spiritual self. Pain, torture of body and soul, martyrdom and penance, death and resurrection, the personality of the individual soul, inner life, love, and emotional life in general--this characteristic content of the romantic imagination, in a religious sense, is no object, for which the external form taken simply for what it is in its spatial entirety, and the material which belongs to it in its more sensuous existence unrelated to ideality, can supply either a form that is wholly relevant to it, or one similarly congruent with it. It is therefore not in romantic art sculpture contributes the fundamental type and the affiliating quality of membership in a system[211] to all the other arts as in Greece, but yields the palm in this respect to painting and music, as arts more adequate to express the life of the soul, distinct from the external world of particularity which is withdrawn from it. No doubt we find also in Christian art repeated examples of sculpture in wood, marble, bronze, and both silver and gold work, examples of the greatest excellence. Yet for all that sculpture is not here the art which, as in Greek art, is most fitted to reveal the Divine image. Religious romantic sculpture, on the contrary, is to a larger extent than in the case of the Greek, an embellishment of architecture. The saints are placed as a rule in the niches of towers and buttresses, or at the entrance doors. Likewise the birth, baptism, the histories of the passion and resurrection, and many other incidents in the life of Christ, the day of Judgment and so forth, accommodate themselves naturally by the multiplicity of their subject-matter to reliefs over church doors, on church walls, and stalls in the choir, and readily approximate to the character of arabesques. All such sculpture contains, for the reason that it is the life of the soul which is herein pre-eminently expressed, characteristics suggestive of the painter's art in a higher degree than is permitted in the plastic of ideal sculpture. And from another point of view, for the same reason, such a sculpture seizes more readily upon aspects of ordinary life, and therewith inclines to portraiture, which, as in the case of painting, it is quite prepared to associate with religious representations. The goose-seller, for example, in the Nürnberg marketplace, which is highly prized by Goethe and Meyer, is an ordinary rustic of very realistic appearance in bronze (it would be impossible in marble), who carries a goose under either arm to market. There are, too, the many sculptured figures, which we find upon the St. Sebaldus Church and on many other churches and buildings, especially dating from the period previous to Peter Vischer, and which in their representation of religious subjects such as the Passion, make clear to us with great vividness this particular type of individualized form, expression, mien and attitude, more particularly in their reflection of every degree of sorrow.
As a rule, then, romantic sculpture, which has deviated only too frequently into every kind of confusion, remains most loyal to the genuine principle of plastic art in those cases where it approaches most nearly the Greek, and either is concerned to treat in the mode of sculpture ancient subject-matter, much as the ancients would have done, or to model the standing figures of heroes and kings, and portraits, with an intention to imitate the antique. This is exceptionally the case nowadays. Much of the most excellent work, however, has been accomplished by sculpture, even in the religious field. It is only necessary here to mention the name of Michelangelo. We can hardly admire sufficiently his dead Christ[212], of which we have a plaster cast in our Royal Museum. The authenticity of the sculptured figure of the Madonna in the Frauenkirche at Bruges, a consummate work, is disputed by certain critics. Speaking for myself, nothing has ever more impressed me than the tomb of the Count of Nassau at Breda[213].
The Count reposes with his lady, life-size figures both in alabaster, on a slab of black marble. At the angles of this are placed Regulus, Hannibal, Caesar, and a Roman warrior in a bowing posture, and they support above their heads a black slab similar to the one beneath.
Could anything be more interesting than to see a character such as that of Caesar placed before our eyes by Michelangelo. Even when dealing with religious subjects the genius, the power of imagination, the force, thoroughness, boldness, in short all the extraordinary resources of this master tended, in the characteristic production of his art, to combine the plastic principle of the ancients with the type of intimate soul-life which we find in romantic art. But as we have seen, the direction as a rule of the Christian emotion, where the religious point of view and idea are paramount, is not towards the classical form of ideality, which primarily and with highest results is the determinant factor of its sculpture.
