DOI Artikel:
Mount, Harry: Shaftesbury V. Richardson: A Counterfactual Exercise
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.56525#0010
SHAFTESBURY V. RICHARDSON: A COUNTERFACTUAL EXERCISE
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term rhyparographyP by which he meant what we would now call low genre painting, while his preferred
term for landscape painting was perspective.33 34
It is notable that all Shaftesbury’s neologisms are derived from Latin and Greek. Richardson, by con-
trast, inclined towards words which had been brought into English by Dutch dealers and artists - he calls
landscapes landscapes and genre paintings drolls.35 In contrast to what Shaftesbury seems to have been plan-
ning Richardson presents his book in straightforward continuous prose and without footnotes. While Shaftes-
bury was conscious of the need to rein in his learning in order not to frighten off painters, ladies and other
unscholarly beings, the more insecure Richardson was anxious to appear as scholarly as possible, for example
by quoting frequently from Italian authors, in particular Dante.36
It is difficult to judge the actual style in which a published version of Plasticks might have been written
because Shaftesbury’s notes are very much notes. However, in these notes we do find occasional instances
of Shaftesbury’s powers as a writer, suggesting a sophistication, passion and immediacy which would in all
likelihood have far surpassed the functional but pedestrian prose of Richardson. For example, he describes
a painting by Domenichino in the dome of the chapel of San Gennaro in Naples Cathedral as looking like
‘an Orange [studded] with Cloves’, an effective punchline to an anecdote in which he relates how the artist
was paid by the number of heads he included and thus chose to maximise his returns by including as many
bodiless angels as possible.37
That Shaftesbury quoted extensively from Greek and Latin sources and Richardson from Italian tells
us much about their respective frames of reference. Shaftesbury was a well-read classical scholar, and the
sources he mentions most often are those from the ancient world, above all Horace’s Ars Poetica, but also
Homer, Virgil, Xenophon, Pliny, Plato and Aristotle. He was also well acquainted with Franciscus Junius’s De
pictura veterum (London 1637), a comprehensive digest of the writings on the ancients on the visual arts.38
It was from these sources that Shaftesbury, on most issues an Ancient in the battle between the Ancients and
the Moderns, derived his values and his principal terms of reference.39 Richardson, less widely read, does not
refer to any ancient sources and those he mentions most often are Italian authors, above all Bellori and Vasa-
ri. Both writers also owed a substantial debt to modern French writers, perhaps inevitably given that those
writers had been so actively engaged in codifying art theory. Both writers were, however, also highly ambiva-
lent about this debt, understandably given that Britain was then just emerging from a long war with France.
This was, moreover, the period during which the French became firmly established as the great rival and other
against which the British defined themselves, a role they would continue to play for the next two centuries.
Shaftesbury and Richardson would be far from the last Britons to find themselves both substantially indebted
to French culture and profoundly resentful of that debt.
The two men responded to this feeling of ambivalence in different ways. Richardson’s solution was to
pretend that the French didn’t exist. In the entirety of his Theory of Painting he cites only two French the-
orists, André Félibien and Roger de Piles, and mentions each only once. This is despite the fact that Richard-
son unquestionably took de Piles’s writings, and especially his Cours de peinture par principes, as a model,
and arguably the primary model, for his own theory of art.40 He was, perhaps, gambling on the likelihood that
de Piles’ book, as yet untranslated into English, would be unknown to most of his readers.41 The more confident
Shaftesbury approached the problem in a different way, frequently referring in his notes for Plasticks to his
33 Ibidem, pp. 257-258.
34 Ibidem, p. 278.
35 E.g. Richardson, Theory of Painting, pp. 39M0.
36 E.g. ibidem, p. 73.
37 Shaftesbury, Plasticks, p. 212
38 For direct references to Junius in Shaftesbury’s, Plasticks, see pp. 192-193, 198, 245.
39 On Shaftesbury and the Ancients see L. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics
in Early Eighteenth-century England, Cambridge 1994, pp. 46-47; H. Mount, Morality, Microscopy and the Moderns: the Meaning of Mi-
nuteness in Shaftesbury’s Theory of Painting, “British Journal for Eighteenth-century Studies”, vol. 21, 1998, pp. 133-139. It is notable that
Shaftesbury almost always gives the temi ‘ancient’ a positive meaning and the temi ‘modem’ a negative one in his notes for Plasticks, see
e.g. pp. 286, 211.
40 R. de Piles, Cours de peinture par principes, Paris 1708. On what Richardson did and did not owe to de Piles see Gib-
son-Wood, op. cit., p. 143. The one mention of de Piles’ Cours in Richardson’s Theorv of Painting occurred near the end of the book
(p. 230).
