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Title: Old world masters in new world collections
Author: Esther Singleton
Release date: October 16, 2025 [eBook #77067]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: The Macmillian Company, 1929
Credits: Karin Spence and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD WORLD MASTERS IN NEW WORLD COLLECTIONS ***
OLD WORLD MASTERS
IN NEW WORLD COLLECTIONS
[Illustration]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO . DALLAS
ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. J. P. Morgan_
GIOVANNA TORNABUONI
--_Domenico Ghirlandaio_]
OLD WORLD
MASTERS IN NEW
WORLD COLLECTIONS
BY
ESTHER SINGLETON
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1929
COPYRIGHT, 1929, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
SET UP AND ELECTROTYPED. PUBLISHED JANUARY, 1929.
SET UP AND ELECTROTYPED BY T. MOREY & SON
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY BERWICK & SMITH CO.
_PREFACE_
It is noteworthy that the first book to be published in any country and
in any language treating of Old Masters in private Collections should
be devoted exclusively to treasures in America.
_Old World Masters in New World Collections_ may be called a
permanent loan exhibition of the greatest and most renowned examples of
Art in America, which cannot be seen anywhere but in this volume.
It is owing to the gracious response and courtesy of the most
distinguished American Collectors that I am able to present between
these covers a selection of a hundred and ten of the choicest paintings
in the country, representing portraits, religious and mythological
subjects, and _genre_ from the Thirteenth through the Eighteenth
Centuries.
One of the principal factors in the formation of many of these
magnificent Collections has been the outstanding influence of Sir
Joseph Duveen, Bart., under whose guidance the foremost American
Collections have been raised to a dominating position in the world of
art.
It is significant that among the paintings reproduced here, the greater
number have been brought to this country by Sir Joseph Duveen; and I am
happy to express my thanks to Sir Joseph for his enthusiastic interest
and encouragement to me throughout the entire preparation of this
volume.
A very interesting feature in this book is the distinguished ownership
of these paintings: Frederick the Great, for instance, owned Lancret’s
_La Camargo_, the celebrated French dancer; Queen Christina of Sweden,
Raphael’s _Agony in the Garden_; Madame de Pompadour, Chardin’s _La
Serinette_ and Boucher’s _Les Deux Confidentes_; Sir Joshua Reynolds,
Rembrandt’s _Standard-Bearer_; Sir Horace Walpole, Rembrandt’s _Simeon
and Mary_; and Charles Le Brun, Poussin’s _Jupiter and Calisto_. Fra
Filippo Lippi’s _Madonna della Stella_ came directly to the present
owner from the Monastery of the Carmine (Florence) for which it was
painted; Raphael’s _Niccolini Madonna_, from the Niccolini Palace;
Titian’s _Caterina Cornaro_, from the Riccardi Palace, Florence;
Bartolommeo Veneto’s _Maximilian Sforza_, from the Sforza Palace,
Milan; Rubens’s _Louis XIII, King of France_, from the ex-Emperor
of Germany’s Palace of Charlottenburg; and Van Dyck’s _Dædalus and
Icarus_, from the famous Collection of Earl Spencer at Althorp and was
consequently in the home of the Duchess of Devonshire, whose beautiful
eyes must have frequently looked upon it. Holbein’s _Prince Edward of
England_ was painted for King Henry VIII; and with the portrait of
Sir Thomas More, Holbein’s great reputation began. Of all Sir Joshua
Reynolds’s portraits _Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse_ is considered
the greatest; and Gainsborough’s _Blue Boy_ and the _Duchess of
Devonshire_ rank among the world’s most famous pictures. Surpassing the
_Blue Boy_ in beauty and charm (though not so famous) and depicting
withal a far lovelier personality, is Romney’s _John Walter Tempest_;
and Romney’s _Lady Derby_ and the _Hon. Mrs. Davenport_ will stand
forever among the loveliest presentations of charming womanhood. On
a par with these are _La Marquise de Villemomble_, by Drouais; _La
Marquise de la Fare_, by Fragonard; and _La Marquise de Baglion_ by
Nattier. Many critics call the last named work the greatest French
portrait of the Eighteenth Century.
We read with amazement of European Collectors and Collections of the
past: of the treasures owned by the wealthy Dukes of Burgundy; by
Lorenzo the Magnificent and by other members of the Medici family;
by the Sforzas, Gonzagas, d’Estes, and other Italian princes; by the
Fuggers, those wealthy bankers of Augsburg; by noble Austrian and
German barons; by the great merchant-princes and lords of England from
Queen Elizabeth’s day to the present; by Cardinal Richelieu, Cardinal
Mazarin and Cardinal de Rohan; and by the Rothschilds and other notable
bankers. Yet, in some respects--particularly in the high quality of
their Collections and the velocity with which these Collections have
been made--our American Collectors surpass them all. On this point Sir
Joseph Duveen remarks:
“The particular thing that makes American Collections so unique and
so priceless is that their pictures are all masterpieces. In Europe
you will find much larger Collections and these will have, like the
Bridgewater for instance, a large number of very mediocre paintings
and a few of supreme excellence--gems--magnificent! Many Collections
in England and also on the Continent go into hundreds with just a few
fine things. In America, on the contrary, every Collector wants the
best. He may have only thirty pictures, but they will all be fine.
Americans make Collections of masterpieces. _That_ is why they are
different. That is why Americans are a new race of Collectors. American
Collections are Collections of Masterpieces.”
_The Blue Boy_ purchased from the Duke of Westminster by Sir Joseph
Duveen for the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington at the then unheard of sum
of $800,000 set the imagination of the American public aflame. When
exhibited at the National Gallery, London, and afterwards at the Duveen
Galleries, New York, for charity in 1922, the whole world flocked to
see it. _The Blue Boy_ proved to be a “sensation.” Within a few months
Gainsborough’s masterpiece was followed by Sir Joshua Reynolds’s
_Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse_, also purchased from the Duke of
Westminster by Sir Joseph Duveen for the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington
for $500,000. _Mrs. Siddons_ was, in her turn, followed by eighteen
superb examples of Gainsborough, Romney, Reynolds, and Lawrence,
several of which appear in this book. It was, therefore, the English
School that started the ball rolling for a new type of Collector, who
sought gems of the first water only.
From this period onward great paintings of all Schools--Italian,
French, Dutch, Flemish, and Spanish, as well as English--have been
coming across the Atlantic in amazing numbers, and with eagerly
awaiting purchasers to greet them. The result is that America has
become a great Repository of Art, in which the entire country is
beginning to take a personal and justifiable pride.
On this question of Art-migration the noted critic and director of the
Berlin Museum, Dr. Wilhelm von Bode, wrote not long ago:
“Any one who a decade ago had even hinted at the possibility of
Gainsborough’s _Blue Boy_ making its way across the Atlantic to become
the central gem in the Huntington Collection would have been thought
mad. He might as well have suggested the uprooting of England’s
century old oaks, or the removal of the Rock of Gibraltar. And yet the
impossible has happened; and not only the famous _Blue Boy_ but many
another of the world’s masterpieces has travelled the same route.
“This is the greatest transplantation of art-works the world has known
since the Roman plundering of Grecian art and the rape of the churches
and museums of Europe whereby Napoleon enriched the Louvre.
“No power on earth can turn back the pages of history to the first
of August, 1914, on which day forces were set in motion that were to
result in a complete reversal of all hitherto existing political,
geographical, social, and economic values. No one could have foreseen
at the time that the world’s accumulated art-treasures would also be
affected by these sweeping changes.”
From the amazing wealth that has been so generously placed at my
disposition, I have been guided by one principle of selection,--that of
_Beauty_!
Art, according to my way of thinking, is something to be enjoyed,
something to delight the senses, and something to refresh the mind;
and I feel sure that many _connoisseurs_ will agree with me and
gladly welcome a book devoted to Old Masters in which not the slightest
suggestion of suffering enters. Therefore, in this book there are no
Crucifixions, Pietàs, martyrdoms, nor tragedies.
Nor in my definition of Beauty do I recognize any distortion of the
word that might include the cant phrase--the “beauty of ugliness.”
Beauty, when most subtle, is always obvious; and I agree heartily
with Bernard Berenson’s dictum: “And not what man knows but what man
_feels_ concerns Art. _All else is science._”
Fashions may come and fashions may go, but while these changing tides
ebb and flow the great manifestations and expressions of genius shine
with undimmed splendor as shine the stars of Heaven over a world racked
with dissension and controversy and troubled with many shell-shocked
minds. Shakespeare and Shelley and Keats and Tennyson will charm,
inspire, and uplift generations to come when yawping _vers libre_
has been thrown into the literary junk-heap; Beethoven and Chopin
and Wagner will delight, astound, and refresh sensitive spirits when
the scores of the Twentieth Century cacophonists will be unopened
and coated with dust; and Raphael, Botticelli, Watteau, Fragonard,
Chardin, Gainsborough, Reynolds, and Romney will fascinate, enthrall,
and enrapture lovers of the beautiful when works of jostled planes and
lurid color will have been hooted to extinction.
The Torch of Beauty burns brightly through all the confusion of tongues
and wild ragings of Twentieth Century iconoclasts. In this belief
and hope I have the support of the noted French critic, Robert de la
Sizeranne, who says:
“Art never dies, even when all that has maintained it and served as
the motive for its very existence--civilization, society, religious
belief, social authority--has fallen into irremediable decay. For it
has still another reason for existence, which is the powerful one of
_Beauty_. Humanity is not rich enough to dispense with a vision of
Beauty. The day comes when it will return to it gladly and acclaim it
as if it were a living being.”
Some idea of the value of the paintings shown in this book will be had
if I mention a few sums which were reached at the last sales, although
the figures have risen considerably since those sales. Here are, for
example, twelve paintings:
Gainsborough’s _Harvest Waggon_, $360,000; Lawrence’s _Pinkie_,
$377,000; Gainsborough’s _Blue Boy_, $800,000; Reynolds’s _Mrs.
Siddons_, $500,000; Raphael’s _Small Cowper Madonna_, $700,000;
Raphael’s _Niccolini Madonna_, $875,000; Frans Hals’s _Laughing
Mandolin Player_, $250,000; Botticelli’s _Giuliano de’ Medici_,
$240,000; Raphael’s _Agony in the Garden_, $500,000; Gainsborough’s
_The Mall_, $500,000; Romney’s _The Hon. Mrs. Davenport_, $304,700; and
Romney’s _Anne, Lady de la Pole_, $206,850.
Hence it will be seen that these twelve paintings represent
considerably more than $5,500,000.
With these figures in mind (and I have not attempted to estimate the
Memlings, Holbeins, Bellinis, Crivellis, Titians, Rembrandts, Van
Dycks, Fragonards, Nattiers, and others) it will be easily appreciated
that the value of the paintings shown in this book soars beyond
millions into the billion dollar class!
It gives me pleasure to offer my thanks to all the Collectors whose
pictures are represented and very particularly to Mrs. Herbert L.
Satterlee, Mr. J. P. Morgan, Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft, and Miss
Helen C. Frick who permitted me to have photographs especially taken of
the Duchess of Devonshire, and Lady Betty Delmé; Eliza Farren, Countess
of Derby; Maria Walpole, Duchess of Gloucester and “The Jessamy Bride”;
and Sir Thomas More.
I also wish to thank most cordially Mr. Felix Wildenstein for his
valuable advice and approbation and for important material sent to me
from Paris and to express my appreciation to Mr. C. R. Henschel of
Messrs. Knoedler & Co., and to Mrs. Paul Reinhardt of the Reinhardt
Galleries for their warm support and aid.
E. S.
NEW YORK,
November 8, 1928.
_CONTENTS_
CHAPTER PAGES
I. ITALIAN 3–153
Sienese
Florentine
Umbrian
North Italian
Venetian
II. FLEMISH 157–196
III. DUTCH 199–232
IV. GERMAN 235–253
V. SPANISH 257–272
VI. FRENCH, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 275–326
VII. ENGLISH, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 329–428
_ILLUSTRATIONS_
GIOVANNA TORNABUONI _Domenico Ghirlandaio_ Frontispiece
Mr. J. P. Morgan.
PAGE
ST. FRANCIS AND THE BEGGAR _Sassetta_ 7
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay.
MADONNA AND CHILD WITH
SAINTS AND ANGELS _Matteo di Giovanni_ 11
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay.
ADORATION OF THE MAGI _Benvenuto di Giovanni_ 13
Sir Joseph Duveen, Bart.
MADONNA AND CHILD _Giotto di Bordone_ 27
Mr. Henry Goldman.
THE ANNUNCIATION _Masolino_ 29
Mr. Henry Goldman.
GABRIEL, THE ANNOUNCING ANGEL _Fra Angelico_ 33
Mr. Edsel B. Ford.
THE VIRGIN RECEIVING THE DIVINE MESSAGE _Fra Angelico_ 35
Mr. Edsel B. Ford.
ST. COSIMAS AND ST. DAMIANUS _Fra Angelico_ 41
Mr. Albert Keller.
MADONNA DELLA STELLA _Fra Filippo Lippi_ 43
Mr. Carl W. Hamilton.
MADONNA AND CHILD _Alesso Baldovinetti_ 49
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay.
PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG LADY _Piero Pollaiuolo_ 53
Mr. Nils B. Hersloff.
GIULIANO DE’ MEDICI _Sandro Botticelli_ 57
Mr. and Mrs. Otto H. Kahn.
PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN _Sandro Botticelli_ 63
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay.
MADONNA AND CHILD _Sandro Botticelli_ 65
Mr. Max Epstein.
GIOVANNA TORNABUONI _Domenico Ghirlandaio_ 67
Mr. J. P. Morgan.
FRANCESCO SASSETTI AND
HIS SON TEODORO _Domenico Ghirlandaio_ 71
Mr. Jules S. Bache.
MADONNA AND CHILD _Gentile da Fabriano_ 75
Mr. Henry Goldman.
MADONNA AND CHILD WITH ANGELS _Benedetto Bonfigli_ 79
Mr. and Mrs. Otto H. Kahn.
MADONNA AND CHILD _Perugino_ 81
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay.
THE NICCOLINI MADONNA _Raphael_ 85
Sir Joseph Duveen, Bart.
THE SMALL COWPER MADONNA _Raphael_ 87
Mr. Joseph E. Widener.
AGONY IN THE GARDEN _Raphael_ 91
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay.
PORTRAIT OF A LADY _Pisanello_ 101
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay.
ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS _Andrea Mantegna_ 105
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay.
VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH THE
INFANT ST. JOHN AND ANGEL _Francia_ 109
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay.
PORTRAIT OF A LADY _Luini_ 111
The Hon. Andrew W. Mellon.
TITIAN’S SCHOOLMASTER _Moroni_ 113
Mr. Joseph E. Widener.
MADONNA AND CHILD _Antonello da Messina_ 123
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay.
MADONNA AND CHILD _Crivelli_ 127
Mr. A. W. Erickson.
MADONNA AND CHILD _Crivelli_ 129
Mr. Philip Lehman.
THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. LUCY,
ST. CATHERINE, ST. PETER AND
ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST _Giovanni Bellini_ 131
Mr. Jules S. Bache.
THE VIRGIN AND CHILD _Giovanni Bellini_ 133
Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas F. Brady.
MADONNA AND CHILD _Giovanni Bellini_ 135
Mr. Philip Lehman.
FEAST OF THE GODS _Giovanni Bellini_ 139
Mr. Joseph E. Widener.
THE VIRGIN AND CHILD _Titian_ 141
Mr. Jules S. Bache.
CATERINA CORNARO, QUEEN OF CYPRUS _Titian_ 145
Mr. John Ringling.
GIORGIO CORNARO WITH FALCON _Titian_ 147
Mr. A. W. Erickson.
MAXIMILIAN SFORZA _Bartolommeo Veneto_ 149
Mr. Henry Goldman.
A SCENE ALONG THE ADRIATIC COAST _Francesco Guardi_ 153
Mrs. Charles B. Alexander.
PORTRAIT OF A LADY _Roger van der Weyden_ 167
The Hon. Andrew W. Mellon.
PORTRAIT OF A CARTHUSIAN MONK _Petrus Christus_ 171
Mr. Jules S. Bache.
MADONNA AND CHILD WITH ANGELS _Hans Memling_ 173
The Hon. Andrew W. Mellon.
PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN _Hans Memling_ 175
Mrs. John N. Willys.
LOUIS XIII, KING OF FRANCE _Peter Paul Rubens_ 177
Sir Joseph Duveen, Bart.
RINALDO AND ARMIDA _Sir Anthony Van Dyck_ 183
Mr. Jacob Epstein.
DÆDALUS AND ICARUS _Sir Anthony Van Dyck_ 185
Mr. Frank P. Wood.
ROBERT RICH, EARL OF WARWICK _Sir Anthony Van Dyck_ 189
Mr. Jules S. Bache.
QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA WITH
JEFFREY HUDSON AND A MONKEY _Sir Anthony Van Dyck_ 193
Mr. William Randolph Hearst.
THE STANDARD-BEARER _Rembrandt van Rijn_ 205
Mr. Jules S. Bache.
PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG OFFICER _Rembrandt van Rijn_ 209
Mr. A. W. Erickson.
AN OLD LADY SEATED IN AN ARMCHAIR _Rembrandt van Rijn_ 211
The Hon. Andrew W. Mellon.
SIMEON AND MARY PRESENTING THE
INFANT CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE. _Rembrandt van Rijn_ 213
Mr. Nils B. Hersloff.
PORTRAIT OF AN OFFICER _Frans Hals_ 221
Mr. Henry Goldman.
THE LAUGHING MANDOLIN PLAYER _Frans Hals_ 223
Mr. John R. Thompson.
A MUSIC PARTY _Pieter de Hoogh_ 225
Mrs. John N. Willys.
THE LACE-MAKER _Jan Vermeer_ 229
The Hon. Andrew W. Mellon.
PORTRAIT OF A MAN _Albrecht Dürer_ 239
The Hon. Andrew W. Mellon.
PRINCE EDWARD OF ENGLAND _Hans Holbein the Younger_ 241
The Hon. Andrew W. Mellon.
SIR THOMAS MORE _Hans Holbein the Younger_ 245
The late Mr. Henry Clay Frick.
DIRK BERCK OF COLOGNE _Hans Holbein the Younger_ 247
The Hon. Andrew W. Mellon.
JEAN DE DINTEVILLE _Hans Holbein the Younger_ 249
Mr. Henry Goldman.
CARDINAL ALBRECHT AS
SAINT HIERONYMUS _Lucas Cranach the Elder_ 253
Mr. John Ringling.
CARDINAL QUIROGA _El Greco_ 261
The late Mr. Henry Clay Frick.
THE VIRGIN APPEARING TO ST. DOMINIC _El Greco_ 263
Mr. J. Horace Harding.
MARIANNE OF AUSTRIA _Velasquez_ 265
Mr. Philip Lehman.
PHILIP IV OF SPAIN _Velasquez_ 267
The late Mr. Henry Clay Frick.
GENERAL NICOLAS GUYE _Goya_ 269
Mr. J. Horace Harding.
PEPITO COSTA Y BONELLA _Goya_ 271
Mrs. William Hayward.
JUPITER AND CALISTO _Nicolas Poussin_ 279
Mr. Carroll Tyson.
LA DANSE _Antoine Watteau_ 283
Mr. Charles A. Wimpfheimer.
MADAME BONIER DE LA MOSSON _Jean Marc Nattier_ 287
Mr. Edward J. Berwind.
LA MARQUISE DE BAGLION _Jean Marc Nattier_ 289
Mr. A. W. Erickson.
LA CAMARGO _Nicolas Lancret_ 293
The Hon. Andrew W. Mellon.
LE DUO _Nicolas Lancret_ 295
Mr. and Mrs. Emil J. Stehli.
UNE FÊTE CHAMPÊTRE _Jean Baptiste Joseph Pater_ 297
Mr. Jules S. Bache.
UNE FÊTE GALANTE _Jean Baptiste Joseph Pater_ 299
Mr. Edward J. Berwind.
LA SERINETTE _Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin_ 301
The late Mr. Henry Clay Frick.
LES DEUX CONFIDENTES _François Boucher_ 305
Mrs. William R. Timken.
A YOUNG GIRL READING A LETTER _Jean Baptiste Greuze_ 307
Mr. John McCormack.
YOUNG GIRL _Jean Baptiste Greuze_ 309
Mr. William Randolph Hearst.
LA MARQUISE DE BESONS
TUNING A GUITAR _Jean Baptiste Greuze_ 311
Dr. and Mrs. Henry Barton Jacobs.
LA MARQUISE DE VILLEMOMBLE _François Hubert Drouais_ 313
Mr. Jules S. Bache.
MADEMOISELLE HELVETIUS _François Hubert Drouais_ 315
Mr. Mortimer L. Schiff.
L’INVOCATION À L’AMOUR _Jean Honoré Fragonard_ 317
Mr. Mortimer L. Schiff.
LE BILLET-DOUX _Jean Honoré Fragonard_ 319
Mr. Jules S. Bache.
LA MARQUISE DE LA FARE _Jean Honoré Fragonard_ 321
Mrs. James B. Haggin.
THE FOUNTAIN IN THE PARK _Hubert Robert_ 323
Dr. and Mrs. Henry Barton Jacobs.
MADAME LABILLE-GUIARD
AND TWO PUPILS _Madame Labille-Guiard_ 325
Mr. Edward J. Berwind.
LADY BETTY DELMÉ _Sir Joshua Reynolds_ 339
Mr. and Mrs. Herbert L. Satterlee.
THE STRAWBERRY GIRL _Sir Joshua Reynolds_ 343
Mrs. Francis F. Prentiss.
DIANA, VISCOUNTESS CROSBIE _Sir Joshua Reynolds_ 345
The late Mr. Henry E. Huntington.
MRS. SIDDONS AS THE TRAGIC MUSE _Sir Joshua Reynolds_ 349
The late Mr. Henry E. Huntington.
GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE _Sir Joshua Reynolds_ 355
The late Mr. Henry E. Huntington.
THE COTTAGE DOOR _Thomas Gainsborough_ 359
The late Mr. Henry E. Huntington.
THE MALL _Thomas Gainsborough_ 365
The late Mr. Henry Clay Frick.
MARIA WALPOLE, DUCHESS
OF GLOUCESTER _Thomas Gainsborough_ 367
Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft.
GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE _Thomas Gainsborough_ 373
Mr. and Mrs. Herbert L. Satterlee.
THE BLUE BOY _Thomas Gainsborough_ 379
The late Mr. Henry E. Huntington.
GENERAL PHILIP HONYWOOD _Thomas Gainsborough_ 387
Mr. John Ringling.
THE HARVEST WAGGON _Thomas Gainsborough_ 391
Sir Joseph Duveen, Bart.
JOHN WALTER TEMPEST _George Romney_ 393
Mr. and Mrs. Marshall Field.
THE HON. MRS. DAVENPORT _George Romney_ 399
The Hon. Andrew W. Mellon.
LADY DERBY _George Romney_ 401
Mr. Jules S. Bache.
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON _George Romney_ 405
The late Mr. Henry E. Huntington.
ANNE, LADY DE LA POLE _George Romney_ 409
The Hon. Alvan T. Fuller.
THE HON. MRS. GRANT OF KILGRASTON _Sir Henry Raeburn_ 413
Mr. C. Fisher.
QUINTON MCADAM _Sir Henry Raeburn_ 415
Mr. A. W. Erickson.
MARY HORNECK, “THE JESSAMY BRIDE” _John Hoppner_ 417
Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft.
ELIZA FARREN, COUNTESS OF DERBY _Sir Thomas Lawrence_ 421
Mr. J. P. Morgan.
PINKIE _Sir Thomas Lawrence_ 427
The late Mr. Henry E. Huntington.
ITALIAN
Sienese
Florentine
Umbrian
North Italian
Venetian
_SIENESE_
There are no beginnings of art in Italy. The old civilizations of
Etruria, Rome, and Byzantium never perished entirely; and upon their
surviving traditions “Christian Art” was built. Old pictorial ideas
and old decorative motives were absorbed, rearranged, and worked over
again and again in conjunction with theological dogma until in the
Thirteenth Century, largely owing to the beautiful character, ideals,
and influence of St. Francis, to the intellectual teachings of Dante,
and to the fervor aroused by the Crusades, “Christian Art” became a
living movement, which inspired, among other important things, the
creation of magnificent Cathedrals. When the architects, the carvers
of wood and stone, and the makers of the jewel-like windows had
finished their work, the best painters of the day were called on to
produce altar-pieces that would stimulate religious devotion, charm the
worshippers by beauty, and instruct the people (unaccustomed to books)
by representation of saintly lives and scriptural stories.
Italian Painting in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries thus
shows many of the old Byzantine traditions still lingering in the new
“Christian,” or “Gothic Art.”
Siena and Florence were the chief early Italian Schools. Siena was at
first the more important of the two and greatly influenced Florentine
and also French Painting. The leading early artists of Siena were
Guido da Siena, Duccio di Buoninsegna, Ugolino da Siena, Segna di
Bonaventura, Simone Martini, Lippo Memmi, Pietro Lorenzetti, Ambrogio
Lorenzetti, Lippo Vanni, Andrea Vanni, Bartolo di Fredi, Taddeo di
Bartolo, and Stefano di Giovanni (Sassetta).
The next group includes Domenico di Bartolo, Lorenzo Vecchietta,
Neroccio di Landi, Benvenuto di Giovanni, Girolamo di Benvenuto, and
Matteo di Giovanni.
“To understand and appreciate the painting of Siena one should think of
it as the culmination of the art of the Middle Ages rather than as a
promise of anything modern. Therein lies the difference which caused so
great a gulf between the art of Siena and that of contemporary Florence
only forty miles away. Sienese Art may be regarded as the most perfect
expression of the Byzantine ideal. It was hieratic and mystic. While
Giotto was forecasting the development of modern art by studying nature
and making his figures act like the real people whom he saw about
him, Duccio and Simone Martini were sounding the Byzantine creed that
the Christian saints were not _human_ but _divine_, not _vulgar_ but
_regal_, not _approachable_ but _aloof_. To the early Sienese, as to
the Byzantine, the Raphaelesque conception of the Madonna as the most
tender possible human mother would have been blasphemous bad taste.
“Although Sienese Art was founded on Byzantine and was in a sense the
culmination of Byzantine, it was, nevertheless, a Gothic art. In other
words it belonged to its period, but it selected certain elements of
Gothic style for emphasis.
“In Florence Giotto was inspired by the plasticity of Gothic Art and
its naturalism. In Siena Duccio and his followers developed the Gothic
living line; and, later, the emotionalism of Gothic spirit. Thus both
Florentines and Sienese were Gothic, but in a different way.
“Technically as well as spiritually, the Sienese approached the
artistic abstractions of China and Japan. The analogies between Sienese
and Oriental Art have been observed by practically every writer on
the Sienese School. They have been tacitly attributed however, to
accidental similarities in ideals and modes in Siena and the East.
As yet no one has been bold enough to suggest an influence derived
from actual contact with Eastern Art, but such contact is not beyond
the bounds of possibility. In the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries
overland communication with the Near East and with China was common and
secure. Merchants like the Polos, prelates like John of Monte Corsino,
Andrew of Perugia and Friar Odoric of Friuli readily found the way to
Cathay, as China was then called. Peking was made a Roman Catholic
diocese and Pegolotti of the Bardi banking-house in Florence was moved
to write a traveller’s itinerary, remarkably like a modern Baedeker,
giving the most minute instructions as to inns, food, servants, and
so forth, on the route from Constantinople to Peking. Moslems like
Ibn Batuta travelled as widely as Christians, and Oriental travellers
visited the Occident. Thus Bar Sauma, a Nestorian of Peking, visited
the Pope in 1287 and passed through Tuscany on his way to Paris and
Bordeaux two years after Duccio painted the _Rucellai Madonna_.
Not only the Near East and China, but India, was opened to the European
and we hear of the martyrdom of one Brother Peter of Siena at a place
near Bombay. It was not until the end of the Fourteenth and the
beginning of the Fifteenth Century that the conversion of the western
Tartars to Islam, the advance of the Seljuk Turks, and the overthrow of
the broad-minded hospitable Mongol dynasty in China closed the overland
trade-routes. During the next hundred and fifty years while the
sea-routes were being discovered Europe seems largely to have forgotten
the existence of the Orient. Wild as the theory may sound, therefore,
it is possible that actual contact with Oriental Art may account not
only for the occasional Mongolian types and bits of Oriental armor to
be observed in Sienese Art, but even for something of the spirit of the
style.”--_Mediæval and Renaissance Paintings_ (Fogg Art Museum,
Cambridge, 1927).
ST. FRANCIS AND THE BEGGAR.
_Sassetta_
(_1392–1450_).
_Collection of
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay._
On September 5, 1437, the Minorites of Siena ordered an altar-piece
for the Church of San Francesco at Borgo San Sepolcro from Stefano di
Giovanni, better known as Sassetta. The artist promised “to paint it
with fine gold, ultramarine, and other good colors, to employ all the
subtleties of his art, and to make it as beautiful as he could.” Also
he promised to complete it in four years. Sassetta, however, made a
wrong calculation; for the work occupied him seven, instead of four,
years. It was finished on June 5, 1444, and placed above the high
altar at Borgo San Sepolcro, where it remained until 1752, when the
panels were dispersed. From contemporary documents nine panels were
proved in recent years to have been among the decorations of this
famous altar-piece; and these panels were shown at the Retrospective
Exhibition of Sienese Art held in Siena in 1904.
Seven of these nine panels are now in the Collection of Mr. Clarence H.
Mackay: _St. Francis and the Poor Knight_; _St. Francis Renounces his
Heritage_; _St. Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio_; _St. Francis before
the Soldan_; _St. Francis before Pope Honorius III_; _St. Francis
Receiving the Stigmata_; and _The Burial of St. Francis_.
Another panel, _The Marriage of St. Francis to Poverty_, is in the
Chantilly Museum and the central panel of the altar-piece, representing
_The Glory of St. Francis_, is in the Collection of Mr. Bernard
Berenson.
The panel representing _St. Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio_ was long
in possession of the Comte de Martel at the Château de Beaumont, near
Blois, and the other six panels came from the Collection of the late M.
Georges Chalandon, Paris.
It was obvious that for a church dedicated to St. Francis the story of
his life should be told in paintings.
It is a little hard to realize that the frescoes by Giotto and his
companions depicting the _Life of St. Francis_ had been admired and
worshipped for a hundred odd years before Sassetta was called upon by
the Sienese Minorites to tell the story again. Sassetta produced an
entirely new version with regard to composition, color, and spiritual
interpretation.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Clarence H. Mackay_
ST. FRANCIS AND THE BEGGAR
--_Sassetta_]
There is much to attract an artist in the story of St. Francis, for
although his life is not one of much variety, it is full of striking
episodes, which afford splendid pictorial opportunities. St. Francis,
founder of the great Order of Friars Minor, or Franciscans, and called
“the Poor Man of Assisi,” was born in Assisi in 1182, and died there
in 1226. He was the son of a rich merchant, who, furious because his
son lavished money on the starving poor of the vicinity, demanded that
he should renounce his inheritance. This he did with a joyful spirit
in public and before the Bishop of Assisi, thereafter devoting himself
to the service of the poor. Disciples flocked to his little chapel,
called the Portiuncula; and when the New Order celebrated its General
Chapter in 1219, five thousand friars assembled there. The Order was
approved by Pope Innocent III and by his successor, Pope Honorius III.
Poverty was the leading characteristic of the Franciscans, or Begging
Friars; individually and collectively they refused to own anything
whatsoever.
St. Francis journeyed about doing good. His wanderings took him as far
as Egypt and Palestine; and it was in the year 1224, on the desolate
Mount Alvernia, that he received the Stigmata, or Impression on the
flesh of Our Lord’s Five Sacred Wounds, in memory of which the Church
instituted a special festival. St. Francis was canonized in 1228, two
years after his death.
_St. Francis and the Beggar_, shown here, tells two episodes of the
story. On the left and in the immediate foreground the young St.
Francis, having dismounted from his horse, whose head (very finely
drawn) appears above his shoulder, is in the act of giving his cloak to
a poor beggar; and the latter, very dramatically expresses his delight,
surprise, and gratitude. Beyond these figures a winding road, bordered
with cypress trees, leads to a handsome villa, presumably the home
of St. Francis, beyond which little hills appear on the horizon. The
sky, very expansive, is silvery above these hills and grows gradually
bluer and bluer until it reaches the top of the picture, or dome of
the sky, where a strange castle is seen with banners of the Holy Cross
floating from its battlements and turrets. This castle really belongs
to the second episode represented on the right, which shows St. Francis
sleeping in a little room. This heavenly castle is the vision he has in
his dreams. It would appear that the Angel, standing over St. Francis
and pointing to the mystical castle in the clouds, is inspiring this
mystical dream. It is interesting to note here that Giotto made at
Assisi two pictures of _St. Francis and the Beggar_ and _The Dream of
St. Francis_. Sassetta combined the two episodes into one picture.
“Even without documents,” says Berenson, “we should know that this
Borgo San Sepulcro polyptych was painted by a contemporary of Masolino,
Pisanello, Jacopo Bellini, and Antonio Vivarini. And that the master
was a Sienese we should know not only from his pure, flat color and
his devotion to line, but in other ways as well. At all events it is
he, Stefano Sassetta, who has left us the most adequate rendering of
the Franciscan soul that we possess in the entire range of painting.
“Sassetta was not only one of the few masters in Europe of imaginative
design, but the most important painter at Siena during the second
quarter of the Fifteenth Century, the channel through which Sienese
Trecento traditions passed and became transformed into those of the
Quattrocento, for nearly all the later painters of Siena were his
offspring.”
Stefano di Giovanni was born at Siena in 1392. He was a pupil of Paolo
di Giovanni Fei and was deeply influenced by the earlier Sienese
painters, Duccio, Simone Martini, and the Lorenzetti brothers. In 1427
he was asked to furnish a design for the font in the Siena Baptistery
and he painted the altar-piece of the _Madonna Enthroned with
Saints_ in the church, since known as the Osservanza, built for St.
Bernardine on the site of his hermitage. Sassetta’s work for the Borgo
San Sepulcro did much to popularize Sienese ideas in Umbria. Sassetta
made many paintings in Siena and at Cortona, where he was influenced by
Fra Angelico. In 1447 he was commissioned to complete the frescoes on
the Porta Romana at Siena, begun by Taddeo di Bartolo; and he died in
1450 from exposure while working on this gate. Fifteen years later the
frescoes were finished by Sano di Pietro, one of Sassetta’s many pupils
and followers.
For a long time Sassetta was forgotten; but of late years there has
been much interest in his works, which are of great pecuniary as well
as artistic value.
MADONNA AND CHILD WITH SAINTS AND ANGELS.
_Matteo di Giovanni_
(_1430?–1495_).
_Collection of
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay._
Among the most important pupils of the famous Sassetta was the painter
and sculptor, Lorenzo Vecchietta, who in turn was the principal master
of Matteo di Giovanni, the most celebrated Sienese painter of his time.
Therefore we have direct artistic ancestry for Matteo di Giovanni
through Vecchietta to Sassetta and to Duccio.
Matteo di Giovanni, also called Matteo da Siena, was the son of a
tradesman who came from Siena to Borgo San Sepulcro, where Matteo was
born about 1430. His first master is supposed to have been the Umbrian,
Piero della Francesca (or Pier dei Franceschi). Removing to Siena,
Matteo spent the rest of his days there. His life was uneventful,
for he gave all his time to painting. His domestic life must have
been somewhat exciting for he was twice married--the second time to a
countess--and he had a large family. Matteo was particularly famous for
his Madonnas, tender and wistful, with very decorative accessories.
The lovely _Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels_, represented
here, shows this decorative quality of Matteo in its highest
expression. The Sienese love for Oriental fabrics[1] appears in the
rich attire of the Virgin. Here is no peasant woman in simple robe and
mantle, but a lady of high degree, wearing a gown of handsome brocade
with the significant pattern of the pomegranate. A white veil, soft and
transparent, lightly covers her forehead and her mantle is gracefully
drawn up over her head to form a hood. The Holy Child rests comfortably
upon her left arm while her right hand, large and firm, gives Him
additional support. A light drapery passes around the body of the Holy
Child--the Sienese were Oriental enough in their discriminating taste
to avoid uninteresting nudity and they also knew how to manage both
heavy and light materials--who grasps the Virgin’s tunic with His right
hand and has placed his left hand over that of His mother. The golden
_nimbus_ of the Virgin is inscribed “_Ave (Maria) Gratia Plena_.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Clarence H. Mackay_
MADONNA AND CHILD WITH SAINTS AND ANGELS
--_Matteo di Giovanni_]
St. Catherine of Siena stands on the right, also wearing a handsome
brocade gown and a white veil. She is holding a missal and a fragment
of her wheel of torture. On the left we see St. Anthony, in monk’s
habit, writing in a book. Behind this group two Angels are singing
loudly and joyfully. The background and all the _nimbi_ crowning
the heads of the figures are of gold, made the richer by burnished
ornamentation.
This picture, painted in tempera on a panel 29 × 20 inches, came from
the Collection of Lord Ashburnham, Ashburnham Place, Battle, Surrey,
England. Of it Berenson says: “It is not only his (Matteo di Giovanni)
most typical and his most characteristic, but also his most impressive
and beautiful work; it has every advantage of ivory flesh, golden
tone, and gorgeous brocade; and with all these decorative qualities it
possesses real humility.”
Among Matteo di Giovanni’s other important paintings are: the _Madonna
Enthroned_ (1470) in the Accademia; the _Madonna della Neve_ (1477) and
the _Coronation of St. Barbara_ in St. Domenico, Siena; the _Assumption
of the Virgin_ in the National Gallery, London; and _St. Jerome in his
Cell_, in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
ADORATION OF THE MAGI.
_Benvenuto di Giovanni _Collection of
(1436–1518)._ Sir Joseph Duveen, Bart._
We have here a charming Sienese version of the ever-popular
subject--the _Adoration of the Magi_. Everything about this picture
is radiant, charming, and decorative. The groups in pyramidal form
with masses at the base, made rich and beautiful by means of the wise
lighting and graceful arrangement of draperies, balanced with lively
animals on the right and left, rise higher and higher with more and
more delicacy of treatment that suggests the technique of old ivory
carving or the miniature painting of Mediæval manuscripts, until the
peak is reached in the charming presentation of a lovely walled town
with spires lifted heavenward.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Sir Joseph Duveen, Bart._
ADORATION OF THE MAGI
--_Benvenuto di Giovanni_]
The picture is full of movement, life, joy, and expression. The Holy
Child is appreciative (which is an unusual feature) and the animals,
too, are taking an enthusiastic part in the ceremony.
The tender and gentle Virgin, seated on a stone bench directly in
front and wearing a red robe and a blue mantle, has the Holy Child
comfortably placed on her knee. On her left hand she is holding one
of the presents. The Holy Child, according to the Sienese fashion, is
draped and the linen folded around Him is embroidered in gold. His
expression is animated and very sweet and He is raising His little hand
in blessing. The eldest of the Magi,[2] Melchior with white hair (what
there is left of it) and white flowing beard, is kneeling before the
Holy Child and kissing His right foot, wearing a rich golden mantle
with a damask pattern in _raised_ gold relief, held by a jewelled
girdle. The second Magus, on the left, Balthasar, is clothed in a red
brocade mantle embroidered in gold. He has a dark complexion and is
removing his crown from his thick black hair and holds in his right
hand a piece of gold plate. The third King, Caspar, on the right, is
the most attractive figure in the picture,--a typical young prince
and dandy of the period dressed in a pale tunic, cut with point in
front showing a rich brocade undergarment, and plaited and slashed
and bordered according to the latest Fifteenth Century fashions. The
sleeves are slashed and ornamented with puffs and a rich girdle holds
the dagger with hilt of gold. Lilac trunk-hose, red shoes, and a golden
crown complete the costume. His face is delicate and charming and his
wavy hair is blonde. He, too, is bringing a piece of gold plate. This
radiant figure looks as if he might have stepped from the pages of the
_Romaunt of the Rose_. St. Joseph, behind Balthasar, leans his head
on his hand as if he were puzzled. Each one of these six important
figures has a flat golden _nimbus_. Behind St. Joseph, on the left,
the ox and the ass, by the intelligent gleam in their eyes, allow us
to believe in the legend that animals are endowed with the power of
speech on Christmas Eve. Over the roof of their open shed sparkles and
scintillates the Star of the East and under the Star we note a bush
laden with fruit,--a real Christmas tree! On the right, the group is
that of the retinue of the three Kings--people on foot, wide-eyed and
curious, and knights on horseback. A beautiful white horse arches his
head majestically and surveys the scene; behind him are a very superior
horse and a very superior camel, who gaze downward somewhat haughtily,
while a third horse looks backward at these companions to see what they
are thinking of it all!
As in many ancient paintings, the scene is enacted for us in two
episodes. If we look ardently we see the three Magi on their approach
to the shrine. We can identify Balthasar on the left; Caspar in the
centre; and Melchior on the left of Caspar, followed by their retinue
defiling through the gateway of the machicolated wall, behind which the
town, with its towers and turrets, domes and roofs, stands out clearly
and poetically from its golden horizon.
This painting, tempera on panel (70 × 53 inches), came from the
Collection of Sir William Neville Abdy, Bart., Dorking, Surrey, and was
exhibited in Paris at the Salle des Etats, Musée du Louvre, in 1885.
Benvenuto di Giovanni di Meo del Guata, also known as Benvenuto da
Siena, was, like Matteo di Giovanni, a pupil of Vecchietta. He was
born in Siena, September 13, 1436, the son of a mason. In 1453 he was
painting in the Baptistery in Siena. He painted in Siena all his life
and aided in designing the inlaid marble pavement in the Cathedral and
he also decorated the cupola. Benvenuto di Giovanni cared little about
the scientific experiments the contemporary Florentine painters were
essaying, content to paint in the decorative and charming traditional
Sienese manner, of flat and ornamental designs beautifully enriched
with gold. It is very interesting to compare this painting with the
pageants of Benozzo Gozzoli and Gentile da Fabriano. It holds its own,
thereby, for its high decorative quality and peculiar charm.
_FLORENTINE_
It is not strange when Sienese Painting was at its height that its
influence should have been felt in Florence, which is only about
forty miles distant. The fame of Cimabue (1240?–1301), the founder
of the Florentine School, indeed, rests chiefly on the _Madonna_
in the Rucellai Chapel of S. Maria Novella, which modern criticism
attributes to Duccio of Siena. Vasari was responsible for accrediting
the _Rucellai Madonna_ to Cimabue; and Vasari’s story that when
finished “it was carried in solemn procession with the sound of
trumpets and other festal demonstrations from Cimabue’s house to the
church, Cimabue being highly rewarded and honored for it,” reads like
an echo of the triumphal procession of Duccio’s great altar-piece--the
_Majestas_--from the house of that painter to the Cathedral of Siena.
Cimabue, whose name was Cenni dei Pepe, transitional from Byzantine to
Gothic, is particularly famed for being the discoverer and teacher of
Giotto.
Giotto di Bordone (1276–1336), sculptor and architect as well as
painter, is the dominating personality in Trecento Art, and the first
Gothic painter of Florence. Giotto’s influence lasted for a hundred
years or more (see page 25).
One of Giotto’s associates and followers was Bernardo Daddi, son of
Daddo di Simone, a Florentine. The date of his birth is supposed to
have been 1280. He died in 1348. About 1317 he was admitted to the
Arte de Medici e Speziale, the Guild of Doctors and Apothecaries, from
whom the painters obtained their pigments. According to the laws of
the period no painter could pursue his art unless he took his degree
in that confraternity. The early painters became independent of the
Guild of Doctors and Apothecaries after the Guild of St. Luke[3] was
formed--the special brotherhood of all painters, which spread to every
country and to every town--and there is a tradition that Daddi was one
of the founders of this Compagnia di San Luca, which would show that
this Florentine Guild of St. Luke was organized as early as 1348.
Daddi painted the fresco over the San Giorgio Gate of Florence about
1330 and he also painted the frescoes of the Martyrdom of St. Stephen
and St. Lawrence in Santa Croce. Daddi comes very close to Giotto
(1276–1336), in dates and in style, although he shows great sympathy
with the Sienese painters.
Giotto’s followers--the Giotteschi--worked from about 1330 to 1430
and include: Taddeo Gaddi, Andrea di Cione (better known as Orcagna),
Giovanni da Milano, Agnolo Gaddi, Cennino Cennini, Andrea di Firenze,
Antonio Veneziano, Spinello Aretino, and Lorenzo Monaco.
These painters prepared the way for greater changes by studying
perspective and the human form and by gradually introducing Classic
Architecture into their pictures in place of Gothic decoration.
In studying Fifteenth Century Art in Florence we are struck by the
great number of goldsmiths and other workers in metal who became
painters. There is a reason for this. The most important work in
Florence for twenty-two years was the making of the four bronze doors
for the Baptistery, the competition for which was won by Ghiberti in
1401. The undertaking was so vast that Ghiberti engaged, at one time or
another, nearly all the most talented artists and artisans of Florence.
Many painters and sculptors who acquired fame afterwards, such as
Masaccio and Donatello for instance, received their early training
under Ghiberti.
Of the last-mentioned painter Leonardo da Vinci wrote:
“After the days of Giotto, painting declined again, because everyone
imitated the pictures that were already in existence; and this went on
until Tommaso of Florence, nicknamed Masaccio, showed, by his perfect
works, how artists who would take any teacher but Nature--the mistress
of all masters--labor in vain.”
Tommaso Masaccio (1401–1429?) and Tommaso Masolino (1383–1447) worked
together in the Brancacci Chapel. Masaccio was the son of a notary in
the parish of Castel S. Giovanni in Val d’Arno, learned to draw and
paint, joined the Guild of St. Luke in 1424, and became Masolino’s
assistant for painting the frescoes in the new Chapel built by Felice
Brancacci in the Carmine. When Masolino went to Hungary, Masaccio
worked there alone.
Masaccio’s frescoes made an epoch in art, although the painter was
little appreciated in his day. He left his work suddenly and went to
Rome. Nothing more was ever heard of him. He is thought to have died
in Rome in 1429. Almost immediately Masaccio’s work began to be valued
and all the Florentines of the Fifteenth Century flocked to study these
Brancacci frescoes. Masolino (1383–1447) was appointed in 1423 to paint
frescoes in the new Brancacci Chapel in the Carmine and two years
later went to Hungary. Returning home after several years, he painted
frescoes in various cities (see page 28).
Gerardo, better known as “Starnina” (1354–1408), a pupil of Antonio
Veneziano, spent nine years in Spain and on his return to Florence,
achieved great fame by his frescoes in the Carmine. The name was taken
from that of his father, Jacopo Starna. It is said that “Starnina” was
the master of Masolino and Fra Angelico.
Fra Angelico (1387–1455), brings us to another transitional
period,--this time from the Gothic to the Renaissance. Fra Angelico, or
Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, the angelic and mystical painter and the most
beloved of all the early artists, spent his life painting frescoes and
altar-pieces for churches and cloisters. He was frequently called by
the Pope to Rome, where he died (see page 32).
To this period belong Andrea del Castagno (1390?–1457), a vigorous and
austere painter, and Paolo Uccello (1397–1475), named Paolo di Dono,
but called Uccello because he kept in his house and painted so many
birds. Uccello began life as a goldsmith and assistant to Ghiberti.
No survey of painting in Florence in the Fifteenth Century, however
slight, would be complete without reference to the Medici. Art, like
all other branches of learning, owed its splendid development to
their intelligent sympathy and generous patronage. The Medici began
this patronage early. Giovanni de Bicci (1360–1428), the founder of
the family, was one of the judges who selected Ghiberti to make the
Baptistery doors and Cosimo, “the Father of his Country” (1389–1464),
was so liberal a patron of Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi, Benozzo
Gozzoli, Paolo Uccello, Domenico Veneziano, and many others, that we
may safely say the great flowering of Florentine Art is almost entirely
due to his taste and encouragement.
The Florentine artists, too, were greatly stirred by the meeting of the
Council of the Eastern and Western Churches, which was one of the most
important gatherings ever held anywhere in the history of the world.
This Council was invited by Cosimo to Florence and all the dignitaries
and their suites were his personal guests, entertained by him in his
various palaces and villas. Picturesque and bizarre these dignitaries
were; and the painters had full opportunity to see them when they sat
in the Duomo under Brunelleschi’s newly completed dome (then the Eighth
Wonder of the World), or when they moved about the streets with their
suites.
In his delightful book, _The Medici_, Col. G. F. Young has called
particular attention to the importance of this great Council; how
it led Cosimo to found the Platonic Academy; and how the Fall of
Constantinople, fourteen years later, changed the world so utterly that
no such meeting could ever take place again. In part he says:
“This great gathering of 1439 in Florence had its effect also on
Art. We are often inclined to wonder where such painters as Fra
Angelico, Benozzo Gozzoli, and Gentile da Fabriano got the idea of
the gorgeous robes and strange-looking head-dresses which we see in
their pictures of Eastern subjects. It was all taken direct from the
life of Florence of this year. During that summer the inhabitants of
Florence saw a perpetual succession of grand processions and imposing
functions in which these visitors from the East appeared in every kind
of magnificent and strange costume. Vespasiano da Bisticci and other
writers of the time dilate upon their rich silken robes, heavy with
gold, and their fantastic-looking head-dresses, regarded with deep
interest by the learned on account of their ancient character. And the
painters reproduce these before us in pictorial records, which are
valuable to us on that very account, and because this was the last
occasion on which these costumes were destined to appear.”
Piero il Gottoso (1416–1469), Cosimo’s son, “carried on” the traditions
of the Medici, encouraging Art to such an extent that practically every
great work produced in Florence in his time was made for, or inspired
by, him. Piero il Gottoso and his cultured wife, Lucrezia Tornabuoni,
recognizing Botticelli’s genius, took him into their home and made him
one of the family. All of Botticelli’s early works, therefore, belong
to the period he spent under the patronage of Piero de’ Medici. Yet, of
course, Botticelli is recognized as the particular painter of Lorenzo
the Magnificent (1449–1492), son of Piero, and a friend and boyhood
companion.
“As had been the case with his father, Piero, the leading artists
of the day did most of their work for him, and nearly every work
of eminence in painting or sculpture belonging to Lorenzo’s time
remaining in Florence, was commissioned by him. Verrocchio did almost
all his work for him; that sculptor’s graceful tomb in San Lorenzo
over Lorenzo’s father and uncle, his bronze _David_, and his fountain
of _The Boy with a Dolphin_ were all executed for Lorenzo. Botticelli
he made his family painter as well as friend and all the pictures of
Botticelli’s second period were painted for him. It was Lorenzo who
caused Ghirlandaio’s frescoes in Sta. Maria Novella and Santa Trinità
to be painted; and it was he who selected and sent Leonardo da Vinci to
Milan to become ‘Il Moro’s’ great painter. Among others he also gave
commissions to Filippino Lippi, Signorelli, Baldovinetti, Benedetto
da Majano, Andrea del Castagno and the Pollaiuoli. The Medici Palace
became, Symonds says, ‘a museum at that period unique in Europe,
considering the number and value of its art-treasures;’ and these he
made available to all young artists for purposes of study. There being
at that time no school for sculpture, Lorenzo formed one in his garden
near San Marco, collected there casts from many antique statues, placed
the school in charge of Donatello’s pupil, Bertoldo, and invited all
young sculptors to study there. Among those who did so were Lorenzo di
Credi, Michelangelo, and many others afterwards famous.”--COL. G. F.
YOUNG, _The Medici_ (London, 1909).
The roll-call is large and marvellous; and when we think of the
troubles of the time,--the quarrels, the conspiracies, the dangers
of murder, and the constant visitations of the Plague, we almost
comprehend refuge in the cloister rather than such extraordinary
activity in Art and Learning. Let us look at the greatest names.
Domenico Veneziano (1400–1461), a native of Venice, as his name plainly
shows, but employed by Piero il Gottoso, classed in his day with Fra
Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi, a delightful musician, playing on the
lute and singing well, and said by Vasari, to have introduced into
Florence the Flemish method of using oils. Veneziano taught Piero della
Francesca, the Umbrian painter. Then there is Fra Angelico, already
mentioned, and there is Fra Filippo Lippi (1406?–1469), a monk, but
not a saint like Fra Angelico,--wild and adventurous yet a superlative
painter, whose reputation continues to increase and whose Madonnas,
usually with the face of Lucrezia Buti, are justly admired (see page
42).
Francesco Pesellino (1422–1457), whose real name was Francesco di
Stefano, pupil of his grandfather, Giuliano, and a follower of Fra
Filippo Lippi, famous for his decorative qualities and his animals,
rare and valued to-day. Another painter of decorative taste, charming
and refined, is Alesso Baldovinetti (1425–1499), a follower of Domenico
Veneziano and teacher of Ghirlandaio (see page 48).
Then come the famous brothers, workers in gold, silver, and bronze,
painters of heroic frescoes, and celebrated as draughtsmen--Antonio
Pollaiuolo (1432–1498) and Piero Pollaiuolo (1443–1496), sons, too, of
a goldsmith, all three busy, at various times, on the Ghiberti doors
(see page 51).
Then there is Pier Francesco Fiorentino, an Umbrian, born in Borgo
San Sepolcro about 1430, pupil of Domenico Veneziano, and said to
have assisted Ghirlandaio at S. Giminiano in 1475. Next comes Andrea
Verrocchio (1435–1488), goldsmith and sculptor, pupil and assistant
to Donatello. Andrea di Cione’s nickname of “Verrocchio” (true eye)
is self-explanatory. Verrocchio was also an accomplished musician.
He was employed by the Medici all his life; and he trained in his
workshop, Leonardo da Vinci, Perugino, and Lorenzo di Credi. Verrocchio
also planned many of the splendid pageants, for which Florence was so
famous, and designed the artistic helmets worn by young Lorenzo and
Giuliano at their tournaments. When Lorenzo became head of the Medici
he continued the family patronage to Verrocchio. Cosimo Rosselli
(1439–1507), followed Paolo Uccello and Alesso Baldovinetti.
Sandro Botticelli (1444–1510), who belongs to both Piero and Lorenzo
de’ Medici, was a pupil of Fra Filippo Lippi and was influenced
by Antonio Pollaiuolo before he blossomed forth in his full
individuality. For many centuries Botticelli has charmed the world, his
_prestige_ ever growing greater (see page 55).
Botticelli leads us into another group. Here is Domenico del
Ghirlandaio (1449–1494), “the garland-maker,” first a goldsmith, then
a pupil of Alesso Baldovinetti and much influenced by Botticelli
and Verrocchio. Into his decorative scenes this painter introduced
portraits of distinguished Florentines (see page 70).
Then we have one of the world’s greatest geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci
(1452–1519), painter, sculptor, architect, decorator, designer of
pageants and masques, musician, and engineer, and, moreover, a
personage of charm and many social gifts. Leonardo was apprenticed to
Verrocchio and patronized by Lorenzo de’ Medici, who sent him in 1482
to Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan (see page 93).
Filippino Lippi (1457–1504), son of Fra Filippo Lippi and the nun,
Lucrezia Buti (see page 44), a pupil of Botticelli, achieved a fine
reputation as a painter and as a man. Lorenzo di Credi (1457–1537),
fellow-pupil with Perugino and Leonardo da Vinci in Verrocchio’s
studio, esteemed for his execution and careful finish, was an especial
favorite with Verrocchio.
Piero di Cosimo, or Piero di Lorenzo (1462–1521?), called Cosimo after
his master, Cosimo Rosselli, assisted the latter in decorating the
Sistine Chapel in 1480. Piero di Cosimo is famed for his mythological
pictures and for a portrait of Simonetta Vespucci (see page 59), now in
the Chantilly Museum.
Fra Bartolommeo (1472–1517), whose name was Baccio della Porta, an
apprentice of Cosimo Rosselli, became an ardent follower of Savonarola.
It was, therefore, a natural step for him to become a Dominican monk
in 1500; but he continued to paint and had for a partner Mariotto
Albertinelli (1474–1515), a pupil of Cosimo Rosselli and Piero di
Cosimo.
Michelangelo (1475–1564), painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and
military engineer, was born at Castel Caprese, where his father,
Ludovico Buonarroti, was governor of the Castle. Apprenticed to
Ghirlandaio, he also worked in the Medici Gardens and became a favorite
with Lorenzo. After Lorenzo’s death in 1492, he worked for his son,
Piero. Michelangelo’s commanding work, however, was done in Rome, where
he went in 1508 to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In 1547
Michelangelo succeeded Antonio di San Gallo as architect of St. Peter’s.
Raphael Santi (1484–1520) has to be included among the Florentine
painters for he worked in Florence during 1504–1508, when he fell under
the influence of Leonardo da Vinci and Fra Bartolommeo and painted
several important pictures, including the _Madonna del Gran Duca_ (now
in the Pitti) and the _Madonna del Cardellino_ (now in the Uffizi).
(See page 86.)
Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Bartolommeo, and Michelangelo influenced Andrea
del Sarto (1486–1531), pupil of Piero di Cosimo. His real name was
Andrea d’Agnolo and because of his facile technique was called “_Andrea
senza errori_”. Francis I had Andrea come to Fontainebleau in 1518; but
he soon went home to Florence and died of the Plague.
Franciabigio (1482–1525), son of Christoforo Bigio, partner of Andrea
del Sarto and pupil of Albertinelli and Piero di Cosimo, noted for his
religious pictures and portraits, and Bronzino (1502–1572), poet and
painter (whose name was Angelo Allori), pupil of Jacopo da Pontormo,
and famous for his portraits of the Medici family, bring us to the last
quarter of the Sixteenth Century.
The great days of painting were over; and they had been great days!
MADONNA AND CHILD.
_Giotto di Bordone_
(_1276–1336_).
_Collection of
Mr. Henry Goldman._
Framed by a slightly pointed arch, not sufficiently removed from
the old Romanesque curves to be full Gothic, and projected upon a
background of gold, appears this graceful Madonna, so unusual in type
and of such amazing beauty. Her face, with its almond-shaped eyes
(not set obliquely however) and its sweet flower-like mouth, has a
Chinese quality that bestows a great charm. On the face there is
also an Oriental radiation of gentleness, resignation, and spiritual
experience. While looking at us this lovely Madonna--who might answer
as well for the Chinese goddess Kuan Yin--seems to be trying to draw
us into a contemplation of the Infinite. The dress, too, is unusual.
All that we see is a blue mantle lined with silk, shaded in green,
white, and pink, decorated by a gold border with an Arabic inscription.
This mantle is carried over the head to form a hood and one end is
very gracefully thrown across the left arm. On the right shoulder a
conventionalized flower is embroidered in gold, reminding us of the
star that the Sienese Madonnas usually carry. A white drapery, also
having an Arabic border, is folded around the Holy Child, who grasps
His mother’s forefinger with His left hand, while with His right He
tries to take from her a white rose[4] that she is holding upward. Each
head is encircled by a _nimbus_: that of the Virgin is very large
and very decorative with an interlaced pattern of Oriental design; and
that of the Holy Child has a foliage design reminiscent of Byzantine
ornament. On both sides of the Virgin’s face a pink veil is visible.
This picture, painted on a panel (34 × 25 inches), came from the
Collection of M. Eugène Max of Paris.
Many legends have gathered around the name of the great Florentine,
doubly famed as painter of marvellous frescoes and as the architect of
the Campanile in Florence that is still called by his name. The story
of how Giotto, the little shepherd boy tending his father’s flocks on
the Apennines, was discovered drawing a sheep on a rock by Cimabue and
taken by him to Florence and trained, ultimately becoming the greatest
painter of his time and founder of a School, was told by Ghiberti and
Leonardo da Vinci many years before Vasari’s day.
Giotto di Bordone is supposed to have been born at Colle di Vespignano,
about twenty miles from Florence, in 1266 and he died in Florence in
1337. He was a pupil of Cimabue but surpassed him. About 1300 he was in
Rome making the mosaics in the portico of St. Peter’s, a polyptych, and
some frescoes in the choir. In 1303–1306 Giotto painted the frescoes
in the Arena Chapel in Padua; at Assisi he painted the scenes from the
_Life of St. Francis_ in the Upper Church and also some of the
frescoes in the Magdalen Chapel in the Lower Church. After 1316 he
decorated the Bardi and the Peruzzi Chapels in S. Croce in Florence.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Henry Goldman_
MADONNA AND CHILD
--_Giotto di Bordone_]
“From the first,” says Mrs. Cartwright, “Giotto adopted a clear,
pale tone of coloring, which forms a marked contrast to the dark
and heavy tints in use among Byzantine artists, and produces the
effects of water-color, while that of the older painters more nearly
resembles oils. The technique which he used, both for tempera and
fresco-painting, and which remained in use among Florentine artists for
the next hundred and fifty years, was in reality founded on the old
Greek method which had been practiced during many centuries, although
the improvements which he introduced were sufficient to justify the
Giottesque artist, Cennino Cennini, in saying that Giotto changed
painting from the Greek to the Latin manner and brought in modern
art. Yet more striking were the innovations which he introduced in his
types, the almond-shaped eyes, long noses, and oval countenances with
square, heavy jaws which he substituted for the staring eyes and round
faces of Byzantine artists. The few and simple lines of his draperies
give a majestic effect to his figures and at the same time sufficiently
indicate the structure of the human form beneath; so that in spite of
his ignorance of anatomy and modelling, the result is remarkably good.”
Giotto was working in Naples for King Robert in 1333 when he was sent
for by the Signoria of Florence and appointed Chief Architect of the
State and Master of the Cathedral Works, succeeding Arnolfo del Cambio,
who had died in 1310. All work had stopped since that date; but now
the authorities had decided to erect a bell-tower and they announced:
“For this purpose we have chosen Giotto di Bordone, painter, the great
and dear master, since neither in the city, nor in the whole world,
is there any other to be found as well fitted for this and similar
tasks.” The whole achievement of Giotto’s life was summed up more than
a hundred years later when Lorenzo the Magnificent commanded Angelo
Poliziano to write a Latin inscription for a bust of Giotto he was
placing on Giotto’s tomb in the Duomo:
“Lo, I am he by whom dead Painting was restored to life, to whose right
hand all was possible, by whom Art became one with Nature. No one ever
painted more or better. Do you wonder at yon fair Tower which holds the
sacred bells? Know it was I who bade her first rise towards the stars.
For I am Giotto--what need is there to tell of my work? Long as verse
lives, my name shall endure!”
THE ANNUNCIATION.
_Masolino_
(_1383–1447_).
_Collection of
Mr. Henry Goldman_
We have here a very interesting and important example of interior
decoration. The Renaissance has arrived as well as the Announcing
Gabriel! The round arch of grey stone (the spandrels of which contain
rosettes) frames a sumptuous room divided by a slender Corinthian
column. The walls and the _cassette_ ceiling are inlaid with mosaic
of different colors and the archway leading into another room--the
Virgin’s bedroom--has a blue sky sprinkled with gold stars. In
the centre of the background richly decorated doors lead into the
adjoining room. The general hues of the wall and ceiling are grey,
green, and red. The Virgin is seated on the right upon a tall and
not very comfortable Italian settee. She has on a light blue mantle
which falls around her in graceful folds. Her parted light hair is
surrounded by a golden _nimbus_ of decorative design. She holds an
open prayer-book with one hand and with the other makes a gesture of
submission and humility as she listens to the message of the Angel.
Whether she _sees_ Gabriel or not, she evidently _hears_ what he has to
tell her. The Angel, too, expresses reverence with hands crossed upon
his breast. He wears a rich claret-colored, velvet brocade embossed
with gold flowers and above his fair hair, which is tightly curled,
shines a golden _nimbus_ decorated with flower-like rosettes. His wings
seem not to have quite quieted down from the flight from Heaven to
earth.[5] Of this picture (painted on a panel 58¼ × 45¼ inches), which
came from the Collection of Lord Wemyss at Gosford House, Longniddry,
Haddingtonshire, Scotland, Berenson says:
“The decorative effect is so strong and so enchanting that like the
rest of Masolino’s art it scarcely finds precedence in Florence or even
in Italy. The suavity, the grace, the splendor, although paralleled
in Gentile da Fabriano and in Sassetta, would seem inspired rather by
the ecstatic mood of Parisian painting toward 1400 with its figures of
angelic candor and skies of heavenly radiance than by Tuscan models.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Henry Goldman_
THE ANNUNCIATION
--_Masolino_]
Masolino, the son of a house painter, was born in Panicale in 1383.
His real name was Tommaso di Cristoforo di Fino, and he was familiarly
called Masolino da Panicale. According to Vasari he was a pupil
of “Starnina” and worked under Ghiberti. He was admitted into the
Florentine Guild of Painters in 1423. In that year he was commissioned
to paint the frescoes in the new chapel of the Carmine, built by Felice
Brancacci, and he took for his assistant, Masaccio, who went on with
the work when Masolino was sent to Hungary in 1425 to decorate a church
at Stuhlweissenburg.
When Masolino returned to Florence--after several years--he found
that great changes had taken place in art, for the painters had been
busy with the new problems of perspective and light and shade and
the substitution of Classic for Gothic architecture and decoration.
Masolino availed himself of the new ideas, but could not quite forget
his Giottesque traditions. He painted frescoes in Rome, Naples, and
Lombardy.
“Masolino,” Vasari wrote, “was a man of rare intelligence and his
paintings are executed with great love and diligence. I have often
examined his works and find his style to be essentially different
from the styles of those before him. He gave majesty to his figures
and introduced finely designed folds in his draperies. He began to
understand light and shade and to give his forms relief and succeeded
in some very difficult foreshortenings. He also gave greater sweetness
of expression to his women heads and gayer costumes to his young men,
and his perspective is tolerably correct. But, above all, he excelled
in fresco-painting. This he did so well, and with such delicately
blending colors, that his flesh tones have the utmost softness
imaginable; and if he could have drawn more perfectly, he would deserve
to be numbered among the best artists.”
GABRIEL, THE ANNOUNCING ANGEL.
_Fra Angelico_
(_1387–1455_).
_Collection of
Mr. Edsel B. Ford._
This panel and the one succeeding it, _The Virgin Receiving the
Divine Message_, originally formed a diptych. In treatment
and expression they resemble the figures in Fra Angelico’s
_Annunciation_ in the Oratorio del Gesù at Cortona.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Edsel B. Ford_
GABRIEL, THE ANNOUNCING ANGEL
--_Fra Angelico_]
The Archangel, according to Dante’s expression, has brought the
long-desired tidings and he stands on a background of gold with wings
still extended like those of a dove, just alighted from the heavens,
looking into Mary’s face very earnestly, and pointing upward to
emphasize to her that he comes from the spheres above. This Gabriel is
one of the most beautiful of Fra Angelico’s most beautiful angels, his
wings being of an extraordinary elegance of _contour_ and a peculiar
loveliness of color--rose, violet, green, and yellow, scintillating in
iridescent play. His crimson robe, shading into high lights and fainter
tones, is richly, although very simply, decorated with bands of gold
embroidery in the Byzantine style. The hair is blonde and beautifully
curled and the head stands out in fine relief from the golden glory.
Notice the beauty of the ear and the distinguished line of the neck,
the calm, deep, unattached gaze of the eye, the refined and sensitive
nose, the pure and lovely mouth, and the graceful, strong, and _very
psychic hands_. This figure perfectly fits Ruskin’s tribute to Fra
Angelico in _Modern Painters_:
“The art of Fra Angelico, both in drawing and color, is perfect,
and his work may be recognized at any distance by its rainbow play
and brilliancy, like a piece of opal among common marbles. In order
to effect clearer distinction between heavenly beings and those of
this world, he represents the former as clothed in draperies of the
purest color, crowned with glories of burnished gold and _entirely_
shadowless; the flames on their foreheads waving brighter as they move;
the sparkles streaming from their purple wings like the glitter of the
sun upon the sea; while they listen in the pauses of alternate song for
the prolonging of the trumpet blast and the answering of psalm and harp
and cymbal, throughout the endless deep and from all the star-shores of
Heaven. This mode of treatment, combined as it is with exquisite choice
of gesture and disposition of drapery, _gives perhaps the best idea of
spiritual beings which the human mind is capable of forming_.”
THE VIRGIN RECEIVING THE DIVINE MESSAGE.
_Fra Angelico_
(_1387–1455_).
_Collection of
Mr. Edsel B. Ford._
In an attitude of divine submission, devout humility, and serene grace,
the Virgin Mary is listening to the words of the Angel Gabriel. Her
brow is almost as clear and pure as that of Gabriel himself and her
features are beautiful, especially those heavy-lidded eyes. Her blonde
hair is exquisitely arranged, confined by a band of black velvet and
encircled by a _nimbus_, of which she is apparently unconscious.
Mary wears a crimson robe with bands of gold around the neck and
sleeves, over which is a blue mantle lined with yellow. Her hands are
capable, exquisite, and very high bred; and in the left one she holds,
with rare grace, a red book.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Edsel B. Ford_
THE VIRGIN RECEIVING THE DIVINE MESSAGE
--_Fra Angelico_]
Like the companion panel, _Gabriel, the Announcing Angel_, the
background is gold. The dimensions of each are 14½ × 10 inches.
Both pictures were long in the Collection of the Duke of Hamilton at
Hamilton Palace; and afterwards were in the Collection of Mr. John
Edward Taylor and in that of Mr. Carl W. Hamilton. In an unpublished
letter regarding these works Mr. Berenson writes:
“They are among the sweetest, purest, and most candid of Fra Angelico’s
paintings. I could not easily point to others which better justify the
surname of ‘The Angelic’ given to this artist, who was so great that
he was child-like. These panels date from about 1425, that is to say
from the best year of Fra Angelico’s maturity. They show his best self,
emancipated from the cramping traditions he was heir to, but not yet
showing sign of spiritual fatigue leading finally to his painting a
little by rote. In coloring they are exquisite; and for pictures five
centuries old, they are almost miraculously well preserved.”
Vasari’s words show how deeply Fra Angelico was appreciated by men who
lived closer to his time than we:
“This truly angelic father spent his whole life in the service of
God and his fellow-creatures. He was a man of simple habits and most
saintly in all his ways. He kept himself from all worldliness and was
so good a friend to the poor that I think his soul must be already
in Heaven. He worked continually at his art, but would never paint
anything but sacred subjects. He might have been a wealthy man, but
he did not care for money and used to say that true riches consist in
being content with little. He might have enjoyed high dignities both in
his convent and in the world, but he cared nothing for these things,
saying that he who would practice painting has need of quiet and should
be free from worldly cares; and that he who would do the work of Christ
must live continually with Him. He was never known to be impatient with
the Brothers,--a thing to me almost incredible! When people asked him
for a picture he always replied that, with the Prior’s approval, he
would try and satisfy their wishes. He never corrected or retouched his
works, but left them as he first painted them, saying that such was the
will of God. He never took his pencil up without a prayer and could not
paint a _Crucifixion_ without the tears running down his cheeks. And
the saints that he painted are more like saints in face and expression
than those of any other master. And since it seemed that saints and
angels of beauty so divine could only be painted by the hand of an
angel, he was always called Fra Angelico.”
Fra Angelico was born in 1387 in a little hamlet called Vicchio, in the
province of Mugello in Tuscany, about twenty miles from Florence. His
surname is unknown--if indeed he had one--for his father, who lived in
a cottage belonging to the lord of the Castle of Vicchio, was simply
known as Pietro of Mugello. Guido was the name his father gave him but
he changed this to Fra Giovanni, when he became a monk of the Dominican
Order at Fiesole in 1406. It is supposed that he had been thoroughly
trained as a painter, because he immediately began to paint frescoes
for the monks; and it is also supposed that “Starnina” was his master.
Owing to religious troubles, the Dominican monks were driven from
Fiesole to Foligno and thence to Cortona, where the earliest extant
works--movable altar-pieces--of Fra Angelico are preserved. In 1418
the Dominicans returned to Fiesole, where Fra Angelico, or rather Fra
Giovanni, lived for the next few years and where he painted many of his
most famous altar-pieces.
In 1434 Cosimo de’ Medici was recalled from banishment and he
immediately had the Convent of San Marco rebuilt for the Dominican
monks of Fiesole. When the new building was ready in 1436 he
commissioned Fra Angelico to decorate the walls. In a cell which Cosimo
de’ Medici had reserved for his own personal retreat from worldly
cares, he had Fra Angelico paint a large _Adoration of the Magi_,
for he desired to have “this example of Eastern kings laying down their
crowns at the manger of Bethlehem always before his eyes as a reminder
for his own guidance as a ruler.”
While Fra Angelico was busy on a series of small panels depicting the
_Life of Christ_ for a _credenza_ in which the altar-plate was kept
and which had been ordered by Piero de’ Medici (Cosimo’s son), Pope
Eugenius IV called him to Rome, to paint a chapel in St. Peter’s.
Three of the remaining panels of the _credenza_ were painted by Alesso
Baldovinetti.
After completing the chapel in St. Peter’s, Fra Angelico was invited to
paint in the Cathedral at Orvieto; and, on finishing the work there,
he returned to Rome to spend three years decorating the Pope’s Oratory
in the Vatican. In 1450 he was back in Florence, and he began the new
year of 1451 as Prior of his old monastery at Fiesole. Again he went
to Rome and died there in the House of his Order at Santa Maria sopra
Minerva on March 18, 1455. He was buried in the monastery church by the
high altar and not far from the tomb of St. Catherine of Siena. Pope
Nicholas V wrote for him a Latin epitaph, the last line of which reads:
“That city which is the flower of Etruria bore me, Giovanni.”
The paintings of Fra Angelico are noted for their fine composition,
beautiful coloring, and variety and expression in the heads and faces
of his persons and Angels. Fra Angelico’s Angels are particularly
beautiful; and it is reasonable to infer that it is because of these
Angels so many of his works have been preserved. No other painter of
the Fifteenth Century has been treated with so much reverence as Fra
Angelico. The consequence is that there are somewhere between two and
three hundred of his compositions in existence. The greater number are
still in Florence. Every large gallery, however, possesses one or more.
Among the most famous ones that all the world knows and loves are _The
Virgin and Child surrounded by Twelve Angels_, ten of whom are playing
musical instruments (now in the Uffizi); _Christ with the Banner of
Resurrection_ (in the National Gallery, London); and _The Coronation
of the Virgin_ (in the Louvre), of which Gautier said the figures
represented “visible souls rather than bodies--thoughts of human form
enveloped in chaste draperies of white, rose, and blue, sown with stars
and embroidered, clothed as might be the happy spirits who rejoice in
the eternal light of Paradise.” Fra Angelico’s greatest frescoes are in
the Convent of San Marco at Florence and in the Vatican at Rome.
Fra Angelico is classed variously as a “Primitive,” a “Gothic,” an
“International,” and an “Early Renaissance” painter. The fact is
he stands between the old and the new. His position in Art is very
definitively described by Berenson:
“Yet simple though he was as a person, simple and one-sided as was his
message, as a product he was singularly complex. He was the typical
painter of the transition from Mediæval to Renaissance. The sources of
his feeling are in the Middle Ages, but he _enjoys_ his feelings
in a way which is almost modern; and almost modern also are his means
of expression. Moreover, he was not only the first Italian to paint
a landscape that can be identified (a view of Lake Trasimene from
Cortona) but the first to communicate a sense of the pleasantness of
Nature.”
As a tribute to his spiritual qualities let us listen to Mrs.
Cartwright’s eulogy:
“All the mystic thought of the Mediæval world, the passionate love of
God and man that beat in the heart of St. Francis, the yearnings of
Dante’s soul after a higher and more perfect order, the poetic dreams
of the monks who sang of the Celestial Country are embodied in the art
of Angelico. The depth and sincerity of his own religious feeling lent
wings to his imagination and the exquisite purity of his soul breathes
in every line of his painting: it is his own sweet and gentle fancy
that brings down these enchanted visions of Paradise.”
ST. COSIMAS AND ST. DAMIANUS.
_Fra Angelico
(1387–1455)._
_Collection of
Mr. Albert Keller._
About the year 1436 Cosimo commissioned Fra Angelico to paint the
altar-piece for the Church of San Marco in Florence (see page 37).
Underneath the group of the _Virgin and Child_ Fra Angelico painted for
the predella nine beautiful panels representing the legendary history
of _Cosimas and Damianus_, the patron saints of the Medici family.
The panel, shown here, tempera on wood (14¼ × 18 inches), which comes
from the collection of Mr. F. Böhler of Munich, is one of these nine
pictures. The companion pictures of this S. Marco altar-piece are now
in Dublin, Florence, Munich, and Paris.
This composition, divided into two episodes in one building, represents
the traditional benevolence of the two Saints, Cosimas and Damianus.
In the scene at the left, enacted within a room, which we view through
a large, rounded, door-like opening, St. Cosimas and St. Damianus,
with golden _nimbi_, are administering to a sick man sitting up in a
bed which is elevated on a daïs. The two Saints, in the blue robe, red
mantle, and red and white _biretta_ of the physicians, are standing
on either side of the bed, offering nutriment to the invalid and
giving their benediction. Kneeling behind the bed-head are a man and
a woman, the latter wearing a red mantle and white hood, the former a
turban-like cap. Over the bed stretches a deep, square, brown canopy
with an olive-green curtain all around it. On the daïs rests a tray
with an ewer, and beside it on the floor, we see a round stool with
three legs, and a foot-stool.
The scene on the right, takes place in a cobbled court-yard of a white
house, and here we see one of the Saints, in his physician’s gown,
colored as in the first scene, who has just handed to an aged woman
a loaf of bread, receiving no payment but raising his right hand in
benediction. The woman, dressed in a mauve gown and white veil, is
cleverly and gracefully posed within a small doorway, and behind her is
a room with an open door still farther back, through which flowering
shrubs are seen; and in this inner room a ray of light glints on the
floor. High on the top of the wall a large terra-cotta flower-vase is
silhouetted against a blue sky, and at the left of this there is a
narrow slit window.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Albert Keller_
ST. COSIMAS AND ST. DAMIANUS
--_Fra Angelico_]
“Cosimas and Damianus were two brothers, Arabians by birth, but they
dwelt in Ægæ, a city of Cilicia. Their father having died while they
were yet children, their pious mother, Theodora, brought them up
with all diligence, and in the practice of every Christian virtue.
Their charity was so great, that they not only lived in the greatest
abstinence, distributing their goods to the infirm and poor, but they
studied medicine and surgery, so that they might be able to prescribe
for the sick, and relieve the sufferings of the wounded and infirm;
and the blessing of God being on all their endeavors, they became
the most learned and the most perfect physicians that the world had
ever seen. They ministered to all who applied to them, whether rich
or poor. Even to suffering animals they did not deny their aid, and
they constantly refused all payment or recompense, exercising their
art only for charity and for the love of God; and thus they spent
their days. At length those wicked Emperors, Diocletian and Maximian,
came to the throne, in whose time so many saints perished. Among them
were the physicians, Cosimas and Damianus, who, professing themselves
Christians, were seized by Lycias, the proconsul of Arabia and cast
into prison. At first they were thrown into the sea, but an Angel
saved them; and then they were cast into fire, but the fire refused
to consume them; and then they were bound on two crosses and stoned,
but of the stones flung at them, none reached them, but fell on those
who threw them and many were killed. So the proconsul, believing that
they were enchanters, commanded that they should be beheaded, which
was done.” This Oriental legend, which is of great antiquity, was
transplanted into Western Europe in the first ages of Christianity. The
Emperor Justinian, having recovered, as he supposed, from a dangerous
illness, by the intercession of these saints, erected a superb church
in their honor. Among the Greeks Cosimas and Damianus succeeded to the
worship and attributes of Æsculapius; and from their disinterested
refusal of all pay or reward they are distinguished by the honorable
title of _Anargyres_, which signifies moneyless, or _without
fees_.
MADONNA DELLA STELLA.
