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The Paragone in Nineteenth-Century Art

Offering an examination of the paragone, meaning artistic rivalry, in nineteenth-­

century France and England, this book considers how artists were impacted by pre-
vailing aesthetic theories, or institutional and cultural paradigms, to compete in the
art world. The paragone has been considered primarily in the context of Renaissance
art history, but in this book readers will see how the legacy of this humanistic com-
petitive model survived into the late nineteenth century.

Sarah J. Lippert is Associate Professor of Art History and at the University of

­M ichigan-Flint, USA and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Paragone: Past and Present.

Cover image: Gerome, Jean Leon (1824–1904), Pygmalion and Galatea, ca. 1890.
Oil on canvas, 35 × 27 in. (88.9 × 68.6 cm). Gift of Louis C. Raegner, 1927 (27.200).
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image Copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of
Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY.
Routledge Research in Art History

Routledge Research in Art History is our home for the latest scholarship in the field of
art history. The series publishes research monographs and edited collections, covering
areas including art history, theory, and visual culture. These high-level books focus
on art and artists from around the world and from a multitude of time periods. By
making these studies available to the worldwide academic community, the series aims
to promote quality art history research.

Pop Art and Popular Music

Jukebox Modernism
Melissa Mednicov

Globalizing East European Art Histories

Past and Present
Edited by Beáta Hock and Anu Allas

Visual Typologies from the Early Modern to the Contemporary

Local Contexts and Global Practices
Edited by Tara Zanardi and Lynda Klich

Cultural Mobility in the Interwar Avant-Garde Art Network

Poland, Belgium and the Netherlands
Michał Wenderski

New Geographies of Abstract Art in Postwar Latin America

Edited Mariola V. Alvarez and Ana M. Franco

René Magritte and the Art of Thinking

Lisa Lipinski

The Paragone in Nineteenth-Century Art

Sarah J. Lippert

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-

Research-in-Art-History/book-series/RRAH
The Paragone in
Nineteenth-Century Art

Sarah J. Lippert
First published 2019
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Taylor & Francis
The right of Sarah J. Lippert to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lippert, Sarah J., 1975– author.
Title: The paragone in nineteenth-century art / Sarah Jordan Lippert.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2019. | Series: Routledge research in art
history | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018053053 | ISBN 9781472430953 (hardback : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780367140458 (ebook : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Aesthetics, French—19th century. |
Aesthetics, British—19th century. | Paragone (Aesthetics)
Classification: LCC BH221.F8 L57 2019 | DDC 701/.1709034—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018053053

ISBN: 978-1-4724-3095-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-14045-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
Dedicated to
The late Dr. Gerard George Lippert
The late Dr. Brian Curran
The late Dr. George Mauner
Contents

Color Plates viii

List of Figures ix
Acknowledgements xi
Key Words xii
Prologue xiii

1 An Introduction to the Paragone 1

2 The Archetype of Beauty: Narcissus and the Birth of

the beau idéal 25

3 Pygmalion and Galatea: The Battle between

Iconophobes and Iconodules 83

4 Salomé versus Medusa 155

Conclusion 217
Index 221
Color Plates

Between pages 82 and 83

Plate 1 Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, The Sleep of Endymion, 1791
Plate 2 
A nne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, Pygmalion et Galatée (Pygmalion
and Galatea), 1819
Plate 3 Jean-Léon Gérôme, Pygmalion and Galatea, 1892 (ca. 1890)
Plate 4 
Jean-Léon Gérôme, Painting Breathing Life into Sculpture/
Sculpturae vitam insufflate pictura, 1893
Plate 5 Jean-Léon Gérôme, Atelier de Tanagra, 1893
Plate 6 
Jean-Léon Gérôme, Joueuse du boules or Ball Player with Three
Masks, 1902
Plate 7 Gustave Moreau, The Apparition, 1874–6
Plate 8 Gustave Moreau, Salomé Dancing before Herod, 1876
Figures

1.1 Michelangelo Buonarroti, Creation of Adam, 1508–12 8

2.1 Edward Burne-Jones, The Mirror of Venus, 1870–6 32
2.2 Edward Burne-Jones, Le Chant d’Amour (The Love Song), 1868–77 33
2.3 Edward Burne-Jones, The Baleful Head: Perseus and Medusa Series,
1884–8 34
2.4 Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Pygmalion and the Image: The Heart
Desires, 1875–8 35
2.5 Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Pygmalion and the Image: The Hand
Refrains, 1875–8 36
2.6 Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Pygmalion and the Image: The Godhead
Fires, 1875–8 37
2.7 Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Pygmalion and the Image:
The Soul Attains, 1875–8 38
2.8 Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Lady Lilith, 1867 40
2.9 Jean-Germain Drouais, Soldat romain blessé
(Wounded Roman Soldier), 1785 55
2.10 Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Socrates, 1787 57
2.11 Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, Danaë, 1798 61
2.12 Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, The Ghost of Hector Appearing to
Aeneas (The Dream of Aeneas), ca. early 1800s 62
3.1 Étiènne-Maurice Falconet, Pygmalion aux pieds
de sa statue qui s’anime, 1761 87
3.2 Louis Gauffier, Pygmalion and Galatea, 1797 99
3.3 Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, A Sculptor’s Model, 1877 108
3.4 Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Pygmalion and the Image (left to right: The
Heart Desires, The Hand Refrains, The Godhead Fires, The Soul
Attains), 1868–70 110
3.5 Jean-Léon Gérôme, Le travail du marbre (Working in Marble or The
Artist Sculpting Tanagra), 1895 115
3.6 Jean-Léon Gérôme, Tanagra, 1890 116
3.7 Jean-Léon Gérôme, Phryné devant l’Aréopage, 1861 117
3.8 Jean-Léon Gérôme, Pygmalion and Galatea, 1890 120
3.9 Jean-Léon Gérôme, Pygmalion and Galatea, 1892 127
3.10 George Frederick Watts, Bust of Clytie, 1878 133
4.1 Gustave Moreau, Orpheus, 1865 161
4.2 Gustave Moreau, Detail of John the Baptist from
The Apparition, 1874–6 164
x Figures
4.3 Gustave Moreau, Detail of gems and amulets from
The Apparition, 1874–6 165
4.4 Gustave Moreau, Detail of the dangling eye from Salomé Dancing
before Herod, 1876 166
4.5 Gustave Moreau, Detail of the panther from Salomé Dancing before
Herod, 1876 167
4.6 Gustave Moreau, Salomé Tattooed, 1874 (ca. 1876),
oil on canvas, 92 × 60 cm 170
4.7 Gustave Moreau, Detail of Egyptian eyes from Salomé Tattooed,
1874 (ca. 1876) 172
4.8 Gustave Moreau, Study for Herod for the Apparition 173
4.9 Benvenuto Cellini, Perseus and Medusa, 1545–54 179
4.10 Gustave Moreau, Study for the head of Salomé, ca. 1874 181
4.11 Edward Burne-Jones, The Death of Medusa II, 1876–90 186
4.12 Edward Burne-Jones, Perseus and the Graiae, 1892 187
4.13 Aubrey Beardsley, Cover Design for Salome by Oscar Wilde, 1894 197
4.14 Aubrey Beardsley, Enter Herodias for Salome by Oscar Wilde, 1894 198
4.15 Aubrey Beardsley, The Climax for Salome by Oscar Wilde, 1894 200
Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge Margaret Michniewicz, Liana De Girolami

Cheney, and David Cuthbertson for their support of the project. The author wishes to
thank the University of Michigan for its support of this project through the University
of Michigan Office of Research. The following organisations are also acknowledged
for the assistance of their staff in various research efforts:

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham
Hearst Castle, San Simeon
Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris
Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester
Musée d’Orsay, Archive Centre, Paris
Musée du Louvre, Paris
Département des arts graphiques
Département des peintures
Département des sculptures
Musée Girodet, Montargis
Musée Gustave Moreau, Paris
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
The Huntington Library, San Marino
Victoria and Albert Museum Prints and Drawing Study Room, London
Key Words

Beardsley, Aubrey
Beau idéal
Burne-Jones, Sir Edward Coley
Endymion
Galatea
Gérôme, Jean-Léon
Girodet, Anne-Louis Trioson-
Huysmans, Joris-Karl
Iconophobia
Medusa
Metamorphosis
Moreau, Gustave
Narcissus
Ovid
Paragone
Perseus
Polychrome
Pygmalion
Salomé
Ut pictura poesis
Watts, George Frederic
Wilde, Oscar
Prologue

This book is about the paragone or rivalry in the arts. This rivalry began in classical
antiquity and has informed the theoretical and practical relationship between the arts
ever since. During the Renaissance, visual artists responded to the pervasive belief
that the literary arts were superior to their own, and participated in literary and other
disputations, such as over which medium could best express the glory of God and na-
ture. The debate continued in various permutations into the nineteenth century. While
most art historians are familiar with the paragone tradition of the Renaissance, the
exploration of its reincarnations in post-Renaissance contexts is this book’s concern.
A paragonising artist can be one of any era or discipline and is not limited by tra-
dition or the ‘canon’ of art history. Very simply, a paragonising artist is an artist who
takes a competitive approach to artistic production, in theory, practice, or both. Some
competitive artists are only mildly devoted to the concept of competition and often si-
multaneously espouse a ‘sister arts’ attitude, whereby the qualities of other art forms are
celebrated. On the other hand, paragonising approaches reach the opposite extreme, with
artists who are so competitive that they cultivate hostile relationships with, or opinions
about, other artists or media. So, the term ‘paragonising’ means a competitive approach.
In contrast to many explorations of word–image relationships, as well as tradi-
tional comparative studies of the arts, the paragone scholar studies how and why an
artist competes to prove or elevate the status of his or her art. This rivalry, and the
form it takes, is unique to a given artist engaging in the debate and can be of consid-
erable utility in any broader effort to understand his or her art There are many issues
of interest to the paragone scholar. For instance, one might track the motives of artists
who seek to raise the status of their arts. Typically artists have done so during crises,
including changes in the hierarchy of the arts, shifting aesthetic theories, cultural and
social changes to the status of the artist, personal doubt, political activism, or patri-
otic endeavours. For this reason, the socio-historical context in which artists live and
work is often pertinent to the evaluation of their motivation to compete.
Once the parameters of the paragone are made clear, it emerges as a distinct meth-
odology within art-historical scholarship. It can be an important device that aids in
appreciating choices that a particular artist might make, with regards to such things
as subject matter or stylistic modes of artistic practice. Nevertheless, it is not mutually
exclusive to other methodologies, whether theoretical, socio-historical, or otherwise.
In his Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, W.J.T. Mitchell identifies the paragone’s im-
portance to scholarship and theorises that its concerns continue to be played out by
successive generations of artists, even in technological media.1
Rapid changes in the nineteenth-century art world contributed to the significance
of the paragone in that century especially. The changing aesthetic theories and
xiv Prologue
ideologies of the Royal Academy of Arts (London), the Académie des beaux-arts
(Paris), and the École des beaux-arts (Paris and Rome), contributed to instability
of artistic genres and shifting respect for traditional artistic institutions, such as the
­Salon, thereby affecting both professional and public opinion regarding art’s value.
Academic institutions often espoused theories or practices that encouraged the sur-
vival of the paragone under their institutional umbrellas, even if they were not ben-
eficial to their artists. The propensity for nineteenth-century art critics to also act as
poets made visual artists vulnerable to writers in increasingly threatening ways.
Certain motifs and subjects in nineteenth-century painting and sculpture are par-
ticularly good indicators of paragonising approaches to the arts — they manifest as
an iconography of the paragone. Of these motifs, the mastery of the beau idéal (or
ideal nude), the mythologising of artistic creation in the form of the Pygmalion and
Galatea narratives, the depictions of Salomé, and the theme of Medusa were especially
effective signifiers of the competitive dialogue waged between painters, critics, poets,
sculptors, and book illustrators. In these subjects, the proliferation of the beau idéal
(or mastery of the human figure’s ideal representation) was seen to indicate artistic
skill and therefore bespoke supremacy, especially in early to mid-nineteenth-century
painting.2 This book will explore how the aforementioned subjects drew artists with
competitive agendas, illuminating both the subjects and the objectives of the artists
who represented them. Exploration of each narrative that came to iconographically
represent the paragone will also reveal that these themes: Narcissus (Endymion et al
as an ideal), Pygmalion and Galatea, Salomé, and Medusa took their place in the de-
bate because of complex arguments that their stories and prior iterations represented
about the power of the visual and which form of the visual was preeminent.

Notes
1 W.J.T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago and London: The University
of Chicago Press, 1986). Another examination of competition in the arts may be found in
Marc Gotlieb, ‘The Painter’s Secret: Invention and Rivalry from Vasari to Balzac,’ The Art
Bulletin 84, no. 3 (Sept. 2002), 469–90.
2 On the issue of male nude representations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries see:
Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Male Trouble: A Crisis in Representation (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1997), or the brief study, ‘The Other Side of Vertu: Alternative Masculinities in
the Crucible of Revolution,’ Art Journal (Summer 1997), 55–61. Also pertinent are works
by Alex Potts, Flesh and the Ideal: Winckelmann and the Origins of Art History (London
and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994) and ‘Images of Ideal Manhood in the French
Revolution,’ History Workshop Journal 30 (Autumn 1990), 1–21. For Thomas Crow see
‘Observations on Style and History in French Painting of the Male Nude, 1785–1794,’
Visual Culture: Images and Interpretations, eds. Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly,
and Keith Moxey (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, W ­ esleyan Uni-
versity Press, 1994), 141–68, and Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). For an examination of the male nude from the
perspective of homosocial culture in England see Colin Cruise, ‘Lovely Devils: Simeon
Solomon and Pre-Raphaelite Masculinity,’ Re-framing the Pre-Raphaelites: Historical
and Theoretical Essays, ed. E. Harding (Aldershot: Scolar, 1996), 195–210, and Michael
Hatt’s ‘Physical Culture: The Male Nude and Sculpture in Late Victorian Britain,’ After
the Pre-Raphaelites: Art and Aestheticism in Victorian England, ed. Elizabeth Prette-
john (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1999), 240–56. And finally, Alison
Smith, ‘Masculinities in Victorian Painting,’ Art History 20, no. 4 (Dec., 1997), 629–31.
Referencing the beau idéal is Annie Becq, ‘Esthétique et politique sous le Consultat et
l‘Empire: le notion de beau idéal,’ Romantisme 51–4 (1986), 22–37; and also R. Michel,
Le Beau idéal ou l’art du concept, exh. cat. (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 1989).
1 An Introduction to the Paragone

The Paragone of Antiquity

While artists did not take up the paragone in great numbers until the Italian Renais-
sance, its history began in antiquity. For instance, in sixth-century Greece, Simonides
of Ceos, according to both Cicero and Plutarch, became the first ancient writer to
compare poetry and painting. Simonides viewed poetry and painting as two different
expressions of essentially visual imagery, and his famous epigram ‘painting is mute
poetry and poetry is a speaking picture’ provided the basis for the theory of the sister
arts.1 This theory was founded on the premise that the arts of painting and poetry
shared similar objectives and content, although they differed in their means and man-
ner of expression.2 Correspondingly, later theorists endorsed the correspondences be-
tween the arts and often ignored their unique strengths. Writing in the first century
CE, the poet Horace recorded the equally famous statement ‘ut pictura poesis’ or ‘as is
painting so is poetry,’ in his Epistle to the Pisos.3 Horace’s maxim provided the basis
for an almost infinite series of comparisons between the sister arts, becoming the root
of most subsequent theories regarding the nature of the arts and their relationship to
one another.4 Throughout history, many artists, poets, and writers have challenged
the theory of the sister arts, which typically did not acknowledge one art as superior to
another (especially in the relationship between painting and poetry). When differences
between the arts were observed by proponents of the sister arts theory, painting was
often described as being dependent upon poetry. Many competitors were first moti-
vated by admiration for those with whom they competed.
Rensselaer Lee and Henryk Markiewicz have suggested that neither Simonides
nor Horace probably intended for these little sayings to have had such an impact on
inter-arts relationships. But these ancient thinkers were not the only ones to address
the arts as part of an epistemology. For instance, Plato and Aristotle both considered
the nature of the arts within their complex theories (although neither philosopher
felt the arts important enough to address as a primary subject). Plato, like Simon-
ides, consigned the visual arts to the lowest level of creative production. According
to Plato, the material world was merely a reflection of an ideal, immaterial, and
­unseen reality, so those who imitated it, such as painters and sculptors, were reduced
to ‘imitators’ (in a pejorative sense) and were essentially liars. Plato’s artist merely
copied an imperfect, material imitation of an ideal form. 5 On the other hand, Aris-
totle’s assertion that beauty could reside in material form lent credence to the artist’s
aim of creating beautiful artworks. But even Aristotle in his Poetics (IX, 1–3) held
that poetry was more philosophical, because it dealt with truths, rather than just
2 The Paragone in Nineteenth-Century Art
natural fact.6 Since truth was generally the ultimate goal of such epistemologies,
poetry would have been more respected, even in Aristotle’s system. In sum, the an-
cient artists were esteemed enough that some of them are still known by name to us
today, such as Apelles (ca. 332–329 BCE), Praxiteles (ca. fourth century BCE), and
Polykleitos (ca. late fifth to early fourth centuries BCE), even though they were not
as famous as the rhetoricians of their day. Likewise, the first efforts to record art’s
history originate in antiquity, such as Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE), who preserved
the story of Apelles in his Natural History. The accounts of visual artists competing
with one another in antiquity shaped the paragone in the centuries that followed.

