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/** rt ~ A r rt 11 rt Jt) Ull-imim I ¦
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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We should do our utmost to encourage the Beautiful , for the Useful encourages itself . — wOHTHB *
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THE MOORE RAPHAEL . APOIXO AND MARSYAS . The beautiful picture , of which we present an engraving in another page , has recently been added to the list of Raphael ' s known works . It was exhibited in the rooms of Messrs . Christie and Manson before their sale , on the 2 nd of March . In the Catalogue it was ascribed to Andrea da Mantegna ; " hidden in that conspicuous place , " and disguised by a name not popularly appreciated , it escaped the notice both of critics and purchasers until it was detected by the lynx eye of Morris Moore—the " Verax" of the " Times , " well known for his sagacious vigilance over the works of the old masters in this country , and his manful defence of them against the ravages of the official " cleaner . " The picture had belonged to the collection made by the late Mr . Duroveray , a city man ; he had probably bought it of a dealer ; its
anterior history is unknown . The work has escaped from its obscure career in a marvellous state of preservation : vermin of the cleaner and restorer tribes have scarcely touched it ; a good fortune accounted for , perhaps , by the very obscurity . If the illustrious authorship of the picture had been known , unquestionably it would have been " cleaned * ' to the panel , and " restored " into a perfectly modern painting .
The size of the picture is 15 JS- inches high hy 11 % b broad ; but that breadth includes a dark band painted down each side , diminishing the measure by a considerable part of an inch . It is painted on panel , in oils ; and is most carefully and elaborately finished in every part . The highest lights , on the hair , on the lyre and bow , and even on some parts of the foliage , are touched with gold ; but in so delicate a manner , that , although , the practice is not sanctioned by Raphael ' s latest works , the harmony of the picture is not disturbed .
Our copy was drawn on the wood , from the original picture by John Waller , who will be remembered as a successful competitor for the National Cartoon Prizes . It was cut by W . J . Linton , already known as a master of his art . The size of the engraving is 10 & inches in height , and nearly 7 & inches in breadth . If the reader will open our paper , so that two pages shall be before him , place it sideways , and exclude the surrounding margin and one column , he may take the three columns of type in one page , the blank part between the two pages , and the two continuous columns of the other page , as giving together an area very nearly corresponding with the size of the original picture ; the measurement across the five columns with intermediate blank representing the height ; the total length of a column , the breadth .
Those who are acquainted with the painting will observe a departure from the original which all who have a sound and cultivated judgment in Art will condemn . We distinctly recognize the breach of true decorum ; the alteration has been made on this principle : in the case of a separate engraving offered for sale , every individual can take his choice of purchasing or not . In the case of an engraving included in a journal , the work is as it were forced into the hands of a class , of which only a portion may view it with the familiar eye of a cultivated taste ; and it is in deference to the views of those ¦ who are less familiar that we have caused the alteration to be made . The separate impressions which we have had taken of the engraving , on paper of a better quality than that which suffices for our ordinary printing , have been taken before the alteration was made .
Most of our readers will retain the subject in their memory . Among the authors ready to our hand , the fullest account is given by the pedantic and tedious Natalis Comes . Marsyas , he says , was a son of that Thyagnis who first of all mortals adjusted musical laws to the praises of the Gods . Dwelling in a country fertile in reeds , Marsyas is said to have invented wind instruments ; and he became so expert in their use that he excelled all in the beauty and expression of his music . By some he is described as having picked up the fife which Minerva had thrown away , because the blowing disfigured her face . Marsyas formed a very tender friendship with the goddess Cybele , an attachment which survived her subsequent infidelity , and even consoled her under the retaliation inflicted by the instability
of his rival . Before that catastrophe , however , Marsyas wandered with Cybele to Nyaa , and there also Apollo happened to be . Marsyas challenged him to a musical combat , on the audacious condition that the victor should do with the vanquished what he pleased . " Nothing , " replied Apollo , " could be more just , " and they fell to . Those bores , the rationalists , will have it that this contest is to be explained by a squabble which raged among the inhabitants of Nysa—like that between the Gluckists and Piccinists of Paris—as to the comparative merit of the file which Marsyas had invented , and the lyre to which , as Comes says , " Apollo accommodated his song . " Apollo was the victor , and he enforced the condition of the combat in a cruel mode ; tearing off his rival ' s skin . Ovid describes the agony of the sufferer : — " Quid me mihi detrahis ? inquifr . Ah piget : ah non est , clamabat , tibia tanti ! Clamanti outis est surumos dcrepta per artus : Nee quicquam , nisi vulnus , erat . Cruor undiq ; manat ; Ditpctique patent nervi : trepidmque sine ulltl Pflle micant venoo . Salientia viscera possia , Et pellucentes nuraerare in pectore floras . Ilium ruricolsc , silvarum numina , Fauni , £ t Satyri frutres , et tune quoque clarus Olympus ,