_Fra Filippo Lippi
(1406?–1469)._
_Collection of
Mr. Carl W. Hamilton._
This picture came directly from the Monastery of the Carmine Brethren
in Florence to the present owner. It is painted in tempera on a panel
32⅝ × 25¼ inches. The Madonna, with head half turned towards the right,
is standing at half length and holding the Holy Child very lovingly
in her arms. She wears a dark-green, hooded mantle, with wide gold
border and fastened across the breast with two narrow straps of gold
embroidery. Under this is seen a bright crimson robe falling in tight,
formal plaits from the neck. The sleeve of the right arm shows a gold
embroidered band at the wrist. On the right shoulder of the mantle is
embroidered a golden star (reminiscent of the Sienese decoration),
from which the picture takes the name of _Madonna della Stella_.
The head-dress, which permits a little of the blonde hair to be seen,
is of a soft, white muslin, which is delicately folded and carried
around the base of the long, slender neck. Above the head-dress is a
very large golden _nimbus_ with lines radiating from the centre.
The Holy Child is firmly supported by both arms of the Virgin and rests
His left foot on her right arm, while His right leg hangs down behind
her wrist. The Holy Child is swathed in a drapery of purple hue and
His head is also encircled by a golden halo. With His left hand He
grasps the folds of His mother’s head-dress, where it falls upon her
neck, and with His right He supports His chin in a very mature and
contemplative way. The background is composed of a loosely hanging gold
brocade of decorative pattern. The extravagant use of gold produces a
warm and lustrous gleam and glow and the deep colors stand out from the
background with great richness and beauty.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Carl W. Hamilton_
MADONNA DELLA STELLA
--_Fra Filippo Lippi_]
It is generally accepted that Lucrezia Buti, the young nun whom Fra
Filippo Lippi stole from the Convent of Santa Margherita, served as the
model for this Madonna and that the Infant Jesus is none other than
Fra Filippino Lippi, the future painter. Comparison with the _tondo_
in the Pitti Palace, representing the _Madonna with Saints_, in which
Lucrezia Buti is known to appear, shows the same oval face, slender
neck, expressive eyes, dilated nostrils, full lips, slightly dimpled
chin, and wistful glance.
Fra Filippo Lippi is one of the strangest personalities in the history
of art. He became a Carmelite monk from circumstance rather than
choice; and nobody was ever less fitted to belong to Holy Orders than
this gay, adventure-loving Florentine. “Lippi was very fond of good
company,” Vasari notes, “and led a free and joyous life.” Fra Filippo
Lippi presents a strange contrast to the saintly Fra Angelico, who was
his contemporary and fellow-worker. Filippo Lippi, son of a butcher,
was born in or about 1406, in a street behind the Carmine Church in
Florence; and, being left an orphan, was cared for by an aunt, who took
him at the age of eight to the Convent of Sta. Maria del Carmine and
gave him to the Friars to rear. The Friars soon discovered the boy’s
extraordinary talent for drawing, and, fortunately, encouraged it,
sending him to study under Lorenzo Monaco.
At this time Masaccio was at work in the Brancacci Chapel of the
Carmine Church, and young Lippi used to watch him with profound
interest and delight. In 1421 Filippo Lippi became a Carmelite monk;
but he was permitted to continue his painting and he executed many
frescoes for church and cloister. In ten years’ time he left the
monastery to give his whole life to his art. However, he always signed
his pictures “_Frater Philippus_.” Though not a copyist, by any means,
Fra Filippo Lippi shows in his works how much he admired and how
much he learned from Masaccio, Masolino, Domenico Veneziano, and Fra
Angelico.
Adventures of many kinds filled his life; for instance, there is a
story that he was captured by Moorish pirates one day while sailing for
pleasure, and taken to Barbary as a slave and that because he drew his
master’s portrait so cleverly, he was given his freedom a year or so
later. This--if it happened at all--happened in 1431–1434. About the
last-named date Fra Filippo Lippi was employed by Cosimo de’ Medici,
who took a great fancy to the lively Friar and was most indulgent to
his pranks and misdemeanors, excusing everything he did because of his
genius and his attractive personality. Fra Filippo Lippi decorated many
churches, palaces, and villas for his patron. Among the first works
that Lippi painted for the Medici Palace (now the Riccardi) were the
_Annunciation_ and _St. John the Baptist with Six Other Saints_ (both
in the National Gallery, London). Lippi’s most important picture in
Florence is his _Coronation of the Virgin_.
“Lippi’s character, however, only affects his credit as a painter by
accounting for the kind of success he achieved. He had, as was to be
expected, no ears for the message which Donatello was at this time
teaching, and consequently his pictures on religious subjects have an
exceedingly mundane character. Nevertheless, the sweet seriousness
of his Madonnas falls in no way short of those of Fra Angelico, and
the faces of his children are full of a quaint, mischievous character
which is delightful, while in both drawing and coloring he shows the
immense advance which had now taken place in Painting. And it is here
that Lippi’s true claim to fame lies. Masaccio, the only man who up
to that time had found out the true methods of the art of Painting,
had died too soon to be able to make known his discovery, except to
the few who could visit Florence and the Brancacci Chapel. It was
left for Lippi, the rough boy whom he had taught, to show the world
Masaccio’s discovery. And Lippi did so. Vasari says: ‘Taught as he had
been by Masaccio, he was a faithful follower of Masaccio’s style;’ and
he adds that he followed the latter’s methods so faithfully, that it
appeared that the spirit of Masaccio had entered Lippi’s body. Thus
what Masaccio had done for the art of Painting is chiefly to be seen
by a comparison of Lippi’s pictures with those of Masaccio’s immediate
predecessors, the Giotteschi. Lippi’s principal picture in Florence is
his _Coronation of the Virgin_ painted for Cosimo and now in the
Accademia delle Belle Arti; but his best work is considered to be his
frescoes in the Cathedral at Prato painted between 1456 and 1465.
“It was not an easy thing to get any work out of Lippi. There is an
amusing story of how, when he was painting this picture for Cosimo,
the latter being at last in despair (owing to Lippi’s lazy ways) of
ever seeing the picture finished, had him locked up in the room in the
Medici Palace where it was being painted, declaring that he should not
be let out until the work was done. Whereupon Lippi tied his bedclothes
into a rope, let himself down from the window into the street and
disappeared into the slums of Florence, not to be found again for many
days.”[6]
Lippi’s drunkenness and his unscrupulous behavior brought him many
times before the magistrates and on one occasion he was flogged for
embezzlement. However, the Medici family always came to the rescue and
helped him out.
In 1452 he was made Chaplain of San Niccolò de Fieri, Florence, and in
1456 Chaplain of Santa Margherita, Prato, and here again it was Cosimo
de’ Medici, who obtained these posts for him. At Prato he painted some
of his finest pictures. Requested by the Abbess of Sta. Margherita to
paint a picture for the Chapel, the gay Friar, who was now over fifty,
fell in love with a young nun of twenty-one, Lucrezia Buti, who had
taken the vows two years previously. At the Festival of the Holy Girdle
in 1456, Fra Filippo Lippi managed to carry off the pretty nun and take
her to his house in the vicinity. The next year Filippino Lippi was
born, who appears in the arms of Lucrezia Buti in the _Madonna della
Stella_ represented here. Two years later Lucrezia Buti re-entered
the Convent; but she soon tired of it and returned to Fra Filippo
Lippi. A charge of abduction was then brought against the painter,
who again appealed to Cosimo de’ Medici; and, through the latter’s
influence, Pope Pius II absolved monk and nun from their religious vows
and declared them lawfully married.
“I laughed heartily when I heard of Fra Filippo’s escapade,” Giovanni
de’ Medici, Cosimo’s younger son, remarked; and that remark shows
exactly how the Medici felt towards Fra Filippo Lippi. They adored him
as an artist and they did not take him seriously as a man.
About 1465 Fra Filippo Lippi left Prato and went to Spoleto, taking
Lucrezia and his two children (there was now a daughter); and there,
still under the patronage of the Medici, the energetic painter-monk
produced a splendid series of frescoes depicting one of his favorite
subjects, the _Coronation of the Virgin_. Fra Filippo was working
on the Duomo at Spoleto when he died in 1469. Fra Filippo Lippi gains
additional fame for having been the first master of Botticelli. His
contemporaries--without dissent--regarded Fra Filippo Lippi as the
“rarest master of the time.” Fra Filippo Lippi was one of the first to
use the _tondo_ form.
“His dreams were all of the earth and his thoughts never soared beyond
the gladness and beauty of the natural world. He paints the merry,
curly-headed boys whom he met in the streets of Florence as cherubs,
takes his mistress as a model for his Madonnas, and peoples the court
of heaven with fair maidens in rich attire and dainty head-gear. A
thorough-going realist at heart, his naturalism differed wholly from
that of his contemporaries, Paolo Uccello, or Andrea del Castagno.
He never troubled his head with scientific problems, or new technical
methods. The old tempera painting was good enough for him and he
carried this form of art to the highest perfection, while at the same
time he profited by all the advance which Masaccio and his followers
had made, and gave a marked impulse to the new realism by the strong
human element which he introduced in his works. His genial delight in
all bright and pleasant things, in the daisies and the springtime,
in rich ornament and glowing color, in splendid architecture and
sunny landscapes, in lovely women and round baby faces, fitted him in
especial manner to be the herald of that fuller and larger life which
was dawning on the men and women of the Renaissance.”[7]
Fra Filippo Lippi’s son, Filippino Lippi (1457–1504), inherited his
father’s talent and was trained by Botticelli. It was Lorenzo de’
Medici, who recommended to the Friars of the Carmine that they should
employ Fra Filippo Lippi’s son to finish Masaccio’s frescoes in the
Brancacci Chapel. Filippino did this to everyone’s satisfaction and
in _The Trial of St. Peter and St. Paul_ he introduced portraits
of Antonio Pollaiuolo, Botticelli, and himself. Filippino achieved an
enormous reputation and was beloved for his modesty and gentleness of
character. As in the case of his father, the next generation of the
Medici continued their patronage to a Lippi.
MADONNA AND CHILD.
_Alesso Baldovinetti
(1425–1499)._
_Collection of
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay._
In the charming picture represented here, on canvas transferred from
panel (29 × 21 inches), which was formerly in the possession of Arnoldo
Corsi in Florence and afterwards in the Collection of Mr. William
Solomon in New York, the Madonna, seen at three-quarter length, is
seated in a chair. She is turned slightly to the left and wears a
red tunic edged with gold and a blue mantle. Over the white veil,
which covers her temples and hides her ears, is folded a golden-brown
head-dress that descends to her shoulders. Her head is encircled by a
gold _nimbus_. She is gazing at the Holy Child in her lap with
downcast eyes and pensive expression. The Holy Child, who is nude,
wears a red coral necklace, from which a “charm” hangs. Around His
head is a very decorative cruciform _nimbus_. In His right hand
He holds a narrow piece of white drapery and He raises His left hand
in a benediction in the Greek manner. The landscape in the background
recedes gently towards a distant range of hills, showing scanty
vegetation beneath a light-blue sky. Bernhard Berenson has pronounced
this a very characteristic work of Baldovinetti’s middle years, painted
before the pictures now in the Uffizi.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Clarence H. Mackay_
MADONNA AND CHILD
--_Alesso Baldovinetti_]
Alesso Baldovinetti, born in Florence in 1425, was a pupil of Domenico
Veneziano and became a member of the Painters Guild in 1448, when he
was twenty-three. His entry-book, a copy of which is preserved in the
Archives of S. Maria Nuova, containing his accounts and orders, begins
with the date 1449. One of his first commissions was to finish some
panels begun by Fra Angelico for a _credenza_ in the Medici Chapel
of the Annunziata (see page 37), and some paintings on the doors of
the vestry of Santa Annunziata (now in the Museum of San Marco),
which also completed a series begun by Fra Angelico. Thenceforward
he painted frescoes and altar-pieces, including an altar-piece
representing the _Annunciation_ for the Chapel of the Medici villa
at Caffagiuolo (now in the Uffizi) and the fresco representing the
_Birth of Christ_ in Santa Annunziata (1460–1462). In 1470–1473 he was
busy on the altar-piece in the San Ambrogio and the _Trinita_ (now in
the Accademia). Of the frescoes of Santa Trinità, on which he worked
until 1497, only a small portion remains. Other unquestionable works
by Baldovinetti are the _Madonna and Saints_ (in the Uffizi) and a few
pictures in private collections.
Baldovinetti also painted a great number of panels for private
altars and he frequently turned from religious subjects to decorate
marriage-chests and other sumptuous furniture. He also worked in
mosaics, made cartoons for stained glass, and produced designs for
_intarsia_,--all of which developed his delightful, decorative
qualities.
Baldovinetti’s entire life seems to have been absorbed in painting. He
married late. After the death of his wife, he entered the hospital
of S. Paolo of the Third Order of St. Francis and bequeathed what
few possessions he had to this house of charity. After his death in
Florence in 1499, a large chest that belonged to him was opened; but
the monks, instead of seeing the hoped-for gold, only found a book
on mosaic-work and some drawings. “No one was really surprised,”
says Vasari, who tells the story, “for Baldovinetti was so kind and
courteous that he shared everything he possessed with his friends.
Alesso was a very diligent artist, who tried to copy minutely every
detail in Mother Nature. He loved painting landscapes exactly as they
are, and you see in his pictures rivers, bridges, rocks, plants,
fruit-trees, roads, fields, towns, castles, and an infinite number of
similar objects. In his _Nativity_ you can count the separate
straws and knots in the thatched roof of the hut and you see the stones
in the ruined house behind, worn away by rain, and the thick root of
ivy growing up the wall is painted with so much accuracy that the green
leaves are differently shaded on either side; and among the shepherds
he introduced a snake crawling in the most natural manner along the
wall.”
PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG LADY.
_Piero Pollaiuolo
(1443–1496)._
_Collection of
Mr. Nils B. Hersloff._
In profile to the right, with features clear-cut and strongly outlined
against a light-green background, appears a young Florentine lady,
whose dress and bearing proclaim her to be a patrician. She has not
been as yet identified; but doubtless she was one of those elegant and
gay Florentines whom we meet with in song and story. We are very safe
to guess that she was a friend of the Medici and Tornabuoni group and
played her part in the brilliant life of the period. Her dress, pink
brocade with a floral pattern, is edged with white around the neck. Her
hair is fancifully plaited with pale blue ribbons and partly covered
with a head-dress of thin white gauze, which falls over the right ear
on to her neck; and her hair is also decorated with a jewel set in
pearls. According to the fashion of the time, her forehead and the nape
of her neck are shaven; for the long line of the neck was considered
of the greatest importance. It was also important to hold the head
properly; and this young lady has certainly acquired the correct and
noble carriage of the head.
An unpublished letter of Berenson exclaims enthusiastically: “This
profile portrait of a _Young Lady_ by Piero Pollaiuolo I believe
to be one of the most delightful of the series of female profiles
which, from Paolo Uccello and Domenico Veneziano down to Botticelli and
Amico di Sandro, glorifies the art of Florence during the Fifteenth
Century. Few of them have survived to our own time. With the exception
of one in the Poldi Collection at Milan, this is the most satisfactory
of them all; for besides representing an extraordinarily attractive
personality of the highest Florentine society of the time (as, indeed
is confirmed by the dress and the jewels), it is a work of art of
exquisite draughtsmanship, subtle modelling, and delicate, pure color.”
The painting in tempera is on a panel, 18 × 13 inches, and came from
several important Collections,--that of the Conte Isolani Bologna;
Baron Lazzaroni, Rome; and the late Mr. William Solomon, New York.
Mr. Berenson notes the fine draughtsmanship in this picture. Unusual
drawing is to be expected from the brothers Pollaiuolo. Benvenuto
Cellini called Antonio “the best draughtsman of his day in Florence”
and tells us that all the goldsmiths worked from his designs; and, as
Antonio trained his youngest brother, Piero, we cannot be surprised
at the simple, direct, and commanding lines and these telling effects
produced by such economical methods.
The real name of the talented brothers was Benci. Their father, Jacopo
d’Antonio Benci, was nicknamed by his friends, Pollaiuolo, because his
father kept a poulterer shop. Jacopo was a goldsmith and was employed
by Lorenzo Ghiberti; and it is said that he made a remarkable quail on
one of the Baptistery Gates.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Nils B. Hersloff_
PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG LADY
--_Piero Pollaiuolo_]
Antonio (1432–1498) was apprenticed to Bartoluccio Ghiberti, a
goldsmith, and soon achieved fame in Florence as a worker in jewelry
and _niello_. Lorenzo Ghiberti called him to work on the Baptistery
“Gates of Paradise” and the Bronze Doors. In 1459 he started to work
independently and became renowned as a painter, sculptor, and master
goldsmith. His _bottega_ near the Ponte Vecchio was the most popular
workshop in Florence; and here he remained until he went to Rome in
1484. Piero Pollaiuolo helped Antonio in his work and was also very
versatile. Engravings, drawings, _niello_, sculpture, and painting,
besides a vast amount of gold-work, silver-work, and bronze-work
prove these men to be as industrious as they were talented. They
also followed Alesso Baldovinetti in trying out new oil glazes and
varnishes. In 1460 the Pollaiuoli painted in the Medici Palace, and
about the same time executed the six life-sized _Virtues_ for the
Tribunal of the Mercatanzia. In 1471 Piero painted a portrait of
_Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan_, who was visiting Florence; and this
portrait, which hung for many years in the Medici Palace, is now in the
Uffizi. Piero’s fresco of _St. Christopher_, painted at San Miniato
outside the gates, is considered by most authorities to be the same
_St. Christopher_ now preserved in the Metropolitan Museum, New York.
Piero also painted a very fine _Annunciation_ (now in the Berlin
Gallery), which has a view of Florence and the Val d’Arno through the
open windows and which is remarkable for its Renaissance architecture;
for the profusion of pearls and other jewels adorning the Virgin’s
chair and the robes of the Angels; and for three Cherubs playing the
lute, viol, and organ.
In 1489 Antonio was called to Rome by Pope Innocent VIII to make the
bronze tomb of Sixtus IV, and a monument for himself in St. Peter’s. He
was joined by Piero. The Pollaiuoli never saw Florence again; for, on
account of the raging Plague, no travellers were allowed to come within
twenty miles of Florence. Piero died in 1496 and Antonio in 1498; and
at the request of the latter he was buried in the same tomb with Piero
in the church of S. Pietro in Vincula.
The Pollaiuoli were closely associated with Botticelli, Leonardo da
Vinci, Ghiberti, and Verrocchio.
GIULIANO DE’ MEDICI.
_Sandro Botticelli
(1444–1510)._
_Collection of
Mr. and Mrs. Otto H. Kahn._
This proud, intellectual, refined, and cold face is painted almost in
profile; but, notwithstanding that we see only a part of the face,
we seem to see it all. Never did painter achieve a more complete
presentation of personality and of character. Moreover, Botticelli has
painted the whole of Florentine Society in this portrait. And with
what amazingly simple means! There is practically no costume,--a black
doublet, giving a glimpse of a red tunic below, and a severe white
linen band doing duty for a collar. Even the background is neutral!
The simplicity of presentation and the economy of line are almost
Japanese in their severity. The skillful handling is almost Oriental,
too. Nothing seems to have been done here for _effect_,--yet what
_effect_ is here! There is almost no color; and the hair, too, which
falls to the neck, is black. If we did not know that Giuliano de’
Medici was a dashing young Florentine of high mettle and full of the
zest of life, we might easily mistake him for a priest.
The picture, painted on wood (21 × 13½ inches), gives us the impression
of a life-size portrait. It was formerly in the Collection of Conte
Procolo Isolani, in Bologna.
Giuliano de’ Medici was one of the most romantic characters in
history; and the tragedy that cut the thread of his life at the age
of twenty-five adds no little to the romantic appeal he makes to us
to-day. Yet even at this age, he had so perfected himself in all the
accomplishments that belonged to a gentleman of the Fifteenth Century
that he stands as the very type of the elegant young man of his period.
Giuliano was, like his brother, Lorenzo, proficient in the arts, a
lover of pictures, music, and poetry; he wrote charming love-songs
and other lyrical verse; he was intellectual and witty and talked
extremely well; and he was a brilliant jouster and a well-trained
all-round athlete and devoted to the chase. For all these things the
Florentines _admired_ him; but they _loved_ him for his character, his
high-mindedness, and his courtesy. He adored his brother; and Lorenzo,
who was far from handsome, had no jealousy for the admiration that his
younger brother inspired. The terrible murder of this public idol at
High Mass in the Cathedral first shocked and then grieved the entire
community. The grief manifested at the great public funeral in the
church of the Medici family, San Lorenzo, was violent and sincere, for
Giuliano de’ Medici was the beloved of both high and low.
In his book, _The Medici_, Col. Young writes:
“Giuliano de’ Medici, the youngest of the five children of Piero il
Gottoso and Lucrezia Tornabuoni, was, unlike his brother Lorenzo,
exceedingly good-looking; he was gifted with considerable abilities,
and for his many endearing qualities was greatly beloved, not only in
his own family but also by the people of Florence. Before his early
death he had already shown on several occasions that he possessed
plenty of political capacity and could give valuable advice to his
brother.
“The relations which existed between these two brothers is one of the
pleasantest things in the history of the Medici. At that epoch jealousy
between brothers placed in such a position as Lorenzo and Giuliano were
was the normal state of things. That it was entirely absent in their
case speaks well for both of them.
“Giuliano was twenty-five at the time of his death. He left an
illegitimate son, born just at that time. Lorenzo took the child and
brought him up with his own sons; and this child became in the next
generation the well-known Giulio de’ Medici, afterwards Clement VIII.”
Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi was born in Florence in 1444, the son of
a prosperous tanner who had four sons, the eldest of whom, Giovanni,
was called “_Bottecello_” from the sign of a barrel which hung
over his shop, and which name was given to all the other members of the
family. Sandro Botticelli, like so many other Florentine painters began
life as a goldsmith. Then he was apprenticed to Fra Filippo Lippi, who
was, of course, able to hand on to him the old Giottesque tradition.
Botticelli next fell under the influence of the Pollaiuoli, with whom
he worked. It was not long, however, before the young painter began to
exhibit his originality.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Otto H. Kahn_
GIULIANO DE’ MEDICI
--_Sandro Botticelli_]
Soon after returning from Prato, where he had gone to help Fra Filippo
Lippi with the frescoes in the Cathedral, he was immediately employed
by Piero il Gottoso, who with his wife, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, recognized
the genius and peculiar charm of the young painter, and took him
into the Casa Medici almost like a son. Botticelli was at this time
about twenty-one, only five years older than Lorenzo, the eldest son.
Consequently, Botticelli was on the most intimate terms with Lorenzo
and Giuliano.
All the pictures of this period except _Fortitude_ were painted
for Piero, who bestowed large rewards on the painter. The _Madonna
of the Magnificat_, one of his most beautiful pictures (now in the
Uffizi) was painted in 1465 (when Lorenzo and Giuliano were about
sixteen and twelve); and it must have been done especially to please
Lucrezia Tornabuoni, for her two sons are represented as Angels
kneeling before the Madonna and holding the inkstand and the book.
Giuliano is the one facing us with the conspicuous lock of hair on his
forehead, while Lorenzo, of darker complexion, is in profile and in
full light.
The _Adoration of the Magi_, painted in 1467 for Sta. Maria Novella
(now in the Uffizi) is also a Medici family group surrounded by their
_protégés_ in art and letters. Cosimo, “_Pater Patriæ_” (then dead), is
kneeling before the Holy Child; Giovanni, brother of Piero il Gottoso
(then dead), stands at the left in a red and black costume; Piero il
Gottoso is kneeling in the centre with back to the spectator; Giuliano,
in a robe of white and gold, is kneeling at the latter’s right and
Lorenzo, aged seventeen, stands at his left, holding a sword. The last
figure, standing on the right, is Botticelli himself. Botticelli’s
portrait of Lucrezia Tornabuoni is in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum,
Berlin.
When Lorenzo, destined to become known as the “Magnificent,” became, on
the death of his father, head of the Medici and ruler of Florence, he
continued the Medici patronage to Botticelli.
“It was a period when the exuberant vitality of the Renaissance was
at its height; and the first nine years of his rule, when he was
from twenty to twenty-nine and his brother, Giuliano, from sixteen
to twenty-five, was a time in Florence of constant festivities of
music, art, and poetry, of joy and laughter and all the bright side of
life. It was the fashion of the day to import into all amusements an
imitation of the Classic times of ancient Greece, and the Florence of
that time appears set before us as a city ‘with youth at the prow and
pleasure at the helm’ and full of all the life, joy, and pleasure of
the old pagan ideal of Greece set in a Fifteenth Century dress. Besides
all his duties in regard to State affairs and labors in the founding
of institutions to advance Learning, not to mention his own literary
work, Lorenzo with his brother led these festivities organizing
pageants and other spectacles of the most costly description (permeated
with classical learning and poetical allusions) for the popular
amusement.”[8]
These entertainments took the form of masques, _tableaux_, and
tournaments. Young Lorenzo, too, gathered at his villa in Fiesole
and even more particularly in that of Careggi the _literati_ of
the day and read classical authors with these scholars, particularly
commemorating once a year the birthday of Plato. In 1469 Lorenzo held
a magnificent tournament for his own glorification and in 1475 an even
more elaborate one in honor of Giuliano in the Piazza Sta. Croce, with
the beautiful Simonetta Cattaneo, who had lately been married at the
age of sixteen, to Marco Vespucci, as the Queen of Beauty. Giuliano,
now just twenty-two, wore a suit of silver armor and Verrocchio
designed his helmet, and Lorenzo’s also.
Botticelli, of course, witnessed this tournament and did for it in
painting what Politian did in his poem, _La Giostra di Giuliano de’
Medici_. The _Primavera_ or _Return of Spring_ (now in the Accademia,
Florence), the _Birth of Venus_ (in the Uffizi) and _Mars and Venus_
(in the National Gallery, London), were all three painted for Lorenzo.
All the elaborate imagery of Politian’s verse is reproduced in
Botticelli’s painting representing the _Birth of Venus_ in allusion to
the Queen of Beauty, Simonetta, of Giuliano’s Tournament. In the second
picture, _Mars and Venus_, Botticelli again follows Politian’s poem.
“And then having devoted one picture to the tournament’s Queen of
Beauty, and one to the victor in its mimic warfare, Botticelli makes
his _third_ picture (the most important of the three) relate to
Lorenzo and his part in all this, gathering up in one view the whole
subject of these pastimes. This Botticelli does with great talent and
in a manner all his own. He takes for his text the celebrated standard
which had been borne in front of Lorenzo at both his and Giuliano’s
tournaments, with its motto of _Le temps revient_, its device of
the bay-tree, which had appeared dead, again putting forth its leaves,
and its allusion to the new era of youth and joy which Lorenzo had
inaugurated, and had likened to the _Return of Spring_ after the
gloomy months of winter. Making the leading thought of his picture the
theme on Lorenzo’s standard, Botticelli paints for him the _Return of
Spring_ (the _Primavera_), perhaps the most widely admired of
all Botticelli’s pictures.
“And so Botticelli depicts for us a scene of light-hearted, youthful
joy, representing the return of spring, and by his great talent
contrives that the entire picture shall speak of Lorenzo and breathe
the very spirit of the poems in which the latter had sung of the joys
of May-time in Tuscany. Shielded from rough winds and scorching sun
by a grove of orange trees, backed by the ever-present laurel (always
representing Lorenzo from the play on the Latin form of his name,
_Laurentinus_), Queen Venus (Simonetta) stands presiding over the
return of spring to Tuscany; the Graces dance before her; from out a
laurel grove at her side the three spring months, March, April and May
(or it may be Zephyr, Fertility and Flora), come bringing flowers of
every hue; Mercury (Giuliano) scatters the clouds of winter; and the
little blind God of Love aims his arrows recklessly around.
“These pictures relating to Giuliano’s tournament could not have been
painted until some time afterwards, as in any case they could not have
been so until Politian’s poem had appeared; and they may have been
executed at any time during Lorenzo’s life. If painted, as is most
probable, subsequently to Giuliano’s death in 1578, they would remind
Lorenzo of a time of bygone joys; and would be all the more prized by
him on that account.”[9]
A few months after Giuliano’s grand tournament the beautiful Simonetta
was lying dead and three years later Giuliano was foully murdered,
victim of the Pazzi conspiracy.
In 1481 Botticelli was sent for by Pope Sixtus to assist Perugino and
Ghirlandaio in painting frescoes in the newly erected Sistine Chapel;
and when this work was completed Botticelli returned to Florence with
an added lustre to his name. It was the fashionable thing for wealthy
owners of villas to have frescoes painted in these country-houses; and
among many orders that Botticelli filled was an important series of
frescoes for Lorenzo Tornabuoni in the villa of the Tornabuoni family
(now Villa Lemmi) at Rifredi representing scenes in reference to the
marriage of Lorenzo Tornabuoni and Giovanna degli Albizzi in 1486 (see
page 68). These frescoes, recently discovered under whitewash, are now
in the Louvre.
The death of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the banishment of the Medici,
and the rule of Savonarola changed Botticelli’s life and his style of
painting. In this third period the painter of nymphs and goddesses
paints his charming and wistful Madonnas with many suggestions of Venus
and Simonetta and the grace and loveliness of the pagan world.
To the last period, when Botticelli had emerged from the Savonarola
influence, the great painter produced _Calumny_ (in the Uffizi) and the
_Nativity_ (in the National Gallery, London); and with these two works
the career of Botticelli ends.
The theory that the _Birth of Venus_, _Mars and Venus_ and the
_Primavera_ were painted for Lorenzo di Pier Francesco has been
thoroughly examined and disproved by Col. G. F. Young in his splendid
history of _The Medici_.
PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN.
_Sandro Botticelli
(1444–1510)._
_Collection of
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay._
Standing behind a balustrade and looking wistfully toward the observer,
this handsome young Florentine appears at half-length with his head
inclined towards the left.
How we should like to penetrate his secret and help him away from the
melancholy mood that has overwhelmed him!
Although we see that he is a dreamer (and most probably a lute-player
as his hands might seem to indicate), something has touched him very
deeply--far too deeply to be classed as a momentary sorrow. We should
also like to know his identity. It is unlikely that it will ever be
revealed. But of one thing we can be well assured,--he is an aristocrat
and a young gentleman of wealth, for he has all the air of _savoir
faire_ and sureness of his position. We might make a guess that he
is one of the Medici family. Could it be Giuliano? Look again at the
_Madonna of the Magnificat_, at Giuliano immediately below the
bending Angel! The resemblance is quite surprising and grows stronger
as we study the two faces, only in the _Madonna of the Magnificat_
Giuliano is younger and is seen with the characteristic lock on his
forehead.
His costume in this portrait shows up well from the black background:
the coat is purplish brown edged with fur with white puffs at the
shoulders; and a red cap contrasts well with his light-yellow hair.
This picture, a tempera painting on panel (15¾ × 11¾), was long in the
Collection of Baron Arthur de Schickler in Martinvast, Normandy, where
it was attributed to Masaccio.
“There can be no question,” Berenson thinks, “that this portrait is
Botticelli’s own handiwork. The glamor it cast when I first saw it
frightened me into doubts that were dispelled directly I could study
the painting at my leisure. There is no one, using this formula and
technique, but Sandro himself who has the sinuous line, the inevitable
contours, the structural articulation, the firmness, convincingness,
and delicacy of modelling this work possesses; nobody else who could
produce a rhythm so subtly vibrant, or could give this limpid, radiant,
and ethereal coloring.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Clarence H. Mackay_
PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN
--_Sandro Botticelli_]
“True, it is more Botticellian than any other Botticelli in existence.
He must have uttered this completest note of his own music just
before he was seized by the Savonarolian madness, from which he
never recovered, just at the moment when he was most peculiarly and
poignantly, and, if I may say so, most extravagantly, himself. The
isolation of this head, too, exaggerates the impression. Perhaps if
we found it as an Angel in a _Magnificat_, or a _Madonna with the
Pomegranate_, in a _Tobias_ or some Allegory, the other figures,
the landscape and all the accessories would prevent our attention
from concentrating on what is almost uncannily characteristic of the
master’s style.”
Berenson also notes the important hand, which, by the way, is
especially lighted as if to draw our attention to it most particularly.
“Perhaps the most interesting thing about this portrait,” he observes,
“is the manifest competition of the hand with the face. The hand is
studied just as carefully, drawn, and modelled with as much intention,
as the face itself. Its action reveals the automatic nervous tension
of an overstrung physique that the conscious mind, controlling the
expression, tries to keep in order. It thus becomes, in a sense, the
most important clue to understanding the character. If you think
it away, the expression, of course, remains, but what makes it
comprehensible disappears.”
It is this peculiar intelligence and sensitiveness of the hand that
makes me suspect the musician.
MADONNA AND CHILD.
_Sandro Botticelli
(1444–1510)._
_Collection of
Mr. Max Epstein._
This picture is the latest Botticelli to have been brought to
this country for it arrived only in May, 1928. It was painted in
Botticelli’s early period, about 1470 or 1472. The Holy Child
is handsome, although robust, and His embrace of the Madonna is
touchingly affectionate and human. In this picture the Madonna would
seem to have had a vision of the coming tragedy and she is not yet
resigned. She loves her Child too well. That her eyes are full of tears
we can feel in those heavily drooping lids. Her face is full of pain.
But even in her suffering and quiet anguish this Madonna is beautiful
and graceful; and we cannot fail to see in her face some little
resemblance to Botticelli’s Venus in the _Primavera_ and Venus
in her scallop-shell borne over the waves in the early morning in the
_Birth of Venus_.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Max Epstein_
MADONNA AND CHILD
--_Sandro Botticelli_]
In this picture the Holy Child seems to have little or no consciousness
of His Divinity. The Mother here is the enlightened one.
The picture is tempera on panel (35¾ × 23¼ inches) and came into
possession of M. Féral in Paris in 1907. It has been accepted by Bode
and Jashiro as a genuine and an early Botticelli.
The Madonna’s robe is deep blue with a lining of dull green, which
shows at the left wrist and slightly down the front and on the left
shoulder a star is embroidered. She wears a closely folded diaphanous
veil and a red scarf, one end of which is gracefully thrown around the
Holy Child. The sleeve of the dress has a band of golden embroidery at
the wrist.
The cruciform _nimbus_ of the Holy Child foretells His destiny. The
_nimbus_ of the Virgin is plain. The Angel wears a tunic of deep cream
white ornamented with gold on the sleeves and a black band ornamented
with gold at the throat. On the parapet stands a vase apparently of
alabaster containing myrtle leaves and white star-shaped flowers,
probably jasmine (see page 25). Through the open arch we see a gentle
landscape, with a river winding around distant hills.
GIOVANNA TORNABUONI.
_Domenico Ghirlandaio
(1449–1494)._
_Collection of
Mr. J. P. Morgan._
With this picture, which is considered “one of the finest Italian
portraits in existence,” we step back into the period of the
Renaissance and into the very presence of one of the most gifted and
celebrated of the younger women of the Fifteenth Century.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. J. P. Morgan_
GIOVANNA TORNABUONI
--_Domenico Ghirlandaio_]
“Art coulds’t thou but portray character and the mind, then there would
be no picture in the whole world more beautiful than this.”
Such is the translation of the legend inscribed in capital letters on
the cartel:
“_Ars ultinam mores animumque effingere posses
Pulchrior in terris nulla tabella foret_”
with the date MCCCCLXXXVIII.
The charms of Giovanna degli Albizzi, who was married to Lorenzo
Tornabuoni in 1486, were sung by all the poets of Florence. Giovanna
came of the noted Albizzi family, famous for wealth and rank and for
leading the party of Nobles (_Grandi_) against the Medici, whom
they considered upstarts and enemies of the aristocratic faction
in Florence. By a former marriage, however, the Albizzi had become
connected with the Medici, for the wife of Piero de’ Medici (il
Gottoso) was Lucrezia Tornabuoni, one of the most accomplished women
of the age and whose portrait by Botticelli hangs to-day in the Kaiser
Friedrich Museum in Berlin. Giovanna’s husband, Lorenzo Tornabuoni
(Lucrezia Tornabuoni’s nephew), was, therefore, the first cousin of
Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici.
Subsequent to the ownership by the Tornabuoni and Pandolfini families,
the portrait represented here passed to a private Collection in Paris
and thence to the late Mr. Henry Willett of Brighton, England; to the
famous Collection of Mr. Rodolphe Kann of Paris and, finally, to that
of Mr. J. P. Morgan.
The picture is painted on a wooden panel (29¾ × 19½ inches).
Standing in profile to the left and against an architectural
background, the lady appears at half-length. She wears a rich dress of
gold brocade of a handsome and decorative pattern with square neck, the
sleeves of a different material, dark-red in color and having yellow
diamond-shaped compartments bearing a floral design in the centre. A
handsome pendant, consisting of a ruby with three pearls, hangs from
a fine black silk cord around her neck. Her hair falls in light, wavy
tresses over her temples and covers her ears. In the recess at the back
is placed a cluster of precious stones. On the right is a _Book of
Hours_, and above is looped a necklace of coral beads. All of these
things undoubtedly have some particular and sentimental association
for Giovanna. Giovanna died the same year this portrait was painted; in
this year her father-in-law, Giovanni Tornabuoni, also uncle of Lorenzo
de’ Medici, commissioned Ghirlandaio to decorate the walls of the
choir of Sta. Maria Novella with the _Lives of John the Baptist and
the Virgin_; and here again the portrait of Giovanna degli Albizzi
appears. Let us turn to Mrs. Cartwright for a description of this
remarkable series of frescoes:
“These twenty-one subjects have been much injured by damp and
restoration and the hand of inferior assistants is plainly seen in
many of the best preserved portions. But as a splendid illustration
of Florentine life the whole series is of rare interest. On the one
hand we have the public and official life of the Tornabuoni, their
stately banquets and processions; on the other, we catch a glimpse of
their private and domestic history. In the guests seated at _Herod’s
Feast_, in the crowds who throng the temple court, we recognize
the Tornabuoni and their kinsmen, the partners of the Medici bank,
Gianfrancesco Ridolfi, Roderigo Sassetti, and Andrea de’ Medici. On one
side we have a group of famous humanists--Angelo Poliziano, Marsilio
Ficino, Cristoforo Landino, and Lorenzo’s tutor, Gentile de’ Becchi;
on the other, we see the painter with his aged father and his brother,
David, and brother-in-law, Sebastiano Mainardi, the assistants who
helped in the decoration of the choir. Giovanna degli Albizzi, the
fair maiden who on the 16th of June, 1486, became the bride of Lorenzo
Tornabuoni, is here in her stiff brocades and rich jewels with her
young sister-in-law, Lodovica, and many noble dames on their way to
visit the mother and new-born babe. These frescoes, which were finally
completed in 1490, filled the Tornabuoni family with delight and
wonder, and Ghirlandaio was next employed to paint the chapel of their
_villa_ near Fiesole, which was unfortunately destroyed by floods
in the next century.”
As in the case of so many Italian painters, the name by which
Ghirlandaio is known is only a nickname: it means “Garland-maker,”
and was given to him because his first reputation was derived from
the beautiful gold and silver garlands and wreaths he made for the
wealthy ladies of fashion. Ghirlandaio, son of Tommaso Bigordi, a silk
merchant of Florence, was born in that city in 1449. He began his life
as apprentice to a goldsmith--as so many superlative painters have
done--and early showed talent for drawing and sketching. Before long he
left the goldsmith and entered the studio of Alesso Baldovinetti (see
page 48); and he undoubtedly owed much to this painter in his fondness
for decorative effects. Ghirlandaio was tremendously industrious and
always worked with the best artists of his time. At San Gimigniano
in 1475 he worked with Pier Francesco Fiorentino and he assisted
Botticelli in the Sistine Chapel in 1481. His own independent work was
stupendous. Ghirlandaio devoted himself almost exclusively to sacred
subjects and his frescoes are practically scenes of the Florentine
world he knew so well. Whether he painted scenes from the life of St.
Francis, or of the Virgin, or Herod, or St. Zenobius, the characters
represented are members of the Medici, the Tornabuoni, the Sassetti,
the Albizzi, and other important Florentine families. In fact, his
attention to details and the careful way he rendered them, show that he
had some knowledge of contemporary Flemish paintings; and consequently
Ghirlandaio is regarded as chief of the Florentine realists. However,
Ghirlandaio ranked in his day with Botticelli and Filippino Lippi, and
he enjoyed the patronage and friendship of the Medici. Ghirlandaio’s
most important frescoes are those in Sta. Maria Novella representing
_Lives of the Virgin and John the Baptist_, commissioned by Giovanni
Tornabuoni, described above, and those in Santa Trinità depicting the
_Life of St. Francis_, ordered by Francesco Sassetti described on page
72.
Ghirlandaio died in 1494 of the Plague, comparatively young, but having
accomplished a vast amount of work and having trained a number of
painters, the most important of whom was Michelangelo. Ghirlandaio’s
son, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio (1483–1561), became a painter and was an
intimate friend of Raphael.
FRANCESCO SASSETTI AND HIS SON TEODORO.
_Domenico Ghirlandaio
(1449–1494)._
_Collection of
Mr. Jules S. Bache._
Francesco Sassetti, a wealthy banker and Lorenzo de’ Medici’s agent at
Lyons, is shown here slightly under life-size, wearing a purple skull
cap and a red robe lined with fur and held at the waist by a black
cord, from which hangs a pouch, or purse. His right hand rests upon
the arm of the chair in which he is seated. His eyes look downward
upon his son, who stands at his left, in profile, gazing upward into
his father’s face. His hands are clasped and he is wearing a costume
of silvery grey brocade trimmed with white fur, undersleeves of
dark-green and slashed, and a scarlet cap. Through the window we have
an interesting view of an inlet of the sea (or a large river) with
mountains and buildings. On the top of the window-frame there is an
inscription: “_Franciscos Saxettvs Theodorus QVE_.” The picture
is an oil painting on panel (29½ × 20½ inches) and is supposed to have
been executed in 1487–1489. Francesco Sassetti was born about 1420 and
died in 1491. Teodoro was born on March 11, 1479, and is seen here at
about the age of eight or nine, which fixes the date of the picture.
It is interesting to note that Teodoro Sassetti was the grandfather of
Filippo Sassetti, an early traveller in India (see Marencci, _Lettere
di Filippo Sassetta_, Firenze, 1855).
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Jules S. Bache_
FRANCESCO SASSETTI AND HIS SON TEODORO
--_Domenico Ghirlandaio_]
This picture comes from the Benson Collection and was formerly owned
by Mr. William Graham. Francesco Sassetti also appears in the frescoes
depicting the _Life of St. Francis_, which Ghirlandaio painted in
the Sassetti Chapel in the Trinità in Florence. Ghirlandaio introduced
into this series other members of the Sassetti family, as well as many
of his illustrious contemporaries and friends, including Lorenzo de’
Medici, Pope Honorius, Maso degli Albizzi, Palla Strozzi, and Angelo
Acciaiuoli. In the fifth fresco, where St. Francis is bringing a
dead child to life, Ghirlandaio has painted his own portrait. He is
conspicuous in a red cap and resting his hand upon his hip.
_THE UMBRIAN SCHOOL_
The Umbrian School occupied the relative place in the Early Renaissance
that the Sienese School held in the Middle Ages. At first, Umbrian
painting was the offspring of Siena, but it fell under and developed
under the influence of Florence. Florentine artists came to Umbria and
Umbrian artists went to Florence, and gradually the Umbrian School,
which had certain qualities of its own, developed and reached full
flower in the beloved of all the world,--Raphael.
The word Umbrian is used rather loosely by critics to include many
Tuscan painters who have to be gathered into this group, which dates
from the end of the Fourteenth and beginning of the Fifteenth Century.
One particular quality of the Umbrians was their essentially deep
religious feeling.
“Whereas the devotion of Sienese art had been hieratic, aristocratic,
and akin to the ideals of Mediæval Byzantium, that of Umbria became
ecstatically human. The Renaissance trend towards bringing to earth
the regal Christian gods of the Middle Ages was nowhere so strong
as in Umbria; and it is not an exaggeration to say that we owe to
the Umbrians our modern visual images of the Eternal, the Madonna,
and the other important members of the Christian Pantheon. The
piety and humility of the figures was deepened and dignified by
a specially emphasized space-composition, both architectural and
landscape. Landscape backgrounds were given unusual importance and
delicate beauty. The Umbrian School thus became the most charming,
the tenderest, and the most intimately human of Renaissance
Italy.”--_Mediæval and Renaissance Paintings_ (Fogg Art Museum,
Cambridge, 1927).
The first great Umbrian painter was Gentile da Fabriano (1370?–1427),
pupil of an earlier Umbrian painter, Allegretto Nuzi (active from 1346
to 1373), in turn a pupil of the Florentine Bernardo Daddi.
The next important Umbrian was Piero della Francesca or Pier dei
Franceschi (1416?–1492), pupil of Domenico Veneziano of Florence,
important in his own work and important as a master, forming Luca
Signorelli, who in turn influenced Michelangelo. Piero della Francesca
was also influenced by the Florentine, Paolo Uccello, whose scientific
leanings towards perspective he shared. As a colorist, as a painter
of light and atmosphere, and as a master of composition, Piero della
Francesca ranks with the greatest Italian masters of the Early
Renaissance.
By this time Perugia had become the most important centre of painting
in Umbria. Among its conspicuous artists was Benedetto Bonfigli
(1425–1496); Fiorenzo di Lorenzo (1440–1521), the supposed master
of Perugino and Pintoricchio; Perugino, whose real name was Pietro
Vannucci (1446–1523); Bernard Pintoricchio “the little painter”
(1454–1513), whose real name was Bernard di Betto, or Biagio; and the
great Raphael (1483–1520), son of the painter Giovanni Santi of Urbino;
and with this painter of the world’s favorite Madonnas the Umbrian
School practically ends.
MADONNA AND CHILD.
_Gentile da Fabriano
(1370–1427)._
_Collection of
Mr. Henry Goldman._
No little suggestion of the Giotto Madonna (shown on page 27), appears
in the _Madonna and Child_ by Gentile da Fabriano, which, according
to Colosanti, was painted in the best period of the artist, shortly
before he produced the _Adoration of the Kings_, now in the Uffizi.
In comparing it with the Giotto _Madonna_, we see that the arch has
become slightly more pointed than the one in the Giotto picture
and we find also a gold background; but in the Fabriano painting a
_graffito_ design of two winged Angels with flowing robes on either
side is slightly visible. As in the Giotto picture the two _nimbi_
are different; the Virgin’s _nimbus_ having an Arabic inscription
and the _nimbus_ of the Holy Child having a Gothic foliage. The
Virgin is seated on a _cassone_, or chest (a not unusual but hardly
very comfortable seat in the Fourteenth Century), covered with a
dark-brown cloth with floral figure behind which a tiled floor is
seen. The Virgin wears a long tunic of claret-colored damask with gold
border, on which appears the motto “_Ave Maria Plena Dom---- Tecu----
Ben_.” On the border around the neck the word “_Mater_” appears. The
mantle is slit at the sides through which the arm protrudes in a long
sleeve of rich gold brocade with the pomegranate pattern. A scarf of
thin yellow woollen material, decorated with red and blue flowers
and red fringe, is worn around her head and neck. The Holy Child
has on a little dress, very neatly made and fitting very snugly, of
dark-blue trimmed with a border of red and gold. He is standing with
His left foot on His mother’s knee and is stepping forward with the
other. He has raised His right hand as if to emphasize the words He is
speaking and to which His mother is listening with rapt admiration.
This movement of the Child takes something away from the solemnity of
the picture and the Virgin’s maternal pride shows her to be more of
this earth than the Giotto _Madonna_ whose calm, impassive yet tender
beauty, proclaims her to belong to a higher sphere than does the
Fabriano.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Henry Goldman_
MADONNA AND CHILD
--_Gentile da Fabriano_]
The picture, tempera on panel (38 × 22½ inches), belonged to the
Alexander Baker Collection, London, and to the Collection of Madame E.
J. Sartoris, Paris.
Gentile da Fabriano’s full name was Gentile di Nicola di Giovanni
di Masso and he was born at Fabriano about 1370. He was a pupil of
Allegretto Nuzi and possibly of Ottaviano Nelli. Vasari says, too, that
he studied under Fra Angelico. He worked in Fabriano, Brescia, and
Venice; and in 1422 he became a member of the Guild in Florence. Later
he painted in Orvieto, Siena, and Rome, where Pope Martin V called
him to paint in San Giovanni Laterano. Subsequently Gentile painted
in Venice, Florence and other places, learning all that was new from
other painters he met and everywhere attracting followers; but never
forgetting his early Sienese inheritance in his love for beauty and for
decoration.
Gentile da Fabriano became so much of a traveller and cosmopolitan
that he has to be classed as an “Internationalist” as well as a
Sienese painter. Gentile had a marvellous talent for presenting
brilliant and beautiful pictures of the courtly life he saw around
him and which was fast passing away for the styles and fashions of the
approaching Renaissance. His _Adoration of the Magi_, now in the
Accademia delle Belle Arti, Florence, is a gorgeous representation of
a procession such as the painter had doubtless many times witnessed.
It is while thinking of this brilliant _Adoration of the Magi_
that Berenson exclaims: “Fair knights and lovely ladies, spurs of gold,
jewelled brocade, crimson damasks, gorgeous trains on regal steeds ride
under golden skies wherein bright suns flatter charmed mountain tops.
All the faces are aglow with blitheness. Why are they so happy? Have
they waked from nightmare hauntings of Purgatory and Hell? So it would
seem; and they rejoice in the blood tickling their veins, in the cool
breezes, in the smell of flowers. And what a love of flowers! Gentile
fills with them even the nooks and crannies of the woodwork enframing
his gorgeous Epiphany.”
Gentile died in 1427,--the one great Umbrian of the Middle Ages.
Michelangelo remarked of Gentile that his name was in perfect harmony
with the tone of his works.
MADONNA AND CHILD WITH ANGELS.
_Benedetto Bonfigli
(1425–1496)._
_Collection of
Mr. and Mrs. Otto H. Kahn._
We have here a very unusual background, reminding us of the Arabian
desert,--tall, barren rocks; and against these the Virgin is seated.
Her costume is very lovely, consisting of a red tunic cut square
across the neck and finished with a broad band of gold embroidery,
and a blue mantle lined with yellow. Over her blonde hair, which is
arranged in the style favored by Italian ladies of fashion, waved and
parted and falling down at the sides of the cheeks, a white veil is
folded in intricate plaits and made to ripple gracefully down over the
shoulders. Above this complicated head-dress is a golden _nimbus_.
The Holy Child, resting on her lap, steadied by the Virgin’s hand
and additionally supported by the graceful hand of the little Angel,
is partly swathed in muslin. One of His little hands rests on His
mother’s veil and the other reaches for a pomegranate,[10] which she
is holding. The dress of the Angel is red bordered with ermine and the
bottom of the tunic is edged with a deep gold band of Cufic lettering.
The _nimbi_ are tooled in gold and that of the Holy Child is
cruciform. The strong wings of the Angels soar up boldly above their
heads and make a perfect balance to the rocks behind the Virgin.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Otto H. Kahn_
MADONNA AND CHILD WITH ANGELS
--_Benedetto Bonfigli_]
The picture is tempera on wood (31½ × 21 inches).
Bonfigli is regarded as the founder of the School of Perugia which
became so famous through Perugino, who perpetuates the name of the town.
Little is known of Benedetto Bonfigli, who was born about 1425, in
Perugia, and was buried there in the Church of St. Domenico in 1496.
Bonfigli shows in his work the influences of Piero della Francesca,
Fra Angelico, Camillo Boccatis, and Benozzo Gozzoli. Bonfigli was in
Rome in 1453 working for Pope Nicholas V, and in the following year he
was back in Perugia painting a series of frescoes for the Capella dei
Priori in the Palazzo del Consiglio depicting _St. Louis of Toulouse
and St. Ercolano_, which were unfinished at the time of his death.
Bonfigli painted processional banners and small pictures as well as
frescoes. Many of Bonfigli’s works are now in the Gallery at Perugia.
“As an artist Bonfigli scarcely ranks as high as Niccolò da Foligno,
his fellow-pupil under Benozzo Gozzoli. He was a much more dependent
person, but being more imitative, with the models of Fra Angelico or
Benozzo before him, he at times painted exquisite things and by nature
he was gifted with that sense of the charming wherewith Perugia was
later to take the world captive. Some of the freshest and loveliest of
all angel faces may be seen in Bonfigli’s altar-pieces and standards.
His color has almost always that tint of gold which never fades from
Umbrian art.”[11]
MADONNA AND CHILD.
_Perugino
(1446–1523)._
_Collection of
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay._
In red robe and blue mantle the Virgin appears seated three quarters
to the left and supporting the Holy Child on her left knee with both
hands. Her head is slightly inclined and the hair, parted above her
forehead, is brushed plainly down either side and looped up rather
curiously at the back and tied there by a narrow veil. The Holy Child
looks away towards the left. Behind the figures is seen one of those
delightful Umbrian landscapes made so famous by Perugino and Raphael.
This picture, an oil painting on panel (27¾ × 19½ inches), has an
interesting pedigree. From the family of the Marquis of Villafranca it
came into possession of the Marquis de la Romana from the Palace of
Anglona, Madrid, and then belonged to the Collection of the Marquis de
Villamajor, Madrid. The wife of the latter says:
“This painting of the _Madonna and Child_ by Perugino has been
for many generations in my husband’s family. It comes from the family
of the Marquises de Villafranca who lived in Italy in the Sixteenth
Century and of which several members were Viceroys of Naples (Alvarez
de Toledo). The Marquis of Romana, having acquired the Palace of the
Prince d’Anglona in Madrid, assembled all the pictures and works of art
inherited from his ancestors which were in the Palaces of Valencia,
Palma de Mallorque, and in Italy, thus forming a fine and important
Collection in which were paintings by Goya, Cameron, Ribera, Velasquez,
and many paintings of the Italian, Flemish, and French Schools. On the
death of the Marquis de la Romana, his son, the Marquis de Villamajor,
received a part of this Collection (which was divided between him and
his brothers), and this Perugino comes from the Marquis de Villamajor’s
heritage.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Clarence H. Mackay_
MADONNA AND CHILD
--_Perugino_]
Perugino was born at Città della Pieve, near Perugia, about 1446, and
died (probably of the Plague), at Castello di Fontignano, also near
Perugia, in 1523. His real name was Pietro Vannucci and he was also
called Pier della Pieve; but he is known always and everywhere as
Perugino from Perugia, where he spent his early life and learned his
art. It is uncertain under whom he studied before he went to Florence,
but he certainly assisted Piero della Francesca at Arezzo. At Florence,
he worked in Verrocchio’s studio, having Leonardo da Vinci and Lorenzo
di Credi for fellow-students. Then in 1475 he was commissioned to
paint in the Palazzo Pubblico, Perugia. In 1481–1482 he was working
in Rome in the Sistine Chapel with Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Cosimo
Rosselli, and Signorelli. Of his four frescoes here only one remains,
_Delivery of the Keys to St. Peter_; the other three were destroyed to
make room for Michelangelo’s _Last Judgment_. Perugino also painted
in the Vatican and remained about ten years in Rome. Then he returned
to Florence and had a studio there and also in Perugia. Besides, he
travelled about a great deal to execute commissions in various cities.
In 1490, for instance, he was in Rome again painting for Cardinal
della Rovere an altar-piece now in the Villa Albani; in 1494 he was in
Venice and Cremona; and in 1496 in Pavia, working for “Il Moro,” Duke
of Milan. The three principal pictures of the beautiful altar-piece
that Perugino painted for the Certosa, or Carthusian Convent near
Pavia--_The Virgin adoring the Infant Christ_; _Tobias and the Angel
Raphael_; and the _Archangel Michael_--are now in the National Gallery,
London.
In 1495 Perugino was again working in Perugia; and it was then that
Raphael, a boy of about twelve, became his pupil. At this time Perugino
was the most celebrated of all the Umbrian painters. His best work
was accomplished between 1490 and 1505. To this period belongs _The
Marriage of the Virgin_, now in the Museum of Caen, Normandy, a picture
that Raphael very closely followed, but eclipsed in beauty, in his
_Sposalizio_, now in the Brera, Milan.
About 1590 Perugino painted his famous frescoes in the Sala di Cambio,
Perugia, in which he introduced his own portrait; and in 1505 he
painted The _Triumph of Chastity_ for the Marchese Isabella of Mantua,
which is now in the Louvre.
After another visit to Rome he worked principally in churches in the
neighborhood of Perugia, the last of which is supposed to be _The
Nativity_, painted for the Church of Fontignano (where he died), and
which is now in the South Kensington Museum.
Perugino was one of the earliest of the Italians who mastered the use
of oil, then a new medium. In his constant moving around and visiting
so many important cities, Perugino had every opportunity of seeing what
the other artists of his day were doing. However, although he worked
with the latest materials, Perugino remained faithful to the style
of art known as the Quattrocento, which before his death was being
rapidly superseded by the Cinquecento, of which Leonardo da Vinci and
Michelangelo were the chief exponents. Like Piero della Francesca he
also advanced the science of perspective. For a time Perugino adopted
the Florentine style, especially with regard to composition; but
eventually he developed his own manner of grace, softness, delicacy,
tenderness of color, great expression in faces and figures, and his
unusually charming landscapes.
Berenson speaks particularly of Perugino’s “space composition:”[12]
and in this art “Perugino surpassed all who ever came before him, and
indeed all who came after him, excepting, however, his own pupil,
Raphael, by whom even he was left far behind. Perugino had a feeling
for beauty in women, charm in young men, and dignity in the old, seldom
surpassed before or since. Then there is a well-ordered seemliness, a
sanctuary aloofness in all his people which makes them things apart,
untouched, and pure. Great reserve also does much for him. Violent
action he doubtless avoided because he felt himself unequal to the
task--indeed, so little did he ever master movement that his figures
when walking dance on tiptoe and on their feet they never stand; but
he as carefully kept away from unseemly expression of emotion. How
refreshingly quiet are his _Crucifixions_ and _Entombments_! The still
air is soundless and the people wail no more; a sigh inaudible, a look
of yearning, and that is all. How soothing must such paintings have
been after the din and turmoil and slaughter of Perugia, the bloodiest
town in Italy! Can it be wondered that men, women, and children ran to
see them? Nor yet is life so free from sordid cares and meaningless
broils that we can forego such balm for the soul as Perugino brings.”
THE NICCOLINI MADONNA.
_Raphael
(1483–1520)._
_Collection of
Sir Joseph Duveen, Bart._
This picture came directly from the Niccolini Palace where it was
purchased in 1780 by George Nassau, third Earl Cowper, who was at that
time His Majesty’s Ambassador to the Court of Tuscany; and it was so
prized that in order to get the picture out of Florence without any
disturbance it had to be hidden in the lining of the Ambassador’s
carriage. Another name for the picture is _The Cowper Madonna of
1508_. The picture now comes from the Collection of Lady Desborough,
of Panshanger, Hertfordshire, who inherited it from her brother,
Francis Thomas, seventh Earl Cowper.
The painting, an oil on panel (30½ × 22 inches), represents the Madonna
seated in the open air in a dark, rose-red robe with long close-fitting
undersleeves of yellow-green, ultramarine-blue mantle, and diaphanous
veil. Around the neck of the dress and the hem of the mantle what
appears to be a decorative band of golden embroidery is really the
signature of the painter “M(D or CCCC)VIII. R. U. Pin,” meaning 1508
Raphael of Urbino Pinxit. And, by the way, is it not possible that
Sir Joshua Reynolds got the idea from this picture of painting his
name on the robe of _Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse_? It will be
remembered that Mrs. Siddons sat for that magnificent portrait in
1784. The _Niccolini Madonna_ was bought by Earl Cowper in 1780 and,
undoubtedly, Sir Joshua was very familiar with it. Moreover, at this
date, Raphael’s masterpiece was also very fresh in the mind of the
English picture-world.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Sir Joseph Duveen, Bart._
THE NICCOLINI MADONNA
--_Raphael_]
The Holy Child is seated on a white cushion in the Virgin’s lap
gently supported by her hand, which also lightly holds an end of her
floating veil. The suggestion of a light breeze rippling the veil is an
exquisite thought. The _nimbi_ of both Mother and Child are very
delicate. The background consists of a blue sky.
It is very interesting to compare this picture with the other _Cowper
Madonna_ and on doing so we find that the same model was used for the
Child, although the women are different. The hand of the _Small Cowper
Madonna_ is noticeably more refined than the hand in the _Niccolini
Madonna_, yet, on the whole, the model used for the _Niccolini Madonna_
seems to be of a slightly higher social status. In the latter, we find
the plucked eyebrows and forehead which Raphael’s taste has softened by
the hair, lightly blown about, like the veil, by the breeze.
The _Niccolini Madonna_ was one of the last pictures painted by Raphael
in Florence, as he went to Rome in 1508, the date given on this
painting. It may be noted here that the _Madonna del Granduca_ (which
belonged to the Grand Duke Ferdinand III, who carried it with him
wherever he went), was the first picture Raphael painted in Florence.
The _Madonna del Cardellino_ (of the Goldfinch), in the Uffizi, and
_La Belle Jardinière_ (in the Louvre), also date from the Florentine
period--painted when Raphael was about twenty-five,--which seems almost
incredible.
THE SMALL COWPER MADONNA.
_Raphael
(1483–1520)._
_Collection of
Mr. Joseph E. Widener._
This Madonna was painted in 1505, soon after the _Granduca Madonna_
(now in the Pitti). It was purchased in Florence about 1780 by Lord
Cowper and was one of the ornaments of his Collection at Panshanger.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Joseph E. Widener_
THE SMALL COWPER MADONNA
--_Raphael_]
The Madonna is seated on a stone bench and wears a red dress and a
mantle of blue lined with green. The Holy Child throws His arms
lovingly around His mother’s neck and steadies Himself by planting His
left foot against her right hand. The hair of both mother and Child
are blonde and encircled by a thin golden _nimbus_. The eyes are,
in both subjects, of a warm and deep brown. A lovely Umbrian landscape
carries us many miles away to the left; and nearer the figures on
the right, there appears a building, identified as San Bernardino, a
Franciscan Convent near Urbino.
The picture is painted on wood (23 × 17 inches). The original drawing
is in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
“And now we are face to face with the most famous and beloved name
in modern art--Raphael Sanzio. Raphael was endowed with a visual
imagination, which has never even been rivalled for range, sweep,
and sanity. When it has been surpassed, it has been at single points
and by artists of more concentrated genius. Thus gifted and coming
at a time when form had, for its own sake, been recovered by the
Naturalists and the essential artists, when the visual imagery, of at
least the Italian world, had already suffered along certain lines, the
transformation from the Mediæval into what ever since has been for all
of us the _modern_, when the ideals of the Renaissance were for an
ineffable instant standing complete, Raphael, filtering and rendering
lucid and pure all that had passed through him to make him what he
was, set himself the task of dowering the modern world with the images
that to this day, despite the turbulent rebellion and morose secession
of recent years, embody for the great number of cultivated men their
spiritual ideals and their spiritual aspirations. ‘_Belle comme une
madonne de Raphael_’ is, among the most artistic people in Europe,
still the highest praise that can be given to female beauty. And, in
sooth, where shall one find greater purity, more utter loveliness than
in the _Granduca Madonna_, or a sublimer apparition of woman than
appeared to St. Sixtus?
“When looking at the _Granduca Madonna_, has it ever occurred to
you to note that the whole of her figure was not there? So perfect is
the arrangement that the attention is entirely absorbed by the grouping
of the heads, the balance of the Virgin’s draped arm and the Child’s
body. You are not allowed to ask yourself how the figure ends. And
observe how it holds its own, easily poised, in the panel which is just
large enough to contain it without crowding, without suggesting room
for aught besides.
“But great as is the pleasure in a single group perfectly filling a
mere panel, it is far greater when a group dominates a landscape.
Raphael tried several times to obtain this effect--as in the _Madonna
del Cardellino_, or the _Madonna del Prato_, but he attained to supreme
success once only--in the _Belle Jardinière_. Here you have the full
negation of the _plein-air_ treatment of the figure. The Madonna is
under a domed sky, and she fills it completely, as subtly as in the
_Granduca_ panel, but here it is the whole out-of-doors, the universe,
and a human being _supereminent_ over it. What a scale is suggested!
Surely the spiritual relation between man and his environment is here
given in the only way man--unless he becomes barbarized by decay or
non-humanized by science--will ever feel it. And not what man knows but
what man feels, concerns art. All else is science.”
Raphael Santi--everybody’s Raphael,--best beloved of all painters, was
born in Urbino in 1483, the day unknown. He was the son of Giovanni
Santi, a painter, and was first taught by him. Then it is supposed that
he studied under Evangelista di Pian di Meleto, with whom he painted
an altar-piece and worked afterwards with Evangelista’s partner,
Timoteo Viti. Next we find him assisting Perugino at Perugia and also
Pintoricchio. In 1504 he went to Florence and fell under the influence
of Leonardo da Vinci and Fra Bartolommeo. During his four years in
Florence, Raphael painted a number of important works including the
_Terranuova Madonna_ (Berlin Museum); the _Small Cowper Madonna_ and
the _Niccolini Madonna_ (on page 87 and page 85); the _Madonna del
Cardellino_ (Uffizi); the _Madonna in the Meadow_ (Belvedere, Vienna);
_La Belle Jardinière_ (Louvre); and a number of portraits including
the famous self-portrait (Uffizi). He was but twenty-five! Called to
Rome in 1508 to decorate the Stanze in the Vatican this immense work
occupied him until 1514. In the meantime, he was given the decoration
of the Loggia, but while he made the designs, the actual painting of
“Raphael’s Bible” was done by his pupils. In the pressure of all this
stupendous work he found time to paint _The Triumph of Galatea_ for
Agostino Chigi in the Farnesina Palace, _The Madonna della Seggiola_
(Pitti), the _Portrait of Tommaso Inghirami_ and many portraits. In
1516 he painted _Baldassare Castiglione_ (Louvre); in 1517 the _Madonna
di San Sisto_, for the convent of San Sisto at Piacenza (Dresden
Gallery) and the _St. Cecilia_ (Bologna Gallery). In 1518 he began _The
Transfiguration_, which was unfinished at the time of his death and
which was placed beside his bier.
All this magnificent work which expresses such high creative power and
such vast technical knowledge is the performance of a young man of
twenty-seven! Had he painted but three pictures, _La Belle Jardinière_,
the _Madonna of the Chair_, and the _Sistine Madonna_, Raphael’s place
would have been with the greatest of the immortals. Taking his entire
list of works into consideration Raphael, perhaps, comes nearer than
any other painter to the term “inspired.”
AGONY IN THE GARDEN.
_Raphael
(1483–1520)._
_Collection of
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay._
This panel (9½ × 11 inches), was one of four belonging to the Predella
of the large altar-piece representing the _Madonna Enthroned with
Saints_, painted by Raphael in 1505 for the Nuns of S. Antonio,
Perugia. It is, therefore, one of Raphael’s early works.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Clarence H. Mackay_
AGONY IN THE GARDEN
--_Raphael_]
The Saviour in a grey robe kneels in prayer at the right near a tree
and towards him an Angel holding a chalice descends from the clouds.
The other characters are sleeping: St. John the Evangelist in a green
and red robe lies upon a grassy bank at the left; St. Peter reclines
against a grassy mound at the right; and St. James, in a green and
yellow robe, has propped himself against the tree in the centre. Trees
and low-lying hills form the background. All four panels forming
the Predella were purchased from the Nuns of St. Anthony in 1663 by
Christina, Queen of Sweden. This particular panel--_The Agony in the
Garden_--passed from the Queen of Sweden’s possession into that
of Cardinal Azzolini, and thence into the Collection of Don Livio
Odescalchi, whose heirs sold it to the Regent, the Duc d’Orleans. The
Orleans Collection was sold in London in 1798 and _The Agony in the
Garden_ then went into the Bryant Collection. Lord Eldin bought it
next and subsequently the poet, Samuel Rogers, at whose sale in 1856
the panel was purchased by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. After the
sale of the W. Burdett-Coutts Collection at Christie’s in 1917, the
panel found its way to New York. The other three panels are: _St.
Anthony of Padua and St. Francis_ (now in the Dulwich Gallery); the
_Procession to Calvary_ (in the National Gallery, London); and a
_Pietà_ (in the Gardner Collection, Boston).
The altar-piece--_The Madonna Enthroned with Saints_--was
presented to the Metropolitan Museum by the late Mr. J. Pierpont
Morgan.
_NORTH ITALIAN_
The greatest painters of Northern Italy were Altichiero Altichieri
(1330?–1395), Pisanello (1397–1455), Domenico Morone (1442–1503),
Liberale (1451–1536), Girolamo dai Libri (1474–1503), and Paolo
Veronese (1528–1588), in Verona; Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506), in
Padua; and Cosimo Tura (1420?–1495), in Ferrara; Vincenzo Foppa
(1427?–1515–16), Bramante da Milano (died about 1470), Bartolommeo
Suardi, called Bramantino (1450?–1536), and Bernardino Luini
(1475?–1531–2), in Milan; Lorenzo Costa (1460?–1535), and Francesco
Francia (1450?–1517), in Bologna; Moretto da Brescia (1498–1554), and
Giambattista Moroni (1520–5–1578), in Brescia; and Antonio Allegri,
better known as Correggio (1494–1534), in Parma.
The towns of Northern Italy were more or less influenced by Florentine
artists who worked in various towns and who naturally attracted pupils
and local assistants. Painters travelled too, a great deal, wishing, as
they do now, to see the famous works of painters both living and dead
and of learning the newest and latest technique. Lords and dukes also
attracted celebrated painters to their courts; and, if they liked them,
bestowed lavish orders for portraits, for their relatives and friends;
small devotional pictures for their own cabinets; wall-paintings for
their villas; and altar-pieces and frescoes for their local churches or
cathedrals.
Lodovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, sent to Lorenzo de’ Medici on two or
three occasions to recommend painters from Florence for work that he
wished to have done. The great intellectual and artistic activity of
Lombardy at the end of the Fifteenth Century was largely owing to
Lodovico Sforza, whose Court was one of the most brilliant of the
day. “Here,” an enthusiastic contemporary exclaimed, “here the muses
of poetry and the masters of sculpture reigned supreme; here came the
most distinguished painters from distant regions; here, night and day,
were heard sounds of such sweet singing and such delicious harmonies of
music that they seemed to descend from heaven itself.”
New churches and palaces arose in Milan, Pavia, Como, Cremona,
Piacenza, Lugano, and other places, and artists were necessary for
decorating them. In 1496, Leonardo having all he could do, Lodovico
wrote to Florence for a description of the best painters of the day.
This is what he received; and it is very interesting as showing the
estimation of the men mentioned while they were living:
“Sandro de Botticello--a most excellent master, both in panel and
wall-painting. His figures have a manly air and are admirable in
conception and proportion.
“Filippino di Frati Filippo--an excellent disciple of the above-named
and a son of the rarest master of our times. His heads have a gentler
and more suave air; but, we are inclined to think, less art.
“Il Perugino--a rare and singular artist, most excellent in
wall-painting. His faces have an air of the most angelic sweetness.
“Domenico de Girlandaio--a good master in panels and a better one in
wall-painting. His figures are good and he is an industrious and active
master who produces much work.
“All of these masters have given proof of their excellence in the
Chapel of Pope Sixtus, excepting Filippino, and also in the Spedaletto
of the Magnificent Laurentio, and their merit is almost equal.[13]
The glimpse Leonardo da Vinci has given us of his life charms us across
the long shadow of four centuries and more:
“The painter describes himself as living in a fine house, full of
beautiful paintings and choice objects surrounded by musicians and
poets. Here he sits at his work, handling a brush full of lovely
color, never so happy as when he can paint listening to the sound of
sweet melodies. The spacious _atélier_ is full of scholars and
apprentices employed in carrying out their master’s ideas, or making
chemical experiments, but careless of the noise of tools and hammers,
the fair-haired boy, Angelo, sings his golden song, and, Serafino, the
wondrous _improvisatore_, chants his own verses to the sound of
the lyre. Visitors come and go freely--Messer Jacopo of Ferrara, the
architect, who was so dear to Leonardo as a brother, the courtly poet,
Gaspare Visconti, and Vincenzo Calmeta, Duchess Beatrice’s secretary,
or, it may be, the great Messer Galeaz himself, whose big jennet and
Sicilian horse the master has been drawing as models for the great
equestrian statue standing outside in the Corte Vecchia. There, among
them all, the painter bends over his canvas seeking to perfect the
glazes and scrumbles of his pearly tints, or trying to realize some
dream of a face that haunts his fancy with its exquisite smile. He
has, it is true, many labors--(_a tanta faccenda!_) as he wrote
to the councillors of Piacenza--and at times he hardly knows which way
to turn; but he is his own master, free to work as he will, now at
one, now at another. He has no cares nor anxiety. He can dress as he
pleases, wear rich apparel if he is so minded, or don the plain clothes
and sober hues that he prefers. He has gold enough and to spare; he can
help a poorer friend and educate a needy apprentice, or save his money
for a rainy day; and, above all, he has plenty of books and leisure
to meditate on philosophical treatises, or ponder over the scientific
problems in which his soul delights. He can find time to jot down his
thoughts on many things, to write his great treatise on painting, and
to draw the wonderful interlaced patterns inscribed with the strange
words which have puzzled so many generations of commentators. And he
has friends, too, dear to his heart--Messer Jacopo and the wise Lorenzo
da Pavia, that master of organs whose hands were as deft in fashioning
lyres and viols as in drawing out sweet sounds--with whom he loved to
commune of musical instruments and eternal harmonies, and the boy,
Andrea Salai, with the beautiful, curling hair, whom he loved to dress
up in green velvet mantles and shoes with rose-colored ribbons and
silver buckles. ‘Such,’ he tells us ‘was I, Leonardo the Florentine, at
the Court of the most illustrious Prince, Signor Lodovic.’”[14]
In such surroundings Leonardo da Vinci spent sixteen happy years,
during which he exercised all his talents as architect, engineer,
sculptor, musician, and painter, also designing ingenious settings for
masques and tournaments and superintending decorations for weddings and
for other festivities. Here, too, he painted the _Last Supper_
in the refectory of the Dominican Friars of S. Maria delle Grazie,
which “Il Moro” had taken under his special protection; the _Virgin
of the Rocks_ (now in the Louvre), originally for the Church of S.
Francesco of Milan, and many portraits, including those of Ludovico
Sforza and of his talented young wife, Beatrice d’Este. When the French
entered Milan in 1499 Leonardo returned to Italy.
The presence of the supreme and superlative Leonardo in Milan for so
long a time naturally stimulated art and artists of all kinds and even
more particularly that of painting and painters. His style dominated
the Milanese School of painters just as Richard Wagner dominated the
musical composers of the Nineteenth Century; and we find, particularly
in the case of Luini, some of the Master’s most engaging qualities
appreciated and imitated (see page 110).
“It has often been asked,” Marcel Reymond notes in a finely thought-out
criticism of the Milanese painters, “how it came to pass that Leonardo
left no disciples in Florence when he created such a strong School
in Milan. The first cause, in my opinion, should be sought for in
the laws that presided over the formation and development of the
Florentine School of painting. This School, created by fresco-painters
accustomed to works of vast dimensions, did not care to tarry over the
_finesse_ of execution, or the enumeration of minute details;
it simplified its vision, attaching itself particularly to the broad
lines and only retaining of the forms what was essentially expressive
in them. This character will be noticed at all periods of Florentine
painting from Giotto, Masaccio, Ghirlandaio, and Andrea del Sarto. When
the Florentine painters depart from this general conception, it is
only by accident and almost always in consequence of foreign action,
an action that will be sometimes that of Flemish painters, such as
Van der Weyden, or Van der Goes, and sometimes that of the Florentine
sculptors, who, at a given moment, about the middle of the Fifteenth
Century, exercised so powerful an influence upon the painters who were
their contemporaries. The action of Verrocchio in particular was such
as to transform the style of the Florentine School of Painting and to
give birth to the so entirely individual, and in certain respects so
little Florentine, of Leonardo da Vinci.
“But the fact that this new style was outside the traditions of the
Florentine School of Painting must have hindered its development, and
in reality Leonardo had no disciple in Florence. With Fra Bartolommeo
and Andrea del Sarto, it is the old character of the School that
reappears to follow out its natural evolution through the whole course
of the Sixteenth Century.
“In the North of Italy, on the contrary, the precision of line and
observation of detail form a predominant character of those Schools of
which Mantegna is the most illustrious representative. These Schools,
therefore, found in Leonardo a teaching that responded to their ancient
traditions; and we may thus understand how the seed planted by Leonardo
in the soil of Milan struck such deep root and produced such beautiful
flowers there.
“But however this may be and whatever may have been the causes of
this admirable blossoming of Milanese Art in the early years of the
Sixteenth Century, we may say that it represents in a highly learned
form one of the researches that have the most occupied Italian
genius,--I mean the seeking after beauty pursued in the harmonious
accord between form and poetry.”
Francesco Squarcione (1394–1474), was a native of Padua, the son of a
notary. Beginning life as a tailor and embroiderer, he chose to become
a painter, but first he decided to travel. He made a tour through
Italy and, it is said, visited Greece. It is in 1441 that his name
first appears in the Paduan Guild of Painters. Squarcione achieved
more reputation as a teacher than as a painter; and it seems that in
executing what commissions came to him he either gave over his orders
to his talented pupils, or had them, indeed, do most of the work under
his name. It is now thought that it was Mantegna’s refusal to continue
painting for Squarcione that led to the rupture between master and
pupil and not Squarcione’s anger at Mantegna’s marrying Nicolosia
Bellini, which has long been a favorite legend. Squarcione’s school,
however, was the most famous of its time and brought him the title of
“Father of Painters.” The list of his pupils runs to about a hundred
and thirty-seven. One of the features of Squarcione’s workshop was his
fine collection of fragments of statues which he used as models. It is
also said on good authority that Squarcione was a dealer in antiquities.
In Padua also lived Jacopo Bellini, with whom Mantegna worked and
whose daughter Nicolosia he married, a relation that made him, of
course, brother-in-law to Giovanni and Gentile Bellini. For a number of
years--presumably from 1444 to 1460--Jacopo Bellini had a workshop in
Mantua and, here, himself a pupil of Gentile da Fabriano, he trained
and worked with his two gifted sons and also Andrea Mantegna. This
_bottega_ became quite a rival of Squarcione’s. Indeed such a
combination as the three Bellini artists and Andrea Mantegna would
certainly offer a formidable competition to any rival, at any time, or
in any place.
The founder of the Ferrarese School was Cosimo Tura (1420?–1495), also
a pupil of Squarcione, the first Ferrarese painter of eminence; and,
from 1451, in permanent service of the Dukes at Ferrara. Tura had
certain affinities for Carlo Crivelli, Melozzo da Forli, and Andrea
Mantegna.
At Bologna, in 1485, Lorenzo Costa (1460?–1535), a supposed pupil of
Tura, established himself, thus forming one of the main links between
the Schools of Ferrara and Bologna; and it was another pupil--also a
fellow-worker of Costa, Francesco Francia (1450?–1517), who is the
chief glory of the Bolognese School (see page 107).
In Verona, first comes the Mediæval painter, Altichiero Altichieri
and next the greater Antonio (or Vittore) Pisano (1397–1455), called
Pisanello, worker in medals, painter of portraits, and mural decorator
(see page 99).
The School of Brescia is represented by Alessandro Bonvicino, called
Moretto da Brescia (1498–1554), influenced by Titian and Raphael and
considered the greatest provincial painter in Northern Italy of his
time. Moretto is also famous for having formed Moroni, the great
portrait-painter (1520–5–1578). Moretto and Moroni are regarded as
ranking among the greatest portrait-painters of the Sixteenth Century.
In mode and technique they closely follow the greatest Venetian
Masters; but the Brecians have a more silvery and a much “cooler” tone
than Titian and Tintoretto (see page 112).
We have now come to the High Renaissance, where Antonio Allegri,
called Il Correggio, from his birthplace, a small town near Modena
(1494–1534), is the dominating personality of the School of Parma.
Francesco Bianchi (1457–1510), of Ferrara, is his traditional master;
but he was influenced by Lorenzo Costa, Francesco Francia, and Andrea
Mantegna. Correggio has been called “an isolated phenomenon in Italian
art--we look in vain, after his earliest years of practice for any true
affinity between him and other masters. In his treatment of light and
shades and of atmosphere he contributed something new to Italian art.”