From this point we may now fix the transition from sculpture to another principle of artistic apprehension and presentment, which requires for its realization another sensuous material. In classical sculpture it was the objective and _substantive_ individuality in its human shape, which constituted the vital core, and the human form was placed thereby at such a lofty level, that it was in fact retained in its abstract simplicity as the beauty of form, and as such converted to the Divine image. Under such a one-sided aspect of content and representation man is not fully himself in his _concrete humanity._ The anthropomorphism of art remains in its incomplete state in ancient sculpture. For that which fails us here is humanity in its _objective universality_, a universality which we identify at the same time with the principle of _absolute personality_, quite as much as that aspect of it which in common parlance is called human, in other words the phase of _subjective singularity_, human weakness, contingency, caprice, immediate sense life, passion, and so forth, a phase or factor which must be taken up into that universality in order that the _entire individuality_, the subject of conscious life, that is, in its entire range, and in the infinite compass of its reality, may appear as the vital principle both of the mode of presentment and its content.
In classical sculpture one of these phasal aspects, that is the human from the side of immediate Nature, is in part only brought before us in animals, quasi-animals, fauns and the like, without being reflected back again into the personal life of soul, and stated as a negation of that; and also in some measure this type of sculpture only accepts the factor of particularity, only directs its interest to external things in the _pleasing style_, in the countless sallies of delight and conceits, in which the antique plastic lives and moves. Owing to this we wholly fail to meet here the profundity and infinity which lies at the root of man's personal life, that inmost reconciliation of Spirit with the Absolute, that ideal union of humanity with the humanity of God. No doubt Christian sculpture is the instrument which makes visible the content which here enters the domain of art more consonant with the above disregarded principle. But it is precisely its modes of art's embodiment which expose to us the fact that sculpture is insufficient for such a content, that other modes of art will infallibly arise able to reach in very truth the mark which sculpture failed in its work to achieve. We may collectively unite these new arts under the title of the _romantic arts._ They are indeed the modes most adequate to express the romantic type of art.
[Footnote 111: _Sein subjektives Fürsichseyn._ Subjective independence of material conditions. Self-consciousness.]
[Footnote 112: _Rückkehr in sich._ Into itself, its own ideal world of conscious thought and emotion.]
[Footnote 113: _In seine innerliche Subjektivität._ That is, what is essentially the world of soul. Spirit here stands for mind and _Gemüth_ or emotional life.]
[Footnote 114: _Ein Sichzeichen des Geistes_, _i.e._, are signs of itself which mind evolves in a mode of externality.]
[Footnote 115: Here called generically _Baukunst._] [Footnote 117: _Das subjektive Innere, i.e._, spiritual experience of a personality.]
[Footnote 118: That is in comparison with the fully independent arts.]
[Footnote 119: That is to say it must be a distinct object of the senses.]
[Footnote 120: _In sich materiell particularisirt._ We see Hegel's false notions of the theory of colour influencing his expression. It is really false to say that sculpture has nothing to do with colour. Light and shadow at least are necessary and colour is implied.]
[Footnote 121: That is, lets fall some of its aspects.]
[Footnote 122: _Das Gemüth._ Strictly the more emotional part.]
[Footnote 123: Between the extremes of architecture and poetry or music.]
[Footnote 124: Lit., "Without being manifested in its return to itself as ideal substance."]
[Footnote 125: Unparticularized, that is in its essential experience.]
[Footnote 126: He explains this lower down. The concentrated point is in the flash of the eye. Perhaps here he merely refers to it generally.]
[Footnote 128: This is only partially true of bronze, and any marble that has had weathering.]
[Footnote 129: By _grosse geistige Sinn_ Hegel means no doubt more than "taste." He refers to the deep-rooted instinct in the genius of the race.]
[Footnote 130: Meyer, "History of the Plastic Arts among the Greeks," vol. I, p. 119.]
[Footnote 131: _Die acht plastische Mitte._ Hegel means that plastic art comes to its most important focus, as it were, between the arts that either incline too much to the material as in architecture, or to ideality as in poetry.]
