The direct connection between Reynolds and Northcote ended in 1775, when Northcote was twenty-nine years old. They parted on good terms, Reynolds saying that Northcote had been very useful to him, more so than any other scholar that had ever been with him, and adding, "I hope we shall assist each other as long as we live." Northcote now went back to Plymouth for a time, and painted portraits until he had made enough money to fulfil his purpose—that of going to Italy to study the great masters—to steal from them, as he afterwards described the process. He spent three years in Italy, not knowing a word of the language, or indeed of any language but his own. This proved no hindrance. He said to Hazlitt, speaking of this journey, "There may be sin in Rome, as in all great capitals, but in Parma, and the remoter towns, they seem all one family. Their kindness to strangers is great. I travelled from Lyons to Genoa, and from Genoa to Rome, without speaking a word of the language, and in the power of a single person, without meeting with the smallest indignity; everywhere, both in inns and on the road, every attention was paid to my feelings, and pains taken to make me comfortable." In the "Conversations" Hazlitt sums up Northcote's impressions of this period:—
He spoke of his journey to Italy, of the beauty of the climate, of the manners of the people, of the imposing effect of the Roman Catholic religion, of its favorableness to the fine arts, of the churches full of pictures, of the manner in which he passed his time, studying and looking into all the rooms in the Vatican. He had no fault to find with Italy, and no wish to leave it. Gracious and sweet was all he saw in her. As he talked (this was when he was an old man of eighty) he looked as if he saw the different objects pass before him, and his eye glistened with familiar recollections. He said, "Raffaelle did not scorn to look out of himself, or to be beholden to others; he took whole figures from Masaccio to enrich his designs, because all he wanted was to advance the art, and to ennoble human nature." "Everything at Rome," he said, "is like a picture, is calculated for show. I remember walking through one of the by-streets near the Vatican, where I met some procession in which the pope was; and all at once I saw a number of the most beautiful Arabian horses curvetting and throwing out their long tails like a vision, or part of a romance. All our pageants are Bartholomew Fair exhibitions compared with what you see at Rome. And then, to see the pope give the benediction at St. Peter's, raising himself up, and spreading out his hands in the form of a cross, with an energy and dignity as if he was giving a blessing to the whole world!"
Raffaelle, Titian, and Michael Angelo—the last-named especially—were the great objects of attraction to him. He told Reynolds, on his return, "For once that I went to look at Raffaelle, I went twice to look at Michael." He made good use of those studies. You must use the great masters, not imitate them: that was his conclusion. It is easy, he says, to imitate one of the old masters, but repetitions are useless.
If you want to last, you must invent something. To do otherwise is only pouring liquor from one vessel into another; that becomes staler every time. We are tired of the antique; the world wants something new, and will have it; no matter whether it be better or worse, if there is but an infusion of new life and spirit, it will go down to posterity. There is Michael Angelo, how utterly different from the antique, and in some things how superior! There is his statue of Cosmo de Medici leaning on his hand, in the chapel of San Lorenzo, at Florence. I declare it has that look of reality in it, that it almost terrifies one to be near it. Is it not the same with Titian, Correggio, and Raffaelle? These painters did not imitate one another, but were as unlike as possible, and yet were all excellent. Originality is neither caprice nor affectation. It is an excellence that is always to be found in nature, but has never had a place in art before.
Northcote, as this passage shows, was a sound critic. He could also describe a fine picture so as to bring it bodily before us. Speaking of Titian, he said to Hazlitt:—
There is that fine one which you have heard me speak of—Paul the Third, and his two natural sons, or nephews, as they are called. My God! what a look it has. The old man is sitting in his chair, and looking up to one of the sons, with his hands grasping the armchair with his long spider fingers, and seems to say, as plain as words can speak, "You wretch, what do you want now?" while the young fellow is advancing with a humble, hypocritical air. It is true history, and indeed it turned out so, for the son (or nephew) was afterwards thrown out of the palace windows by the mob, and torn to pieces by them.
Here is another criticism, on Velasquez.
