Apologia II

Writing in The Idler (No. 79), Sir Joshua Reynolds states that if this imitation of nature is a mere mechanical copying of the “literal truth and a minute exactness” of nature, then “Painting must loose its rank, and no longer be considered as a liberal art, and a sister to Poetry.” Reynolds here echoes the distinctions between the Italian and Flemish schools of painting described by his hero, Michelangelo. For Michelangelo, the Flemish “paint with a view to external exactness”, “without reason or art, without symmetry or proportion, without skillful choice or boldness, and, finally, without substance and vigor.” Italian Painting, on the other hand,  “is nothing but a copy of the perfections of God and a recollection of His painting”. 

As two rival views on what it means to imitate nature, the Italian school was concerned with form, where as the Flemish school was concerned with appearances. The understanding of forms, from the study of classical sculpture, gave the Italian school a superior sense of design and unity to their paintings.  The close observation of nature gave the Flemish school a stronger sense of realism, particularly of light and tone.  At its worst, however, the Italian school and digress into mannerism, when it substitutes conceptions of universal forms for a perception of nature.  The Flemish School, on the other hand, can become at its worst a completely superficial or mechanical copying of nature that is entirely subjective.

 For much art history, most artists fell more in the middle ground between the Italian and Flemish schools of painting, some leaning more toward perception and others towards form. Paul Delaroche, in the “Hemicycle”, painted in the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris, divides the old masters into two groups one to the left, beside a muse of Flemish painting, and the other to the right, beside the muse of Italian painting.  But a more accurate picture of art history would have the middle ground occupied by an academic tradition, connected to the Italian school, based on the study of Raphael and the classical sculptures of antiquity, which is fed and challenged by new insights into perception. 

Caravaggio and much later Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites drew art away from the mannerist tendencies of the academic painting back to a closer perception of nature. The Flemish schools, on the other hand were often alloyed with insights about form from the Italian school.  In fact, during the later half of the nineteenth century saw a remarkable profusion of new insights into painting and perception:  luminism, impressionism, the macchiaioli, tonalism to name a few.

But the First World War cut short these new approaches to perception, and the balance of the two schools. After the war, the Italian school digressed into the artificial, abstracted and distorted forms of art deco and cubism.  The Flemish school became increasingly superficial and subjective, moving from impressionism to fauvism to abstract impressionism.  At the same time, the disillusionment of the war gave birth modernist movements, such as the futurists and Dada, which sought to subvert tradition values and destroy representational painting.  The Futurists wanted to destroy all the works of antiquity.  Some art students and teachers inspired by this movement slashed painting and smashed classical casts at many of the prominent art academies, including the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris.  An alienation from nature and confusion about the value of art are some of the legacies of these movements.