[Footnote 133: The reader must always bear in mind that Spirit (_Geist_) includes intelligence. It might no doubt in some places be better translated as "mind."]
[Footnote 134: _Substantielle._ That is what is the concrete fulness of real spiritual content.]
[Footnote 136: _Besonderheit._ The isolated self of the _Aufklärung._] [Footnote 137: _Zufälligen Selbstischkeit._ Contingent selfness. The ego above described.]
[Footnote 138: _Ohne innere Subjektivität als solche._ That is, in the wholly abstract sense.]
[Footnote 139: _Begriff_ appears to refer here to the notion of animal life generally, rather than the generic notion in its narrow sense.]
[Footnote 140: _Innern Strukture._ The structure that ideally motives the whole.]
[Footnote 141: _Dieses ideelle einfache Fürsichseyn des leiblichen._ Apparently this includes the vegetable world.]
[Footnote 142: _Macht sich._ That is an operative principle in the working out of.]
[Footnote 143: _Als Seele_, _i.e._, in the narrow sense of the expression above defined.]
[Footnote 144: _Pathognomik_, _i.e._, the science, that is, of the expression of the passions, together with that of their physiological aspect.]
[Footnote 145: Lit., contingent subjectivity.]
[Footnote 146: Hegel's expression _Mienen_ is not easy to translate by a single English equivalent. It signifies the passing look--the general variety of facial expression as contrasted with the permanent expression of substantive character.]
[Footnote 147: _Den eigentlichen Mienen._ The definite aspects of the face which express relatively permanent states of soul-life.]
[Footnote 148: Persists in the line of direction of the Ideal.]
[Footnote 149: _Die schöne freie Nothwendigkeit._] [Footnote 150: By _Witzigkeit_ I presume Hegel means oddity and funniness of every kind--perhaps "humorous eccentricity" would interpret it.]
[Footnote 151: I think this gives the sense, though the language is rather confused because his image is that of invention attaching itself to what is already presented rather than creating a form that is based on external suggestion.]
[Footnote 152: The celebrated courtesan. She entered the sea with dishevelled hair at a celebrated festival at Eleusis. She had a statue of gold at Delphi.]
[Footnote 154: _Statarisch._ That is, modelled on historical associations or the results of former work; perhaps "eclectic" would be a better word.]
[Footnote 157: As in savage animals.]
[Footnote 158: The word _system_ is used, which is not readily translated in this context, though I have adopted the literal translation lower down.]
[Footnote 159: _Mildrung._ The softening of its severe lines.]
[Footnote 161: It is difficult to see what Hegel means exactly here by _Schnitte._ I suppose he means the external lines of the eye-socket.]
[Footnote 163: _Flügeln_ must here refer to the orifices of the nose.]
[Footnote 165: Hegel's word is _habitus._ Customary attitude and mode of connection appears to be included.]
[Footnote 166: _Gebehrde_, a word somewhat difficult to translate here.
It seems to combine the ideas of gesture and pose.]
[Footnote 167: The reference is, of course, to painting and indirectly to poetry.]
[Footnote 168: _Ein in sich versunkenes Dastehn oder Liegen._] [Footnote 170: See vol. I, pp. 268-272.]
[Footnote 174: This vitality.]
[Footnote 177: Mus. Pio-Clement. Tom. 2, pp. 89-92.]
[Footnote 178: Winck., vol. II, p. 491.]
[Footnote 179: Vol. IV, bk. 5, ch. I, § 29.]
[Footnote 180: I am not sure what is exactly meant by _gekrümmt_ here.
The description is not very lucid.]
[Footnote 182: Winck., vol. VII, p, 78.]
[Footnote 183: Winck., vol, VII, p. 80.]
[Footnote 184: Vol. IV, p. 78.]
[Footnote 185: Vol. II, § I.]
[Footnote 186: Winck., vol. IV, p. 116.]
[Footnote 187: Such is, I think, the general meaning, though the literal translation of the words _als den Figuren sämmtlich die Einfachheit abgeht_ is not quite clear. I take the word _sämmtlich_ to mean "taken collectively as separate units."]