The Paragone of the Medieval Era

In the medieval era ‘ut pictura poesis’ was still prevalent while poetry (as a rhetor-
ical art) was upheld as the superior art form, based on the notion that the latter
required intellect and learning to appreciate, whereas the visual arts supposedly
did not. Words were the art form of the educated elite, while images were the art
form of the uneducated masses.7 Prior to the fifteenth century, with the exception
of luminaries such as Giotto di Bondone (ca. 1267–1337) who appeared along with
Cimabue in Dante’s Divine Comedy (ca. 1310), relatively few artists enjoyed indi-
vidual acclaim, and even fewer were known by name. The medieval artist was a
conduit for the creative power of God, so most were not particularly inspired to
credit their own work. In addition, the guild system and craftsman status of artists
made it more difficult to achieve individual acclaim.8
Even though he was not primarily concerned with the arts, Dante Alighieri
(1265–1321) presented a version of divine truth in his epic poem that addressed
the status of medieval artists.9 Essentially, he prophesied the paragone debate of
the Italian Renaissance, as he chastised those who put too much faith in visual
imagery, saying, ‘O ye proud Christians, wretched and weary, who, sick in mental
vision, put trust in backward steps’ (Purgatorio, Canto X).10 In another passage,
he undermined the fame and success of Proto-Renaissance artists (indeed the very
phenomenon of artistic virtue), whom he felt relied on the fickleness of celebrity,
by declaring ‘O empty glory of human powers! […] Cimabue thought to hold the
field in painting, and now Giotto has the cry, so that the other’s fame is dim,’
­(Purgatorio, Canto XI). Dante, like Horace, believed in the didactic function of
poetry and its instructive value.11 Dante enjoyed renewed popularity throughout
the nineteenth century.12

The Paragone of Renaissance

Early Modernism brought artists out of anonymity and into celebrity through secular
patronage and humanism.13 Poetry was not yet accepted as a ‘liberal art’ in the early
Renaissance, but its literary character made it comparable to rhetoric (which was
a liberal art) and seemingly more intellectual.14 As a result, when painters or their
advocates tried to vie with poets for cultural status, they often emphasised painting’s
intellectual demands and didactic value.
Increasingly throughout the Renaissance, individual artists and theoreticians be-
gan to publicly debate the paragone. Artists became keen to use ancient theory to
 An Introduction to the Paragone 3
raise their social status and/or the status of their art, which coincided with a new
interest in writing artistic treatises, usually to defend the merits of one’s art, as well
as methods to exploit its most valued goals and attributes. For instance, Cennino
Cennini’s (ca. 1370–1440) treatise titled Il libro dell’arte of 1437 was concerned
with practical modes of artistic production. It would be eclipsed by more theoretical
treatises, such as those by Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72) and Leonardo da Vinci
(1452–1519). Still, the roots of the humanistic artist were present in Cennini’s early
Renaissance treatise. He encouraged artists to approach their works as though they
were professionals in ‘theology, philosophy, or other theories.’15
By the later medieval period, the liberal arts included the following: grammar, di-
alectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy, although these would
be modified later to include fields such as poetry.16 Many Renaissance artists resented
their exclusion from these noble endeavours. For example, Leonardo stated that ‘[P]
ainting is to be preferred to all other occupations, because it embraces all the forms that
are and are not found in nature. It is to be more praised and exalted than music, which
is only concerned with pitch […] Therefore, seeing that you have placed music amongst
the liberal arts, either you should place painting there or remove music.’17
Around 1435–6, Alberti wrote a treatise titled On Painting, offering guidance to
Renaissance artists in their efforts to achieve greater notoriety and respect. Alberti
advised artists to produce ‘history painting,’ which was founded upon istoria or
narrative.18 Alberti’s goal was to elevate the painter’s social status, by encourag-
ing him to produce intellectual and philosophical subjects. Alberti’s treatise also
challenged painting’s lesser status, by recommending techniques to secure its ele-
vation.19 In order for artists to raise their status from craftsmen to liberal artists,
Alberti recommended a broad education in the arts and letters, explaining that
painters should be well-versed in learned subjects, mathematics, and the scientific
application of colour. 20 Moreover, a painter was to produce didactic and socially
relevant works, so as to give artists a moral and eminent social function.
Alberti’s treatise was so influential that history painting remained the most es-
teemed genre well into the twentieth century, and its popularity in the Renaissance
improved the status of painters and painting in the hierarchy of the arts. In sum,
Alberti became one of the most influential figures to raise the artist’s status from
mere craftsman to celebrity. However, despite the considerable impact of his treatise,
Alberti unwittingly made painting dependent upon poetry by insisting on the preem-
inence of istoria, or narrative. Alberti writes that ‘[t]he most important part of the
painter’s work is the ‘historia,’ in which there should be every abundance and beauty
of things […].’21 For Alberti, subject matter should consist of the most respected nar-
ratives, such as Christian and antique sources. 22 So, Alberti’s artists were consigned
to imitate the word and the natural world, while trying to secure a personal style
demonstrative of individual genius. 23
Patrons, including guilds, wealthy families, rulers, and the church, seeking to dis-
play their ‘magnificence’ also competed with one another to commission the most
impressive and prestigious artworks and buildings. Rona Goffen has explained that
the revival of antiquity in the Renaissance similarly contributed to the boon in parag-
onising activity. Because the revival of antiquity drove artists to imitate the ancients,
this in turn led to a desire to rival these illustrious forebears; artists sought to surpass
one another through imitation of predecessors. 24 Likewise, the sense of rediscovery
4 The Paragone in Nineteenth-Century Art
made it feel as though antiquity was being rivalled in the artworks of a new breed
of competitive artists, who were keen to investigate and acknowledge their ability to
reflect antiquity in their works. 25 In his Lives, Vasari likened the return to antique
style to an epiphany, observing that many antique monuments had long been readily
available for such a discovery to be made, but it was the attitude towards them that
changed:

Before then [1250], during the years after Rome was sacked and devastated and
swept by fire, men had been able to see the remains of arches and colossi, statues,
pillars, and carved columns; but until the period we are discussing they had no
idea how to use or profit from this fine work. However, the artists who came
later, being perfectly able to distinguish between what was good and what was
bad, abandoned the old way of doing things and started once again to imitate the
works of antiquity as skilfully and carefully as they could. 26

Not known for his historical accuracy or consistency, Vasari later implied that the
early Renaissance artists lacked examples from antiquity to fully bring art back to
the perfection that it had achieved at that time. Not surprisingly, for Vasari only
the artists of his generation were of the calibre that could rival those of antiquity.
Imitation of antiquity was fuelled by the ongoing unearthing of antiquities at that
time. Vasari listed several ancient works that Renaissance artists had rediscovered,
including the Laocoön, a Hercules, the Belvedere Torso, a Venus, an Apollo, and a
Cleopatra, which he mentions were also described by Pliny. 27 Supposedly, these were
the greatest examples left by the ancients, rising from the soil like phoenixes out of
the ashes. By suggesting that ancient art was perfect, Vasari alleged that the revival of
antiquity was the defining discovery that led ‘modern’ artists to finally draw from the
best ­examples through which Renaissance art could be judged. 28
Further escalating the Renaissance paragone was Benedetto Varchi (1502–65),
who called for a public disputation on the merits of the arts. His writings, which were
later published as the Due Lezzioni (1550) documented his earlier ‘call to arms.’29
Varchi asked high-profile figures, such as Leonardo and Michelangelo Buonarroti
(1475–1564), to write letters defending the merits of their art, which he intended to
publicly debate.30 Leonardo eventually wrote a book on the concept of such a de-
bate. After Leonardo’s death his theoretical treatise remained unfinished, but parts
of it were disseminated throughout the sixteenth century under the title the Codex
Urbinas.31 Leonardo became the first Renaissance artist to leave a documented the-
oretical approach to the paragone, wherein he advocated for painting’s supremacy
over poetry and sculpture. 32 In 1651, Leonardo’s treatise (illustrated by Poussin) was
published in Italian and French and was re-published in both French and English in
the nineteenth century, thereby rekindling interest in his theories.
Leonardo’s text tackled centuries of western thinking that maintained painting’s
inferiority to poetry and was the first serious challenge to the sister arts tradition.
Leonardo defended painting as the highest art form amongst the arts; his rebel-
lious sentiments were voiced when he reversed Simonides’ famous epigram to say
‘If you assert that painting is dumb poetry, then the painter may call poetry blind
painting.’33 The Della Pittura included numerous arguments supporting painting’s
superiority over all other art forms, based on its comparative difficulty in execution,
 An Introduction to the Paragone 5
the intellectual skill required of a talented painter, the presumed superiority of the
sense of sight over hearing, and the greater expressive ability of visual rather than
auditory stimuli to affect an individual. These theories were also manifested in his
work; Leonardo created paintings that rivalled sculpture, reflecting his personal
competition with Michelangelo (who identified himself as a sculptor, despite his
skills in painting, poetry, and architecture). For example, Leonardo contended that
because a sculptor needed to exert himself physically he was a craftsman and there-
fore less intellectual and refined than a painter. 34
Artists in the sixteenth century, like Leonardo, predominantly justified the status
of the visual arts by emphasising their scientific qualities, relating the importance of
painting and sculpture to their respective abilities to imitate nature through mathe-
matical and empirical investigation.35 Empirical study, using the eye to perceive the
natural world, was therefore dependent upon the sense of sight, prompting Leonardo
to compare the arts to the senses. Leonardo’s arguments to uphold the eye over the
ear were numerous, many pivoting on the idea that the eye can perceive in an instant
what the ear must receive over time. Whereas Leonardo asserted that the ear could be
used to study the sciences, or the natural world, the eye (drawing from an Aristotelian
respect for the material) was necessary for the study of anatomy, optics, perspective,
proportion, etc. Leonardo explained that

Painting moves the senses more rapidly than poetry […] And if you were to describe
the image of some deities, such writing would never be venerated in the same way
as a painted goddess, since votive offerings and various prayers will continually
be made to such a picture. Many generations from diverse regions and across the
eastern seas will flock to it, and they will beg succour from such a painting but not
from writing.36

While many scholars acknowledge Michelangelo’s arguments for the divine ori-
gin of artistic genius, actually, both Leonardo and Michelangelo supported this
view. Leonardo stated that ‘Sometimes I will deduce effects from causes and at
other times causes from effects, adding also my own conclusions, some of which
do not arise in this way but may nonetheless be formulated — if the Lord, light of
all beings, deigns to illuminate my discourse on light.’37 While Leonardo pursued
the study of nature empirically, he contended that it is through this empiricism
and understanding of nature that one approaches love and understanding of God.
Speaking of ‘hypocrites’ who criticised painters for studying nature on religious
holidays, Leonardo wrote that

These people reprove painters who on feast-days study things which relate to
a true understanding of all the forms found in the works of nature and who
solicitously contrive to acquire an understanding of these things to the best of
their ability. But let such repressers be silent for this is the way to understand the
maker of so many wonderful things and the way to love so great an inventor, for
in truth great love is born of thorough knowledge of the beloved […]. 38

Leonardo’s famous Mona Lisa (ca. 1503–16, also called La Gioconda, Musée du
Louvre), exemplifies many of the painter’s paragonising approaches to the art of
6 The Paragone in Nineteenth-Century Art
painting. Even if portraiture was less illustrious than history painting, for Leonardo,
the image’s power lay in its intended audience. He explained in this passage:

And if the poet claims that he can inflame men to love […] the painter has the
power to do the same, and indeed more so, for he places before the lover’s eyes the
very image of the beloved object (and the lover) often engages with it […] which
he would not do were the same beauties placed before him by the writer; and so
much more (does painting) conquer the minds of men, to love and fall in love with
a painting, (even) when it does not portray any living woman.39

Luba Freedman and Claire Farago have both examined the optical effects in Leonardo’s
work. Freedman determines that Leonardo’s use of chiaroscuro and colour reflected his
scientific study of optics and light.40 For her part, Farago links Leonardo’s sfumato to
his study of aerial perspective and nature.41 Leonardo’s use of science to raise public
esteem for painting was made clear when he stated:

You say that a science is correspondingly more noble to the extent that it embraces
a more worthy subject, and accordingly, that a spurious speculation about the na-
ture of God is more valuable than one concerned with something less elevated. In
reply we will state that painting, which embraces only the works of God, is more
worthy than poetry, which only embraces the lying fictions of the works of man.42

Another trend that contributed to competition between artists was the rise of artis-
tic biographies.43 In these accounts of artists’ lives, the rivalries and confrontations
between artists were often documented, including those between Leonardo and Mi-
chelangelo, or Raphael and Michelangelo. Although the treatise that Michelangelo
intended to write on the arts was never realised, his paragonising arguments have
filtered down to us through his poems and the writings of others. Possibly inspired
by Neo-Platonic philosophy, Michelangelo argued that a sculptor’s inspiration was of
divine origin and that creativity originated from the artist’s intellect.44 His famous
poem to Varchi substantiated this theory. When Varchi called for artists and writers
to send him letters defending the merits of their arts, Michelangelo chose to defend
the art of sculpture. Varchi’s Due Lezzioni was based on two lectures that he deliv-
ered before the Accademia Fiorentina in 1547; they demonstrated that the paragone
had become an important theoretical approach to the creative process. Varchi was
not neutral in the paragone debate. Mendelsohn, in her study of Varchi, notes that
arguments for sculpture’s superiority coincided with a brief moment when sculpture
reigned in the hierarchy of the arts.45 In his first lecture, Varchi championed the art of
sculpture and specifically Michelangelo by responding to a sonnet that the latter had
written in response to Varchi’s invitation to debate the merits of the arts (called Non
ha l’ottimo artista alcun concetto […]).46 Perhaps challenging Leonardo’s support of
painting over poetry and sculpture, Michelangelo argued for sculpture’s superiority.47
In 1547 he wrote the following to Varchi: ‘In my opinion painting is to be considered
the better the more it approaches relief, and relief is to be considered the worse the
more it approaches painting: and therefore I used to feel that sculpture was the lan-
tern of painting, and that there was the difference between them as between the sun
and the moon.’ Michelangelo added that he had come to see painting and sculpture
more like equals, since he had read Varchi’s discussion that the two are the same.
 An Introduction to the Paragone 7
Michelangelo’s earnestness should be questioned though, since he also insulted those
claiming that painting was nobler than sculpture. The passage of Varchi’s response to
which Michelangelo probably refers is this:

I hold as certain, that substantively sculpture and painting are one art only, and
consequently equally noble in relation to each other. [In support of] this point
I present the reason alleged above, that is, that the arts are recognized by their
‘ends’ [fine] and all those arts that have the same ends are essentially one and
the same, although in ‘accidentals’ they may differ. Now everyone confesses that
not only the end is the same, that is the artificial imitation of nature, but also the
principle, that is, disegno.48

In the nineteenth century, Michelangelo appealed especially to Romantic artists, who

saw in the stereotype of his melancholic and divinely gifted persona an equivalent
of their own new visions of the artist’s role in society. The view of Michelangelo
as an intellectual was ironically due to his poetry. In 1857, John S. Harford pub-
lished a biography of Michelangelo that included English translations of his sonnets.49
­Michelangelo’s poem described something called the concetto, meaning the creative
idea in the artist’s mind. From the immaterial idea, the artist, like God, creates by giv-
ing shape to the idea in material form. In this way, Michelangelo seemed to illustrate
the sculptor’s virtue and intellect, as the sculptor ekes the concetto or artistic vision
out of earthly matter. A clever illustration for the divine origin of artistic genius might
be illustrated in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, from the Sistine Chapel in Rome
(Fig. 1.1, ca. 1510).50 Adam, representative of humanity, is about to be transformed by
God’s touch, such that the figures become a metaphor for the transference of God-like
divine genius from God himself to the artist or man. Since antiquity, artistic creation
had been equated with god-like, creative powers — the artist, like a god, creates some-
thing from nothing. So, the Creation of Adam encapsulates, even if unintentionally,
Michelangelo’s theory of art, illustrating an origin of creativity and genius that is a
mental and divinely bestowed gift. Michelangelo’s competitive nature is seen else-
where in the Sistine Chapel. While he did not argue for painting’s supremacy in the
hierarchy of the arts, it is quite possible that Michelangelo’s Last Judgement, which
was commissioned by Pope Paul III (ca. 1536–41), challenged not only poetry through
Dantesque imagery, 51 but also endeavoured to surpass his many respected predeces-
sors, whose works lined the walls of the Chapel, including Raphael and Perugino.52
Scholarship on the Renaissance paragone has been expanding beyond Michelangelo
and Leonardo. For example, in 2011 Rudolf Preimesberger published Paragons and
Paragone: Van Eyck, Raphael, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Bernini, which followed
Rona Goffen’s Renaissance Rivals from 2004. The Renaissance paragone has most
often been studied through the theories of Leonardo or rivalries between specific
artists, but the phenomenon was driven through theoretical and critical discourse, as
well as patronage and the quest for artistic virtue and magnificence. 53

The Paragone of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

In the wake of the Renaissance, artistic fame reached its height in grand Manner-
ist programmes, whose patrons demanded increasingly esoteric subject matter and
extraordinary illusionism. Still, despite new-found status and appreciation for the
8 The Paragone in Nineteenth-Century Art

Figure 1.1 M
 ichelangelo Buonarroti, Creation of Adam, 1508–12. fresco, Sistine Chapel,
Vatican Palace, Vatican City.
Credit: Alinari; Art Resource, NY.

