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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Six Centuries of Painting, by Randall Davies
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Six Centuries of Painting
+
+Author: Randall Davies
+
+Release Date: July 28, 2009 [EBook #29532]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIX CENTURIES OF PAINTING ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Chuck Greif and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SIX CENTURIES OF PAINTING
+
+[Illustration; VITTORE PISANO
+
+(CALLED PISANELLO)
+
+ST ANTHONY AND ST GEORGE
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+
+
+
+SIX CENTURIES OF
+
+PAINTING
+
+BY
+
+RANDALL DAVIES
+
+[Illustration]
+
+LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
+
+67 LONG ACRE, W.C., AND EDINBURGH
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+TUSCAN SCHOOLS--                                                    PAGE
+
+I. GIOVANNI CIMABUE                                                    1
+
+II. GIOTTO DI BONDONE                                                 10
+
+III. THE EARLIER QUATTROCENTISTS                                      18
+
+IV. THE LATER QUATTROCENTISTS                                         26
+
+V. LEONARDO DA VINCI                                                  33
+
+VI. MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI                                           40
+
+VII. RAFFAELLO DI SANTI                                               47
+
+
+VENETIAN SCHOOLS--
+
+I. THE VIVARINI AND BELLINI                                           59
+
+II. TIZIANO VECELLIO                                                  78
+
+III. PAOLO VERONESE AND IL TINTORETTO                                 99
+
+
+SPANISH SCHOOL                                                       109
+
+
+FLEMISH SCHOOL--
+
+I. HUBERT AND JAN VAN EYCK                                           121
+
+II. PETER PAUL RUBENS                                                143
+
+III. THE PUPILS OF RUBENS                                            157
+
+
+DUTCH SCHOOL--
+
+I. FRANS HALS                                                        165
+
+II. REMBRANDT VAN RYN                                                171
+
+III. PAINTERS OF _GENRE_                                             183
+
+IV. PAINTERS OF ANIMALS                                              191
+
+V. PAINTERS OF LANDSCAPE                                             202
+
+
+GERMAN SCHOOLS                                                       211
+
+
+FRENCH SCHOOL--
+
+I. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY                                           225
+
+II. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY                                           235
+
+
+THE ENGLISH SCHOOL--
+
+I. THE EARLY PORTRAIT PAINTERS                                       251
+
+II. WILLIAM HOGARTH                                                  258
+
+III. SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS AND THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH                     267
+
+IV. THE CLOSE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY                              295
+
+
+THE NINETEENTH CENTURY--
+
+I. THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT                                              305
+
+II. EUGÈNE DELACROIX                                                 309
+
+III. RUSKIN AGAINST THE PHILISTINES                                  313
+
+IV. MANET AND WHISTLER AGAINST THE WORLD                             324
+
+V. THE ROYAL ACADEMY                                                 329
+
+
+INDEX                                                                335
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+VITTORE PISANO (called PISANELLO)--St Anthony
+and St George                                            _Frontispiece_
+National Gallery, London
+
+PLATE                                                        FACING PAGE
+
+I. FILIPPO LIPPI--The Annunciation                                    22
+National Gallery, London
+
+II. SANDRO BOTTICELLI(?)--The Virgin and Child                        26
+
+National Gallery, London
+
+III. SANDRO BOTTICELLI--Portrait of a Young Man                       28
+National Gallery, London
+
+IV. SANDRO BOTTICELLI--The Nativity                                   32
+National Gallery, London
+
+V. LEONARDO DA VINCI--The Virgin of the Rocks                         36
+National Gallery, London
+
+VI. PIETRO PERUGINO--Central Portion of Altar-Piece                   50
+National Gallery, London
+
+VII. RAPHAEL--The Ansidei Madonna                                     52
+National Gallery, London
+
+VIII. RAPHAEL--La Belle Jardinière                                    52
+Louvre, Paris
+
+IX. RAPHAEL--Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione                       56
+Louvre, Paris
+
+X. CORREGGIO--Mercury, Cupid, and Venus                               58
+National Gallery, London
+
+XI. ANDREA MANTEGNA--The Madonna della Vittoria                       68
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XII. GIOVANNI BELLINI--The Doge Loredano                              72
+National Gallery, London
+
+XIII. GIORGIONE--Venetian Pastoral                                    78
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XIV. TITIAN--Portrait said to be of Ariosto                           84
+National Gallery, London
+
+XV. TITIAN--The Holy Family                                           86
+National Gallery, London
+
+XVI. TITIAN--The Entombment                                           88
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XVII. TINTORETTO--St George and the Dragon                           102
+National Gallery, London
+
+XVIII. VELAZQUEZ--The Infante Philip Prosper                         112
+Imperial Gallery, Vienna
+
+XIX. VELAZQUEZ--The Rokeby Venus                                     118
+National Gallery, London
+
+XX. MURILLO--A Boy Drinking                                          120
+National Gallery, London
+
+XXI. JAN VAN EYCK--Jan Arnolfini and His Wife                        128
+National Gallery, London
+
+XXII. JAN VAN EYCK--Portrait of the Painter's Wife                   132
+Town Gallery, Bruges
+
+XXIII. JAN MABUSE--Portrait of Jean Carondelet                       136
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XXIV. SIR PETER PAUL RUBENS--Portrait of Hélène Fourment,
+the Artist's Second Wife, and two of Her Children                    150
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XXV. FRANS HALS--Portrait of a Lady                                  168
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XXVI. REMBRANDT--Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels                     176
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XXVII. REMBRANDT--Portrait of an Old Lady                            182
+National Gallery, London
+
+XXVIII. TERBORCH--The Concert                                        186
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XXIX. GABRIEL METSU--The Music Lesson                                188
+National Gallery, London
+
+XXX. PIETER DE HOOCH--Interior of a Dutch House                      190
+National Gallery, London
+
+XXXI. JAN VERMEER--The Lace Maker                                    192
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XXXII. "THE MASTER OF ST BARTHOLOMEW"--Two Saints                    212
+National Gallery, London
+
+XXXIII. HANS HOLBEIN--Portrait of Christina, Duchess of
+Milan                                                                224
+National Gallery, London
+
+XXXIV. ANTOINE WATTEAU--L'Indifférent                                236
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XXXV. JEAN-BAPTISTE GREUZE--The Broken Pitcher                       244
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XXXVI. JEAN HONORÉ FRAGONARD--L'Étude                                248
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XXXVII. HANS HOLBEIN--Anne of Cleves                                 256
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XXXVIII. WILLIAM HOGARTH--The Shrimp Girl                            260
+National Gallery, London
+
+XXXIX. SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS--Lady Cockburn and Her Children           274
+National Gallery, London
+
+XL. SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS--The Age of Innocence                        284
+National Gallery, London
+
+XLI. THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH--The Market Cart                            290
+National Gallery, London
+
+XLII. GEORGE ROMNEY--The Parson's Daughter                           298
+National Gallery, London
+
+XLIII. GEORGE ROMNEY--Mrs Robinson--"Perdita"                        300
+Hertford House, London
+
+XLIV. JACQUES LOUIS DAVID--Portrait of Mme. Récamier                 306
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XLV. EUGÈNE DELACROIX--Dante and Virgil                              310
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XLVI. JOHN CONSTABLE--The Hay Wain                                   312
+National Gallery, London
+
+XLVII. J. M. W. TURNER--Crossing the Brook                           316
+National Gallery of British Art, London
+
+XLVIII. ÉDOUARD MANET--Olympia                                       326
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XLIX. J. M. WHISTLER--Lillie in Our Alley                            328
+In the possession of John J. Cowan, Esq.
+
+
+
+
+_INTRODUCTORY_
+
+
+So far as it concerns pictures painted upon panel or canvas in tempera
+or oils, the history of painting begins with Cimabue, who worked in
+Florence during the latter half of the thirteenth century. That the art
+was practised in much earlier times may readily be admitted, and the
+life-like portraits in the vestibule at the National Gallery taken from
+Greek tombs of the second or third century are sufficient proofs of it;
+but for the origin of painting as we are now generally accustomed to
+understand the term we need go no further back than to Cimabue and his
+contemporaries, from whose time the art has uninterruptedly developed
+throughout Europe until the present day.
+
+Oddly enough it is to the Christian Church, whose early fathers put
+their heaviest ban upon all forms of art, that this development is
+almost wholly due. The reaction against paganism began to die out when
+the Christian religion was more firmly established, and representations
+of Christ and the Saints executed in mosaic became more and more to be
+regarded as a necessary, or at any rate a regular embellishment of the
+numerous churches which were built. For these mosaics panel paintings
+began in time to be substituted; but it was long before any of the human
+feeling of art was to be found in them. The influence of S. Francis of
+Assisi was needed to prepare the way, and it was only towards the close
+of the thirteenth century that the breath of life began to be infused
+into these conventional representations, and painting became a living
+art.
+
+As it had begun in Italy, under the auspices of the Church, so it
+chiefly developed in that country; at first in Florence and Siena, later
+in Rome, whither its greatest masters were summoned by the Pope, and in
+Venice, where, farther from the ecclesiastical influence, it flourished
+more exuberantly, and so became more capable of being transplanted to
+other countries. In Germany, however, and the Low Countries it had
+appeared early enough to be considered almost as an independent growth,
+though not till considerably later were the northern schools capable of
+sustaining the reputation given them by the Van Eycks and Roger Van der
+Weyden.
+
+But for the effects of the Renaissance in Italy in the fifteenth century
+it is questionable whether painting would ever have spread as it did in
+the sixteenth and seventeenth to Spain and France. But by the close of
+the fifteenth century such enormous progress had been made by the
+Italian painters towards the realisation of human action and emotion in
+pictures, that from being merely an accessory of religious
+establishments, painting had become as much a part of the recognised
+means of intellectual enjoyment of everyday life as music, sculpture, or
+even the refinements of food and clothing.
+
+Portraiture, in particular, had gradually advanced to a foremost place
+in painting. Originally it was used exclusively for memorials of the
+dead--as we have seen in the case of the paintings from the Greek
+tombs--and on coins and medals. But gradually the practice arose, as
+painters became more skilful in representing the appearance of the
+model, of introducing the features and figures of actual personages into
+religious pictures, in the character of "donors," and as these increased
+in importance, the sacred personages were gradually relegated to the
+background, and ultimately dispensed with altogether. At the beginning
+of the sixteenth century we find Hans Holbein (as an example)
+recommended by Erasmus to Sir Thomas More as a portrait painter who
+wished to try his fortunes in England; and during the rest of his life
+painting practically nothing but portraits.
+
+By the end of the sixteenth century, if not earlier, painting had become
+almost as much a business as an art, not only in Italy but in most other
+countries in Europe, and was established in each country more or less
+independently. So that making every allowance for the various foreign
+influences that affected each different country, it is convenient to
+trace the development of painting in each country separately, and we
+arrange our chapters accordingly under the titles of Tuscan and Venetian
+(the two main divisions of Italian painting), Spanish, Flemish, Dutch,
+German, French, and British Schools. In each country, as might be
+expected--and especially in Italy--there are subdivisions; but, broadly
+speaking, the lover of pictures will be quite well enough equipped for
+the enjoyment of them if he is able to recognise their country, and
+roughly their period, without troubling about the particular district or
+personal influence of their origin.
+
+For while it is undoubtedly true that the more one knows about the
+history of painting in general the greater will be the appreciation of
+the various excellences which tend to perfection, it is absolutely
+ridiculous to suppose that only the learned in such matters are capable
+of deriving enjoyment from a beautiful picture, or of expressing an
+opinion upon it. In the first place, the picture is intended for the
+public, and the public have therefore the best right to say whether it
+pleases them or not--and why. And it may be noted as a positive fact
+that whenever the public, in any country, have a free choice in matters
+of art, that choice generally turns out to be right, and is ultimately
+endorsed by the best critics. Most of the vulgar art to be found in
+advertisements and the illustrated papers is put there by ignorant and
+vulgar providers, who imagine that the whole public are as ignorant and
+vulgar as themselves; whereas whenever a better standard of taste is
+given an opportunity, it never fails to find a welcome. Until Sir Henry
+Wood inaugurated the present régime, the Promenade Concerts at Covent
+Garden were popularly supposed to represent the national taste in music.
+Until the Temple Classics and Every Man's Library were published it was
+commonly supposed that the people at large cared for nothing but Bow
+Bells, the Penny Novelette, or such unclassical if alluring provender.
+In the domain of painting, the Royal Academy has such a firm and ancient
+hold on the popular imagination of the English that its influence is
+difficult to dispel; but there are many signs that its baneful
+ascendency is at length on the decline; and it is well known that the
+National Gallery is attracting more and more visitors and Burlington
+House less and less as the years go on.
+
+In the following attempt at a general survey of the history of
+painting--imperfect or ill-proportioned as it may appear to this or that
+specialist or lover of any particular school--I have thought it best to
+assume a fair amount of ignorance of the subject on the part of the
+reader, though without, I hope, taking any advantage of it, even if it
+exists; and I have therefore drawn freely upon several old histories and
+handbooks for both facts and opinions concerning the old masters and
+their works. In some cases, I think, a dead lion is decidedly better
+than a live dog.
+
+R. D.
+
+CHELSEA, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+_TUSCAN SCHOOLS_
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+GIOVANNI CIMABUE
+
+
+By the will of God, in the year 1240, we are told by Vasari, GIOVANNI
+CIMABUE, of the noble family of that name, was born in the city of
+Florence, to give the first light to the art of painting. Vasari's
+"Lives of the Painters" was first published in Florence in 1550, and
+with all its defects and all its inaccuracies, which have afforded so
+much food for contention among modern critics, it is still the principal
+source of our knowledge of the earlier history of painting as it was
+revived in Italy in the thirteenth century.
+
+Making proper allowance for Vasari's desire to glorify his own city, and
+to make a dignified commencement to his work by attributing to Cimabue
+more than was possibly his due, we need not be deterred by the very
+latest dicta of the learned from accepting the outlines of his life of
+Cimabue as an embodiment of the tradition of the time in which he
+lived--two centuries and a quarter after Cimabue--and, until
+contradicted by positive evidence, as worthy of general credence. In the
+popular mind Cimabue still remains "The Father of modern painting," and
+though his renown may have attracted more pictures and more legends to
+his name than properly belong to him, it is certain that Dante, his
+contemporary, wrote of him thus:--
+
+    Credette Cimabue nella pintura
+    Tener lo campo, ed ora ha Giotto il grido
+    Si che la fama di colui s'oscura.
+
+This is at least as important as anything written by a contemporary of
+William Shakespeare; and even if we are required to believe that some of
+his most important works are by another hand, his influence on the
+history of art is beyond question. Let us then follow Vasari a little
+further, and we shall find, at any rate, what is typical of the
+development of genius.
+
+"This youth," Vasari continues, "being considered by his father and
+others to give proof of an acute judgment and a clear understanding, was
+sent to Santa Maria Novella to study letters under a relation who was
+then master in grammar to the novices of that convent. But Cimabue,
+instead of devoting himself to letters, consumed the whole day in
+drawing men, horses, houses, and other various fancies on his books and
+different papers--an occupation to which he felt himself impelled by
+nature."
+
+This is exactly what is recorded of Reynolds, it may be noted, and very
+much the same as in the case of Gainsborough, Benjamin West--and many a
+modern painter.
+
+"This natural inclination was favoured by fortune, for the governors of
+the city had invited certain Greek (probably Byzantine) painters to
+Florence, for the purpose of restoring the art of painting, which had
+not merely degenerated but was altogether lost. These artists, among
+other works, began to paint the chapel of the Gondi in Santa Maria
+Novella, and Cimabue, often escaping from the school, and having
+already made a commencement of the art he was so fond of, would stand
+watching these masters at their work. His father, and the artists
+themselves, therefore concluded that he must be well endowed for
+painting, and thought that much might be expected from him if he devoted
+himself to it. Giovanni was accordingly, much to his delight, placed
+with these masters, whom he soon greatly surpassed both in design and
+colouring. For they, caring little for the progress of art, executed
+their works not in the excellent manner of the ancient Greeks, but in
+the rude modern style of their own day. Wherefore, though Cimabue
+imitated them, he very much improved the art, relieving it greatly from
+their uncouth manner and doing honour to his country by the name that he
+acquired and by the works which he performed. Of this we have evidence
+in Florence from the pictures which he painted there--as for example the
+front of the altar of Saint Cecilia and a picture of the Virgin, in
+Santa Croce, which was and still is (_i.e._ in 1550) attached to one of
+the pilasters on the right of the choir."
+
+Unfortunately the very first example cited pulls us up short alongside
+the official catalogue of the Uffizi Gallery (where the picture was
+placed in 1841), in which it is catalogued (No. 20) as "Unknown ...
+Vasari erroneously attributes it to Cimabue."
+
+Tiresome as it may seem to be thus distracted, at the very outset, by
+the question of authenticity, it is nevertheless desirable to start with
+a clear understanding that in surveying in a general way the history and
+development of painting, it will be quite hopeless to wait for the final
+word on the supposed authorship of every picture mentioned. In this
+instance, as it happens, there is no reason to question the modern
+catalogue, though that is by no means the same thing as denying that
+Cimabue painted the picture which existed in the church of S. Cecilia in
+Vasari's time. Is it more likely, it may be asked, that Vasari, who is
+accused of unduly glorifying Cimabue, would attribute to him a work not
+worthy of his fame, or that during the three centuries since Vasari
+wrote a substitution was effected? The other picture, the _Madonna and
+Child Enthroned_, which found its way into our National Gallery in 1857,
+is still officially catalogued as the work of Cimabue, and it is to be
+hoped that this precious relic, together with the Madonnas in the
+Louvre, the Florence Academy, and in the lower church at Assisi, may be
+long spared to us by the authority of the critics as "genuine
+productions" of the beloved master.
+
+On the general question, however, let me reassure the reader by stating
+that so far as possible I have avoided the mention of any pictures, in
+the following pages, about which there is any grave doubt, save in a few
+cases where tradition is so firmly established that it seems heartless
+to disturb it until final judgment is entered--of which the following
+examples of Cimabue's reputed work may be taken as types. The latest
+criticism seeks to deprive him of every single existing picture he is
+believed to have painted; those mentioned by Vasari which have perished
+may be considered equally unauthentic, but, as before mentioned, his
+account of them gives us as well as anything else the story of the
+beginnings of the art.
+
+Having afterwards undertaken, Vasari continues, to paint a large picture
+in the Abbey of the Santa Trinità in Florence for the monks of
+Vallombrosa, he made great efforts to justify the high opinion already
+formed of him and showed greater powers of invention, especially in the
+attitude of the Virgin, whom he depicted with the child in her arms and
+numerous angels around her, on a gold ground. This is the picture now in
+the Accademia in Florence. The frescoes next described are no longer in
+existence:--
+
+"Cimabue next painted in fresco at the hospital of the Porcellana at the
+corner of the Via Nuova which leads into the Borgo Ogni Santi. On the
+front of this building, which has the principal door in the centre, he
+painted the Virgin receiving the Annunciation from the angel, on one
+side, and Christ with Cleophas and Luke on the other, all the figures
+the size of life. In this work he departed more decidedly from the dry
+and formal manner of his instructors, giving more life and movement to
+the draperies, vestments and other accessories, and rendering all more
+flexible and natural than was common to the manner of those Greeks whose
+work were full of hard lines and sharp angles as well in mosaic as in
+painting. And this rude unskilful manner the Greeks had acquired not so
+much from study or settled purpose as from having servilely followed
+certain fixed rules and habits transmitted through a long series of
+years by one painter to another, while none ever thought of the
+amelioration of his design, the embellishment of his colouring, or the
+improvement of his invention."
+
+After describing Cimabue's activities at Pisa and Assisi with equal
+circumstance, Vasari passes to the famous _Rucellai Madonna_, now
+supposed to be by the hand of Duccio of Siena. However doubtful the
+story may appear in the light of modern criticism, historical or
+artistic, it certainly forms part of the history of painting--for its
+spirit if not for its accuracy--and as such it can never be too often
+quoted:--
+
+"He afterwards painted the picture of the Virgin for the Church of
+Santa Maria Novella, where it is suspended on high between the chapel of
+the Rucellai family and that of the Bardi. This picture is of larger
+size than any figure that had been painted down to those times, and the
+angels surrounding it make it evident that although Cimabue still
+retained the Greek manner, he was nevertheless gradually approaching the
+mode of outline and general method of modern times. Thus it happened
+that this work was an object of so much admiration to the people of that
+day--they having never seen anything better--that it was carried in
+solemn procession, with the sound of trumpets and other festal
+demonstration, from the house of Cimabue to the Church, he himself being
+highly rewarded and honoured for it. It is further reported, and may be
+read in certain records of old painters, that while Cimabue was painting
+this picture in a garden near the gate of S. Pietro, King Charles the
+Elder of Anjou passed through Florence, and the authorities of the city,
+among other marks of respect, conducted him to see the picture of
+Cimabue. When this work was thus shown to the King, it had not before
+been seen by anyone; wherefore all the men and women of Florence
+hastened in great crowds to admire it, making all possible demonstration
+of delight."
+
+Now whether or not Vasari was right in crediting Cimabue with these
+honours in Florence instead of Duccio in Siena, makes little difference
+in the story of the origin and early development of the art of painting.
+One may doubt the accuracy of the mosaic account of the Creation, the
+authorship of the Fourth Gospel or the Shakespearean poems, or the list
+of names of the Normans who are recorded to have fought with William the
+Conqueror. But what if one may? The Creation, the poems and plays of
+Shakespeare and the battle of Hastings are all of them historic facts,
+and neither science, nor literature, nor history is a penny the worse
+for the loose though perfectly understandable conditions under which
+these facts have been handed down to us. When we come down to times
+nearer to our own the accuracy of data is more easily ascertainable,
+though the confusion arising out of them often obscures their real
+significance; but in looking for origins we are content to ignore the
+details, provided we can find enough general information on which to
+form an idea of them. To these first chapters of Vasari, then, we need
+not hesitate to resort for the main sources of the earlier history of
+painting. Even so far as we have gone we have learnt several important
+facts as to the nature of the foundations on which the glorious
+structure was to be raised.
+
+First of all, it is apparent that the practice of painting, though
+strictly forbidden by the earliest Fathers of the Church, was used by
+the faithful in the Eastern churches for purposes of decoration, and was
+introduced into Italy--we may safely say Tuscany--for the same purpose.
+
+Second, that being transplanted into this new soil, it put forth such
+wonderful blossoms that it came to be cultivated with much more regard;
+and from being merely a necessary or conventional ornament of certain
+portions of the church, was soon accounted its greatest glory.
+
+Third, that it was accorded popular acclamation.
+
+Fourth, that its most attractive feature in the eyes of beholders was
+its life-like representation of the human form and other natural
+objects.
+
+Prosaic as these considerations may appear, they are nevertheless the
+fundamental principles that underlie the whole of the subsequent
+development of painting; and unless every picture in the world were
+destroyed, and the art of painting wholly lost for at least a thousand
+years, there could not be another picture produced which would not refer
+back through continuous tradition to one or every one of them. First,
+the basis of religion. Second, the development peculiar to the soil.
+Third, the imitation of nature. Fourth, the approbation of the
+public--there we have the four cardinal points in the chart of painting.
+
+It would be easy enough to contend that painting had nothing whatever to
+do with religion--if only by reference to the godless efforts of some of
+the modernists; but such a contention could only be based on the
+imperfect recognition of what religion actually means. In Italy in the
+thirteenth century, as in Spain in the seventeenth, it meant the Church
+of Rome. In Germany of the sixteenth, as in England in the eighteenth,
+it meant something totally different. To put it a little differently,
+all painting that is worth so calling has been done to the glory of God;
+and after making due allowance for human frailties of every variety, it
+is hard to say that among all the hundreds of great and good painters
+there has ever been one who was not a good man.
+
+As for the influence of environment, or nationality, this is so
+universally recognised that the term "school" more often means locality
+than tuition. We talk generally of the French, English, or Dutch
+schools, and more particularly of the Paduan, Venetian, or Florentine.
+It is only when we hesitate to call our national treasure a Botticelli
+or a Bellini that we add the words "school of" to the name of the master
+who is fondly supposed to have inspired its author. The difference
+between a wood block of the early eighteenth century executed in
+England and Japan respectively may be cited as an extreme instance of
+the effect of locality on idea, when the method is identical.
+
+With reference to the imitation of nature, at the mere mention of which
+modernists become so furious, it is worth recalling that the earliest
+story about painting relates to Zeuxis, who is said to have painted a
+bunch of grapes with such skill that the birds ignored the fruit and
+pecked at the picture. In later times we hear of Rembrandt being the
+butt of his pupils, who, knowing his love of money, used to paint coins
+on the floor; and there are plenty of stories of people painting flies
+and other objects so naturally as to deceive the unwary spectator.
+Vasari is continually praising his compatriots for painting "like the
+life."
+
+Lastly, the approbation, or if possible the acclamation, of the public
+has seldom if ever been unconsidered by the artist. Where it has, it has
+only been the greatest genius that has been able to exist without it. A
+man who has anything to say must have somebody to say it to; and though
+a painter may seem to be wasting the best part of his life in trying to
+make the people understand what he has to say in his language instead of
+talking to them in their own common tongue, it is rarely that he fails
+in the end, even if, alas for him, the understanding comes too late to
+be of any benefit to himself.
+
+Cimabue's last work is said to be a figure, which was left unfinished,
+of S. John, in mosaic, for the Duomo at Pisa. This was in 1302, which is
+supposed to be the date of his death, though Vasari puts it two years
+earlier, at the time he was engaged with the architect Arnolfo Lapi in
+superintending the building of the Duomo in Florence, where he is
+buried.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+GIOTTO DI BONDONE
+
+
+While according all due honour, and probably more, to Cimabue as the
+originator of modern painting, it is to his pupil, GIOTTO, that we are
+accustomed to look for the first developments of its possibilities. Had
+Cimabue's successors been as conservative as his instructors, we might
+still be not very much better off than if he had never lived. For much
+as there is to admire in Cimabue's painting, it is only the first flush
+of the dawn which it heralded, and though containing the germ of the
+future development of the art, is yet without any of the glory which in
+the fulness of time was to result from it.
+
+To Giotto, Vasari considers, "is due the gratitude which the masters in
+painting owe to Nature, seeing that he alone succeeded in resuscitating
+art and restoring her to a path that may be called the true one; and
+that the art of design, of which his contemporaries had little if any
+knowledge, was by his means effectually recalled to life." This seems to
+detract in some degree from his eulogies of Cimabue; but it is to the
+last sentence that our attention should be directed, which implies that
+in profiting by the master's example he succeeded in extending the
+possibilities of the new art beyond its first limits. Cimabue, we may
+believe, drew his Virgins and Saints from living models, whereas his
+predecessors had merely repeated formulas laid down for them by long
+tradition. Giotto went further, and extended his scope to the world at
+large. For the plain gold background he substituted the landscape, thus
+breaking down, as it were, a great wall, and seeing beyond it. Nor was
+this innovation merely a technical one--it was the man's nature that
+effected it and made his art a living thing.
+
+Giotto, who was born in 1276, was the son of a simple husbandman, who
+lived at Vespignano, about fourteen miles from Florence. Cimabue chanced
+upon the boy when he was only about ten years old, tending his father's
+sheep, and was astonished to find that he was occupied in making a
+drawing of one of them upon a smooth piece of rock with a sharp stone.
+He was so pleased with this that he asked to be allowed to take him back
+to Florence, and the boy proved so apt a pupil that before very long he
+was regularly employed in painting.
+
+His influence was not confined to Florence, or even to Tuscany, but the
+whole of Italy was indebted to him for a new impulse in art, and he is
+said to have followed Pope Clement V. to Avignon and executed many
+pictures there. Giotto was not only a painter, but his name is also
+famous in the history of architecture: the wonderful Campanile adjoining
+the Duomo in Florence was designed by him, and the foundations laid and
+the building erected under his instructions. On sculpture too he
+exercised a considerable influence, as may be seen in the panels and
+statues which adorn the lower part of the tower, suggested if not
+actually designed by Giotto, and carved by Andrea Pisano.
+
+Chief of the earlier works of Giotto are his frescoes in the under
+church at Assisi, and in these may be seen the remarkable fertility of
+invention with which he endowed his successors. Instead of the
+conventional Madonna and Child, and groups of saints and angels, we have
+here whole legends represented in a series of pictures of almost
+dramatic character. In the four triangular compartments of the groined
+vaulting are the three vows of the Franciscan Order, namely, Poverty,
+Chastity, and Obedience, and in the fourth the glorification of the
+saint. In the first, the Vow of Poverty, it is significant to find that
+he has taken his subject from Dante. Poverty appears as a woman whom
+Christ gives in marriage to S. Francis: she stands among thorns; in the
+foreground are two youths mocking her, and on either side a group of
+angels as witnesses of the holy union. On the left is a youth, attended
+by an angel, giving his cloak to a poor man; on the right are the rich
+and great, who are invited by an angel to approach, but turn scornfully
+away. The other designs appear to be Giotto's own invention. Chastity,
+as a young woman, sits in a fortress surrounded by walls, and angels pay
+her devotion. On one side are laymen and churchmen led forward by S.
+Francis, and on the other Penance, habited as a hermit, driving away
+earthly love and impurity. S. Francis in glory is more conventional, as
+might be expected from the nature of the subject.
+
+In the ancient Basilica of S. Peter in Rome Giotto made the celebrated
+mosaic of the _Navicella_, which is now in the vestibule of S. Peter's.
+It represents a ship, in which are the disciples, on a stormy sea.
+According to the early Christian symbolisation the ship denoted the
+Church. In the foreground on the right the Saviour, walking on the
+waves, rescues Peter. Opposite sits a fisherman in tranquil expectation,
+typifying the confident hope of the simple believer. This mosaic has
+frequently been moved, and has undergone so much restoration that only
+the composition can be attributed to Giotto.
+
+Of the paintings of scriptural history attributed to Giotto very few
+remain, and the greater part of those have in recent times been
+pronounced to be the work of his followers. Foremost, however, among the
+undoubted examples are paintings in the Chapel of the Madonna dell'Arena
+at Padua, which was erected in 1303. In thirty-eight pictures, extending
+in three rows along the wall, is contained the life of the Virgin. The
+ground of the vaulting is blue studded with gold stars, among which
+appear the heads of Christ and the prophets, while above the arch of the
+choir is the Saviour in a glory of angels. Combined with these sacred
+scenes and personages are introduced fitting allusions to the moral
+state of man, the lower part of the side walls containing, in medallions
+painted in monochrome, allegorical figures of the virtues and vices--the
+former feminine and ideal, the latter masculine and individual--while
+the entrance wall is covered with the wonderful _Last Judgment_.
+
+Here, as in his allegorical pieces, Giotto appears as a great innovator,
+a number of situations suggested by the Scriptures being now either
+represented for the first time or seen in a totally new form. Well-known
+subjects are enriched with numerous subordinate figures, making the
+picture more truthful and more intelligible; as in the Flight into
+Egypt, where the Holy Family is accompanied by a servant, and three
+other figures are introduced to complete the composition. In the Raising
+of Lazarus, too, the disciples behind the Saviour on the one side and
+the astonished multitude on the other form two choruses, an arrangement
+which is followed, but with considerable modification, in Ouwater's
+unique picture of the same subject now in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum at
+Berlin. This approach to dramatic reality sometimes assumes a character
+which, as Kugler puts it, oversteps the strict limits of the higher
+ecclesiastical style. It is worth noting, however, that the early
+Netherlandish school--as we shall see in a later chapter--developed this
+characteristic to a far greater extent, continuing the tradition handed
+down, quite independently of Giotto, through illuminated manuscripts,
+and with less of that expression of the highest religious or moral
+feeling which is so evident in Giotto.
+
+The few existing altar-pieces of Giotto are less important than his
+frescoes, inasmuch as they do not admit of the exhibition of his higher
+and most original gifts. Two signed examples are a _Coronation of the
+Virgin_ in Santa Croce at Florence, and a _Madonna_, with saints and
+angels on the side panels, originally in S. Maria degli Angeli at
+Bologna, and now in the Brera at Milan. The latter, however, is not now
+recognised as his. The earliest authentic example is the so-called
+Stefaneschi altar-piece, painted in 1298 for the same patron who
+commissioned the _Navicella_. Giotto's highest merit consists especially
+in the number of new subjects which he introduced, in the life-like and
+spiritual expression with which he heightened all familiar occurrences
+and scenes, and in the choice of the moment of representation. In all
+these no earlier Christian painter can be compared with him. Another and
+scarcely less important quality he possessed is in the power of
+conveying truth of character. The faces introduced into some of his
+compositions bear an inward guarantee of their lively resemblance to
+some living model, and this characteristic seems to have been eagerly
+seized upon by his immediate followers for emulation, as is noticeable
+in two of the principal works--in the Bargello at Florence, and in the
+church of the Incoronata at Naples--formerly attributed to him but now
+relegated to his pupils. The portrait of Dante in a fresco on the wall
+of the Bargello shows a deep and penetrating mind, and in the
+_Sacraments_ at Naples we find heads copied from life with obvious
+fidelity and such a natural conception of particular scenes as brings
+them to the mind of the spectator with extraordinary distinctness.
+
+Of Giotto's numerous followers in the fourteenth century it is
+impossible in the present work to give any particular account, but of
+his influence at large on the practice as on the treatment and
+conception of painting at this stage of its development, one or two
+examples may be cited as typical of the progress he urged, such as the
+frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa. This wonderful cloister, which
+measures four hundred feet in length and over a hundred in
+width--traditionally the dimensions of Noah's ark--was founded by the
+Archbishop Ubaldo, before 1200, on his return from Palestine bringing
+fifty-three ships laden with earth from the Holy Land. On this soil it
+was erected, and surrounded by high walls in 1278. The whole of these
+walls were afterwards adorned with paintings, in two tiers.
+
+So far as concerns the history of painting, the question of the
+authorship of these frescoes--which are by several distinct hands--is
+altogether subordinate to that of the subjects depicted and the manner
+in which they are treated, and we shall learn more from a general survey
+of them than by following out the fortunes of particular painters. The
+earliest are those on the east side, near the chapel, but more important
+are those on the north, of about the middle of the fourteenth century,
+which show a decided advance, both in feeling and execution, beyond
+Giotto. The first is _The Triumph of Death_, in which the supernatural
+is tempered with representations of what is mortal to an extent that
+already shows that painting was not to be confined to religious uses
+alone. All the pleasures and sorrows of life are here represented, on
+the earth; it is only in the sky that we see the demons and angels. On
+one side is a festive company of ladies and cavaliers, with hawks and
+dogs, seated under orange trees, with rich carpets at their feet, all
+splendidly dressed. A troubadour and a singing girl amuse them with
+songs, _amorini_ flutter around them and wave their torches. On the
+other side is another group, also a hunting party, on splendidly
+caparisoned horses, and accompanied by a train of attendants. On the
+mountains in the background are several hermits, who in contrast to the
+votaries of pleasure have attained in a life of contemplation and
+abstinence the highest term of human existence. Many of the figures are
+traditionally supposed to be portraits.
+
+The centre foreground is devoted to the less fortunate on earth, the
+beggars and cripples, and also corpses of the mighty; and with these we
+may turn to the allegorical treatment of the subject. To the first group
+descends the angel of death, swinging a scythe, and to her the
+unfortunate are stretching out their arms in supplication for an end to
+their sorrows. The second group, it will be seen, are tracing a path
+which leads to three open coffins in which lie the bodies of three
+princes in different stages of decay, while a monk on crutches--intended
+for S. Macarius--is pointing to them. The air is filled with angels and
+demons, some of whom receive the souls of the dead.