[Footnote 188: Winck., Werk., vol. V, p. 389. Anmerk.]
[Footnote 189: Meyer's _Gesch. der bild. Künste bei den Griechen_, vol.
I, p. 60.]
[Footnote 190: Pausanias, II, 30.]
[Footnote 191: I presume this is the meaning of _Bildnerei._] [Footnote 192: I am not sure whether _Angaben_ refers to actual sketches, or merely other evidence handed down.]
[Footnote 193: In the year 1829.]
[Footnote 194: That is in the accuracy of mechanical line as the result of machine.]
[Footnote 195: _Sanftes Verlaufen, i.e._, passage from one plane surface to another. _Zusammen-stossen_ appears to me the melting together of lines, _i.e._, conjunction, fusion.]
[Footnote 197: Vol. III, Vorr. XXVII.]
[Footnote 198: That is in 1821.]
[Footnote 199: _Statarischen_, scholastic, eclectic.]
[Footnote 200: "De Leg.," Lib. II, ed. Bekk., III, 2, p. 239.]
[Footnote 201: Herod, II, _c._ 167.]
[Footnote 202: Vol. III, bk. 2, ch. I, p. 74.]
[Footnote 203: Vol. III, bk. 2, ch. 2, pp. 77-84.]
[Footnote 204: "Cours d'Archéologie par Raoul-Rochette, 1-12me leçon," Paris, 1828.]
[Footnote 205: I am not sure if this rightly gives the sense of the words _Die Gestalten bei strenger Zeichnung gedrungen._] [Footnote 206: Ueber die Aeg. Bildwerke mit kunstgesch. Anmerk. von Schelling, 1817.]
[Footnote 207: That is, it does not approach Egyptian type so nearly.]
[Footnote 208: Hegel's words mean this, I suppose, though the German is somewhat compressed and not very clear as it stands.]
[Footnote 209: Vol. III, ch. 2, § 10, p. 188 and Pl. VI, A.]
[Footnote 210: Hegel uses the unusual word _Begeistigung_, I presume somewhat in the sense of _Begeisterung_, signifying the personal inspiration of the artist.]
[Footnote 211: This appears to be the meaning of the difficult phrase that sculpture supplies _das gesammte Daseyn_, _i.e._, is the affiliating link of the collective body. All the different arts are stamped with its characteristics.]
[Footnote 212: I presume the Pietà in St. Peter's.]
[Footnote 213: Hegel's "Vermisch. Schriften," vol. II, p. 561.]
SUBSECTION III THE ROMANTIC ARTS The source of the general transition from sculpture to the other arts is, as we have seen, the principle of _subjectivity_, which now invades art's content and its manner of exposition. What we understand here by subjectivity is the notion of an intelligence which ideally exists in free independence, withdrawing itself from objective reality into its own more intimate domain, a conscious life which no longer concentrates itself with its corporeal attachment in a unity which is without division.
There follows from this transition, therefore, that dissolution, that dismemberment of the unity which is held together in the substantive and objective presence of sculpture, in the focus of its tranquillity and all-inclusive rondure and as such is apprehended in fusion. We may consider this breach from two points of view. On the one hand sculpture, in respect to its _content_, entwined what is substantive in Spirit directly with the individuality, which is as yet not self-introspective, in the exclusive unit of a personal consciousness, and treated thereby an _objective_ unity in the sense in which objectivity suggests what is intrinsically infinite, immutable, true--that substantive aspect, in short, which has no part in mere caprice and singularity. And from another point of view sculpture failed to do more than discharge this spiritual content wholly within the corporeal frame as the vital and significant instrument of the same, and by doing so create a _new objective_ unity in _that_ meaning of the expression, under which objectivity, as contrasted with all that is wholly ideal and subjective, indicates real and external existence.
