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DESCRIPTIVE, EXPLANATORY, AND CRITICAL

CATALOGUE, &c.

JESUS CHRIST ARGUING IN THE SYNAGOGUE.

(DESIGNED AND PROBABLY PAINTED BY)

LIONARDO DA VINCI.

THIS admirable, and carefully preserved picture, has generally been designated "Christ disputing with the Doctors;" and more recently "Christ reasoning with the Pharisees." But the Saviour is here represented as too old for that first-recorded manifestation of his divine powers, which it will be remembered took place at the age of twelve years, when his mother, after three days' search, discovered her son in the Temple of Jerusalem disputing with the Rabbin. He has here attained to manhood; and as his auditors do not seem like conceited, self-important hypocrites such as were the Pharisees-but rather like a miscellaneous assemblage, some of whose minds, at least, may be supposed to be open to conviction, we have ventured to entitle the picture as above, Jesus Christ arguing in the Synagogue, to which he was used occasionally to resort, as we learn from the text, "When he was come into his own country, (of Nazareth,) he taught them in the Synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished! and said one to another, Whence hath this man his wisdom, and his mighty works?" If the picture be meant to

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illustrate any particular text, (as probably it is,) it appears to be that which we have cited above from St. Matthew, the Saviour having evidently attained to manhood, and his audience being miscellaneous.

There are who suppose, from the action of his hands, that Lionardo intended we should understand that his Christ was here explaining the mystery of the Holy Trinity: but, as logicians who would steer clear of any dangerous dilemma, do not unfrequently employ their fingers thus methodically as they proceed in their demonstrations, it is submitted that Jesus Christ arguing in the Synagogue (at Nazareth) will on the whole prove a preferable title to either of those which are mentioned above.

The countenances of those who are listening to the divine Teacher at least three out of the four who are here depicted-exhibit more attention, than pertinacity. The nearest of the bearded elderly figures, holds up his hand with the thumb and finger elevated, as if noting some passage or expression in the argument adduced, on which he wishes for further information, or concerning which he reserves, and will offer, some objection. The front-faced figure beyond him, who seems pondering, is perhaps intended for one of the sect of Sadducees who professed to disbelieve the immortality of the soul, but whose faith may well be supposed to be a little shaken by what he hears: he is evidently an attentive, and an unprejudiced, listener.

Concerning the defects of the picture :-The shadows of the flesh are perhaps too brown for Nature; yet, from this obscurity, the lights derive a degree of brilliancy. The bearded figure who wears the frontlet, has no Hebrew text or adage displayed on it, such as

were at the time common on the phylacteries of the Pharisees, and such as Rubens, with due attention to costume, has introduced in his "Woman detected in Adultery,” and as Raphael has hinted at in his cartoon of Ananias and Sapphira; and the jewelled bosom-border of the vest, in which Christ is habited, is perhaps in its pattern too Milanese and Cinquecento, and, studded as it is with rubies and other precious gems, is too rich in ornament, for the humble birth and terrestrial pretensions of the son of Joseph the carpenter. But these are trifles-hypercriticisms perhaps

"Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow:

He who would search for pearls must dive below."

All the heads introduced, including that of Jesus Christ himself, appear to be portraits of individuals, very little, if at all, idealised. The Christ is meek, unassuming, beneficent, far removed from the faintest shade of human arrogance: his eyes tell of divine intelligence; his hair is parted over his forehead conformably to ancient and accredited descriptions of his person; and Da Vinci has boldly dispensed with the customary halo, or head-encircling light, which, among the Italian saint-painters and their patrons, having previously been regarded as the conventional sign of sacredness or divinity, had spared the Cimabues and Giottos the trouble of writing, and the majority of their contemporaries the greater trouble of reading, "This is a saint." Relying, like any other professed teacher of wisdom, on the simple truths he unfolded, and in no degree presuming on the sacredness of his own character and mission, Lionardo's Christ has a noble amplitude of forehead,

a well-formed nose, and in the tout ensemble of his countenance there is a decided and considerable advancement from the art of preceding ages toward that ineffability which belongs to the mild, and passionless, and peaceful, energies of Jesus Christ; yet, as he is here the speaker, his lips should surely have been apart. This closed mouth is a more important defect in the picture, than either of those which we have intimated above: and, on the whole, critics will perhaps, after due acknowledgment of its merits, deem this face to be somewhat deficient in divine elevation of character, although exquisitely wrought up in respect of light, shade, colour, and careful blandishment.

Notions of pictorial abstractions, central forms, and ideal beauty, such as have resounded through the academies of Europe during the last century, had not during the age of Da Vinci begun, or were but just beginning, to disclose themselves. All that an artist sought, was to select and combine those features or passages of Nature which were best suited to any given historical or poetical occasion: more than which is not here attempted.

Of the possible painted and sculptured heads of Jesus Christ, I have formerly written that they could only be exalted above those of all individual men, by possessing what is common to all good men in character and expression: but I am now uncertain whether such a compound abstraction be practicable in Art: whether, if it be, it would appear at once human and deific; or excite the exalted, yet humble and meek, idea which attaches to the character of Christ.

Such ideas, however, did begin to obtain among

the artists of Italy soon after the era of the resurrection of the Antique Sculpture. Wondering how the Greeks could have attained to such superlative beauty and grandeur as are displayed in their works, the then modern artists sought for it in theory, and credulously listened to the stories of Phidias copying Homer, rather than Nature, in modelling his Olympian Jupiter; to that of the six selected beauties who are said to have sat to Zeuxis for his Helen: and, to the modern prevalence of this supposed, and perhaps real, ancient creed, we owe the Jesus Christ of Poussin, resembling a youthful Jupiter, and the still more abstracted or generalised Saviour of Coreggio and the Caraccii, which is perhaps better than Da Vinci's, Michael Angelo's, Poussin's, or even Raphael's-with the exception of his beatified and deific head of the transfigured Saviour, which is so justly admired.

But the opinions on this point, as well as the practice of the ancients, is desirable. Now it sometimes happens that a single phrase of a good writer, lets us into the knowledge of a principle; and that the critical literature of the ancients, as well as their Fine Art—or, at least, that some of its professors, as well as some of the moderns, were possessed with the notion of ideal forms, if not of their superiority over those of selected nature; and the practicability of rendering them perceptible to sense-we may gather from the learned Proclus' mention of "brainborn images."

Reynolds, however, unhesitatingly promulgated, expanded, and enforced, the principle of exploring central forms through means of ideal and pictorial abstractions, but has, notwithstanding, virtually coun