My Friend!

Concerning the delay of the draft text promised to you on the ability to appreciate beauty in art, I shall explain myself in the words of Pindar. When he had made Agesidamus, a noble youth from Locri, “beautiful of form and permeated with grace,” wait a long time for an ode he had intended for him, he said “A debt paid with interest removes the reproach.” My Kind Lord can relate this to the present treatise, which has turned out to be more elaborate than was intended originally, when that which was promised was to appear together with other so-called Roman Letters.

The content stems from you. Our acquaintanceship was short, and too short for both you and me, but the harmony between our minds was obvious to me when I caught sight of you for the first time. Your physique led me to conclude the existence of that which I desired, and I discovered in a beautiful body a soul made to be virtuous, one that is gifted with the appreciation of beauty. Taking leave of you was therefore one of the most painful such occasions of my life, and our mutual friend is a witness to this, even after your departure, for your being at such a distance under remote skies leaves me no hope of seeing you again.

I owe the public an explanation concerning the History of the Art and Especially the Sculpture of Ancient Peoples, Primarily of the Greeks, which I announced several years ago. I could have brought it out at that time, but it will be more useful to me and to the reader that this did not happen. For when I took over the Description of the Deeply Incised Stones in the Stoss Museum in Florence, I had to become involved again with many investigations that I had previously not carried out with the same attentiveness. This work, which was composed in French, was printed in Florence, but the preface and index were printed in Rome, and without these two parts it is six hundred pages thick. As I reviewed my history again after completion of this work, I found it to be inadequate, partly as regards essentials, and partly with regard to certain pieces of evidence. And considering this I decided to organize the whole text according to a different system. I had more drawings made for the necessary copperplate prints, which are gradually being engraved. And these are the reasons for the delay.

The present Remarks on the Architecture of the Ancients developed during the investigations I have made over more than five years, while I have been living in Rome and other cities of Italy, into everything concerning the arts.

Fragment

The greatest work by Correggio, which is the height of three men, is likewise a seated Madonna with several saints and a bishop in a sumptuous vestment, and is painted on canvas, just like a another Madonna of the same size with an Evangelist and a Saint Francis at her side, with a nun next to each of them. They are in his earliest style, which is in the style of Andrea Mantegna. But Richardson made a poor observation when he compared the style of the first of these two last-mentioned works with the Saint George.

One can perceive with pleasure and amazement the leap he made from his early to his most mature style.

Apart from these great works there is a portrait of a Medici by Correggio, but not in his best style. It is also from Modena.

Among the most noteworthy works by Titian is a woman, not holding a portrait, but with a fan according to the fashion of the times, in the form of a piece of cloth on a standard. She is said to be the painter's lover, Violanta. It is regarded as one of the most beautiful portraits by his brush. It is only a pity that it is too high up. The woman is dressed in white satin.

The Three Graces are in his earliest style, for Titian altered his style more than once. That is to say that it has hard contours.

Noble Count,

As I had the pleasure of accompanying you on your journey from Rome to Naples during the carnival in 1762, I decided to set down something on the unusual things that you saw in the Royal Museum at Portici, to remind you of the most remarkable things, and at the same time to provide instruction to other travelers, who are not able, during a short stay there, to give everything their full attention.

I have had more opportunity than others, both strangers and local people, to examine these treasures of antiquity, as I stayed for almost two months on my first visit in Portici itself. By virtue of a royally sanctioned decree that I should be shown everything that one is allowed to see, and with all possible convenience I made use of this free access to the best of my ability. As a result, I spent whole days in the museum. You know, Noble Count, that during our stay of three weeks in Naples scarcely a day passed when I did not travel to Portici in the early morning. Apart from this my close friendship with Mr. Camillo Paderni, the custodian of this museum, provided me with sufficient opportunity to examine everything as I wanted, and it was like being in my own home there.

