Goethe's Theory of Colours · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
40.
An essay on the Painting of the Ancients[2] was contributed by Heinrich Meyer. [1] See Note on Par. 177. [2] Vol. ii. p. 69, first edition. NOTE X.--Par. 670. This agrees with the general recommendation so often given by high authorities in art, to avoid a tinted look in the colour of flesh. The great example of Rubens, whose practice was sometimes an exception to this, may however show that no rule of art is to be blindly or exclusively adhered to. Reynolds, nevertheless, in the midst of his admiration for this great painter, considered the example dangerous, and more than once expresses himself to this effect, observing on one occasion that Rubens, like Baroccio, is sometimes open to the criticism made on an ancient painter, namely, that his figures looked as if they fed on roses. Lodovico Dolce, who is supposed to have given the _vivâ voce_ precepts of Titian in his Dialogue,[1] makes Aretino say: "I would generally banish from my pictures those vermilion cheeks with coral lips; for faces thus treated look like masks. Propertius, reproving his Cynthia for using cosmetics, desires that her complexion might exhibit the simplicity and purity of colour which is seen in the works of Apelles."
Those who have written on the practice of painting have always recommended the use of few colours for flesh. Reynolds and others quote even ancient authorities as recorded by Pliny, and Boschini gives several descriptions of the method of the Venetians, and particularly of Titian, to the same effect. "They used," he says, "earths more than any other colour, and at the utmost only added a little vermilion, minium, and lake, abhorring as a pestilence _biadetti, gialli santi, smaltini, verdi-azzurri, giallolini_."[2] Elsewhere he says,[3] "Earths should be used rather than other colours:" after repeating the above prohibited list he adds, "I speak of the imitation of flesh, for in other things every colour is good;" again, "Our great Titian used to say that he who wishes to be a painter should be acquainted with three colours, white, black, and red."[4] Assuming this account to be a little exaggerated, it is still to be observed that the monotony to which the use of few colours would seem to tend, is prevented by the nature of the Venetian process, which was sufficiently conformable to Goethe's doctrine; the gradations being multiplied, and the effect of the colours heightened by using them as semi-opaque mediums. Immediately after the passage last quoted we read, "He also gave this true precept, that to produce a lively colouring in flesh it is not possible to finish at once."[5] As these particulars may not be known to all, we add some further abridged extracts explaining the order and methods of these different operations.
"The Venetian painters," says this writer,[6] "after having drawn in their subject, got in the masses with very solid colour, without making use of nature or statues. Their great object in this stage of their work was to distinguish the advancing and retiring portions, that the figures might be relieved by means of chiaro-scuro--one of the most important departments of colour and form, and indeed of invention. Having decided on their scheme of effect, when this preparation was dry, they consulted nature and the antique; not servilely, but with the aid of a few lines on paper (_quattro segni in carta_) they corrected their figures without any other model. Then returning to their brushes, they began to paint smartly on this preparation, producing the colour of flesh." The passage before quoted follows, stating that they used earths chiefly, that they carefully avoided certain colours, "and likewise varnishes and whatever produces a shining surface.[7] When this second painting was dry, they proceeded to scumble over this or that figure with a low tint to make the one next it come forward, giving another, at the same time, an additional light--for example, on a head, a hand, or a foot, thus detaching them, so to speak, from the canvas." (Tintoret's _Prigionia di S. Rocco_ is here quoted.) "By thus still multiplying these well-understood retouchings where required, on the dry surface, _(à secco)_ they reduced the whole to harmony. In this operation they took care not to cover entire figures, but rather went on gemming them _(gioielandole)_ with vigorous touches. In the shadows, too, they infused vigour frequently by glazing with asphaltum, always leaving great masses in middle-tint, with many darks, in addition to the partial glazings, and few lights."
