Part 4

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

[Illustration]

FLAXMAN

It was not till the time of Banks and Flaxman, that the English school had produced any notable specimens of the lofty and heroic style in sculpture. Wilton, Bacon, and Nollekens, were respectable in their line, which was nearly confined to allegorical monuments and busts. Roubilliac, though eminently unclassical, possessed a superior style of art, and has executed some works which for strength and liveliness of expression may challenge competition in this or any other country. But the attainments and genius of the two first-mentioned artists were of a different, and a loftier class. Those, however, who trace the history of the lives of Flaxman and Banks, will find, that whatever they achieved in the higher departments of sculpture was due solely to their ardent pursuit of excellence, almost unaided by that patronage, which, in this country, has been so liberally bestowed on other branches of the fine arts.

The heroic beauty and noble proportions of the Mourning Achilles, fully establish the claim of Banks to a high rank as a poetic sculptor; this fine work of art, however, remained for years in plaster during his life, and after his death was presented to the British Gallery, where it now stands in the hall, “as a warning,” observes Mr. Allan Cunningham, “to all sculptors who enter, that works of classic fancy find slender encouragement here!” With respect to Flaxman, in an early period of his professional career, he executed the outline illustrations of Homer, Æschylus, and Dante, which at once established his fame; and yet, during a long life, no single patron called upon him to embody in marble any one of these lofty conceptions, the very existence of which forms the chief glory of the English school of poetic design.

The progress of sculpture in this country has been very recently traced by Mr. Allan Cunningham, in his amusing ‘Memoirs of British Sculptors.’ Of these, the last, and most interesting, is that of Flaxman, from the spirited and amusing pages of which, together with the memoir prefixed to the Lectures on Sculpture, this short account has been chiefly extracted.

John Flaxman, the second son of a moulder of figures, who kept a shop in the Strand for the sale of plaster casts, was born in 1755. Like most who have been eminent as artists, he early manifested a taste for drawing. As soon as he could hold a pencil, he took delight in copying whatever he saw, and at an age when most children are engrossed with childish sports, he had read many books, and had begun to trace upon paper the lineaments and actions of those heroes who had engaged his fancy. Numerous stories are told of his fondness for that art to which his mature energies were devoted; and, allowing somewhat for the fond recollections of parents and friends, it is fully established that young Flaxman early showed proofs both of application and genius. To this development of his talents, his bodily constitution may have lent some aid, for his health from infancy was delicate, and a weak, and somewhat deformed frame, indisposed him from joining in the usual games of children.

His station in life did not enable him to profit by the common means of education; he gathered his knowledge from various sources, and mastered what he wanted by some of those ready methods which form part of the inspirations of genius. The introduction, through the means of an early patron, Mr. Mathew, to Mrs. Barbauld, contributed to improve his education and form his taste.

In his fifteenth year he became a student in the Royal Academy. Here he formed an intimacy with Blake and Stothard, both artists of original talent; but, like their more eminent companion, less favoured by fortune than many not so deserving of patronage and applause.

At the Academy, Flaxman obtained the silver medal, but in the contest for the gold one, he was worsted by Engleheart, a name now entirely forgotten. Flaxman, however, though humbled and mortified, was only stimulated by this defeat to greater exertions and more unwearied application.

The narrow circumstances of his father did not allow him to devote his whole time to unproductive study. His first employment was for the Wedgewoods; and to this fortunate combination of genius in the artist, and enterprise, skill, and taste in the manufacturers, the sudden and rapid improvement of the porcelain of this country is mainly to be ascribed. “The subjects executed by Flaxman were chiefly small groups in very low relief, from subjects of ancient verse and history; many of which,” observes Mr. A. Cunningham, “are equal in beauty and simplicity to his designs for marble: the Etruscan vases and the architectural ornaments of Greece supplied him with the finest shapes; these he embellished with his own inventions, and a taste for forms of elegance began to be diffused over the land. Flaxman loved to allude, even when his name was established, to these humble labours; and since his death, the original models have been eagerly sought after.” A set of chessmen, also executed for the Wedgewoods, are exceedingly beautiful.

Whilst earning by his labour a decent subsistence, he continued his devotion to the pursuit of his art, making designs from the Greek poets, the Pilgrim’s Progress, and the Bible. He exhibited various works at the Academy; but it does not appear that he was enabled by patronage to execute any of these in marble, and it is, perhaps, owing to the little practice that he had in early life in this mode of working, that his admitted want of excellence in this branch of the art of sculpture is to be attributed.