+
+A second picture is _The Last Judgment_, and a third _Hell_, the
+resemblance between which and the great altar-piece in the Strozzi
+Chapel in Santa Maria Novella at Florence, painted by Andrea Orcagna in
+1357, was formerly considered proof of the same authorship. They are
+now attributed to an unknown disciple of Pietro Lorenzetti, who was
+painting in Siena between 1306 and 1348, and is assumed to have been a
+pupil of Duccio.
+
+The fourth picture, apparently by another hand--possibly that of
+Lorenzetti himself--is _The Life of the Hermits_ in the wilderness of
+Thebais, composed of a number of single groups in which the calm life of
+contemplation is represented in the most varied manner. In front flows
+the Nile, and a number of hermits are seen on its banks still subjected
+to earthly occupations; they catch fish, hew wood, carry burdens to the
+city, etc. Higher up, in the mountains, they are more estranged from the
+world, but the Tempter follows them in various disguises, sometimes
+frightful, sometimes seducing. As a whole this composition is
+constructed in the ancient manner--as in Byzantine art--several series
+rising one above the other, each of equal size, and without any
+pretension to perspective: the single groups, at the same time, are
+executed with much grace and feeling.
+
+Next to this are six pictures of the history of S. Ranieri, and as many
+of the lives of S. Efeso and S. Potito. The latter are known to have
+been painted in 1392 by Spinello of Arezzo, or Spinello Aretino as he is
+called, of whose work we have some fragments in the National
+Gallery--alas too few! Two of these fragments are from his large fresco
+_The Fall of the Rebellious Angels_, painted for the church of S. Maria
+degli Angeli at Arezzo, which after being whitewashed over were rescued
+on the conversion of the church to secular uses. Vasari relates that
+when Spinello had finished this work the devil appeared to him in the
+night as horrible and deformed as in the picture, and asked him where he
+had seen him in so frightful a form, and why he had treated him so
+ignominiously. Spinello awoke from his dream with horror, fell into a
+state of abstraction, and soon afterwards died.
+
+On the third part of the south wall is represented the history of Job,
+in a series of paintings which were formerly attributed to Giotto
+himself, though it is now recognised that they cannot be of an earlier
+date than about 1370.
+
+The _Temptation of Job_ is by Taddeo Gaddi, and the others, painted in
+1372, are probably by Francesco da Volterra--not to be confused with the
+sixteenth century painter Daniele da Volterra.
+
+The paintings on the west wall are of inferior workmanship, while those
+on the north were the crowning achievement of Benozzo Gozzoli a century
+later.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE EARLIER QUATTROCENTISTS
+
+
+COMING to the second period in the development of the new art--roughly,
+that is to say, from 1400 to 1450--Vasari observes that even where there
+is no great facility displayed, yet the works evince great care and
+thought; the manner is more free and graceful, the colouring more varied
+and pleasing; more figures are employed in the compositions, and the
+drawing is more correct inasmuch as it is closer to nature. It was
+Masaccio, he says, who during this period superseded the manner of
+Giotto in regard to the painting of flesh, draperies, buildings, etc.,
+and also restored the practice of foreshortening and brought to light
+that modern manner which has been followed by all artists. More natural
+attitudes, and more effectual expression of feeling in the gestures and
+movements of the body resulted, as art seeking to approach the truth of
+nature by more correct drawing and to exhibit so close a resemblance to
+the face of the living person that each figure might at once be
+recognised. _Thus these masters constantly endeavoured to reproduce what
+they beheld in nature and no more; their works became consequently more
+carefully considered and better understood._ This gave them courage to
+lay down rules for perspective and to carry the foreshortenings
+precisely to the point which gives an exact imitation of the relief
+apparent in nature and the real form. Minute attention to the effects of
+light and shade and to various technical difficulties ensued, and
+efforts were made towards a better order of composition. Landscapes also
+were attempted; tracts of country, trees, shrubs, flowers, clouds, the
+air, and other natural objects were depicted with some resemblance to
+the realities represented; insomuch that the art might be said not only
+to have become ennobled, but to have attained to that flower of youth
+from which the fruit afterwards to follow might reasonably be looked
+for.
+
+Foremost among the painters of this period was FRA ANGELICO, or to give
+him his proper title, Frate Giovanni da Fiesole, who was born in 1387
+not far from Florence, and died in 1455. When he was twenty years old he
+joined the order of the preaching friars, and all his painting is
+devoted to religious subjects. He was a man of the utmost simplicity,
+and most holy in every act of his life. He disregarded all worldly
+advantages. Kindly to all, and temperate in all his habits, he used to
+say that he who practised the art of painting had need of quiet, and
+should live without cares and anxious thoughts; adding that he who would
+do the work of Christ should perpetually remain with Christ. He was most
+humble and modest, and in his painting he gave evidence of piety and
+devotion as well as of ability, and the saints that he painted have more
+of the air of sanctity than have those of any other master.
+
+It was the custom of Fra Angelico to abstain from retouching or
+improving any painting once finished. He altered nothing, but left all
+as it was done the first time, believing, as he said, that such was the
+will of God. It is also affirmed that he would never take his brushes in
+hand until he had first offered a prayer, and he is said never to have
+painted a crucifix without tears streaming from his eyes, and in the
+countenance and attitude of his figures it is easy to perceive proof of
+his sincerity, his goodness, and the depth of his devotion to the
+religion of Christ.
+
+This is well seen in the picture of the _Coronation of the Virgin_,
+which is now in the Louvre (No. 1290). "Superior to all his other
+works," Vasari says of this masterpiece, "and one in which he surpassed
+himself, is a picture in the Church of San Domenico at Fiesole; in this
+work he proves the high quality of his powers as well as the profound
+intelligence he possessed of the art he practised. The subject is the
+Coronation of the Virgin by Jesus Christ; the principal figures are
+surrounded by a choir of angels, among whom are a vast number of saints
+and holy personages, male and female. These figures are so numerous, so
+well executed in attitudes, so various, and with expressions of the head
+so richly diversified, that one feels infinite pleasure and delight in
+regarding them. Nay, one is convinced that those blessed spirits can
+look no otherwise in heaven itself, or, to speak under correction, could
+not if they had forms appear otherwise; for all the saints male and
+female assembled here have not only life and expression most delicately
+and truly rendered, but the colouring also of the whole work would seem
+to have been given by the hand of a saint or of an angel like
+themselves. It is not without sufficient reason therefore that this
+excellent ecclesiastic is always called Frate Giovanni Angelico. The
+stories from the life of Our Lady and of San Domenico which adorn the
+predella, moreover, are in the same divine manner; and I for myself can
+affirm with truth that I never see this work but it appears something
+new, nor can I ever satisfy myself with the sight of it or have enough
+of beholding it."
+
+No less beautiful are the five compartments of the predella to the
+altar-piece still in San Domenico at Fiesole--which were purchased for
+the National Gallery in 1860 at the then alarming price of £3500--with
+no less than two hundred and sixty little figures of saintly personages,
+"so beautiful," as Vasari says, "that they appear to be truly beings of
+Paradise."
+
+FRA FILIPPO LIPPI, born in Florence about 1406, and dying there in 1469,
+was the exact antithesis of Fra Angelico, both in his private life and
+in the method of his painting. He was just as earthly in both respects
+as Fra Angelico was heavenly. As a child he was put with the Carmelites,
+and as he showed an inclination for drawing rather than for study, he
+was allowed every facility for studying the newly painted chapel of the
+Branacci, and followed the manner of Masaccio so closely that it was
+said that the spirit of that master had entered into his body. It is
+only fair to Masaccio to add that this means his artistic spirit, for
+Filippo's moral character was by no means exemplary. The story of one of
+his best-known works, _The Nativity_, which is now in the Louvre (No.
+1343), is thus related by Vasari:--"Having received a commission from
+the nuns of Santa Margherita, at Prato, to paint a picture for the high
+altar of their church, he chanced one day to see the daughter of
+Francesco Buti, a citizen of Florence, who had been sent to the convent
+as a novice. Filippo, after a glance at Lucrezia--for that was her
+name--was so taken with her beauty that he prevailed upon the nuns to
+allow him to paint her as the Virgin. This resulted in his falling so
+violently in love with her that he induced her to run away with him.
+Resisting every effort of her father and of the nuns to make her leave
+Filippo, she remained with him, and bore him a son who lived to be
+almost as famous a painter as his father. He was called Filippino
+Lippi."
+
+The picture of S. John and six saints in the National Gallery (No. 677)
+also recalls the story of his wildness, inasmuch as it came from the
+Palazzo Medici, where Filippo worked for the great Cosimo di Medici. It
+was well known that Filippo paid no attention to his work when he was
+engaged in the pursuit of his pleasures, and so Cosimo shut him up in
+the palace so that he might not waste his time in running about while
+working for him. But Filippo after a couple of days' confinement made a
+rope out of his bed clothes, and let himself down from the window, and
+for several days gave himself up to his own amusements. When Cosimo
+found that he had disappeared, he had search made for him, and at last
+Filippo returned; after which Cosimo was afraid to shut him up again in
+view of the risk he had run in descending from the window.
+
+Vasari considers that Filippo excelled in his smaller pictures--"In
+these he surpassed himself, imparting to them a grace and beauty than
+which nothing finer could be imagined. Examples of this may be seen in
+the predellas of all the works painted by him. He was indeed an
+
+[Illustration: PLATE I.--FILIPPO LIPPI
+
+THE ANNUNCIATION
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+artist of such power that in his own time he was surpassed by none;
+therefore it is that he has not only been always praised by
+Michelangelo, but in many particulars has been imitated by him."
+
+As a contributor to the progress of the art of painting he is credited
+by Vasari with two innovations, which may be seen in his paintings in
+the church of San Domenico at Prato, namely (1) the figures being larger
+than life, and thereby forming an example to later artists for giving
+true grandeur to large figures; and (2) certain figures clothed in
+vestments but little used at that time, whereby the minds of other
+artists were awakened and began to depart from that sameness which
+should rather be called obsolete monotony than antique simplicity.
+
+It is noticeable that despite his bad character--which is said to have
+been the cause of his death by poison--all his work was in religious
+subjects. He was painting the chapel in the Church of Our Lady at
+Spoleto when, in 1469, he died.
+
+PAOLO UCCELLO, as he was called, was born at Florence in 1397, and died
+there in 1475. His real name was Paolo di Dono, but he was so fond of
+painting animals and birds--especially the latter--that he officially
+signed himself as Paolo Uccello. He devoted so much of his time,
+however, to the study of perspective, that both his life and his work
+suffered thereby. His wife used to relate that he would stand the whole
+night through beside his writing table, and when she entreated him to
+come to bed, would only say, "Oh, what a delightful thing is this
+perspective!" Donatello, the sculptor, is said to have told him that in
+his ceaseless study of perspective he was leaving the substance for the
+shadow; but Donatello was not a painter.
+
+Before his time the painters had not studied the question of
+perspective scientifically. Giotto had made no attempt at it, and
+Masaccio only came nearer to realising it by chance. Brunelleschi, the
+architect, laid down its first principles, but it was Uccello who first
+put these principles into practice in painting, and thereby paved the
+way for his successors to walk firmly upon.
+
+How he struggled with the difficulties of this vitally important subject
+may be seen in the large battle-piece at the National Gallery, and
+however crude and absurd this fine composition may seem at first sight
+to those who are only accustomed to looking at modern pictures, it must
+be remembered that Uccello is here struggling, as it were, with a savage
+monster which to succeeding painters has, through his efforts, been a
+submissive slave.
+
+This picture is one of four panels executed for the Bartolini family.
+One of the others is in the Louvre, and a third in the Uffizi.
+Another--or indeed almost the only other--work of Uccello which is now
+to be seen is the colossal painting in monochrome (_terra-verde_) on the
+wall of the cathedral at Florence. Strangely enough, this equestrian
+portrait commemorates an Englishman, Sir John Hawkwood, whose name is
+Italianized in the inscription into Giovanni Acuto. He was born at Sible
+Hedingham in Essex, the son of a tanner, and adventuring under Edward
+III. into France, found his way to Florence, where he served the State
+so well that they interred him, on his death in 1393, at the public
+expense, and subsequently commissioned Uccello to execute his monument.
+
+With all his devotion to science, the artist has committed the strange
+mistake of making the horse stand on two legs on the same side, the
+other two being lifted.
+
+TO MASACCIO, born in or about 1400, and dying in 1443, we owe a great
+step in art towards realism. It was he, says Vasari, who first attained
+the clear perception that _painting is only the close imitation, by
+drawing and colouring simply, of all the forms presented by nature
+showing them as they are produced by her, and that whoever shall most
+perfectly effect this may be said to have most nearly approached the
+summit of excellence_. The conviction of this truth, he adds, was the
+cause of Masaccio's attaining so much knowledge by means of perpetual
+study that he may be accounted among the first by whom art was in a
+measure delivered from rudeness and hardness; it was he who led the way
+to the realisation of beautiful attitudes and movements which were never
+exhibited by any painter before his day, while he also imparted a life
+and force to his figures, with a certain roundness and relief which
+render them truly characteristic and natural. Possessing great
+correctness of judgment, Masaccio perceived that all figures not
+sufficiently foreshortened to appear standing firmly on the plane
+whereon they are placed, but reared up on the points of their feet, must
+needs be deprived of all grace and excellence in the most important
+essentials. It is true that Uccello, in his studies of perspective, had
+helped to lessen this difficulty, but Masaccio managed his
+foreshortenings with much greater skill (though doubtless with less
+science) and succeeded better than any artist before him. Moreover, he
+imparted extreme softness and harmony to his paintings, and was careful
+to have the carnations of the heads and other nude parts in accordance
+with the colours of the draperies, which he represented with few and
+simple folds as they are seen in real life.
+
+Masaccio's principal remaining works are his frescoes in the famous
+Branacci Chapel at the Carmine convent in Florence. The work of
+decorating the chapel was begun by Masolino, but finished by Masaccio
+and Filippo Lippi. Vasari states it as a fact that all the most
+celebrated sculptors and painters had become excellent and illustrious
+by studying Masaccio's work in this chapel, and there is good reason to
+believe that Michelangelo and Raphael profited by their studies there,
+without mentioning all the names enumerated by Vasari. Seeing how
+important the influence of Masaccio was destined to become, I have
+ventured to italicise Vasari's opinions on the causes which operated in
+creating the Florentine style and in raising the art of painting to
+heights undreamt of by its earliest pioneers.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE LATER QUATTROCENTISTS
+
+
+THREE names stand out conspicuously from the ranks of Florentine
+painters in the latter half of the fifteenth century. But progress being
+one of the essential characteristics of the art at this period, as in
+all others, it is not surprising that the order of their fame coincides
+(inversely) pretty nearly with that of their date. First, ANTONIO
+POLLAIUOLO; second, SANDRO BOTTICELLI; and lastly, LEONARDO DA VINCI.
+
+It is important to note that Pollaiuolo was first apprenticed to a
+goldsmith, and attained such proficiency in that craft that he was
+employed by Lorenzo Ghiberti in the carving of the gates of the
+Baptistry, and subsequently set up a workshop for himself. In
+competition with Finiguerra he "executed various stories," says Vasari,
+"wherein he fully equalled his competitor in careful execution, while he
+surpassed him in beauty of design. The guild of merchants, being
+convinced
+
+[Illustration: PLATE II.--SANDRO BOTTICELLI (?)
+
+THE VIRGIN AND CHILD
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+of his ability, resolved to employ him to execute certain stories in
+silver for the altar of San Giovanni, and he performed them so
+excellently that they were acknowledged to be the best of all those
+previously executed by various masters.... In other churches also in
+Florence and Rome, and other parts of Italy, his miraculous enamels are
+to be seen."
+
+Now whether or not Antonio, like others, continued to exercise this
+craft, the account given by Vasari, as follows, of his learning to paint
+is extremely significant as showing how painting was regarded in
+relation to the kindred arts so widely practised in
+Florence:--"Eventually, considering that this craft did not secure a
+long life to the work of its masters, Antonio, desiring for his labours
+a more enduring memory, resolved to devote himself to it no longer; and
+his brother Piero being a painter, he joined himself to him for the
+purpose of learning the modes of proceeding in painting. He then found
+this to be an art so different from that of the goldsmith that he wished
+he had never addressed himself to it. But being impelled by shame rather
+than any advantage to be obtained, he acquired a knowledge of the
+processes used in painting in the course of a few months, and became an
+excellent master."
+
+As early as 1460 he had painted the three large canvases of _Hercules_
+for Lorenzo de'Medici, now no longer existing, but probably reflected in
+the two small panels of the same subject in the Uffizi. These alone are
+enough to mark him as one of the greatest artists of his time. The
+magnificent _David_, at Berlin, soon followed, and the little _Daphne
+and Apollo_ in our National Gallery. These were all accomplished
+unaided, but a little later he worked in concert with his brother Piero,
+to whom we are told to attribute parts of the painting of the large _S.
+Sebastian_ in the National Gallery, painted in 1475 for Antonio Pucci,
+from whose descendant it was purchased. "For the chapel of the Pucci in
+the church of San Sebastian," says Vasari, "Antonio painted the
+altar-piece--a remarkable and wonderfully executed work with numerous
+horses, many nude figures, and singularly beautiful foreshortenings.
+Also the portrait of S. Sebastian taken from life, that is to say, from
+Gino di Ludovico Capponi. This picture has been more extolled than any
+by Antonio. He has evidently copied nature to the utmost of his power,
+as we see more especially in one of the archers, who, bending towards
+the ground, and resting his bow against his breast, is employing all his
+force to prepare it for action; the veins are swelling, the muscles
+strained, and the man holds his breath as he applies all his strength to
+the effort. All the other figures in the diversity of their attitudes
+clearly prove the artist's ability and the labour he has bestowed on the
+work."
+
+It is in his superb rendering of the figure, especially in the nude,
+that Antonio Pollaiuolo marks a decisive step in the progress of
+painting, and is entitled to be regarded as "the first modern artist to
+master expression of the human form, its spirit, and its action." But
+for him we should miss much of the strength and vigour that
+distinguishes the real from the false Botticelli.
+
+"In the same time with the illustrious Lorenzo de Medici, the elder,"
+Vasari writes, "which was truly an age of gold for men of talent, there
+flourished a certain Alessandro, called after our custom Sandro, and
+further named di Botticello, for a reason which we shall presently see.
+His father, Mariano Filipepi, a Florentine citizen, brought him up with
+care; but although the boy readily acquired whatever he had a mind to
+learn,
+
+[Illustration: PLATE III.--SANDRO BOTTICELLI
+
+PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+yet he was always discontented, nor would he take any pleasure in
+reading, writing, or accounts; so that his father turned him over in
+despair to a friend of his called Botticello, who was a goldsmith.
+
+"There was at that time a close connection and almost constant
+intercourse between the goldsmiths and the painters, wherefore Sandro,
+who had remarkable talent and was strongly disposed to the arts of
+design, became enamoured of painting and resolved to devote himself
+entirely to that vocation. He acknowledged his purpose forthwith to his
+father, who accordingly took him to Fra Filippo. Devoting himself
+entirely to the vocation he had chosen, Sandro so closely followed the
+directions and imitated the manner of his master, that Filippo conceived
+a great love for him, and instructed him so effectually that Sandro
+rapidly attained a degree in art that none could have predicted for
+him."
+
+The influence of the Giottesque tradition which was thus handed on to
+the youthful Botticelli by Filippo Lippi is traceable in the beautiful
+little _Adoration of the Magi_--the oblong, not the _tondo_--in the
+National Gallery (No. 592). This was formerly attributed to Filippino
+Lippi, but is now universally recognised as one of Sandro's very
+earliest productions, when still under the immediate influence of
+Filippo, and prior to the _Fortitude_, painted before 1470, which is now
+in the Uffizi, and is the first picture mentioned by Vasari,
+thus--"While still a youth he painted the figure of Fortitude among
+those pictures of the virtues which Antonio and Pietro Pollaiuolo were
+executing in the Mercatanzia or Tribunal of Commerce in Florence. In
+Santo Spirito (Vasari continues, naming a picture which is probably _The
+Virgin Enthroned_, now at Berlin (No. 106)), he painted a picture for
+the Bardi family; this work he executed with great diligence, and
+finished it very successfully, depicting the olive and palm trees with
+extraordinary care."
+
+The influence of Pollaiuolo is more evident in his two next productions,
+the two small panels of _Holofernes_ and the _Portrait of a Man with a
+Medal_, in the Uffizi, and again in the _S. Sebastian_ now at Berlin,
+which was painted in 1473.
+
+About 1476 the second _Adoration of the Magi_ in the National Gallery
+was painted, and a year or two later the famous and more splendid
+picture of the same subject which is in the Uffizi. With this he
+established his reputation, showing himself unmistakably as an artist of
+profound feeling and noble character besides being a skilful painter. It
+was commissioned for the church of Santa Maria Novella. "In the face of
+the oldest of the kings," says Vasari, "there is the most lively
+expression of tenderness as he kisses the foot of the Saviour, and of
+satisfaction at the attainment of the purpose for which he had
+undertaken his long journey. This figure is the portrait of Cosimo
+de'Medici, the most faithful and animated likeness of all now known of
+him. The second of the kings is the portrait of Giuliano de' Medici,
+father of Pope Clement VII., and he is presenting his gift with an
+expression of the most devout sincerity. The third, who is likewise
+kneeling, seems to be offering thanksgiving as well as adoration; this
+is the likeness of Giovanni, the son of Cosimo.
+
+"The beauty which Sandro has imparted to these heads cannot be
+adequately described; all the figures are in different attitudes, some
+seen full face, others in profile, some almost entirely turned away,
+others bent down; and to all the artist has given an appropriate
+expression, whether old or young, showing numerous peculiarities, which
+prove the mastery he possessed over his art. He has even distinguished
+the followers of each king, so that one can see which belong to one and
+which to another. It is indeed a most wonderful work; the composition,
+the colouring, and the design are so beautiful that every artist to-day
+is amazed at it, and at the time it acquired so great a fame for Sandro
+that Pope Sixtus IV. appointed him superintendent of the painting of the
+chapel he had built in Rome."
+
+The visit to Rome was in 1481, and meantime Botticelli had produced the
+wayward _Primavera_, and the more stern and harsh _S. Augustine_ in the
+church of Ognissanti. Of his frescoes in the Pope's chapel nearly all
+have survived, including _Moses slaying the Egyptian_, _The Temptation_,
+and _The Destruction of Korah's Company_, besides such of the heads of
+the Popes as were not painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio and his other
+assistants in the work.
+
+Returning to Florence in 1482, he was for twenty years without a rival
+in the city--after the departure of Leonardo to Milan--and he appears to
+have been subjected to no new influences, but steadily to have developed
+the immense forces within him. Before 1492 may be dated the two examples
+in the National Gallery, the _Portrait of a Youth_ and the fascinating
+_Mars and Venus_, which was probably intended as a decoration for some
+large piece of furniture. The beautiful and extraordinarily life-like
+frescoes in the Louvre (the only recognised works of the master in that
+Gallery) from the Villa Lemmi, representing Giovanna Tornabuoni with
+Venus and the Graces, and Lorenzo Tornabuoni with the Liberal Arts, are
+assigned to 1486. Of this period are also the more familiar _Birth of
+Venus_; _The Tondo of the Pomegranate_ and the _Annunciation_ in the
+Uffizi, and the San Marco altar-piece, the _Coronation of the Virgin_
+in the Florence Academy.
+
+To the influence of Savonarola, however great or little that may have
+been, is attributed the seriousness of his latest work. Professor Muther
+characterises Botticelli as "the Jeremiah of the Renaissance," but
+whether or not this is a rhetorical overstatement, the "tendency to
+impassioned and feverish action, so evident in the famous _Calumny of
+Apelles_, reflects, no doubt, the agitation of his spiritual stress."[1]
+
+This is the latest of Sandro's works which are in public galleries, and
+there is every probability that the last years of his life were not very
+productive. "This master is said to have had an extraordinary love for
+those whom he knew to be zealous students in art," Vasari tells us, "and
+is affirmed to have gained considerable sums of money, but being a bad
+manager and very careless, all came to nothing. Finally, having become
+old, unfit for work, and helpless, he was obliged to go on crutches,
+being unable to stand upright, and so died, after long illness and
+decrepitude, in his seventy-eighth year. He was buried at Florence, in
+the church of Ognissanti in the year 1510."
+
+The large and beautiful _Assumption of the Virgin_, with the circles of
+saints and angels, in the National Gallery, which has only of late years
+been taken out of the catalogue of Botticelli's works, is now said to
+have been executed by his early pupil FRANCESCO BOTTICINI (_c._
+1446-1497) in 1470 or thereabouts. "In the church of San Pietro," Vasari
+writes of Botticelli, "he executed a picture for Matteo Palmieri, with a
+very large number of figures. The subject is the Assumption of our Lady,
+and the zones or circles of heaven are
+
+[Illustration: PLATE IV.--SANDRO BOTTICELLI
+
+THE NATIVITY
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+there painted in their order. The patriarchs, prophets, apostles,
+evangelists, martyrs, confessors, doctors, virgins, and the hierarchies;
+all of which was executed by Sandro according to the design furnished to
+him by Matteo, who was a very learned and able man. The whole work was
+conducted and finished with the most wonderful skill and care; at the
+foot were the portraits of Matteo and his wife kneeling. But although
+this picture is exceedingly beautiful, and ought to have put envy to
+shame, yet there were certain malevolent and censorious persons who, not
+being able to fix any other blame upon it, declared that Matteo and
+Sandro had fallen into grievous heresy." It is apparent that the picture
+has suffered intentional injury, and it is known that in consequence of
+this supposed heresy the altar which it adorned was interdicted and the
+picture covered up.
+
+In view of all the circumstances it is certain that it was designed by
+Botticelli, and very possibly executed under his immediate supervision
+and with some assistance from him. If we do not see the real Botticelli
+in it, we see his influence and his power far more clearly than in the
+numerous _tondi_ of Madonna and Child that have been assigned to him in
+less critical ages than our own. For the real Botticelli was something
+very real indeed, and though it was easy enough to imitate his
+mannerisms, neither the style nor the spirit of his work were ever
+within reach of his closest followers.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+LEONARDO DA VINCI
+
+
+Twelve years younger than Botticelli was LEONARDO DA VINCI (1452-1520),
+whose career as a painter commenced in the workshop of Andrea
+Verrocchio, goldsmith, painter, and sculptor. That so extraordinary a
+genius should have fixed upon painting for his means of expression
+rather than any of his other natural gifts is the most telling evidence
+of the pre-eminence earned for that art by the efforts of those whose
+works we have been considering. For once we may go all the way with
+Vasari, and accept his estimate of him as even moderate in comparison
+with those of modern writers. "The richest gifts," he writes, "are
+sometimes showered, as by celestial influence, on human creatures, and
+we see beauty, grace, and talent so united in a single person that
+whatever the man thus favoured may turn to, his every action is so
+divine as to leave all other men far behind him, and to prove that he
+has been specially endowed by the hand of God himself, and has not
+obtained his pre-eminence by human teaching. This was seen and
+acknowledged by all men in the case of Leonardo da Vinci, in whom, to
+say nothing of the beauty of his person, which was such that it could
+never be sufficiently extolled, there was a grace beyond expression
+which was manifested without thought or effort in every act and deed,
+and who besides had so rare a gift of talent and ability that to
+whatever subject he turned, however difficult, he presently made himself
+absolute master of it. Extraordinary strength was in him joined with
+remarkable facility, a mind of regal boldness and magnanimous daring.
+His gifts were such that his fame extended far and wide, and he was held
+in the highest estimation not in his own time only, but also and even to
+a greater extent after his death; and this will continue to be in all
+succeeding ages. Truly wonderful indeed and divinely gifted was
+Leonardo."
+
+To his activities in directions other than painting, I need not allude
+except to say that they account in a great measure for the scarcity of
+the pictures he has left us, and to emphasise the significance of his
+having painted at all. To a man of such supreme genius the circumstances
+in which he found himself, rather than any particular technical
+facility, determined the course of his career, and in another age and
+another country he might have been a Pheidias or a Newton, a Shakespeare
+or a Beethoven.
+
+But if the pictures he has left us are few in number--according to the
+present estimate not more than a dozen--they are altogether greater than
+anything else in the realm of painting, and with their marvellous beauty
+and subtlety have probably had a wider influence, both on painters and
+on lovers of painting, than those of any other master. They seem to be
+endowed with a spirit of something beyond painting itself, and in the
+presence of _The Last Supper_ or the _Mona Lisa_ the babble of
+conflicting opinions on questions of style, technique, and what not is
+silenced.
+
+Similarly, in writing of Leonardo's pictures, every one of which is a
+masterpiece, it seems superfluous to say even a word about what the
+whole world already knows so well. All that can be usefully added is a
+little of the tradition, where it is sufficiently authenticated,
+relating to the circumstances under which they came into existence, and
+such of the circumstances of his life as concern their production.
+
+When still quite a youth Leonardo was apprenticed to Andrea Verrocchio,
+and the story goes that it was the marvellous painting of the angel, by
+the pupil, in the master's _Baptism_ in the Academy at Florence, that
+induced Verrocchio to abandon painting and devote himself entirely to
+sculpture. This angel has been attributed to the hand of Leonardo from
+the earliest times, but can hardly be taken, at any rate in its present
+condition, as a decided proof of the genius that was to be displayed in
+manhood. More certain are the _S. Jerome_ in the Vatican, and the
+_Adoration of the Kings_ in the Uffizi, though neither is carried beyond
+the earlier stages of "under-painting." A few finished portraits are now
+assigned with tolerable certainty to his earlier years; but for his
+famous masterpieces we must jump to the year 1482, when he left Florence
+and went to Milan, where for the next sixteen years he was
+intermittently engaged in the execution of the great equestrian statue,
+which was destroyed by the French mercenaries before it was actually
+completed.
+
+It appears that he was recommended by Lorenzo de'Medici to Lodovico il
+Moro, Duke of Milan, probably for the very purpose of executing this
+statue. However that may be, it is now certain that in 1483 he was
+commissioned by the Franciscan monks to paint a picture of the Virgin
+and Child for their church of the Conception, and that between 1491 and
+1494 Leonardo and his assistant, Ambrogio di Predis, petitioned the Duke
+for an arbitration as to price. This was the famous _Virgin of the
+Rocks_, now in the Louvre, and the similar, and though not precisely
+identical, composition in our National Gallery is generally supposed to
+be a replica, painted by Ambrogio under the supervision of, and possibly
+with some assistance from, Leonardo himself.
+
+Between 1495 and 1498 Leonardo was engaged on the painting of _The Last
+Supper_. In the Forster Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum is a
+notebook which contains his first memoranda for the wonderful design of
+this masterpiece. At Windsor are studies for the heads of S. Matthew, S.
+Philip, and
+
+[Illustration: PLATE V.--LEONARDO DA VINCI
+
+THE VIRGIN OF THE ROCKS
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+Judas, and for the right arm of S. Peter. That of the head of the Christ
+in the Brera at Milan has been so much "restored" that it can hardly be
+regarded as Leonardo's work. Vasari's account of the delays in the
+completion of the painting is better known, and probably less
+trustworthy, than one or two notices of about the same date, quoted by
+Mr H. P. Horne, in translating and commenting on Vasari. In June 1497,
+when the work had been in progress over two years, Duke Lodovico wrote
+to his secretary "to urge Leonardo, the Florentine, to finish the work
+of the Refectory which he has begun, ... and that articles subscribed by
+his hand shall be executed which shall oblige him to finish the work
+within the time that shall be agreed upon." Matteo Bandello, in the
+prologue to one of his _Novelle_, describes how he saw him actually at
+work--"Leonardo, as I have more than once seen and observed him, used
+often to go early in the morning and mount the scaffolding (for _The
+Last Supper_ is somewhat raised above the ground), and from morning till
+dusk never lay the brush out of his hand, but, oblivious of both eating
+and drinking, paint without ceasing. After that, he would remain two,
+three, or four days without touching it: yet he always stayed there,
+sometimes for one or two hours, and only contemplated, considered, and
+criticised, as he examined with himself the figures he had made."
+
+Vasari's story of the Prior's head serving for that of Judas is related
+with less colour, but probably more truth, in the Discourses of G. B.
+Giraldi, who says that when Leonardo had finished the painting with the
+exception of the head of Judas, the friars complained to the Duke that
+he had left it in this state for more than a year. Leonardo replied that
+for more than a year he had gone every morning and evening into the
+Borghetto, where all the worst sort of people lived, yet he could never
+find a head sufficiently evil to serve for the likeness of Judas: but he
+added, "If perchance I shall not find one, I will put there the head of
+this Father Prior who is now so troublesome to me, which will become him
+mightily."
+
+In 1500 Leonardo was back again in Florence, and his next important work
+was the designing, though probably not the actual painting, of the
+beautiful picture in the Louvre, _The Virgin and Child with S. Anne_,
+the commission for which had been given to Filippino Lippi, but resigned
+by him on Leonardo's return. In 1501 Isabella d'Este wrote to know
+whether Leonardo was still in Florence, and what he was doing, as she
+wished him to paint a picture for her in the palace at Mantua, and in
+the reply of the Vicar-General of the Carmelites we have a valuable
+account of the artist and his work. "As far as I can gather," he writes,
+"the life of Leonardo is extremely variable and undetermined. Since his
+arrival here he has only made a sketch in a cartoon. It represents a
+Christ as a little child of about a year old, reaching forward out of
+his mother's arms towards a lamb. The mother, half rising from the lap
+of S. Anne, catches at the child as though to take it away from the
+lamb, the animal of sacrifice signifying the Passion. S. Anne, also
+rising a little from her seat, seems to wish to restrain her daughter
+from separating the child from the lamb; which perhaps is intended to
+signify the Church, that would not wish that the Passion of Christ
+should be hindered. These figures are as large as life, but they are all
+contained in a small cartoon, since all of them sit or are bent; the
+figure of the Virgin is somewhat in front of the other, turned towards
+the left. This sketch is not yet finished. He has not executed any
+other work, except that his two assistants paint portraits and he, at
+times, lends a hand to one or another of them. He gives profound study
+to geometry, and grows most impatient of painting."
+
+The history of this cartoon--as indeed of the Louvre picture--is
+somewhat obscure, but it is certain that the beautiful cartoon of the
+same subject in the possession of the Royal Academy is not the one above
+described.
+
+Lastly, there is the famous--or, may we say, now more famous than
+ever--portrait of _Mona Lisa_. "Whoever wishes to know how far art can
+imitate nature," Vasari writes, "may do so in this head, wherein every
+detail that could be depicted by the brush has been faithfully
+reproduced. The eyes have the lustrous brightness and watery sheen that
+is seen in life, and around them are all those rosy and pearly tints
+which, like the eyelashes too, can only be rendered by means of the
+deepest subtlety; the eyebrows also are painted with the closest
+exactitude, where fuller and where more thinly set, in a manner that
+could not be more natural. The nose, with its beautiful and delicately
+roseate nostrils, seems to be alive. The mouth, wonderful in its
+outline, shows the lips perfectly uniting the rose tints of their colour
+with that of the face, and the carnation of the cheek appears rather to
+be flesh and blood than only painted. Looking at the pit of the throat
+one can hardly believe that one cannot see the beating of the pulse, and
+in truth it may be said that the whole work is painted in a manner well
+calculated to make the boldest master tremble.
+
+"Mona Lisa was exceedingly beautiful, and while Leonardo was painting
+her portrait he kept someone constantly near her to sing or play, to
+jest or otherwise amuse her, so that she might continue cheerful, and
+keep away the melancholy that painters are apt to give to their
+portraits. In this picture there is a smile so pleasing that the sight
+of it is a thing that appears more divine than human, and it has ever
+been considered a marvel that it is not actually alive."
