in the praises which he bestows on that valuable monument of the middle ages. We do not less approve the very sensible animadversions which he makes on the singular judgment given in the famous case of the St. Iago; a decision which, we think we can venture to affirm, would never have proceeded from the lips of the eminently learned and able judge who now presides in our Admiralty Court. The discourse subjoined to this volume, on the Rights and Duties of Neutrality,' supports the system which has lately been so much asserted; and about which, we apprehend, speculatists have now abated somewhat of their zeal: finding, perhaps, on farther deliberation, that antient practice is less unreasonable than they had supposed it to be. It is rather remarkable that, a century ago, the publicists of other nations, their ordinances, and their treaties, carried the rights of belligerents as high as did those of Great Britain; while the new doctrines came into vogue about the time at which the naval superiority of this country began to be established. It would appear, then, that innovations owe their origin more to jealousy than to the study of abstract principles. We do not doubt that our country will retain the distinction which it has reached, under any new regulations by which the several powers will consent seriously and permanently to bind themselves. In times not very remote, the rules of public law for which Great Britain contended were generally regarded as consistent with the wellbeing of the maritime states, and as such were adopted; and under these, from causes and circumstances not necessary here to be enumerated, this island has flourished, and has raised herself to a high degree of naval pre-eminence. If a set of principles more adapted to promote the general welfare had been set up, instead of those which have prevailed, the only difference would have been, that she would have risen to superiority still more conspicuous. In conclusion; we must express our thanks to Professor Martens for the work before us, which clears up several important points that before appeared dubious. Labours such as his confer obligations on civilized states; since they tend to reduce public law to certain principles, to ground it on authorities which cannot be shaken, to compel courts of Admiralty to administer rather than to frame justice, and to restrain their discretion within invariable rules.-To the translator, also, though we have already said that his task has not been executed in the best manner, we still are indebted; and we must admit the validity of his claim, when he ventures to hope that he has rendered an acceptable service' to the public at large, and to the legal profession in particular. Jo..s. ART, ART. VI. A Selection of Twelve Heads from the Last Judgment of palliation, if not in justification, of the extravagancies which genius often commits, many persons have quoted this couplet from Pope's Essay on Criticism; "Great wits may sometimes gloriously offend, And rise to faults true crities dare not mend." Those glorious offences, however, of which the true critic must not presume to suggest a correction, are extremely rare; and perhaps, after all the declamation of poets and orators in favour of indefinable sublimity, men of a chastised and accurate taste will feel the necessity of reprobating even the "greatest wits," when they prefer the flights of imagination to the suggestions of judgment and the dictates of the understanding. In an age of reason, no name nor maxim will secure respect to absurdity. The great masters of painting and music, as well as the most celebrated poets, are intitled to no more praise than just criticism will bestow; and we cannot be too careful in distinguishing between their excelWhen the professor of the harmonic lences and defects. art endeavours to express by sound that which sound cannot possibly convey; when the painter attempts to exhibit that which the pencil cannot delineate; when the orator mistakes the vericst bathos for the truest sublime ;-if the loud clamour of the multitude should call us to admire, let the "still small voice of reason" inspire us with resolution to condemn. It would be deemed invidious, perhaps, to illustrate these remarks by applying them to any efforts of art in the present day; and indeed, as excited by the work before us, they seem rather to be restricted to more distant exemplification. We must observe, then, that, among the absurdities of pictorial representation, we cannot but reckon the Last Judgment, by Michael Angelo, which decorates the chapel of the Vatican. The distinguished talents of that artist are eminent in the painting of each distinct figure, but, as a whole, the composition is extravagant and disgusting. The subject itself, as predicted by the Sacred Scriptures, is indeed too vast and awful for human delineation but it ought at least to have been attempted with strict attention to decorum and propriety. In such a picture, no playfulness of design should have been admitted; and Charon, the ferryman of the Styx, should never have been allowed to make his appearance in a scene intended to be expressive of the Christian's day of final retribution. The idea ot of a fiend guiding a boat full of condemned beings, to the confines of perdition, is borrowed from pagan mythology. These strictures, however, do not affect Michael Angelo's general merit as a painter; and we do not wonder that, while Mr. Duppa was cultivating the fine arts at Rome, his attention. should be particularly fixed on this representation of the Last Judgment. He appears to have contemplated it with great care; and the present selection of heads, from the immense groupe of which Angelo's picture consists, is intended to supply a set of studies for artists, rather than to excite the indiscriminate admiration of the public. The style in which they are executed does high credit to Mr. Duppa; and his general observations evince so much good taste, and are so well written, that we shall with pleasure extract a part of them. After having remarked that, when Michael Angelo is mentioned as a painter, it must be with reference only to his fresco works; that he disliked painting in oil;-that his scholar and biographer,Condivi, distinctly records only two easel pictures of his painting;-that his oil pictures even in Italy are certainly very limited;-and that the authenticity of those which are ascribed to him in foreign countries is strongly impeached; the author directs the lover of the fine arts to this fresco painting in the Vatican, whence the most certain information of Angelo's powers as a painter may be obtained. Mr. Duppa does not attempt a minute criticism of this extensive picture, but his account of it is extremely judicious: Amidst