Human Industry, Chapter 6
CAP. VI.
foreign: OR, The Art of Limning and Painting.
PAinting comes near an Artificial Miracle, Of Architecture. Elinguis umbrarum & luminum eloquentia; muta line…rum poesis.saith Sir Henry Wotton, to make divers distinct eminences appear upon a Flat by force of shaddows, and yet the shaddows themselves not to appear, is the uttermost value and vertue of a Painter, saith that Learned Knight.
—miror
Praelia rubricâ picta aut Carbone velut si
Re verâ pugnent, feriant, vitent que moventes
Arma viri—
This is a lawfull dissembling or counterfeiting of natural things; it is a witty and subtile Art, it gives life (in a manner) to the dead; by this wee see those that have lived many ages before us in their true and proper colours, and reade not onelyonly the shape and stature of their Bodies but their Attire, Habiliments and Fashions, which no relation of History can so well represent unto us or inform us of. By this wee see our absent Friends, and call to minde what is farr out of sight. By this Apelles shewed to King Ptolomy the servant that brought him to the Kings Dining-Chamber, by drawing his picture on a wall wth a coal, when hee could not finde his person. By this, antient Histories are acted (in a dumb shew before us, and every real becomes a book; wherein the most ignorant man can reade something, and understand by the pencil what he cannot by the pen. St Gregory spoke right enough in this: quod legentibus Scriptura, haec Idiotis pictura praestat cernentibus; quia in ipsa etiam ignorantes vident, q…od sequi debeant, in ipsa legunt qui litter as nesciunt.
And because the eye is a better informer than the ear, and conveighs things more effectually to the minde, and imprints them deeper; therefore some visible Representations are as usefull for our instruction as those things that wee take in at the ear. Upon this consideration, that excellent Emblem of Mortality called Chorea Mortuorum, or Deathsdance, that was pourtrayed on the wall of a Church in the Town of Basil in Germany being decayed with time,Hentzneri Itinerarium. was thought fit (by the Aedills or publique Surveyors of that City) to be renewed; ut qui vocalis picturae divina monita securi audiunt, mutae saltem Poëseos miserabili. spectaculo, ad seriam Philosophiam excitentur, as the new Inscription there speaks.
This Art had but rude beginnings, as all others had; the shaddows of men projected upon the ground or the wall, gave it birth; whence p…ctures are termed shaddows, which very name betrayes their original. A Coal was at first both the pencil and the colour, and a white wall was their table and canvas.
Pictorum Calami carbones, maenia Chartae.
From one colour they rose to ten; they have decem palmarios colores, as Bullinger saith; ten colours of principal note, besides others. Painters (of old) were desired to set a name on every thing they drew, that men might know what they meant.
Thus it was, when this Art was yet foreign (as Aelian speaks) in its swathes and cradle. At first they pourtrayed but the bare Lineaments and natural Representations of things in one solemn posture and scheme called foreign, and Aristides the Theban was the first, qui animum pinxit & sensus, saith Pliny; that added the Ethick part of Painting, and expressed the passions with his pencil; that made his mute tables to laugh or weep, smile or frown, as the drift of his fancie suggested unto him.
Apelles brought this Art to perfection, as the same Pliny affirms; for hee surpassed omnes priùs genitos, l. 35. Hist. Nat. c. 10.futurosque posteà, as hee saith; all that went before him or ever should come after him. He painted things that could not be painted, as Lightening and Thunders, as Pliny relates of him, l. 3. 6. 10. Paint mee a voice (saith the Angel in Esdras, and call back yesterday; intimating both to be impossible. His Master-piece was the picture of Venus rising out of the Sea, and wringing the water out of her disheveled hair. This was called foreign, whereof Ovid makes mention, l. 4. de Pont….
Ut Venus artificis labor est & Gloria Coi,
Aequoreo madidas quae premi… imbre comas.
When this Apelles came to Rhodes, where Protogenes (another famous Painter) lived, he went to his house, and not finding him within, he drew with a pencil a streight line, very small and slender, and left it as a challenge, and went his way. Protogenes coming home and finding this line, did guess that Apelles had been there, and thereupon drew another line through the very midst of that line of Apelles with a different colour, which was (in effect) an answer to the challenge; Apelles returning again to Protogenes his shop, and finding a line most artificially drawn through the midst of his, took the pencil and drew a third line in a different colour, from the two former, nullum relinquens amplius subtilitati locum (saith my Author) leaving no room for further art or subtilty, and so was Victor in this invention.