As the Sixteenth Century progressed the North Italians fell more and
more under the spell of the Venetians. Dosso Dossi (1479–1541), for
instance, a painter of Ferrara and a pupil of Lorenzo Costa, went
to Venice and was charmed by Giorgione and Titian before he became
court-painter of Alphonso I, Duke of Ferrara, and his wife, Lucrezia
Borgia.
Northern Italy also claims Paolo Caliari, better known as Paolo
Veronese (1528–1588), a native of Verona, whence his name; but classed
with the Venetian School, as he spent the greater part of his life in
Venice, gorgeously decorating its palaces, churches, and monasteries.
PORTRAIT OF A LADY.
_Pisanello
(1397–1455)._
_Collection of
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay._
This is a particularly rare picture as it is one of only three
portraits of this painter so far known, the other two being a female
portrait in the Louvre and a male portrait in Bergamo. Berenson says of
this portrait: “It is in the most mature and the most sumptuous manner
of this greatest master of the fascinating epoch between Gothic and
Renaissance. It has all the direct simplicity of that happy moment when
art had recovered from the mannerisms of the late Gothic style and was
still far from the modishness of the ripe Renaissance. How fascinating
are its qualities of pure decoration!”
The lady is dressed in dark-blue velvet with a curious collar of
white lawn and grey fur with another collar at its base of spangled
embroidery and around the waist a narrow girdle to match. The dress is
profusely decorated with gold filigree beads.
Gold pins are placed in her blonde hair, over which is a head-dress
of curiously puffed and twisted material decorated by blue and gold
sequins.
The background is black.
This portrait, painted in tempera on a panel (20¾ × 14¾), was
purchased by M. Veil-Picard of Paris at the Villeroy Sale in Paris
in 1922. Adolfo Venturi writes in _L’Arte_ (April, 1925): “The
Mackay portrait cut off below the waist, rises in the canvas with
Gothic grace. Picturesqueness is the keynote. The relief, even in
its slightest parts, has an ideal softness of planes. But in this
picture Pisanello’s genius has attained its maximum of expression.
Everything shows an advance on the Louvre picture--the eye sunk deep
in its socket; the eyebrow like the valve of a shell molded over the
round, while in the Louvre picture it is a mere silken strip; the ear,
no longer a mere piece of cartilage, is downy velvet; above all, the
superb decorative effect of the oval face between the strange volutes
of the turban and the chains of perforated gold beads.
“In the other portraits the decorative effect is helped by the
fantastic blossoms standing out against the dark background of the
hedge, making a greater contrast with the background than with the
face. In the Mackay portrait the background is equally dark throughout.
The interest of the face itself is accentuated by the myriad gold
lights in the gilded trefoils on the dress and in the golden beads of
the chains (light as balls of silk) and in the nebulous phosphorescence
of the little balls which adorn the neck of the dress and the dark
enamel of the ivy on the turban of Oriental splendor. The effect,
carefully prepared to isolate the face from the surrounding shadow,
acquires an intensity of refinement. The contrast between the dark
background and the phosphorescent dress is repeated in that between the
dark blue material of the dress and in the high lights of this; the
icy brilliance of the collar cuts into the softness of the fur with
unexpected suddenness; and the ivory of the flesh contrasts sharply
with the delicate softness of tone.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Clarence H. Mackay_
PORTRAIT OF A LADY
--_Pisanello_]
“The highest pictorial and decorative value in the art of Pisanello
as a colorist is reached in this Mackay portrait, which represents,
moreover, one of the most acute character-readings of the penetrating
eye of the medallist. The proud carriage accentuated by the rigid cut
of the high velvet collar; the clear-cut outlines of the profile; the
ram’s horn head-dress; the splendid cap; the well-defined lips, from
which one expects to hear the sibilant breath issue; above all, the
keen glance directed downwards under the heavy-veiled eyelids render
this a picture of frigid haughtiness. The fine lines of the mouth and
the narrow opening of the eyes are executed with an extraordinary
penetrating observation and the contour of the face is drawn with a
delicacy that does all honor to this great master of the silhouette.
“The lines of the face are in complete harmony with the contours
of the whole figure. The curves repeat themselves in the fantastic
coiffure, in the fur border of the collar, in the lines of the arm
and in the chains hanging from the shoulders. And, contrarily, these
general sweeping curves of coiffure and costume lead up to the finely
concentrated line of the profile which stands out sharply against a
black background, as in Pisanello’s painting of _Saint Eustace_,
in London (National Gallery). The artist has understood perfectly the
value of contrast between the plastic and the decorative elements.
The flat planes of the delicate ivory-like face are emphasized by the
sculpturesque coiffure with its gold ornaments; and just where we would
naturally look for an accentuation of the physical attributes--on the
bust and arms--the artist has, through the broad curves of the chains
and the spacing of the patterns of the dress, emphasized the decorative
design. Finally, the color of this most decorative masterpiece is
of the greatest charm. There are tiny lines recalling the delicate
technique of a piece of Satsuma-ware on the surface of the ivory-tinted
face that rises from a white collar resting on grey fur while a
delightful blue predominates in the coiffure and the costume, which is
enhanced with yellow and gold ornaments.
“The dress itself is of no little charm and belongs to a period
when costume and figure were attuned to a harmonious whole as has
seldom happened in the history of costume design. By plucking out the
hair from her forehead and eyebrows this young woman has created a
high-domed brow for herself and further emphasized the up-sweeping
lines by high-arched eyebrows applied with cosmetic. What a burden that
towering coiffure must have been and how uncomfortable the high collar
and the girdle drawn tight beneath the breast! Nevertheless she suffers
these discomforts in the name of fashion with dignity and equanimity.”
Pisanello (whose real name was Antonio Pisano), born about 1397
(some authorities say 1380 and some 1385), was a renowned painter of
portraits and religious pictures of highly decorative character as
well as a famous medallist. Pisanello was a follower of Altichiero and
was also greatly influenced by Gentile da Fabriano. Of his early life
little or nothing is known; but the rest of his days he spent wandering
throughout Italy, now in Mantua, now in Verona, now in Venice, now in
Rome, now in Naples, and now in Ferrara, cutting medals and painting
portraits of distinguished personages. In 1439 he was in Mantua as an
intimate friend of the Marchese Francesco Gonzaga, whom he followed
at the capture of Verona. Therefore he had to come under the Tribunal
of the Council of Ten at Venice in 1442. Pisanello’s career coincides
almost precisely in date with Fra Angelico, Donatello, Ghiberti, and
Brunelleschi. As a medallist Pisanello was unexcelled. In his paintings
he shows the spirit of a miniaturist rather than that of a mural
decorator. He shares with Gentile da Fabriano the charming quality
of chivalric grace and attention to interesting detail. Pisanello
must have been especially fond of animals, as his rarely beautiful
drawings of them preserved in various galleries would seem to prove;
and, moreover, he was fond of introducing them into his pictures. In
the _Vision of Saint Eustace_, for instance (National Gallery,
London), in addition to the stag bearing the cross upon his horns,
there are various animals and birds as well as the fine horse with its
gay trappings, on which the handsome Eustace is mounted.
“Altichiero had scarcely ceased covering wall-spaces with pomp and
circumstance of Mediæval life,” writes Berenson, “when the task was
taken up by his better-known Renaissance follower, Vittorio Pisanello.
The larger part of this artist’s work, in fact all his decoration
of great houses and public palaces, has perished. Even now, after
earnest efforts to gather together the strewn limbs of his art, only
six paintings of his can be discovered: two frescoes, two sacred
subjects, and two portraits. His renown as a painter has, therefore,
been eclipsed by his fame as a medallist. And, in truth, never, since
the days when Greek craftsmen modelled coins for proud city states, has
there been such a moulder of subtle reliefs in miniature. Yet Pisanello
himself never signed his name without the addition of the word
_Pictor_ and it was as a painter that he received the stipends of
princes and the adulation of poets.
“Although he was much more modern than his master, there was nothing in
his paintings to startle princes and poets, or even less distinguished
persons, whose education in art consisted then, no doubt, as it does
now, in confirming a fondness for the kind of picture to which their
eyes had grown accustomed during childhood and youth. Pisanello,
although counting as one of the great geniuses of the Renaissance,
by no means broke with the past. He went, it is true, as far beyond
Altichiero as Altichiero had gone from his immediate precursors, but
he betrays no essential difference of intention or spirit. In him
art-evolution produced a painter most happily fitted to hold up an
idealizing mirror to a parallel product of social evolution, the sunset
of Chivalry. No wonder that he was employed along with the kindred
Gentile da Fabriano by the rich and noble and that he was chosen to
continue the courtly Umbrian’s tasks.”
ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS.
_Andrea Mantegna
(1431–1506)._
_Collection of
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay._
It is more than likely this is the picture described in 1586 as
“_Presepe_” (manger) in the Este Palace, Ferrara. At all events it
is an early work.
The Virgin surrounded by cherubs is kneeling in adoration before
the Holy Child, who is asleep on the bottom of her gown. Near her
St. Joseph is seated, fast asleep. On the right two Shepherds are
approaching and, behind them, a Man and a Woman are crossing a bridge.
High up on the rocks, on the right, two Angels are watching over the
scene. Behind the simple wooden building, which shelters the group,
stretches a landscape.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Clarence H. Mackay_
ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS
--_Andrea Mantegna_]
The panel transferred to canvas (15 × 21½ inches), was formerly in
the Collection of Mr. C. A. Rouse-Boughton-Knight of Downton Castle,
Ludlow, Herefordshire, England.
Andrea Mantegna was born in Vicenza in 1431. He was inscribed in the
Guild at Padua as pupil and adopted son of Squarcione (see page 97) in
1441 and made the most extraordinary progress in his studies, perfectly
fascinated with “the antique”. “At a little more than ten years of
age,” Berenson writes, “Mantegna was adopted by a contractor named
Squarcione. How much of a painter Squarcione was, we do not know, but
we do know that he undertook designing and painting to be executed by
people in his employ. He was also a dealer in antiquities and his shop
was frequented by the distinguished people who passed through Padua,
and by the Humanists teaching in the famous University. It happened
to be a moment when in Italy Antiquity was a religion, nay, more, a
mystical passion, causing wise men to brood over fragments of Roman
statuary as if they were sacred relics, and to yearn for ecstatic union
with the glorified past. To complete the spell, this glorified past
happened to be the past of their own country.”
Another influence was Donatello, who was working in Padua in 1750
and after; and still another was Jacopo Bellini. After his marriage
to Bellini’s daughter and his break with Squarcione, Mantegna went
to Venice to have his contract with Squarcione cancelled in the Law
Courts; and, returning to Padua, he continued his work on important
frescoes. In 1460 Mantegna removed to the Court of Mantua at the
invitation of the Marchese Lodovico Gonzaga and in addition to his
painting he designed for pageants and festivals, and decorated villas
and palaces, just as Leonardo da Vinci was destined to do a few years
later for another Lodovico,--“Il Moro,” Regent and, later, Duke of
Milan. Mantegna also at this period designed for goldsmiths. When
Francesco Gonzaga succeeded his father, Mantegna remained at the Court
of Mantua and became the supreme arbiter of the taste of the day.
For Francesco’s wife, Isabella d’Este (sister of “Il Moro’s” wife,
Beatrice d’Este) and for her mother, the Duchess of Ferrara, Mantegna
painted some of his most famous pictures, such as the _Triumph of
Cæsar_ (now at Hampton Court Palace) and the _Madonna and Child
with Singing Cherubs_ (now in the Brera). On leaving for Rome in
1788 Mantegna was knighted. In Rome he decorated the Belvedere Chapel
for Pope Innocent VIII. To his last period belong delicate and lovely
mythological pieces, including the _Parnassus_ (now in the Louvre)
and the strong and decorative painting of _Judith with the Head of
Holofernes_ (now in the Widener Collection).
When Mantegna died in 1506, Lorenzo da Pavia (see page 95) wrote to
Isabella d’Este: “The death of our Master Andrea causes me great
sorrow, for in him a second Apelles has passed away; I do believe that
the Lord God wishes to employ him for the creation of some beautiful
work. I can never hope to meet a finer draughtsman nor a more original
artist.”
Padua, Mantua, Venice,--all felt Mantegna’s influence.
VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH THE INFANT ST. JOHN AND ANGEL.
_Francia
(1450?–1517)._
_Collection of
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay._
This picture came from the Collection of the Comtesse Edmond de
Pourtales of Paris and shows the Virgin seated and holding the nude
Infant Jesus on her right knee. She is wearing a crimson dress
edged with gold embroidery and a blue mantle, also edged with gold
embroidery, which is drawn over her head. Beneath this a white gauze
veil covers her hair. The Holy Child has raised His right hand in
benediction while in His left he holds a blue ball. The Angel on the
right wears a rose-colored tunic and yellow mantle and is adorned with
jewels. By his side and with one foot on a balustrade stands the Infant
St. John, dressed in blue and carrying a slender cross over his left
shoulder.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Clarence H. Mackay_
VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH THE INFANT ST. JOHN AND ANGEL
--_Francia_]
Of this panel (23½ × 19¾ inches), painted in oil, Berenson says:
“If this most famous of the Bolognese artists ever painted a more
delightful picture than the present one, it remains unknown to me.
Perhaps its only rival in my affections would be the Munich picture
of the _Virgin in the Rose Garden_ where, however, it is not the
faces but the pale roses against the flat green that give the work its
special charm.”
Francesco Raibolini, who took the name Francia from a master-goldsmith
to whom he was apprenticed, was born in Bologna in 1450, the son of
a carpenter. He spent his early years working in metals and settings
for jewels and became very expert in _niello_, gold and silver
enamels, and designs for jewelry. He also acquired a reputation for his
coins and medals, so much so indeed that Giovanni Bentivoglio II, who
became his patron, appointed him his master of the mint. Moreover, in
1511 Francia was elected one of the _Golfalonieri_ of the people;
in 1512 re-elected to the mastership of the Goldsmith’s Guild; and in
1514 he became “Master of the Four Arts.” It is thought that he began
to paint about 1483, when Lorenzo Costa came to Bologna and formed a
friendship with Francia. Be this as it may, he worked with Costa on an
altar-piece for the Church of the Misericordia and the influence of
Costa is apparent in much of his work. Francia also painted with Costa
in 1505–1507 the series of frescoes in the Chapel of St. Cecilia and
the _Madonna del Terremoto_ in the Palazzo Communale, Bologna.
Francia painted Madonnas all his life; and in addition to these
religious pictures, he painted a number of splendid portraits. He died
in Bologna in 1517. One of his pupils was Timoteo Viti, who in turn was
Raphael’s early teacher and imparted to him some of Francia’s quality,
particularly in the general appearance of the Madonna and the full
rounded contours of the figures. About 1500 Francia began to develop
his own personal style.
PORTRAIT OF A LADY.
_Bernardino Luini
(1475?–1531–2)._
_Collection of the
Hon. Andrew W. Mellon._
The first thing we notice in this picture is a very peculiar
head-dress--large and round and fleecy.
The figure is half-length, life-size, and faces us so that we gain
a very good idea of the unknown lady, so boldly set forth from the
background of a green curtain. She wears a dark-grey dress, a white
embroidered _chemisette_ and a jewelled cross hanging from a
gold chain which she is fingering lightly. In her right hand is a pet
marten. The hands, it should be noted, are beautifully drawn. This,
an oil painting on panel (29 × 21½), came from the Benson Collection,
having been previously in the Collection of Mr. F. R. Leyland.
Bernardino Luini was born at Luini, near the Lago Maggiore about
1475, and died in Milan in 1531 or 1532. Luini worked chiefly in the
vicinity of Milan and painted a great many frescoes. He is said to
have been a pupil of Borgognone; but whether that be true or not, most
certainly Leonardo da Vinci was his real master. It was assuredly
from the painter of the _Mona Lisa_ that Luini learned how to
paint a charming woman with refined features breaking into a radiant
and enchanting smile. Luini painted many notable religious pictures,
including admirable Madonnas, but his loveliest work is the portrait
of a Milanese lady known as _The Columbine_, in The Hermitage
Gallery, gazing at the flower she is holding in her hand, from which
the picture takes its name.
[Illustration:
_Collection of the Hon. Andrew W. Mellon_
PORTRAIT OF A LADY
--_Luini_]
“Luini’s female creations are so exquisite that for a long time
people supposed that Leonardo alone was capable of conceiving them,”
writes Marcel Reymond, “and permanently recording their loveliness;
but now this injustice has come to an end and Luini’s art appears
before us with sharply determined characteristics that prevent us from
confounding it with Leonardo’s art; first of all, from the point of
view of technique, it must be remembered that Leonardo works like a
master born about 1450 and Luini like one born after 1470. With Luini
the workmanship is less precise than with Leonardo, while the stroke is
less restrained and the modelling freer.”
TITIAN’S SCHOOLMASTER.
_Giambattista Moroni
(1520–5–1578)._
_Collection of
Mr. Joseph E. Widener._
In the National Gallery, London, there is a striking portrait of a
_Tailor_--known as the _Tagliapanni_--standing behind his board, at
half-length, with shears in his right hand and a piece of cloth in his
left, looking inquiringly at the spectator. It is forceful, attractive,
commands attention, and lives in the memory of all who have looked upon
it. Moroni’s _Tailor_ is one of the great portraits of the world. The
merest glance at the picture represented here would tell you that it
is by the same hand. The means of producing a striking effect are even
simpler than in the London portrait.
The title is entirely fanciful, but it accords well with the subject,
a pleasant, genial man with an intellectual countenance. He seems to
be about sixty years of age and is dressed in black with white linen
collar and a black cap. His beard is grey. He is sitting sideways in
a chair that is often described to-day (and for no reason whatever)
as a “Savonarola Chair,” resting his left arm on the arm of the chair
and holding a book in his right. It would appear that he has just
been interrupted in his reading--pleasantly, too, it would seem--and
is keeping the page he has left off reading with one finger between
the leaves. The hands are marvellously drawn and painted, as is also
the ring on the left hand. Van Dyck admired this picture so much that
he made a sketch of it in his Italian sketch-book (which is now at
Chatsworth).
This portrait in oils on canvas (38 × 29½ inches) was long in the
Borghese Gallery at Rome, and then at the beginning of the Nineteenth
Century it was purchased by the Marquis of Stafford. From the Duke of
Northumberland’s Collection, Stafford House, it passed to the present
owner.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Joseph E. Widener_
TITIAN’S SCHOOLMASTER
--_Moroni_]
Moroni’s great fame, even in his own day, was as a portrait-painter;
and it is said that when people from Bergamo and its vicinity went to
Titian to have their portraits painted, he told them to go home and sit
to their own countryman. Moroni was a pupil of Moretto at Brescia, was
influenced by Lotto and Titian, and he, in his turn, influenced Van
Dyck.
Moroni was born at Bondo in Bergamo between 1520 and 1525 and died at
Bergamo in 1578.
_VENETIAN_
“It is evident,” wrote Taine, “that, while following a path of its own,
Venetian Painting developed as in the rest of Italy. It issued here, as
elsewhere, from missals and mosaics and was at first in sympathy with
purely Christian emotion; then, by degrees, the feeling for beautiful
human life introduced into the altar-frames vigorous and healthy
bodies taken from contemporary types; and we wonder at the placid,
expressions and religious physiognomies on the blooming faces in which
the youthful blood circulates and sustains innate temperament. This is
the confluence of two spirits and two ages: one, the Christian, which
is fading away; the other, the Pagan, which is in the ascendant. In
Venetian Art special traits are distinguished. The people are more
closely copied from life and are less transformed by Classic or mystic
sentiment, not so pure as at Perugia, not so noble as at Florence:
they are addressed more to the senses than to the mind or the heart;
they are more quickly recognized as men and give greater pleasure to
the eye. Strong and lively tones color their muscles and their faces;
living flesh is soft on their shoulders and on the thighs of little
children; clear landscapes open into the distance to make the deeper
tints of the figure stand out; saints gather around the Virgin in a
variety of attitudes unknown to the other Primitive Schools with their
uniform processions. At the height of its fervor and faith the national
spirit, fond of diversity and joy, allows a smile to escape.”
Venice was slow in abandoning Byzantine tradition. Changes begin to be
apparent in the Fourteenth Century. Walter Pater notes: “The beginnings
of Venetian Painting link themselves to the last, stiff, half-barbaric
splendors of Byzantine decoration and are but the introduction into the
crust of marble and gold on the walls of the Duomo of Murano, or of St.
Mark’s, of a little more of human expression. And throughout the course
of its later development, always subordinate to architectural effect,
the work of the Venetian School never escaped from the influence of
its beginnings. Unassisted, and therefore, unperplexed by naturalism,
religious mysticism, philosophical theories, it had no Giotto, no
Fra Angelico, no Botticelli. Except from the stress of thought or
sentiment, which taxed so severely the resources of the generations of
Florentine artists, those earlier Venetian painters, down to Carpaccio
and the Bellini, seem never for a moment to have been tempted even to
lose sight of the scope of their art in its strictness, or to forget
that painting must be before all things decorative, a thing for the
eye, a space of color on the wall, only more dexterously blent than the
marking of its precious stone, or the chance interchange of sun and
shade upon it--this to begin and end with--whatever higher matter of
thought, or poetry, or religious reverie, might play its part therein,
between.”
During the Fifteenth Century Venice began to be influenced by painters
from other cities, particularly by Gentile da Fabriano (see page 74)
and Pisanello (see page 99), who were sent for to decorate the Doge’s
Palace. Gentile da Fabriano represented all the latest “modernistic”
ideas of his day. Among the Venetians who were most profoundly
influenced by him was Jacopo Bellini (who later went to Padua).
Jacopo, in spite of his contact with Squarcione and Andrea Mantegna
(who married his daughter), remained “Gothic” in essentials. Jacopo
Bellini had one of the largest _bottegas_ in Venice; and this
_bottega_ was continued by his gifted sons, Giovanni and Gentile.
Jacopo was a talented painter who had worked in Florence as well as
Padua, but who really belongs to Venice.
The great rivals of the Bellini painters were the Vivarini on the
Island of Murano. The Vivarini, the first of whom was Antonio da
Murano (active 1440–1476 or 1484), who played a great part in the
development of the Venetian School and whose work consisted of enormous
altar-pieces of many compartments set in Gothic framework of very
ornate character and profusely adorned with gold; Bartolommeo Vivarini,
Antonio’s younger brother (1431?–1499?), in whose work the influence of
the Paduan School of Squarcione is marked and also that of Antonello
da Messina; and Antonio’s son, Alvise Vivarini (1447–1504), a pupil of
his father and uncle, who was working in 1474 with Giovanni Bellini
in the Scuola di San Girolamo in Venice and whose portraits show the
influence of Antonello da Messina.
Carlo Crivelli (1430?–1493?), if not a Venetian by birth, which is most
probable, is classed as belonging to the Venetian School. Crivelli
was a fellow-pupil of Bartolommeo Vivarini under Antonio da Murano
(Vivarini), and Squarcione. Like Mantegna, Crivelli kept to tempera
painting; Crivelli stands alone for his wonderful decorative qualities
(see page 125 and page 128).
Antonello da Messina (1430–1479) was a contemporary of Crivelli and
is particularly distinguished for introducing into Italy the Flemish
system of painting with oils. In his pictures the influence of the
Bellini is apparent (see page 124).
Giovanni Bellini (1428–30–1516), one of the greatest painters of the
Fifteenth Century, was trained by his father, Jacopo Bellini. Next
he followed in the footsteps of Squarcione and Andrea Mantegna; but
he changed his style, as well as his technique, gradually abandoning
tempera for the new practice in oils, which he was one of the first to
master. In some respects Giovanni Bellini was influenced by his own
pupil, Giorgione (see page 118). Gentile Bellini (1426–9–1507), was
named, it is interesting to note, for Gentile da Fabriano, his father’s
master and friend. Gentile, trained by his father, Jacopo, was called
upon to paint the organ-shutters at St. Mark’s with colossal figures
of St. Mark, St. Theodore, St. Jerome, and St. Francis; was knighted
by Frederic III in 1469; and was employed to restore the frescoes of
Gentile da Fabriano in the Hall of the Grand Council in the Doge’s
Palace, a commission which carried with it the honor of painting the
portrait of every new Doge. Sent for by the Sultan of Constantinople,
Mohammed II, to paint his portrait, Gentile sailed for Constantinople
in 1479 and returned in 1480 with the title of Bey. Gentile then joined
his brother, Giovanni, who was working on the Fabriano frescoes. The
Bellini brothers also painted on canvas a series of pictures portraying
the legend of Frederic Barbarossa and Pope Alexander III, which
perished in the fire of 1577. Gentile’s _Procession of Corpus Christi
of 1496_ has been pronounced “the most important extant work of the
Venetian School previous to the advent of Titian.”
The _bottegas_ of the Bellini and Vivarini naturally produced
a host of able painters, among whom were Marco Basaiti (active
1500–1521); Lazzaro Bastiani (active 1449–1512); Cima da Conegliano
(1460?–1517?); and Jacopo Bassano (1510?–1592). Vittore Carpaccio
(1450?–1526?), was a follower of Gentile Bellini; and the stories
he told in paint, such as the series depicting the _Life of Saint
Ursula_, belong to the great works of Venice.
Giorgione (1477–1510) is the next important name. Little or nothing
is known of his life, except that he was born of humble parents at
Castelfranco. By 1500 his reputation was established, for he was then
painting important works. Among these was a picture for the Hall of
Audience in the Doge’s Palace and some fresco decorations for the
exterior of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the bank of the German merchants
in Venice. Giorgione was a pupil and follower of the Bellini and had
much influence upon Giovanni Bellini. Giorgione died of the Plague in
his thirty-fourth year. Giorgione stands alone for his romantic and
lyrical qualities and for his penetrating charm. He is notable, too,
for having introduced music into his pictures, or rather persons who
are playing upon instruments.
Apart from his delightful qualities Giorgione is of the greatest
importance in the evolution of painting. Walter Pater writes:
“Giorgione is the inventor of _genre_, of those easily movable
pictures which serve for uses, neither of devotion nor of allegorical,
or historical teaching--little groups of real men and women,
amid congruous furniture or landscape--morsels of actual life,
conversation, or music, or play, refined upon or idealized, till they
come to seem like glimpses of life from afar. Those spaces of more
cunningly blent color, obediently filling their place, hitherto, in
a mere architectural scheme, Giorgione detaches from the wall; he
frames them by the hands of some skillful carver, so that people may
move them readily and take with them where they go, like a poem in
manuscript, or a musical instrument, to be used, at will, as a means of
self-education, stimulus or solace, coming like an animated presence,
into one’s cabinet, to enrich the air as with some choice aroma, and,
like persons, live with us, for a day or a lifetime. Of all art like
this, art which has played so large a part in men’s culture since that
time, Giorgione is the initiator.”
Titian, or rather Tiziano Vecello (1477?–1576), fellow-pupil of
Giorgione, of Gentile and Giovanni Bellini and assistant to Giorgione
in decorating the Fondaco dei Tedeschi (which established a new era in
Italian painting), was the leading painter of his day (see page 140).
Bartolommeo Veneto, of Veneziano (1480–1555), pupil of Giovanni
Bellini, became a famous portrait-painter. (See page 148.)
Tintoretto, the magnificent Venetian, was nicknamed “Il Furioso,”
because of his great technical powers that include astonishing display
of foreshortening and many curious effects in light and color, as
well as in form. Ruskin says Tintoretto (or Tintoret, call him as you
please) made “figures lovely in themselves, content that they should
_deserve_ not _demand_, your attention.”
Playing with a full orchestra of color and understanding how to produce
the most luminous effects of light, the great Venetian filled Venice
with marvellous pictures. Tintoretto was equal to the immense work he
undertook and his noble brush never left anything that was unworthy of
it. Tintoretto, whose real name was Jacopo Robusti (1518–1594), was
apprenticed to Titian and was influenced by Titian, Palma Vecchio,
Michelangelo, and Parmigiano (of the School of Palma and follower of
Correggio).
“There is one only--the last and greatest of the Venetians of the
Renaissance--who could sound all the notes of tragedy and pathos
as well as notes of joy. Tintoretto, the supreme Venetian, the
greatest exponent of the essential spirit of Venice, is the son of a
wider kingdom than hers and of a greater age than the Renaissance.
Unsurpassed as a designer and colorist, he is endowed throughout with
the peculiar gifts of Venice; but during those years of passionate
study, in which he was winning here and there the secrets of his
art, hungry for knowledge, careless of gain, and bargaining only for
material in which to realize his conceptions,--during those years in
which he lived alone in continual meditation on some fresh labor, he
was probing the deep and passionate things of humanity as no Venetian
artist had ever probed them before. The streets and churches of the
city seem to echo still to the steps of this genius at once so robust,
so tender, so profound, and so joyous.”[15]
Paolo Veronese, or rather Paolo Caliari (1528–1588), a native of
Verona, whence his name, is one of the most delightful of painters.
J. Buisson considers Veronese of all the painters of Italy “the one
whose work best serves to particularize the art of painting” and this
able French critic goes on to say that “Veronese painted the Venetian
Beautiful as the Greeks sculptured the Hellenic Beautiful” and that
“Paul Veronese is of all the colorists, without a single exception, the
one who has most unity. He is the most ethereal of the colorists. He is
the painter of the air, both out-of-doors and in-doors. His values are
impeccable and his shadows are at once transparent and full of color,
without any artifice, such as Rubens’s exaggerated reflections, or the
excessive sacrifices, which in Rembrandt are almost equivalent to a
monotone in those parts that are lacking in light. His lights are broad
and steady although modelled without any gleams, but of so shining a
quality that they are positively radiant. Happy artist! He had the eye
of the most perfect colorist ever known, able to perceive at the same
time the different qualities of light and color and their variations
in intensity and values and he possessed the gift to reveal them with
marvellous art to ordinary mortals. Optics applied to his pictures show
no law that he did not know and practice. Moreover, around his perfect
visions of color are grouped other qualities, such as imagination,
taste, rhythm, elegance, nobility, and magnificence in decoration. His
hand is the equal of his eye. The rapidity of his brush may be compared
only to that of Velasquez and to that of Rubens.”
This great period, Taine sums up as follows:
“The more we consider the ideal figures of Venetian Art, the more we
feel the breath of an heroic age behind us. Those great, toga-draped,
old men with the bald foreheads are the Patrician Kings of the
Archipelago, Moorish Sultans, who, trailing their silken _simars_,
received tribute and ordered executions. The superb women in sweeping
robes, bedizened and jewelled, are Empress-daughters of the Republic,
like that Caterina Cornaro from whom Venice received Cyprus. There
are the muscles of fighters in the bronzed breasts of the sailors
and captains; their bodies, reddened by the sun and the wind, have
dashed against the athletic bodies of Janizaries; their turbans, their
_pelisses_, their furs, their sword-hilts constellated with
precious stones--all the magnificence of Asia is mingled on their
bodies with the floating draperies of Classic times and the nudities of
Pagan tradition.”
Sebastian del Piombo (1485?–1547), pupil of Giovanni Bellini and
Giorgione, preferred oil to fresco and this led to a famous quarrel
between him and Michelangelo. Palma Vecchio (1480–1528), standing
first in the second rank of Bellini-Giorgione followers, is another
important painter. Lorenzo Lotto (1480–1556), pupil of Alvise Vivarini,
painted with Raphael in the Vatican in 1508–9 and naturally fell under
Raphael’s spell. Lotto spent much time in Bergamo; was touched by
Correggio’s spirit; and, after 1529, was affected by Titian.
Paris Bordone (1500–1571), a gorgeous colorist, pupil and follower
of Giorgione and Titian (and slightly touched by Palma Vecchio),
was famous for his portraits, mythological pictures, and for that
masterpiece entitled _The Fisherman Presenting the Ring of St. Mark
to the Doge_ (now in the Accademia at Venice).
“These Venetian artists of the Renaissance,” says d’Annunzio, “create
in a medium that is itself a joyous mystery--in color, the ornament
of the world, in color which seems to be the striving of the spirit
to become light. And the entirely new _musical understanding they
have of color_ acts in such a way that their creation transcends
the narrow limits of the symbols it represents and assumes the lofty,
revealing faculty of an infinite harmony.”
To the Eighteenth Century belongs Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
(1696–1769), famous as a designer and colorist, influenced by Veronese,
and a decorator of palaces and villas in Venice, Genoa, Milan,
Würzburg, and Madrid, where he died. Tiepolo married Guardi’s sister in
1715.
Canaletto, or Giovanni Antonio da Canale (1697–1768), son of Bernardo
da Canale, a scene-painter, is famous for his views of Venice and for
being the teacher of Guardi.
Francesco Guardi (1712–1793), a native Venetian, but of Austrian
stock, a follower of his master Canaletto, was also celebrated for his
Venetian views (see page 153).
“Venice herself” writes Berenson, “had not grown less beautiful in her
decline. Indeed, the building which occupies the very centre of the
picture Venice leaves in the mind--the Salute--was not built until the
Seventeenth Century. This was the picture that the Venetian himself
loved to have painted for him and that the stranger wanted to carry
away. Canale painted Venice with a feeling for space and atmosphere,
with a mastery over the delicate effects of mist peculiar to the city,
that make his view of the Salute, the Grand Canal, and the Piazzetta
still seem more like Venice than all the pictures that have been
painted since. Later in the century Canale was followed by Guardi, who
executed smaller views with more of an eye for the picturesque, and for
what may be called instantaneous effects, thus anticipating both the
Romantic and the Impressionist painters of our own century.”
To the Eighteenth Century also belongs Pietro Longhi (1702–1785?),
influenced by Guardi, but called “The Goldini of painters,” because
of his bright comedies of manners, somewhat in the _genre_ of
Watteau, Pater, and Lancret.
“Longhi painted for the picture-loving Venetians,” says Berenson,
“their own lives in all their ordinary domestic and fashionable phases.
In the hair-dressing scenes we hear the gossip of the periwigged
barber; in the dressmaking scenes the chatter of the maid; in the
dancing-school, the pleasant music of the violin. There is no tragic
note anywhere. Everybody dresses, dances, makes bows, takes coffee,
as if there were nothing else in the world that wanted doing. A tone
of high courtesy, of great refinement, coupled with an all-pervading
cheerfulness, distinguishes Longhi’s pictures from the works of
Hogarth, at once so brutal and so full of presage of change.”
MADONNA AND CHILD.
_Antonello da Messina_
(_1430–1479_).
_Collection of
Mr. Clarence H. Mackay._
The Virgin, slightly under life-size, stands behind a stone parapet,
three-quarter face to left, apparently in a reverie with half-closed
eyelids. She wears a red and gold brocade gown and a blue mantle
carried up over her head and falling in a straight line, but for
one small plait, to her left arm. The Holy Child is seated upon a
green cushion on the parapet and is wrapped in a brick-red shawl.
With His left arm around His mother’s neck and right hand in her
bosom, He gazes straight ahead. The flesh-tones are pale with clear,
light-brown shadows and the rose-leaf lips and cylindrical fingers with
filbert-shaped nails are to be noticed and admired.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Clarence H. Mackay_
MADONNA AND CHILD
--_Antonello da Messina_]
This oil painting on panel (23 × 16 inches), comes from the Benson
Collection. Antonello da Messina, also known as Antonello di Giovanni
degli Antoni, holds a very important place in the development of
Painting, because _it is owing to him that the Flemish system of
painting in oil was adopted in Italy_, although Italian painters had
been previously acquainted with the process, for they knew the works of
the Van Eycks and Roger van der Weyden. It is supposed that Antonello,
who was born in Messina in 1430, visited Flanders. It is certain,
however, that Antonello was travelling in Italy in 1457–1460 and he may
have met Roger van der Weyden, who visited Italy in 1450. Antonello da
Messina was certainly in Venice in 1475–1476. He died in 1479, leaving
a son, Jacobello, or Jacopo degli Antoni, and a nephew, Antonello di
Saliba, both of whom were painters. It seems that Antonello da Messina
and the Bellini exchanged many ideas and were of great mutual benefit.
It is supposed that Antonello da Messina encouraged Giovanni Bellini to
try painting in oils. _St. Jerome in his Study_ in the National
Gallery, London, shows the new character that Antonello brought into
the Italian painting of his day.
MADONNA AND CHILD.
_Carlo Crivelli_
(_1430?–1493?_).
_Collection of
Mr. A. W. Erickson._
Before analysing this delightful picture, let us read an appreciation
of a most fascinating and not too well-understood painter by Cosmo
Monkhouse: “Carlo Crivelli is a Venetian artist of whom we know
little but what can be gathered from pictures. He is supposed to have
been born about 1430 and his dated works range from 1468 to 1493. He
was a Venetian by birth and from his mode it would appear certain
that he studied under Squarcione at Padua and probably also under
Vivarini at Venice. But he perfected a style and one marked by so many
peculiarities that despite all affinities which may be traced with
other masters he stands out clear and distinct by himself.
“In the first place, he is unique as a colorist. He belongs, indeed,
to the old mosaic and illumination school of color, not to the school
of ‘great schemes,’ in which the masses are blent into one great
harmony. The masses, or patches, of color are isolated and produce a
pleasant variegation without fusion. His color is thin, also, as of a
superficial tinting, not affecting the substance. His flesh is hard
and opaque, his flowers leathery, his fruit, though finely drawn and
beautifully colored, of a stony texture, his draperies anything but
soft. It is only in hard smooth things, like pottery and glass, that
you get the true consistency as well as the true color. Yet his color
is exquisite of its kind, brilliant and transparent like enamel, and
the different tints in themselves are lovely and varied. Such reds and
greens and lilacs and salmon-pinks and a hundred other combinations
of the primaries are scarcely to be matched in the work of any other
artist. Nor has anyone been more skillful in the use of gold in
connection with color.
“There is scarcely any need to call attention to Crivelli’s special
gift as a designer of decoration. Almost every square inch of his
canvas attests the inexhaustible richness of his invention--an
invention fed no doubt from the rich products of Oriental looms of
which Venice was the emporium.
“Crivelli wrought only for the Church and appears to have spent
most of his life at Ascoli, but neither restriction of subject and
feeling, nor provincial residence, could fetter his genius. There is,
indeed, no artist of more striking individuality than Carlo Crivelli,
no one who had more complete mastery over his means of expression, or
attained more nearly to his ideal. This ideal was not the ‘_beau
ideal_’--that is to say, the perfection of physical beauty--it was
an ideal of character, the embodiment of the essential qualities of
his subject. One cannot help regarding Crivelli as a man of knowledge
and intellect, of charming manners, refined almost to fastidiousness,
delighting in all things dainty and beautiful, a lover of animals and
of his kind.”
This picture, an oil painting on panel (38 × 17 inches), came from the
Benson Collection, having been previously in the Collection of Mr. G.
H. Marland (sold in 1863), and in the Collection of Mr. William Graham
(sold in 1886). The Virgin, a small full-length figure, is seated on a
red and white marble throne, wearing a pale-red robe and a gold brocade
mantle lined with green carried up over the head, which is adorned
with a white veil. The Holy Child, standing on her lap, has on a gold
dress and a white sash. Behind these two figures there is a hanging
of pale-red, watered silk and behind the throne again there is a gold
hanging with the pomegranate pattern. The Holy Child turns to the
right in the act of blessing. On the step of the throne, which has a
conspicuous crack, two pears[16] are lying; and they have attracted a
fly. The step is inscribed: “Carolvs Crivellvs Venetvs Pinsit, 1472.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. A. W. Erickson_
MADONNA AND CHILD
--_Crivelli_]
“The effect is archaic and almost Byzantine,” G. McNeil Rushforth
writes in his _Carlo Crivelli_ (London, 1900), “but its merits
are very great.” “Though on a comparatively small scale the decorative
effect is superb. The Child’s head is heavy and inferior to that of
the Virgin, but the action is lively and realistic. The great charm,
however, of the picture is the Virgin. Her features are not beautiful
and the drawing of the hands might be criticized. But if ever grace
and dignity were conceived and executed by Crivelli, they are here.
Preëminently does this Virgin possess all that we understand by
distinction. Taken separately, the turn of the head and the action of
the fingers might be called affected. But they do not offend as parts
of the whole, so perfectly has the artist defined the ideal that was
before his mind. A curious feature in the picture is the treatment of
the drapery. The folds of the brocaded mantle are more elaborate than
anything which Crivelli had yet attempted, and they are expressed by
clear-cut lines without any shadow.”
MADONNA AND CHILD.
_Carlo Crivelli
(1430?–1493?)._
_Collection of
Mr. Philip Lehman._
This beautiful picture belongs to Crivelli’s greatest period, when
the artist had reached the height of his powers, had attained perfect
command of the problems of composition, and had gained the technique to
represent those materials he delighted in,--such as brocades, marbles,
and garlands of fruit, which he always combined with such decorative
beauty. Roger Fry says of this picture: “It has, in a supreme degree,
the delicacy and the almost metallic incisiveness of Crivelli’s contour
as well as the firmness and brilliance of his painting. The Madonna
supporting the Child upon her right arm, is seated in one of those
sumptuous Renaissance thrones, which Crivelli loved to elaborate with
every conceivable ingenuity of invention. Though the forms are intended
to be Classic, it is evident from the proportions of the mouldings
and something in the character of the detail that Crivelli is still
essentially an old Venetian artist, one who uses Classical conventions
with a Gothic exuberance.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Philip Lehman_
MADONNA AND CHILD
--_Crivelli_]
“This is a work of Crivelli’s prime. Indeed, it would be hard to
name another design in which he shows quite such mastery as he does
here. There is hardly another work in which the sequence of lines
is so suave, its flow so uninterrupted, or in which the movements
of the figures harmonize so perfectly. It is already almost a
_cinque-cento_ work as regards the amplitude of its forms and the
breadth of its divisions. One notes, for instance, that the fruits
hanging on the throne are even more enlarged and more massed than
usual, so that the quantities of relief support and carry out the
relief of the figures in a remarkable manner. Much of the earlier
intensity of feeling has undoubtedly gone. This has none of the
strange, brooding pathos of the early Madonnas, nor has it the sharp
individual accent of their faces. The works with which it appears to be
most akin are the Vatican _Madonna_ and the Triptych in the Brera,
both of 1482.”
THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. LUCY, ST. CATHERINE,
ST. PETER AND ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST.
_Giovanni Bellini
(1428–30–1516)._
_Collection of
Mr. Jules S. Bache._
This is the type of group picture known as a “Holy Conversation” and
represents the Virgin and Child with Saints. It seems to have been
painted when Bellini was between seventy-two and seventy-seven years of
age and between the years 1500 and 1505.
The figures are three-quarter length and under life-size and the
picture, which is an oil painting on canvas, measures 38 × 60 inches.
The Virgin is seated in the centre with a dark-grey curtain behind
her and a marble balustrade in front of her. She wears a rose-colored
tunic and a blue mantle lined with a changeable green and yellow silk.
The Holy Child leans back against her right arm. On her right stands
St. Catherine with a rope of pearls twisted in her hair and St. Lucy,
on her left, wearing a myrtle wreath and holding a tall standing-cup
of Venetian glass. St. John the Baptist, wearing a green mantle,
stands on the right, looking downward with bended head; and St.
Peter, in orange-brown cloak with book and key, stands on the left.
A very decorative effect is derived from the palm-branches, which
curve upwards into the top corners of the picture. A range of distant
hills appears in the background and on the _cartellino_ on the
balustrade is the signature in script, “Ioannes Bellinus.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Jules S. Bache_
THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. LUCY, ST. CATHERINE, ST. PETER
AND ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST
--_Giovanni Bellini_]
Authority for dating the picture is derived from the fact that the
features of St. Lucy reappear in the San Zaccaria altar-piece, which
is dated 1505, and the features of St. John the Baptist occur in the
_Baptism of Christ_ in Santa Corona, Vicenza, supposed to have
been begun in 1500.
The picture came from the Benson Collection, having been formerly in
the Wynn Ellis Collection and in the Collection of Mr. William Graham.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas F. Brady_
THE VIRGIN AND CHILD
--_Giovanni Bellini_]
The date of Giovanni Bellini’s birth is not known. He was working with
his brother, Gentile, in his father’s studio in Padua and was painting
in Venice in 1464, where he produced two pictures for the Scuola di San
Girolamo. In 1475 he met Antonello da Messina, who came to Venice, and
seems to have adopted then his method of painting in oil. In 1479, when
Gentile Bellini went to Constantinople, Giovanni was appointed to carry
on his work in the Doge’s Palace; and when Gentile returned the two
brothers worked together. Giovanni was essentially a religious painter
and his Madonnas stand among the finest ever created. Most of his
portraits are lost; but one, the _Doge Loredano_ (in the National
Gallery, London), ranks as one of the finest of all known portraits.
This dates from 1501, painted when Giovanni was over eighty! Giovanni
died in 1516.
THE VIRGIN AND CHILD.
_Giovanni Bellini
(1428–30–1516)._
_Collection of
Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas F. Brady._
The Madonna at half-length turned towards the left, supports the Holy
Child with both arms as He reclines in her lap against her right knee,
which is raised. She is dressed in a blue mantle arranged to form a
hood, with embroidered border. A graceful white veil, also embroidered,
covers the head and falls below the neck.
The Holy Child gazes upward into his mother’s face and she, with eyes
slightly veiled by drooping lids, looks tenderly downward towards him.
The background is hilly, with a castle on the left. The picture, oil on
a panel (28¾ × 23¾) is signed “Joannes Bellinus.”
This Bellini Madonna comes from the Collection of the Grand Dukes
of Oldenburg, Oldenburg Castle, near Bremen, Germany, and was also
formerly in the Collection of Count Montija in Madrid. Much has been
written about Bellini’s Madonnas. They differ greatly from those
painted by the Florentines; and the following sympathetic note tells us
why:
“If we turn to the religious art of Venice, we shall be struck by a
lack of anything like mystic rapture, or absorption in the sufferings
of Christ. We have but two examples in Venice of Bellini’s portrayal of
the facts of Christ’s mature life, but he has treated the theme of the
Madonna and Child with a unique profundity. The mystery of life seems
to be shadowed in the face of the Madonna; his saints and apostles,
so striking in their individuality, so virile in their piety, have a
significance beyond their perfect act of worship. No Venetian religious
painter before Tintoretto equalled Bellini in solemnity and depth
of conception; but in all we find the same pervading calm, the same
absence of tumult, or the disturbing elements of pain or agony.”[17]
Is it not the quietness of Bellini’s Madonnas that give them their
peculiar charm?
MADONNA AND CHILD.
_Giovanni Bellini
(1428–30–1516)._
_Collection of
Mr. Philip Lehman._
This picture came from the Collection of Prince Potenziani, of Rieti,
Italy, and represents the Virgin standing behind a parapet and
supporting the Holy Child who is standing upon it. Her mantle and tunic
are decorated with a border of embroidery and over the mantle falls
her heavy white veil which might be described as a hood, showing a
little of her wavy hair. The face of the Virgin is a perfect oval, her
eyes are set far apart, her nose is long and aquiline, and her mouth
a little discontented. Her arm and wrist are beautifully modelled
and so is the thumb of her right hand. This hand is noticeably wide.
The left hand does not seem to match the right; it is coarser. The
Holy Child is leaning against His mother’s left shoulder and looking
out of the picture. He wears a little tunic over a white shirt with
sleeves and a wide, blue sash with a striped pattern. A close-fitting
cap is tied with ribbons under His chin. His right hand is lifted in
blessing and His left is clasping the fingers of His mother’s right
hand. On the right of the parapet a crystal ball is lying and on the
left a capsicum-pod, and behind the Madonna’s head hangs a heavy swag
of capsicum. The landscape in the background is noticeably fine. On
the left, a road winds through trees to the gates of a city with high
Gothic towers; on the right, a river flows past hills crowned with
castles. Clouds fill the sky. The _nimbi_ are quite unusual. This
is evidently an early work and not a little of Mantegna’s influence is
apparent in it.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Philip Lehman_
MADONNA AND CHILD
--_Giovanni Bellini_]
THE FEAST OF THE GODS.
(IL BACCANALE.)
_Giovanni Bellini
(1428–30–1516)._
_Collection of
Mr. Joseph E. Widener._
“In the year 1514”--this is Vasari’s narrative--“Duke Alfonso
of Ferrara had caused a little chamber to be decorated and had
commissioned Dosso, the painter of Ferrara, to execute in certain
compartments stories of Æneas, Mars, and Venus and, in a grotto, Vulcan
with two smiths at the forge; and he desired that there should also be
there pictures by the hand of Gian Bellini. Bellini painted on another
wall a vat of red wine with some _Bacchanale_ around it and
Satyrs, musicians and other men and women all drunk with wine, and near
them a nude and very beautiful Silenus riding on his ass, with figures
about him that have their hands full of fruits and grapes; which work
was in truth executed and colored with great diligence, inasmuch
that it is one of the most beautiful pictures that Gian Bellini ever
painted, although in the manner of the draperies there is a certain
sharpness after the German manner (nothing, indeed, of any account)
because he imitated a picture by the Fleming,[18] Albrecht Dürer, which
had been brought in those days to Venice and placed in the Church of
S. Bartolommeo, a rare work and full of most beautiful figures painted
in oils. On that vat Gian Bellini wrote these words: ‘Joannes Bellinus
Venetus P. 1514.’ That work he was not able to finish completely,
because he was old, and Tiziano, as the most excellent of all the
others, was sent for to the end that he might finish it.”
Titian’s work is to be found in the landscape-background,--which
is an exact view of Titian’s own Cadore. This landscape, with its
valley and rocky hill surmounted by a castle with towers, bathed in
warm, luminous light, was the finest that had ever been painted up to
that time. Bellini only lived two years after painting _The Feast
of the Gods_. In 1515 he painted the so-called _Venus of the
Belvedere_ and he died in the following year.
“So easy is the passage from Bellini’s art to Titian’s, that the
transition creates no contrast. The tone throughout is harmonized, and
the art of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries meets and mingles in
perfect fellowship,” Crowe and Cavalcaselle note.
This picture, an oil painting on canvas (67 × 74 inches) came from
the Collection of the Duke of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle,
England, having been previously in the Collection of Cardinal Pietro
Aldobrandini and in that of Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, Rome.
These two villas, upon whose walls _The Feast of the Gods_ hung
for so many years, are very celebrated. The _Villa Aldobrandini_
is one of the most notable residences near Rome. It is situated on the
slope of a mountain overlooking Frascati and was built by Cardinal
Pietro Aldobrandini, who entrusted its decoration to the most eminent
artists of his day, such as Jacopo della Porta, Domenichino, Giuseppe
Gesari, and Giovanni Fontana. Here, too, were gathered the most
precious relics of ancient art, while the gardens, adorned with vases,
statues, colonnades, and sparkling fountains, made the exterior a place
of marvellous beauty and charm. The view of mountains and sea suggested
the name of _Belvedere_. The Villa belongs to-day to the Borghese
family, who inherited it from the Aldobrandini.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Joseph E. Widener_
FEAST OF THE GODS
--_Giovanni Bellini_]
The _Villa Ludovisi_, frequently called the Piombino Palace, is
situated on the site of the ancient gardens of Sallust. This palace was
erected in 1622 by Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, nephew of Pope Gregory
XV, who selected Domenichino for his architect and the famous Le Nôtre
for his landscape-gardener. The property passed by inheritance to the
Princess of Piombino (Buonocampagni-Ludovisi).
Art-lovers know the name in connection with the colossal and
magnificent head of the Juno Ludovisi (Fifth Century, B. C.);
and it will be remembered that the Juno Ludovisi and other antiques
from the Villa Ludovisi formed the Museo Buonocompagni.
THE VIRGIN AND CHILD.
_Titian
(1477?–1576)._
_Collection of
Mr. Jules S. Bache._
The Virgin, in profile, seated on a stone seat, has auburn
hair--“Titian hair”--which is relieved against a dark-green curtain.
Her robe is pale rose-color with slashes of white and her mantle of
cobalt blue like the landscape, “which resembles the sea at midday.”
She also wears a white veil. She is looking with great tenderness at
the Holy Child, lying at full length on her lap and smiling at her.
The composition is most beautiful and the introduction of the trees
gives perpendicular lines which contrast delightfully with the general
horizontal effects.
Lionel Cust calls it a picture of great charm, as indeed it is, and
says: “The Virgin leans tenderly over the Child lying upon her knees.
This composition is treated in the same manner as the picture at
Bergamo, the _Virgin and Child with St. Bridgit and St. Ulphus_,
in the Prado at Madrid, and a few others. In all of these works the
sentiment is that of Giorgione, even though the execution is of the
hand of Titian; and one could not think of attaching another name than
his to this picture and to that at Madrid. It will be noticed also that
the two tree-trunks, so much in evidence at the back of the picture,
constitute a _leit-motiv_, which Giorgione first employed and
which Titian imitated.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Jules S. Bache_
THE VIRGIN AND CHILD
--_Titian_]
Herbert F. Cook in his _Giorgione_ (London, 1907), gives this
painting to Giorgione, sustaining the claim by the following: “The
marble parapet is a feature in Giorgione’s work, but not in Titian’s.
But the most convincing evidence to those who know the master lies
in the composition, which forms an almost equilateral triangle,
revealing Giorgione’s supreme sense of beauty in line. The splendid
curves made by the drapery, the pose of the Child, so as to obtain
the same unbroken sweep of line, reveal the painter of the _Dresden
Venus_. The painting of the Child’s hand over the Madonna’s is
precisely as in the Madrid picture, where, moreover, the pose of
the Child is singularly alike. The folds of drapery on the sleeve
recur in the same picture, the landscape with the small figure seated
beneath the tree is such as can be found in any Giorgione background.
The oval of the face and the delicacy of the features are thoroughly
characteristic, as is the spirit of calm reverie and tender simplicity
which Giorgione has breathed into his figures.”
Whether by Titian, or by Giorgione, or by both, the painting is a gem.
If by Giorgione, it would be even more valuable, as this master is so
rare.
The painting, oil on panel (18 × 22 inches), came from the
Benson Collection and was formerly at Burghley House, Stamford,
Northamptonshire, having been acquired in Italy between 1690 and 1700
by the Earl of Exeter.
Tiziano Vecellio was born about 1477 at Pieve di Cadore, the son
of Gregorio Vecelli, and was taken to Venice at the age of ten and
apprenticed to a mosaic-worker. After this he studied in Giovanni
Bellini’s _bottega_, where he had for a fellow-pupil, Giorgione,
with whom he was associated in decorating the Fondaco dei Tedeschi.
Titian visited Padua, Rome, and, in 1516, Ferrara. Commissions of all
kinds followed rapidly and Titian became the most famous painter of
his time. He lived in splendid style and his long life was filled with
magnificent painting and magnificent results. Titian died of the Plague
in 1576.
In his long life, crowned with every kind of success, Titian painted
with superlative skill every sort of subject. Titian was one of the
greatest masters the world has ever known.
“In attempting to picture Titian,” writes Taine, “we imagine a happy
man, the happiest and the healthiest of his species, Heaven having
bestowed upon him nothing but favors and felicities: the first among
his rivals; visited in his house by the Kings of France and Poland;
a favorite of the Emperor, of Philip II, of the Doges, of Pope Paul
III, of all the Italian princes; created a knight and a count of
the Empire; overwhelmed with orders; liberally paid, pensioned, and
worthily enjoying his good fortune. He kept house in great state,
dressed himself splendidly, and entertained at his table cardinals,
lords, the greatest artists and the ablest writers of his day. Beauty,
taste, cultivation, and talent play and reflect back upon him, as if
from a mirror the brightness of his own genius. His brother, his son,
Orazio, his two cousins, Cesare and Fabrizio, and his relative, Marco
di Tiziano, were all excellent painters. His daughter, Lavinia, dressed
as Flora, with a basket of fruit on her head, supplied him with a model
of fresh complexion and ample form. His talent flows on like a great
river in its bed, nothing disturbs its course, and its own increase is
sufficient. Like Leonardo and Michelangelo, Titian sees nothing outside
of his art.”
CATERINA CORNARO, QUEEN OF CYPRUS.
_Titian
(1477–1576)._
_Collection of
Mr. John Ringling._
Proud and handsome this famous Queen and beauty looks down upon us
from the centuries. She is wearing a dress of gold and green striped
velvet with a pink camelia at her neck and one of those fashionable,
tall, sugar-loaf head-dresses--called in France the _hennin_--with
jewelled band around the rim and a floating veil. Very beautifully are
her pearls painted; and, fastened by a chain to a bracelet on her left
wrist, is a pet chameleon.
This portrait, oils on canvas (43 × 38 inches), came from the Ricardi
Palace, Florence, and from the Collection of R. S. Holford, Esq.,
Dorchester House.
Caterina Cornaro, “_La Reine de Chypre_,” famous in song and story,
was the daughter of Marco Cornaro, a noble Venetian and descendant of
the Doge of the same name, and Florence, daughter of Niccolò Crispo,
Duca dell’ Archipelago. Caterina was born in Venice in 1454, educated
at the Convent of San Benedetto in Padua, and reared in all the wealth
and elegance of the time. At an early age she was married to the King
of Cyprus, Jerusalem, and Armenia (Jacques de Lusignan), who chose
her from sixty-two of the most beautiful women of Venice. The Senate,
having adopted Caterina Cornaro as a daughter of the Republic, gave her
a dowry of a hundred thousand golden ducats and agreed to defend the
Kingdom of Cyprus against all enemies.
The wedding took place by proxy in Venice in 1472 and was celebrated
with great magnificence. The Doge, himself, Cristoforo Moro, called
for the bride at her palace in the Bucentaur and accompanied her to
the Venetian ship in which she embarked with a regal suite for her
new home. After experiencing several accidents at sea, the beautiful
Venetian lady arrived in Cyprus, where her rare beauty and charming
manners captivated the entire population. Within two years her husband
died and Caterina then reigned over Cyprus for fourteen years, subject,
however, to the strict surveillance of Venice. At last, wearied by
restrictions and intrigues, the Queen of Cyprus in 1489 returned to
Venice with her beloved brother, Giorgio Cornaro, and made a solemn
transfer of all her claims in Cyprus to the Doge.
Caterina then went to Frattalonga, situated at the foot of the Asolani
mountains, to meet the Emperor Maximilian, who was on his way home from
Milan to Vienna; and the place pleased her so much that she obtained
from the Doge, Agostino Barbarigo, the investiture of Asolo and its
district. A few months later--in October 1489--Caterina returned to
Asolo with a suite of four thousand persons and established a Court in
the Castle, where she lived for twenty-one years, protected by troops
granted to her by the Republic of Venice. In this beautiful residence
Caterina was said to have held three Courts--that of the Muses; that
of Love; and that of her own, which was of great magnificence. The
leading spirit there was the celebrated poet, Pietro Bembo, (in later
years Cardinal Bembo), who wrote his famous dialogues of love, _Gli
Asolani_, here in 1490, for the superb marriage festivities of one
of Caterina’s maids-of-honor. Every illustrious personage of the period
visited the Court at Asolo.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. John Ringling_
CATERINA CORNARO
QUEEN OF CYPRUS
--_Titian_]
During the wars occasioned by the League of Cambrai (1508), Caterina
returned for safety to Venice and died there in 1510, in the palace of
her brother, Giorgio, who was then procurator of St. Mark’s.
Titian painted several other portraits of Caterina Cornaro, of which
the one in the Uffizi is the most famous, representing the Queen
of Cyprus with her golden crown studded with large pearls and an
over-dress or coat of rich green brocade.
GIORGIO CORNARO WITH FALCON.
_Titian
(1489–1576)._
_Collection of
Mr. A. W. Erickson._
We have here a famous Venetian statesman and general of the Sixteenth
Century, beloved brother of Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus (see page
143), representing him probably in the habit he liked best of all--that
of a sportsman with his pet falcon. Here he stands, three quarters to
the right, in a slate-colored hunting coat with brown fur collar and
with a black belt at the waist from which hangs a sword, bound with a
crimson sash. His curly hair and beard are chestnut color and his eyes
are very bright. His head is raised and he looks intently at his falcon
perched upon his left gloved hand, with hood, bill and jacket attached,
and with his right hand grasps the bird’s breast.
From the left hand corner the head of a white, liver-spotted hound
looks up. The background is dark. The painting, an oil on canvas (43
× 38 inches) was formerly in the Collections of the Carignan branch
of the Royal House of Piedmont; Louis François de Bourbon, Prince de
Conti; the Earl of Carlisle, Castle Howard, Yorkshire, England; and Dr.
Edward Simon, Berlin. Crowe and Cavalcaselle in their _Life and Times
of Titian_ (London, 1881) say of this work: “Titian never produced a
finer picture than which now adorns the gallery of Castle Howard. This
beautiful work is modelled with all the richness of tone and smoothness
of surface which distinguishes polished flesh. The attitude is natural,
the complexion warm and embrowned by the sun; and every part is blended
with the utmost finish without producing want of flexibility.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. A. W. Erickson_
GIORGIO CORNARO WITH FALCON
--_Titian_]
Giorgio Cornaro succeeded his father, Marco Cornaro in 1479, he being
about twenty-five. Italian historians are fond of attributing the
Victory of Cadore to Giorgio Cornaro, who lived until 1527, having
played an important part all his life in Venetian politics.
MAXIMILIAN SFORZA, DUKE OF MILAN.
_Bartolommeo Veneto
(1480–1555)._
_Collection of
Mr. Henry Goldman._
This portrait, oil on panel (30⅞ × 23¼ inches), was formerly in the
Palazzo Sforza and later hung in the Casa Perego, Milan, until the
entire Casa Perego Collection was bought in the early Nineteenth
Century by Senator Crespi of Rome, in whose gallery it remained until
the Crespi Collection was sold. It is doubly interesting as a work of
art and as the representation of an important character in Italian
history. Bernhard Berenson calls it “one of the most manly portraits
and one of the most beautiful paintings of the Italian Renaissance.”
The half-length figure is seen almost full front, but the head is
turned slightly to the left. All the Italian Renaissance seems to be
expressed in this proud, distinguished person and in his rich dress,
which consists of a coat of green velvet trimmed with bands of gold,
a finely embroidered white shirt, black waistcoat with horizontal
gold stripes and a rich fur collar, which he clasps with his right
hand on the index finger of which is a handsome ring. His dark hair
falls to the shoulders and is surmounted by a black velvet cap, on the
side of which is a gold and enamelled medal showing an allegorical
female figure with the date 1512, of the kind that all the fashionable
gentlemen were wearing at that period. A red curtain falls behind the
figure and on the wall hangs a picture in which are introduced figures
from Dürer’s famous woodcut, _The Knight and the Lansquenet_.
In front of the sitter is a narrow ledge, or balustrade, with a card
in the centre, which originally carried the signature of Bartolommeo
Veneto.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Henry Goldman_
MAXIMILIAN SFORZA
--_Bartolommeo Veneto_]
Maximilian Sforza was the son of Ludovico Sforza, “Il Moro,” Duke of
Milan, the most illustrious prince of Italy, and Beatrice d’Este, one
of the most fascinating and brilliant women of the Italian Renaissance.
Maximilian was born on January 25, 1493, in the Castello of Milan, and
was named Ercole out of compliment to his grandfather, Duke Ercole of
Ferrara. He was brought up in the most brilliant of Courts and his
education and training were of the very best. His mother was devoted
to him and constantly mentions him in her letters. Ercole appears in
the great altar-piece attributed to Zenale, now in the Brera, kneeling
by the side of his father. The portrait of this little child must be a
good one, for we see the same face grown older in the Veneto portrait
before us. On the altar-piece, just mentioned, Ercole’s younger
brother kneels by the side of Beatrice d’Este. It was during a visit
of the Emperor Maximilian to Ludovico and his wife in 1496 that Ercole
received his new name. The Emperor, again charmed by Beatrice, took
great interest in her two sons and requested that the elder should be
called Maximilian.
But the brilliant days passed and sorrows came. The beautiful, gifted
mother died in January, 1497, and the French invaded Milan. Ludovico
determined to seek safety in flight and sent his two sons to Germany
under the care of his brother, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, Cardinal
Sanseverino, and their kinswoman, Camilla Sforza. “A truly piteous and
heart-breaking sight it was,” wrote an eye-witness, “to see these poor
children embrace their beloved father, whose face was wet with their
tears.” Twenty mules laden with baggage and a large chariot drawn by
eight horses and containing Ludovico’s precious jewels and 240,000
gold ducats followed in the train of the young princes. These young
gentlemen never saw their father again, for “Il Moro” was captured,
taken to Paris, and imprisoned in the castle of Loches, where he died
in 1508.
An Italian writer, Marino Sanuto, exclaimed on the terrible fate of
Ludovico: “Only think, reader, what grief and shame so great and
glorious a lord, who had been held to be the wisest of monarchs and
ablest of rulers, must have felt at losing so splendid a state in these
few days, without a single stroke of the sword. Let those who are in
high places take warning, considering the miserable fall of this lord,
who was held by many to be the greatest prince in the world, and let
them remember that when Fortune sets you on the top of her wheel, she
may at any moment bring you to the ground.”
The rest of the story is well told in Mrs. Cartwright’s _Beatrice
d’Este_ (London, 1889):
“Meanwhile Beatrice’s sons grew up at Innsbrück, under the care of
their cousin, the Empress Bianca. It was a melancholy life for these
young princes, born in the purple and reared in all the luxury and
culture of Milan. And when their cousin, Bianca, died in 1510, they
lost their best friend. But a sudden and unexpected turn of the tide
brought them once more to the front. That warlike pontiff, Julius II,
who, as Cardinal della Rovere, had been one of the chief instruments in
bringing the French into Italy, entered into a league with Maximilian
to expel them and reinstate the son of the hated Moro on the throne of
Milan. They succeeded so well that in 1512, four years after Ludovico’s
death at Loches, young Maximilian Sforza entered Milan in triumph
amidst the enthusiastic applause of the people. Once more he rode
up to the gates of the Castello, where he was born, and took up his
abode there as reigning duke. But his rule over Lombardy was short.
A handsome, gentle youth, without either his father’s talents or his
mother’s high spirit, Maximilian was destined to become a passive
tool in the hands of stronger and more powerful men. His weakness and
incapacity soon became apparent, and when, three years later, the new
French King, Francis I, invaded the Milanese and defeated the Italian
army at Marignano, the young duke signed an act of abdication and
consented to spend the rest of his life in France. There he lived in
honorable captivity, content with a pension allowed him by King Francis
and with the promise of a Cardinal’s hat held out to him by the Pope,
until he died in May, 1530.”
Bartolommeo Veneto (or Bartolommeo Veneziano), born in 1480, was a
pupil of Giovanni Bellini, whose influence is apparent in Veneto’s
early pictures. In 1506–1508 Veneto was painting for Lucrezia Borgia in
Ferrara and after that he was engaged at the Court of Milan, where he
painted this portrait of _Maximilian Sforza_. The picture bears
the date 1512, which was the year the young Duke returned to Milan.
Bartolommeo Veneto was famous for his portraits. He lived for sometime
in Lombardy and, like all the painters of the time and place, fell
under the influence of Leonardo da Vinci. As the last trace of him
appears on a portrait in the Uffizi, dated 1555, it is supposed that
Veneto died in that year.
A SCENE ALONG THE ADRIATIC COAST.
_Francesco Guardi
(1712–1793)._
_Collection of
Mrs. Charles B. Alexander._
Guardi, a pupil of Canaletto, devoted himself to the study of his
native city, Venice, where he was born in 1712 and where he painted
steadily until his death in 1793. Guardi ranks with Canaletto and
Turner as one of the three greatest painters of the “Dream City” as
Charles Dickens called Venice. In Guardi’s long list of pictures we
have a perfect history in paint of the “Queen of the Adriatic” during
the Eighteenth Century. There are innumerable views of the Grand Canal;
of both the exterior and the interior of San Marco; of San Giorgio, the
Salute, San Zaccaria, and other churches; of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi
(the German banking-house); the Doges Palace; the Piazza and the
Piazzetta; scenes on the outlying islands; views on the Lagoons; and
pictures of processions of the Doges and of festivals of the church.
The picture presented here shows a scene outside of Venice, but not far
away; and it is a beautiful and characteristic work of Guardi, both as
to composition and color. The painting came from the Collection of the
Baron Maurice de Rothschild of Paris to its present owner, Mrs. Charles
B. Alexander of New York.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mrs. Charles B. Alexander_
A SCENE ALONG THE ADRIATIC COAST
--_Francesco Guardi_]
FLEMISH PAINTING
_FLEMISH PAINTING_
Flemish Painting in the Fourteenth Century was based on the
miniature-painting that illustrated the Mediæval manuscripts: indeed,
many of the early paintings look like enlarged versions of the little
pictures that adorn the vellum pages of missals and old _romans_.
The early painters were influenced by the School of Cologne until
the two Van Eycks (Hubert, 1366–1426, and Jan, 1380–1441), by their
marvellous painting and by the followers they attracted, raised Flemish
Art into importance and gave it a standing by itself as the School of
Bruges.
Little is known of the lives of these painters except that they stood
high in the favor of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, who frequently
sent Jan on missions to foreign countries, and that the brothers
painted the great and famous altar-piece, the _Adoration of the Lamb_,
for the Cathedral of St. Bavon in Ghent. This great work, which is
one of the most celebrated of all altar-pieces, is a landmark in the
history of painting. It may be said to have inaugurated the Flemish
School; and it marks an innovation as well. This _Adoration of the
Lamb_ was ordered by Jodocus Vydts, a burgomaster of Ghent, and his
wife, Isabella Borluut, for their mortuary chapel in the Cathedral of
St. Bavon; and Van Mander relates that when it was finished “swarms of
people” came to gaze upon it; but, as the wings were closed except on
special festivals, “few but the high-born and those who could afford
to pay the _custos_ saw it.” It must be remembered that at this period
changes were also taking place in Italy under Gentile de Fabriano,
Pisanello, and Masaccio. Whether the Van Eycks invented oil-painting or
not, they had much to do with perfecting the process and influencing
others to the use of the new method.
The Van Eycks had as pupils and followers all the Flemish and German
painters of the day and their influence was even felt in Italy, where
their pictures sold for their weight in gold.
In 1425 Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, took Jan van Eyck into his
service as painter and “_varlet de chambre_;” and Jan, thereafter,
seems to have spent his life at the Court, painting portraits and
designing variously, going on embassies for the Duke, and painting in
Bruges and in Lille. As a portrait-painter Jan van Eyck is ranked with
Dürer, Holbein, Raphael, Titian, Van Dyck, and the other great ones in
this line. Undoubtedly, Jan van Eyck moved about a good deal through
the Duke of Burgundy’s immense domain, which included all the Low
Countries and a great part of what is now France.
We are apt to think of these early painters who laid the foundations
of modern art as living in a much simpler day than our own. It is true
that in the Fifteenth Century the Middle Ages were still holding their
own in Flanders--the Renaissance moved very slowly northward--but it
was a time of great prosperity and great luxury, especially in the
Burgundian country.
Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, son of the King of France, was the
most luxurious prince of his time. His titles show his power. He was
Duke of Burgundy, of Brabant, of Lothier and of Luxembourg; Count
of Flanders, of Artois, and of Burgundy; Palatine of Hainault, of
Holland, of Zeeland, of Namur, and of Charolais; Marquis of the Holy
Empire; and Lord of Friesland, of Salins, and of Mechlin. The House of
Burgundy, therefore, by its inheritances, alliances and conquests, had
attained such power as even to overshadow the French throne. Philip
the Good (1396–1467) was even more luxurious than his grandfather,
Philip the Bold. His Court was unequalled in Europe and was subject to
the strictest rules of etiquette. His palaces in Brussels, Dijon, and
Paris were sumptuously furnished and his collections of tapestries,
gold-work, silver-work, jewels, embroideries, illuminated manuscripts,
and printed books excited the admiration of such travellers and
chroniclers as were privileged to see them and who, fortunately for us,
have left accounts for us to read. At this period, too, the Flemings
were the great craftsmen of Europe and they produced every kind of
article required for the tastes and comfort of the wealthy Burgundians.
Brussels and Dijon became veritable Meccas for Mediæval artists, while
Bruges, Tournay, Arras, Ypres, Ghent, and Dinant held a welcome for any
able craftsman or artist, who, driven from England, France, or Italy by
the civil wars, sought refuge and work.
And there was plenty of work to be done!
Artistic designs of all kinds were needed for tapestry-workers, for
the goldsmiths and silversmiths, for the furniture-makers, and for
craftsmen busy in making articles for household use or for personal
decoration. Moreover, for the great entertainments, such as weddings,
receptions of princes, or celebrations in honor of the Knights of the
Golden Fleece, and other important functions, a veritable army of
painters, sculptors, illuminators, carvers, and machinists was needed
to design, plan, and execute the _entremets_ exhibited during the
banquets and the grand decorations erected in the streets through which
the processions passed.
We shall gain a better idea of the spirit of early Flemish Art if we
pause for a moment to look into the palace at Lille, in 1454, when
Philip the Good was celebrating the “Feast of the Pheasant.” The large
hall was hung with tapestry representing the _Labors of Hercules_.
The _dressoir_ of enormous size was adorned with magnificent gold
and silver vessels and there were three large tables, splendidly laden
with viands artistically decorated. One of the guests wrote: “On a
raised platform at the head of the first table sat the Duke. He was
arrayed in his accustomed splendor--his dress of black velvet serving
as a dark ground that heightened the brilliancy of the precious stones,
valued at a million of gold crowns, with which it was profusely decked.
Among the guests was a numerous body of knights, who had passed the
morning in the tilting-field, and fair Flemish ladies, whose flaunting
beauty had inspired these martial sports. Each course was composed of
forty-four dishes, which were placed on chariots painted in gold and
azure and which were moved along the tables by concealed machinery.
As soon as the company was seated, the bells began to peal from the
steeple of a huge pastry church with stained windows that concealed an
organ and choir of singers; and three little choristers issued from the
edifice and sang a very sweet _chanson_. Twenty-eight musicians,
hidden in a mammoth pie,[19] performed on various instruments and the
fine viands and wines were circulated.”
After the exhibition of _entremets_, the _pheasant_ was brought in, the
Crusade proclaimed against the Sultan, and the vows registered.
It is safe to conjecture that Hubert and Jan van Eyck were among the
painters who were employed to design the _entremets_, triumphal
arches, and curiosities executed in pastry and in confections made of
sugar, as well as to paint portraits of distinguished Flemings and
altar-pieces for their churches.
The Flemish Primitives certainly had many occasions to feast their eyes
upon magnificence!
John Paston, who went to Bruges to attend Charles the Bold’s second
marriage in 1468 to Margaret of York, was overwhelmed and dazed by
what he saw. “Nothing was like it save King Arthur’s Court,” he
wrote home. The streets were hung with tapestries and cloth-of-gold,
triumphal arches were erected and at intervals along her way the bride
was entertained by “Histories,” the joint production of painters,
decorators, dramatists, and machinists. The banquet-hall was superbly
decorated and the chroniclers say “lighted by chandeliers in the form
of castles surrounded by forest and mountains with revolving paths on
which serpents, dragons, and other monstrous animals seemed to roam
in search of prey, spouting forth jets of flame that were reflected
in huge mirrors, so arranged as to catch and multiply the rays. The
dishes containing the principal meats were ships, seven feet long and
completely rigged, the masts and cordage gilt, the sails and streamers
of silk, each floating in a silver lake between shores of verdure and
enamelled rocks and attended by a fleet of boats laden with lemons,
oranges, and condiments. There were thirty of these vessels and as many
huge pastries in the shape of castles with banners waving from their
battlements and towers; besides tents and pavilions for the fruit;
jelly-dishes of crystal supported by figures of the same material
dispensing streams of lavender and rose-water; and an immense profusion
of gold and silver plate.”
When Charles the Bold was killed on the battlefield of Nancy (1477),
a New Era was about to dawn. America was soon to be discovered; Vasco
da Gama was to find an ocean route to the East Indies; the Moors
were to be expelled from Spain; the Wars of the Roses were to end in
England; Ferdinand and Isabella were to marry their daughter, the “mad
Joanna,” to Philip the Fair of Austria, heir through his mother, Mary
of Burgundy, to the Burgundian dominions (the issue being Charles V,
born in Ghent in 1500). Of still more importance to the world of Art
than these important events was the discovery of Italy by the French,
who crossed the Alps with Charles VIII. The French were dazzled by what
they saw in Italy. On their return the Renaissance in France and the
Netherlands may be said to have begun to blossom. _The ground had
already been prepared by the art-loving Dukes of Burgundy._
Let us return, however, to the Bruges painters:
“The rise of the School was aided by the Fourteenth Century Art of
Cologne best shown in the work of Meister Wilhelm. The Art of the
movement was, for the period, strongly realistic. Natural objects
were painted with the utmost fidelity, interest in still-life and
_genre_ begin to appear, and details of architecture and landscape
were rendered as carefully as the heads of the most sacred personages
in the compositions. So pronounced was this tendency that superficial
observers are led to consider Flemish painting fundamentally material;
but a thoughtful analysis will reveal a spirituality in the art quite
as sincere, if not so obvious, as in the painting of contemporary
Italy. In the early School, the painting was almost wholly religious,
and scenes and actors were handled with reverence and deep feeling.
“The Flemings, however, inherited from earlier art a religious type
to which they clung with great tenacity and which to the modern eye
is ugly. The exaggeratedly-domed forehead of the Madonna, a symbol of
intellect to the Fleming, is to the modern a distortion. Similarly the
tiny mouth, the eyes almost without brows,[20] and the other features
which Flemish symbolism demanded, are now somewhat disturbing to
the eye. When native realism and symbolism were coupled, as in the
over realistic rendering of the ascetic Christ-Child, the effect is
sometimes startling to the layman; and the beginner in the study of
Flemish Art should beware of mistaking accidents of convention for
artistic defects. If the conventions of Flemish Art make it at first
difficult to appreciate, the technical perfection of the work must
appeal to any one. Oil-painting, perfected if not necessarily invented
in Flanders, gave a richness of color and a lustre of surface which
specially distinguished the style. The play and delicate gradation
of light over richly-colored surfaces was rendered so skillfully
that the artists approached the expression of a complete visual
effect, finally reached in Seventeenth Century Holland in the work of
Vermeer.--_Mediæval and Renaissance Paintings_ (Fogg Art Museum,
Cambridge, 1927).
Next in importance to the Van Eycks comes Roger van der Weyden
(1400?–1464). By 1432 Roger had made a name for himself, for he had
become a master painter in the Tournay Guild. In 1450 he went to Italy
and seems to have visited Cologne on his way home (see page 166).
The Maître de Flémalle (Robert Campin?), who showed a great interest in
still-life, is thought to have been the master of Roger van der Weyden.
Petrus Christus (1410?–1473), a native of Baerle, Holland, free citizen
of Bruges in 1444, is regarded as one of the ancestors of _genre_
painting (see page 169).
Hans Memling (1430–5–1494), a native of Holland, was a supposed pupil
of Roger van der Weyden. It is believed that Roger van der Weyden took
Memling with him to Italy in 1450. Memling was closely associated with
his master Roger van der Weyden and sometimes painted the wing-panels
for Roger’s great altar-pieces. Memling’s chief painting was done in
Bruges (see page 172).
Taine thus sums up the Flemish Primitives: “A Flemish Renaissance
underneath Christian ideas, such, indeed, is the two-fold nature of
art under Hubert and Jan van Eyck, Roger van der Weyden, Memling,
and Quentin Massys; and from these two characteristics proceed all
the others. On the one hand, artists take interest in actual life;
their figures are no longer symbols like the illuminations of ancient
missals, nor purified spirits like the Madonnas of the School of
Cologne but living beings and bodies. They attend to no anatomy, the
perspective is exact, the minutest details are rendered regarding
stuffs, architecture, accessories, and landscape; the relief is strong
and the entire scene stamps itself on the eye and on the mind with
extraordinary force and sense of stability; the greatest masters of
coming times are not to surpass them in all this, nor even go so far.
Nature is now discovered. The scales fall from their eyes; they have
just mastered almost in a flash, the proportions, the structure, and
the coloring of visible realities; and, moreover, they delight in them.
