Beautiful nature is embellished nature , perfected by the fine arts for use and enjoyment. This verity is developed with the help of the author of “The Principles of Literature”.

Those who are bored by too uniform of a pleasure from objects offered by nature alone, and who are otherwise disposed to receive pleasure, have resorted to their genius to provide themselves with a new sequence of thoughts and feelings to awaken their mind and stimulate their taste. But what could this genius do when limited in its fecundity and in its vision, unable to carry them further than nature , and having on the other hand to work for men whose faculties were enclosed within the same limits? All of its efforts would necessarily be reduced to selecting the most beautiful parts of nature in order to shape them into an exquisite whole of greater perfection than nature itself, yet without ceasing to be natural. There you have the principle upon which had to be erected the framework of the arts and which great artists have followed throughout the centuries. In choosing objects and their features, they have presented them to us with the complete perfection of which they were capable. They did not simply imitate nature as it is in itself, but as what it could be and as the mind could conceive it. Thus, since the arts have as their object of imitation beautiful nature represented in all of its perfection, let us see how they accomplish this.

We could divide nature into two parts in relation to the arts: one that we enjoy with the eyes and another by means of the ears, since the other senses are completely fruitless with respect to the fine arts. The first part is the object of painting which creates representations in relief, and ultimately of the art of gesture, which is a branch of the other two arts I just mentioned and which only differs from them, in its contents, because the subject to which gestures are assigned in dance is natural and living, unlike the canvas of the painter and the marble of the sculptor.

The second part is the object of music, considered by itself and as singing; in second place, it is also the object of poetry, which employs words, but words measured and calculated in all the tones.

Thus, painting imitates beautiful nature with colors, sculpture with reliefs, and dance with movements and poses of the body. Music imitates it with inarticulate sounds. And lastly poetry, with metered speech. These are the distinctive features of the main arts and if at times they mix and merge together, as for example in poetry, when dance lends gestures to theater actors, when music lends the tone of voice to declamation, or when the paintbrush decorates the stage, they render these services to one another by virtue of their common end and reciprocal alliance, but without any harm to their individual natural duties. A tragedy without gestures, without music, without decoration, is always still a poem. It is imitation expressed through measured speech. Music without words is always music: it expresses pity and joy independently of the words, which in truth help, but which neither add to nor subtract from its nature or its essence. Its essential expression is sound, just like that of painting is color and that of dance is the movement of the body.

However, it should be mentioned here that, just like the arts have to select the designs of nature and perfect them, they also have to choose to perfect the expressions that they borrow from nature . They should not employ all sorts of colors, nor all sorts of sounds, but should select them properly to form a beautiful blend; they should combine them, balance their proportions and nuances, and harmonize them. Colors and sounds are subject to attractions and repulsions among themselves. Nature has the right to unite them as it pleases, but art has to do it according to the rules. Taste should not only be completely unoffended, but it should be flattered and to the extent that it is possible for it to be flattered. Thus, we can define painting, sculpture, and dance to be an imitation of beautiful nature expressed by colors, visual and spatial relief, and poses, while music and poetry are the imitation of beautiful nature by sounds or metered speech.

The arts which we just discussed have had their beginning, their progress, and their revolutions in the world. There was a time when people occupied themselves only with the task of sustaining or defending their lives; there were only workers or soldiers: without laws, without peace, without traditions, their societies were nothing but congregations. It was not in those times of distress and darkness that the fine arts came to bloom; it is clear from their nature that they are the children of abundance and peace.

When people were tired of hurting one another and dreadful experiences brought them to understand that only virtue and justice could make humankind happy, they started to enjoy the protection of the laws, the first movement from the heart was of joy. They abandoned themselves to the pleasures that followed in the wake of innocence. Singing and dancing were the first expressions of emotion, and then leisure, need, opportunity, and chance suggested the idea of the other arts and cleared their path.

As soon as people became a bit more refined by society and began to feel that they were worth more for their spirit than for their body, undoubtedly there was some wonderful man who, inspired by genius, cast his eyes on nature .

After contemplating it well, he considered himself. He recognized that he had an innate capacity for perceiving the relations he observed and that they had an agreeable effect upon him. He understood that order, variety, proportion, which were imprinted so vividly in the works of nature, were not only supposed to raise us to the knowledge of a supreme intelligence, but they could also become lessons in conduct and turned to the profit of human society.