However, Protogenes was esteemed nothing inferior to Apelles, whom Petronius mentions; Protogenis Rudimenta cum ipsius naturae veritate certantia, non sine quodam horrore tractavi, saith Petronius Arbiter.
There is a pretty story in the same Pliny to this purpose, touching Zeuxes and Parrhasius, two famous Artizans and Masters of the Pencil in their times: for Quintilian calls this Parrhasius the Legislator among the Painters, that is, one that gave Law to all others in this Art, l. C. 12. C. 10. Zeuxes for his Masterpiece hung forth a Table wherein he had drawn a Boy carrying Grapes in his hand, which were so lively done, that the Birds flew to the Table to peck at the Grapes: But Parrhasius painted a Curtain upon a Tablet so artificially, that Zeuxes thinking it had been a Curtain indeed, stretcht his hand to draw the Curtain aside, that he might see the picture which he thought to be behinde it; at which error he was so abashed, that he yielded the best to Parrhasius, adding this ingenuous confession, That Zeuxes his piece had deceived but silly Birds, but that of Parrhasius deceived an Artist.
The same Zeuxes painted an Old Woman so lively and so deformed, that he died with extream laughter at the spectacle and his own ridiculous fancy and conceit therein, as Quercetan reports in his Diaetat. Polyhist.
Pliny makes mention of some Women painters; and of one Lala a Virgin of Cyzicum, that drew her own picture by a Glass: and Mountaigue in his Essaies speaks of a picture which he had seen at Barleduc that Ren King of Sicily had made of himself and presented to the French King Francis the Second.
It is a pretty Art, that in a pleated paper, and table furrowed or indented, men make one picture to represent several faces; as one I have seen, that looking from one place or standing, represented Edward the Sixth; from another, Queen Elizabeth; and from a third place, King James. Another I read of, that being viewed from one place, did shew the head of a Spaniard, and from another the head of an Ass. This was the conceit of a Frenchmen (I believe) who can neither speak well nor think well of a Spaniard.
One of the late Chancellours of France had in his cabinet a picture wch presented to the common beholder a multitude of little faces, which were the famous Ancestors of that noble man; but if one did look on the said picture through a Perspective, there appeared onelyonly the single pourtraicture of the Chancellour himself: the Painter thereby intimating, that in him alone were contracted all the vertues of his Progenitors. So the ingenious translator of Pastor Fido in his Epistle Dedicatory relates.Mr. Fanshaw.
Painting in Oyle is a modern Invention, which was wanting to the full complement and perfection of this Art; for hereby Colours are kept fresh and lively from fading, and pictures are made to bear against the injuries of time, air, and age; when their Prototypes and originals cannot, notwithstanding all the Fucusses and decorations and Adulteries of Art among our Women-painters, who can never repair the decayes of nature with all their boxes and shops of Minerals.
The Art of Sculpture or Engraving in brass (which the French call de taille Douce) is near of kin to this art, and herein to be preferred before it; for that when a picture in this kinde is finished upon a table of Brass or Copper, or the like mettal, a thousand Copies may be taken of it (by the help of a Rolling-Press) in a few hours space, as in Printing, when one page of a leaf is set and composed, that one form will serve to make a thousand more by it, and that in a trice, whereas a picture in colours is not so soon copied out.
But the highest piece of perfection in this art (in my judgement) are those perspective pieces which do represent Temples, wherein the vulgar eye discerns nothing upon the Tablet but arched lines and steps, degrees, or ascents; but with a Perspective glass you may see (as it were) the inside of a Temple at ful length with the arched roofs above, & windows on each side: Some Statues cast in brass do shew much wit and art. The brazen Cow of Myron is made famous by the Epigram of Ausonius translated out of Greek, which was so lively done, that Bulls passing by thought to cover her; as the Poet (if he do not over-reach) informs us.
Bucula sum, coelo genitoris facta Myronis
Aerea, nec factam me puto sed genitamAusonium Epig. 57.
Sic me Taurus init, sic proxima bucula Mugit
Sic vitulus sitiens ubera nostra petit:
Miraris quod fallo gregem? Gregis ipse Magister
Inter pascentes me numerare solet.
