this chapter is concerned, are those of the "Eclectic School" of Bologna – the Carracci, Domenichino, Guido Reni; and Salvator Rosa, the Neapolitan painter of about the same period.

It may be noticed, in the first place, that the lower repute in which these Italian painters of the seventeenth century are now held is of comparatively recent date. Poussin, for instance, ranked Domenichino next to Raphael, and preferred the works of the Carracci to all others in Rome, except only Raphael's, and Sir Joshua Reynolds cited them as models of perfection. Why, then, is it that modern criticism stamps the later Italian Schools as schools of the decadence? To examine the pictures themselves and to compare them with earlier works is the best way of finding out; but a few general remarks may be found of assistance. The painting of the schools now under consideration was "not spontaneous art. It was art mechanically revived during a period of critical hesitancy and declining enthusiasms." It was largely produced at Bologna by men not eminently gifted for the arts. When Ludovico Carracci, for instance, went to Venice, the veteran Tintoretto warned him that he had no vocation. Moreover "the painting which emerged there at the close of the sixteenth century embodied religion and culture, both of a base alloy… Therefore, though the painters went on painting the old subjects, they painted all alike with frigid superficiality. Nothing new or vital, fanciful or imaginative, has been breathed into antique mythology. What has been added to religious expression is repellent, … extravagantly ideal in ecstatic Magdalens and Maries, extravagantly realistic in martyrdoms and torments, extravagantly harsh in dogmatic mysteries, extravagantly soft in sentimental tenderness and tearful piety… If we turn from the ideas of the late Italian painters to their execution, we shall find similar reasons for its failure to delight" (Symonds's Renaissance, vii. 232). For "all these old eclectic theories were based not upon an endeavour to unite the various characters of nature (which it is possible to do), but the various narrownesses of taste, which it is impossible to do… All these specialities have their own charm in their own way; and there are times when the particular humour of each man is refreshing to us from its very distinctness; but the effort to add any other qualities to this refreshing one instantly takes away the distinctiveness" (Two Paths, § 58). It was not an attempt to unite the various characters of nature. On the contrary, "these painters, in selecting, omitted just those features which had given grace and character to their models. The substitution of generic types for portraiture, the avoidance of individuality, the contempt for what is simple and natural in details, deprived their work of attractiveness and suggestion. It is noticeable that they never painted flowers. While studying Titian's landscapes, they omitted the iris and the caper-blossom and the columbine, which star the grass beneath Ariadne's feet… They began the false system of depicting ideal foliage and ideal precipices – that is to say, trees which are not trees, and cliffs which cannot be distinguished from cork or stucco. In like manner, the cloths wherewith they clad their personages were not of brocade, or satin, or broadcloth, but of that empty lie called drapery … one monstrous nondescript stuff, differently dyed in dull or glaring colours, but always shoddy. Characteristic costumes have disappeared… After the same fashion furniture, utensils, houses, animals, birds, weapons, are idealised – stripped, that is to say, of what in these things is specific and vital"27 (Symonds, ibid. p. 233).

With regard to the historical development of the declining art whose general characteristics we have been discussing, it is usual to group the painters under three heads – the Mannerists, the Eclectics, and the Naturalists. By the first of these are meant the painters in the several schools who succeeded the culminating masters and imitated their peculiarities. We have already noticed, under the Florentine School, how this "mannerism" set in, and all the other schools show a like process. Thus Giulio Romano shows the dramatic energy of Raphael and Michael Angelo passed into mannerism. Tiepolo is a "mannerised" Paolo Veronese, Baroccio a "mannerised" Correggio. Later on, however, and largely under the influence of the "counter-Reformation" – the renewed activity, that is, of the Roman church consequent on the Reformation,28– a reaction against the Mannerists set in. This reaction took two forms. The first was that of the Eclectic School founded by the Carraccis at Bologna in about the year 1580. This school – so called from its principle of "selecting" the qualities of different schools – includes, besides the Carraccis themselves, Guido Reni, Domenichino, Sassoferrato, and Guercino. The last-mentioned, however, combined in some measure the aims both of the Eclectics and of the other school which was formed in protest against the Mannerists. This was the school of the so-called Naturalists, of whom Caravaggio (1569-1609) was the first representative, and whose influence may be traced in the Spanish Ribera (see page 220) and the Neapolitan Salvator Rosa. They called themselves "Naturalists," as being opposed to the "ideal" aims alike of the Mannerists and the Eclectics; but they made the fatal mistake – a mistake which seems to have a permanent hold on a certain order of minds, for it is at the root of much of the art-effort of our own day – that there is something more "real" and "natural" in the vulgarities of human life than in its nobleness, and in the ugliness of nature than in its beauty (see below under 172, and under Salvator Rosa passim).

The later Venetian pictures make a most interesting group. In the eighteenth century Venetian art experienced a partial revival, and the painters of this revival – Tiepolo, Longhi, Canaletto, and Guardi may here be well studied.