Consider the superb copes wrought in gold and bedecked with diamonds,
the embroidered silks, the flowered and dazzling diadems with which
they ornament their saints and divine personages, all of whom represent
the pomp of the Burgundian Court. Look at the calm and transparent
water, the bright meadows, the red and white flowers, the blossoming
trees and the sunny distances of their admirable landscapes. Observe
their coloring--the strongest and richest ever seen, the pure and full
tones side by side as in a Persian carpet and united solely through
their harmony, the superb breaks in the folds of purple mantles, the
deep azure of long, falling robes, the green draperies like a summer
field permeated with sunshine, the display of gold skirts trimmed with
black, the strong light which warms and enlivens the whole scene--and
you have a concert in which each instrument sounds its proper note.
They see the world on the bright side and make a holiday of it, a
genuine _fête_, similar to those of this day, glowing under a
more bounteous sunlight and not a heavenly Jerusalem suffused with
supernatural radiance such as Fra Angelico painted. They are Flemings
and they stick to the earth.”
Contemporary with Memling is Hugo Van der Goes (1430–1482), one of
the last important figures in the Van Eyck School, more celebrated
in his day than in ours, but powerful and austere, and painter of an
altar-piece in 1476 for Tommaso Portinari, which was placed in the
Church of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence and was greatly admired by
Ghirlandaio and Piero di Cosimo. With Gerard David (1450–1523), a
follower of Memling and Massys, we leave the Flemish Primitives for a
world of newer ideas.
Quentin Massys (1460–1530), creator of the Antwerp School, belongs to
an intermediate epoch. He is herald of the Italianiate Flemings--Jan
Mabuse, Bernard van Orley, Lambert Lombard, Jan Mostært, Bellegambe,
Launcelot Blondeel, and others--all of whom, dazzled by the
Renaissance, tried to combine their Flemish coldness with Italian
grace. Some of them lived to see the triumph of Rubens and the rise of
another School.
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), is the recognized head of the Flemish
School of Painting. His power was felt throughout Europe and he had
more influence on taste in the Seventeenth Century than any other
artist. Rubens painted more than two thousand pictures and made nearly
five hundred drawings. In every style he proved himself a great master
(see page 176).
Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641) studied under Hendrik van Balen and then
became assistant to and pupil of Rubens. After a long stay in Italy
he returned to Antwerp and thence settled in England where he became
Court-Painter to Charles I. In his short life he painted nearly a
thousand pictures and acquired such proficiency in portraiture that he
is ranked among the greatest in this line (see page 181).
The important Brueghel (or Breughel) family affords an example of
heredity in painting and how in the course of generations there was
transition from the old to the new art. Pieter (Peasant) Brueghel
(1530–16--?) received lessons from Van Orley and Jerome Cœck, but his
real master was the long dead Jerome Bosch, whose fantastic works
fascinated him. Brueghel went to Italy and was delighted with the
Alpine scenery; but, on his return he tried to preserve the Flemish
ideas that were fast dying under the Italian cult. He persisted in
portraying the familiar scenes of his boyhood and familiar humorous
situations. Therefore, he received the sobriquets of “Peasant
Brueghel” and “Droll Brueghel.” His two sons were equally famous.
Jan or “Velvet Brueghel” (1568–1625), so-called from his fondness for
wearing velvet, was famous for his flowers; and he frequently painted
garlands in the pictures of Rubens. Pieter Brueghel (1574–1637),
so loved painting infernal scenes that he was nicknamed “Hell-fire
Brueghel.” Their sons continued their names and professions until the
close of the Seventeenth Century.
Pieter Pourbus (1510–1584) and his son Frans (1540–1580) are among the
best portrait-painters of the Sixteenth Century.
Frans Snyders (1579–1657) studied under Peter Brueghel and Hendrik van
Balen, became the friend and associate of Rubens, and a brilliant and
unsurpassed painter of fruits and animals.
Jacob Jordaens (1593–1678), born in Antwerp, son of a cloth merchant,
depicted scenes from domestic life and popular festivities. He
was astonishingly able to render mirth and jollity. Jordaens is
distinguished for his unrestrained and boisterous humor and he often
repeated his somewhat crazy home-concert, “As the old ones sing, so
will the young ones twitter.” Jordaens sometimes collaborated with
Frans Snyders, Jan Fyt, Adriaen van Utrecht, and others. Jordaens was
entirely Flemish, absolutely unaffected by the foreign influences that
charmed Rubens and Van Dyck.
David Teniers the Younger (1610–1690) is the greatest _genre_
painter of the southern Netherlands. Teniers is one of those Flemish
painters who were sought after in Holland during their lifetime.
This may have arisen from the fact that he was closely allied with
the Dutch School and with Brouwer who lived and worked in Antwerp.
Teniers was an indefatigable painter and left more than eight hundred
pictures,--inn-interiors, _kermesses_, hawking-parties, drinkers,
bagpipe-players and other musicians, “conversations,” bowling-games,
kitchens, _Temptations of St. Anthony_, and monkey-scenes. Sir Joshua
Reynolds admired him and said: “The works of David Teniers, jun., are
worthy of the closest attention of a painter who desires to excel
in the mechanical knowledge of his art. His manner of touching, or
what we call handling, has perhaps never been equalled: there is in
his pictures that exact mixture of softness and sharpness which is
difficult to execute.”
One of the best artists of the second period of the Antwerp School
is Gonzales Coques (1614–1684), a painter of interiors of elegance,
wealth, gaiety, and happy serenity, and also portraits. His distinction
he borrows from Van Dyck and his color is inspired by Rubens. However,
in the dimensions of his pictures and their minuteness of detail and
finish, Coques is reminiscent of the Dutch School,--particularly
Terborch and Metsu.
In the Eighteenth Century there is little painting to claim attention.
Charles Blanc has put the matter most succinctly:
“For the Flemish School the Eighteenth Century is a long
_entr’acte_ during which the stage, so nobly occupied of old,
is sad and deserted. Here and there an artist appears to remind us
what Flanders was in color and decoration for two centuries. France
was triumphing in spirit and grace; Italy, though decadent, was still
ingenious and smiling; England at last was producing original masters;
_but Flanders was asleep_.”
PORTRAIT OF A LADY.
_Roger van der Weyden
(1400?–1464)._
_Collection of the
Hon. Andrew W. Mellon._
This very striking portrait, an oil painting on panel (14⅜ × 10⅝), came
from the Collection of the Duke of Anhalt, Ducal Castle of Dessau, and
was previously in the Gothic Palace, Wörlitz, Germany.
[Illustration:
_Collection of the Hon. Andrew W. Mellon_
PORTRAIT OF A LADY
--_Roger van der Weyden_]
The subject is a Flemish lady of high birth. She is not beautiful,
but she has an air of great distinction. Her half-figure is turned
three-quarters to the left and dressed in a dark robe with a
turned-over collar, opening at the throat, where a transparent piece of
soft, white muslin is arranged into a V-shape, and over this hangs a
fine gold chain. A crimson girdle fastened with a gold clasp encircles
her waist. The hair is brushed back from the forehead, or rather the
forehead is rendered bald by the fashionable style of plucking out
the hair, and covered by a close-fitting cap, composed of interlaced
bands edged with a black ribbon, holding in place a thin veil; and over
this a transparent white “wimple” is pinned to the cap, passing over
the forehead and fastened at the back where it spreads in a wing on
either shoulder. The right hand is placed over the left, presumably
resting on a parapet, and a simple gold ring is on a finger of each
hand.
Dr. Max Friedländer writes in _Meisterwerke der Niederländischen
Malerei des XV u. XVI Jahrhunderts auf der Ausstellung zu Brügge_
(1902):
“This simple, proud, and very well preserved portrait, which has up
to the present time not received a great deal of attention, in my
estimation appears to be characteristic of Roger van der Weyden, in
the severe and somewhat Moorish outline of the face, in the economic
modelling of the shadows, and in the drawing of the lean hands. Similar
women’s portraits are in the National Gallery, London, and in Adolphe
de Rothschild’s Collection (from the Nieuwenhuij’s Sale).
Roger van der Weyden, or Rogier de la Pasture, the son of Henri de
la Pasture, was born in 1400 in Tournai, where the family had been
settled since 1260. His father was a sculptor and gave Roger his first
training. Next he was apprenticed to the Maître de Flêmalle (Robert
Campin) and later went to Brussels to live. Here he quickly gained a
great reputation, for in 1436 he was appointed painter to the city
of Brussels. While busy on his great _Last Judgment_, commissioned
by Nicholas Rolin for the Hospital at Beaune (a polyptych, which has
been classed with the Van Eyck _Adoration of the Lamb_), Roger went on
a long trip to Italy. Visiting Rome, he greatly admired the frescoes
begun by Gentile da Fabriano in St. John Lateran. He also went to
Florence, Ferrara, and, it is supposed, Venice. Roger painted a good
deal in Italy and even had orders. Among other things he painted a
_Madonna and Child_ for Cosimo de’ Medici.
Roger returned home, it is thought, by way of Cologne. While on this
trip, Roger was commissioned by Leonello d’Este to paint a picture.
Roger van der Weyden left as much in Italy as he brought home. His
influence is seen in many of the contemporary Italians. In like manner,
the influence of the Italians appears in the pictures that Roger van
der Weyden painted on his return. German artists, too, fell under the
spell of Roger van der Weyden, particularly Martin Schöngauer, the
greatest German painter of the Fifteenth Century.
Roger van der Weyden was extremely versatile: he produced paintings in
oil and painted miniatures, designed cartoons for tapestry-weavers, and
made wood-engravings.
Fierens-Gevaert, the greatest authority on Flemish Primitives, says of
Roger van der Weyden:
“His figures, among which males predominate, both in number and
interest, do not all possess the impassibility sometimes attributed to
them. Their beauty, or their moral significance, is merely restrained,
just like the artist’s own emotions. Both need to be discovered. As for
the expression of the color, the novel truth of the light, the profound
feeling of the landscape--these are the incontestable merits in the
Louvain painter. They explain his profound influence upon Memling,
Gerard David, Quentin Massys, the Master of the Death of Mary, his
_prestige_ with the Sixteenth Century Renaissants, and the growing
admiration of modern criticism for his genius.”
Roger van der Weyden died in Brussels, June 16, 1464, leaving many
pupils and followers, the most noteworthy of whom was Hans Memling.
PORTRAIT OF A CARTHUSIAN MONK AS A SAINT.
_Petrus Christus
(1410?–1473)._
_Collection of
Mr. Jules S. Bache._
This interesting panel (8½ × 11⅝ inches) came to America by way of
Spain, having been in the Collections of Don Ramon de Oms, Majorca, and
the Marquis de Dos Aguas, Valencia.
The picture is signed and dated 1446 at the base of the portrait,
below a ledge, on which an insect is slowly walking. The identity of
the subject and the reason for the presence of the fly, or grasshopper
(or whatever it is), are equally unknown. However, we have here a
marvellous human document, which grows more amazing the longer it is
studied. The portrait preserves the personality and features of a
strong, kindly, and interesting man, who must have been beloved and
honored, or he would not have been represented with a golden ring
around his head, proclaiming him a saint.
And the painter has done more than this: he has thrown such atmosphere
around the man that the interesting life in the old abbeys seems to
rise before us. We see the picturesque buildings set in emerald swards
and shaded by leafy trees, and surrounded by cloisters where the monks
take exercise, or read in some traceried recess; and we peer into
the halls where the artistic members of the community are writing,
composing music, copying, or painting and illuminating beautiful
miniatures in manuscripts, destined--although undreamed of by these
painters and gold-leaf workers--to bring thousands of dollars at
auction-sales five hundred years in the future and to be prized as
treasures in a then undiscovered country across the Atlantic Ocean,
whose waters were thought by those very monks to break upon the shores
of Far Cathay!
Our _Carthusian Monk_, in his white cassock, carries us into the
Chapel, where we see him and others of his Order in prayer at midnight,
at early dawn, or at the vesper hour; and again with him we stroll
to the near-by river in the golden sunlight of the afternoon and sit
under the soft willows, dangling a line from a long fishing-pole until
we have a sufficient catch for supper. On our return to the abbey we
notice how heartily our _Carthusian Monk_ welcomes a group of
arriving travellers--for the abbeys were the hostelries in the Middle
Ages--and we join them at supper in the refectory. Doubtless, too, our
Carthusian gives us a _petit verre_ of golden Chartreuse of his
own making.
While the rules in the ancient abbeys were rigid and inflexible and
religion, of course, the chief business, it was in these secluded
places that art and learning were preserved and fostered. The world
to-day is apt to forget what civilization owes to the Mediæval Abbey,
and Petrus Christus has brought this _Carthusian Monk_ to tell us
something of what that is.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Jules S. Bache_
PORTRAIT OF A CARTHUSIAN MONK AS A SAINT
--_Petrus Christus_]
Petrus Christus was born at Baerle, on the southern border of Holland,
in 1410 (it is thought). In 1444 he became a free citizen of Bruges
and, as he was a follower and probably a pupil of Jan van Eyck and
Roger van der Weyden, he is classed as belonging to the School of
Bruges. Petrus Christus painted religious pictures and portraits and
is regarded as one of the direct ancestors of _genre_ painting.
He died in 1473. Of late years his pictures have come into special
prominence.
MADONNA AND CHILD WITH ANGELS.
_Hans Memling
(1430–5–1494)._
_Collection of the
Hon. Andrew W. Mellon._
This painting, an oil on panel (23 × 19 inches), came from the
Collection of the Duke of Anhalt, Gothic Palace, Wörlitz, near Dessau,
Germany.
The Virgin in a blue robe and red mantle is seated on a canopied
throne, behind which is an embroidered hanging. Her eyes are looking
downward upon a missal which she holds in her left hand. On her right
knee, and supported by her right arm, is seated the Holy Child, who
reaches out for an apple, offered to Him by a kneeling Angel. This
Angel holds in his left hand a viol and bow. At the right, another
kneeling Angel is playing a harp. The scene is framed in a Gothic arch,
flanked on either side by a circular column, each column supporting a
single male figure in a sculptured niche: on the right, St. Simon the
Apostle is holding a saw, and on the left, the Prophet David is holding
a harp. On each spandrel of the arch a cherub is holding a globe.
Beyond this again, on either side of the throne, we see a landscape
with a castle on the left and a church and river on the right. In the
foreground there is a tessellated floor covered with an Oriental rug.
This idea of angels playing instruments[21] Memling may have learned
from Italy.
[Illustration:
_Collection of the Hon. Andrew W. Mellon_
MADONNA AND CHILD WITH ANGELS
--_Hans Memling_]
Hans Memling (or Memlinc), was born in 1430 or 1435, supposedly in
Memelynck (whence his name) near Alkmaar in Holland. Tradition says
that his family removed to the diocese of Mainz when he was fifteen.
Memling seems to have painted in Cologne before he went to Bruges about
1465, where it is thought he was a pupil of Roger van der Weyden. It
is certain that he was a master painter in Bruges in 1467. In 1479 he
painted his masterpiece, _The Marriage of St. Catherine_, ordered by
Jan Floreins for the St. John’s Hospital, Bruges, and also a smaller
triptych, _The Adoration of the Magi_, for the same building. Another
great work was the _Shrine of St. Ursula_, ordered by the Hospital
in 1480 to enclose some relics of St. Ursula brought from the Holy
Land,--a miniature Gothic chapel adorned with finials, statuettes, and
medallions representing episodes in the life of St. Ursula. Memling
died in 1494 in Bruges, which contains to-day a great number of his
works.
Memling, in common with the Van Eycks and Roger van der Weyden was
fond of enamelling his grassy swards, where the people sit or walk,
with beautifully painted flowers; such as the daisy, the anemone, and
the iris. Hans Memling is the most attractive of all the painters
of the Netherlandish School, the most human, the most poetic, most
graceful and the tenderest, merging, as did Fra Angelico (1387–1455),
his contemporary, from Mediæval to Renaissance. Indeed Hans Memling is
often called the “Flemish Fra Angelico.”
PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN.
_Hans Memling
(1430–1494)._
_Collection of
Mrs. John N. Willys._
Here we have the portrait of a young gentleman nearly full face, and
clad in a black doublet which is open at the neck showing a white linen
shirt with a narrow black circular band around the top. On his head is
a circular black felt cap with narrow brim. The dense masses of his
brownish red hair fall over his shoulders and completely cover his
forehead to the top of his eyebrows. He has blue eyes and an intensely
thoughtful and serious expression, and he holds in his left hand a
scroll of paper, which might seem to indicate that he is a poet. The
background consists of a woody landscape, and on the left is a river
with two swans.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mrs. John N. Willys_
PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN
--_Hans Memling_]
Dr. Max J. Friedländer, of Berlin, after examining the picture wrote to
the present owner: “I was greatly interested in the Memling portrait
from the Taylor Collection which I saw at your place. It is positively
a characteristic work of the hand of the Master.”
This picture painted on panel (13½ × 9 inches) came from the John
Edward Taylor Collection, London, in 1912.
LOUIS XIII KING OF FRANCE.
_Peter Paul Rubens
(1577–1640)._
_Collection of
Sir Joseph Duveen, Bart._
This interesting oil painting on canvas (46½ × 38 inches) came from
the Collection of the Emperor of Germany, Palace of Charlottenburg
near Berlin, and was originally in the Collection of the Archduke
Leopold William of Austria at the Ducal Palace, Brussels. It was
painted between 1622 and 1625, and is supposed to be a companion to the
portrait of _Anne of Austria_ (now in the Prado).
Louis XIII is represented about the age of twenty-five, life-size,
and three-quarter length, looking at the observer from a background
of sky, portico, and red drapery. He has a slight moustache and his
hair is curled and falls down to the fine lace ruff around his neck.
He is dressed in a polished steel suit of armor and rests his left
hand, wearing a gauntlet, on a table covered by a cloth. A marshal’s
_bâton_ is in his right hand. The Cross of the Order of the Holy
Spirit hangs from a ribbon at his right side and on his left hangs a
sword from a belt. Over his shoulder is thrown a bright blue velvet and
ermine mantle embroidered with _fleur-de-lys_ and on the table is
seen his helmet surmounted by rich plumes of ostrich feathers.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Sir Joseph Duveen, Bart._
LOUIS XIII, KING OF FRANCE
--_Peter Paul Rubens_]
Louis XIII, son of Henri IV and his second wife, Marie de’ Medici,
was born in 1601 and became king at the age of nine, on his father’s
assassination in 1610. Marie de’ Medici, then becoming Regent,
determined to bring France into close relation with the House of
Austria and Spain, and, consequently, brought about the marriage of her
son in 1615 with Anne of Austria, daughter of the Spanish King, Philip
III.
Louis does not seem to have inherited any of the talents of the Medici
family, nor any of the dashing charm of his father, the gallant “King
Henry of Navarre.” He acquiesced for a time in his mother’s government
and in the rule of her favorites, among whom the Marshall d’Ancre was
notable; but in 1617 he had the latter assassinated with the help of
Charles d’Albert, Sieur de Luynes. This caused a breach between him and
his mother and their relations continued hostile until death.
In 1624 Cardinal Richelieu, who had been Marie de’ Medici’s chief
adviser, entered into the King’s council, and, thereafter, Richelieu
directed the policy of France and controlled Louis XIII. Many conflicts
resulted between the Protestants and the nobles of France; and Louis
was made the enemy of his mother, Gaston d’Orléans (his brother) and,
frequently, of his wife, Anne of Austria. On one occasion the Queen
Mother and Gaston d’Orléans gained influence over Louis and he was
about to dismiss Richelieu; but the Cardinal regained his power and
immediately punished his enemies. The Queen Mother was forced to flee
to Brussels and Gaston d’Orléans to Lorraine. Towards the end of his
reign Louis is quoted as having said to Richelieu: “We have lived
together too long to be separated.”
Cardinal Richelieu died in December, 1642, and Louis died a few months
later, in May, 1643.
Peter Paul Rubens was born in Siegen, Westphalia, in 1577, and received
his first education in the Jesuit College in Antwerp, and, for a few
years, thereafter, was page to a noble lady. At the age of thirteen he
began to study painting under Tobias Verhaagt, whom he left to study
under Adam van Noort. Next he worked under Otto van Veen. In 1600
he went to Italy, entering the service of Vincenzo Gonzaga, Duke of
Mantua, with whom he remained for eight years, interrupted by missions
to various courts. In 1603 he visited Madrid and went to Venice, Rome,
and Genoa. In 1609, on the death of the Duke of Mantua, Rubens returned
to Antwerp and became Court-Painter to Albert and Isabella, Regents of
the Netherlands. In that year also Rubens married Isabella Brandt. His
studio at Antwerp now became famous and attracted students from every
town in Europe.
He had barely established himself when he wrote to a friend in 1611:
“On every side I am overwhelmed with solicitations. Without the least
exaggeration, I may assure you that I have already had to refuse more
than a hundred pupils.”
In 1621 Rubens was called by Marie de’ Medici to Paris to decorate the
gallery in the Palace of the Luxembourg. At this period the _style
Rubens_, which he introduced on his return from Italy and which was
inspired by the late Italian Renaissance, was all the rage.
In 1622 he published a book on the _Palaces of Genoa_; and from
the preface we learn that he was perfectly delighted to see the “old
style known as barbarous, or Gothic, go out of fashion, to the great
honor of the country, and disappear from Flanders, giving place to
symmetrical buildings designed by men of better taste and conforming to
the rules of the Greek and Roman antique.”
Rubens was a favorite with several kings and when he was neither
painting nor teaching, he was visiting some foreign court on an
embassy. On one of these visits to London in 1629–30 he was knighted by
Charles I.
In 1630 he married again (Isabella Brandt having died in 1626), uniting
himself to his first wife’s niece, Helena Fourment, who was but
sixteen. Rubens now built a palatial house in Antwerp, where, as well
as in his _Château de Steen_ in the vicinity, he lived a happy,
industrious, and splendid life, having everything the world could give
in the way of honors and joys. Rubens’s influence upon the artists of
his own time was very great and he dominated the entire art taste of
Europe during the first three quarters of the Seventeenth Century.
Religious subjects, mythological subjects, landscapes, hunting scenes,
portraits, and still-life,--everything came easily to his brush. Sir
Joshua Reynolds wrote a fine analysis of Rubens, in which he says: “The
striking brilliancy of his colors, and their lively opposition to each
other, the flowing liberty and freedom of his outline, the animated
pencil with which every object is touched, all contribute to awaken
and keep alive the attention of the spectator; awaken in him, in some
measure, correspondent sensations, and make him feel a degree of that
enthusiasm with which the painter was carried away. To this we may add
the complete uniformity in all the parts of the work, so that the whole
seems to be conducted and grow out of one mind: everything is of a
piece and fits its place.
“Besides the excellency of Rubens in these general powers, he possessed
the true art of imitating. He saw the objects of nature with a
painter’s eye; he saw at once the predominant feature by which every
object is known and distinguished; and as soon as seen, it was executed
with a facility that is astonishing. Rubens was, perhaps, the greatest
master in the mechanical part of the art, the best workman with his
tools, that ever exercised a pencil.
“This power which Rubens possessed in the highest degree enabled him
to represent whatever he undertook better than any other painter. His
animals, particularly lions and horses, are so admirable that it may
be said they were never properly represented but by him. His portraits
rank with the best works of the painters who have made that branch of
art the sole business of their lives; and of those he has left a great
variety of specimens. The same may be said of his landscapes.
“The difference of the manner of Rubens from that of any other painter
before him is in nothing more distinguishable than in his coloring,
which is totally different from that of Titian, Correggio, or any of
the great colorists. The effect of his pictures may be not improperly
compared to clusters of flowers; all his colors appear as clear and as
beautiful; at the same time he has avoided that tawdry effect which one
would expect such gay colors to produce; in this respect resembling
Barocci more than any other painter. What was said of an ancient
painter may be applied to those two artists, that their figures look as
if they fed upon roses.”
RINALDO AND ARMIDA.
_Sir Anthony Van Dyck
(1599–1641)._
_Collection of
Mr. Jacob Epstein._
This picture, oils on canvas (90 × 96 inches), came from the Collection
of the Duke of Newcastle, Clumber Park, Nottinghamshire, to its present
home in Baltimore.
Rinaldo is in shining, silver-blue armor with a flowing mantle of
golden yellow, which is clasped at the shoulder. Armida wears a blue
robe and a red mantle. The sky is blue with white clouds and there is a
tree in the background and an enchanted lake at the right.
The influence of Van Dyck’s master, Rubens, is very apparent in this
gorgeous picture, where all the delights of the Garden of Armida are
set forth--that magic garden that Tasso described in his _Jerusalem
Delivered_, to which many a Crusader was lured.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Jacob Epstein_
RINALDO AND ARMIDA
--_Sir Anthony Van Dyck_]
Another _Rinaldo and Armida_ by Van Dyck is in the Louvre.
Armida was a beautiful sorceress; and it was difficult to resist her
enchantment. Two messengers were sent from the Christian Army with a
talisman to effect Rinaldo’s escape. Armida followed Rinaldo and, not
being able to regain her power over him, rushed into the combat and was
killed. Rinaldo came of the noble Este family and ran away at the age
of fifteen to join the Crusaders. He was enrolled in the “Adventurers
Squadron” and is often called the “Achilles of the Christian Army.”
Anthony, or Antoon, van Dyck, was born at Antwerp in 1599, son of a
silk-merchant. At the age of ten he became the pupil of Henrik van
Balen and entered Rubens’s studio as assistant in 1618, when only
seventeen. He soon achieved a reputation for his portraits and visited
England. In 1621, by Rubens’s advice, he went to Italy, having already
acquired a reputation. After a five years’ stay, much of which time
was spent in Genoa, Van Dyck returned home and painted his celebrated
picture of the _Crucifixion_ for the Church of St. Michael in
Ghent, which established his reputation. In 1630 he again visited
England; but, not meeting with the reception he had anticipated,
he returned to Antwerp. However, in 1632, Charles I, who had seen a
portrait of his Chapelmaster by Van Dyck, sent for him to come to
England. On this occasion the painter was warmly welcomed, lodged by
the King at Blackfriars, and, in the following year was knighted and
given a pension for life. Van Dyck was the second painter to have
an English Knighthood. Thenceforward Van Dyck lived very grandly,
having a town house and also a country house at Eltham. He was always
magnificently dressed, had numerous coaches and horses, and kept so
good a table that few princes were better served. Van Dyck died in
London in 1641, at the age of forty-two, having left a prodigious
amount of work and a fortune of £20,000 sterling, notwithstanding his
expensive manner of living. He was buried in Old St. Paul’s, near the
tomb of John of Gaunt; but his remains, of course, perished in the
Great Fire of 1666.
In the short span of his life--forty-two years--he painted nearly a
thousand pictures. Van Dyck has three styles. The first is his Italian
period; the second, his Flemish period, dating from his return from
Italy in 1626 to his departure for England in 1631; and the third, his
English period, from 1631 to 1641. The latter period is the greatest
and the most distinguished for grace, elegance, and aristocratic
quality.
“More noble than Rubens in his choice of form,” writes Charles Blanc,
“Van Dyck had fewer faults than his master, but perhaps also less
grandeur. His color was as charming without being so splendid. His
design was learned, but without pedantry; and his contours were always
governed by the sentiment of grace, or fire of genius. Very nearly
the equal of Titian in portraiture, Van Dyck has sometimes risen to a
great height in his historical compositions, in which the beauty of the
expression is often as admirable as the excellence of the touch.”
DÆDALUS AND ICARUS.
_Sir Anthony Van Dyck
(1599–1641)._
_Collection of
Mr. Frank P. Wood._
A treasure of art, long in England in the famous Collection of the late
Earl Spencer, K. G., at Althorp, Northumberland, is Van Dyck’s poetic
version of the ancient Greek myth regarding man’s attempt at flight.
Van Dyck was so fond of this subject that he painted it more than once.
This work is an oil painting on canvas (46 × 35 inches).
The figures are nearly life-size and very finely modelled. Icarus
is nude save for a red drapery caught around the waist by a narrow
band of bluish green,--a rather strange aviator’s suit to our way of
thinking to-day! The position of his right hand would seem to tell us
that Icarus is about to speak to his father, who, standing behind him,
has apparently just fastened on his son’s wings and who appears to be
giving him that sage advice about flying too near the sun. The flashing
eyes and knitted brow of young Icarus indicate that this advice is not
relished.
Max Rooses has noted that Icarus is not unlike the Angels that Van Dyck
was fond of painting; calls attention to his beautiful, waving, golden
hair; and finds a strong likeness between Icarus and the artist himself
in his youth. One of the wings shows a white interior and the other, in
the shadow, a bluish green exterior.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Frank P. Wood_
DÆDALUS AND ICARUS
--_Sir Anthony Van Dyck_]
Dædalus was a mythical personage under whom the Greek writers
personified the earliest development of human flight and also the arts
of sculpture and architecture. Some traditions represent Dædalus as of
the royal race of the Erechthidæ and others make him a Cretan. Dædalus
devoted himself to sculpture and taught his sister’s son, Talus, who
soon surpassed him. Consequently, in envy Dædalus killed this young
rival. Condemned to death in Athens for this murder, Dædalus fled to
Crete, where his fame won him the friendship of King Minos. When Queen
Pasiphae gave birth to the Minotaur, Dædalus constructed the Labyrinth
at Cnossus in which the Minotaur was kept; and for doing this King
Minos imprisoned him. However, Pasiphae released him. This was of not
much advantage, however, because King Minos had seized all the ships
on the coast of Crete. “Necessity is the mother of invention:” Dædalus
had to get away. The question was “how?”. The result was that Dædalus
made wings for himself and for his son, Icarus, and fastened them on
the shoulders with wax, cautioning the youth not to fly too close to
the sun. Icarus would not pay attention to this advice and, flying too
high, the wax melted and he dropped down and was drowned in that part
of the Ægean Sea, which is now called after him the Icarian Sea.
Dædalus, however, flew safely over the Ægean and reached Sicily, where
he was protected by Cocalus, King of that Island. When King Minos heard
where Dædalus had taken refuge he sailed with a great fleet to Sicily;
but was murdered there by Cocalus. According to some accounts, Dædalus
alighted on his flight from Crete at Cumæ in Italy, where he erected a
temple to Apollo in which he offered the wings with which he had flown.
Like Lindberg, his descendant, he placed his “We” in a museum!
Many works of art were attributed to Dædalus in Greece, Italy, Egypt,
and the islands of the Mediterranean. Also the Greeks gave the name
of Dædala to the ancient wooden statues of the gods ornamented with
gilding, bright colors, and real drapery.
It is appropriate to add here a sonnet by an old French poet, Philippe
Desportes (1545–1606) entitled “Icare”:
_ICARE_
_Icare est chut ici, le jeune audacieux,
Qui pour voler au ciel eut assez de courage:
Ici tomba son corps dégarni de plumage,
Laissant tous braves cœurs de sa chute envieux._
_O bienheureux travail d’un esprit glorieux,
Qui tire un grand gain d’un si petit dommage!
O bienheureux malheur plein de tant d’avantage,
Qu’il rende le vaincu des ans victorieux!_
_Un chemin si nouveau n’étonna sa jeunesse,
Le pouvoir lui faillit, mais non le hardiesse;
Il eut pour le brûler des astres le plus beau;_
_Il mourut poursuivant une haute aventure;
Le ciel fut son désir, la mer sa sépulture;
Est-il plus beau dessein, ou plus riche tombeau?_
ROBERT RICH, EARL OF WARWICK.
_Sir Anthony Van Dyck
(1599–1641)._
_Collection of
Mr. Jules S. Bache._
In silver doublet with slashed sleeves embroidered with flowers,
crimson knee-breeches edged with gold braid, pink silk stockings and
white shoes with lace rosettes (or “shoe roses,” as they were called
in those days), a crimson cloak thrown over his left shoulder and held
by his gloved hand, white lawn collar and cuffs edged with handsome
lace, Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, stands before us, a picture of
elegance, manly beauty, and aristocratic _hauteur_. He is standing
full front with his head turned three-quarters to the left, in which
direction he is also looking, and he is holding his black felt hat in
his right hand. His armor and _bâton_ of command are lying on the
ground by his side. The embroidered curtain in the background does not
prevent us from seeing a naval engagement on his right.
Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, came of very distinguished ancestry on
the maternal line, for his mother was Penelope Devereux, the sister of
Essex, whose mother, Lettice Knollys, had been Maid of Honor to Queen
Elizabeth (and who captivated the Earl of Leicester), and whose father,
Walter Devereux, was first Earl of Essex (died 1576). Penelope’s father
had wished her to marry Sir Philip Sidney; but the Earl of Huntingdon,
Penelope’s guardian, ruled otherwise and forced her to marry Lord
Rich, “a man of independent fortune and a known estate but otherwise
of an uncourtly disposition, unsociable, austere, and of no agreeable
conversation to her.”
Lady Rich, the most beautiful woman in all London, particularly famous
for her sparkling black eyes, plunged wildly into society and was the
most admired and courted woman of the Court. She played, too, a leading
part in the rebellion of her distinguished brother, Essex. Lady Rich
lives in literature as Sidney’s Stella. The romance between these
lovers, “Astrophel and Stella,” never cooled. When Sidney learned of
Penelope’s marriage to “the rich Lord Rich,” he played with her new
name as follows:
“Towards Aurora’s court a nymph doth dwell,
Rich in all beauties which man’s eye can see;
Beauties so far from reach of words that we
Abase her praise saying she doth excel:
Rich in those gifts which give the eternal crown;
Who, though most rich in these and every part
Which makes the patents of true worldly bliss,
Hath no misfortune but that Rich she is.”
Lord Rich was created Earl of Warwick in 1618; but he had been divorced
from Lady Rich in 1605, thirteen years before he succeeded to this
title. On obtaining her divorce Lady Rich then married Charles Blount,
Earl of Devonshire and eighth Baron Mountjoy, who, in defense of his
marriage, wrote the following:
“A lady of great birth and virtue being in the power of her friends,
was by them married against her will unto one against whom she did
protest at the very solemnity and ever after; between whom, from the
first day, there ensued continued discord, although the same fears that
forced her to marry constrained her to live with him. Instead of a
comforter, he did study in all things to torment her; and by fear and
fraud, did practice to deceive her of her dowry.”
Sidney was always writing of Stella’s marvellous black eyes and their
shining rays:
“When nature made her chief work, Stella’s eyes,
In color black, why wrapt she beams so bright?
Would she in beauty black, like painter wise,
Fame daintiest lustre, mixt of shades and light?
Or did she else that sober hue devise
In object best to knit and strength our sight;
Least, if no veil these brave gleams did disguise,
They, sunlike, should more dazzle than delight?
Or would she her miraculous power show,
That, whereas black seems Beauty’s contrary,
She even in black doth make all beauties flow?
Both so, and thus--she, minding Love should be
Placed even there, gave his this mourning weed
To honor all their deaths who for her bleed.”
There is every reason, therefore, why the subject of this picture
should be so handsome, so distinguished, and so fascinating.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Jules S. Bache_
ROBERT RICH, EARL OF WARWICK
--_Sir Anthony Van Dyck_]
Robert Rich was born in 1587 and was admitted to Emmanuel College,
Cambridge, in 1603 and in that year was created a Knight of the Bath.
He was quite old enough to have remembered the exciting days of the
Essex conspiracy, the part his mother took in this, her imprisonment
and release, and his uncle’s execution in 1601. At the age of
twenty-three he was elected to Parliament and was again elected in
1614. In 1619 he succeeded to the title.
Robert Rich was one of the original members of the Company for the
Plantation of the Bermudas in 1614 and was granted a seat on the
Council of the New England Company in 1620, which two great enterprises
connect this handsome lord with our own country. Also in 1624 Robert
Rich was made a member of the Council of the Virginia Government. Yet
this was not all. Warwick’s Colonial interests brought him into close
relation with the leading men of the Puritan Party and link his name
with the early history of the New England Colonies. He was closely
associated with the origin of Connecticut, for in 1632 he granted to
Lord Say, Lord Brooke, John Hampden, and others what is known as “the
old patent of Connecticut,” under which the town of Saybrook (named for
Lord Say and Lord Brooke) was founded.
In English politics Warwick opposed the policy of Charles I and,
consequently, after the dissolution of the Short Parliament, he was
arrested by the King’s order.
As temporal head of the Puritans and opposed to the party in the
Established Church led by Archbishop Laud, Warwick concurred in
the prosecution of Archbishop Laud and the Earl of Strafford. In
1643 Warwick was appointed Lord High Admiral of the Fleet, serving
Parliament in opposition to Charles I, and he bore the title of
Governor-in-Chief of all the islands and other plantations subject
to the English Crown, on which authority he became associated with
the founding of the Colony of Rhode Island. After the monarchy and
the House of Lords had both been swept away, the Earl of Warwick gave
his support and encouragement to Oliver Cromwell. The marriage of
Cromwell’s daughter to Warwick’s grandson proves the strength of the
friendship. The Earl of Warwick died on April 19, 1658, and was buried
at Felsted, Essex. He had been three times married.
This picture, in oils on canvas (83 × 49 inches), belonged in the
Collection of the Marquess of Breadalbane, Taymouth Castle, Scotland,
and to the Collection of the Hon. Mrs. Robert Baillie-Hamilton,
Langton, Duns, Scotland.
QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA WITH JEFFREY HUDSON AND A MONKEY.
_Sir Anthony Van Dyck
(1599–1641)._
_Collection of
Mr. William Randolph Hearst._
This full-length portrait in oils on canvas (85¼ × 52 inches) was
painted in 1633, the year that Van Dyck was knighted and when he
had been about a year in the service of Charles I. Its pedigree is
interesting. The painting was in the possession of the Newports, Earls
Bradford of the first creation, and was left in 1762, on the death
of the fifth Earl, to his sister, Diana, Countess of Mountrath. From
the Countess of Mountrath it descended to her son, the last Earl of
Mountrath, and from him to the first Earl of Dorchester, of Milton
Abbey, where it remained until removed by the Earl of Portarlington to
Emo Park, Queen’s County, Ireland. In 1881 Thomas George, first Earl of
Northbrook, acquired it by exchange from the Earl of Portarlington; and
from the latter it was inherited by Francis George, the second Earl of
Northbrook, whence it came to the present owner.
The Queen of Charles I, proud and handsome, is very French and Italian
in general style; for be it remembered that Henrietta Maria was the
daughter of the gallant King Henry of Navarre and his second wife,
Marie de’ Medici, and that she was, consequently, the sister of Louis
XIII (see page 176).
The Queen has brown hair curled in “ringlets” and one “ringlet” falls
on her shoulder. Her face is oval and delicate and her eyes are brown.
She is standing at full length on a step with her head slightly turned
to the left, dressed in a blue silk gown (of the shade we now call
“Alice blue”), trimmed with narrow gold braid, and a large black felt
hat with a white plume, lace collar and a kerchief over her shoulders
with two pink bows in front. Beautifully painted frills of lace adorn
the elbow sleeves. With her left hand she touches a stiff fold in
her dress and with her right hand she caresses a little brown monkey
perched on the shoulder of Jeffrey Hudson, the famous dwarf. The little
dwarf is about thirteen years of age and is much under size. He has
light hair and the slightly wizened face that usually goes with this
kind of freak. Indeed our little Jeffrey looks not unlike the pictures
of the famous “Gen. Tom Thumb” of Barnum days in the mid-Nineteenth
Century. Jeffrey Hudson wears a suit of brick-dust red velvet, a lace
collar, and long, brown boots.
In the background, to the left, there is a stone wall and upon it
a flower-pot holding an orange tree, and farther away we note some
trees and, still farther beyond, the sky. To the right of the fluted
pillar on the right, there is a sort of ledge or shelf covered with a
brilliant orange silk curtain on which rests a crown of gold studded
with pearls, which informs us of the presence of Royalty.
Queen Henrietta Maria was born in 1609, the year before her father,
Henri IV, King of France, was assassinated. In 1624, when she was about
fifteen, the Prince of Wales offered marriage; and this was consented
to by her brother, Louis XIII, on condition that the English Roman
Catholics should be relieved from the enforcement of the penal laws. In
June, 1625, Henrietta Maria was married by proxy and went to England,
thus encumbered with political and religious pledges that were certain
to bring unpopularity upon everybody concerned. The Prince of Wales had
now become King of England and he soon found an excuse for breaking his
promise to relieve the English Roman Catholics. This course of action
offended the Queen deeply. The early years of Charles’s married life
were very unhappy and the favorite, the dashing Buckingham, fanned the
flames of the King’s discontent. After the assassination of Buckingham
in 1628, the King and Queen became deeply attached to each other; and
from that moment the bond of affection that united them was never
loosened.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. William Randolph Hearst_
QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA WITH JEFFREY HUDSON AND A MONKEY
--_Sir Anthony Van Dyck_]
For a number of years Henrietta Maria’s chief interests lay with her
young family. Her children were: Charles II (born 1630); Mary, Princess
of Orange (born 1631); James, Duke of York, afterwards James II, (born
1633); Elizabeth (born 1636); Henry, Duke of Gloucester (born 1640);
and Henrietta, Duchesse d’Orléans (born 1644). The Queen also delighted
in the amusements of the gay and brilliant Court. With political
matters she had nothing to do until 1637, when she opened a diplomatic
communication with the See of Rome, to help her co-religionists. She
appointed an agent to reside in Rome and Rome sent to her a Papal agent
(a Scotchman named George Conn), who soon made many converts among the
English nobility and gentry.
Protestant England took alarm and, therefore, the Queen became very
unpopular. When the Scottish troubles broke out Queen Henrietta Maria
raised money from her fellow Catholics to support the King’s army on
the Borders in 1639; and in 1640, during the sitting of the Short
Parliament, the Queen urged her husband to oppose himself to the House
of Commons in defence of the Catholics. When the Long Parliament met,
the Catholics were believed to be the authors and agents of every
arbitrary scheme supposed to have entered into the plans of Strafford
or Laud. During the Long Parliament Henrietta Maria urged the Pope to
lend money to enable her to restore her husband’s authority and she
threw herself heart and soul into the schemes for rescuing Strafford
and coercing Parliament. The Army Plot, the schemes for using Scotland
against England, and the attempt upon the five members--Pym, Hampden,
Haselrig, Hoiles, and Strode--were the fruits of her political activity.
Next the Queen effected her passage to the Continent and in February,
1643, she returned and, landing at Burlington Quay, placed herself at
the head of a band of Loyalists and marched through England to join
the King near Oxford. After little more than a residence there of a
year, on the 3d of April, 1644, she parted from her husband to see his
face no more; but as long as Charles I was alive she never ceased to
encourage him to resistance. Henrietta Maria found refuge in France,
for Richelieu was then dead and Anne of Austria proved compassionate,
yet she had much to suffer in her exile. The execution of her
husband was a terrible distress. There is a story with some truth
that she married her equerry, Lord Jermyn, which may account for the
estrangement of her children.
When Henrietta Maria returned to England after the Restoration, she
found that she had no place in the new Court. Parliament gave her a
grant of £30,000 a year in compensation for the loss of her dower-lands
and her son, Charles II, added a similar sum as a pension from himself.
In January, 1661, Henrietta returned to France to be present at the
marriage of her daughter, Henrietta, to the Duc d’Orléans, but in July,
1662, she was back in England, taking up her residence at Somerset
House. Three years later she returned to France and died at Colombes,
near Paris, in 1666.
The other personage in this double portrait, Jeffrey Hudson, was born
at Oakham, Rutland, in 1619. His father was a butcher, who kept and
baited bulls for George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham. Neither
of his parents was undersized. When he was nine years old his father
carried Jeffrey to Burleigh-on-the-Hill and offered him to the Duchess
of Buckingham, who took him into her service. At that time he was
scarcely eighteen inches in height and, if we may believe Fuller,
“without any deformity, wholly proportioned.”
Shortly afterwards Charles I and Henrietta Maria passed through Rutland
and the Duke of Buckingham gave a dinner in their honor. During one of
the courses an enormous pie[22] was served; and when it was cut, out
jumped Jeffrey Hudson! The Queen was so delighted with the sprightly
little dwarf that she appropriated him at once and he became a Court
favorite.
Jeffrey had a number of adventures. On one occasion, when he was sent
to France to procure a nurse for the Queen, the ship was captured on
the return voyage by a Flemish pirate and Jeffrey, the nurse, and the
Queen’s dancing-master were all taken to Dunkirk. Then Jeffrey also
saw some military service. When the Prince of Orange besieged Breda in
1637, “Strenuous Jeffrey” was in the Prince’s camp in company with the
Earl of Warwick (see page 187) and the Earl of Northampton, who were
volunteers in the Dutch Service.
During the Civil Wars Jeffrey Hudson is said to have been a Captain of
the Horse. It is certain that he followed the Queen, for he was with
her in the flight to Pendennis Castle, in June, 1644, and he went with
her to Paris. “He was,” says Fuller, “though a dwarf, no dastard”; and,
accordingly, when insulted by Crofts at Paris in 1649, he shot him dead
with a pistol in a duel. Crofts had rashly armed himself only with a
squirt. In consequence of this, Jeffrey had to leave Paris, although
Henrietta Maria saved him from imprisonment, which, however, he had
frequently experienced. At sea Jeffrey was captured by a Turkish rover,
carried to Barbary, and sold as a slave. His miseries, according to
his own account, made him grow taller. Jeffrey managed to get back to
England about 1658, at which time Heath addressed some lines to him in
his _Clarastella_.
After the Restoration, Jeffrey Hudson lived quietly in the country for
some time on a pension subscribed by the Duke of Buckingham and others;
but, on coming up to London to push his fortunes at Court, he, being a
Roman Catholic, was suspected of complicity in the Popish Plot (1679)
and was confined in the Gatehouse at Westminster.
In June, 1680, and April, 1681, “Captain Jeffrey Hudson” received
respectively £50 and £20 from Charles II’s secret service fund. Jeffrey
Hudson died in 1682.
Accounts of his height vary, but, according to his own statement (as
made to Wright, the historian of Rutland), after reaching the age of
seven, when he was eighteen inches high, he did not grow at all until
he was thirty, when he shot up three feet, six or nine. Hudson’s
waistcoat, breeches, and stockings are preserved in the Ashmolean
Museum, Oxford.
DUTCH PAINTING
_DUTCH PAINTING_
It is not until we come to the Seventeenth Century that Painting in
that part of the Spanish and Austrian Netherlands now known as Holland
took on the national character of the Dutch race. The new political
and economic views inculcated by the States-General, and even more
particularly through the bias of the Protestant faith, produced an
entirely new kind of painting. The sacred subjects inspired by the
Roman Catholic religion, as well as the mythological and historical
subjects (made so popular by Rubens) were rejected for more prosaic
and literal interpretations of Biblical stories; for representations
of popular heroes in the late wars that overthrew Spanish tyranny; for
portrait groups of civic dignitaries, such as Regents and Presidents
of guild-halls, shooting-galleries, hospitals and other charitable
institutions (known as “_Regent_” and “_Doelen_” pictures); and
for those domestic scenes and social parties called “_Conversation
Pieces_,” in which are mirrored the Dutch home and its simple
pleasures with detailed representation of furniture, rugs, china,
glass, brass-ware, musical instruments, birds, animals, food, fruit,
and flowers. Landscapes and marines were also in harmony with the new
choice of subject, and, of course, portraiture of the most realistic
kind.
This matter-of-fact art was given a somewhat “romantic” quality
by the extraordinary treatment of dark masses of shadow and of
sunlight effects and also by a fine use of color. Artists have always
appreciated these characteristics, agreeing with Sir Joshua Reynolds,
who wrote after his visit to the Netherlands:
“A market-woman with a hare in her hand, a man blowing a trumpet, or
a boy blowing bubbles, a view of the inside or outside of a church,
are the subjects of some of their most valuable pictures; but there
is still entertainment, even in such pictures--however uninteresting
their subjects, there is some pleasure in the contemplation of the
imitation. But to a painter they afford likewise instruction in his
profession; here he may learn the art of coloring and composition, a
skillful management of light and shade and indeed all the mechanical
parts of the art as well as in any other School whatever.
“The same skill which is practised by Rubens and Titian in their large
works is here exhibited, though on a smaller scale. Painters should go
to the Dutch School to learn the art of painting as they would go to a
grammar-school to learn languages. They must go to Italy to learn the
higher branches of knowledge.”
In the long list of great and noteworthy Dutch painters the two
greatest names are Rembrandt and Frans Hals. Rembrandt van Rijn
(1606–1669), a powerful giant, excelling in painting, etching, and
drawing, producing masterpiece after masterpiece and standing alone as
an interpreter of Bible stories, profound searcher for character in
portraiture, and dramatist in light and shade (see page 204).
Frans Hals (1580?–1666), painter of portraits, corporations and
military companies, and characters of low life, with an uncanny
analysis of the eye and an uncanny technique to register surely and
rapidly what his eye saw, whose pictures, long neglected, are of high
value to-day (see page 220).
Not far below Frans Hals and Rembrandt as a painter of great civic
group pictures comes Bartholomew van der Helst (1612–1670), whose
enormous _Civic Guard Banquet_, painted in 1648 in celebration of
the Peace of Münster, with its twenty-four life-size portraits, ranks
as one of the great pictures of the world. Van der Helst’s _Company
of Captain Roelof Bicker_, in the same gallery, with its thirty-two
portraits, is its equal although not quite so renowned.
Dutch Painting, however, did not leap into being with Rembrandt, Frans
Hals, and Bartholomew van der Helst. There were Dutch Primitives,
as there were Flemish Primitives, and they are not always to be
distinguished from one another. The famous Hubert and Jan van Eyck, for
instance, are thought to have been natives of Maaseyck on the Maas and
Hans Memling is supposed to have been born in Memelynck, near Alkmaar.
The greatest of the Dutch painters was Lucas van Leiden (1494-1533),
who knew Italian Art well and who was a follower of Albrecht
Dürer. Some of his paintings are very decorative and his chess and
card-players may almost be said to begin Dutch _genre_ painting,
brought to such perfection by the Little Dutch Masters. By the end of
the Fifteenth Century a great many Dutch painters had visited Italy;
some of them had studied there; and some of them had worked there. Jan
van Scorel (1495–1562), for instance, was kept in Rome for five years
by Pope Adrian VI, who was, himself, a native of Utrecht.
Jan van Scorel was the master of Antonio Moro, or Antonis Mor
(1512–1577), who went to Rome, was admitted to the Guild of Painters
in Utrecht in 1547, and leaped into fame with a portrait of Cardinal
Granvella, who took Moro in his train to Brussels. Moro soon became
Court-Painter to the House of Hapsburg and travelled about to various
courts, painting portraits of Royalty. Michiel Jansz Mierevelt
(1567–1641), was portrait-painter to the House of Orange and Nassau and
his pupil, Paulus Moreelse (1571–1638), a native of Utrecht, was hardly
less popular. The greatest painter of Corporation Pictures before Frans
Hals was Jan van Ravensteyn (1572–1657).
The early Dutch landscape-painters travelled to Italy, Switzerland,
and even Norway; but none of them acquired the reputation of two
Dutchmen who found inspiration at home. Jan van Goyen (1596–1656),
and Jan Wynants (1620?–1682), were the first to take pleasure in
their own country. Van Goyen loved the water, the boats, the clouds,
the mist, and distant towns silhouetted against the sky. Wynants
showed the charm of the lonely walk that led through the dunes to the
sea. Wynants formed Adriaen van de Velde (1635–1672), who carried
landscape-painting so far that he comes very close to the Barbizon
School of the Nineteenth Century. Then there are two Dutch artists
who are doubly famous for their landscapes and animals: Aelbert Cuyp
(1620–1691), “the King of Dutch landscape-painters,” noted for his
golden light and elegant cavaliers riding fine horses; and Paul Potter
(1625–1654), known far and wide for his _Bull_, in the Hague Gallery,
painted when the artist was only twenty-two; but not so fine a work
as _La Vache qui se mire_ (_The Mirrored Cow_) in the same gallery.
Of these two pictures the French critic, Burger, wittily remarked:
“_La Vache qui se mire_ is a _chef-d’œuvre_ and not a _hors d’œuvre_,
like the _Bull_!” Supreme as landscape-painters stand Jacob Ruisdael
(1628–9–1682), who used as a rule a very dark green and who was able
to suggest immense perspectives in very small compass, also for his
harmonious relation of earth and sky, and Meindert Hobbema (1638–1709),
supposed to have been his pupil, and whose long neglected pictures of
long, straight roads beneath tall trees now bring high prices.
Adriaen van Ostade (1610–1685), a pupil of Frans Hals, wandered about
the country finding material along the roads. Ostade often caught the
poetic side of a rustic scene and he had a commanding knowledge of
light.
The Dutch, with their love of home and their simple pleasures, excelled
in depicting scenes of intimate life, “_Conversation Pieces_,” and
_genre_. The list of these worthy painters is long. A few, however,
stand out prominently,--Gerard Dou, Gerard Terborch, Jan Steen, Pieter
de Hoogh, Jan Vermeer of Delft, Gabriel Metsu, Nicholas Maes, and
Frans van Mieris--all painters of the Seventeenth Century, portraying
life as they saw it around them, according to the class in which they
moved. Terborch, Metsu, and van Mieris showed ladies and gentlemen,
beautifully dressed, enjoying music, or playing cards, or having
a light afternoon repast, or writing letters, or making love, or
talking in the garden, or sitting quietly in a comfortably furnished
room; Jan Steen depicted feasts, merry-making, weddings, St. Nicholas
celebrations, tavern-scenes, drunken brawls and quack doctors; and
Gerard Dou produced simple scenes in the home where servants are
at work and mothers sit by the cradle, and sometimes scenes by
candle-light with strange reflections, for Gerard Dou was a pupil of
Rembrandt and liked to play tricks with _chiaroscuro_. Another painter,
who was a magician with light, is Jan Vermeer of Delft (1632–1675), who
was a pupil of Rembrandt’s pupil, Carel Fabritius, and whose pictures
are rare and famous (see page 228). Still another artist, remarkable
for his knowledge of the complex problems of light, is Pieter de
Hoogh or Hooch (1629–1677?), hardly less remarkable for his solid and
splendid rendering of architecture, exterior as well as interior (see
page 226).
Moreover, the Dutch excelled in two other _genres_,--birds and flowers.
Melchior d’Hondecoeter (1636–1695), caught all the beauties of the
feathered world and had an insight into its society. _The Floating
Feather_, in the Rijk’s Museum, is very celebrated. Burger delightfully
wrote of it:
“No one has painted better than Hondecoeter the cocks and hens,
ducks and drakes, and particularly little chicks and ducklings. He
has understood such families as the Italians have the mystical Holy
Family; he has expressed the motherhood of the hen as Raphael has the
motherhood of the Madonna. In fact, the subject is more naturally
treated because it has less sublimity. Hondecoeter gives us here a
mother-hen who could face the _Madonna of the Chair_. She bends
over with solicitude with outspread wings, beneath which peep the
excited heads of the little chickens; while on her back is perched the
privileged _bambino_--she does not dare move,--the good mother!”
Melchior d’Hondecoeter was taught by Jan Baptiste Weenix (1621?–1660),
painter of dead game, and teacher of his son, Jan Weenix (1640–1719),
who often arranged his dead game around the base of a large urn in a
private park.
Of fruits and flowers--important subjects in Holland--come the two
de Heems, father and son, Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606–1684), the first
Dutchman to excel with fruit; Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750), painter of
flowers, fruits, bouquets with butterflies and moths fluttering about,
old logs and tree stumps in the forest, and deserted birds’ nests.
Jan van Huysum (1682–1749) “the Correggio of fruits and flowers,” was
famed for his skill in depicting a transparent dewdrop trickling down a
satiny petal; and Abraham Mignon (1640–1679), pupil of Jan Davidsz de
Heem was a brilliant painter of flowers, fruits, butterflies, insects,
and dewdrops.
With Cornelis Troost (1697–1750), called “the Dutch Hogarth,” because
of his familiar scenes of comedy, the Decadence begins; and Dutch
Painting ceased to be interesting until the middle of the Nineteenth
Century.
THE STANDARD BEARER.
_Rembrandt van Rijn
(1606–1669)._
_Collection of
Mr. Jules S. Bache._
This picture, oils on canvas (55 × 45½ inches), has the distinction
of having belonged to Sir Joshua Reynolds and, after him, to the
Earl of Warwick at Warwick Castle. It is signed on the left at the
bottom, “Rembrandt fe 1654.” Consequently it was painted the same
year as the famous _Burgomaster Jan Six_. The person has never
been identified; but it is supposed that he was the standard-bearer
of one of the Amsterdam Shooting Companies. The man is life-size,
three-quarter length, with full light falling from the left foreground
upon the whole figure. A grey wall with a rusticated pillar at the
right forms the background from which the elderly Standard Bearer
stands out boldly. He wears a dark-brown coat with gold buttons, a dark
bluish green sash, and a rich gold-embroidered sword-belt crossing the
chest from the right shoulder. A black hat with a large white plume
covers his grey hair, but does not hide his face. In his gloved left
hand he carries a red and yellow banner bearing the Arms of the City
of Amsterdam and he holds a glove in his right hand. The picture is
rich in color and fine in its illumination. From the Earl of Warwick it
passed through the Collections of Mr. Charles Sedelmeyer of Paris, Mr.
Charles J. Wertheimer of London, and Mr. George J. Gould of New York
into that of its present owner.
Rembrandt van Rijn was born in Leiden in 1606, the son of a miller, who
sent him to the Leiden University. Young Rembrandt, however, preferred
painting and for three years studied under Jacob van Swanenburch,
a Leiden painter, who had studied in Italy. Rembrandt had painted
a good many pictures before he removed to Amsterdam at the age of
twenty-three. He soon became famous in Amsterdam. From the year 1633
the face of a good-natured, buxom young woman, Saskia van Ulenburgh,
daughter of a Friesland lawyer, appears on his canvases. In 1634
Rembrandt married Saskia; and Fortune smiled thereafter on everything
he did. His orders made him rich and he had a splendid home, filled
with collections of many kinds, including antique busts, costumes,
curios, and paintings. At this period Rembrandt loved to dress Saskia
and himself in fantastic array and paint gay and somewhat theatrical
portraits of themselves.
[Illustration:
Collection of Mr. Jules S. Bache
THE STANDARD BEARER
--_Rembrandt van Rijn_]
Who does not know the famous picture of Saskia seated on Rembrandt’s
knee in the Dresden Gallery, the artist clasping his wife’s waist
with his left hand and brandishing in his right hand a long glass of
sparkling wine, before them a table covered with an Oriental rug on
which is a pastry surmounted by a peacock?
Not so familiar but more beautiful is the portrait in the Hermitage of
_Saskia_ dressed as a fanciful shepherdess with a mantle of pale
green thrown over her white brocaded gown, in her hand a flower-twined
crook, and on her head a heavy, thick wreath of ranunculus, anemones,
iris, columbine, and striped red and white tulips. “Innocent and
engaging in her brilliant draperies and gaily tinted flowers,” says
Emile Michel, “she stands a graceful apparition, the light falling full
upon her. Spring itself seems to be singing a paean of love and poetry
from the master’s palette, at the dawn of that year which was to bring
about the propitious union.”
Rembrandt’s life changed entirely after Saskia’s death in 1642, which,
by the way, was the year he painted his most famous picture, _The Night
Watch_ (in the Rijks Museum), more properly called _The Sortie of the
Company of Captain Banning Cock_.
Rembrandt became bankrupt in 1656 and his collections of antiques
and paintings were sold for a mere 5000 florins! In the following
year his house and collection of engravings came also to the hammer.
Thenceforward Rembrandt lived with his son, Titus, in a modest dwelling
in the Rozengracht, attended by his servant, Hendrickje Stoffels
(his reputed wife) until the latter’s death in 1664. The close of
Rembrandt’s life in 1669 found him poor, but as industrious as ever.
Rembrandt is said to have painted about 550 pictures and to have made
more than 250 etchings and 1500 drawings.
The Hague is the place to see the great works of Rembrandt’s early
period, such as _The Anatomy Lesson_, the _Presentation in the Temple_
or _Simeon in the Temple_, and several portraits of himself and
others; and the Rijks Museum has the great productions of his middle
and last period, including _The Syndics_ and _The Night Watch_.
Apart from his individual and amazing portrayal of shadows and light
effects, Rembrandt stands alone as the interpreter of the Bible story.
In portraiture he is profoundly searching; and no one ever painted more
forcible self-portraits than Rembrandt van Rijn.
Of all the qualities that Rembrandt possesses the most striking one is
understanding of light and shadow. Fromentin very aptly defines this
Rembrandtesque _chiaroscuro_ in his _Maîtres d’autrefois_ (Paris, 1876):
“To envelop and immerse everything in a bath of shadow; to plunge
light itself into it only to withdraw it afterwards in order to make
it appear more distant and radiant; to make dark waves revolve around
illuminated centres, grading them, sounding them, thickening them; to
make the obscurity nevertheless transparent, the half gloom easy to
pierce, and, finally, to give a kind of permeability to the strongest
colors that prevents their becoming blackness,--this is the prime
condition and the difficulties of this very special art. It goes
without saying that if any one ever excelled in this it was Rembrandt.”
PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG OFFICER.
_Rembrandt van Rijn
(1606–1669)._
_Collection of
Mr. A. W. Erickson._
This picture signed lower right, “Rembrandt f. 1636” is painted on
a panel, 20 × 25⅞ inches. It is one of Rembrandt’s finest and most
pleasing portraits. With masterly skill the artist has painted the
light in the eyes and the fine lines and texture of the lips.
The subject is supposed to be François Copal, the brother-in-law of
Saskia van Ulenburgh, Rembrandt’s wife, and there is abundant evidence
in support of the theory. Dr. Bode in his _Rembrandt_ notes:
“There is a pair of portraits in the Liechtenstein Gallery at Vienna,
dated 1636, of a _Young Officer with Thick Black Hair and His Wife_, in
costumes like those in which Rembrandt painted Saskia and himself. The
young couple here represented was probably closely connected with the
artist and his bride. The husband, whose features are regular, almost
handsome, and who has a slight moustache wears a steel gorget and a
small gaily-colored neck cloth over his finely plaited silk shirt, a
greenish blue cloak hangs from his right shoulder, and his gloved hand
rests on the hilt of his sword.
“Portraits of the artist himself and of his relations and friends,
are nearly all executed with as much care as the numerous portraits
of other persons painted to order at this time. Some few may have
been presents to friends and relations; but the majority produced at
this period (1633–1635), and that immediately following it were very
probably commissions from friends and patrons of the master, the most
renowned artist in Holland whose name was soon to be associated with
those of the greatest painters in Europe. These pictures had a special
attraction over and above their interest as portraits, by virtue of the
highly individual costume and conception which add so much to their
picturesque effect.”
Dr. W. R. Valentiner, also believing this to be a likeness of Saskia’s
brother-in-law, says:
“The portrait of a cavalier, possibly François Copal, is one of the
most imposing and impressive of the portraits which Rembrandt painted
in the middle of the thirties, at the time when he was approaching
the height of his fame as a portrait-painter at Amsterdam. Among
the considerable number of portraits which the artist painted to
order during these years, the present one (and a companion piece
in the Liechtenstein Gallery, Vienna) stand out through the vivid,
passionate expression and the personal touch which undoubtedly reflects
the artist’s own mood. At no time Rembrandt expresses so much of a
youthful, almost wild, temperament in his compositions, at no time
he endeavors to give to them such an overpowering force and such an
intense, almost sensuous feeling of life, as in these stormy years of
his first successes at Amsterdam, which were accompanied by a happy
marriage, by social connections, by acquiring riches and almost luxury.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. A. W. Erickson_
PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG OFFICER
--_Rembrandt van Rijn_]
“Something of young Samson, of whom the artist was so fond in these
years, we feel also in the portrait of a handsome cavalier. We feel
the lion’s force behind those glowing, piercing eyes, behind the
energetic chin and cheek bones, and the exuberantly flowing, broad
waves of the bushy, dark hair remind us of a lion’s mane.
“We easily recognize in Rembrandt’s work those portraits of which the
sitters were strangers to him. The present one, in which he put so
much of his own self, as he did only with friend’s portraits, does
not belong to these. He has ornated the young cavalier with a costume
which appealed to his imagination, the details of which we know from
portraits of persons in his surroundings and self-portraits: the
breast-plate, the colored scarf around the neck, the golden chain with
medal-lion, the green velvet mantle with gold-embroidered border. On
the companion-piece, on the other hand, the lady wears a costume and
pieces of jewelry which we find also in Saskia’s portraits.
“Strange to say, the female figure itself has so much likeness to
Saskia that we would be tempted to believe it to be a portrait of her,
if there was not the portrait of the cavalier as the companion-picture
preventing us from this supposition. But we know that Saskia had a
sister, Titia, who visited the Rembrandt family frequently within
these years (a portrait-sketch, a pen-drawing made of her in 1639 by
Rembrandt is in the Stockholm Museum). She and her husband François
Copal, were witnesses at the baptism of Saskia’s first children. We
know also a portrait of François Copal’s brother, Antoni, in the
Rothschild Collection, Vienna, which Rembrandt painted in 1635. The
sitter of this portrait undoubtedly has a resemblance to the gentleman
in our picture, almost as much as the companion-piece resembles Saskia.
Is thus the theory too bold that the present portrait represents
François Copal and the companion-piece at Vienna, Titia, his wife?”
The portrait came to the present owner, Mr. Erickson, directly from
the famous Liechtenstein Collection, Vienna, purchased by Prince
Liechtenstein from the Marchesa Incontri, Florence. Previously the
picture had been in the Collections of the Comte Koucheleff Besborodko,
Paris; the Duc de Choiseul Praslin, Paris (1793), and B. da Costa, The
Hague (1752).
AN OLD LADY SEATED IN AN ARMCHAIR.
_Rembrandt van Rijn
(1606–1669)._
_Collection of the
Hon. Andrew W. Mellon._
This splendid portrait, oils on canvas (42½ × 35½ inches), takes rank
with Rembrandt’s famous study of _Elizabeth Bas_, widow of Admiral
Swartenhout, in the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam. It is three-quarters
length, life-size, and signed on the left “Rembrandt F. 1643.” The
subject is seated in an arm-chair of red leather with her head turned
slightly to the left and she is looking in the same direction. She
wears a black costume with a tightly fitting jacket lined with fur, a
large flat, round, and gauffered ruff, and a flat, dark velvet cap. Her
arms rest easily on the arms of the chair and in the right hand she is
holding her eyeglasses, while the fingers of her left hand are placed
between the leaves of a large book--presumably a Bible, with silver
clasps and gilt edges,--a marvellous piece of still-life painting. The
background is dark of the brownish Rembrandt tone and the light falls
from the left upon the face of the sitter and upon her large ruff. Dr.
Bode, in speaking of the lighting of this remarkable portrait, says:
“A strong light falls on the broad, gauffered ruff and is reflected
on the more softly illuminated face; another ray of light touches the
hands with their small white cuffs. The dull red of the chair-back, the
subdued glint of the gold edges and silver clasps of the book relieve
the blackish tone of the picture almost imperceptibly. It takes a
special place among Rembrandt’s portraits by reason of its peculiarly
distinguished harmony. In arrangement and illumination it stands midway
between the St. Petersburg _Portrait of the Old Woman_ and the
numerous studies of old women painted between 1650 and 1660.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of the Hon. Andrew W. Mellon_
AN OLD LADY SEATED IN AN ARMCHAIR
--_Rembrandt van Rijn_]
The picture was sold in Amsterdam in 1764 and has passed through the
Collections of J. van der March, Amsterdam, 1773; M. Thelluson, Paris,
1777; an anonymous Parisian collection, 1788; M. C. A. de Calonne,
London, 1795; Mr. J. Allmutt, London, 1863; and M. Louis Lebeuf de
Montsgermont, Paris.
SIMEON AND MARY PRESENTING THE INFANT CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE.
_Rembrandt van Rijn
(1606–1669)._
_Collection of
Mr. Nils B. Hersloff._
This picture is interesting for two reasons. One, that it belonged to
Horace Walpole and hung for many years in _Strawberry Hill_; and
the other, that it is a recently discovered Rembrandt.
It would seem from the present documents that the picture is not many
stages away from the painter’s studio. In a case like this, it is best
to tell the story of the identification of this _Strawberry Hill_
picture with the Rembrandt studio picture in the words of those most
concerned in the matter.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Nils B. Hersloff_
SIMEON AND MARY PRESENTING THE INFANT CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE
--_Rembrandt van Rijn_]
But first let us read the interesting analysis written by the
Rembrandt specialist, Dr. Jan Veth, author of the _Life and Art of
Rembrandt_, published on the commemoration of the 300th anniversary
of his birth. This essay is dated Amsterdam, August 2, 1916, when this
picture from the Walpole Collection was discovered and sent to Holland.
Dr. Veth speaking:
“A rather large-sized picture, about 39½ × 31½ inches, has recently
been imported from England, a picture which one recognized without any
difficulty as being a late work by Rembrandt. This unknown work was
at first thought to be in a rather dilapidated condition. Evidently
long ago it had been relined by an unskilled hand, leaving the canvas
badly wrinkled in places. These have been easily removed, the picture
slightly restored and apart from a few local blemishes (nowhere
occurring in the vital parts) the beautifully crackled and original
coat of paint appears unimpaired. Many a museum piece giving the
impression of being in a perfect state of preservation is, in reality,
much less intact than this Rembrandt.
“The figure of Simeon in the picture reminds us to a certain extent
of the figure of _Homer_ in the Collection of Dr. Bredius, but the
handling of the paint is more certain, the head firmer and more
plastic. In his later period, where his old men bear so much of a
resemblance to each other, it was not necessary that Rembrandt should
always use the same models. The character, however, of this Simeon
is akin to that of _St. Matthew_ in the Louvre, to the father in the
_Prodigal Son_ in Petrograd, to the man behind _Pilate_ in the picture
in New York, Altman Collection, and to the _Haman_ in the Collection of
the King of Roumania.
“For the rest, the peculiar expression of Simeon’s rugged and full
bearded countenance can be traced quite easily in that dark, majestic
etching of the _Presentation in the Temple_ with the exception that the
head in the etching leans slightly more backward. Simeon’s expression
depicts in a striking manner the decrepit old man to whom the divine
revelation was made, and who, after walking into the Temple, seeing the
Child and taking Him into his arms, said: ‘Lord, now lettest Thou Thy
servant depart in peace, according to Thy word: For mine eyes have seen
Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people:
A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people, Israel.’
Luke II, 29–32.
“The hermit-like old man wears a wide gold-colored leather mantle. Full
of devotion he is holding the Christ Child, without touching Him with
his long and stiffened hands.
“The little face appears foreshortened and recalls to one’s mind the
strange drawing of the uplifted face of the young Jesus where he walks
between his parents in that remarkable etching of the _Return from the
Temple_. Close to Simeon and behind, stands Mary, the inclination of
the head and attitude identical with the Virgin in the etching of the
_Presentation_. Over her head she wears a wide, drooping hood, and the
greater part of her face--a face of no ordinary maternity and with
something of the grandeur so characteristic in Mantegna’s Madonnas--is
deeply enveloped in shadows. In contrast with the bronze-like, warm
color of the ancient man, she appears cool in tone, the neck only
illuminated like enamel against the sombre purple of her frock.
“The group is composed without any additional accessory to distract
or allure the spectator, being placed against a background deep and
sombre, a great and connected whole. Throughout, the handling of the
paint is full and direct without any small or useless accents, a great
design treated like sculpture. The stronger colors of brown and red are
dissolved in a sombre tone of bronze and with that singular mixture of
smothered lights and cave-like half-tones and shadows which give the
true expression of the quiet and pathetic event.
“Out of the whole tonality emerges first the powerful head of the old
Seer, then the suppressed light of the strange Infant, and finally the
beautiful sibyl-like Mary. The picture is full of that inner power
of expression which Millet would have admired and Israels would have
revelled in.
“In Holland we can point to more complete, perhaps more pompous and
more brilliant, Rembrandts, but a picture by the master of such
wonderful simplicity and at once of such great eloquence we hardly know
of in this country.”
Turning to the Dutch records we learn the following:
“The desire to obtain the minutest detail of information about
Rembrandt’s life and works, and perhaps with a wish to discover some
allusion to his pictures, has led such men as Dr. Bredius to search
among the old Dutch archives for records of ancient deeds in the
registries of Amsterdam and near-by towns and villages. This has been
no light task, for besides the numberless documents to be examined,
the difficulties of deciphering the curious legal language used in
the Seventeenth Century had to be combatted. Dr. Bredius’s efforts,
however, were rewarded, when, about ten years ago he discovered an
ancient deed relating directly to a painting by Rembrandt, and dated
May 12, 1671 (two years after his death), signed before a notary named
J. De Winter of Amsterdam. The document so unearthed threw light upon
a picture entitled _Simeon_, of which no record had up to the time of
Dr. Bredius’s discovery, been known. Dr. Bredius deemed the subject so
interesting that he wrote an article dealing with _The Last Year of
Rembrandt’s Life_, which appeared in _Oud-Holland_ in 1909.”
Now we go to the number of _Oud-Holland_ and take this extract.
Dr. Bredius speaking:
“Although we have learned much of the last years of Rembrandt’s life,
of the very last and perhaps the saddest year of that rich life, we
have learned little up to the present time. Only one work, that of
his own portrait in the collection of Sir Audley Neeld in Griffleton
House, seems to bear the date of 1669. We have no other picture and no
etching, and in this portrait the master appears so feeble that we had
begun to believe that Rembrandt worked but little in the last year of
his life.
“That he was, however, still working and planned to do some etchings
and also that there was a picture on his easel shortly before he died,
is proven by an old deed I have recently discovered. Short as this may
be, it nevertheless gives us much important information. Among other
things it is new to us _that Rembrandt was working up to the time of
his death_, and that Dirck van Cattenburch, a gentleman dealer with
his brother, Otto, as far back as 1654, had business connections with
Rembrandt. And here we see the aged master, as often happened and still
happens with artists, more or less in the hands of the Art-dealer, who
pays for the work before it is finished.
“Perhaps Rembrandt really considered his _Simeon_ a finished picture,
but the buyers probably did not, and looked upon his broadly painted
canvases of his latest period as not being ‘entirely finished.’ We are
not acquainted with any _Simeon_ of his last period.[23] It is also
interesting to note from the deed that the artist planned to make a
series of etchings of the _Passion_, a subject which always attracted
him and of which he made some of his most wonderful plates. Deed: May
12, 1671, Appeared before me, Allart van Everdingen, age about fifty
years and Cornelius van Everdingen, age twenty-five years, both artists
living in this town, and on request of Dirck van Cattenburch, do hereby
declare that Allart van Everdingen, a few months before the death of
Rembrandt van Rijn, artist, had a conversation as to the settling of a
painting representing Simeon, painted by the aforesaid Rembrandt van
Rijn, not yet entirely finished, owned by Dirck van Cattenburch and
being in Rembrandt’s house.
“That he, witness, went to see and examine the aforesaid picture in the
house of van Rijn, who told him at the time that the picture was owned
by said Dirck van Cattenburch. The aforesaid Cornelius van Everdingen
further declares that he went up to Rembrandt’s studio several times,
where, on each occasion, he saw and examined the said picture,
which was discussed by them, Rembrandt declaring that the picture
was owned by Dirck van Cattenburch. Also that Rembrandt had several
polished plates owned by Dirck van Cattenburch in order to engrave the
_Passion_.
Signed Allart van Everdingen
Signed Cornelius van Everdingen.”
“It is interesting to note that Allart van Everdingen was a well-known
painter of the time of Rembrandt and that he was born in 1612. He
excelled in painting rocky landscapes. He also executed sea-pieces and
storms with such surprising effect and spirit that his work entitled
him to the appellation, the ‘Salvator Rosa of the North.’ Allart van
Everdingen was also an etcher of repute and in this work there must
have existed a bond of sympathy between Rembrandt and himself. He
died in 1675, six years after the death of the master. His works are
represented in all the great museums. Cornelius van Everdingen, his
son, was also an artist, but not so universally known as his more
brilliant father.”
Now then we turn to another Dutch authority to continue the story:
“Dr. Bredius, by the remarkable discovery of the ancient deed, had
established the fact that a certain picture of _Simeon_ (always
identified in Art with _The Presentation in the Temple_) was in
Rembrandt’s studio a few months before his death. But what had become
of the picture there was nothing to show, none of the great biographers
of the artist has ever classified a work of this subject dating from
his last period.
“And now commence the most interesting events connected with the
picture under consideration. Many inquiries were instituted. Dr.
Bredius, from his rich stock of material bearing upon the master,
searched exhaustively for some indication where the picture might be
found. The known and unknown private and public collections of Europe
and even America were examined through and through, until at last his
efforts were rewarded and nine years after the discovery of the deed
and his subsequent article, the picture was recognized and acclaimed as
the lost _Simeon_.
“The painting was found in the collection of a nobleman in England, and
although it had lain neglected for centuries there could be no possible
doubt that it was the picture of _Simeon_ referred to in the deed.
“This discovery occurred in the year 1916, at a time when the world was
in the midst of the Great War; but such was the importance of the find
that the masterpiece was sent at once to Holland, there to be admired
by all of the great Rembrandt authorities.”
Critics have called attention to the fact that the _first_ important
picture painted by Rembrandt was _Simeon in the Temple_ which is now
in the Mauritshuis, The Hague, and which is also called _Presentation
in the Temple_. It is a little strange that the _last_ picture should
have been on the same subject. Yet any one can see they are by the same
hand. In the Hague picture it is beneath the high roof of a temple
that the Virgin and St. Joseph make the offering and present the Holy
Child to the Lord. Simeon, in a robe glittering with gold, holds the
Holy Child and the High Priest stands in front of the group, his hands
lifted in ecstasy. The latter’s robe of violet makes a beautiful note
of color which is carried through the lights and shadows and which
contrasts and harmonizes, too, with the Virgin’s dress of light blue.
In the vaporous distance persons are seen ascending and descending the
steps. All the light is concentrated on the central group and the cold,
mysterious depths of the vast fane are expressed with marvellous skill.
_Homer Reciting his Poems_, also in the Hague Gallery, representing an
old man in a yellow robe, has the face of the _Strawberry Hill Simeon_
and _Homer_ was painted in 1663. It could be possible that the same
model was used for _Homer_ and the _Strawberry Hill Simeon_.
How did Horace Walpole get this Rembrandt?
The information that we gain from the Catalogue of the _Strawberry
Hill_ Collection issued when Earl Waldegrave sold the contents of
_Strawberry Hill_ at Covent Garden in 1842 is rather tantalizing
than otherwise.
The items read as follows.
On Page XVII of prefatory remarks:
“A Fine Rembrandt (No. 100) and a Nicholas Poussin adorn this end of
the chamber. Page 204. The great North Bed Chamber: No. 100. _The
Presentation in the Temple_, displaying all the power of light and
shade so peculiar to this great master, Rembrandt.
“The above two pictures No. 99 and 100 were bought from a very old
gentlewoman for whose grandfather they had been painted, and till then
had never been taken out of their old black frames and are still in
their pure and genuine state.”
Was the “very old gentlewoman” the grand-daughter of Dirck van
Cattenburch?
PORTRAIT OF AN OFFICER.
_Frans Hals
(1580?–1666)._
_Collection of
Mr. Henry Goldman._
The subject, which we might almost call a Dutch Falstaff, is seated
in a chair on the arm of which he rests his right elbow, while he
seems to be grasping a stick with his hand. The left hand is hidden.
Beneath his large grey felt hat with its wide turned-up brim a few
locks of straggly grey hair are visible. His doublet is of grey silk
with a dotted pattern (long anticipating the “Polka Dot” of the
early Nineteenth Century), a surcoat of buff leather, and a broad,
flat collar, trimmed with handsome and heavy lace, worn over a metal
breast-plate. The Officer looks directly at us with a half-humorous,
half-suspicious glance,--one of those characteristic Frans Hals’s
expressions.
The picture, oils on canvas (32½ × 25¾) bears the monogram F. H. and
the words “Ætat 55. A. 1637.” It was sold from the Collection of Mr. J.