It was then, properly speaking, that the arts emerged from nature. Until then their elements had been mixed up and dispersed, as in a kind of chaos. They were barely known, as a hint, or as a kind of instinct. Then people began to sort out some principles: there were some attempts which succeeded in sketching them. It was quite a lot: it was not easy to find something about which one has no definite idea while in the process of seeking it. Who would have thought that the shadow of a body, traced by a simple stroke could become a painting of Apollo; that a few unarticulated accents could give birth to music as we know it today? The journey is vast. How many useless paths did our fathers take, or that were even contrary to their goal! How many failed results, searching in vain, unsuccessful trials! We enjoy their labor and, instead of gratitude, they receive our contempt.

When the arts were born, they were like people: they had to be formed anew by some sort of education, since they came out of barbarism. True, there was imitation, but a vulgar one, and of a nature that itself was vulgar. Art consisted entirely in rendering what one saw and felt; one did not know how to select. Confusion reigned in the design; disproportion and uniformity in the parts; excess, oddity and vulgarity in the decorations. The results were construction materials rather than an edifice, yet people were creating imitations.

The Greeks, blessed with a happy genius, finally captured exactly the essential and main features of beautiful nature and clearly understood that it was not enough to imitate things, but that it was also necessary to select them. Until then, the works of art were hardly notable, except for the enormity of their size or undertaking. Those were the works of titans. The more enlightened Greeks, however, felt that it was better to charm the spirit than to astound or blind the eyes. They decided that unity, variety, and proportion had to be the foundation of all the arts, and on this foundation – so beautiful, right, and corresponding to the laws of taste and feeling, the canvas took the shapes and colors of nature , ivory and marble came to life under the chisel. Music, poetry, eloquence, and architecture also promptly gave birth to miracles; and as the idea of perfection common to all the arts became set in that fine age, almost all at once in all the genres there appeared masterpieces, which afterwards became models to all the civilized nations. This was the first triumph of the arts. Let us stop at this epoch, since we need to gather from the ancient monuments of Greece the refined taste and the admirable models of beautiful nature , which is nowhere to be found among the objects before our eyes.

The preeminence of the Greeks in matters of beauty and perfection is unquestionable; one can sense the facility with which their art masters were able to attain the true expression of beautiful nature . In their time nature constantly lend itself to the curious examination of the artist at public games, in gymnasiums, and even on the theater stage. Because Greek artists had frequent occasions to observe, they conceived the idea of going further. They began to form certain general notions of beauty, not only of the parts of the body, but also of the proportions between them. These beauties had to rise above those produced by nature. Their originals were found in an ideal nature, i.e. in their own conception.

No great effort is necessary to grasp the fact that the Greeks naturally had to raise the expression of natural beauty to the expression of ideal beauty which goes beyond the former, and whose traits, according to an ancient interpreter of Plato, are renditions of pictures existing only in the mind. This is how Raphael painted his Galatea. Just like perfect beauties are so rare among women, he says in a letter to Count Balthasar Castiglione, I am executing an idea conceived in my imagination.

These ideal forms, superior to the material ones, provided the Greeks with the principles, according to which they represented gods and men. When they wanted to render the resemblance of people, at the same time they always tried to embellish them, which inevitably presupposes the intention to represent nature with greater perfection than is normal. Such was the work of Polygnotus at all times.

When writers tell us that some ancient artists had followed the method of Praxiteles, who painted his mistress Cratine as the model for Venus of Knidos, or that Lais was the model for the Graces of more than one painter, we should not think that these artists have diverged from the general principles which they respected as their supreme laws. The beauty that struck the senses presented the artist with beautiful nature , but it was ideal beauty that provided him with great and noble features: from the former, he took the human part and then from the latter, the divine part which had to enter into his work.