When we find, then, that these two aspects, at first thus reconciled in one another by sculpture, are separated, that which we call _self-introspective_ spirituality is not merely placed in opposition to that which is _external_, but also, in the domain of what is _spiritual_ throughout, what is substantive and objective in that medium, in so far as it no longer continues to be retained in what is substantial individuality simply, is dissevered from the vital particularity of the conscious life, and all these aspects which have been hitherto held together in perfect fusion are relatively to each other and independently free, so that they can be treated too by art as free in this very way.
1. If we examine the content, then, we have through the above process, on the one hand, the substantive being of what is spiritual, the world of truth and eternity, the _Divine_ in fact, which however here, in accordance with the principle of particularity, is comprehended and realized by art as a subject of consciousness, or as personality, as the Absolute, which is self-conscious in the medium of its infinite spiritual substance, as God in His Spirit and Truth. And in contrast to Him we have asserted the worldly and _human_ condition of soul-life, which, regarded now as no longer in direct union with the intrinsic substance of Spirit, can unfold itself in all the fulness of that particularity which is simply human, and thereby permits the heart of man wherever and whenever represented[214], the entire wealth of our human mortality, to be open to art's acceptance.
The meeting-ground upon which these two aspects once more coalesce is the principle of _subjectivity_, which is common to both. The Absolute is, in virtue of this, disclosed to us to the full extent a living, actual, and equally human subject of consciousness, as the human and finite conscious life, viewed as spiritual, makes vital and real the absolute substance and truth, or in other words simply the Divine Spirit. The new bond of unity which is thus secured no longer, however, supports the character of that former immediacy, such as sculpture disclosed it; rather it is a union and reconciliation which asserts itself essentially as a mediation of opposed factors, and whose very notion makes its apprehension only possible in the realms of _the soul_ and ideal life.
I have already, when the general subdivision of our science in its entire compass offered an opportunity for doing so, laid it down, that if the Ideal of sculpture sets forth in a sensuously present image the essential solidity[215] of the individuality of the God in the bodily form alone able to express that substance, the community thereupon essentially confronts such an object as the intelligent reflection of that unity. Spirit, however, that is wholly self-absorbed can only present the substance of Spirit under the mode of Spirit, in other words as a conscious subject, and receives thereby straightway the principle of the spiritual reconciliation of individual subjective life with God. As particular self, however, man also possesses his contingent natural existence, and a sphere of finite interests, needs, aims, and passions, whether it be more extensive or restricted, in which he is able to realize and satisfy his nature quite as much as he can in the same be absorbed in those ideas of God and the reconciliation with God.
2. _Secondly_, if we consider the aspect of the representation on its _external_ side, we find that it is by virtue of its particularity at once self-subsistent and possesses a claim to stand forth in this independence, and this for the reason that the principle of subjectivity excludes that correspondence in its immediacy, and disallows to itself the absolute interfusion of the ideal and external aspects in every part and relation of it. For the subjective principle is here precisely that which comes to be, in self-subsistent seclusion, that inward life which retires from real or objective existence into the realm of the Ideal, the world of emotion, soul, heart, and contemplation[216]. This ideal life is manifested no doubt in its external form, under a mode, however, in which the external form itself appears, that is to say it is _merely_ the outer shell of a conscious subject that is growing _independently_ within. The hard and fast association of the bodily form and the life of Spirit in classical sculpture is not therefore carried to the point of an all-dissolving unity[217] but in so light and slack a coalescence that both aspects, albeit neither is present without the other, preserve in this connection their separate independence relatively to the other, or at least, if a profounder union is really secured, the spiritual aspect as that inward principle, which asserts its presence over and beyond its suffusion with the objective or external material, becomes the essentially illuminating focus of all. And it results from this that, to promote the enhancement of this relatively increased self-subsistency of the objective and material aspect,--we have in our mind mainly, no doubt, the extreme case of the representation of external Nature and its objects, even in their isolated and most exclusive particularity,--yet even in such a case and despite all realism in the presentment it is necessary that such counterfeits should permit a reflection of the artist's soul to be visible on their face. They should in other words suffer us to see the sympathy of Spirit in the manner of their artistic realization, and therewith discover to us the life of soul, the ideal life which is the vital breath of their co-ordination, the penetration of man's emotional life itself into this extreme type of external environment.