artist, the paragone continued to be played out. 54 In 1637 Charles Alphonse du

­Fresnoy (1611–65) wrote the poem De arte graphica (published in 1667), wherein
he exclaimed: ‘Let poetry be like painting; and let painting resemble poetry; let them
compete with each other and exchange their tasks and names; one is called mute po-
etry, the other shall be known as speaking painting.’55 This poem demonstrates the
extent to which painting and poetry were being likened to one another as sister arts
following the Renaissance. Theorists even argued that painting’s formal elements,
such as colour, line, and composition, were comparable to poetry’s words and com-
position. 56 It was seen as the mandate of both arts to express human emotion through
expressive means at the disposal of either the painter or poet. So, the original doctrine
of ut pictura poesis, which emphasised the similarity of the arts (in purpose but not
in form) was extended to include the latter. But the sister arts theory could be abused.
Du ­Fresnoy’s poem indicates that at times the goal of resembling one another made
painting and poetry likely to subsume each other, making the other irrelevant. The-
oretical approaches to the arts continued to crop up throughout the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, as the medieval guild system was phased out by academies that
supported individual education and promotion, just as Alberti had wanted.
Another trend developed in the eighteenth century was that theoreticians set out
to define the natural limits or qualities of the arts. Some of these treatises included
 An Introduction to the Paragone 9
Roger de Piles’ (1635–1709) Cours de peinture par principes (1708), Dubos’ Réflex-
ions critique sur la poésie et la peinture (1719), Antoine Coypel’s (1661–1722) On
the Excellence of Painting (1721), and James Harris’s (1709–80) Treatise Concerning
Music, Painting, and Poetry (1744).57 Leonardo’s contribution was revived and dis-
seminated with the seventeenth-century publication of his treatise, which included
illustrations by Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665). 58 Despite these developments, poetry
remained more prestigious than painting, since it was argued that the former could
better express abstract or immaterial ideas, while the latter should limit itself to the
natural and material world. 59 The French eighteenth-century theorist Dubos called
attention to another widely held belief regarding the limits of the arts, emphasising
the temporal limitations of painting. He wrote that

The poetic composition of a painting, is the ingenious arrangement of figures

designed to render the action that they represent the most touching and realistic.
This demands that all of the characters be linked to the principal action, because
a painting can only incorporate many moments, on the condition that all of the
particular actions are united by a principal action, and that they make up but a
single and homogeneous subject.60

While it may at first seem that painting has been given the upper hand in Dubos’
comparison of the arts, he placed painting in the natural realm based on its ability to
arouse the passions rather than the intellect. In this manner, he aligned it with an un-
educated audience. Dubos stated that ‘Painting makes use of natural signs that do not
require education to understand […] It is nature herself that painting submits before
our eyes.’61 The ‘natural’ had, such as in eighteenth-century writings of influential fig-
ures such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), been linked with feminine, passionate,
or irrational properties. So, references to painting’s supposed femininity were also to
be found in poetic and critical writings.62
Despite early attempts to differentiate between the two arts, it was not until his
influential text Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry (1766) that
the eighteenth-century theorist Lessing sought to create non-competitive spheres for
the arts. Lessing’s work was significant to inter-arts relationships, because it was one
of the most important theoretical contributions to the paragone and ut pictura poesis
traditions since the Renaissance, and because it synthesised and responded to a his-
tory of inter-arts relationships since antiquity.63 Paragonising tactics often involved
artists appropriating the power of an art being rivalled, such as the manifestation of
poetic qualities in paintings. For Lessing, these were transgressive acts degrading to
both painting and poetry, in that each sought to behave inappropriately like the other.
Lessing levelled his own criticism at the havoc that art criticism and other writers were
causing, in forcing the arts to behave inappropriately by breaking their own limits:

Indeed, this spurious criticism [art criticism] has to some degree misled even the
masters of the arts. In poetry in has engendered a mania for description and in
painting a mania for allegory, by attempting to make the former a speaking pic-
ture, without actually knowing what it could and ought to paint, and the latter a
silent poem, without having considered to what degree it is able to express general
ideas without denying its true function and degenerating into a purely arbitrary
means of expression.64
10 The Paragone in Nineteenth-Century Art
Using these distinctions, Lessing cleaved the sister arts tradition in two, establishing
separate laws and objectives for painting and poetry. His text was the first compre-
hensive attempt to define the limits of the respective arts. One of the basic justifi-
cations for Lessing’s system of limits was that, because of the sequential nature of
words, poetry belonged to the realm of time, while painting, because of its ability to
depict illusionistic space and ‘bodies in space,’ was spatial.65 The time-versus-space
distinction provided a basis for determining painting and poetry’s innate properties.
Time and space were opposed through comparison with other unequal qualities in
binary thought, such that poetry became temporal, masculine, cultural, contem-
plative, sublime, and capable of expressing complex intellectual subjects; whereas
painting was feminine, natural, sensual, beautiful, and limited to a single narrative
moment.66 In Lessing’s system painting was feminised, despite the painter’s belief in
its masculine vigour. As much as the principle of binary thought is contested now,
it is important to understanding previous eras when it was considered an acceptable
form of logic. Clearly, Lessing was not an impartial arbiter between the arts, as he
routinely associated poetry with culturally superior attributes. Mitchell contends
that it was Lessing’s bias as a German writer that prompted him to categorise paint-
ing as a foreign (and most likely French) uncontrollable and less effectual ‘sister’ to
poetry. In Lessing’s system, painting always trespasses into poetry’s domain, making
it an aberrant ‘other.’67 In deciphering Lessing’s system and its numerous prejudices
Mitchell concludes that the theorist has even gone so far as to ascribe genders to the
arts, whereby the visual arts were feminised and the poetic arts were masculinised.68
Although Lessing’s theories were intended to be applied in practice to the arts, even
though Lessing’s paragonising text was influential, poets and artists who might have
been aware of his theories were not entirely willing to implement his rules in artistic
production. Most of Lessing’s limits (and those in systems like his) where the visual
arts were diminished in status were at odds with typical academic instruction, given
the investment of these institutions in painting and sculpture’s prestige. Rensselaer
Lee proposes that Lessing’s limits were simply too strict; they invited transgression,
particularly by painters, for whom he denied a claim to ­humankind’s thoughts and
emotions.69 But for Lessing, these limits defended the hapless viewer against the iconic
power of visual imagery. He maintained that ‘The plastic arts in particular — aside
from the inevitable influence they exert on the character of a nation — have an effect
that demands close supervision by the law.’ 70 Lessing’s iconophobia caused him to
­demonise the image.71 For Lessing and his ilk poetry and painting’s limits were not
just practical, but moral. Since opposing qualities in Lessing’s system were not of equal
value, the ascription of these qualities to each art demonstrated their inherent, virtues,
vices, and inequality. Writing in the early nineteenth century, Antoine-­Chrysostome
Quatremère de Quincy (1755–1849) also identified art’s moral responsibilities: ‘Every
art is therefore, both morally and physically, restricted to unity of object in its ­imitation,
and unity of subject in its work.’72 One must assume that (like Lessing) Quatremère, as
secretary of the academy in Paris and a prolific writer on his theory of education and
other topics in academic life, would consider an artist’s disregard for the limits of his
or her art form to be immoral.
Lessing and Quatremère represented a growing trend whereby theoreticians pub-
licly debated the merits of the arts. When Lessing’s Laocoön was published in French
in 1802, its translator, Charles Vanderbourg, wrote in the introduction that Lessing’s
treatise might incite competitive reactions. He also called for heightened attention in
 An Introduction to the Paragone 11
France to the theory of the arts (by which he meant aesthetic theory) saying that the
French needed to catch up to this growing branch of European scholarship. In his
view, the best reaction to the translation would be for Lessing’s readers to counter his
theories by writing their own treatises on the arts. Vanderbourg explained:

It might be possible for us to hope that apparently it [Lessing’s text] will reawaken
the public’s attention to the theory of the arts, and it will give birth to other treatises
that will be destined to expand Lessing’s ideas, or to combat them. Because this is
ordinarily the kind of book that makes one think, and this is not its least merit.
This will be the most flattering reward that this translation could offer the work.73

Vanderbourg was right, because Gottfried von Herder’s (1744–1803) treatise Sculp-
ture: Some Observations on Form and Shape from Pygmalion’s Creative Dream
(1778) was crafted as a rebuttal to Lessing’s treatise, which lumped sculpture in
with painting under the label of the visual arts, motivating Herder, who was a great
admirer of sculpture, to argue for sculpture’s status as a distinct and celebrated
medium within visual media.
In his call for combative responses, Vanderbourg acknowledged the contentious-
ness of Lessing’s treatise with regards to the artistic tradition in France and therefore
the forcefulness of Lessing’s rules. Vanderbourg wrote:

He [Lessing] seeks to determine the respective limits of the two arts, proving
that the rules of one are not always the rules of the other, and establishing new
rules that are formed on the nature of painting and poetry themselves, which are
confirmed by the examples of the ancients.// We know of no other didactic work
that is more properly designed to show poets and artists the many stumbling
blocks they must avoid, in imitating […].74

Whether a student of the arts had ever read Lessing’s treatise or not, by the end of the
nineteenth century, these limit-imposing aesthetic theories had become so familiar
that most artists would have been introduced to their general principles at some point.
They had, moreover, been re-circulated by nineteenth-century writers such as Charles
Blanc (1813–82) in his Grammaire des arts du dessin (1867).
In addition to inheriting the burden of these artistic limits, eighteenth-century
French artists were motivated to engage in the paragone due to changes in offi-
cial arts institutions. In France, when the monarchy fell in 1789, so too did the
Académie royale and the security of official patronage. When Jacques-Louis David
(1748–1825) reformed the academy under the banner of Republicanism, he encour-
aged artists to become paragons of civic virtue. These changes meant that artists
were more dependent on the bourgeois consumer’s taste and the public’s regard for
art’s value. Moreover, the Salon and the academy became increasingly conceived
as public institutions, giving less power to the artist and more power to bourgeois
tastes and ever-changing fancy. As a government-funded institution, the Salon also
came to be public property and bound to serve the people rather than a monarch.
Such instability created an environment ripe for the paragone.
Another issue that complicated the status of artists was that, irrespective of the
potential fame that individual artists could achieve, the old medieval issue of artis-
tic production as a trade continued to plague eighteenth-century artists. The switch
12 The Paragone in Nineteenth-Century Art
from annual to biennial Salons in the mid-eighteenth century was supposed to lessen
pressure caused by annual critical responses, but also was meant to dispel the impres-
sion that painters were craftsmen churning out new works each year just to fill the
Salon. Hence, a longer interval between Salons was instituted in order to encourage
better-quality work and to provide reprieve from the growing tensions between visual
artists and writers (art critics).75
The paragone of the Renaissance similarly retained its grip on eighteenth-century
artists. Alberti’s standards for educating history painters were still felt when students
of Paris’s École were required to take courses in geometry, perspective, anatomy, po-
etry, fables, history, and geography. Additionally, they were expected to contribute to
the academy’s intellectual life by attending conferences and lectures.76 Jean Locquin,
who was a historian of the academy, stated that ‘The history painter is a man of let-
ters, and of cultivated intelligence, who is familiar with the epic poets, with the prin-
cipal historians, [and] the ancients and the moderns […].’ 77 Locquin’s account of the
academic approach to antiquity at the end of the eighteenth century provides insight
into the competitive objectives of both the institution and its members. Within the ac-
ademic systems there were distinctions being made between different types of artists,
thereby bolstering an atmosphere of rivalry. French academicians expressed concern
over the hierarchy of painterly genres, compared to sculpture, music, and poetry, due
to reaction against the popular, though often criticised, Rococo movement — Michael
Fried considers this development symptomatic of painting’s falling status.78 The lowest
genres were considered more akin to a craft, while the highest genre was reserved for
the most intellectual and gifted painters. Typically, still-life and landscape paintings
were in the least prestigious categories. Portraits and genre subjects (scenes of every-
day often domestic life) were somewhat more respected, as they represented human
subjects.79 In the tradition of Alberti, history paintings (mythological, Biblical, and
allegorical subjects) were most esteemed. It was also believed that history painting,
which included human figures, was most aesthetically gratifying, due to the human
body’s naturally greater beauty in comparison to non-human subjects. Denis Diderot
(1713–84), who was one of the first celebrity art critics of the eighteenth century,
­justified the human figure’s importance, saying that

Because flesh is more beautiful than the most beautiful of draperies. Because the
body of a man, his chest, arms and shoulders, and the feet, hands, and throat of
a woman are more beautiful than the richest of the materials with which they
might be covered. Because their execution is more difficult, requiring greater
skill […] and by using nudes the scene is rendered more remote, bringing to mind
a simpler, more innocent age, more primitive moral values that are better adapted
to the imitative arts.80

Herder also argued for the human body’s preeminence as a subject because it teaches
the most about nature.81 But, what separated the history painter from mere craftsman
was not just his or her subject matter and the skill to render it — it was his or her
moral societal obligation to present edifying and educational content.82 Clearly, his-
tory painters were held to different standards than genre painters, the latter seeming
to intensify painting’s commodification. Lower subjects were actually more lucrative,
because artists catered to wealthy middle and upper-class patrons, without having to
rely on infrequent if major commissions from official institutions.83
 An Introduction to the Paragone 13
To identify the place that new academicians would occupy in the system, in order
to be accepted to the Académie artists were required to submit an acceptance piece,
the genre of which determined their academic rank. Only history painters could
hold the most respected positions within the academy, could be appointed court
painters, or could hold important awards.84 In 1668 André Félibien (1619–95) ex-
plained that the different genres of art were based on subject matter, with history
painting at the hierarchy’s apex.85 Despite the continued regard for history paint-
ing, genre painting increased in popularity and influence throughout the eighteenth
century, resulting from the seventeenth-century’s growing art market, which height-
ened concern for history painting’s degeneration and fed fears that the educated,
esteemed, and intellectual history painter — a breed born of the Renaissance —
would soon be extinct.86
To complicate matters, history painters and genre painters, being so segregated by
the academic system and public expectations, were competitive with one another.
Many critics, for example, extolled the virtues of the lesser genres. Interestingly,
Diderot claimed in his writings to see the merits of genre scenes, to the degree that
he considered them on par in difficulty and social value with history paintings.
He even suggested that genre paintings could be poetic, and the product of genius
and truth. Nevertheless, when Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805), who was a well-
known genre painter, tried to submit a history painting as his acceptance piece to
the academy, seeking a status that was higher than what he had accomplished in his
career, Diderot was amongst those who condemned the work and Greuze’s right to
hold such a status.87 In sum, the discourse surrounding the status of the arts and
the genres in France was central to understanding the development of the paragone
in the eighteenth century.

The Paragone of the Nineteenth Century

The paragone in the nineteenth century was primarily shaped by the foundations
laid in the previous century. The nineteenth century was also the period of greatest
ongoing change in academies and their systems.88 These changes in Europe and Great
Britain were significant, and relevant to the rise of the paragone in the works of many
artists.89 While France’s political system oscillated between monarchy, empire, and
other forms of government throughout the nineteenth century, artists became increas-
ingly suspicious of the governmentally run academy, and its wisdom with regards to
holding exhibitions, judging works to be shown in the Salon, and upholding the cali-
bre of artistic achievement deemed suitable for the nation. Even though the Salon had
been the primary exhibition venue until the early nineteenth century, by the late 1840s
artists were unhappy with the status quo. A famous example of this is, of course,
Gustave Courbet’s (1819–77) decision to hold his own ‘Pavilion of Realism’ (1855)
outside the academy’s exhibition, upon learning that his works had not been accepted.
Many other artists also chose to show their works ‘on the fringe,’ establishing venues
like the Salon des refusés, which was first held in 1863 and included Edouard Manet
(1832–83) and the Impressionists, who held independent exhibitions throughout the
1870s. Additionally, in response to increasing pressure to become more inclusive, the
size of the academy’s exhibitions continued to increase, to the point that by the late
nineteenth century there were concerns about its (by then) open-door policy. It had
become possible for thousands of artworks to be shown in a single exhibition, giving
14 The Paragone in Nineteenth-Century Art
the impression that the artworks had not been chosen based on quality, but rather on
their ability to sell. Many of the artists began to exhibit in smaller private galleries,
demonstrating the failure of the academies both in France and England to provide
satisfactory exhibition policies.
One of the few nineteenth-century artists to have been directly linked to the par-
agone in art historical scholarship is Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863). Building on the
work of George Mras, scholars have considered Delacroix’s position on the status
of the arts in the context of the continued popularity of Lessing-like limits in the
academy throughout the Romantic period.90 Delacroix’s reaction to changing aes-
thetic theories amongst Romantic artists, poets, and musicians reflected changes that
would be felt for the rest of the century regarding the increasing power of art critics.
Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) considered Delacroix the true peintre-poète (applied
favourably), having the ability to capture poetic nobility in a visual medium. How-
ever, Baudelaire was not without his own literary bias, which is evident in his state-
ment that ‘The best account of a painting can be a sonnet or an elegy.’ 91 As both
an art critic and theorist, Baudelaire interjected himself into the paragone, which
is especially evident in his Salons and the essay The Painter of Modern Life (1863),
wherein he took it upon himself to advise painters on what to paint and how.92 In
Baudelaire’s essay, he addressed the new expectations regarding artistic theory and
production. For instance, David Scott notes that changing opinions regarding the
artist’s status and the nature of creative inspiration encouraged writers and visual
artists to believe in the innate, almost supernatural, source of the artistic creative
drive in both the written and visual arts, as Delacroix did. The issue of the creative
impulse and broadening of the definition of an ‘artist’ to include writers contributed
to the Romantic conception of artistic genius. Indeed, the writings of Baudelaire and
Delacroix show such an obsessive concern for artistic genius. Writing of his creative
impulse Delacroix says that ‘There is something in me that is stronger than my body,
which is often given new heart by it. In some people this inner power seems almost
non-existent, but with me it is greater than my physical strength. Without it I should
die, but in the end it will burn me up — I suppose I mean my imagination, that domi-
nates me and drives me on.’93 These words epitomise the tortured, Romantic, creative
genius, which Delacroix glamorises.
The budding aesthetic theories of the eighteenth century continued to carve deeper
trenches between nineteenth-century writers, art critics, and visual artists. For ex-
ample, evolving ideas about the nature of artistic inspiration led to new problems in
aesthetic theory. Throughout the Romantic era, poetry was equated with music more
often than it was with painting, since both poetry and music were considered imma-
terial art forms and comparable in their temporal composition. The Romanticists
judged the merits of the arts based on their ability to prove the divine inspiration of
artists and on their respective dependence upon material or sensual form. The less
material an art form, like music, the higher it was esteemed. This prejudice towards
the material was a vestige of Plato, yet the Christian tradition likewise celebrated the
non-physical. Music’s immateriality made it transcendent; consequently, the merits of
painting and poetry were often judged on their ability to be like music.94 At this time,
the sister-arts tradition was revived in a new Romantic version of ut pictura poesis,
wherein it was acknowledged that the arts were distinct from one another, even if they
were united in expressing the artist or poet’s imagination. For the Romantics, the ge-
nius of artistic imagination even became more important than the artist’s learnedness
 An Introduction to the Paragone 15
and training. Nevertheless, poetry remained superior to painting, in part due to its
supposed greater immateriality.
Another factor in nineteenth-century paragone history is that art exhibitions were
increasingly written about in Salon reviews, arts and culture periodicals, and news-
papers. Earlier in the century it became more frequent for critics to write prosaic
ekphrases on exhibited works. Tensions in this arena were already surfacing in the
eighteenth century, when Salons were held annually from 1737 to 1748 (with some
exceptions) and then biennially from 1751 to 1791. The switch from an annual to bi-
ennial programme was prompted by the negative critical responses artists had been re-
ceiving each year. Artists found this intense criticism unsupportable, to the degree that
the Salon of 1749 was cancelled.95 Critical ekphrases were often construed as attempts
on the critic’s part to demonstrate his or her own poetic genius, thereby surpassing
the visual work that he or she was describing.96 So, artists were at the poet’s mercy
with regards to the public’s impression of their work and its success in the artistic
community. Despite the fact that this trend was begun by famous eighteenth-century
critics, such as Diderot, the scale of such criticism was unprecedented in the nineteenth
century. The predominance of the art critic gave writers new power over painters and
sculptors. Their heightened vulnerability to the critic caused many artists to feel that
they were being unjustly victimised by the often negative critiques.97 As such, the em-
powered art critic could often ‘smell the fear’ and negatively influence the success of an
artist’s career. Delacroix’s feelings towards the art critic bespoke the angst that many
artists like him felt at this time. In his journal he wrote this:

Precious realm of painting! That silent power that speaks at first only to the
eyes and then seizes and captivates every faculty of the soul! Here is your real
spirit; here is your own true beauty, beautiful painting, so much insulted, so
grievously misunderstood and delivered up to fools who exploit you. But there are
still hearts ready to welcome you devoutly, souls who will no more be satisfied
with mere phrases than with inventions and clever artifices. You have only to be
seen in your masculine vigour to give pleasure that is pure and absolute.98

Moreover, many of the so-called art critics were in actuality poets in their own
right, who often derived poetic subject matter from the visual arts. Overall, the
nineteenth-century painter was experiencing expanded vulnerability to the poet and
the written word. Adding to this vulnerability was the increase in popular media,
such as photography, book illustration, and periodicals, all of which challenged the
relevance of more conventional media in modern life.
While the paragone was an especially lively debate during the nineteenth century, it
has been argued that as long as there are changes in the art world, there will be new
reasons for rivalries and tensions between the arts to increase, or at least continue.
Mitchell chronicles the validity of many of the paragonising texts upon which much
of the debate has been centred. He rightly points out that the paragone is an ongoing
struggle that recurs without resolution. Mitchell suggests that the artistic impulse
itself is a competitive one that is perpetually exacerbated by the preponderance of the-
orists, whose motives are often prejudiced.99 If artists and theorists represent cultural
trends, then the arguments for the superiority of an art form, in Mitchell’s analysis,
are important to scholarship in all areas, because they represent broader concerns
from every aspect of cultural production.100 If one agrees with Mitchell, the study
16 The Paragone in Nineteenth-Century Art
of the paragone becomes not just the examination of how one artist or writer rivals
others, but how his or her concept of that rivalry has been shaped by the cultural
influences on his or her life and art form.
Another contributor to nineteenth-century paragone studies is Alexandra Wet-
tlaufer. In her book Pen vs. Paintbrush: Girodet, Balzac, and the Myth of Pygmalion
in Post-revolutionary France, and her article on Girodet’s Endymion, Wettlaufer as a
scholar of comparative literature offers a seminal analysis of the paragone in the work
of Girodet.101 Wettlaufer’s book opens with a brief history of the paragone, ending
with Leonardo.102 She acknowledges that despite many examinations of word–image
relationships, few scholars have analysed the theoretical relationships between rivals
in artistic production, even though this is greatest in the nineteenth century. As in
my own work, and that of Mras, Wettlaufer considers the nineteenth century as a
culmination of the paragone, due to the social circumstances that put the artists in
precarious social and political circumstances.103

A Brief Note on Methodology in Nineteenth-Century Scholarship

A point needs to be made about the usefulness of art history in examining the par-
agone. There is a bias, or perhaps competition, that occurs when using words to
decipher the arguments of visual artists. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
artists did not distinguish between art historians and art critics (Delacroix and
Moreau are both examples of this). As a result, the history of art history was bound
up in the competitive world out of which the art critic emerged. Therefore, acknowl-
edging the paragone, for some scholars, is at some level threatening and conten-
tious. As we question the validity of those who usurp the legacy of an artwork with
words, this author included, we must also question the art historian’s authenticity
as a verbal contributor to the debate, if not the entire discipline. An example of this
phenomenon may be found in Post-Modernist art history, where the methodologi-
cal popularity of critical theory sometimes negates the artwork itself, proving that
some art historians prefer not to compete with the art object at all; rather, they
leave a legacy in rhetorical devices, and occasionally in convoluted or impenetrable
arguments. Therefore, the art historian plays in the same sandbox with art critics,
philosophers, musicians, and artists, all of whom are vying for supremacy in the
debate, and for the grandest legacy, whether visual or verbal.

