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He is masculine and absolutely free from the neurasthenic morbidezza of his fellow-countryman Zuloaga. He is not a thinker. He is the painter of bright mornings and brisk salt breezes. He is half Greek. There is Winckelmann's Heiterkeit, blitheness, in his groups of romping children, in their unashamed bare skins and naïve attitudes. Boys on Valencian beaches evidently believe in Adamic undress.
According to London Tit-Bits, "De Heiterkeit had the honor of exhibiting before Louis XIV., the Emperor of Austria, the King of Sicily and the Doge of Venice, and his name having reached the Inquisition, that holy office proposed experimenting on him to find out whether he was fireproof externally as well as internally.
One result of this temperament is a serenity Heiterkeit which characterises Winckelmann's handling of the sensuous side of Greek art. This serenity is, perhaps, in great measure, a negative quality; it is the absence of any sense of want, or corruption, or shame. With the sensuous element in Greek art he deals in the pagan manner; and what is implied in that?
Chance medley of sensation. P. 11: Unschuldiges Verbrechen der Sinne. Where serenity was wont to fix her reign. P. 13: Wo die Heiterkeit ihren Sitz aufgeschlagen hatte. Wayward shades of my canvas. P. 20: Die harten Schattirungen meines Gewebes. Caterpillars. P. 22: Heuschrecken. The chance medley of existence.
To imitate him without sharing his emotions or comprehending his thoughts, as the soulless artist of the decadence attempted, was without any doubt a grievous error. Surely also we may regret, not without reason, that in the evil days upon which he had fallen, the fair antique "Heiterkeit" and "Allgemeinheit" were beyond his reach.
It could hardly be solved, as in Pericles or Pheidias, by the direct exercise of any single talent: amid the manifold claims of modern culture, that could only have ended in a thin, one-sided growth. Goethe's Hellenism was of another order, the Allgemeinheit and Heiterkeit, the completeness and serenity, of a watchful, exigent intellectualism.
So perfectly did the young Raffaelle infuse that Heiterkeit, that pagan blitheness, into religious works, that his picture of Saint Agatha at Bologna became to Goethe a step in the evolution of Iphigenie.* But in proportion as this power of smiling was found again, there came also an aspiration towards that lost antique art, some relics of which Christian art had buried in itself, ready to work wonders when their day came.
Heiterkeit blitheness or repose, and Allgemeinheit generality or breadth, are, then, the supreme characteristics of the Hellenic ideal. But that generality or breadth has nothing in common with the lax observation, the unlearned thought, the flaccid execution, which have sometimes claimed superiority in art, on the plea of being "broad" or "general."
The secret methods employed by Richardson were disclosed by his servant, and this publicity seems to have brought his career to a sudden close; at least I have found no record of his subsequent movements. About 1713 a fire-eater named De Heiterkeit, a native of Annivi, in Savoy, flourished for a time in London.
To imitate him without sharing his emotion or comprehending his thoughts, as the soulless artists of the decadence attempted, was without all doubt a grievous error. Surely also we may regret, not without reason, that in the evil days upon which he had fallen, the fair antique Heiterkeit and Allgemeinheit were beyond his reach."
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