Ralph, Ellys, Hogarth, and Fielding: The Cabal Against Jacopo Amigoni

Abstract

HE NAMES OF HENRY FIELDING and William Hogarth have often been linked as symbolizing a robustious attitude toward life, a hearty and masculine stance that, in exposing human frailty and folly to ridicule and viciousness to scorn, does not blink the propensity of man to indulge his appetites. Though the novelist was younger than the painter by ten years, similarity of interest and points of view drew them together. They were, it is generally agreed, rather close friends. Certain it is that they worked together from time to time and that Fielding praised Hogarth in play, newspaper essay, and novel. One such instance occurs in Book III, Chapter 6, of Joseph Andrews. Here, in homophonic form, Fielding linked Hogarth's name with those of three Italian artists: Paolo Veronese and Annibale Carracci, both dead, and Jacopo Amigoni, still quite alive in 1742 and only recently returned to the Continent from a protracted and profitable stay in England. In a recent article 1 exploring the implications of this conjunction of names, William B. Coley sees it as a compliment the novelist paid to his painter-friend. But the supposition that Fielding himself was unaware of the impropriety in linking Hogarth with Amigoni, that Fielding knew nothing of their rivalry, cannot stand the test of circumstance. It is not the novelist-Coley likewise recognizes this fact-who in propria persona associates the four painters, one English and three