Part 21

Two pictures had been painted by those artists, which, as if to decide their rival claims, were hung opposite to each other in the church of San Gregorio. The subjects were similar; the one the Flagellation, the other the Martyrdom of the Saint from whom the church is named. The performance of Guido was the one most generally preferred: but Poussin formed a different judgment, and sat down to copy the picture of the less popular artist. Domenichino, on being informed of this, although he was then suffering from illness, ordered himself to be carried to the church, where he entered into conversation with Poussin, to whom he was personally unknown, and who indeed imagined him to be dead. A friendly intimacy was the consequence of this interview, which was exceedingly advantageous to Poussin, as Domenichino took pleasure in communicating all that knowledge of art, which long experience had enabled him to acquire. Shortly after this Domenichino quitted Rome for Naples, and the storm of envy and detraction seemed to gather force in his absence. So much was his reputation injured, that the monks of the convent of San Girolamo della Carità, who had in their possession his superb picture of the Communion of St. Jerome, ordered it to be removed from the walls and consigned to a cellar as a thing utterly contemptible. This anecdote, were it not attested by unquestionable evidence, would be difficult to believe; for the merits of the picture require no deep knowledge of art to be duly appreciated: it is not less admirable in colour and effect than in sentiment and character. The intelligent monks, however, wishing for a picture to supply its place, engaged Poussin to paint one, acquainting him at the same time that they could save him the expense of canvass, by sending him a worthless daub, over which he might paint. The astonishment of Poussin on receiving the picture may be easily conceived. He immediately directed it to be carried to the church from whence it had been taken, and announced his intention to deliver a public disquisition on its merits. This he accordingly did to a large auditory, and with such force of reasoning and illustration, that malice was silenced and prejudice convinced; and the name of Domenichino assumed from that time its just rank in public estimation.

The pictures of Poussin, as he advanced in his career, were eagerly purchased by connoisseurs from all countries, and his fame was at length established throughout Europe. In 1638 a project was suggested to Louis XIII., by Cardinal Richelieu, for finishing the Louvre, and adorning the royal palaces, according to the magnificent plans of Francis I. The high reputation of Poussin marked him out as the person best qualified for the partial execution and entire superintendence of these splendid works; and accordingly a letter was transmitted to him by order of the French monarch, appointing him his principal painter, and requesting his immediate attendance at Paris. But so absorbed was the artist in his studies, and so unambitious was his temper, that he allowed two years to elapse before he attended to this flattering requisition; nor is it probable that he would have quitted Rome at all, had not a gentleman been despatched from the court of France to bring him. On his arrival, he was presented to the King, who received him with courtesy, and assigned him a liberal income. Placed in the full enjoyment of fame and wealth, Poussin’s situation might well appear enviable to his less favoured brethren in art. But his station, brilliant as it was, proved ill-suited to his disposition: and his letters to his friends in Rome were soon filled with the language of disappointment and complaint. He felt that he was no longer exercising his genius as an artist, but labouring as an artisan. Commissions were poured in upon him from the court with merciless rapidity, without the slightest calculation of the time requisite to the production of works of art. On one occasion he was required to execute a picture containing sixteen figures, larger than life, within six weeks. Nor was this the worst: the triflers of the court obtruded on him, with irritating politeness, the most insignificant employments; designs for chimney-pieces, ornamental cabinets, bindings for books, repairing pictures, &c. To complete the catalogue of annoyances, his coadjutors in the public works, Le Mercier the architect, and the painters Vouet and Fouquieres, thwarted and opposed him in every particular; until at length, worn out and disgusted, he applied for permission to return to Rome. This he obtained with some difficulty, and not without a stipulation that he should revisit Paris within twelve months. It is not improbable that the condition would never have been fulfilled; but the King’s death in the following year released him from the obligation. The last works executed by Poussin in Paris were two allegorical subjects: the one, Time bringing Truth to light, and delivering her from the fiends, Malice and Envy; in which an allusion was most probably meant to the controversies in which he had been engaged: the other, in which his intention is less equivocal, is an imitation of bas-relief, in the ceiling of the Louvre, where his opponents, Fouquieres, Le Mercier, and Vouet, are consigned to the derision of posterity under the figures of Folly, Ignorance, and Envy.

Perhaps the happiest, and not an inconsiderable, portion of Poussin’s life, was that which intervened between his return to Rome and his death. Experience of the cabals and disquietudes of Paris had no doubt taught him to value the classical serenity of his adopted home. Although in possession of great and undisputed fame, and sufficiently affluent, he continued to labour in his art with unrelaxing diligence, if that may be called labour which constituted his highest gratification. His talents and moral worth drew round him a large circle of the learned and the polite, who anxiously sought his society during his leisure hours; and in his evening walks on the Pincian Hill, he might have been said to resemble one of the philosophers of antiquity, surrounded by his friends and disciples. Thus he descended, with tranquil dignity, into the vale of life. In 1665 he suffered from a stroke of the palsy, and, shortly after, the death of his wife plunged him into the deepest affliction. He perceived his own end to be approaching, and awaited it with calm resignation. He died in his 72d year, A. D. 1665, and was buried with public honours in the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina.

The pictures of Poussin are so numerous, and so generally dispersed, that every one, whose attention has been directed to the arts, must have a pretty accurate impression of his style. It is a style of perfect originality, reminding us somewhat of ancient art, but without a tincture of imitation of any modern master. For a short time Poussin sought a model in the school of Titian, but turned from that task to copy the pictures discovered among the ruins of ancient Rome. Apparently he wished to give his works something of the subdued tone which Time has communicated to those relics; and hence, in some of his pictures, there is a singular discrepancy between the subject and the effect. He delighted to paint antique revels, bacchanalians, dancing nymphs, &c.; but his tints never accord with gay subjects, nor exhibit the vivacity and freshness proper to such scenes. The solemn and sombre hue of his colouring is far better adapted to grand or pathetic subjects. Considering the implicit and almost idolatrous admiration with which Poussin regarded the antique statues, it is astonishing that he should not have infused into his own forms more of the spirit in which these are conceived; for, in this point, imitation could not have been carried too far. But the reverse is the case: his figures are direct transcripts of individual models, usually correct in proportion, but seldom rendered ideal, or generalized into beauty. A still greater defect is chargeable on his composition, which is almost invariably scattered and confused, without a centre of interest or point of unity. His principal figures are mixed up with the subordinate ones, and those again with the accessories in the back-ground. What, then, are the qualities by which Poussin has acquired his high reputation? The principal one we conceive to consist in that very simplicity and severity, by which perhaps the eye is at first offended. He appears to feel himself above the necessity of superficial ornament. He is always thoroughly in earnest; his figures perform their business with an emphasis which rivets our attention, we become identified with the subject, and lose all thought of the painter in his performance. This is a result never produced by an inferior artist. On the whole, although we cannot assign Poussin a place by the side of Raffaelle, Rubens, Titian, and some others, who may be considered the giants of art, and compose the foremost rank, he certainly stands among those who are most eminent in the second. His compositions, which are very numerous, are varied with great skill, and surprise us, not unfrequently, with novel and striking combinations; and several among them—we may adduce particularly the Ark of God among the Philistines, the Deluge, and the Slaughter of the Innocents—could only have originated in a mind of a very exalted order.

Several of Poussin’s finest works are in this country. In the Dulwich Gallery there is, we believe, the largest number to be found in any one collection. Among those, the subject of the Angels appearing to Abraham is treated with considerable grace and beauty. The picture of Moses striking the rock, in the possession of the Marquis of Stafford, is one of Poussin’s most profound and elaborate performances; and, in the National Gallery, the two Bacchanalian subjects will furnish a full idea both of his powers and deficiencies in treating that favourite class of compositions.

The reader will find a more detailed account of the life and works of Poussin in Lanzi’s ‘Storia Pittorica dell’Italia,’ and Bellori’s ‘Vite di Pittori moderni.’ There is an English life of him written by Maria Graham. Much critical information concerning his style and performances will be found in the writings of Mengs, Reynolds, and Fuseli.

[Illustration: [Holy Family; from a picture by Poussin.]]