Speaking, then, generally, we may affirm that the principle of subjectivity carries with it as its inevitable result, on the one hand, that the wholly unconstrained union of Spirit with its corporeal frame should be given up, and the bodily aspect be asserted in a more or less negative relation over against the former, in order that the ideality of Spirit may be emphasized on the front of that external reality, and, on the other hand, in order to procure free scope for every separate feature of the variety, division, and movement of what is spiritual no less than what directly appeals to man's senses.
3. And, _thirdly_, this new principle has to establish itself in the sensuous material, of which art avails itself in its new manifestations.
(_a_) The material hitherto was matter simply, that is, the material of gravity in the content of its spatial extension, and no less was it form under its simplest and most abstract definition of configuration.
Now that the _subjective_ and at the same time the essentially particularized content of the soul is imported into this material, the spatial totality of such material will without question in some measure suffer loss in order that the former content may appear upon its face with its ideal mintage[218], and contrariwise will be converted from its immediately material guise to an appearance which is the product of _mind_ or spirit; and, on the other hand, both in respect to form and its externally sensuous visibility, all the detail of what appears will be necessarily emphasized in the way that the new content requires. Art is, however, even now compelled in the first instance to move in the realm of the visible and sensuous, because, following the above course of our inquiry, though no doubt the inward or ideal is conceived as self-introspection[219], yet it has further to appear as a return of its own quality to itself from this very realm of _externality_ and _material shape_, in short, as a return of itself to itself, which can only from the earliest point of view be portrayed in the objective existence of Nature and the corporeal existence of Spirit's life.
The _first_ among the romantic arts will consequently have as its proper function to assert its content in the visible forms of the external human figure and the natural shape wherever disclosed, without, however, remaining bound to the sensuous ideality and abstract range of sculpture. This is the task and province of _painting._ (_b_) In so far, however, as we find in painting for its fundamental type, not as in sculpture the entirely perfected resolution of the spiritual idea and the bodily form in one content, but rather the predominant exposition of the self-absorbed ideality of soul, to that extent the spatial figure in extension is not a truly adequate medium of expression for the inward life of Spirit. Art therefore abandons the previous medium of configuration, and in the place of spatial forms employs the medium of _tone_ in the limited duration of its sounds; tone in fact by its assertion of the material of Space under a purely negative relation secures for itself a finite existence nearer to ideality, and corresponds to that soul-life, which in accordance with its own inward experience conceives and grasps that life as emotion, and then expresses that content, as it enforces its claim in the unseen movement of heart and soul, in the procession of tones. The second art, therefore, which follows this principle of exposition is that of _music._ (_c_) Thereby, however, music merely is placed at the opposite extreme, and, in contrast to the plastic arts, both in respect to its content and relatively to its sensuous material, and the mode of its expression, cleaves fast to the formless content of its pure ideality.
It is, however, the function of art, in virtue of its essential notion, to disclose to the senses not _merely_ the soul-life, but the manifestation and actuality of the same in its _external reality._ When, however, art has abandoned the process of veritably informing the real and consequently visible form of objective existence, and has applied its activity to the element itself of soul-life, the objective reality, to which it once more recurs, can no longer be the reality as such in itself, but one which is merely _imagined_ and prefigured to the mind or sensitive soul. The presentment, moreover, as being the communication to Spirit of creative mind working in its own domain is compelled to use the _sensuous_ material united to its disclosure simply as a mere means for such communication. It must consequently lower its denomination to that of a sign which of itself is without significance. It is at this point that _poetry_ or the art of speech, confronts us, which now incorporates its art-productions in the medium of a speech elaborated to an instrument of artistic service, precisely as intelligence already in ordinary speech makes intelligible to spiritual life all that it carries in itself. And, moreover, for the reason that it is able thus to unfold the _entire_ content of Spirit in its own medium, it is the _universal_ art, which belongs indifferently to all the types of art, and is only excluded in that case where the spiritual life which is still unrevealed to itself in its highest form of content is merely able to make itself aware of its own dim presentiments in the form and configuration of that which is external and alien to itself.