H. Töpfer in Amsterdam in 1841 and then it was in the Collection of Sir
Edgar Vincent (Lord d’Abercorn) at Esher.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Henry Goldman_
PORTRAIT OF AN OFFICER
--_Frans Hals_]
Frans Hals (1580?–1666), one of the greatest masters of painting, was
born in Antwerp, where his parents (natives of Haarlem, and of good
lineage), are supposed to have gone because of political disturbances
of the time. It seems that Hals was settled in Haarlem before 1591,
busily painting, and he lived there all the rest of his life. In
1637 he came under Rembrandt’s influence in Amsterdam. Hals’s life
was rather disgraceful and went from bad to worse until poverty and
comparative oblivion compelled him to accept charity. He died in
Haarlem in 1666, leaving a great many followers. The real life of the
man is to be found in such works as _The Laughing Cavalier_ in
the Wallace Collection and those vagabonds, lute-players, topers, and
other rascals that belong to the same class as Autolycus, Launcelot
Gobbo, Touchstone, Dogberry, Sir Toby Belch, Falstaff and our other
much-prized, although disreputable, Shakespearian low-comedy characters.
Hals always accomplished his work by the greatest economy of means. A
few broad, rapid, and unhesitating strokes, or _swipes_, of the
brush, a dot here and there of light,--and that is all!
Everything that Hals painted shows his dazzling genius, his astounding
instinct for striking effects, and his marvellous ability for catching
a likeness. Hals never worked out his ideas: he left no sketches, nor
studies. His extraordinary power of quick analysis with the eye and the
gift his hand had for expressing what his eye had seen, combined with a
rapid, sure, and skilled technique rank Hals as a master among masters.
Moreover, he had a keen and gay humor. No painter has ever been able
like Hals to render the face in action and to fix forever, a rapid and
fleeting expression on canvas. He loved to catch and make permanent a
wink, a smile, a leer, or even hearty laughter.
Frans Hals was a genius at portraiture. Those who have seen the large
number of Hals’s _Doelen_ pictures in the Town Hall of Haarlem,
each canvas containing from fourteen to twenty life-size portraits,
stand aghast at the power represented in just this one phase of his art.
When we look upon these pictures we feel as if we were entering a
hall full of convivial officers, laughing, jesting and making merry
over their fine wines and choice food. They are richly dressed. Many
of them wear lace cuffs and ruffs and bright scarves. Flags flutter,
spears glitter, spurs and swords clink and rattle and flash in the
sunlight; and plumes on the large hats nod in the breeze, or with the
motions of these men’s bodies. Loud talk and bursts of laughter seem
to issue from the frames. These convivial men have fought against the
hated Spaniard and are ready “to trail a pike” again at any moment. A
gallant and a jovial crowd,--these Arquebusiers of St. George and St.
Andrew!
The artist was commanded to paint each man accurately and according to
his rank in the Company; and Hals did more than fill his order,--he
made each and every man _live_.
THE LAUGHING MANDOLIN PLAYER.
_Frans Hals
(1580–1666)._
_Collection of
Mr. John R. Thompson._
Here is a half-figure of a young man seated, turning his head towards
the spectator, and laughing merrily as he holds up a glass of wine in
his right hand. His mandolin is lying on the table beside him and his
left fingers close around its neck. He wears a dark cloak lined with
blue and a large black cap thrown carelessly at the side of his head
and his hair is unkempt and straggly. But what cares he? He has sung
his song and played his tune and has been rewarded well,--well enough,
indeed, to have a glass of good wine. So no wonder he laughs! Life is a
joke anyway--“So here’s to the company and thank you, gentlemen!”
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. John R. Thompson_
THE LAUGHING MANDOLIN PLAYER
--_Frans Hals_]
The picture is an oil painting on panel (36 × 30 inches), and is signed
with the monogram F. H.
The _Laughing Mandolin Player_ belonged to the Capello Collection,
Amsterdam, from which it was sold in 1767, and then it passed to Count
Bonde, Stockholm; to Jules Porges, Paris; to the late Baron Ferdinand
de Rothschild, Waddeston Manor, England; and to M. A. Veil-Picard,
Paris.
A MUSIC PARTY.
_Pieter de Hoogh
(1629–1677?)._
_Collection of
Mrs. John N. Willys._
Here are six figures in the reception bedroom of a prosperous merchant
or citizen. The dominant note of the apartment is red. The floor
is paved with square blocks of marble. The primary interest of the
picture is in the group on the left, consisting of two fashionably
dressed gentlemen and an elegantly attired lady at a table over which
is spread an Oriental “table-carpet.” The lady, dressed in a scarlet
skirt, an old-gold overskirt and bodice and a deep white lace collar,
is looking at the spectator and singing from a piece of music which she
is holding in her left hand, her right being raised as if to beat time.
Standing near her and smilingly accompanying her in her song is a young
gentleman with long hair and wearing a white jacket and a broad-brimmed
hat. With his right hand he is holding a long funnel-shaped glass
partly filled with wine. Seated opposite and looking intently at the
lady is a middle-aged gentleman with long hair and yellow jacket,
holding a flageolet with both hands, and apparently waiting for the
note at which he may join in the accompaniment. On the table are the
flageolet player’s high-crowned hat with red feathers, an open book of
music and a glass. In the background are standing figures of a lady and
gentleman in conversation, and near-by is an attendant in brown dress
holding a wine-jar in his left hand and abstractedly looking out of the
window. In the background is a bed enclosed with curtains. Two windows
to left and right open on to a garden, a portion of which, adorned with
statues, is seen through an open doorway on the extreme right.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mrs. John N. Willys_
A MUSIC PARTY
--_Pieter de Hoogh_]
The picture, oil on a panel (24 × 28 inches), was formerly in the
Collections of Edmund Higginson of Saltmarshe Castle, England, 1846;
George H. Morland, Esq., London, a well-known amateur, a descendant of
George Morland, the artist, 1863; and Albert Levy, London, 1874.
Pieter de Hoogh (or Hooch) is thought to have been born in Rotterdam.
Little is known of his life. He seems to have been a servant in his
early years employed by Justus de la Grange and to have lived in Delft,
in Leiden and in The Hague. In some way he learned to paint; some
authorities say he studied under Rembrandt’s pupil Carel Fabritius,
Houbraken says he was a fellow-student with Jacob Ochtevelt under
Nicholaes Berchem. In 1653 Pieter de Hoogh became a member of the
Guild of Painters in Delft and he married in that city and lived
there Until 1664. Next he is living in The Hague and after that in
Amsterdam. Pieter de Hoogh is ranked as one of the best of the “Little
Dutch Masters.” His pictures show a particularly fine mastery in the
action of light. He almost invariably opens a door in the background
leading into a garden or into an adjoining room. He groups his figures
interestingly and tells his simple story in paint graphically and
convincingly. His architecture is always remarkably fine and his
drawing is second to none.
Pieter de Hoogh was neglected for many years, but to-day he is deeply
appreciated. Burger says he never saw any picture by de Hoogh that
was not of the first rank: “Sometimes he paints interiors--people are
playing cards, or having a family concert, or reading, or drinking,
or conversing. Sometimes he paints exteriors; and then the painter
introduces us to domestic occupations and the innocent recreations of
private life, as, for instance, a servant washing linen in a backyard,
or cleaning fish, or plucking fowl, or perhaps there are ladies and
their cavaliers playing at bowls in a garden with trim gravelled walks.
“When he paints interiors this artist rarely neglects to show, on
the right or left, doors opening on a staircase or revealing a leafy
alley, or the trees along a quay, so that his pictures always seem to
be the antechamber of another picture. In this characteristic style of
de Hoogh when the interior of the apartment is moderately lighted the
sun shines outside. Pieter de Hoogh seems to have been in Rembrandt’s
secrets.”
THE LACE-MAKER.
_Jan Vermeer
(1632–1675)._
_Collection of the
Hon. Andrew W. Mellon._
This delightful picture on panel (17¾ × 15½ inches) was only discovered
in 1926. On its exhibition at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in 1926–1927
in Berlin, Dr. Wilhelm Bode wrote: “I consider it a genuine, perfect,
and very characteristic work of Jan Vermeer of Delft. Not only has it
the true Vermeer charm as to the lighting and coloring, but at the
same time there is an extraordinary fascination in the expression of
the face, still half that of a child.” Dr. Max J. Friedländer also
pronounced it “a genuine and highly characteristic work by Vermeer of
Delft.”
The young girl is seen at half-length with her head turned towards the
observer and her eyes looking straight out of the picture. She is busy
making lace on a pillow, or cushion, which is supported on a frame
with two upright posts. In her left hand she is holding a bobbin. Her
costume is a yellow jacket, or bodice, with broad white collar and
broad white cuffs. Her brown hair, arranged very simply, is adorned
with a tiny knot of blue ribbon. The handsome pear-shaped pearls in
her ears proclaim that she is in more than affluent circumstances and
that she is a young Dutch lady of some position, making lace for her
pleasure and not to earn a living. At her left elbow is a blue cushion
and a large pewter dish.
_The Lace-Maker_ is in every way a picture of charm and one of the
most thoroughly attractive that Vermeer ever produced.
[Illustration:
_Collection of the Hon. Andrew W. Mellon_
THE LACE-MAKER
--_Jan Vermeer_]
When it came to light in 1926 it was cordially welcomed. Seymour
de Ricci published a long article under the title of _Le
Quarante-et-Unième Vermeer_ in the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_
(December, 1927), which says in part:
“Seated, with her work on her knees and her bobbins in her hand, she
stops in her occupation for a moment to look at the spectator. On the
right, upon the corner of a table, covered with an Oriental rug, a flat
dish of pewter and a blue cushion ornamented with three rows of gold
braid and two gold tassels--that is the entire subject of the picture!
“It needed the consummate art of a Vermeer to produce with this slender
material such a veritable _chef-d’œuvre_. Many painters would
doubtless have tried to place this fresh figure in a striking setting.
A Gerard Dou would have framed her in a window; a Metsu would have
surrounded her with furniture; and a Pieter de Hoogh would have felt
compelled to let us see through an open door into the next room, or
into a bright flower garden. The bolder and much greater painter,
Vermeer, places his model before a white wall, the plaster of which in
the course of two centuries has combined ivory reflections with the
pearly gray of clouds in springtime. Upon the clearness of this wall
this youthful figure stands out with striking clarity: the faint rosy
tints of the complexion, the whiteness of the broad flat collar and
cuffs and the bright yellow of the bodice form a scale of colors that
are juxtaposed with singular frankness and boldness. It is only in the
flesh tints that the painter allows himself to bring the model into
relief: in everything else he shows an affection for flat surfaces
and flat tints. His touch is so light that in places--noticeably in
the whites--each stroke of the brush has left its trace. The artist
has proceeded by circular blots juxtaposed, announcing therefore a
technique which certain French artists pretend to have discovered at
the end of the Nineteenth Century.
“In everything here Vermeer the colorist takes precedence of Vermeer
the draughtsman. There is not a line in the entire picture,--nothing
but the juxtaposition of color-tones. A magnifying glass is impotent
to make us discover the bridge of the nose, the profile of the cheek
or the fingers. The eyebrows are barely indicated, the brown hair is
treated in large luminous masses, and even the bobbins which to the
naked eye seem to be drawn with such punctilious exactitude are merely
indicated, but with such correctness and such prodigious skillfulness
of touch that the illusion of the detail is most complete, even for the
instructed spectator.
“In this charming composition, the greatest of Dutch colorists has
taken pleasure in playing the entire scale of his favorite colors. In
the brown masses of the hair he has placed a tiny blue ribbon, echoing
the large blue surface of the cushion. On the other hand, on this same
cushion three rows of dark yellow braid echo the bright ochre of the
bodice. In the very centre of the picture the cherry red of the little
smiling mouth throws a note more brilliant than the artist dared to
place on the rose cheeks of his model white with the reflections from
the large starched collar. All the lower part of the picture is in
deep half-light which is brightened by the red and blue tones of the
table-carpet and the luminous reflections of the pewter dish. The
curious observer will notice that the painter was not afraid to change
the centre of his composition towards the right, indifferent to the
traditions of its accepted place, just as he was to the methods of his
fore-runners with regard to the use of color.
“It has been attempted more than once to elucidate the mystery of
the technical methods to which is due the incredible luminosity of
Vermeer’s pictures. It has even been thought that he painted on a
groundwork of some very bright color; but it has been correctly
remarked that such a groundwork--if he had employed it--would at
the end of two centuries have become visible under the painting and
would have necessarily assimilated the colors. Others have suggested
a preliminary preparation of water colors or gum. But, in truth, we
are perfectly ignorant of how this amazing and incontestable result
has been attained. This newly discovered picture reveals nothing to
us relative to Vermeer’s technique, and although the painting is so
lightly done and of so thin a coating, it has taken on its surface
something of the hardness and brilliance of porcelain; and fine
crackles have broken all through this suggesting the paste of porcelain.
_The Lace-Maker_ was in the Collection of Harold R. Wright, Esq.,
of London, before it passed to the Hon. Andrew W. Mellon.
Jan Vermeer of Delft (1632–1675) was a pupil of Carel Fabritius, who
was a pupil of Rembrandt--consequently Vermeer had the best training.
Lemke’s eulogy is worth reading:
“Vermeer was a painter of the light and sun school; and this was his
chief study--to catch and hold fast the moment. What Frans Hals did for
the physiognomy, grasping the flying moment in an incomparable manner
with winks, smiles, leers, gesticulation, etc., and fixing it in paint,
Vermeer as a landscape painter, delighted to do for the sunshine. He
shows its rays streaming into a room, or the play of light and shadow
when the light with the moving air falls through heavy foliage against
a bright house and paints it with rays of light and shade. Unlike the
moment of Rembrandt and Ruisdael, which is fixed for all eternity, with
Vermeer the moment vibrates in the light. The shadows lose their sharp
outlines and the fine brush-work suggests the living change and play
of the light. Rembrandt paints light in darkness and lets it glow in
the dark or streaming into it, or in a broad flood of brilliance; but
Vermeer prefers to set darkness or twilight against the light.”
GERMAN PAINTING
_GERMAN PAINTING_
Painting reached its greatest development in Germany from the middle
of the Fifteenth to the middle of the Sixteenth Century during the
Renaissance and the Reformation. The dominating personalities were
Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein the Younger.
The early German painters devoted their talents almost exclusively to
altar-pieces. The chief centres of activity were Cologne, Colmar, Ulm,
Nuremberg, and Augsburg. Cologne was the most important and had much
influence upon the neighboring Flemings. As early as the Thirteenth
Century Wolfram van Eschenbach, describing his handsome Knight in
_Parsifal_, declares that
“From Koln nor from Maestricht
No limner could excel him.”
The first important Cologne painter is Meister Wilhelm, first half of
the Fourteenth Century, followed by Meister Stephan Lochner (active
1430–1451), possibly his pupil, painter of the great altar-piece in
the Cologne Cathedral, the “_Dom-bild_”, which every painter tried to
see. Albrecht Dürer, for instance, wrote in his _Journal_: “Item. I
have paid two silver pennies to have the picture opened, which Meister
Stephan painted at Cologne.”
Heine, many years later, sang of the wondrous eyes of the Madonna in
that picture in the Cologne Cathedral that reminded him of his beloved;
and the idea is most beautifully emphasized in the musical setting of
that little song by Robert Franz, who expresses in his accompaniment
all of the emotion aroused by the painting.
The Cologne painters were much influenced by Roger van der Weyden, who
seems to have visited Cologne in 1450. Certainly Martin Schöngauer
(about 1445–1491) was a follower of Roger, if not a personal pupil.
Schöngauer is remarkable among other things for the weird and fantastic
creatures he frequently introduced into his pictures. Martin
Schöngauer, regarded as the precursor of Dürer, was much admired by the
Italian painters, who called him “_Il bel Martino_.” Michelangelo
is said to have copied in oils his celebrated print of _Saint Anthony
tormented by Demons_ and he was a friend of Perugino and exchanged
drawings with him. The two Germans of next importance were Bartholomäus
Zeitblom of Ulm (1450?–1521), who, like Martin, belongs to the Swabian
School, and Michael Wohlgemut (1434?–1519?), the leading spirit of the
Franconian School, who worked especially in the Nuremberg churches.
In the picturesque town of Nuremberg, with its peaked gables,
overhanging balconies, and quaint façades, town of wood-carvers,
goldsmiths, and toy-makers, town of Hans Sachs and the Meistersinger,
the house of Dürer is still shown to tourists.
Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), one of the giants in art, was supreme
master in wood-cuts, etchings, and drawings as well as in paintings.
Dürer, too, is one of the greatest portrait-painters (see page 237).
In Augsburg, the leading commercial city of Southern Germany,
there were many wealthy art-lovers, such as the Fuggers, famous
merchant-princes of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. The leading
painter was Hans Holbein the Elder (1470?–1524), much influenced by
Martin Schöngauer and also by the Italians. He trained his gifted son,
Hans Holbein the Younger (1497–1543), who completely overshadowed him.
The latter went to Basle and eventually to London, where he became
Court-Painter to Henry VIII (see page 240).
Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553), leader of the Saxon School, was a
contemporary of Dürer and Holbein, pupil of his father, and, in common
with most German artists, excelled as an engraver on wood and copper
and designer, as well as a painter. Cranach was Court-Painter to three
Saxon Electors (see page 251).
Lucas Cranach the Younger (1515–1586) was a pupil of his father, but
was far below him in talent and performance.
PORTRAIT OF A MAN.
_Albrecht Dürer
(1471–1528)._
_Collection of the
Hon. Andrew W. Mellon._
We should like to know--but we never shall--the name of the man who
looks so keenly from this picture (12¾ × 15⅝ inches). All that is
known of it is that it belonged to the Collection of Count Bonde, of
Stockholm, before it found its present home.
Albrecht Dürer was a great painter of portraits. He began early. Indeed
the first authentic drawing by him is a portrait of himself at the age
of thirteen, which is preserved in the Albertina, Vienna.
At all periods of his life, Dürer painted and drew portraits. To the
early Nuremberg period belongs _Frederic the Wise_, tempera on linen
(Berlin), and he painted a _Portrait of his Father_ in 1497 (of which
there are several versions). Then there is _Oswald Krell_ in the Munich
Gallery and a _Portrait of Himself_, a _Portrait of a Young Man_ at
Hampton Court Palace and the very famous _Hieronymus Holtzschuher_ in
Berlin.
Dürer’s one idea was to give as exact a representation of the sitter as
possible; and if he painted character as well as the features, it was
because his penetrating eye saw directly through the person. There was
no conscious analysis or deep ponderings of any kind. Dürer simply saw
the person and painted him; and he painted him so well that we see him,
too, just the man he was. Dürer was like a camera; he depicted every
wrinkle and every hair with an amazing effect of reality and he caught
the personality as well. Nothing seems to have been hidden from his
eyesight and nothing seems to have been beyond the power of his brush.
Albrecht Dürer was the son of a goldsmith of Hungarian origin who had
spent some time in the Netherlands. In 1455 he settled in Nuremberg,
where Albrecht was born in 1471, the third of eleven children.
His father intended him for a goldsmith, but, seeing his talent,
apprenticed him to Michael Wolgemuth to serve three years. Of this
period Dürer wrote: “God gave me diligence so that I learned well. And
when I had served my time, my father sent me away and I was absent four
years until my father needed me again; and I set out in 1490 after
Easter, so I returned in 1494 after Whitsuntide. And when I returned
home Hans Frey treated with my father and gave me his daughter, Agnes,
and he gave me with her two hundred florins; and the marriage was
celebrated on the Monday before St. Margaret’s Day in the year 1494.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of the Hon. Andrew W. Mellon_
PORTRAIT OF A MAN
--_Albrecht Dürer_]
The story that Dürer’s wife was a shrew who led him an unhappy life is
now exploded.
In 1505 Dürer went to Italy and spent some time in Venice, where
he painted for the Guild of German merchants and their Fondaco dei
Tedeschi, _The Feast of the Rosary_, which is now in the monastery of
Strahow near Prague.
Returning to Nuremberg in 1507 Dürer painted some of his finest
altar-pieces. In 1511 he began his fine sets of wood-cuts and
etchings--the _Apocalypse_, the _Great Passion_, the _Little Passion_,
the _Life of the Virgin_ and _St. Jerome in his Study_. To this period
belongs the large altar-piece _Adoration of the Trinity_, in the
Belvedere at Vienna. In 1518 Dürer was in Augsburg and in 1520–1521 he
travelled in the Low Countries. Once back in Nuremberg, he seems to
have worked quietly and industriously until his death in 1528.
In forming any estimate of Dürer it is essential to remember that
Dürer was a great expression and a great flowering of the German race.
Mrs. Heaton has well summed up his characteristics: “We do not find,”
she says, “in Dürer’s art the classic ideal of the perfection of
man’s physical nature, nor the spiritual ideal of the early religious
painters, nor the calm dignity and rich sensuous beauty of the
great masters of the Italian Renaissance, but in it we find a noble
expression of the German mind, with its high intellectual powers,
its daring speculative philosophy, its deep-seated reverence, its
patient laboriousness, and above all its strange love for the weird
and grotesque. Dürer was the companion of some of the most learned and
thoughtful men of his day. Luther and Melancthon were among the number
of his friends, and there is no doubt but the reforming spirit of the
age was powerfully at work within him, affecting his thought and art.
Melancthon bears testimony to his rare worth as a man by saying: ‘his
least merit was his art.’”
PRINCE EDWARD OF ENGLAND.
_Hans Holbein the Younger
(1497–1543)._
_Collection of the
Hon. Andrew W. Mellon._
This portrait is one of the finest that Holbein ever painted. The
artist had every reason to do his best, for the picture was intended
as a New Year’s Gift to Henry VIII of his little son, the Prince of
Wales, who was nearly two years old. The King was so delighted with the
picture that he presented Holbein with a magnificent gold standing-cup
with cover. Prince Edward (who became Edward VI) was the son of Jane
Seymour, the third wife of Henry VIII, who only lived twelve days after
Prince Edward’s birth at Hampton Court Palace on October 12, 1537.
By the Peace Treaty of Scotland in 1543, it was arranged that Prince
Edward should marry Mary, Queen of Scots, at that time but a few months
old; but this came to nothing, owing to “the grasping greed” of Henry
VIII, whose ambition was to absorb the Crown of Scotland and whose
purpose was discovered by the patriotic Scotch. On the death of Henry
VIII in January 1547, the Prince of Wales succeeded to the throne and
was crowned on February 20, 1547, as Edward VI. Edward, on the point of
death, bequeathed the Crown in 1553 to Lady Jane Grey, daughter of his
cousin, Frances Grey, eldest daughter of Mary, the daughter of Henry
VII, and who was married to the son of the Duke of Northumberland. On
July 6, 1553, the young King Edward VI died and was buried the next day
in Henry VII’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey.
The portrait in oil on a panel (21¾ × 17 inches) was painted in 1538.
The little prince is wearing a red and gold costume and red and gold
hat with white feather. The background is gold.
His hands are marvellously painted, particularly the right, which is a
triumph of foreshortening. The left hand holds a silver rattle.
[Illustration:
_Collection of the Hon. Andrew W. Mellon_
PRINCE EDWARD OF ENGLAND
--_Hans Holbein the Younger_]
The Latin inscription painted at the base was written by Sir Richard
Morysin (who became English Ambassador to the Hanse towns in 1646 and
to the Court of the Emperor Charles V in 1550). The eulogy is addressed
to Henry VIII, through the child; and it is well for Edward VI that
he did not live to learn the verdict that time has passed upon this
Bluebeard of History. Translated it reads:
“Little one, imitate thy father and be the heir of his virtue, the
world contains nothing greater. Heaven and Nature could scarcely give a
son whose glory should surpass that of such a father. Do thou but equal
the deeds of thy parent: the desires of man cannot go beyond this.
Surpass him and thou hast surpassed all the kings the world has ever
worshipped and none will ever surpass thee.”
Can flattery go beyond this?
For many years this portrait hung in the Royal Picture Gallery at
Hanover in Germany, probably taken there by one of the Georges, all of
whom preferred their Hanoverian Court to that of England. In late years
the picture belonged to the Duke of Cumberland, whose father was King
of Hanover until Prussia absorbed that kingdom in 1866.
Hans Holbein, born in Augsburg in 1497, was taught by his father,
Hans Holbein the Elder, as was also his elder brother, Ambrose. About
1515 these two young Holbeins went to Basle, where there was plenty
of work for artists, for Basle had long been a centre of intellectual
and artistic life. Holbein’s talents won recognition; and among other
kinds of work he drew designs for title-pages and various decorations
for books. Some marginal drawings for _The Praise of Folly_ by
Erasmus, led to a friendship with that distinguished personage, which
was destined eventually to change his entire life. Holbein also painted
in fresco the council chamber of the new Rathaus in Basle and also
the famous votive picture _The Meier Madonna_, representing the
Burgomaster, Jacob Meier of Basle, kneeling with his family before the
Virgin. He also painted several portraits of Erasmus. In 1526 Holbein
decided to visit England, taking a letter of introduction from Erasmus
to Sir Thomas More and stopping on the way at Antwerp to visit Quentin
Massys. Holbein remained in London two years, returned to his family
in Basle in 1528, bought a house, designed for goldsmiths, worked
again on his unfinished frescoes in the Rathaus, made another portrait
of Erasmus and painted the faces of clocks. In 1532 Holbein decided
to return to London, where, after a period of working in the German
colony, he became Court-Painter to Henry VIII with a salary of thirty
pounds a year and rooms in the Palace. From that time onward Holbein
painted everybody of importance in Tudor England. He also aided in
the street decorations for Anne Boleyn’s Coronation procession and
festivities. Holbein was also sent on various missions by Henry VIII to
paint portraits; also in 1538 to Brussels, to paint the portrait of the
young widow, Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan; and in 1539, to
Cleves, to paint Anne, sister of the Duke.
These two portraits were ordered by the King with a view to matrimony,
in case they met with his favor. The first portrait (now in the
National Gallery, London) representing, in her mourning garb of
black satin, Christina the young widow of Francesco Sforza, brother
of Maximilian Sforza (see page 148) and who was, moreover, niece of
the Emperor Charles V, in every way, therefore, a distinguished and
desirable bride, pleased Henry VIII so well that he offered his royal
hand on seeing it. But the wise young Duchess, declining the hand
replied sarcastically “that unfortunately she had only _one_ head;
if she had _two_, one would be at His Majesty’s service.” The other
portrait of _Anne of Cleves_ (now in the Louvre), in purple velvet
flashing with jewels, standing full face, with beautifully painted
hands laden with rings and clasped gracefully, gained for this lady
the Royal Bluebeard; but only for a short time. The portrait was too
flattering of the “Flanders Mare”, as Henry VIII called her, and the
_fourth_ wife was soon divorced.
In 1538 Holbein went to Basle on a mission for the King, visited his
wife and children and, refusing liberal offers from the municipality of
Basle to remain there, returned to London. Back again in his English
quarters, he continued his painting until he died in 1543, supposedly
of the Plague, which was then raging.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
_Hans Holbein
(1497–1543)._
_Collection of the late
Mr. Henry Clay Frick._
This was one of the first portraits that Holbein painted in England
and was done in 1526–1527, while Holbein was a guest in Sir Thomas’s
delightful home at Chelsea. It is a life-size, half-length portrait on
panel (23¼ × 29¼ inches), representing Sir Thomas in a dark-green coat
with purple velvet sleeves, fur collar, and large hat. The conspicuous
and heavy double S-chain of gold with a double rose pendant,
significant of the union of the Red and White Roses of Lancaster and
York, was only permitted to Knights. His right hand holds a paper and
the arm rests on a table, on which the date is inscribed.
This portrait was painted before Sir Thomas More became Lord Chancellor
in 1529.
“His face,” says Dr. Alfred Woltman, “shows that calm repose which
indicated the utmost harmony of nature and inward peace; but the
expression is one of the deepest seriousness, though gentleness is
linked with it. The finely-cut lips are firmly closed; there is
something almost visionary in the bright and penetrating glance, though
otherwise the features betoken clear judgment, combined with moral
strictness and nobility of feeling. In looking at the picture the words
occur to us with which Erasmus in another passage concisely sums up
More’s characteristics: ‘He possessed that beautiful ease of mind, or,
still better, that piety and prudence with which he joyfully adapts
himself to everything that comes, as though it were the best that could
come.’”
Sir Thomas More was born in 1478 in Cheapside, London, the son of
Sir John More, and was beheaded in 1535 for refusing to support the
Act of Supremacy. More was one of the most intellectual and highly
cultured men of his time. He wrote one of the most famous of books,
_Utopia_. Sir Thomas was also a fine critic of painting. He was
knighted in 1521.
[Illustration:
_Collection of the late Mr. Henry Clay Frick_
SIR THOMAS MORE
--_Hans Holbein the Younger_]
Erasmus gives a picture of Sir Thomas and his home in a letter to
Ulrich von Hutten, written from Chelsea. He says:
“More has built near London upon the Thames a modest but commodious
house. There he lives surrounded by his large family--his wife, his
son, his son’s wife, his three daughters and their husbands with eleven
grand-children. There is not any man living so affectionate to his
children as he, and he loveth his old wife as if she were a girl of
fifteen. Such is the goodness of his nature that whatsoever cometh
about which cannot be helped he is as cheerful and well satisfied as if
the best had happened. In More’s house you would say that the Academy
of Plato lived again save that whereas in the Academy the conversation
turned upon geometry and the power of numbers, the house at Chelsea is
a true school of Christian religion. In it is no one, man or woman,
but studdieth the liberal arts, yet above all piety is their care.
There is never any seen idle; the head of the house governs it, not by
lofty demeanor and frequent rebukes, but by gentle and lovable manners.
Everyone is busy in his place doing his business with diligence; nor is
sober mirth absent.”
DIRK BERCK OF COLOGNE.
_Hans Holbein
(1497–1543)._
_Collection of the
Hon. Andrew W. Mellon._
When Holbein returned to England on his second trip in 1532, his
friend and patron, Sir Thomas More, was out of favor. However, he
found a cordial welcome among his compatriots--the German merchants of
the Steelyard. These German merchants had formed themselves into an
association of real power: indeed, they had made a little city of their
own, which went by the name of Stahlhof, where they managed all their
business, kept their stores, had their counting-houses, their Bourse,
their Guildhall, and their homes; and, being Germans, of course they
had a festival-hall and spacious gardens on the bank of the Thames,
where they could enjoy themselves. The company, forming a part of the
great Hanseatic League, was opulent and dealt largely in iron and
precious metals.
[Illustration:
_Collection of The Hon. Andrew W. Mellon_
DIRK BERCK OF COLOGNE
--_Hans Holbein the Younger_]
Consequently, among the group were skilled goldsmiths, watch-makers,
armorers, and many other prosperous artisans as well as bankers. The
brilliant painter had no difficulty in getting orders for portraits;
and we may be very sure that after he had produced such a masterly
likeness as that of _Georg Gisze_ (now in the Berlin Museum), he
must have been in even greater demand, as the numbers of “steelyard
portraits” scattered in various galleries attest.
This particular portrait in oils on panel (21 × 16¾ inches) was painted
in 1536, as we learn from the right hand corner, which bears the date
and the sitter’s age, “An 1536 Aeta. 30.” Dirk Berck of Cologne appears
at half-length facing us full face from a background of blue relieved
by a green curtain with red strings. Dirk Berck is dressed in a heavy,
black, and lustrous silk cloak with a wide collar, an embroidered
shirt showing at the opening at the neck, a flat cap (something like a
_biretta_) at a slight angle on his head, with his hair cut in a fringe
(or “bobbed”) that nearly covers his ears. He has a slight moustache
and a full square-cut beard, which makes him appear older than his
thirty years. His small eyes are dark blue and intelligent, his brows
are black, his cheek bones are prominent, and his general expression
is serious and rather kindly. His hands rest one upon the other, the
right one on top, while the left, placed on the table, holds a letter
addressed to himself: “_Dem Ersame ’U (N) d fromen Derick berk i.
London upt. Stalhof_” with the trademark of his house and the motto,
“_besad dz end_” (consider the end). A small piece of paper lying on
the red-covered table bears this Latin sentence from Virgil: “_Olim
meminisse juvabit_” (Hereafter I shall be remembered) which speaks well
for Dirk Berck’s estimation of Holbein and his intelligent forecast of
ours.
The portrait came from the Collection of Lord Leconfield, Petworth,
Sussex, and was formerly in the Collection of Colonel Egremont Wyndham,
also of Petworth, Sussex, and the Earls of Egremont.
JEAN DE DINTEVILLE.
_Hans Holbein
(1497–1543)._
_Collection of
Mr. Henry Goldman._
This gentleman in black costume with black cap and white shirt sits
at a table covered with a red cloth (one of Holbein’s favorite
arrangements), and in front of an apple-green curtain. Around his neck
he wears a fine gold chain and a black ribbon, to which is attached a
little case of gold studded with jewels. His eyes are very blue but
rather cold, giving one the idea that Jean de Dinteville is something
of a dreamer. His hands, beautifully drawn and painted, gain additional
grace from the fine ruffles at his wrists. In his right hand he holds a
roll of paper (most likely a musical composition), and the left fingers
close around the neck of a lute. On the table before him two books are
lying--one shut and one open--and both books are supplied with green
book-marks, that draw the rest of the picture into harmony with the
green curtain at the back.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Henry Goldman_
JEAN DE DINTEVILLE
--_Hans Holbein the Younger_]
This portrait, in oils on panel (17½ × 17½ inches), is supposed to be
the same one listed in the inventory of Alethea, Countess of Arundel,
in 1654 as _Ritratto d’un Musico_.
It was in the Collection of Ralph Bernal, London, and sold at
Christie’s in 1855 to Mr. Morant for 100 guineas; subsequently, the
picture was in the Collection of Sir John Ramsden, Bart., Bulstrode
Park, Buckinghamshire, having been purchased by him at an auction in
Scotland in 1860.
Jean de Dinteville, Lord of Polisy and Bailly of Troyes, was born in
1504 and died in 1555. After having served as a diplomat in the Court
of Francis I, he was sent as Ambassador to England in 1553, in which
year Holbein painted him with George de Selve in the large picture
known as _The Ambassadors_, now in the National Gallery, London.
In this picture Jean de Dinteville stands on the left, wearing a black
kilted costume, which includes a cloak lined with white fur. Around his
neck is a heavy gold chain with the French Order of Saint Michel, at
his side is a dagger with gold hilt and sheath, and his black cap is
ornamented with a silver skull set in gold. A lute, a case of flutes,
and a music-book near him proclaim the musician. This picture is dated
1553.
CARDINAL ALBRECHT AS SAINT HIERONYMUS.
_Lucas Cranach the Elder
(1472–1553)._
_Collection of
Mr. John Ringling._
This picture (49 × 35¼ inches), came into possession of the present
owner from Baron Viehweg of Hanover, in whose family it had been since
the time of Cranach.
All of Cranach’s delightful characteristics are represented here. It
is interesting to compare this painting with Dürer’s print of _St.
Jerome in his Study_, the latter so serious and the one represented
here so merry. Cranach’s St. Jerome reminds us of a jolly old German
folksong. In this perfectly Teutonic setting with characteristic German
furniture and the favorite “antler” chandelier, nothing has been
forgotten; and St. Jerome in his red Cardinal’s robe and _biretta_
sits propped up before his reading-desk truly monarch of all he
surveys. His crucifix and devotional books are placed conveniently
on his table and he has just looked up for a moment from his task of
translating the Scriptures.
His big red Cardinal’s hat, too, is placed in the foreground, so that
we cannot miss it and the picture of the _Madonna and Child_ on
the wall is purposely turned out of proper perspective so that we
cannot lose any of its “beauties.” St. Jerome takes good heed of time;
for on the wall, at his left, an hour-glass trickles away the minutes.
It is to be hoped that he feeds his birds and animals regularly! And
how deliciously these little friends are painted. Every member of St.
Jerome’s menagerie looks happy except the lion. There is still the
“call of the wild” in his eye and he seems to be trying to control
himself; but if St. Jerome does not watch his hour-glass and should
happen to delay the dinner-hour, it looks as if things might go very
badly for the pheasant family.
There were three traditional ways of representing St. Jerome: St.
Jerome as Penitent in the Desert; St. Jerome as Patron Saint and Doctor
of the church; and St. Jerome as Translator and Commentator of the
Scriptures. When St. Jerome is seen translating the Bible, the lion is
so frequently present that he seems to be an editorial necessity; and
almost invariably the Cardinal’s hat is lying somewhere near St. Jerome.
There is no authority for making St. Jerome a Cardinal; because
Cardinals were not ordained until three centuries after St. Jerome’s
death.
Lucas Cranach the Elder was born in Kronach in Franconia in 1472 and
died in Weimar in 1553. Cranach was the first painter of importance of
the Saxon School and took his name from his native town. He was a pupil
of his father and has as important a reputation for his engravings on
wood and copper as for his paintings. Cranach seems to have lived in
Vienna, Innsbrück, Augsburg, Wittenberg, and Weimar; and it is said
that he visited the Holy Land in 1493, with the Elector Frederic the
Wise. In 1504 he settled permanently in Wittenberg as Court-Painter to
the Elector Frederic the Wise; and he continued as Court-Painter to
the three succeeding Electors. In 1509 he was sent by the Elector on
an embassy to the Emperor Maximilian; and on this visit he painted the
portrait of his son, the Archduke Philip (father of Charles V). Cranach
was evidently of importance in Wittenberg, for he was Burgomaster in
1537 and 1540. He had an art-studio, a book-printing business, and an
apothecary-shop. His house, called the “Adler,” was burned down in 1871.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. John Ringling_
CARDINAL ALBRECHT AS SAINT HIERONYMUS
--_Lucas Cranach the Elder_]
Cranach was an intimate friend of Luther and Melancthon and,
consequently, was greatly affected by the Reformation. He painted
Luther many times. Cranach always painted with oils on panels of wood
and his coloring is warm and rich. His drawing is somewhat archaic; but
often very amusing. His cheerful fancy led him to introduce birds and
animals into his pictures. Cranach excelled in portraiture and always
gives a realistic and somewhat gay presentation of the German people of
his day.
SPANISH PAINTING
_SPANISH PAINTING_
Spanish Painting developed slowly although there were schools in all
the provinces. Even in the Fourteenth Century little was known about
Spanish Art in other countries. Starnina, who spent nine years in Spain
(having taken refuge from his part in civil disturbances in Florence),
painting pictures in the Escurial for John of Castile, had much to tell
when he returned to Florence in 1387 and introduced Spanish costumes
into the frescoes he made in the Carmine.
Other Italian painters followed Starnina and Italian ideas dominated
Spanish Art until the Emperor Charles V became King of Spain. Charles,
although heir of Maximilian and of the Holy Roman Empire, was also
a direct descendant of the Dukes of Burgundy, the great-grandson of
Charles the Bold. Charles V was born in Ghent and spent his first
sixteen years in the Netherlands, brought up by his aunt, Margaret of
Austria. Charles’s devotion to his birthplace is well-known; and his
pun that he could put the whole of Paris into his _Gant_ (glove), shows
how far superior he considered Ghent to Paris. Charles took with him to
Spain a vast horde of artists and artisans from the Low Countries; and
he also imported the punctilious and traditional etiquette of the old
Burgundian Court, which, absorbed into Spain, eventually became known
as “Spanish etiquette.”
Spanish artists were profoundly affected with Flemish technique and
realism. The leading early Spanish painters are Bartolomé Vermejo,
active in the late Fifteenth Century, a native of Cordova in Andalusia,
who combined Flemish and Arabian ideas with native traditions; Pedro
Berruguete (active 1483–1504); Luis de Vargas (1502–1568); and Luis de
Morales (1509?–1586).
Then again an important foreigner arrived--Antonio Moro (or Mor),
who, after serving Cardinal Granvella, was sent by Mary of Hungary
to Madrid, where he became Court-Painter to the House of Hapsburg.
Thenceforward Moro was constantly employed by Philip II to paint
portraits in various Courts, although his headquarters seem to have
been in Utrecht.
Moro trained the Spaniard, Alonso Sanchez Coello (1515?–1590),
who, like himself, was rather stiff and hard, but able to paint a
satisfactory portrait.
Then in 1575 another foreign painter arrived. This time it was a Greek,
Domenico Theotocopoulos (1545?–1614), a native of Crete and said to
have studied under Titian in Venice. “El Greco,” however, caught none
of the glowing colors of Venice on his palette. Austere and gloomy, he
settled in austere and gloomy Toledo, where he lived all the rest of
his life painting religious pictures and portraits from a strange and
morbid point of view.
Francisco de Ribalta (1551?–1628), revolting against Classic
taste, founded his style on Caravaggio and painted darkly in the
“_tenebroso_” manner. His pupil, Jusefe Ribera (1589–1652), called “_Lo
Spagnoletto_,” born near Valencia, settled in Naples, where he filled
many orders for Philip IV.
Francisco Pacheco (1571–1654), and Francisco de Herrera the Elder
(1576–1656) are chiefly notable because they were the masters of
Velasquez. Herrera originated the “_bodegones_” (shop-pictures),
which are scenes of popular life.
Francisco Zurbaran (1598–1662), of the School of Seville, was called
“the Spanish Caravaggio.” Through the influence of his friend,
Velasquez, he entered the service of the King. It is said that Philip
IV called him “_Pintor del Rey y Rey de los Pintores_” (Painter
of the King and King of the Painters). Zurbaran painted the great
altar-piece in the Cathedral of Seville.
Don Diego de Silva y Velasquez (1599–1660), a native of Seville, became
painter to Philip IV in 1623 and continued in his service all his life.
His works range from such groups as _Las Meninas_ and _Las Hilanderas_
to portraits of kings, queens, princes, princesses, ladies, gentlemen,
dwarfs, and idiots.
Bartolomé Estéban Murillo (1617–1682), a native of Seville, came
of the poor, laboring class and developed into a beloved painter,
particularly famous for his Holy Families and Immaculate Conceptions.
After Velasquez and Murillo there was no important painter until
the original, versatile, and prolific Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828),
a native of Aragon, who rose from a laborer in the fields to
Court-Painter. Goya had a profound influence on modern art, greatly
affecting, for instance, Manet and John Singer Sargent.
CARDINAL QUIROGA.
_El Greco_
(_1545?–1614_).
_Collection of the late
Mr. Henry Clay Frick._
This picture, oil on canvas (37½ × 43¼ inches), was discovered, coated
with the dust and dirt of ages, in a dark corner of the sacristy of
the Cathedral of Valladolid, where it had evidently been hidden for
centuries. A Parisian dealer, having heard of it, purchased it, and
from him it passed through several hands until it reached its present
home. The subject represents a Cardinal seated before a table on which
a volume is lying and the Cardinal’s hands are conspicuously posed upon
opposite pages. The right thumb pointed downwards emphatically upon a
certain verse might possibly point to a special text that the Cardinal
was associated with as betokening a famous sermon delivered by him, or,
perhaps, an important controversy with which his name was associated.
The figure, face, and hands are very elongated, as in all of El Greco’s
performances; but the general effect is more reposeful than usual
with this painter. Perhaps El Greco pulled the Cardinal out on his
bed of Procrustes as far as he dared, but the Cardinal was long and
thin and attenuated anyway, so that he was a model, as it were, ready
made. It is one of El Greco’s best works. The silvery hair and mist of
beard are marvellously painted, as are also the piercing eyes, keen
and searching, yet betraying the philosopher and man of much reading.
The face is intensely intellectual, but hard and cruel. No one would
care to attempt to break a lance with this gentleman in any kind of an
argument. With all his high-bred atmosphere, as both gentleman and
student, Quiroga expresses a narrow bigotry and remorseless cruelty.
The picture is also known as _St. Jerome_; and there are five
replicas of it, one of them being in the National Gallery, London.
[Illustration:
_Collection of the late Mr. Henry Clay Frick_
CARDINAL QUIROGA
--_El Greco_]
“El Greco” is the name by which Domenico Theotocopoulos became known
to his contemporaries. He was born in Crete, and in 1570, when he
was about twenty-five or thirty, he went to Venice, and, it is
said, studied under Titian. About 1575 he settled in Toledo, where
he lived for thirty-four years until his death in 1614, and where
“La casa del Greco” is still shown to tourists. El Greco painted a
number of pictures, chiefly religious, notwithstanding the fact that
“the individuality and strangeness of his work always more or less
disconcerted his patrons.” El Greco also painted portraits and seems
to have elongated every sitter to conform to his own ideas. Everything
that he painted proclaims his own fervor and love of motion. El Greco
also designed the dome for the then unfinished tower of the west front
of the Toledo Cathedral, which presents a very strange contrast with
its companion, the ornate Gothic tower.
Hugh Stokes says:
“El Greco stands apart, both in his portraiture and his large subject
compositions. A Greek by family, Theotocopoulos does not fail to
remind us of the archaic Byzantines. At first his limited palette,
his crudity, his angularity excite repulsion. All his figures are
muscularly distended as if they had recently passed the ordeal of the
rack. Gradually these very defects attract. There is a movement and
passion in his pictures which can be found in very few purely Spanish
works. These agitated patriarchs and apostles, with draperies caught
by every wind of heaven, are almost demoniac. Nature herself assists,
for each horizon in the background frowns with a gathering maelstrom of
black thunderclouds.”
THE VIRGIN APPEARING TO ST. DOMINIC.
_El Greco_
(_1545?–1614_).
_Collection of
Mr. J. Horace Harding._
The Virgin, in the traditional red robe and blue mantle, has floated
on a cloud into the church where St. Dominic has been praying. The
vision, as told here by El Greco, seems as real to us as it does to the
astonished monk. Dominic de Guzman, who founded the Dominican Order of
Preaching Friars in 1215, was born in Calaroga, Old Castile, in 1170.
St. Dominic went on a mission to the Albigenses in Languedoc. and the
Dominican Order grew out of the volunteers who joined him there. The
rest of his life was spent in Toulouse and Rome. He died in 1221 and
was canonized in 1234 by Gregory IX. The Dominican Order was known in
England as the Black Friars (from their black habit) and in France as
Jacobins, because their chief house in Paris was in the rue St. Jacques.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. J. Horace Harding_
THE VIRGIN APPEARING TO ST. DOMINIC
--_El Greco_]
This picture, oils on canvas (24 × 39¼ inches) came from the Collection
of Henri Rouats of Paris and shows El Greco’s ecstasy with less
exaggeration and eccentricity than is customary with him. Elie Faure
has well defined the characteristics of El Greco: “Remorse at having
been born,” he says “pursues the painter until the end, but when he
expresses it in his art, the magnificence which it takes on atones
for his terrors. At the end of his life he painted like one in an
hallucination, in a kind of ecstatic nightmare, where preoccupation
with expressing the spirit engrossed him. Deformation appears in
his pictures more and more, lengthening the bodies, attenuating the
fingers, and hollowing the faces. His blues, his wine-like reds, and
his greens seem lit by some livid reflection sent to him from the
near-by tomb and from Hell, caught sight of from eternal bliss. If
there is a place where shadows wander, if in some sinister valley
there are corpses that stand upright and living spectres that have not
yet lost their form, Domenico Theotocopoulos alone after Dante has
found it. One would say that he is exploring a dead planet, that he is
descending into extinct volcanoes, where ashes accumulate and a pale
half moon sheds her light.”
MARIANNE OF AUSTRIA.
_Velasquez_
(_1599–1660_).
_Collection of
Mr. Philip Lehman._
This picture (14½ × 19 inches) was for many years a valued possession
of the Zenon Gallery, Cadiz, and represents the little girl, daughter
of Ferdinand II, who became the wife of Philip IV in 1649 and who had
first been betrothed to Philip’s son, Don Balthazar Carlos. The latter
died in 1646. Three years later Philip IV sent for the little Grand
Duchess to be his second wife. The reason for this marriage was a
dynastic one, for it united the Spanish branch of the House of Hapsburg
with the German branch of the House of Hapsburg, Marianne being a
descendant of Ferdinand, brother of Charles V, and, therefore, of
exactly the same blood as Philip IV.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Philip Lehman_
MARIANNE OF AUSTRIA
--_Velasquez_]
Velasquez was one of those painters favored by the gods. Like Rubens,
he early attracted Royal patronage and held it all his life. There
were no struggles of genius for recognition: all he had to do was to
complete and develop his gifts and talents. In 1623 he was introduced
to Philip IV by Olivares and Philip took him into his service.
Rubens, visiting Madrid in 1628, begged Velasquez to go to Italy.
Velasquez did so and spent a year in Rome, visited Naples, where he
met his countryman, Ribera. On his return to Madrid, he was given a
painting-room in the Royal Palace. Velasquez visited Italy several
times in the future; and on one visit to Rome painted the famous
portrait of Pope Innocent X, now in the Doria Gallery (with a replica
in The Hermitage). Back again in Madrid, Velasquez was decorated with
the Cross of St. Iago by Philip IV, who made him Aposentador Major
(grand marshal of the palace). To the last period belong his most
important portraits, the series of court freaks, and the famous _Las
Hilanderas_ and _Las Meninas_.
Velasquez died in Madrid in 1660.
PHILIP IV OF SPAIN.
_Velasquez_
(_1599–1660_).
_Collection of the late
Mr. Henry Clay Frick._
This portrait known as the “Parma Velasquez,” because it belonged
to the Grand Duke of Parma, is painted in oils on canvas (38¾ × 52½
inches). It was painted in 1644 in Cataluna, where Philip had gone to
try to raise the siege of Lerida invested by the French. Velasquez
went with the King and painted the picture in a dilapidated hovel,
which was fitted up for the purpose of a studio. A contemporary record
says: “The King dressed as a soldier posed to Velasquez in fitted hose
edged with silver embroidery, sleeves of same, plain buck jerkin, red
sash edged with silver, cape of red fustian, falling collar, and black
_sombrero_ with crimson plumes.”
The King was kept amused by his dwarf, El Primo, while the portrait was
being painted. The costume is the one that Philip usually appeared in
before his army as commander-in-chief.
“From the figure itself,” says Carl Justi, “it is evident that it was
taken far from the atmosphere of the Alcazar. It is freer than those
tall figures in black, which are perpetually receiving despatches, and
which are the incarnation of unrelenting monotony, of the weariness of
etiquette. To this effect the color contributes much, for the picture
is all light and brightness. The legs seem to stand in profile, but the
body and head face to the right; the white _bâton_ in the right
hand is planted against the hip; the elbow of the left which holds
the hat, rests on the hilt of the sword, and, curiously enough, both
arms are disposed in a somewhat parallel position. The lines of the
King’s features, now in his thirty-ninth year, are firmer, the color
fresher than hitherto. The otherwise inseparable _golilla_ is here
replaced by a broad lace collar falling on the shoulders; the hands
are white in unison with the white sleeves, the most luminous parts
of the whole picture--well nurtured, royal hands, ringless, but by no
means ‘washed out,’ as has been supposed by those unacquainted with the
master’s habit of dispensing with shade to indicate the fingers.
[Illustration:
_Collection of the late Mr. Henry Clay Frick_
PHILIP IV OF SPAIN
--_Velasquez_]
“Philip wears a rich, light red doublet with hanging sleeves, the
narrow opening showing the leather jerkin underneath. Of like color and
also covered with silver embroidery are the _bandolier_ and hose.
The only patch of gold is the Golden Fleece, all else--collar, sleeves
of jerkin (pearl tone), lace cuffs, lace ruffle of boots, silver
sheath--being white. This white on the red produces the well-known
effects of a lighter or ‘camellian red.’ The hat alone is black, which
is not in keeping with the costume, and may probably be due to license
on the part of the artist, who here wished to avoid white on white,
and who needed a dark part in softening contrast to the silvery red
of the whole. At the same time the red of the _bandolier_ and
plume on the red of the doublet shows the painter’s indifference to
such matters. To all this must be added the full flood of daylight
which even projects an oblique shadow from the _mustachios_ on to
the cheek. The stupendous relief is effected by the empty, dark-grey
surface of the ground and by the spare brown shadows, which help to
bring out the collar, arm, and hat.”
When the portrait was finished “it was hung in the church under a
canopy embroidered in gold where much people congregated to see it.”
The record adds that “copies thereof are already being made.” The one
in the Dulwich Gallery, England, is one of these.
The picture was sent by Ferdinand VI, King of Spain, to his
step-brother, the Grand Duke of Parma; and it remained in the Parma
Palace until recent times, when it was sold by Prince Elias.
Philip IV was born in 1605, died in 1665, and ascended the throne when
he was only sixteen. He was a solemn person, with coarse tastes and
was fond of horse-play. He, however, gave his patronage to Velasquez,
Calderon, and Lope de Vega, which is much to his credit.
GENERAL NICOLAS GUYE.
_Goya_
(_1746–1828_).
_Collection of
Mr. J. Horace Harding._
The Spanish General represented in oils on canvas (33⅜ × 41¾ inches)
wears a brilliantly colored uniform resplendent with gold lace and
decorated with medals. His knee-breeches are white, and he holds his
_chapeau bras_ in his hand. The picture was given to Vincent Guye,
the General’s brother, in 1810.
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was born in Fuendetodos in Aragon,
March 30, 1746. His parents were humble cottagers and he worked in the
fields until he was eighteen. Through the interest of a monk he was
sent to Zaragoza to the studio of José Martinez. Goya distinguished
himself both in the studio and in quarrels, which sometimes resulted in
bloodshed. After a fight Goya fled to Madrid, where he copied Velasquez
and became embroiled in more disturbances. He escaped to Italy; and in
1772 took the second prize for painting at the Academy in Parma. Back
in Zaragoza in 1771, he painted a fresco in the Cathedral. Revisiting
Italy he formed a friendship with Jacques Louis David. In 1774 he
returned to Spain, married the sister of a painter, and began to paint
furiously. In 1789 Goya became painter of the Chamber--“_pinter de
camera_”--to Charles IV, with a large salary. During the occupation
of Spain by the French and the expulsion of the latter by Wellington,
Goya lived quietly without taking any part in the exciting events; but
he had been observing. On the return of Ferdinand VII, he published
his series of _Desastres de la Guerra_, in which the horrors
and bestialities of war are set forth in so frank a manner and with
such commanding technique that they make a magnificent appeal for the
abolition of war.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. J. Horace Harding_
GENERAL NICOLAS GUYE
--_Goya_]
Goya had previously published his series of prints, _Los Caprichos_,
a most amazing presentation of humanity in brutal and revolting
caricatures, the origin and significance of which are neither
fully known nor understood; but, mingled with the demonology and
repulsiveness, there are occasional gleams of beauty. Equally
celebrated are his plates, the _Tauromachia_, dealing with the
bull-ring.
Goya had an uncanny facility for every medium,--etching, lithographs,
drawings, and aquatints, as well as oil-paintings. Goya spent the year
1825 in Bordeaux and returned to Madrid, where he died in 1828.
“My only masters have been Nature, Velasquez, and Rembrandt,” Goya
said. Being so independent Goya left no pupils and founded no school.
He was always hostile to the academic: “Always lines and never
_body_,” he exclaimed when criticising his contemporaries, “but
where do we find these lines in Nature? I can only see masses in light
and masses in shadow, planes which advance or planes which recede,
reliefs or backgrounds. My eye never catches outlines or details. I do
not count the hairs on the head of the man who passes me in the street.
The buttons on his coat are not the chief object to catch my glance. My
brush ought not to have better eyesight than its master!”
PEPITO COSTA Y BONELLA.
_Goya_
(_1746–1828_).
_Collection of
Mrs. William Hayward._
This delightful picture, oils on canvas (33¼ × 41⅝ inches), is
brilliant with many colors delightfully harmonized and contrasted. The
little boy, with fair hair and dark complexion, wears a green velvet
jacket with gilt braid, lace collar, white trousers, rose-colored
stockings, light-yellow slippers, and red and white plumes in his dark
hat. The drum is blue.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mrs. William Hayward_
PEPITO COSTA Y BONELLA
--_Goya_]
The picture comes from the Collection of the Countess Uda de Gandomar
of Madrid.
FRENCH, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
_FRENCH, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY_
We have now come to the age of elegance in painting. In the preceding
sections of this book we have passed through many periods and many
schools and have brought forward superb examples of great masters of
several countries, but we now come to a time when the Art of Painting
may be said to have reached _perfection_. The French Painters
of the Eighteenth Century show us something entirely new in manner
and in subject. They have grace, elegance, delicacy, style, beauty,
brilliancy, clarity, and translucence of color. What can, for instance,
equal the lightness of Watteau and Fragonard, or the dewy freshness of
Greuze?
There are such things as the floating silk of the thistle’s parachute;
such things as the feathery dust on the wings of “painted butterflies”;
such things as the velvet pile on the petals of flowers; such things
as the purple bloom on the plum and the grape; such things as the down
on the breast of the cygnet; such things as the roseate gleam of the
Oriental pearl; such things as the prismatic twinkle of the morning
dew; and such things as the liquid silver of the moon’s bright ray.
All these most precious and evanescent beauties Watteau, Lancret,
Pater, Fragonard, Drouais, Chardin, and other painters of the
Eighteenth Century caught upon their palettes.
It was the genius Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) who opened the magic
casements into this new world of fairy-like color and fairy-like
lightness.
In the reaction from the heavy solemnity and gloom of the last years
of Louis XIV, when the Sun-King was setting under the dark clouds of
the bigoted and severe Madame de Maintenon’s influence, French taste
swung to the other extreme of gaiety, fancy, gallantry, and caprice.
Law’s Mississippi Bubble, while it lasted, enabled a great many persons
to become suddenly rich; and, as is always the case with a new state
of society, new styles of fashion came to meet its requirements.
Moreover, the tastes of the Regent--the Duc d’Orléans--and the young
King Louis XV were gay and playful; and, consequently, they were both
glad to see all the traditions of Louis XIV swept away. The _Art
nouveau_ of the period was most graceful and charming in its early
expression. The playful curves and fantastic motifs from the Far
East--pagodas, mandarins, umbrellas, monkeys, little bells, dripping
water, and strange, wreathing vines, were all transmuted by the great
decorative artists and designers into that delicious and delightful
French _mélange_ known as _Chinoiserie_, which is, perhaps, more
_French_ than Chinese. The riotous curves, most of which were derived
from the volutes of the shell, the shell itself, and the dripping water
(or hanging icicles), were used so prolifically and so universally
that their name _rocaille_ (rock and shell) or _rococo_, is almost
synonymous with that of the “_style Louis Quinze_,” although it does
not include all the motifs nor all the spirit of the age.
Watteau was followed in his fascinating portrayal of _pastorales
galantes_, _fêtes champêtres_, and all the light pleasures of society
and its beautifully dressed men and women, by Nicolas Lancret
(1690–1743) and Jean Baptiste Joseph Pater (1695–1736); and to this
group belongs Jean Baptiste Huet (1745–1811), who in his first years
followed Watteau closely; and as a decorative designer, he also
expressed the taste of the Directoire and Empire period through which
he lived.
Of the portrait painters, Jean Marc Nattier (1685–1766) stands first
as Court-Painter and portrayer of lovely ladies in flowing draperies,
rose-colored or blue scarfs, and wreaths and garlands of flowers,
appearing as Hebe, Diana, Flora and other goddesses of Grecian
mythology. Close to him comes Maurice Quentin de la Tour (1704–1788),
who early abandoned oil-painting for pastels (his masterpiece, the
portrait of Madame de Pompadour is now in the Louvre), was called a
magician by Diderot and his work is described by de Goncourt as “a
magic mirror, in which is seen all the talent, all the glory, all the
wit, and all the grace of the reign of Louis XV.”
Carle Van Loo (1705–1765) is another portrait-painter of delicate
and distinguished taste and performance. François Hubert Drouais
(1727–1775) also expresses all the beauty, charm, and grace of the day
in his presentations of the fashionable world.
François Boucher (1703–1770), the friend and successor of Carle Van Loo
as first painter to the King, is so idyllic and fanciful that he has
been characterized as the “Anacreon of Painting.”
Alexandre François Desportes (1661–1743), painter of hunting-scenes
and animals, and Jean Baptiste Oudry (1686–1755), painter of
hunting-scenes, animals, flowers, fruit, and still-life, blazed
the trail for Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin (1699–1779), one of the
greatest colorists in the entire history of painting. Jean Baptiste
Greuze (1725–1805), full of grace, charm, and freshness, painter
_par excellence_ of pretty girls, and Jean Honoré Fragonard
(1732–1806), pupil of Chardin and Boucher, famous for his delicate
color and lightness of touch, lived into the new _régime_ and
their work became unappreciated. Hubert Robert (1733–1808), painter
of delicate and highly decorative garden-scenes and classical ruins,
and Madame Labille-Guiard (1749–1803) also lived into the Directoire
and Napoleonic period when they were forced to leave their quarters
in the Louvre formerly accorded to them by Royal permission. Madame
Labille-Guiard was in her day ranked with Madame Vigée LeBrun
(1755–1842), wife of the grand-nephew of the great painter, Charles
LeBrun, who won distinction for her portraits, her brilliant
_salon_, and her charming personality.
JUPITER AND CALISTO.
_Nicolas Poussin_
(_1594–1665_).
_Collection of
Mr. Carroll Tyson._
This famous picture was first owned by the great painter Charles
LeBrun. It subsequently belonged to the Collections of Baron Holback,
1789; Baron Clary, 1868; and Baron de Tournelle in Paris. Painted
about 1635, this large canvas (53½ × 70½ inches), is in a fine state
of preservation, the colors, in consequence, appearing richer than
is usual in Poussin’s works. The greens, browns, and pinks are warm;
the flesh tints are glowing; and the draperies and the sky are a deep
_lapis-lazuli_ blue.
The puzzle is to find Jupiter! In Smith’s _Catalogue raisonné_ we
read:
“The god under the form of Diana is represented sitting on a shady bank
embracing the beautiful nymph, who sits by his side with a spear in
her hand; seven Cupids are sporting around them, one of which, while
flying, is discharging an arrow from his bow; a second is playing with
the hounds of the supposed huntress; a third holds up the blazing torch
of love; and two others, buoyant among the trees, are casting flowers
on the heads of the lovers.
“In his very beautiful pictures illustrative of ancient mythology
Poussin has treated the various subjects in a style that proves he
perfectly understood the mystery of the allegories therein contained
and employed with the happiest effect the numerous symbolical
figures to denote qualities, places, and things. His style, although
unquestionably of French origin, owes all its beauty to his subsequent
study of a few of the great Italian Masters, and of ancient sculpture.
To such an extent was he carried in his enthusiastic admiration of
the latter, that most of the celebrated statues and monuments, both
of Greek and Roman origin, may be recognized in his pictures. This
fondness for the chaste beauty of the antique may have led him in
some instances so far as to give to his figures a rigidity which ill
accords with the elasticity of nature. This defect (if it be one),
is amply compensated by the grace and dignity of attitude and the
chaste correctness of drawing which pervades his works. Execution,
that medium by which the conceptions of a painter are embodied, and by
which the connoisseur is frequently enabled to judge of the originality
of a picture, is distinguished in the Artist (in his best period) by
breadth and precision of hand, and a firm and decided outline; every
touch of the pencil appears the result of consideration and profound
knowledge, and in this respect it is the very reverse of that rapidity
and dexterous freedom of hand observable in the works of Rubens, Paul
Veronese, and Giordano.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Carroll Tyson_
JUPITER AND CALISTO
--_Nicolas Poussin_]
Poussin spent almost his entire life in Rome. Born at Villiers near
Les Andelys in Normandy in 1594, he went to Paris at the age of
eighteen to study art, having had some training under Quentin Varin
at Les Andelys. In Paris he studied under Ferdinand Elle, a Flemish
portrait-painter, and L’Allemand, a native of Lorraine. In 1620 he
started for Rome, but only got as far as Florence. Compelled to return
to Paris he now formed a friendship with Philippe de Champaigne (also
a pupil of L’Allemand) and worked with him on the decorations of the
Luxembourg under Duchesne. Four years later Poussin arrived in Rome,
his long desired goal, and plunged enthusiastically into the study of
ancient art, also working in the studio of Domenichino. For a long time
Poussin had to struggle with poverty, illness, and Italian hatred,--for
the Italians and French were enemies at this time. Marriage with the
daughter of a wealthy compatriot changed matters and Poussin bought
with his bride’s dowry a handsome house on the Pincian Hill. Cardinal
Barberini’s patronage now brought Poussin fame, for the Cardinal
commissioned two paintings, _The Death of Germanicus_ and _The
Capture of Jerusalem_--besides other important orders. Poussin’s
reputation soared rapidly and in 1640 Louis XIII called him to Paris,
appointed him first painter-in-ordinary, and gave him a residence in
the garden of the Tuileries for life. For two years Poussin worked
industriously, producing many paintings, cartoons for tapestries, and
illustrations for books; but he longed for his beloved Rome and in
1642 returned to that city, where he spent the remainder of his life
in the tranquil pursuit of his art. Poussin painted for twenty-three
more years and died in Rome in 1665. His works are numerous; and, with
the exception of a few portraits, are chiefly devoted to mythological,
classical, historical, and Biblical subjects. Titian was his idol.
However, despite his Italian inspiration and taste, Poussin is regarded
as the head of the French School. His devotion to classical subjects
and his deep study of the antique in all its expressions make Poussin
one of the most scholarly of painters.
Sir Joshua Reynolds says: “In contemplating his classical pictures the
mind is thrown back into antiquity or remote ages; and it would be
no difficult matter for the spectator to imagine that such pictures
were coeval, or nearly so, in their production with the mythological
metamorphosis and Bacchanalian festivals that are set before him. His
shepherds, fauns, nymphs, satyrs, and Bacchanals appear a primitive
progeny, the native inhabitants of the mountains and woodlands of the
genial climate of Greece and of that Golden Age when Hellas and Asia
Minor may be supposed to have been overspread with aboriginal forests
and life was careless resignation to present enjoyment.”
From Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain (1600–1682), landscape-painter
of idealized Classic scenes, poetic in spirit and suffused with
dreamful, golden light, the Eighteenth Century French painters may be
said to have found their fountain-head of inspiration.
LA DANSE.
_Antoine Watteau._
(_1684–1721_).
_Collection of
Mr. Charles A. Wimpfheimer._
With the exception of the superb _Embarquement pour l’Ile de Cythère_,
we do not think of individual paintings of Watteau. We consider his
work as a whole and we have a composite picture in our minds of
_assemblées galantes_ under the trees in beautiful parks and gardens.
Although he derived his themes from his master, Gillot, who was
painting all the fashionable follies and fancies of the time, Watteau
surpassed him so entirely in his approach to these subjects, as well
as in his technique, that we are wont to look upon Watteau as the
originator of _fêtes champêtres_, _pastorales galantes_, _concerts
champêtres_, monkeys in all kinds of attitudes and costumes satirizing
the modes and manners of the day, ladies and gentlemen playing Blind
Man’s Buff (_Colin Maillard_) under the trees, ladies swinging or
flirting with their fans, love-scenes beside statues in leafy dells,
members of the Italian Comedy--Pierrot, Arlequin, Scaramouche, Mezetin,
Columbine, and Scalpin--and charming people making music or dancing
under the trees.
This characteristic picture which came from the S. R. Bertron
Collection to its present owner, is a charming illustration of
Watteau’s style. Here we have dancing and music and merry conversation.
The light is concentrated on the chief figure--the dancer--clad in
that white satin that Watteau painted so marvellously. But why single
out any special object for that facile and versatile brush? Did not an
eminent critic of the Nineteenth Century proclaim that Watteau was “the
most brilliant and vivid painter the world has ever seen”?
Watteau created an Arcadia of his own--a Watteau world; and it is not
without reason that another critic called him “the Shakespeare and the
Aristophanes of Art.”
The world has long recognized that Watteau was a poet. Élie Faure asks
why it is that the _ensemble_ always produces the sensation so
near to sadness, and then he gives the reason:
“The spirit of the poet is present. Watteau had brought back from his
Flemish country and from a visit he had made to England the love of
moist landscape, where the colors in the multiplied prism of the tiny
suspended drops take on their real depth and splendor. Music and trees,
the whole of Watteau is in them. The sound does not interrupt the
silence, but rather increases it. Barely, if at all, a whispered echo
reaches us from it. We do indeed see the fingers wandering from the
strings: the laughter and the phrases exchanged are to be guessed from
bodies bending forward or turning backward and from fans that tap on
hands. The actors in the charming dramas are at a distance from their
painter and are dispersed in the depths of the open spaces. Watteau
fears to come near them, to penetrate their mystery; for to see them
too close would destroy the aërial veil that trembles between them and
himself. He caresses them only with his delicate tones that hover here
and there as would some bee from the north flying about in the damp
forests or under the lights of the _fête_, among the powdered
gold of the hair, the rose of the costumes, the bluish, milky haze,
the flower-sprinkled moss, the grass on which rest skirts and mantles
of silk and satin, and the nocturnal phosphorescence given to jewels
and velvets by the gleam of moonlight and the flare of waving torches.
It is the irised air which makes the marble statues seem to quiver,
which gives agitation to the sprightly and piquant faces, movement to
the fingers plucking guitars, and to delicate fine legs in stockings
of transparent silk. Watteau never comes near the scene: the vision
is as distant as an old dream. Observe it in detail. The structure
of the figures--solid, moving, and substantial--makes them appear as
if on the plane of man. Watteau’s little personages are as large as
his conception of them: he paints with the breadth, the fire, and the
freedom of Veronese, of Rubens, of Velasquez, and of Rembrandt.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Charles A. Wimpfheimer_
LA DANSE
--_Antoine Watteau_]
Antoine Watteau, born at Valenciennes, Oct. 10, 1684, was turned
adrift by his father, a tile-maker, and he went to Paris, where he
gradually became a fine draughtsman. He entered the studio of Claude
Gillot (1673–1722), well known for his mythological pictures, his
_Chinoiserie_, his _fêtes galantes_, his _singerie_, and his buffoonery
of the Italian Comedy. Watteau soon surpassed his teacher and left
him to study for a short time with Claude Audran (1658–1734). In 1717
Watteau became a member of the Academy; in 1719 he visited England; and
in 1721 he died at Nogent, near Paris.
The de Goncourts have summed up his qualities so well that no excuse is
needed for placing their analysis here:
“It is doubtless owing to the early decorative work executed by
Watteau that he acquired a taste for the theatre of which in after
days his cunning brush drew so many pleasing representations, so many
curious pictures and that he so often depicted the Italian and French
Comedians, those friends and intimates of his brush, whose motley
family he painted in that beautiful and striking picture which is a
companion to _Comédiens Français_. He painted their companion picture
when Madame de Maintenon drove them out of France in 1697; he painted
their amusements, their nocturnal amours and serenades, their holidays,
their open-air sports. Mezetin and Columbine appear on a hundred
panels. But there would be little reason to thank the chance that led
Watteau at the outset of his career to work under an obscure decorator
if he had only copied the silken folds of their costumes and had not
conceived the idea of using these Trans-alpine types as the poetic
habitants of his _scènes galantes_ and _scènes champêtres_. In fact, by
the introduction of these Merry Andrews, these gracious mummers, these
elegant incarnations of dainty laughter and fine comedy, these men and
women whose materiality is so vague and their reality so veiled beneath
symbol and myth, the compositions of the painter no longer seem like
pictures of a real world. The greensward of his _scènes galantes_
seems peopled with mythical beings to whom Watteau’s imagination and
lightness of touch have left nothing of the actors who served as his
models; and we have the illusion of looking into a verdant country
inhabited by creations of whim and fancy.”
MADAME BONIER DE LA MOSSON.
_Jean Marc Nattier_
(_1685–1766_).
_Collection of
Mr. Edward J. Berwind._
Nolhac calls the portrait of Madame Bonier de la Mosson “_une des plus
belles de ses Dianes ou de ses Nymphes chasseresses_.” The picture (51
× 38 inches) was exhibited in the Salon of 1742. From the Collections
of Debatz, Reims, and Tamvaco, Cairo, it passed into that of Mr.
Berwind. This handsome lady, radiant in her leopard skin and flowers,
was the wife of M. Bonier de la Mosson, who was also painted by Nattier
four years later (1746), in his “cabinet of curiosities,” for M. Bonier
de la Mosson was one of those amateur scientists of the age. In his
rich _hôtel_ in the rue Saint Dominique in Paris, he had a laboratory
and an “_apothicairerie_,”--his pots, bottles, mortars and pestles
and crucibles surrounded by furniture of the most superb description.
The portrait of M. Bonier de la Mosson was in great contrast to that
of his beautiful wife. The portrait of the gentleman is a fine work,
but the portrait of the lady shows Nattier in his most characteristic
aspect. Here is the _real_ Nattier, for Nattier specialized in what
was called in his day the “historic portrait,”--that is to say the
sitter was represented as a mythological, or historical, personage with
all the attractive symbolical and picturesque accessories. Nattier’s
vogue during his lifetime was very great and all the aristocratic
and fashionable ladies wanted, above all things, to have themselves
perpetuated as Dianas, Floras, Hebes, and Auroras. Consequently, many
old families in France cherish a fine allegorical portrait of a
handsome ancestress caught as it were on Mount Olympus with the gods
and goddesses.
“_Nattier l’élève des Graces,
Et le peintre de la beauté_”
is a tribute in some verses in 1727.
“It may seem fantastic,” Sir Walter Armstrong writes, “to bracket
Van Eyck with a painter like Nattier, but a little consideration
will show that in a sense they belonged to the same faction, that is
to say that if Van Eyck had lived in Paris in 1760, he would have
conceived a portrait much in the same way as Nattier, and so _mutatis
mutandis_ with the Frenchman. The conscious desire of both was
to _reproduce_ their sitter, choosing a moment when he or she
was thinking of nothing in particular, and surrounding him with his
familiar properties carefully marshalled into a design.”
Jean Marc Nattier came of a family of artists. His father, Marc
Nattier, was an Academician, his mother, Marie Courtois, was a
miniature-painter of reputation, and his brother, J. B. Nattier, was
also a painter. Jean Marc Nattier was born in Paris, March 17, 1685,
and was trained at a very early age by his father. Admitted to the
classes at the Académie, he won a prize in drawing and at the age
of fifteen was given a stipend. In 1715 Nattier went to Holland,
where Peter the Great was staying, and painted the Czar, the Empress
Catherine II, and several members of the Russian Court; but he declined
all inducements to follow the Czar to Russia and returned to Paris.
In 1718 Nattier was received at the Académie and, thenceforth, devoted
himself to portraiture. In 1724 he married Mademoiselle de la Roche,
daughter of an old _mousquetaire_ of the King; and it was not long
before he became official painter of the court and, in consequence, the
most fashionable portrait-painter in France.
Nattier was made assistant professor of the Académie in 1745 and full
professor in 1752. Every year brought him more fame and more honors
until his death in Paris in 1766.
Nattier depicts the delicate, charming, and aristocratic beauty of
the early Louis XV period and has the gift of expressing also grace and
alluring qualities. Louis XV had Nattier make replicas of many of the
court portraits most pleasing to him, which he sent to European Courts;
and this explains how it is that so many splendid Nattiers are hanging
to-day in European galleries.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Edward J. Berwind_
MADAME BONIER DE LA MOSSON
--_Jean Marc Nattier_]
Nattier has a unique place as the painter of beautiful women, yet,
although he painted individuals, his work, taken as a whole, presents
the French Society woman of the Eighteenth Century with her peculiar
charm, elegance, and _finesse_, appearing in his portraits as
she really was,--experienced, flexible, high-bred, gay, witty, and
accomplished, graceful in manner and in speech, perfect in the arts of
the toilet and in dress, conscious of her charm, and tactful, polished,
and fascinating in society.
LA MARQUISE DE BAGLION AS FLORA.
_Jean Marc Nattier_
(_1685–1766_).
_Collection of
Mr. A. W. Erickson._
This masterpiece is also known as the “Chaponay Nattier,” from having
been long in the Collection of the Marquis de Chaponay in Paris.
Previously the picture graced the Collection of la Comtesse Armand née
Gontoud-Biron and subsequently that of M. Nicolas Ambatielos in London.
Many critics regard _La Marquise de Baglion_ as the finest French
portrait of the Eighteenth Century. Its first appearance in public was
at the Salon of 1746 and it was shown in the Paris Exhibition of the
One Hundred Masterpieces in 1892 (No. 28) and in the Paris Exhibition
of the One Hundred Portraits of Women of the French and English Schools
in 1909 (No. 85).
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. A. W. Erickson_
LA MARQUISE DE BAGLION
--_Jean Marc Nattier_]
The picture (53⅛ × 41¼ inches) is signed and dated 1746, hence it
was shown as soon as it was finished. The subject of the picture,
Angélique Louise Sophie d’Allouville de Louville was born Feb. 10,
1710, daughter of Charles Augustin d’Allouville, Marquis de Louville,
Gentleman-in-waiting to the King of Spain, Lieutenant-General of his
armies and Governor-General of Courtray. Her mother was Hyacinthe
Sophie de Bechameil de Nointel. On June 10, 1733, Angélique Louise
Sophie was married to Pierre François Marie de Baglion, Comte de la
Salle. After twenty-three years of marriage the Marquise de Baglion
died in 1756. Her only daughter, Françoise Sophie Scholastique de
Baglion (who was married to Denis Auguste Grimoard de Beauvoir,
Marquis du Roure, Colonel of the Grenadiers of France of Saintonge, of
Dauphine, and later brigadier), was lady-in-waiting to the Dauphine
(Marie Antoinette), and was a great friend of Madame de Pompadour, whom
she usually accompanied on her visits to Choisy.
In this exquisite picture, La Marquise de Baglion, an unusually
beautiful woman, who has great intelligence in her face, as well as
beauty, appears in a very _décolleté_ dress, which shows her dazzling
neck and shoulders. Her aristocratic hand, long and beautifully shaped,
lightly holds a blue scarf--“Nattier blue”--filled with lovely flowers.
Flowers are as nearly important as the Goddess of Flowers herself; and,
consequently, Nattier has shown himself here the equal of any painter
who specialized in flowers.
The picture was much talked of in its day at Versailles; in the
_boudoirs_; at the toilet of the marquise; and at the _petits soupers_
of the King, Louis XV. Many poets have sung its praises. One of the
latest and best tributes is by Roger Milès called a _Madrigal for a
Portrait of the Marquise de Baglion painted by Nattier_. In reading it
we cannot help regretting that the beautiful Flora could not have read
these sympathetic verses:
_MADRIGAL_
(_Pour un Portrait de la Marquise de Baglion peint par Nattier_)
_Dès le matin, dans la rosée, au fond du parc,
La Marquise s’en fut, pour saluer l’Aurore,
Et les cerfs inquiets qui sommeillaient encore,
Pour Diane la prenant, des yeux cherchaient son arc._
_Mais elle n’était pas la Déesse farouche
Et, si parfois ses yeux ont pu lancer ces traits,
Ses victimes devaient y trouver des attraits,
Tant le sourire avait de douceur sur sa bouche._
_Elle allait simplement, fière de sa beauté,
Humilier les fleurs écloses pour lui plaire,
Sachant leur jalousie aimable et sans colère,
Ames où des parfums chantent la volupté._
_Et voici que ses mains cruelles et câlines
Ont fait leur choix parmi la fraicheur des buissons,
Pour les encourager, de leurs nids, les pinsons
Raillaient à plein gosier les branches orphelines._
_Et de ses belles mains déborde son butin.
Sa cueillette fut bonne, et ses touffes fleuries.
Suffiraient à parer la mousse des prairies
Quant la Nature dit sa prière au Matin._
_Sur un banc, souriante, elle s’est reposée,
Une rose retient l’épaulette qui fuit,
Et le Zephyr qui passe en balayant la nuit,
S’attarde à la splendour de sa gorge rosée._
_L’étoffe la possède entre ses plis légers,
Des joyaux précieux se serrent à sa hanche,
Et, sur un chiffonné de mousseline blanche,
Ses genoux par un tissu bleu sont assiégés._
_Mais un charme divin s’epanouait en elle,
Et l’on tremble, en voyant son pur rayonnement,
Que Dieu pour nous ravir à cet enchantement,
Ne fasse palpiter à son épaule ... une aile._
LA CAMARGO.
_Nicolas Lancret_
(_1690–1743_).
