p>The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 27, January, 1860 / A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
OUR ARTISTS IN ITALY
HIRAM POWERS.
Antique Art, beside affording a standard by which the modern may be measured, has the remarkable property-giving it a higher value—of testing the genuineness of the Art-impulse.
Even to genius, that is, to the artist, a true Art-life is difficult of attainment. In the midst of illumination, there is the mystery: the subjective mystery, out of which issue the germs—like seeds floated from unknown shores—of his imaginings; the objective mystery, which yields to him, through obvious, yet unexplained harmonies, the means of manifestation.
Behind the consciousness is the power; behind the power, that which gives it worth and occupation.
To the artist definite foresight is denied. His life is full of surprises at new necessities. When the present demand shall have been fulfilled, what shall follow? Shall it be Madonna, or Laocoön? His errand is like that of the commander who bears sealed instructions; and he may drift for years, ere he knows wherefore. Thorwaldsen waited, wandering by the Tiber a thousand days,—then in one, uttered his immortal "Night."
Not even the severest self-examination will enable one in whom the Art-impulse exists to understand thoroughly its aim and uses; yet to approximate a clear perception of his own nature and that of the art to which he is called is one of his first duties. What he is able to do, required to do, and permitted to do, are questions of vital importance.
Possession of himself, of himself in the highest, will alone enable the student in Art to solve the difficulties of his position. His habitual consciousness must be made up of the noblest of all that has been revealed to it; otherwise those fine intuitions, akin to the ancient inspirations, through whose aid genius is informed of its privileges, are impossible.
Therefore the foremost purpose of an artist should be to claim and take possession of self. Somewhere within is his inheritance, and he must not be hindered of it. Other men have other gifts,—gifts bestowed under different conditions, and subject in a great degree to choice. Talent is not fastidious. It is an instrumentality, and its aim is optional with him who possesses it. Genius is exquisitely fastidious, and the man whom it possesses must live its life, or no life.
In view of these considerations, the efforts of an artist to assume his true position must be regarded with earnest interest, and importance must be attached to that which aids him in attaining to his true plane.
Such aid may be, and is, derived from the influences of Italy. Of those agencies which have a direct influence upon the action of the artist, which serve to assist him in manifesting his idea and fulfilling his purpose, mention will be made in connection with the works which have been produced in Italian studios. They have less importance than that great element related to the innermost of the artist's life,—to that power of which we have spoken, making Art-action necessary.
It is not, however, exclusively antique Art which exercises this power of elevation. Ancient Art may be a better term; as all great Art bears a like relation to the student. In Florence the mediaeval influences predominate. Rome exercises its power through the medium of the antique.
There is much Christian Art in Rome. Yet its effect is insignificant, compared with that of the vast collection of Greek sculptures to be found within its walls. Instinctively, as the vague yearnings and prophecies of youth lift him in whom they quicken away from youth's ordinary purposes and associations, his thought turns to that far city where are gathered the achievements of those who were indeed the gods of Hellas. To be there, and to demand from those eloquent lips the secret of the golden age, is his dream and aim, and there shall be solved the problem of his life.
But antique Art, waiting so patiently twenty centuries to afford aid to the artist, waits also to sit in judgment upon his worth and acts. Woe to him who cannot pass the ordeal of its power, and explain the enigma of its speech!
Nothing can be more pitiful and sad than the condition of one who, having been subjected to the influence of ancient Art, has not had the ability to recognize or the earnestness of purpose essential to the apprehension of the truths which it has for his soul instead of his hands. But if, through truthfulness of aim, and a sense of the divine nature of the errand to which he seems appointed, he reach the law of Art, then henceforth its pursuit becomes the sign of life; if the impulse bear him no farther than rules, then all he produces goes forth as a proclamation of death. There is no middle path. Art is high or low: high, if it be the profoundest life of an earnest man, uttering itself in the real, even though it be awkwardly, and in violation of all accepted methods of expression; low, if it be not such utterance, even though consummate in obedience to the finest rules of all Art-science. There can be no other way. The life is in the man, and not in the stone; and no affectation of vitality can atone for the absence of that soul which should have been breathed into existence from his own divine life.
As was said, possession of self is the only condition under which the quantity and quality of the Art-impulse may be determined. It is only when a man stands face to face with himself, in the stillness of his own inner world, that his possibilities become apparent; and it is only when conscious of these, and inspired by a just sense of their dignity, that he can achieve that which shall be genuine success. Once he must be lifted away and isolated from worldly surroundings, relieved from all objective influences, from the pressure of all human relations; once the very memory of all these must be blotted out; once he must be alone. This is possible to a Mendelssohn in the awful solitude of Beethoven's "Sonate Pathétique," to a painter in the presence of Leonardo's "Last Supper," and to a sculptor in the hushed halls of the Vatican.
But that which lifts the true artist above externals, the externals of his own individual being, crushes the false, to whom the marble and the paint are in themselves the ultimate.
This train of thought has been suggested by the fact of the dominion which classic Art has acquired over sculptors, and by the influence of the sixteenth and seventeenth century schools upon painters. It is due, however, to our sculptors in Italy that credit should be given them for having resisted the influence of forms, of the mere letter of the classic, to a greater extent than the students of any other nation. Whether or not they have been receptive of the spirit of the antique remains to be seen.
American painters have been less fortunate. Too often the lessons of the old masters, and especially those of the earliest, the Puritan Fathers of Art, have been unheeded; or the rules and practices which served them temporarily, subject to the phase of the ideal for the time uppermost, have passed into permanent laws, to be obeyed under all conditions of Art-utterance.
The United States have had within the last twenty years as many as thirty sculptors and painters resident in Italy. At the beginning of the present year ten sculpture studios in Rome and Florence were occupied by Americans. We will speak of these artists in the order in which they entered the profession of an art which they have served to develop in this first period of its history in America. The eldest bears the honored name of Hiram Powers.
Three parties have been remarkably unjust to this man,—namely, his friends, his enemies, and himself.
Neither the artist nor his friends need feel solicitude for his fame. The exact value of his excellence shall be estimated, and the height of his genius fully recognized, when the right man comes. Other award than that from an age on a level with his own life can be of small worth to one who has attained to the true level of Art. Fame must come to him of that vision which can pierce the external of his work and penetrate to the presence of his very soul. His action must be traced to its finest ideal motive,—as chemist-philosophers pursue the steps of analysis until opaque matter is resolved to pure, ethereal elements. His fame must be from such vision, and it will approach the universal just in proportion as his pulse beats in unison with the heart of mankind. Whatever may be an artist's plans, or those of his friends, in regard to his valuation by the world, while he is living, ultimately he himself, divested of all save his own individuality, must stand revealed.
Those who in other departments of action are necessarily governed somewhat, or it may be entirely, by rules of conduct general in nature and universal in application, may fail to receive or may escape