No artist has ever exerted a more extensive influ ence, or more deeply impressed his own peculiar spi rit upon art. But this influence has not been favour able to its progressive improvement,or even stationary excellence. The imitation of a natural and simple style, either in literature or the arts, will never prove injurious. But even the excellencies which this re cognised, urged as the character required to the ex tremity of daring, necessarily became sources of error to imitators. A style of art which thus carried ima gination to the very verge of possibility, which not only aspired to an excellence altogether distinct from imitation of reality, but introduced a necessity of con stantly pursuing novelty; which created a standard of beauty highly artificial, and in many respects inde pendent of nature, operated with baneful influence on the future advancement and purity of art. The works of Michael Angelo, exhibiting the principles and full development of this style, were regarded as the only models of imitation. Originality thus began quickly to disappear. The deviations even of his immediate successors from the simple and the beautiful were great, because in adopting a standard thus exclusively ideal, they receded more and more from nature.
The irregularities and defects also growing out of this system his genius alone had been able to conse crate or conceal. Deterioration thus becomes rapidly apparent in the works of inferior imitators who failed to acquire those nobler qualities by which the ergots or extravagancies of mightier spirits are redeemed. From these causes, various in their effects, yet all ori ginating in the system and style of art now explained, a decline had visibly taken place, and exaggeration. and mannerism, had evidently commenced at the close of the sixteenth century, when the principles of chael Angelo were established in all the schools of Europe.
The decline which is pe•ceivrd to take place in the productions of sculpture, even from the commence ment of the seventeenth century, is to be ascribed in part to causes political and moral, though more espe cially to those which originated in the state of art itself. Indeed, without the operation of such exter nal influences, when a high degree of excellence has been attained in any intellectual pursuit, internal cor ruption never can occasion a sudden or rapid retro gression; at the same time a lapse under such circum stances always indicates an inferiority in knowledge or practice. The different states of Italy, in which the arts had been cultivated from political motives chiefly, were no longer alive to the same interests. Rome at no period had possessed a native school, cherishing the arts only as sources of political impor tance. Florence no longer enjoyed her free constitu tion; and the other states had, with the dignity, lost the sentiments of independent communities. In Bo logna, indeed, a new era in painting commenced; but its principles were not calculated to bring back sim plicity and correctness. In fact, the subsequent as cendency acquired by the school of the Carracci, may be numbered among the means contributing to the decline of sculpture. Moral causes also operated strongly in directing attention to other studies, and in forming intellectual habits opposed to those of the artist. A spirit of philosophical inquiry had gone abroad in the age, turning the genius of the time to mathematics and to science. Michael Angelo died at Rome on the day which gave birth to Galileo at Flo rence. Nature, as if unwilling to bless the same epoch with transcendent powers in opposite pro vinces, seemed to rob the arts in order to enrich phi losophy. Poetry and the Fine Arts depend upon the
same intellectual temperament, and the same state of society seems congenial to both. Ilence they have generally flourished or fallen together. But between the spirit of analytical inquiry—of minute discovery which belongs to scientific investigations, and the creative fancy which leads to successful exercise of the poet's and the sculptor's art, the dissimilarity is so great that the human mind has never attained emi nence in both at one period and among the same people.
The commencement of the seventeenth century thus promised by no means auspiciously for the future pro gress of sculpture. A crowd of undistinguished names followed the dissolution of the great Tuscan school; and when an artist of high talent at length appeared, the circumstance proved only the more hurtful from throwing splendour around a capricious and injudici ous style. Bernini, born at Naples in 1598, was en dowed by nature with all the qualities requisite for becoming one of the greatest of modern sculptors. No artist ever displayed happier dispositions For excel ling, nor at an earlier age. Unfortunately, however, he aspired to invention instead of imitation, and chose rather to be a founder of a sect than to take his place among. the fathers and chiefs of regular art.
To the beautiful simplicity of ancient taste :.ppeared meagre in outline, poor in composition, and in effect feeble. The style of Michael Angelo he pre ferred as being more forcible in its impressions, but possessing a character too severe and forbidding. Ile aimed at eliciting a third style with distinctive qualities of its own, which should display greater strength and energy than the former, while it sur passed the latter in suavity and grace. In pursuit of these imaginary and incompatible excellencies, he deviated still further from the simple, the true, and the natural. To produce effect was now the only ob ject of study; every means of startling attitude, volu minous drapery, forced expression, was employed to strike, to dazzle, to surprise. Statues were composed and draped after the fashion of painting; and the full flowing robes of the Bolognese school, the most im proper for the sculptor, were selected as the model which he was to follow. Thus, amid greater errors engrafted upon those of the antecedent age, Bernini, by the introduction of a style rendering less neces sary the science hitherto constituting a redeeming quality in the school of Michael Angelo, and which had tended to maintain an intercourse with this pri mal source, prepared a more fatal separation from nature. The powers of a fine and facile execution, possessed by him in so eminent a degree, recom mended or concealed the impurities of his composi tion, tending only to render his example the more per nicious. This style was adopted quickly and almost universally, both as it was the reigning mode, and as its author, till his death in 1680, enjoyed such domi nating influence and exclusive patronage as rendered him the tyrant of art, to whom all who expected to rise in their profession or in fame, were expected to do homage. The works of Bernini in sculpture are very numerous, but all composed in the same pretending and affected style. The group of Apollo and Daphne, executed in his eighteenth year, is his most chaste performance. As an architect, the circular colon nade of St. Peter's does him more honour than his sculptures.