I could not believe that my little work would deserve such attention and stir up such judgments. It was written only for a few experts on the arts, and for this reason it seemed superfluous to lend it a certain learned air, which a work can acquire through the citation of books. Artists understand what is written in a few words about art, and since most of them “consider it foolish,” and must consider it so, “to spend more time on reading than on writing,” as an ancient orator has taught us, then if one cannot teach them anything new, one should at least make oneself agreeable to them through brevity. And I am generally of the opinion that as what is beautiful in art depends more on fine senses and refined taste than on deep reflection, the words of Neoptolemus, “Philosophize, but in a few words,” should especially be observed in works of this kind.

Some parts of my work are amenable to explanation, and as objections to it by an unnamed person have come to light, it would be reasonable for me to explain myself and at the same time provide a response. The circumstances, however, in which I find myself due to my imminent journey do not allow me to do either the one or the other in the way I have planned.

Grace is what is intellectually pleasing. It is a concept that covers a broad range of things, because it also extends to all actions. Grace is a gift from heaven, but not like beauty, for heaven grants only the promise of it and the capability of achieving it. It is developed through education and reflection, and can become part of nature in those with the capacity for it. It cannot be forced in any way and is free of any labored wit, but it requires attentiveness and diligence, and naturalness in all actions, in which it reveals itself according to the talent of each person, helping him to rise to a suitable level of ease. It is effective in simplicity and in the calmness of the soul, and is obscured by wild fury and stirred up feelings. All human doings and actions are made pleasant by it, and in a beautiful body it exerts great power. Xenophon was gifted with it, but Thucydides did not seek it. The merit of Apelles and Correggio in modern times consisted of it, but Michelangelo did not attain it. However, the works of antiquity were generally endowed with it, and it can also be recognized in mediocre works.

The identification and assessment of grace in human beings and in imitations of them in statues and paintings appear to vary, because many do not find something objectionable in this context that would be displeasing to them in real life.

These remarks will not appear superficial to those who know the great work of Giuseppe Pancrazi,1 in which Sicilian antiquities are explained, because he reports very little or not at all on the architecture of the temples and buildings he has reproduced as copper engravings. Wise scholars do not like to depart from their fixed track. For this reason Canon Mazzocchi, one of the foremost scholars of our time, in his merely scholarly treatise on Paestum, which together with other works is included with his explanation of the Hercules tablets, passes over in silence the temples at Paestum as though they did not exist, but I shall mention them in passing.

Giusseppe Pancrazi, of the Theatine order, is still living in Cortona, in Tuscany, his homeland, but outside his order and remote from the world, because of feebleness of mind, the cause of which is attributed to the miscalculations he had made in disputing the costs of his work, miscalculations concerning the generosity of those Englishmen to whom he had dedicated the copper plates. This was because, lacking experience of the world, he had taken the very idea of this nation to be synonymous with magnanimity.

His intention was to make a large extensive work, and for this purpose he had arranged for the supposed letters of Phalaris to be printed in their entirety and made them the basis for his history of the city of Akragas, called Agrigentum by the Romans, and now known as Agrigento.

My friend!

You have written about Greek arts and artists, and I would have liked you to have proceeded in your work as the Greek artists did with theirs. They exposed them to the eyes of the whole world, and especially to those of experts, before they released them from their own hands, and the whole of Greece passed judgment on their works at the great games, especially at the Olympic Games. You know that Aetion took his painting of Alexander's marriage to Roxane there. You would have needed someone greater than Proxenides,1 who passed judgment on the artist there. If you had not been so secretive about your work, then I would have liked to pass on information about it before it was printed to several experts and scholars with whom I have developed an acquaintanceship here.

One of them has seen Italy twice and looked at every one of the paintings of the greatest masters for several whole months in the very places where they were produced. You know that only in this way can one become an expert. A man who can tell you which of Guido Reni's altar pieces have been painted on taffeta or on canvas, and what kind of wood Raphael used for his Transfiguration, and so on, well, I think his judgment would have been decisive!

Another of my acquaintances has studied antiquity and knows it by its reputation: