United on Politics, Divided on Art
While Holland was on the grand tour in Europe, he kept up a regular correspondence with Charles James Fox, his uncle, foster-father, and mentor. Along with extensive discussions of current events [particularly the poor relations between England and revolutionary France] the two exchanged opinions about the art and literature of the countries that Holland was visiting, particularly Spain and Italy. The English gentleman’s tour of Europe was intended to make him familiar with the languages and cultures of the continent, and Holland and Fox frequently compare notes on what Holland has been seeing or reading and what Fox remembers from his own travels.
In many ways the two men share the common ground of eighteenth-century taste. In ancient art, they see the Apollo Belvedere, the Laocoon, and the Venus de Medici as the standard masterpieces - the equivalent of Michelangelo’s David or the Mona Lisa for a twenty-first century tourist. In more recent art, Raphael and Titian share the glory with seventeenth-century painters like Domenichino, Guercino, and Guido Reni. As for Michelangelo, Fox and Holland both seem to feel that of course he is a great genius, but a bit hard to take, all the same!
But as the correspondence progresses, it becomes clear that Holland belongs to a different generation from his uncle. The difference in their taste matches the difference between Amigoni’s Venus and Cupid and Lord Holland’s portrait by Fabre. Fox is charmed by the softness of Correggio and his followers, which also inspired the rococo style of early eighteenth-century painters like Amigoni. Holland is ambivalent about Correggio and repelled by his followers -- he feels that they ignore fundamental rules of painting.
The difference of opinion on Raphael’s St Cecilia is particularly significant. Fox doesn’t think much of it, Holland is offended that he can say such a thing. This might be Holland kowtowing to the great name of Raphael, but he did not hesitate to criticize Raphael’s Madonna della Sedia. The St. Cecilia is a particularly “classical” Raphael, and one that could easily be particularly admired by someone who was also attracted to Neo-classical artists like Fabre and his teacher, Jacques-Louis David. Fox quotes the artist Annibale Carracci, who considered the St. Cecilia ‘wooden.’ Fox likewise seems to find the painting stiff and cold -- the sort of criticism that has also been leveled at Neoclassical artists. Holland, by contrast, faults the painting only for occasional lapses into ‘vulgarity’ and emotionalism -- just the opposite of Fox’s complaints about it!
Timothy Riggs
NOTE: To make the text below easier to read, I have frequently added or changed punctuation. I have also guessed at numerous words and a few whole phrases, when the difficulty of transcribing eighteenth-century handwriting produced a text that did not make sense. I believe that these selections accurately present the general flow of the dialogue between Holland and his uncle, but any serious student of the interaction between them should consult the original manuscripts in the British Library.
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Holland, Rome, February, 1794
At the gallery at Florence I committed a great blunder for I took the group of Laocoon and his sons which is in the long gallery for the original. However, I consoled myself with thinking that though every one is not candid or foolish enough to confess it, almost everybody upon their first coming into Italy makes as great mistakes—Indeed how was I to know an original when I had never seen such a thing before in my life.” |
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Fox, March 9, 1794
[at] Naples there is a great deal to see, particularly antiquities, some of which are not so much worth seeing for themselves as for the very pretty places you see in going to them. The temples of [Paestum?] are more curious than beautiful but the road thither is very well worth seeing especially about [Salerno?] which seems to be the country Salvator Rosa most [haunted?]… |
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Holland, Rome, April 9, 1794
I like the Danae of Titian beyond measure, as well as the pictures of Shedoni [Bartolomeo Schedoni] and those of Raphael which are at the Capo di Monte [in Naples]. Holland, Rome, April 13, 1794“I have been today to see the [Apollo] Belvedere, and came home more delighted with it than I could have expected. I do not know how to express how much I like it and prefer it very much indeed to the Venus of Medici’s -- but I must not begin telling you all I like in Rome as the catalogue of things is much too long. -- |
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Fox, April, 1794
…”If you go from Bologna to Venice pray do not forget to go to Cento where there are several beautiful pictures of Guercino … |
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Holland, Venice, May, 1794
(Holland notes that it is impossible to describe all he has seen in Rome, Bologna and elsewhere.) “What a fine painter Guercino is! I am glad you admire him and I trust you do the whole Bolognese school. |
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Fox, June 23, 1794
