DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.73713#0069
RAPHAEL MENGS.
65
the figures ought to have the motions moderate,
easy, lovely, and more humble than arrogant.
The execution ought not to be treated with
much force, and ought to be also eafy, foft,
and varied, and without minutiae.
This was thepart which the Grecians confess
to have been possessed in a superior degree by
Appelles; and although that artist was very mo-
dest, still he gloried in possessing it; saying with
ingenuity, that others surpassed him in some
parts but that he conquered in grace. The
idea which the ancients had of grace was very
different from that which we have of it; because
in comparison with theirs, ours is a kind of af-
fectation which cannot subsist in persect beauty
without embarrassing it; consistingin certain ges-
tures, actions, and difficult postures, unnatural,
or violent, or at least like those of children, as
we see sometimes in great Correggio himself,
and more in Parmigianino, and in others who
have followed that track. In the ancients
there was not that grace; it was a character to
give the same idea of beauty which beauty gives
of perfection, by presenting the pleating parts
of beautiful objeCts. The most beautiful Gre-
cian examples of that style, are the Venus of
Medicis, the Apollo, the Hermaphrodite of the
villa of Borghefe, and that which remains an-
tique of the beautiful Cupid of the same villa;
as also a Nymph in the collection of San Ilde-
sonso, and in various other statu^s. Raphael pos-
sessed true Grace in the motions of figures;
he wanted however a certain elegance in the
VOL. II. K
65
the figures ought to have the motions moderate,
easy, lovely, and more humble than arrogant.
The execution ought not to be treated with
much force, and ought to be also eafy, foft,
and varied, and without minutiae.
This was thepart which the Grecians confess
to have been possessed in a superior degree by
Appelles; and although that artist was very mo-
dest, still he gloried in possessing it; saying with
ingenuity, that others surpassed him in some
parts but that he conquered in grace. The
idea which the ancients had of grace was very
different from that which we have of it; because
in comparison with theirs, ours is a kind of af-
fectation which cannot subsist in persect beauty
without embarrassing it; consistingin certain ges-
tures, actions, and difficult postures, unnatural,
or violent, or at least like those of children, as
we see sometimes in great Correggio himself,
and more in Parmigianino, and in others who
have followed that track. In the ancients
there was not that grace; it was a character to
give the same idea of beauty which beauty gives
of perfection, by presenting the pleating parts
of beautiful objeCts. The most beautiful Gre-
cian examples of that style, are the Venus of
Medicis, the Apollo, the Hermaphrodite of the
villa of Borghefe, and that which remains an-
tique of the beautiful Cupid of the same villa;
as also a Nymph in the collection of San Ilde-
sonso, and in various other statu^s. Raphael pos-
sessed true Grace in the motions of figures;
he wanted however a certain elegance in the
VOL. II. K