The introduction to the subject of Venetian colouring, in the poem by the same author, is also worth transcribing, but as the style is quaint and very concise, a translation is necessarily a paraphrase.[8] "The art of colouring has the imitation of qualities for its object; not all qualities, but those secondary ones which are appreciable by the sense of sight. The eye especially sees colours, the imitation of nature in painting is therefore justly called colouring; but the painter arrives at his end by indirect means. He gives the varieties of tone in masses;[9] he smartly impinges lights, he clothes his preparation with more delicate local hues, he unites, he glazes: thus everything depends on the method, on the process. For if we look at colour abstractedly, the most positive may be called the most beautiful, but if we keep the end of imitation in view, this shallow conclusion falls to the ground. The refined Venetian manner is very different from mere direct, sedulous imitation. Every one who has a good eye may arrive at such results, but to attain the manner of Paolo, of Bassan, of Palma, Tintoret, or Titian, is a very different undertaking."[10] The effects of semi-transparent mediums in some natural productions seem alluded to in the following passage--"Nature sometimes accidentally imitates figures in stones and other substances, and although they are necessarily incomplete in form, yet the principle of effect (depth) resembles the Venetian practice." In a passage that follows there appears to be an allusion to the production of the atmospheric colours by semi-transparent mediums.[11]
"Ma l'arivar a la maniera, al trato (Verbi gratia) de Paulo, del Bassan, Del Vechio, Tentoreto, e di Tician, Per Dio, l'è cosa da deventar mato."--p. 294, 297. [11] The traces of the Aristotelian theory are quite as apparent in Boschini as in the other Italian writers on art; but as he wrote in the seventeenth century, his authority in this respect is only important as an indication of the earlier prevalence of the doctrine. NOTE Y.--Par. 672. The author's conclusion here is unsatisfactory, for the colour of the black races may be considered at least quite as negative as that of Europeans. It would be safer to say that the white skin is more beautiful than the black, because it is more capable of indications of life, and indications of emotion. A degree of light which would fail to exhibit the finer varieties of form on a dark surface, would be sufficient to display them on a light one; and the delicate mantlings of colour, whether the result of action or emotion, are more perceptible for the same reason. NOTE Z.--Par. 690. The author appears to mean that a degree of brightness which the organ can bear at all, must of necessity be removed from dazzling, white light. The slightest tinge of colour to this brightness, implies that it is seen through a medium, and thus, in painting, the lightest, whitest surface should partake of the quality of depth. Goethe's view here again accords, it must be admitted, with the practice of the best colourists, and with the precepts of the highest authorities.--See Note C.
NOTE A A.--Par. 732. Ample details respecting the opinions of Louis Bertrand Castel, a Jesuit, are given in the historical part. The coincidence of some of his views with those of Goethe is often apparent: he objects, for instance, to the arbitrary selection of the Newtonian spectrum; observing that the colours change with every change of distance between the prism and the recipient surface.--_Farbenl._ vol. ii. p. 527. Jeremias Friedrich Gülich was a dyer in the neighbourhood of Stutgardt: he published an elaborate work on the technical details of his own pursuit.--_Farbenl._ vol. ii. p. 630. NOTE B B.--Par. 748. Goethe, in his account of Castel, suppresses the learned Jesuit's attempt at colorific music (the claveçin oculaire), founded on the Newtonian doctrine. Castel was complimented, perhaps ironically, on having been the first to remark that there were but three principal colours. In asserting his claim to the discovery, he admits that there is nothing new. In fact, the notion of three colours is to be found in Aristotle; for that philosopher enumerates no more in speaking of the rainbow,[1] and Seneca calls them by their right names.[2] Compare with Dante, Parad. c. 33. The relation between colours and sounds is in like manner adverted to by Aristotle; he says--"It is possible that colours may stand in relation to each other in the same manner as concords in music, for the colours which are (to each other) in proportions corresponding with the musical concords, are those which appear to be the most agreeable."[3] In the latter part of the 16th century, Arcimboldo, a Milanese painter, invented a colorific music; an account of his principles and method will be found in a treatise on painting which appeared about the same time. "Ammaestrato dal quai ordine Mauro Cremonese dalla viola, musico dell' Imperadore Ridolfo II. trovò sul gravicembalo tutte quelle consonanze che dall' Arcimboldo erano segnate coi colori sopra una carta."[4]
The moral associations of colours have always been a more favourite subject with poets than with painters. This is to be traced to the materials and means of description as distinguished from those of representation. An image is more distinct for the mind when it is compared with something that resembles it. An object is more distinct for the eye when it is compared with something that differs from it. Association is the auxiliary in the one case, contrast in the other. The poet, of necessity, succeeds best in conveying the impression of external things by the aid of analogous rather than of opposite qualities: so far from losing their effect by this means, the images gain in distinctness. Comparisons that are utterly false and groundless never strike us as such if the great end is accomplished of placing the thing described more vividly before the imagination. In the common language of laudatory description the colour of flesh is like snow mixed with vermilion: these are the words used by Aretino in one of his letters in speaking of a figure of St. John, by Titian. Similar instances without end might be quoted from poets: even a contrast can only be strongly conveyed in description by another contrast that resembles it.[1] On the other hand it would be easy to show that whenever poets have attempted the painter's method of direct contrast, the image has failed to be striking, for the mind's eye cannot see the relation between two colours.
