David
J. CALIFF Francis Cleyn's Vergil
Drawings
John
Dryden's Works of Virgil
is perhaps the most widely known and admired English
translation of a classical Latin author; however, the
illustrations that accompanied his translation are all
but unknown to modern classicists.
Designed by Francis Cleyn and executed as prints by Wenceslaus
Hollar and Pierre Lombart, these illustrations are
remarkable for their attentiveness to the narrative and
descriptive details of the Aeneid,
yet it would be a mistake to regard Cleyn as a bland
imitator of Vergil or an artist lacking in creativity and
originality. Although it is admittedly difficult to place Cleyn
among artists of the first rank, this paper will attempt
to demonstrate that he is both a skilled craftsman and,
at his best, a subtle and insightful interpreter of
Vergil.
A
brief biographical sketch will be offered to introduce
Cleyn to an audience that may be largely unfamiliar with
his work and to place him in his historical and cultural
context. The
body of the paper is devoted to the discussion of
particular illustrations and is built upon five
assertions. First,
Cleyn's rigorous attention to detail stems less from a
pedantic desire to transform word into image than from a
deliberate attempt to serve a particular 17th
century aesthetic &emdash; one that that favors
ornateness and an intricacy of design within a tightly
compressed visual space (e.g. "Aeneas Meets the Disguised
Venus"). Second,
Cleyn is quite willing to depart from the Vergilian text
when it suits him to do so.
Indeed, striking alterations are evident in several scenes,
among them "The Death of Priam" from Aeneid
2 and "The Funeral of Misenus" from Aeneid 6, both of which will be discussed with special
attention given to the possible reasons for their
divergences from Vergil. Third, Cleyn sometimes
departs from a literal reading of the text but
produces an illustration that may nevertheless be
justified as a valid pictorial interpretation of the overall impact and
meaning of a given scene (e.g. "Aeneas's Encounter with
the Sibyl"). Fourth, Cleyn has a habit of
bringing together several separate, though related,
narrative moments in a single image.
In Aeneid 4, for example, scenes of the
hunt, the storm, the cave, and Rumor are joined in a one
illustration, whereby Cleyn visually demonstrates the
interrelatedness of these otherwise distinct narrative
moments.
Finally, the important influence of other visual sources must
not be neglected. Cleyn's "Laocoön," for
instance, owes a significant debt to the famous
Hellenistic sculpture group attributed to Agesander,
Polydorus, and Athenodorus of Rhodes.
Collectively,
these examples reveal an artist whose concerns extend
well beyond a feeble and unimaginative transcription of
the plot of Vergil's great epic. This paper will be
illustrated by slides, and a handout will be provided.