Notes
1 Both Plutarch and Cicero credited Simonides with this contribution. In the De Gloria
Atheniensium Plutarch quoted Simonides. Other ancient writers to compare the arts in-
clude Cicero (Tusculans), Longinus (On the Sublime), Plato (The Republic), and Aristotle
(Poetics). Henryk Markiewicz, ‘Ut Pictura Poesis […] A History of the Topos and the
Problem,’ New Literary History 18, no. 3 (Spring 1987), 536. For the full study see
535–58.
2 Rensselaer W. Lee, ‘Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting,’ The Art
Bulletin 22 (1940), 197. For the full study see 197–269.
3 Horace, The Art of Poetry: The Poetical Treatises of Horace, Vida, and Boileau, ed.
Albert S. Cook, trans. Francis Howes, Christopher Pitt, William Soame (Boston: Ginn
and Company, 1892), 27.
4 Markiewicz, ‘Ut Pictura Poesis,’ 535. Although it is likely that Horace never intended
for his expression to mean that the arts should imitate each other’s content and means of
 An Introduction to the Paragone 17
expression, his statement nevertheless remained the justification for those who encour-
aged this sister arts approach to the doctrine of ut pictura poesis. See also Wesley Trimpi,
‘The Meaning of Horace’s Ut Pictura Poesis,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Institutes 36 (1973), 1–34.
5 Plato, Great Dialogues of Plato, trans. W.H.D. Rouse, ed. Eric H. Warmington and
Philip G. Roush (New York: Mentor, 1984). See Book X of the Republic for Plato’s dis-
cussion of artists. See also Rupert Lodge, Plato’s Theory of Art (New York: Russell and
Russell, 1975). Plato describes the senses, through which the visual arts are perceived, as
untrustworthy. He wrote following: ‘Take our perceptions then. I can point to some of
these which do not provoke thought to reflect upon them, because we are satisfied with
the judgement of the senses. But in other cases perception seems to yield no trustworthy
result, and reflection is instantly demanded […].’ From Plato, Republic: Book V, trans.
Francis M. Cornford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945), 238–9.
6 For Aristotle’s discussion of imitation and the arts see Poetics, The Basic Works of Aristotle,
trans. Ingram Bywater, ed. R. McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), 1459a28. For an
analysis of Aristotle’s art theory see Garry Hagberg, ‘Aristotle’s Mimesis and Abstract Art,’
Philosophy 59, no. 229 (Jul., 1984), 365–71. See also Samuel Henry Butcher, Aristotle’s
Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, with a Critical Text and Translation of the Poetics (New
York: Dover, 1951). For theories of art in general see works such as Moshe Barasch, Theo-
ries of Art: From Plato to Winckelmann (New York: New York University Press, 1985). An
examination of how Aristotle and Plato’s theories were absorbed into Renaissance theory is
discussed at length in Leatrice Mendelsohn’s, Paragoni: Benedetto Varchi’s Due Lezzioni
and Cinquecento Art Theory (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1982).
7 Markiewicz, ‘Ut Pictura Poesis,’ 536. Markiewicz is quoting St. Augustine, In Ioannis
Evangelium, 24.2 here.
8 Richard Turner, Renaissance Florence: The Invention of a New Art (Upper Saddle River,
NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997), 47–67.
9 Another scholar of inter-arts relationships who discusses the early impact of Dante is
James Hall in his book The World of Sculpture: The Changing Status of Sculpture from
the ­Renaissance to the Present Day (London: Chatto & Windus, 1999), 10–14. Hall
­focuses on the history of sculpture from antiquity to the present.
10 Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. Carlyle-Okey-Wicksteed (New York: Vin-
tage Books, 1959), 251. The significance of these passages to the paragone was brought to
my attention by Dr. James Miller of Western University (London, Canada).
11 Lee, ‘Theory of Painting,’ 228. For Leonardo’s interest in Dante see Charlotte F. Johnson,
‘Leonardo and Dante,’ American Imago XXIX (1972), 177–85. For Michelangelo’s inter-
est in Dante see Bernadine Barnes, ‘Metaphorical Painting: Michelangelo, Dante, and the
Last Judgment,’ Art Bulletin (Mar. 1995), 65–81.
12 Aida Audeh, ‘Rodin’s Gates of Hell: Sculptural Illustration of Dante’s Divine Comedy,’
in Rodin: A Magnificent Obsession (London: Merrell Holberton Publishers, 2001),
93–126. Audeh observes that the Romanticists revived Dante, who was viewed in France
as the archetypal artistic genius. See also James H. Rubin, ‘Delacroix’s Dante and Virgil
as a ­Romantic Manifesto: Politics and Theory in the Early 1820s,’ Art Journal 52, no. 2
­(Summer 1993), 48–58.
13 For a study of the artistic signature’s development in Renaissance art see Sarah Blake
McHam, ‘Reflections of Pliny in Giovanni Bellini’s Woman with a Mirror,’ Artibus et
Historiae 29, no. 58 (2008), 157–71.
14 Lee, ‘Theory of Painting,’ 203.
15 Cennino d’Andrea Cennini, The Craftsman’s Handbook: Il Libro dell’Arte, trans. Daniel
V. Thompson, Jr. (New York, Dover Publications, Inc., 1933), 16.
16 Mendelsohn, Varchi, 43.
17 Leonardo on Painting, trans. Martin Kemp and Margaret Walker, intro. and ed. Martin
Kemp (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 37.
18 Alberti’s first version of his treatise On Painting was written in Latin, but he intended it to be
used by artists so the second version was in the vernacular Italian: the Della Pittura of 1436.
19 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, trans. Cecil Grayson, intro. and notes Martin Kemp
(Penguin Classics, 1991).
18 The Paragone in Nineteenth-Century Art
20 On the education of the Renaissance see Charles Dempsey, ‘Some Observations on the
Education of Artists in Florence and Bologna during the Later Sixteenth Century,’ Art
Bulletin 62 (1980), 552–69.
21 Alberti, On Painting, 93.
22 Alberti, On Painting, 91. In Alberti’s opinion, the artist must choose the best examples
from nature: ‘So let us always take from nature whatever we are about to paint, and let us
always choose those things that are most beautiful and worthy.’
23 Giorgio Vasari’s The Lives of the Artists, trans. Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bon-
danella (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), in which he documented the success of
the most popular artists of the period, reflected this new respect for the individual artist
in its biographical methodology. In focusing on biographies, he emphasised the growing
appreciation for intellect, virtue, genius, and skill in visual artists, thereby contributing to
their rising social status. A modern Italian edition has appeared in Le vite de’ più eccellenti
pittori, scultori e architettori, ed. Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti (Milan: Rizzoli, 1942–9). For
a study on some of Vasari’s theories see Frederika H. Jacobs, ‘Vasari’s Vision of the History
of Painting: Frescoes in the Casa Vasari, Florence,’ Art Bulletin 66 (Sept., 1984), 399–416.
24 Rona Goffen, Renaissance Rivals: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian (London
and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). For another examination of Leonardo’s
competitive approach see E. Panofsky, The Codex Huygens and Leonardo’s Art Theory
(Studies of the Warburg Institute, XIII) (London: Warburg Institute, 1940).
25 On this expansive issue see Leonard Barkan, Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aes-
thetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).
26 Vasari, Lives, preface to part 1.
27 Vasari, Lives, 279.
28 Vasari, Lives, 297. He wrote the following:
The artisans who followed them succeeded after seeing the excavation of some of the
most famous antiquities […] which exhibit in their softness and harshness the expres-
sions of real flesh copied from the most beautiful details of living models and endowed
with certain movements which do not distort them but lend them motion and the
utmost grace. And these statues caused the disappearance of a certain dry, crude, and
clear-cut style which was bequeathed to this craft through excessive study […].
With regards to models for painters to follow, and the qualities that set Raphael apart,
Vasari cites Apelles and Zeuxis as exemplars of the best painters:
Raphael of Urbino, who studied the efforts of both the ancient and modern masters,
taking the best elements from them all; and, by assimilating them, he enriched the
art of painting with the kind of complete perfection reflected in the ancient works of
Apelles and Zeuxis and his work equalled theirs.
Lives, 280. Alberti also discussed such figures. On Painting, 93.
29 See Benedetto Varchi, Opera di Benedetto Varchi (Trieste: Lloyd Austriaco, 1859).
30 See Varchi’s Due Lezzioni, and Mendelsohn’s study on Varchi Paragoni.
31 Leonardo’s student and heir Francesco Melzi organised his master’s writings into this
manuscript, which was widely circulated throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies. Leonardo on Painting, 1–2.
32 For Leonardo’s contribution to the paragone see Mendelsohn, Varchi, 38–9, 44–5.
33 Leonardo on Painting, 20.
34 Leonardo on Painting, 38–45. See also Ascanio Condivi, The Life of Michelangelo, ed.
Hellmut Wolhl, trans. Alice Sedwick Wolh (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1999), 106.
35 On the issue of art as science since the Renaissance see Martin Kemp, The Science of Art:
Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat (New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 1990). For nature in Renaissance art see Jan Bialostocki, ‘Poussin et
le Traité de la Peinture de Leonardo,’ Actes du colloque international Nicolas Poussin, Col-
loques Internationaux, Sciences humaines, ed. André Chastel (Paris: CNRS, 1960), 133–9.
36 Leonardo on Painting, 30.
37 Leonardo on Painting, 29.
 An Introduction to the Paragone 19
38 Leonardo on Painting, 195.
39 Leonardo on Painting, 118. A study specifically on Leonardo’s writings may be found
in C. Pedretti, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci: A Commentary to Jean Paul
Richter’s Edition (Oxford: Phaidon, 1977); as well as in I. Richter, Paragone: Compari-
son of the Arts by Leonardo da Vinci (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949).
40 Luba Freedman, ‘The Blurred Horizon in Leonardo’s Painting,’ Gazette des beaux-arts
129, no. 1540 (May–Jun., 1997), 181–94.
41 For a comprehensive examination of Leonardo’s paragonising activities and theories
see Claire Farago, Leonardo da Vinci’s Paragone: A Critical Interpretation with a
New Edition of the Text in the Codex Urbinas (Leiden, New York: E.J. Brill, 1992).
Other sources on Leonardo’s competitive artistic practice include the following: John
Shearman, ‘Leonardo’s Colour and Chiaroscuro,’ Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte XXV
(1962), 13–47; Shearman, ‘Maniera as an Aesthetic Ideal,’ Studies in Western Art: Acts
of the Twentieth International Congress of the History of Art (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1963), 200–21.
42 Leonardo, On Painting, 32–3.
43 Vasari’s Lives demonstrated the interest in the ‘celebrity’ of artists, and how carefully
they were compared. Other sixteenth-century biographies, such as Ascanio Condivi’s
(1525–74) authorised biography of Michelangelo, or Benvenuto Cellini’s (1500–71) Auto-
biography, were likewise part of this development.
44 Studying Michelangelo’s theory of the arts, Clements cites the artist saying that
As a faithful guide for my vocation, beauty was given me at/ birth, which is a beacon
and mirror for me in both arts; if any/ one thinks otherwise, his opinion is wrong. This
alone bears the/ eye up to those lofty visions which I am preparing here below/ to paint
and sculpt.// If those of rash and stupid judgement attribute to sense that/ beauty which
stirs and bears to heaven every whole intelletto, it follows that infirm eyes do not pass
from the mortal to the/ divine, nor even eyes fixed firmly on those heights where it is/
a vain hope to ascend without possessing grace.
Cited in Robert J. Clements, Michelangelo’s Theory of Art (New York: Gramercy Pub-
lishing Company, 1961), 14.
45 Mendelsohn explains Varchi’s bias throughout her Paragoni.
46 For Michelangelo’s writings see Complete Poems and Selected Letters of Michelangelo,
trans. Creighton Gilbert, ed. Robert N. Linscott (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1963). The first stanza of the sonnet reads: ‘The best of artists never
has a concept/ A single marble block does not contain/ Inside its husk, but to it may
attain/ Only if hand follows intellect.//’ Cited in fn. 121 in Condivi, Michelangelo,
145. In Italian it is ‘Non ha l’ottimo artista alcun concetto,/ Ch’un marmot solo in
se non circonscriva/ Col suo soverchio, et solo a quello arriva/ La man, che ubbidisce
all’intelletto.//’ Cited in Mendelsohn, Varchi, 103.
47 Howard and Shirley G. Hibbard, Michelangelo (Boulder, CO and Oxford: Westview
Press, 1985), 278.
48 Cited in Mendelsohn, Varchi, 132.
49 Lene Østermark-Johansen, Sweetness and Strength: The Reception of Michelangelo in
Late Victorian England (Farnham, UK: Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 12, 41.
50 On the issue of divine knowledge and the Creation of Adam see the controversial the-
ory of A. Meshberger, ‘An Interpretation of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam based
on Neuroanatomy,’ Jama-Journal of the American Medical Association 264, no. 14
(Oct. 1990), 1837–41.
51 Michelangelo based his vision of this apocalyptic event on Dante’s writings and the Bi-
ble. Condivi observed that Michelangelo could often be found reading Dante’s works.
Condivi, Michelangelo, 19. A last judgement based upon Dante’s epic poem had already
been undertaken by Luca Signorelli (1445–1523) at the Brixio Chapel in Orvieto (ca.
1504), where he depicted numerous apocalyptic scenes. Dante himself was even incorpo-
rated into this cycle. For his version, Michelangelo portrayed the mythological figure of
Charon, who convoys the damned in his barque over the River Styx, and sports demonic
glaring eyes as described by Dante. Still, Michelangelo’s imagery rivals Dante’s poem
20 The Paragone in Nineteenth-Century Art
through its phantasmagoric representation of Dante’s vision (an observation of Dr. James
Miller, Western University). Vasari, Lives, 474. Vasari claimed that Michelangelo ‘took
particular delight in reading the vernacular poets, especially Dante, whom he loved and
imitated in his conceits and inventions. See Barnes, ‘Metaphorical Painting,’ 65–81.
52 Barnes, ‘Metaphorical Painting,’ See also Judith Dundas, ‘The Paragone and the Art of
Michelangelo,’ Sixteenth-Century Journal 21, no. 1 (Spring 1990), 87–93.
53 See Rudolf Preimesberger, Paragons and Paragone: Van Eyck, Raphael, Michelangelo,
Caravaggio, Bernini (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2011); Maryan Wynn
Ainsworth, Jan Gossart’s Trip to Rome and his Route to Paragone (RKD: Netherland In-
stitute for Art History, 2014); earlier notable studies include: Katherine Ann Krupp, The
Paragone and Bronzino’s Sculptural Style (Northampton, MA: Smith College, 1987);
Robert E. Campo, Ronsard’s Contentious Sisters (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina, 1998); André Chastel, ‘The Paragone or Comparison of the Arts’ in Leonardo
on Art and the Artists (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002); Paragone als Mistreits
(Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2014); Christiane J. Hessler, Zum Paragone: Malerei, Skulp-
tur und Dichtung in der Rangstreitkultur des Quattrocento (Berlin: Akademie Verlag,
2014); Ben Thomas, The Paragone and Sixteenth-Century Italian Art (Oxford: Univer-
sity of Oxford, 1996); Sefy Hendler, La guerre des arts: le paragone peintre-sculpture en
Italie XVe–XVIIe siècle (Paris: L’ErmArte Series, 2013); Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese:
Rivals in Renaissance Venice, ed. Frederick Ilchman and David Rosand (Boston: Mu-
seum of Fine Arts Publications, 2009); Jonathan Jones, Lost Battles: Leonardo, Michel-
angelo, and the Artistic Duel that Defined the Renaissance (New York: Random House,
2010). On the early history of the paragone in theological and aesthetic theory moving
into the Early-Modern era see Lauriane Fallay d’Este, Le Paragone: Le parallèle des arts,
trans. Lauriane Fallay d’Este and Nathalie Bauer (Klincksieck, 1992).
54 Some notable contributions to scholarship on the paragone in the seventeenth and eight-
eenth centuries include the following: Timothy Erwin, Textual Vision: Augustan Design
and the Invention of Eighteenth-Century British Culture (Lewisburg: Bucknell Univer-
sity Press, 2015); Karin Hellwig, ‘The Paragone between Painting and Sculpture,’ in On
Art and Painting: Vicente Carducho and Baroque Spain, eds. Jean Andrews, Jeremy Roe,
and Oliver Noble Wood (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2016); Anne Betty Weinshen-
ker, A God or a Bench: Sculpture as a Problematic Art during the Ancien Régime (Bern:
Peter Lang, 2008). See especially Chapter Four: The Afterlife of the Paragone.
55 Quoted in Markiewicz, ‘Ut Pictura Poesis,’ 537. The poem was well known, and was
translated and published in England by John Dryden in 1695 and Daniel Defoe in 1720.
56 Lee, ‘Theory of Painting,’ 202.
57 Markiewicz, ‘Ut Pictura Poesis,’ 538.
58 For an examination of the treatise see Jan Bialostocki, ‘Poussin et le Traité de la Peinture
de Leonardo,’ Actes du colloque international Nicolas Poussin: Colloques Internation-
aux, Sciences humaines, ed. André Chastel (Paris: CNRS, 1960), 133–9.
59 Roy Park, ‘Ut Pictura Poesis: The Nineteenth-Century Aftermath,’ The Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism 28 (1969), 161. For the full study see 155–64.
60 All translations are the author’s unless otherwise noted. These translations have been
provided to convey the general meaning of the quotes and are not meant to serve as a
definitive reference for the English translation of the original texts. Abbé Jean-Baptiste
Dubos, Sur la poësie et sur la peinture (Paris: Pissot, 1770), 255.
La composition Poëtique d’un tableau, c’est l’arrangement ingénieux des figures inventé
pour rendre l’action qu’il réprésente plus touchante et plus vraisemblable. Elle demande
que tous les personnages soient liez par une action principale, car un tableau peut con-
tenir plusieurs incidens, à condition que toutes ces actions particulières se réunissent en
une action principale, et qu’elles ne fassent toutes qu’un seul et même sujet.
61 Dubos, Sur la peinture, 376. ‘La peinture emploie des signes naturels dont l’énergie ne
dépend pas de l’éducation […] C’est la nature elle même que la peinture met sous nos yeux.’
62 For instance, in an examination of Honoré de Balzac’s (1799–1850) paragonising posi-
tion towards painting Alexandra K. Wettlaufer finds that his prosaic writings suggest
that painting is artificial (which was a remnant of the Platonian belief in art as deceptive
 An Introduction to the Paragone 21
imitation), fatal, and feminine. Wettlaufer, ‘Girodet/Endymion/Balzac: Representation
and Rivalry in Post-Revolutionary France,’ Word and Image 17, no. 4 (Oct.–Dec. 2001),
408. For the full article see 401–11. See also the longer study Pen vs. Paintbrush: Gi-
rodet, Balzac, and the Myth of Pygmalion in Postrevolutionary France (New York:
Palgrave, 2001). Wettlaufer cites Balzac’s La Maison du chat-qui-pelote (1829) and Le
Chef-d’œuvre inconnu (ca. 1831) in her study of a paragonising relationship between Gi-
rodet and Balzac in the early nineteenth century. Since Wettlaufer treats the paragonis-
ing relationship shared by Girodet and Balzac at length, with regards to the Pygmalion
subject, this will not be dealt with in this text, which will focus on the role of Girodet’s
treatment of Pygmalion in the history of visual art.
63 See Space and Time in Artistic Practice and Aesthetics: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Leg-
acy, ed. Sarah Lippert (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017).
64 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry,
trans. Edward Allen McCormick (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1984), 5.
65 Lessing, Laocoön, 40. Dubos had already observed the temporal limitations of painting (al-
though in a much less codified manner); he declared that, ‘Le Peintre qui fait un tableau […],
ne nous représente sur la toile qu’un instant de l’action.’ Quoted by Michael Fried, ‘Toward a
Supreme Fiction: Genre and Beholder in the Art Criticism of Diderot and his Contemporar-
ies,’ New Literary History 6, no. 3 (1975), 552. For the full study see 543–85. ‘The painter
who creates a painting represents but one instant of the action on the canvas.’
66 These associations would have relied on already established binary oppositions in
eighteenth-century thought. Mitchell, Iconology, 107. Mitchell interprets Lessing’s
hierarchical system by considering his biased position as a writer within the debate.
67 Mitchell, Iconology, 107.
68 Mitchell, Iconology, 109–11. Mitchell reminds readers that Lessing’s system was in re-
sponse to that of Burke, although Lessing never acknowledged this debt, according to
Mitchell. Mitchell also provides a table that breaks down the divisions between poetry
and painting, identifying painting with the following: space, natural signs, narrow sphere,
imitation, body, external, silent, beauty, eye, and feminine. Poetry on the other hand is:
time, arbitrary (man-made) signs, infinite range, expression, mind, internal, eloquent,
sublimity, ear, and masculine. For Lessing’s descriptions of painting as limited to the
realm of beauty see Laocoön, 15, 23, 104, 111–12.
69 Lee, ‘Theory of Painting,’ 215.
70 Lessing, Laocoön, 14. Mitchell asserts that Lessing’s paragone is in part motivated by
a national rivalry, because Lessing has come to view France as a degenerate culture in
comparison to Germany. He concludes that Lessing’s theory of the visual arts is primarily
based on his view of French art and therefore his nationalistic rivalry taints his theorisa-
tion of the arts. Mitchell, Iconology, 110.
71 Mitchell, Iconology, 112–13.
72 Quatremère de Quincy, An Essay on the Nature, the End, and the Means of Imitation
in the Fine Arts, trans. by J.C. Kent (London and New York: Garland Publishing Inc.,
1979), 59. The original translation dates to 1837.
73 Lessing, Laocoön, x.
[I]l nous est peut-être permis d’espérer que dans l’état où il paroît, il réveillera l’at-
tention du public sur la théorie des arts, et qu’il donnera naissance à d’autres traités
destinés à étendre les idées de Lessing, ou à les combattre. Tel est ordinairement le sort
des livres qui font penser, et ce n’est pas leur moindre mérite. Ce seroit au moins la
récompense la plus flatteuse que le traduction pût obtenir de son travail.
74 Lessing, Laocoön, vi.
[I]l [Lessing] cherche à déterminer les limites respectives des deux arts, à prouver que
les règles de l’un ne sont pas toujours les règles de l’autre, et à établir des règles nou-
velles, puisées dans la nature même de la peinture et de la poésie, et confirmées par
l’exemples des anciens.// Nous ne connaissons point d’ouvrage didactique plus propre
que celui-çi à désigner au poète et à l’artiste les écueils nombreux qu’ils doivent éviter,
en s’imitant […].
22 The Paragone in Nineteenth-Century Art
75 Richard Wrigley, The Origins of French Art Criticism: From the Ancien Regime to the
Restoration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 42.
76 Jean Locquin, La peinture d’histoire en France de 1747 à 1785: études sur l’évolution des
idées artistiques dans la seconde moïtié du 18 siècle, facsimile of the 1912 edition from
Paris, Laurens (Paris: Arthéna, 1978), 82.
77 Locquin, La peinture, 82, 87. ‘[L]e Peintre d’Histoire est un artiste lettré, d’intelligence
cultivée, qui s’est familiarisé avec les grands poètes, avec les principaux historiens, an-
ciens et modernes […].’ Another useful examination of the instructional practices of the
French academy and the impact of studying the antique in academic systems is found in
Paul Duro’s ‘The Lure of Rome: The Academic Copy and the Académie de France in the
Nineteenth Century,’ in Art and the Academy in the Nineteenth Century, eds. Rafael
Cardoso Denis and Colin Trodd (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000),
133–49. See also Carl Goldstein, Teaching Art: Academies and Schools from Vasari to
Alpers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
78 Fried, ‘Toward a Supreme Fiction,’ 582. Throughout the article Fried addresses the para-
gonising relationship between drama or theatre versus painting in the eighteenth century.
79 André Félibien, Conférences de l’ académie royale de peinture et de sculpture pendant
l’année 1667 (Paris: F. Leonard, 1668). Sir Joshua Reynolds also addressed the genre of
the arts in his writings. See Reynolds, Discourses on Art: Sir Joshua Reynolds, ed. Robert
R. Wark (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). See also Paul Duro’s,
‘Giving up on History? Challenges to the Hierarchy of the Genres in Early Nineteenth-­
century France,’ Art History 28, no. 5 (Dec., 2005), 689–711.
80 Denis Diderot, Diderot on Art – I: The Salon of 1765 and Notes on Painting, trans. John
Goodman, intro. Thomas Crow (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995),
228. See also Lessing, Laocoön, 39, and Félibien in ‘Preface to the Seven Conferences,’ 112.
81 Johann Gottfried Herder, Sculpture: Some Observations on Shape and Form from Pyg-
malion’s Creative Dream, ed., trans., and intro. Jason Gaiger (Chicago and London: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 2002), 87.
Whatever subtle laws of well-being and well-formedness, or proportion and dispro-
portion, are discovered in optics and the arts of arrangement, these all find their great
model in the human form and in human beauty: this noble work is everywhere the
favored and most characteristic product of Mother Nature.
82 A writer for Sur la peinture explained that
The Artisan makes his wellbeing completely dependent on riches and he ensures his
social existence only by their consumption. The Artist has as a spur only public es-
teem: he does good only in the coin of honour. The virtue of the latter is not vulgar or
obvious; it requires moreover an extraordinary courage and intelligence. It may be that
the Artisan, who pays no attention to public opinion, believes himself an independent
agent because he acts. On the contrary, he is simply a rough cog in a machine that is
propelled by some directing power. Properly speaking, the Artisan is the matter of the
state, the Artist is its spirituality.
Quoted by Thomas Crow, Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 232.
83 Andrew McClellan, ‘Watteau’s Dealer: Gersaint and the Marketing of Art in Eighteenth-
Century Paris,’ The Art Bulletin 78, no. 3 (Sept. 1996), 439–53.
84 Jon Whiteley, ‘Art, hiérarchie et Révolution française,’ in Majeurs ou mineurs — les
hiérarchies en art, ed. Georges Roque (Nîmes: Éditions Jacqueline Chambon, 2000), 68.
For the full study see 66–77.
85 See Félibien’s Des Principes de l’architecture de la sculpture, de la peinture, et des autres
arts qui en dependent; and Félibien, Entretiens sur les vies et sur les ouvrages des plus
excellens peintres anciens et modernes (Paris: Pierre Le Petit, 1666).
86 Whiteley, ‘Révolution française,’ 67. After 1789, for fear of artists pandering to commercial
rather than artistic rewards, artists were encouraged not to paint self-portraits and minia-
tures, which were believed to be shameful commercialisation. Wrigley, Origins, 44. But,
this meant that artists could not promote themselves as individuals. Therefore, in order to
heighten one’s prestige, the painter’s recourse was to advance the status of painting in general.
 An Introduction to the Paragone 23
87 Diderot, Notes on Painting, 229–31. For a study of Greuze’s attempt to be accepted as
a history painter see Eik Kahng ‘L’Affaire Greuze and the Sublime of History Painting,’
Art Bulletin 86, no. 1 (Mar. 2004), 96–113. For Diderot’s writings see such works as the
following: Notes on Painting, Essai sur la peinture, his Letter on the Blind for the use of
those who can see (1749), and the Salons of 1763, 1765, 1767.
88 The evolution of the academy in the nineteenth century has been dealt with by such
­scholars as Albert Boime, The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth C ­ entury
(London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 1971); ‘The Prix de Rome: Images of Authority and
­T hreshold of Official Success,’ Art Journal 44 (Fall 1984), 281–9; ‘The Salon des Refusés
and the Evolution of Modern Art,’ The Art Quarterly 32 (1969), 411–26; ‘The Teaching
Reforms of 1863 and the Origins of Modernism in France,’ Art Quarterly 1 (1977),
1–39. Topics on the paragone in the nineteenth century include the following: Philippe
Junod, ‘The New Paragone: Paradoxes and Contradictions or Pictorial Musicalism,’
in The Arts E ­ ntwined: Music and Painting in the Nineteenth Century, eds. Marsha L.
­Morton and Peter L. Schmunk (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 2000),
23–46; Lene Østermark-Johansen, Walter Pater and the Language of Sculpture ­(Farnham
UK, ­Ashgate, 2011); Linda Goddard, Aesthetic Rivalries: Word and Image in France
1880–1926 (New York: Peter Lang, 2012).
89 See the following for Patricia Mainardi: ‘The Death of History Painting in France, 1867,’
Gazette des beaux-arts (Dec. 1982), 219–26; and The End of the Salon: Art and the State
in the Early Third Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). For early
academic history see Frances Yates, The French Academies of the Sixteenth Century
(London: The Warburg Institute, 1947).
90 An exceptional primary source on Delacroix’s theory of the arts is The Journal of Eu-
gène Delacroix, ed. Hubert Wellington, trans. Lucy Norton (London: Phaidon Press Ltd.,
1995). The earliest work on Delacroix’s paragone was conducted by George Mras. For his
scholarship see Eugène Delacroix’s Theory of Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1966), and ‘Ut Pictura Musica: A Study of Delacroix’s Paragone,’ Art Bulletin 45 (Sept.
1963), 266–71. For my examination of Delacroix, see Sarah Lippert, Gustave Moreau
and the Paragone: An Investigation of the Ut Pictura Poesis Legacy in the Work of a
Nineteenth-Century History Painter, Master of Arts thesis (London, Canada: University
of Western Ontario, 2002), Chapter 2. The work of Michèle Hannoosh on Delacroix’s
journal is also significant in the field. See Hannoosh’s Painting and the Journal of Eugène
Delacroix (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
91 Quoted from Baudelaire’s Salon (1846) by Robin Spencer, ‘Whistler, Swinburne and Art-
for-art’s sake,’ in After the Pre-Raphaelites: Art and Aestheticism in Victorian Eng-
land, ed. Elizabeth Prettejohn (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999),
63. For the full study see 59–89. Another source focusing on Baudelaire and Delacroix
is ­Elizabeth Abel, ‘Redefining the Sister Arts: Baudelaire’s Response to the Art of Delac-
roix,’ in The Language of Images, ed. W.J.T. Mitchell (Chicago and London: The Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1980), 27–58.
92 Charles Baudelaire, Art in Paris 1845–1862: Salons and Other Exhibitions Reviewed
by Charles Baudelaire, ed. and trans. Jonathan Mayne (London: Phaidon Press, 1965).
See also The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, ed. and trans. Jonathan Mayne
(London: Phaidon Press Inc., 1995).
93 Delacroix, The Journal, 6.
94 See Mras, ‘Ut Pictura Musica,’ 266–71.
95 Wrigley, Origins, 41–2.
96 For a look at this kind of ekphrasis see Kahng ‘L‘Affaire Greuze,’ 96–7. Kahng discusses
Diderot’s competitive ekphrasis of Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s Coresus and Callirhoe
(1765).
97 See Wrigley, Origins.
98 Delacroix, The Journal, 39.
99 Mitchell, Iconology, 98.
100 Mitchell, Iconology, 49.
101 Wettlaufer, Pen vs. Paintbrush. Wettlaufer, ‘Girodet/Endymion/Balzac,’ 401–11. Wet-
tlaufer has also explored other aspects of literary and artistic rivalry in nineteenth-­century
France. See ‘The Sublime Rivalry of Word and Image: Turner and Ruskin Revisited,’
24 The Paragone in Nineteenth-Century Art
Victorian Literature and Culture 28, no. 1 (2000), 211–31. ‘Balzac and Sand: Sibling
Rivalry and the Sisterhood of the Arts in Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu and Les Maîtres
mosaïstes,’ George Sand Studies 18 (2000), 65–85.
102 Wettlaufer, Pen vs. Paintbrush, 4–7. This introduction to the history of the paragone is in
Wettlaufer’s book limited primarily to a mention of such figures as Plato, Hesiod, Alberti,
the history of the liberal arts, Leonardo, Lessing, and Mitchell.
103 Wettlaufer, Pen vs. Paintbrush, 4–5, 31. Wettlaufer’s methodology leans towards the ‘tra-
ditional equals bad’ and ‘avant-garde equals good’ view of artistic production with much
focus on the work of Patricia Mainardi, and some conclusions being overly simplified.
David, for instance, is touted as a paragon of anti-conservatism, despite connections to
aristocracy and dependence on official patronage both before and after the French Revo-
lution, as well as other generalisations that are inconsistent with the historical context.
2 The Archetype of Beauty
Narcissus and the Birth of the
beau idéal

