Part 1 (1/2)

Germany from the Earliest Period.

by Wolfgang Menzel.

PART XXI

THE RISE OF PRUSSIA

(CONTINUED)

CCXLIV. Art and Fas.h.i.+on

Although art had, under French influence, become unnatural, bombastical, in fine, exactly contrary to every rule of good taste, the courts, vain of their collections of works of art, still emulated each other in the patronage of the artists of the day, whose creations, tasteless as they were, nevertheless afforded a species of consolation to the people, by diverting their thoughts from the miseries of daily existence.

Architecture degenerated in the greatest degree. Its sublimity was gradually lost as the meaning of the Gothic style became less understood, and a tasteless imitation of the Roman style, like that of St. Peter's at Rome, was brought into vogue by the Jesuits and by the court architects, by whom the chateau of Versailles was deemed the highest chef-d'oeuvre of art. This style of architecture was accompanied by a style of sculpture equally unmeaning and forced; saints and Pagan deities in theatrical att.i.tudes, fat genii, and coquettish nymphs peopled the roofs of the churches and palaces, presided over bridges, fountains, etc. Miniature turnery-ware and microscopical sculpture also came into fas.h.i.+on. Such curiosities as, for instance, a cherry-stone, on which Pranner, the Carinthian, had carved upward of a hundred faces; a chessboard, the completion of which had occupied a Dutchman for eighteen years; golden carriages drawn by fleas; toys composed of porcelain or ivory in imitation of Chinese works of art; curious pieces of mechanism, musical clocks, etc., were industriously collected into the cabinets of the wealthy and powerful. This taste was, however, not utterly useless. The predilection for ancient gems promoted the study of the remains of antiquity, as Stosch, Lippert, and Winckelmann prove, and that of natural history was greatly facilitated by the collections of natural curiosities.

The style of painting was, however, still essentially German, although deprived by the Reformation and by French influence of its ancient sacred and spiritual character. Nature was now generally studied in the search after the beautiful. Among the pupils of Rubens, the great founder of the Dutch school, Jordaens was distinguished for brilliancy and force of execution, Van Dyck, A.D. 1541, for grace and beauty, although princ.i.p.ally a portrait painter and incapable of idealizing his subjects, in which Rembrandt, A.D. 1674, who chose more extensive historical subjects, and whose coloring is remarkable for depth and effect, was equally deficient. Rembrandt's pupil, Gerhard Douw, introduced domestic scenes; his attention to the minutiae of his art was such that he is said to have worked for three days at a broomstick, in order to represent it with perfect truth. Denner carried accuracy still further; in his portraits of old men every hair in the beard is carefully imitated. Francis and William[1] Mieris discovered far greater talent in their treatment of social and domestic groups; Terbourg and Netscher, on the other hand, delighted in the close imitation of velvet and satin draperies; and Schalken, in the effect of shadows and lamplight. Honthorst[2] attempted a higher style, but Van der Werf's small delicious nudities and Van Loos's luxurious pastoral scenes were better adapted to the taste of the times. While these painters belonged to the higher orders of society, of which their works give evidence, numerous others studied the lower cla.s.ses with still greater success. Besides Van der Meulen and Rugendas, the painters of battle-pieces, Wouvermann chiefly excelled in the delineation of horses and groups of hors.e.m.e.n, and Teniers, Ostade, and Jan Steen became famous for the surpa.s.sing truth of their peasants and domestic scenes. To this low but happily-treated school also belonged the cattle-pieces of Berchem and Paul de Potter, whose ”Bull and Cows” were, in a certain respect, as much the ideal of the Dutch as the Madonna had formerly been that of the Italians or the Venus di Medici that of the ancients.

Landscape-painting alone gave evidence of a higher style. Nature, whenever undesecrated by the vulgarity of man, is ever sublimely simple. The Dutch, as may be seen in the productions of Breughel, called, from his dress, ”Velvet Breughel,” and in those of Elzheimer, termed, from his attention to minutiae, the Denner of landscape- painting, were at first too careful and minute; but Paul Brill, A.D.

1626, was inspired with finer conceptions and formed the link between preceding artists and the magnificent Claude Lorraine (so called from the place of his birth, his real name being Claude Gelee), who resided for a long time at Munich, and who first attempted to idealize nature as the Italian artists had formerly idealized man. Everdingen and Ruysdael, on the contrary, studied nature in her simple northern garb, and the sombre pines of the former, the cheerful woods of the latter, will ever be attractive, like pictures of a much-loved home, to the German. Bakhuysen's sea-pieces and storms are faithful representations of the Baltic. In the commencement of last century, landscape-painting also degenerated and became mere ornamental flower-painting, of which the Dutch were so pa.s.sionately fond that they honored and paid the most skilful artists in this style like princes. The dull prosaic existence of the merchant called for relief. Huysum was the mosrt celebrated of the flower-painters, with Rachel Ruysch, William von Arless, and others of lesser note. Fruit and kitchen pieces were also greatly admired. Hondekotter was celebrated as a painter of birds.

Painting was, in this manner, confined to a slavish imitation of nature, for whose lowest objects a predilection was evinced until the middle of the eighteenth century, when a style, half Italian, half antique, was introduced into Germany by the operas, by travellers, and more particularly by the galleries founded by the princes, and was still further promoted by the learned researches of connoisseurs, more especially by those of Winckelmann. Mengs, the Raphael of Germany, Oeser, Tischbein, the landscape-painters Seekatz, Hackert, Reinhardt, Koch, etc., formed the transition to the modern style. Frey, Chodowiecki, etc., gained great celebrity as engravers.