_Collection of the
Hon. Andrew W. Mellon._
This painting came into this country directly from the Collection of
the Emperor of Germany, having long hung in Potsdam Palace, “Sans
Souci,” near Berlin. It was originally in the Collection of the
Prince de Carignan in Paris, from whom it was acquired in 1744 by the
Count von Rothenburg, Prussian Ambassador, for Frederick the Great
(1712–1786), to adorn his castle at Rheinsberg.
The picture is in oils on canvas (30 × 41¾ inches). We have here a
typical scene of French Eighteenth Century life, laid in a beautiful
park of emerald swards, lovely trees, and graceful foliage, a
“terminal” figure of a Muse in the middle distance, and a fountain
tossing its spray at the extreme right. Mademoiselle Camargo and her
partner occupy the left centre of the picture dancing to music played
by a small orchestra on the left. Seated and standing around them
beneath the trees are groups of interested spectators; and among them
at the extreme left Lancret has painted his own portrait. He is wearing
a dark mantle and a _biretta_, and looks directly toward the observer.
The dancer, who gives the name to the picture, is the celebrated Marie
Anne de Cuppi de Camargo, born in Brussels in 1710. The Princess de
Ligne became interested in her and sent her to Paris at the age of
ten to be trained for a dancer. Under Madame Prevost, a dancer at the
Opéra, her progress was so rapid that she made her _début_ at the Opéra
at the age of seventeen, when her extraordinary grace and her wonderful
clothes caused her to be acclaimed as a star. Through the lessons of
Blondy and Dupré she perfected her talents and became the most famous
Parisian dancer of her time. A _liaison_ with the Comte de Clermonte
Abbé of Saint-Germain-des-Prés caused her to leave the Opéra in 1734;
but she returned in 1740 and regained her former triumphs. This was
the time when Lancret painted some wonderful portraits of the great
_danseuse_, including the fine picture presented here. Mademoiselle
Camargo retired permanently in 1751 and died in Paris in 1770.
[Illustration:
_Collection of the Hon. Andrew J. Mellon_
LA CARMARGO
--_Nicolas Lancret_]
Nicolas Lancret was born in Paris in 1690 and died there in 1743. He
was a pupil of Pierre d’Ulin and Claude Gillot; but he adopted Watteau
as his model. Indeed, his close imitations of Watteau estranged the
latter. Lancret, however, won a great reputation for his beautiful
sense of composition, his fine design, and his charming color. He
was elected a member of the French Academy of Painting in 1719. His
landscapes are always delicate and romantic, and as a painter of
_Fêtes galantes_ he almost equals Watteau and Pater.
LE DUO.
_Nicolas Lancret
(1690–1743)._
_Collection of
Mr. and Mrs. Emil J. Stehli._
At first glance we might take this painting for a Watteau, for
Lancret has shown in it the same appreciation of park scenery, leafy
and fresh foliage, charming figures of grace and refinement, and,
even more particularly, the suggestion of music. We seem to hear the
liquid, silvery, cool notes of the flute and the sweet, clear voice
of the pretty young lady who is singing from a book of music while
the young gallant looks over her shoulder and plays his part in the
duet. The costumes are lovely; the young lady is dressed in white and
the flute-player wears a brownish-red suit. The flute-player’s pose
is interesting: all his weight is placed on his right foot. Note his
hands: they are properly placed on the holes of his instrument, which
he is holding as a musician. The French have always been superlative
flute-players and it was only natural that Lancret would select a
capable musician for his model. We can make a safe guess that the music
we are hearing from these musicians is an air by Rameau, whose operas
and ballets were enjoying great vogue when this picture was painted.
The work, oils on canvas (19¾ × 16¾ inches), belonged to the Collection
of Sir William Knighton, Bart., and came from that of Mr. Pitt Rivers
of London to the present owner, Mr. Emil J. Stehli of New York.
Comparing Lancret with Watteau, Eugène Langevin writes:
“First the style of the master was not adopted by him in its entirety;
he modified it in accordance with his own disposition; he has played
some of Watteau’s melodies, but in a lower key and with a slower
movement. It is _conversations galantes_ rather than _fêtes
galantes_ that he paints. He seems to feel that he does not possess
the fire, the caprice, the vivacity, the imagination, and the supreme
poetic distinction that are required for _Departures for the
Enchanted Isle_. He halts half-way. Where Watteau painted sumptuous
and impassioned eclogues, Lancret portrays rural amusements, richly
adorned and at the same time frolicsome as he had seen them on the
boards. Watteau revels in the most magical of fictions: he is the
Shakespeare, the Aristophanes of Art.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Emil J. Stehli_
LE DUO
--_Nicolas Lancret_]
“Like Watteau, Lancret broke with the academic traditions of the day,
which were all for reddish or brown tints: he acknowledged a wholesome
horror of burnt colors. And if he lacks that distinction which his
master owed to his constant practice of Flemish and Venetian Art and
to his own natural gifts, if he cannot produce those glowing and
_rutilant_ tonalities full of golden sheen, those rich colors, and
those subtle harmonies of infinitely delicate beauty, he, at least,
possessed a palette both rich and refined.”
UNE FÊTE CHAMPÊTRE.
_Jean Baptiste Joseph Pater
(1695–1736)._
_Collection of
Mr. Jules S. Bache._
This brilliant picture, painted in 1733, the height of the Regency
period, came from the Collection of Lady Carnarvon, having been
bequeathed to her by Alfred Charles de Rothschild of Seymour Place,
London.
The scene is laid in a romantic landscape with the ruins of an old
_château_ and other ancient buildings surrounded by beautiful, feathery
trees. Upon the green sward groups of men, women, and children have
gathered to enjoy themselves in various ways. The merry assemblage,
dressed in brilliant costumes of delightful colors, charmingly
harmonized and contrasted, are dancing, feasting, making love, and
watching actors and mountebanks perform. Even two little dogs in the
foreground have partaken of the general gaiety. The movement, _brio_
and general _joie de vivre_ make this a veritable panorama of the
Eighteenth Century. The picture is also noteworthy for being the
largest ever painted by Pater.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Jules S. Bache_
UNE FÊTE CHAMPÊTRE
--_J. B. J. Pater_]
Jean Baptiste Joseph Pater was born at Valenciennes in 1695, the son
of a wood-carver who appreciated his son’s talent, taught him what
he could, and then took him to Paris, where he became a pupil of
his fellow-townsman, Watteau. The irritable temper of Watteau caused
a separation; but in 1721 Watteau sent for Pater to come to him at
Nogent-sur-Marne and gave him daily instruction.
Pater was very “modernistic” in his time, for in 1728 he was received
into the Academy as a member of the new class of “_peintres de sujets
modernes_.”
Pater was entirely absorbed in his art. He rarely left his studio,
formed no friendships, painted all day and every day, and gave himself
no pleasures. His feverish industry coupled with his parsimonious
living--he was haunted by the fear of poverty in old age--at last told
upon him and he died in Paris in 1736.
Pater is a very close follower of Watteau in subject and composition as
well as in his charming and delicate color.
UNE FÊTE GALANTE.
_Jean Baptiste Joseph Pater
(1695–1736)._
_Collection of
Mr. Edward J. Berwind._
It is interesting to compare this picture with the _Fête Champêtre_
preceding it. We have two characteristic examples of Pater’s work. In
the _Fête Champêtre_ we look upon a large gathering and a miscellaneous
crowd. In the picture represented here we have a more intimate group.
There are certain elements in this picture that suggest Watteau; others
that suggest Lancret; and still others that show us that the later
Boucher and Fragonard did not deign to take a few ideas from Pater. The
picture is very individual. The colors are soft and delicate--“pastel”
tints we like to call them to-day--pale blues, and pinks, and yellows,
and rich mauves, contrasting beautifully with the exquisite green of
the foliage. Pater never produced a more artistic background, with its
distant hills and picturesque buildings. The painting came from the
Wertheimer Collection, London, to the present owner.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Edward J. Berwind_
UNE FÊTE GALANTE
--_J. B. J. Pater_]
LA SERINETTE.
_Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin
(1699–1779)._
_Collection of the late
Mr. Henry Clay Frick._
Madame de Pompadour, whose taste in art was always superlatively good,
was the first owner of this charming picture, which has passed through
many notable collections. The work is known under three titles: _La
Serinette_ (the Bird-Organ); the _Education of a Canary_; and _The
Diversions of a Lady_. According to tradition this lady is Madame
Chardin, wife of the painter. The sitting-room gives us an idea of
her varied occupations and it would appear that she has just left her
tapestry-work to give her canary a singing-lesson. The bird is seen
in a cage, which stands on a little table near the window, and Madame
Chardin is turning the handle of the bird-organ. We would like to know
the tune the little music-box produces. Both as regards subject and
treatment the picture is a masterpiece. Jean Guiffrey considers the
work most charming and admires the way all the many accessories are
brought into perfect harmony. “It would be impossible to find,” he
says, “a more correct design and a better color scheme and tonality.”
Chardin sent this picture to the Salon of 1751 and again to that of
1755. After Madame de Pompadour’s death _La Serinette_ passed into
the notable Collections of Monsieur de Vandières, director of the
Royal Buildings; the Marquis de Menars, Madame de Pompadour’s brother
(sold in 1783); Baron Denon, Director of Museums (sale 1826); Count
d’Houdetot (sale 1859); Duke de Morny (sale 1865); Mr. G. du Tillet of
Paris; and, finally, to the late Mr. Henry Clay Frick.
The picture was shown in 1860 at the Exposition of the Association for
the Mutual Relief of Artists, Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (No.
92).
Chardin was one of the greatest colorists of the French School and one
of the greatest painters of the Eighteenth Century. Few painters have
equalled him in his broad and free style and in his luminous effects of
color and light.
[Illustration:
_Collection of the late Mr. Henry Clay Frick_
LA SERINETTE
--_J. B. S. Chardin_]
Chardin was born in Paris, Nov. 2, 1699, the son of a master-carpenter
and upholsterer, who was employed to make billiard-tables for Louis
XIV. After studying under Pierre Jacques Cazes, Chardin entered the
studio of Noël Nicolas Coypel. Before he was thirty he had made a
name as a painter of still-life. In 1728 Chardin was admitted to the
Académie Royale and eventually became its treasurer. In 1752 Louis XV
bestowed a pension upon him and in 1757 gave him rooms in the Louvre.
In his middle period Chardin struck out in a new path--that of frank
realism, selecting for subjects scenes from the domestic life of the
_bourgeoisie_; but he treats everything, however, with the distinction
and taste that belonged to France in the Eighteenth Century. Therefore,
he throws a poetic glamour around a loaf of bread, a bunch of
grapes, a plate of peaches, a sleeping cat, or a copper _casserole_.
Consequently, while his subjects are similar to those of the “Little
Dutch Masters,” Chardin introduces an elegance and a quality of which
those painters never dreamed. Neither Pieter de Hoogh, nor Vermeer,
excelled Chardin in effects of light, atmosphere, and iridescence.
“Chardin,” Élie Faure writes, “did not paint much because he paints
slowly with a laborious and passionate application. He has no models,
but his wife, children, a few familiar animals, the everyday tableware,
and cooking-utensils and then there are meat, vegetables, bread, and
wine brought that same day from the butcher, the meat-roaster, the
baker, and the vegetable seller. With these he writes the legend of
domestic labor and of obscure life: his images speak to us after the
manner of La Fontaine’s words and he is, with Watteau and Goya, the
greatest painter there is in Europe between the death of Rembrandt and
the maturity of Corot and of Delacroix.”
Chardin is an artist beloved by artists. In a sympathetic criticism,
Armand-Dayot writes:
“It is not by accident that I am using this word _métier: beauté
du métier_--all is comprised in that phrase. By this phrase the
greater number of the French artists of the Eighteenth Century should
be judged. _La beauté du métier_--that expresses all their
efforts. And, indeed, what formula could better define Chardin than the
_beauté du métier_? An illumination, meticulous and systematic,
because it has been so well ordered and arranged; light departing
from one point to appear at another and showing the various objects
according to the place they occupy with relation to the distance from
the luminous centre; a beautiful paste of the best composition in its
own day and which time has converted into a transparent and limpid
enamel; and, above all, that classical arrangement, which is like that
of Poussin, Le Brun, Le Sueur and Claude Lorrain, add to the play
of great sweeps of color; the enchanting reflections that cross one
another and that are superimposed without breaking the original balance
of the contrasting colors; and the rigorous drawing--such are the
reasons why we class Chardin high in the French traditions of clarity
and beautiful arrangement of light. In his richness of color he is
derived from the Venetians and he became the ancestor of Fantin-Latour.”
Chardin’s vogue is increasing day by day, for he belongs to that small
group of great masters who have played with light. Perhaps, more than
any other painter, Chardin succeeded in producing the most subtle
overtones of color. M. Armand-Dayot, as we have just seen, claims
Chardin as the ancestor of Fantin-Latour. May we not also suggest that
in Chardin, Matisse has found inspiration for his delicate and tenuous
effects in the upper reaches of the color scale?
We get a glimpse of Chardin at work from Diderot who, after a visit to
his _atelier_, wrote:
“Chardin, who has such a keen feeling for color, keeps his eyes glued
upon his canvas: his mouth is half-open; and he breathes heavily.
His palette is a picture of chaos and into this chaos he dips his
brush. From it he draws his work of real creation,--birds with all the
delicate _nuances_ of tint in their plumage; flowers with velvet
petals; trees of varied foliage and greenery, the blue of the sky, the
spray of water, animals with their soft fur and the fire flaming from
their brilliant eyes. The painter rises, walks some distance away, and
throws a rapid glance upon his picture; then he seats himself again
before this canvas and you soon see appear flesh tints, cloth, velvet,
damask, taffetas, transparent muslin, or heavy linen. You also see the
ripe yellow pear falling from the tree and the green grapes hanging on
the vine.”
LES DEUX CONFIDENTES.
_François Boucher
(1703–1770)._
_Collection of
Mrs. William R. Timken._
Madame de Pompadour was the first owner of this picture and it looks
as if it might have been painted at her suggestion. It is signed and
dated 1750 and measures 32 × 29 inches,--a perfect size for a boudoir
or a small _salon_. Next the picture was in the Collections of
Pillet-Will, the Marquis de Marigny, and the Marquis de Menars.
Here we have two young ladies of high degree playing at pastoral life.
Their bare feet and the presence of sheep are the only suggestion that
they are shepherdesses. They are, however, shepherdesses of the kind we
read of in the eclogues of poets.
In every way the picture is charming. The composition is faultless,
the lights splendidly concentrated and diffused, and the colors are
of exquisite beauty. Against the green of the feathery trees in the
background and the verdant turf in the foreground the lustrous silken
dresses--palest blue and palest rose--of the young ladies who are
exchanging confidences (doubtless of faithful or faithless lovers)
appear to the greatest advantage. The flowers, tumbling out of the
basket which has fallen down, are most sympathetically painted by one
who rarely, if ever, omitted roses in any picture. All the colors melt
and mingle in perfect harmony.
Boucher painted at the height of the Louis XV period and of this period
Élie Faure says:
“François Boucher is its soul. Fashion is always present in his facile
and fecund work--on ceilings, screens, carriage-panels, _dessous
portes_, boxes and fans--shepherdesses and pastorales everywhere
and on every thing. Charming in manner, generous, pleasure-loving and
adored by both men and women, Boucher stands with the King’s mistress,
Madame de Pompadour, as the centre of his own revolving circle of
winged Cupids and garlands of flowers.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mrs. William R. Timken_
LES DEUX CONFIDENTES
--_François Boucher_]
François Boucher, born in Paris, Sept. 29, 1703, began his career as
an illustrator and engraver and went to Italy with Carle Van Loo.
Returning to Paris in 1731 he frequented the gay society of operatic
and theatrical circles and acquired reputation. In 1734 he was admitted
to the Academy with his picture of _Rinaldo and Armida_ now in the
Louvre. Boucher became associated with the tapestry-manufactory at
Beauvais and also at the Gobelins and in 1765 succeeded Carle Van Loo
as first painter to Louis XV. Boucher attracted the attention of Madame
de Pompadour and decorated her boudoirs and _salons_, and painted
several portraits of this handsome lady. Boucher died in the Louvre in
1770, while painting _Venus at her Toilet_. According to his own record
Boucher painted a thousand pictures and made ten thousand drawings and
sketches.
A YOUNG GIRL READING A LETTER.
_Jean Baptiste Greuze
(1725–1805)._
_Collection of
Mr. John McCormack._
This picture, an oil painting on canvas (27½ × 21½ inches), comes from
the Collection of Alfred Charles de Rothschild, Seamore Place, London,
and represents a young girl seated in an upholstered chair wearing a
white chemise, which has slipped from her shoulders. An open letter is
spread on her lap,--a letter before envelopes were known, for this has
the seal still attached. However, letters bring tidings of delight or
sorrow, with or without envelopes, and we have no clue to the contents
of this one. We gather, however, that the missive is a love-letter.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. John McCormack_
A YOUNG GIRL READING A LETTER
--_Jean Baptiste Greuze_]
Jean Baptiste Greuze was born at Tournous, near Macon, Burgundy, and
was the son of a thatcher. He first studied painting with a travelling
picture-pedlar named Grondon and went with him to Lyons and lived
there for eight years, painting pictures and hawking them about the
country. However, Grondon was the father of the wife of Grétry, the
composer, so Greuze probably had a little taste of art. In 1746 he
went to Paris and worked at the Academy, making some progress in
historical painting and portraits. One day he astonished everybody by
his picture of _Un père de famille expliquant la Bible à ses enfants_
and _Le Paralytique servi par ses enfants_, which caused him to be
received as an _Académicien_. Others of this type of pathetic, or
homely, story-telling in paint followed. This, then new style of art,
won Greuze many admirers, among them Diderot. In 1756 Greuze went to
Rome for two years and on his return to Paris began to exhibit his now
famous busts and heads of beautiful young girls. Between 1755 and 1769
Greuze exhibited about one hundred and twenty pictures at the Louvre
and, after the Revolution, about thirty works. He was entirely broken
by the Revolution and died in 1805 in poverty and oblivion.
YOUNG GIRL.
_Jean Baptiste Greuze
(1725–1805)._
_Collection of
Mr. William Randolph Hearst._
We hardly know which face to admire the most--that of the little girl
or that of her little dog with the bright, intelligent eyes, so loving
and so trustful.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. William Randolph Hearst_
YOUNG GIRL
--_Jean Baptiste Greuze_]
This picture (14 × 14 inches) Greuze has painted with the tenderest
care,--depicting the budding beauty of the child; and he has, moreover,
used the swirling curves in such a distinguished manner that we think
of the circles and the curves in Raphael’s _Madonna della Sedia_ in
the Pitti. There is a gentle sadness in the face of the little girl of
which the little companion and friend, so confidently nestled in her
loving arms, seems to be conscious; and, perhaps, a little worried as
well.
LA MARQUISE DE BESONS TUNING A GUITAR
_Jean Baptiste Greuze
(1725–1805)._
_Collection of
Dr. and Mrs. Henry Barton Jacobs._
At the Salon of 1757 Greuze exhibited this portrait under the title of
_Madame X Tuning a Guitar_. Many who saw the picture recognized
Madame X as Anne de Bricqueville de la Luzerne, wife of Jacques Bazin,
Marquis de Besons, a very prominent and powerful lord of the Houses
of Hupin, Neuvill, etc., and Lieutenant-General of the King’s armies.
Madame de Besons is wearing a pale pink silk dress with a deep flounce
with sleeves of the favorite Mechlin lace and a large cape with collar.
Her hair is waved in fine shells and adorned with the little spray of
flowers that Madame de Pompadour had made the fashion at this moment. A
necklace consisting of three rows of perfectly matched pearls proclaim
Madame de Besons a lady of wealth. The chair in which Madame de Besons
is sitting is a handsome example of Louis XV furniture, gold frame
upholstered in light green brocade. The background is dark grey. The
painting (37 × 29¼ inches) is an unusual and a most artistic work of
Greuze.
LA MARQUISE DE VILLEMONBLE.
_François Hubert Drouais
(1727–1775)._
_Collection of
Mr. Jules S. Bache._
One is often asked to define the _style Louis XV_. Could there possibly
be a better definition than is expressed in this exquisite portrait
of an exquisite lady,--La Marquise de Villemonble? Is not the very
essence, the spirit, the perfume of the Eighteenth Century seen in the
face, the dress, the pose, the manner, the charm, and the “grand style”
of the Marquise?
[Illustration:
_Collection of Dr. and Mrs. Henry Barton Jacobs_
LA MARQUISE DE BESONS TUNING A GUITAR
--_Jean Baptiste Greuze_]
It is very evident that Drouais took deep delight in painting this
aristocratic lady and her beautiful costume as well. We can see with
what pleasure the painter’s brush swept into being the lustre and the
folds of the pale lemon satin dress; traced the delicate pattern of
the Mechlin lace that forms the ruffles of the bell-sleeves and the
garniture of the neck; tied the bows of rich pink satin adorning the
corsage and holding the lace at the sleeves; touched up the cluster of
shaded grey feathers and rounded the pearls in the _coiffure_;
placed the little string of black velvet around the neck; and lingered
upon the sheet of music which the Marquise is holding so gracefully.
The words below the notes show that the lady is a singer. Yet all
these carefully painted details do not detract from the beauty of
the lady herself. Her features are high-bred, sweet, and perfect,
and her expression shows great loveliness of nature. Altogether the
Marquise de Villemonble is a beautiful and charming person and Drouais,
we may be sure, has not flattered her in this beautiful and charming
portrait. The canvas (46 × 35 inches) is signed and dated 1761 and it
is interesting to relate that it came directly from the Villemonble
family to its present owner, Mr. Jules S. Bache.
François Hubert Drouais was born in Paris in 1727 and studied under
his father, Hubert Drouais (1699–1767), a portrait-painter who was
also famous for his miniatures. Young François grew up with the great
painters of the day, who were friends of his father--Nattier, de Troy,
Oudry, and others--and he became a pupil of Carle Van Loo and Boucher.
With such masters is it any wonder that Drouais should have developed
_style_?
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Jules S. Bache_
LA MARQUISE DE VILLEMONBLE
--_François Hubert Drouais_]
Drouais began to exhibit at the Salon of 1755 and appeared every
year subsequently until his death in 1775. His talents brought him
recognition and he became painter to the King, to Monsieur and Madame,
and practically all the nobility and aristocracy of France sat to
him. Naturally, the world of fashion followed suit. Drouais painted
Madame de Pompadour and owed much to her patronage. He also painted
Madame du Barry many times and his vogue continued through the reign
of Louis XVI. One of his most successful portraits--Marie Antoinette
as Hebe--now hangs at Chantilly and gives a most distinguished
presentation of the young Queen, a proud figure in yellow draperies,
rose-colored waist ribbons, and lilac scarf, holding a golden cup in
one hand and a silver ewer in the other.
Drouais holds his own with Watteau, Pater, Lancret, Fragonard, Greuze,
Chardin, and de la Tour, for he, too, like these artists of radiant
style, knew how to present with skillful and polished technique,
flowing lines, fluent grace, piquant expression, characteristic
gesture, and fashionable dress. Moreover, his quick observation and
light touch produce something akin to sparkling comedy; and yet in
all the play of his brush and his airy manner Drouais never failed to
create an atmosphere of elegance and distinction.
MADEMOISELLE HELVETIUS.
_François Hubert Drouais
(1727–1775)._
_Collection of
Mr. Mortimer L. Schiff._
That Drouais was a master who could succeed with any subject for
portraiture will be appreciated by comparing this sympathetic
presentation of a pretty little girl with the preceding portrait of La
Marquise de Villemonble, who appears in the full beauty of maturity.
Even Greuze, with all his skill in representing youthful charm, never
produced a lovelier work than this Mademoiselle Helvetius. Here the
little girl looks at us smiling beneath her big “shepherdess” hat,
holding in her dress clusters of purple and jade colored grapes.
Drouais evidently appreciated the decorative beauty of the grape and
its leaves, for he has brought out their character and lusciousness
with a loving surety of touch that shows him to be on a par with any
painter who has specialized in fruit.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Mortimer L. Schiff_
MADEMOISELLE HELVETIUS
--_François Hubert Drouais_]
The delightful painting, which is signed, came to its present owner
from the J. P. Morgan Collection.
L’INVOCATION À L’AMOUR.
_Jean Honoré Fragonard
(1732–1806)._
_Collection of
Mr. Mortimer L. Schiff._
The de Goncourts remarked in their _L’Art du Dix-huitième Siècle_ that
the two great--and the only great--poets in France in the Eighteenth
Century were Watteau and Fragonard; and they very fancifully and very
truly said that the saucy little Loves hovering about in the sky of
_L’Embarquement pour L’Île de Cythère_ were “getting ready to fly to
Fragonard and to put on his palette the hues of their butterfly wings.”
Of that tragic painting, _Corésus and Callirhoé_ (in the Louvre) the
de Goncourts, noting the extraordinary movement and whirl in the work,
said “a great mute cry seems to rise in the composition,” and then
added: “This cry of a picture, so new for the Eighteenth Century, is
Passion.”
Fragonard had the genius for expressing movement and emotion to such a
degree that sometimes “a cry” seems to issue from his canvas. This rush
of movement and this torrent of emotion, this outburst like leaping
flames and whirling clouds, is expressed in full power in the picture
represented here, which bears some likeness to the _Fountain of
Love_ in the Wallace Gallery, London.
_L’Invocation à l’Amour_ (20½ × 24¾ inches) was painted between 1780
and 1785. It came into public notice at the La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
Sale in Paris in 1827 and has since belonged to the Collections of M.
le duc de Polignac; to Madame la duchesse de Polignac née Crillon; to
Mr. L. Neumann, London; and to M. Jean Bertoloni, Paris. _L’Invocation
à l’Amour_ was shown at the Fragonard Exposition, Musée des Arts
Décoratifs, Paris in 1921, and came thereafter into possession of Mr.
Mortimer L. Schiff.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Mortimer L. Schiff_
L’INVOCATION À L’AMOUR
--_Jean Honoré Fragonard_]
Jean Honoré Fragonard was born at Grasse in 1732 and died in Paris in
1806. He studied under Chardin and Boucher, won the _grand prix_
de Rome at the age of twenty, studied in Rome, visited Naples and
Sicily with Hubert Robert, and, returning to Paris, leaped into fame
with his _Corésus and Callirhoé_ in 1765. Fragonard painted every
subject--love-scenes, portraits, _genre_, and landscape--equally
well and always with the lightest touch, the most delicate colors, and
infinite charm.
“His method,” says Louis Hautecœur, “is even more dexterous than
that of Boucher, because he is better instructed; this rapidity of
brush-work is not negligent, because it is guided by previous study;
this freedom of handling is not hap-hazard: it springs from the joy of
creating; that is what makes Fragonard a great painter. Thus a natural
sensibility, which gave to his works movement, picturesque character,
and color seems to be the master faculty of Fragonard; and out of this
movement, this feeling for the picturesque, and this color arises a
fantasy composed of intelligence and imagination. The _Fête of St.
Cloud_ becomes a fairy scene; the _Garden of Fontainebleau_ the setting
of a dream; and the _Fountain of Love_ flows in a world of mystery.
Fragonard was not only a _painter_ unique in style, but he was a _poet_
of that century of which he saw the close--a _poet_ whose sensibility
was shown less in the nature of his works than in the manner in which
he treated them: in his golden rays of light; in the shadowy recesses
of the parks; in the cloud forms of a tempest; in the youthful charm of
children; and in the grace of women--and herein lies his originality.”
LE BILLET-DOUX.
_Jean Honoré Fragonard
(1732–1806)._
_Collection of
Mr. Jules S. Bache._
In studying this graceful composition with its subtle harmonies of
color and its amazing play of iridescent reflections and ever changing
lights it is easy to see that Fragonard spent some time in the studio
of Chardin, having the benefit of instruction from that great master.
Charm is the keynote of the picture. The colors are indescribable as
they are constantly changing; but the general tonality is golden-brown
in all the shades of leaves at autumn with sunlight playing upon
them and combined with the softest blue of the sky; and these browns
and blues are so merged and mingled that they shimmer and vary like
“changeable velvet.” The effect is, therefore, both rich and, at the
same time, tender, soft, and brilliant. A few high lights of pink are
discreetly used. The charming, piquant, and lovely lady, is said to be
the daughter of Boucher and was married to another painter, Baudouin,
and, after his death, to M. de Cuviller. The lady is half rising from
her writing-table and is holding in her left hand a bouquet of pink
roses in a conical paper-holder into which she is placing a letter,
addressed to “Monsieur M. C.” Her head is turned a little to the front
and her expression seems to indicate that she does not wish to be
detected in her pretty romance. She is a person of elegance and fashion
and her dress is altogether _comme il faut_, in what we please to
call to-day a “Watteau costume,” with the panniers and the “Watteau
plait” at the back. The material is a very pale blue velvet with
brownish lights. Her hair is dressed fashionably and surmounted by
a modish little “butterfly cap” brightened with pink ribbons, which,
with the pink roses, are the only notes of bright color in the picture.
Lying on the chair and looking directly out of the picture is a darling
little poodle dog. In the “_Billet-Doux_,” Louis Hautecœur says,
“we can best appreciate the skill of the master who delighted in making
a golden light play across a yellow curtain upon a blue robe.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Jules S. Bache_
LE BILLET-DOUX
--_Jean Honoré Fragonard_]
This painting (33¾ × 26⅜ inches) passed through the Collections of the
Baron Feuillet de Conches; Madame Jagerschmidt; M. Ernest Cronier; and
M. Joseph Bardac,--all of Paris. The _Billet-Doux_ was shown at the
Alsace-Lorraine Exhibitions of 1874 and 1927, and is lauded in all the
standard works on Fragonard.
LA MARQUISE DE LA FARE.
_Jean Honoré Fragonard
(1732–1806)._
_Collection of
Mrs. James B. Haggin._
Could anything be lighter, lovelier, and more graceful in the way of
painting than this distinguished representation of the distinguished
Marquise de la Fare? For elegant simplicity as well as technique this
portrait is without a peer. Only Fragonard could have painted it. There
is something here that reminds us of the flicker and flutter and quick
movement and vitality of the flame,--that symbol of the soul and of
eternal life. Unconsciously, perhaps, by these leaping, flashing lines
the painter symbolized his own genius and the spirit of the exquisite
lady he was privileged to portray. With his butterfly touch and his
liquid, rapid brush, Fragonard caught this charming personality. Yet,
behind this quick impressionistic work--as light in key and ethereal in
harmony as Claude Monet or Matisse--what knowledge, what skill! Here
is all the majesty of Greek sculpture at its climax of perfection,
but Greek sculpture rendered dynamic and human. And what a pose! What
exquisite arms and hands! What style! What _chic_! The dress is cream
and the drapery, old rose, harmonizing with the ash-blonde hair and
blue eyes.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mrs. James B. Haggin_
LA MARQUISE DE LA FARE
--_Jean Honoré Fragonard_]
The picture (31¾ × 25 inches) came directly from the de la Fare family
to its present owner.
THE FOUNTAIN IN THE PARK.
_Hubert Robert
(1733–1808)._
_Collection of
Dr. and Mrs. Henry Barton Jacobs._
When Hubert Robert exhibited for the first time in August, 1765, he
won instant recognition. The French public at a period when taste was
supreme, praised the originality of Hubert Robert’s design and his
exquisite delicacy of coloring and decided, moreover, that although his
study of the antique had been thorough and sympathetic, the new artist
was, above all, a Parisian of Parisians.
Hubert Robert plays on two themes: one, the ruins of
antiquity--especially Rome--and the other, garden-scenes. In fact, his
success with ruins as subject-matter gave him the _sobriquet_ of
“_Robert des Ruines_.” Hubert Robert was born in Paris in 1733
and after some preliminary art education went to Rome in 1754, where
he studied for eleven years, devoting himself almost exclusively
to antiquities. On his return to Paris he was made a member of the
Academy and his pictures brought him instant fame. He lived in the
studios in the Louvre until the outbreak of the Revolution, when he was
imprisoned for ten months; but during this time he painted and produced
a _Taking of the Prisoners by Torchlight in Open Carts from St.
Pélagie to St. Lazare_. He was lucky in his release, which occurred
through the mistake of the jailer, who sent another prisoner of the
same name to the guillotine. Hubert Robert died in Paris on April 15,
1808. Equal to his reputation as a painter was his reputation as a
landscape-gardener. He was the successor of Le Nôtre, whose style had
given place to the Anglo-Chinese gardens. Hubert Robert, as architect
of the King’s Gardens, designed the _Baths of Apollo_ in the
Park of Versailles in 1784, and he laid out the very famous grounds
of Mézéville near Étampes-in-Beauce, in which work Joseph Vernet was
associated.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Dr. and Mrs. Henry Barton Jacobs_
THE FOUNTAIN IN THE PARK
--_Hubert Robert_]
The distinguished picture shown here (57½ × 39 inches) from the
Collection of M. S. Bardac, Paris, presents the artist also as a
garden-lover. All the poetry produced by a tossing stream of spray
among green trees is expressed here.
“Hubert Robert,” writes Henri Frantz, “is one of those who, brought
back into fashion by the de Goncourts and their generation, enjoy a
reputation increasing every day; and thus drawings in red chalk or in
water-colors which one might easily have picked up years ago in the
boxes of the petty dealers of Paris or of Rome are found to-day in
museums and in the most celebrated Collections and fetch the highest
prices in European sales. Moreover, Hubert Robert did not go out of
fashion till the commencement of the Nineteenth Century and no artist
was _fêted_ and admired by his contemporaries more than he.”
Hubert Robert has again become the fashion.
MADAME LABILLE-GUIARD AND TWO PUPILS.
_Madame Labille-Guiard
(1749–1803)._
_Collection of
Mr. Edward J. Berwind._
Here we have a picture painted in the grand style, a beautiful
composition, a marvellous expression of technique, and a portrait-group
including a self-portrait of the artist.
Madame Labille-Guiard, a handsome women of dashing style, is seated
before her easel busy at work, wearing a very handsome costume and not
one exactly appropriate to working in a studio. However, the painter
being as delightfully feminine in her tastes as she was masculine in
her artistic performance, has the vanity of her sex to wish to be
perpetuated in rich and fashionable attire,--_comme il faut_ in
every respect.
The two young ladies, who are observing the work of Madame
Labille-Guiard are her favorite pupils, Mesdemoiselles Capet and
Rosemond.
Madame Labille-Guiard’s dress is blue-grey satin with lace at neck
and sleeves and hat of golden straw with blue-grey ostrich feathers
matching the dress. The chair in which the artist is seated is
upholstered in green velvet. The pupil in front wears a dark brown
dress. Most beautifully is painted the diaphanous ruffle at her elbow.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Edward J. Berwind_
MADAME LABILLE-GUIARD AND TWO PUPILS
--_Madame Labille-Guiard_]
The picture of large dimensions (82½ × 60 inches) is signed and dated
1785 and was exhibited at the Salon in that year. From the Collection
of Madame Griois, a descendant of the artist, the painting came to its
present owner, Mr. Edward J. Berwind.
Adélaïde Labille-des-Vertus was born in Paris, April 11, 1749. She
studied art under François Élie Vincent, a clever miniature-painter
and afterward under Latour. She married twice: first, the sculptor
Guiard, and, after his death, François André Vincent, the son of
her former teacher, himself a capable painter and etcher. Madame
Labille-Guiard became an Académicien in 1783 at the same time with
Madame Vigée Lebrun. She painted a great number of large oil-portraits
and miniatures, and in 1787 and 1789 attracted attention by her
portraits of the King’s daughters, Madame Adélaïde and Madame Victoire.
She also painted a large picture for Monsieur (afterwards Louis
XVIII), called the _Initiation of a Knight of Malta_, which was
finished at the outbreak of the Revolution; but which was destroyed.
Madame Labille-Guiard died in Paris on Floréal 4, _An XI. de la
République_, or April 8, 1803.
ENGLISH, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
_ENGLISH, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY_
When Théophile Gautier saw Gainsborough’s portrait of _Mr. and Mrs.
Hallet_, now known as _The Morning Walk_, he said that he felt “a
strange retrospective sensation, so intense is the illusion it produces
of the spirit of the Eighteenth Century. We really fancy we see the
young couple,” he adds, “walking arm-in-arm along a garden avenue.”
It is this “strange retrospective sensation” that we feel when we look
upon the canvases of Gainsborough, Reynolds, and Romney.
The Eighteenth Century was one of those periods in the world’s history
when Society reached its peak, when Society was the goal of all things
and of every one, and when it was dominated by taste, elegance, gaiety,
lightness, brightness, wit, beauty, and charm. There was charm in
everything--in art, in music, in literature, in conversation, and in
dress. There was a _chic_ and dainty grace with which the Eighteenth
Century belle wore her large hat, tied her sash, and pointed the toe of
her high-heeled satin slipper on the polished floor of the ball-room,
or the greensward of the garden or lawn; and there was a corresponding
_chic_ and dashing elegance with which the Eighteenth Century _beau_
made his bow, tapped his snuff-box, or handed the “ladies of St.
James’s” in and out of their sedan-chairs.
This sparkling, iridescent age, with its taste, grace, and wit can
never come again--for our world has travelled far along another
path--but if the Eighteenth Century cannot return to us, we can return
to it by means of its literature, its music, and its art.
At such a period, when the social world was of exceptional brilliance,
it is only natural that the art of portraiture should have flourished
with unparalleled lustre.
Three great geniuses arose in England to bring this special branch of
painting up to a pitch that had never been reached there before.
It is true that Holbein’s portraits are magnificent, stately, and true
to life, and that they present wonderful portrayals of character; but
Holbein was painting in a world of drastic change, of adventure, of
political agitation, when nearly everyone whom he painted had the fear
of the axe descending upon his neck. It is true that Van Dyck painted
people of elegance and distinguished manner--the portrait of Robert
Rich, Earl of Warwick on page 189 would alone prove this--and gives us
a glimpse into a charming world.
But Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Romney were the first to paint
Society--that brilliant, witty, provocative, frivolous, graceful,
charming, _chic_, and altogether delightful Society of the
Eighteenth Century.
The Eighteenth Century! How we delight in it!
We are not too far away to feel at home in it; and, moreover, much
of our beautiful Georgian architecture survives in this country with
Chippendale, Sheraton, and Heppelwhite furniture and Spode, Wedgwood,
Chelsea, Lowestoft and various china, with other relics besides, to
show us that our Colonial forefathers lived in style and elegance. The
latest fashions in household furnishings and dress travelled here from
London even quicker than they travelled to the English provinces.
To lift the curtain upon the Eighteenth Century is like lifting the
cover from a Chinese jar of _pot-pourri_; and just as that subtle
yet pungent scent of rose-leaves, lavender, sweet spices, and musk
float from it, so visions appear before another sense. Our inherited
memories bring before us pictures of brocade gowns or “hoops,”
flowered silk overdresses, high-heeled satin slippers with glittering
buckles, ruffles of Mechlin lace, “chicken-skin” fans gay with Watteau
or Lancret or Pater pictures, rustling silks, shimmering satins,
nodding feathers, cinnamon coats, Ramilies tie-wigs, lace-solitaires,
wrist-ruffles, cocked-hats, swords, and snuff-boxes.
We seem to stand in lovely gardens, bright with roses and hollyhocks,
larkspur, foxglove, amaranth, love-in-a-mist, bleeding-hearts, and
gilliflowers, noting the moving shadow on the sundial and watching the
stately peacocks behind the well-clipped hedges of box and holly; or
we follow the fashionable world to Ranelagh or Vauxhall, where we look
with fascinated gaze on the beautiful women in hoops of brocade or
lutestring silk, much painted, powdered and patched, glancing archly
beneath their coquettish “gipsy hats” at their gallant escorts, who
know so well how to lead them through the steps of a minuet or a
gavotte to the rococo tunes of Rameau, Dr. Arne, or Couperin with their
quirls and pretty runs and trills and long pauses for stately bows.
That world is so fascinating to us that we fancy we, too, could wear
without embarrassment the elaborate costume and that we, too, would
feel much at home with Horace Walpole and his friends at _Strawberry
Hill_. We, too, might be able to prepare minced chicken in a
chafing-dish, just as satisfactorily as the Miss Berrys; and we like
to fancy that we could take part in their airy conversation of charm,
banter, and light mockery. At any rate, if we should not be able to
succeed in entertaining Horace Walpole, we are very certain that Sir
Horace could entertain us!
All the Society people of London of this time seem very friendly to us
and we are strangely “at home” with the portraits of Gainsborough, Sir
Joshua, and Romney.
When we look upon _Diana, Lady Crosbie_, _Lady Betty Delmé_,
_Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire_, _Maria Walpole, Duchess of
Gloucester_, _Lady Derby_, and _The Hon. Mrs. Davenport_ do we not feel
that we have known and talked to these people in the flesh? Their eyes
meet ours and our thoughts meet theirs,--and we are not strangers to
one another.
And when we look upon Gainsborough’s _Mall_ does it not bring back
memories of the time when we, ourselves, walked there with all the gay
throng of a bright morning?
Lord Gower said very aptly:
“Gainsborough created a new school by making a lady’s petticoat a thing
of beauty. He could even throw a halo upon a ribbon or a scarf.”
That is true; but Lord Gower forgot the fact that the lady had by her
taste and her high-bred elegance conferred distinction on her clothes
by the fitness with which she selected them and by the manner in which
she wore them.
Thrice in England have pairs of geniuses appeared at the same time,
inviting comparison and attracting partisans--Keats and Shelley;
Thackeray and Dickens; and Reynolds and Gainsborough.
There should be no partisans. The more we love and admire Keats, the
better we are able to admire and love Shelley; the more we appreciate
and delight in Dickens, the more we are able to appreciate and delight
in Thackeray; and the more we comprehend and enjoy Sir Joshua, the more
we are able to comprehend and enjoy Gainsborough.
Although they were rivals--and quite bitter ones at times--the two
supreme English painters of the Eighteenth Century admired each other
prodigiously.
“Damn him! how various he is!” Gainsborough exclaimed of Reynolds; and
Sir Joshua remarked to Sir George Beaumont of Gainsborough; “I cannot
imagine how he manages to produce his effects.”
“What is it then that gives Romney his hold upon this generation and
will continue to give him a hold so long as a love of art endures
among us?” Humphrey Ward asks; and then he answers his own question as
follows:
“In part, of course, it is because he shares with Reynolds and
Gainsborough the good fortune of having kept alive for us a society of
which the fascination is enduring--that limited and privileged society
of the Eighteenth Century which has realized such a perfect art of
living and with which we can clasp hands across the gap as we cannot
with the men and women of Charles the Second’s time, or even of Queen
Anne’s. Much more is it because of temperament and training. Romney was
an artist in love with loveliness; because he found it in the women and
children of his time and stamped it on countless canvases.
“To our problem-haunted painters of to-day it may be seen that his
sense of form was ‘generic and superficial’; they may condemn him
because he did not try to penetrate deep into character and because he
simplified too much, like the Greek sculptors. The lover of mere human
beauty will care little for such objections, provided that a portrait
gives him the essentials of a beautiful face.
‘The witchery of eyes, the grace that tips
The inexpressible douceur of the lips’--
and has blended them with the aristocratic dignity of the Lady Sligo,
or with the melting sweetness of many of the sketches of Emma. This is
what he finds in every first-rate Romney; and he finds much more. He
finds pure and unfaded color, the fruit of the painter’s knowledge and
of a self-restraint which forbade him to search for complex effects
through rash experiments. He finds a quality of painting which, though
it wants the subtlety and preciousness that Gainsborough reached
instinctively and Sir Joshua by effort, is a quality to which nobody
but a master can attain. To be convinced of this we have only to look
closely at the brush-work of the eyes in any of the National Gallery
Romneys, or the draperies in such pictures as the _Lady Warwick and
Children_ or the _Lady Derby_.
“When all is said, Romney remains one of the greatest painters of the
Eighteenth Century and one of the glories of the English name.”
We are apt to think that it was easier to conquer a reputation in the
Eighteenth Century than it is to-day and that Sir Joshua Reynolds,
Gainsborough, Romney, Hoppner, and Raeburn stepped easily into their
commanding positions. Let us remember that Horace Walpole mentions the
fact that there were two thousand portrait-painters in London in his
time!
The story of English Painting previous to the Eighteenth Century is
interesting and very different from that of any nation on the Continent.
The Wars of the Roses, which lasted thirty years (1455–1485), coincide
with the great developments of Painting in Italy and Flanders. During
this period, while York and Lancaster were, like the Lion and the
Unicorn, fighting for the Crown, no attention could be paid to the
painting of pictures. Up to this period England had had a notable
past in portraiture, fresco-painting, and, even more particularly,
in the art of illumination and miniature-painting. In the decoration
of manuscripts from about 1250 to 1350 the Anglo-Norman painters
stood first in this branch of art. The old monastic artists had great
traditions to follow and superb models to draw upon, such as the
_Book of Kells_ (dating from the Eighth or Ninth Century); and
the Winchester School of the Tenth Century stood very high before the
advent of the Normans in 1066.
Our own country to-day can show many examples of this splendid work in
private collections. After William Caxton set up his printing-press at
Westminster in 1471, there was little more need for the laboriously
written manuscripts with their exquisite miniature-painting and
illumination.
Oliver Cromwell’s Roundhead bandits and other Puritans with their
wholesale demolishing and slashing of all art and everything beautiful
together with the Great Fire of London in 1666 destroyed all the
paintings that could have told us just what had been accomplished in
England at the time when Fra Angelico, Fra Lippo Lippi, and Botticelli
were creating masterpieces in Italy and when Roger van der Weyden
and Memling were painting gloriously in the great realm of the Dukes
of Burgundy. Such works as the _Romaunt de la Rose_ and other
Anglo-Norman manuscripts give us a hint of what Painting in England
must have been; for, of course, English, or Anglo-Norman Painting, in
Plantagenet days must have been--as in other countries--an enlarged
version of the brightly colored miniatures touched up with gold-leaf in
the manuscripts.
Henry VIII seems to have been the first English King who was a
patron of art in the modern sense. But there was no English artist
of power to be patronized. The German Hans Holbein (see page 240)
was made Court-Painter. Holbein painted all the great personages
in Tudor England and his influence lasted long after his death.
Miniature-portraits were also popular. The greatest artist in this line
was Nicholas Hilliard (1547–1619), a native of Exeter, trained as a
goldsmith, a follower of Holbein, and appointed goldsmith, carver, and
portrait-painter to Queen Elizabeth (whose portrait he painted many
times). Later he was portrait-painter to James I. It was Hilliard, too,
who engraved the Great Seal of England in 1587. Hilliard’s pupil, Isaac
Oliver (1556–1617?), also a pupil of Federigo Zuccaro, was unsurpassed
as a miniature-painter and taught his son Peter (1601–1660), who
was famous for his drawings and water-colors as well as for his
miniatures. Samuel Cooper (1609–1672), achieved a great reputation as
a miniaturist portrait-painter and painted Charles II, Henrietta Maria,
all the celebrities of the Court, and also John Milton and Oliver
Cromwell. Collectors appreciate his works to-day.
Holbein left no School and there was no one to succeed him.
Consequently when Antonio Moro (see page 257), came to England from
Spain in 1553 to paint Mary Tudor, he stayed in London for some time
painting celebrities.
In Queen Elizabeth’s time another foreign portrait-painter, Federigo
Zuccaro (or Zucchero) arrived from Italy with a great reputation,
having worked for Pope Gregory XIII and the Cardinal of Lorraine, and
also in Antwerp and Amsterdam. Zuccaro painted Queen Elizabeth, Sir
Francis Walsingham, Sir Walter Raleigh, the Earl of Leicester, and many
other English notables.
Another foreigner, Daniel Mytens (1590?–1656), arrived in the reign
of James I, became his Court-Painter and continued in the post in
the reign of Charles I, until Van Dyck’s popularity sent him back to
Holland. Mytens painted in the style of Rubens and Van Dyck. Hampton
Court Palace contains many full length portraits by him. A portrait
by Mytens of Jeffrey Hudson (see page 191), holding a dog by a leash,
hangs in Buckingham Palace.
However, in the reign of Charles I, Anthony Van Dyck (see page 181)
dominated Painting just as Holbein had in the reign of Henry VIII. For
years after his death every painter tried to follow Van Dyck’s style;
but they all missed his distinction, not having his genius to start
with.
Civil war and Puritanism killed art completely. Consequently
when “Charlie came over the water” and the “King Enjoyed his Own
Again,” there was nobody in the kingdom able to paint an acceptable
portrait. Again a foreigner met the need. This time it was Peter Lely
(1618–1680), who was a Dutchman, born in Westphalia, Germany, the son
of Pieter van der Faes, a captain of infantry, who had changed his name
to Lely. In 1640 young Lely was in England, painting landscapes and
trying to imitate Van Dyck in portraiture. The marriage of Princess
Mary to William, Prince of Orange gave Lely his first opportunity and
he painted the Royal couple with Charles II, who made him a knight and
baronet in 1679. Sir Peter only enjoyed his honors a year, for he died
in 1680. Sir Peter Lely painted a great number of portraits, including
the “Court Beauties,” which now hang in Hampton Court Palace.
The Court-Painter of Queen Mary II and Queen Anne was another
foreigner, Godfrey Kneller (1646–1723), a native of Lübeck, a pupil of
Ferdinand Bol, Carlo Maratti, and Bernini, with painting experiences in
Rome and Venice. Kneller painted portraits of Charles II, Louis XIV,
James II, William III, Queen Mary, Queen Anne, and George I. For Queen
Mary II he painted the “Beauties” at Hampton Court, in a certain sense
a continuation of Sir Peter Lely’s “Beauties.” Kneller was knighted in
1692 and made a baronet in 1715.
Sir Godfrey painted the members of the Kit-Cat Club and every person of
distinction in England. In 1705 he settled near Twickenham. Pope wrote
an epitaph for Kneller’s monument in Westminster Abbey.
William Hogarth (1697–1764) who now enters the lists, is the first
really English painter. Hogarth was a native of London and an engraver
as well as a painter. Hogarth became Sergeant-Painter to the King
in 1757. He first attracted attention by his prints for Butler’s
_Hudibras_ in 1726 and at this time began to paint in oils. In 1731 he
painted _The Harlot’s Progress_ and followed this with _Southwark Fair_
and _The Rake’s Progress_ which gave him great fame as a satirist. In
1745 he painted his own _Portrait_ and the _Marriage à la Mode_ (six
scenes). The vigor and personality of his portraits, the beautiful
coloring of his palette, and the atmosphere of the Eighteenth Century
make Hogarth one of the great names in art. England was a long time
producing an artist; but when he came he was a very great one.
Hogarth was so pre-eminently a chronicler of the fashions and follies
of his time that we are apt to forget his beautiful use of color, and
Hogarth’s technique is so solid and so sure that his colors are as
fresh to-day as when they were painted.
Hogarth did not believe in his powers of portraiture; but the world
does not agree with him. The portrait of _Lavinia Fenton as Polly
Peachum in the Beggar’s Opera_, (National Gallery, London) ranks
as one of the great portraits of the world. And there are others:
_David Garrick and his Wife_ in Windsor Castle; his own _Portrait_
(National Gallery, London); _Archbishop Herring_ (Lambeth Palace); _Peg
Woffington_; and many others.
Hogarth’s book _The Analysis of Beauty_ had the following origin. In
his own portrait painted in 1745 he drew on a palette in one corner
of the picture a serpentine line with the words: “The line of beauty
and grace.” So much discussion ensued that Hogarth wrote the book to
explain what he meant and to establish a standard of beauty.
The Eighteenth Century saw the great period of English Painting
expressed in Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792); Thomas Gainsborough
(1727–1788); and George Romney (1734–1802). Others of importance
were Richard Wilson (1714–1782), famous for his landscapes in many
of which ruins were introduced; Francis Cotes (1725–1770), famous
portrait-painter; and, lapping over into the Nineteenth Century,
Sir William Beechey (1753–1839), who became portrait-painter to the
Queen; John Hoppner (1758?–1810), portrait-painter (see page 416);
John Opie (1761–1807), historical portrait-painter; Sir Thomas
Lawrence (1769–1830); Sir Henry Raeburn (1756–1823); Joseph Mallord
William Turner (1775–1851); John Constable (1776–1837); John Wilkie
(1785–1841); and John Crome, known as “Old Crome” (1793–1842).
LADY BETTY DELMÉ.
_Sir Joshua Reynolds
(1723–1792)._
_Collection of
Mr. and Mrs. Herbert L. Satterlee._
This, one of Sir Joshua’s finest group pictures (93 × 57 inches), was
painted in 1777, a year in which the artist made many notable portraits
including that of Diana, Viscountess Crosbie (see page 345). Lady Betty
Delmé is seated at the base of an old beech-tree on her estate between
London and Portsmouth, her arm around her children. The little Scotch
terrier seems much interested in his master. The whole is a wonderful
study in amber and russet tones. The picture came to Mrs. Satterlee
from her father, the late Mr. J. P. Morgan.
Joshua Reynolds was born in Plympton Earl Plymouth, July 16, 1723, the
son of the Rev. Samuel Reynolds, headmaster of the grammar school.
Early showing great talent for drawing, young Joshua was apprenticed
in 1740 to Thomas Hudson, the portrait-painter, in London. Three years
later he returned home and established himself as a portrait-painter
at Plymouth Dock, where he met William Gandy, a painter, who had no
little influence upon his style. In 1744 Reynolds was back in London
and in 1749 back in Devonshire, this time settling in Devonport. In
this year he met at Mount Edgcumbe young Commodore Keppel (afterwards
Admiral), whose portrait he painted and with whom he formed a great
friendship. Accepting Keppel’s invitation to sail with him on the
_Centurion_ for a Mediterranean trip, Reynolds eventually reached
Rome, where he spent two years. While studying in the Vatican he caught
a severe cold which resulted in a life-long deafness. Returning home in
1753, Reynolds took rooms in St. Martin’s Lane, then the headquarters
of art, and people began to flock to his studio. He then removed to
Newport Street and in 1760 established himself in Leicester Fields (now
Leicester Square), which for thirty years was the _rendez-vous_
for the artistic, literary, and distinguished world of London.
In 1768 Reynolds was unanimously elected first President of the
just-established Royal Academy and in 1769 was knighted by George III.
In 1784 Sir Joshua succeeded Allan Ramsay as Painter-in-Ordinary to the
King. In 1789 his eyesight began to fail and he soon had to relinquish
his art. Sir Joshua died in 1792 and was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral
with great pomp. In addition to his enormous list of paintings Sir
Joshua designed the windows for New College, Oxford, and Oxford gave
him the degree of D. C. L. Sir Joshua’s famous _Discourses on Art_
were delivered between 1769 and 1790 at the Academy “to encourage a
solid and vigorous course of study.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert L. Satterlee_
LADY BETTY DELMÉ
--_Sir Joshua Reynolds_]
When we think of the thousands of pictures that Sir Joshua painted--all
of them _fine_ and many of them _great_--we stand amazed at the
capacity of the artist who produced them. They were all creations!
The five portraits of little Isabella Gordon known as _Angels’
Heads_ (National Gallery, London), which in lightness, delicacy, and
iridescence have been compared to the petals of a flower and the
melting softness of the rainbow; _Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse_;
the _Strawberry Girl_; the _Age of Innocence_; _Nelly O’Brien_; _Kitty
Fisher_; _Penelope Boothby_; _Mrs. Abington_; _Lord Ligonier_; _The
Graces Decorating a Terminal figure of Hymen_; _Diana, Lady Crosbie_;
_Mrs. Hardinge_; _Lady Cockburn and her Children_;--all belong to the
first rank of original and artistic achievement.
“Reynolds,” Sir Walter Armstrong writes, “arrived at results scarcely
to be distinguished from those of genius, and did so entirely by the
action of an original mind and a profound taste upon accumulated
materials. His path towards excellence was conscious, discriminative,
judicial. Every step he took was the result of a deliberate choice.
He felt no heats driving him into particular expression in his own
despite. Just as by fairness of mind he produced the effect of sympathy
among his friends, so by unerring judgment he produces the effect of
creation on us who value his art. He appears to me the supreme, if
not the only, modern instance of a painter reaching greatness along
a path, every step of which was trodden deliberately, with a full
consciousness of why it was taken and whither it was leading, and with
the power unimpaired to turn back or to change the goal at any moment.
Superficially the art of Sir Joshua resembled that of Raphael as little
as it well could; mentally the processes of the two men were curiously
alike. Both possessed taste to such a degree that it became genius;
and both were endowed, for the service of their taste, with a mental
industry which is rare.”
It is unfortunate that Sir Joshua experimented so deeply with his
pigments and glazes so that we can see none of his pictures in their
pristine beauty and brilliance. That he was a rare colorist we would
know from _Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse_ and the _Angels’
Heads_--the former rich and gorgeous and the latter iridescent and
delicate--showing the two extremes.
Here is Sir Joshua’s palette given in the _Farington Diary_ under
date of August 14, 1806:
“Marchi (Sir Joshua Reynolds’s assistant) I called on before dinner to
desire him to call upon J. Taylor to give his opinion of a picture
said to be a portrait of Garrick by Sir J. Reynolds. I desired Marchi
to state to me what colors Sir Joshua Reynolds had placed upon his
palette and the order in which they were laid. He named them as
follows. He used a handle palette as it is called: White; Naples
Yellow; Yellow oker; Vermillion; light red; lake; black. Asphaltum he
used occasionally, but that he had it in a galley-pot. His vehicles
were: Mastick varnish and drying oil made into Macgilp in a pot. Nut
oil which he used with his white in a pot. Mastick varnish _only_,
which he sometimes used alone; and Marchi observed that it caused his
colors to crack and fly off. Wax (white virgin wax) he had in a tin pot
which he melted at the fire when he proposed to use it. This vehicle
Marchi observed caused his colors to scale off from the canvas in
flakes.”
To mention the sitters who came to Leicester Fields and the company
that gathered there every evening when Sir Joshua was not dining out
would be to list the entire society of London in the Eighteenth Century.
“In these days we are apt to forget that to many of Sir Joshua’s
contemporaries, with the stricter notions of social precedency in vogue
a century ago,” Sir Walter Armstrong notes, “the painter’s station in
London society must have seemed almost an outrage, especially as it had
been won without any kind of pretence or undue submission to those who
were then called the great. Fond as he was of the best that Society
could give, he lived his life in his own way, invited whom he chose
to his table, leaving his guests to shake down among themselves as
best they could, and, so far as we can discover, paying little heed to
prejudices on the matter of birth, and still less to those which had to
do with politics or conventional morality.”
Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower has made this very interesting comparison
of Romney and Reynolds:
“The mighty events which were in progress around him--the war with
the American Colonies, and the supervening naval war with France and
Spain--ran their course without personally affecting him, whereas
Reynolds was in constant touch with the men who were most vigorously
opposing Lord North’s policy, with Burke and Charles Fox; and it
was his own intimate friend of nearly thirty years standing, Admiral
Keppel, whose trial in this very year 1778, formed the central
battle-ground between the Court and the popular party. In all these
things Reynolds was intimately concerned, as he was in the lighter
events of social life, with his constant dinner-parties at Leicester
Fields, his still more constant attendance at the tables of the great
and the assemblies of Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. Ord, his outings to
Streatham, and his mild flirtation with ‘Little Burney.’ But Romney
lived remote, as remote in his shyness and isolation as Gainsborough
lived in his fondness for a Bohemian world--the world of artists that
painted and played and left war to the soldiers and politics to the
politician. It is true that a couple of years afterwards politics
were brought pretty closely home to both of them, as they were,
_nolentibus volentibus_, to all the householders in London. The
Keppel riots in 1778, celebrating the acquittal of the popular Admiral,
were festive and pleasant enough; noblemen and gentlemen went out
with the crowd; young Pitt, it is said, helped to break Lord North’s
windows; and young Rogers, the banker-poet, to unhinge the gates of the
Admiralty. This was very well and very pleasant; but two years later
the mob improved upon their lesson, and in the Lord George Gordon Riots
London was ablaze.”
THE STRAWBERRY GIRL.
_Sir Joshua Reynolds
(1723–1792)._
_Collection of
Mrs. Francis F. Prentiss._
James Northcote in his _Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds_ notes: “The
picture of a little _Strawberry Girl_ was painted about this time
(1775?) and he considered it one of his best works, observing that no
man ever could produce more than about half a dozen really original
works in his life; “and this picture,” he added, “is one of mine.”
This little girl is about three years old and is shown at three-quarter
length with a handkerchief folded around her head after the fashion
of a turban, the curls escaping from her forehead. She wears a
lightcolored dress with a pinafore caught over her arm. At her neck
is a ribbon bow. Her hands are demurely folded at the waist and over
her right arm hangs a cone-shaped strawberry “pottle.” The background
is composed of large rocks and trees at the right.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mrs. Francis F. Prentiss_
THE STRAWBERRY GIRL
--_Sir Joshua Reynolds_]
The picture is painted in oils on canvas (29 × 24 inches) and is a
replica of the original in the Wallace Collection, London.
Leslie and Taylor voiced so well the impression that every one has when
looking at this fascinating work that what they said bears quoting:
“_The Strawberry Girl_ with her pottle on her arm, creeping
timidly along and glancing round her with large, black eyes, might be
Little Red Riding Hood hearing the first rustle of the wolf in the
wayside bushes, could we substitute a red hood for the odd turban-like
head-dress with which the painter has crowned his little maiden, and
which even Sir Joshua’s taste can barely make becoming, and hang on her
arm the basket of butter and eggs for her sick grandmother instead of
the strawberry pottle which gives her a name.”
The model for _The Strawberry Girl_ was Miss Theophila Palmer, Sir
Joshua’s favorite niece, who lived with him and looked after him until
her marriage. Her name Theophila was divided into two pet names. “The”
and “Offie,” upon which Sir Joshua once wrote a playful-verse:
When I’m drinking my tea, I am thinking of The,
When I’m drinking my coffee, I’m thinking of Offie,
So, whether I’m drinking my tea or my coffee,
I always am thinking of thee, my The-Offie.
In the _Farington Diary_ (Vol. IV), by Joseph Farington (London, 1924),
we also learn that Miss Theophila Palmer was the “My dear Offy” of
Sir Joshua’s letter, dated Jan. 30, 1781, in which he wished that she
and Mr. Robert Lovell Gwatkin of Kellrow, Truro, Cornwall, her future
husband, “may be as happy as both deserve--and you will be the happiest
couple in England. So God Bless you!”
[Illustration:
_Collection of the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington_
DIANA, VISCOUNTESS CROSBIE
--_Sir Joshua Reynolds_]
Fanny Burney, in a description of a reception at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s
house in Leicester Square, refers to young Gwatkin, the Cornish Squire,
“making sheep’s eyes at Offy, whose uncle, Sir Joshua was very fond
of her.” “I never was,” he wrote to Offy, “a great friend to the
efficacy of precept, nor a great professor of love and affection, and,
therefore, I have never told you how much I loved you for fear you
should grow saucy upon it.”
The well-known picture of _Simplicity_ is of Theophila Gwatkin,
daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Gwatkin and this little girl was
also known affectionately as The.
DIANA, VISCOUNTESS CROSBIE.
_Sir Joshua Reynolds
(1723–1792)._
_Collection of the late
Mr. Henry E. Huntington._
Sir Joshua Reynolds pronounced the _Strawberry Girl_ one of his most
original creations. The portrait of _Diana Lady Crosbie_ certainly
ranks as another. All critics are united in considering it one of the
finest productions of the master’s brush. Who but Sir Joshua would ever
have thought of such a pose?
The Honorable Miss Diana Sackville, daughter of Lord George Sackville,
aged twenty-one, was engaged to be married to Viscount Crosbie (son and
heir of the first Earl of Glandore) and was visiting his seat, Ardfert
Abbey, Kerry, Ireland. Lord Crosbie sent for Sir Joshua Reynolds to
come and paint the portrait of Lady Diana; and the story goes that soon
after arriving Sir Joshua caught sight of Lady Diana running across the
lawn. He was so fascinated by her lightness and grace that he begged
permission to paint her as he had first seen her.
Consequently, we have Lady Diana surprised in the act, as it were, of
tripping over the park, holding up her dress with her right hand and
extending her left in graceful attitude. The dress is white silk, bound
at the waist by a gold sash, and beneath the folds of the dress, so
exquisitely painted, the tip of a small slipper is seen. The picture
was painted in September, 1777, and two months later Lady Diana was
married to Lord Crosbie. In 1781, when her husband succeeded to the
title, Lady Crosbie became, of course, Countess of Glandore. She died
in 1814. For painting this portrait Sir Joshua received £78.15.
The picture, oils on canvas (93 × 58 inches), left the Crosbie home
only within recent years to occupy a place of honor in Sir Charles
Tennant’s drawing-room in London. From the Tennant Collection it went
directly to California. The picture has been engraved several times
and the best known engravings are by W. Dickinson (1779); James Scott
(1863); and R. S. Clouston (1890); and “proofs before letters” of these
plates bring very high prices in the auction-rooms.
“Here is a miracle of vivacity,” says Spielmann, “so natural, so
alive, that you almost forget that you are in front of a picture as
you look at this lady who moves across the canvas with outstretched
hand to greet you as you approach. Rarely have animation and movement
been so completely realized on canvas. The design is finely sustained
by the mellow, golden tone of the white dress and the telling note of
the golden scarf, all seen against a convincing landscape that seems
entirely novel in Reynolds’s open-air portraits.”
MRS. SIDDONS AS THE TRAGIC MUSE.
_Sir Joshua Reynolds
(1723–1792)._
_Collection of the late
Mr. Henry E. Huntington._
This gorgeous portrait, oils on canvas (93 × 56 inches), was painted
in 1785, when the famous actress was twenty-eight, in the full bloom
of her beauty and fruition of her talents; and it is rightly described
by Mrs. Jameson as “the apotheosis of her genius and beauty.” It is
painted in the “grand style” with rich coloring of amber and purple,
the _Tragic Muse_ seated on a throne among the clouds with her
head lifted as if listening to some inspiring voices and her hand
raised as if to command silence. A coronet of pearls adorns her hair,
and heavy ropes of pearls are wound around her neck and are knotted
loosely in front. Over her lap is thrown a drapery, on the hem of which
Sir Joshua painted his name.
The poetic and dramatic conception of the picture show how much Sir
Joshua admired Michelangelo’s _Prophets_ and _Sibyls_ in the Sistine
Chapel.
In this magnificent work Sir Joshua certainly realized his theories
regarding the “grand style” as expressed in his _Fourth Discourse_
to his pupils: “To give a general air of grandeur at first view all
trifling or artificial play of little lights, or an attention to a
variety of tints, is to be avoided; a quietness and simplicity must
reign over the whole work; to which a breadth of uniform and simple
color will very much contribute.”
In the theatrical annals of England the Kemble family rank with the
later Trees and Terrys; and Mrs. Siddons was a Kemble. Sarah Siddons,
the eldest daughter of Roger Kemble, actor and theatrical manager,
was born in 1755 in Brecon, Wales, where her father was managing a
troupe of players. She was the sister of Charles Kemble, the famous
comedian and manager of the Covent Garden Theatre, and aunt of Fanny
Kemble, the noted actress. At an early age, Sarah played small parts
in her father’s company and when she was eighteen was married to a
young actor named Siddons, also in the Kemble company. Soon afterward
Mr. and Mrs. Siddons appeared in _The Clandestine Marriage_ in
the provinces. Sarah Siddons soon attracted Garrick’s attention and
he gave her an engagement at Drury Lane; but she was not a success.
She then went to Bath, where she became a favorite and established her
reputation. In 1783 she reappeared at Drury Lane and this time she took
London by storm. Then she went to Dublin, where more triumphs added
to her confidence as well as to her fame; and, when she returned to
London, it was to Covent Garden, where her brother, John Philip Kemble,
was manager. Mrs. Siddons shone especially in tragedy and achieved,
perhaps, her greatest success as Lady Macbeth. When Byron saw her in
this _rôle_ he wrote: “It was something transcending nature; one
would say that a being of a superior order had descended from a high
sphere to inspire fear and admiration at the same time.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington_
MRS. SIDDONS AS THE TRAGIC MUSE
--_Sir Joshua Reynolds_]
Mrs. Siddons’s great parts were Lady Macbeth, Portia, Constance,
Isabella, Jane Shore, Almeira, Lady Ann, Calista, Belvedera, and Mrs.
Beverly. In 1812 she retired from the stage with a large fortune and
died in 1831. Thomas Campbell wrote her life in 1834.
All the portrait-painters of the day had Mrs. Siddons sit to them. The
most famous pictures, however, were Reynolds’s _Tragic Muse_;
Gainsborough’s beautiful one in an afternoon costume of light blue,
striped silk, black hat, yellow scarf and muff, in the National
Gallery, London; and two by Lawrence, also in the National Gallery,
London.
“It was probably after his return from his tour of the Low Countries
that Mrs. Siddons, now in the very flush of her popularity, sat to
him. She had not yet acted in Shakespeare, unless her first appearance
as Isabella (_Measure for Measure_) and as Constance (_King John_)
with her brother, John Kemble (for whom her success had procured a
leading engagement at Drury Lane), preceded her first sittings, which
is possible, though not probable. Her fame has been won in such parts
as Isabella (in _The Mourning Bride_), Euphrasia (in _The Grecian
Daughter_), Jane Shore, Calista, Belvedera, Zara, and Mrs. Beverly. The
Royal Family, little as they loved tragedy, had already distinguished
her by every mark of favor. Her house was besieged by the noble and
fashionable. The managers of Drury Lane had gladly supplemented her
modest salary of ten pounds a week by a double benefit; and in June
she had left London--after a series of successes which almost eclipsed
the still recent fame of Garrick--for Ireland and a short round of
provincial performances. Mr. Russell, author of the _History of Modern
Europe_, had sung her praises under the title of The Tragic Muse,
before she left London. His verses are forgotten, but they may have
suggested to Reynolds the subject of his picture. It could not have
been prompted, as Boaden imagines, by an allusion in the epilogue to
_Tancred and Sigismunda_, as her first appearance in that tragedy was
on the 24th of April, 1784, when the picture was already in its place
on the walls of the Exhibition-Room. The conception of this noble work
was no doubt suggested by Michelangelo’s _Isaiah_. Mrs. Siddons told
Mr. Phillips that it was the production of pure accident. Sir Joshua
had begun the head and figure in a different view; but while he was
occupied in the preparation of some color she changed her position
to look at a picture hanging on the wall of the room. When he again
looked at her and saw the action she had assumed, he requested her not
to move; and thus arose the beautiful and expressive figure we now see
in the picture.”[24]
Yet there is still another story, which is told by Mrs. Jameson. Mrs.
Siddons used to describe Sir Joshua as taking her by the hand and
leading her up to his platform with the words: “Ascend your undisputed
throne; bestow on me some idea of the Tragic Muse.” On which, Mrs.
Siddons said: “I walked up the steps and instantly seated myself in
the attitude in which the Tragic Muse now appears.” It is most likely
that both stories are true. Sir Joshua’s leading the Queen of the
London Stage to her throne on his painting-platform with his courtly
compliment was thoroughly in character and that he also encouraged The
Tragic Muse to act her part and create expression as well as take a
dramatic pose, is also most in keeping with the exciting moment. Sir
Joshua undoubtedly foresaw that he had the opportunity of producing his
greatest masterpiece.
Mrs. Siddons also related that when Sir Joshua was putting the last
touches to the work he said: “I cannot resist the opportunity for going
down to posterity on the edge of your garment,” upon which he painted
his name and the date 1784 on the hem of the robe.
However, Sir Joshua had already done this ten years before in the
portrait of _Lady Cockburn and her Children_, in the National Gallery,
London, where the name and date make a decorative finish to Lady
Cockburn’s amber-colored robe trimmed with white fur thrown across her
lap and that famous picture was begun in 1773 and finished in 1775.
_The Tragic Muse_ was greatly admired when it first appeared. _The
Public Advertiser_, April 28, 1784, said:
“It is impossible to be too lavish in its praise; it is, indeed, a most
sublime and masterly performance and undoubtedly one of the very best
that ever was produced by Sir Joshua. He seems to have conceived and
executed it with enthusiasm. Mrs. Siddons is drawn in the character
of _The Tragic Muse_, the composition is in a grand style, the figure
possesses great dignity, and that fine expression of countenance for
which the original is preëminent and almost unrivalled. Sir Joshua has
been said to paint the _mind_; and perhaps there never _was_ a more
striking instance of it than in this performance. The accompanying
genii ready to administer the dagger or the bowl have also great
expression, and in the effect of the _tout ensemble_ there is a
grandeur and a solemnity suited to the subject and highly worthy of
universal admiration.”
It is illuminating, too, to dip into the _Farington Diary_ (London,
1925), and note in 1801:
“Opie thinks the Mrs. Siddons by Sir Joshua the finest picture he
knows. Opie thinks the picture of Mrs. Siddons much superior to any of
the Titians which were brought by Day from Rome.
“Bourgeois mentioned that Sir Joshua had said the principle to work
upon is to fix a high light and a lowest depth to which all other
lights and dark parts should be subordinate.”
In 1808 we read:
“Lawrence spoke with the highest admiration of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s
portrait of _Lord Heathfield_ now at the European Museum, having
been sent there by Boydell to be sold for 350 guineas. He said this
picture and the portrait of _Mrs. Siddons_ by Sir Joshua are the top
of his Art.” And again in the same year: “We looked at the picture of
_Mrs. Siddons_ by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Lawrence said, it was his best
picture. I said, it was a high refinement of Rembrandt. Mr. Smith[25]
said he gave £320 for it, which was not half what Calonne paid. It cost
the latter £800.”
On the authority of Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower in _Sir Joshua
Reynolds_ (London, 1902), we learn:
“There is another version of _The Tragic Muse_ in the Dulwich Gallery.
This was sold by Reynolds to M. Desenfans for seven hundred guineas
in 1790 and the date on the hem of her garment is 1789, from which it
appears that he completed this five years after the Grosvenor House
picture. Both of these may be regarded as the authentic work of the
master. There is a replica also of _The Tragic Muse_ at Langley Park,
near Stowe, which is said to have been given by Reynolds to Mr. Harvey
in exchange for a painting by Snyders of a _Boar Hunt_; and another was
in the possession of Mrs. Combe in Edinburgh. I think there is no doubt
that these replicas are by the hands of Reynolds’s assistants.”
Mrs. Siddons in the Dulwich Gallery (canvas 93 × 57 inches) described
as follows:
“She sits on a throne in front view and looks up towards the right; the
right arm and the left elbow rest on the throne; with the hand raised
as if listening to some inspiring voice; a coronet on the back of her
hair; wearing an amber brown dress, with rows of pearls round her neck;
across her lap is a robe, on the hem of which Sir Joshua has inscribed
his name. Paid for, February 1790, Mrs. Siddons, sold to Mr. Desenfans
£735.”
The picture was purchased from Sir Joshua in 1790 by Noel Desenfans
and by him bequeathed to Sir Francis Bourgeois, R. A., by whom it was
left to Dulwich College. It hangs in the picture gallery there. It is
interesting to note that the date on the hem of the robe is 1789--five
years after the Duke of Westminster’s picture! Some critics think that
Sir Joshua also painted this replica himself.
Leslie and Taylor mention in their _Life of Reynolds_ that they failed
to find any note relative to Score’s making a copy of _The Tragic
Muse_; but they draw attention, on the contrary, to the following
extract from Northcote’s _Life of Reynolds_:
“The picture of a little _Strawberry Girl_ with a kind of turban on
her head was painted about this time (1772) and he considered it one
of his best works, observing that no man ever could produce more
than about half a dozen really original works in his life; ‘and this
picture,’ he added, ‘is one of them.’ The picture was exhibited (1773)
and repeated several times; not so much for the sake of profit as for
that of improvement, for _he always advised as a good mode of study,
that a painter should have two pictures in hand of precisely the same
subject and design and should work on them alternately; by which means,
if chance produced a lucky hit, as it often does_, then instead of
working on the same piece, and by that means destroy that beauty which
chance had given, he should go to the other and improve upon that. Then
return again to the first picture, which he might work upon without any
fear of obliterating the excellence which chance had given it, having
transposed it to the other. Thus his desire of excellence enabled him
to combat with every sort of difficulty or labor.
“The compilers’ theory, then, is: after the sketch of _Mrs. Siddons’s_
portrait was laid in, he took up a fresh canvas, made a replica and
worked on both alternately until ‘the lucky hit’ was produced and
that appeared to Sir Joshua in the picture finished and exhibited in
the Royal Academy, 1784. Notwithstanding the glowing eulogiums passed
upon it, a purchaser was not found for it until 1788, when it was sold
to M. de Calonne. Sir Joshua did not record the sale in his ledger,
or note-book, and it only transpired when Skinner and Dyke sold at
their rooms, Spring Gardens, 1795, the English pictures of the Calonne
Collection and specified in the Catalogue that M. de Calonne paid Sir
Joshua 800 guineas for the portrait of Mrs. Siddons in the character of
the Tragic Muse.
“At this time M. Desenfans was Consul-general in Great Britain for the
Kingdom of Poland, a writer of marked ability, a recognized authority
on art, an extensive picture-dealer, employed by the King of Poland
to purchase high-class Old Masters to complete his Collection and who
kept up an acquaintance with Sir Joshua, notwithstanding the trick he
played of selling him, through Cribb, his frame-maker, the copy of a
Claude, specially made by Marchi for the purpose as an original. The
compiler’s surmise is, then, that he knew Sir Joshua had the unfinished
replica on hand, and came to an understanding with him to complete it
in its present form, ‘signed and dated 1789 on the edge of the robe.’
This investigation leads to three inferences; first, that Sir Joshua
would not condescend, for any consideration, to sign and date a copy
of _The Tragic Muse_ made by Score; secondly, that an astute man
of business, such as Desanfans was, would not give £735 for a copy;
thirdly, that The Dulwich picture must now be regarded in the same
light as the Westminster one--both from the hand of Reynolds; but which
was first commenced cannot be ascertained.”
GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE.
_Sir Joshua Reynolds
(1723–1792)._
_Collection of the late
Mr. Henry E. Huntington._
It is interesting to compare this picture by Sir Joshua with
Gainsborough’s _Duchess of Devonshire_ (see page 373), which is
probably the earlier of the two. This picture, oils on canvas (94 ×
57 inches), was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1776 as No. 233.
The Duchess had not long been married when this picture was painted,
as her marriage took place in 1774. There is something in the pose
that suggests the portrait of _Diana, Lady Crosbie_, which was painted
later. The Duchess is represented full-length facing the left, in the
act of descending a flight of stone steps, her right hand placed on the
balustrade and her left holding her dress very gracefully. The dress
is cream-colored cut low in the neck and fashioned with full sleeves.
The skirt is gracefully cut and abounds in plaits and draperies. A
gauzy scarf is wound around her right arm and floats below. The hair
is dressed very fashionably with a long and round curl pinned tightly
at the back of the neck and reaching the shoulder, and above the braid
which forms a coronal the hair mounts higher and is ornamented by
pearls and grey and red feathers. Vines are growing gracefully around
the balustrade, beyond which and through the near-by trees we see an
open vista of the park with a statue at the left. Presumably this is
_Chatsworth_, the seat of the Duke of Devonshire.
[Illustration:
_Collection of the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington_
GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE
--_Sir Joshua Reynolds_]
The picture was in the Collection of Earl Spencer, K. G., at Althorp,
Nottinghamshire, before it was taken to California.
THE COTTAGE DOOR.
_Thomas Gainsborough
(1727–1788)._
_Collection of the late
Mr. Henry E. Huntington._
The little group is assembled in front of a thatched cottage, beside
which a gnarled and withered tree rises scarred and seared by the
storms of many years. Overhanging the roof a large tree droops its
feathery Gainsborough foliage and, on the left, half of another
feathery Gainsborough tree is waving in the summer breeze. By this
tree, and farther back as well, a stream is seen falling in a little
cascade beneath a rustic bridge. Luxuriant weeds grow in the foreground
and by the side of the cottage, the door of which is open and beside
which a peasant’s family is grouped. The mother, in yellowish brown
skirt and white bodice, has a suggestion (save for the costume) of the
beautiful ladies that sat to Gainsborough. In her arms is a baby. On
her right, is a little boy, scantily dressed, who is eating something;
in front of her are two children, one holding a bowl and the other
dipping from it with a spoon; a fifth child, with one hand on his head
and the finger of his left hand in his mouth, looks forward shyly;
and the sixth is seated on the ground by his side. “Old pimply-nosed
Rembrandt,” as Gainsborough called him, never lighted a scene more
beautifully, nor more marvellously than this.
