DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20658#0175
161
SECTION III.
of drapery.
THOUGH this article has been treated of in Chapter III. Lesson VI. yet it is necessary in
this place to resume the subject; to deliver those precepts which may tend to qualify the student
in the more refined parts of this branch of the art: what has been before delivered upon this
subject may be considered as introductory and preparatory only to the rationale of the practice,
and like certain exercises which boys perform at school, in acquiring the manual art of writing
are, on their attaining a compleat command of the pen, discontinued. A good deal of mechanical
address is required in forming and contrasting the folds of different kinds of drapery : but this
quality is merely mechanical and as such has been delivered to the pupil in an earl}' stage of his
progress: what follows is to teach him to clothe his figures according to the truly great style. In
the former lesson he was directed to identify the different sorts of clothing, according to the na-
ture of the stuffs: this direction however though not to be wholly neglected, is not to be too punc-
tually followed, lest he degenerate into the display of the detail and trifling parts of the ai t. Many
great artists, whose works have met with general approbation, have never condescended to distin-
guish the different kinds of drapery-, With them the clothing is neither woollen nor linen nor
silk satin or velvet; it is clothing and nothing more. It is the inferior style of painting only
that marks the variety of stuffs. The art of disposing of the folds of drapery so that they shall
have an easy communication and gracefully follow each other, with such natural negligence as
to look like the effect of chance, and at the same time shew the figure under them to the ut-
most advantage, requires the nicest judgement and makes a very considerable part of the painter'-s
study.
It was the opinion of Carlo Maratti that the disposition of drapery was a more difficult part of
the art than that of drawing a human figure: as the rules for delineating it could not be so well
ascertained as those for drawing a correct form ; consequently a student, he said, might be more
easily taught the latter than the former. It would be presumptuous to contradict so great an
artist in his opinion of that particular branch of his practice in which he claimed his chief excel-
lence. Yet it must be confessed, by his artificial management of the subject, which is too appa-
rent, he is inferior to Raphael even in this particular. Nevertheless a judicious display of dra-
pery is an excellence somewhat rare ; and perhaps for this reason that in common with many
other parts of the art, it is not to be attained by a mechanical and slavish attention to rules, but
by a correct taste and just knowledge of truth and nature.
As the just delineation of the folds in drapery depends on a successful display of the chiaro
oscuro, the student must by all means render himself perfect in giving relief to his figures; for
every fold, to make it appear natural, must be properly relieved with shade. It has also been
before mentioned that drapery is not so much intended to conceal the figure as to discover the
form of the members it covers: and as it hath been justly observed that as the inequalities of a
surface are discoverable by the inequalities of the water that runs over it, so the posture and shape
of the members must be discernable by the folds of the garment that covers them, This remark
serves to shewMis4be absurdity of those painters who have loaded their figures with a great mass
of drapery, abounding with a multitude of superfluous folds and needless windings, so that the
2 t whole
SECTION III.
of drapery.
THOUGH this article has been treated of in Chapter III. Lesson VI. yet it is necessary in
this place to resume the subject; to deliver those precepts which may tend to qualify the student
in the more refined parts of this branch of the art: what has been before delivered upon this
subject may be considered as introductory and preparatory only to the rationale of the practice,
and like certain exercises which boys perform at school, in acquiring the manual art of writing
are, on their attaining a compleat command of the pen, discontinued. A good deal of mechanical
address is required in forming and contrasting the folds of different kinds of drapery : but this
quality is merely mechanical and as such has been delivered to the pupil in an earl}' stage of his
progress: what follows is to teach him to clothe his figures according to the truly great style. In
the former lesson he was directed to identify the different sorts of clothing, according to the na-
ture of the stuffs: this direction however though not to be wholly neglected, is not to be too punc-
tually followed, lest he degenerate into the display of the detail and trifling parts of the ai t. Many
great artists, whose works have met with general approbation, have never condescended to distin-
guish the different kinds of drapery-, With them the clothing is neither woollen nor linen nor
silk satin or velvet; it is clothing and nothing more. It is the inferior style of painting only
that marks the variety of stuffs. The art of disposing of the folds of drapery so that they shall
have an easy communication and gracefully follow each other, with such natural negligence as
to look like the effect of chance, and at the same time shew the figure under them to the ut-
most advantage, requires the nicest judgement and makes a very considerable part of the painter'-s
study.
It was the opinion of Carlo Maratti that the disposition of drapery was a more difficult part of
the art than that of drawing a human figure: as the rules for delineating it could not be so well
ascertained as those for drawing a correct form ; consequently a student, he said, might be more
easily taught the latter than the former. It would be presumptuous to contradict so great an
artist in his opinion of that particular branch of his practice in which he claimed his chief excel-
lence. Yet it must be confessed, by his artificial management of the subject, which is too appa-
rent, he is inferior to Raphael even in this particular. Nevertheless a judicious display of dra-
pery is an excellence somewhat rare ; and perhaps for this reason that in common with many
other parts of the art, it is not to be attained by a mechanical and slavish attention to rules, but
by a correct taste and just knowledge of truth and nature.
As the just delineation of the folds in drapery depends on a successful display of the chiaro
oscuro, the student must by all means render himself perfect in giving relief to his figures; for
every fold, to make it appear natural, must be properly relieved with shade. It has also been
before mentioned that drapery is not so much intended to conceal the figure as to discover the
form of the members it covers: and as it hath been justly observed that as the inequalities of a
surface are discoverable by the inequalities of the water that runs over it, so the posture and shape
of the members must be discernable by the folds of the garment that covers them, This remark
serves to shewMis4be absurdity of those painters who have loaded their figures with a great mass
of drapery, abounding with a multitude of superfluous folds and needless windings, so that the
2 t whole