Hazlitt's Gusto

(portrait of Ippolito de Medici by Titian. Nothcote commissioned a copy)

His closeness of attention to detail was sharpened by his time spent copying Titian in the Louvre. He worked from half-past nine or ten to half-past three or four on the four days allowed by his licence as a copyist. He hoped to have eight pictures completed in eight weeks according to a letter to his father in 1802. The paintings of Titian were what he was working on for his patron James Northcote. His admiration of skill in any sphere of life, pugilism, juggling, fives and of course painting and writing is a theme of many of his essays. To have your craft penetrate to the marrow of your bones is part of that confidence in life which is a major part of gusto. That entry to the profound mystery of the elaboration of a world is wrought by a control of your powers evinced by a signature mastery. The Cruijff turn
cruijff
would have given him endless pleasure, in its own way the analogy to the Titian turn with flesh:

Gusto in art is power or passion defining any object. -- It is not so difficult to explain this term in what relates to expression (of which it may be said to be the highest degree) as in what relates to things without expression, to the natural appearances of objects, as mere colour or form. In one sense, however, there is hardly any object entirely devoid of expression, without some character of power belonging to it, some precise association with pleasure or pain: and it is in giving this truth of character from the truth of feeling, whether in the highest or the lowest degree, but always in the highest degree of which the subject is capable, that gusto consists.
There is a gusto in the colouring of Titian. Not only do his heads seem to think -- his bodies seem to feel. This is what the Italians mean by the morbidezza of his flesh-colour. It seems sensitive and alive all over; not merely to have the look and texture of flesh, but the feeling in itself. For example, the limbs of his female figures have a luxurious softness and delicacy, which appears conscious of the pleasure of the beholder. As the objects themselves in nature would produce an impression on the sense, distinct from every other object, and having something divine in it, which the heart owns and the imagination consecrates, the objects in the picture preserve the same impression, absolute, unimpaired, stamped with all the truth of passion, the pride of the eye, and the charm of beauty. Rubens makes his flesh-colour like flowers; Albano's is like ivory; Titian's is like flesh, and like nothing else. It is as different from that of other painters, as the skin is from a piece of white or red drapery thrown over it. The blood circulates here and there, the blue veins just appear, the rest is distinguished throughout only by that sort of tingling sensation to the eye, which the body feels within itself. This is gusto. -- Vandyke's flesh-colour, though it has great truth and purity, wants gusto. It has not the internal character, the living principle in it. It is a smooth surface, not a warm, moving mass. It is painted without passion, with indifference. The hand only has been concerned. The impression slides off from the eye, and does not, like the tones of Titian's pencil, leave a sting behind it in the mind of the spectator. The eye does not acquire a taste or appetite for what it sees. In a word, gusto in painting is where the impression made on one sense excites by affinity those of another.

(from Gusto by William Hazlitt>