We see a ghost: Hogarth's satire on Methodists and Connoisseurs

Foote makes a clear distinction between (negative) religious enthusiasm and the ingenious (positive) enthusiasm of the true artist. John Byrom, in his poetical essay Enthusiasm, adds "critics," "virtuosos," and "connoisseurs" to the widespread enthusiasts of his time.(71) Hogarth, the hardworking self-made artist, opposed all such ideas of artistic enthusiasm.(72) In Enthusiasm Delineated he takes his skepticism to an extreme and puts all forms of enthusiasm, be it of a Methodist, an artist, or a connoisseur, on the same base level. Everybody in the print is indulging in sexual excesses in one form or another or is caught up in raving or melancholy madness.

To steer the viewer's attention toward art enthusiasts, the main target of Enthusiasm Delineated, Hogarth pokes fun at high art throughout the print. The distorted faces of the congregation allude to the French academy, which placed great emphasis on the correct representation of the human passions.(73) They remind one of the extreme passions recommended for history painting by Charles Le Brun in his Methode pour apprendre a dessiner les passions (1698):(74) "Horrour," "Fright," or "Extream bodily Pain." The face of the "Globe of Hell," surprised at the activity below, is remarkably like Le Brun's passion of "Astonishment" [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 16, 17 OMITTED]. The young woman beneath the pulpit aroused by the caress of the lecherous aristocrat resembles Le Brun's passion of "Pure Love" [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 18, 19 OMITTED]. In this connection one might also mention the suggestive shape of the "Poors Box" placed close to the area of her genitals. In 1760, Daniel Webb, in his Enquiry into the Beauties of Painting, had criticized religious art for its inability to represent passions. Hogarth, with typical irony, demonstrates that he was able to place almost every passion recommended by Charles Le Brun for historical paintings in a single, "religious" print.

There are many satirical references to religious art in the print. The composition itself picks up on the traditional figura piramidale. God the Father, with his mock symbol of the Trinity, is at the top, but the two Christ figures that form the base (the one swinging up, the other falling down) create anything but a stable composition [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 20 OMITTED]. I believe the "fallen" woman on the left to be a parody of a fainted Mater Dolorosa in a Lamentation or Pieta, as found, for example, in Correggio's Compianto su Cristo Morto [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 21, 22 OMITTED], rather than an allusion to Giovanni Lanfranco's painting of Saint Margaret of Cortona in Ecstasy (1618-20, Pitti Palace, Florence), as Ronald Paulson sees it.(75) The motif of the Christ figure rising from between the legs of this woman may, apart from its sexual connotations, even suggest the Resurrection. The dark-skinned melancholic woman mendicant (until recently considered to be a chimney sweep) sitting in front of the clerk's lectern fondling a figure of Christ seems to parody a Madonna of Humility or a Baroque "Black Virgin" holding her child. Another sideswipe at Christian iconography is the howling dog sitting on its cushion beneath the top of the clerk's lectern in much the same way as the bellowing pulpiteer is standing in his pulpit below the sounding board: this dog, in line with the Doctors of the Church, ironically symbolizes a preacher, as it did in traditional religious motifs, where it is a specific attribute of Saints Dominic and Augustine.(76) The duck feet of one of the putti on either side of the clerk parody the overblown cherubim in Renaissance and Baroque art.