APPENDIX TO LECTURE V.

READ 1831,

INSTEAD OF THE EULOGIUM ON M. ANgelo.

THE perfection of this system is to be found in the works of Raffaelle and M. Angelo ; but I shall not now repeat to you the discussion which I have in former lectures entered into, upon the peculiar power of invention which inspired the mind of M. Angelo. Other men, endowed with different qualities of invention, demand regard; and perhaps the influence of the power they exhibited not being of so abstruse a nature, but more immediately resulting from the common circumstances of life, may more easily be applied in the composition of such works as the taste of the present time requires. I will therefore now direct your attention to the beautiful and pure display of the inventive faculty of a painter, in the series of pictures by Raffaelle in the Vatican, In those pictures, the representation of human action and passion excites our minds to the most exalted admiration of the artist, and our

hearts to the most animated feeling; there propriety without insipidity is the presiding principle, and there enthusiastic fervour has evidently been the inspirer of the imagery employed.

If invention be manifested in a manner less imposing by the series of compositions painted by Raffaelle in the chambers of the Vatican, than by that of M. Angelo in its chapel; being less emphatic, more within the extreme boundary of truth, and not presenting when understood such evident and immediate unity of design in its parts; yet being also less abstruse in its quality, having a nearer degree of affinity to human feeling, it affords greater gratification to the world at large in the separate pictures which cover the walls.

The subject for the illustration of which Raffaelle was summoned to Rome, by Pope Julius II. was the establishment and maintenance of the Christian Church; and a subject more proper for adoption in the residence of the head of that Church cannot well be imagined. But the combined symbolical, allegorical, and historical mode adopted for its display being extremely complex, and thereby deprived of more than half the interest it ought to possess, is consequently seldom pursued.

As far as I have been able to trace it from inspections of the work, and with the help of the very slight materials afforded by contemporary authors, it appears that the series of pictures in the chamber first painted, containing the Dispute on the Sacrament, the School of Athens, the Parnassus, and the Jurisprudence, are intended to convey an idea of the church being founded on the strong basis of religion and philosophy; on the blessing of God and the cultivation of man and in the other chamber where are the Miracle of Bolsena, the Heliodorus, the Attila, St. Peter released from Prison and other pictures, as upheld by many important grants of Divine favour interposed in its behalf. In the School of Theology, or as it is more commonly called, the Dispute on the Sacrament, the holy and revered Doctors of the Church, assembled near the sacred altar, and under the influence of the Holy Spirit, (descending from the heavenly hierarchy above), determine that important doctrine of the Roman church, one great resting point of its system, Transubstantiation. In the opposite picture the school of Athens, or more properly the school of Philosophy, we find a symbolical display of the great support to religion derived from the wisdom of man, the influence of cultivation. There, the great heathen philosophers of former ages, are

assembled; and Plato, and Aristotle discuss the nature of the Divine Being, and the adoration due to him, in the presence of a numerous audience; whilst the attainments of diverse branches of science are displayed in other portions of the composition: the whole being intended to declare, that human acquirements in the discovery of truth, prepared the minds of men to receive the more perfect display of it in the revelation of the Gospel.

Upon the same system of reasoning, the refinement of Poetry, which has borne so large a share in polishing and perfecting mental capacity, was adopted and displayed by the assemblage of Poets on Parnassus; where, under Divine influence, (represented by Apollo and the Muses,) Virgil and Ovid and Dante, listen to the strains of Homer. In a fourth picture in the same room we are referred to the united influence of all, by the union of the virtues Fortitude, Prudence, and Temperance; and other pictures, painted in the angles formed by the arched tops of the larger ones, of groups, or of single figures, assist to illustrate the ideas those large pictures are intended to convey.

In the adjoining chamber, the subject of the picture of Theology is supported by the miracle of Bolsena, where drops of blood are seen, by the priest who administers the sacrament to the

Pope, to fall from the consecrated wafer. The intervention of Almighty power in the establishment of the church, is depicted by the miraculous release from prison of its founder and first Bishop, St. Peter: and two instances of its preservation by Divine interference, extended both to its spiritual and its temporal power, are recorded in the same room, by the pictures called the Heliodorus and the Attila. The first symbolically, by representing the punishment inflicted by Divine agents upon sacrilege; and supposed to allude to the destruction of the foes of the church, the powerful Barons who had endeavoured to seize its property but were overcome by the policy of Julius. The other, historically, by a representation of the Arrest of Attila on his way to Rome; first by a vision of St. Peter and St. Paul, with drawn swords in their hands, threatening him with destruction if he advanced farther; and afterwards by treaty with Pope Leo I.

Again, the picture of St. Leo causing by his prayers the cessation of the fire, as seen in the Incendio del Borgo, tends to inspire holy confidence in the Head of the Church, as an immediate agent of heavenly power. The conversion of the Emperor Constantine, seen in one of the pictures, representing his vision of the cross, and his triumph over Maxentius, increased