BIOGRAPHICAL OBSERVATIONS on ALBERT DURER, MICHAEL AN. GELO, and LEONARDO DA VINCI, by M. FUSELI. "T [From the third Volume of the fame Work.] HE indifcriminate ufe of the words Genius and Ingenuity has, perhaps, nowhere caufed more confufion than in the claffification of artifts. Albert Durer was a man of great ingenuity without being a genius. He ftudied, and, as far as his penetration reached, eftablished certain proportions of the human frame, but he did not create a style. 'He copied rather than imitated the forms that furrounded him, and without remorse tacked deformity and meagrenefs to fulness and beauty. He fometimes had a glimpfe of the fublime, but it was only a glimpfe. The expanded agony of Chrift on the Mount of Olives, and the myftic mafs of his figure of Melancholy have much fublimity, though the expreffion of the laft is weakened by the rubbish he has thrown about her. His Knight, attended by Death and the Fiend, is more capricious than terrible; and his Adam and Eve are two common models fhut up in a rocky dungeon. Every work of his is a proof that he wanted the power of imitation, of concluding from what he faw to what he did not fee. Copious without tafte, anxiously precife in parts, and unmindful of the whole, he has rather fhewn us what to avoid than what we are to follow. Though called the Father of the German School, he neither reared scholars, nor was imitated by the German artifts of his or the fucceeding century. That the importation of his works into Italy fhould have effected a temporary change in the principles of fome Tufcans who had ftudied Michael Angelo, is a fact which proves that minds at certain periods may be fubject to epidemic influence as well as bodies. That M. Angelo, when a boy, copied with a pen Michel Wolgemuth's print of the Temptation of St. Anthony, and bought fish in the market to colour the devils, may be believed; but it requires the credulity of Wagenfeil to fuppofe that he could want any thing of Albert Durer, when he was a man. The legend contradicts itself; for who ever before heard of the bronzes of Albert Durer? "M. Angelo, punctilious and haughty to princes, was gentle, and even fubmiffive to inferior artifts. Guiliano Bugiardini, a man of tiney talents and much conceit, had been applied to by Meffer Ottaviano de Medici to paint the portrait of M. Angelo for him. Bugiardini, familiar with M. Angelo, obtained his confent. He fat to him; defired to rife after a fitting of two hours; and perceiving at the first glance the incorrectnefs of the outline, What the devil, faid he, have have you been doing? You have fhoved one of the eyes into the temples; pray look at it. Guiliano, after repeatedly looking at the picture and the original, at last replied with much gravity, I cannot fee it: but pray fit down and let us examine again. M. Angelo, who knew where the caufe of the blunder lay, fat down again, and patiently fubmitting to a long fecond infpection, was at laft peremptorily told that the copy was correct. If that BIOGRAPHICAL OBSERVATIONS on ALBERT DURER, &c. [15] that be the case, said he, nature has committed a mistake; go you on, and follow the dictates of your art. "There now exifts at Holkham, among the pictures collected by the late lord Leicester, and in the poffeffion of Mr. Coke of Norfolk, the only copy ever made of the whole compofition of the celebrated Cartoon of Pifa. It is a small oil picture, in chiarofcuro, and the performance of Bastiano da St. Gallo, furnamed Ariftotile, from his learned or verbofe defcants on that furprifing work. It was painted at the defire of Vafari, and tranfmitted to Francis the Firft by Paolo Giovio, bishop of Nocera. How it could escape the eyes of the French and English connoiffeurs or artists, who had access to the collections of which it conftituted the chief ornament, is a myftery, which for the honour of the art none can wish to unravel. "Nothing is trifling in the hiftory of genius. The following ftrange incident, extracted from the Life of M. Angelo, written by his pupil, or rather attendant, Afcanio Condivi, deferves notice, because it is related from the mouth of M. Angelo himself. "Some time after the death of Lorenzo de Medici, Cardiere, a young improvifatore, entertained by his fon Piero, fecretly informed M. Angelo, with whom he lived in habits of friendship, that Lorenzo de Medici had appeared to him in a ragged pall of black over his naked body, and commanded him to announce to his fon, that in a fhort time he should be driven into exile and return no more. M. Angelo exhorted him to execute the commands of the vifion; but Cardiere, aware of the haughty info lent temper of Piero, forbore to follow his advice. Some mornings after this, whilft M. Angelo was bufy in the cortile of the palace, Cardiere, terrified and pale, comes again and relates, that the night before, when yet awake, Lorenzo, in the fame garb, appeared to him again, and had enforced his orders with a violent blow on the cheek. M. Angelo now, with great earneftnefs, infifting on his immediate compliance with the commands of the vifion, Cardiere fet off directly for Careggi, a villa of the family about three miles