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Show CONCLUSION. 531 who makes her more lovely than she is in parts, and who adroitly, and with excellent taste, avoids tracing all that is common and imperfect in her works. Taking the word in its moral sense, Montesquieu is right. It is more noble to show courage and firmness in one's last moments than cowardice and trepidation; but an artist ought to paint only what has been, what is, or what could have been, especially in an historical subject. The apparent tranquillity of the features of a stoic in the midst of tortures is doubtless to be admired; but this moral and physical power must not be given to all ; it would be untrue and improper to paint all the characters on the canvas as unmoved by the greatest calamities. The examples given by Montesquieu do not seem to m e to bear out his assertion. By deceiving himself, he has probably led others into error. Raphael is the painter who, of all others, throws most true nobility into his subjects ; the expression of his characters also is ever true and beautiful, and often sublime. If the painter, like the poet, wishes to convey a moral lesson or a fact in the garb of allegory, he may then join truth and fiction, and represent things that are the mere creatures of imagination. H e may be noble in his manner, although the different portions of the picture, taken separately, would not be approved by philosophy. All our gestures are purely automatal, and signify nothing if the face is dumb in expression instead of animating and vivifying them. A n actor who only moves his body and limbs is like a painter, who, while he carefully finishes the other parts of his picture, totally neglects the countenance, and thus produces the resemblance of a being deprived of all emotions, or like a poet w h o " builds the lofty rhyme" with words of majestic and harmonious sound, symmetrically placed, but totally devoid of idea. |
