Though faithful to history, the painter was nevertheless a poet: in order to represent some circumstances, he filled even the furniture with sentiments. The Sphinxes by the Prince’s bed allude to his problematic sickness, the enquiries of Erasistratus, and his sagacity in discovering its true cause.
I have been told that some young Italian artists, when considering this picture, and perceiving the Prince’s arm perhaps a trifle too big, went off without enquiring into the subject itself. Should even Minerva herself, as she once did to Diomedes, attempt to deliver some people from the mist they labour under, by heaven! the attempt were vain!
——_pauci dignoscere possunt_ _Vera bona, atque illis multum diversa, remota_ _Erroris nebula._
I have run into this long digression, in order to throw some light on one of the first productions of the art, which is nevertheless but little known.
The idea of noble simplicity and sedate grandeur in Raphael’s figures, might rather, as two eminent authors express it[55], be called “still life.” It is indeed the standard of the Greek art: however, indiscreetly commended to young artists, it might beget as dangerous consequences, as precepts of energetick conciseness in the style; the direct method to make it barren and unpleasing.
“In youths, says Cicero[56], there must be some superfluity, something to be taken off: prematurity spoils the juices, and it is easier to lop the young rank branches of a vine, than to restore its vigour to a worn out trunk.” Not to mention, that figures wanting gesture would, by the bulk of mankind, be received as a speech before the Areopagites, where, by a severe law, the speaker was forbid to raise any passions, though ever so gentle[57]: nay, pictures of this kind would be so many portraits of young Spartans, who, with hands hid under their coats, and down-cast eyes, stalk forth in silent solemnity[58].
Neither am I quite of the author’s opinion with regard to allegory; the applying of which would too frequently do in painting, what was done in geometry by introducing algebra: the one would soon be as difficult as the other, and painting would degenerate into Hieroglyphicks.
The author attempts, in vain, to persuade us, that the majority of the Greeks thought as the Egyptians. There was no more learning in the painting of the platfond of the temple of Juno at Samos, than in that of the Farnese gallery. It represented the love-intrigues of Jupiter and Juno[59]: and, in the front of a temple of Ceres at Eleusis, there was nothing but representations of a ceremony at the rites of that goddess[60].