I am not ignoring the fact that some artists are divided as to how much preference should be given to the study of ancient monuments versus those of nature . Cavalier Bernini was among those who contested the Greeks’ prerogative of a more beautiful nature , along with that of the ideal beauty of their figures. He, moreover, thought that nature knows how to give to every part its appropriate beauty and that art consisted only of capturing that beauty. He also boasted to have finally freed himself from the prejudice he had at first tasted in regards to the beauties of the Medici Venus. After a long and hard effort, as he says, he found on different occasions the same beauties in simple nature . Whether this were so or not, according to his own admission this same Venus had taught him to discover beauties in nature , which until then he had only ever perceived in that famous statue.

One can also believe with some basis of certainty that without this statue probably one would not have sought these beauties in nature . Thus, we conclude that the beauty of Greek statues is easier to grasp than that of nature itself, insofar as the former is less common and more striking than the latter.

A second truth follows from what we have just established: that in order to attain knowledge of perfect beauty, the study of nature is, at the least, a longer and more difficult route than the study of the ancients. Bernini, who usually recommended to young artists to always imitate what in nature is most beautiful, did not, however, indicate the fastest way to reach that perfection.

Either imitation of nature is born from a single object or it gathers in a single work what the artist has observed in many individuals. The first manner of imitating produces copies which resemble portraits. The second raises the mind of the artist towards beauty in general and toward ideal notions of beauty. The Greeks had chosen this last route and, unlike us, they were able to attain these notions by contemplating very beautiful bodies and by frequent occasions of observing the beauties of nature . These beauties, as was said elsewhere, showed themselves to them every day, animated by a most genuine expression, whereas they show themselves rarely to us, and even more rarely as the artists would like them to present themselves.

In our times, nature will not be able to easily produce a body as perfect as that of Antinous. Likewise, in regards to a beautiful divinity, the human spirit will not be able to conceive anything beyond the superhuman dimensions of the Apollo at the Vatican. It unites everything that nature , art and genius are capable of producing. Nor is it normal to think that the imitation of such pieces should abbreviate the study of art. In the first case, you can find the summation of that which is scattered in all of nature ; in the other, we can see how far sensible audacity can raise most beautiful nature above its own self. While these pieces offer the greatest point of perfection that one can attain when representing divine and human beauties, how is it possible to think that an artist who will imitate these pieces will not learn to think and to draw with dignity and confidence, without fear of falling into error?

An artist, who lets his intellect and his hand be led by the rule that the Greeks had adopted for beauty, will find himself on the path that leads directly to the imitation of nature . The notions of the whole and of perfection gathered in the nature of the ancients will be refined in him and will make manifest the scattered perfections of the nature that we see before us. In discovering the beauties of the latter, he will know how to combine them with the ideal beauty and by means of the sublime forms always present to his mind, this ideal will become a sure rule also for him.

Artists should above all constantly bear in mind that the truest expression of beautiful nature is not the only thing that experts and imitators of the Greek works admire in its divine origins; rather, that which creates its distinctive character is the expression of a possible best, of an ideal beauty, below which always remains the most beautiful nature .

This brilliant principle can be extended to all the arts, and above all to poetry, music, architecture, etc. At the same time, one should keep well in mind that physical beauty is the foundation, the basis and the source of intellectual beauty, and that it is only by following the beautiful nature we see that we can create, like the Greeks, a second nature – undoubtedly more beautiful but analogous to the first. In a word, ideal beauty should be none other than a perfected, actual beauty.

Rome became a disciple of Athens. It admired the wonders of Greece and attempted to imitate them; soon it made itself appreciated for its works of taste as much as it made itself feared for its arms. All the peoples applauded its taste and this approval proved that the Greeks, whom the Romans had imitated, had indeed been most excellent models.

The revolutions that followed are known. Europe was overtaken by the barbarians and as a necessary consequence the sciences and the arts were shrouded in the adversity of the times, until those exiled from Constantinople came back to seek refuge in Italy. They awakened the spirits of Horace, of Virgil, and of Cicero there; they went searching as far as their tombs, which had been used for sculpture and painting. People saw antiquity reappear with the graces of youth. Artists hastened to imitate it; public admiration multiplied the talents; emulation stimulated them and the fine arts came back in their splendor. They will be corrupted and lost. One already overloads beautiful nature, adjusts it, makes it up; dons it with ornaments, which make it unrecognizable. These refinements of countering vulgarity are more difficult to destroy than vulgarity itself. It is because of them that taste is dulled and decadence begins.