Briefly, what published statements or studies by Humbert preceded the appearance of the first edition of the Essai? During 1807 and 1808, Louis Bonaparte, who was particularly interested in sculpture, sent to Holland two convoys containing a complete collection of plaster casts made after the best antiques.[67] It is thought that either Humbert's friend, the Leiden University professor of jurisprudence Johan Melchior Kemper or another associate, the minister for Arts and Sciences, Johann Meerman, might have suggested this idea to the king. At any rate, the sculpture remained packed and crated in Amsterdam during the war years until they could be transported to Leiden. [68]
Humbert informs us in his Catalogue des plâtres antiques de l'Université de Leyde that the core of the Museum was formed in July of 1815.[69] In a Prospectus published in 1817, he outlines a four-part program that promises, among other things, a complete description of these plaster casts.[70] His carefully chosen statuary of gods, demi-gods, and heroes, is characterized by a triple schematism, which looks forward to that developed in the Essai. For example, Juno, Pallas, and Venus make their first appearance here. Humbert asks: "Do they not establish the true value and use of Power, of Wisdom, of Pleasure, and of Beauty, which the three goddesses bestow on their worshipers."[71] He also discusses the Apollo Belvedere, the Indian Bacchus, and the concept of the herolegislator. All these ideas are linked to the founding of a truly Neoclassic temple of learning.[72] Humbert's museum project was to foreshadow what eventually became "Les Deux Édifices."
Interestingly, as early as his play Jésus which appeared in its entirety in 1815, there is an intimation of the Essai to come.[73] In the advertisement for the 1812 edition, which contained only the first of three acts, Humbert stated that the publication of the remaining two would follow rapidly in order "to enable me to occupy myself entirely with a survey of the arts of design compared in their moral function with tragedy." [74] Indisputably, this statement alludes to what must have been the first conception of the Essai, constituting a polemic along the lines of the ut pictura poesis argument. It is also noteworthy that Christ, in Humbert's play, is interpreted as "the moral hero," the "Virtuous Man" of the Stoics, the ultimate "Lawmaker of the Christians" - all themes taken up individually in the Essai
. Perhaps even more significant is the fact that the play's limited personae align themselves according to the passions, in a triple schema.
On a broader, theoretical level, the puristic vision of what constitutes art that comes to dominate the Essai certainly reaches back into Humbert's Italian period. Previtali has noted that the rationalist mentality of Neoclassicism found the intellectualism of the trecento and the erudite naturalism of the quattrocento more congenial to its taste than the fantasy of Mannerist and Baroque art. [75] In his Roman Sketchbook, and in numerous loose folios ( found at the Venice Accademia and the Leiden Prentenkabinet) devoted to copies after early Italian masters, Humbert emphasizes their almost exclusive use of horizontal and vertical lines. Or rather, since he was such an excellent and sensitive copyist, who suppressed his own style in order to transmit what he saw, it would be more accurate to say that he perceived what no one before him had, namely, that the early Italian masters used certain limited, linear signs to embody emotion. [76]
Something of Humbert's method of copying is illustrated by a passage from the Roman Sketchbook in which he states that it was his custom, in the evening, to transform "in a scientific manner" sketches that he had executed by day while wandering through Rome and Tuscany [77]. This rigorous purification meted out to drawings, purging them of any material dross in order that their essential expressive quality might become apparent, will be a significant contributing factor to the central idea of the Essai.
The first known public statement of the leading idea of the Essai - as it appears in its final form - dates from November 11, 1822, when Humbert delivered an illustrated lecture before the fourth class of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands. The minutes of the meeting record only a cursory reference to his: "new theory of lines in the fine arts based on the human countenance." [78]
In July 1824 Humbert gave a follow-up lecture, illustrated by several drawings, in which he discussed architecture and sculpture. [79] December found him r eading the sequence on painting that would subsequently be included in the book. [80] By October 1825 he was lecturing on the influence of perspective on the perception of architecture, noting the importance of the first impression a building makes on the observer. This was demonstrated by a paradoxical device that used the height of a Doric temple and the width of a Gothic cathedral to form the radius of an optical cone at whose apex the eye is placed. Humbert states that the aesthetic effect of a given structure can be mathematically determined to insure, in the eyes of the beholder, an optical prolongation of the perceptions of horizontalitv or verticality beyond the actual boundaries of the building. Humbert hopes thereby to insure sensory multiplication of height and width so that architecture may achieve something of the limitless quality associated with the perception of natural objects. [81]
We also learn through these records that considerable opposition was expressed to Humbert's ideas. On Februay 14, 1825, a discussion took place in the Academy concerning a letter that Humbert had written that January, asking the minister of the Interior to underwrite the publication expenses of his book. Van Ewyck, in turn, requested from the members of the fourth class of the Institute an evaluation of Humbert's efforts. The secretary states that a number of his associates could not completely agree wlth the contents of the Essai. Others asked for a closer investigation of the entire theory. Finally, after an initial draft had heen composed, an affirmative letter, endorsed by the majority, was sent to the Government. [82] On June 6, 1825, the minister informed the Institute that Humbert would be given 5000 florins toward the publication costs of text and illustrations. In return for this favor the manuscripts and drawings were to be given to the fourth class.
Humbert's attempts to have his book published, which according
to Jean-Émile went back to 1821, did not come to fruition
until almost two years after the government grant was published.
By 1828 he was able to offer the Institute the first and second
numbers of the Essai, along with two plates from the Atlas.
[83] At long last the Essai
began publication.
[next chapter: Sculpture, The new sphinx,
or the colossus on the coast of Holland]