The Old Masters
Were Still Unpleasing To Me, But They Were Truly Divine
Contrasted With The Copies.
The copy is to the original
as the pallid, smart, inane new wax-work group is to
the vigorous, earnest, dignified group of living men
and women whom it professes to duplicate.
There is a
mellow richness, a subdued color, in the old pictures,
which is to the eye what muffled and mellowed sound
is to the ear. That is the merit which is most loudly
praised in the old picture, and is the one which the copy
most conspicuously lacks, and which the copyist must
not hope to compass. It was generally conceded by the
artists with whom I talked, that that subdued splendor,
that mellow richness, is imparted to the picture by AGE.
Then why should we worship the Old Master for it,
who didn't impart it, instead of worshiping Old Time,
who did? Perhaps the picture was a clanging bell,
until Time muffled it and sweetened it.
In conversation with an artist in Venice, I asked: "What
is it that people see in the Old Masters? I have been in the
Doge's palace and I saw several acres of very bad drawing,
very bad perspective, and very incorrect proportions.
Paul Veronese's dogs to not resemble dogs; all the horses
look like bladders on legs; one man had a RIGHT leg on
the left side of his body; in the large picture where
the Emperor (Barbarossa?) is prostrate before the Pope,
there are three men in the foreground who are over
thirty feet high, if one may judge by the size of a
kneeling little boy in the center of the foreground;
and according to the same scale, the Pope is seven feet
high and the Doge is a shriveled dwarf of four feet."
The artist said:
"Yes, the Old Masters often drew badly; they did not
care much for truth and exactness in minor details;
but after all, in spite of bad drawing, bad perspective,
bad proportions, and a choice of subjects which no longer
appeal to people as strongly as they did three hundred
years ago, there is a SOMETHING about their pictures
which is divine - a something which is above and beyond
the art of any epoch since - a something which would be
the despair of artists but that they never hope or expect
to attain it, and therefore do not worry about it."
That is what he said - and he said what he believed;
and not only believed, but felt.
Reasoning - especially reasoning, without technical
knowledge - must be put aside, in cases of this kind.
It cannot assist the inquirer. It will lead him,
in the most logical progression, to what, in the eyes
of artists, would be a most illogical conclusion.
Thus: bad drawing, bad proportion, bad perspective,
indifference to truthful detail, color which gets its
merit from time, and not from the artist - these things
constitute the Old Master; conclusion, the Old Master
was a bad painter, the Old Master was not an Old Master
at all, but an Old Apprentice.
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