such an assemblage of figures, (he says) some groupes may reasonably be expected more admirable than others, more justly conceived, or happily executed and it cannot be denied that there are many parts which shew the plenitude of Michael Angelo's talents: yet, upon the whole, comparing him with himself, it may be questioned, whether this picture, stupendous as it is, does not rather mark the decline than the acme of his genius. The satire of Salvator Rosa, in these lines, is well known; and though put into the mouth of the critic Biagio Martinelli, appears not to be wholly ill founded: "Michel' Angiolo mio, non parlo in gioco; Questo che dipingete è un gran Giudizio; ▪ In addition to his adopting the unphilosophical notions of the darker ages to comply with the vulgar prejudices of his time, the painter has also injudiciously added some ludicrous embellishments of Good Michael Angelo, I do not jest, his own. But the most serious exception made to the general com position by his contemporaries, was that of violating decorum, in representing so many figures without drapery. The first person who made this objection was the Pope's master of the ceremonies, who, seeing the picture when three parts finished, and being asked his opinion, told his Holiness that it was more fit for a brothel than the Pope's chapel. This circumstance caused Michael Angelo to introduce his portrait into the picture with asses' ears; and not overlooking the duties of his temporal office, he represented him as Master of the Ceremonies in the lower world, ordering and directing the disposal of the damned; and to heighten the character, wreathed him with a serpent, Dante's well known attribute of Minos. (Inferno, Canto V.) It is recorded, that the Monsignore petitioned the Pope to have this portrait taken out of the picture, and that of the painter put in its stead; to which the Pope is said to have replied, "had you been in purgatory, there might have been some remedy, but from hell nulla est redemptio." On the effect of the picture, and on the merit of the painter, Mr. Duppa observes: From the high character and notoriety of the Last Judgment, the amateur might expect at first view to receive the strongest and most sensible impressions, but in this picture the means of art best calculated for that end are least attended to. The mind is divided and distracted by the want of a great concentrating principle of effect; and the prevailing hue of colour is of too low a tone to be impressive; added to which, it is partially damaged and obscured by smoke, and is therefore now, doubtless, less harmonious than when originally painted. Possessing the most important requisites of his art, Michael Angelo appears often regardless of the subordinate qualifications. In his happiest efforts his subject is imagined with a strength of thought peculiar to himself, and his hand seems at once to have traced and decided the image of his mind, without exhibiting any attractive powers of mechanical excellence; and as Reynolds justly observes, that mind was so rich and abundant that he never needed, or seemed to disdain to look around him for foreign help. Guided only by nature, his own genius amply supplied the necessity of his referring to the works of his predecessors. No artist perhaps that ever lived, was freer from plagiarism; and it may be interesting to observe, that in the Last Judgment, which was painted nearly at the close of a long life, he seems evidently to have had individual nature constantly before him, and to have referred to it more than to any fixed principles which he had formed by his previous practice. There are few heads which do not appear to have been more or less copied from nature.' The superior abilities of Michael Angelo are shewn in the sublimity of his conceptions, and the power and facility with which they are executed: correctness, in the usual signification of the word, * Michael Angelo was born in 1474 and died in 1564. made made no part of his admired talent, and his knowledge of the human figure is not marked by attention to aggregate beauty or elegance of proportion. In composition, action and expression, he often embraces the whole range of creative power, and yet has shewn that inequality which is so often the attendant on soaring minds; for whilst his Prophets and Sibyls in the vault of the Sistine Chapel are idealized to the utmost verge of sublimity, those perfect characters to whom he has assigned a place in Heaven in the Last Judgment, are all simple copies of imperfect and individual nature.' Hence it follows that, overlooking the defects of design and general composition, the artist must regard each figure as a separate study; and such has been Mr. Duppa's practice. As he attended the lectures of Dr. Marshal (to whom this work is dedicated) in London, in order to learn the correct anatomy of the human frame, so at Rome he attentively examined the drawings of Michael Angelo, for the purpose of acquiring precise ideas of the accurate delineation of the human figure in various attitudes. The heads here selected (he says) are fac-similes of a few of those studies which were made in Rome, to enable him to form a more perfect knowlege of the particular character of Michael Angelo as a painter; and they were intended merely as outlines, with just as much shadow as would serve more fully to mark the expression, and give the general principle of Chiar'-oscuro. If so far they may be found to possess the merit of fidelity, it is hoped, in a country where the originals are imperfectly known, they may impart some share of that information which was the object of his own research.' To the student in painting, these delineations will no doubt form a desirable acquisition; and their value is much enhanced by Mr. Duppa's sensible prefatory observations. This introductory matter is printed in the most beautiful and superb form; and it is preceded by a truly magnificent title-page containing a vignette designed to represent the Gate of Hell.' To us, however, it more resembles the entrance of a necromancer's cave. Indeed, the Editor says that, being disappointed of an appropriate design from an artist eminent in the line of excentricity, he availed himself of the description of Dante, in giving a sketch of his own, which he must allow to be more picturesque than sublime; and for which the poet must be the apologist.-We confess that we do not perceive the propriety of exhibiting a view of hell's gate as a vignette to this work: such a subject, seriously contemplated, is fit only to be referred to the imagination by the sublimity of poetry; and the painter will incur the almost inevitable danger of falling into the ludicrous, when 'he attempts a grandeur beyond the reach of art." Mo..y. ART. |