The picture, oils on canvas (57 × 46 inches), is one of Gainsborough’s
most mature works and dates from about 1776–1778.
Bought by T. Harvey of Catton, Norfolk, in 1786, it passed to Mr.
Coppin of Norwich in 1807. Then it became the property of Sir John
Leicester, Bart., created Lord de Tabley in 1826; and at the Sale of
the effects of the latter it was bought by Earl Grosvenor, created
Marquess of Westminster in 1831. In 1921 _The Cottage Door_ was
sold by the second Duke of Westminster to Mr. Henry E. Huntington.
“There is no painter of English birth more widely appreciated than
Gainsborough whose art touches every observer, great and simple,
learned and unlearned. As we look at his pictures, said Constable,
we find tears in our eyes and know not what brings them. A thread
of romance runs through the whole of Gainsborough’s career, from
his marriage to a beautiful and well-dowered bride, whose origin is
shrouded in mystery, down to the pathetic termination of the long
years of jealous rivalry with Reynolds. And romance and mystery are
inseparably connected with his pictures--with the portraits of that
_Duchess of Devonshire_, whom tradition has brought us to regard as
typical of English beauty, with that masterpiece at Edinburgh, the
portrait of _Mrs. Graham_, hidden from sight for fifty years on account
of one of the tenderest of love stories; and with the famous _Blue
Boy_, the secret of whose history still remains undiscovered.”[26]
“Old pimply-nosed Rembrandt and myself were both born in a mill,”
Gainsborough used to say, because his father, John Gainsborough, was
a manufacturer of woollens in Sudbury. Thomas was born there in 1727.
At twelve he was said to be a “confirmed painter.” His first portrait
seems to have been a great success. Some one had been stealing pears
from the Gainsborough orchard and one day, when young Thomas was
sketching there he saw a man’s face peering over the fence. Instantly
he made a quick sketch and took it into the house. By means of this
sketch the culprit was identified. Gainsborough then enlarged the
sketch, painted an oil portrait, mounted it on a board, and stuck “Tom
Peartree” up to the delight of all the neighbors and confusion of
strangers. This picture was lent to the Gainsborough Exhibition held at
the Grosvenor Gallery in 1885 and is now in the Elizabethan Mansion in
Christchurch Park, Ipswich.
[Illustration:
_Collection of the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington_
THE COTTAGE DOOR
--_Thomas Gainsborough_]
In 1741 Gainsborough went to London and, after studying under Hubert
Gravelot and Francis Hayman, took a studio in Hatton Garden and tried
to start as a portrait and landscape-painter. A year of failure decided
the young artist to return home. In a short time he married Margaret
Burr (supposed to be a natural daughter of the Duke of Bedford) and
removed to Ipswich. Here he painted chiefly landscapes. About 1760 he
settled in Bath and immediately became the fashion. Fourteen years
later Gainsborough removed to London, where his success continued and
he became the rival of Reynolds. Gainsborough had already in 1768 been
nominated by George III one of the thirty-six Academicians on the
foundation of the Academy and he exhibited almost yearly at the Royal
Academy from 1769 to 1788, when there was a misunderstanding about the
hanging of his pictures. Gainsborough died in 1788, closing one of
the most remarkable careers in art, for this great painter was almost
entirely self-taught. Reynolds called attention to this remarkable fact
in his _Fourteenth Discourse_, in which he cites Gainsborough as
an example of an artist who has arrived “at great fame without the
assistance of an academical education, or any of those preparatory
studies which have so often been recommended.”
Yet his genius was such that he attained the greatest eminence in his
day and his place in art to-day is in the small circle of the very
great ones.
Ruskin did not exaggerate in the least when he wrote: “Gainsborough’s
power of color is capable of taking rank beside that of Rubens; he is
the purest colorist of the English School; with him, in fact, the art
of painting did in great part die and exists not now in Europe. In
management and quality of single and particular tint, in the purely
technical part of painting, Turner is a child to Gainsborough. His
hand is as light as the sweep of a cloud, as swift as the flash of a
sunbeam. He never loses sight of his picture as a whole. In a word
Gainsborough is an immortal painter.”
Gainsborough painted about seven hundred portraits and two hundred
landscapes. Strange as it may seem, he preferred to paint landscapes.
At least he told George III this. And he told his friend Jackson
in a letter “I’m sick of Portraits and wish very much to take my
viol-da-gamba and walk off to some sweet village where I can paint
landskips and enjoy the fag-end of life in quietness and ease.”
This seems strange coming from one of the greatest of all
portrait-painters.
To read the list of Gainsborough’s portraits is to run through the
Social Register of London and Bath. Gainsborough painted “everybody
that was anybody.” The great personalities of the day wanted their
portraits “limned” by both Reynolds and Gainsborough, often adding
Romney and Hoppner as well. The fourteen years that he lived in Bath
Gainsborough’s painting-room was almost as much of a _rendez-vous_
as the Pump Room and his sitters ranged from the most aristocratic
and wealthy, such as Earl Spencer, his wife, and little daughter, the
future Duchess of Devonshire, to statesmen, like Pitt, and actors like
Garrick and Quin. The latter sat three times to Gainsborough. The
following little piece of amusing acting usually took place. Quin,
suffering from gout, would hobble to the painting-room and tapping at
the door would ask “Is Old Grumpus in?” Gainsborough would reply “Come
in”; and, placing a chair for his friend and a stool to rest his foot
upon, would put on a grave, doctorial look and, resting his chin on his
maul-stick, would inquire in the Bath phrase: “Well, how is _toe_?”
Quin evidently was a critic: “Sometimes, Tom Gainsborough,” he
said, “a picture in your rigmarole style appears to my optics the
veriest daub,--then, the devil’s in you, I think you a Van Dyck!” And
Gainsborough would tell Quin that “nothing could equal the devilism of
portrait-painting.”
“Indeed, he told me,” Angelo relates, “at his house in Pall Mall,
that he was sure the perplexities of rendering something like a human
resemblance from human blocks was a trial of patience that would have
tempted holy St. Anthony to cut his own throat with his palette-knife.”
Gainsborough was devoted to music, played several instruments and was
a great friend of the oboe-player in the Queen’s Band, John Christian
Fischer, who married his daughter Margaret; of John Christian Bach,
son of the great John Sebastian Bach; and of Bach’s associate, Charles
Frederick Abel, the celebrated virtuoso on the viol-da-gamba, whose
portrait Gainsborough painted with his instrument by his side, and
which is now in the Huntington Gallery.
Gainsborough’s portrait by Zoffany in the National Portrait Gallery,
London, presents a handsome and rather dashing man of about thirty-five
with classic features and large, fine eyes with penetrating glance and
an intelligent, interior light. Had he not been a painter he might have
easily become a _beau_, or a gallant officer of the Major André type,
or of that impudent young dog, Jack Absolute, who captivated Miss Lydia
Languish in _The Rivals_.
It was the same in London as it had been in Bath. Gainsborough became
the fashion. He barely had time to fill all the orders that came thick
and fast and he enjoyed society and still more his cronies, and, to
judge from numerous anecdotes, was not averse to wild companions; but
for all that he was generous, sympathetic, outgoing, and much beloved
by his friends.
As an instance of his ready wit on one occasion, when he was in court
regarding a picture the councillor tried to embarrass him. “I observe,”
he said, “you lay great stress on a painter’s eye. What do you mean by
that expression!” “A painter’s eye,” replied Gainsborough, without a
moment’s hesitation, “is to him what a lawyer’s tongue is to you!”
Gainsborough was sprightly, humorous, and lively in conversation and
indeed, in society, to use the word of the period, something of a
“rattle.”
Whenever he appeared, either at a morning lounge at Christie’s amidst
the enlightened and polite, or at My Lady’s midnight rout surrounded by
bowing _beaux_ and curtseying belles, his gaiety enlivened every
group. He knew everybody and everybody knew him; he was, however, most
at home with the worthies of the auction-room. For some years Garrick
was frequently his companion at Christie’s, where the amusement caused
by the humor common to both never failed to give an additional zest to
the proceedings. Mr. Christie often declared that “the presence of this
choice pair added fifteen per cent to his commission on a sale.”
And this was a “choice pair,”--Garrick and Gainsborough!
“We know as little about Gainsborough’s tools and methods of painting
as we do of his pigments, but if his daughter’s memory may be trusted,
her father worked with paint so thin and liquid that his palette ran
over unless he kept it on the level. It is generally agreed that he
used very long brushes, and Nollekens Smith who saw him at work, says:
‘I was much surprised to see him sometimes paint portraits with pencils
on sticks full six feet in length and his method of using them was
this: he placed himself and his canvas at a right angle to the sitter,
so that he stood still and touched the features of his pictures exactly
at the same distance at which he viewed the sitter.’ The anonymous
biographer of the _Morning Chronicle_ who knew the painter excuses
his supposed want of finish by saying that he worked with a very long
and broad brush. Another contemporary, John Williams (Pasquin), in a
biographical note declares that Gainsborough always prided himself
upon using longer and broader tools than other men and upon standing
farther away from his canvas when at work. That he always stood to
paint we know from Thicknesse, but it is obvious that all his work
could not have been done with broad tools of hog-hair. Probably he used
camel-hair brushes sometimes, as did Gainsborough Dupont, who inherited
his uncle’s implements and colors and in painting followed his manner
exactly. Dupont left behind him, in addition to a great quantity of
hogtools, ‘twelve bundles of camel’s hair pencils.’ Fulcher says that
when Gainsborough’s sitters left him it was his custom to close the
shutter, in which was a small circular aperture, the only access for
light and by this subdued illumination work on his picture and get rid
of superfluous detail. No authority is given for this statement, but
there can be little doubt that Gainsborough loved to subdue the light
in his painting-room. Williams says that it was sometimes subdued to
such an extent that objects were barely visible.”[27]
And Osias Humphrey, R. A., tells us a little more, drawing from his
memories of Bath,... “Exact resemblances in his portraits was Mr.
Gainsborough’s constant aim, to which he invariably adhered. These
pictures, as well as his landscapes, were frequently wrought by
candle-light and generally with great force and likeness. But his
painting-room--even by day a kind of darkened twilight--had scarcely
any light and I have seen him, whilst his subjects have been sitting to
him when neither they nor the pictures were scarcely discernible.” We
also learn that Gainsborough let in more light when the picture reached
its finishing stages.
THE MALL IN ST. JAMES’S PARK.
_Thomas Gainsborough
(1727–1788)._
_Collection of the late
Mr. Henry Clay Frick._
Horace Walpole characterized this delightful picture as airier than
a Watteau and “all in motion and flutter like a lady’s fan.” It is
one of Gainsborough’s latest works, painted in 1786, and one of his
masterpieces, oils on canvas (57¾ × 47½ inches). The picture was among
those in the painter’s studio at the time of his death. After a few
changes of ownership, it passed into the Collection of George Frost,
an artist and fellow-townsman of Gainsborough, and then to Sir Audley
Dallas Neeld, Bart., Grittleton House, near Chippenham, Wiltshire.
_The Mall_ is a perfect epitome of London society in the Eighteenth
Century--the London of Austin Dobson.
“The Mall from the days of the Stuarts until the closing years of the
Eighteenth Century was the field upon which fashion, and feminine
fashion especially, chose to disport itself. Twice a day social London
donned its best apparel and took a turn under the trees, once at
midday and again, in summer, in its evening clothes after the early
dinner. Here fashion met its friends, exchanged its repartees, made
appointments for evening _rendez-vous_ at Ranelagh or Vauxhall,
ate fruit or bought flowers from Betty’s girl out of St. James’s
Street, or drank syllabubs from the red cow’s milk which was one of
the attractions of the London parks. Nothing in the external aspect of
London more struck the intelligent foreigner than the amenities of the
promenade in the Mall. One of these gentlemen concluded an eloquent
pæan on the beauty of the lady promenaders, by recording with rapture
that of a morning the very ground glistened with the pins which they
had dropped. The Mall, indeed, was the very shrine of flounce and
furbelow until somewhere about 1795, when fashion unaccountably moved
northward to the walk in the Green Park at the back of Arlington
Street, and from there later to Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens.
[Illustration:
_Collection of the Mr. Henry Clay Frick_
THE MALL
--_Thomas Gainsborough_]
“The very spirit of this life is preserved in Gainsborough’s picture,
one of the few canvases in which he represents figures in motion;
singular also among his work is that it contains a score or so of
figures. There is a central group of four ladies with an attendant
cavalier advancing towards the spectator, a pair on the right, two
pairs on the left passing each other, others again seated on the
right. The accidental episodic quality of such a subject is perfectly
conveyed--the transient glance of a passing woman, the turn of the neck
appropriate to that attitude, the ground dotted with an occasional dog.
Technically it represents Gainsborough at his highest, where the solemn
tones of his earlier manner have disappeared, and the very painting
itself seems to echo his delight in the mastery of heightened, luminous
color.”[28]
MARIA WALPOLE, DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER.
_Thomas Gainsborough
(1727–1788)._
_Collection of
Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft._
The subject of this portrait was famous under three names: her maiden
name of Maria Walpole; as Lady Waldegrave; and as the Duchess of
Gloucester. She was very beautiful (no one could compete with her but
the Gunning sisters); she was very witty and brilliant; and, moreover,
she was noted for her rich qualities of heart and character. Her uncle,
Horace Walpole, was devoted to her.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft_
MARIA WALPOLE, DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER
--_Thomas Gainsborough_]
Maria Walpole began life under a cloud, but this was soon dispelled and
the rest was all sunshine. The Hon. Edward Walpole, second son of Sir
Robert, was her father and her mother was a milliner’s apprentice at
Bath. Maria was baptized July 10, 1738, at St. James’s, Westminster,
and was made legitimate by His Majesty’s warrant. Recognized as a
Walpole, everything was done for her. The old _London Town and
Country Magazine_ gives us this very good idea of her preparation
for life: “Maria’s education was suited to the rank of life in which
she has ever figured; and the advantages she derived from it were
entirely noticed by every man of taste and discernment who was happy
enough to be in her company.”
Horace Walpole brought about her first marriage to the Right Honorable
James, Second Earl of Waldegrave, K. G., in 1759; and he wrote to Sir
Horace Mann:
“I have married, that is, I am marrying my niece, Maria, my brother’s
second daughter, to Lord Waldegrave. What say you? A month ago I
was told he liked her--does he? I jumbled them together and he has
already proposed. For character and credit he is the first match in
England--for beauty I think she is. She has not a fault in her face and
person and the detail is charming. A warm complexion tending to brown,
fine eyes, brown hair, fine teeth, and infinite wit and variety.”
In another letter Sir Horace wrote: “The second daughter of my brother
is beauty itself. Her face, bloom, eyes, hair, teeth, and person all
are perfect. You may imagine how charming she is when her only fault,
if one must find one, is that her face is rather too round. She has a
great deal of wit and vivacity with perfect modesty.”
To George Montagu on May 16, he wrote:
“Well! Maria was married yesterday. Don’t we manage well? The
original day was not once put off; lawyers and milliners were all
ready canonically. It was as sensible a wedding as ever was. There
was neither form nor indecency, both which generally meet on such
occasions. They were married at my brother’s in Pall Mall just before
dinner by Mr. Keppel;[29] the company, my brother, his son, Mrs. Keppel
and Charlotte,[30] Lady Elizabeth Keppel, Lady Betty Waldegrave and
I. We dined there. The Earl and new Countess got into the post-chaise
at eight o’clock and went to Navestock (Lord Waldegrave’s seat near
Brentwood, Essex) alone, where they stay till Saturday night; on Sunday
she is to be presented. Maria was in a white and silver nightgown[31]
with a hat very much pulled over her face; what one could see of it
was handsomer than ever; a cold maiden blush gave her the sweetest
delicacy in the world.”
Maria was a friend of the Countess of Coventry, who had attained fame
as the beautiful Maria Gunning and used to walk with her in the Park
and they must have been a very striking pair, for after the Countess
of Coventry’s death, Lady Waldegrave was considered the handsomest
woman in England. A month after Maria’s marriage Sir Horace noted in a
letter: “My Lady Coventry and my niece Walpole have been mobbed in the
park.”
There were three daughters of this marriage--Laura, Maria, and
Horatia--remembered to-day especially for the group portrait Sir Joshua
Reynolds painted of them and which belonged to Sir Horace Walpole in
1782.
Lord Waldegrave died in 1763; and on Sept 6, 1766, Maria, now Dowager
Countess of Waldegrave, was married privately to H. R. H. William
Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, seven years her junior.
The marriage was performed in her own house in Pall Mall by her own
chaplain and she thus became the sister-in-law of George III. The
secret was kept for some time and the King banished his brother from
Court, but after two years the Duke was taken back into Royal favor and
the Duchess bore her honors with such grace and dignity that she became
very popular at Court.
The portrait represented here, oils on canvas (35½ × 27½ inches), was
painted about 1779, or before.
“We hear,” the _Public Advertiser_ printed on May 4, 1772, “that the
gentlemen upon the Committee for managing the Royal Academy have been
guilty of a scandalous meanness to a capital artist by secreting a
whole-length picture of an English Countess for fear their Majesties
should see it; and this only upon a full conviction that it was the
best finished picture sent in this year to the Exhibition.” Again in
1775 a society reporter for the _Morning Chronicle_ gathered up this
piece of gossip: “The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester are often going
to a famous painter’s in Pall Mall; and it is reported that he is now
doing both their pictures, which are intended to be presented to a
great lady.”
The picture is nearly three-quarter length and represents the Duchess
in a gold-tinted dress with hair dressed high and powdered and wearing
lovely pearls. Her head is posed upon her left hand and the arm rests
upon a pedestal that is barely visible. There is good reason for
thinking this portrait was originally full-length and that it has been
cut down. It is interesting to compare this portrait of the _Duchess
of Gloucester_ with _The Hon. Mrs. Graham_ in the National Gallery,
Edinburgh, who is painted, full length, and is resting her arm,
likewise, on a pedestal.
“The introduction of a parapet, or indeed, of any kind of architectural
setting in a portrait of kit-cat size is most unusual. The left arm
resting on the parapet and the large scale on which the head is here
painted, confirm our view that our canvas was originally, as Fulcher
claims, a whole length. This canvas to-day is almost exactly kit-cat
size. It may well have been cut down to meet the requirements of
hanging. Half a century ago such a practice was not unknown, especially
in the English Royal Collections. It will be remembered that the lower
portions of the canvas of Gainsborough’s _Eldest Princesses_ was
very inceremoniously cut away in the early part of the Nineteenth
Century.
“A kit-cat, strictly speaking, is a canvas for a portrait less than a
half-length, but including the hands, and measuring 36 by 28 inches.
It is so called from the portraits of the members of the Club at Barn
Elms, who seem to have originally met in the pie-house kept in Shire
Lane, London, by one Kit (i.e. Christopher) Cat. These portraits are
now in the Baker Collection at Bayfordbury, near Hertford.”[32]
In June 1904 _The London Times_ stated that “The Duke of
Cambridge’s pictures, which are now hung on Christie’s walls, form
the largest collection of portraits of the reigning house that has
ever been offered for sale. All, in fact, represent George III and
his family, with their husbands and wives. By far the finest is
Gainsborough’s _Maria Walpole, Countess of Waldegrave and Duchess of
Gloucester_, Horace Walpole’s beautiful niece.”
These art-treasures, as well as Gloucester House, had been inherited
by the Late Duke of Cambridge from his aunt, the second and last
Duchess of Gloucester, who died in 1857.
The sale of this picture created a sensation. Again referring to the
_London Times_ (June 13, 1904), we read: “The honors of the day
distinctly fell to Gainsborough, whose beautiful portrait of _Maria
Walpole_ has established a record price for this artist’s pictures
at auction. Bidding was started on Saturday at 5000 guineas and in
rather more than half a dozen bids reached 12,000 guineas, at which
it was knocked down to Messrs. Agnew & Sons. The price, therefore,
quite eclipses the 10,000 guineas paid in 1876 for the famous stolen
_Duchess of Devonshire_, which remained the record price for a
Gainsborough until Saturday.”
In the following November, the _Majestic_ brought the
$60,000-Gainsborough to New York.
This portrait, when exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1799, was
described by Sir Horace Walpole as “very good and like.”
Maria Walpole died in 1807, two years after the Duke of Gloucester,
leaving one son and two daughters. Of her other portraits Lionel Cust
in _The Royal Collection of Paintings_, Vol. I, 1905, says:
“The beautiful Countess of Waldegrave was one of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s
favorite sitters. She sat to him in 1759, after her marriage, for the
full-length portrait in peeress’s robes, which belongs to the present
Earl Waldegrave, and again in 1761 and 1762, for the well-known
portrait in a turban and for the Madonna-like group with her child,
which was bequeathed by Frances, Countess Waldegrave, to the Duc
d’Aumale, and is now in the Condé Collection at Chantilly. She sat
again to Reynolds in 1764, as a widow in mourning for her husband, and
more than once again during her widowhood. She sat to him in October,
1767, when really Duchess of Gloucester, for a portrait to be given to
her father, Sir Edward Walpole.
“After the marriage had been revealed to the world, the Duchess sat
to Reynolds in 1771, for the full-length seated portrait now at
Buckingham Palace. This was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1774.
This portrait descended to her daughter, H. R. H. Princess Sophia
Matilda of Gloucester, who at her death in November, 1844, bequeathed
the portrait to H. R. H. Prince Albert, the late Prince Consort.
“The Duchess of Gloucester sat for the last time to Reynolds in 1779,
for a group of herself and her daughter, Princess Sophia Matilda.”
GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE.
_Thomas Gainsborough
(1727–1788)._
_Collection of
Mr. and Mrs. Herbert L. Satterlee._
She stands here--proud, elegant, disdainful, stylish, aristocratic,
beautiful, and altogether charming, in her dashing, large, black hat
worn at a _debonnaire_ angle, white dress, and light petticoat and
light blue sash, looking at us with the most marvellous eyes ever put
upon canvas and a mouth that matches them in such naturalness that we
expect the Duchess to smile at any moment. Her eyes have such fire and
sparkle that they pierce right through us. It is hard to believe that
we are looking upon a painted portrait--it must be the Duchess herself
who gives us that alert, penetrating, fiery, and mocking glance.
This picture has had a most romantic history. It is the famous “Lost
Duchess,” stolen in London, and found after twenty-five years in
America.
The Duchess, in some unknown way, fell into the hands of a Mrs.
Maginnis, an old schoolmistress, who had it cut down to fit the space
over the chimney-piece in her sitting-room and burned up the cut-off
piece. Mr. Bentley, a dealer bought the picture from Mrs. Maginnis for
£56 and then sold it to Mr. Wynn Ellis, a wealthy City merchant, who
sent this _Portrait of a Lady_ to be engraved by Messrs. Henry
Graves & Co. This firm, having already engraved the Clifden Duchess of
Devonshire, at once identified the subject. When the Wynn Ellis Sale
took place at Christie’s, June 6, 1876, this portrait created a great
deal of excitement. It was catalogued as follows:
“T. Gainsborough, R. A. _The Duchess of Devonshire_, in a white
dress and blue silk petticoat and sash, large black hat and feathers,
59½ × 45 inches.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert L. Satterlee_
GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE
--_Thomas Gainsborough_]
As this portrait of the Duchess was the first “star” that ever rose
in an auction-sale, it is worth while putting forward here the
contemporary account of an event which has passed into history. The
_London Times_ records:
“The sale of the modern pictures belonging to the Wynn Ellis Collection
on Saturday last created such a sensation as has never been experienced
in the picture world of London. Throughout the week the pictures had
attracted a considerable number of visitors, but on the day preceding
the sale the interest came to a climax and crowds filled the rooms of
Messrs. Christie, Manson, & Woods. Anyone passing the neighborhood of
St. James’s Square might well have supposed that some great lady was
holding a reception and this, in fact, was pretty much what was going
on within the Gallery in King Street. All the world had come to see
a beautiful Duchess, created by Gainsborough; and so far as we could
observe, they all came, saw, and were conquered by her fascinating
beauty.
“When the portrait was placed before the crowded audience a burst of
applause showed the universal admiration of the picture. The biddings
commenced at one of 1000 guineas, which was immediately met with one of
3000 guineas from Mr. Agnew; and, amid a silence of quite breathless
attention, the bids followed in quick succession until 10,000 guineas
was announced. Mr. Agnew then called 10,100 guineas and won the battle
in this most extraordinary contest. The audience densely packed on
raised seats round and on the floor of the house, stamped, clapped, and
bravoed.”
And now comes the story!
Twenty days after this sale, on the night of May 26, 1876, the
galleries of Messrs. Agnew were entered, the canvas was cut from the
stretching frame, and the Duchess was carried off!
Where?
By whom?
The picture was already too well-known to be saleable and to make
it still better known photographs of the picture were immediately
placed in every shop-window in London. The subject became of universal
interest: pictures of the Duchess were printed on every article of
merchandise possible; and fashion decreed that once again the Duchess’s
huge hat should be the proper thing to wear. For many years afterwards
the “Gainsborough Hat” and the “Picture Hat” continued to be worn in
country towns across the Atlantic, far away from London, by persons who
had never heard of the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire.
Sensation No. 2.
In March, 1901, the newspapers all over the world announced that the
“Lost Duchess” had been found!
Mr. Morland Agnew, after various negotiations, was handed a parcel in
the Auditorium Hotel in Chicago which proved to be the Gainsborough
canvas. The discovery had been made by the New York Pinkerton Detective
Agency, who found the thief, one Adam Worth alias Henry Richmond, son
of a German Jew, who had settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and who
was one of the most famous and clever criminals ever known.
A few days after its return the picture was purchased by Mr. J. P.
Morgan at a price beyond £30,000.
Many years before, in 1762–3, Gainsborough had painted in his studio at
Bath the Duchess of Devonshire when she was little Georgiana Spencer,
aged six, in a white dress, pink ribbons, and dainty cap. At the
same period Gainsborough painted portraits of her parents, Earl and
Countess Spencer of Althorp, the one of the Countess ranking very high
among Gainsborough’s works of the Bath period. The Countess, Margaret
Georgiana, daughter of the Hon. Stephen Poyntz, was a very beautiful
and extremely wealthy woman and the Earl also possessed enormous wealth
and became famed for the magnificent Collection he made at Althorp. The
marriage of this couple in 1755 created a sensation and was much talked
of in the gossipy letters and memoirs of the day. One eye-witness
related: “The bride followed in a new sedan-chair lined with white
satin, a black page walking before and three footmen behind, all in the
most superb liveries. The diamonds worn by the newly married pair were
given to Mr. Spencer by Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, and were worth
£100,000. The shoe-buckles of the bridegroom alone were worth £30,000.”
Lady Harvey related that the wedding-party went from London to
Althorp “in three coaches with six horses and two hundred horsemen.
The villages through which they passed were in great alarm, some of
the people shutting themselves up in their houses, and others coming
out with pitchforks, spits, and spades, crying out ‘The invasion has
come’, believing that the Pretender and the King of France were both
come together; and great relief was experienced when the formidable
cavalcade had passed without setting fire to the habitation, or
murdering the inhabitants.”
The year after this marriage Mrs. Delany, Horace Walpole’s friend,
met “Mrs. Spencer, one of the finest figures I ever saw, in white
and silver with all her jewels and scarlet decorations; her modest,
unaffected air gives a lustre to all her finery that would be very
tinsel without it.”
Is it any wonder that with such parentage Georgiana Spencer should have
had brains, beauty, charm, and perfect equipment in every way for that
world of society which was her inheritance?
Georgiana was born on June 9, 1757, and was married at the age of
seventeen to the fifth Duke of Devonshire, regarded as the “first
match” in England. “Georgiana was a lively girl,” said Walpole,
“natural and full of grace.” Immediately the Duchess became “the
irresistible queen of ton” and the most conspicuous leader of society
whenever and wherever she appeared. She dazzled every gathering by
her beauty; astonished everyone with her elegant and extravagant
dress; and charmed everybody by her wit and her grace. The Duchess
was always among the gay butterflies who masqueraded at the Pantheon,
promenaded at Ranelagh, danced at assemblies, or played for high-stakes
at fashionable gaming-tables. To think of London society in the late
Eighteenth Century without the Duchess of Devonshire, is impossible.
Walpole writes that she “effaces all without being a beauty; but her
youthful figure, flowing good nature, sense, and lively modesty and
modest familiarity make her a phenomenon.”
The Duchess had a clever mind and she delighted in the society of
persons of talent. Fox, Sheridan, and Selwyn were among her special
friends. The story of her campaigning for Fox with Fox’s sister, Lady
Duncannon, and even selling “a kiss for a vote” is told by many pens
and by pencils as well, for the Duchess afforded fine material for
the caricaturists. The Duchess was much pleased, it is said, by the
compliment paid to her during the Fox campaign by an Irishman, who
exclaimed: “Sure I could light me pipe at her eyes!” And Gainsborough
managed to fix this flaming glance in the famous Satterlee portrait.
Coarse satire attacked the Duchess of Devonshire as it attacks all
who enter the political arena; but, on the other hand, there are many
tributes from contemporary pens to her sweetness of disposition and to
her noble and generous qualities of heart.
In 1806 upon hearing of her death at Devonshire House, Piccadilly,
(just lately demolished), the Prince of Wales exclaimed: “We have lost
the best-loved woman in England” and Charles James Fox replied: “We
have lost the kindest heart in England.”
The Duchess of Devonshire occasionally wrote verse. Her _Passage
of the Mountain of St. Gothard_, dedicated to her children (she
had a son and two daughters), was published with a French translation
in 1802; an Italian translation was printed in 1803; and a German
translation in 1805. This poem gave occasion to Coleridge’s ode with
the lines:
“O lady nursed in pomp and pleasure
Whence learned you that heroic measure?”
Gainsborough could not have made this or any other portrait of the
Duchess of Devonshire until after 1782, because, in that year, Bate
published in the _Morning Herald_, the following lines:
“O Gainsboro! thou whose genius soars so high,
Wild as an eagle in an unknown sky,
To Devon turn!--thy pencil there shall find
A subject equal to thy happy mind!
Amidst thy fairest scenes, thy brightest dyes,
Like young Aurora let the Beauty rise.”
Another portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire by Gainsborough is also
in this country, owned by the Hon. Andrew W. Mellon. It represents a
whole length life-size figure leaning against a pedestal and came from
the Collection of the late Earl Spencer at Althorp, Nottinghamshire.
THE BLUE BOY.
_Thomas Gainsborough
(1727–1788)._
_Collection of the late
Mr. Henry E. Huntington._
The _Blue Boy_ is without doubt the most famous picture in the world.
When it passed from the Duke of Westminster’s Collection in Grosvenor
House, London, by private sale to the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington, the
event created a sensation in the art-world, which soon extended to the
general public. No painting was ever exploited so widely in the press
and when exhibited at the Duveen Galleries in New York, before starting
on its journey to California, the _Blue Boy_ attracted unusual crowds.
Before it bade farewell to London the famous picture was exhibited at
the National Gallery and the following extract from a letter of Sir
Charles J. Holmes, Director of the National Gallery, dated January
24, 1922, to Sir Joseph Duveen, gives an idea of how the portrait is
regarded in England:
“My dear Duveen: I saw the last, for the time being anyhow, of the
_Blue Boy_ this afternoon at ten minutes past four and feel bound
to write these lines to thank you and Mrs. Huntington for the pleasure
which the sight of it has given to more than 90,000 people during the
last three weeks. It is indeed a most brilliant thing, outshining in
its present condition all our English pictures at Trafalgar Square and
when the natural mellowing of the varnish during the next two or three
years has taken place its perfections will be enhanced. And though its
passing from us has been the cause of universal regret, that regret has
not been tinged with bitterness. It is generally recognized that while
in the process of recovering from the War, the Nation could not have
paid the price which its fortunate owner was able to afford.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington_
THE BLUE BOY
--_Thomas Gainsborough_]
The picture, an oil painting on canvas, is large (5 feet, 10 inches ×
4 feet) and represents a young boy, Master Jonathan Buttall of London,
life-size, dressed in a blue suit, holding a broad-rimmed hat in
his right hand and very conspicuously standing forth from a landscape
background with a dark, cloudy sky.
The following notes from the _Farington Diary_, recently published,
bring us into relation with the two early sales.
Under date of Dec. 15, 1796, we find:
“Buttall’s sale. I went to Gainsborough’s picture of a _Boy in a Blue
Vandyke Dress_ sold for 35 guineas. Several of his drawings were sold
in pairs. Some went so high as 8 guineas and a half the pair.”
“May 25, 1802. I painted till four o’clock and then went to Nesbitt’s
sale in Grafton Street, where I met Hoppner, who had purchased the
_Boy in Blue Dress_ by Gainsborough, which was Buttal’s, for 65
guineas. At Buttalls sale it was sold for 35 to Mr. Nesbitt.”
The picture is in marvellous condition. When Lord Ronald
Sutherland-Gower saw it in the Duke of Westminster’s Collection before
it came to America, he exclaimed:
“The _Blue Boy_ at Grosvenor House has all the glamor and charm of
a portrait of a fairy prince.”
These few words explain the spell that the picture seems to cast upon
every one who sees it, for whenever _The Blue Boy_ has been exhibited
crowds have stood enraptured before it.
Regarding Mr. Nesbitt’s connection with the picture we have the
following story from the Rev. J. T. Trimmer, Vicar of Marston-on-Dove,
Derbyshire:
“Many years ago there resided at Heston a Mr. Nesbitt, a person of
substance and a companion of George, Prince of Wales. He once possessed
Gainsborough’s _Blue Boy_ and in the following way. He was dining with
the Prince. ‘Nesbitt,’ said the Prince, ‘that picture, (pointing to
the _Blue Boy_) shall be yours.’ At first he thought the Prince must
be joking, but, finding he was decidedly serious, Nesbitt, who was a
_beau_ of the first water, made all suitable acknowledgments for H. R.
H.’s generosity and next morning the _Blue Boy_ arrived, followed in
due time by a bill for £300, which he had the satisfaction of paying. I
heard Mr. Nesbitt many years ago tell the story at my father’s table.”
From Mr. Nesbitt the _Blue Boy_ came into possession of John Hoppner,
the artist, who sold it to Earl Grosvenor. Then, of course, _The Blue
Boy_ passed as an heirloom to his successor, the Duke of Westminster.
For many years _The Blue Boy_ hung in Grosvenor House, London, in the
same room with Sir Joshua Reynolds’s _Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse_,
the two most famous portraits of the two most famous English painters.
And it is one of the romances of art that these two portraits should
have crossed the Atlantic and to be again united, as it were, this time
in a California mansion.
Gainsborough had doubtless some reason for painting this portrait;
but it is not the reason usually given,--namely that it was done in
refutation of a theory expressed by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1778. Apart
from the reasons now accepted to disprove this theory, the picture
is too joyously painted for a controversial and academic _tour de
force_.
One of Gainsborough’s latest biographers, Mr. William T. Whitley,[33]
discovered the following in a number of _The European Magazine_ (August
1798), which would seem to give the real reason for the genesis of
Gainsborough’s famous portrait:
_Mr. Gainsborough_
“One of the finest pictures this great artist ever painted, and which
might be put upon a par with any portrait that ever was executed, is
that of a boy in a blue Vandyke dress, which is now in the possession
of a tradesman in Greek Street. Gainsborough had seen a portrait of
a boy by Titian for the first time, and, having found a model that
pleased him, he set to work with all the enthusiasm of his genius. ‘I
am proud,’ he said, ‘of being of the same profession with Titian, and
was resolved to attempt something like him.’”
So much has been written about this portrait and the copies that have
been made of it that great confusion has resulted, and the constant
repetition of the same story by writers has tended to obscure rather
than to clarify the subject. However, the theory now accepted is
that the portrait of _The Blue Boy_ first appeared in public at the
Royal Academy in 1770, sent there by Gainsborough himself,--a theory
supported by a letter written by Mary Moser, R. A. to Fuseli, then in
Rome, in which she said: “It is only telling you what you know already
of the Exhibition of 1770, to say that Gainsborough is beyond himself
in a Vandyke habit.” Another argument in favor of this date is found in
a conversation with an old artist, John Taylor, recorded by J. T. Smith
in his _Book for a Rainy Day_.
The person, chiefly, if not wholly, responsible for the first
suggestion of the theory that Gainsborough painted the picture to
disprove Sir Joshua Reynolds’s pronouncement regarding color seems
to have been John Burnet, the engraver of some of Wilkie’s pictures
and a writer on art. The legend began to be circulated in 1817, when
Burnet published his _Practical Treatise on Painting_, where, after
challenging the rules laid down by Sir Joshua, he says: “I believe
Gainsborough painted the portrait of a boy dressed in blue, now in the
possession of Lord Grosvenor, to show the fallacy of this doctrine.”
That seems to be all there is to it; and, once started, the story
became widespread and was handed on from pen to pen and from lip to
lip, until nearly everybody believes it.
Let us turn, however, to some of the authorities. First to F. G.
Stephens:
“Master Jonathan Buttall was the son of Mr. Jonathan Buttall, an
ironmonger in an extensive way of business, living at 31 Greek Street
(at the corner of King Street), Soho, between 1728 (if not before)
and 1768, when he died. According to the _Book for a Rainy Day_,
he was ‘an immensely rich man.’ The younger Buttall continued in the
business of his father until 1796, when his effects were sold by Sharpe
and Coxe, the well-known auctioneers. These effects included premises
in Soho and the City, a share in Drury Lane Theatre, many drawings
by Gainsborough, and pictures by the same hand and others, wine, and
musical instruments. It has been asserted that a _Blue Boy_ (for
there can hardly be a doubt that more than one version of the work
exists) was sold on this occasion.
“A story has been credited that _The Blue Boy_ was produced by
Gainsborough to refute a dictum of Sir Joshua Reynolds, delivered in
his _Eighth Discourse_ to the Students of the Royal Academy, December
10, 1778: ‘It ought, in my opinion to be indispensably observed, that
the masses of light in a picture be always of a warm, mellow color,
yellow, red, or a yellowish-white; and that the blue, the grey, or the
green colors be kept almost entirely out of these masses, and be used
only to support and set off these warm colors; and for this purpose, a
small proportion of cold colors will be sufficient. Let this conduct
be reversed; let the light be cold and the surrounding colors warm, as
we often see in the works of the Roman and Florentine painters, and it
will be out of the power of Art, even in the hands of Rubens or Titian,
to make a picture splendid and harmonious.’
“It is obvious that the _Eighth Discourse_ may have been delivered
covertly to depreciate a picture which had been exhibited eight years
before, but this is not likely; or it may be assumed that the painting
was produced to demonstrate the futility of the President’s counsel.
It is obvious that Gainsborough might, and probably did, find occasion
to illustrate a principle which is apparently opposed to the dictum of
Reynolds, without reference to the _Eighth Discourse_, or previous
utterance of the P. R. A. Van Dyck repeatedly employed masses of blue
in draperies, with results which are at least equal to those of the
picture before us. The _Children of Charles the First_ at Windsor
is an example of the fact.[34] Leslie and every practical critic
recognized that Gainsborough had evaded the full and just method of
controverting the declaration of Sir Joshua rather than successfully
assailed it.
“The picture before us is known to have been exhibited at the British
Institution with a collection of Gainsborough’s works--the first formed
independently of the artist and his wife--in 1814, under the title of
_Portrait of a Youth_ and again at the same place, in 1834, as ‘117,
_A Young Gentleman in a Landscape_; the Picture known as _The Boy in
Blue_.’ It was at Manchester in 1857; the International Exhibition
in 1862; and at the Royal Academy in 1870. The last occasion evoked
the discussion above alluded to, when the other _Blue Boy_ became
prominent. The question may be summed up by saying that probably the
younger Buttall had a version of his own portrait, while the Prince had
another.
“Reynolds, by the way of supporting his own dictum, produced _A Yellow
Boy_ in the ‘_Portrait of Charles, Earl of Dalkeith_’ with an owl and
a dog, which was No. 132 at the Grosvenor Exhibition, in 1884. ‘_A
Portrait of a Lady_,’ by Gainsborough, known as ‘_The Blue Lady_’ was
at the British Institution in 1859; ‘_The Pink Boy_’ (Master Nicholls,
grandson of Dr. Mead), by Gainsborough, was at the Academy in 1879,
No. 39; it has recently been sold to a member of the Rothschild
family. _The Blue Boy_ is at once the complement and the antithesis of
_Mrs. Graham_ (born Cathcart), now in the Scottish National Gallery
(Edinburgh).”
Turning now to M. H. Spielmann in _British Portrait Painting_:
“In the view expressed by the late F. G. Stephens and others--an
opinion I am inclined to share--the portrait known as _The Blue Boy_,
more properly Master Jonathan Buttall, belongs to the year 1770, or
thereabouts, and not to a period ten years later, as is argued by
those who desire, in the face of internal evidence, to apply to it a
passage--usually cited incorrectly--in Sir Joshua Reynolds’s _Eighth
Discourse_ (delivered in 1778), against the use of masses of cold blue.
The stricture could not possibly apply to this picture, which triumphs
by virtue of its _warm_ blue, as it does by nobility of pose (more
suggestive of a prince, as we imagine a prince should be, than of the
son of a wealthy ironmonger of Greek Street), by the well controlled
power and dignity made manifest throughout and by the brilliant brush
charged with fat paint. The finely posed head with its admirably
expressed character of boyhood and a good deal of sturdy doggedness
behind the intelligent eyes, is rendered a little more heavily than is
Gainsborough’s wont; but that it is a masterpiece of portraiture, as it
is of color, cannot be challenged. This portrait, which from its manner
may be believed to have been painted eight years before the father’s
death and not two years after it, is the first to show Gainsborough’s
outstanding genius as a painter of independent thought and striking
modernity. At the same time it should be pointed out an earlier _Blue
Boy_ by him exists in the portrait of his nephew, Edward Gardiner,
painted in 1768.
“Here in Master Buttall is Gainsborough’s first great invention both
in matter and manner, almost a challenge to Van Dyck’s reputation,
but painted in a scheme of color Van Dyck never thought of, and would
probably never have tried if he had. In handling it is Gainsborough’s
first link with Watteau in its broken tints and fearless lightness of
handling of the drapery, in its fascinating play of light and shade,
its delightful silhouette and cast shadows. It is difficult to imagine
how the composition could be bettered; the picture, by itself, had no
others come from the same brush, would have immortalized the painter.”
Finally, Sir Walter Armstrong agrees, too, with the Stephens theory:
“Those who cling to the old traditions quote the style of _The Blue
Boy_ in support of the notion that it could not have been painted
before 1779. I confess that, to me, it now seems, after much and
close observation, to point the other way. The loaded _impasto_, the
ruddy carnations, the tendency to brown and beyond it in the shadows,
the preoccupation with force, seem all to belong to about the same
period as the group at Knole and to be inconsistent with the feathery
lightness, freedom, and gaiety which mark Gainsborough’s work towards
the end of his life. The most significant comparison may be made with
the National Gallery _Mrs. Siddons_. Here again blue, and a franker
blue than that of the Master Buttall, is the dominant note. But the
painting is more assured, the handling lighter and more prompt, the
shadows more transparent, and the figure, as a whole, truer to its
illumination. It would not be fair to dwell too much on the contrast
between the flesh painting of _The Blue Boy_ and that of the _Mrs.
Siddons_, for I fancy the peculiar white bloom of the latter’s skin
is due to the fact that she sat in her paint. But it must not be
overlooked that even in the portraits of pretty women, that of _Eliza
Linley_ for instance, painted about 1770, there is a fullness of color
we do not find ten years later. Taking everything into account, it
seems to me that the old tradition of _The Blue Boy_ must be given
up, and that the Duke of Westminster’s picture, so far from being an
answer to Reynolds, was one of the many things that provoked his
dictum, Gainsborough replying, if he took the trouble to reply at all,
with the _Mrs. Siddons_ and those other portraits, painted in the last
ten years of his life, in which blue, canary yellow, and other cool
tints are made the centres of the color scheme.”
Buttall and Gainsborough continued their relations. Buttall was one
of the “few friends Gainsborough respected and whom he desired should
attend his funeral at Kew. Buttall outlived Gainsborough seventeen
years and died in December, 1805, as the _Morning Herald_ notes: “Died,
on Friday last, at his house in Oxford Street, Jonathan Buttall, Esq.,
a gentleman whose amiable manners and good disposition will cause him
to be ever regretted by his friends.”
GENERAL PHILIP HONYWOOD.
_Thomas Gainsborough
(1727–1788)._
_Collection of
Mr. John Ringling._
When Gainsborough exhibited this portrait in London in 1765 it created
quite a stir, as it was a departure from the style of any portrait by
that artist; and when it was sent home to _Mark Hall_, the seat of
the Honywood family in Essex, a new room had to be built in order to
accommodate it, as the canvas measures nearly ten feet square (96¾ ×
82¼).
This has the reputation of being the finest equestrian portrait ever
painted by Gainsborough. Fulcher writes of it:
“Never was the amenity of landscape more happily displayed. Through a
richly wooded scene wherein the sturdy oak and silvery-barked birch
are conspicuous, the soldier, mounted on a bay horse, appears to be
passing, wearing a scarlet dress which contrasts finely with the mass
of surrounding foliage. Nothing can be easier than his attitude,
as with one hand he curbs his charger and with the other holds his
sword which seems to flash in the sun. The picturesque design of this
portrait, its brilliant coloring, its bold yet careful execution,
Gainsborough never surpassed. No wonder that George III wished to
become the possessor of it and no wonder that Horace Walpole wrote of
it in his catalogue ‘very good.’ Of the nine pictures which decorated
the walls of _Mark Hall_ grand staircase, three were by Gainsborough
and included the remarkable portrait of General Honywood. It is the
largest work by that master and has the reputation also of being the
finest equestrian portrait ever painted by Gainsborough, competing only
with Van Dyck’s _Portrait of Charles I_ in the Prado Gallery, Madrid,
with which it has more than once been compared.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. John Ringling_
GENERAL PHILIP HONYWOOD
--_Thomas Gainsborough_]
The landscape, it is interesting to say, is a part of the park at _Mark
Hall_. General Philip Honywood of _Mark Hall_ came of an old Kentish
family deriving its origin from a place called _Honewood_ or _Hunewood_
in the parish of Postling in Kent, where they had held lands since the
Norman Conquest. General Philip Honywood was born in 1710 and succeeded
his nephew in 1758. He was a General of His Majesty’s forces, Colonel
of the Third Royal Dragoon Guards, Governor of the Town and Citadel
of Kinston-upon-Hull and was also member of Parliament for thirty-one
years for the borough of Appleby in the County of Westmoreland. Philip
Honywood was always familiarly called “the General” and he died in 1785.
Until 1878 this portrait remained in possession of the Honywood family
at _Mark Hall_.
Sir Walter Armstrong in his _Gainsborough_ writes:
“It represents the General riding across the canvas from left to right.
He wears a scarlet uniform and carries his sword, unsheathed, in his
right hand; he has no scabbard. The horse, a rich bay, is a little
too long. The painter has not taken the precaution to draw him in
before commencing the figure, and so the fore-quarters are separated
from the hind by rather too much middle-piece. This mistake is still
more conspicuous in the _Colonel St. Leger_ at Hampton Court, where a
quite unreasonable amount of horse shows behind the figure. Otherwise,
the Honywood picture is as successful in design as it is in all other
ways. The landscape is one of the finest backgrounds ever painted and
reminds one of the backgrounds to some of those equestrian portraits by
Velasquez which Gainsborough never saw. It is curious that Reynolds had
sent a _General on Horseback_ to the Exhibition of 1761. Many things
point to the probability that Gainsborough made an annual visit to
London during the exhibition and it is quite likely that the apparition
of Sir Joshua’s ‘General’ suggested the treatment of his own.”
The Reynolds referred to above is the portrait of _Lord Ligonier_ now
in the National Gallery, London.
THE HARVEST WAGGON.
_Thomas Gainsborough
(1727–1788)._
_Collection of
Sir Joseph Duveen, Bart._
This picture bears comparison with Gainsborough’s famous _Market Cart_
in the National Gallery, London. Some critics even prefer it. It is
painted in oils on canvas (48 × 59 inches) and represents a countryside
and a scene very familiar to the painter. The country is rugged with
a wheel track winding from the left foreground away into the distance
towards the blue hills. On the left, there are massive boulders
overgrown with shrubbery and trees with russet foliage overhanging
the lane. The rustic dray-cart, laden with laughing country folk, is
halted to enable a young girl to clamber up over the wheel and into the
arms of a youth who bends forward to help her. The three horses stand
placidly while the driver adjusts the collar of the leader. A panting
dog capers by the cart and two sheep that have strayed from their flock
are seen resting by the boulders. The rock in the foreground is signed
with the initials “T. G.”
_The Harvest Waggon_ gains particular interest because the two young
girls--one seated in the waggon and one climbing up over the wheel--are
Gainsborough’s daughters. The horses, too, are portraits--horses that
belonged to John Wiltshire, the chief carrier of Bath, and the cart
is one of Wiltshire’s “flying waggons.” In some accounts of John
Wiltshire he is represented as an ordinary dray-man, who drove his
own carts and made deliveries. This was not the case, however. John
Wiltshire was a man of importance in Bath, having built up a large
“carrying business” (which we would to-day call express), with a
regular service of “flying waggons,” always going back and forth from
his warehouses in Broad Street, Bath, to the _White Swan_ at Holborn
Bridge, London. Wiltshire was elected Mayor of Bath in 1772 and gave a
great entertainment at the Town Hall to the gentry and fashionables,
giving thereby “much offense to the people in trade” who were not
invited. Some idea of the speed of these “flying waggons” may be had
from Gainsborough’s letter to Garrick relative to the delivery of the
latter’s portrait:
“The picture is to go to London by the Wiltshire fly-waggon on
Wednesday next and I believe will arrive by Saturday morning.”
John Wiltshire, who came of a good old family that had attained
the rank of squires, lived in a fine mansion at Shockerwick near
Bath, which had belonged to his father. This was quite a place of
_rendez-vous_ for the notable personages who visited Bath. “There,” it
was said, “Anstey had a beech tree, Gainsborough an elm, and Quin an
arm-chair, while Fielding, Allen, and their hospitable host, Wiltshire,
enjoyed the shades of its sylvan glades.”
Wiltshire was so devoted to Gainsborough and such an admirer of
his paintings that he would never allow him to pay any bills for
“carrying.” Yet he delivered all of Gainsborough’s finished pictures.
After a time, upon Gainsborough’s insisting, Wiltshire replied: “When
you think I have carried to the value of a little painting, I beg you
will let me have one, sir; and I shall be more than paid.”
By degrees Wiltshire thus acquired his small, but very choice,
collection of Gainsboroughs, which was sold at Shockerwick in 1867.
_The Harvest Waggon_ was one of these; and the way the picture came
to be painted was this. On one occasion Gainsborough asked Wiltshire
to lend him a horse for a model. The generous Wiltshire saddled and
bridled one of his horses and sent it to Gainsborough for a present.
Gainsborough painted this horse and made, as Fulcher says, “a
remarkably fine study of this animal.” Gainsborough now returned the
compliment. He painted _The Harvest Waggon_ and sent it to Wiltshire as
a present. Wiltshire was overjoyed, for here was his own waggon; here
were his own horses; and here were the artist’s own daughters!
[Illustration:
_Collection of Sir Joseph Duveen, Bart._
THE HARVEST WAGGON
--_Thomas Gainsborough_]
On giving _The Harvest Waggon_ to Wiltshire, Gainsborough said it
_pleased him more than any picture he had ever painted_.
From the Collections of Thomas Gibbons, Esq., Hanover Terrace, Regents
Park, of the Rev. Benjamin Gibbons, Hanover Terrace, Regents Park,
and of Sir Lionel Phillips, London, _The Harvest Waggon_ passed into
the Collection of the late Judge Elbert H. Gary. It attracted great
attention at the Gary Sale in New York, April, 1928, when it was sold
at the Plaza Hotel for $875,000, the highest figure that any picture
has ever reached at auction.
JOHN WALTER TEMPEST.
_George Romney
(1734–1802)._
_Collection of
Mr. and Mrs. Marshall Field._
It would be hard to find in all the range of portraiture, at any time
and in any place, a work more charming, true, sincere, natural, and
ingratiating than this adorable boy with his beloved horse. You can see
at a glance that they love each other.
Everything about the picture is delightful: the coloring, the handsome,
sweet, and dreamy boy with his unspeakable grace and gentleness, the
fine horse, so contented, and the suave landscape--all make both
a portrait and a picture that will live for all time. No changes
in fashion can ever destroy its beauty and its appeal. Moreover,
Romney has succeeded in suggesting here a young boy’s dreams and the
friendship between a boy and a horse. The relation between the two, as
they enjoy a pause in their jaunt through the woodland, is marvellously
expressed. The relation of these figures to the landscape is such that
we feel as if we, too, were in this lovely, English, sylvan spot. We
seem to hear the plash of the tiny waterfall and the sound of the
horse’s lips as he quenches his thirst. In just one moment more and the
sweet, gentle, dreamy boy will pat his friend’s warm, brown neck, leap
lightly on his back and off they will go merrily
“to seek fresh woods and pastures new.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Marshall Field_
JOHN WALTER TEMPEST
--_George Romney_]
The picture is in oils on canvas (90 × 58 inches) and was painted in
1779–1780. In the _Catalogue Raisonné_ of Romney’s works we read:
“Whole length, when a youth, standing, facing towards and looking to
the front; long hair; purple dress, white turned-down collar, white
stockings and black shoes with silver buckles; standing by his horse,
which is drinking at a stream to the left; right hand holding the
reins; left hand holding whip; trees in the distance.”
For several years this lovely picture was in the Collection of Asher
Wertheimer, Esq., of London.
John Walter Tempest was the only son of John Tempest, Esq., of
Sherburn, County Durham, and member of Parliament for Durham. He died
in 1793 at Brighthelmstone, where he had gone for his health.
The German critic, August Grisebach, has a profound admiration for this
portrait. Writing in _Die Kunst für Alle_ (1908), he says:
“As a new representation of the half-grown boy Romney’s _John Walter
Tempest_ stands next to the _Blue Boy_. In place of the warm lighting
of the brilliant silk of the correctly adorned boy in Van Dyck style
and the aristocratic pose of the manufacturer’s son, is the simple
cloth coat of subdued violet against the light-brown horse, so quiet
and reserved in color and line, similar to an antique relief.”
_The Strawberry Girl_ is reckoned among the most original of Sir Joshua
Reynolds’s works. Surely _John Walter Tempest_ is one of Romney’s most
brilliant triumphs! Moreover, the picture is highly original.
For a great number of years George Romney in his house, No. 32
Cavendish Square, shared the patronage of the aristocracy with Reynolds
and Gainsborough. Romney’s career was remarkable, for he had almost
no training. Romney was born in 1734 at Beckside, near Dalton in
Cumberland, the son of a cabinet-maker, who wrote his name Rumney. He,
too, was destined for a cabinet-maker, but made the acquaintance in
Kendal of a portrait-painter named Christopher Steele, who had studied
with Carle Van Loo, and became his pupil and apprentice in 1755. Romney
soon painted a number of portraits in Kendal and also a hand holding a
letter for the town post-office, which attracted much attention.
Undoubtedly Romney acquired something of the French style through
this teacher and we may regard him indirectly as a pupil of Van Loo.
Certainly there is a quality in Romney that finds response in the
French painters of the Eighteenth Century.
Lord Gower says in his _Romney_ (London, 1904):
“Apparently the Count made use of his pupil to prepare and grind
his colors and to carve frames for his portraits. Later these
color-grindings must have been of great use to Romney, and the
preparation and mode of laying on the oil colors may account for the
excellence and permanency of his paintings, which have stood admirably
and unfadingly the test of time and which are in most cases as fresh
and brilliant, as clear and transparent, as when they left Romney’s
studio nearly a century and a half ago. It is not without interest that
one recalls how all the great Italian and Flemish Masters instructed
their pupils in the preparation of the minutest detail in all things
relating to their painting, from the preliminary grinding of the colors
and the laying on of the groundwork of their subject, whether on paint
or canvas; for not only were the great Italian and Flemish old painters
past masters in all that appertained to the technicalities of their
art, but honest and loyal in seeing no detail, however irksome, omitted
which could give permanency and endurance to their creations; hence
those marvels of color, paintings three and four centuries old which
still glow with all the brilliancy of gems and flowers, as radiant as
some noble stained-glass window in some glorious Gothic fane.”
In 1762, when he was but twenty-eight, Romney moved to London (leaving
his wife, son, and daughter) and established himself in the great
city. As a painter of excellent portraits at low prices Romney soon
saved enough money for a visit to Paris, and hard work enabled him to
close his studio and spend two years in Italy. Soon after his return
in 1775, Romney removed from Gray’s Inn to No. 32 Cavendish Square,
formerly occupied by the painter, Francis Cotes, (who had died in
1770). A portrait of the _Duke of Richmond Reading_ launched Romney
into fame and fortune. Thenceforward there was nothing to do but work.
Romney became the fashion and ranked with Gainsborough and Reynolds;
and, as his prices were considerably less than theirs, his studio was
never empty of sitters. Romney’s _Diaries_ show his amazing industry
and a golden register of the nobility and gentry besides people of
fashion and artistic distinction. The year 1777, for instance, shows
six hundred sittings which Mr. Ward calculates as representing from a
hundred and twenty to a hundred and fifty finished portraits. Romney’s
charming style was now fully developed and some of his loveliest
portraits date from this period: the _Countess of Warwick and her
Children_; _Lady Susan Lenox_; _Lady Derby_ (see page 401); _Lady
Albemarle_; _Lord Gower’s Children Dancing_; _John Walter Tempest_; and
_Lady Craven_, which inspired Horace Walpole to write:
“Full many an artist has on canvas fix’d
All charms that Nature’s pencil ever mix’d--
The Witchery of Eyes, the Grace that tips
The inexpressible douceur of Lips
Romney alone, in this fair image caught
Each Charm’s Expression and each Feature’s thought.
And shows how in their sweet assemblage sit
Taste, Spirit, Softness, Sentiment, and Wit.”--H. W.
Therefore, it will be seen that Romney had been producing beautiful
work before the advent of the beautiful Emma Hart, the future Lady
Hamilton.
Romney left Cavendish Square in 1798, having bought a house at
Hollybush Hill, Hampstead, from which he removed two years later
to return to his wife and son at Kendal. He bought the estate of
Whitestock, near Ulverstone, where his son finished the house he did
not live to complete. Romney died in 1802, having been for two or three
years in a state of complete imbecility.
“For the first half-century or more after his death his work was
neglected. Hidden in private houses, the public never saw it;
his biographies did not interest people; he had left no group of
influential friends to hand down his memory. There was no such
machinery of celebrity in his case as had existed so abundantly in
Sir Joshua’s who lived not only by his pictures but by a multitude of
lovely engravings and by the written and spoken word of colleagues,
pupils, and friends. So Romney’s fame may almost be said to have
died away during the dark ages between 1820 and 1850; and Christie’s
Catalogues show that in those days he was ignored by collectors and
by galleries, such as then existed. In the general revival of æsthetic
intelligence which began about the middle of the century--a revival
of which the Pre-Raphaelite movement, the eloquence of Ruskin, and
the growth of a new class of wealthy amateurs were so many symptoms
and conditions--Romney began to emerge once more. Never was there an
artist who lived more wholly in his art. ‘In his painting-room,’ said
his pupil, Robinson, ‘he seemed to have the highest enjoyment of life,
and the more he painted the greater flow of spirits he acquired.’ It is
true that, by one of the ironies of history, it was not primarily in
portrait-painting that he was interested, but in those larger schemes
and subjects to which, according to the classification of his time, he
gave a higher place.”[35]
THE HON. MRS. DAVENPORT.
_George Romney
(1734–1802)._
_Collection of the
Hon. Andrew W. Mellon._
The _Hon. Mrs. Davenport_ (Charlotte Sneyd) is another of Romney’s
superlative creations. She is the personification of a gentle English
beauty, who might well have sat for the portrait of Tennyson’s “Queen
of the Rosebud Garden of Girls” in _Maud_.
Mrs. Davenport, dressed in perfect taste, is posed against a lovely
landscape background. Her gown is a delicate, yet glowing pink, and her
cape is white velvet trimmed with white fur. She also wears a white
scarf with brown ribbon and a white felt hat trimmed with brown and
white ribbons. Her powdered hair is arranged in soft ringlets and a
black velvet band around her neck affords a note of contrast to the
general lightness of the color of the costume. A fashionable muff adds
a _chic_ touch. The face is remarkably sweet and intelligent, as well
as beautiful, and the whole impression given by the portrait is of a
charming, gentle, gracious, and lovable personality.
Charlotte Sneyd, born in 1756, was the daughter of Mr. Ralph Sneyd
of _Keele Hall_, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, descended from
an ancient family of Chester, one of whom had been knighted on the
battlefield of Pinkie in 1547. Her mother was the daughter of Sir W.
W. Bugot, fifth Baronet of Blithefield, and the grand-daughter of the
first Earl of Dartmouth.
[Illustration:
_Collection of the Hon. Andrew W. Mellon_
THE HON. MRS. DAVENPORT
--_George Romney_]
Charlotte Sneyd was married in 1777 to Mr. Davies Davenport, High
Sheriff of Cheshire in 1783, and M. P. from 1806 to 1830. His seats
were Capesthorne, Crewe, and Calvely, Nantwich. Their youngest son took
the extra surname of Bromley and owned _Baginton Hall_, Coventry.
The Hon. Mrs. Davenport died in 1829. She was a cousin of Honora
Sneyd, whose name has been associated with that series of portraits by
Romney known as the “Serena” portraits. Honora was also famous for her
engagement to the talented, charming, and ill-fated Major John André.
The picture, painted in oils on canvas (30 × 25 inches), came from the
Collection of Brigadier-General Sir William Bromley-Davenport, K. C.
B., Lord-Lieutenant of the County of Chester, _Capesthorne Hall_,
Cheshire, England.
LADY DERBY.
_George Romney
(1734–1802)._
_Collection of
Mr. Jules S. Bache._
Of _Elizabeth, Countess of Derby_, Romney made one of his most
beautiful portraits and one of the most beautiful portraits, moreover,
of that great portrait period in which Romney worked. Everything about
it is lovely. There is no color in the picture except Lady Derby’s
golden hair and the green and brown tones of the distant landscape and
of the tree behind her. The dress, a thin white India mull of exquisite
fineness and transparency, is draped over a white brocade skirt, making
a costume which is the quintessence of purity and lightness; and Romney
has treated the white so perfectly that the picture seems to emit a
celestial radiance. Lady Derby has the fresh English complexion of rose
and white, and her golden hair is like sunshine and amber. The pose
is so easy and natural that we may safely guess it was a characteristic
one. Lady Derby seems unconscious of her charm; but she was certainly
too beautiful not to know it.
Elizabeth, Countess of Derby, was the only daughter of James, sixth
Duke of Hamilton and the famous Irish beauty, Elizabeth Gunning, who,
with her sister, Maria, took London by storm when they removed there in
1751 from Dublin. The career of the Gunning sisters was extraordinary,
for they had no money; but their handsome faces, fine figures, stylish
dressing, and charming manners, soon brought them into notoriety.
Crowds surged around them whenever they appeared: in the streets, in
Hyde Park, at Ranelagh, at Vauxhall, at routs, at assemblies, or at the
theatre. Horace Walpole said “it was extraordinary that two sisters
should be so beautiful.” Maria Gunning married in 1752 the Earl of
Coventry and also in the same year Elizabeth married surreptitiously
James, sixth Duke of Hamilton “using the ring of the bed-curtain for
her wedding ring.” On his death, six years later, she married John,
fifth Duke of Argyll. Elizabeth, now Duchess of Argyll, was still
as beautiful as ever and people ran after her as usual whenever she
appeared in public. “One Sunday evening in June, 1759,” so Horace
Walpole notes, “she was mobbed in Hyde Park. The King ordered that to
prevent this for the future, she should have a guard; and on the next
Sunday she made herself ridiculous by walking in the Park from eight
to ten P. M. with two sergeants of the Guards in front with
their halberds and twelve soldiers following her.” Elizabeth, Countess
of Derby, with such a beautiful mother, had, therefore, the right to
be a beauty. On June 12, 1774, “Lady Betty Hamilton” was married to
Edward Smith Stanley, afterwards twelfth Earl of Derby, known as the
“Cock-fighting Earl.” She soon tired of him and ran away with the Duke
of Dorset, who had been working on the Derby estate for some time in
the guise of a gardener in order to be near the beautiful Elizabeth
and to perfect their plans for elopement. Who can look upon Romney’s
portrait and blame him? Lord Derby married in 1797 the celebrated
actress Miss Farren (see page 420). Elizabeth Hamilton died in 1797,
aged forty-four.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Jules S. Bache_
LADY DERBY
--_George Romney_]
This portrait, oils on canvas (49½ × 39 inches), was painted in
1776–1778, after twelve sittings: Nov. 27, 1776; Jan. 31, Feb. 11, 14,
21, and March 19, 1777; Feb. 13, March 2, 9, 14, 23 and May 4, 1778. A
mezzotint was made by John Dean in 1780.
After having been for many years in the Tennant Collection this
_chef-d’œuvre_ passed to Mr. Jules S. Bache.
A charming picture of Lady Elizabeth Hamilton, or “Lady Betty
Hamilton,” as a child of five years, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds,
now hangs in the Widener Collection at _Lynnewood Hall_, Elkins Park,
Pennsylvania. The little girl is seated on a bank facing the spectator
and is shown at full length, wearing a pink dress over a large hoop,
with low neck and short sleeves, and a spray of flowers at her neck. In
her hands she holds a bouquet of bright flowers. This picture, painted
in 1758, belonged to the Duke of Argyll and afterwards to the Earl of
Normanton.
“The Eighteenth Century,” says Max Roldt, “has often been called the
_Age of Grace_. If I were asked how this name could best be justified,
I should point without a moment’s hesitation to the portraits by George
Romney. Others painted graceful women in graceful dresses and graceful
poses, but Romney personified Grace, made her his goddess; and it was
her portrait which he painted over and over again under different
lineaments and with various features. See his _Lady Derby_ as she
sits on a bank quietly dreaming under the trees; her legs are lightly
crossed; her elbow rests on her knee so that her long, fine hand just
touches her chin without actually supporting the pure oval of the
head; with her white, muslin dress pulled up showing the underskirt of
the _broché_ satin of the same hue, is she not the very embodiment of
grace?”
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON.
_George Romney
(1734–1802)._
_Collection of the late
Mr. Henry E. Huntington._
Who tied that white band over the big hat--Romney or Emma? It was
certainly a very original idea!
“_Three quarters in a straw hat called Emma_, finished for Mr.
Crawford,” is the way this picture is referred to in John Romney’s
_Memoirs_; and in Romney’s own Ledger this note occurs: “Three quarters
paid for by Mr. Crawford, 30 guineas, Sept. 15, 1792, and sent home to
Mr. Crawford’s No. 48 Brook Street, July 21, 1792.”
At three-quarter, then, seated in a chair, dressed in white and wearing
the conspicuous “straw hat,” trimmed with a broad band of ribbon tied
into large bows, “Emma” looks at us rather pensively,--almost sadly.
The pose is alluringly graceful and easy, but the swirling lines, when
analysed, show the thought and art of a master. It is like a graceful
melody of Mozart. Contour, beauty, and rhythm all are here!
Romney painted no fewer than thirty pictures of the “Divine Emma,” in
character and with titles, and fourteen portraits, without titles; and,
besides, he painted many replicas and variants of these portraits.
Emma Hart came into Romney’s life in 1782, taken to the painter’s
studio in Cavendish Square one April morning by the Hon. Charles
Francis Greville, second son of the Earl of Warwick, with whom she was
then living. Romney was instantly struck by her extraordinary beauty,
vivacity, and talent for posing. From this first picture, entitled
_Nature_ and representing Emma with a little black spaniel under
arm, for which Greville paid twenty guineas, Romney produced portrait
after portrait in various characters: Alope; Ariadne; Bacchante; In a
Black Hat; Calypso (perhaps the same as Ariadne); Cassandra; Circe;
Comedy; Comic Muse; Cybele; Daphne (perhaps the same as Bacchante);
Contemplation; Emma in a Straw Hat (see page 405); Euphrosyne; Gipsy;
Iphigenia; Joan of Arc; Kate (same as Ariadne); Magdalen; Medea;
Meditation; with Miniature in Belt; Miranda; Lady Hamilton in Morning
Dress; Nature; Nun; Pythian Priestess; Reading the Gazette; St.
Cecilia; Sensibility; Serena; Servant’s Cap; Shepherdess; Sigismunda;
Spinning-Wheel; Supplication; With Vesuvius in the Distance; Welsh
Girl; Wood Nymph (same as Alope).
Portraits without titles are: Seated resting head on right hand,
white dress; Bust to left showing hands, head leaning on right hand,
forefinger on chin, bare neck and shoulders, blue and white drapery;
Half-length, life-size, head facing, resting on crossed hands, light
dress, colored scarf twisted around the head, arms bare to elbow,
leaning on table; Head looking up to left; Head looking up to left
(oval); Head to left with startled expression (sketch); Three-quarter
length figure seated to left looking back over left shoulder, head
resting on left hand, white dress and cap and colored sash; Half figure
turned to right, white dress, white drapery around head (several
versions); Head, shoulders, full face, low cut white dress, dark curly
hair; Bust facing front, face looking down reading a book, white dress,
brown background; Bust, life-size looking upward and smiling; White
veil over head; Head and shoulders looking at spectator and smiling,
dark red dress cut low, brown hair falling over shoulders, turban; Half
figure directed to left looking at spectator, dark dress, white fichu,
dark felt hat with broad brim and bunch of feathers, hair bound with
blue ribbon, hands resting on lap, white lace cuffs.
[Illustration:
_Collection of the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington_
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
--_George Romney_]
The story of Emma, Lady Hamilton, is a strange one. She was born on
April 26, 1761, at Denhall, Chester, the only child of Henry Lyon, a
blacksmith: no one knows why she took the name of Hart. While she was
a child, her mother moved to Hawarden, entering the service of Mrs.
Thomas, wife of the parish doctor, and Emma remained there until she
was sixteen, earning her living as nursery-maid and waiting-woman. We
find her in London in her eighteenth year employed in the celebrated
Temple of Health, of which the notorious empiric, Dr. Graham, was
the originator and proprietor, presiding there as the “lovely Hebe
Vestina, Rosy Goddess of Health.” Here, at certain times of day, the
“lovely Hebe” and the famous quack could be seen buried up to their
necks in the mudbaths, Dr. Graham’s hair dressed according to the
latest expression of the perruquier’s taste and Hebe with one of those
towering head-dresses of the day, powdered and decorated with flowers,
feathers, ropes of pearls, and gewgaws of many kinds.
Sir Walter Armstrong is of the opinion that Emma Hart sat for
Gainsborough’s _Musidora Bathing her Feet_ (in the National Gallery,
London). “The features,” he says, “are those of Emma Lyon refined, the
hair is hers, and the rest of the figure is what we find in several of
Romney’s pictures.”
There is a very good reason that this might be so, for Gainsborough
rented one part of Schomberg House, Pall Mall, and Dr. Graham rented
the other. Consequently, Gainsborough had every opportunity of seeing
the lovely Emma very frequently.
While presiding at Dr. Graham’s establishment, Emma attracted the
attention of Sir Henry Featherstonehaugh of _Up Park_, Sussex, who
persuaded her to leave the Temple and reside at _Up Park_. In the
following year she placed herself under the protection of the Hon.
Charles Greville.
In 1784 Sir Charles’s uncle, Sir William Hamilton, his Majesty’s
Ambassador at Naples, came to London on a visit, a widower, a man of
distinguished tastes, an art-connoisseur, a lover of music, and a
descendant of a noble family. Sir William became fascinated with Emma
and there was a clever transfer of Emma, not to the credit of either of
these dashing “blades.” Ultimately Emma joined Sir William in Naples,
where she was lodged at the British Embassy and treated with the
distinction due royalty, having, moreover, her carriage, boat, livery,
and other appurtenances of state. In a letter to the Hon. Charles, Emma
says: “Sir William is very fond of me and very kind to me. The house
is full of painters painting me. He has now got nine pictures of me
and two a-painting. Marchant is cutting my head in stone, that is in
cameo for a ring. There is another man modelling me in wax and another
in clay. All the artists is come from Rome to study from me, so that
Sir William as fitted up a room that is called the painting-room. Sir
William is never a moment from me. He goes no where without me. He has
no dinners but what I can be of the party. Nobody comes without they
are civil to me.”
On Sept. 6, 1791, the infatuated Ambassador married Emma in Marylebone
Church, the Marquis of Abercorn, Sir William’s kinsman, acting as best
man. During the months preceding the wedding Emma sat almost daily to
Romney.
On June 19, 1791, Romney wrote to William Hayley: “At present and the
greatest part of this summer, I shall be engaged in painting pictures
from the _divine lady_. I cannot give her any other epithet for
I think her superior to all womankind. I have two pictures to paint
of her for the Prince of Wales. She says she must see you before she
leaves England, which will be in the beginning of September. She asked
me if you would not write my life. I told her you had begun it; then
she said she hoped you would have much to say of her in the life, as
she prided herself on being my model.”
Romney also gave a party in Emma’s honor, on which occasion she
displayed her remarkable talents. Romney wrote:
“She performed in my house last week, singing and acting before some of
the nobility with most astonishing power. She is the talk of the whole
town, and really surpasses everything, both in singing and acting,
that ever appeared. Gallini offered her two thousand pounds a year and
two benefits if she would engage with him, on which Sir William said
pleasantly that he had engaged her for life.”
Directly after her marriage Lady Hamilton gave Romney a sitting. His
_Diary_ has these dates:
“Sept. 5 Mon. Mrs. Hart at 9.
Sept. 6 Tues. Lady Hamilton at 11.”
Sir William and Lady Hamilton left soon afterwards for Naples and
Romney and Emma never met again.
Sir William Hamilton died in 1803; but from 1796 Emma had lived with
and for Lord Nelson until his death in the Battle of Trafalgar. Emma
died at Calais, Jan. 15, 1815.
The portrait shown here (30 × 25 inches), belonged to Tankerville
Chamberlayne, Esq., and then passed into the Collection of Alfred C. de
Rothschild, Esq.
England indirectly owes to Lady Hamilton one of Nelson’s great
victories. When Nelson was in pursuit of the French, it was Lady
Hamilton who obtained the order from the King of Naples for the fleet
to enter port for provisions and water. Nelson thereupon entered the
harbor of Syracuse, watered his fleet, and fought the victorious Battle
of the Nile. A few months later Lady Hamilton and Nelson managed to
rescue the Royal family of Naples by taking them through a subterranean
passage and by boats to Nelson’s ship, the _Vanguard_. “The world
owes it to Lady Hamilton,” says John Paget, “that the sister of Marie
Antoinette did not share her horrible fate--that another head, as fair
as that which fell into the basket of sawdust in front of the Tuileries
on the 16th of October, 1793, did not roll on the scaffold at Naples in
1799. When we come to take the account as it stood between the world
and Lady Hamilton when it finally closed in 1815, we find it strangely
changed since 1791. The balance has turned. It is the world, it is
humanity, that is the debtor.”
What a strange career! A woman of matchless beauty, artistic gifts of
a high order, mental brilliance, generosity, charm, and kindness of
heart, and, moreover, able to educate herself in the ways of society,
admired, and courted by princes, artists, and men of powers, the
intimate friend of the Queen of Naples, the beloved of Lord Nelson, the
deity of Romney, enjoying at one time all that wealth and distinction
could give and at the end forlorn, poor, and deserted, and dying in a
foreign country--such was the life of Emma, Lady Hamilton!
How beautifully Humphrey Ward sums up the whole situation:
“We know that in later years many painters tried their skill upon
her--Reynolds once, Madame Vigée Le Brun at least twice, Angelica
Kauffman probably, and many an Italian painter and sculptor to whom
she sat in Sir William’s painting-room at Naples. But none of these
artists, not even Reynolds himself, in the well-known _Bacchante_,
made of the most beautiful woman in the world anything that was
distinctive, anything that was much removed from the commonplace. It is
Romney alone who has preserved the life of those wonderful features,
of that radiant hair, and of the multitudinous phases of expression
through which this born actress, inspired by his suggestions, passed
seemingly at will. Her name remains inseparably bound, though in very
different ways, with the names of two great men--a hero and a painter.
In the _Chronique scandaleuse_ of a hundred years ago, Emma
belongs to Nelson; in the history of art, she belongs to Romney.”
ANNE, LADY DE LA POLE.
_George Romney
(1734–1802)._
_Collection of the
Hon. Alvan T. Fuller._
The portrait represented here of Anne, Lady de la Pole, oils on canvas
(49 × 39½ inches), was painted in 1786 after the great Lady Hamilton
period. The dress is of white satin with puffed sleeves of white mull
and a sash of pale green with gold fringe. The slippers, of pale green,
match the sash. The hair is powdered and draped with a white veil.
A critic notes that “the sheen of the white satin dress has since it
was painted one hundred and forty years ago become slightly tinged with
mauve thus completely harmonizing with the light color of the sash and
shoes. The manipulation of the light on the right side of the picture
gives a mellow autumnal atmosphere to the portrait of a dignified and
beautiful woman.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of the Hon. Alvan T. Fuller_
ANNE, LADY DE LA POLE
--_George Romney_]
Anne, Lady de la Pole, was the only daughter of John Templer, Esq.,
of Stover House, Devon, and was married in January, 1781, to Sir John
William Pole, sixth Baronet and son of Sir John Pole of Shute, Devon,
whom he succeeded in 1766. Sir John assumed by “sign-manual” the name
of de la Pole.
At the same time that he made this beautiful portrait, Romney also
painted Sir John de la Pole, as a companion piece. Lady de la Pole died
in 1832.
THE HON. MRS. GRANT OF KILGRASTON.
_Sir Henry Raeburn
(1756–1823)._
_Collection of
Mr. C. Fisher._
This picture comes from the Collection of Colonel Walter Brown of
Renfrew and was formerly in the Collection of the Hon. Mr. Stuart Gray.
It is an oil on canvas (30 × 24 inches), depicting _Mrs. Grant of
Kilgraston_, daughter of Francis, Lord Grey. The lady is turned
three quarters to the left and wears a dark gown with deep loose frill
of white around the neck. Her hair falls in careless curls over her
brow. The background is plain.
Compared with Sir Joshua Reynolds’s some two thousand portraits,
Raeburn’s some seven or eight hundred is small; but it is, after all, a
goodly number.
“Raeburn,” in the words of his fellow-townsman, Robert Louis Stevenson,
“was a born painter of portraits. He looked people shrewdly between the
eyes, surprised their manners in their face and had possessed himself
of what was essential in their character before they had been many
minutes in his studio. What he was so swift to perceive he conveyed to
the canvas almost in the moment of conception.”
Raeburn, born in Stockbridge, a suburb of Edinburgh, in 1756, became
the leading Scottish portrait-painter, President of the Royal Society
of Artists at Edinburgh, and a Royal Academician in 1815, presenting in
1821 his diploma picture _The Boy with Rabbit_. Raeburn was knighted by
George IV in 1822.