In 1782 he left his father’s home, and married an amiable and accomplished woman, whose society and affection formed the chief happiness of his after life. All those who knew them, describe in glowing terms the harmony and mutual affection in which they lived. In 1787 he determined to visit Rome. Two monuments which he executed before his departure deserve notice. One is in memory of Collins. It represents the poet seated, reading what he told Dr. Johnson was his only book, ‘THE BIBLE,’ whilst his lyre and poetical compositions lie neglected on the ground. The second is erected in Gloucester cathedral, to Mrs. Morley, who perished with her child at sea, and is represented as rising with the infant from the waves, at the summons of angels. The simple and serene beauty of this work is admirably suited for monumental sculpture.

How he profited whilst at Rome by the study of those noble specimens of ancient art, to which modern artists resort as the best school of excellence, is shown in the outline illustrations of Homer, Æschylus, and Dante; works which spread his fame throughout Europe, and at once stamped the character of the English School of Design. These compositions, which have been the admiration of every nation where art is cultivated, which have been repeatedly published in Germany and Italy, as well as in England, and which have been commented on with unlimited praise by Schlegel, and almost every other modern writer on the fine arts, were made, the Homeric series for fifteen shillings; those taken from Æschylus and Dante, for one guinea each. It is not creditable to English taste that this country does not possess a single group, or even bas-relief, executed from them, although the author lived for more than thirty years after their publication.

Of the illustrations of the Iliad, there are in all thirty-nine; of the Odyssey, thirty-four. Of the designs from Dante, thirty-eight are taken from the Hell, thirty-eight from the Purgatory, and thirty-three from the Paradise. The Homeric series was made for Mrs. Hare. The illustrations of Æschylus were undertaken at the desire of the Countess Spencer; and those of the Divina Commedia were executed for Mr. Thomas Hope, one of Flaxman’s early patrons, for whom, whilst at Rome, he executed in marble a very beautiful small-sized group of Cephalus and Aurora.

Of these three series, the Homeric is the most popular. This preference may, perhaps, be accounted for by the Grecian poem being more generally familiar than that of Dante: yet the subject of the Divina Commedia in many respects appears to have been more congenial to the talents of the artist; and perhaps an impartial judgment will pronounce, that of all the works of Flaxman, the designs from Dante best exhibit his peculiar genius. During his stay at Rome he executed for Frederick, Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry, a group in marble, which consisted of four figures larger than life, representing the fury of Athamas, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses: by this he lost money, the price agreed on being only six hundred guineas; a sum insufficient to cover the expenses of the work. The recollection of this piece of patronage was so disgusting, to use the word by which he himself once characterized it, that in after life he could not bear to talk on the subject.

Whilst in Italy he made numerous drawings and memoranda upon ancient art, which afterwards formed the groundwork of his lectures on sculpture. After an absence of seven years he returned to England, and engaged a house in Buckingham-street, in which he continued to reside till his death.

His first great work after his return was a monument to the Earl of Mansfield. In 1797 he was elected an associate, and in 1800, a member of the Royal Academy, to which he presented, on his admission, a marble group of Apollo and Marpessa. He visited for a short time, in 1802, the splendid collections of the Louvre, in order to revive his early recollection of the works of art which had been brought from Rome. In 1810, a professorship of sculpture having been established by the Academy, he was elected to fill the chair, and his lectures were commenced in 1811. Those who had formed high expectations of eloquence, and of felicity of diction and illustration, were disappointed. The sedate gravity of his manner, his unimpassioned tone, and the somewhat dull catalogue of statues and works of art which he occasionally introduced, conduced to tire a general audience. But the ten lectures, which have been published since his death, must always furnish an important manual to every student in sculpture. The lectures on Beauty, and the contrast of Ancient and Modern Sculpture, are peculiarly interesting, and embody nearly all which can be said on the leading principles of art. In addition to these lectures he wrote several anonymous articles, which are enumerated by Mr. Cunningham. These were the ‘Character of the Works of Romney,’ for Hayley’s life of that artist, and either the whole or part of the articles, Armour, Basso-relievo, Beauty, Bronze, Bust, Composition, Cast, Ceres, in Rees’s Cyclopædia. Many of the opinions put forth in these different essays he has embodied in his lectures.

Besides the designs already noticed, he executed numerous illustrations of the Pilgrim’s Progress, forty designs for Sotheby’s translation of Oberon, and thirty-six designs from Hesiod, illustrating the story of Pandora, and exhibiting the effects of her descent on earth. The subjects from Hesiod were those in which his poetic fancy appeared most to delight.

In 1820, Flaxman lost his wife, with whom he had lived in uninterrupted happiness for thirty-eight years, and from the effects of this bereavement he seemed never entirely to recover. A beloved sister, and the sister of her whom he most loved, remained to him, and continued his companions till his death.