+
+It is worth observing that while these rapturous expressions of wonder
+at the life-like qualities of the portrait may seem somewhat tame and
+childish in comparison with the appreciation accorded to Leonardo's work
+in these times--notably that of Walter Pater in this case--they are in
+reality at the root of all criticism. If Vasari, as I have already
+pointed out, pitches upon this quality of life-likeness and direct
+imitation of nature for his particular admiration, it is only because
+the first and foremost object of the earlier painters was in fact to
+represent the life; and though in the rarefied atmosphere of modern talk
+about art these naïve criticisms may seem out of date, it is significant
+that between Vasari and ourselves there is little, if any, difference of
+opinion as to which masters were the great ones, and which were not.
+"Truly divine" is a phrase in which he sums up the impressions created
+in his mind by the less material qualities of some of the greatest, but
+before even the greatest could create such an impression they must have
+learnt the rudiments of the art in the school of nature.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI
+
+
+IN the opening years of the sixteenth century the art of painting had
+attained such a pitch of excellence that unless carried onward by a
+supreme genius it could hardly hope to escape from the common lot of
+all things in nature, and begin to decline. After Botticelli and
+Leonardo, the works of Andrea del Sarto, "the perfect painter" as he has
+been called, fall rather flat; and no less a prodigy than Michelangelo
+was capable of excelling his marvellous predecessors, or than Raphael of
+rivalling them.
+
+Vasari prefaces his life to ANDREA DEL SARTO (1486-1531) with something
+more definite than his usual rhetorical flourishes. "At length we have
+come," he says, "after having written the lives of many artists
+distinguished for colour, for design, or for invention, to that of the
+truly excellent Andrea del Sarto, in whom art and nature combined to
+show all that may be done in painting when design, colouring, and
+invention unite in one and the same person. Had he possessed a somewhat
+bolder and more elevated mind, had he been distinguished for higher
+qualifications as he was for genius and depth of judgment in the art he
+practised, he would beyond all doubt have been without an equal. But
+there was in his nature a certain timidity of mind, a sort of diffidence
+and want of strength, which prevented those evidences of ardour and
+animation which are proper to the highest characters from ever appearing
+in him which, could they have been added to his natural advantages,
+would have made him truly a divine painter, so that his works are
+wanting in that grandeur, richness, and force which are so conspicuous
+in those of many other masters.
+
+"His figures are well drawn, and entirely free from errors, and perfect
+in all their proportions, and for the most part are simple and chaste.
+His airs of heads are natural and graceful in women and children, while
+both in youth and old men they are full of life and animation. His
+draperies are marvellously beautiful. His nudes are admirably executed,
+simple in drawing, exquisite in colouring--nay, they are truly divine."
+
+And yet? Well, let us turn to Michelangelo.
+
+"While the best and most industrious artists," says Vasari, "were
+labouring by the light of Giotto and his followers to give the world
+examples of such power as the benignity of their stars and the varied
+character of their fantasies enabled them to command, and while desirous
+of imitating the perfection of Nature by the excellence of Art, they
+were struggling to attain that high comprehension which many call
+intelligence, and were universally toiling, but for the most part in
+vain, the Ruler of Heaven was pleased to turn the eyes of his clemency
+towards earth, and perceiving the fruitlessness of so many labours, the
+ardent studies pursued without any result, and the presumptuous
+self-sufficiency of men which is farther from truth than is darkness
+from light, he resolved, by way of delivering us from such great errors,
+to send to the world a spirit endowed with universality of power in each
+art, and in every profession, one capable of showing by himself alone
+what is the perfection of art in the sketch, the outline, the shadows,
+or the lights; one who could give relief to painting and with an upright
+judgment could operate as perfectly in sculpture; nay, who was so highly
+accomplished in architecture also, that he was able to render our
+habitations secure and commodious, healthy and cheerful,
+well-proportioned, and enriched with the varied ornaments of art."
+
+A more prosaic passage follows presently, occasioned by the innuendoes
+of Condivi as to Vasari's intimacy with Michelangelo and his knowledge
+of the facts of his life at first hand. Vasari meets this accusation by
+quoting the following document relating to the apprenticeship of
+Michelangelo to Domenico Ghirlandaio when fourteen years old. "1488. I
+acknowledge and record this first day of April that I, Lodovico di
+Buonarroti, have engaged Michelangelo my son to Domenico and David di
+Tommaso di Currado for the three years next to come, under the following
+conditions: That the said Michelangelo shall remain with the above named
+all the said time, to the end that they may teach him to paint and to
+exercise their vocation, and that the above named shall have full
+command over him paying him in the course of these three years
+twenty-four florins as wages...."
+
+Besides this teaching in his earliest youth, it is considered probable
+that in 1494, when he visited Bologna, he came under influences which
+resulted in the execution at about that time of the unfinished
+_Entombment_ and the _Holy Family_, which are two of our greatest
+treasures in the National Gallery. As he took to sculpture, however,
+before he was out of Ghirlandaio's hands, there are few traces of any
+activity in painting until 1506, when he was engaged on the designs for
+the great battle-piece for the Council Hall at Florence. The one easel
+picture of which Vasari makes any mention, the _tondo_ in the Uffizi, is
+the only one besides those already noted which is known to exist. "The
+Florentine citizen, Angelo Doni," Vasari says, "desired to have some
+work from his hand as he was his friend; wherefore Michelangelo began a
+circular painting of Our Lady for him. She is kneeling, and presents the
+Divine Child to Joseph. Here the artist has finely expressed the delight
+with which the Mother regards the beauty of her Son, as is clearly
+manifest in the turn of her head and fixedness of her gaze; equally
+evident is her wish that this contentment shall be shared by that pious
+old man who receives the babe with infinite tenderness and reverence.
+Nor was this enough for Michelangelo, since the better to display his
+art he has grouped several undraped figures in the background, some
+upright, some half recumbent, and others seated. The whole work is
+executed with so much care and finish that of all his pictures, which
+indeed are but few, this is considered the best."
+
+After relating the story of the artist's quarrel with his friend over
+the price of this masterpiece (for which he at first only asked sixty
+ducats), Vasari goes on to describe the now lost cartoons for the great
+fresco in the Council Hall at Florence, in substance as follows:--
+
+"When Leonardo was painting in the great hall of the Council, Piero
+Soderini, who was then Gonfaloniere, moved by the extraordinary ability
+which he perceived in Michelangelo [he calls him in a letter a young man
+who stands above all his calling in Italy; nay, in all the world],
+caused him to be entrusted with a portion of the work, and our artist
+began a very large cartoon representing the Battle of Pisa. It
+represented a vast number of nude figures bathing in the Arno, as men do
+on hot days, when suddenly the enemy is heard to be attacking the camp.
+The soldiers spring forth in haste to arm themselves. One is an elderly
+man, who to shelter himself from the heat has wreathed a garland of ivy
+round his head, and, seated on the ground, is labouring to draw on his
+hose, hindered by his limbs being wet. Hearing the sound of the drums
+and the cries of the soldiers he struggles violently to get on one of
+his stockings; the action of the muscles and distortion of the mouth
+evince the zeal of his efforts. Drummers and others hasten to the camp
+with their clothes in their arms, all in the most singular attitudes;
+some standing, others kneeling or stooping; some falling, others
+springing high into the air and exhibiting the most difficult
+foreshortenings.... The artists were amazed as they realised that the
+master had in this cartoon laid open to them the very highest resources
+of art; nay, there are some who still declare that they have never seen
+anything to equal it, either from his hand or any other, and they do not
+believe that genius will ever more attain to such perfection. Nor is
+this an exaggeration, for all who have designed from it and copied
+it--as it was the habit for both natives and strangers to do--have
+become excellent in art, amongst whom were Raphael, Andrea del Sarto,
+Franciabigio, Pontormo, and Piero del Vaga."
+
+In 1508 Michelangelo began to prepare the cartoons for the ceiling of
+the Sistine Chapel. Space forbids me to attempt any description of
+these, but the story of their completion as related by Vasari can hardly
+be omitted. "When half of them were nearly finished," he says, "Pope
+Julius, who had gone more than once to see the work--mounting the
+ladders with the artist's help--insisted on having them opened to public
+view without waiting till the last touches were given, and the chapel
+was no sooner open than all Rome hastened thither, the Pope being first,
+even before the dust caused by removing the scaffold had subsided. Then
+it was that Raphael, who was very prompt in imitation, changed his
+manner, and to give proof of his ability immediately executed the
+frescoes with the Prophets and Sibyls in the church of the Pace.
+Bramante (the architect) also laboured to convince the Pope that he
+would do well to entrust the second half to Raphael.... But Julius, who
+justly valued the ability of Michelangelo, commanded that he should
+continue the work, judging from what he saw of the first half that he
+would be able to improve the second. Michelangelo accordingly finished
+the whole in twenty months, without help. It is true that he often
+complained that he was prevented from giving it the finish he would have
+liked owing to the Pope's impatience, and his constant inquiries as to
+when it would be finished, and on one occasion he answered, "It will be
+finished when I shall have done all that I believe necessary to satisfy
+art." "And we command," replied Julius, "that you satisfy our wish to
+have it done quickly," adding finally that if it were not at once
+completed he would have Michelangelo thrown headlong from the
+scaffolding. Hearing this, the artist, without taking time to add what
+was wanting, took down the remainder of the scaffolding, to the great
+satisfaction of the whole city, on All Saints' Day, when the Pope went
+into his chapel to sing Mass."
+
+Michelangelo had much wished to retouch some portions of the work _a
+secco_, as had been done by the older masters who had painted the walls;
+and to add a little ultramarine to some of the draperies, and gild other
+parts, so as to give a richer and more striking effect. The Pope, too,
+would now have liked these additions to be made, but as Michelangelo
+thought it would take too long to re-erect the scaffolding, the pictures
+remained as they were. The Pope would sometimes say to him, "Let the
+chapel be enriched with gold and bright colours; it looks poor." To
+which Michelangelo would reply, "Holy Father, the men of those days did
+not adorn themselves with gold; those who are painted here less than
+any; for they were none too rich. Besides, they were holy men, and must
+have despised riches and ornaments."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+RAFFAELLO DI SANTI
+
+
+The character and the influence of RAPHAEL are well expressed in the
+following sentences with which Vasari concludes his biography:--"O happy
+and blessed spirit! every one speaks with interest of thee; celebrates
+thy deeds; admires thee in thy works! Well might Painting die when this
+noble artist ceased to live; for when his eyes were closed she remained
+in darkness. For us who survive him it remains to imitate the excellent
+method which he has left for our guidance; and as his great qualities
+deserve, and our duty bids us, to cherish his memory in our hearts, and
+keep it alive in our discourse by speaking of him with the high respect
+which is his due. For through him we have the art in all its extent
+carried to a perfection which could hardly have been looked for; and in
+this universality let no human being ever hope to surpass him. And,
+beside this benefit which he conferred on Art as her true friend, he
+neglected not to show us how every man should conduct himself in all the
+relations of life. Among his rare gifts there is one which especially
+excites my wonder; I mean, that Heaven should have granted him to infuse
+a spirit among those who lived around him so contrary to that which is
+prevalent among professional men. The painters--I do not allude to the
+humble-minded only, but to those of an ambitious turn, and many of this
+sort there are--the painters who worked in company with Raphael lived in
+perfect harmony, as if all bad feelings were extinguished in his
+presence, and every base, unworthy thought had passed from their minds.
+This was because the artists were at once subdued by his obliging
+manners and by his surpassing merit, but more than all by the spell of
+his natural character, which was so full of affectionate kindness, that
+not only men, but even the very brutes, respected him. He always had a
+great number of artists employed for him, helping them and teaching them
+with the kindness of a father to his children, rather than as a master
+directing his scholars. For which reason it was observed he never went
+to court without being accompanied from his very door by perhaps fifty
+painters who took pleasure in thus attending him to do him honour. In
+short, he lived more as a sovereign than as a painter. And thus, O Art
+of Painting! thou too, then, could account thyself most happy, since an
+artist was thine, who, by his skill and by his moral excellence exalted
+thee to the highest heaven!"
+
+Raphael was the son of Giovanni Sanzio, or di Santi, of Urbino. He
+received his first education as an artist from his father, whom,
+however, he lost in his eleventh year. As early as 1495 probably, he
+entered the school of Pietro Perugino, at Perugia, where he remained
+till about his twentieth year.
+
+The "Umbrian School," in which Raphael received his first education, and
+in which he is accordingly placed, is distinguished from the Florentine,
+of which it may be said to have been an offshoot, by several
+well-defined characteristics. Chief of these are, first, the more
+sentimental expression of religious feeling, and second, the greater
+attention paid to distance as compared with the principal figures; both
+of which are explainable on the ground of local circumstances. They
+reflect the difference between the bustling intellectual activity of
+Florence and the dreamy existence but broader horizon of the dwellers
+in the upper valley of the Tiber. In the beautiful _Nativity_ of PIERO
+DELLA FRANCESCA (No. 908 in the National Gallery) we see something akin
+to the Florentine pictures, and yet something more besides. Piero shared
+with Paolo Uccello the eager desire to discover the secrets of
+perspective; but in addition he seems to have been influenced by the
+study of nature herself, in the open air, as Uccello never was. His
+pupil, LUCA SIGNORELLI (1441-1523), was more formal and less
+naturalistic, as may be seen by a comparison between the _Circumcision_
+(No. 1128 in the National Gallery) and Piero's _Baptism of Christ_ on
+the opposite wall. PIETRO PERUGINO (1446-1523)--his real name was
+Vannucci--was influenced both by Signorelli and by Verrocchio. In the
+studio of the latter he had probably worked with Leonardo and Lorenzo di
+Credi, so that in estimating the influences which went to form the art
+of Raphael we need not insist too strongly on the distinction between
+"Umbrian" and "Florentine."
+
+Raphael's first independent works (about 1500) are entirely in
+Perugino's style. They bear the general stamp of the Umbrian School, but
+in its highest beauty. His youthful efforts are essentially youthful,
+and seem to contain the earnest of a high development. Two are in the
+Berlin Museum. In the one (No. 141) called the _Madonna Solly_, the
+Madonna reads in a book; the Child on her lap holds a goldfinch. The
+other (No. 145), with heads of S. Francis and S. Jerome, is better.
+Similar to it, but much more finished and developed, is a small round
+picture, the _Madonna Casa Connestabile_, now at St. Petersburg.
+
+A more important picture of this time is the _Coronation of the
+Virgin_, painted for the church of S. Francesco at Perugia in 1503, but
+now in the Vatican. In the upper part, Christ and the Madonna are
+throned on clouds and surrounded by angels with musical instruments;
+underneath, the disciples stand around the empty tomb. In this lower
+part of the picture there is a very evident attempt to give the figures
+more life, motion, and enthusiastic expression than was before attempted
+in the school.
+
+After this, Raphael appears to have quitted the school of Perugino, and
+to have commenced an independent career: he executed at this time some
+pictures in the neighbouring town of Città di Castello. With all the
+features of the Umbrian School, they already show the freer impulse of
+his own mind,--a decided effort to individualize. The most excellent of
+these, and the most interesting example of this first period of
+Raphael's development, is the _Marriage of the Virgin_ (Lo Sposalizio),
+inscribed with his name and the date 1504, now in the Brera at Milan.
+With much of the stiffness and constraint of the old school, the figures
+are noble and dignified; the countenances, of the sweetest style of
+beauty, are expressive of a tender, enthusiastic melancholy, which lends
+a peculiar charm to this subject.
+
+In 1504 Raphael painted the two little pictures in the Louvre, _S.
+George_ and _S. Michael_ (Nos. 1501-2) for the Duke of Urbino. _The
+Knight Dreaming_, a small picture, now in the National Gallery (No.
+213), is supposed to have been painted a year earlier.
+
+In the autumn of 1504 Raphael went to Florence. Tuscan art had now
+attained its highest perfection, and the most celebrated artists were
+there contending for the palm. From this period begins his
+emancipation
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VI.--PIETRO PERUGINO
+
+CENTRAL PORTION OF ALTAR-PIECE
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+from the confined manner of Perugino's school; the youth ripens into
+manhood and acquires the free mastery of form.
+
+To this time belong the celebrated _Madonna del Granduca_, now in the
+Pitti Gallery, and another formerly belonging to the Duke of Terra
+Nuova, and now at Berlin (No. 247a). In the next year we find him
+employed on several large works in Perugia; these show for the first
+time the influence of Florentine art in the purity, fullness, and
+intelligent treatment of form; at the same time many of the motives of
+the Peruginesque school are still apparent. The famous _Cowper Madonna_,
+recently sold to an American for £140,000, also belongs to the year
+1505, when the blending of the two influences resulted in a picture
+which has been extolled by the sanest of critics as "the loveliest of
+Raphael's Virgins." An altar-piece, executed for the church of the
+Serviti at Perugia, inscribed with the date 1506, is the famous _Madonna
+dei Ansidei_, purchased for the National Gallery from the Duke of
+Marlborough. Besides the dreamy religious feeling of the School of
+Perugia, we perceive here the aim at a greater freedom, founded on
+deeper study.
+
+Raphael was soon back in Florence, where he remained until 1508. The
+early paintings of this period betray, as might be expected, many
+reminiscences of the Peruginesque school, both in conception and
+execution; the later ones follow in all essential respects the general
+style of the Florentines.
+
+One of the earliest is the _Virgin in the Meadow_, in the Belvedere
+Gallery at Vienna. Two others show a close affinity with this
+composition; one is the _Madonna del Cardellino_, in the Tribune of the
+Uffizi, in which S. John presents a goldfinch to the infant Christ. The
+other is the so-called _Belle Jardinière_, inscribed 1507, in the
+Louvre.
+
+It is interesting to observe Raphael's progress in the smaller pictures
+which he painted in Florence--half-figures of the Madonna and Child.
+Here again the earliest are characterised by the tenderest feeling,
+while a freer and more cheerful enjoyment of life is apparent in the
+later ones. The _Madonna della Casa Tempi_, at Munich, is the first of
+this series. In the picture from the Colonna Palace at Rome, now in the
+Berlin Museum (No. 248), the same childlike sportiveness, the same
+maternal tenderness, are developed with more harmonious refinement. A
+larger picture, belonging to the middle time of his Florentine period,
+is in the Munich Gallery--the _Madonna Canignani_, which presents a
+peculiar study of artificial grouping, in a pyramidal shape. Among the
+best pictures of the latter part of this Florentine period are the _S.
+Catherine_, now in the National Gallery, formerly in the Aldobrandini
+Gallery at Rome, and two large altar-pieces. One of these is the
+_Madonna del Baldacchino_, in the Pitti Gallery. The other, _The
+Entombment_, painted for the church of S. Francesco at Perugia, is now
+in the Borghese Gallery at Rome. This is the first of Raphael's
+compositions in which an historical subject is dramatically developed;
+but in this respect the task exceeded his powers. The composition lacks
+repose and unity of effect; the movements are exaggerated and mannered;
+but the figure of the Saviour is extremely beautiful, and may be placed
+among the greatest of the master's creations.
+
+About the middle of the year 1508, when only in his twenty-fifth year,
+Raphael was invited by Pope
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VII.--RAPHAEL
+
+THE ANSIDEI MADONNA
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VIII.--RAPHAEL
+
+LA BELLE JARDINIÈRE
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+Julius II. to decorate the state apartments in the Vatican. With these
+works commences the third period of his development, and in these he
+reached his highest perfection. The subjects, more important than any in
+which he had hitherto been occupied, gave full scope to his powers; and
+the proximity of Michelangelo, who at this time began the painting of
+the Sistine Chapel, excited his emulation.
+
+At this period, just before the Reformation, the Papal power had reached
+its proudest elevation. To glorify this power--to represent Rome as the
+centre of spiritual culture--were the objects of the paintings in the
+Vatican. They cover the ceilings and walls of three chambers and a large
+saloon, which now bear the name of the "Stanze of Raphael."
+
+The execution of these paintings principally occupied Raphael to the
+time of his death, and were only completed by his scholars.
+
+In 1513 and 1514 Raphael also executed designs for the ten tapestries
+intended to adorn the Sistine Chapel, representing events from the lives
+of the apostles. Seven of these magnificent cartoons are now in the
+South Kensington Museum.
+
+Beside these important commissions executed for the Papal court, during
+twelve years, many claims were made on him by private persons. Two
+frescoes executed for Roman churches may be mentioned. One, in S. Maria
+della Pace, represents four Sibyls surrounded by angels, which it is
+interesting to compare with the Sibyls of Michelangelo. In each we find
+the peculiar excellence of the two great masters; Michelangelo's figures
+are grand, sublime, profound, while the fresco of the Pace exhibits
+Raphael's serene and ingenious grace. In a second fresco, the prophet
+Isaiah and two angels, in the church of S. Agostino at Rome, the
+comparison is less favourable to Raphael, the effort to rival the
+powerful style of Michelangelo being rather too obvious.
+
+Like all other artists, Raphael is at his best when, undisturbed by
+outside influences, he follows the free original impulse of his own
+mind. His peculiar element was grace and beauty of form, in so far as
+these are the expression of high moral purity.
+
+The following works of his third period are especially deserving of
+mention.
+
+The _Aldobrandini Madonna_, now in the National Gallery--in which the
+Madonna is sitting on a bench, and bends down to the little S. John, her
+left arm round him. The _Madonna of the Duke of Alba_, in the Hermitage
+at St. Petersburg. _La Vierge au voile_, in the Louvre; the Madonna is
+seated in a kneeling position, lifting the veil from the sleeping Child
+in order to show him to the little S. John. The _Madonna della
+Seggiola_, in the Pitti at Florence (painted about 1516), a circular
+picture. The _Madonna della Tenda_ at Munich; a composition similar to
+the last, except that the Child is represented in more lively action,
+and looking upwards.
+
+A series of similar, but in some instances more copious compositions,
+belong to a still later period; they are in a great measure the work of
+his scholars, painted after his drawings, and only partly worked upon by
+Raphael himself. Indeed many pictures of this class should perhaps be
+considered altogether as the productions of his school, at a time when
+that school was under his direct superintendence, and when it was
+enabled to imitate his finer characteristics in a remarkable degree.
+
+In this class are the _Madonna dell'Impannata_, in the Pitti, which
+takes its name from the oiled-paper window in the background. The large
+picture of a _Holy Family_ in the Louvre, painted in 1518, for Francis
+I., is peculiarly excellent. The whole has a character of cheerfulness
+and joy: an easy and delicate play of graceful lines, which unite in an
+intelligible and harmonious whole. Giulio Romano assisted in the
+execution.
+
+With regard to the large altar-pieces of his later period in which
+several Saints are assembled round the Madonna, it is to be observed
+that Raphael has contrived to place them in reciprocal relation to each
+other, and to establish a connection between them; while the earlier
+masters either ranged them next to one another in simple symmetrical
+repose, or disposed them with a view to picturesque effect.
+
+Of these the _Madonna di Foligno_, in the Vatican, is the earliest. In
+the upper part of the picture is the Madonna with the Child, enthroned
+on the clouds in a glory, surrounded by angels. Underneath, on one side,
+kneels the donor, behind him stands S. Jerome. On the other side is S.
+Francis, kneeling, while he points with one hand out of the picture to
+the people, for whom he entreats the protection of the Mother of Grace;
+behind him is S. John the Baptist, who points to the Madonna, while he
+looks at the spectator as if inviting him to worship her.
+
+The second, the _Madonna del Pesce_ has much more repose and grandeur as
+whole, and unites the sublime and abstract character of sacred beings
+with the individuality of nature in the happiest manner. It is now in
+Madrid, but was originally painted for S. Domenico at Naples, about
+1513. It represents the Madonna and Child on a throne; on one side is
+S. Jerome; on the other the guardian angel with the young Tobias who
+carries a fish (whence the name of the picture). The artist has imparted
+a wonderfully poetic character to the subject. S. Jerome, kneeling on
+the steps of the throne, has been reading from a book to the Virgin and
+Child, and appears to have been interrupted by the entrance of Tobias
+and the Angel. The infant Christ turns towards them, but at the same
+time lays his hand on the open book, as if to mark the place. The Virgin
+turns towards the Angel, who introduces Tobias; while the latter
+dropping on his knees, looks up meekly to the Divine Infant. S. Jerome
+looks over the book to the new-comers, as if ready to proceed with his
+occupation after the interruption.
+
+But the most important is the famous _Madonna di San Sisto_, at Dresden.
+Here the Madonna appears as the queen of the heavenly host, in a
+brilliant glory of countless angel-heads, standing on the clouds, with
+the eternal Son in her arms; S. Sixtus and S. Barbara kneel at the
+sides. Both of them seem to connect the picture with the real
+spectators. This is a rare example of a picture of Raphael's later time,
+executed entirely by his own hand.
+
+Two large altar pictures still claim our attention; they also belong to
+Raphael's later period. One is the _Christ Bearing the Cross_, in
+Madrid, known by the name of _Lo Spasimo di Sicilia_, from the convent
+of Santa Maria dello Spasimo at Palermo, for which it was painted. Here,
+as in the tapestries, we again find a finely conceived development of
+the event, and an excellent composition. The other is the
+_Transfiguration_, now in the Vatican, formerly in S. Pietro at
+Montorio.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE IX.--RAPHAEL
+
+PORTRAIT OF BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+This was the last work of the master (left unfinished at his death); the
+one which was suspended over his coffin, a trophy of his fame, for
+public homage.
+
+"I cannot believe myself in Rome," wrote Count Castiglione, on the death
+of the master, "now that my poor Raphael is no longer here." Men
+regarded his works with religious veneration as if God had revealed
+himself through Raphael as in former days through the prophets. His
+remains were publicly laid out on a splendid catafalque, while his last
+work, the _Transfiguration_, was suspended over his head. He was buried
+in the Pantheon, under an altar adorned by a statue of the Holy Virgin,
+a consecration offering from Raphael himself. Doubts having been raised
+as to the precise spot, a search was made in the Pantheon in 1833, and
+Raphael's bones were found; the situation agreeing exactly with Vasari's
+description of the place of interment. On the 18th of October, in the
+same year, the relics were reinterred in the same spot with great
+solemnities.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The schools of Lombardy and the Emilia, which derive their
+characteristics from Florentine rather than from Venetian influences,
+may here be briefly mentioned before turning to the consideration of the
+Venetian School. In 1482, it will be remembered, Leonardo went to Milan,
+where he remained till the end of the century; and the extent of his
+influence may be judged from many of the productions of BERNADINO LUINI
+(1475-1532) and GIOVANNI ANTONIO BAZZI, known as SODOMA (1477-1549). Of
+AMBROGIO DI PREDIS we have already heard in connection with the painting
+of our version of Leonardo's _Virgin of the Rocks_. GIOVANNI ANTONIO
+BOLTRAFFIO (1467-1516) was a pupil of VINCENZO FOPPA, but he soon
+abandoned the manner of the old Lombard School, and came under the
+influence of the great Florentine, of whom he became a most enthusiastic
+disciple.
+
+More independent--indeed, he is officially characterised as "an isolated
+phenomenon in Italian Art"--was ANTONIO ALLEGRI, commonly called
+CORREGGIO, from the place of his birth. In 1518 he settled at Parma,
+where he remained till 1530, so that he is usually catalogued as of the
+School of Parma, which for an isolated phenomenon serves as well as any
+other. Of late years his popularity has been somewhat diminished by the
+increasing demands of private collectors for works which are
+purchasable, and most of Correggio's are in public galleries. At Dresden
+are some of the most famous, notably the _Nativity_, called "La Notte,"
+from its wonderful scheme of illumination, and two or three large
+altar-pieces. The _Venus Mercury and Cupid_ in our National Gallery,
+though sadly injured, is still one of his masterpieces. It was purchased
+by Charles I. with the famous collection of the Duke of Mantua. Our
+_Ecce Homo_ is entitled to rank with it, as is also the little _Madonna
+of the Basket_.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE X.--CORREGGIO
+
+MERCURY, CUPID, AND VENUS
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+
+
+
+_VENETIAN SCHOOLS_
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE VIVARINI AND BELLINI
+
+
+In Venice the Byzantine style appears to have offered a more stubborn
+resistance to the innovators than in Tuscany, or, in fact, in any other
+part of Italy. Few, if any, of the allegorical subjects with which
+Giotto and his scholars decorated whole buildings are to be found here,
+and the altar pictures retain longer than anywhere else the gilt
+canopied compartments and divisions, and the tranquil positions of
+single figures. It was not until a century after the death of Cimabue
+and Duccio that the real development of the Venetian School was
+manifested, so that when things did begin to move the conditions were
+not the same, and the results accordingly were something substantially
+different.
+
+The influence of the Byzantine style still hangs heavily over the work
+of NICOLO SEMITECOLO, who was working in Venice in the middle of the
+fourteenth century, as may be seen in the great altar-piece ascribed to
+him in the Academy--the Coronation of the Virgin with fourteen scenes
+from the life of Christ. In this work there is little of the general
+advancement visible in other parts of Italy. It corresponds most nearly
+with the work of Duccio of Siena, though without attaining his
+excellence; while the gold hatchings and olive brown tones are still
+Byzantine.
+
+An altar-piece, by MICHELE GIAMBONO, also in the Academy, painted during
+the first half of the fifteenth century, shows a more decided advance,
+and even anticipates some of the later excellences of the Venetian
+School. The drapery is in the long and easy lines which we see in the
+Tuscan pictures of the period, and what is especially significant, in
+view of the subsequent development of Venetian painting, the colouring
+is rich, deep, and transparent, and the flesh tints unusually soft and
+warm. This is signed by Giambono, and is one of his most important
+works, as well as the most complete, as it exists in its original state
+as an _ancona_ or altar-piece divided into compartments by canopies of
+joiners' work. It is unusual in form, inasmuch as the central panel,
+though slightly larger than the pair on either side, contains but a
+single figure. This figure was generally supposed to be the Saviour, but
+it has recently been pointed out that it is S. James the Great, the
+others being SS. John the Evangelist, Philip Benizi, Michael, and Louis
+of Toulouse. Some of Giambono's finest work was in mosaic, and the walls
+and roof of the Cappella de'Mascoli in S. Mark's may be regarded as the
+highest achievement in mosaic of the early Venetian School. While this
+species of decoration had given place to fresco painting elsewhere, it
+was here, in 1430, brought to a pitch of perfection by Giambono which
+entitles this work to a prominent place in the history of painting.
+
+But the two chief pioneers of the early fifteenth century were Giovanni,
+or JOHANNES ALAMANUS, and ANTONIO DA MURANO. The former appears from his
+surname to have been of German origin, the latter belonged to the family
+of VIVARINI, and they used to work together on the same pictures. Two
+excellent examples of this combination are in the Academy at Venice.
+The one, dated 1440, is a Coronation of the Virgin, with many figures,
+including several boys, and numerous saints seated. In the heads of the
+saints we may trace the hand of Alamanus, in the Germanic type of
+countenance which recalls the style of Stephen of Cologne. A repetition
+of this, if it is not actually the original, is in S. Pantalone at
+Venice. The other picture, dated 1446, of enormous dimensions,
+represents the Virgin enthroned, beneath a canopy sustained by angels,
+with the four Fathers of the Church at her side. The colouring is fully
+as flowing and splendid as that of Giambono.
+
+We do not recognise here, as Kugler rightly observes, the influence of
+the school of Giotto, but rather the types of the Germanic style
+gradually assuming a new character, possibly owing to the social
+condition of Venice itself. There was something perhaps in the nature of
+a rich commercial aristocracy of the middle ages calculated to encourage
+that species of art which offered the greatest splendour and elegance to
+the eye; and this also, if possible, in a portable form; thus preferring
+the domestic altar or the dedication picture to wall decorations in
+churches. The contemporary Flemish paintings, under similar conditions,
+exhibit analogous results. With regard to colour, the depth and
+transparency observable in the works of the old Venetian School had long
+been a distinguishing feature in the Byzantine paintings on wood, and
+may therefore be traceable to this source without assuming an influence
+on the part of Padua, or from the north through Giovanni Alamanus.
+
+The two side panels of an altar-piece, representing severally SS. Peter
+and Jerome, and SS. Francis and Mark, now in the National Gallery (Nos.
+768 and 1284), are ascribed to Antonio Vivarini alone, though the centre
+panel, the Virgin and Child, now in the Poldi Pezzoli collection at
+Milan is said to be the joint work of Alamanus and Antonio. However that
+may be, there is no longer any dispute about the fascinating Adoration
+of the Kings in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum at Berlin, formerly supposed
+to be the work of Gentile da Fabriano, but now catalogued as that of
+Antonio.
+
+In 1450 the name of Alamanus disappears altogether, and that of
+BARTOLOMMEO VIVARINI, Antonio's younger brother, replaces it in an
+inscription upon the great altar-piece commissioned by Pope Nicholas V.
+in commemoration of Cardinal Albergati, now in the Pinacoteca of
+Bologna. The change is noticeable as introducing the Paduan influence of
+Squarcione, under whom Bartolommeo had studied, instead of the northern
+influence of Alamanus, into Antonio's workshop, and while this work of
+1450, as might be supposed, bears a general resemblance to that of 1446,
+the change of partnership is at least perceptible, and had a determining
+influence on the development of the Venetian style.
+
+A slightly earlier work of Bartolommeo alone is a Madonna and Child
+belonging to Sir Hugh Lane, signed and dated 1448. An altar-piece in the
+Venice Academy is dated 1464, a Madonna and Four Saints, in the Frari,
+1482, and S. Barbara, in the Academy, 1490. Bartolommeo is supposed to
+have died in 1499.
+
+ALVISE, or LUIGI, VIVARINI was the son of Antonio, and though he worked
+under him and his uncle Bartolommeo, as well as under Giovanni Bellini,
+the Paduan influence is apparent in his work. He was born in 1447, and
+his first dated work is an altar-piece at Montefiorentino, in 1475. In
+the Academy at Venice is a Madonna dated 1480, and at Naples a Madonna
+with SS. Francis and Bernard, 1485. Another Madonna at Vienna is dated
+1489, and the large altar-piece in the Basilica at the Kaiser Friedrich
+Museum in Berlin is assigned to about the same time. This is the first
+of his works in which the influence of Bellini rather than that of his
+family is traceable, while of the "Redentore" Madonna at Venice, of
+about five years later, Mr Bernhard Bernson says that, "As a composition
+no work of the kind by Giovanni Bellini even rivals it." In 1498 he had
+advanced so far as to be spoken of as anticipating Giorgione and Titian,
+in the effect of light and in the roundness and softness of the figures
+of the _Resurrection_, at Bragora. His last work, the altar-piece at the
+Frari, was completed after his death in 1504 by his pupil Basaiti.
+Bartolommeo Montagna, Jacopo da Valenza and Lorenzo Lotto were the chief
+of his other pupils.
+
+In connection with the Vivarini must be mentioned CARLO CRIVELLI, who
+studied with Bartolommeo under Antonio and Squarcione. But there was
+something fierce and uncongenial about Crivelli which takes him out of
+the main body of Venetian painters, and seems to have given him more
+pride in being made a knight than in his pictorial achievements,
+remarkable as they were. In his ornamentation of every detail with gold
+and jewels he recalls the style of Antonio Vivarini, but while the
+master used it as accessory merely, Crivelli positively revelled in it.
+An inventory of the precious stones, ornaments, fruits and flowers, and
+other detached items in the great "Demidoff Altar-Piece" in the National
+Gallery would fill several pages. Of the eight examples in this gallery
+the earliest is probably the _Dead Christ_, presumably painted in 1472.
+The Demidoff altar-piece is dated 1476. The _Annunciation_ (No. 739),
+which may be considered his masterpiece, was ten years later. In 1490
+Crivelli was knighted by Prince Ferdinand of Capua, and from that date
+onward he was careful to add to his signature the title _Miles_--as
+appears in our _Madonna and Child Enthroned_, with SS. Jerome and
+Sebastian--called the Madonna della Rondine:----
+
+CAROLUS CRIVELLUS VENETUS MILES PINXIT. This was painted for the Odoni
+Chapel in S. Francesco at Matelica, the coat of arms of the family being
+painted on the step.