Under the same category of effect produced by association may be classed the moral qualities in which poets have judiciously taken refuge when describing visible forms and colours, to avoid competition with the painters' elements, or rather to attain their end more completely. But a little examination would show that very pleasing moral associations may be connected with colours which would be far from agreeable to the eye. All light, positive colours, light-green, light-purple, white, are pleasing to the mind's eye, and no degree of dazzling splendour is offensive. The moment, however, we have to do with the actual sense of vision, the susceptibility of the eye itself is to be considered, the law of comparison is reversed, colours become striking by being opposed to what they are not, and their moral associations are not owing to the colours themselves, but to the modifications such colours undergo in consequence of what surrounds them. This view, so naturally consequent on the principles the author has himself arrived at, appears to be overlooked in the chapter under consideration, the remarks in which, in other respects, are acute and ingenious. [1] Such as-- "Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night, Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear." _Romeo and Juliet_. NOTE D D.--Par. 849. According to the usual acceptation of the term chiaro-scuro in the artist world, it means not only the mutable effects produced by light and shade, but also the permanent differences in brightness and darkness which are owing to the varieties of local colour.
NOTE E E.--Par. 855. The mannered treatment of light and shade here alluded to by the author is very seldom to be met with in the works of the colourists; the taste may have first arisen from the use of plaster-casts, and was most prevalent in France and Italy in the early part of the last century. Piazzetta represented it in Venice, Subleyras in Rome. In France "Restout taught his pupils that a globe ought to be represented as a polyhedron. Greuze most implicitly adopted the doctrine, and in practice showed that he considered the round cheeks of a young girl or an infant as bodies cut into facettes."[1] [1] See Taylor's translation of Merimée on oil-painting, p. 27. Barry, in a letter from Paris, speaks of Restout as the only painter who resembled the earlier French masters: the manner in question is undoubtedly sometimes very observable in Poussin. The English artist elsewhere speaks of the "broad, happy manner of Subleyras."--_Works_, London, 1809. NOTE F F.--Par. 859. All this was no doubt suggested by Heinrich Meyer, whose chief occupation in Rome, at one time, was making sepia drawings from sculpture (see Goethe's Italiänische Reise). It is hardly necessary to say that the observation respecting the treatment of the surface in the antique statues is very fanciful. NOTE G G.--Par. 863.
This observation might have been suggested by the drawings of Claude, which, with the slightest means, exhibit an harmonious balance of warm and cold. NOTE H H.--Par. 865. The colouring of Paolo Uccello, according to Vasari's account of him, was occasionally so remarkable that he might perhaps have been fairly included among the instances of defective vision given by the author. His skill in perspective, indicating an eye for gradation, may be also reckoned among the points of resemblance (see Par. 105). NOTE I I.--Par. 902. The quotation before given from Boschini shows that the method described by the author, and which is true with regard to some of the Florentine painters, was not practised by the Venetians, for their first painting was very solid. It agrees, however, with the manner of Rubens, many of whose works sufficiently corroborate the account of his process given by Descamps. "In the early state of Rubens's pictures," says that writer,[1] "everything appeared like a thin wash; but although he often made use of the ground in producing his tones, the canvas was entirely covered more or less with colour." In this system of leaving the shadows transparent from the first, with the ground shining through them, it would have been obviously destructive of richness to use white mixed with the darks, the brightness, in fact, already existed underneath. Hence the well-known precept of Rubens to avoid white in the shadows, a precept, like many others, belonging to a particular practice, and involving all the conditions of that practice.[2] Scarmiglione, whose Aristotelian treatise on colour was published in Germany when Rubens was three-and-twenty, observes, "Painters, with consummate art, lock up the bright colours with dark ones, and, on the other hand, employ white, the poison of a picture, very sparingly." (Artificiosissimè pictores claros obscuris obsepiant et contra candido picturarum veneno summè parcentes, &c.)
NOTE K K.--Par. 903. The practice here alluded to is more frequently observable in slight works by Paul Veronese. His ground was often pure white, and in some of his works it is left as such. Titian's white ground was covered with a light warm colour, probably at first, and appears to have been similar to that to which Armenini gives the preference, namely, "quella che tira al color di carne chiarissima con un non so che di fiammeggiante."[1] [1] "Veri Precetti della Pittura," p. 123. NOTE L L.--Par. 919. The notion which the author has here ventured to express may have been suggested by the remarkable passage in the last canto of Dante's "Paradiso"-- "Nella profonda e chiara sussistenza, Dell' alto lume parremi tre giri Di tre colori e d'una continenza," &c. After the concluding paragraph the author inserts a letter from a landscape-painter, Philipp Otto Runge, which is intended to show that those who imitate nature may arrive at principles analogous to those of the "Farbenlehre."
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.