At the time of this domestic misfortune the artist was in the zenith of his fame. Commissions poured in, and among them, one order especially worthy of his talents, for a group of the Archangel Michael vanquishing Satan, given by the Earl of Egremont, a nobleman who has omitted no opportunity of patronising the fine arts in this country. This group exhibits more grandeur of conception than any work of art of modern times. Unfortunately the marble of which it was cut was much discoloured, and the work was not entirely finished at his death. Amongst the finest of Flaxman’s later productions, Mr. Cunningham enumerates his Pysche, the pastoral Apollo (also in the possession of Lord Egremont), and two small statues of Michael Angelo and Raphael. But the most remarkable of them is the shield of Achilles, designed and modelled for Messrs. Rundell and Bridge, the silversmiths. The diameter is three feet, and the description of Homer has been strictly followed. In the centre is the chariot of the sun, in bold relief, almost starting from the surface, surrounded by the most remarkable of the heavenly bodies: around the rim is rolled the ever flowing ocean. The intermediate space is occupied by twelve scenes, beautifully designed in conformity with the words of the poet. For this the artist was paid £620. Four casts of it in silver were taken, the first for the late King, another for the Duke of York, the third for Lord Lonsdale, the fourth for the Duke of Northumberland.

Flaxman died on the 7th of December, 1826, of an inflammation of the lungs, the result of a cold. In person he was small, and slightly deformed, but his countenance was peculiarly placid and benign, and greatly expressive of genius. His dress, manners, and mode of life were simple in the extreme: he was never found at the parties of the rich and great, and mixed little even with his professional brethren. His life was spent in a small circle of affectionate friends, in his studio, and in his workshops, where those whom he employed looked up to him as a father.

Amongst the different classes of his works, the religious and the poetic were those in which he chiefly excelled. The number of pure and exalted conceptions, which he has left sketched in plaster or outlined in pencil, is quite extraordinary. “His solitude,” observes Sir Thomas Lawrence, “was made enjoyment to him by a fancy teeming with images of tenderness, purity, or grandeur. His genius, in the strictest sense of the word, was original and inventive.” Among the most important of his works not before noticed, is his monument to the memory of Sir Francis Baring, in Mitcheldever Church, Hants, a work of exquisite beauty, both in design and expression, embodying the words, “Thy kingdom come—thy will be done—deliver us from evil.” He also executed, among others, monuments to the memory of Mary Lushington, of Lewisham, in Kent, to the Countess Spencer, to the Rev. Mr. Clowes, of St. John’s Church, Manchester, and to the Yarborough family at Street Thorpe, near York. This last, and one to Edward Bulmer, representing an aged man instructing a youthful pair, Flaxman considered the best of his compositions.

He executed several historical monuments to naval and military commanders. These deal too largely in emblems and allegories, Britannias, lions, victories, and wreaths of laurel, to add much to the reputation of the artist: especially as his forte lay in the exquisite feeling and grace of his conceptions, not in manual dexterity of execution; the chief merit to which such cold and uninteresting productions can lay claim. He executed statues of Sir Joshua Reynolds; of Sir John Moore, in bronze, of colossal size, for Glasgow; of Pitt, for the Town-Hall of the same city; of Burns; and of Kemble, in the character of Coriolanus. That of Sir Joshua Reynolds (one of his earliest) is perhaps the best. Many of his works were sent abroad: for India he executed a statue of the Rajah of Tanjore, and a monument to the celebrated Schwartz; two monuments in memory of Lord Cornwallis, a figure of Warren Hastings, and a statue of the Marquess of Hastings.

Since the death of Flaxman, six plates have been published by his sister, from his designs. The subjects are religious; the engravings are admirable fac-similes of the original drawings, which were made in his best time; and perhaps there is no published work of his more illustrative of the peculiar taste and genius of the artist.

Our Portrait has been engraved from a fine picture by Jackson, in the possession of Lord Dover. There is also an excellent portrait painted by Howard, and a good bust of Flaxman was executed by Baily some few years before our artist’s death.

[Illustration: [“Feed the hungry,” from a bas-relief of Flaxman.]]

[Illustration]

COPERNICUS

The illustrious discoverer of the true planetary motions, whose features are represented on the accompanying plate, lived during the latter part of the fifteenth century, and the first half of the following one. Notwithstanding the success and celebrity of the theory which still bears his name, the materials are very scanty for personal details regarding his life and character. This ignorance is not the result of recent neglect. A century had scarcely elapsed from the time of his death, when Gassendi, who, at the request of the poet Chapelain, undertook to compile an account of him, was forced to preface it by a similar declaration.

Whilst Europe rang from one end to the other with the fierce dispute to which the new views of the relation and motions of the heavenly bodies gave rise, the character, the situation and manner of life, almost the country, of the great author of the controversy, remained unknown to the greater number of his admirers and opponents. Even the name of the discoverer of the Copernican system now appears strange, except in the Latinised form of Copernicus, in which alone it occurs in his own writings and in those of his commentators.

Nicolas Cöpernik[1], to use his genuine appellation, was a native of Thorn, a city of Polish Prussia, situated on the river Weichsel or Vistula. He was born in the year 1473. Little is known of his parents, except that his father, whose name also was Nicolas, was a surgeon, and, as it is believed, of German extraction. The elder Cöpernik was undoubtedly a stranger at Thorn, where he was naturalized in 1462: he married Barbara, of the noble Polish family of Watzelrode. Luke, one of her brothers, attained the high dignity of Bishop of Ermeland in the year 1489, and the prospects of advancement which this connection held out to young Cöpernik, probably induced his father to destine him to the ecclesiastical profession. He acquired at home the first elements of a liberal education, and afterwards graduated at Cracow, where he remained till he received the diploma of Doctor in Arts and Medicine from that university. He is said to have made considerable proficiency in the latter branch of study; and possessed, even in more advanced life, so high a reputation for skill and knowledge, as to produce an erroneous belief that he had once followed medicine.

Footnote 1:

The authority for this manner of spelling the name is Hartknoch, Alt und Neues Preussen. The inscription, Nicolao Copernico, which appears on the plate, is a literal copy of the inscription on the original picture.

[Illustration:

_Engraved by E. Scriven._

NICOLAO COPERNICO.

_From a Picture in the possession of the Royal Society, presented by D^r. Wolf, of Dantzic, June 6, 1770._

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

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

He also exhibited at an early age a very decided taste for mathematical studies, especially for astronomy; and attended the lectures, both public and private, of Albert Brudzewski, then mathematical professor at Cracow. Under his tuition, Copernicus, as we shall hereafter call him, became acquainted with the works of the astronomer, John Müller, (now more commonly known by his assumed appellation of Regiomontanus,) and the reputation of this celebrated man is said to have exercised a marked influence in deciding the bent of his future studies. Müller died at Rome a few years after the birth of Copernicus, and when the latter had reached an age capable of appreciating excellence and nourishing emulation, he found Müller’s works disseminated through every civilized country of Europe, his genius and acquirements the subject of universal admiration, and his premature death still regretted as a public calamity. The feelings to which the contemplation of Müller’s success gave rise, were still more excited by a journey into Italy, which Copernicus undertook about the year 1495. One of his brothers and his maternal uncle were already settled in Rome, which was therefore the point to which his steps eventually tended. He quitted home in his twenty-third year; when his diligence in cultivating the practical part of astronomy had already procured for him some reputation as a skilful observer. It seems to have been in contemplation of this journey that he began to study painting, in which he afterwards became a tolerable proficient.

Bologna was the first place at which he made any stay, being drawn thither by the reputation of the astronomical professor, Dominic Maria Novarra. Copernicus was not more delighted with this able instructor than Novarra with his intelligent pupil. He soon became an assistant and companion of Novarra in his observations, and in this capacity acquired considerable distinction, so that on his departure from Bologna and arrival at Rome, he found that his reputation had preceded him. He was appointed to a professorship in that city, where he continued to teach mathematics for some years with considerable success.

It does not appear at what time Copernicus entered into holy orders: probably it may have been during his residence at Rome; for on his return home he was named to the superintendence of the principal church in his native city Thorn. Not long afterwards his uncle Luke, who, in 1489, succeeded Nicolas von Thungen in the bishopric of Ermeland, enrolled him as one of the canons of his chapter. The cathedral church of the diocese of Ermeland is situated at Frauenburg, a small town built near one of the mouths of the Vistula, on the shore of the lake called Frische Haff, separated only by a narrow strip of land from the Gulf of Dantzig. In this situation, rendered unfavourable to astronomical observations by the frequent marshy exhalations rising from the river and lake, Copernicus took up his future abode, and made it the principal place of his residence during the remainder of his life. Here those astronomical speculations were renewed and perfected, the results of which have for ever consigned to oblivion the subtle contrivances invented by his predecessors to account for the anomalies of their own complicated theories.

But we should form a very erroneous opinion of the life and character of Copernicus, if we considered him, as it is probable that by most he is considered, the quiet inhabitant of a cloister, immersed solely in speculative inquiries. His disposition did not unfit him for taking an

## active share in the stirring events which were occurring around him, and

it was not left entirely to his choice whether he would remain a mere spectator of them.