The eagle's nest : ten lectures on the relation of natural science to art

Front matter

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Preface

r I AHE following Lectures have been written, not with less care, but with less pains, than any in former courses, because no labour could have rendered them exhaustive statements of their subjects, and I wished, therefore, to take from them every appearance of pretending to be so : but the assertions I have made are entirely deliberate, though their terms are unstudied ; and the one which to the general reader will appear most startling, that the study of anatomy is destructive to art, is instantly necessary in explanation of the system adopted for the direction of my Oxford schools. At the period when engraving might have

XVI PREFACE.

become to art what printing became to literature, the four greatest point-draughtsmen hitherto known, Mantegna, Sandro Botticelli, Durer, and Holbein, occupied themselves in the new industry. All these four men were as high in intellect and moral sentiment as in art-power ; and if they had engraved as Giotto painted, with popular and unscientific simplicity, would have left an inexhaustible series of prints, delightful to the most innocent minds, and strengthening to the most noble.

But two of them, Mantegna and Durer, were so polluted and paralyzed by the study of anatomy that the former's best works (the magnificent mythology of the Vices in the Louvre, for instance) are entirely revolting to all women and children ; while Durer never could draw one beautiful female form or face ; and, of his important plates, only four, the Melancholia, St. Jerome in his study, St. Hubert, and The Knight and Death, are of any use for popular

PREFACE. XV11

instruction, because in these only, the figures being fully draped or armed, he was enabled to think and feel rightly, being delivered from the ghastly toil of bone-delineation.

Botticelli and Holbein studied the face first, and the limbs secondarily ; and the works they have left are therefore (without exception) precious ; yet saddened and corrupted by the influence which the contemporary masters of body-drawing exercised on them; and at last eclipsed by their false fame. I purpose, therefore, in my next course of lectures, to explain the relation of these two draughtsmen to other masters of design, and of engraving.

Brantwood. Sept. 2nd, 1872.

CONTENTS,

LECTURE I.

PAGE THE FUNCTION IN ART OF THE FACULTY CALLED BY

THE GREEKS <TO0ia I

LECTURE II.

THE FUNCTION IN SCIENCE OF THE FACULTY CALLED BY

THE GREEKS (7O01CI 25

LECTURE' III.

February 15, 1872.

THE RELATION OF WISE ART TO WISE SCIENCE . .46

LECTURE IV.

THE FUNCTION IN ART AND SCIENCE OF THE VIRTUE

CALLED BY THE GREEKS (T<d<ppoavvr) . . -74

XX CONTENTS.

LECTURE V.

February 22, 1872.

PAGE THE FUNCTION IN ART AND SCIENCE OF THE VIRTUE

CALLED BY THE GREEKS CLVTCLpKaa . . . .89

LECTURE VI.

THE RELATION TO ART OF THE SCIENCE OF LIGHT . I 1 4

LECTURE VII.

THE RELATION TO ART OF THE SCIENCES OF INORGANIC

FORM I38

LECTURE VIII.

THE RELATION TO ART OF THE SCIENCES OF ORGANIC

LECTURE IX.

Introduction To Elementary Exercises In Physio- Logic Art. The Story Of The Halcyon . . 1 88

LECTURE X.

March 9, 1872.