“I do not wonder at your admiring the Bolognese school and Guercino particularly but Mrs. A.[Mrs. Armistead, Fox’s mistress] will never forgive you if you have not taken particular notices of his picture of Christ in the Garden at Cento which probably you saw in your way from Bologna to Venice tho’ you do not mention it. I think it by far the most pleasing of his works. I have been always partial to the Venetian Painters, Titian and Tintoretto in particular, and I doubt whether there is any one picture upon the whole superior to the Martyrdom of St. Peter the Hermit [by Titian]. … I hope you admired properly the Martyrdom of St. Agnes by Domenichino of Bologna which I think the finest picture there is. Non mi piace molto quella Santa Cecilia di Raffaello. [I don’t think much of that Saint Cecilia of Raphael] . |
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Holland, Bologna, July 3, 1794
“I have nothing to say to you in this letter but how much Guerchino pleases … me -- that last time I was here I was in a great hurry and several then circumstances contributed to [make] me see them in a slovenly manner. However even then I admired them very much -- He and Guido are … the first of all painters, my favorites. Raphael certainly is sometimes, indeed generally, finer than either and more correct -- but yet there is something in Guido, I confess, that I like beyond all. The famous picture of his, St. Paul and St. Peter in the Zampieri palace, and that of Samson in the Palazzo Publico are surely as perfect as it is possible for human works to be. … I think the subjects of Guido or Guerchino are always the best subjects for pictures. -- I never saw any ill chosen but the Massacre of the Infants by Guido in a church here, and which tho’ very fine is not so pleasing as most of his works … “By the bye at Florence are four or five pictures of Guerchino equal to those I have seen. I saw at Parma the famous Correggio and though I admired it for a degree, I do not like it near so much as many pictures here by [the] Carracci’s or their scholars (I [admire] all of the second Bolognese school) but are not so highly valued or so well known.-- The prettiest Correggio, except the famous one at Dresden, that ever I saw is a small one at the Caprara palace here, Holland, Florence, August 5, 1794 “I am sorry to find by your last letter that we do not coincide on opinion about pictures near so much as about Politics.—Titian I agree with you upon—But as to Tintoret I think him one of the vilest daubers in Italy. So much affectation and so little attention either to expression or to the story of his picture, attended with such incorrectness of drawing, can never in my opinion be compensated by any imagination or any force of colouring.— I can easily forgive in Poetry any deviation from rules, indeed I know scarce any good poet of modern times that has not deviated from what are supposed to be rules. But I am not equally indulgent to Painters.—Perhaps the generally admitted rules of painting are more incontrovertible than those of poetry … … Be that as it will, in general I dislike very much the Venetian School and prefer the Flemish to it in its own way, that is to say with an exception to the finest works of Titian, of which the Danae at Naples, I think, is the most pleasing picture in Italy and consequently in the world. -- However I do not, like Charles Beauclerck [a friend who had been traveling with Holland], deny that Tintoretto has painted some fine things, & I speak always of his general character: two or three things of his at Venice pleased me very much … Now as to Domenichino -- I am sure I admire one or two of his pictures as much as any ones, his frescos at Rome the most, and in all his pictures there are parts, especially children, that are inimitable but yet; if it be not that pleasing to say so, I do not like him very much upon the whole. His drapery is so gorgeous and his groups so confused that I could always find nearly as much to [blame] as to admire .. nor do I think the St. Agnes his best picture. I like the St. Jerome or St. Laurence (which is it?) at Rome better. And as to your taste about the St. Cecilia -- how could you put such an opinion to paper! I declare I never heard such a thing in my life. — I should scarce have dared to have written so unguardedly upon Domenichino, if you had not given me the example by speaking in the [manner?] you do of the St. Cecilia. I admire her very much indeed though I will allow the instruments are rather vulgar and her face a little drunken. – Andre del Sarto is a wonderful fine painter but he is too singular I think to be quite pleasing, all his pictures, though finely colored and in high preservation, look as if they were inlaid marble.— Fra Bartolomeo is an amazing fine painter and in my opinion infinitely the best painter before Raphael, for as to Michael Angelo though I am convinced he was one of the first geniuses that ever lived, and that for an artist his works are among the best, yet I confess that I am not deep enough in the art to be pleased at his pictures -- though I am not, as many people are, disgusted at them.-- Putting Frescos aside and two or three of Titian’s best pictures, I like Guido and Guerchino the best of all painters.-- but I think all the Bolognese school is fine--that is the Caraccis’ school, for [as] to Correggio I am a little doubtful and all his imitators I detest. |
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Fox, August 10/18, 1794
