The form of real beauty has neither the projected parts obtuse, nor the vaulted ones sharp. The eye-bone is magnificently raised, the chin thoroughly vaulted. Thus the best ancients drew: though, when taste declined amongst them, and the arts were trampled on in modern times, these parts changed too: then the eye-bone became roundish and obtusely dull, and the chin mincingly pretty. Hence we may safely affirm, that what they call Antinous, in the Belvedere, whose eye-bone is rather obtuse, cannot be a work of the highest antiquity, any more than the Venus.
As these remarks are general, they likewise concern the features of the face, the form only. There is another charm, that gives expression and life to forms, which we call Grace; and we shall give some loose reflexions on it separately, leaving it to others to give us systems.
The figure of a man is as susceptible of beauty as that of a youth: but as a various one, not the various alone, is the Gordian knot, it follows, that a youthful figure, drawn at large, and in the highest possible degree of beauty, is, of all problems that can be proposed to the designer, the most difficult. Every one may convince himself of this: take the most beautiful face in modern painting, and it will go hard, but you shall know a still more beautiful one in nature.——I speak thus, after having considered the treasures of Rome and Florence.
If ever an artist was endowed with beauty, and deep innate feelings for it; if ever one was versed in the taste and spirit of the ancients, ’twas certainly _Raphael_: yet are his beauties inferior to the most beautiful nature. I know persons more beautiful than his unequalled Madonna, in the _Palazzo Petti_ at Florence, or the Alcibiades in his academy. The Madonna in the Christmas-night of _Corregio_, (a piece justly celebrated for its chiar’-oscuro) is no sublime idea; still less so is that of _Maratta_ at Dresden: _Titian_’s celebrated Venus[327] in the Tribuna at Florence is common nature. The little heads of _Albano_ have an air of beauty; but it is a different thing to express beauty in little, and in great. To have the theory of navigation, and to guide a ship through the ocean, are two things. _Poussin_, who had studied antiquity more than his predecessors, knew perfectly well what his shoulders could bear, and never ventured into the great.