[Illustration:

_Engraved by E. Scriven._

W. HARVEY, M.D.

_From the original Picture by C. Jansen in the possession of the Royal Society._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.

_London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._ ]

[Illustration]

HARVEY

William Harvey was born on the 1st of April, 1578, at Folkstone, on the southern coast of Kent. He was the eldest of nine children; of the rest little more is known than that several of the brothers were among the most eminent merchants in the city of London during the reigns of the two first Stuarts. His father, Thomas Harvey, followed no profession. He married Joanna Falke at the age of twenty, and lived upon his own estate at Folkstone. This property devolved by inheritance upon his eldest son; and the greatest part of it was eventually bequeathed by him to the college at which he was educated.

At ten years of age he commenced his studies at the grammar school in Canterbury; and upon the 31st of May, 1593, soon after the completion of his fifteenth year, was admitted as a pensioner at Caius College, Cambridge.

At that time a familiar acquaintance with logic and the learned languages was indispensable as a first step in the prosecution of all the branches of science, especially of medicine; and the skill with which Harvey avails himself of the scholastic form of reasoning in his great work on the Circulation, with the elegant Latin style of all his writings, particularly of his latest work on the Generation of Animals, afford a sufficient proof of his diligence in the prosecution of these preliminary studies during the next four years, which he spent at Cambridge. The two next were occupied in visiting the principal cities and seminaries of the Continent. He then prepared to address himself to those investigations to which the rest of his life was devoted; and the scene of his introduction to them could not have been better chosen than at the University of Padua, where he became a student in his twenty-second year.

The ancient physicians gathered what they knew of anatomy from inaccurate dissections of the lower animals; and the slender knowledge thus acquired, however inadequate to unfold the complicated functions of the human frame, was abundantly sufficient as a basis for conjecture, of which they took full advantage. With them every thing became easy to explain, precisely because nothing was understood; and the nature and treatment of disease, the great object of medicine and of its subsidiary sciences, was hardily abandoned to the conduct of the imagination, and sought for literally among the stars. Nevertheless, so firmly was their authority established, that even down to the close of the sixteenth century the naturalists of Europe still continued to derive all their physiology, and the greater part of their anatomy and medicine, from the works of Aristotle and Galen, read not in the original Greek, but re-translated into Latin from the interpolated versions of the Arabian physicians. The opinions entertained by these dictators in the republic of letters, and consequently by their submissive followers, with regard to the structure and functions of the organs concerned in the circulation, were particularly fanciful and confused, so much so that it would be no easy task to give an intelligible account of them that would not be tedious from its length. It will be enough to say, that a scarcely more oppressive mass of mischievous error was cleared away from the science of astronomy by the discovery of Newton, than that from which physiology was disencumbered by the discovery of Harvey.

But though the work was completed by an Englishman, it is to Italy that, in anatomy, as in most of the sciences, we owe the first attempts to cast off the thraldom of the ancients. Mundinus had published a work in the year 1315, which contained a few original observations of his own; and his essay was so well received that it remained the text-book of the Italian schools of anatomy for upwards of two centuries. It was enriched from time to time by various annotators, among the chief of whom were Achillini, and Berengarius, the first person who published anatomical plates. But the great reformer of anatomy was Vesalius, who, born at Brussels in 1514, had attained such early celebrity during his studies at Paris and Louvain, that he was invited by the republic of Venice in his twenty-second year to the chair of anatomy at Padua, which he filled for seven years with the highest reputation. He also taught at Bologna, and subsequently, by the invitation of Cosmo de’ Medici, at Pisa. The first edition of his work ‘De Corporis Humani fabricâ,’ was printed at Basle in the year 1543; it is perhaps one of the most successful efforts of human industry and research, and from the date of its publication begins an entirely new era in the science of which it treats. The despotic sway hitherto maintained in the schools of medicine by the writings of Aristotle and Galen was now shaken to its foundation, and a new race of anatomists eagerly pressed forward in the path of discovery. Among these no one was more conspicuous than Fallopius, the disciple, successor, and in fame the rival, of Vesalius, at Padua. After him the anatomical professorship was filled by Fabricius ab Aquapendente, the last of the distinguished anatomists who flourished at Padua in the sixteenth century.