“You were very near losing all credit with the Lady of the Hill [Mrs. Armistead,] for speaking so coldly about the Correggio at Parma, but you reconciled it a little by admiring so much that of the Caprara Palace, which was the first of the Master she ever saw and which she was wild about.. I do not agree with you about your preference of Guido to all painters, but I have not time to discuss it now. I like, however, the Massacre of the Innocents extremely and think it a very good subject, and can not think that two old Apostles, though most capably executed I allow, can be considered as a remarkable instance of a painter’s [humanity?] in choosing subjects. You do not mention Domenichino [whom] in some of his works I prefer to Guido. The Death of St. Jerome and the chapel of St. Cecilia in the church of St. Louis [San Luigi francese] at Rome and the St. Agnes at Bologna are in my mind far superior to any thing of Guido’s.” Fox, August 21, 1794 Pray, in the Palazzo Pitti (I think it is there) take notice of Titian’s Portrait of [Pope] Paul the Third. It is by far the finest portrait in the world to my thinking and I have not yet heard you speak of Titian with the praise he deserves. There is a St. Mark by Fra Bartolomeo there too, which is a wonderful fine thing and as grand as any thing of M. Angelo. Dinner is on table, and indeed if it were not I have nothing more to say, so God bless you, and write one good long letter and come home as soon as you can.” |
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Holland, Florence, Sept 21/20, 1794
“Though I do not quite agree with you as to pictures, yet in praises of Titian, I write you … ‘as far as who goes farthest’. I think upon the whole the best picture of his paintings the Danae, there is something in that picture superior, I think, to any female figure I ever saw, I like it much [better] than the famous Venus here — indeed, there is another Venus of Titian’s here which I prefer to the celebrated one in the tribune.— that portrait of Paul the Third in the Pitti is as good as portrait can be; there is another of them in a palace at Rome I think equal to this. I am not quite sure that the Madonna della sedia [by Raphael] quite deserves its reputation, though I have no fault to find except that the face of the child does not look healthy, and … upon the whole he looks a stupid child. |
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Fox, October 5, 1794
(Responding to H’s letters. ) “…our tastes are certainly not very like in painting, for to doubt about Correggio seems to me just as if a Man were to doubt about Homer or Shakespeare or Ariosto, and as to his imitators whom you did the [same?], who are they? Do you consider Parmegiano one? And do you dislike him? His other principal imitators that I know are Schidone [Bartolomeo Schedoni], Baroccio and Sir Joshua Reynolds, all of them I think very excellent Painters. You seem to think, & in that I agree, that expression adapted to the subject is the first [quality? beauty?] of a painter, and yet by some strange difference of seeing (I suppose) from me you prefer Guido to Domenichino who of all painters (excepting only Raphael) has this merit to the greatest degree. I did not mention his St. Agnes as his best. I think the St. Jerome at Rome and his frescoes in San Luigi much superior but I mentioned it because being at Bologna you might more easily compare it to the works of the other Bolognese painters. As to the St. Cecilia at Bologna, I am not shamed of my opinion and think, as Annibal Caracci said of it after he had seen the Correggio of Parma, ‘Quella Santa Cecilia di Raffaelle mi pare una cosa di legno …’ [‘That St. Cecilia of Raphael looks to me like something made of wood etc.’]. But I have seen Charles Beauclerk and I perceive that you have encouraged one another in these heretical opinions so much that there is no persuading you out of them. That Rubens is a greater genius than Paul Veronese (tho’ by the way it was not quite fair to compare the first of the Flemish School with the second or third of the Venetian) I readily admit, but in point of that propriety of expression which I mentioned above, he is far his inferior. I do not know whether you were struck with the expression of the countenance of a pope in one of P. V[eronese].’s large pictures, I believe that of Vicenza. He is listening I think to our Savior who is supping with him in the habit of a pilgrim, and in point of grave readable expression, it is equal almost to any thing in the School of Athens itself. I can not conclude this subject of pictures without observing that, from questioning Cha. Beauclerk, and from your saying nothing about it, I conclude that neither of you saw when you were at Venice Titian’s Martyrdom of Peter the Hermit which is by far his first work, and in grandness of style which is not usually his excellence would not shame M. Angelo himself. By the way, in what you say of him M.A. [Michelangelo] I do most exactly agree with you, and here ends this discussion of Pictures. I should be much more sorry if should I have any difference of opinion about politicks, nor do I think it all likely except perhaps in the degree of ability which belongs to the system of party.” |
![[Apollo] Belvedere](http://www.artchive.com/artchive/G/greek/belvedere_apollo.jpg.html){kind=link}
