Humbert's interest in origins is patently stated when he turns to consider next our unconditional comprehension of the visible language of nature. The emotion that this language arouses is supposedly related to a common sensibility hidden within the constitutive atoms of an animate nature. Humbert envisions a Great Chain of Being through which this primal sensation evolved, in order finally to emerge in the human race, where it attained self-consciousness. This spiraling evolutionary development, this rise of organic matter ascending from mote to spirit, is ceaseless. It will continue to climb until it reaches that primal intelligence from which it emanates and with which it aspires to reunite itself. For this reason alone man was drawn by the Prime Mover to the summit of all sublunar life. Man is the sole interpreter of the spectacle of nature, of those eternal scenes which arouse in him the sublime and vague idea of infinity.[21]
Hence, even the universe is incorporated into Humbert's theory. There are four primary geometric figures that evince the archetypal signs from which the cosmos is constructed. The circle is the least aesthetic of the group because its meaning lies entirely in an intellectual notion. The ideal circle as a limitless concept syrmbolizes a centralized ego, or consciousness, radiating thought. There is an immense difference, however, between this figure and a circle limited in time and space, such as the shape or orbit of a celestial body. The magnitude of the sun and the moon could be substantially increased, but as long as their circumferences can be grasped by the mind, their effect on the observer will be bound to diminish. Conversely, if we could actually see the horizon stretched before us, this material fact would palpably evoke the circle of thought whose contour is perpetually remote and indefinable. However, such a vision is impossible in this world, where we can perceive the horizon only as a restricted phenomenon-a straight line-which awakens in us the ideas of serenity and equilibrium.[22] Although the circle ean suggest an ideal paradigm, the "melancholy square" has no prior intellectual existence whatever until reason assigns it significance. Thus its value is exclusively mathematical, since space can never be perceived by the senses as being angular. The parallelogram or rhombus always displays two opposing sides; hence its expression depends on whether it is stationed vertically or horizontally. The triangle, which is the simplest of all rectilinear figures and the one most frequently supplied by nature itself, has a truly aesthetic value. When its base is parallel to the horizon it becomes the symbol of the convergence of distant terrestrial points toward the zenith. When the triangle is reversed, it typifies movement, vacillation, flight. What had been at the apex, occupying the summit of existence, is now at the nadir; the spiritual is plunged into the material. [23]
Having formulated into a principle the identical and unconditional meaning of colored and linear signs, in the second book Humbert considers their relevance for the fine arts.Architecture, the noblest of the arts, had the most shameful origins. Its existence was due to tyranny and slavery under the Pharaohs of Egypt, the Bels of Chaldea, and the monks or some weak monarch, vassal of the Church, during the Middle Ages.[24] In Humbert's book neither the accepted origin of architecture nor its history will be found; rather, he discusses its essence as an art. Architecture, which alone of all the arts can reproduce the imposing effects of creation, "is in some sense a transplanted nature." [25] It vies with nature in trying to stamp its own productions with endlessness - the absence of any final or determined aim in a building - the sine qua non of natural design.
