But there were many reasons for this tendency, direct and indirect and one of the most important may be traced to the formation of the celebrated Boisserée Collection of early German and Italian masters, which was then in progress. A taste for the peculiarities of that period, part real and part got up, was gradually spreading abroad. Some few understood their merits, and many more pretended to do so because Goethe and the Schlegels set the fashion. The first works of our young students, therefore, concurring with this predisposition, such as it was, were hailed with enthusiasm. It is true they were as dry, stiff, and untrue to living nature as those from whom they sought inspiration; but this of course gave no offence to those with whom the manner and the spirit of early art were synonymous terms; while their real simplicity of treatment and earnestness of intention had the full charm of novelty. The consequence was an immediate demand for frescoed apartments-M. Bartholdi, the Prussian Consul at Rome, and Canova giving the first commissions. Meanwhile instead of clothing their abstract ideas more and more in the forms and graces of real nature, as they matured in knowledge-which the first masters of the world have invariably done-the young Germans only plunged deeper and deeper in a mystical and typical direction; and in 1814 finally sealed their devotion to the ancient forms of art by going over to the Roman Church. Viewing this step in a moral light we have nothing to say. The state of Lutheranism in Germany is such that it is not to be wondered at, and certainly not to be regretted, when any one of that community becomes a Romanist; but, viewing it in an æsthetic sense, we believe that it was the worst step they could have taken. Throughout the whole progress of this religious school of art there has been that express seeking, and not that unconscious following, of one idea, which bespeaks more a factitious system than a spontaneous instinct. It is one of the distinctive signs of genius to draw nourishment from, and seek combination with, the most heterogeneous elements and the most opposite qualities. Rubens imbibed from Leonardo da Vinci-Byron delighted in Pope. is its especial sign and privilege to convert thwartings, contradictions, even persecutions, into means of progress--to make difficulties its helps. It will help itself to food wherever it finds it, and will find it where common minds never imagined it to exist; while, at the same time, it seems the law of Nature that no two geniuses should arrive at the same end by the same way. But in these Germans we find no such marks. They deliberately sat down and said, We will be like unto Raphael, Perugino, Fra Angelico, and Albert Durer-we will do in all things as they did -we -we will work as they worked-we will live as they lived-and we will believe as they believed. And this they have done, with much talent, great application, and intense faith; and they have discovered much of the old masters' manual system, and caught many of their undoubted habits; they have draped their figures like Fiesole, and studied positions like Perugino, and put in backgrounds like Raphael, and etched their subjects like Albert Durer; and they are very admirable imitators, but they are nothing more. Nor could they be. We believe in no two Raphaels. They have fed their instincts too much with a prescribed diet, for them to have any natural appetite of themselves; and it is, we repeat, highly probable that the two great circumstances which have marked their artistic career-viz. the recovery of the art of fresco, and their adoption of the Roman faith -however they may have assisted imitation, have been the greatest stumbling-blocks to originality. These conversions extended to eleven of their number, including Overbeck, Schadow, and Veit. Cornelius was Roman Catholic by birth; though less so by nature than any of the others. At first this event occasioned great disturbances and divisions among the fraternity. The new converts were accused sometimes of fanaticism, sometimes of hypocrisy, and styled in derision 'the Nazarenes.' But the sincerity of their piety soon enforced respect. About this time also occurred a circumstance not less important for their career. This was the visit to Rome of the present King of Bavaria, then Prince Royal. Circumstances seemed in every way to indicate this prince as the fitting man to take this new movement by the hand. His knowledge of art was distinguished, his tastes were classic, his faith Roman, and his heart preeminently German. The young artists looked to him therefore with ardent expectation, as to a patron who would not only secure them protection and maintenance, but also that position as a national school which they most desired. They were not disappointed. The prince immediately recognised in them the ornaments of his future reign, and the executors of many a beautifying design already floating in his imagination. He entered warmly into the spirit of their labours, attached himself personally to several of the young men, and scattered commissions liberally amongst them. The artists in return combined to give him a grand festival as an expression both of their gratitude and of their hopes. A villa was engaged for the purpose, and the prince was received at the porch by a representation of St. Luke, as patron saint of painters, with an inscription bidding him enter and con template template what the arts had done in his honour. We cannot go further into the details of the evening, except to assure the reader that the arts had indeed done their best to flatter both parties. Allegorical compliments, both to their visitor and to themselves, were flying in every form that paintings and transparencies, busts, wreaths, and garlands could convey. Veit had set forth the models to which they aspired by the figures of Giotto, Fiesole, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Durer, &c. Overbeck indicated the part the prince was to play by portraits of Pericles, Augustus, Julius II, and Leo X.; whilst Schadow, Vogel, and others gave the broadest hints of their own high calling by representations of the downfall of the walls of Jericho, the extermination of the Philistines by Samson, and the cleansing of the Augean stables by Hercules. There is no doubt that this visit to Rome laid the foundation of all the royal undertakings that have since distinguished Munich. In 1820 the Glyptothek was commenced, and Cornelius and his pupils engaged to paint the interior with appropriate frescos; and in 1825, when the royal Mecænas ascended the throne, the summons went forth to the chief leaders of that rapidly developed body of