DOI article:
Jaźwierski, Jacek: "The Judgement of Hercules": Shaftesbury at the Crossroads of Art Theory
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.56525#0035
34
JACEK JAŻWIERSKI
Dryden’s translation in his library21 and he mentioned Dufresnoy in his writings along with other French authors,
Fréart de Chambray and Abraham Bosse, as well as the Dutch humanist Franciscus Junius.22
Shaftesbury’s definition of the tablature reveals his dependence on all those authors despite substantial
differences in their approach to painting in general and to pictorial unity in particular.23 Junius and Fréart
considered painting as imaginative and intellectual undertaking which revolved around the history invented
by the painter-poet; for them, the unity of pictures was guaranteed by Aristotelian rules of poetical narrative.
This view was sustained or even augmented by John Dryden who in the Parallel of Poetry and Painting
which prefaced his translation of De arte graphica shifted the balance in ut pictura poesis doctrine sharply
towards poetry. “[T]he chief end of Painting is to please the Eyes: and ’tis one great End of Poetry to please
the Mind. Thus far the Parallel of the Arts holds true: with this difference, That the principal end of Painting
is to please', and the chief design of Poetry is to instruct. In this the latter seems to have the advantage of the
former.^ In order to mitigate this stance, hardly suitable for the preface to the book on painting, he added:
“But if we consider the Artists themselves on both sides, certainly their aims are the very same: they wou’d
both make sure of pleasing, and that in preference to instruction. Next, the means of this pleasure is by De-
ceipt. One imposes on the Sight, and the other on the Understanding.”25 Dufresnoy and de Piles were first to
challenge this long established history-first approach. For them, especially for de Piles, the pivotal principle
of painting was no longer the Albertian storia but tout ensemble - a pleasurable visual effect of the whole
picture based on orderly interplay of colours, lights and shades. Dufresnoy not only maintained the balance
between the visual aspects of the picture and its ability to instruct but also linked them together into coherent
system. The subject of the picture should allow the painterly “charms and graces, that Colours, and the el-
egance of Design can possibly give [... ] and to produce somewhat to the sight which is excellent, judicious,
and well season’d; and at the same time proper to instruct, and to enlighten the Understanding.”26 De Piles
in his Observations made painting and poetry equally capable of imitation, expression, deceiving and repre-
senting truth by means of fiction, because both equally relied on imagination. What is more, painting “often
givefs] more Light to the Understanding than the clearest discourses we can make.”27 The visual effect cham-
pioned by de Piles replaced rhetorical clarity of narrative as an aim of art and set both on colliding course.28
Shaftesbury’s definition of the tablature indicates that he was both versed with recent art-theoretical
ideas and aware of different approaches to painting. In what follows, I would like to analyze the Judgment of
Hercules seeking the answer to the question how Shaftesbury interpreted, reinterpreted and accommodated
the cluster of interrelated concepts of disposition, unity, the whole, single view, the eye, harmony and colour
by which Dufresnoy and de Piles tried to grasp and explain the visual effect of pictures.
The main part of Shaftesbury’s treatise consists in detailed discussion of the (still) imaginary picture of
Hercules. Shaftesbury reflected on how the parts and elements of the picture should be arranged and why.
This type of analysis was adopted in French Academy and Shaftesbury knew it from Fréart’s Idea.29 Fréart
discussed several pictures by Raphael (some engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi), Michelangelo and Giulio
Romano in order to demonstrate how the principles of invention, proportion, colouring, expression and dis-
position (“Of the Regular Position of Figures”) worked in practice.
What in the Introduction to Hercules looked like an ambitious mixture of intellectual and visual unity,
now was given less equivocal interpretation. As the history tablature, which in his Dictionary of Art Terms39
attached to the Second Characters Shaftesbury called simply a poem, Hercules was disposed on poetical prin-
21 Librorum Anglicorum, Gallicorum, Italicorum, &c. utriusque Bibliotheca? vizt. Aigidiana, & Chelseyana Comitis de Shaftesbury.
Algidis Anno Aera? Christiana? 1709, available at the Shaftesbury Project website: https://www.angam.phil.fau.de/fields/enst/lit/shaftesbuiy/
reading-room/english-ffench-italian/#collapse_3 [13.09.2020],
22 R. Fréart de Chambray, An Idea of the Perfection of Painting, trans. J. Evelyn, London 1668; A. Bosse, Le peintre converty
aux precises et universelles regies de son art, Paris 1667; F. Junius, De pictura veterum, Amsterdam 1637. Shaftesbury mentioned them in
the Idea of the Work, the Prefaratory Anticipatory Thoughts and the Plastics, [in:] Second Characters, pp. 8, 16, 155 and note 2, 171.
23 On the pictorial unity see T. Puttfarken, David ’s Brutus and Theories of Pictorial Unity in France, “Ail History”, 4, 1981, no. 3,
pp. 296-299.
24 Du F resnoy, The Art ofPainting, p. xx.
25 Ibidem, p. xx.
26 Ibidem, p. 12.
27 Ibidem, pp. 80-81.
28 For the detailed discussion of de Piles’ theoiy see T. Puttfarken, Roger de Piles Theory of Art, New Haven-London 1985.