+
+Our _Annunciation_ was executed for the convent of the Santissima
+Annunziata at Ascoli, and is dated 1486. Three coats of arms on the
+front of the step at the bottom of the picture are those of the Bishop
+of Ascoli, Pope Innocent VII., the reigning Pontiff, and the City of
+Ascoli. Between these are the words _Libertas Ecclesiastica_, in
+allusion to the charter of self-government given in 1482 by the Pope to
+the citizens of Ascoli. The patron saint of the city, S. Emidius, is
+represented as a youth kneeling beside the Archangel, holding in his
+hands a model of it. The Virgin is seen through the open door of a
+house, and in an open loggia above are peacocks and other birds. Amid
+all the rich detail, the significance of the group of figures at the top
+of a flight of steps must not be missed, amongst which a child and a
+poet are the only two who are represented as noticing the mystic event.
+
+Another painter of the earlier half of the fourteenth century may be
+mentioned here, though as he was more famous as a medallist his
+influence on the main course of painting is not observable. VITTORE
+PISANO, called PISANELLO, was born in Verona before 1400, and died in
+1455. Of the few pictures attributed to him we are fortunate in having
+two such beautiful examples as the _SS. Anthony and George_ and _The
+Vision of S. Eustace_ in the National Gallery. Both exhibit his two most
+noticeable characteristics, namely, the minute care and exquisite
+feeling that made him the most famous of medallists, and his wonderful
+drawing of animals. The latter, it is worth remarking, was attributed by
+a former owner to Albert Dürer. The other is signed "Pisanus"; in the
+frame are inserted casts of two of his medals, representing Leonello
+d'Este, his patron, and a profile of himself.
+
+Another very considerable factor in the development of Venetian painting
+was the influence of GENTILE DA FABRIANO (_c._ 1360-1430), who settled
+in Venice in the latter part of his life, and there formed the closest
+intimacy with Antonio Vivarini. The remarkable _Adoration of the Kings_
+in the Berlin Museum was until lately given to Gentile, though it is now
+catalogued as the work of Antonio. Of Gentile's education little is
+known, and of the numerous works which he executed at Fabriano, in Rome
+and in Venice very few have survived. From those that exist, however, we
+can form an estimate of his talents and of the difference between his
+earlier and later styles. To the first belong a fresco of the Madonna in
+the Cathedral at Orvieto, and the beautiful picture of the Madonna and
+saints which is now in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum at Berlin. Also the
+fine _Adoration of the Kings_, inscribed with his name and the date
+1423, formerly in the sacristy of S. Trinità at Florence, and now in the
+Accademia. This, his masterpiece, is one of the finest conceptions of
+the subject as well as one of the most excellent productions of the
+schools descended from Giotto. Of his later period the _Coronation of
+the Virgin_ (called the _Quadro della Romita_) in the Brera gallery at
+Milan is one of the finest. In many respects his work is like that of
+Fra Angelico, and was aptly characterised by Michelangelo when he said
+that "Gentile's pictures were like his name." Apart from the influence
+of the Paduan School, which will next be noticed, the Venetian owed most
+to Gentile da Fabriano, if only as the master of Jacopo Bellini, whose
+son, Giovanni Bellini, may be regarded as the real head of the Venetian
+School as developed by his pupils Giorgione and Titian at the opening of
+the sixteenth century.
+
+Whether or not Giotto left any actual pupils in Padua after completing
+the frescoes in the chapel of the arena there, it must be admitted that
+the older school of painting in Padua, which centred round the church
+containing the body of S. Anthony, was an offshoot of the Florentine,
+and that as Giotto was the great leader in Florence he must be
+considered the same here; though his followers differ so much from each
+other in style that beyond their indebtedness to their founder they have
+no distinctive feature in common. But with the opening of the fifteenth
+century one particular tendency was developed under the fostering
+influence of FRANCESCO SQUARCIONE, born in 1394, which affected in a
+very sensible degree the style of the great painters of the next
+generation in Venice. This, in a word, was the cult of the antique.
+
+Among the Florentines, as we have seen, the study of form was chiefly
+pursued on the principle of direct reference to nature, the especial
+object in view being an imitation in two dimensions of the actual
+appearances and circumstances of life existing in three. In the Paduan
+School it now came to be very differently developed, namely, by the
+study of the masterpieces of antique sculpture, in which the common
+forms of nature were already raised to a high ideal of beauty. This
+school has consequently the merit, as Kugler points out, of applying the
+rich results of an earlier, long-forgotten excellence in art to modern
+practice. Of a real comprehension of the idealising principle of classic
+art there does not appear any trace; what the Paduans borrowed from the
+antique was limited primarily to mere outward beauty. Accordingly in the
+earliest examples we find the drapery treated according to the antique
+costume, and the general arrangement more resembling bas-relief than
+rounded groups. The accessories display in like manner a special
+attention to antique models, particularly in the architecture, and the
+frequent introduction of festoons of fruit; while the exaggerated
+sharpness in the marking of the forms due to the combined influence of
+the study of the antique and the naturalising tendency of the time,
+sometimes borders on excess.
+
+The immediate cause of this almost sudden outbreak of the cult of the
+antique--whatever natural forces were behind it--was the visit of
+Squarcione to Greece, and Southern Italy, to collect specimens of the
+remains of ancient art. On his return to Padua his collection soon
+attracted a great number of pupils anxious to avail themselves of the
+advantages it offered; and by these pupils, who poured in from all parts
+of Italy, the manner of the school was afterwards spread throughout a
+great portion of the country. Squarcione himself is better known as a
+teacher than as an artist, the few of his remaining works being of no
+great importance. There is no example in the National Gallery, but of
+the work of his great pupil, Mantegna, we have as much, at any rate, as
+will serve to commemorate the master.
+
+ANDREA MANTEGNA was born at Vicenza in 1431, and when no more than ten
+years old was inscribed in the guild of Padua as pupil and adopted son
+of Squarcione. As early as 1448 he had painted an altar-piece for Santa
+Sophia, now lost, and in 1452 the fresco in San Antonio. In 1455 he was
+engaged with Nicolo Pizzolo (Donatello's assistant), and others, on the
+six frescoes in the Eremitani Church at Padua. The whole of the left
+side of the chapel of SS. James and Christopher--the life of S.
+James--and the martyrdom of S. Christopher are his, and in these, his
+earliest remaining works, we already see the result of pedantic
+antiquarianism combined with his extraordinary individuality.
+
+In 1460 he went to Mantua, where he remained for the greater part of his
+life, visiting Florence in 1466 and Rome in 1488.
+
+Among his earlier works are the small _Adoration of the Kings_ in the
+Uffizi at Florence, the _Death of the Virgin_ and the _S. George_ in the
+Venice Academy. From 1484 to 1494 he was intermittently engaged on the
+nine great cartoons of _The Triumph of Cæsar_, which are now at Hampton
+Court, having been acquired by Charles I. with many other gems from the
+Duke of Mantua's collection. On the completion of these he painted the
+celebrated _Madonna della Vittoria_, now in the Louvre--a large
+altar-piece representing a Madonna surrounded by saints, with Francesco
+Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, and his wife, kneeling at her feet. It is a
+dedication picture for a victory obtained over Charles VIII. of France
+in 1495. It is no less remarkable for its superb execution than for a
+softer treatment of the flesh than is usual in Mantegna's work. Two
+other pictures in the Louvre are, however, distinguished by similar
+qualities--the _Parnassus_, painted in 1497, and the _Triumph of
+Virtue_.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XI.--ANDREA MANTEGNA
+
+THE MADONNA DELLA VITTORIA
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+In our own collection we have _The Agony in the Garden_, painted in
+1459--to which I shall refer presently--two monochrome paintings (Nos.
+1125 and 1145), the beautiful _Virgin and Child Enthroned_, with SS.
+Mary Magdalen and John the Baptist, which is comparable with the more
+famous Louvre _Madonna_, and, lastly, the _Triumph of Scipio_, in
+monochrome, painted for Francesco Cornaro, a Venetian nobleman,
+completed in 1506, only a few months before the painter's death. In this
+we see that Mantegna's antiquarianism was not simply a youthful phase,
+but lasted till the very end of his career. The subject is the reception
+of the Phrygian mother of the gods among the recognised divinities of
+the Roman State, as is indicated on the plinth by the inscription. In
+the centre is Claudia Quinta about to kneel before the bust of the
+goddess. Behind is Scipio, and in the background are monuments to his
+family. The composition includes twenty-two figures. It is significant
+that the subject and its treatment are so entirely classic as only to be
+appreciated by references to Latin literature.
+
+Another significance attaches to the _Agony in the Garden_ above
+mentioned, which is one of the very earliest, as the _Scipio_ is the
+very latest, of Mantegna's pictures, being painted before he left Padua
+to go to Mantua. In this we find that the original suggestion for the
+design appears to have been taken from a drawing in the sketch-book of
+his father-in-law, Jacopo Bellini, which is now in the British Museum;
+and the same design appears to have served Giovanni Bellini in the
+composition of the picture in our gallery (No. 726). This takes us back
+to Venice, and accounts for the Paduan influence traceable in the works
+of the Bellini family and their pupils.
+
+JACOPO BELLINI, whose considerable talents have been somewhat obscured
+by the fame of his two sons, Gentile and Giovanni, was originally a
+pupil of Gentile da Fabriano, after whom he named his eldest son. He was
+working in Padua in the middle of the fifteenth century, in rivalry with
+Squarcione, and in 1453 his daughter Nicolosia married Andrea Mantegna.
+Thus it happened that both of his sons came under the influence of
+Mantegna, and evidently, too, of the sculptor Donatello, when working at
+Padua between 1450 and 1460.
+
+Very few authentic pictures by Jacopo are known to us. _A Crucifixion_
+(much repainted) was in the sacristy of the Episcopal Palace at Verona;
+and another, which recalls the treatment of his master, Gentile da
+Fabriano, at Lovere, near Bergamo. In the sketch-book above mentioned,
+the contents of which consist of sacred subjects, and studies from the
+antique, both in architecture and in costume, we see the peculiar
+tendency of the Paduan School expressed in the most complete and
+comprehensive manner. These drawings constitute the most remarkable link
+of connection between Mantegna and the sons of Jacopo Bellini, all three
+of whom must have studied from them. The book was inherited by Gentile
+on his mother's death, and bequeathed by him to his brother on condition
+that he should finish the picture of _S. Mark_, on which Gentile was
+engaged at the time of his death.
+
+GIOVANNI BELLINI was born in 1428 or 1430 and lived to 1516. Albert
+Dürer, writing from Venice in 1506, says that "he is very old, but is
+still the best in painting."
+
+The greater number of Bellini's pictures are to be found in the
+galleries and churches in Venice, all of those which are dated being
+the work of his old age. Of his earlier pictures we are fortunate in
+having two fine examples in the National Gallery, _Christ's Agony in the
+Garden_ (No. 726) and _The Blood of the Redeemer_ (No. 1233). In both of
+these the influence of his famous brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna, is
+traceable,--the former being till lately attributed to him. Both
+Giovanni and Gentile worked in Padua, where Mantegna was established, in
+1460 or thereabouts, and where another influence, that of the sculptor
+Donatello, must have had its effect on the young brothers. Similar in
+character, and even more beautiful in some respects, is the _Redeemer_,
+a single half figure in a landscape, recently acquired for the
+Louvre--the first authentic example of the master in that collection.
+
+In 1464, Giovanni had returned to Venice, and it was some years before
+the severe Paduan influence melted before "the sensuous feeling of the
+true Venetian temperament." In 1475, however, the arrival of Antonello
+da Messina in Venice, bringing with him the practice of painting in oil,
+effected a revolution, in which Giovanni, if not one of the foremost,
+was certainly one of the most successful in adopting the new method. His
+later works, so far from showing any diminution of power, may be said to
+anticipate the Venetian style of the sixteenth century in the clearest
+manner. One of the chief, dated 1488, is the large altar-piece in the
+sacristy of S. Maria di Frari, a _Madonna Enthroned_ with two angels and
+four saints. The two little angels are of the utmost beauty; the one is
+playing on a lute, and listens with head inclined to hear whether the
+instrument is in tune; the other is blowing a pipe. The whole is
+perfectly finished and of a splendid effect of colour. To the year 1486
+belongs a _Madonna Enthroned with Six Saints_, now in the Academy at
+Venice. The famous head of the Doge Loredano in the National Gallery
+must have been painted in or after 1501. In 1507, he completed the large
+picture of _S. Mark Preaching at Alexandria_, now in the Brera Gallery
+at Milan, begun by his brother Gentile. Within three years of his death,
+namely in 1513, he could produce such a masterwork as the altar-piece in
+S. Giovanni Crisostomo. His last work, the landscape in which was
+finished by Titian, is dated 1514. This is the famous _Bacchanal_ now in
+the collection of the Duke of Northumberland.
+
+The influence of Bellini on the Venetian School was paramount, and his
+noble example helped more than anything else to develop the excellences
+observable in the works of Cimada Conegliano, Vincenzo Catena, Lorenzo
+Lotto, Palma Vecchio and Basaiti, to say nothing of his great pupils
+Titian and Giorgione. It is impossible to conjecture what course the
+genius of this younger generation would have taken without his guidance,
+but when we consider that in 1500 Bellini was seventy years old, and had
+stored within his mind the experience of his early association with his
+brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna in Padua, the introduction of the use of
+oil paints by Antonello da Messina in 1475, since which date he had
+sedulously developed the new practice; when we also take into account
+the dignity and gravity of his own works, and the indication they afford
+of the man himself, it is not difficult to judge how much his pupils and
+successors owed to him.
+
+The works of GENTILE BELLINI, the elder brother of Giovanni, are of less
+importance, but of considerable interest, especially in view of his
+journey to Constantinople in 1479 at the request of the Sultan, whose
+portrait he painted there in the following year. A replica
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XII.--GIOVANNI BELLINI
+
+THE DOGE LOREDANO
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+of this portrait has been bequeathed to the National Gallery by Sir
+Henry Layard, and it is to be hoped that the difficulties raised by the
+Italian government as to its removal from Venice will shortly be
+overcome. The picture of _S. Mark Preaching at Alexandria_ already
+mentioned as having been finished by Giovanni, is remarkable for the
+Oriental costumes of all the figures in it. Gentile's pictures are often
+ascribed to his brother; in two examples at the National Gallery (Nos.
+808 and 1440) there is actually a false signature on a cartellino. In
+the latter instance Messrs Ludwig and Molmenti are still of opinion that
+the picture is the work of Giovanni.
+
+VINCENZO CATENA (_c._ 1470-1530) is not known to have been a pupil of
+Bellini, but he began by so modelling his style upon him that one of his
+works in the National Gallery was until quite lately officially ascribed
+to him, namely the _S. Jerome in his Study_. Another, a later work, _A
+Warrior Adoring the Infant Christ_ was similarly ascribed to Giorgione.
+This is a proof that Catena was very susceptible to various influences,
+and was "an artist of extraordinary suppleness of mind, never too old to
+learn or to appreciate new ideals and new sentiments." In a manner more
+his own is the _Madonna with Four Saints_ in the Berlin Gallery (No.
+19). The _S. Jerome_ and the _Warrior_ are among the most popular
+pictures in the National Gallery--partly perhaps on account of their
+supposed illustrious parentage, but by no means entirely. A painter who
+could so absorb the characteristics of two such masters must needs be a
+master himself.
+
+CIMA DA CONEGLIANO, so called from his birthplace in Friuli--the rocky
+height of which serves as a background in some of his pictures--settled
+in Venice in 1490, when he was about thirty years old. The influence of
+Bellini may be seen in the temperamental as well as the technical
+qualities of his work, which is distinguished by sound drawing and
+proportion, fine and brilliant colour, as well as by sympathetic types
+of countenance. One of his best and earliest pictures is the _S. John
+the Baptist_ with four other saints, in Santa Maria del Orto in Venice.
+Another is the _Madonna with S. Jerome and S. Louis_, now in the Vienna
+Gallery. A smaller but peculiarly attractive piece is the _S. Anianus of
+Alexandria_ healing a shoemaker's wounded hand, at Berlin, distinguished
+for its beautiful clear colours and the life-like character of the
+heads.
+
+ANDREA PREVITALI, born in Bergamo in 1480, came to Venice to study under
+Bellini, whom he succeeded in imitating with remarkable success. _The
+Mystic Marriage of S. Catherine_ (No. 1409) in the National Gallery was
+formerly attributed to Bellini. If he had not the originality to carry
+the art any farther, his pictures are nevertheless a decided and very
+agreeable proof of the advance that was being made in it at the
+beginning of the sixteenth century, before the full splendour of
+Giorgione and Titian had unfolded.
+
+MARCO BASAITI, though probably not a pupil of Bellini, nevertheless
+acquired many of his characteristics. The picture in the National
+Gallery known as _The Madonna of the Meadow_ was until lately assigned
+to Bellini, and another of his, in the Giovanelli Palace at Venice,
+which is identical in technique, tone, and general effect with this one,
+is still so ascribed. Whether or not he learnt from Bellini, he was
+certainly an assistant to Alvise Vivarini, on whose death he completed
+the large altar-piece in the Church of S. Maria de Friari at Venice,
+representing _S. Ambrose surrounded by Saints_. His _Christ on the Mount
+of Olives_ and _The Calling of Zebedee_, both dated 1510, are now in the
+Academy at Venice, and together with the _Portrait of a Man_, dated
+1521, in the Bergamo Gallery, and _The Assumption_ in S. Pietro Martire
+at Murano, may be considered his best performances.
+
+More remote from Bellini, yet not so far as to be entirely free from his
+influence in some of their more important compositions, was the school
+formed by LAZZARO DI BASTIANI or SEBASTIANI, of which the chief ornament
+was Vittore Carpaccio, and among the lesser ones Giovanni Mansueti and
+Benedetto Diana. The history of this independent group of painters has
+only of late years been elucidated; Kugler, after a page devoted to
+Carpaccio, dismissed them with the remark that Mansueti and Bastiani
+were both pupils of Carpaccio, and that Benedetto Diana was "less
+distinguished." Our national collection was without any example until
+1896, when Mansueti's _Symbolic representation of the Crucifixion_ was
+purchased. In 1905 the National Art-Collections Fund secured Bastiani's
+_Virgin and Child_, and in 1910 Sir Claude Phillips presented Diana's
+_Christ Blessing_. Alas! that we are still without anything from the
+hand of Vittore Carpaccio. Seven portraits by Moroni do not fill a gap
+like this.
+
+The name of Lazzaro de Bastiani first occurs in Venice as a witness to
+his brother's will in 1449, and as early as 1460 he was painting an
+altar-piece for the Church of San Samuele. Ten years later, the brothers
+of the Scuolo di San Marco ordered a picture of the _Story of David_
+from him, promising him the same payment as they gave to Jacobo Bellini,
+who had been working for them with his two sons Gentile and Giovanni.
+In 1474, another proof of his rank and repute as a painter is afforded
+by a letter from a gentleman in Constantinople, asking for a picture by
+him, but that Giovanni Bellini should paint it in the event of Bastiani
+being already dead. He was thus, it would seem, preferred to Bellini,
+though it will be remembered that five years later, when the Sultan
+expressed the wish that a distinguished portrait-painter should be sent
+him from Venice, it was Gentile Bellini who was nominated. All the same,
+Gentile was a portrait-painter, and Bastiani was not; and it is fairly
+evident that the latter was at least in the front rank. One of his
+best-known pictures the _Vergine dai begli occhi_ in the Ducal Palace at
+Venice used to be attributed to Giovanni Bellini; but though he appears
+to have drawn inspiration for his larger and more important compositions
+from Jacobo Bellini, his style was chiefly developed through that of
+Giambono. His most important work is now in the Academy at Vienna--an
+altar-piece painted for the Church of Corpus Domini, Venice, _S.
+Veneranda Enthroned_. In the Imperial Gallery at Vienna are a _Last
+Communion_ and _Funeral of S. Girolamo_. In the Academy at Venice are
+_S. Anthony of Padua_, seated between the branches of a walnut-tree,
+with Cardinal Bonaventura and Brother Leo on either side, a large
+picture of a _Miracle of the Holy Cross_, and a remarkable rendering of
+_The Madonna Kneeling_, the child being laid under an elaborate canopy.
+An _Entombment_ in the Church of S. Antonino at Venice is reminiscent of
+Giovanni Bellini at his best.
+
+In 1508, the name of VITTORE CARPACCIO occurs with that of Bastiani in
+connection with the frescoes of Giorgione upon the façade of the Fondaco
+de Tedeschi, about which there was a dispute. To Carpaccio we are
+indebted for the most vivid realization of the contemporary life of
+Venice; for although his subjects were nominally taken from sacred
+history or legend, they are treated in a thoroughly secular fashion,
+giving the clearest idea of the buildings, people, and costume of the
+Venice of his time, with the greatest variety and richest development.
+His object is not only to represent single events, but a complete scene,
+and while we observe this characteristic in one or two pictures by the
+Bellini, Carpaccio not only shows it much oftener, but carries it to a
+much fuller development--possibly influenced by the Netherlandish
+masters.
+
+Many of his works are in the Academy at Venice; eight large pictures,
+painted between 1490 and 1495, represent the history of S. Ursula and
+the eleven thousand virgins. Such a wealth of charming material might
+have embarrassed a less capable painter, but "the monotonous incident
+which forms the groundwork of many of them," as Kugler coldly puts it,
+"is throughout varied and elevated by a free style of grouping and by
+happy moral allusions." Another series is that of the _Miracles of the
+Holy Cross_, among which may be especially noticed the cure of a man
+possessed by a devil; the scene is laid in the loggia of a Venetian
+palace, and is watched from below by a varied group of figures on the
+Canal and its banks. Larger and broader treatment may be seen in the
+_Presentation in the Temple_, painted in 1510, which is also in the
+Academy, and in the altar-piece of _S. Vitale_, dated 1514. This last
+brings Carpaccio into closer comparison with the later Venetian
+painters, being in the nature of a _Santa Conversazione_, where the holy
+personages are grouped in some definite relation to each other, and not
+independent figures.
+
+PALMA VECCHIO (1480-1528), so called to distinguish him from Giacomo
+Palma the younger--Palma Giovane,--was so much influenced by Giorgione
+and Titian that his indebtedness to Bellini appears to have been
+comparatively slight. The beautiful _Portrait of a Poet_ in the National
+Gallery has been attributed both to Giorgione and to Titian.
+
+The number of pictures which are now permitted by the experts to be
+called Giorgione's is so small, that we may learn more about him as an
+influence on the work of other painters--especially Titian--than from
+the meagre materials available for his own biography. The only
+unquestioned examples of his work are three pictures at the Uffizi, _The
+Trial of Moses_, _The Judgment of Solomon_, and _The Knight of Malta_;
+the _Venus_ at Dresden; _The Three Philosophers_ at Vienna; and the
+famous _Concert Champêtre_ in the Louvre. But until the critics deprive
+him even of these, we are able to agree that "his capital achievement
+was the invention of the modern spirit of lyrical passion and romance in
+pictorial art, and his magical charm has never been equalled."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+TIZIANO VECELLIO
+
+
+TITIAN occupies almost, if not quite, as important a place in the
+history of painting as does Shakespeare in that of literature. His fame,
+his popularity, the wide range as well as the immense quantity of his
+works, entitle him to be ranked with our poet, if only for the
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XIII.--GIORGIONE
+
+VENETIAN PASTORAL
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+enormous influence they have both exercised on posterity: and without
+carrying the parallel farther than the limits imposed by the difference
+of their circumstances and their method of expression, it may fairly be
+said that Titian, in painting, stands for us to-day much as Shakespeare
+stands for in letters. "Titian," says M. Caro Delvaille,[2] "is the
+father of modern painting. As the blood of the patriarchs of old infused
+the veins of a whole race, so the genius of the most productive of
+painters was destined to infuse those of artists through all the ages
+even to the present day. He bequeathed, in his enormous _oeuvre_, a
+heritage in which generations of painters have participated."
+
+Not only was he the father of modern painting, but he was himself the
+first modern painter, just as Shakespeare was, to all present intents
+and purposes, the first modern writer. Among a thousand readers of
+Shakespeare, there is possibly not more than one who has ever read a
+line of Chaucer, or who has ever heard of any of his other predecessors.
+So it is with Titian. To the connoisseur, Titian is one of the latest
+painters; to the public he is the earliest. "In certain of his
+portraits," we read in the National Gallery Catalogue, "he ranks with
+the supreme masters; in certain other aspects he is seen as the greatest
+academician, as perhaps he was the first."
+
+As it happens, too, Titian stands in much the same relation to Giorgione
+as Shakespeare did to Marlowe. Giorgione was really the great innovator,
+and Giorgione died young, leaving Titian to carry on the work. It has
+always been supposed that Titian and Giorgione, like Marlowe and
+Shakespeare, were born within the same year; but in this respect the
+parallel is no longer admissible, as Mr Herbert Cook has shown to the
+verge of actual proof that the story of Titian being born in 1577, and
+having lived to be ninety-nine years old, is unworthy of acceptance. If
+this were merely a question of biography, it would not be worth dwelling
+upon; but as it seriously affects the whole study of early Venetian
+painting, it is necessary to point out that the probability, according
+to a critical study of all the evidence available, is that Titian was
+not born till 1488 or 1489, and was thus really the pupil rather than
+the contemporary of Giorgione, and therefore more slightly influenced by
+Giovanni Bellini than has been generally supposed.
+
+Without going into all the evidence adduced by Mr Cook (_Reviews and
+Appreciations,_ Heinemann, 1913) it is nevertheless pretty evident that
+in the account given by his friend and contemporary, Lodovico Dolce,
+published in 1557, we have the most authentic story of Titian's early
+years, and from this it is quite clear that Titian was considerably
+younger than Giorgione. "Being born at Cadore," he writes, "of
+honourable parents, he was sent, when a child of nine years old, by his
+father to Venice, to the house of his father's brother, in order that he
+might be put under some proper master to study painting; his father
+having perceived in him even at that tender age strong marks of genius
+towards the art.... His uncle directly carried the child to the house of
+Sebastanio, father of the _gentilissimo_ Valerio and of Francesco
+Zuccati (distinguished masters of the art of mosaic, ...) to learn the
+principles of the art. From them he was removed to Gentile Bellini,
+brother of Giovanni, but much inferior to him, who at that time was at
+work with his brother in the Grand Council Chamber. But Titian, impelled
+by nature to greater excellence and perfection in his art, could not
+endure following the dry and laboured manner of Gentile, but designed
+with boldness and expedition. Whereupon Gentile told him he would make
+no progress in painting because he diverged so much from the old style.
+Thereupon Titian left the stupid Gentile and found means to attach
+himself to Giovanni Bellini; but not perfectly pleased with his manner,
+he chose Giorgio da Castel Franco. Titian, then, drawing and painting
+with Giorgione, as he was called, became in a short time so accomplished
+in art that when Giorgione was painting (in 1507-8) the façade of the
+Fondaco de'Tedeschi, or Exchange of the German merchants, which looks
+towards the Grand Canal, Titian was allotted the other side which faces
+the market place, being at the time scarcely twenty years old. Here he
+represented a Judith of wonderful design and colour, so remarkable
+indeed, that when the work came to be uncovered it was commonly thought
+to be the work of Giorgione, and all the latter's friends congratulated
+him (Giorgione) as being by far the best thing he had produced.
+Whereupon Giorgione, in great displeasure, replied that the work was
+from the hand of his pupil, who showed already how he could surpass his
+master and (what is more) Giorgione shut himself up for some days at
+home, as if in despair, seeing that a young (_i.e._ younger) man knew
+more than he did."
+
+Again, in speaking of the famous altar-piece--the _Assumption_, now in
+the Academy at Venice--painted by Titian in 1516, Dolce mentions him
+twice as "giovinetto." "Not long afterwards he was commissioned to paint
+a large picture for the high altar of the Church of the Frate Minori,
+where Titian, quite a young man, painted in oil the Virgin ascending to
+Heaven.... This was the first public work which he painted in oil, and
+he did it in a very short time, and while still a young man."
+
+Vasari's account of Titian's early years is substantially the same, but
+unfortunately opens with the statement that he was "born in the year
+1480." This might easily have been a slip of the pen or a printer's
+mistake for 1488 or 1489, and subsequent passages in the life bear out
+this supposition. But partly because Titian was a Venetian and not a
+Florentine, and partly, no doubt, because he was still alive, and had
+been producing picture after picture for over sixty years at the time
+Vasari published his second edition in 1568, the whole account is so
+confused and inaccurate that its credit has been severely shaken by
+modern critics, with the result that it is hardly nowadays considered
+authentic in any respect. The following extracts, however, there seems
+no reason to question:----
+
+"About the year 1507, Giorgione not being satisfied [with the
+old-fashioned methods of Bellini and others] began to give his works an
+unwonted softness and relief, painting them in a very beautiful manner."
+And a little later "Having seen the manner of Giorgione, Titian early
+resolved to abandon that of Gian Bellino, although well grounded
+therein. He now, therefore, devoted himself to this purpose, and in a
+short time so closely imitated Giorgione that his pictures were
+sometimes taken for those of this master, as will be related below.
+Increasing in age, judgment and facility of hand, our young artist
+executed numerous works in fresco.... At the time when he began to adopt
+the manner of Giorgione, being then not more than eighteen, he took the
+portrait of a gentleman of the Barberigo family, who was his friend, and
+this was considered very beautiful, the colouring being true and
+natural, the hair so distinctly painted that each one could be counted,
+as might also the stitches in a satin doublet painted in the same work;
+in a word, it was so well and carefully done that it would have been
+taken for a work of Giorgione if Titian had not written his name on the
+dark ground."
+
+With this we may leave the question of Titian's birth date, and consider
+the exceptional interest attaching to the question of this Barberigo
+portrait. According to Mr. Cook, and also, under reserve, to several
+other eminent authorities, it is no other than the so-called _Ariosto_,
+which was purchased for the National Gallery in 1904. The chief
+difficulties in deciding the question are, first, whether it is possible
+that a youth of eighteen could have painted such a masterpiece, second,
+that the signature _Titianus_ is supposed not to have been used by the
+artist before about 1520, and lastly, that the head, at any rate, is
+decidedly more in the manner of Giorgione than that of Titian. This
+last, of course, did not trouble Vasari, and his testimony is therefore
+all the more valuable; but all difficulties vanish if we accept Mr.
+Cook's theory that the portrait was begun by Giorgione in 1508, was left
+incomplete at his sudden death in 1510, and finished by Titian in 1520.
+That is to say, the head and general design is that of Giorgione, the
+marvellous finish of the sleeve and other parts that of Titian.
+
+Of works left unfinished at a master's death and completed by a pupil
+there are numerous instances; the famous _Bacchanal_ at Alnwick is one
+which takes us a step further in Titian's career. This was begun by
+Giovanni Bellini, and Titian was invited by the Duke of Ferrara, in
+1516, to finish it. The landscape is entirely his. To complete the
+decoration of the apartment in which the picture was hung, he was
+called upon to paint two others of the same size, one the _Triumph of
+Bacchus_, or as it is usually called _Bacchus and Ariadne_ (now in the
+National Gallery) and the other a similar subject, the _Bacchanal_, now
+in the Prado (No. 418, formerly 450).
+
+Ridolfi, in his life of Titian characterises our picture as one to whose
+unparalleled merits he is inadequate to do justice; "There is," he says,
+"such a graceful expression in the figure of Ariadne, such beauty in the
+children--so strongly marked both in the looks and attitudes is the
+joyous character of the licentious votaries of Bacchus--the roundness
+and correct drawing of the man entwined with snakes, the magnificence of
+the sky and landscape, the sporting play of the leaves and branches of
+the most vivid tints, and the detailed herbage on the ground tending to
+enliven the scene, and the rich tone of colour throughout, form
+altogether such a whole that hardly any other work of Titian can stand
+in competition with it."
+
+In the composition of the second picture, _The Bacchanal_ at Madrid, a
+number of the votaries of Bacchus are assembled on the bank of a
+rivulet, flowing with red wine from a hill in the distance; some of them
+are distributing the liquor to their associates, while a nymph and two
+men are dancing. The nymph is supposed to be a portrait of Violante,
+Titan's mistress, as he has painted, in allusion to her name, a violet
+on her breast and his own name round her arm. Her light drapery is
+raised by the breeze, and discovers the beautiful form and _morbidezza_
+of her limbs. In the foreground Ariadne lies asleep, her head resting on
+a rich vase in place of a pillow.[3]
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XIV.--TITIAN
+
+PORTRAIT SAID TO BE OF ARIOSTO
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+Cumberland says that Raphael Mengs, who lived long at Madrid at the time
+when this picture was in the reception room of the New Palace, was of
+opinion that Titian's superior taste was nowhere more strikingly
+displayed, and remarks that he himself could never pass by it without
+surprise and admiration, more particularly excited by the beauty of the
+sleeping Ariadne in the foreground.
+
+Respecting the merits of both pictures the testimony of Agostino
+Carracci should not be omitted; when he viewed them in the possession of
+the Duke of Ferrara he declared that he considered them the first in the
+world, and that no one could say he was acquainted with the most
+marvellous works of art without having seen them.
+
+Commenting upon another picture of Titian's early period, Sir Joshua
+Reynolds delivers himself of the following criticisms on Titian as
+compared with Raphael, "It is to Titian that we must turn," he says, "to
+find excellence in regard to colour, and light and shade in the highest
+degree. He was both the first and the greatest master of this art; by a
+few strokes he knew how to mark the general image and character of
+whatever object he attempted, and produced by this alone a truer
+representation of nature than his master, Giovanni Bellini, or any of
+his predecessors, who finished every hair. His greatest object was to
+express the general colour, to preserve the masses of light and shade,
+and to give by opposition the idea of that solidity which is inseparable
+from natural objects....
+
+"Raphael and Titian seemed to have looked at nature for different
+purposes; they both had the power of extending their view to the whole,
+but one looked only at the general effect as produced by form, the
+other as produced by colour. We cannot refuse Titian the merit of
+attending to the general form of the object, as well as colour; but his
+deficiency lay--a deficiency at least when he is compared with
+Raphael--in not possessing the power, like him, of correcting the form
+of his model by any general idea of beauty in his own mind. Of this his
+_St. Sebastian with other Saints_ (in the Vatican) is a particular
+instance. This figure appears to be a most exact representation both of
+the form and colour of the model which he then happened to have before
+him, and has all the force of nature, and the colouring of flesh itself;
+but unluckily the model was of a bad form, especially the legs. Titian
+has with much care preserved these defects, as he has imitated the
+beauty and brilliancy of the colouring...."
+
+Of the Sebastian, Vasari says very much the same as Reynolds. "He is
+nude," he writes, "and has been exactly copied from the life without the
+slightest admixture of art, no efforts for the sake of beauty have been
+sought in any part--trunk or limbs; all is as nature left it, so that it
+might seem to be a sort of cast from the life. It is nevertheless
+considered very fine, and the figure of our Lady with the infant in her
+arms, whom all the other figures are looking at, is also accounted most
+beautiful."
+
+Two more of the pictures of Titian's earliest period are in the National
+Gallery--the _Christ appearing to Mary Magdalen_ (No. 270), and the
+_Holy Family_ (No. 4). The former is ascribed to about the year 1514,
+partly on the ground that the group of buildings in the landscape is
+identical, line for line, with that in the Dresden _Venus_ painted by
+Giorgione but completed by Titian after his death. The same landscape
+also occurs in the beautiful little _Cupid_ in the Vienna
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XV.--TITIAN
+
+THE HOLY FAMILY
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+Academy, and, as Mr Herbert Cook suggests, possibly represents some
+cherished spot in Titian's memory connected with his mountain home at
+Pieve di Cadore.