Humbert hastens to add that today our admiration for architecture no longer stems from ignorance and gullibility but from our morality. Although the signs offered by nature have not changed, their interpretation has. He cites the case of Gothic architecture, which has been misunderstood too long, particularly during the fastidiously immoral and paganly learned reigns of Leo X and Louis XIV. For Humbert the Gothic church, purged of its former panoply of false dogma, symbolizes the human being in all his physical and moral dignity. Its stance, like that of man himself, is upright and pointing toward heaven.[26] In a remarkably prescient statement foreshadowing the ideas of A. W. Pugin, (the Contrasts), Humbert maintains that Gothic architecture, being the only form of nature found within our cities, has a pro£ound moral influence on custom and dress. Thus one can perceive remarkable similarities between the costume and architecture of the medieval period, such as the black-and-red metal helmet of the Christian knight, whose expressive form Humbert sees as corresponding to that of an ogival window. [ fig. 5 ]
Humbert proceeds to draw an analogy between the general physiognomy of a nation and that of its typical structures. The pagodas of the Chinese imitate the linear and coloristic expansiveness of the Chinese physiognomy. [ fig. 6 ] He claims that this, in turn, is due to the frivolity of their institutions. He compares the petty capriciousness of the Chinese temple to the bold and solemn Gothic cathedral. Nevertheless, there may be a mythological and hence redeeming feature in this otherwise bizarre mode of construction. He speculates that perhaps its origin is due to a venerable, but misunderstood, fable told of a saint born of a virgin who sailed on the waters of the great flood to preach peace to distant nations. Humbert conjectures that the shape of his ship might be commemorated in the curving roof of the Chinese temple. [27]
The third form of construction, which occupies an intermediary position between the Gothic and the Chinese, is the Greek Doric temple. Reason itself seems to have presided at its invention. Whereas the Gothic cathedral inspires religious feeling, the Doric temples of Magna Graecia affect us more materially, in conformity with our earthly existence. Their predominantly horizontal signs are juxtaposed with the face of the Pallas of Velletri, whose eyes and nose are mirrored in the abacus and colonnade of the Temple of Neptune at Paestum. [ fig. 7 ]Similarly, the south window of the Church of St. Pancrace in Leiden, through the development of its slender rods into tracery, is made to evoke eloquently the meditative, converging lines of a crusader's face. [ fig. 8 ] [ fig. 9 ] [28]
Ultimately the Doric building planted firmly on its columns becomes the epitome of human reason, just as the Gothic cathedral with its sublime pointed arch is symbolic of limitless thought. The color appropriate to the latter construction is formed of graduated shades of white to black stone, rising from base to summit. This progression from white to black is understandable when one realizes that, for Humbert, the throne of Him who is without beginning or end is at the center of darkness without end. No linear symbol exists to express the hidden God, only the color black perceived absolutely and abstractly. Conversely, white marble of the purest kind is appropriate to the materiality of a Greek temple.[29]
Finally, Humbert is violently opposed to the mixing of sculpture and architecture, although not to their association. Thus the Parthenon with its sculptured frieze and metopes in high relief is a dangerous masterpiece.[30] St. Peter's in Rome is an abortive colossus that is incapable of becoming even an interesting ruin.[31]
Humbert contends that Egypt possessed the unique conditions for the development of sculpture. This art originated in the mummy case, and its aim was the commemorative one of preserving the fame of great men into future generations. [ fig. 10 ] Thus since the beginning sculpture and death were inextricably joined.[32] The natural prototype of the mummy case is a cocoon that hides the brilliant butterfly, and in whose casing life succeeds apparent death. Sculpture's origin dictates that it maintain equilibrium, order, solidity, and endurance. In addition, it must be colossal and monolithic, exhibiting symmetry and grandeur in its disposition. [ fig. 11 ][33] According to Humbert, without gigantic proportions the human figure is a mere corpse or an idolatrous plaything.
In the millennia that succeeded the time of the creators of Egyptian colossi, only Michelangelo appeared to assume this true sculptor's task, but the brusqueness and intemperance of his genius harmed the expression of simple grandeur necessary to that art. Nonetheless, to his great credit, he was incapable of creating the Moses out of marquetry. Bernini, by comparison, is a mere carver of prostituted flesh.[34] As an extension of these thoughts, Humbert contrasts the colossi of Memnon, Luxor, and Abusimbel, which give the impression of effortless immobility that will endure as long as the physical world, with the Hercules Farnese who lacks all monumental character, being only apparently colossal. Propping up its hefty, overhanging body with a club, this Greek caricature impresses the observer with its awkwardness and fragmentation of parts. Conversely, before that race of silent giants standing on the plain of Thebes, human judgment falters between the illusion of life and the reality of an inert, inorganic mass of rock. The impossibility of the imagination's ever limiting or completing that experience makes Egyptian sculpture the paradigm of an open, nonfinal production of art. For Humbert human creation may be termed art only if it possesses the requisite boundlessness and expanding contour that constantly eludes our limiting circle of thought. In the final analysis he perceives sculpture as a closed system whose rules were irrevocably set under the pharaohs. Humbert particularly admires the care with which the Egyptian sculptor avoided imitaffon. He knew how to omit slavish details like hair and fur, which refuse to lend themselves to the overriding monumental idea.