diftant from Florence; but having scarcely got half way met Piero with his fuite returning to town, and inftantly acquainted him with what he had feen, heard, and fuffered. He was laughed at by Piero, and ridiculed by his attendants, one of whom, Divizio, afterwards cardinal di Bibiena, told him he was mad to fancy Lorenzo would charge a ftranger with a meffage he might deliver himself to his fon. Difmiffed in this manner, he returned to M. Angelo, and prevailed on him to quit Florence and go to Bologna, where he had scarcely feitled in the houfe of Gian Francefco Aldrovandi before the predicted revolution took place, and the expulfion of the whole family of the Medici with all their party confirmed the vifion of Cardiere, whether fancy-bred,' or communicated by spirit bleft or goblin damned.' "Leonardo da Vinci, made up of all the elements, without the preponderance of any one, gave univerfal hints, and wafted life infatiate in experiment; now on the wing after beauty, then grovelling on the ground after deformity; now looking full in the face of terror, then then decking it with fhards, and fhells, and mafks: equally attracted by character and caricature, by ftyle and common nature, he has drawn rudiments of all, but, like a ftream loft in ramification, vanished without a trace. "Want of perfeverance alone could make him abandon his cartoon of the celebrated group of horsemen destined for the great council-chamber at Florence, without painting the picture. For to him who could organize the limbs of that compofition, Michael Angelo himself could be no object of fear. And that he was able to organize it, we may be certain from the sketch that remains of it, however pitiful, in the Etruria Puttrice,' lately published, but still more from the admirable print of Edelinck, after a drawing of Rubens, who was his great admirer, and has faid much to imprefs us with the beauties of his Laft Supper at Milan, which he abandoned likewife with out finishing the head of Chrift, exhaufted by a wild chace after models for the heads and hands of the apoftles. Had he been able to conceive the center, the radii muft have followed of courfe. Whether he confidered that magic of light and shade, which he poffeffed in an unparalleled degree in his smaller pictures, as an inferior principle in a work of fuch dignity, or was unable to diffuse it over numerous groups, cannot now be determined; but he left his fresco flat, and without that folemnity of twilight, which is more than an equivalent for thofe contrafts of chiaroscuro that Giorgione is faid to have learnt from him. The legend which makes Leonardo go to Rome with Juliano di Medici at the election of Leo X. to accept employment in the Vatican, whether fufficiently authentic or not, furnishes a characteristic trait of the man. The pope paffing through the room allotted for the pictures, and instead of defigns and cartoons finding nothing but an apparatus of diftillery of oils and varnishes, exclaimed, Ah me! he means to do nothing; for he thinks of the end before he has made a beginning. From a fonnet of Leonardo, preserved by Lomazzo, he appears to have been fenfible of the inconftancy of his own temper, and full of wishes at leaft to correct it. "Much has been faid of the honour he received by expiring in the arms of Francis the First. It was indeed an honour, by which destiny in fome degree atoned to Francis for his disaster at Pavia.” ACCOUNT of fome of the SINGULARITIES of the late Mr. HOWARD. [From the first Volume of GLEANINGS through WALES, HOLLAND, and WESTPHALIA, by Mr. PRATT.] "H TOWARD had many fingula rities, but very few affectations. It was fingular for mere mortal man to go about doing good for the fake of doing it: to devote his fortune, and his life, to explore the moft neglected, and the most forlorn of the wretched, and to relieve them according to their feveral neceffities'-to begin the work of of benevolence, where other people's bounty commonly ends itin a prifon. All this, I fay, was very fingular, but wholly pure of affectation. Further, it was fingular, deferving that word, indeed, inafmuch as in human hiftoryit is without a parallel-to put himself to the greatest perfonal inconveniences, and to encounter the greatest dangers, often of life itfelf, to accomplish the propofed ends of his philanthropy, fince it is notorious that he traverfed the earth, without any confideration of political diftinctions, or the nature of climate, in fearch of his objects, by which perfeverance and intrepidity of refolution, he overcame all impediments that would have deterred many excellent perfons from attempting the like enterprises; and made even thofe faint by the way, who, with like good hearts, but with lefs firm minds, would have found themselves unequal to like undertakings: yet in Howard this was altogether unaffected and before any man fets down any part of it to a love of being particular, or to a love of fame, arifing therefrom, let him well and truly examine his own heart, his own difpofition, and fee that he is not hunting about for an excufe to his own want of benevolence, or to his own vanities, in being bountiful, by lowering the