+
+The _Holy Family_, above mentioned, is a most charming example of the
+_sacra conversazione_ as developed by Titian from the somewhat formal
+and austere conception of Bellini and his contemporaries into something
+eminently characteristic of the secular side of his genius. The very
+titles of two of his most beautiful and most famous pictures of this
+sort proclaim the hold they have taken on the popular mind. The one is
+the _Madonna of the Cherries_, in the Vienna Gallery. The other is the
+_Madonna with the Rabbit_, in the Louvre. In our picture the
+distinguishing feature is the kneeling shepherd, with his little
+water-cask slung on his belt, who puts us at once in touch with the
+whole scene by the simple appeal to our common human experience. Raphael
+could move our religious feelings to revere the godhead in the child,
+but could seldom, like Titian, stir our human emotions and bring home to
+us that Christ was born on earth for our sakes.
+
+If this particular characteristic of Titian were confined to the
+pastoral setting of these Holy Conversations, it might be taken as
+merely accidental, and without further significance than should be
+accorded to a youthful fancy. But in the wonderful _Entombment_, now in
+the Louvre, in which he displays "the full splendour of his early
+maturity," the human element is such an important factor in the
+presentment of the divine tragedy that even a painter, M.
+Caro-Delvaille, must postpone his description of the picture to
+sentences like these:--"Sur un ciel tourmenté," he writes, in phrases
+which it is impossible to render adequately in English, "se profile le
+groupe tragique. Aucun geste superflu; le drame est intérieur. La
+Douleur plane dans l'air alourdi du crépuscule, comme une aile
+fatale--Jésus est mort! Le grand cadavre livide, que les apôtres
+angoissés soutiennent, n'a rien dans sa robustesse inerte de la
+dépouille émaciée des Christs mystiques. Le fils de Dieu semble un
+patriarche douloureusement frappé par le décret d'en haut.
+
+"Une âpreté primitive, où les larmes se cachent comme une faiblesse,
+communique a l'oeuvre un pathétique si poignant que le mystère de la
+mort s'étend jusqu'à nous.
+
+"La Vierge et la Madeleine sont là. Elle, la Mère, doute de la réalité,
+tant elle souffre! Son regard fixe sur le corps chéri, elle ne peut
+croire que tout est consommé. La pécheresse pitoyable la prend dans ses
+bras pour essayer de l'arracher à l'horreur de cette vision.
+
+"Drame humain et divin! ne sont-ce point des fils qui ramènent le
+cadavre de leur père à la poussière? Tous ceux qui passèrent par ces
+épreuves se souviennent de ce deuil qui semble se prolonger dans la
+nature entière."
+
+Titian's first period may be said to end in 1530, by which time he had
+completed the famous _Peter Martyr_, which was destroyed by fire in
+1867. In 1530, too, Titian's wife died. This event of itself need not be
+supposed to have greatly influenced his career, as there is no evidence
+of her having appealed to his artistic nature as did his daughter
+Lavinia. As it happened, however, a more certain influence was nearly
+coincident with this event--the arrival in Venice of the notorious
+Aretine, who, chiefly as it appears, with an eye to business, entered
+into the most intimate relations with Titian. The accession of the
+sculptor
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XVI.--TITIAN
+
+THE ENTOMBMENT
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+Sansovino to the comradeship earned for the group the name of the
+Triumvirate.
+
+So far from Titian being corrupted by the society of Aretine, there is
+direct evidence in one of the poet's letters to him that he was not.
+"You must come to our feast to-night," he writes, "but I may as well
+warn you that you had better leave early, as I know how particular you
+are about certain things." Nor is there anything in the artist's works
+of this next period--which we may roughly date from 1530 to 1550, that
+betrays a more serious devotion to the sensual side of life than can be
+accounted for by the demands of the high and mighty patrons that Aretine
+was soon to find for him. As an artist he looked upon woman as a
+beautiful creature, as a man he most probably never troubled about her,
+or was troubled by her. There is no proof that any of his pictures are
+rightly called "Titian's mistress," and we may conclude that he was as
+good a husband and a father as was Rubens, who revelled in painting
+woman, or Velasquez, who seems to have frankly disliked it. Like
+Rowlandson, whom the general public only know as a caricaturist, but who
+when he once got away from London was the most pure minded and poetical
+artist, so Titian, when once dissociated from the demands of corrupt
+patrons, like Philip II., never reveals himself as having fallen under
+the influence of Aretine--if indeed at all. The _Danaë_ and the _Venus
+and a Musician_ at the Prado are the only examples it is possible to
+cite--unless it be the _Venus_, to which popular opinion would hardly
+deny its place of honour in the Tribune at the Uffizi.
+
+At the same time the difference in circumstances, the fuller, richer
+life that he must have led in these years of patronage and prosperity,
+accounts for a certain "shallowness and complacency" which
+distinguishes his work during this period as sharply from that which
+preceded as from that which followed it; and fine as is his
+accomplishment during these years, especially in portraiture, it
+includes fewer of those masterpieces which appeal to the heart as much
+as to the eye.
+
+To 1538 belongs the large and beautiful picture of the _Presentation of
+the Virgin Mary in the Temple_, painted for the Scuola della Carità in
+Venice, which is now occupied by the Academy, where it still hangs, as
+is said, in its original place. It is twenty-two feet in length, and
+contains several portraits, among which are those of his daughter
+Lavinia (the Virgin, as is supposed), Andrea Franchescini, grand
+chancellor of Venice, in a scarlet robe; next him, in black, Lazzaro
+Crasso, a lawyer, and certain monks of the convent following them.
+
+We now find Titian employed by the Duke of Urbino on some of the
+principal works of this period. Among these were the Uffizi _Venus_,
+said to be a portrait of the Duchess herself. The _Girl in a Fur Mantle_
+at Vienna, portraits of the Duke and of the Duchess (1537), and the
+so-called _La Bella_ at the Uffizi. The so-called _Duke of Norfolk_ at
+the Pitti, supposed to represent the young Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino.
+Also the _Isabella d'Este_ at Vienna, and somewhat earlier, the
+_Cardinal Ippolito_ in Hungarian dress, at the Pitti; and the _Daughter
+of Robert Strozzi_, at Berlin.
+
+The large _Ecce Homo_ in the Vienna Gallery, dated 1543, measuring 11
+ft. 3 in. by 7 ft. 7 in. was for some years in London, and with better
+fortune might still be in this country if not in our national
+collection. It was one of the nineteen pictures by Titian in the
+wonderful collection of Rubens, which the Duke of Buckingham persuaded
+him to sell to him for a fabulous price. The collection was shipped to
+England in 1625, when the pictures were taken to York House in the
+Strand, and the statues and gems to Chelsea. In 1649 a portion of the
+collection was sold at Brussels, and the _Ecce Homo_ was purchased there
+by the Archduke Leopold for his gallery at Prague, which now forms part
+of that at Vienna. The Earl of Arundel offered the Duke of Buckingham
+£7000 for it--an unheard of price, especially when we remember the
+greater value of money at that time.
+
+With another masterpiece--fortunately still preserved in the Prado,
+though not entirely uninjured by fire--we may close the second period.
+This is the magnificent equestrian portrait of _The Emperor Charles V._
+which was painted at Augsburg in 1548. A few years later the Emperor
+abdicated in favour of his egregious son, Philip II., of whom Titian
+painted three portraits in succession. The second of these, now in the
+Prado, has an especial interest for us, inasmuch as it was painted for
+the benefit or the enticement of Queen Mary before her marriage to
+Philip. As might be expected, it is a highly flattering likeness,--in
+white and gold, in half armour. To quote M. Caro-Delvaille, this king of
+_auto da fés_ and sunken galleys is here nothing more than a gallant
+cavalier--neurasthenic but elegant. For England was also painted the
+_Venus and Adonis_, in 1554; but unfortunately the original is now in
+Madrid, and only a copy in our National Gallery. However, the remains of
+Philip are there too, and not in Westminster Abbey!
+
+A copy of another famous picture painted by Titian for the Emperor
+Charles V. was also in the collection of the Duke of Buckingham, who
+probably brought it with him when he returned from his madcap expedition
+with Prince Charles to Madrid. It is described in his catalogue as "One
+great Piece of the Emperor Charles, a copy called Titian's Glory, being
+the principal in Spain, now in the Escurial." This was the great
+_Paradise_, or Apotheosis of Charles V. which Charles took with him into
+Spain at the time of his abdication and placed in the monastery of St.
+Juste, in Estramadura, to which he retired. After his death it was
+removed by Philip II. to Madrid.
+
+Of the two versions of _The Crowning with Thorns_, the earlier one at
+the Louvre, painted in 1560, is more familiar to, and probably more
+popular with, the general public than the much later one at Munich
+painted in 1571. But for the real merits of the two we need not hesitate
+to accept M. Caro-Delvaille's judgment, since if he had any bias it
+would be in favour of his own country's treasure. The former he
+characterises as an incoherent composition, in which useless
+gesticulation diminishes the dramatic effect, while striving to force
+it; and adds that all the false romanticism of painting comes from this
+sort of theatrical pathos. Of the other he writes "It was the picture at
+the Louvre which shocked me with its violent declamation and its forced
+blows that never hit anything. But here at Munich a mystery so profound
+broods over the drama that the melodramatic element disappears. The
+scene becomes tragic, lamentable, hopelessly sad. The great artist with
+a brush that trembles in his aged hands paints but the sentiment of it,
+to exhale from his work like a plaintive sigh. The veil of death
+descends and spreads over life.... Titian might seem to have painted it
+as an offering to Rembrandt when he, too, should feel the approach of
+death."
+
+Another of his latest pictures, the _Adam and Eve in Paradise_, is in
+the Prado (No. 429, formerly 456). This was copied, or one might almost
+say travestied, by Rubens when he was at Madrid in 1629, and his work
+was hung in the same room with it. As the colouring is of a lower tone
+than is usual with Titian, and the attitudes of the figures extremely
+simple and natural, the contrast is all the more marked, and was well
+expressed by Cumberland, who said that "when we contemplate Titian's
+picture of Adam and Eve we are convinced they never wore clothes; turn
+to the copy, and the same persons seem to have laid theirs aside."
+
+A more generous comparison between these two painters is made by
+Reynolds in a note on du Fresnoy's poem on Painting respecting the
+qualities of regularity and uniformity. "An instance occurs to me where
+those two qualities are separately exhibited by two great painters,
+Rubens and Titian: the picture of Rubens is in the Church of S.
+Augustine at Antwerp, the subject (if that may be called a subject where
+no story is represented) is the Virgin and Infant Christ placed high in
+the picture on a pedestal with many saints about them and as many below
+them, with others on the steps to serve as a link to unite the upper and
+lower part of the picture. The composition of this picture is perfect in
+its kind; the artist has shown the greatest skill in composing and
+contrasting more than twenty figures without confusion and without
+crowding; the whole appearing as much animated and in motion as it is
+possible where nothing is to be done.
+
+"The picture of Titian which we would oppose to this is in the Church
+of the S. Frari at Venice (the "Pesaro Madonna," where the two donors
+kneel below the Virgin enthroned). One peculiar character of this piece
+is grandeur and simplicity, which proceed in a great measure from the
+regularity of the composition, two of the principal figures being
+represented kneeling directly opposite to each other, and nearly in the
+same attitude. This is what few painters would have had the courage to
+venture; Rubens would certainly have rejected so unpicturesque a mode of
+composition had it occurred to him. Both these pictures are excellent in
+their kind, and may be said to characterize their respective authors.
+There is a bustle and animation in the work of Rubens, a quiet solemn
+majesty in that of Titian. The excellence of Rubens is the picturesque
+effect he produces; the superior merit of Titian is in the appearance of
+being above seeking after any such "artificial excellence."
+
+The most important artist besides Titian who was a pupil of Giorgione
+was SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO, as he was called--his father's name was
+LUCIANI. But as two other notable influences determined his career, he
+is not to be taken as typical of the Venetian School in general or that
+of Giorgione in particular. Born in Venice about the year 1485, he first
+studied under Giovanni Bellini, as appears from the signature as well as
+from the style of a _Pietà_ by him in the Layard collection, which we
+may hope soon to see in the National Gallery. Of his Giorgionesque
+period there is only one important picture known to us, the beautiful
+altar-piece in S. Giovanni Crisostomo in Venice, which is not far
+removed from the richness of Titian's earlier work. The picture
+represents the mild and dignified S. Chrysostom seated, reading aloud at
+a desk in an open hall; S. John the Baptist leaning on his cross is
+looking attentively at him; behind him are two male and on the left two
+female saints listening devoutly, and in the foreground the Virgin
+looking majestically out of the picture at the spectator--a splendid
+type of the full and grand Venetian ideal of female beauty of that time.
+The true expression of a _Santa Conversazione_ could not be more
+worthily given than in the relation in which the listeners stand to the
+reader, and in glow of colour this work is not inferior to the best of
+Giorgione's or Titian's.
+
+As early as 1510, however, he not only left Venice, but also his
+Venetian manner. He was invited to Rome by the rich banker and patron of
+the arts, Agostino Chigi, where he met Raphael, and with astonishing
+versatility succeeded as well in emulating the excellences of that
+master as he had those of Bellini and Giorgione. The half-length
+_Daughter of Herodias_ bequeathed to the National Gallery by George
+Salting is dated 1510, and in 1512 he painted the famous _Fornarina_ in
+the Uffizi, which until the middle of the last century was supposed to
+be a _chef d'oeuvre_ of Raphael. To this period also belongs the _S.
+John in the Desert_, at the Louvre.
+
+Within the next seven years a still mightier influence found him, that
+of Michelangelo, and how far he was capable of responding to it may be
+judged by our great _Raising of Lazarus_, painted at Rome in 1517-19 for
+Giulio de'Medici, afterwards Pope Clement VII., to be placed with
+Raphael's _Transfiguration_ in the Cathedral of Narbonne. Both pictures
+were publicly exhibited in Rome, and by some people Sebastiano's was
+preferred to Raphael's. According to Waagen the whole composition was
+designed by Michelangelo, with whom Sebastiano had entered into the
+closest intimacy; and Kugler states that the group of Lazarus and those
+around him was actually drawn by the master. However that may be, we can
+hardly fail to see how entirely the Venetian influence is obscured by
+that of the great Florentine, and to recognise the extraordinary genius
+of a painter who could do something more than imitate from such masters
+as Bellini, Giorgione, Raphael and Michelangelo.
+
+The last traces of the Vivarini influence are to be seen in the earlier
+works of LORENZO LOTTO(1480-1556), who was a pupil of Alvise, though his
+pictures after 1508, when he had left Venice, Treviso and Reccanti,
+where he had been employed, show the effect of his changed surroundings.
+To this date is assigned the _Portrait of a Young Man_, at Hampton
+Court. At Rome in 1509 he was painting with Raphael in the Vatican, and
+in his next dated work, the _Entombment_, at Jesi, the echoes of
+Raphael's Disputation and the _School of Athens_ are clear. The Dresden
+_Madonna and Child with S. John_ was probably painted at Bergamo in
+1518, and the _Madonna and Saints_, lately bequeathed to the National
+Gallery, is dated 1521.
+
+At Madrid is a picture by him of _A Bride and Bridegroom_ dated 1523, to
+which year probably belongs the _Family Group_ in the National Gallery.
+These are early instances of the comparatively rare inclusion of more
+than a single figure in a pure portrait. In our example the father and
+mother and two children are composed into a delightful picture, in which
+for once we may see the actual people of the time in something like
+their natural surroundings, instead of being posed, however effectively,
+to assist in the representation of some historic or legendary scene.
+
+In 1527 Lotto was back again in Venice, and was probably influenced by
+Palma Vecchio when he painted the superb portrait of the sculptor
+_Odoni_, which is at Hampton Court. A little later the influence of
+Titian is more visible. Two other portraits are in our National Gallery,
+those of the Protonotary Juliano and of Agostino and Niccolo della
+Torre.
+
+BONIFAZIO DI PITATI (1487-1553), sometimes called Bonifazio Veronese or
+Veneziano, was born at Verona, but studied in Venice under Palma
+Vecchio. The influence of his native city distinguishes his work in some
+degree from the pure Venetian, as it did that of the more famous Paolo
+in later years; but the atmosphere created by Giorgione was so strong as
+to cause Bonifazio's masterpiece (if we except the _Dives and Lazarus_
+at the Academy in Venice) to be attributed until quite lately to
+Giorgione. It is thus described by Kugler:--"A picture in the Brera in
+Milan, very deserving of notice, is perhaps one of Giorgione's most
+beautiful works; it is historic in subject, but romantic in conception.
+The subject is the finding of Moses; all the figures are in the rich
+costume of Giorgione's time. In the centre the princess sits under a
+tree, and looks with surprise at the child who is brought to her by a
+servant. The seneschal of the princess, with knights and ladies, stand
+around. On one side are seated two lovers on the grass, on the other
+side musicians and singers, pages with dogs, a dwarf with an ape, etc.
+It is a picture in which the highest earthly splendour and enjoyment are
+brought together, and the incident from Scripture only gives it a more
+pleasing interest. The costume, however inappropriate to the story,
+disturbs the effect as little as in other Venetian pictures of the same
+period, since it refers more to a poetic than to a mere historic truth,
+and the period itself was rich in poetry; its costume too assists the
+display of a romantic splendour. This picture, with all its glow of
+colour, is softer than the earlier works of the master, and reminds us
+of Titian...."
+
+The beautiful _Santa Conversazione_ in the National Gallery, again,
+which was formerly in the Casa Terzi at Bergamo, was there attributed to
+Palma Vecchio. Here the Virgin in a rose-coloured mantle is the centre
+of the composition, with the Child on her knee, whose foot the little S.
+John is bending to kiss. On the right is S. Catherine and on the left S.
+James the Less and S. Jerome. In the landscape are seen a shepherd lying
+beside his flock, while other shepherds are fleeing from a lion who has
+seized their dog. A copy of this composition is in the Academy at
+Venice.
+
+Oddly enough it was a pupil of Bonifazio who employed the grand Venetian
+manner in the humbler and more commonplace walks of life, and neglecting
+alike the _Sacra Conversazione_ and the pompous scenes of festivity,
+developed into the first Italian painter of _genre_. This was JACOPO DA
+PONTE, called from his birthplace BASSANO, who was working in Venice
+under Bonifazio as early as 1535. He afterwards returned to Bassano, and
+selecting those scenes in which he could most extensively introduce
+cottages, peasants, and animals, he connected them with events from
+sacred history or mythology. A peculiar feature by which his pictures
+may be known is the invariable and apparently intentional hiding of the
+feet of his figures, for which purpose sheep and cattle and household
+utensils are introduced. He confines himself to a bold, straightforward
+imitation of familiar objects, united, however, with pleasing
+composition, colour, and chiaroscuro. His colours, indeed, sparkle like
+gems, particularly the greens, in which he displays a brilliancy quite
+peculiar to himself. His lights are boldly infringed on the objects,
+and are seldom introduced except on prominent parts of the figures. In
+accordance with this treatment his handling is spirited and peculiar,
+somewhat in the manner of Rembrandt; and what on close inspection
+appears dark and confused, forms at a distance the very strength and
+magic of his colouring. The picture of the _Good Samaritan_ in the
+National Gallery is a good example, and was formerly in the collection
+of Reynolds, who it is said always kept it in his studio. The _Portrait
+of a Man_ (No. 173) is excelled by that of an _Old Man_ at Berlin.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+PAOLO VERONESE AND IL TINTORETTO
+
+
+It cannot be said that the Venetian artists of the second half of the
+sixteenth century equalled in their collective excellence the great
+masters of the first, but in single instances they are frequently
+entitled to rank beside them. At the head of these is JACOPO ROBUSTI
+(1518-1594), called IL TINTORETTO (the dyer), in allusion to his
+father's trade. He was one of the most vigorous painters in all the
+history of art; one who sought rather than avoided the greatest
+difficulties, and who possessed a true feeling for animation and
+grandeur. If his works do not always charm, it should be imputed to the
+foreign and non-Venetian element which he adopted, but never completely
+mastered; and also to the times in which he lived, when Venetian art had
+fallen somewhat into the mistaken way of colossal and rapid
+productiveness. His off-hand style, as Kugler calls it, is always full
+of grand and significant detail, and with a few patches of colour he
+sometimes achieves the liveliest forms and expressions. But he fails in
+that artistic arrangement of the whole and in that nobility of motives
+in the parts which are necessary exponents of a really high ideal. His
+compositions are achieved less by finely studied degrees of
+participation in the principal action than by great masses of light and
+shade. Attitudes and movements are taken immediately from common life,
+not chosen from the best models. With Titian the highest ideal of
+earthly happiness in existence is expressed by beauty; with Tintoretto
+in mere animal strength, sometimes of an almost rude character.
+
+For a short time he was a pupil of Titian, but for some unknown reason
+he soon left him, and struck out for himself. In the studio which he
+occupied in his youth he had inscribed, as a definition of the style he
+professed, "The drawing of Michelangelo, the colouring of Titian." He
+copied the works of the latter, and also designed from casts of
+Florentine and antique sculpture, particularly by lamplight--as did
+Romney a couple of centuries later--to exercise himself in a more
+forcible style of relief. He also made models for his works, which he
+lighted artificially, or hung up in his room, in order to master
+perspective. By these means he united great strength of shadow with the
+Venetian colouring, which gives a peculiar character to his pictures,
+and is very successful when limited to the direct imitation of nature.
+But apart from the impossibility of combining two such totally different
+excellences as the colouring of Titian and the drawing of Michelangelo,
+it appears that Tintoretto's acquaintance with the works of the latter
+only developed his tendency to a naturalistic style. That which with
+Michelangelo was the symbol of a higher power in nature was adopted by
+Tintoretto in its literal form. Most of his defects, it is probable,
+arose from his indefatigable vigour, which earned for him the nickname
+of _Il Furioso_. Sebastian del Piombo said that Tintoretto could paint
+as much in two days as would occupy him two years. Other sayings were
+that he had three brushes, one of gold, one of silver, and a third of
+brass, and that if he was sometimes equal to Titian he was often
+inferior to Tintoretto! In this last category Kugler puts two of his
+earliest works, the enormous _Last Judgment_, and _The Golden Calf_, in
+the church of S. Maria dell'Orto, while on his much later _Last Supper_
+he is still more severe. "Nothing more utterly derogatory," he writes,
+"both to the dignity of art and to the nature of the subject can be
+imagined. S. John is seen with folded arms, fast asleep, while others of
+the Apostles with the most burlesque gestures are asking, 'Lord, is it
+I?' Another Apostle is uncovering a dish which stands on the floor
+without remarking that a cat has stolen in and is eating from it. A
+second is reaching towards a flask; a beggar sits by, eating. Attendants
+fill up the picture. To judge from an overthrown chair the scene appears
+to have been a revel of the lowest description. It is strange that a
+painter should venture on such a representation of this subject scarcely
+a hundred years after the creation of Leonardo da Vinci's _Last
+Supper_."
+
+It was in 1548, when but thirty years old, that Tintoretto first became
+famous, with the large _Miracle of S. Mark_, now in the Venice Academy.
+This is perhaps his finest as well as his most celebrated work; but the
+greatest monument to his industry and general ability is the Scuola
+di'San Rocco, where he began to work in 1560 under a contract to produce
+three pictures a year for an annuity of a hundred ducats. In all there
+are sixty-two of his pictures in this building, the greater part of
+them very large, the figures throughout being of the size of life. _The
+Crucifixion_, painted in 1565, is the most extensive of them, and on the
+whole the most perfect. In 1590, four years before his death, he
+completed the enormous _Paradise_ in the Sala del Gran Consiglio,
+measuring seventy-four feet in length and thirty in height.
+
+In the National Gallery we have three characteristic examples,
+fortunately on a smaller scale, namely, the _S. George_ on a white
+horse, which, with its greyish flesh tones and the blue of the
+princess's mantle, is cooler in tone than the generality of his
+pictures; _Christ washing the Disciples' Feet_, and the very beautiful
+and radiant _Origin of the Milky Way_, purchased from Lord Darnley in
+1890. At Hampton Court a still finer example, _The Nine Muses_, is so
+discoloured by age and hung in such a difficult light that it is
+impossible to enjoy its full beauty.
+
+PAOLO CALIARI, better known as VERONESE, was born ten years later than
+Tintoretto, and died six years before him (1528-1588). He studied in his
+native city of Verona till he was twenty, and after working for some
+time at Mantua he came to Venice in 1555, where he was quickly
+recognised by Titian and by Sansovino, the sculptor and Director of
+Public Buildings, and was commissioned in that year to paint a
+_Coronation of the Virgin_ and other works in the church of S.
+Sebastian. The _Martyrdom of S. Giustino_, now in the Uffizi, and the
+_Madonna and Child_ in the Louvre are also among his earlier works. As
+early as 1562 he was at work on the enormous _Feast at Cana_, now in the
+Louvre, and a similar work at Dresden is of the same date. In 1564 he
+went to Rome, where he studied the works of Raphael and Michelangelo. On
+his return to Venice in
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XVII.--TINTORETTO
+
+ST GEORGE AND THE DRAGON
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+1565--after visiting Verona, where he painted in his parish church, and
+also married--he was employed to decorate the Ducal Palace, but much of
+his best work there was destroyed by fire. Two of his most important
+works completed before 1573 are in the Academy at Venice, _The Battle of
+Lepanto_ and the _Feast in the House of Levi_. In this last he incurred
+strictures from the Inquisition more severe than those of Kugler upon
+Tintoretto's _Last Supper_, and possibly with as much reason, it being
+objected that the introduction of German soldiery, buffoons, and a
+parrot was "irreligious." His _Family of Darius_, now in the National
+Gallery, was one of his latest works.
+
+Veronese, even more than Titian, whom in colouring he sought to emulate,
+and Tintoretto, whom in this respect he certainly excelled, expresses
+the spirit of the Venetians of his time--a powerful and noble race of
+human beings, as Kugler calls them, elate with the consciousness of
+existence, and in full enjoyment of all that renders earth attractive.
+By the splendour of his colour, assisted by rich draperies and other
+materials, by a very clear and transparent treatment of the shadows, he
+infused a magic into his great canvases which surpasses almost all the
+other masters of the Venetian School. Never had the pomp of colour, on a
+large scale, been so exalted and glorified as in his works. This, his
+peculiar quality, is most decidedly and grandly developed in scenes of
+worldly splendour; he loved to paint festive subjects for the
+refectories of rich convents, suggested of course from particular
+passages in the Scriptures, but treated with the greatest freedom,
+especially as regards the costume, which is always of his own time.
+Instead, therefore, of any religious sentiment, we are presented with a
+display of the most cheerful human scenes and the richest worldly
+splendour. That which distinguishes him from Tintoretto, and which in
+his later period, after the death of Titian and Michelangelo, earned for
+him the rank of the first living master, was that beautiful vitality,
+that poetic feeling, which as far as it was possible he infused into a
+declining period of art. At the same time it becomes more and more
+evident, as our attention is turned to the deeper and nobler spirit of
+the earlier masters in Venice, that the beauty of his figures is more
+addressed to the senses than to the soul, and that his naturalistic
+tendencies are often allowed to run wild.
+
+The most celebrated, and as it happens the most historically
+interesting, of his great pictures is the _Feast at Cana_, in the
+Louvre, measuring thirty feet wide and twenty feet high. This was
+formerly in the refectory of S. Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. The scene is
+a brilliant atrium, surrounded by majestic pillars. The tables at which
+the guests are seated form three sides of a parallelogram. The guests
+are supposed to be almost entirely contemporary portraits, so that the
+figures of Christ and His mother, of themselves insignificant enough,
+lose even more in the general interest of the subject. Servants occupy
+the foreground, while on the raised balustrades and the balconies of
+distant houses are innumerable onlookers. The most remarkable feature of
+the whole composition is a group of musicians in the centre of the
+foreground, which are portraits of the artist himself and Tintoretto,
+playing on violon-cellos, and Titian, in a red robe, with the
+contra-bass.
+
+_Christ in the House of Simon_, the Magdalen washing His feet, is
+another scarcely less gigantic picture in the Louvre; but it is much
+simpler in arrangement, and is distinguished by the fineness of the
+heads, especially that of the Christ. An interesting piece of technical
+criticism on the _Feast at Cana_ occurs in Reynolds's Eighth
+Discourse:--
+
+"Another instance occurs to me," he says, "where equal liberty may be
+taken in regard to the management of light. Though the general practice
+is to make a large mass about the middle of the picture surrounded by
+shadow, the reverse may be practised, and the spirit of rule may still
+be preserved.... In the great composition of Paul Veronese, the
+_Marriage at Cana_, the figures are for the most part in half shadow;
+the great light is in the sky; and indeed the general effect of this
+picture, which is so striking, is no more than what we often see in
+landscapes, in small pictures of fairs and country feasts; but those
+principles of light and shadow, being transferred to a large scale, to a
+space containing near a hundred figures as large as life, and conducted
+to all appearance with as much facility and with an attention as
+steadily fixed upon the _whole together_ as if it were a small picture
+immediately under the eye, the work justly excites our admiration; the
+difficulty being increased as the extent is enlarged."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the death of the great Venetians, Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul
+Veronese, in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, the history of
+Italian painting of the first rank comes to an end. In Florence, the
+imitation of Michelangelo was the chief object striven after, and, as
+might be expected, the attempt was not eminently successful. The greater
+number of the Italian painters of the early seventeenth century who
+attained any fame are known by the name of Eclectics, from their having
+endeavoured, instead of imitating any one of their great predecessors,
+to select and unite the best qualities of each, without, however,
+excluding the direct study of nature. The fallacy of this aim, when
+carried to an extreme, is, of course, that the greatness of the earlier
+masters consisted really in their individual and peculiar qualities, and
+to endeavour to unite characteristics essentially different involves a
+contradiction.
+
+The most important of the Eclectic schools was that of the Carracci, at
+Bologna, which was founded by LODOVICO CARRACCI (_c_. 1555-1619), a
+scholar of Prospero Fontana and Passignano at Florence. In his youth he
+was nicknamed "the ox," partly from his slowness, but possibly also for
+his study of long-forgotten methods, by which he arrived at the decision
+that reform was necessary to counteract the independence of the
+mannerists. He therefore obtained the assistance of his two nephews,
+AGOSTINO and ANNIBALE CARRACCI, sons of a tailor, and in concert with
+them opened an academy at Bologna in 1589. This he furnished with casts,
+drawings, and engravings, and provided living models and gave
+instruction in perspective, anatomy, etc. In spite of opposition this
+academy became more and more popular, and before long all the other
+schools of art in Bologna were closed.
+
+The principles of their teaching was succinctly expressed in a sonnet
+written by Agostino, in substance as follows:--"Let him who wishes to be
+a good painter acquire the design of Rome, Venetian action and
+chiaroscuro, the dignified colouring of Lombardy (that is to say, of
+Leonardo da Vinci), the terrible manner of Michelangelo, Titian's truth
+and nature, the sovereign purity of Correggio, and the perfect symmetry
+of Raphael. The decorum and well-grounded study of Tibaldi, the
+invention of the learned Primaticcio, and a _little_ of the grace of
+Parmigiano."
+
+This "patchwork ideal," as Kugler calls it, was, however, but a
+transition step in the history of the Carracci and their art. In the
+prime of their activity they threw off a great deal of their
+eclecticism, and attained an independence of their own. The merit of
+Lodovico is chiefly that of a reformer and a teacher, and the pictures
+by Agostino are few and of no great account. But in Annibale we find
+much more than imitation of the characteristics of great masters. In his
+earlier works there are rather obvious traces of Correggio and Paul
+Veronese, but under the influence of the works of Raphael and
+Michelangelo and of the antique, as he understood it, he developed a
+style of his own. Though in recent years he is a little out of fashion
+with the public, there is no question about his having a place among the
+greater artists. To show how opinion can change, I venture to quote a
+passage from a letter written to me on the subject of Carracci's _The
+Three Maries_, lately presented to the National Gallery by the Countess
+of Carlisle:--"I saw the gallery at Castle Howard in 1850. _The Three
+Maries_ was then still regarded as one of _the_ great pictures of the
+world; and they told the story of how Lord Carlisle and Lord Ellesmere
+and Lord----, who shared the Paris purchases [after the Peace of 1815]
+between them, had to cast lots for this, because it was thought to be
+worth more than all the rest of the spoil."
+
+The most important, or at any rate one of the most popular, of the
+pupils of Carracci was DOMENICO ZAMPIERI, commonly called DOMENICHINO
+(1581-1641). If we are less enthusiastic about him at the present, it
+may still be remembered that Constable particularly admired him, but it
+is significant that the four examples in the National Gallery are
+numbered 48, 75, 77 and 85--there is no more recent acquisition. He had
+great facility, and his compositions--not always original--are treated
+with great charm if with no real depth. His most famous picture, the
+_Communion of S. Jerome_, now in the Vatican, is closely imitated from
+Agostino Carracci's.
+
+GUIDO RENI (1575-1642), even more popular in the eighteenth and early
+nineteenth centuries than Domenichino, was as skilful in some respects,
+but hardly as admirable. The _Ecce Homo_, bequeathed by Samuel Rogers to
+the National Gallery, is an excellent example of his ability to charm
+the sentimentalist, and if ever there should be a popular revival of
+taste in the direction of the now neglected school of the Carracci, he
+will possibly resume all the honour formerly paid to him. The same can
+hardly be predicted for the far inferior Carlo Maratti, Guercino, and
+Carlo Dolce.
+
+Space forbids me more than the bare mention in these pages of the
+brilliant revival of painting in Venice during the earlier part of the
+eighteenth century by ANTONIO CANALE (1697-1768), GIOVANNI BATTISTA
+TIEPOLO (1692-1769), PIETRO LONGHI (1702-1785), and FRANCESCO GUARDI
+(1712-1793). Charming as their excellent accomplishments were, they must
+give place to more important claims awaiting our attention in other
+countries.
+
+
+
+
+_SPANISH SCHOOL_
+
+
+One of the sensations of the Exhibition of Spanish Old Masters at the
+Grafton Gallery in the autumn of 1913 was an altar panel, dated 1250,
+which was acquired by Mr Roger Fry in Paris, and catalogued as of the
+"Early Catalan School." In view of the fact that this picture is
+"certainly to be regarded as one of the very oldest of primitive
+pictures painted on wood in any country ... a decade earlier than the
+picture by Margaritone in the National Gallery," it seems somewhat
+dogmatic to assert that while retaining a strongly Byzantine character
+"the style is distinctly that of Catalonia." What was the style of
+Catalonia?
+
+So far as the history of the art is concerned, the chapter on Spain is,
+with one exception, a very short and a singularly uninteresting one,
+whether Mr Fry's panel was painted in Catalonia or whether it was not;
+and in spite of every effort to find in this uncongenial country that
+expansion of painting that might reasonably have been expected to flow
+from Italy and moisten its barren soil for the production of so
+wonderful a genius as Velasquez, there is positively nothing earlier
+than Velasquez, and not very much after him, that has more than what we
+may call a documentary interest. While in Italy or the Netherlands the
+names of scores of painters earlier than the seventeenth century are
+endeared to us by the recollection of the works they have left us, the
+enumeration of those of the few Spaniards of whom we have any knowledge
+awakens no such thrill, and if we have ever heard of them, their works
+mean little more to us than their names. Only when we come within touch
+of Velasquez does our interest awaken--as in the case of Ribera and
+Zurbaran--and that is less because of them than because of Velasquez. El
+Greco was not a Spaniard by birth, but a Cretan; and if he were ranged
+with the Italians, to whom he more properly belongs, he would scarcely
+be more famous than some Bolognese masters whose names are now--or
+perhaps we ought to say, at the present moment--almost forgotten. The
+announcement that one of his portraits has been sold to an American for
+£30,000 is of commercial rather than of artistic interest.