Because of its nature the only proper subjects for sculpture are the frontal, single, seated or standing male figure and the recumbent lion, preferably seen in profile. The volatile horse should never be represented, and equestrian statues are doomed to failure. As was true of architecture, stone is the only acceptable construction material. Wood and metal are subject to decay and stress, satisfying neither the stipulation of large size nor that of endurance. Marble, basalt, or granite - because of their hardness and color - form the appropriate media. The predominance of black or white coloration depends on the upright or horizontal disposition of the rectangular mass and on the desired play of surface light and shade. When it comes to the question of color in sculpture, Humbert remarks that the Egyptians were incapable of creating a painted doll like the Olympian Jupiter, coloring the tip of a nose, or decorating with ivory the lobe of an ear. They painted their sculpture symbolically, shunning the imitative illusionism of the Greeks.
What a difference, I say, between such a petty mechanism and the bold hand stripping, with great strokes of the chisel, the recalcitrant covering of granite that conceals the gigantic limbs of a Memnon, an Osymandias, to expose them to the astonishment and admiration of future centuries.[35]
Humbert predicts that Italy, because of the undulating lines of its landscape, can only produce painters, but the countries of the North, gazing upon the Alps, will be the scene of sculpture's rebirth.[36] He feels that today we have to renounce sculpture as the Greeks knew it. Their Mars, Hercules, and Bacchus no longer embody any meaning besides that of a merely formal beauty. The only exception to this statement is the Apollo Belvedere, which unites physical perfection with morality. Humbert foresees the possibility of at least one type of monumental sculpture appropriate to the present: that of some great man represented standing in a frontal position without any dress or ornament other than what is indispensable to his public office. No horse, throne, or crown should mar this image, and the splendid Indian Bacchus of the Vatican could serve as its model.[37]
In turning to a discussion of painting, Humbert notes that all of us are painters in the mind whenever we think, remember, or imagine.[38] Just as the idea or inner word always precedes spoken language, the immaterial concept exists prior to the external sign. Because of its affinity with nonverbal language, painting is the most spiritual of the arts and man is its proper object. As might be expected, Humbert is disdainful of genre painting. True painting can be inspired only by religion, as it was at its renascence in the thirteenth century. Because of its spiritual essence, painting limns the immaterially visible correspondence of man's thought with a superior intellectual and moral world, the realm of Jesus. [ fig. 12 ][39] We are told that painting must rise to the level of its sister art, poetry, and like her it must evoke the moral dimension that stretches between heaven and earth and is populated by spiritual beings, specters, and apparitions. Humbert conjures a Swedenborgian vision stretching between heaven and hell. Like Milton or Dante, the artist's themes range from the infernal to the paradisaical. They form the subject matter that the early Tuscan and German masters rendered to such perfection that even Raphael could not attain to their stature.