Architecture flourished during the Middle Ages, painting at the time of the Reformation, and music in modern times. The same spirit that spoke to the eye in the eternal stone now breathed in transient melody to the ear. The science of music, transported by Dutch artists into Italy, had been there a.s.siduously cultivated; the Italians had speedily surpa.s.sed their masters, and had occupied themselves with the creation of a peculiar church-music and of the profane opera, while the Netherlands and the whole of Germany were convulsed by b.l.o.o.d.y religious wars. After the peace of Westphalia, the national music of Germany, with the exception of the choral music in the Protestant churches, was almost silent, and Italian operas were introduced at all the courts, where Italian chapel-masters, singers, and performers were patronized in imitation of Louis XIV., who pursued a similar system in France. German talent was reduced to imitate the Italian masters, and, in 1628, Sagittarius produced at Dresden the first German opera in imitation of the Italian, and Keyser published no fewer than one hundred and sixteen.

The German musicians were, nevertheless, earlier than the German poets, animated with a desire to extirpate the foreign and degenerate mode fostered by the vanity of the German princes, and to give free scope to their original and native talent. This regeneration was effected by the despised and simple organists of the Protestant churches. In 1717, Schroeder, a native of Hohenstein in Saxony, invented the pianoforte and improved the organ. Sebastian Bach, in his colossal fugues, like to a pillared dome dissolved in melody,[3]

raised music by his compositions to a height unattained by any of his successors. He was one of the most extraordinary geniuses that ever appeared on earth. Handel, whose glorious melodies entranced the senses, produced the grand oratorio of the ”Messiah,” which is still performed in both Protestant and Catholic cathedrals; and Graun, with whom Frederick the Great played the flute, brought private singing into vogue by his musical compositions. Gluck was the first composer who introduced the depth and pathos of more solemn music into the opera. He gained a complete triumph at Paris over Piccini, the celebrated Italian musician, in his contest respecting the comparative excellencies of the German and Italian schools. Haydn introduced the variety and melody of the opera into the oratorio, of which his ”Creation” is a standing proof. In the latter half of the foregoing century, sacred music has gradually yielded to the opera. Mozart brought the operatic style to perfection in the wonderful compositions that eternalize his fame.

The German theatre was, owing to the Gallomania of the period, merely a bad imitation of the French stage. Gottsched,[4] who greatly contributed toward the reformation of German literature, still retained the stilted Alexandrine and the pseudo-Gallic imitation of the ancient dramatists to which Lessing put an end. Lessing wrote his ”Dramaturgy” at Hamburg, recommended Shakespeare and other English authors as models, but more particularly nature. The celebrated Eckhof, the father of the German stage, who at first travelled about with a company of actors and finally settled at Gotha, was the first who followed this innovation. He was succeeded by Schroeder in Hamburg, who was equally industrious as a poet, an actor, and a Freemason. In Berlin, where Fleck had already paved the way, Iffland, who, like Schroeder, was both a poet and an actor, founded a school, which in every respect took nature as a guide, and which raised the German stage to its well-merited celebrity.

At the close of the eighteenth century, men of education were seized with an enthusiasm for art, which showed itself princ.i.p.ally in a love for the stage and in visits for the promotion of art to Italy. The poet and the painter, alike dissatisfied with reality, sought to still their secret longings for the beautiful amid the unreal creations of fancy and the records of cla.s.sical antiquity.

Fas.h.i.+on, that masker of nature, that creator of deformity, had, in truth, arrived at an unparalleled pitch of ugliness. The German costume, although sometimes extravagantly curious during the Middle Ages, had nevertheless always retained a certain degree of picturesque beauty, nor was it until the reign of Louis XIV. of France that dress a.s.sumed an unnatural, inconvenient, and monstrous form. Enormous allonge perukes and ruffles, the fontange (high headdress), hoops, and high heels, rendered the human race a caricature of itself. In the eighteenth century, powdered wigs of extraordinary shape, hairbags and queues, frocks and frills, came into fas.h.i.+on for the men; powdered headdresses an ell in height, diminutive waists, and patches for the women. The deformity, unhealthiness, and absurdity of this mode of attire were vainly pointed out by Salzmann, in a piece ent.i.tled, ”Charles von Carlsberg, or Human Misery.”

[Footnote 1: Also his brother John, who painted with equal talent in the same style.--_Trans_.]

[Footnote 2: Called also Gerardo dalle Notti from his subjects, princ.i.p.ally night-scenes and pieces illuminated by torch or candle-light. His most celebrated picture is that of Jesus Christ before the Tribunal of Pilate.--_Ibid_.]

[Footnote 3: Gothic architecture has been likened to petrified music.]

[Footnote 4: He was a.s.sisted in his dramatic writings by his wife, a woman of splendid talents.--_Trans_.]

CCXLV. Influence of the Belles-Lettres

The German, excluded from all partic.i.p.ation in public affairs and confined to the narrow limits of his family circle and profession, followed his natural bent for speculative philosophy and poetical reverie; but while his thoughts became more elevated and the loss of his activity was, in a certain degree, compensated by the gentle dominion of the muses, the mitigation thus afforded merely aggravated the evil by rendering him content with his state of inaction. Ere long, as in the most degenerate age of ancient Rome, the citizen, amused by sophists and singers, actors and jugglers, lost the remembrance of his former power and rights and became insensible to his state of moral degradation, to which the foreign notions, the vain and frivolous character of most of the poets of the day, had not a little contributed.

After the thirty years' war, the Silesian poets became remarkable for Gallomania or the slavish imitation of those of France. Unbounded adulation of the sovereign, bombastical _carmina_ on occasion of the birth, wedding, accession, victories, fetes, treaties of peace, and burial of potentates, love-couplets equally strained, twisted compliments to female beauty, with pedantic, often indecent, citations from ancient mythology, chiefly characterized this school of poetry.

Martin Opitz, A.D. 1639, the founder of the first Silesian school,[1]