Introduction: The Myth and the Poet

When Ovid (43 BCE–17 CE) wrote his Metamorphoses (ca. 2–8 CE) he explored
in nearly every way possible the potential for the temporal written word to portray
transformation or the passage of time. His text recounted dozens of narratives, each
bringing to life the physical and spiritual metamorphoses of mythological personas
and creatures. During its long and prestigious afterlife, the Metamorphoses became
one of the most celebrated sources of pagan legend, inspiring artists and writers
from the Renaissance to the present day to pillage its stories for challenging, often
inherently paragonising subjects.
In the context of the paragone, Ovid’s stories of transformation were the consum-
mate declaration of the poet’s power over the temporal in art. The Metamorphoses
would have been part of his effort to attain a quintessential humanist desire: fame.
Given that the best way to be immortalised in ancient Rome was to produce an epic
literary work, other scholars, such as A. Griffin, have already identified Ovid’s text
as the embodiment of the poet’s ambitions; Griffin has also observed that Ovid was
more of a ‘visual artist’ than the other Latin poets, because he insisted on breathtak-
ing detail in an elaborate panorama of mental imagery.1 As will be explored through-
out the next chapters, artists generally compete with revered examples of artistic
genius, such as an ancient poet, since one must have a worthy opponent, in order to
be deemed a victor in the arts and the paragone. Alternatively, the main theme of the
Metamorphoses may be seen as the alteration of the stone image, such that Ovid’s
objective was to celebrate the arts in general. 2 If indeed Ovid was competing with
artists and authors of his own day, then his repeated use of the stone image makes
sense, because one of the most popular art forms of Roman antiquity was marble
sculpture. But could Ovid’s intentions lie somewhere between these two analyses?
Ovid may very well have been celebrating the visual arts, but readers could have been
expected to conclude that the greatest of all of the arts was poetry and its preeminent
practitioner Ovid. Artists were especially drawn to Ovid’s account of Pygmalion, due
to the fact that he altered previous versions to transform the King of the Cypriots
into a sculptor, thereby offering the first Pygmalion narrative to centre on the issue
of artistic creation. 3
Ovid’s fame was secured in his own day, but how well was he known in the modern
era? His history in France and England began hundreds of years before the nineteenth
century.4 It was through Italy that Ovid was passed on to the rest of ­Europe, such that
many of the stories from the Metamorphoses were represented in Italian Renaissance art.
26 The Paragone in Nineteenth-Century Art
Paul Barolsky argues that Ovid was actually so popular in the visual arts of the
Renaissance that his Metamorphoses became a metaphor of the artistic process,
whereby the artist transforms mere matter into artistic virtue. 5 Ovid eventually be-
came a popular source in France and England. In the former, Ovid’s narratives took
the stage especially in the early sixteenth century, when various moralised versions of
the Metamorphoses were disseminated.6 The first version, however, most likely dates
to the fourteenth century.7 In England, Ovid enjoyed great popularity in the seven-
teenth century when many new editions were released.8
Not surprisingly, trying to capture the temporal act of transformation was both
feared and revered by visual artists, since only the best could convincingly portray
something that was viewed as outside of the capabilities of the visual arts. Famous
triumphs in depictions of transformation are easy to identify, such as Gianlorenzo
Bernini’s (1598–1680) Apollo and Daphne, completed for Cardinal Scipione Borgh-
ese (1576–1633) in 1622, where Daphne transforms into a tree just as Apollo reaches
her. Other Baroque artists who turned to Ovid for subjects of transformation were
Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665) and Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610),
both of whom painted the story of Narcissus. While these artists opted for different
moments of the narrative — Caravaggio showed Narcissus gazing at himself in the
reflective pool, and Poussin captured Narcissus dying beside the pool — each included
the watery surface that Ovid so carefully described. The story, according to Ovid,
went this way:

There was a clear pool, […].// Narcissus […] lay down here […] he was enchanted
by the beautiful reflection that he saw. He fell in love with an insubstantial hope,
mistaking a mere shadow for a real body. Spellbound by his own self, he remained
there motionless, with fixed gaze, like a statue carved from Parian marble. […],
he gazed at the twin stars that were his eyes, at his flowing locks, worthy of Bac-
chus or Apollo, his smooth cheeks, his ivory neck, his lovely face where a rosy
flush stained the snowy whiteness of his complexion, admiring the features for
which he was himself admired. Unwittingly, he desired himself, and was himself
the object of his own approval, at once seeking and sought, himself kindling the
flame with which he burned. How often did he vainly kiss the treacherous pool,
how often plunge his arms deep in the waters, as he tried to clasp the neck he
saw! But he could not lay hold upon himself. He did not know what he was look-
ing at, but was fired by the sight, and excited by the very illusion that deceived
his eyes. Poor foolish boy, why vainly grasp at the fleeting image that eludes you?
The thing you are seeing does not exist: only turn aside and you will lose what
you love. What you see is but the shadow cast by your reflection; in itself it is
nothing.// No thought of food or sleep could draw him from the spot. Stretched
on the shady grass, he gazed at the shape that was no true shape with eyes that
could never have their fill, and by his own eyes he was undone.9

In this story Ovid the poet issued a battle cry to all visual artists. It is not difficult to
detect in Ovid’s writings the lingering scent of Plato’s disdain for the artist’s works
as mere shadows and lies.10 Ovid made clear that Narcissus’s fate was secured by
the image’s deceptive capabilities; the eyes were at fault, and therefore the fruit of
vision also; Narcissus was ‘fired by the sight, and excited by the very illusion that
deceived his eyes.’ Narcissus’s reflected image was an ‘insubstantial hope,’ a ‘shadow,’
 The Archetype of Beauty 27
and ‘treacherous.’ And yet, it was the perfection of this very image that made it so
captivating; Ovid asserted that the better the image, the more dangerous it must be.
Throughout the tale of Narcissus’s love affair with his likeness, Ovid compared both
the reflection and the mortal boy to the splendour and form of a marble sculpture
with such references to Narcissus as ‘a statue carved from Parian marble’ and having
‘hands as white as marble.’11 A point from Griffin is relevant too. Because the gods
were shown in marble, Ovid likens Narcissus’s beauty to that of a divine being.12
The reference to a ‘fixed gaze’ likewise recalls the immobile nature of marble and its
inability to free the narrative from a single moment or action. In truth, Narcissus’s
legend was a veritable recipe for iconophobia (or creating fear of the image); the eyes
lie; aesthetic beauty is the medium for the trickery and gazing upon the deception
leads to death. According to his analysis of the Renaissance interpretation of the
Narcissus myth, Barolsky notes that Ovid’s Narcissus was the archetypal painter.13
But if this is the case, then Ovid’s view of the painter could not have been without
negative connotations. Narcissus’s influential reflection also parallels another ancient
fable concerning the Medusa legends. In Ovid’s text, the young hero Perseus was
able to use the severed head of the once beautiful Medusa as a weapon.14 Those who
looked upon her would die.15

Narcissus as the Ideal Challenge

The story of Narcissus was a vehicle for demonstration of artistic virtue. To depict
Narcissus in the non-temporal art of painting or sculpture, one must show the most
emblematic moment of the myth — the one that manifests the image’s iconic power,
such that it can bring about both a torturous love of the thing represented and death.
More specifically, it was for painters that this narrative would become the most
­alluring; because, it was only in painting that the reflective pool could be illustrated.
The creation of the ‘perfect reflection’ has been a preoccupation of many painters.
This has taken the form of artists, such as Caravaggio, who studied the luminous
­effects in glass vases; or, it can be seen in a distorted illusionistic reflection, such as
Parmigianino’s (1503–40) Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (ca. 1524, Kunsthistor-
isches Museum, Vienna).
Another facet of the reflection made it important to the paragone debate. Irre-
spective of the technical skill required to master the reflection in a two-dimensional
medium, the reflection itself was the first celebrated image in history. Before there
was art, there were reflections. And just as they were in the story of Narcissus, these
reflections were in pools of water, not in finely wrought glass or obsidian mirrors,
bestowed upon humanity by nature herself. Alberti perpetuated the association of
Narcissus with the birth of painting when he wrote the following in his treatise On
Painting (1436): ‘Consequently I used to tell my friends that the inventor of painting,
according to the poets, was Narcissus, who was turned into a flower; for, as painting
is the flower of all the arts, so the tale of Narcissus fits our purpose perfectly. What
is painting but the act of embracing by means of art the surface of the pool?’16 As
Dent notes, this theory was one of the most important for the art of painting in the
Renaissance.17 Thus, the reflection became the iconic image, the first illusory decep-
tion in the history of images, and the first method through which humans beheld
an insubstantial and elusive form of human beauty. So the reflection, especially cast
in water as in the Narcissus story, was the archetypal image and the first painting,
28 The Paragone in Nineteenth-Century Art
thereby making God the first artist, because he created the natural world including
the water. Many scholars have observed that treatment of light, shade, and chiaro-
scuro has always been a preoccupation of competitive artists. Animating the surface
and acting on God-like ability to create something from nothing, Alberti also argued
that painters ‘have the power of metamorphosis.’18
Of course, artists were similarly drawn to the mental image that Ovid himself
conjured of Narcissus. Only the most beautiful image could cause a viewer to gaze in
perpetuity, resulting in starvation and dehydration, as it did for Narcissus, who fool-
ishly refused to abandon the reflective pool and the image to which he had anchored
himself.
Narcissus’s story presented three challenges to the visual artist. The first was to
create a figure worthy of archetypal beauty; Ovid compared Narcissus to Apollo or
Bacchus or the beau idéal. The second was to create a perfect reflection. The third
was to capture the image’s iconic power. Visual artists, therefore, found an array of
competitive features in the Narcissus narrative. Literary scholars, such as Dennis
Patrick Slattery, have found that the story was also of import to writers because it
addressed the origin of the word in the literary tradition. Slattery has shown that
from the writer’s perspective Narcissus’s journey of transformation began with the
spoken word, manifested in the trapped and pathetic figure of Echo who could never
initiate speech with Narcissus and whose love for him went unnoticed. Narcissus’s
fantasy lover was also shattered through uttering words to illuminate the problem.
He needed to speak to his reflection to ascertain his identity, even if it was too late
to disentangle himself from the image and its true nature.19 Nevertheless, it was the
spoken word that jolted Narcissus out of false reality. In other traditions, independ-
ent from the Narcissus context, the word has also been celebrated. For instance,
the origin of the word is aggrandised in the Christian tradition, based on the first
chapter of the Gospel of John where the Word begins with Christ, representing the
Logos, thereby likening the word to truth, reason, and divine authority. In the same
way in Ovid’s mythological tale, it is the spoken word that represents truth, logic,
and reality.
The Narcissus myth, like other Ovidian narratives, has, likewise, become a fasci-
nating focus for art theorists. As we have seen, Narcissus’s story was re-fashioned by
Alberti in his treatise to mythologise painting as a reflection or a mirror. To master
the reflection equated to triumph over painting itself. Notwithstanding the intrigu-
ing ramifications of this myth, Alberti’s theories had sometimes negative implica-
tions for the art of painting. Baskins observes that in Alberti’s account of Narcissus,
he conflated the flower that Narcissus became with the reflective surface, thereby
enforcing the idea that Narcissus ‘invented’ the flower. If the flower was a feminine,
beautiful, and fleeting object of the viewer’s gaze, then Alberti’s comparison solid-
ified the connection between reflections and painting’s feminine nature. Painting,
like the reflection and flower, is ephemeral, to be looked at, and a necessarily beau-
tiful entity. 20 This kind of comparison would persistently feminise painting in the
eyes of later aesthetic theorists, which in the patriarchal society of Renaissance Italy
made painting inferior to more masculine intellectual pursuits. However, as Hubert
Damisch, Kent Minturn, and Eric Trudel observe, Alberti argues that painting is a
God-like activity that through mimesis nourishes human intellect and spirit. They
also note that for Alberti painting has the power of metamorphosis, as a mirror of
nature, which the other arts do not possess. 21
 The Archetype of Beauty 29
Nonetheless, Alberti’s notion of the mirror as a metaphor for the artist was shared
by others as well, such as Leonardo. For instance, Leonardo wrote the following:
‘The painter’s mind should be like a mirror which transforms itself into the color of
the thing it has as its object, and is filled with as many likenesses as there are things
placed before it.’22 In his study of painted reflections, Olszewski explores an alterna-
tive subtext for the mirror, in that it could do more than mimic and reflect; rather, the
mirror, like the artist, could amplify, manipulate, and frame. He cites the example of
Parmigianino’s Self-Portrait, wherein the painter proved his artistic skill, as we have
discussed, by crafting a highly distorted reflection of himself in a curved mirror. 23 In
this way, Parmigianino confirmed his preeminence as a painter, by choosing to im-
aginatively replicate the natural world in his art and by discerning which distortion
would prove the most fascinating.
Nineteenth-century French painters did not have to dig deep to find another faultless
master of reflections. One of the most heralded artists in the foundation of French aca-
demic painting was Poussin. Because he was considered the archetypal good, ‘academic’
French painter, well into the late nineteenth century, a brief appraisal of his strengths
is appropriate. An overview of this figure’s œuvre exposes the lengths to which Poussin
went to validate painting’s rightful standing at the zenith of the hierarchy of the arts.
Poussin’s celebrated Self-Portrait (1650, Musée du Louvre) is a multifaceted and potent
model of self-promotion. It is the consummate self-portrait, showing Poussin holding
his painting tools, standing in his studio in front of completed canvases. He looks out
at the viewer with confident professionalism. Just as Renaissance artists such as Leon-
ardo dwelt on the eye’s importance to the painter, Poussin also took up this convention.
The work includes a view of painting as a woman; she bears the artist’s eye; it was also
emblazoned on Alberti’s personal medal of the fifteenth century. Like his predecessors
Leonardo and Alberti, Poussin’s scientific approach to painting confirmed its intellectu-
ality and the artist’s role as a purveyor of truth through scrutiny of the natural world,
which he would have argued was best perceived through the sense of sight.
Of particular interest, with regards to Poussin, is the attention that he paid to por-
traying reflective surfaces.24 One of the forms of reflection that re-emerged habitually
in Poussin’s works was the mirror, or glassy, watery surfaces. For example, the Land-
scape with a Calm (1650–1, Getty Center), Narcissus and Echo (1627–8, Musée du
Louvre), and The Finding of Moses (1638, Musée du Louvre), all integrate prominent
watery surfaces. Watery reflections, though, were outnumbered by Poussin’s portray-
als of reflective metal. In fact, as Jonathan Unglaub shows in his article ‘Poussin’s
Reflection,’ the artist customarily situated armour and other reflective surfaces at
the picture plane, showcasing his artistic proficiency. One of Poussin’s favourite liter-
ary sources, which he frequently pillaged for painterly subject matter, was Torquato
Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (an epic poem that was first published in Italian in
1581). According to Unglaub, much of Tasso’s narrative included allusions to armour,
making it a logical focus for Poussin. 25 Poussin also paid attention to reflections in
armour. Unglaub proposes that, like Parmigianino, Poussin distorted the armour’s
reflective surface to herald his talent. This is most evident in the reflection of Ermin-
ia’s hand and dress on the sword’s surface, which she hoists into the air in Poussin’s
Tancred and Erminia (ca. 1635, Hermitage Museum). Even more stunning is the
reflection of a face in the cuirass worn by Vafrino. 26 Poussin meticulously analysed
Leonardo’s writings when he illustrated the Renaissance artist’s paragonising treatise
on painting. Unglaub proposes that the optical illusions in Tancred and Erminia were
30 The Paragone in Nineteenth-Century Art
by-products of Poussin’s interest in Leonardo’s theories of light and shade from his
treatise. 27 Reflections, then, since the dawn of painting, have become emblems of
skill and competition.