In Humbert's estimation three factors contributed to the deterioration of this sublime art, and he proposes three correctives. The all-too-material technique of oil painting has fresco or stained glass substituted for it. The examination of a vital nature without embellishment must replace cold and systematic studies after the antique. Finally, painting should be used exclusively to ornament churches and other sacred places, rather than to deck boudoirs and galleries with trifles.[40]
Painting, then, is schematic, an art of signs and symbols devoid of the materiality of architecture and sculpture. The sign is essential to its very conception since, by definition, it is stripped of all corporeality. As could be expected, the colors appropriate to this art are limited: nuances of white and red; gold should be substituted for yellow; green, which is excluded from the sky (except in the rainbow) may, however, be employed as a material, vegetal emblem. In terms of content, the eagle alone among the lower animals is adequate to painting, because this art repudiates anything that is purely earthbound. The horse, largely because Humbert likes it, may also be used. In fact, he dubs it an almost-spiritual quadruped.[41]
Among the modern masters, Humbert pays a grudging respect to the sculpture of Michelangelo and to the frescoes of the Sistine ceiling. The learned Leonardo and the scholarly Poussin also receive fair admiration. Poussin's Extreme Unction and the sublime simplicity and epigrammatic economy of the Testament of Eudamidas, which he knew only through the engravings by Jean Pesne, were singled out because of the perfect correspondence existing between the horizontal direction of the dead man and the recumbent rectangle that framed the compositions.[42] Humbert felt that the Eudamidas expressed particularly well the calm silence surrounding eternal repose. He stipulated that in order for this painting to be perfect, the actors should be wasted, pallid, and dressed in nuances of white. Poussin was singled out for superlative praise by a contemporary author known to Humbert. Gault de Saint-Germain lauds the French artist for precisely that quality considered essential in painting by Humbert. For Poussin thought was always the main ob ject in his work and it is seen in "all his masterpieces, which contain whatever philosophy, history, poetry, ethics possess of strength, virtue, and charm." Indeed, Poussin is the epitorne of the "painter of reason and of intellectuals."[43]
The greatness of his compatriot Rembrandt prodded Humbert into making an exception to his theory. Rembrandt alone could successfully paint a Magdalene dressed in yellow and a Christ cloaked in red. He justifies what, for him, is an unacceptable color symbolism by stating that, because of the striking transition made in Rembrandt's compositions from a single light area to a dark mass, these colors effectively represent whiteness contrasted with surrounding darkness. Humbert redefines white as the strongest light emitted by any color or substance. Thus, in Rembrandt's work the sudden juxtaposition of indeterminate shadows with luminosity may replace the axiomatic identity of linear and coloristic signs. The concentrated and illuminated spot of pigment that rivets our eyes in a Rembrandt painting is extended by the imagination into an implicit line indicating a specific direction.[44]
These digressions on modernity aside, Humbert returns to his real preoccupation - the nature of painting at its inception. For Humbert painting at its beginning was nothing but writing, sometimes of a symbolic, and at other times of an ideographic sort. In either case its signs were derived from nature, not as objects of imitation but as figurative and visible emblems of an intellectual idea. Painting is exclusively the visible expression of thought, and for Christians, of Christian thought. Unlike sculpture or architecture, whose raison d'etre is immutability, painting offers the instantaneous and fleeting expression of an external sign that stimulates the thought processes.to bring forth an image still absent. [45] Thus the true aim of painting is the intellectual apprehension of a momentary conjunction of phenomenon and concept (by the mind) in the form of a sign. The mind becomes the invisible eanvas on which the imagination limns.
The cursory third book of the Essai introduces us to a project that Humbert never completed. The division of the arts into restricted categories that permit only two out of three to associate (not merge), and having architecture as the shared member, was to be the subject of two additional articles in a section of the Essai entitled the "Medusa." These, plus an article that gave its name to that section, were never published and will be dealt with in detail later.[46] This rigorous separation of the arts is founded on a passionate disdain for the Gesammtkunstwerk and is based on the distinction that Humbert draws between a wholly material, earthly, and political art governed by civil law, which addresses itself to man and his social duties, and another, guided by the law of perfection, which is exclusively religious, intellectual, and schematic, informing man of his contract with God. These considerations were to have comprised studies devoted to a horizontal or political construction associated with sculpture, and an ascendant or religious building related to painting.[47]
The remaining part of Humbert's treatise vanishes rather than ends. Not only is the entire section mentioned above missing, but an appendix, dealing with sculpture as an absolute art and called "The Giant on the Coast, Symbolizing Holland," is simply tacked on, without further expansion, to the extremely short third book.[48] We also find, tucked among the footnotes, an article, not integrated into the text, that discusses the divisions of an ideal society, with the costume and habitation appropriate to the various estates.[49]
One has the impression that everything that could possibly be published at that moment (1832) was. Perhaps the author felt that the political situation and hostility toward his theory would not allow him to bring it to a proper conclusion. Moreover, six years had elapsed since the publication of his book began, and a decade had passed since it had first been composed; ideas that were original and relevant then were beginning to lose their novelty. [next chapter: Exposition of the Essai sur les signes inconditionels dans l'art, The failure of the second edition]