But the chiefest of this art of Foundery or Imagery was Lysippus, Plin. l. 35. cap. 8.who did cast one Image of brass so rare and exquisite, that Artificers called it the Canon, that is, the rule or standard from whence all Artists must fetch their Draughts, Symmetries, and Proportions, as from the pattern and most absolute Masterpiece.
Of late times the Italians and Germans do surpass in these Arts, Michael Angelo Buonarota of Florence, was both an Architect, a Painter, and a Sculptor.
—Veras depingere formas,
Naturam ipse doces, victam subigisque fateri:
Dextra sed ingenio non infoelicior, & te
Nobilitant Calami, sicut coelo at que colores
So one of his countrymen writes of him.
Albertus Durerus of Norimberg was not inferiour to Apelles, as Wimphelingius tells us; Van Dijk a Dutchman was very famous in London, and attained to very great wealth by his art; Paulus Rubeus of Antwerp is vivum Europae miraculum, (if he be yet alive) as an ingenious Traveller styles him, whose Table of the Last Judgement was valued at five thousand Florins; Tabulae oppidorum opidus emptae; so Pliny of the Curiosities of his time.
The Art of Painting in Glass, which they call Annealing, is very ingenious: when they have layed the colours upon the Glass, they put the Glass into some hot Furnace for fifteen or twenty days to imbibe the colours: This art was known unto the Ancients, as Bullinger is perswaded, and cites a Distich of Martial for it;
Non sumus audacis plebeia Toreumata vitri
Nostra nec ardenti gemma feritur aqua.
But the Poet means no such matter there, but he speaks of certain cups made of Christal, or some subtiler and finer sort of Glass which cannot brook hot water, as common glasses can, but crack presently when it is poured into them, as appears by his words in another Epigram which give light to this;
Nullum sollicitant hoc Flacce torreumata furem
Et nimium calidis non vitiantur aquis. l. 12. Epig. 57.
The Aegyptians had a device of making pictures in their fine linnen cloth, which was thus; when they had drawn the colours upon the cloth, and those pictures & fancies they thought fit, nothing would be seen upon the cloth until they had cast it into a c…uldron of boyling water, wherein certain herbs and juyces had been boiled, and having sokened them there, in a little while they drew them forth with perfect and lively pictures; so Bulenger de Pictura & Statuaria, lib. 1. c. 12. out of Pliny.
To work pictures not only upon cl…th out in cloth, to inlay and incorporate them (as it were) into the very substance and contexture of the Webb, and that so lively, as the Pencil can scarce mend them, as we have seen in Carpets and Chamber-hangings, which is an art no less subtile and ingenious then any of the rest. These are called Picturae textiles by Tully l. 4. contra Verrem, & by Lucret l. 2. By this Art we have Fountains, Gardens, and Forrests in our chambers, Roses that never fade, Flowers that look fresh all the year, also Groves and Forrests that are alwaies green, with all manner of Beasts and Birds therein, with chases and Hounds so lively represented, that there wants nothing but noise and sound to make up the Game, as Martiall said of the carved Fishes made by Phidias so lively, that there wanted nothing but water to make them swim.
Artis Phidiacae toreuma clarum
Pisces Aspicis? adde aquas, natabunt;
Phidias did these Fishes Limn,
Add but water, they will swim.
The Babylonians were the first that taught this art, as Polydor Virgil acquaints us: But the Artificers of Arras in Flanders whence our rich Arras is fetcht, & called Arras-work, are not thought inferiour to any Nation in this Workmanship. I will conclude this chapter with Mosaick work, which the French call Marhuetrie, the Latines Musaeum, and Musivum opus, the Greeks foreign, it's a work wrought with stones of divers colours, mettals, marble, glass, and all wrought into the form of knots, flowers, and other devices, wtih that excellency of cunning, that they seem all one stone, and rather the work of nature then art. The Ancients were not ignorant of this Art, see Pliny lib. 36. Nat. Hist. cap. 25. and more copiously in Bulenger, de Pict. l. 1. c. 8.
The picture of La…co and his two sons with the serpents clasping about their middle, according to Virgil's description in the 2d of the Aeneis, is now in the Popes Palace at Rome, and is esteemed the most absolute piece of Art in the whole world, and which Mich. Angelo (one that could well judge of such things) did not stick to cal artis miraculum, the miracle of art, as Laurent. Schraderus in l. 2. of the monuments of Italy. It is a piece of antiquity, mentioned by Pliny, laboured by three Rhodian Sculptors, that were the excellentest in their times, as the said Pliny hath recorded.