+
+If one had to sum up the career and the art of Velasquez in a sentence,
+it might be done by calling him a Court painter who never flattered.
+After recording his life from the time when he left his master Pacheco
+to enter the service of Philip IV. to the day that he died in it, we
+shall find that only a bare percentage of his work was not commissioned
+by the king; and in all his pictures which were not simply portraits
+there is little if anything to be found which is not as literal and
+truthful a presentment of the model in front of him as the life-like
+representations of Philip and those about his Court, of which the
+supreme quality is that of living resemblance, or to put it in more
+general terms, vivid realism. Gifted as he must have been with an
+extraordinary vision and a still rarer, if not unique, ability to put
+down on canvas what he saw, he confined himself entirely within the
+limits of actuality, and thereby attained to heights which his great
+contemporaries Rubens and Rembrandt in their noblest flights of
+imagination never reached.
+
+Velasquez was baptised on the 6th of June 1599, in the church of S.
+Peter at Seville. He was the son of well-to-do parents; his father, a
+native of Seville, was named Juan Rodriguez de Silva, his mother
+Geronima Velasquez. At thirteen years old he had displayed so strong an
+inclination towards painting that he was put to study under Francisco de
+Herrera, then the most considerable painter in Spain (his son, also
+Francisco, was the painter of the _Christ Disputing with the Doctors_,
+in the National Gallery), but owing to Herrera's violent temper
+Velasquez was shortly transferred to the studio of Francisco Pacheco,
+whose daughter he eventually married.
+
+Pacheco who was, besides being an accomplished artist, a man of literary
+tastes, and much sought after in Seville by the more intellectual class
+of society, was exceedingly proud of his pupil, and said of him that he
+was induced to bestow the hand of his daughter upon him "by the
+rectitude of his conduct, the purity of his morals, and his great
+talents, and from the high expectation he entertained of his natural
+abilities and transcendent genius," adding that the honour of having
+been his instructor was far greater than that of being his
+father-in-law, and that he felt it no demerit to be surpassed by so
+brilliant a pupil.
+
+In 1649 Pacheco published a book on painting, in which we are told that
+the first attempts of Velasquez were studies in still life, or simple
+compositions of actual figures, called _bodegones_ in Spanish, of which
+we have a fair example at the National Gallery in the _Christ at the
+House of Martha_. Sir Frederick Cook, at Richmond, has another, an _Old
+Woman Frying Eggs_, and the Duke of Wellington two more, of which _The
+Water Carrier of Seville_ is probably the summit of the young painter's
+achievement before he left Seville, in 1623, and entered the service of
+Philip IV. as Court painter.
+
+His first portrait of the king was the magnificent whole length in the
+Prado Gallery, now numbered 1182, standing in front of a table with a
+letter in his right hand. No. 1183 is the head of the same portrait,
+possibly done as a study for it. Philip was so pleased with this that he
+ordered all existing portraits of himself to be removed from the palace,
+and appointed Velasquez exclusively as his painter.
+
+Another of his earliest successes at Court was the whole length portrait
+of the king's brother, Don Carlos, holding a glove in his right hand;
+and the picture now in the Museum at Rouen of _A Geographer_ is probably
+of this date.
+
+In 1628, when Velasquez was still quite young, and had fallen under no
+influence save that of Pacheco and the school of Seville, he was charged
+by the king to entertain Rubens, who came to the Spanish Court on a
+diplomatic mission, and show him all the treasures in the palace. If any
+one could influence Velasquez, we might suppose it would have been
+Rubens, who was not only a great painter, but a man of the most
+captivating manners and disposition, ever ready to help younger artists.
+But not only did he have no perceptible effect on the style of
+Velasquez, but in the picture of _The Topers_, which must have been
+painted while Rubens was at Madrid, or very shortly after he left, we
+can almost see a determination not to be influenced by him; for the
+subject was a favourite one of Rubens's, and yet there is nothing in
+this most realistic presentment of
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XVIII.--VELAZQUEZ
+
+THE INFANTE PHILIP PROSPER
+
+_Imperial Gallery, Vienna_]
+
+actual figures under the title of Bacchus and his votaries which has
+anything at all in common with the florid and imaginative compositions
+of the Flemish painter. Velasquez had begun as a realist, and a realist
+he was to continue till the end of his days.
+
+Shortly after painting this picture he left his native country for the
+first time, and visited Venice and Rome. At Venice he made copies of
+Tintoretto's _Last Supper_ and _Crucifixion_; but little if any of
+Tintoretto's influence is to be seen in the two pictures he painted in
+Rome--_The Forge of Vulcan_ and _Joseph's Coat_, both of which are still
+as realistic as ever in treatment, though showing great advances in
+technical skill. Soon after his return to Spain in 1631, he probably
+painted the magnificent whole length _Philip IV._ in the National
+Gallery, which compares so well, on examination with the more popular
+and showy _Admiral Pulido Pareja_ purchased some years ago from Longford
+Castle. Senor Beruete, who has studied the work of Velasquez more
+closely and more intelligently than any one else, considers that whereas
+there is not a single touch upon the former that is not from the brush
+of Velasquez, the latter cannot be properly attributed to him at
+all--any more than can another popular favourite, the _Alexandro del
+Borro_ in the Berlin Gallery, now given to Bernard Strozzi.
+
+To this period may be also assigned the _Christ at the Column_ in the
+National Gallery, a picture which though not at first sight attractive,
+is nevertheless as fine in technique, and in sentiment, as any other
+picture in the Spanish room, and deserves far more attention than is
+usually given to it. Its simple realism and its pathetic sweetness are
+qualities which are wanting in many a more showy or sensational
+composition, and the more it is studied the nearer we find we are
+getting to the real excellences that distinguish Velasquez from any
+painter who has ever lived. The _Crucifixion_ at the Prado is perhaps
+more wonderful, but the familiar subject helps the imagination of the
+spectator to admire it, whereas the unfamiliar setting of our picture is
+apt at first sight to repel.
+
+The most important composition undertaken by Velasquez in this middle
+period of his career--that is to say between his two visits to Italy in
+1629 and 1649--is the famous _Surrender of Breda_, or, as it is
+sometimes called, _The Lances_. Soon after his arrival in Madrid he had
+once painted an historical subject, _The Expulsion of the Moors_, in
+competition with his rivals who had asserted that he could paint nothing
+but heads. In this competition the prize was awarded to him, but as the
+picture has perished we are unable to judge of its merits for ourselves.
+But apart from this, and such unimportant groups of figures as we have
+mentioned, he had been occupied wholly in painting single portraits, and
+it is a marvellous proof of his genius that he should produce such a
+masterpiece of composition as _The Lances_ with so little practice in
+this branch of his art. Here, at least, we might have expected to trace
+the influence of Rubens, but there is actually no sign of it; and if he
+sought any inspiration at all from other painters, it was from what he
+recalled of Tintoretto's work which he had seen and studied in Venice.
+
+In the king's eldest boy, _Baltazar Carlos_, who was born in 1629,
+Velasquez found a model for two or three of his most charming pictures.
+One is at Castle Howard; a second the equestrian portrait, on a
+galloping pony, at the Prado; and a third the full length hunting
+portrait, also at the Prado, in which we see the little prince standing
+under a tree, gun in hand, with an enormous dog lying beside him.
+Another is at Vienna, representing him as of about eleven years old,
+full length, with his hand resting on the back of a chair. All of these
+owe some of their charm to the youth and attractive personality of the
+subject; but if we want to see the power of Velasquez without any
+outside element to help us to appreciate it, there is the portrait of
+the sculptor _Martinez Montanes_ at the Prado. "The head is wonderful in
+its colour and its modelling," writes Senor Beruete; "and what a lesson
+in technique! The eyes, lightly touched with colour, are set deep in
+their sockets, and surmounted by a strongly marked forehead. The high
+lights are of a rich _impasto_, manipulated with extraordinary skill;
+the greyer tones of the flesh, so true and so delicate, are painted in a
+way that brings out with marvellous truth, both the soft parts of the
+cheeks and the harder structure of the face, under which one can follow
+the bones of the nose and forehead.... Everything in the picture is
+spontaneous, and one can see that it is a pledge of friendship given by
+one artist to another; there is nothing here of that artificial
+arrangement that spoils commissioned portraits even when they are the
+work of a painter as independent as Velasquez was. One feels here the
+assurance of an artist who knows that his work will be understood by his
+friend in the spirit in which it was executed." M. Lefort, the French
+critic, is even more enthusiastic. "Ah! these redoubtable neighbours,"
+he exclaims, seeing it surrounded by the works of other painters at the
+Prado. "This canvas makes them look like mere imitations--dead
+conventional likenesses. Van Dyck is dull, Rubens oily, Tintoret yellow;
+it is Velasquez alone who can give us the illusion of life in all its
+fulness!"
+
+In 1649 Velasquez paid his second visit to Rome, where he painted the
+famous portrait of His Holiness, _Pope Innocent X._ which is now in the
+Doria palace. This is exceptional in treatment, inasmuch as it is the
+only portrait by Velasquez in which the subject is seated--excepting of
+course equestrian portraits--and instead of the usual quiet tones of
+grey and brown which he was so fond of employing, the picture of the
+Pope is a radiant harmony of rose red and white. In its realism it is
+even more surprising than most of the other portraits, considering how
+ugly the face had to be made to resemble nature, although the sitter was
+of a still higher rank than Velasquez's royal master.
+
+Returning to Madrid in 1651, Velasquez never again left Spain, and the
+remaining twenty years of his life may be considered the third period of
+his artistic development, inasmuch as no special influence was exerted
+upon him outside the ordinary and somewhat tedious course of his
+employment at the Court. To this period are assigned twenty-six
+pictures--Senor Beruete only admits the authenticity of eighty-three in
+all, it may be mentioned--twelve of which are royal portraits, seven
+those of buffoons and dwarfs, three mythological and two sacred
+subjects, and the two famous pieces of real life, _Las Meninas_ and _Las
+Hilanderas_.
+
+Of the royal portraits those of the _Infanta Margarita_ are among the
+most fascinating, no less from their technical excellence than on
+account of the youthful charm of the little Princess. The one at Vienna
+represents her as about three years old, dressed in red, standing by a
+little table. Of this, Senor Beruete says that it is "one of the most
+beautiful inspirations of Velasquez, and perhaps one that reveals better
+than any other his power as a colourist; it is a flower, perfumed with
+every infantine grace." Another standing portrait, though only a half
+length, when she was not many years older, is that in the Salon Carré at
+the Louvre, which is more familiar to us being nearer home and more
+often reproduced. M. de Wyczewa praises it thus:--"The perfect
+_chefs-d'oeuvre_ collected in this glorious salon pale in the presence
+of this child portrait; not one of them can bear comparison with this
+simple yet powerful painting, which seems to aim only at external
+resemblance and without other effort to attain a mysterious beauty of
+form and colour." At Frankfort again is a charming picture of the little
+Princess, whole length, at the age of six or seven--a replica of which
+is at Vienna. She is dressed in greyish white with trimmings of black,
+and her hoop skirt is so enormous that her arms have to be stretched out
+straight to allow her hands to reach the edge of her coat.
+
+Of the three mythological subjects two are in the Prado, namely the
+_Mars_ and the _Mercury and Argus_, while the third and most beautiful
+is the _Venus at the Mirror_ recently purchased for our national
+collection. These were all of them painted for the decoration of the
+royal palaces, and we may therefore suppose that the artist was not
+entirely at liberty either in the choice of his subject or in his method
+of treating it. Certainly he does not seem to have been fond of painting
+the nude, unless with men, and it is noticeable that he has posed his
+model in this case with more modesty and reserve than is to be observed
+in the pictures of Rubens and Titian. The Holy Church was sternly averse
+to this class of painting, in which, accordingly, none of the Spanish
+school indulged; but at the same time the royal galleries did not
+exclude the most exuberant fancies of Rubens, Titian, Tintoretto, and
+others, and Velasquez was in all probability commissioned by Philip to
+paint this Venus--and another which has perished--along with the Mars
+and Mercury without regard to the ecclesiastical authorities. But it is
+hardly surprising if Velasquez availed himself less fully of the
+privilege than a Flemish or Italian painter would no doubt have done,
+and has given us so chaste and beautiful a realisation of the goddess.
+Having regard to the scepticism with which this masterpiece was received
+in England at the time of its purchase for the nation it is worth
+quoting Senor Beruete's remarks upon it in that connection. "The
+authenticity of this work," he writes "has found numerous doubters in
+Spain, less on account of its subject--being the only nude female figure
+in the whole _oeuvre_ of Velasquez--than because so few people ever
+suspected its existence; but after it was exhibited at Manchester in
+1857 and in London in 1890, it was recognised that its attribution to
+Velasquez was well founded. At the sight of the canvas all doubt
+vanishes. There, indeed, is the style, the inimitable technique of
+Velasquez."
+
+This, from the connoisseur who has devoted years of study to the work of
+the master, and who rejects such well established examples as the
+Dulwich _Philip IV._ and the _Admiral Pulido Pareja_, is surely more
+conclusive than the academic pedantry of ignorance masquerading as
+authority.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+BARTOLOMÉ ESTÉBAN MURILLO (1617-1682) has always been accounted the most
+popular of the Spanish painters, and it is only in recent times that his
+popularity has faded into comparative insignificance on the fuller
+recognition and understanding of the genius of Velasquez. The intensely
+Anglican feeling in this country during the eighteenth and nineteenth
+centuries
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XIX.--VELAZQUEZ
+
+THE ROKEBY VENUS
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+seems to have found peculiar relief in the sentimental aspirations of
+the followers of Raphael in the rendering of religious subjects from the
+Romish point of view. At the present time we are readier to estimate
+Murillo's justly high place in the annals of painting by such a picture
+as his own portrait, lent by Lord Spencer to the recent Exhibition, than
+to allow it on the strength of our recollection of the Madonnas and Holy
+Families, Immaculate Conceptions and Assumptions, of which there exist
+so many copies in the dining rooms of country rectories. The _Boy
+Drinking_, which is here reproduced, if it is the least "important" of
+the four examples in the National Gallery, is certainly not the least
+excellent.
+
+From the miserable state into which Spain had fallen by the end of the
+seventeenth century, it could hardly be expected that anything further
+in the nature of art would result, and it was not until towards the end
+of the eighteenth that another genius arose, in the person of FRANCISCO
+GOYA (1746-1828). Of this extraordinary phenomenon in the firmament of
+art it is impossible to say more than a very few words in this place.
+Like a meteor, he is rather to be pointed at than talked about, when
+there are so many stars and planets whose regular courses have to be
+observed and recorded. He was like a sharp knife drawn across the face
+of Spain, gashing it here and there, but for the most part just touching
+it lightly enough to sting and to leave a mark. As a Court painter he
+was an unqualified success, his salary under Charles IV. rising in ten
+years from 15,000 to 50,000 reals; but his official productions are not
+the less devoid of interest on that account, and are sometimes the more
+satirical from the necessity for concealment. In his more outspoken
+works, such as the _Disasters of War_, and the series of prints called
+_Los Caprichos_ and _Tauromachia_, he is too brutal not to affect the
+ordinary observer's judgment upon his artistic qualities. Velasquez
+himself could scarcely stop short enough, when painting dwarfs and
+idiots and cripples, to let us admire his genius unhampered by shivers
+of repulsion. Goya, being exactly the opposite of Velasquez in
+temperament, had no scruples about expressing the utmost of his subject;
+and even in decorating a church was reproved for "falling short of the
+standard of chastity" required. But between the extremes of brutality
+and conventionalism there is such a wide expanse of pure joy of painting
+that nothing can diminish the reputation of Goya, however much it is
+likely to be enhanced. To the modern Spanish painter he is probably as
+fixed a beacon as Velasquez.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XX.--MURILLO
+
+A BOY DRINKING
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+
+
+
+_FLEMISH SCHOOL_
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+HUBERT AND JAN VAN EYCK
+
+
+In 1383, on the death of Louis de Maele, his son-in-law Philip the
+Hardy, Duke of Burgundy, assumed the government of Flanders. In the same
+year Philip founded the Carthusian Convent at Dijon and employed a
+Flemish painter named Melchin Broederlam to embellish two great shrines
+within it. To the strong-handed policy of Philip and his successors
+during the ensuing century may be attributed the rise of Netherlandish
+art which, though existing before their time, required their vigorous
+repression of intestine feuds to give it an opportunity of developing.
+Under Louis and his predecessors Flanders and its cities had risen to
+great commercial importance, but its rulers had neither the strength nor
+the prestige to keep the turbulent spirit of their subjects in due
+bounds. The school of painting which now arose so rapidly to perfection
+under the Dukes of Burgundy thus owed a portion of its progress to the
+wealth and independence of the commercial classes. The taste, power, and
+cultivation of a Court gave it an additional spur; and the clergy
+throwing in their weight, added their support in aid of art.
+
+Two wings of one of the Dijon shrines are still preserved in the museum
+there, and in these Messrs Crowe and Cavalcaselle observe the
+characteristics of much that was to follow:--"Although Melchior's style
+was founded on the study of the painters of the Rhine, his composition
+was similar to the later productions of the Flemish school. A tendency
+to realism already marks this early Fleming, and is the distinctive
+feature of a manner in which the painter strives to imitate nature in
+its most material forms. Idealism and noble forms are lacking, but
+Broederlam is a fair imitator of the truth. Distinctive combination and
+choice of colours in draperies, and vigorous tone, characterise him as
+they do the early works at Bruges and other cities of the Netherlands
+which may be judged by his standard." And again, "the painter evidently
+struggled between the desire to give a material imitation, and the
+inspirations of graceful teachers like those of Cologne.... Penetrated
+with similar ideas the early Flemings might under similar circumstances
+have risen to a sweet and dignified conception of nature; and if we fail
+to discover that they attained this aim we must attribute the failure to
+causes peculiar to Flanders. Amongst these we may class the social
+status of the Flemish painters, whose positions in the household of
+princes subjected them perhaps to caprices unfavourable to the
+development of high aspirations, or the contemplation and free communion
+with self which are the soul of art."
+
+It is interesting to compare these observations, so far as they refer to
+the realism which characterises Netherlandish painting, with those of Dr
+Waagen, who it will be seen explains it on the broader grounds of
+national temperament. "Early Netherlandish painting," he contends, "in
+its freedom from all foreign influence, exhibits the contrast between
+the natural feeling of the Greek and the German races respectively in
+the department of art--these two races being the chief representatives
+of the cultivation of the ancient and the modern world. In this
+circumstance consists the high significance of this school when
+considered in reference to the general history of art. While it is
+characteristic of the Greek feeling--from which was derived the
+Italian--to idealise,--and to idealise, be it observed, not only the
+conceptions of the ideal world but even such material objects as
+portraits,--by the simplification of forms and the prominence given to
+the more important parts of a work of art, the early Netherlanders, on
+the other hand, conferred a portrait-like character upon the most ideal
+personifications of the Virgin, the Apostles, Prophets, and Martyrs, and
+in actual portraiture aimed at rendering even the most accidental
+peculiarities of nature, like warts and wrinkles, with excruciating
+fidelity.
+
+"While the Greeks expressed the various features of outward nature--such
+as rivers, fountains, hills, trees, etc.--under abstract human forms,
+the Netherlanders endeavoured to express them as they had seen them in
+nature, and with a truth which extended to the smallest details.
+
+"In opposition to the ideal, and what may be called the personifying
+tendency of the Greeks, the Netherlanders developed a purely realistic
+and landscape school.
+
+"In this respect the other Teutonic nations are found to approach them
+most nearly, the Germans first, and then the English."
+
+But whatever may have been the causes which produced the distinguishing
+features of Netherlandish painting, we have still to enquire the origin
+from which the practice of painting in northern Europe proceeded. For
+in taking Melchior Broederlam as a starting-point we are only going as
+far back--with the exception of certain rude wall paintings--as the
+earliest examples take us; and having seen how in Italy the whole
+history of the art is traceable to Cimabue, Duccio, and Giotto, through
+the Byzantines, at least a century before Broederlam comes under our
+notice, we might naturally conclude that it was from Italy that it
+spread to Cologne, and from Cologne to the Netherlands. So far as is
+known, however, this was not the case, and we must look elsewhere than
+to Italy for the influences which formed this school. Nevertheless it
+was a collateral branch of the same stock--Byzantine art--and the family
+resemblance comes out none the less strongly from the two branches
+having developed under different circumstances. In Italy, as we have
+seen, the Byzantine seed, sown in such fertile soil, attained suddenly a
+great luxuriance. In the north, transplanted by Charlemagne to
+Aix-la-Chapelle in the ninth century, it grew slowly and more timidly,
+but none the less surely, under the cover of Monasticism, in the
+manuscripts illuminated with miniatures; and thus when it did burst
+forth into fuller blossom, the boldness of the Italian masters, who
+worked at large in fresco, was wanting, and a detailed and almost
+meticulous realism was its chief characteristic. Another point worth
+noticing is that though primarily introduced for religious purposes, as
+in Italy, namely the decoration of the cathedral erected by Charlemagne
+at Aix-la-Chapelle, the paintings in his palace showed forth events in
+his own life, such as his campaigns in Spain, seiges of towns and feats
+of arms by Frankish warriors. At Upper Ingelheim, likewise, his chapel
+was adorned with scenes from the Old and New Testaments, while the
+banqueting hall exhibited on one wall the deeds of great Pagan rulers,
+such as Cyrus, Hannibal, and Alexander, and on the other those of
+Constantine and Theodosius, the seizure of Acquitaine by Pepin, and
+Charlemagne's own conquest over the Saxons and finally himself enthroned
+as conqueror. Although no trace remains of these paintings, contemporary
+manuscripts executed by his order are still in existence in the
+libraries of Paris, Trèves, and elsewhere from which we can form some
+idea of the style in which they were rendered and of the source from
+which they were derived.
+
+Of these we need only mention the Vulgate decorated by JOHN OF BRUGES,
+painter to King Charles V. of France, in 1371, which contains a portrait
+of the king in profile with a figure kneeling before him, and a few
+small historical subjects. From these it is evident that the art of
+painting, at any rate in little, had made considerable progress in the
+Netherlands at that date, and the express designation of _pictor_
+applied to John of Bruges, while the ordinary miniaturist was called
+_illuminator_, shows the probability of his having painted pictures on a
+larger scale. The high development of realistic feeling as it first
+appears to us in the pictures of Hubert and Jan van Eyck is thus partly
+accounted for, especially when we also consider the wholesale
+destruction of larger works of art that took place in the disturbed
+condition of the Netherlands in the sixteenth century. The main points,
+however, to be borne in mind is that whereas Cimabue and Duccio started
+painting on walls under the influence of Byzantine teachers, Hubert van
+Eyck, a century later, began painting on wooden panels under that of
+illuminators and painters in books.
+
+To these, nevertheless, there must be added another scarcely less
+important, namely, that the early Italians were ignorant of the use of
+what we now call oil paints, and worked entirely in tempera--that is to
+say, there was no admixture of oil or varnish with their pigments. To
+Hubert van Eyck is attributed the invention of the modern practice, as
+Vasari relates with more colour than historic truth in his life of
+Antonello da Messina, who is supposed to have carried it into Italy. Be
+that as it may, the works of the van Eycks and their successors are all
+in oils, and there is no doubt that the employment of this medium from
+the first considerably influenced the style, colour, and execution of
+all the works of this school.
+
+HUBERT VAN EYCK who according to the common acceptation was born in the
+year 1366 at Maaseyck, a small town not far from Maestricht, must have
+been settled before the year 1412 in Bruges, when we hear of him as a
+member of the Brotherhood of the Virgin with Rays.
+
+There can be little doubt that Hubert van Eyck was acquainted with the
+work of this John of Bruges, and that it had a considerable influence on
+him. But while on the one hand he carried the realistic tendencies of
+such works to an extraordinary pitch of excellence, it is evident that
+in many essential respects he was actuated by a more ideal feeling and
+imparted to the realism of his contemporaries, by means of his far
+richer powers of representation, greater distinctness, truth to nature,
+and variety of expression. Throughout his works is seen an elevated and
+highly energetic conception of the stern import of his labours in the
+service of the Church.
+
+The prevailing arrangement of his subjects is symmetrical, holding fast
+to the earliest rules of ecclesiastical art. His heads appear to aim at
+an ideal beauty and dignity only combined with actual truth to nature.
+His draperies exhibit the purest taste and softness of folds, the
+realistic principle being apparent in that greater attention to detail
+which a delicate indication of the material of the drapery necessitates.
+Nude figures are studied from nature with the utmost fidelity; undraped
+portions of figures are also given with much truth, especially the
+hands. But what is the principal distinguishing characteristic of his
+art is the hitherto unprecedented power, depth, transparency and harmony
+of his colouring. Whatever want of exact truth there may be in the story
+as related by Vasari's story of the discovery of oil painting, there is
+no doubt that Hubert Van Eyck succeeded in preparing so transparent a
+varnish that he could apply it without disadvantage to all colours.
+
+The chief work by Hubert Van Eyck is the large altar-piece painted for
+the cathedral of S. Bavon at Ghent;--parts of this have been removed and
+are now in the Berlin Gallery, and supplemented with excellent copies of
+the rest, the whole of the wonderful composition may there be well
+studied; a large photograph of the whole altar piece may also be seen in
+the library at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which shows how the work
+was originally designed. It was painted for Jodocus Vyts, Burgomaster of
+Ghent, and his wife Elizabeth, for their mortuary chapel in the
+cathedral.
+
+The subject of the three central panels of the upper portion is the
+Deity seated between _the Virgin and S. John the Baptist_. Underneath
+these, of the same width, is the famous _Adoration of the Lamb_. These
+together formed the back of the altar-piece, and were covered by wings
+which opened out on hinges on either side.
+
+The three large figures of the upper part are designed with all the
+dignity and statuesque repose belonging to an earlier style, and they
+are painted on a ground of gold and tapestry, as was constantly the
+practice in earlier times: but united with the traditional type we
+already find a successful representation of life and nature in all their
+truth. They stand as it were on the frontier of two different styles,
+and from the excellence of both form a wonderful and most impressive
+whole. The Heavenly Father sits directly fronting the spectator, in all
+the solemnity of ancient dignity, His right hand raised to give the
+benediction to the Lamb and to all the multitude of figures below; in
+His left hand is a crystal sceptre; on His head the triple crown, the
+emblem of the Trinity. The features are such as are ascribed to Christ
+by the traditions of the Church, but noble and well proportioned; the
+expression is forcible, though passionless.
+
+The tunic and the mantle of this figure are of a deep red, the latter
+being fastened over the breast by a clasp, and falling down in ample
+folds over the feet. Behind, as high as the head, is a hanging of green
+tapestry which is ornamented with a golden pelican--a symbol of the
+Redeemer. Behind the head the ground is gold, and on it in a semicircle
+are three inscriptions describing the Trinity as almighty, all-good, and
+all-bountiful. The figures of S. John and of the Virgin display equal
+majesty; both are reading holy books, as they turn towards the centre
+figure. The countenance of S. John expresses ascetic seriousness, but in
+that of the Virgin we find a serene grace and a purity of form which
+approach very nearly to the happier effects of Italian art.
+
+The arrangement of the lower central picture, the worship of the Lamb,
+is strictly symmetrical, as the mystic nature of the allegorical subject
+might seem to
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXI.--JAN VAN EYCK
+
+JAN ARNOLFINI AND HIS WIFE
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+have demanded; but there is such beauty in the landscape, in the pure
+atmosphere, in the bright green of the grass, in the masses of trees and
+flowers--even in single figures which stand out from the four principal
+groups--that we no longer perceive either hardness or severity in this
+symmetry.
+
+The landscape of this composition and that part of it containing the
+patriarchs and prophets are generally supposed to have been completed by
+JAN VAN EYCK (_c._ 1385-1441), whose name till within a comparatively
+recent period had almost obscured that of Hubert. For although there is
+little doubt that the elder brother was the first to develop the new
+method of painting, yet the fame of it did not extend beyond Belgium and
+across the Alps until after the death of Hubert, when the celebrity it
+so speedily acquired throughout Europe was transferred to Jan Van Eyck.
+Within fifteen years after his death, 1455, Jan was commemorated in
+Italy as the greatest painter of the century, while the name of Hubert
+was not even mentioned. It was Jan van Eyck to whom Antonello da Messina
+is said by Vasari to have resorted in Bruges in order to learn the new
+style of painting; he alone also is mentioned in Vasari's first edition
+of 1550, Hubert not until the second edition in 1568, and then only
+incidentally.
+
+Fortunately there are in existence various authentic pictures by Jan Van
+Eyck in which his original powers are more easily recognised than in the
+part he took in the execution of the great altar-piece at Ghent, in
+which he doubtless accommodated himself with proper fraternal piety both
+to the composition and to the style of his elder brother--who was also
+his master. In these we can see that he possessed neither the enthusiasm
+for the rich imagery and symbolism of the ecclesiastical art of the
+Middle Ages, nor that feeling for beauty in human forms or in drapery
+which belonged to his elder brother. His feeling, on the other hand, led
+him to the closest and truest conception of individual nature. Where he
+had to paint portraits only--a task which was most congenial to the
+tendency of his mind--he attained a life-like truth of form and
+colouring in every part, extending even to the minutest details, such as
+no other artist of his time could rival, and which art in general has
+seldom produced. In his actual brush work he shows greater facility than
+was ever attained by Hubert, by which he was enabled to render the
+material of every substance with marvellous fidelity.
+
+What little we know of the personal history of Jan Van Eyck is of
+exceptional interest, inasmuch as we find him employed on diplomatic
+errands to foreign countries, like his great successor Rubens; and as it
+happens he landed in England, though not intentionally, in the course of
+one of these voyages, being driven into Shoreham and Falmouth by adverse
+weather. It was in 1425 that he was taken into the service of Philip
+III., Duke of Burgundy, as painter and "varlet de chambre," shortly
+after which he went to Lille. In the following year he was sent on a
+pilgrimage as the Duke's proxy, and again on two secret missions. In
+1428 he went with the Duke's Embassy to the King of Portugal which was
+to sue for the hand of Isabella, the Portuguese princess. It was on this
+occasion that he was driven on to our shores. Arriving at Lisbon he
+painted two portraits of Isabella, one of which was sent home by sea and
+the other overland. After a happy and successful career he died in 1441
+at Bruges, where he had married and settled down on his return from
+Portugal.
+
+The most beautiful example of Jan Van Eyck's work in England is the
+portrait of Jean Arnolfini and Jeanne de Chenany his wife, now in the
+National Gallery (No. 186). This is dated with the charming inscription,
+"Johannes de Eyck fuit hic 1434"--that is to say, instead of simply
+signing the picture, he writes, "Jan Van Eyck was here, 1434." No other
+picture shows so high a development of the master's extraordinary power
+and charm. Besides every other quality peculiar to him, we observe here
+a perfection of tone and of chiaroscuro which no other specimen of this
+whole period affords. It is recorded that Princess Mary, sister of
+Charles V. and Governess of the Netherlands, purchased this picture from
+a barber to whom it belonged at the price of a post worth a hundred
+gulden a year. Among its subsequent possessors were Don Diego de
+Guevara, majordomo of Joan, Queen of Castile, by whom it was presented
+to Margaret of Austria. In 1530 it was acquired by Mary of Hungary, and
+later it returned to Spain. In 1789 it was in the palace at Madrid, and
+soon after it was taken by one of the French Generals, in whose quarters
+Major-General Hay found it after the battle of Waterloo.
+
+Two other portraits in the National Gallery bear the signature of Jan
+Van Eyck. No. 222, An elderly man, head and shoulders, on the frame of
+which is the painter's motto, "als ich can," and his signature,
+"Johannes de Eyck me fecit anno 1433, 21 Octobris." The other, No. 290,
+is a younger man, half length, standing inside an open window, on the
+sill of which is inscribed "[Greek: Timotheos]," and "Léal Souvenir,"
+and below the date and signature, "Actum anno domini 1432, 10 die
+Octobris a Iohanne de Eyck."
+
+Among the Netherlandish scholars and followers of the Van Eycks of whom
+any record has been preserved some appear to have been gifted with
+considerable powers, though none attained the excellence of their great
+precursors. Although a number of works representing this school still
+exist in the various countries of Europe, yet compared with the actual
+abundance of them at one time they constitute but a scanty remnant.
+
+Though not actually a pupil of Jan Van Eyck, ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN
+acquired after him the greatest celebrity. As early as 1436 he filled
+the honourable post of official painter to the city of Brussels. The
+chief work executed by him in this capacity was an altar-piece for the
+Chamber of Justice in Hôtel de Ville. According to the custom of the
+time, it set forth in the most realistic fashion examples of stern
+observance of the law for the admonition of those placed in authority.
+The principal picture showed how Herkenbald, a judge in the eleventh
+century, executed his own nephew (convicted of a grave crime, but who
+would otherwise have escaped the penalty of the law) with his own hands;
+and how the sacramental wafer which, on the plea of murder, was denied
+to him by the priest, reached the lips of the upright judge by means of
+a miracle. The wings contained an example of the justice of the Emperor
+Trajan. These pictures are unfortunately no longer in existence, having
+probably been burned when Brussels was besieged in 1695.
+
+In the Museum of the Hospital at Beaune is one of the most important of
+his works still in existence, _The Last Judgment_, though in this it is
+generally supposed he was assisted by Dirk Bouts and Hans Memling. It
+contains several portraits, notably those of the Pope, Eugenius IV., who
+stands behind the Apostles in the right wing, and next to him Philip the
+Good. The crowned female in the opposite wing is probably Philip's
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXII.--JAN VAN EYCK
+
+PORTRAIT OF THE PAINTER'S WIFE
+
+_Town Gallery, Bruges_]
+
+second wife, Isabella of Portugal, whose portrait Jan Van Eyck went to
+Lisbon to paint before her marriage. On the outer sides are excellently
+painted portraits of the founder of the Hospital, Nicolas Rolin, and his
+wife. This work has been classed with the Van Eycks' _Adoration of the
+Lamb_, and the _Adoration of the Shepherds_ by Hugo Van der Goes, as
+crystallizing the finest expression of early northern painting.
+
+In 1450 he visited Italy, where he painted the beautiful little
+altar-piece which is now in the Städel Institute at Frankfort, for Piero
+and Giovanni de'Medici.
+
+Another very fine example of his work is the triptych, now in the Berlin
+Museum, executed for Pierre Bladelin. In the centre is the Nativity,
+with a portrait of Bladelin kneeling, and angels. On the one side is the
+annunciation of the Redeemer to the ruler of the West--the Emperor
+Augustus--by the agency of the Tiburtine Sibyl; on the other to those of
+the East--the Three Kings--who are keeping watch on a mountain, where
+the child appears to them in a star.
+
+One of the largest as well as of the finest of the master's works is a
+triptych in the Munich Gallery--the _Adoration of the Kings_, with the
+_Annunciation_ and the _Presentation in the Temple_ in the wings. The
+figure of the Virgin in the _Presentation_ is particularly pleasing for
+its simple and unaffected realism. _S. Luke painting the Virgin_, also
+in the Munich Gallery, is ascribed to Roger.
+
+No painter of this school, the Van Eycks even not excepted, exercised so
+great and widely extended an influence as Roger Van der Weyden. Not only
+were Hans Memling--the greatest master of the next generation in
+Belgium--and his own son, also named Roger, his pupils, but innumerable
+works other than pictures were produced, such as miniatures,
+block-books, and engravings, in which his form of art is recognisable.
+It was under his auspices that the realistic tendency of the Van Eycks
+pervaded all Germany; for it was only after the death of Jan Van Eyck,
+in 1441, that the widespread fame of Roger Van der Weyden induced
+Germans to visit his studio at Brussels. Martin Schongauer, one of the
+greatest German masters of the sixteenth century, is known to have been
+his pupil, and it is certain that there must have been many others.