The Role of Shadows and the Birth of Painting

Shadows, by their very nature, comprise one half of the reflection, since the other half
is light. Olszewski’s scholarship draws attention to the significance of shadows in the
early theorisation of painting. 28 Shadows could be manipulated to show the persua-
siveness of an artistic medium, offering another metaphor for the dawn of painting.
Shadows were connected to its birth by ancient sources, such as Pliny the Elder, who
described painting’s birth from shadows in his Natural History (ca. 77 CE). The fifth
chapter of Book 35 opens with Pliny recounting the origin of painting:

We have no certain knowledge as to the commencement of the art of painting,

nor does this enquiry fall under our consideration. The Egyptians assert that it
was invented among themselves, six thousand years before it passed into Greece;
a vain boast, it is very evident. As to the Greeks, some say that it was invented
at Sicyon, others at Corinth; but they all agree that it originated in tracing lines
round the human shadow. 29

The crux of the fable was that a young Corinthian maiden (the daughter of a man
named Butades who came to be known as Dibutade, although she is not named by
Pliny) fell in love with a man and created the first ‘painting’ (two-dimensional image)
when she traced his profile on a wall from his shadow. 30 Her father, Butades, was a
potter and then made the first sculpture by building up the drawing into a relief using
clay.31 In this way, the story correlated painting and femininity, because it was the
daughter who created the two-dimensional image. Sculpture was imbued with greater
masculine vigour and permanence, since Butades (a man) transformed the fragile
painting into the more impressive and substantial sculpture.
Myths dealing with the origin of painting appealed to artists and theorists who
were concerned with the status of the artist, since the more illustrious the origins of
an artist’s art were, the more prestigious the artist could become.32 Accounts of these
origins were useful in determining the inherent strengths and weaknesses of each art,
whether sought by practitioners or theorists. Other myths stood alongside that of
Dibutade such as those of Apelles (ca. fourth century BCE) and Zeuxis (ca. fifth cen-
tury BCE), who were amongst the first renowned artists from antiquity. Zeuxis was
featured in a famous account from Pliny regarding the competitive streak amongst
Greek artists, indelibly connecting the origin of the arts to artistic fame and rivalry.
He offered a role model for paragonising artists, due to his supposed involvement in
one of the first public artistic competitions. 33 According to Pliny, Zeuxis entered into
a competition with Parrhasius to determine which artist was more accomplished.
Both artists completed flawless paintings, the former creating an illusion of grapes
that birds attempted to eat, while the latter tricked Zeuxis with a painted curtain.34
Pliny’s account verifies how intimately connected the origins of the arts were with the
concept of deception (the medium is the message — Pliny is a writer).
For his part, Apelles was hailed as the greatest painter of the ancient world, and
according to Pliny he was responsible for an unsurpassed depiction of Venus. Michi-
aki Koshikawa, studying Pliny’s account of Apelles’s accomplishments, asserts that
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 “I am much pleased with your remarks on Spherical Orreries, or
rather on the circles generally adapted to such Orreries. Mr. Rowning
seems to be so much of the same opinion, that I could not deny
myself the pleasure of transcribing some part of his account of
Orreries, and of an imaginary machine, which he thinks might be
made very useful.[138] Several of his hints appear to me ingenious,
and I hope they will not be unacceptable to you.

“I would have you pursue your Orrery in your own way, without any
regard to an ignorant or prevailing taste. All you have to study is
truth, and to display the glorious system of Copernicus in a proper
manner;—and to make your machine as much an original, as
possible. I beg you will not limit yourself in the price. I am now
perfectly convinced, that you can dispose of it to advantage; and
should be sorry you would lose one hour more in fears or doubts
about it. In fact, I have laid such plans for the disposal of it, that I
have almost a moral certainty of having a demand for more than one
of the kind. I have not time to write you as fully as I could wish, as
the transcribing from Rowning has detained me so long, and I am
this moment setting out for Caernarvon.

“My letter to the Proprietor[139] is delayed, till I can send him the
account of your design, which you are pleased to promise me. You
say you have “a specimen” in hand: I should be glad to know what it
is.

“I shall not neglect the things you mentioned to me, as I shall

always receive a pleasure in serving you.... She joins me in love to
father, mother and all friends.—I am, in haste, dear Davy, your very
affectionate friend and brother,

“Thomas Barton.

“P. S. Forgive this wretched scrawl—I have not time to examine

whether I have committed any errors in copying Mr. Rowning.

“I beg leave to recommend Huygens’, Cotes’, Helsham’s, and

Power’s Philosophy to you. You will be much pleased with them.
 “I wish you would purchase Bion’s Description of Philosophical
and Mathematical Instruments, &c.”

“Mr. David Rittenhouse.”

His next letter to Mr. Barton, covering the promised Account of his
Orrery, is dated the 27th of March, 1767: and this, it will be
perceived, is very nearly a year before a description of it was
communicated to the American Philosophical Society in
Philadelphia. In this letter, he says—“Rowning’s opinion of Orreries
pleases me more than any thing I had met with before. The idea of
his imaginary machine naturally presents itself to persons
conversant in Astronomy; but, if actually made, it could not answer
the purpose, unless prodigiously large,—which I presume is the
reason it has never been done.

“I send you a description of my imaginary machine: the foundation

of it is now laid; and I hope that part of it, containing the mechanical
Astronomy of the Moon, will be finished some time this spring: then
we shall be able to judge, whether my abilities are equal to the
undertaking.”

The “Description” here referred to, in Mr. Rittenhouse’s own hand-

writing, is new before the writer of these Memoirs; and is thus
endorsed by the Rev. Mr. Barton—“Original Description of Mr.
Rittenhouse’s Orrery, first communicated to Thomas Barton.”—For
the satisfaction of those, who may not have an opportunity of seeing
the American Philosophical Society’s Transactions, in which this
short account of the Orrery was afterwards published; and, as this
original description of it differs somewhat from the printed one, it is
presumed that the introduction of the former into this work, will not
be unacceptable to the reader.

The impossibility of conveying to the mind of any one, even the

most intelligent and skilful, by means of either any delineation upon
paper in the nature of a diagram, or by words, an adequate idea of
so complex and multiform a machine as the one now about to be
described, will instantly be conceived. Indeed no description, alone,
can render the nature of its construction, and the many curious and
useful purposes it is capable of answering, perfectly intelligible to the
most scientific Astronomer. Mr. Rittenhouse’s very concise
description of his Orrery will, therefore, necessarily be found
defective: it is thus worded by himself.

“DESCRIPTION OF A NEW ORRERY.

“This Machine is intended to have three faces, standing

perpendicular to the horizon: that in the front to be four feet square,
made of sheet-brass, curiously polished, silvered, and painted in
proper places, and otherwise ornamented. From the centre arises an
axis, to support a gilded brass ball, intended to represent the Sun.
Round this ball move others, made of brass or ivory, to represent the
Planets: They are to move in elliptical orbits, having the central ball
in one focus; and their motions to be sometimes swifter, and
sometimes slower, as nearly according to the true law of an equable
description of areas as is possible, without too great a complication
of wheel-work. The orbit of each Planet is likewise to be properly
inclined to those of the others; and their Aphelia and Nodes justly
placed; and their velocities so accurately adjusted, as not to differ
sensibly from the tables of Astronomy in some thousands of years.

“For the greater beauty of the instrument, the balls representing

the planets are to be of a considerable bigness; but so contrived,
that they may be taken off at pleasure, and others, much smaller,
and fitter for some purposes, put in their places.

“When the Machine is put in motion, by the turning of a winch,

there are three indexes which point out the hour of the day, the day
of the month, and the year (according to the Julian account,)
answering to that situation of the heavenly bodies which is then
represented; and so continually, for a period of 5000 years, either
forward or backward.
 “In order to know the true situation of a Planet at any particular
time, the small set of balls are to be put each on its respective axis;
then the winch to be turned round until each index points to the given
time. Then a small telescope, made for the purpose, is to be applied
to the central ball; and directing it to the planet, its longitude and
inclination will be seen on a large brass circle, silvered, and properly
graduated, representing the zodiac, and having a motion of one
degree in seventy-two years, agreeable to the precession of the
equinoxes. So, likewise, by applying the telescope to the ball
representing the earth, and directing it to any planet,—then will both
the longitude and latitude of that planet be pointed out (by an index
and graduated circle,) as seen from the earth.

“The two lesser faces are four feet in height, and two feet three
inches in breadth. One of them will exhibit all the appearances of
Jupiter and his Satellites—their eclipses, transits, and inclinations;
likewise, all the appearances of Saturn, with his ring and satellites.
And the other will represent all the phænomena of the moon,
particularly, the exact time, quantity, and duration of her eclipses—
and those of the sun, occasioned by her interposition; with a most
curious contrivance for exhibiting the appearance of a solar eclipse,
at any particular place on the earth: likewise, the true place of the
moon in the signs, with her latitude, and the place of her apoge in
the nodes; the sun’s declination, equation of time &c. It must be
understood, that all these motions are to correspond exactly, with the
celestial motions; and not to differ several degrees from the truth, in
a few revolutions, as is common in Orreries.

“If it shall be thought proper, the whole is to be adapted to, and

kept in motion by, a strong pendulum-clock; nevertheless, at liberty
to be turned by the winch, and adjusted to any time, past or future.”

“N. B. The diurnal motions of such planets as have been

discovered to revolve on their own axes, are likewise to be properly
represented; both with regard to the Times, and the situation of their
Poles.”
 The foregoing is a literal copy of the original manuscript; and such
readers of this article as may think proper to compare it with the
printed description of Mr. Rittenhouse’s Orrery, communicated to the
American Philosophical Society by Dr. Smith, on the 21st of March
1768, and contained in the first volume of that Society’s
Transactions, will find some (though, on the whole, not very
essential) differences, in the two descriptions. The concluding
paragraph, indeed,—designated, in each, by a N. B.—is materially
variant in the two: and it appears, by its having been announced in
the published (and later) account of this machine, that, “the clock
part of it may be contrived to play a great variety of Music,” (a
suggestion wholly omitted in Mr. Rittenhouse’s original
communication, made to the Rev. Mr. Barton,) that the philosophic
Artist had been afterwards induced, in one particular at least, “to
comply with the prevailing taste.”[140] But this may be readily
accounted for: our artist had previously made some extremely
curious and beautiful Time-pieces, to each of which was attached the
mechanism of a Musical Clock, in addition to a limited Planetarium,
in miniature. These were in the hands of gentlemen of respectability
and taste:[141] and they were much and generally admired, as well for
the great ingenuity displayed by the constructor, in these combined
and pleasing operations of his machinery, as for the superior
accuracy and beauty of the workmanship; qualities eminently
conspicuous in all his mechanical productions.

It appears, that when Mr. Rittenhouse sent the foregoing

description of his projected Orrery to Mr. Barton—that is to say, on
the 27th of March, 1767[142]—the “foundation” of it was “laid.” But,
notwithstanding his earnest wishes prompted him to the utmost
diligence, in his exertions to finish it, many circumstances concurred
to retard its completion. The magnitude of the undertaking—the
multiplicity of the work—and, perhaps, the difficulty of sometimes
readily procuring, even from Philadelphia, the necessary materials,—
all conspired, to prevent as early a completion of the machinery as
he had anticipated: and, added to these causes of unavoidable
delay, was the yet unabandoned pursuit of his professional business.

The Orrery was, nevertheless, then his favourite object. On the

18th of June, 1767, he wrote to Mr. Barton, thus—“I hope you will
persuade your Pequea friends to stay for the clocks, till harvest is
over; and then, I think, I may venture to promise them, for ready
money: but, at this time, one part of the Orrery is in such
forwardness, that I am not willing to lay it by till it is done. I hope it
will far exceed the description I gave you of it. To-morrow morning I
am to set off for Reading, at the request of the Commissioners of
Berks county, who wrote to me about their town-clock. They had
employed a ... to make it, who, it seems, is not able to go through
with it: if I should undertake to finish it, this will likewise retard the
great work.”

Amidst the more important philosophical pursuits which engaged

Mr. Rittenhouse’s attention before his removal to Philadelphia, as
well as after he fixed his residence in that city, he now and then
relaxed the energy of his mind from its employment in laborious
investigations, by bestowing a portion of his time on minor objects in
physical science; and indeed, sometimes, even on little matters of
ingenuity, curiosity and amusement. As instances of this, he
addressed to the Rev. Mr. Barton the letter under the date of the 20th
of July, 1768, which will be found in the Appendix; and also another,
dated the 4th of February, 1770, to which there is the following
postscript:

“I have,” says he, “seen a little curiosity, with which you would be
pleased; I mean the glass described by Dr. Franklin, wherein water
may be kept in a boiling state, by the heat of the hand alone, and
that for hours together. The first time I shall be in Lancaster, where I
hope to be next June, I expect to prevail on you to accompany me to
the Glass-house,[143] where we may have some of them made, as
well as some other things I want.”—A description of this instrument,
then usually called Dr. Franklin’s Pulse-Glass,[144] by means of which
water may be made to boil, in vacuo, by the heat of the human hand,
was communicated by Mr. Rittenhouse to Mr. Barton in a subsequent
letter.

1. Hence, in conformity to this sentiment, Mr. Pope says, when

animadverting on the insufficiency of talents, alone, for acquiring an
honourable fame and meriting a character truly great,—

“If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shin’d,

The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind;
Or, ravish’d with the whistling of a name,
See Cromwell damn’d to everlasting fame.”
[Essay on Man.]

2. The miserable consequences which have resulted to the

civilized world, from the mode of reasoning abstractly, and from the
mere synthetical plan of philosophising, are too apparent to need
much comment. Even some geometricians of great name have been
seduced, by such means, into monstrous absurdities in physics; and
into the maintenance of doctrines, alike subversive of religion and
morals, as destructive of the foundations of civil society. Such were
Descartes, Leibnitz and Spinoza, of the seventeenth century: and
such have been, and even now are, too many of that class of
modern philosophers, as well in this country as on the continent of
Europe,—whose metaphysical notions of religion and government,
(although some of them may, perhaps, be pretty correct on the
subject of physics, alone,) have been the means of inundating the
world with scepticism; and, after overturning regular, orderly, and
peaceable states, of establishing despotism and misery on the ruins
of rational government, in many of the fairest portions of the old
world.

Even Voltaire, who had, himself, been instrumental in corrupting

the mind of the great Frederick of Prussia, and, thus, of furnishing
the means for the subsequent overthrow of that once powerful
monarchy; even this infidel could not help exclaiming, in a moment of
sober reflection, “Who could have believed, that geometricians have
been wild enough to imagine, that, in the exaltation of the soul, we
may possess the gift of divination; yet more than one philosopher
took it into their heads, by the example of Descartes, to put
themselves into God’s place, and create a world with a word! But
now, all these philosophical follies are reproved by the wise; and
even their fantastical edifices, overthrown by reason, have left in
their ruins, materials, of which reason has made some use.—A like
extravagance has infected the moral world: there have been some
understandings so blind as to undermine the very foundation of
society, at the time they thought to reform it. They have been mad
enough to maintain that the distinctions of meum & tuum are
criminal, and that one ought not to enjoy the fruits of one’s own
labour; that not only all mankind are upon a level, but that they have
perverted the order of nature, in forming societies; that men are born
to be separated from each other, like wild beasts; and that
amphibious animals, with bees and ants, confound the eternal laws,
by living in common! These impertinences, worthy of an hospital of
madmen,” continues Mr. de Voltaire, sarcastically, “have been for
some time in fashion, just as it is customary to lead apes to dance, at
fairs.” [See The Age of Louis XV. ch. 39.]

But although it cannot be doubted; that the society of Voltaire

contributed to support, if not to generate, the deistical principles of
Frederick II. other foreigners, whom he had patronized and
cherished in his own capital, and with whom he associated, most of
them Frenchmen, did much towards debauching his mind, in regard
to religion. The Prince de Ligne, a distinguished Austrian field-
marshal, has verified this remark. In a letter written to the king of
Poland, in the year 1785, the prince narrates some particulars of a
conversation which took place between the Prussian monarch and
himself, in the year 1770; and observes, that the king expressed his
libertine sentiments too freely, even making a boast of his irreligion.
The prince de Ligne, on this occasion, charges freethinkers with a
want of candour, in promulgating opinions fraught with infidelity,
while many of them heartily dread the consequences of what they
affect to renounce. But this, he remarks, is not their only fault: “they
are also apt,” says he, “to make a parade of free-thinking; which
betrays, at least, a want of taste. It was,” continues the prince, “from
having been surrounded by men of bad taste, such as D’Argens,
Maupertuis, La Beaumelle, La Mettrie, the Abbé de Brades, and
some clumsy infidels of his academy, that the king had contracted
the habit of abusing religion, and talking of dogmas, Spinozism, the
court of Rome, &c.”

Letters and Reflexions of the Prince de Ligne.

3. However Cæsar may be admired as an accomplished

gentleman and scholar,—or even as a great and gallant soldier,—he
ought ever to be reprobated as an usurper and a tyrant.—Dr. Adam
Ferguson remarks, that “Julius Cæsar possessed the talent of
influencing, of gaining, and employing men to his purpose, beyond
any other person that is known in the history of the world: but it is
surely not for the good of mankind,” continues this able writer, “that
he should be admired in other respects. To admire even his
clemency, is to mistake for it policy and cunning.” [See Ferguson’s
Hist. of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic, vol. 5.
ch. 36.]

Indeed our admiration of the great military talents of such a man

as Cæsar, may carry us too far. Mr. Hume, in his History of England
(ch. 47.) very justly observes—that “The unhappy prepossession
which men commonly entertain in favour of ambition, courage,
enterprise, and other warlike virtues, engages generous natures,—
who always love fame,—into such pursuits as destroy their own
peace, and that of the rest of mankind.”

4. Mr. Fontenelle in his Eloge on Sir Isaac Newton (published by

the Royal Academy of Sciences, at Paris,) mentions particularly the
great honours that were paid him, by his countrymen, as well during
his life as after his decease. “The English,” says he, “are not apt to
pay the less regard to great abilities, for being of their native growth;
but instead of endeavouring to lessen them by injurious reflexions, or
approving the envy which attacks them, they all join together in
striving to advocate them,”—“They are sensible that a great genius
must reflect honour upon the state; and whoever is able to procure it
to their country, is upon that account infinitely dear to
them.”—“Tacitus,” says he, “who has reproached the Romans with
their extreme indifference towards the great men of their own nation,
would have given the English quite a different character.”—And, after
describing the almost princely magnificence, in the manner of
Newton’s interment in Westminster Abbey, Mr. Fontenelle remarks,
that we must almost go back to the ancient Greeks, if we would find
a like instance of so great a veneration paid to learning.

