Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 15. (Budapest, 1995)
ÁCS Piroska: „Átváltozások" - Stobwasser-szelencék dekorációinak művészeti párhuzamai
belongs to this series. It shows a triangular grouping of people with characteristic clothing: a meeting of Oxford scholars and students. The last picture of the series, executed the same year, is entitled "The Company of Undertakers" and presents a humorous panorama of the medical world of the time. 10 In this series of Hogarth's early etchings, the chosen theme is, to all intents and purposes only a pretext for the presentation of a great diversity of characters. They are in fact proof of his artistic practice. He trained his eye through memorization of "schemata of character and expression" rather than through academic copying. His compositions, gradually built up from series of busts, are full of life, thanks to this thorough knowledge of society as a whole, to the attention with which he followed the little episodes in life, and to his profund psychological study of his fellow men. Although some of his contemporaries may be recognized in his works, his goal was not lifelike representation. He was rather inclined to scourge human weakness and stupidity through humour - in the representation of grotesque or bold facial expressions. Although the lines written about him by Jonathan Swift indicate mordant misanthropy," he can only be said to stand for a fundamentally humane attitude, despite his biting irony 12 : How I want thee, humorous Hogarth Thou, I hear, a pleasant rogue art. Were hut you and I acquainted, Every monster should be painted: You should try your graving tools On this odious group of fools; Draw the beasts as I describe them; Form their features, while I gibe them; Draw them like, for I assure ye, You will need to car catura; Draw them so that we may trace All the soul in every face. Although Hogarth usually preferred character-drawing, he also often reached back to caricature-like faces. 13 The paintings or copise of his prints made during the 18th century usually grossly exaggerated the features of his figures. In the first decades of the 19th century the careful makers of the boxes, seemingly tried to avoid this error, but neverthless the miniaturist of our example has chosen exaggeration, and has changed the nature of the picture in the direction of caricature. It is probable that the other prints in the series were also represented on boxes manufactured by Stobwasser. The theme of the next box 14 to be discussed is set out on the inside of the lid: "Hero um Leander weined" (Hero Mourning Leander) (Fig. 3.), 15 but makes no reference to the original picture, nor to the name of the original artist. In fact, there exist a number of standard treatments of this story (Leander swimming across tne Hellespont while Hero guides him from the tower with her torch; Nereids lifting the drowned Leander out of the water, Hero throwing herself from the tower.) 16 But we are concerned here with a less banal variation: Hero mourning over Leander' s dead body washed onto a rock does not figure among the most popular treatments of the story. For when Hero, "Apud fundamentorum vero turris / Dilaniatum scopulis ut vidit mortuum maritum, / Artificiosam disrumpens circa pectora vestem / Cum strepi tu praeceps ab alta cecidit turri." 17 The lamentation motif appears in Ovid's Heroides (Epistulae), in which Hero alludes to the possible tragedy metaphorically: ...Nec minus hesternae confudor imagine noctis Quamvis est sacris ilia piata meis. Namque sub Aurorám, iam dormitante lucerna, Tempore quo cerni somnia vera soient. Stamina de digitis cecidere sopore remissis, Collaque pulvino nostra ferenda dedi. Hie ego vetosas nantem Delphina per undas Cernere non dubia sum mihi visa fide. Quern postquam bibulis illisit fluctus arenis, Unda simul miserum, vitaque deseruit. 18 Leander, as a reply, writes down the préfiguration of the awful reality. Sic tumidum paucis etiam nunc noctibus aequor, Ire per invitas experiemur aquas.