Et Nymphae flerunt : et quisquis montibus fllfo Lanigerosque greges , armentaque bucera psvit * Fertilis immaduit , madefaptaqueterra eaducas Concepit lacrymas , ac venis perbibit imis . Quas ubi fecit aquam , vacuas emisit in auras . Inde patens rapidum ripis declivibus aequor , ( ^ Marsya nomen habet , Phrygian liquidissimus amnis . Thus translated by the rough and close Sandys : — " Me from myself , ah why do you distract ? ( Oh !) I repent , he cry d : Alas ! this fact Deserves not such a vengeance ! Whilst he cried ; Apollo from his body stript his hide . His body was one wound , blood every way Streames from all parts ; his sinews naked lay ; His bare veins pant : his heart you might behold ; And all the fivers in his breast have told . For him the fauns , that in forrests keep ; For him the nymphs , and brother satyres weep . His end Olympus ( famous they ) bewailes With all the shepherds of those hills and dales . The pregnant Earth conceiveth . with their teares ; Which in her penetrated womb she beares , Till big with waters : she discharg'd her fraught . This purest Phrygian streame a way out sought By downfalls , till to toyling seas he came ; Now called Marsyas of the Satyre ' s name . "
The period taken by Raphael for his design is that in which Apollo is listening to Marsyas . The design is conceived with that directness and simplicity which characterize all the works of Raphael , from the earliest that we have by his hands to that which his death left scarcely finished—from , the ** Annunciation , " which he drew in outline at twelve years of age , to the ' * Transfiguration" that hung over his death-bed . Marsyas is seated on a bank in a perfectly natural posture ; easy , with just so much constriction of the frame as would necessarily follow from the steadied action of the hands , and even of the lips and lungs . The hair is closely cropped ; the general
contour of the figure is that of a compact rustic vigour . The general idea of the Apollo , even to the attitude and the dressing of the hair , is taken from the antique ; but into the countenance is thrown all the living force of Raphael ' s expression . The inspired marble is turned to flesh and blood still more inspired ; as when Art and Love , uniting in the hand of Pygmalion , worked out , not a statue , but a being of life . Although the wood-cut is a masterpiece in its kind , it is impossible for the cutter to mould the stubborn wood as Raphael has moulded the living flesh . The expression depends in great part upon the contraction of the minuter fibres and folds in the cheek ; it is , therefore ,
represented in the painting by a very minute following of undulations and shades on the surface . This can only be effected in a material capable at once of the most forcible tints and the softest blendings ; the wood can but give a general idea . In the painting , Apollo listens with a countenance of superiority approaching almost to indifference : his attention is implicitly given to his rival ; but over the divine and beautiful countenance flickers the most delicate shade of scorn . Although Marsyas drew such sweet son no s from the reed , that the birds flew to listen—so says the fable , and so we see them in the picture , —what was the flute against the diviner song of the string ?
From the picture the judges are absent ; unless you , the spectator , are supposed to be standing among them . The fable variously represents them as the Muses , or some jury of Nysa . In either case there can be no doubt of the judgment . While the headlong swoop of the birds proclaims the kindred song which he of the race of Sileni is warbling , the figure of Apollo is in itself an embodied music with all its flowing grace , its harmony , its passion , and its force of beauty . It is painted music .
The period at which the work was executed may be assigned with a tolerable approximation to certainty ; we have already noticed certain crudities in the materials which were rejected by Raphael ' s mature judgment , and there are imperfections in the modelling of the figures , judged by the high standard of Raphael ' s perfected works , which indicate an early year . The legs of Apollo , for example , have a certain slenderness , like that of Perugino , which is familiar to the observers of Raphael ' s early works ; and the right foot is more turned out than it would have been in his later designs . At the
same time , it must have been painted after he had gone to Florence , and had become acquainted with the masters of that city—with their bold , firm drawing , their strength of simplicity , and their broad daylight style of colouring . This would fix it somewhere about the year 1504 . The exquisite finish of the picture we have already mentioned . It is handled in every part as a jeweller might handle a gem . An ingenious guess has been thrown out , that it was the young painter ' s offering of gratitude to the Lady Giovanna della Rovere , Duchess of Sora and sister of the Duke of Urbino : she had supplied Raphael , on his leaving Rome for Florence , with a beautiful letter of introduction to the Gonfaloniere Soderini .
Like all great and fertile geniuses , Raphael was perfectly unscrupulous in copying others , and even himself . As Ariosto and Spenser , Rossini and Mozart , have appropriated whole passages from their compeers , or themselves , so has Raphael used the creations with which other masters have peopled the world of Art ; and he has not scrupled to repeat his own ideas , though always with a variation which attested his marvellous command over invention . He took the right thing for the occasion , whether it was suggested by a new inspiration or by a reminiscence . The present work is interesting for provoking many of these comparisons . The landscape , which is among the most beautiful that we have from his hand , will recal that of the " Vision of the Knight" in our National Gallery . The general treatment of the picture resembles the " Espousal of the Virgin "; the plants in the foreground h rfgyflitr *
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Sept . 7 , 1850 . ] © & * WttUtltt * 671
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 7, 1850, page 571, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1852/page/19/
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