41 De Piles’ Cours was first translated into English as The Principles of Painting, London 1743.
9
term rhyparographyP by which he meant what we would now call low genre painting, while his preferred
term for landscape painting was perspective.33 34
It is notable that all Shaftesbury’s neologisms are derived from Latin and Greek. Richardson, by con-
trast, inclined towards words which had been brought into English by Dutch dealers and artists - he calls
landscapes landscapes and genre paintings drolls.35 In contrast to what Shaftesbury seems to have been plan-
ning Richardson presents his book in straightforward continuous prose and without footnotes. While Shaftes-
bury was conscious of the need to rein in his learning in order not to frighten off painters, ladies and other
unscholarly beings, the more insecure Richardson was anxious to appear as scholarly as possible, for example
by quoting frequently from Italian authors, in particular Dante.36
It is difficult to judge the actual style in which a published version of Plasticks might have been written
because Shaftesbury’s notes are very much notes. However, in these notes we do find occasional instances
of Shaftesbury’s powers as a writer, suggesting a sophistication, passion and immediacy which would in all
likelihood have far surpassed the functional but pedestrian prose of Richardson. For example, he describes
a painting by Domenichino in the dome of the chapel of San Gennaro in Naples Cathedral as looking like
‘an Orange [studded] with Cloves’, an effective punchline to an anecdote in which he relates how the artist
was paid by the number of heads he included and thus chose to maximise his returns by including as many
bodiless angels as possible.37
That Shaftesbury quoted extensively from Greek and Latin sources and Richardson from Italian tells
us much about their respective frames of reference. Shaftesbury was a well-read classical scholar, and the
sources he mentions most often are those from the ancient world, above all Horace’s Ars Poetica, but also
Homer, Virgil, Xenophon, Pliny, Plato and Aristotle. He was also well acquainted with Franciscus Junius’s De
pictura veterum (London 1637), a comprehensive digest of the writings on the ancients on the visual arts.38
It was from these sources that Shaftesbury, on most issues an Ancient in the battle between the Ancients and
the Moderns, derived his values and his principal terms of reference.39 Richardson, less widely read, does not
refer to any ancient sources and those he mentions most often are Italian authors, above all Bellori and Vasa-
ri. Both writers also owed a substantial debt to modern French writers, perhaps inevitably given that those
writers had been so actively engaged in codifying art theory. Both writers were, however, also highly ambiva-
lent about this debt, understandably given that Britain was then just emerging from a long war with France.
This was, moreover, the period during which the French became firmly established as the great rival and other
against which the British defined themselves, a role they would continue to play for the next two centuries.
Shaftesbury and Richardson would be far from the last Britons to find themselves both substantially indebted
to French culture and profoundly resentful of that debt.
The two men responded to this feeling of ambivalence in different ways. Richardson’s solution was to
pretend that the French didn’t exist. In the entirety of his Theory of Painting he cites only two French the-
orists, André Félibien and Roger de Piles, and mentions each only once. This is despite the fact that Richard-
son unquestionably took de Piles’s writings, and especially his Cours de peinture par principes, as a model,
and arguably the primary model, for his own theory of art.40 He was, perhaps, gambling on the likelihood that
de Piles’ book, as yet untranslated into English, would be unknown to most of his readers.41 The more confident
Shaftesbury approached the problem in a different way, frequently referring in his notes for Plasticks to his
33 Ibidem, pp. 257-258.
34 Ibidem, p. 278.
35 E.g. Richardson, Theory of Painting, pp. 39M0.
36 E.g. ibidem, p. 73.
37 Shaftesbury, Plasticks, p. 212
38 For direct references to Junius in Shaftesbury’s, Plasticks, see pp. 192-193, 198, 245.
39 On Shaftesbury and the Ancients see L. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics
in Early Eighteenth-century England, Cambridge 1994, pp. 46-47; H. Mount, Morality, Microscopy and the Moderns: the Meaning of Mi-
nuteness in Shaftesbury’s Theory of Painting, “British Journal for Eighteenth-century Studies”, vol. 21, 1998, pp. 133-139. It is notable that
Shaftesbury almost always gives the temi ‘ancient’ a positive meaning and the temi ‘modem’ a negative one in his notes for Plasticks, see
e.g. pp. 286, 211.
40 R. de Piles, Cours de peinture par principes, Paris 1708. On what Richardson did and did not owe to de Piles see Gib-
son-Wood, op. cit., p. 143. The one mention of de Piles’ Cours in Richardson’s Theorv of Painting occurred near the end of the book
(p. 230).
41 De Piles’ Cours was first translated into English as The Principles of Painting, London 1743.