In Russia Italian influence mingled with French. The Venetian, Lampi, was the fashionable portrait-painter of the day. Soon, however, that country, where for centuries past art had consisted in the endless repetition, not without a sort of over-refined and mysterious beauty, of the hieratical types of the Byzantine ikons, saw the birth of a painter of European stature, Dmitri Levitsky (1735-1822), who, drawing his inspiration from French models, beheld and painted Russian life with enthusiasm. Borovikovsky (1758-1826), while less inspired, was a keen observer, even in his ceremonial portraits.
Germany was for a long time under the influence of Antoine Pesne (1683-1757), portrait painter, and decorator of the music room at Sans Souci, a charming French artist whom France has almost forgotten. Then a new ideal, inspired by the archaeologist Winckelmann, converted artists to an arbitrary and pedantic Hellenism beside which another academic style, that of David, seems flexibility and life itself. The case of Winckelmann is com parable to that of Viollet-le-Duc a century later. Both were men of learning, breaking new ground, responsible for real progress in the history of art, the one restoring to the world the sense of Greek art, the other bringing to light again the principles and beauties of Gothic art ; but their practical influence upon artists was just the contrary of what they had intended. Winckelmann, who desired to free Germany from French apron-strings, under pretext of recalling his compatriots to a sense of higher things, achieved nothing, but subjected them to a pedantry infinitely more withering than the imitation of Boucher and Lancret could ever have been. He was the true father of the pseudo-classicism which ruled Europe for some 5o or 6o years.
The first and most regrettable victim of this introduction of a priori aestheticism into art was Raphael Mengs (1728-79). Until the middle of the 19th century Germany paid the penalty of this error which persisted in the frigid style of men like Over beck (1789-1869), Cornelius (1783-1867), and others who were nicknamed the "Nazarenes" and who, preferring to devote them selves to Christian and Germanic scenes, and because they claimed descent from the Italian primitives rather than the Greeks, be lieved themselves to be reacting against the influence of Winckel mann, whereas they actually did no more than substitute one academic style for another. Nevertheless a paradoxical result of this return to the antique was, in a certain measure, the partial emancipation of the national Schools which had hitherto taken orders from France, which had, as a matter of fact, suffered the same infatuation for the Greek ideal. But since, generally speak ing, the aim was to take the Greeks for sole masters and models, artists both could and must go to them direct without having recourse to French art as a go-between, and in fact neither Mengs in Germany, nor the sculptor, Thorwaldsen, in Denmark, nor Canova in Italy had any need of David; their roads were merely parallel to his. From the statues of the Vatican museum and
Winckelmann's writings they formed each in his own way their ideas of classic art. By a fresh paradox, when this artificial classi cism had everywhere displayed its impotence to create a living art the Schools, which had thought to emphasize their national char acter by separation from France, found life again by renewed con tact, direct or indirect, with the true French tradition. In Scandi navia this was the case of Christian Krohg and of Anders Zorn.
In the Germany of about 185o is not Adolf Menzel, a draughts man rather than a painter, but, as such, accurate and intelligent, much farther removed from the School of Winckelmann and the Nazarenes than from that of the French beloved by Frederick II., to whose glorification he devoted much of his talent? Is not the same regard for truthful observation the chief merit of Wilhelm Leibl, a conscientious painter of his native peasantry? Later on was not the most original artist whom 19th century Germany pro duced, Hans von Marees a descendant, moreover, of French Protestant refugees, nearer in his decorative and poetic evocations to Puvis de Chavannes or even Gauguin than to his contemporary, Boecklin, whose inspiration is purely Germanic? Finally was it not French impressionism which gave a stimulus to Northern art of which the German Liebermann was the principal beneficiary? The Return to the Antique: David.—In France the first indications of the return to the antique are already visible in the discourse on the life of Watteau pronounced in the Academy by the Comte de Caylus, an old friend of the painter of Fetes gal antes, but at the same time a good archaeologist. This was in 1748, several years before the discoveries of Pompeii and Her culaneum which, in 1755, roused the artistic and literary world to enthusiasm ; earlier even than Winckelmann's first publications. Mme. de Pompadour copied books of reproductions from the antique under the tutelage of the engraver, Gay, and encouraged the great change which was taking place in furniture and archi tectural form. The style which has been christened "Louis Seize" sprang up in the middle of Louis XV.'s reign, while that destined to be called "Empire" was already almost fully formed under Louis XVI. In painting, Vien (1716-1809) caught the fashion with his Marchandes d'Amour and Belisaires. David (1748-18a5) passed through Vien's studio but owes him little, Vien's real pupils, Vincent and Regnault, being nearer to Prud'hon than to David. The future author of the Horaces and Leonidas aux Thermopyles had been Boucher's pupil before coming to Vien. Until his departure for Italy, when after long and determined effort he had won the Prix de Rome he painted like a docile enough imitator of Boucher. At Rome he suddenly adopted, with the uncompromising and inflexible enthusiasm natural to him, the doctrine of Winckelmann.