Raeburn was almost entirely self-taught; and it seems strange that with
practically no training, as the world understands this word, that he
should have risen to the circle of great painters. Many of the greatest
Italian painters of the Renaissance began life as goldsmiths. So did
Raeburn. After a preliminary education at the famous Heriot’s Hospital
in Edinburgh, he was apprenticed to a goldsmith in that city. Next he
took up miniature-painting and passed on to oils, devoting himself to
portraits. Success came quickly and early. At the age of twenty-two
Raeburn was thoroughly established as the leading portrait-painter in
Scotland and had married a wealthy widow of title. A visit to London
and Rome in 1785–7 was the only break in his enviable life, passed
in the greatest serenity replete with domestic happiness, social
distinction, and artistic fertility. Practically an entire generation
of the men and women of Scotland, most of them celebrities--sat to
Raeburn in his studio.
As Raeburn’s portraits are neither signed nor dated and no very marked
periods emphasize his style, it is difficult to assign accurate dates
to any of his works unless some special year is attached to them.
Moreover, no lists of the sitters and note-books are known. If he
kept them they were destroyed. However, as Raeburn advanced in years
he attained more and more command of technique, his appreciation of
character became deeper, and his expression of it more complete.
Raeburn was appreciated by his contemporaries. When he showed some of
his portraits to Sir Joshua Reynolds in London in 1785, Sir Joshua took
him at once into favor and friendship; Sir Thomas Lawrence pronounced
the portrait of _The Macnab_ (the Highland Chieftain) the best
representation of a human being he had ever seen; and Sir David Wilkie
compared Raeburn to Velasquez. Writing to a brother artist from Madrid
in 1828 Sir David remarks:
“There is much resemblance between Velasquez and the works of some of
the chiefs of the English School; but of all Raeburn resembles him
most, of whose square touch in heads, hands, and accessories, I see
the very counterpart of the Spaniard.” Wilkie also wrote to Alexander
Nasmyth from Spain: “There are some heads by Velasquez in Madrid,
which, were they in Edinburgh, would be thought to be by Raeburn; and I
have seen a portrait of _Lord Glenlee_, I think, by Raeburn, which
would in Madrid be thought a near approach to Velasquez.”
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. C. Fisher_
THE HON. MRS. GRANT OF KILGRASTON
--_Sir Henry Raeburn_]
Dr. John Brown, one of Raeburn’s best friends, described his methods
as follows: “Like Sir Joshua, Raeburn placed his sitters on a high
platform, shortening the features and giving a pigeon-hole view
of the nostrils. The notion is that people should be painted as if
they were hanging like pictures on the wall, a Newgate notion, but it
was Sir Joshua’s. Raeburn and I have had good-humored disputes about
this. I appealed to Titian, Van Dyck, etc., for my authorities; they
always painted people as if they were sitting opposite to them, not
on a mountebank stage, or dangling on the wall. This great question
we leave to be decided by those who know best. His manner of taking
his likenesses explains the simplicity and power of his heads. Placing
his sitter on the pedestal, he looked at him from the other end of a
long room, gazing at him intently with his great dark eyes. Having
got the idea of the man, what of him carried farthest and ‘told,’ he
walked hastily up to the canvas, never looking at his sitter, and
put down what he had fixed in his inner eye; he then withdrew again,
took another gaze and recorded his results, and so on, making no
measurements.”
It is pleasant to catch a glimpse of a painter from another painter.
Farington writes in his _Diary_, Sept 21, 1801:
“I next went to Mr. Raeburn, the portrait-painter most esteemed here
who lives in York Place, New-Town. The house is excellent and built
by himself. His show room is lighted from the top. His painting-room
commands a view of the Forth and the distant mountains. Here I found
pictures of a much superior kind to those I saw at Mr. Nasmyth’s. Some
of Mr. Raeburn’s portraits have an uncommonly true appearance of nature
and are painted with much firmness, but there is great inequality in
his works. That which strikes the eye is a kind of Camera Oscura effect
and from those pictures which seem to be his best, I should conclude
he has looked very much at nature, reflected in a camera. Raeburn and
Nasmyth do not associate much with other artists and hold themselves
very high. Raeburn scarcely indeed with any of the profession. The
prices of Raeburn are 100 guineas for a whole length, 50 guineas half
length, 30 guineas for a kit-cat and 25 guineas for a three-quarter
portrait.”
QUINTON McADAM.
_Sir Henry Raeburn
(1756–1823)._
_Collection of
Mr. A. W. Erickson._
Raeburn was particularly happy in painting portraits of children, full
of naturalness and charm and character; and it will be remembered that
he chose for his contribution to the Royal Academy the lovely _Boy
with a Rabbit_.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. A. W. Erickson_
QUINTON McADAM
--_Sir Henry Raeburn_]
On a par with this masterpiece stands the portrait represented here
of _Quinton McAdam_, a little boy twelve years old, the only son of
Quinton McAdam of Craigengillan, Ayrshire, to whom Burns wrote an
“_Epistle_” addressed to Mr. McAdam of Craigengillan. Quinton McAdam
was born in Angus in 1805 and died in 1826 and this picture hung for
over a hundred years at Camlarg, the dower-house of Craigengillan until
it was purchased by the Agnews of London in 1926. The family still
possess Raeburn’s receipt for payment for the picture.
The portrait is painted on canvas (61 × 47 inches), life-size, and
represents the boy in light yellowish-brown trousers, dark jacket,
and white, ruffled shirt. The light shines beautifully on his satiny,
blonde hair. His eyes are violet blue.
MARY HORNECK.
(THE JESSAMY BRIDE.)
_John Hoppner
(1758–1810)._
_Collection of
Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft._
This canvas (29 × 24½ inches), a portrait of _Mrs. Gwyn_, better
known as Mary Horneck, Oliver Goldsmith’s “Jessamy Bride,” remained
in the possession of the Gwyn family until it was sold at Christie’s
in 1889. Subsequently it passed into the Collection of Mr. Henry G.
Marquand and thence into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft in
Cincinnati.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft_
MARY HORNECK “THE JESSAMY BRIDE”
--_John Hoppner_]
The “Jessamy Bride” appears in a low-cut, white dress with blue sash
and a white cap with a peacock-blue bow and tied under her chin with a
narrow, black ribbon, or cord. A black spotted scarf is thrown around
her waist and draped over her arms. The complexion is rosy, the eyes
are brown, and the hair is powdered _à la mode_.
Mary Horneck was the daughter of Captain Kane William Horneck of the
Royal Engineers and Hannah Mangles, known in her day as “the Plymouth
Beauty.” Both were painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Captain Horneck
died in 1755, leaving his widow in comfortable circumstances and
she immediately removed with her three children, Charles, Mary, and
Catherine, to London. About 1769 the Hornecks became acquainted with
Oliver Goldsmith, who had three years before that date written _The
Deserted Village_, which he dedicated to Sir Joshua Reynolds, then
President of the Royal Academy. Goldsmith soon found appropriate names
for the Horneck children. Mary was the “Jessamy Bride”; Catherine was
“Little Comedy” and Charles was the “Captain in Lace.” They are all
three mentioned in Goldsmith’s acceptance to a dinner given by Dr.
Baker to the Hornecks and to which the Horneck girls sent an invitation
to Goldsmith in rhyme. Goldsmith’s reply was as follows:
“Your mandate I got,
You may all go to pot,
Had your senses been right
You’d have sent before night;
As I hope to be saved,
I put off being shaved;
For I could not make bold
While the matter was cold,
To meddle in suds,
Or to put on my duds;
So tell Horneck and Nesbitt
And Baker and his bit,
And Kauffman beside
And the Jessamy Bride,
And the rest of the crew,
The Reynoldses too,
Little Comedy’s face,
And the Captain in Lace--
(By the bye, you may tell him
I have something to sell him)--
Tell each other to rue
Yon Devonshire crew
For sending so late
To one of my state.
But ’tis Reynold’s way
From Wisdom to stray
And Angelica’s[36] whim
To be frolick like him;
But alas! your good worships, how could they be wiser
When both have been spoiled in to-day’s _Advertiser_?”
It was after Goldsmith’s death that Mary Horneck married Col. Gwyn of
the 16th Dragoons, who eventually became an equerry to the King. On his
appearance at Court, Fanny Burney noted that “Colonel Gwyn is reckoned
a remarkably handsome man and he is husband of the beautiful eldest
daughter of Mrs. Horneck.” Of Mary Horneck, now Mrs. Gwyn, Fanny Burney
wrote in 1788, she was “as beautiful as the first day I saw her; all
gentleness and softness;” and a year later, as “soft and pleasing and
still as beautiful as an angel.”
Mrs. Gwyn became a Woman of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte and died
in London in 1840, at the age of eighty-seven.
Catherine Horneck (“Little Comedy”) married in 1771 the artist, Henry
William Bunbury. Their son, Charles John Bunbury was painted at the age
of eight or nine, by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
John Hoppner born in Whitechapel, London, of German parents, in
1758, was a follower of Sir Joshua Reynolds. He exhibited at the
Royal Academy and became a Court-Painter and a rival of Lawrence.
Hoppner married in 1782 the daughter of Mrs. Wright, the American
sculptress and maker of wax-works, who often sat to him as a model.
Hoppner exhibited his first picture at the Royal Academy in 1780; and,
through the patronage of the Prince of Wales, became a fashionable
portrait-painter. After the death of Gainsborough and Reynolds, Hoppner
and Lawrence commanded the field of art. Hoppner’s charming canvases,
which are very characteristic of the period, are gaining in vogue day
by day and bring very large prices.
ELIZA FARREN, COUNTESS OF DERBY.
_Sir Thomas Lawrence
(1769–1830)._
_Collection of
Mr. J. P. Morgan._
Lawrence was only a young man of twenty-one when he sent to the Royal
Academy Exhibition of 1790 this portrait of _Miss Farren_, which was
catalogued as _The Portrait of an Actress_.
The picture, oils on canvas (80 × 57 inches), shows the graceful young
woman walking in a beautiful English park with a blue sky overhead,
and who has paused for a moment. She wears an ivory-white, satin cloak
trimmed with brown fur over a soft white muslin gown. Her gloved left
hand is holding a large muff on which is a blue bow.
The picture was very much criticized. On hearing many adverse opinions,
Miss Farren wrote to Lawrence:
“One says it is so thin in the figure that you might blow it away;
another that it looks broke off in the middle; in short, you must make
it a little _fatter_ at all events diminish the _bend_ you
are so attached to, even if it makes the picture look ill, for the
owner of it is quite distressed about it at present. I am shocked to
tease you and dare say you wish me and the portrait in the fire; but
as it was impossible to appease the cries of friends, I must beg you
to excuse me.” The owner Miss Farren refers to was most probably Lord
Derby.
At the death of Eliza, Countess of Derby, the portrait became the
property of her daughter, Mary Margaret, wife of Thomas, second Earl
of Wilton. From her descendant, Lord Wilton, the picture passed into
the Collection of Mr. Ludwig Neumann of Manchester, and thence into
possession of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, from whom it was inherited by his
son.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. J. P. Morgan_
ELIZA FARREN, COUNTESS OF DERBY
--_Sir Thomas Lawrence_]
This picture is very well known by the famous engraving by Bartolozzi,
published in 1792, and re-issued in colors in 1797. On the death of
Lady Derby in March, 1797, the Earl of Derby married, two months later,
the subject of this portrait, to whom he had long been attentive. In
the _Farington Diary_, under date of October 15, 1797, we read:
“Miss Farren (the actress afterwards Lady Derby) was bridesmaid to
Lady Charlotte Stanley (Lord Derby’s daughter). Lord Derby’s attachment
to Miss Farren is extraordinary. He sees her daily and always attends
the play when she performs. When she came to _Knowsley_ her mother
was with her, so careful she is of appearances.”
And again on May 20, 1797: “Lady Gage told Hoppner that when Lady Derby
(Miss Farren the actress recently married to Lord Derby) was presented,
the Queen _advanced to her_, which is a great compliment.”
Eliza Farren, born in 1759, was the daughter of George Farren, a
surgeon and an apothecary of Cork, who went on the stage and attained
a little success. His wife and daughters also followed him and,
consequently, Eliza was brought up in the theatre. She played juvenile
parts in Bath, acting with her family, and often sang between the acts.
At the age of fifteen she appeared in Liverpool as Rosetta in _Love
in a Village_ and soon afterwards as Lady Townly in _The Provoked
Husband_. In 1777 she made her London _début_ at the Haymarket as
Miss Hardcastle in _She Stoops to Conquer_ with great success and for
many years she was the favorite actress of the Haymarket and of Drury
Lane. When the charming Mrs. Abington left Drury Lane in 1782, Miss
Farren was accepted as her successor. Miss Farren’s specialty was the
fine and fashionable lady and her big part was Lady Townly. She was
greatly admired in the _rôles_ of Lady Fanciful in _The Provoked Wife_;
Berinthia in the _Trip to Scarborough_; Belinda in _All in the Wrong_;
Angelica in _Love for Love_; Elvira in _The Spanish Friar_ and also in
the Shakesperian parts of Juliet and Olivia in _Twelfth Night_.
Thomas Lawrence was born in Bristol in 1769 and spent his early years
in Devizes, where his father was proprietor of the Black Bear Inn.
Very early the boy showed remarkable talent for drawing portraits in
crayons. He was so successful that he went to Bath, took a studio, and
began his remarkable career which reached its climax when he became the
foremost portrait-painter in England.
“In 1787 the wish of Lawrence’s heart was realized, and we find the
young painter, then eighteen, established in rooms in what was then
known as Leicester Fields--the present Leicester Square. He was
accompanied to London by his father and on the thirteenth of September
of that year he was admitted as a student of the Royal Academy. Armed
with a letter of introduction from Prince Hoare, one of Lawrence’s Bath
patrons, a member of the Dilettanti Society and Secretary for Foreign
Correspondence to the Royal Academy, Lawrence obtained an interview
with Sir Joshua Reynolds, and as a specimen of his ability and artistic
skill he took to the President an oil-portrait of himself, painted in
1786. He was kindly received by the courtly old Sir Joshua, who praised
his work and spoke most encouragingly to the young artist. “You have
been looking at the _Old Masters_, I see,” he said, “but my advice is
this: Study Nature! Study Nature!”
Three years later the young artist, who was extremely handsome and
“romantic” in appearance, exhibited his picture of _Miss Farren_
at the Royal Academy, which attracted much attention.
In 1791 Lawrence made a drawing of a much more beautiful subject,
_Emma, Lady Hamilton_, from which a print was engraved.
“Hoppner who was ten years older than Lawrence,” writes Lord Ronald
Sutherland Gower, “had been for some time the favorite painter of
George, Prince of Wales, with the result that half the smart ladies of
the town sat to him. But the King, who allowed the Queen’s and Princess
Amelia’s portraits to be painted by Lawrence, became so much interested
in him, that, on the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds in February, 1792,
he decided that the young painter, then not twenty-three years of age
and not yet a full member of the Academy, should be appointed to the
post of Painter-in-Ordinary, an office that had been filled by the late
President. ‘Never perhaps, in the country,’ writes Redgrave, in his
account of Lawrence, ‘had a man so young, so uneducated, so untried
in his art, advanced as it were _per saltum_ to the honors and
emoluments of the profession.’ The King’s favorite painter was the
American, Benjamin West, Sir Joshua’s successor in the Presidential
Chair, and Windsor was filled with his historical pictures, which,
although once valuable, would not now fetch even a modest sum if they
were sold at Christie’s.”
About 1790 Lawrence removed to Old Bond Street, installing himself in
a handsome apartment with his friend, Farington, as his secretary.
Lawrence tried to paint imaginary and historical pictures, but it soon
was evident that portraiture was his forte. The death of Opie in 1807
and of Hoppner in 1810, left him without a rival. On the death of
Benjamin West in 1820, Lawrence was unanimously elected President of
the Royal Academy. Fuseli, a little dissatisfied, exclaimed: “Well!
well! since they must have a face-painter to reign over them, let them
take Lawrence; he can at least paint eyes!” The period between 1820 and
1830 (when Lawrence died) is practically a “Lawrence Age.” Sir Thomas
painted everybody of note from George IV and the Duke of Wellington
to fashionable ladies of no particular distinction save their wealth.
His full-length portrait of George IV in his Coronation robes was so
frequently copied and given by the King to his friends that nearly
every Royal Collection in Europe can show a replica.
The spirit of the age was certainly expressed in Lawrence’s portraits.
We have only to look at such portraits as the _Countess of Blessington_
(Wallace Gallery), _Lady Peel_ (Frick Collection), _Lady Dover and
her Son_, and _La Duchesse de Berri_ to realize how true this is.
These ladies look as if they had stepped from the pages of Akermann’s
_Repository_.
It is always interesting to learn what an artist has to say about his
own work. To Mrs. Jameson, Lawrence wrote the following:
“My thoughts have almost invariably been devoted to Sir Joshua, and,
generally, to the Italian School--Raphael, Correggio, Titian, even
Parmigiano. An admirer of the very finest works of Van Dyck, and
acknowledging the consistent ability of his pencil, I have been less
his votary than, perhaps, hundreds since his time, of distinguished
taste and talent (Gainsborough, for instance), to whose judgment in
other cases I should justly bend. Rubens has been infinitely more the
object of my admiration; but, as you know, presents very little as
example for portrait-painting.
“Sir Joshua continues to be more and more my delight and my surprise.
Rembrandt has another and still higher place in my affection. In my
men, then, I have thought of both, and of Titian and of Raphael, as
the subjects approached their style. In women, of Sir Joshua, Raphael,
Parmigiano, and Correggio. In children, of Sir Joshua and the two
latter. In my portraits of Kemble and of Mrs. Siddons, of the highest
Italian School.”
In 1825 the King of France gave Lawrence the Cross of the _Legion
d’honneur_. Lawrence died in 1830, unmarried, a fashionable “man
about town,” courted, admired, and not unlike Lord Byron, in some
respects. Lord Gower says:
“That his fame underwent a marked decline during the half-century after
his death in this country cannot be doubted; but within the last few
years a reaction has set in, which is tending to place him again in the
forefront of our greatest portrait-painters.
“Both as a man and as an artist Lawrence was impressionable, and in
his work was entirely influenced by the spirit of his period, a period
of affectation that frequently bordered upon vulgarity. If Lawrence’s
art in portraiture had been genius instead of talent of the highest
order, he would have created a public taste instead of slavishly
following that set by the Court or Society of his day. As it was, his
work was the ultimate expression of the curtain and column school of
portraiture, and his success set a fashion that was followed for years
afterwards by innumerable portrait-painters. These, in imitating the
style, missed the spirit and perception by which Lawrence, trammelled
as he was by the absurdities of dress and conventionality of attitude
and surroundings, was enabled to place upon his canvases some
suggestion of the actual identity of his sitters. And it was not until
the advent of George Frederick Watts and the late Sir John Everett
Millais that the effects of the imitation of the obvious points of
Lawrence’s style finally disappeared from English portraiture.
“Lawrence’s chief defect was that he turned his art too much into a
trade; he would have attained a far higher position had he contented
himself with painting half the people he did, and his name would have
stood on a higher pinnacle in the Temple of Fame. During the last
twenty years of his life he painted but little more, as a rule, than
the face of his sitter, the rest of the picture being completed by
his pupils; or rather his assistants. This practice has, of course,
lessened the value of his portraits.
“These are grave failings; but on the other side, his great merits are
incontestable and weigh the scale in his favor. Where, except among the
very greatest of those whose fame chiefly rests on their excellence in
the art of portrait-painting--such giants as Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt,
Velasquez, and Van Dyck, Reynolds, and Gainsborough--can finer work be
shown them than in such astonishing likenesses as those of Lawrence
when at his best; and the master must be judged by his master-works.
His style, when once he had adopted it, had the great merit of being
a style of its own, of much refinement and excellence in drawing;
although his work was, perhaps, too smooth in technique and somewhat
affected in feeling. His paintings have lasted, whereas those of many
of his contemporaries are mere wrecks and shadows of their former
selves; for he attempted no experiments in glazings and pigments, as
was Sir Joshua’s wont, and his pictures are, as a rule, as fresh as
when they were painted.
“I believe it only fair to place him immediately beneath our
three greatest portrait-painters,--that immortal trio, Reynolds,
Gainsborough, and Romney: at a time when Hoppner, Opie, and Raeburn
were all working, this is high praise.”
PINKIE.
_Sir Thomas Lawrence
(1769–1830)._
_Collection of the late
Mr. Henry E. Huntington._
This radiant portrait is generally considered to be Lawrence’s
masterpiece. How fresh, how sweet, how breezy it is! “Pinkie” stands
on a high hill with a beautiful low-lying landscape of wooded hills
spreading out and undulating towards the distant horizon. The sky is
dappled with swiftly moving clouds and the morning breeze is blowing
pretty freshly, for Pinkie’s light gown is rippling with it and the
strings of her bonnet are fluttering and flapping rather violently.
These ribbons are pink, matching the sash which holds the diaphanous,
white gown in place. Pinkie’s eyes are brown, large, and lustrous and
her brown hair is touzled by the wind; but she looks at us so sweetly
and brightly that we love her at first sight. How daintily her little
slippered foot is planted on the flower-sprinkled turf! Her airy,
youthful, billowy figure suggests the idea of Spring beneath whose
every footstep flowers instantly appear in full bloom.
[Illustration:
_Collection of the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington_
PINKIE
--_Sir Thomas Lawrence_]
How far she has come! Do we not see her home in the distance on the
right, encircled by a crescent of leafy trees and with a wide driveway
through the clearing?
“Pinkie’s” name was Sarah Moulton-Barrett, and she was the only
daughter of Charles Moulton, Esq., and his wife Elizabeth Barrett
Moulton. Pinkie was born March 22, 1783, and the lovely child died at
the age of twelve, the year in which this portrait was painted. It is
interesting to note that Pinkie was the aunt of the famous poet, Mrs.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who was the daughter of Pinkie’s brother,
Edward Moulton-Barrett of Coxhoe Hall, Durham, and Hope End, Hereford.
The portrait, oils on canvas (57½ × 39¾ inches), was painted in 1795
and was formerly in the Collection of Octavius Moulton-Barrett, Esq.,
Westover, Calbourne, Isle of Wight, and thence it passed to the Right
Hon. Lord Michelham, K. C. V. O., London. A modern critic rapturously
expresses what every one feels on looking at this enchanting picture:
“If ever canvas was instinct with life, this picture lives and
breathes. If ever the vehicle of oil paint spread on canvas has caught
the wind as it blows, the light that dances in a mischievous child’s
eyes, the breath of life and joy in living, Lawrence, in this picture,
achieved the miracle. You feel, as you look at it, that you could read
small print by its light in the dead of night. The color of it is the
color of sea-downs on a May morning; the joy of it is of the joy of the
first warm day of Spring. And in the little girl’s graceful figure are
comprised whatever things are lovely, whatever things are pure, to the
minds of men.”
INDEX
[Titles of Paintings in this book appear in italics.]
Abbey, mediæval, 170
Abel, Charles Frederick, 361
Act of Supremacy, 244
Adoration of the Kings (Gentile da Fabriano), 74, 77
Adoration of the Lamb (Van Eycks), 157, 168
_Adoration of the Magi_ (Benvenuto di Giovanni), 12–16
Adoration of the Magi (Botticelli), 58
Adoration of the Magi (Fra Angelico), 37
Adoration of the Magi (Memling), 174
_Adoration of the Shepherds_ (Mantegna), 104
Adoration of the Virgin (Lippi), 46
Age of Innocence (Reynolds), 340
Agnolo Gaddi, 18
_Agony in the Garden_ (Raphael), 90
Akermann’s Repository, 424
Albert, Charles d’, 178
Albertinelli, Mariotto, 24
Albigenses, 262
Albizzi family, 68
Allegri, Antonio, 93, 99
Alphonso, Duke of Ferrara, 99
Altichiero Altichieri, 93, 98, 103, 104
Ambassadors, The (Holbein), 250
“Anacreon of Painting,” The, 277
Anatomy Lesson, The (Rembrandt), 206
Analysis of Beauty, Hogarth’s, 337
Ancre, Marshall d’, 178
André, Major John, 398
Andrea d’Agnolo, 24
Andrea del Castagno, 19
Andrea del Sarto, 24
Andrea di Cione (Orcagna), 18
Andrea di Cione (Verrocchio), 23
Andrea di Firenze, 18
“Andrea senza errori,” 24
Anemone, 174
Angelo Allori, 24
Angels, Fra Angelico’s, 32–34, 38
Angels’ Heads (Reynolds), 338, 340
Anglo-Norman painters, 333
Anne of Austria, 176, 178, 194
_Anne, Lady de la Pole_ (Romney), 410
Annunciation, The, 28, 30
_Annunciation, The_ (Masolino), 28
Annunciation, Lily, 30
Annunzio, D’, quoted, 121
Antonello da Messina, 117, 124, 132
Antonello di Giovanni degli Antoni, 124
Antonio di San Gallo, 24
Antonio Veneziano, 18, 19
Antwerp School, 164, 166
Apple, 126
Arlequin, 281
Armand-Dayot, quoted, 302
Armida, 181
Armida, Garden of, 181
Armstrong, Sir Walter, quoted, 286, 340, 341, 385, 388, 406
Army Plot, 194
Arne, Dr., 331
Arnolfo del Cambio, 28
Arte de Medici e speziale, 17
Asolo, 144
Astrophel and Stella, 187–188
Audran, Claude, 284
Augsburg, 236
Baccio della Porta, 24
Bach, John Christian, 361
Balen, Hendrik van, 164, 165, 181
Baldovinetti, Alesso, 22, 23, 37, 48–51, 52, 70
Baptistery doors, 18, 20, 52
Barbizon School, 201
Barry, Madame du, 312
Bartolo di Fredi, 3
Basaiti Marco, 118
Bassano, Jacopo, 118
Bastiani, Lazzaro, 118
Bath, 348, 358, 361, 390, 422
Battle of the Nile, 408
Beatrice d’Este, 96, 107, 148, 150
Beauvais tapestry, 306
Beechey, Sir William, 337
Bellini, Gentile, 98, 116, 117, 118, 119, 132
Bellini, Giovanni, 98, 116, 117, 118, 119, 121, 124, 130–139, 151
Bellini, Jacopo, 8, 98, 116, 117
Bellini, Nicolosia, 97, 98
Bembo, Pietro (Cardinal), 144
Benci, Jacopo d’Antonio, 52
Benvenuto di Giovanni, 3, 12–16
Berenson, quoted, 8, 12, 36, 52, 62–63, 77, 83–84, 99, 103, 106,
122
Bermudas, Plantation of the, 190
Bernard di Betto, 74
Bernardo da Canale, 122
Berruguete, Pedro, 257
Birds, Painters of, Dutch, 203
Birds, Painters of, Italian, 19
_Billet-Doux, Le_ (Fragonard), 318
Birth of Venus (Botticelli), 59, 61, 66
Black Friars, 262
Blanc, Charles, quoted, 166, 182
Blount, Charles, Earl of Devonshire, 188
_Blue Boy, The_ (Gainsborough), 378–386
Boccatis, Camillo, 78, 172
Bode, Dr. Wilhelm, quoted, 207–208, 212, 228
Bodegones, 258
Bologna School, 98
Bonfigli, Benedetto, 74, 77–78
Bonvicino, Alessandro, 98
Bordone, Paris, 121
Borgia, Lucrezia, 99, 151
Borgognone, 110
Borgo San Sepolcro, 5, 9, 10, 22
Borluut, Isabella, 157
Bosch, Jerome, 164
Botticelli, Sandro, 21, 23, 47, 48, 55–66, 82, 94, 334
Boucher, François, 272, 304, 312, 316
Boulton, William H., quoted, 366
Boy with a Rabbit (Raeburn), 411, 416
Bramante di Milano, 93
Bramantino, 93
Brancacci Chapel, 19, 31, 45, 46, 48
Brancacci, Felice, 19, 31
Brancacci frescoes, 19, 31
Brandt, Isabella, 178
Bredius, Dr., quoted, 217–218
Brescia School, 98
Bronzino, 24
Brooke, Lord, 190
Brown, Dr. John, quoted, 412
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 428
Brueghel, “Hell-fire,” 165
Brueghel, “Peasant,” 164
Brueghel, “Velvet,” 165
Bruges, School of, 157, 161, 170
Brunelleschi, 103
Buisson, J., quoted, 120
Buckingham, Duke of, 192, 195, 196
Bull, The (Paul Potter), 201
Bunbury, Charles John, 419
Bunbury, Henry William, 419
Burger, quoted, 201, 203, 227
Burgundian Court, 158–160, 257
Burgundy, Dukes of, 334
Burnet, John, 382
Burney, Fanny, quoted, 344, 419
Buttall, Jonathan, 378–386
Byron, quoted, 348
Byzantine traditions, 3, 115
Cadore, 137–142
Cadore, Valley of, 146
Caliari, Paolo, 99, 120
Calonne, 252, 354
Campanile (Giotto’s), 26
Campbell, Thomas, 350
Campin, Robert, 162, 169
Canaletto, 121, 152
Caprichos, Los (Goya), 170
“Captain in Lace,” 418
Caravaggio, 258
_Cardinal Albrecht as St. Hieronymus_ (Cranach), 251
Cardinal Bembo, 144
Cardinal Granvella, 201, 257
_Cardinal Quiroga_ (El Greco), 259
_Camargo, La_ (Lancret), 291–292
Carnations, 25
Carpaccio, Vittore, 118
Cartwright, Mrs. Julia, quoted, 26, 39, 47–48, 69, 95, 150
Castiglione, Baldassare, 90
_Caterina Cornaro_ (Titian), 143
Caxton, William, 334
Cazes, Pierre Jacques, 302
Cenni dei Pepe, 17
Cennino Cennini, 18, 26
Champaigne, Philippe de, 278
“Chaponnay Nattier,” 288
Chardin, J. B. S., 277, 300–303, 316, 318
Charles I (England), 164, 179, 182, 190, 192, 194, 195
Charles II (England), 194, 195
Charles V (Emperor), 161, 240, 243, 257
Charles the Bold, 160, 161, 257
Château de Steen, 179
Cherries, 126
Chinoiserie, 276, 284
Christian Art, 3
Christina of Denmark, 243
Christus, Petrus, 162, 169–172
Cimabue, 17, 26
Cima da Conegliano, 118
Civic Guard Banquet (B. van der Helst), 200
Classic Architecture, 18, 31
Clement VIII, 56
Cleves, Anne of, 243
“Cock-fighting Earl,” 400
Coeck, Jerome, 164
Coello, Alonzo Sanchez, 258
Coleridge, quoted, 377
Colonel St. Leger (Gainsborough), 388
Columbine, 281, 284
Columbine, The (Luine), 110
Comédiens français, 284
Compagnia di San Luca, 18
Company of Capt. Roelof Bicker (B. van der Helst), 200
Connecticut, 190
Constable, John, 337
Convent of San Marco (Florence), 37, 38
Conversation-pieces, 199, 202
Cook, Herbert F., quoted, 140
Cooper, Samuel, 334
Copal, François, 207–210
Copal, Titia, 210
Coques, Gonzales, 166
Coronation of the Virgin (Lippi), 46
Corporation pictures, 201
Corésus and Callirhoé (Fragonard), 314, 316
Cornaro, Caterina, 121, 143–145, 146
Cornaro, Giorgio, 144, 146
Correggio, 93, 99, 119
“Correggio of Fruits and Flowers,” 203
Cosimas and Damianus, 39–42
Costa, Lorenzo, 93, 98, 99, 108
Costumes, Eastern, 20
Cotes, Francis, 337, 395
_Cottage Door, The_ (Gainsborough), 357
Council of the Eastern and Western Churches, 20
Countess of Coventry, 369
Couperin, 331
Court Beauties (Kneller), 336
Court Beauties (Lely), 336
Court of Mantua, 107
Court of Milan, 94–95, 151
_Cowper Madonna, The Small_ (Raphael), 86–88
Cowper Madonna of 1508 (Raphael), 84–86
Coypel, Noel, 302
Cranach, the Elder, Lucas, 251–252
Cranach, the Younger, Lucas, 236
Crivelli, Carlo, 98, 117, 125–130
Crome, John, 337
Cromwell, Oliver, 190, 334, 335
Crowe and Cavalcaselle, quoted, 138
Cust, Lionel, quoted, 138
Cuyp, Aelbert, 201
Daddi, Bernardo, 17, 18, 73
Dædalus, 184–186
_Dædalus and Icarus_ (Van Dyck), 184
Daisy, 174
_Danse, La_ (Watteau), 281
Dante, 3, 32
Davenport, The Hon. Mrs., 397–398
David Garrick and His Wife (Hogarth), 336
David, Gerard, 164
David, Jacques Louis, 270
Delany, Mrs., quoted, 376
Delmé, Lady Betty, 337
Derby, Earl of, 400, 420–422
Desastres de la guerra, 270
Deserted Village, The, 418
Desportes, A. F., 277
Desportes, Philippe, quoted, 186
_Deux Confidentes, Les_ (Boucher), 304
Devereux, Penelope, 187
Devereux, Walter, 187
_Diana, Viscountess Crosbie_ (Reynolds), 331, 337, 340, 346–347,
356
Diderot, quoted, 276, 303
_Dirk Berck of Cologne_ (Holbein), 246
Discourses on Art (Reynolds), 338
Doelen pictures, 199, 222
Doge Loredano (Giovanni Bellini), 132
Dom-bild, Cologne, 235
Domenichino, 138
Domenic de Guzman, 262
Domenico di Bartolo, 3
Domenico Veneziano, 22
Dominican Order, 262
Donatello, 18, 103, 106
Dosso Dossi, 99, 137
Dou, Gerard, 202
Drouais, F. H., 276, 310–314
Duccio di Buoninsegna, 3, 4, 5, 9, 17
Duchess of Argyll, 400
Duchess of Devonshire, 331, 356, 358, 361, 371
Duchess of Ferrara, 107
Duchess of Gloucester, 366
Duchess of Marlborough, 375
Duke of Gloucester, 369
Duke of Mantua, 178
Dulwich, Mrs. Siddons as Tragic Muse at, 353–356
_Duo, The_ (Lancret), 294
Duomo, 26
Dürer, Albrecht, 137, 200, 235, 236, 237–238
Dürer, etchings by, 238
Dürer, portraits by, 237
Dürer, wood-cuts by, 238
“Dutch Hogarth,” The, 203
Dutch School, 165
Duveen, Sir Joseph, 378
Dyck, Sir Anthony Van, 112, 164, 181–196, 300, 335
Edward VI (England), 240
Eighteenth Century French women, 288
Eighteenth Century Society, 229–231
El Greco, 258, 259–262
_Eliza Farren_ (Sir Thomas Lawrence), 420
Elizabeth Bas (Rembrandt), 212
Elizabeth Hamilton, Countess of Derby, 398–402
Embarquement pour l’Île de Cythère (Watteau), 281, 314
_Emma, Lady Hamilton_ (Romney), 403–410, 423
Erasmus, 242
Erasmus, quoted, 244
Ercole of Ferrara, Duke, 150
Essex, Earl of, 187, 190
Este family, 181
Este, Lionello, 168
Evangelista di Pian di Meleto, 89
Everdingen, Allart Van, 217–218
Everdingen, Cornelius Van, 217–218
Eyck, Hubert van, 157, 160, 200
Eyck, Jan van, 157, 158, 160, 170, 200, 286
Fabrics, Oriental, 10
Fabritius, Carel, 202, 227, 231
Fantin-Latour, 303
Farington Diary, quoted, 340–341, 344, 352, 380, 414, 420, 421
Farren, Miss, 400, 420–422
“Father of His Country, The,” 20
“Father of Painters,” 97
Faure, Élie, quoted, 262, 282, 302
_Feast of the Gods_ (Bellini), 137
Feast of the Pheasant, 159–160
Feast of the Rosary (Dürer), 238
Featherstonehaugh, Sir Henry, 406
Ferrarese School, 98
_Fête Champêtre, Une_ (Pater), 296
_Fête Galante, Une_ (Pater), 298
Fêtes galantes, 276, 284, 292
Fierens-Gevaert, quoted, 169
Filipepi, Alessandro di Mariano, 56
Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, 74
Fischer, John Christian, 361
Fisherman Presenting the Ring of St. Mark to the Doge (Paris
Bordone), 121
“Flemish Fra Angelico,” The, 174
Flemish Painting, 161, 162
Flemish School, 157
Floating Feather, The (M. d’Hondecoeter), 203
Floreins, Jan, 174
Florentine School, 17–72
Flower painters, 203
Flowers (Memling), 174
Fly represented, 128, 169
Fondaco dei Tedeschi, 118, 119, 152, 238
Fontainebleau, 24
Foppa, Vincenzo, 93
Fourment, Helena, 179
_Fountain in the Park, The_ (Hubert Robert), 322
Fox, Charles James, 342, 377
Fra Angelico, 19, 20, 32–42, 50, 76, 78, 103, 334
Fra Bartolommeo, 24, 89
Fra Filippo Lippi, 20, 22, 23, 42–48, 58, 334
Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, 19, 37
Fragonard, J. H., 272, 314–320
Francesco di Stefano, 22
_Francesco Sassetti and His Son Teodoro_ (Ghirlandaio), 72
Francia, Francesco, 93, 98, 99, 107–108
Franciabigio, 24
Francis I, 24
Franciscans, Order of, 6
Franconian School, 236
Frans, Robert, 235
Frantz, Henri, quoted, 324
Frederick the Great, 291, 296
French women of the Eighteenth Century, 288
Friars Minor, Order of, 6
Friedländer, Max J., quoted, 168, 176, 228
Fromentin, quoted, 207
Fruit, 126
Fry, Roger, quoted, 128
Fuggers, The, 236
Fulcher, quoted, 386
Fuller, quoted, 196
Fuseli, quoted, 424
Fyt, Jan, 165
Gabriel, Angel, 28, 30, 32, 34
_Gabriel, the Announcing Angel_ (Fra Angelico), 32
Gainsborough, Thomas, 329, 330, 331, 332, 333, 337, 357–392, 394,
426
Gandy, William, 338
Garden Scenes, 320
Garrick, David, 348, 350, 361
“Gates of Paradise,” 52
Gautier, Théophile, quoted, 38, 229
_General Nicolas Guye_ (Goya), 270
_General Philip Honywood_ (Gainsborough), 386
Genre painting, Dutch, 201
Gentile da Fabriano, 10, 16, 20, 31, 73, 74–77, 98, 103, 104,
116, 117, 157, 168
_Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire_ (Gainsborough), 372–378
_Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire_ (Reynolds), 356
Gerardo, 19
Ghiberti, Lorenzo, 18, 20, 31, 52, 103
Ghirlandaio, Domenico, 23, 61, 66–72, 82, 164, 194
Ghirlandaio, Ridolfo, 70
Gillot, Claude, 281, 284, 292
_Giorgio Cornaro_ (Titian), 146
Giorgione, 99, 117, 118, 119, 121, 140, 142
Giotto di Bordone, 4, 6, 10, 17, 25–28, 74
Giotteschi, The, 18
Giovanna degli Albrizzi, 61, 68–69
_Giovanna Tornabuoni_ (Ghirlandaio), 66
Giovanni Antonio da Canale, 121
Giovanni da Milano, 18
Girolamo di Benvenuto, 3
Gisze, Georg, 247
_Giuliano de’ Medici_ (Botticelli), 55–61
Gli Asolani, 144
Gobelins, 306
Goes, Hugo van der, 163
Golden Fleece, Knights of the, 159
“Goldini of Painters, The,” 122
Goldsmith, Oliver, 418
Goldsmith, Oliver, verse by, 418–419
Goldsmiths, 18, 411
Goncourts, de, quoted, 284, 314
Gonzaga, Marchese Francesco, 103
Gonzaga, Vincenzo, 178
Gordon Riots, Lord George, 342
Gothic Art, 3, 4
Gothic Style, 179
Gower, Lord, quoted, 331, 341, 353, 380, 395, 423, 425
Gourd, 126
Goya y Lucientes, 258, 270–272, 302
Goyen, Jan van, 201
Gozzoli, Benozzo, 16, 20, 78
Graces Decorating a Terminal Figure of Hymen (Reynolds), 340
Graham, Dr., 404
Gravelot, Hubert, 358
Great Fire of London (1666), 182, 334
Great Seal of England, 334
Greco, El, 258, 259–262
Greuze, J. B., 277, 306–310, 314
Greville, the Hon. Charles Francis, 403
Grey, Lady Jane, 240
Grisebach, August, quoted, 394
Guardi, Francesco, 122, 152
Guido da Siena, 3
Guiffrey, Jean, quoted, 300
Guild of Doctors and Apothecaries, 17
Guild of St. Luke, 17–18, 19
Gunning, Elizabeth, 369, 400
Gunning, Maria, 369, 400
Gunnings, The, 366
Hals, Frans, 200, 202, 220–224
Hamilton, Sir William, 406
Hampden, John, 190, 194
Hanseatic League, 246
Harlot’s Progress, The (Hogarth), 336
Hart, Emma, 396, 403
_Harvest Waggon, The_ (Gainsborough), 389–390
Hautecœur, Louis, quoted, 316, 320
Hayman, Francis, 358
Heaton, Mrs., quoted, 238
Heem, Jan Davidsz de, 203
Heine, 235
Helst, B. van der, 200
Henri de la Pasture, 168
Henri IV (Navarre), 176, 191, 192
Henrietta, Duchesse d’Orléans, 194, 195
Henry VIII (England), 240, 243, 334
Herrera, Francisco the Elder, 258
Hervey, Lady, quoted, 376
Hilliard, Nicholas, 334
Hobbema, Meindert, 202
Hogarth, William, 236–237
Holbein, Hans the Elder, 236
Holbein, Hans the Younger, 235, 236, 240–250, 330, 334, 335
Holy Conversation, 130
_Hon. Mrs. Davenport, The_ (Romney), 397
Hon. Mrs. Graham, The (Gainsborough), 358
_Hon. Mrs. Grant of Kilgraston_ (Raeburn), 411
Hondecoeter, Melchior d’, 203
Honywood, General Philip, 386, 389
Hoogh, Pieter de, 202, 226–227
Hoppner, John, 333, 337, 361, 380, 381, 419, 423, 424, 426
Horneck, Catherine, 418, 419
Horneck, Charles, 418
Horneck, Mary, 416–419
Hudson, Jeffrey, 195–196, 335
Hudson, Thomas, 338
Hudibras, 336
Huet, J. B., 276
Humphrey, Osias, quoted, 363
Huysum, Jan van, 203
Ibn Batuta, 5
Icare, poem, 186
Icarus, 184–186
_Invocation à l’Amour, L’_ (Fragonard), 314
Iris, 174
Isabella d’Este, 107
Isabella of Mantua, 82
Italian Comedy, 281, 284
Italianate Flemings, 164
Jacobins, 262
Jacopo da Pontormo, 24
James I (England), 334, 335
Jardinière, La Belle (Raphael), 86, 89, 90
Jasmine, 25, 31
_Jean de Dinteville_ (Holbein), 350
Jermyn, Lord, 195
Jerusalem Delivered (Tasso), 181
_Jessamy Bride, The_ (Hoppner), 416–419
_John Walter Tempest_ (Romney), 392
Jordaens, Jacob, 165
Judith with Head of Holofernes (Mantegna), 107
Juno Ludovisi, 138
_Jupiter and Calisto_ (Poussin), 277
Justi, Carl, quoted, 266
Kauffman, Angelica, 408, 419
Kells, Book of, 333
Kemble, Charles, 348
Kemble, Fanny, 348
Kemble, John Philip, 348, 350
Kemble family, 348
Keppel, Admiral, 338, 342
Keppel, the Hon. Frederick, 368
Keppel riots, 342
Kit Kat Club, 336
Kitty Fisher (Reynolds), 340
Kneller Godfrey, 336
Knollys, Lettice, 187
_Labille-Guiard and Two Pupils, Madame_ (Labille-Guiard), 324–326
_Lace-Maker, The_ (Jan Vermeer), 228
_Lady Betty Delmé_ (Reynolds), 337
Lady Betty Hamilton (Reynolds), 402
Lady Cockburn and Her Children (Reynolds), 340, 351
Lady Derby, Eliza Farren (Lawrence), 420
_Lady Derby_, Elizabeth Hamilton (Romney), 333, 398–402
Lady Duncannon, 377
Lancret, Nicolas, 276, 291–296, 330
Landscape, first Italian, 39
Landscape painters, Dutch, 201
Last Supper (Leonardo da Vinci), 95
Laud, Archbishop, 190, 194
Laughing Cavalier (Frans Hals), 222
_Laughing Mandolin Player, The_ (Frans Hals), 224
Lavinia Fenton (Hogarth), 336
Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 337, 352, 412, 419, 420–428
Lawrence, Sir Thomas, quoted, 424–425
League of Cambrai, 144
LeBrun, Charles, 277
LeBrun, Vigée, 277, 326, 408
Leicester, Earl of, 187
Lely, Sir Peter, 235–236
Lemké, quoted, 231–232
Le Nôtre, 138, 322
Leonardo da Vinci, 21, 23, 24, 82, 89, 106, 110, 151
Leonardo da Vinci, quoted, 18, 94
Leslie and Taylor, quoted, 344, 350–351
Liberale, 93
Libri, Girolamo dai, 93
Lilies, 25, 30, 31
Line of Beauty, Hogarth’s, 337
Lippi, Fra Filippo, 44
Lippi, Filippino, 23, 47, 94
Lippo Memmi, 3
“Little Comedy,” 418, 419
Little Dutch Masters, 201, 202, 227
Lochner, Meister Stephan, 235
Longhi, Pietro, 122
Lord Glendee (Raeburn), 412
Lord Ligonier (Reynolds), 389
Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, 3, 9
Lorenzetti, Pietro, 3, 9
Lorenzo da Pavia, 95, 107
Lorenzo di Credi, 23, 82
Lorenzo Monaco, 18
Lorraine, Claude, 281, 303
“Lost Duchess, The,” 372
Lotto, Lorenzo, 121
Louis XIII, 176–180, 191, 192
_Louis XIII, King of France_ (Rubens), 176
Lucas van Leiden, 200
Lucrezia Buti, 22, 23, 44, 47
Luini, Bernardino, 93, 110–112
Lusignan, Jacques de, 143
Luther, 238, 253
Luxembourg Palace, 179
Macnab, The (Raeburn), 412
_Madame Bonier de la Mosson_ (Nattier), 285
_Mademoiselle Helvetius_ (Drouais), 314
Madonna, Cardellino, 24, 86, 89
Madonna of the Chair (Raphael), 90
_Madonna and Child_ (Antonello da Messina), 124
_Madonna and Child_ (Alesso Baldovinetti), 48
_Madonna and Child_ (Bellini), 334
_Madonna and Child_ (Botticelli), 64
_Madonna and Child_ (Crivelli), 125
_Madonna and Child_ (Crivelli), 128
_Madonna and Child_ (Gentile da Fabriano), 74
_Madonna and Child_ (Giotto di Bordone), 25
_Madonna and Child_ (Perugino), 80
_Madonna and Child with Angels_ (Bonfigli), 77
_Madonna and Child with Angels_ (Memling), 172
_Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels_ (Matteo di Giovanni), 9
Madonna and Child with Singing Cherubs (Mantegna), 107
Madonna Enthroned with Saints (Raphael), 90, 92
Madonna del Gran Duca (Raphael), 24, 86, 88, 89
Madonna of the Magnificat (Botticelli), 58, 62
_Madonna della Stella_ (Fra Filippo Lippi), 42
Madonna di San Sisto (Raphael), 90
Madonna, costume of the, 10
Madonna, flowers of the, 25, 30–31
Madrigal, Roger Milès, 290
Maes, Nicholas, 202
Maintenon, Madame de, 275, 284
Maître de Flémalle, 162, 169
Majestas, The, 17
_Mall in St. James’s Park, The_ (Gainsborough), 364
Mall, The, 331, 364–365
Manet, 259
Mantegna, Andrea, 93, 97, 98, 99, 104–107, 116
Margaret of Austria, 257
Margaret of York, 160
_Maria Walpole, Duchess of Gloucester_, 366–372
_Marianne of Austria_ (Velasquez), 264
Marie Antoinette, 290, 312
Marie de’ Medici, 176, 178, 179, 191
Market Cart (Gainsborough), 388
_Marquise de Baglion, La_ (Nattier), 288
_Marquise de Besons, La_ (Greuze), 208
_Marquise de la Fare, La_ (Fragonard), 320
_Marquise de Villemonble, La_ (Drouais), 310
Marriage à la Mode (Hogarth), 336
Marriage of St. Catherine (Memling), 174
Marriage of the Virgin (Perugino), 82
Mars and Venus (Botticelli), 59
Martini, Simone, 4, 9
_Mary Horneck_ (Hoppner), 416
Mary of Burgundy, 161
Mary of Hungary, 257
Mary, Queen of Scots, 240
Mary Tudor, 335
Masaccio, Tommaso, 18, 19, 31, 45, 46, 48, 157
Masolino, Tommaso, 8, 19, 28–32
Masolino da Panicale, 31
Massys, Quentin, 164, 242
Matisse, 303, 320
Matteo da Siena, 10
Matteo di Giovanni, 3, 9–12
Maximilian, Emperor, 144, 150, 257
_Maximilian Sforza_ (Veneto), 148
Medici, Cosimo de’, 20, 37, 39, 45, 168
Medici, Giovanni de Bicci, 20
Medici, Giuliano de’, 23, 55–61, 68
Medici, Giulio de’, 56
Medici, Lorenzo de’, the Magnificent, 21, 23, 24, 28, 58, 59, 61,
68, 72, 93, 94
Medici, Piero de’, 21, 22, 56, 58
Medici, The, 20–22
Medici Palace (Riccardi), 45
Meier Madonna (Holbein), 242
Meister Wilhelm of Cologne, 161, 235
Meistersinger, 236
Melancthon, 238, 252
Melozzo da Forli, 98
Memling, Hans, 162, 172–176, 200
Metsu, Gabriel, 166, 202
Mezetin, 281, 284
Michel, Emile, quoted, 206
Michelangelo, 24, 70, 74, 77, 119, 121
Mieris, Frans van, 202
Mignon, Abraham, 203
Milès, Roger, Madrigal by, 290
Millais, Sir John Everett, 425
Milton, John, 335
Miniature painting, 157
Miniature portrait-painters, 334
Minorites of Siena, 5, 6
Minotaur, 184
Mierevelt, Michiel J., 201
Mississippi Bubble, The, 275
Mona Lisa (Leonardo da Vinci), 110
Monet, Claude, 320
Monkhouse, Cosmo, quoted, 125
Morales, Luis de, 257
More, Sir Thomas, 242, 244–246
Moreelse, Paulus, 201
Moretto da Brescia, 93, 98
Moro, Antonio, 201, 257, 335
“Moro, Il,” 21, 23, 82, 93, 106, 148–151
Morone, Domenico, 93
Moser, Mary, quoted, 382
Moroni, Giambattista, 93, 98, 112
Morysin, Sir Richard, 240
Moulton-Barrett, Sarah, 428
Mrs. Abington (Reynolds), 340, 422
Mrs. Hardinge (Reynolds), 340
Mrs. Siddons (Gainsborough), 350, 385
_Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse_ (Reynolds), 340, 347–356, 381
Murano, Antonio da, 116, 117
Murillo, 258
Musical Instruments, 172
_Music Party_ (Pieter de Hoogh), 226
Musidora (Gainsborough), 406
Myrtle, 25
Mytens, Daniel, 335
Nasmyth, Alexander, 412, 414
Nattier, Jean Marc, 276, 285–290, 312
Nelli, Ottaviano, 76
Nelly O’Brien, 340
Nelson, Lord, 407, 408, 410
Neroccio di Landi, 3
Netherlands, Spanish and Austrian, 199
New England Company, 190
_Niccolini Madonna, The_ (Raphael), 84–86
Niccolo da Foligno, 78
Night Watch (Rembrandt), 206, 207
Noort, Adam van, 178
Northcote, James, quoted, 342, 353
North Italian School, 93–114
Nuremburg, 236
Nuzi, Allegretto, 73, 76
Oils, 83, 117, 121, 124
_Old Lady Sealed in an Armchair_ (Rembrandt), 212
Old Woman (Rembrandt), 212
Olive branch, 31
Oliver, Isaac, 334
Oliver, Peter, 334
Opie, John, 337, 424, 426
Orcagna, 18
Oriental Art and Sienese Art, 4–5
Orléans, Duc d’ (the Regent), 92
Orléans, Gaston d’, 178
Orley, Bernard van, 164
Ostade, Adriaen van, 202
Oudry, J. B., 277, 312
Pacheco, Francisco, 258
Paduan School, 116
Paget, John, quoted, 408
Palette, Reynolds’s, 341
Palma, School of, 119
Palma Vecchio, 119, 121
Palmer, Theophila, 344
Paolo di Dono, 119
Paolo di Giovanni Fei, 9
“Parma Valasquez,” 266
Parmigiano, 119
Parliament, Long, 194
Parliament, Short, 190, 194
Parnassus (Mantegna), 107
Parsifal, 235
Paston, John, quoted, 160
Pastry, curiosities in, 159–160, 161
Pater, J. B. J., 276, 296–299, 330
Pater, Walter, quoted, 115, 118
Pears, 126
Peg Woffington (Hogarth), 337
Penelope Boothby (Reynolds), 340
_Pepito Costa y Bonella_ (Goya), 272
Perspective, 31, 83
Perugia, 74, 80, 89
Perugia, School of, 78
Perugino, 23, 61, 74, 78, 80–84, 89, 94
Pesellino, Francesco, 22
Philip the Fair (Austria), 161
Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, 158
Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, 157, 158, 159
Philip IV, 258, 264, 266–268
_Philip IV, King of Spain_ (Velasquez), 266
Pie, mammoth, 160
Pier Francesco Fiorentino, 22, 70
Piero della Francesca (Pier dei Franceschi), 10, 22, 74, 78, 82, 83
Piero di Cosimo, 23, 24, 164
Piero di Lorenzo, 23
Pierrot, 281
Pink Boy (Gainsborough), 384
_Pinkie_ (Sir Thomas Lawrence), 426–428
Pintoricchio, Bernard, 74, 89
Pisanello (Antonio Pisano), 8, 93, 98, 99–104
“Plymouth Beauty, The,” 418
Poliziano, Angelo (Politian), 28, 59, 69
Pollaiuolo, Antonio, 22, 23, 48, 52
Pollaiuolo, Piero, 22, 51–54
Pomegranate, 78
Pompadour, Madame de, 276, 290, 300, 304, 306, 310, 312
“Poor Man of Assisi, The,” 6
Pope, Alexander, 336
Popish Plot, The, 196
Portinari, Tommaso, 164
Portiuncula, The, 6
_Portrait of a Carthusian Monk_ (Petrus Christus), 169
_Portrait of a Lady_ (Luini), 110
_Portrait of a Lady_ (Roger van der Weyden), 166
_Portrait of a Man_ (Albrecht Dürer), 237
_Portrait of an Officer_ (Frans Hals), 220
_Portrait of a Young Gentleman_ (Memling), 174
_Portrait of a Young Lady_ (Piero Pollaiuolo), 51
_Portrait of a Young Man_ (Botticelli), 62
_Portrait of a Young Officer_ (Rembrandt), 207
Potter, Paul, 201
Pourbus, Frans, 165
Pourbus, Pieter, 165
Poussin, Nicolas, 277–281, 303
Praise of Folly, Erasmus, 242
Presentation in the Temple (Rembrandt), 206, 219
Primavera (Botticelli), 59–60, 61, 66
Primitives, Dutch, 200
Primitives, Flemish, 162–163, 169, 200
_Prince Edward of England_ (Holbein), 240
Procession of Corpus Christi of 1496 (Gentile Bellini), 117–118
Puritan Party, 190
Queen Christina of Sweden, 90
Queen Elizabeth, 334, 335
Queen Henrietta Maria, 191–195, 196, 335
_Queen Henrietta Maria with Jeffrey Hudson and a Monkey_ (Sir
Anthony Van Dyck), 191
Quin, 361, 390
_Quinton McAdam_ (Raeburn), 416
Raeburn, Sir Henry, 337, 411–416
Raibolini, Francesco, 108
Rake’s Progress, The, 336
Rameau, 294, 331
Ramsay, Allan, 338
Raphael, 24, 70, 73, 74, 82, 84–92, 98, 99, 121
“Raphael’s Bible,” 89
Ravensteyn, Jan van, 201
Reformation, 235, 252
Regent pictures, 199
Reine de Chypre, La, 143
Rembrandt, 200, 204–220, 231, 232
Rembrandt, Titus, 206
Renaissance, The, 28
Renaissance in France, 161
Renaissance in the Netherlands, 161
Return of Spring, 59–60, 61
Reymond, Marcel, quoted, 96, 110
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 84, 204, 329, 330, 331, 332, 333, 337–356,
360, 371, 394, 408, 412, 418, 423, 426
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, quoted, 115, 179–180, 199–200, 280, 383
Rhode Island, Colony of, 190
Ribalta, Francisco de, 258
Ribera, Jusefe, 258, 264
Ricci, Seymour, quoted, 228–231
Richelieu, Cardinal, 178, 194
Rinaldo, 181
_Rinaldo and Armida_ (Sir Anthony Van Dyck), 181
Robert, Hubert, 277, 316, 322
“Robert des ruines,” 320
_Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick_ (Sir Anthony Van Dyck), 187–190, 195
Roger de la Pasture, 163, 334
Roger van der Weyden, 124, 162, 166–169, 170, 174, 235
Rogers, Samuel, 92
Roldt, Max, quoted, 402
Romaunt de la Rose, 15, 334
Romney, George, 329, 330, 331, 332, 333, 337, 341, 361, 394, 426
Romney, George, quoted, 407
Rooses, Max, 184
Roses, 25, 31
Rosselli, Cosimo, 23, 24, 82
Royal Academy, 338, 354, 356, 360
Rubens, Peter Paul, 164, 176–180, 181, 182, 272, 335
Rucellai Madonna, 5, 17
Ruisdael, Jacob, 202, 232
Rushford, G. McNeil, quoted, 128
Ruskin, quoted, 34, 119
Ruysch, Rachel, 203
Sachs, Hans, 236
“Salvatore Rosa of the North,” 218
Sano di Pietro, 9
Sans Souci Palace, 291, 296
Santi, Giovanni, 74, 89
Sanuto, Marino, quoted, 150
Sargent, John Singer, 259
Saskia van Ulenburgh, 204, 207, 208
Sassetta, 3, 5–9, 31
Sassetti, Francisco, 72
Sassetti, Roderigo, 69
Sassetti, Teodoro, 72
Savonarola, 24, 61
Saxon School, 236, 252
Say, Lord, 190
Saybrooke, 190
Scalpin, 281
Scaramouche, 281
_Scene along the Adriatic Coast_ (Guardi), 152
Schöngauer, Martin, 168, 235–236
Scorel, Jan van, 201
Sebastian del Piombo, 121
Segna di Bonaventura, 3
Sélincourt, Beryl de, quoted, 119–120, 134
“Serena portraits, The,” 398
_Serinette, La_ (Chardin), 300
Seymour, Jane, 240
Sforza, Francesco, 243
Sforza, Ludovico (“Il Moro”), 21, 23, 82, 93, 106, 148–151
Sforza, Maximilian, 148–151, 243
Siddons, Mrs., 84
Sidney, Sir Philip, 187–188
Sidney, Sir Philip, quoted, 188
Siena, 3
Siena, Cathedral, 16, 17
Sienese Art, 4
Sienese School, 3–16
Signorelli, Luca, 74
_Simeon and Mary Presenting the Infant Christ in the Temple_
(Rembrandt), 214
Simeon in the Temple (Rembrandt), 206, 219
Simone Martini, 3, 9
Simonetta, Vespucci, 24, 59, 60
Simplicity (Reynolds), 346
Singerie, 284
_Sir Thomas More_ (Holbein), 244
Sistine Chapel, 24, 61, 70, 82
Six, Burgomaster Jan, 204
_Small Cowper Madonna_ (Raphael), 86
Smith, Nollekens, quoted, 362
Sneyd, Charlotte, 397
Sneyd, Honora, 398
Snyders, Frans, 165
Sortie of the Company of Captain Banning Cock (Rembrandt), 206
Southwark Fair (Hogarth), 336
Space Composition, 83
Spagnoletto, Lo, 258
Spencer, Countess of, 375
Spencer, Earl of Althorp, 356, 361, 375, 378
Spielmann, M. H., quoted, 347, 384
Spinello, Aretino, 18
Sposalizio (Raphael), 82
Squarcione, Francesco, 97, 106, 116, 117, 125
_St. Cosimas and St. Damianus_ (Fra Angelico), 39
St. Francis, 3, 6–8
_St. Francis and the Beggar_ (Sassetta), 5
St. Francis (Ghirlandaio), 72
St. Francis (Giotto), 6, 26
St. Francis, panels, 6
St. Jerome, 252
St. Jerome (El Greco), 260
St. Paul’s (London), Old, 182
St. Ursula (Carpaccio), 118
St. Ursula, Shrine of (Memling), 174
_Standard-Bearer, The_ (Rembrandt), 204
Stanley, Edward Smith (Derby), 400
Starnina, 19, 31, 257
Steelyard (London), 246
Steen, Jan, 202
Stefano di Giovanni, 3, 5–9
Stephens, F. G., quoted, 382
Stevenson, Robert Louis, quoted, 411
Stoffels, Hendrickje, 206
Strafford, Earl of, 190, 194
_Strawberry Girl, The_ (Reynolds), 340, 342–346, 353, 394
Strawberry Hill, 214, 219, 220, 331
Style, Louis Quinze, 276, 310
Style, Rubens, 179
Suardi, Bartolommeo, 93
Swabian School, 236
Swanenburch, Jacob van, 204
Syndics, The (Rembrandt), 207
Taddeo di Bartolo, 3, 9
Taddeo, Gaddi, 18
Tagliapanni (Mononi), 112
Taine, quoted, 115, 120, 142, 162–163
Tasso, 181
Tauromachia (Goya), 270
Tempest, John Walter, 392–394
Temple of Health, 404
Teniers, David the Younger, 165
Terborch, Gerard, 166, 202
Theotocopoulos, Domenico, 258, 260–262
Tiepolo, Giovanni Baptista, 121
Tintoretto (Tintoret), 119
Titian, 119, 137, 138, 140–147, 272
_Titian’s Schoolmaster_ (Moroni), 112
Tiziano Vecello, 119, 142
Tom Thumb, General, 192
Tondo form, first use of, 47
Tornabuoni, Giovanna, 66, 68
Tornabuoni, Giovanni, 69, 70
Tornabuoni, Lorenzo, 61, 68, 69
Tornabuoni, Lucrezia, 21, 56, 68
Tour, Maurice Quentin de la, 276
Tournament (Giuliano de’ Medici), 59
Tournament (Lorenzo de’ Medici), 59
Travellers to the Far East, 5
Trimmer, Rev. J. T., quoted, 380
Triumph of Cæsar (Mantegna), 107
Triumph of Galatea (Raphael), 90
Troost, Cornelis, 203
Tura, Cosimo, 93, 98
Turner, J. W. M., 337
Uccello, Paolo, 19, 20, 23, 74
Ugolino da Siena, 3
Umbrian School, 73–92
Utrecht, Adriaen van, 165
Vache qui se mire (Paul Potter), 201, 202
Valentiner Dr., quoted, 208
Van Eyck School, 163
Van Loo, Carle, 276, 277, 304, 306, 312, 394
Van Mander, quoted, 157
Vanni, Andrea, 3
Vanni, Lippo, 3
Vannucci, Pietro, 74, 80
Vargas, Luis de, 257
Vasari, quoted, 17, 32, 36, 39, 51
Vatican, 38, 82, 89, 121
Vecchietta, Lorenzo, 3, 9, 15
Veen, Otto van, 178
Velasquez, 258, 264–268, 270, 272
Velde, Adriaen van der, 201
Venetian School, 115–153
Veneto, Bartolommeo, 119, 148–151
Veneziano, Bartolommeo, 119–151
Veneziano, Domenico, 20, 74
Venturi, Adolfo, quoted, 100
Verhaaght, Tobias, 178
Vermeer, Jan, 162, 202, 228–232
Vermejo, Bartolomé, 257
Vernet, Joseph, 322
Veronese, Paolo, 10, 93, 99, 120
Verrocchio, Andrea, 21, 22–23, 59, 82
Veth, Dr. Jan, quoted, 214–216
Villa Aldobrandini, 138
Villa Ludovisi, 138
Vincent, François Élie, 326
_Virgin and Child_ (Bellini), 134
_Virgin and Child_ (Titian), 140
_Virgin and Child with the Infant St. John and Angel_ (Francia),
107
_Virgin and Child with St. Lucy, St. Catherine, St. Peter and St.
John the Baptist_ (Bellini), 130
_Virgin Appearing to St. Dominic_ (El Greco), 262
Virgin of the Rocks (Leonardo da Vinci), 96
_Virgin Receiving the Divine Message_ (Fra Angelico), 34
Virginia Government, 190
Vision of St. Eustache (Pisanello), 102, 103
Viti, Timoteo, 89, 108
Vivarini, Antonio, 8, 116, 125
Vivarini, Bartolommeo, 117
Vydts, Jodocus, 157
Waldegrave, Lady, 366
Walpole, Charlotte, Countess of Dysart, 368
Walpole, Edward, 366
Walpole, Horace, 214, 219, 331, 333, 366, 368
Walpole, Horace, quoted, 364, 368, 376, 400
Walpole, Louisa (the Hon. Mrs. F. Keppel), 368
Walpole, Maria, 366
Walpole, Sir Robert, 366
Ward, Humphrey, quoted, 332, 397
Wars of the Roses, 333
Watteau, Antoine, 275, 281–285, 294, 296, 314, 330
Watts, George Frederick, 425
Weenix, J. B., 203
West, Benjamin, 423, 424
Wilkie, Sir David, quoted, 412
Wilkie, John, 337
Wilson, Richard, 337
Wiltshire, John, 389–390
Winchester School, 334
Wohlgemut, Michael, 236, 237
Wolfram von Eschenbach, 235
Woltman, Dr. Alfred, quoted, 244
Wright, Mrs. (Patience), 419
Wynants, Jan, 201
Yellow Boy, The (Reynolds), 384
Young, Col. G. F., quoted, 20, 21, 45–46, 56, 58, 59–60
_Young Girl_ (Greuze), 308
_Young Girl Reading a Letter_ (Greuze), 306
Zeitblom, Bartholomäus, 236
Zuccaro, Federigo, 334, 335
Zurbaran, Francisco, 258
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “The early Byzantine masters represented the Madonna’s garments
enriched with lines of gold. Giotto and the early Florentine painters
as a rule preferred to suggest a plain material, often of delicate
color except when the Madonna was portrayed as Queen of Heaven. In
their devotional pictures the Sienese masters used gorgeous gold and
red, or white and gold fabrics. Some of the Giotteschi and perhaps
Gentile da Fabriano inherited from Siena their love of representing
splendid textiles. Later color effects were made more of a study and
deeper, richer tones appeared; but simple materials were represented
except among the Venetians, who frequently in their pictures of both
sacred and profane subjects painted elaborate, richly colored fabrics.
This cult of splendor reached its height in the Sixteenth Century under
Paolo Veronese.”--_Mediæval and Renaissance Paintings_ (Fogg Art
Museum, Cambridge, 1927).
[2] “The incident of the Adoration of the Magi is related only in the
Gospel of Saint Matthew, and there very briefly; but many legends grew
up around the Magi and Kings from the East. The number of the Magi was
at first indeterminate, but about the Fourth Century the number three
became general. It was not until the Fifth and Sixth Centuries that the
Magi became Kings and not until the Tenth Century were they represented
as crowned Kings. The Magi were for the first time pictured as of
different ages, an old man, a middle-aged man, and a young man, in an
Eastern manuscript dating from about 550. During the Middle Ages the
exact age of each was given--the eldest was sixty, the youngest twenty,
and the other forty years old. Their names, the Latin forms of which
were Jaspar--later Gaspard--Balthasar, and Melchior, first appeared
in a Greek Sixth Century manuscript. A passage attributed to Bede,
quoted in Male’s _Religious Art in France, Thirteenth Century_,
states that ‘Melchior, an old man with long, white hair and a long
beard, offered gold, symbol of the divine kingdom. The second, named
Caspar, young and beardless, with a ruddy countenance, honored Christ
in presenting incense, an offering pointing to his divinity. The third,
named Balthasar, with a dark skin and a full beard, testified in his
offering of myrrh that the Son of Man must die.’ It was not until the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries that artists represented the third
King as a negro, in accordance with the teachings of the theologians
that the three Kings represented the three races of mankind coming
to render homage to the Christ Child. The subject of the Adoration
of the Magi was a favorite one with artists, particularly in the
Fifteenth Century, as it lent itself to the richest and most elaborate
treatment. The early legends asserted that St. Joseph did not appear;
but in representations dating from the Fifteenth Century he is almost
invariably present.”--_Mediæval and Renaissance Paintings_ (Fogg
Art Museum, Cambridge, 1927).
[3] “The legend which makes St. Luke a painter was of Eastern origin
and was introduced into the West at the time of the First Crusade.
There may have been a Greek painter of Madonnas named Luca whom the
Western Church confused with the Evangelist, but the Evangelist was
always regarded an authority on the characteristics of the Madonna.
His Gospel gives the fullest account of her. The subject of St. Luke
painting the portrait of the Madonna was frequently treated in the
Middle Ages and in the Renaissance.“--_Mediæval and Renaissance
Paintings_ (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 1927).
[4] “Double roses, pink or red, were the symbol of divine love and
were consecrated to the Madonna. One of her titles was the Madonna
della Rosa, doubtless based on the verse in the _Song of Solomon_
(ii. 1)--‘I am the Rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys’--for as
early as the first centuries the Fathers of the Church applied to the
Madonna the imagery of the _Canticles_. The tradition is that when
the roses were massed together in garlands or baskets they symbolized
heavenly joys. The painters of Central Italy during the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Centuries represented clusters of lilies and roses in the
foreground of their Madonna pictures as votive offerings to her of
sacred flowers. Often angels present bowls of flowers to her.
“Myrtle was one of the Madonna’s flowers and symbolized her purity and
other virtues. The jasmine, though not strictly a sacred flower, is
often found in religious paintings--the star-shaped blossom apparently
symbolized divine hope or heavenly joy. It is often found with roses
and lilies beside the Madonna. The carnation had no definite symbolic
meaning, but was frequently used instead of the rose; then it had the
same significance as the rose, the symbol of divine love, sacred to the
Madonna.--_Mediæval and Renaissance Paintings_ (Fogg Art Museum,
Cambridge, 1927).
[5] “In general, representations of the _Annunciation_ before the
Twelfth Century are rare; but after the beginning of the Thirteenth
Century they become very frequent, appearing somewhere on every
altar-piece--in medallions, or quatrefoils above the main panels, in
the pinnacles, or in the predella, or painted, or carved on the outside
of the shutters. The subject was often treated as a mystery, not as an
actual scene. Generally only the Virgin and Angel were represented,
although it was not unusual to find other figures. From the end of the
Fourteenth until the Sixteenth Century, God the Father is often seen
in the sky and the Dove of the Holy Spirit descends from Him to the
Virgin on rays of light. The Virgin was represented seated, standing,
about to rise at the approach of the Angel, or kneeling. Gabriel was
pictured standing, or kneeling, before her, or just alighting on
the earth, his feet not yet touching the ground. In the Thirteenth
Century representations, notably in the painted glass windows, the
Virgin and the Angel stand face to face; later the Italian artists
represented the scene as taking place in an open _loggia_, while
the Flemish artists painted the Virgin in meditation in her room when
the Angel appeared to her. Before the Thirteenth Century, Mary was
often represented with a basket of wool, or distaff as, according to
the Protevangelion, she continued to spin for the Temple after she had
become affianced to Joseph and was working when the Angel came. Gabriel
bears the light staff, or sceptre, of a herald, a scroll on which is
inscribed his greeting, an olive-branch, or a stalk of lilies.
“The lily probably was developed from a flower with a long stalk
which was introduced during the Thirteenth Century appearing in
glass-painting and miniatures and signifying springtime, ‘the time
of flowers,’ when the _Annunciation_ took place. Later, lilies
were used to symbolize the purity of the Virgin and were placed in
a jar, or vase, near her, or were carried by the Angel. In Spain
the vase of lilies was almost essential to representations of the
_Annunciation_ and became the special and distinguishing attribute
of the Virgin. The Spanish Order of the Lily of Aragon, established by
Ferdinand of Castile in commemoration of a victory over the Moors in
1410, had for its badge ‘pots filled with white lilies interlaced with
griffins, to which was pendent a medal having thereon an image of the
Virgin Mary.’ In Italy, neither the vase of lilies nor the stalk was
considered essential in representations of the _Annunciation_,
although they are of frequent occurrence. Certain of the Florentine
artists, notably Fra Filippo Lippi, represented both. Ghirlandaio,
in his _Annunciation_ at San Gimigniano, placed a vase beside
the Virgin’s desk and combined other flowers--roses, daisies, and
jasmine--with the lilies. The Angel bears the lily-stalk.
“It is interesting to note that while in the majority of Fourteenth-
and Fifteenth-Century _Annunciations_ the Archangel Gabriel
was represented bearing a lily, the Sienese painters seldom used
this flower, preferring the olive-branch, always a favorite symbol
with them. In the _Annunciation_ it referred to the Christ
Child as the bringer of peace on earth. One interpretation of the
avoidance of the use of the lily by Sienese artists is that it was
due to the hatred of Siena for Florence, the lily being the flower of
Florence.”--_Mediæval and Renaissance Paintings_ (Fogg Art Museum,
Cambridge, 1927).
[6] Col. G. F. Young, _The Medici_ (London, 1910).
[7] Julia Cartwright, _The Painters of Florence_ (London, 1916).
[8] Col. G. F. Young, _The Medici_ (London, 1909).
[9] Col. G. F. Young, _The Medici_ (London, 1909).
[10] “The pomegranate in the hand of the Child, bursting open and
showing the seeds, has been variously interpreted. It may be a symbol
of the hope in eternity, which the Christ gave to man, signified by the
unexpected sweetness of the fruit within the hard rind. In the writings
of the early Fathers the fruit is also interpreted as the emblem of
congregations, because of its many seeds, or as the emblem of the
Christian Church because of the inner unity of countless seeds in one
and the same fruit.”--_Mediæval and Renaissance Painting_ (Fogg
Art Museum, Cambridge, 1927).
[11] Berenson.
[12] “Space composition differs from ordinary composition in the first
place most obviously in that it is not an arrangement to be judged
as extending only laterally, or up and down, on a flat surface, but
as extending inwards in depth as well. It is composition in three
dimensions and not in two, in the cube, not merely on the surface....
Painted space composition opens out the space it frames in, puts
boundaries only ideal to the roof of heaven. All that it uses whether
the forms of the natural landscape, or of grand architecture, or even
of the human figure, it reduces to be its ministrants in conveying a
sense of untrammelled, but not chaotic, spaciousness. In such pictures
how freely one breathes,--as if a load had just been lifted from one’s
breast; how refreshed, how noble, how potent one feels; again, how
soothed; and, still again, how wafted forth to abodes of far-away
bliss!”
[13] Julia Cartwright, _Beatrice d’Este_ (London, 1908).
[14] Julia Cartwright, _Beatrice d’Este_ (London, 1908).
[15] Beryl de Sélincourt, _Venice_ (London, 1907).
[16] “In the north of Italy garlands of fruit took the place of votive
flowers. In pictures of Florentine origin, when the Madonna holds a
single rose, she is represented as the _Madonna del Fiore_--Our
Lady of the Flower--to whom the Cathedral at Florence was dedicated.
“Fruits in general symbolized the fruits of the spirit, or a votive
offering, or were often used purely for decorative purposes. The
cherries which the Angels offer to the Child are the fruit of Heaven,
typifying the delights of the blessed. In a picture by Memling in the
Uffizi, the Child holds in one hand a cluster of cherries--the fruit of
Paradise--while with the other He reaches out for the apple offered Him
by an Angel. This typifies His relinquishment of heavenly joys and His
taking upon Himself the sin of the world.
“The apple and the gourd were often painted together by artists,
notably Crivelli. The use of the gourd dates back to the wall-pictures
in the catacombs, where Jonah was represented as the type of the
Risen Christ and the gourd as the symbol of the Resurrection. As the
apple was the fruit of Eden which brought sin into the world, so
the gourd represented the Resurrection which saved the world from
the consequences of its sin. In early pictures the apple sometimes
represents the fruit of Paradise, which the King of Heaven brings down
to earth with Him. In general, however, it is used as the symbol of the
sin of the world which Christ takes upon Himself.”--_Mediæval and
Renaissance Paintings_ (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 1927).
[17] Beryl de Sélincourt, _Venice_ (London, 1907).
[18] It is interesting to see that Vasari calls Dürer a Fleming!
[19] This reminds us of the old Nursery rhyme:
“Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye;
Four-and-twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing;
Wasn’t that a dainty dish
To set before the King?”
Undoubtedly this jingle is an echo of the jokes and “pleasantries”
in confectionery and pastry that were perpetrated by the Mediæval
_chefs_.--E. S.
[20] This was a _fashion_ of the period, originating in Italy (see
pages 51, 86, 103).
[21] “The introduction of little angels singing vigorously and playing
on musical instruments about the Madonna’s throne was a favorite motif
of the Umbrian Boccatis. Indeed, angel musicians were represented by
artists of all Schools from the Twelfth to the Seventeenth Century.
They stand or kneel before the Madonna and Child, or--particularly in
Venetian and North Italian paintings--sit on the steps of the throne,
playing on lutes, harps, viols, miniature organs, blowing horns and
trumpets, striking cymbals and triangles or beating drums and timbrels,
and singing their songs of praise and adoration. They make a delightful
note of joyousness in representations of the Madonna and Child and are
among the happiest creations of painters and sculptors.”--_Mediæval
and Renaissance Paintings_ (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 1927).
[22] For surprises in pastry, see page 160.
[23] _Strawberry Hill Simeon_ had not then been discovered.
[24] Leslie and Taylor, _Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds_
(London 1865).
[25] William Smith (1756–1835) was a politician who took a great
interest in literature and art. He was a friend of Sir Joshua Reynolds,
for whose _Mrs. Siddons as The Tragic Muse_ he paid £320 at the
Calonne Sale in 1795 and sold it to Mr. G. W. Taylor for £900. At the
Taylor Sale in 1823 the picture cost Earl Grosvenor £1,837. It passed
recently to America along with Gainsborough’s _Blue Boy_.
“This picture Sir Joshua Reynolds valued at 1000 guineas--a large sum
in his day--but notwithstanding all the encomiums passed upon it,
_The Tragic Muse_ remained on his hands for several years. At
length it was purchased from the artist for £800 by M. de Calonne, the
ex-minister of finance in France.
“When M. de Calonne’s pictures were sold by Skinner and Dyke on March
28, 1795, _The Tragic Muse_ was bought by Mr. Smith of Norwich for
£700 and Mr. Smith sold it privately to Mr. G. Watson Taylor for £900.
At the sale of Mr. Taylor’s pictures in 1823 it was purchased by Earl
Grosvenor for £1,837-10. Inherited by the Dukes of Westminster, _The
Tragic Muse_ hung for many years in Grosvenor House, in company with
Gainsborough’s _Blue Boy_ until it was sold in 1921 to the late
Mr. Henry E. Huntington.”
[26] William T. Whitley, _Gainsborough_ (London, 1915).
[27] William T. Whitley, _Gainsborough_ (London, 1915).
[28] William B. Boulton, _Gainsborough_, 1907.
[29] Maria’s sister Louisa had married the Hon. and Rev. Frederick
Keppel, second son of the Earl of Albemarle.
[30] Maria’s sister who married Lionel, fifth Earl of Dysart.
[31] Name for evening dress.
[32] Maurice W. Brockwell, _Taft Catalogue of Paintings_ (New
York, 1920).
[33] _Thomas Gainsborough_ (London, 1915).
[34] The portrait of Henrietta Maria (see page 193) is another example.
[35] Humphrey Ward.
[36] Angelica Kauffman, the famous painter.
Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been
corrected silently.
2. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have
been retained as in the original.
3. Superscripts are represented using the caret character, e.g. D^r. or
X^{xx}.
4. Italics are shown as _xxx_.
5. Bold print is shown as =xxx=.
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