The Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli, Volume 2H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1831 |
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absorbed Agamemnon Agasias Agnolo Agostino Agostino Carracci Albert Durer ancients Andrea Mantegna Annibale Carracci Apelles appears artist attitude beauty breadth called Carracci cartoon centre character characteristic charms chiaroscuro Christ colour composition conception Correggio dæmon died dignity discrimination Domenichino drapery effect elements energy epic equal Eupompus exhibit expression fancy feature female figure frescoes genius Giorgione grace grandeur hand harmony head Homer hues human idea imitation infant inferior invention Julio less light and shade Lionardo Lodovico Carracci Lysippus magic manner Masaccio masses master means ment Michael Angelo mind nature object observations ornament painter painting Parrhasius passions perhaps Phidias picture Pietro Pliny Polygnotus portrait Poussin principle proportion propriety purity Quintilian racter Raffaello Raphael Rembrandt Rome Rubens scene scenery simplicity splendour style sublime subordinate taste terror Timanthes Tintoretto tints tion Tiziano tone ture Vasari vigour whilst whole Zeuxis
Popular passages
Page 162 - For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called "Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Page 20 - There must, in the first place, be knowledge, there must be materials; in the second place, there must be a command of words; in the third place, there must be imagination, to place things in such views as they are not commonly seen in; and in the fourth place, there must be presence of mind, and a resolution that is not to be overcome by failures: this last is an essential requisite; for want of it many people do not excel in conversation. Now / want it: I throw up the game upon losing a trick.
Page 47 - But it may be observed, that those who praise this circumstance were hot painters. They use it as an illustration only of their own art; it served their purpose, and it was certainly not their business to enter into the objections that lie against it in another Art. I fear we have but very scanty means of exciting those powers over the imagination, which make so very considerable and refined a part of poetry. It is a doubt with me, whether we should even make the attempt.
Page 355 - All the modes of harmony, or of producing that effect of colours which is required in a picture, may be reduced to three; two of which belong to the grand style, and the other to the ornamental. The first may be called the Roman manner, where the colours are of a full and strong body, such as are found in the Transfiguration : the next is that harmony which is produced by what the Ancients called the corruption.
Page 85 - His line is uniformly grand. Character and beauty were admitted only as far as they could be made subservient to grandeur. The child, the female, meanness, deformity, were by him indiscriminately stamped with grandeur.
Page 82 - ... musician, man of science, and sometimes empiric, he laid hold of every beauty in the enchanted circle — but without exclusive attachment to one, dismissed, in her turn, each. Fitter to scatter hints than teach by example, he wasted life insatiate in experiment.
Page 48 - ... but merely copied from the description of the sacrifice, as it is found in Euripides. The words from which the picture is supposed to be taken are these : Agamemnon saw Iphigenia advance towards the fatal altar ; he groaned, he turned aside his head, he shed tears, and covered his face with his robe. Falconet does not at all acquiesce in the praise that is bestowed on Timanthes ; not only because it is not his invention, but because he thinks meanly of this trick of concealing, except in instances...
Page 84 - Sublimity of conception, grandeur of form, and breadth of manner are the elements of Michael Angelo's style.* By these principles he selected or rejected the objects of imitation. As painter, as sculptor, as architect, he attempted, and above any other man succeeded, to unite magnificence of plan and endless variety of subordinate parts with the utmost simplicity and breadth.
Page 356 - ... the subject on himself. The last manner belongs properly to the ornamental style, which we call the Venetian, being first practised at Venice, but is perhaps better learned from Rubens : here the brightest colours possible are admitted, with the two extremes of warm and cold, and those reconciled by being dispersed over the picture, till the whole appears like a bunch of flowers.
Page 88 - Raphael's is perfectly beautiful ; no figure of his, in the abstract, possesses the proportions that could raise it to a standard of imitation : form to him was only a vehicle of character or pathos, and to those he adapted it in a mode and with a truth which leaves all attempts at emendation hopeless. His invention connects the utmost stretch of possibility with the most plausible degree of probability, in a manner that equally surprises our fancy, persuades our judgment, and affects our heart.