and advanced to a higher study, that of ideal form, in which they
endeavoured to combine excellencies, and to avoid whatever might
tend to injure the design or to impair its effect. And in this pursuit
they seem to have studied with great care the forms and
expression of animals, as contrasted with those of mankind.
We trace this method of study in many pieces of antiquity,
where the artist has endeavoured to convey the character of dignity,
or bodily strength, or courage, by transfusing into his composition
some of the peculiar forms of animals, as in the personification of
gods and heroes*.
We may trace it also in ancient masks, and in the heads of satyrs,
fawns, and centaurs; and I have placed at the end of this chapter a
drawing from an antique mask, which may serve in some degree as
an illustration of this. In this composition it was the artist’s design
to brutify the countenance, and accordingly we see all the proportions
and expression, which we are accustomed to admire in the
* Pour peu qu’on examine la configuration du roi des dieux, on découvre dans ses
têtes toute la forme du lion, le roi des animaux ; non seulement à ses grands yeux
ronds, à son front haut et imposant, et a son nez, mais encore à sa chevelure, qui
descend du haut de la tête, puis remonte du côté du front et se partage en retombant
en arc: ce qui n’est pas le caractère de la chevelure de l’homme, mais celui de la
crinière du lion. Quant à Hercule, les proportions de sa tête au cou nous offrent
la forme d’un taureau indomptable. Pour indiquer dans ce héros une vigueur et une
puissance supérieures aux forces humaines, ou lui a donné la tête et le cou de cet
animal ; parties tout autrement proportionnées que dans l’homme, qui a la tête plus
grosse et le cou plus mince.” OEuvres de Vyinkelmann, p. 367—368.
outline of the antique head, reversed. This peculiarly ludicrous
effect is produced by the union of brutal physiognomy with human
expression. The flatness, breadth, and depression of the nose,
the direct exposure of the nostrils, and the prominence of the eyes,
characterise the brute; but in the form of the mouth and the lines
of the eyebrows there is wild laughter.
The frequent representation of fawns, satyrs, centaurs, and
masks*, necessarily forced the artists of antiquity to study the
peculiarities of brutes, and to engraft them on the human form.
What then was more natural or obvious, while observing the effect
of these forms and expressions transferred to the human countenance,
than the persuasion that this character should be carefully
avoided, and the proportions which mark it reversed, in order to
convey the dignified and characteristic form of man ?
* We sometimes see exhibited in paintings of fawns and sylvan boys, by modem
artists, such sober, wise, and reflecting human countenances, that they give no representation
whatever of those festive deities. At the bottom of the staircase of the
Royal Academy, the painter may observe in the configuration of the nostrils of the
two centaurs, the moveable membraneous nose of the horse. In these monstrous combinations,
while the parts are joined, they must be composed into a whole; and the
great merit of the composition lies in reconciling the mind to the representation of
these discordant parts.
----------------------------------- faber imus et ungues
Exprimet, et molles imitabitur aere capillos
Infelix operis summa, quia ponere totum
Nesciet.
x 2