29 Fréart de Chambray, An Idea of the Perfection of Painting, pp. 24-136.
30 Second Characters, p. 180.
JACEK JAŻWIERSKI
Dryden’s translation in his library21 and he mentioned Dufresnoy in his writings along with other French authors,
Fréart de Chambray and Abraham Bosse, as well as the Dutch humanist Franciscus Junius.22
Shaftesbury’s definition of the tablature reveals his dependence on all those authors despite substantial
differences in their approach to painting in general and to pictorial unity in particular.23 Junius and Fréart
considered painting as imaginative and intellectual undertaking which revolved around the history invented
by the painter-poet; for them, the unity of pictures was guaranteed by Aristotelian rules of poetical narrative.
This view was sustained or even augmented by John Dryden who in the Parallel of Poetry and Painting
which prefaced his translation of De arte graphica shifted the balance in ut pictura poesis doctrine sharply
towards poetry. “[T]he chief end of Painting is to please the Eyes: and ’tis one great End of Poetry to please
the Mind. Thus far the Parallel of the Arts holds true: with this difference, That the principal end of Painting
is to please', and the chief design of Poetry is to instruct. In this the latter seems to have the advantage of the
former.^ In order to mitigate this stance, hardly suitable for the preface to the book on painting, he added:
“But if we consider the Artists themselves on both sides, certainly their aims are the very same: they wou’d
both make sure of pleasing, and that in preference to instruction. Next, the means of this pleasure is by De-
ceipt. One imposes on the Sight, and the other on the Understanding.”25 Dufresnoy and de Piles were first to
challenge this long established history-first approach. For them, especially for de Piles, the pivotal principle
of painting was no longer the Albertian storia but tout ensemble - a pleasurable visual effect of the whole
picture based on orderly interplay of colours, lights and shades. Dufresnoy not only maintained the balance
between the visual aspects of the picture and its ability to instruct but also linked them together into coherent
system. The subject of the picture should allow the painterly “charms and graces, that Colours, and the el-
egance of Design can possibly give [... ] and to produce somewhat to the sight which is excellent, judicious,
and well season’d; and at the same time proper to instruct, and to enlighten the Understanding.”26 De Piles
in his Observations made painting and poetry equally capable of imitation, expression, deceiving and repre-
senting truth by means of fiction, because both equally relied on imagination. What is more, painting “often
givefs] more Light to the Understanding than the clearest discourses we can make.”27 The visual effect cham-
pioned by de Piles replaced rhetorical clarity of narrative as an aim of art and set both on colliding course.28
Shaftesbury’s definition of the tablature indicates that he was both versed with recent art-theoretical
ideas and aware of different approaches to painting. In what follows, I would like to analyze the Judgment of
Hercules seeking the answer to the question how Shaftesbury interpreted, reinterpreted and accommodated
the cluster of interrelated concepts of disposition, unity, the whole, single view, the eye, harmony and colour
by which Dufresnoy and de Piles tried to grasp and explain the visual effect of pictures.
The main part of Shaftesbury’s treatise consists in detailed discussion of the (still) imaginary picture of
Hercules. Shaftesbury reflected on how the parts and elements of the picture should be arranged and why.
This type of analysis was adopted in French Academy and Shaftesbury knew it from Fréart’s Idea.29 Fréart
discussed several pictures by Raphael (some engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi), Michelangelo and Giulio
Romano in order to demonstrate how the principles of invention, proportion, colouring, expression and dis-
position (“Of the Regular Position of Figures”) worked in practice.
What in the Introduction to Hercules looked like an ambitious mixture of intellectual and visual unity,
now was given less equivocal interpretation. As the history tablature, which in his Dictionary of Art Terms39
attached to the Second Characters Shaftesbury called simply a poem, Hercules was disposed on poetical prin-
21 Librorum Anglicorum, Gallicorum, Italicorum, &c. utriusque Bibliotheca? vizt. Aigidiana, & Chelseyana Comitis de Shaftesbury.
Algidis Anno Aera? Christiana? 1709, available at the Shaftesbury Project website: https://www.angam.phil.fau.de/fields/enst/lit/shaftesbuiy/
reading-room/english-ffench-italian/#collapse_3 [13.09.2020],
22 R. Fréart de Chambray, An Idea of the Perfection of Painting, trans. J. Evelyn, London 1668; A. Bosse, Le peintre converty
aux precises et universelles regies de son art, Paris 1667; F. Junius, De pictura veterum, Amsterdam 1637. Shaftesbury mentioned them in
the Idea of the Work, the Prefaratory Anticipatory Thoughts and the Plastics, [in:] Second Characters, pp. 8, 16, 155 and note 2, 171.
23 On the pictorial unity see T. Puttfarken, David ’s Brutus and Theories of Pictorial Unity in France, “Ail History”, 4, 1981, no. 3,
pp. 296-299.
24 Du F resnoy, The Art ofPainting, p. xx.
25 Ibidem, p. xx.
26 Ibidem, p. 12.
27 Ibidem, pp. 80-81.
28 For the detailed discussion of de Piles’ theoiy see T. Puttfarken, Roger de Piles Theory of Art, New Haven-London 1985.
29 Fréart de Chambray, An Idea of the Perfection of Painting, pp. 24-136.
30 Second Characters, p. 180.