5
Seeking a Moral Order: The Choice between Virtue and
Pleasure
Art as a School of Morals
The process of viewing art, which incorporates both looking and seeing, was in the eighteenth century a
deeply moral issue. Forms of looking varied from the voyeuristic to the enlightened, motivations from a
search for moral inspiration or knowledge to a quest to please the senses, or the temptation to indulge in
visual illusion. As these forms of looking involved not just the sense of sight, but also differing degrees of
mental discrimination or judgment, they were associated with a particular viewer’s moral constitution or
public status. There was, around the middle of the century, a strong desire to enhance art’s ability to
convey messages relating to both private and public morality. The cult of sensibility emphasized the role
of subjective responses (such as weeping) to works of art, as part of a wider engagement with issues of
domestic and public morality. Lewd references in works of art often attracted mildly satirical responses,
but as the century progressed the increasing desire to exploit the didactic or reformist potential of art
made such references seem to many an unwelcome distraction. There were some exceptions, such as the
socially segregated circles of some established connoisseurs, who continued to seek out the more
vicarious attractions of art. Orientalist painting also offered sensual pleasure. By the end of the century
there was widespread institutional approval of art related to themes of public utility and virtue, while a
considerable underbelly of less moral, scurrilous works persisted.
The desire to attribute a moral purpose to art was inherited from antiquity and had been reinforced by the
dominance of the Christian tradition. In his Nichomachean Ethics (350 BCE) Aristotle outlines an ideal
manner of living:
Every art and every enquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good;
and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.
(Aristotle, 1954 [350 BCE], chapter 1, 1093)In the early eighteenth century a similar philosophy underlay the views of Shaftesbury. He distinguished
between public virtue (as demonstrated through one’s role and responsibilities in the social order) and a
looser kind of “social” or “natural” affection, but saw the latter as a prerequisite for the former. A “sense
of fellowship” was in his view essential to the cohesion of society. He identified decency toward others
with beauty in the arts, fusing ethical and aesthetic concerns in the interests of a general harmony or order
(Solkin, 1993, 10–12). Such ideals depended heavily on the idea of a universal “high” taste that would
lead the (educated) public toward the simultaneous appreciation of beauty and morality located in grand
classical and history painting. Shaftesbury’s ethics were based on the ideal standards of the ancient
Roman Republic, and were exemplified in his discussion of the human dilemma of being torn between the
paths of pleasure and virtue (Solkin, 1993, 63–64, 203–204). When envisaging this dilemma, he referred
to the mythical tale of Hercules as he faced such a choice. He saw the theme as one of the most elevated
that might be tackled by a history painter, and offered detailed advice on how it might be represented
visually. The artist Paolo de’ Matteis (1662–1728) subsequently followed Shaftesbury’s advice in his
rendering of the subject. In approaching this mythical moment of crisis, Shaftesbury outlined an area of
tension that was to characterize much eighteenthcentury artistic debate and practice: the choice between