Henry Fuseli - The Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli, Volume 3 (of 3)

135. If you mean to reign dictator over the arts of your own times, assail not your rivals with the blustering tone of condemnation and rigid censure; – sap with conditional or lamenting praise – confine them to unfashionable excellence – exclude them from the avenues of fame.

136. If you wish to give consequence to your inferiors, answer their attacks.

Coroll. – Michael Angelo, advised to resent the insolence of some obscure upstart who was pushing forward to notice by declaring himself his rival, answered: "Chi combatte con dappochi, non vince a nulla: " who contests with the base, loses with all!

137. Genius knows no partner. All partnership is deleterious to poetry and art: one must rule. 28 28 Οὐκ ἀγαθον πολυκοιρανιη εἱς κοιρανος ἐστω. Il. ii. 204. The conception of every great work must originate in one, though it may be above the power or strength of one to execute the whole.

138. The wish of perpetuating a name by enlisting under the banners of another, is the ambition of inferior minds: biography, with all its branches of "Ana," translation and engraving, however useful to man or dear to art, is the unequivocal homage of inferiority offered by taste and talent to the majesty of genius.

139. Dive in the crowd, meet beauty: follow vigour, compare character, snatch the feature that moves unobserved and the sudden burst of passion – and you are at the school of nature with Lysippus. 29 29 Pliny, l. xxxiv. c. 8.

140. The lessons of disappointment, humiliation and blunder, impress more than those of a thousand masters.

141. There are artists, who have wasted much of life in abstruse theories on proportion, who have measured the Antique in all its forms and characters, compared it with Nature, and mixed up amalgamas of both, yet never made a figure stand or move.

Coroll. – "The Apollo is altogether composed of lines sweetly convex, of very small obtuse angles, and of flats, but the soft convexities predominate the character of the figure, being a compound of strength, dignity and delicacy. The artist has expressed the first by convex outlines, the second by their uniformity, and the third by undulation of forms. The convex line predominates in the Laocoon, and the forms of the muscles are angular at their insertions and ends to express agitation; for by these means the nerves and tendons become more visible, straight lines meeting with concave and convex ones, form those angles which produce violence of action. The sculptor of the Farnesian Hercules invented a style totally different; to obtain fleshiness, he composed the figure of round and convex muscles, but made their insertions flat to signify that they are nervous and unincumbered with fat, the characteristic of strength."

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Vel duo vel nemo – turpe et miserabile!

Tacit. Annal. lib. VI. "Nullam ob eximiam artem, sed quod par negotiis, neque supra erat."

D. Longin. περι ὑψους, § 34.

"Les hommes qui ont changé l'univers, n'y sont jamais parvenus en gagnant des chefs; mais toujours en remuant des masses. Le premier moyen est du ressort de l'intrigue, et n'amène que des résultats secondaires; le second est la marche du Génie, et change la face du monde." – Napoleon.

Tacit. Annal. lib. xiv. et xvi.

Difficile est proprie communia dicere. Hor. A.P.

Τον δ' αρ' ὑπο ζυγοφιν προσεφη ποδας αἰολος ἱππος.

Iliad xix. 404. —

Rhœbe diu, etc. —

Virg. x.

Plin. lib. xxxv.

This picture, during a period of nearly half a century, graced the collection of Charles Lambert, Esq. of Paper-buildings, Temple; where it remained without having been washed or varnished. At his death it was purchased by my friend Mr. Knowles, has been cleaned by a skilful hand, and restored to nearly its pristine state.

Sea Voyage, Act 3rd. sc. 1st.

Dante Inferno, Cant. xxiv.

ΗΘΗ. Mores. Plin. l. xxxv.

The Necromantia of Nicias – the sacking of a town, by Aristides. Plin. l. xxxv.

A group of Stephanus in the Villa Ludovisi, known by the name of Papyrius and his mother, called a Phædra and Hippolytus, or an Electra with Orestes, by J. Winkelmann, bears more resemblance to an Æthra with Theseus, or a Penelope with Telemachus.

Gallum inficetissime linguam exserentem. – Plin. l. xxxv.

Plin. l. xxx. W. c. xiv.

Commonly named the Dying Gladiator; by J. Winkelmann called a Herald; with more probability the "Vulneratus deficiens, in quo possit intelligi quantum restet animæ." A work of Ctesilas in bronze, was probably the model of this. Plin. l. xxxiv.

Sueton. l. vi.

In one of the cartoons of Raffaello, now lost, but still in some degree existing in tapestry and in print.

Engraved by G. Audran.

In the cartoon of Peter and John.

Iliad, L. xviii. l. 93; L. xvi. l. 74 and 75; L. ix. l. 346.

Commonly called the Castor and Pollux of Monte Cavallo, – the name given from their horses to the Quirinal.

Plin. N.H. l. xxxv. c. ix. Tantus diligentia, ut Agrigentinis facturus tabulam, quam in templo Junonis Lucinæ publice dicarent, inspexerit virgines eorum nudas, et quinque elegerit, ut quod in quaque laudatissimum esset, pictura redderet.

Mengs Lettera à don A. Ponz. Opere di A.R. Mengs, t. ii. p. 83.

Such was probably that austerity of tone in the works of Athenion, which the ancients preferred to the sweetness or gayer tints of Nicias – "austerior colore et in austeritate jucundior." – Plin. l. xxxv. c. xi.

See the sonnet of Agostino Carracci, which begins "Chi farsi un bon Pittor cerca e desia," &c. which the author himself seems to ridicule by the manner in which he concludes.

Οὐκ ἀγαθον πολυκοιρανιη εἱς κοιρανος ἐστω.

Il. ii. 204.

The conception of every great work must originate in one, though it may be above the power or strength of one to execute the whole.