DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61012#0037
THE FIRST DISCOURSE.
3
But whatever may be our proportion of success, of this
we may be sure, that the present Institution will at least
contribute to advance our knowledge of the Arts, and bring
us nearer to that ideal excellence, which it is the lot of
genius always to contemplate, and never to attain.
The principal advantage of an Academy is, that, besides
furnishing able men to direct the Student, it will be a
repository for the great examples of the Art. These are
the materials on which Genius is to work, and without
which the strongest intellect may be fruitlessly or deviously
employed. By studying these authentic models, that idea
of excellence which is the result of the accumulated experi-
ence of past ages may be at once acquired; and the tardy
and obstructed progress of our predecessors may teach us a
shorter and easier way. The Student receives, at one
glance, the principles which many Artists have spent their
whole lives in ascertaining; and, satisfied with their effect,
is spared the painful investigation by which they came to be
known and fixed. How many men of great natural abilities
have been lost to this nation for want of these advantages 1
They never had an opportunity of seeing those masterly
efforts of genius, which at once kindle the whole soul, and
force it into sudden and irresistible approbation.
Raffaelle, it is true, had not the advantage of studying in
an Academy; but all Rome, and the works of Michel
Angelo in particular, were to him an Academy. On the
sight of the Capella Sistina, he immediately, from a dry,
Gothic, and even insipid manner, which attends to the
minute accidental discriminations of particular and in-
dividual objects, assumed that grand style of painting,
which improves partial representation by the general and
invariable ideas of nature.
Every seminary of learning may be said to be surrounded
3
But whatever may be our proportion of success, of this
we may be sure, that the present Institution will at least
contribute to advance our knowledge of the Arts, and bring
us nearer to that ideal excellence, which it is the lot of
genius always to contemplate, and never to attain.
The principal advantage of an Academy is, that, besides
furnishing able men to direct the Student, it will be a
repository for the great examples of the Art. These are
the materials on which Genius is to work, and without
which the strongest intellect may be fruitlessly or deviously
employed. By studying these authentic models, that idea
of excellence which is the result of the accumulated experi-
ence of past ages may be at once acquired; and the tardy
and obstructed progress of our predecessors may teach us a
shorter and easier way. The Student receives, at one
glance, the principles which many Artists have spent their
whole lives in ascertaining; and, satisfied with their effect,
is spared the painful investigation by which they came to be
known and fixed. How many men of great natural abilities
have been lost to this nation for want of these advantages 1
They never had an opportunity of seeing those masterly
efforts of genius, which at once kindle the whole soul, and
force it into sudden and irresistible approbation.
Raffaelle, it is true, had not the advantage of studying in
an Academy; but all Rome, and the works of Michel
Angelo in particular, were to him an Academy. On the
sight of the Capella Sistina, he immediately, from a dry,
Gothic, and even insipid manner, which attends to the
minute accidental discriminations of particular and in-
dividual objects, assumed that grand style of painting,
which improves partial representation by the general and
invariable ideas of nature.
Every seminary of learning may be said to be surrounded