DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68516#0080
VITALITY
such ideal or abstraction is inimical to vitality, for it is difficult to endow
an abstraction with life. In Raphael’s St Cecilia (34) we see the
effects of this—the figure of the saint herself seems so much the expres-
sion of an ideal of regular formal beauty that she has but little life.
I do not say this figure is markedly lifeless; the figure to the right, too,
certainly has some feeling of inner life. Rather I get the impression that
Raphael’s native gift for vital imagery was inhibited and attenuated by
the search for ideal beauty. And in the St Paul we see another cause of
the same effect, namely the need for striking and noble gestures which
the so-called grand manner demanded. In proportion as gestures con-
form to a rhetorical type they tend to lose the full complexity of living
beings.
The St Mark (4) by Fra Bartolommeo is a striking example of what I
mean, for Fra Bartolommeo certainly has vital power; but the careful
disposition of the limbs according to a preconceived rhetorical idea of
nobility and grandeur interferes with the illusion of life.
With the eclectics of the seventeenth century, with the Carracci and
their followers, we find all illusion of life gone. Nothing could well be
more external, descriptive and lifeless than the Carracci ‘ Childhood of
Christ’ (35). Remember I am not condemning Italian art of this
period for this, merely noting the disappearance of this vitalizing power
and noting that it is accompanied by a peculiarly conscious and de-
liberate pursuit of ideal beauty as revealed by the great artists of the
high Renaissance. But if vitality had deserted Italy in the seventeenth
century, it found in Holland and particularly in Rembrandt its suprem-
est expression (36). For no one I think has ever surpassed Rembrandt
in the power to communicate the idea of the inner life of his images.
And here again we note that it is not inconsistent with a very complete
representation of the natural object. But how clearly Rembrandt forces
us to feel the inner life as dominating and controlling the pose, as
functioning in every curve and direction.
Perhaps this quality is even more evident in such a slight drawing as
this of a coach (37), where every line becomes as it were an indication
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such ideal or abstraction is inimical to vitality, for it is difficult to endow
an abstraction with life. In Raphael’s St Cecilia (34) we see the
effects of this—the figure of the saint herself seems so much the expres-
sion of an ideal of regular formal beauty that she has but little life.
I do not say this figure is markedly lifeless; the figure to the right, too,
certainly has some feeling of inner life. Rather I get the impression that
Raphael’s native gift for vital imagery was inhibited and attenuated by
the search for ideal beauty. And in the St Paul we see another cause of
the same effect, namely the need for striking and noble gestures which
the so-called grand manner demanded. In proportion as gestures con-
form to a rhetorical type they tend to lose the full complexity of living
beings.
The St Mark (4) by Fra Bartolommeo is a striking example of what I
mean, for Fra Bartolommeo certainly has vital power; but the careful
disposition of the limbs according to a preconceived rhetorical idea of
nobility and grandeur interferes with the illusion of life.
With the eclectics of the seventeenth century, with the Carracci and
their followers, we find all illusion of life gone. Nothing could well be
more external, descriptive and lifeless than the Carracci ‘ Childhood of
Christ’ (35). Remember I am not condemning Italian art of this
period for this, merely noting the disappearance of this vitalizing power
and noting that it is accompanied by a peculiarly conscious and de-
liberate pursuit of ideal beauty as revealed by the great artists of the
high Renaissance. But if vitality had deserted Italy in the seventeenth
century, it found in Holland and particularly in Rembrandt its suprem-
est expression (36). For no one I think has ever surpassed Rembrandt
in the power to communicate the idea of the inner life of his images.
And here again we note that it is not inconsistent with a very complete
representation of the natural object. But how clearly Rembrandt forces
us to feel the inner life as dominating and controlling the pose, as
functioning in every curve and direction.
Perhaps this quality is even more evident in such a slight drawing as
this of a coach (37), where every line becomes as it were an indication
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