+
+It is in HANS MEMLING (_c._ 1435-1494), whom Vasari states to have been
+the pupil of Roger, that the early Netherlandish School attains the
+highest delicacy of artistic development. His poetical and profoundly
+human qualities had a special attraction for the "Pre-Raphaelite
+Brotherhood" inaugurated by Rossetti and Holman Hunt in the middle of
+the nineteenth century. This unusual tenderness of feeling is probably
+also the origin of the legend that Memling was taken into the Hospital
+of S. John at Bruges--where he painted most of his masterpieces--as a
+sick soldier after the battle of Nancy. In feeling for beauty and grace
+he was more gifted than any painter except Hubert Van Eyck, and this
+quality, conspicuous amid the somewhat ugly realism of most of his
+contemporaries, has ensured him perhaps a little more popularity than is
+rightly his share. Compared with the works of his master, Roger Van der
+Weyden, his figures are certainly of better proportions and less
+meagreness of form; his hands and feet truer to nature; the heads of his
+women are sweeter, and those of his men less severe. His outlines are
+softer, and in the modelling of his flesh parts more delicacy of half
+tones is observable. His colours are still more luminous and
+transparent. On the other hand he is inferior to Van der Weyden in the
+carrying out of detail, such as the materials of his draperies or the
+rendering of the full brilliancy of gold.
+
+In 1467 Memling was a master painter at Bruges, and painted the portrait
+of the medallist, Nicolas Spinelli, which is now in the Royal Museum at
+Antwerp, and a small altar-piece now at Chatsworth. His most famous
+works, those in the Hospital at Bruges, belong to a somewhat later date,
+the _Shrine of S. Ursula_ not being completed till 1489. The _Adoration
+of the Kings_ and the altar-piece were some ten years earlier. The
+famous shrine of S. Ursula is about four feet in length, and the whole
+of the outside is adorned with painting. On each side of the cover are
+three medallions, a large one in the centre and two smaller at the
+sides. The latter contain angels playing on musical instruments; in the
+centre on one side is a Coronation of the Virgin, on the other the
+Glorification of S. Ursula and her companions, with two figures of
+Bishops. On the gable-ends are the Virgin and Child with two sisters of
+the hospital kneeling before them, and S. Ursula with the arrow, the
+instrument of her martyrdom, and virgins seeking protection under her
+mantle. On the longer sides of the reliquary itself, in six rather
+larger compartments, is painted the history of S. Ursula.
+
+Of about the same period, possibly a little earlier, is the _Marriage of
+S. Catherine_, which is also in S. John's Hospital at Bruges. The
+central figure is that of the Virgin, seated under a porch, with
+tapestry hanging down behind it; two angels hold a crown over her head:
+beside her is S. Catherine kneeling, whose head is one of the finest
+ever painted by Memling. Behind her is an angel playing on the organ,
+and further back S. John the Baptist. On the other side kneels S.
+Barbara, reading: behind her another angel holds a book to the Virgin,
+and still further back is S. John the Evangelist, a figure of great
+beauty, and of a singularly mild and thoughtful character. Through the
+arcades of the porch we look out, on either side of the throne, on a
+rich landscape, in which are represented scenes from the lives of the
+two S. Johns. The panel on the right contains the beheading of the
+Baptist, on the left the Evangelist in the Isle of Patmos, where the
+vision of the Apocalypse appears to him--the Almighty on a throne in a
+glory of dazzling light, encompassed with a rainbow.
+
+The whole forms a work strikingly poetical and most impressive in
+character; it is highly finished, both in drawing and composition.
+
+IAN GOSSAERT (_c._ 1472-1535), called JAN VAN MABUSE from his native
+town of Maubeuge, was the son of a bookbinder who worked for the Abbey
+of Sainte-Aldegonde. It is possible therefore that he might have formed
+an early acquaintance with illuminated manuscripts before studying the
+art of painting in the studio of a master. Memling, Gerard, David, and
+Quentin Massys have been suggested as his instructors, but it is not
+known for certain that he was actually a pupil of any of them. In 1508
+he went to Italy, where he appears to have been greatly influenced both
+by the work of the Renaissance painters and by the antique. The
+_Adoration of the Kings_, which was lately purchased from Castle Howard
+for the National Gallery for £40,000, was painted before he went to
+Italy.
+
+Towards the end of the fifteenth century, in consequence of the transfer
+of commerce from Bruges to Antwerp, this latter city first became and
+long continued the centre of art, and especially of Netherlandish
+painting. Here it is that we find QUENTIN MASSYS, the greatest Belgian
+painter of this later time. He was born
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXIII.--JAN MABUSE
+
+PORTRAIT OF JEAN CARONDELET
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+probably in 1466. His father is said to have been a blacksmith and
+clockmaker, and there is a tradition that Quentin only forsook the
+hammer for the brush at instigation of a tender passion for a beautiful
+lady. Be that as it may, he is an important figure in the history of
+Belgian art. He distinguishes, broadly speaking, the close of the last
+period and the beginning of the next. A number of pictures representing
+sacred subjects exhibit, with little feeling for real beauty of form,
+such delicacy of features, beauty and earnestness of feeling, tenderness
+and clearness of colouring and skill in finish, as worthily recall the
+religious painting of the Middle Ages, though at the very end of them.
+In his draperies, especially, we observe a charm which is peculiar to
+Massys. At the same time, in the subordinate figures introduced into
+sacred subjects, such as the executioners, etc., he seems to take
+pleasure in coarse and tasteless caricatures.
+
+In subjects taken from common life, such as money changers, loving
+couples, or ugly old women, he uses his brush with evident zest, and
+with great success. The pictures of his later period are also
+distinguished from those of other painters by the large size of the
+figures, which for the first time in his country are of three-quarters
+or even actual life size.
+
+Among his most original and attractive pictures are the half-length
+figures of Christ and the Virgin. These must have been very popular in
+his own time, for he has left several repetitions of them. Two heads of
+this class are at Antwerp, and two others of equal beauty are in the
+National Gallery in one frame (No. 295).
+
+The most celebrated of his subject pictures is that known by the name of
+_The Misers_, or _The Money Changers_, at Windsor Castle--of which there
+are numerous copies, and this is not supposed to be the original. _The
+Money Changer and His Wife_ at the Louvre is undoubtedly his.
+
+LUCAS VAN LEYDEN, as he was called (his real name being Luc Jacobez),
+was born in 1494, and died in 1533. He was a pupil of a little known
+artist, Cornelis Engelbrechstein, who was a follower if not a pupil of
+Memling. Lucas was an artist of multifarious powers and very early
+development. He painted admirably--though his authenticated works are
+very scarce--drew, and engraved. He pursued the path of realism in the
+treatment of sacred subjects, but with less beauty or elevation of mind.
+His heads are generally of a very ugly character. At the same time his
+form of expression found sympathy in the feeling of the period, and by
+the skill with which it was expressed, especially in his engravings,
+attracted a number of followers. In scenes from common life he is full
+of truth and delicate observation of nature, though showing now and then
+a somewhat coarse sense of humour. One of his most important works is a
+large composition of _The Last Judgment_, which is at Leyden.
+
+Very early in the sixteenth century--beginning in fact, as we have seen,
+with Jan Mabuse in 1508--the Netherlandish and German artists made it
+the fashion to repair to Italy, attracted by the reputation of the great
+masters; so that from this time onwards their work ceases to exhibit the
+purely northern characteristics of their predecessors. For it appears
+that precisely those qualities most opposed to their own native feeling
+for art made the deepest impression on their minds; more especially such
+general qualities as grandeur, beauty, simplicity of forms, drawing of
+the nude, unrestrained freedom, boldness, and grace of movement--in
+short, all that is comprised in art under the term "ideal."
+
+But the attempt to appropriate all these qualities could lead to no
+successful result. Being based on no inherent want on the part of their
+own original feeling for art, it became only the outward imitation of
+something foreign to themselves, and they never therefore succeeded in
+mastering the complete understanding of form, or in adopting the true
+feeling for beauty of line or grace of movement; and in aiming at them
+they only degenerated into artificiality, exaggeration in drawing, and
+violence in attitude. The pictures of this class, even of religious
+subjects, have accordingly but little to attract the eye, and when they
+selected scenes from ancient mythology, and allegories decked out with
+an ostentation of learning, the result is positively disagreeable.
+
+The most satisfactory productions of this period will be found in the
+department of portrait painting, which, by its nature, threw the artist
+upon the exercise of his own original feeling for art. As in every other
+respect this epoch is far more important as a link in the chain of
+history than from any pleasure arising from its own works, it will be
+sufficient to mention only the more important painters and a few of
+their principal pictures.
+
+The first painter who deserted his native style of art was, as before
+mentioned, Jan Mabuse. After the large _Adoration of the Kings_ in the
+National Gallery the most important picture of his pre-Italian period is
+the _Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane_ at Berlin. Nearly all his works
+subsequent to 1512, by which time he had settled in Brussels, are
+characterised by all the faults above mentioned. Their redeeming quality
+is their masterly treatment. Among those of religious subjects the
+smallest are as a rule the best. The _Ecce Homo_ at Antwerp, so
+frequently copied by contemporary painters, is a specimen of masterly
+modelling and vigorous colour. He is less successful with his life-size
+_Adam and Eve_, of which there are repetitions at Brussels, Hatfield,
+Hampton Court and Berlin. But his most unpleasing efforts are the
+mythological subjects such as the _Danaë_ at Munich, and the _Neptune
+and Amphitrite_ at Berlin. On the other hand, his portraits are
+attractive both from being more original, and less influenced by his
+acquired mannerisms of style Four of these are in the National Gallery,
+and the _Girl weighing Gold Pieces_, in the Berlin gallery, is also
+worthy of mention.
+
+BERNARD VAN ORLEY, born at Brussels in 1471, is characterised in the
+catalogue of the National Gallery as "taking his place after Massys and
+Mabuse on the downward slope of Netherlandish painting." He has been
+immortalised by the fine portrait head of him by Albert Dürer which is
+now in the Dresden Gallery. He was Court painter to Margaret of Austria,
+Governess of the Low Countries, and retained the same post under her
+successor, Mary of Hungary. He is said to have visited Rome in 1509, and
+there made the acquaintance of Raphael, whose influence is certainly
+apparent, though hardly his inspiration, in the _Holy Family_ in the
+Louvre. A more Netherlandish work, both in feeling and in treatment, is
+the _Pietà_ in the Gallery at Brussels.
+
+IAN SCOREL, born in 1495, was a pupil of Mabuse, and appears to have
+been the first to introduce the Italian style into his native
+country--Holland. When on a pilgrimage to Palestine he happened to pass
+through Rome at the time his countryman was raised to the papal dignity
+as Adrian VI., and after painting his portrait he was appointed overseer
+of the art treasures of the Vatican. Returning to Utrecht, where he
+died, he painted the picture of the _Virgin and Child_, with donors,
+which is now in the Town Hall.
+
+A fine portrait by Scorel of Cornelius Aerntz van der Dussen is in the
+Berlin Gallery.
+
+The decided and strongly realistic style in which Quentin Massys had
+painted scenes from common life, as for instance the Misere or Money
+Changers, became the model for various painters in their treatment of
+similar subjects. First among these was his son, JAN MASSYS, born about
+1500, who followed closely but rather clumsily in his father's
+footsteps, and need only be mentioned for carrying on the tradition.
+More interesting were the Breughels, namely, PIETER BREUGHEL the elder,
+born about 1520, called Peasant Breughel, and his two sons Pieter and
+Jan. Old Breughel is best studied at Vienna, where there are good
+examples of his various subjects, notably a _Crucifixion_ and _The Tower
+of Babel_--both dated 1563--and secular scenes like _A Peasant Wedding_
+and a _Fight between Carnival and Lent_, which are full of clever and
+droll invention.
+
+His elder son, Pieter, was called Hell Breughel, from his choice of
+subject. He is far inferior to his father or to his younger brother Jan,
+called Velvet Breughel, born in 1568. Though more especially a landscape
+painter, Jan also takes an important place in the development of subject
+pictures, which, though seldom rising above a somewhat coarse reality,
+are of a lively character, and worthy forerunners of the more
+accomplished productions of Teniers, Ostade, and Brouwer.
+
+It is in portrait painting, however, that the Netherlandish School
+chiefly distinguished itself during its decline in the seventeenth
+century, and had all its sons remained in the country to enhance its
+glory, it is probable that the effect on the general practice of
+painting would have been more than beneficial. But portrait painters
+have not always been content to sit at home and wait for sitters to come
+to them, especially when the state of society in which they happen to
+find themselves makes waiting rather a long and tedious process. From
+the Reformation onwards, for over two centuries, there was a steady
+demand for portrait painters in England, and after the foundation of a
+really English school of painting by Reynolds in the middle of the
+eighteenth century, the stream of foreign, especially Netherlandish,
+talent never entirely ceased to flow. But confining ourselves for the
+present to the sixteenth century, we find that all the considerable
+Netherlandish portrait painters were employed for the most part outside
+their own country.
+
+Typical of these is JOOS VAN CLEEF, of Antwerp, who died in 1540.
+According to Vasari he visited Spain and painted portraits for the Court
+of France. At all events it is certain that he worked for a time in
+England, where the great success of Sir Antonio Mor is said to have
+disordered his brain. The few pictures that can be assigned to him with
+any certainty thoroughly justify the high reputation he enjoyed in his
+time--the two male portraits for example at Berlin and Munich, the
+portraits of himself and his wife at Windsor, and his own at Althorp.
+His style may be classed as between that of Holbein and Antonio Mor. His
+well-drawn forms are decided without being hard, and his warm and
+transparent colouring recalls the great masters of the Venetian School.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+PETER PAUL RUBENS
+
+
+Dr Waagen thus summarises the history of painting in the Netherlands
+during the interval of about a century and a half that elapsed between
+the death of Jan van Eyck in 1440 and the birth of PETER PAUL RUBENS in
+1577.
+
+"The great school of the brothers van Eyck," he writes, "which united
+with a profound and genuine enthusiasm for religious subjects a pure and
+healthy feeling for nature, and a talent for portraying her minutest
+details with truth and fidelity, had continued till the end of the
+fifteenth century, and in some instances even later, to produce the most
+admirable works, combining the utmost technical perfection in touch and
+finish with most vivid and beautiful colouring. To this original school,
+however, had succeeded a perverted rage for imitating the Italian
+masters, which had been introduced into the Netherlands by a few
+painters of talent, particularly by Jean Mabuse and Bernard van Orley.
+To display their science by throwing their figures into forced and
+difficult positions and strongly marking the muscles, by which they
+thought to emulate the grandeur of Michel Angelo, and to exhibit their
+learning by the choice of mythological and allegorical subjects, became
+the aim of succeeding painters, and before these false and artificial
+views of art, the spirit of religious enthusiasm and the pure, naïve
+perception of the truth and beauty of nature gradually disappeared.
+
+"In proportion as the Flemish painters lost the proper conception of
+form, and the feeling for delicacy and beauty of outline, it followed
+of course that they became more and more removed from nature in their
+desire to rival each other in the forced attitudes of their figures, and
+in the exhibition of nudity, until at last such disgusting caricatures
+were produced as we find in the works of Martin Heemskirk or Franz
+Floris, artists who were even deficient in good colouring, the old
+inheritance of the school.
+
+"Some few painters, however, whose feeling for truth and nature repelled
+them instinctively from a path so far removed from both, took to
+portraying scenes of real life with considerable humour and vivacity; or
+they delineated nature in her commonest aspects with great minuteness of
+detail; and thus _tableaux de genre_ and landscape originated. Although
+a few isolated efforts to introduce a better state of things were
+visible towards the end of the sixteenth century, it was reserved for a
+mind of no common power to bring about a complete revolution."
+
+That Rubens was possessed of a "mind of no common power" will be readily
+admitted. He was an extraordinary person, in whom were combined such a
+variety of excellent qualities that there seems to have been no room
+left in him for any of the inferior ones which are usually necessary, as
+one must almost admit, for an alloy that will harden the finer metal for
+the practical purposes of success. With all his feeling for religion, he
+was seldom prudish; his amazing vitality never led him into excess or
+intemperance. His intense patriotism was all for peace; classical
+learning never made him dry or bumptious, nor the favour of kings
+servile. As fine a gentleman as Buckingham, he had no enemies.
+
+Something more than temperament and natural ability, however, was
+necessary to make Rubens exactly what he turned out to be, and that was
+environment. Had he remained in Flanders all his life we should have
+been deprived of much that is most characteristic in his art. He was too
+big, that is to say, for the flower pot. He needed to be bedded out, so
+that his exuberant natural genius might have the proper opportunities
+for expanding under suitable conditions. It was in Venice and Mantua, in
+Florence and Rome that he found himself, and took his measure from the
+giants.
+
+Rubens was born in 1577 at Cologne, where his father, a jurist of
+considerable attainments, had taken refuge from the disturbances at
+Antwerp in 1566. He was christened Peter Paul in honour of the saints on
+whose festival his birthday fell--29th June. At the age of sixteen he
+was placed as a page in the household of the widowed Countess of
+Lalaing, but as he showed a remarkable love for drawing he was
+apprenticed first to Tobias Verhaegt, a landscape painter, and then to
+Adam Van Oort. The latter was so unsuitable a master, however, that
+Rubens was soon committed to the care of Otto Vennius, at that time
+Court painter to the Infanta Isabella and the Archduke Albert, her
+husband; he prospered so well that in 1600 Vennius advised him to go to
+Italy to finish his education as a painter.
+
+Rubens was now in his twenty-third year, and besides being proficient in
+painting he was so well grounded in the classics and in general
+education and manners that he was recommended by the Archduke to
+Vincenzio, Duke of Gonzaga, whose palace at Mantua was famous for
+containing an immense collection of art treasures, a great part of which
+within the next quarter of a century were purchased by King Charles, the
+Duke of Buckingham, and the Earl of Arundel. The influence exerted on
+the young painter by surroundings like these is exemplified in a note by
+Waagen:--
+
+"Rubens during his residence at Mantua was so pleased with the _Triumph
+of Julius Cæsar_ by Mantegna (the large cartoons now at Hampton Court
+Palace), that he made a free copy of one of them. His love for the
+fantastic and pompous led him to choose that with the elephants carrying
+the candelabra; but his ardent imagination, ever directed to the
+dramatic, could not be contented with this. Instead of a harmless sheep,
+which, in Mantegna, is walking by the side of the foremost elephant,
+Rubens has introduced a lion and a lioness, which growl angrily at the
+elephant. The latter is looking furiously round, and is on the point of
+striking the lion a blow with his trunk."
+
+That Rubens should have been so specially attracted by Mantegna may seem
+a little surprising, until we remember that both were lovers and
+students of classical antiquities--a fact that is often forgotten in
+recalling only the principal achievements of either. But it is important
+to know what sort of foundations underlie the most splendid erections if
+we wish to understand how they came into existence and what their place
+is in the history of the arts. A glance through Lemprière's _Dictionary_
+may furnish a modern Academician with a subject for a popular
+picture,--but that is stucco rather than foundation. The roots of tall
+trees go deep. Rubens when he was in Rome studied the antiquities of the
+place with the utmost diligence and zeal, as is evidenced by a book
+published by his brother Philip in 1608.
+
+It was in the autumn of this year that he received the news, when at
+Genoa, of his mother's illness, which induced him to return to Antwerp
+forthwith. On his arrival he found she had died before the messenger
+had reached Genoa.
+
+After four months of mourning he was ready to return to Flanders; his
+sojourn of eight years in Italy had so far influenced him that he might
+have remained there indefinitely had it not been for the Archduke and
+the Infanta pressing him to remain at Brussels and attach himself to
+their Court. Another circumstance may possibly have weighed with him;
+for within a year we find him married to Elizabeth Brant, the daughter
+of a magistrate of Antwerp, and it was not at Brussels, but at Antwerp,
+that he took up his quarters. Here he proceeded to build a wonderful
+house--said to have cost him 60,000 florins--after designs of his own in
+the Italian style, which he filled with the treasures he had collected
+in Italy.
+
+Rubens's first pictures were nearly all of them religious subjects.
+Before he went to Italy he had painted an _Adoration of the Kings_, a
+_Holy Trinity_, and the _Dead Christ in the Arms of God the Father_,
+which was engraved by Bolswert. When Vincenzio sent him to Rome to copy
+pictures there for him, he found time to execute a commission which he
+received from the Archduke Albert to paint three pictures for the Church
+of Santa Croce di Gerusalamme, namely, the _Crowning with Thorns_, the
+_Crucifixion_, and the _Finding of the Cross_. A year later--after
+returning from a journey to Madrid--he painted the altar-piece for the
+Church of Santa Maria in Vallicella, in which the influence of Paul
+Veronese is conspicuous. At Genoa, he painted the Circumcision and S.
+Ignatius for the church of the Jesuits.
+
+One of the first pictures which he painted on his return to Antwerp was
+an altar-piece for the private chapel of the Archduke Albert, of the
+Holy Family. This picture was so much admired that the members of the
+fraternity of S. Ildefonso, at the head of which was the Archduke
+Albert, commissioned him to paint an altar-piece for the Chapel of the
+Order of S. James near Brussels. This picture, which is now at Vienna,
+represents the Virgin enthroned, surrounded by four female saints,
+putting the Cloak of the Order on the shoulders of S. Ildefonso. On the
+wings are the portraits of the Archduke and Isabella, with their patron
+saints.
+
+Thus we find that, like the earliest painters in his own country as well
+as in Italy, the beginning of Rubens's art was under the influence of
+the Church. Further, we find that the most celebrated work of his
+earlier period, the _Descent from the Cross_, in the cathedral at
+Antwerp, was undertaken in circumstances which abundantly show how
+thoroughly he was imbued with the principles of the religion he
+professed. The story is that when preparing the foundations of his new
+house he had unwittingly trespassed upon a piece of ground belonging to
+the Company of Arquebusiers at Antwerp. A lawsuit was threatened, and
+Rubens, with all the vivacity of his nature, prepared measures of
+resistance. But when his friend Rockox, a lawyer, had proved him that he
+was in the wrong, he immediately drew back, and offered to paint a
+picture by way of compensation. The offer was accepted, and the
+Arquebusiers asked for a representation of their patron, S. Christopher,
+to be placed in his chapel in the cathedral. In the magnificent spirit
+which always distinguished the man, he presented to his adversaries not
+merely the figure of the great Saint, but an elaborate and significant
+illustration of his name (Christ-bearer). Thus, in the centre, the
+disciples are lifting the Saviour from the Cross; in the wings the
+Visitation--S. Simeon with Christ in his arms, S. Christopher with
+Christ on his shoulders, and an old hermit bearing a light.
+
+Among the earlier examples of secular pictures one of the most famous is
+the portrait of himself and his bride, which is now in the Munich
+Gallery. This was painted in 1609, when Rubens was over thirty years
+old.
+
+In 1627 Rubens went to Madrid on a diplomatic errand, but still as a
+painter, as we shall see when discussing his relations with Velasquez.
+
+Towards the end of the year 1629 he was sent on another diplomatic
+mission, this time to England. The choice of an ambassador could not
+have fallen on anyone better calculated to suit the personal character
+of Charles I., who was a passionate lover of art and easily captivated
+by men of cultivated intellect and refined manners. Rubens therefore, in
+whom the most admirable and attractive qualities were united to the
+rarest genius as an artist, soon succeeded in winning the attention and
+regard of the king. At Paris, too, Rubens had made friends with
+Buckingham, who had purchased his whole collection of statues,
+paintings, and other works of art for about ten thousand pounds.
+
+It was during his stay in London that he painted the picture now in the
+National Gallery, called _Peace and War_ (No. 46). This was intended as
+an allegory representing the blessings of peace and the horrors of war,
+which he presented to the king as a tangible recommendation of the
+pacific measures which he had come to propose. After the dispersion of
+the Royal Collection during the Commonwealth this picture was acquired
+by the Doria family at Genoa, where it was called, oddly enough,
+_Rubens's Family_. As a matter of fact the children are those of
+Balthazar Gerbier. He also painted the _S. George and the Dragon_,
+which is now at Windsor Castle, and made the sketches for the nine
+pictures on the ceiling of the Banqueting Hall--now the United Service
+Institution Museum--in Whitehall. It was on this occasion, too, that he
+received the honour of knighthood from Charles I., who is said to have
+presented him with his own sword.
+
+In the following year, 1630, Rubens married his second wife, Helena
+Fourment, who was only sixteen years old--he was now fifty-two or
+fifty-three. She belonged to one of the richest and most respectable
+families in Antwerp, and was by no means unworthy of the compliment of
+being painted in the character of the Virgin receiving instruction from
+S. Anne, in the picture which is still at Antwerp.
+
+In 1633 his painting was again interrupted by a diplomatic mission, this
+time to Holland; and his remaining years were subject to more
+distressing interruptions, from the gout, to which he finally succumbed
+in 1640.
+
+When we come to consider the English School of painting we shall see how
+much of its revival in the middle of the eighteenth century was due to
+the personality as well as to the genius of Sir Joshua Reynolds. In the
+Netherlands, likewise, it was not merely a great painter that was
+required to raise the art to life, but a great personality as well; and
+to the influence of Rubens may be attributed much if not all of the
+extraordinary fertility of the Flemish and Dutch Schools of the
+seventeenth century. Making every allowance for the difference in the
+times in which the Van Eycks and Rubens were working, there is no doubt
+that the former lived in too rarefied an atmosphere ever to influence
+their fellows, and with the exception of Hans Memling they left no
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXIV.--RUBENS
+
+PORTRAIT OF HÉLÈNE FOURMENT, THE ARTIST'S SECOND WIFE, AND TWO CHILDREN
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+one worthy to carry on their tradition. Rubens showed his contemporaries
+that art was a mistress who could be served in many ways that were yet
+unthought of, and that she did not by any means disdain the tribute of
+other than religious votaries. Beginning, as we have pointed out, with
+sacred subjects, Rubens soon turned to the study of the classics, and
+found in them not so much the classical severity that Mantegna had
+sought for as the pagan spirit of fulness and freedom. "I am convinced
+that to reach the highest perfection as a painter," he himself writes
+"it is necessary, not only to be acquainted with the ancient statues,
+but we must be inwardly imbued with the thorough comprehension of them.
+An insight into the laws which pertain to them is necessary before they
+can be turned to any real account in painting. This will prevent the
+artist from transferring to the canvas that which in sculpture is
+dependent on the material employed--marble, for instance. Many
+inexperienced and indeed experienced painters do not distinguish the
+material from the form which it expresses--the stone from the figure
+which is carved in it; that which the artist forces from the dead
+marble, from the universal laws of art which are independent of it.
+
+"One leading rule may be laid down, that inasmuch as the best statues of
+antiquity are of great value for the painter, the inferior ones are not
+only worthless but mischievous: for while beginners fancy they can
+perform wonders if they can borrow from these statues, and transfer
+something hard, heavy, with sharp outlines and an exaggerated anatomy to
+their canvas, this can only be done by outraging the truth of nature,
+since instead of representing flesh with colours, they do but give
+colour to marble.
+
+"In studying even the best of the antique statues, the painter must
+consider and avoid many things which are not connected with the art of
+the sculptor, but solely with the material in which he worked. I may
+mention particularly the difference in the shading. In nature, owing to
+the transparency of the flesh, the skin, and the cartilages, the shading
+of many parts is moderated, which in sculpture appear hard and abrupt,
+for the shadows become doubled, as it were, owing to the natural and
+unavoidable thickness of the stone. To this must be added that certain
+less important parts which lie on the surface of the human body, as the
+veins, folds of the skin, etc., which change their appearance with every
+movement, and which owing to the pliancy of the skin become easily
+extended or contracted, are not expressed at all in the works of
+sculptors in general--though it is true that sculptors of high talent
+have marked them in some degree. The painter, however, must never omit
+to introduce them--with proper discretion.
+
+"In the manner in which lights fall, too, statues are totally different
+from nature; for the natural brilliancy of marble, and its own light,
+throws out the surface far more strongly than in nature, and even
+dazzles the eye."
+
+I have quoted rather more of this passage (from Mrs Jameson's
+translation) than I at first intended, because it discloses one of the
+most important secrets of the successful painting of figures, by other
+artists besides Rubens himself--George Romney for example. The
+advantages of a "classical education" at our English public schools and
+universities are questioned, and there can be no doubt that for the bulk
+of the pupils they are questionable. But Rubens shows that the case is
+exactly the same for painters studying classical art as for scholars
+acquainting themselves with classical literature. A superficial study of
+the antique, just because it is antique, is of no use at all, but rather
+a hindrance. But if the study is properly undertaken, there is no surer
+foundation, in art or literature, on which to build. It makes no
+difference what is built; the foundation is there, beneath the surface,
+and whatever is placed upon it will stand for all time.
+
+The remarkable freedom and originality of Rubens's treatment of
+classical subjects is thus accounted for. Under the surface is his
+familiarity with the antique, but instead of carrying this above ground,
+he builds on it a palace in accordance with the times and circumstances
+in which he lived. The principles of classical art underlie the modern
+structure. Among his numerous works of classical mythology the picture
+at Munich of _Castor and Pollux_ carrying off the daughters of Leucippus
+is worthy of being first mentioned. The Dioscuri mounted on spirited
+steeds, one of which is wildly rearing, are in the act of capturing the
+two damsels. The calm expression of strength in the male, and the
+violent but fruitless resistance of the female figures, form a striking
+contrast. Although the former are merely represented as two coarse and
+powerful men, and the women have only common and rather redundant forms
+and Flemish faces, yet the picture produces as a whole such a striking
+effect, owing to the admirable manner in which the subject is conceived,
+the power of imagination which it displays, and the exquisite colouring
+and tone, that it would never occur to any unprejudiced spectator to
+regret the absence of antique forms and character.
+
+Two other pictures of this class are singled out for description by
+Waagen as masterpieces. One is the _Rape of Proserpine_, at
+Blenheim,--Pluto in his car, drawn by fiery brown steeds, is carrying
+off the goddess, who is struggling in his arms. The other is the _Battle
+of the Amazons_, in the Munich Gallery, which was painted by Rubens for
+Van der Geest. With great judgment he has chosen the moment when the
+Amazons are driven back by the Greeks over the river Thermodon: the
+battle takes place upon a bridge, and thus the horror of the scene is
+carried to the highest pitch.
+
+Both in Flanders and in Italy Rubens had been brought into close contact
+with all the magnificence and splendour which belonged to those gorgeous
+times, and he delighted in representing the pomp of worldly state and
+everything connected with it. Of all sacred subjects none afforded such
+a rich field for display as the _Adoration of the Kings_; he has painted
+this subject no less than twelve times, and his fancy appears quite
+inexhaustible in the invention of the rich offerings of the eastern
+sages. Among the subjects of a secular character the history of Marie
+de'Medici, the triumph of the Emperor Charles V., and the Sultan at the
+head of his Army, gave him abundant opportunities of portraying Oriental
+and European pageantry, with rich arms and regalia, and all the pomp and
+circumstance of war. Profusion--pouring forth of abundance, that was one
+of Rubens's most salient characteristics. Exuberance, plenty, fatness.
+
+As a painter of animals, again, Rubens opened out a new field for the
+energy of his fellow-countrymen, which was tilled so industriously by
+Frans Snyders and Jan Fyt, and in a lesser degree by the Dutchmen Jan
+Weenix, father and son, and Hondecoeter. That the naïve instincts,
+agility, and vivacity of animals must have had a great attraction for
+Rubens is easily understood. Those which are remarkable for their
+courage, strength, intelligence, swiftness--as lions, tigers, wild
+boars, wolves, horses, dogs--particularly interested him. He paid
+special attention to animals, seized every opportunity of studying them
+from nature, and attained the most wonderful skill and facility in
+painting them. It is related that he had a remarkably fine and powerful
+lion brought to his house in order to study him in every variety of
+attitude, and that on one occasion observing him yawn, he was so pleased
+with the action that he wished to paint it. He therefore desired the
+keeper to tickle the animal under the chin to make him repeatedly open
+his jaws: at length the lion became savage at this treatment, and cast
+such furious glances at his keeper, that Rubens attended to his warning
+and had the beast removed. The keeper is said to have been torn to
+pieces by the lion shortly afterwards: apparently the animal had never
+forgotten the affront put upon him.
+
+By such means--though it is to be hoped not always with such lamentable
+results--Rubens succeeded in seizing and portraying the peculiar
+character and instinct of animals--their quick movements and
+manifestations of strength--with such perfect truth and energy that not
+one among the modern painters has approached him in this
+respect--certainly not Landseer, as Mrs Jameson would ask us to believe.
+
+The celebrated _Wolf Hunt_, in the collection of Lord Ashburton, was one
+of the earliest, painted in 1612 for the Spanish General Legranes only
+three years after Rubens's return from Italy. In this picture, his bold
+creative fancy and dramatic turn of mind are remarkably
+conspicuous--even at this early stage in his career. Catherine Brant,
+his first wife, on a brown horse, with a falcon in her hand, is near her
+husband; a second huntsman on horseback, three on foot, another old
+wolf and three young ones, with several dogs, complete the composition,
+which is most carefully painted in a clear and powerful tone throughout.
+
+Of scenes of peasant life, one of his earliest, and yet the most famous,
+is the _Kermesse_, which is now in the Louvre. A boisterous, merry party
+of about seventy persons are assembled in front of a country ale-house;
+several are wildly dancing in a circle, others are drinking and
+shouting; others, again, are making love.
+
+_The Garden of Love_, equally famous, was one of Rubens's latest
+pictures. Of this there are several versions in existence, of which
+those at Dresden and Madrid may be considered as originals. Several
+loving couples in familiar conversation are lingering before the
+entrance of a grotto, the front of which is ornamented with a rustic
+portico. Amongst them we recognise the portraits of Rubens and his
+second wife, his pupil Van Dyck, and Simon de Vos.
+
+As Rubens united to such great and various knowledge the disposition to
+communicate it to others in the most friendly and candid manner, it was
+natural that young painters of talent who were admitted into his atelier
+should soon attain a high degree of skill and cultivation.
+
+At "the House in the Wood," not far from the Hague, there is a salon
+decorated entirely by the pupils of Rubens. The principal picture, which
+is one of the largest oil paintings in the world, is by Jacob Jordaens,
+and represents the triumph of Prince Frederick Henry--the object of the
+whole scheme being the glorification of the House of Orange, in 1649.
+Most of the other pictures are of Theodore van Thulden, who in these
+works has emulated his illustrious master in the force and brilliance of
+his colouring.
+
+But it is not in any particular salon or palace that we must look for
+the effects of Rubens' influence; it was far wider than to be able to be
+contained within four walls. In portraiture he gave us Van Dyck; in
+historical subjects, Jacob Jordaens; in animal painting and still life,
+Frans Snyders, Jan Fyt, and the brothers Weenix. In pictures of everyday
+life he gave us Adrian Brouwer and David Teniers; in landscape,
+Everdingen, Ruisdael and Waterloo. "Thus was the art of painting in the
+Netherlands remodelled in every department," says Waagen in the
+concluding sentence of his memoir, "by the energies of a single great
+and gifted mind. Thus was Rubens the originator of its second great
+epoch, to which we are indebted for such numerous and masterly
+performances in every branch of the art."
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE PUPILS OF RUBENS
+
+
+DAVID TENIERS the elder, who was born at Antwerp in 1582, received the
+first rudiments of his art from Rubens, who soon perceived in him the
+happy advances towards excelling in his profession that raised him to
+the head of his school. The prejudice in favour of his son, David
+Teniers the younger, is so great that the father is generally esteemed
+but a middling painter; and his pictures not worth the inquiry of a
+collector. His hand is so little distinguished, however, that the
+paintings of the father are often taken for those of the son. The father
+was certainly the inventor of the manner, which the son, who was his
+pupil, only improved with what little was wanting to perfection.
