Lectures on painting, delivered at the Royal Academy — A Reader’s Guide

Raphael’s Transfiguration Defended

Fuseli devotes sustained attention to Raphael’s Transfiguration, a work 'equally celebrated and censured' for allegedly combining two actions and thus two different moments. He refutes the charge by examining the picture itself: Raphael connected not the cure of the maniac but his presentation for it with the apparition on the mountain. The difficulty of combining two successive actions in one moment was overcome by 'sacrificing the moment of the cure to that of the apparition,' implying the lesser miracle in the greater. Fuseli highlights the apostle in the centre whose uplifted hand and finger refer the father of the maniac to his master above, creating a 'point of contact' that unites the two parts of the fact. This defense reveals Fuseli’s own principles: invention may subordinate narrative sequence to achieve sublimity.

The Loss of Professional Treatises

Fuseli laments that the rules of Parrhasius, the volumes of Pamphilus, Apelles, and Metrodorus are 'all irrecoverably lost.' What remains are compilations by a warrior or incidental observations—none by a professional painter. This absence forces the modern student to rely on mutilated monuments that escaped 'the savage rage of barbarous conquest, and the still more savage hand of superstition.' Fuseli’s introduction is thus a methodological manifesto: theory must be deduced from surviving works, not from unreliable texts. He directs the student to compare his own principles with the sources he cites, enabling them to judge whether his theory is 'genuine' or 'erroneous or false.'

Invention and the Limits of Analysis

Fuseli acknowledges that 'a limited fragment of observations must not presume to exhaust what in itself is inexhaustible.' He describes invention as a faculty whose 'features are multiplied before me as my powers decrease.' This self-awareness tempers his authoritative tone. In discussing the Pisa cartoon, he notes its influence on Raphael, Parmigianino, and Poussin, but does not claim to have catalogued every debt. His method is to offer pointed examples—the 'fierce feature of the veteran' pushing his foot through a rending garment—rather than exhaustive analysis. The lectures thus balance rigorous argument with a recognition of art’s inexhaustible complexity.

Fuseli’s lectures reward readers who attend to his specific visual arguments—the gesture of an apostle, the arrangement of a crowd—rather than seeking general precepts. His defense of Raphael’s temporal liberties and his distrust of ancient textual authorities offer a bracing model for thinking about pictorial invention. Approach these pages as a working painter’s notes, not a finished system.

Fuseli’s defense of the Transfiguration—how the miracle yields to the blinding light above—left me thinking about what we choose to keep. Not the full painting, but the moment it shifts. That same quiet selecting lives in The Pleasures of Collecting — Key Ideas to Explore, where the joy isn’t possession, but which fragment of beauty we carry home. Odd, how one book recalls another.