The following epitaph, in classical Latin, is inscribed on the noble

monument erected to the memory of Newton, in the Abbey Church of
Westminster:

H. S. E.
Isaacus Newton, Eques Auratus,
Qui vi animi prope divinâ
Planetarum motus, figuras,
Cometarum semitas, Oceanique æstus,
Sua mathesi facem præferente,
Primus demonstravit.
Radiorum lucis dissimilitudines,
Colorumque inde nascentium proprietates
Quas nemo antea vel suspicatus erat, prevestigavit,
Naturæ, Antiquitatis, S. Scripturæ,
Sedulus, sagax, fidus interpres,
Dei Opt. Max. majestatem philosophiâ asseruit,
Evangelii simplicitatem moribus expressit,
Sibi gratulentur mortales, tale tantumque exstitisse,
Humani Generis Decus.
Natus XXV. Decemb. MDCXLII. Obiit XX. Mart.
MDCCXXVI.

5. Aristotle is supposed, by some, to have imbibed the best and

most rational of his notions from his master Plato; to whom,
notwithstanding, he seems to have been greatly inferior as a moral
philosopher.
 His opinions respecting government, abound in good sense. As a
general outline of his sentiments on this subject, it may serve to
mention, that he distinguished civil government into two kinds; one,
in which the general welfare is the great object; the other, in which
this is not at all considered.[5a] In the first class, he places the limited
monarchy—the aristocratical form of government—and the republic,
properly so called. In the second, he comprehends tyranny—
oligarchy—and democracy; considering these as corruptions of the
three first. Limited monarchy, he alleges, degenerates into
despotism, when the sovereign assumes to himself the exercise of
the entire authority of the state, refusing to submit his power to any
controul;[5b] the aristocracy sinks into an oligarchy, when the supreme
power is no longer possessed by a reasonable proportion of virtuous
men,—but by a small number of rulers, whose wealth alone
constitutes their claim to authority; and the republican government is
debased into a democracy, when the poorest class of the people
have too great an influence in the public deliberations.[5c]

In Physics, Aristotle scarcely deserves the name of a Philosopher.

—As to his metaphysical opinions, in the common acceptation of the
term,—it is impossible to ascertain, with certainty, what they really
were. It was not until eighteen centuries after his death, that his
philosophy—such as it was then promulgated, anew—began to be
generally known and studied. After the sacking of Constantinople by
the Turks, in the year 1453, some fugitive Greeks, who had escaped
the fury of the Ottoman arms, brought from that city into the west of
Europe many of the writings of the Stagyritish philosopher: But,
although some of his treatises were previously known, they were
such as had passed through the hands of the Arabs, in translations
into their tongue; done by men who, it may be fairly presumed, very
imperfectly understood the author’s language; consequently not
capable, even if they were disposed, to do justice to the sense of the
original. Subsequent translations of those writings, from the Arabic,
probably occasioned, in the same way, further departures from the
meaning of the original Greek. Thus varying, as may be supposed,
from the opinions taught by Aristotle himself,—the philosophy of the
schoolmen, engrafted upon his systems, was neither entirely that of
the Stagyrite, nor altogether different. His writings, nevertheless,
gave birth to what is termed the Scholastic Philosophy,—“that motley
offspring of error and ingenuity,” as it is called by Mr. Mallet.[5d] “To
trace at length,” says this writer, “the rise, progress, and variations of
this philosophy, would be an undertaking not only curious, but
instructive; as it would unfold to us all the mazes in which the force,
the subtlety, the extravagance of human wit, can lose themselves: till
not only profane learning, but Divinity itself, was at last, by the
refined frenzy of those who taught both, subtilized into mere notion
and air.”[5e]
5a. Aristot. de Rep.—lib, 3. cap. 6.

5b. Id. Rhet.—lib. 1. cap. 8.

5c. Id. de Rep.—lib. 3. cap. 7.

5d. In his Life of Lord Chancellor Bacon.

5e. Ibid.

6. Baron Bielfeld (in his Elements of Universal Erudition) observes,

that the fondness for Aristotle’s reveries began about the twelfth
century. It was then, that the scholastic philosophy was formed. This
was partly borrowed from the writings of the Arabs, who were always
attached to the theories of Aristotle: they were initiated into a subtile,
ambiguous, abstract and capricious mode of reasoning; by which
they never hit the truth, but constantly went on the one side, or
beyond the truth. Toward the end of the fourteenth century, continues
the learned Baron, this absurd system arrived to a great height. It
became a mere jargon, a confused heap of unintelligible ideas.

The celebrated Mr. Boyle, the great successor of Lord Verulam

(St. Albans) in experimental philosophy, is said to have declared
against the Philosophy of Aristotle, as having in it more of words
than things; promising much and performing little; and giving the
Inventions of Men for indubitable proofs, instead of building upon
observation and experiment. He was so zealous for, and so
scrupulous about, this true method of learning by experiment, that,
though the Cartesian philosophy then made a great noise in the
world, yet he would never be persuaded to read the works of
Descartes; for fear he should be amused, and led away, by plausible
accounts of things founded on conjecture, and merely hypothetical.
(See Art. Boyle, in the New and General Biography.)—This great and
excellent man was born the same year in which Bacon, Viscount St.
Albans, died.

Epicurus, the disciple of Democritus, and follower of the

Philosophy of Aristotle, was engaged, although unsuccessfully
enough, in the labyrinth of Metaphysics, as well as in Physics. He
adopted the system of Atoms, which Democritus first propagated;
and hence appears to be derived Descartes’s equally preposterous
doctrine of the Plenum and of Vortices.

7. “Nulla gens tam fera, quæ non sciat Deum habendum esse,
quamvis ignoret qualem habere deceat.”

Cic. de Naturâ Deorum.

8. While Plato followed the morals of Socrates, he cultivated the

metaphysical opinions of Pythagoras. He is said to have founded his
physics on the notions of Heraclitus: it may be presumed,
nevertheless, that he derived that branch of his system from a better
source.

9.

“Reason, tho’ taught by sense to range on high,

To trace the stars and measure all the sky;
Tho’ fancy, memory, foresight fill her train,
And o’er the beast he lifts the pride of man;
Yet, still to matter, form and space confin’d,
Or moral truths or laws that rule mankind,
Could ne’er, unaided, pierce the mental gloom,
Explore new scenes beyond the closing tomb,
Reach with immortal hope the blest abode,
Or raise one thought of spirit or of God.”
 Vision of Columbus, book VIII.

10. “An inordinate desire to explain and generalise, without facts

and observations, led the ancient philosophers to the most absurd
and extravagant notions; though, in a few cases, they have
displayed the most wonderful ingenuity, and sagaciously anticipated
the discoveries of modern times.”

New Edinb. Encyclop. tit. Astronomy.

 11. “If the petty motions of us mortals afford arguments for the
being of a God, much more may those greater motions we see in the
world, and the phænomena attending them: I mean, the motions of
the planets and heavenly bodies. For these must be put into motion
either by one common mighty Mover, acting upon them immediately,
or by causes and laws of His appointment; or by their respective
movers, who, for reasons to which you can by this time be no
stranger,” (referring his reader to preceding arguments), “must
depend upon some Superior, that furnished them with the power of
doing this. And granting it to be done either of these ways, we can
be at no great distance from a demonstration of the existence of a
Deity.”—Wollaston’s Rel. of Nat. delineated, sect. v. head 14th.

12. A disciple of Anaximenes, and preceptor to Socrates. He died

428 years B. C. in the seventy-second year of his age.

13. Thales, of Miletus in Ionia, was one of the seven sages of

Greece: he was born about six hundred and forty years before the
Christian era. After travelling into other countries, he returned to his
own, and there devoted himself exclusively to the study of nature.
Being the first of the Greeks who made any discoveries in
Astronomy, he is said to have astonished his countrymen, by
predicting a solar eclipse; and he instructed them, by communicating
the knowledge of geometry and astronomy, which he had acquired
while in Egypt. He died in the ninety-sixth year of his age,—544
years B. C.

14. Marcus Tullius Cicero—the same that has been already

mentioned. He was, himself, not only one of the most learned and
eloquent men, but one of the greatest philosophers, of antiquity. This
illustrious Roman (whose death occurred forty-three years before the
Christian era) firmly believed in the being of a God. He was likewise
a decided advocate for the doctrine of the soul’s immortality;
concerning which, some fine reasoning will be found in his book on
Old Age;—a doctrine, however, by no means confined to Cicero
alone, but one maintained by many of the most eminent among the
heathen philosophers, in the early ages. Plato appears to have been
the first who supported that opinion upon sound and permanent
arguments, deduced from truth and established principles.

15. Cicero himself says, “If any one doubt, whether there be a
God, I cannot comprehend why the same person may not as well
doubt, whether there be a sun or not.” [De Naturâ Deorum, 2. 2.]

It is observed by Dr. Turnbull, in his annotations on Heineccius’s

System of Universal Law, that Polybius as well as Cicero, and
indeed almost all the ancient philosophers, have acknowledged, that
a public sense of Religion is necessary to the well-being and support
of civil society: and such a sentiment of Religion is inseparable from
a reasonable conception of the being and attributes of the Deity.
“Society,” says Dr. Turnbull very truly, “can hardly subsist without it:
or, at least, it is the most powerful mean for restraining from vice;
and for promoting and upholding those virtues by which society
subsists, and without which every thing that is great and comely in
society must soon perish and go to ruin.”—“With regard to private
persons,” continues this learned writer, “he who does not often
employ his mind in reviewing the perfections of the Deity, and in
consoling and strengthening his mind by the comfortable and mind-
exalting reflexions, to which meditation upon the universal
providence of an all-perfect mind, naturally, and as it were,
necessarily lead, deprives himself of the greatest joy, the noblest
exercise and entertainment, the human mind is capable of; and
whatever obligations there may to virtue, he cannot be so firm,
steady, and unshaken in his adherence to it, as he, who, being
persuaded of the truth just mentioned, is daily drawing virtuous
strength and comfort from it.” [See the Annotator’s remark on ch. v.
b. i. of Heineccius.]

16. The Greeks derived their knowledge of astronomy from the

Egyptians and Chaldeans. According to Plutarch, the sciences
began to unfold themselves about the time of Hesiod, the Greek
poet, who flourished upwards of nine centuries before the Christian
era; but their progress was very slow, until the time of Thales, which
was about three centuries later. And although this celebrated
philosopher of antiquity rendered himself famous by foretelling an
eclipse of the sun, he only predicted the year in which it was to
happen. Even this, it is remarked by Mr. Vince (in his invaluable
work, entitled, A Complete System of Astronomy,) he was probably
enabled to do by the Chaldean Saros, a period of 223 lunations;
after which, the eclipses return again nearly in the same order.
Philolaus, a disciple of Pythagoras, lived about four hundred and fifty
years before Christ, and is said to have taught the true solar system,
—placing the sun in the centre, with the earth and all the planets
revolving about it; a system which, it is believed, Pythogaras himself
had conceived, and was inclined to adopt.

However, Hipparchus, who lived between one hundred and

twenty-five and one hundred and sixty years before the Christian
era, and whom Mr. Vince styles “the Father of Astronomy,” was the
first person that cultivated every part of that science. His discoveries,
together with those of Ptolemy, are preserved in the Μεγαλη
Σύνταξις, or Great Construction,—Ptolemy’s celebrated work on
Astronomy, named by the Arabs the Almagest, and now usually so
called.

17. This great philosopher of antiquity, so justly entitled to celebrity

for his mathematical works, flourished three hundred years before
the Christian era. Care should be taken not to confound him with
Euclid of Megara, who lived a century earlier. The latter, as the Abbé
Barthelemi observes, being too much familiarized with the writings of
Parmenides and the Elean school, had recourse to abstractions; “a
method,” says the Abbé, “often dangerous, oftener unintelligible.”
Just after, he adds: “The subtleties of metaphysics calling to their aid
the quirks of logic, words presently took place of things, and students
acquired nothing in the schools but a spirit of acrimony and
contradiction.” Travels of the younger Anacharsis, vol. iii. chap. 37.

18. That the sun is at rest, and that the planets revolve round him,
is an opinion that appears to have been received of old, by Philolaus,
Aristarchus of Samos, and the whole sect of the Pythagoreans. It is
probable, as Mr. Rowning[18a] observes, that this notion was derived
from them, by the Greeks: But the opinion that the sun stood still in
the centre, while the whole heavens moved around it, was the
prevailing one, until Copernicus, by the establishment of his system,
restored the ancient astronomy of the Pythagorean school.

18a. In his Compendious System of Natural Philosophy.

19. Nicholas Copernic (usually latinized, by adding the terminating

syllable, us,) that celebrated astronomer, “whose vast genius,
assisted by such lights as the remains of antiquity afforded him,
explained the true system of the universe, as at present
understood,”[19a] was born at Thorn in Royal Prussia, the 19th of
January, 1442. He was alike distinguished for his piety and
innocence, as for his extraordinary genius and discoveries. He died
in the seventy-seventh year of his age.
19a. Ritt. Orat.

20. This great man was a native of Knudsturp, a province of

Scania in Denmark, and born the 18th of December, 1546, of an
illustrious family. He was the first, who, by the accuracy and number
of his observations, made the way for the revival of astronomy
among the moderns; although, “in theory,” as Rittenhouse has
expressed it, “he mangled the beautiful system of Copernicus.”[20a]—
Brahé (for this is the family-name) died at the age of fifty-five years.
20a. Ibid.

21. John Kepler, a native of Wiel in the duchy of Wirtemberg, in

Germany, became as celebrated for the consequences he drew from
the observations of Tycho, as the latter was for the vast mass of
astronomical materials he had prepared. This eminent, though
somewhat “whimsical”[21a] astronomer, was born the 27th of
December, 1571, and died at the age of fifty-nine years.
21a. Ritt. Orat.

22. “Before his (Bacon’s) time, philosophy was fettered by forms

and syllogisms. The logics of Aristotle held the human mind in
bondage for nearly two thousand years; a miserable jugglery, which
was fitted to render all truth problematical, and which disseminated a
thousand errors, but never brought to light one useful piece of
knowledge.”—Ld. Woolhousie’s Memoirs of the Life and Writings of
Ld. Kames.

23. It is observed by an eminent philosopher of the present day,

that “The more the phænomena of the universe are studied, the
more distinctly their connexion appears, the more simple their
causes, the more magnificent their design, and the more wonderful
the wisdom and power of their Author.” (See Elements of Chymical
Philosophy, by sir Humphrey Davy, LLD. Sec. R. S.)

24. On looking into Maclaurin’s Account of Sir Isaac Newton’s

Philosophical Discoveries, since penning the above, the writer of
these Memoirs was much gratified by the perusal of the following
passage, in the last chapter of that valuable work; wherein its author
treats “Of the Supreme Author and Governor of the Universe, the
True and Living God.” The writer is induced to add it in a note, to his
own reflections on the same subject, such as he has ventured to
offer them in the text; presuming that the authority of so eminent a
philosopher as Mr. Maclaurin will give weight to what he has himself
advanced; so far, at least, as there may appear to be some
coincidence of sentiment on the subject.

“The plain argument for the existence of the Deity, obvious to all
and carrying irresistable conviction with it, is from the evident
contrivance and fitness of things for one another, which we meet with
throughout all parts of the universe. There is no need of nice and
subtle reasonings in this matter: a manifest contrivance immediately
suggests a contriver. It strikes us like a sensation; and artful
reasonings against it may puzzle us, but it is without shaking our
belief. No person, for example, that knows the principles of optics,
and the structure of the eye, can believe that it was formed without
skill in that science; or that the ear was formed, without the
knowledge of sounds:”—“All our accounts of nature are full of
instances of this kind. The admirable and beautiful order of things,
for final causes, exalt our idea of the Contriver: the unity of design
shews him to be One. The great motions in the system, performed
with the same facility as the least, suggest his Almighty Power;
which gave motion to the earth and the celestial bodies, with equal
ease as to the minutest particles. The subtilty of the motions and
actions in the internal parts of bodies, shews that His influence
penetrates the inmost recesses of things, and that He is equally
active and present every where. The simplicity of the laws that
prevail in the world, the excellent disposition of things, in order to
obtain the best ends, and the beauty which adorns the works of
nature, far superior to any thing in art, suggest His consummate
Wisdom. The usefulness of the whole scheme, so well contrived for
the intelligent beings that enjoy it, with the internal disposition and
moral structure of those beings themselves, shew His unbounded
goodness. These are arguments which are sufficiently open to the
views and capacities of the unlearned, while at the same time they
acquire new strength and lustre from the discoveries of the learned.
The Deity’s acting and interposing in the universe, shew that He
governs it, as well as formed it; and the depth of His counsels, even
in conducting the material universe, of which a great part surpasses
our knowledge, keeps up an inward veneration and awe of this great
Being, and disposes us to receive what may be otherwise revealed
to us, concerning Him.”

25. Mr. Cotes, in his preface to the second edition of Sir Isaac
Newton’s Principia, exposes the folly of those depraved dreamers in
philosophy, “the sordid dregs of the most impure part of mankind,”
who strive to maintain, that the constitution of the world is not
derived from the will of God, but from a certain necessity of nature;
that all things are governed by fate, not by Providence; and that
matter, by necessity of nature, has existed always and every where,
and is infinite and eternal. He then adds:—“We may now, therefore,
take a nearer view of nature in her glory, and contemplate her in a
most entertaining manner: and withal, more zealously than ever, pay
our worship and veneration to the Creator and Lord of the Universe;
which is the principal advantage of philosophy. He must be blind
who, from the most excellent and most wise structure of the