William Hogarth - The analysis of beauty

PREFACE.

IF a preface was ever necessary, it may very likely be thought so to the following work; the title of which (in the proposals published some time since) hath much amused, and raised the expectation of the curious, though not without a mixture of doubt, that its purpose could ever be satisfactorily answered. For though beauty is seen and confessed by all, yet, from the many fruitless attempts to account for the cause of its being so, enquiries on this head have almost been given up; and the subject generally thought to be a matter of too high and too delicate a nature to admit of any true or intelligible discussion. Something therefore introductory ought to be laid at the presenting a work with a face so entirely new; especially as it will naturally encounter with, and perhaps may overthrow, several long received and thorough established opinions: and since controversies may arise how far, and after what manner this subject hath hitherto been considered and treated, it will also be proper to lay before the reader, what may be gathered concerning it, from the works of the ancient and modern writers and painters.

It is no wonder this subject should have so long been thought inexplicable, since the nature of many parts of it cannot possibly come within the reach of mere men of letters; otherwise those ingenious gentlemen who have lately published treatises upon it (and who have written much more learnedly than can be expected from one who never took up the pen before) would not so soon have been bewilder'd in their accounts of it, and obliged so suddenly to turn into the broad, and more beaten path of moral beauty; in order to extricate themselves out of the difficulties they seem to have met with in this: and withal forced for the fame reasons to amuse their readers, with amazing (but often misapplied) encomiums on deceased painters and their performances; wherein they are continually discoursing of effects instead of developing causes;. and after many prettinesses, in very pleasing language, do fairly set you down just where they first took you up; honestly confessing that as to GRACE, the main point in question, they do not even pretend to know any thing of the matter. And indeed how should they? when: it actually requires a practical knowledge of the whole art of painting (sculpture alone not being sufficient) and that too to some degree of eminence, in order to enable any one to pursue the chain of this enquiry through all its parts: which I hope will be made to appear in the following work.

*Fig. 64. p 1.

"And because in this place there falleth out a certaine precept of Michael Angelo much for our purpose, I wil not conceale it, leaving the farther interpretation and vnderstanding thereof to the iudicious "reader.. It is reported then that Michael Angelo vpon a time gaue this observation to the Painter Marcus de Sciena his scholler; that he should alwaies make a figure Pyramidall, Serpentlike, and multiplied by one two and three. In which precept (in mine opinion) the whole mysterie of the arte consisteth. For the greatest grace and life that a picture can haue, is, that it expresses Motion: which the Painters call the spirit of a picture: No we there is no forme so sitte to express this motion, as that of the flame of fire, which according to Aristotle and the other Philosophers, is an elemente most actiue of all others: because the forme of the flame thereof is most apt for motion: for it hath a Conus or sharpe pointe wherewith it seemeth to divide the aire, that so it may ascende to his proper sphere. So that a picture having this forme will bee most beautifull." *

Many writers since Lamozzo have in the fame words recommended the observing this rule also; without comprehending the meaning of it: for unless it were known systematically, the whole business of grace could not be understood.

Du Fresnoy, in his art of painting, fays "large flowing, gliding outlines which are in waves, give not only a grace to the part, but to the whole body ; as we fee in the Antinous, and in many other of the antique figures: a fine figure and its parts ought always to have a serpent-like and flaming form: naturally those sort of lines have I know not what of life and seeming motion in them, which very much resembles the activity of the flame and of the serpent." Now if he had understood what he had said, he could not, speaking of grace, have expressed himself in the following contradictory manner." But to say the truth, this is a difficult undertaking, and a rare present, which the artist rather receives from the hand of heaven than from his own industry and studies ." But De Piles, in his lives of the painters, is still more contradictory, where he says, "that a painter can only have it (meaning grace) from nature, and doth not know that he hath it, nor in what degree, nor how he communicates it to his works: and that grace and beauty are two different things; beauty pleases by the rules, and grace without them."

* See Haydocks's translation printed at Oxford, 1598.

All the English writers on this subject have echo'd these passages; hence Je ne sai quoi, is become a fashionable phrase for grace.

By this it is plain, that this precept which Michael. Angelo delivered so long ago in an oracle-like manner, hath remained mysterious down to this time, for ought that has appeared to the contrary. The wonder that it mould do so will in some measure lessen when we come to consider that it must all along have appeared as full of contradiction as the most obscure quibble ever deli vered at Delphos, because,