seaweed through deep sea.* Nevertheless, when the realization is impossible, bold symbolism is of the highest § 18. Yet somevalue, and in religious art, as we shall presently times valuable. see, even necessary, as of the rays of light in the Titian woodcut of St. Francis;1 and sometimes the attention is directed by some such strange form to the meaning of the image, which may be missed if it remains in its natural purity (as, I suppose few, in looking at the Cephalus and Procris of Turner, note the sympathy of those faint rays that are just drawing back and dying between the trunks of the far-off forest, with the ebbing life of the nymph, unless, indeed, they happen to recollect the same sympathy marked by Shelley in the Alastor); but the imagination is not shown in any such modifications; however, in some cases they may be valuable,3 and I note them merely in consequence of their peculiar use in religious art, presently to be examined. all § 19. Exaggeration. Its laws The last mode we have here to note in which the Imagination regardant may be expressed in art is Exaggeration, of which, as it is the vice of bad artists, and may be constantly resorted to without any warrant of imagination, it is necessary of representato note strictly the admissible limits. and limits. First, In scale tion. In the first place a colossal statue is not necessarily any * All the clouds of Tintoret are sublime; the worst that I know in art are Correggio's, especially in the Madonna della Scudella, and Duomo of Parma, 1 [Ed. 1 adds, " before noticed." See Vol. III. p. 355 n.] 2 [For Turner's "Cephalus and Procris," see above, ch. ii. § 20; for another comparison of Shelley and Turner, see Vol. III. pp. 364, 652. The reference here is to the death of the Poet in Alastor: "Now upon the jaggèd hills It rests, and still as the divided frame With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still; And when two lessening points of light alone Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp The stagnate night . . ."] 3 [Ed. 1 adds, " (in the Cephalus they would be utterly destructive)."] The "Madonna della Scodella" (Virgin with the cup) is in the Royal Gallery at Parma; it is engraved at p. 286 of Ricci's Correggio (English ed. 1896).] more an exaggeration of what it represents, than a miniature is a diminution; it need not be a representation of a giant, but a representation, on a large scale, of a man: only it is to be observed, that as any plane intersecting the cone of rays between us and the object must receive an image smaller than the object, a small image is rationally and completely expressive of a larger one; but not a large of a small one. Hence I think that all statues above the Elgin standard, or that of Michael Angelo's Night and Morning, are, in a measure, taken by the eye for representations of giants, and I think them always disagreeable. The amount of exaggeration admitted by Michael Angelo is valuable, because it separates the emblematic from the human form, and gives greater freedom to the grand lines of the frame; for notice of his scientific system of increase of size I may refer the reader to Sir Charles Bell's remarks on the statues of the Medici chapel. But there is one circumstance which Sir Charles has not noticed, and in the interpretation of which, therefore, it is likely I may be myself wrong, that the extremities are singularly small in proportion to the limbs; by which means there is an expression given of strength and activity greater than in the ordinary human type: which appears to me to be an allowance for that alteration in proportion necessitated by increase of size, which has been spoken of in Chap. VI. of the first Section, § 10, note; not but that Michael Angelo always makes the extremities comparatively small, but smallest comparatively, in his largest works: so I think, from the size of the head, it may be conjectured respecting the Theseus of the Elgins. Such adaptations are not necessary when the exaggerated image is spectral; for, as the laws of matter in that case can have no operation, we may expand the form as far as we choose, only let careful distinction be made between the size of the thing represented, and the scale of the representation. The canvas on which Sir T. Lawrence has stretched [See Essay ix. in the Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression, p. 205, 3rd ed. Bell points out that in these statues no one part is exaggerated: "all is magnified with so perfect a knowledge that it is just as a whole, the bone and the muscle corresponding in their proportions."] his Satan in the schools of the Royal Academy' is a mere concession to inability. He might have made him look more gigantic in one of a foot square. Of things Another kind of Exaggeration is of things whose size is variable to a size or degree greater than that usual with them, as in waves and mountains; and there $20. Secondly, are hardly any limits to this exaggeration, so long capable of variety of scale. as the laws which Nature observes in her increase be observed. Thus, for instance, the form and polished surface of a breaking ripple three inches high, are not representative of either the form or the surface of the surf of a storm, nodding ten feet above the beach; neither would the cutting ripple of a breeze upon a lake, if simply exaggerated, represent the forms of Atlantic surges: but as Nature increases her bulk, she diminishes the angles of ascent, and increases her divisions; and if we would represent surges of size greater than ever existed, which it is lawful to do, we must carry out these operations to still greater extent. Thus Turner, in his picture of the Slave Ship,' divides the whole sea into two masses of enormous swell, and conceals the horizon by a gradual slope of only two or three degrees. This is intellectual exaggeration. In the Academy exhibition of 1843, there was, in one of the smaller rooms, a black picture of a storm,3 in which there appeared on the near sea, just about to be overwhelmed by a breaker curling right over it, an object at first sight liable to be taken for a walnut shell, but which, on close examination, proved to be a ship with mast and sail. This is childish exaggeration, because it is impossible, by the laws of matter and motion, that such a breaker should ever exist. Again, in mountains, we have repeatedly observed the necessary building up and multitudinous division of the higher peaks, and the smallness of the slopes by which they 1 ["Satan Calling his Legions (from the first book of Milton)," No. 170 in the Academy of 1797. Sold at the artist's sale, 1831, and now in the Diploma Gallery at Burlington House.] 2 [See Vol. III. pp. 571-572, and Plate 12.] 3 No. 541: "Christ stilleth the Tempest," by J. Martin,] [Ed. 1 reads, "an enormous," and at the end of the sentence adds, "with Christ and his twelve disciples in it."] usually rise.' We may, therefore, build up the mountain as high as we please, but we must do it in nature's way, and not in impossible peaks and precipices: not but that a daring feature is admissible here and there, as the Matterhorn2 is admitted by nature; but we must not compose a picture out of such exceptions; we may use them, but they must be as exceptions exhibited. I shall have much to say, when we come to treat of the sublime,3 of the various modes of treating mountain form; so that at present I shall only point to an unfortunate instance of inexcusable and effectless exaggeration in the distance of Turner's vignette to Milton (the Temptation on the Mountain), and desire the reader to compare it with legitimate exaggeration, in his vignette to the second part of Jacqueline, in Rogers's poems.* characteristic features on diminished scale. Another kind of Exaggeration is necessary to retain the characteristic impressions of nature on reduced $21. Thirdly, scale. It is not possible, for instance, to give the Necessary in expression of leafage of trees in its proper proportion, on a small scale, without entirely losing their grace of form and curvature; of this the best proof is found in the calotype or daguerrotype," which fail in foliage, not only because the green rays are ineffective, but because, on the small scale of the image, the reduced leaves lose their organization, and look like moss attached to sticks. In order to retain, therefore, their character of flexibility, the painter is often compelled to increase the proportionate size of the leaves, and to arrange them in generic masses. Of this treatment compare the grand examples throughout the Liber * See in Addenda, the note on my courtesies of criticism (p. 333). [1883.] 1 [See Vol. III. p. 463.] 2[Ruskin had been for a day to Zermatt, for the first time, in 1844. He notes in his diary (July 19): "Clouds on the Matterhorn all day except at sunset, when there were playing crimson lights over the sky, and the Matterhorn appeared in full ruby-with a wreath of fiery cloud drifting from its top-as Gordon said, like incense from a large altar."] 3 [See Appendix i., p. 368.] [At p. 147; the drawing is No. 241 in the National Gallery. For another reference, see Vol. III. p. 434.] [See Vol. III. pp. 169, 210.] Studiorum. That it is by such means only that the ideal character of objects is to be preserved, has been observed in the 13th chapter of the first Section. In all these cases exaggeration is only lawful as the sole means of arriving at truth of impression when strict fidelity is out of the question. Other modes of Exaggeration there are, on which I shall not at present farther insist, the proper place for their discussion being in treating of the sublime; and these which I have at present instanced are enough to establish the point at issue, respecting imaginative verity, inasmuch as we find that exaggeration itself, if imaginative is referred to principles of truth, and of actual being. We have now, I think, reviewed the various modes in which Imagination contemplative may be exhibited § 22. Recapiin art, and arrived at all necessary certainties re- tulation. specting the essence of the faculty: which we have found in its three functions, Associative of Truth, Penetrative of Truth, and Contemplative of Truth; and having no dealings nor relations with any kind of falsity. One task, however, remains to us, namely, to observe the operation of the Theoretic and Imaginative faculties together, in the attempt at realization to the bodily sense of Beauty supernatural and divine. 1 1 [§ 13, p. 173 above.] |