Harvey became his pupil in 1599, and from this time he appears to have applied himself seriously to the study of anatomy. The first germ of the discovery which has shed immortal honour on his name and country was conceived in the lecture-room of Fabricius.

He remained at Padua for two years; and having received the degree of Doctor in Arts and Medicine with unusual marks of distinction, returned to England early in the year 1602. Two years afterwards he commenced practice in London, and married the daughter of Dr. Launcelot Browne, by whom he had no children. He became a fellow of the College of Physicians when about thirty years of age, having in the mean time renewed his degree of Doctor in Medicine at Cambridge; and was soon after elected Physician to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, which office he retained till a late period of his life.

On the 4th of August, 1615, he was appointed Reader of Anatomy and Surgery to the College of Physicians. From some scattered hints in his writings it appears that his doctrine of the circulation was first advanced in his lectures at the college about four years afterwards; and a note-book in his own handwriting is still preserved at the British Museum, in which the principal arguments by which it is substantiated are briefly set down, as if for reference in the lecture-room. Yet with the characteristic caution and modesty of true genius, he continued for nine years longer to reason and experimentalize upon what is now considered one of the simplest, as it is undoubtedly the most important, known law of animal nature; and it was not till the year 1628, the fifty-first of his life, that he consented to publish his discovery to the world.

In that year the ‘Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis’ was published at Frankfort. This masterly treatise begins with a short outline and refutation of the opinions of former anatomists on the movement of the animal fluids and the function of the heart; the author discriminating with care, and anxiously acknowledging the glimpses of the truth to be met with in their writings; as if he had not only kept in mind the justice due to previous discoveries, and the prudence of softening the novelty and veiling the extent of his own, but had foreseen the preposterous imputation of plagiarism, which, with other inconsistent charges, was afterwards brought forward against him. This short sketch is followed by a plain exposition of the anatomy of the circulation, and a detail of the results of numerous experiments; and the new theory is finally maintained in a strain of close and powerful reasoning, and followed into some of its most important consequences. The whole argument is conducted in simple and unpretending language, with great perspicuity, and scrupulous attention to logical form.

The doctrine announced by Harvey may be briefly stated thus:—

When the blood supplied for the various processes which are carried on in the living body has undergone a certain degree of change, it requires to be purified by the act of respiration. For this purpose it is urged onwards by fresh blood from behind into the veins; and returning in them from all parts of the body, enters a cavity of the heart called the _right auricle_. At the same time the purified blood returning from the lungs by the pulmonary veins, passes into the _left auricle_. When these two cavities, which are distinct from each other, are sufficiently dilated, they contract, and force the blood which they contain into two other much more muscular cavities called respectively the right and left _ventricle_, all retrogression into the auricles being prevented by valves, which admit of a passage in one direction only. The ventricles then contract in their turn with great force, and at the same instant; and propel their blood, the right, by the pulmonary artery into the lungs; the left, which is much the stronger of the two, into all parts of the body, by the great artery called the _aörta_, and its branches; all return being prevented as before by valves situated at the orifices of those vessels, which are closed most accurately when the ventricles relax, by the backward pressure of the blood arising from the elasticity of the arteries. Thus the purified blood passes from the lungs by the pulmonary veins through the left auricle into the ventricle of the same side, by which it is distributed into all parts of the body, driving the vitiated blood before it; and the vitiated blood is pushed into and along the veins to the right auricle, and thence is sent into the right ventricle, which propels it by the pulmonary artery through the lungs. In this manner a double circulation is kept up by the sole agency of the heart, through the lungs, and through the body; the contractions of the auricles and ventricles taking place alternately. To prevent any backward motion of the blood in the superficial veins, which might happen from their liability to external pressure, they are also provided with simple and very complete valves which admit of a passage only towards the heart. They were first remarked by Fabricius ab Aquapendente, and exhibited in his lectures to Harvey among the rest of his pupils; but their function remained a mystery till it was explained by the discovery of the circulation. It is related by Boyle, upon Harvey’s own authority, that the first idea of this comprehensive principle suggested itself to him when considering the structure of these valves.