principle of benevolence in an other. Let it not be imputed to John Howard, as a difhonour, that he had enemies, who, while they could not but applaud the bleffed effects of his virtue, laboured to depreciate the caufe: the Saviour of the whole world, whom, perhaps, of human creatures he most correctly imitated, had the fame, and to refemble his divine exam $795. ple, even in the wrongs that were heaped on his facred head, is rather glory than shame. "He was fingular in many of the common habits of life for inftance, he preferred damp fheets, linen, and cloaths, to dry ones, and both rifing and going to bed fwathed himfelf with coarfe towels dipped in the coldest water he could get; in that ftate he remained half an hour, and then threw them off, freshened and invigorated, as he faid, beyond measure He never put on a great coat in the coldest countries; nor had been a minute under or over the time of an appointment, fo far as it depended on himself, for fix and twenty years. He never continued at a place, or with a perfon, a fingle day beyond the period prefixed for going, in his whole life; and he had not for the laft fixteen years of his exiftence ate any fifh, flesh, or fowl; nor fat down to his fimple fare of tea, milk, and rufks, all that time. His journeys were continued from prifon to prifon, from one groupe of wretched beings to another, night and day, and where he could not go with a carriage he would ride, and where that was hazardous he would walk. Such a thing as an obstruction was out of the question. "There are thofe who, conscious of wanting in themfelves what they envy in others, brand this victorious determination of fuffering no let, or hindrance, to ftop him from keeping on in the right way, as madnefs. Ah, my friend, how much better would it be for their neighbours, and for fociety, were they half as mad. Distractions they doubtlefs have, but it is to be feared, not half fo friendly to the interefts of human kind. But, B indeed, indeed, all enthusiasm of virtue is deemed romantic excentricity, by the cold hearted. "With refpect to Mr. Howard's ing. I do affure you, a good foaking fhower is the best brufh for 'broad cloth, in the universe. You, like the reft of my friends, throw 6 hardships with just as much reason, perfonal fingularities above defcrib-away your pity upon my fuppofed ed, though they were certainly hazardous experiments, in the firit inftance, it was not ufelefs for a man, who had pre-refolved to fet his face againft wind and weather, and after paffing all forts of unhealthy climes, to defcend into the realms of difeafe and death, to make them. "Some days after his first return from an attempt to mitigate the 6 as you commiferate the common beggars, who, being familiar with ftorms and hurricanes,neceffity and nakedness, are a thousand times, fo 'forcible is habit, lefs to be compaffionated than the fons and daughters of Eafe and Luxury, who, accustomed to all the enfeebling refinements of feathers by night, and fires by day, are 6 fury of the plague in Conftanti-taught to feel like the puny crea 6 nople, he favoured me with a ture ftigmatifed by Pope, who fhimorning vifit in London; the wea- 'vered at a breeze. All this is the ther was fo very terrible, that I work of art, my good friend; nahad forgot his inveterate exactness,ture is more independent of exterand had yielded up even the hope,nal circumstances. Nature is infor his own fake, of expecting him. Twelve at noon was the hour, and exactly as the clock, in my room, ftruck it, he entered; the wet, for it rained torrents, dripping from every part of his drefs, like water from a fheep juft landed from its wafhing. He would not even have attended to his fitua trepid, hardy, and adventurous; but it is a practice to spoil her, with indulgencies, from the moment we come into the world-a foft drefs, and foft cradle, be gin our education in luxuries, and we do not grow more manly the more we are gratified: on the contrary, our feet must be wrapt tion, having fat himself down within wool or filk, we must tread the utmoft compofure, and begun converfation, had I not made an offer of dry cloaths, &c. Yes,' faid he, finiling, I had my fears, as I knocked at your door, that we fhould go over the old bufinefs of apprehenfions,about a little rain water, which though it does not run from off my back, as it does from that of a duck, goofe, or any other aquatic bird, it does me as little injury; and after a long drought is fcarcely lefs refrefhing. The coat I have now on has been as often wetted through, as any duck's in the world, and, 6 6 upon carpets, breathe, as it were, in fire, avoid a tempeft, which • fweetens the air, as we would a blast that putrifies it, and guarding every crevice from an unwholefome breeze, when it is the most elaftic and bracing, he down upon a bed of feathers, that relax the fyftem more than a night's lodging upon flint fiones.' 6 You fimile,' added Mr. Howard, after a paufe, but I am a living inftance of the truths I infift on. A more 'puny whipfter' than-myfelf, in the days of my youth, was never feen. I could not walk out indeed, gets no other fort of clean-an evening without wrapping up: |