§ 48.

Historical painting has, besides beauty and grace, character as its principal object; by character is to be understood in general the manifestation of the will at the highest grade of its objectification. Here the individual, as emphasizing a particular side of the Idea of mankind, has peculiar significance, and makes this known not by mere form alone; on the contrary, he renders it visible in mien and countenance by action of every kind, and by the modifications of knowing and willing which occasion and accompany it. Since the Idea of mankind is to be exhibited in this sphere, the unfolding of its many-sidedness must be brought before our eyes in significant individuals, and these again can be made visible in their significance only through many different scenes, events, and actions. Now this endless problem is solved by historical painting, for it brings before our eyes scenes from life of every kind, of great or trifling significance. No individual and no action can be without significance; in all and through all, the Idea of mankind unfolds itself more and more. Therefore no event in the life of man can possibly be excluded from painting. Consequently, a great injustice is done to the eminent painters of the Dutch school, when their technical skill alone is esteemed, and in other respects they are looked down on with disdain, because they generally depict objects from everyday life, whereas only events from world or biblical history are regarded as significant. We should first of all bear in mind that the inward significance of an action is quite different from the outward, and that the two often proceed in separation from each other. The outward significance is the importance of an action in relation to its consequences for and in the actual world, and hence according to the principle of sufficient reason. The inward significance is the depth of insight into the Idea of mankind which it discloses, in that it brings to light sides of that Idea which rarely appear. This it does by causing individualities, expressing themselves distinctly and decidedly, to unfold their peculiar characteristics by means of appropriately arranged circumstances. In art only the inward significance is of importance; in history the outward. The two are wholly independent of each other; they can appear together, but they can also appear alone. An action of the highest significance for history can in its inner significance be very common and ordinary. Conversely, a scene from everyday life can be of great inward significance, if human individuals and the innermost recesses of human action and will appear in it in a clear and distinct light. Even in spite of very different outward significance, the inward can be the same; thus, for example, it is all the same as regards inward significance whether ministers dispute about countries and nations over a map, or boors in a beer-house choose to wrangle over cards and dice; just as it is all the same whether we play chess with pieces of gold or of wood. Moreover, the scenes and events that make up the life of so many millions of human beings, their actions, their sorrows, and their joys, are on that account important enough to be the object of art, and by their rich variety must afford material enough to unfold the many-sided Idea of mankind. Even the fleeting nature of the moment, which art has fixed in such a picture (nowadays called genre painting), excites a slight, peculiar feeling of emotion. For to fix the fleeting world, which is for ever transforming itself, in the enduring picture of particular events that nevertheless represent the whole, is an achievement of the art of painting by which it appears to bring time itself to a standstill, since it raises the individual to the Idea of its species. Finally, the historical and outwardly significant subjects of painting often have the disadvantage that the very thing that is significant in them cannot be presented in perception, but must be added in thought. In this respect the nominal significance of the picture must generally be distinguished from the real. The former is the outward significance, to be added, however, only as concept; the latter is that side of the Idea of mankind which becomes evident for perception through the picture. For example, Moses found by the Egyptian princess may be the nominal significance of a picture, an extremely important moment for history; on the other hand, the real significance, that which is actually given to perception, is a foundling rescued from its floating cradle by a great lady, an incident that may have happened more than once. The costume alone can here make known to the cultured person the definite historical case; but the costume is of importance only for the nominal significance; for the real significance it is a matter of indifference, for the latter knows only the human being as such, not the arbitrary forms. Subjects taken from history have no advantage over those which are taken from mere possibility, and are thus to be called not individual, but only general. For what is really significant in the former is not the individual, not the particular event as such, but the universal in it, the side of the Idea of mankind that is expressed through it. On the other hand, definite historical subjects are not on any account to be rejected ; only the really artistic view of such subjects, both in the painter and in the beholder, concerns never the individual particulars in them, which properly constitute the historical, but the universal that is expressed in them, namely the Idea. Only those historical subjects are to be chosen in which the main thing can actually be shown, and has not to be merely added in thought; otherwise the nominal significance is too remote from the real. What is merely thought in connexion with the picture becomes of the greatest importance, and interferes with what is perceived. If, even on the stage, it is not right for the main incident to take place behind the scenes (as in French tragedy), it is obviously a far greater fault in the picture. Historical subjects have a decidedly detrimental effect only when they restrict the painter to a field chosen arbitrarily, and not for artistic but for other purposes. This is particularly the case when this field is poor in picturesque and significant objects, when, for example, it is the history of a small, isolated, capricious, hierarchical (i.e., ruled by false notions), obscure people, like the Jews, despised by the great contemporary nations of the East and of the West. Since the great migration of peoples lies between us and all the ancient nations, just as between the present surface of the earth and the surface whose organisms appear only as fossil remains there lies the former change of the bed of the ocean, it is to be regarded generally as a great misfortune that the people whose former culture was to serve mainly as the basis of our own were not, say, the Indians or the Greeks, or even the Romans, but just these Jews. But it was a particularly unlucky star for the Italian painters of genius in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that, in the narrow sphere to which they were arbitrarily referred for the choice of subjects, they had to resort to miserable wretches of every kind. For the New Testament, as regards its historical part, is almost more unfavourable to painting than is the Old, and the subsequent history of martyrs and doctors of the Church is a very unfortunate subject. Yet we have to distinguish very carefully between those pictures whose subject is the historical or mythological one of Judaism and Christianity, and those in which the real, i.e., the ethical, spirit of Christianity is revealed for perception by the presentation of persons full of this spirit. These presentations are in fact the highest and most admirable achievements of the art of painting, and only the greatest masters of this art succeeded in producing them, in particular Raphael and Correggio, the latter especially in his earlier pictures. Paintings of this kind are really not to be numbered among the historical, for often they do not depict any event or action, but are mere groups of saints with the Saviour himself, often still as a child with his mother, angels, and so on. In their countenances, especially in their eyes, we see the expression, the reflection, of the most perfect knowledge, that knowledge namely which is not directed to particular things, but which has fully grasped the Ideas, and hence the whole inner nature of the world and of life. This knowledge in them, reacting on the will, does not, like that other knowledge, furnish motives for the will, but on the contrary has become a quieter of all willing. From this has resulted perfect resignation, which is the innermost spirit of Christianity as of Indian wisdom, the giving up of all willing, turning back, abolition of the will and with it of the whole inner being of this world, and hence salvation. Therefore, those eternally praiseworthy masters of art expressed the highest wisdom perceptibly in their works. Here is the summit of all art that has followed the will in its adequate objectivity, namely in the Ideas, through all the grades, from the lowest where it is affected, and its nature is unfolded, by causes, then where it is similarly affected by stimuli, and finally by motives. And now art ends by presenting the free self-abolition of the will through the one great quieter that dawns on it from the most perfect knowledge of its own nature.113