CHAPTER I THE ART OF PAINTING The most adequate object of sculpture is the tranquil self-absorption of personality in its essential substance, the character whose spiritual individuality is in the fullest degree displayed on the face of its corporeal presentment, making the sensuous frame, which reveals this incorporation of spirit, adequate to such an embodiment of mind wholly in its aspects of external form. The sightless look has as yet failed to concentrate at one point the supreme focus of ideal life, the vital breath of soul, the heart of most intimate feeling, and is as yet without spiritual movement, without the deliberate distinction between a world without it and a life within. It is on account of this that the sculpture of the ancients leaves us in some degree unmoved.
We either do not remain long before it, or our delay is rather due to a scientific investigation of the fine modifications of form and detail which it displays. We cannot blame mankind if they are unable to take the profound interest in fine works of sculpture which such works deserve. To know how to value them is a study in itself. At first glance we either experience no attraction, or are immediately conscious of the general character of the whole. To come to closer quarters we have first to discover what it is that continues to supply such an interest. An enjoyment, however, which is only the possible result of study, thought, learning, and a wide experience is not the immediate object of art. And, moreover, the essential demand we make that a character should develop, should pass into the field of action and affairs, and that the soul should thereby meet with divisions and-grow deeper, this, after all our journey in search of the delight which this study of the works of antique sculpture may bring to us, remains unsatisfied. For this reason we inevitably feel more at home in painting. In other words we are at once and for the first time conscious in it of the principle of our finite and yet essentially infinite spiritual substance, the life and breath of our own existence; we contemplate in its pictures the very spark which works and is active in ourselves. The god of sculpture remains for sense-perception an object simply; in painting, on the contrary, the Divine appears as itself essentially the living subject of spiritual life, which comes into direct relations with the community, and makes it possible for each individual thereof to place himself in spiritual communion and reconcilement with Him. The substantive character of such a Divinity is not, as in sculpture, an individual that persists in the inflexible bond of its own limitations[220], but is one which expands into and is differentiated within the community itself.
The same principle generally differentiates the individual from his own bodily frame and external environment to quite as considerable an extent as it brings the soul into mediated relation with the same.
Within the compass of this subjective differentiation--regarded as the independent assertion of human individuality as opposed to God, Nature, and the inward and external life of other persons, regarded also conversely as the most intimate relation, the most secure communion of God with the community, and of individual men with God, the environment of Nature and the infinite variety of the wants, purposes, passions, and activities of human existence--falls the entire movement and vitality, which sculpture, both in respect to its content and its means of contributing expression, suffers to escape; and it adds an immeasurable wealth of new material and a novel breadth and variety of artistic treatment which hitherto was absent. Briefly, then, this principle of subjectivity is on the one hand the basis of division, on the other a principle of mediation and synthesis, so that painting unites in one and the same art what hitherto formed the subject-matter of two different arts, namely, the external environment, which architecture treated artistically, and the essentially spiritual form, which was elaborated by sculpture. Painting places its figures on the background of a Nature or an architectural environment, both of which are the products of its own invention in precisely the same sense, and is able to make this external material in both of these aspects by virtue of its emotional powers and soul a counterfeit within its ideal realm, in the degree that it understands how best to place it in relation and harmony with the spirit of the figures that live and move therein.
Such is the principle of the new advance that painting contributes to the representative powers of art.
If we inquire now the course which the more detailed examination of our subject necessitates the following division will serve us.
In the _first_ place we shall have yet further to consider the _general character_ which the art of painting must necessarily receive in accordance with its notion and relatively both to its specific content, the material that is made consonant with this content and finally the artistic treatment which is thereby involved.
_Secondly_, we have to develop the _separate_ modes of definition, which are contained in the principle of such a content and manner of presentation, and more succinctly fix the boundaries of the subject-matter which is adapted to painting no less than the modes of its conception, composition, and technical qualities as painting.