artists who have since filled the capital of Bavaria with their works. Shortly after Schadow was appointed Director of the Academy at Düsseldorf; Vogel, Director of the Dresden Academy; Veit, Director of the Städel Institution at Frankfort-each becoming the centre of a numerous school— each school branching off into separate combinations-patronage increasing, and where patronage was failing, numerous art-unions taking its place, till there is hardly a town of any note in Germany where some demonstration of art is not going forward. To return, however, to our question, whether German artists be really so much in advance of us as is supposed? We fearlessly answer-No. They have chosen subjects of the highest walk, and executed them in the vehicle of the most pretension; but in that combination of all the different parts of art which constitutes the thorough artist, and in that single distinct track of originality which marks the gifted man, we are not afraid to match the leaders of our various walks of English art, and many of their followers too, against the best men Germany can produce. The very means, indeed, which display the powers of the German artists, serve quite as much to cover their inability. Their greatest hands, in the religious and historical schools, have, generally speaking, only two modes of expression-the coarse conventional fresco, and the small hard outline drawing. Each of these modes evades a host of difficulties: the one has a necessary and prescribed mode of colour and handling, the other other has neither colour nor handling at all. It is true the beauties of detail and execution ought to be kept, especially in such lofty subjects, subordinate to the idea-but the touchstone of real genius is to turn them to every account they can supply, and yet to keep the idea predominant: leaving them out altogether is a suspicious proceeding. Every one practically acquainted with any branch of the arts, knows that it is not the calling the idea into life, but the keeping it there, which is the real difficulty that there is little art and always much pleasure in the first projection of your thought, but that there is great art, and sometimes much pain, in so building it up into actual form as neither to spend nor to extinguish it. The first burst of the imagination is sweet-the trial is the putting it into the current language of the realm to which it belongs. Herein, therefore, we suspect, lies the key to all those seeming high doings in Germany which convince so many that the authors of them must be great men, and puzzle at first even critics on such matters to say why they are not. It is most natural to place those in the rank of the highest artists who are alternately seen bringing their conceptions down to the simplest medium that the language of art allows, or lifting them up into the most solemn and mystical forms that ecclesiastical usage requires. The thought involuntarily follows, How beautifully must such men express themselves in the vulgar tongue of their country-in the common oils and canvas of art-how beautifully! if they would!' Alas! it is not a question of would: they would be too happy if they could. They have taken their post upon the highest and the lowest staves of the ladder-not because they are able to embrace all between, as is at first the natural conclusion, but because they are obliged to pass all over. Here, therefore, their charm over us in great measure ends. The little drawings have little more power to enchant. They are very beautiful promises, but they are promises on which performance waits not. Let it be granted, if you will, that there is a beauty of idea and feeling which may justify the absence of all other beauties of art-that, as Longinus decrees, the true sublime compensates for all possible deficiencies-we must own that this redeeming majesty is not to our eyes apparent in these same drawings and fresco. 'Tis, by comparison, an easy task Earth to despise; but to converse with Heaven- It is easy to depict virgins, saints, and martyrs with folded palms and and downcast eyes, with gold glories round their heads, and little stiff sprigs at their feet. It is easy to denude them of all earthly expression whatsoever, which these artists most successfully do; but to clothe them with a spiritual one-this is another thing, though they are occasionally confounded with each other. They have one, perhaps two, amongst them to whom the secrets of true spiritual expression appear to be disclosed, and to whom, if the highest piety and moral excellence were any passport to the mysterious realms of genius, these ought to be disclosed. Overbeck is one. Whoever has seen, not his frescos, nor his cartoons, but the least of his little etchings, must feel that he is a remarkable man. That kneeling monk with his back to you, and cowl over his head-nothing to tell the tale but the sole of the foot below the robe, and the end of the cross above it-the whole plate not so big as your hand-is a wonderful piece of expression; but let him try to embody it-let him substitute canvas for paper-light and shadow, colour, surface, texture, touch, for a few feeble hatched lines-where would be his idea? He dares not attempt it; for Overbeck may be a great man, but he is only half an artist. He has no scope of language; he is tongue-tied; he cannot even paint his own portrait. Where, then, is the comparison with Raphael? Overbeck's outlines have much of his heavenly grace and sweetness; a design of his might at first sight be mistaken for one of Raphael's-though this is as much owing to the most barefaced imitation of all his accessories as to any identity of inspiration-but here he stops. He can only promise: in point of real practical performance in the spirit of Raphael, we maintain that he is much behind both Stothard and Eastlake. As for the numerous band of artists which this school has engendered, as inferior to Overbeck as he is to his great original, we can only echo Sir Joshua-rather the lowest reality than the highest imitation; rather Gainsborough, as he says, than Raphael Mengs. There are a thousand modes of grace to be picked up in the observation of life and nature, and each artist is born to one or more of them, if he is born to any-no two are born to the same. But German art has been so devoted to types, patterns, and preconceptions, that we doubt she will require another revolution in her system before she can dispense with them. It is true the old masters were surrounded from their cradle with types and patterns, but these were realities in the fifteenth century-they are shadows in the nineteenth. The husk they threw off cannot be the germ we are to spring from. Art |