+
+Rubens was astonished at his early success, and though he followed the
+manner of Adrian Brouwer, looked on him as his most deserving pupil by
+the brightness of genius that he showed. He soon saved enough money to
+undertake the journey to Italy, and when at Rome he established himself
+with Adam Elsheimer, who was then in great vogue. In Elsheimer's manner
+he soon became a perfect master, without neglecting at the same time the
+study of other and greater masters, endeavouring to penetrate into the
+deepest mysteries of their practice. An abode of ten years in Italy, and
+the influence of Elsheimer combined with that of Rubens, formed him into
+what he became.
+
+When he returned to his own country he employed himself entirely in
+painting small pictures filled with figures of people drinking and
+merry-making, and numbers of peasants and country women. He displayed so
+much taste in these that the demand for them was universal. Even Rubens
+thought them an ornament to his collection.
+
+Teniers drew his own character in his pictures, and in the subjects he
+usually expressed everything tends to joy and pleasure. Always employed
+in copying after nature whatsoever presented itself, he taught his two
+sons, David and Abraham, to follow his example, and accustomed them to
+paint nothing but from that infallible model, by which means they both
+became excellent painters. These were his only disciples, and he died at
+Antwerp in 1649.
+
+The only distinction between his works and those of his son, David
+Teniers the younger, is that in the latter you discover a finer touch, a
+fresher brush, a greater choice of attitudes, and a better disposition
+of the figures. The father, too, retained something of the tone of
+Italy in his colouring, which was stronger than his son's; but his
+pictures have less harmony and union--though to tell the truth, when the
+father took pains to finish his picture, he very nearly resembled his
+son.
+
+The latter, DAVID TENIERS the younger, was born in 1610. He was
+nicknamed the Ape of painting, from his powers of imitation. The
+Archduke Leopold William made him a gentleman of his bedchamber, and he
+made copies of all his pictures. He came to England to buy several
+Italian pictures for Count Fuensaldegna, who on his return heaped
+favours upon him. Don John of Austria and the King of Spain set so great
+a value upon his pictures that they built a gallery set apart to
+preserve them--there are no less than fifty-two in the Prado Gallery
+to-day.
+
+His principal talent was landscape adorned with small figures. He
+painted men drinking and smoking, alchemists, corps de garde,
+temptations of S. Anthony, and country fairs and merry-makings. His
+small pictures are superior to his large ones. His execution displays
+the greatest ease; the leafing of his trees is light, his skies are
+admirable: his small figures have an exquisite expression and a most
+lively touch, and the characters are marked out with the greatest truth.
+From the thinness of the colours his works seem to have been finished at
+once; they are generally clear in all their parts, and Teniers had the
+art, without dark shades, to relieve his lights by other lights, so well
+managed as to produce the effect he wanted, an art which few besides
+himself have attained. He died at Antwerp in 1694.
+
+FRANS SNYDERS was born at Antwerp in the year 1587, ten years later,
+that is to say, than Rubens. He received his first instruction in the
+art of painting from Henry van Balen. His genius at first displayed
+itself only in painting fruit. He afterwards attempted animals, in
+which kind of study he succeeded so well that he surpassed all that had
+ever excelled before him. He stayed for some time in Italy, and the
+works he met with there by Castiglione proved a spur to his genius to
+attempt outdoing him in painting animals. When he returned to Flanders
+he fixed his ordinary abode at Brussels, where he was made painter to
+the Archduke and Duchess, and became attached to the house of Spain.
+Twenty-two of his pictures are in the Prado Gallery.
+
+When Snyders required large figures in his compositions both Rubens and
+Jordaens took pleasure in assisting him, and Rubens in turn borrowed the
+assistance of Snyders to paint the ground of his pictures; thus they
+mutually assisted each other in their labours, while Snyders' manly and
+vigorous manner was quite able to hold its own even when joined with
+that of the great master.
+
+ANTHONY VAN DYCK was born at Antwerp in 1599, less than three months
+before Velasquez at Seville. Both became so famous in their capacity of
+Court painters that the rest of their achievement is popularly regarded
+as little more than a bye-product.
+
+In the case of Van Dyck there is the more excuse for the English public,
+inasmuch as, like Holbein before him, he was exclusively employed while
+in this country in the production of portraits; and as "his works are so
+frequent in England," as Horace Walpole observes in the opening sentence
+of his memoir in the "Anecdotes of Painting," "that the generality of
+our people can scarce avoid thinking him their countryman," it is easy
+enough to forget that he only spent the last nine years of his life
+here.
+
+Again, the insatiable craze of the English and American public for
+portraits has helped to obscure the extent of Van Dyck's capabilities in
+other directions, and while the National Gallery contains not a single
+subject-piece from his hand, more and more thousands are continually
+spent in the acquisition of more and more portraits. The bewitching
+_Cupid and Psyche_ in Queen Mary's closet at Hampton Court, painted a
+year before his death, is scarcely known to exist!
+
+At the same time it would be useless to deny that Van Dyck's principal
+claim to his place among the greatest masters rests chiefly upon
+portraiture. The point I wish to make is that portrait painting never
+yet made a great master, but that none but a great master ever became a
+great portrait painter; and so long as we are only permitted to see the
+particular achievement of the artist in our public galleries, so long is
+it likely that we shall continue to be flooded with mediocre likenesses
+of fashionable people by painters whose highest or whose only
+achievement they constitute. Anyone can write a "short story" for the
+cheaper sort of modern journal; only writers like Hardy, Stevenson, or
+Kipling can give us a masterpiece in little.
+
+It was said that Rubens advised Van Dyck to devote himself to
+portraiture out of jealousy: but that is hardly in accordance with what
+we know of his generous nature. If the advice was given at all we may be
+sure that it was given in a friendly spirit. But there was something in
+the temperament of Van Dyck which peculiarly fitted him for the Court,
+apart from any question as to his excellence in any particular branch of
+his art, and it is evident that the personality of Rubens, and his
+connection with the rich and mighty of the earth, influenced him almost
+as much as did his art. How much he owed to Rubens, and how much Rubens
+owed to him in painting is a matter that is arguable. He had been
+several years with Van Balen before he entered the studio of Rubens,
+when eighteen years old, not as a pupil but as an assistant. Here he not
+only had the practical task of painting Rubens's compositions for him,
+in company with numerous others, but had also the advantage of studying
+the works of Titian and other of the great Italian masters in Rubens's
+famous collection. If the hand of Van Dyck is traceable in some of the
+pictures of Rubens at this period, so the spirit of Rubens is very
+obvious in those of Van Dyck. The chief thing to be remembered is that
+in these early days he was not painting portraits. His earliest works,
+in which the influence of Titian is perceptible as well as that of
+Rubens, are the _Christ bearing the Cross_, in S. Paul's at Antwerp,
+painted in 1618; the _S. Sebastian_ at Munich, and the _Christ Mocked_,
+at Berlin. The familiar portrait of _Cornelius van der Geest_ in the
+National Gallery, is one of his very earliest, probably before 1620.
+Again, on his first visit to Genoa, in 1621, on the advice of Rubens,
+his ambition was not to paint portraits, as on his second visit some
+years later, but to rival Rubens in the composition of great historical
+pieces. It was not until 1627, when he left behind him in Genoa the
+superb series of Balbi, Brignole-Sala, Cattaneo, and Lomellini
+portraits, and returned to Antwerp to undertake those such as the _Le
+Roys_ at Hertford House, or the _Beatrice de Cusance_ at Windsor, that
+he had really become a portrait painter. Even then, he was still
+determined not to yield to Rubens at Antwerp, and painted, amongst other
+subjects, the _Rinaldo and Armida_ for Charles I. It was only at the
+solicitation of George Geldorp, a schemer as well as a painter, that he
+consented at length, in 1632, to come to England; and it was only the
+welcome afforded to him by Charles that induced him to settle here.
+
+Two considerations of personal vanity may be suggested as actuating
+Charles to be specially indulgent to Van Dyck--an indulgence of which
+the results posterity should not omit to credit to the sad account of
+the martyr--first, that his father had failed to retain the painter in
+his service, and second, that Velasquez, who had made a sketch of him on
+his mad visit to Madrid in 1623, was then immortalising Philip.
+Velasquez being out of the question, why not Van Dyck! An excellent
+idea! Especially when instead of dwarfs, buffoons, and idiots, the
+English Court contained some exceedingly fine material besides the royal
+family for the artist to exercise his talent upon.
+
+After this, Flanders knew Van Dyck no more, save for a year or two's
+sojourn from 1633-1635 when he painted one or two magnificent portraits,
+and then returned to England, where he died in 1641. With the death of
+Rubens the year before, Flemish painting had suffered another eclipse;
+and though Snyders lived till 1657, and Jordaens and the younger Teniers
+continued till late in the century, no fresh seedlings appeared, and the
+soil again became barren. Rubens and Van Dyck were both too big for the
+little garden--their growth overspread Europe.
+
+
+
+
+_DUTCH SCHOOL_
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+Frans Hals
+
+
+Meantime we must turn our attention to Holland, where FRANS HALS, who
+was born only three years later than Rubens, namely in 1580, was the
+forerunner of Rembrandt, Van der Helst, Bol, Lely, and a host more of
+greater or less painters, who made their country as famous in the
+seventeenth century for art as their fathers had made it in the
+sixteenth for arms. Without going into the complications of the
+political history of the Netherlands at this period, it is important
+nevertheless to remember that while the Flemish provinces remained
+Catholic under Spain, the northern states, after heroic struggles,
+formed themselves into a Republic; so that while it is difficult to draw
+a hard and fast line between what was Dutch and what was Flemish in
+estimating the influence of one particular painter upon another, there
+is no question at all as to vital difference between the conditions
+which led to the production of the pictures of the two schools. The
+Flemish pictures were for the Church and for the Court, the Dutch for
+the house, the Guildhall, or the bourgeoisie. The former were
+aristocratic, the latter democratic. Rubens and Van Dyck were
+aristocrats, Hals and Rembrandt democrats. Rubens painted altar-pieces,
+for the great churches or cathedrals or for the chapels of his patrons.
+Rembrandt painted Bible stories for whoever would purchase them. Van
+Dyck painted the portraits of kings and nobles. Hals painted the rough
+soldiers and sailors, singly, or in the great groups into which they
+formed themselves as Guilds. For the first time in the history of
+painting, neither Church nor Court were its patrons.
+
+In any age or under any circumstances Frans Hals would have seemed a
+remarkable painter, but to measure his extraordinary genius to its full
+height we must try to realise what those times and those circumstances
+were. In Florence and Venice, as we have seen, there were great schools
+of painting, and in Florence especially, the whole city existed in an
+atmosphere of art. There was no escape from it. In Haarlem, where Hals
+spent his youth (he was born in Antwerp), there was no such state of
+affairs. There were no chapels to be decorated, no courtiers to be
+flattered. The country was seething with the effects of war, and the
+whole population were ready for it again at a moment's notice. There
+were plenty of heroes--every man was one--but not of the romantic sort.
+They were all bluff, hardy fellows, who wanted to get on with their
+business. Who would have thought that they wanted to have their
+portraits painted? And who, accordingly, could have induced them to do
+so except a bluff, roystering genius like Hals, who slashed them down on
+canvas before they had time to stop him? Once it got wind that Hals was
+such a good fellow, and that he dashed off a portrait to the life in as
+little time as it took to pass the time of day with him, he had plenty
+of business, and from painting single portraits he was commissioned to
+glorify the Guilds by depicting their banquets, which he did with
+almost as much speed and considerably more fidelity than the limelight
+man at a City dinner in these times. His first great group--_The Archers
+of S. George_, at Haarlem--has all the appearance of being painted
+instantaneously as the banqueters stood around the table before
+dispersing.
+
+When we think of the cultured Rubens, brought up in the atmosphere of
+Courts, and studying for years among the finest paintings and painters
+in Italy, and compare him with this low, ignorant fellow, who had never
+been outside the Netherlands, do we not find his genius still more
+amazing? Nowadays we see a portrait by Hals surrounded with the finest
+works of the greatest painters in all times and in all lands, and see
+how well it stands the comparison. But our admiration must be increased
+a hundredfold, when we know that he was without any of the training or
+tradition of a great artist, and that it must have been by sheer
+character and genius alone that he forced his art upon his commercial,
+though heroic public.
+
+One thing especially it is interesting to notice about the Dutch
+portraits of the early Republican period, namely, that they are
+obviously inspired by the pleasure of having a living, speaking likeness
+rather than by pride and ostentation. Bluff and swaggering as some of
+Hals's portraits of men appear to be--notably _The Laughing Cavalier_,
+at Hertford House--that is only because the subjects were bluff and
+swaggering fellows--swaggering, that is to say, in the consciousness of
+their ability and their readiness to defend their country and their
+homes again, if need be, against the tyrant. But these swaggerers are
+the exception, and the prevailing impression conveyed is that of
+honest, if determined, bluffness. They are not posing, these jolly
+Dutchmen, they are sitting or standing, for Hals to paint them just as
+they would sit or stand to be measured for a suit of clothes. Look at
+the heads of the man and the woman in the National Gallery. Could
+anything be more natural and unassuming? Look at the _Laughing
+Cavalier_, and ask if it is not the man himself, as Hals saw and knew
+him, not a faked up hero? Hals caught him in his best clothes, that is
+all. He did not put them on to be painted in--he was out on a jaunt.
+Look at Hals's women, how pleased they are to be painted, just as they
+are.
+
+Poor Hals, he was a good, honest fellow, though sadly given to drink and
+low company. But for sheer genius he has never had an equal. The vast
+number of his paintings--many of which now only exist in copies--shows
+that with every predilection to ease and comfort, he could not help
+painting--it simply welled out of him. It was a natural gift which seems
+to have needed no labour and no study.
+
+It is certain that this fecundity was a very potent factor in the
+development of the Dutch School of painting. Had Hals confined his
+talent to painting the portraits of the highest in the land, which would
+never have been seen by the public at large, it is improbable that such
+a business-like community would have produced many painters. But Hals
+must have popularised painting much more than we generally suppose. An
+example occurs to me in the picture of _The Rommelpot Player_, of which
+no less than thirteen versions are enumerated by De Groot, none of which
+can claim to be the original. One is at Wilton, another in Sir Frederick
+Cook's gallery at Richmond, and a third at Arthingworth Hall in
+Northamptonshire.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXV.--FRANS HALS
+
+PORTRAIT OF A LADY
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+The subject is an old beggar man playing in front of the door of a
+cottage on a ridiculous instrument consisting of an earthen pot covered
+over like a jampot with a lid of parchment, on which he makes a rude
+noise with a stick, to the intense delight of a group of children. A
+picture like this, then, it is evident, instead of hanging in solitary
+confinement in the house of a great person, was so widely popular that
+it was copied on all sides, and must have been seen by thousands of
+people.
+
+Next to Hals, in point of time, was HENDRIK GERRITZ POT, who was born,
+probably at Haarlem, in 1585. It is to him rather than to Ostade, who
+was a quarter of a century later, that we must trace the origin of
+smaller _genre_ pictures of the Dutch School which in later years became
+its principal product. Pot's works are neither very important nor very
+numerous, but as a portrait painter he is represented in the Louvre by a
+portrait of Charles I., which was probably painted when he was in
+England in 1631 or thereabouts; while at Hampton Court is a beautiful
+little piece by him which is catalogued under the title of _A Startling
+Introduction_. This belonged to Charles I., for his cypher is branded on
+the back of the panel on which it is painted, and it was sold by the
+Commonwealth as "a souldier making a strange posture to a Dutch lady by
+Bott." The painter's monogram H.P. appears on the large chimney piece
+before which the "soldier" is standing.
+
+GERARD HONTHORST, born at Utrecht in 1590, can hardly be said to belong
+to the Dutch School at all. When he was only twenty he went to Rome,
+where his devotion to painting effects of candle-light earned him the
+sobriquet of "Gherardo della Notte." In 1628 he was elected Dean of the
+Guild of St. Luke at Utrecht, but he was in no sense a national painter,
+and neither took nor gave anything in the way of national influence. He
+was in England for a few months in 1628, to which chance we are indebted
+for the picture of the Duke of Buckingham and his family which is in the
+National Portrait Gallery, and another group of the Cavendish family
+which is at Chatsworth. Pictures of the nobility, or of celebrities like
+Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, were more in his
+line than those of his republican patriots, and consequently he plays no
+part in the development of the school we are now considering.
+
+BARTHOLOMEW VAN DER HELST, born in Amsterdam, 1613, died there 1670. He
+is by far the most renowned of the Dutch portrait-painters of this
+period. Although nothing is known as regards the master under whom he
+studied, it is probable that if Hals was not actually his teacher, his
+works were the models whence Van der Helst formed himself. We see this
+in the portrait of Vice-Admiral Kortenaar at Amsterdam, where the
+conception of forms, and the unscumbled character of the strokes of the
+brush, recall Hals. The same may be observed in two larger pictures with
+archers in the Town Hall at Haarlem, where the inartistic arrangement
+and monotony of the otherwise warm flesh tones point to the earlier time
+of the painter. By about the year 1640 his character was more fully
+developed. His arrangement of portrait-pieces with numerous figures
+became very artistic and easy, his tone excellent, and his drawing
+masterly. This standard of excellence he retained till about 1660. The
+following are principal pictures of this period:--A scene from the
+Archery Guild of Amsterdam in 1639, including thirty figures. The
+celebrated picture inscribed 1648, an Archery Festival commemorating the
+Peace of Westphalia, and consisting of a party of twenty-four persons,
+at Amsterdam. The chief charm of this work consists in the strong and
+truthful individuality of every part, both in form and colour; in the
+capital drawing, which is especially conspicuous in the hands; in the
+powerful and clear colouring; and finally, in a kind of execution which
+observes a happy medium between decision and softness. In 1657 he
+executed the picture of the Archery Guild known by the name "het
+Doelenstück" at Amsterdam Gallery. This work represents three of the
+overseers of the Guild, with golden prize vases, and a fourth supposed
+to be the painter himself. It is almost surpassed by a replica on a
+smaller scale executed in the following year, which is now in the
+Louvre. At all events, this picture is in better preservation, and
+offers one of the most typical examples of portrait-painting that the
+Dutch School produced.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+REMBRANDT VAN RYN
+
+
+But the greatest of all the Dutch painters, in some ways the greatest
+painter that has ever lived, was REMBRANDT VAN RYN (1606-1669). Beside
+him all the rest seem merely commonplace, and their works the product of
+this or that demand, according to their different times and
+circumstances, executed with more or less skill. For Rembrandt there
+seems no place among them all--he must stand somewhere alone; and there
+is no standard by which to judge his perfections and imperfections
+except the man himself.
+
+Perhaps the greatest difference between Rembrandt and any other painter
+is that he never seems to have tried to please the public, but only
+painted to please himself. It is for this reason, no doubt, that he was
+never popular with the public, and is never likely to be; but just as
+Beethoven is only understandable by the really musical soul, so
+Rembrandt's appeal is to those who have the feeling for something in
+painting beyond the mere representation of familiar or heroic scenes and
+persons on canvas. For the public it is enough that one of his
+landscapes should be sold for £100,000, and they all flock to see it;
+but put a fine Rembrandt portrait in a shop-window without a name to it,
+and there would be little fear of the pavement being blocked.
+
+This failure of Rembrandt to please the public of his own day brings out
+the truth that the practice of painting had up to then subsisted only so
+long as it supplied a popular demand; and when we come to consider what
+that demand was, we find that it is for nothing else but a pleasing
+representation of natural objects, which may or may not embody some
+sentimental or historical association, but must first and foremost be a
+fair representation of more or less familiar things.
+
+The oldest story about pictures is that of Zeuxis and the bunch of
+grapes, which relates that he painted the fruit so like nature that the
+birds came and pecked at the painting--some versions, I believe, adding
+that the fruit itself was there but they preferred the painting. Similar
+stories with innumerable variations are told of later artists. Rembrandt
+himself is said to have been deceived by his pupils who, knowing he was
+careful about collecting money in small quantities, however extravagant
+he might be in spending it, painted coins on the floor of the studio,
+and enjoyed the joke of seeing him stoop to pick them up. We have heard,
+too, of flies painted with surprising skill in conspicuous places to
+deceive the unwary. But apart from these little pleasantries, one has
+only to remember how the earlier writers on painting have expressed
+themselves to see how much importance, consciously or unconsciously, was
+attached to life-like resemblance to the object painted. Vasari is
+constantly using phrases in which he extols the painter for having made
+a figure look like the life, as though that were the real thing to be
+aimed at. We remember Ben Jonson's lines under Shakespeare's
+portrait----
+
+    "Wherein the graver had a strife
+    With nature to outdo the life."
+
+And though Ben Jonson was not a critic, and if he had been there was
+little enough art in his time in England for him to criticize, still he
+expresses the general feeling of the public for any work of art.
+
+With the Dutch people this was most certainly the case, and the
+popularity of the painters of scenes of everyday life is a proof of it.
+That Hals, Brouwer, or Ostade were great painters was not half so
+important to them, if indeed they thought of it all, as that they were
+capable of turning out pictures which reflected their everyday life like
+a mirror.
+
+So long as Rembrandt painted portraits like those of the Pellicornes and
+their offspring--the two pictures at Hertford House--or a plain
+straightforward group like Dr Tulp's _Anatomy Lesson_ (though in this he
+was already getting away from convention), he was tolerated. And it was
+not so much his freedom in living and his extravagant notions of the
+pleasures of life that brought about his downfall, as his failure to
+realize that when he took the money subscribed for the group of Captain
+Banning Cocq's Company, the subscribers expected something else for
+their money than a picture (_The Night Watch_) which might be a
+masterpiece according to the painter's notions, but was certainly not a
+portrait group of the subscribers.
+
+Here, then, for the first time in the history of painting, we find an
+artist definitely at issue with the public. I do not say that this was
+the first time that an artist had failed to please the public, but it is
+the first occasion on which it was decided that if a painter was to
+undertake commissions, he must consider the wishes of the patron, or
+starve. It was something new for a painter of Rembrandt's repute to be
+told that not he, but the persons who commissioned the work, were to be
+the judges of whether or not it was satisfactory.
+
+The consequences were important. For Rembrandt, instead of taking the
+matter as a man of business, devoted the rest of his life to being an
+artist, and leaving the business of painting to men like Backer, Helst,
+and others, betook himself seriously to developing his art irrespective
+of what the public might or might not think of it. As a result, we have
+in the later work of Rembrandt something that the world--I mean the
+artistic part of it--would be very sorry to do without. Now the meaning
+of this is, not that Rembrandt was ill-advised in deserting his patrons,
+or in suffering them to desert him, but that for the first time in the
+history of painting an artist had the personality--I will not say the
+conscious determination--to realize that his art was something quite
+apart from the affairs of this world, and that what he could express on
+canvas was _not_ merely a representation of natural objects designed to
+please his contemporaries, but something more than human, something that
+would appeal to humanity for all time. That many before him had felt
+that of their art, to a lesser or greater degree, is unquestionable--but
+none of them had ever realised it. Dürer, certainly, may be cited as an
+exception, especially when contrasted with his phlegmatic and
+business-like compatriot Holbein. But then Dürer, a century before, and
+in totally different circumstances, was never assured of regular
+patronage as was Rembrandt.
+
+Rembrandt was the son of a miller named Harmann Geritz, who called
+himself Van Ryn, from the hamlet on the arm of the Rhine which runs
+through Leyden. His mother was the daughter of a baker. He was entered
+as a student at the University of Leyden, his parents being comfortably
+off; but he showed so little taste for the study of the law, for which
+they intended him, that he was allowed to follow his own bent of
+painting, in the studio of a now forgotten painter, Jacob van
+Swanenburg. Here he studied for about three years, after which he went
+to Amsterdam and was for a short time with another painter named
+Lastman, who was a clever but superficial imitator of the Italian School
+then flourishing in Rome.
+
+Returning to Leyden, Rembrandt set up his easel and remained there
+painting till 1631, when he went to Amsterdam. His works during this
+first period are not very well known in this country, but at Windsor and
+at Edinburgh are portraits of his mother, which must belong to it.
+
+The next decade was the happiest and most prosperous in Rembrandt's
+career. At Amsterdam he soon found favour with wealthy patrons, and his
+happiness and success were completed by his marrying Saskia van
+Ulenburgh, the sister of a wealthy connoisseur and art dealer, with whom
+Rembrandt had formed an intimate friendship. To this period belong the
+numerous portraits of himself and Saskia, alone or together, most of
+which are characterized by a barbaric splendour of costume, utterly
+different from the profusion of Rubens, but far more intense. Living
+among the wealthiest Jews in Amsterdam, he seems to have been strongly
+attracted by their orientalism, and while Rubens gloried in natural
+abundance of every sort, and painted the bounty of nature in the full
+sunlight, Rembrandt chose out the treasures of art, and painted costume
+and jewels gleaming out of the darkness. The portraits of himself in a
+cap at Hertford House (No. 52), and of the Old Lady in the National
+Gallery (No. 775), both painted in 1634, are notable examples of this
+period, though they have none of the orientalism to be seen in the
+various portraits of Saskia, or in _The Turk_ at Munich. The two double
+portraits at Hertford House of Jean Pellicorne and his wife with their
+son and daughter respectively, were among the commissions which he
+received after he set up at Amsterdam, and are therefore less
+interesting as self-revelations. Prosperity is not always the best
+condition under which to produce the highest work, and the temperament
+of Rembrandt was so peculiar that there is little wonder that the prim
+Dutchmen were not entirely captivated by his exuberant sensuality, or
+that we ourselves reserve our admiration principally for the more sombre
+and mysterious products of his later years after misfortune began to
+fall upon him.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXVI.--REMBRANDT
+
+PORTRAIT OF HENDRICKJE STOFFELS
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+In 1642 the beloved Saskia died, leaving an only child, Titus, whose
+features are familiar to us in the portrait at Hertford House. As though
+this were not affliction enough, Rembrandt had the mortification of
+offending his patrons over the commission to paint Captain Banning
+Cocq's Company. From this time onward, as the world and Rembrandt
+drifted farther and farther apart, his work becomes more and more
+wonderful.
+
+Dr Muther, in his _History of Painting_, observes that perhaps it is
+only possible to understand Rembrandt by interpreting his pictures not
+as paintings but as psychological documents. "A picture by Rembrandt in
+the Dresden Gallery," he says, "represents _Samson Putting Riddles to
+the Philistines_; and Rembrandt's entire activity, a riddle to the
+philistines of his time, has remained puzzling to the present day.... As
+no other man bore his name, so the artist, too, is something unique,
+mocks every historical analysis, and remains what he was, a puzzling,
+intangible, Hamlet nature--Rembrandt." The author's theory of the
+psychological document is hardly a solution of the admitted puzzle,
+though it is interesting to follow him in tracing it out in Rembrandt's
+religious pictures, from the _Samson_ already mentioned to his last
+dated work, in 1668, the Darmstadt _Crucifixion_. What distinguishes
+Rembrandt from all painters up to, and considerably later than his time,
+and in particular from those of his own school, is the mental, as
+compared with the physical activity that his pictures represent. Perhaps
+this is only another way of stating Dr Muther's theory of the
+psychological documents, but it enables us to test that theory by
+comparing his work with that of others. In technical skill Beruete
+claims a far higher place for Velasquez, going so far as to say that
+the _Lesson in Anatomy_ is not a lesson in painting. But the difference
+between the two is not as great as that in technique, though infinitely
+wider in the mental process which led to the production of a picture. A
+reproduction of the _Portrait of an Old Pole_, at S. Petersburg, is in
+front of me, as it happens, as I am writing; and I see in this no
+inferiority in firmness and precision, in truth and vigour, to any
+portrait by Velasquez.
+
+In their technical ability to present the life-like portrait of a real
+man, we can place Rembrandt, Velasquez, Hals, and Van Dyck on pretty
+much of a level; if we had _Van der Geest_, _Montanes_, the _Old Pole_
+and the _Laughing Cavalier_ all in a row, we should find there was not
+much to choose between them for downright realization. But while in the
+work of Velasquez we see the working of a fine and sensitive
+appreciation of his friend's personality, and the most exquisite
+realization of what was before him, in that of Rembrandt we seem to see
+less of the Pole and more of Rembrandt himself. It is as though he were
+singing softly to himself while he was painting, thinking his own
+thoughts: while Velasquez was simply concerned with the appearance and
+the thoughts of his model.
+
+That Rembrandt's pictures are self-revelations, or psychological
+documents, is certainly true; and a proof of it is in the extraordinary
+number of portraits of himself. The famous Dresden picture of himself
+with Saskia on his knee can only be regarded in that light, and that
+brings into the category all the numerous pictures of Saskia and of
+Hendrike Stoffels, who formed so great a part of his life. If to these
+we add, with Dr Muther, his Biblical subjects, we find that there is
+not so very much left, and when we turn to the life's work of Rubens,
+Titian, Velasquez, or in fact any of the great painters, the difference
+is at once apparent. So that in the pictures of Rembrandt we may expect
+to find less of what we look for in those of others in the way of
+display, but infinitely more of the qualities which, to whatever extent
+they exist in other artists, are bound to be sacrificed to display. When
+we are asked to a feast, we find the room brilliantly lit, and our host
+the centre of an assemblage for whom he has felt it his duty to make a
+display consistent with his means and his station. If we were to peep
+into his house one night we might find him in a room illumined only with
+his reading-lamp, absorbed in his favourite study; but instead of only
+exchanging a few conventional phrases with him, and passing on to mingle
+with his guests and to enjoy his hospitality, we might sit and talk with
+him into the small hours. That is the difference between the success of
+Hals with his _Feast of S. George_, and the failure of Rembrandt with
+_The Night Watch_. Hals was at the feast, and of it. Rembrandt was
+wrapped up in himself, and didn't enter into the spirit of the
+company--he was carried away by his own. That is why his pictures are so
+dark--not of deliberate technical purpose, like those of the
+_Tenebrosi_, but because to him a subject was felt within him rather
+than seen as a picture on so many square feet of canvas. When we call up
+in our own minds the recollection of some event of more than usually
+deep significance in our past, we only see the deathbed, the two
+combatants, the face of the beloved, or whatever it may be; the
+accessories are nothing, unless our imagination is stronger than the
+sentiment evoked, and sets to work to supply them. It is this
+characteristic which so sharply distinguishes the work of Rembrandt
+from that of his closest imitators. There is a large picture in the
+National Gallery, _Christ Blessing the Children_, catalogued as "School
+of Rembrandt," in which we see as near an approach to his manner as to
+justify the attribution, but that is all. I do not know why it has never
+been suggested that this is the work of NICOLAS MAES, who was actually
+his pupil, and who was one of the few Dutch artists to paint life-sized
+groups, as he is known to have done in his earlier days when still under
+the influence of Rembrandt. _The Card Players_, close beside it, has
+marked affinities in style, and especially in the very natural
+characterization of the faces, which is also apparent in that of the
+child in the other picture, and another on the extreme left of the
+picture. That it cannot be Rembrandt's is quite evident; the grouping
+and the lighting of it proclaim the picture seen on the canvas, and not
+felt within the artist's own consciousness.
+
+The realistic tendency which, as has already been pointed out, was so
+characteristic of the whole art of the Netherlands, showed the most
+remarkable and original results in the work of an idealist like
+Rembrandt. Sandrart, one of the earliest writers on painting, says that
+Rembrandt "usually painted things of a simple and not thoughtful
+character, but which were pleasing to the eyes, and
+picturesque"--_schilderachtig_, as the Netherlanders called it. This
+combination of realism and picturesqueness, assisted by his marvellous
+technical power, put him far above and apart from all his compeers. In
+the absence of any pictures by his masters Van Swanenburg and Pinas, it
+is difficult to ascertain what, if anything, he learnt from them. From
+Peter Lastman we may be sure he learnt nothing in the way of technique.
+Kugler--who in these paragraphs is my principal authority--suggests that
+it is highly probable that in this respect he formed himself from the
+pictures of Frans Hals, with which he must have been early acquainted in
+the neighbouring town of Haarlem. At all events unexampled freedom,
+spirit, and breadth of his manner is comparable with that of no other
+earlier Dutch master. But all these admirable qualities would offer no
+sufficient compensation for the ugly and often vulgar character of his
+heads and figures, and for the total subversion of all the traditional
+rules of art in costume and accessory, and would fail to account for the
+great admiration which his works enjoy, if he had not been possessed,
+besides, of an intensely artistic individuality.
+
+In his earliest pictures his touch is already masterly and free, but
+still careful, while the colour of the flesh is warm and clear and the
+light full. _Dr Tulp's Anatomy_, painted in 1632, is the most famous of
+this period. In _The Night Watch_, at Amsterdam, dated 1642, the light
+is already restricted, falling only on isolated objects; the local tone
+of the flesh is more golden; the touch more spirited and distinct.
+Later, that is to say from about 1654 onwards, the golden flesh tones
+become still more intense, passing sometimes into a brown of less
+transparency, and accompanied frequently with grey and blackish shadows
+and sometimes with rather cool lights. The chief picture of this epoch,
+dated 1661, is _The Syndics_, also at Amsterdam, a group of six men.
+This, in the depth of the still transparent golden tone, in the
+animation of the heads, and in body and breadth of handling, is a true
+masterpiece.
+
+With respect to his treatment of Biblical subjects, two older writers,
+Kolloff and Guhl, accord him an honour which, as we shall see, Kugler
+gives to Dürer a century earlier, namely that of being the painter of
+the true spirit of the Reformed Church. Though it is certain, Kugler
+admits, that no other school of painting in Rembrandt's time--neither
+that of Rubens, nor that of the Carracci, nor the French nor Spanish
+schools--rendered the spiritual import of Biblical subjects with the
+purity and depth exhibited by the great Dutch master. Here the kindly
+element of deep sentiment combines most happily with his feeling for
+composition, as in the _Descent from the Cross_, at Munich, in _The Holy
+Family_, in the Louvre, and above all in _The Woman taken in Adultery_,
+in the National Gallery. In this last, a touching truthfulness and depth
+of feeling, with every other grand quality peculiar to Rembrandt, are
+seen in their highest perfection. Of hardly less excellence, also, is
+our _Descent from the Cross_.
+
+Endowed with so many admirable qualities, it follows that Rembrandt was
+a portrait painter of the highest order, while his peculiar style of
+lighting, his colouring and treatment, distinguish his portraits from
+those by all other masters. Even the works of his most successful
+pupils, who followed his style in this respect, are far behind him in
+energy of conception and execution. The number of his admirable
+portraits is so large that it is difficult to know which to mention as
+most characteristic. No other artist ever painted his own portrait so
+frequently, and some of these may first be mentioned. That in the
+Louvre, dated 1633, represents him in youthful years, fresh and full of
+hope. It is spiritedly painted in the bright tone of his earlier period.
+Another in the same gallery, of the year 1660, painted with
+extraordinary breadth and certainty of hand of that later period, shows
+a man weighed down with the cares of life, with grey hair and deeply
+furrowed forehead.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXVII.--REMBRANDT
+
+PORTRAIT OF AN OLD LADY
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+The one at Hertford House, already mentioned, and two in the National
+Gallery, fall between these extremes. Of other portraits we have already
+mentioned the two Pellicorne groups in the Wallace Collection; and
+another of this earliest period, the very popular _Old Woman_, in the
+National Gallery, dated 1634. This is of greater interest as showing, if
+anything does, whether it is fair to attribute any of his training to
+the influence of Hals. At any rate this picture is a highly important
+proof that at the early age of twenty-six, the painter was already in
+the full possession of that energy and animation of conception, and of
+that decision of the "broad and marrowy touch" which are so
+characteristic of him. Of his later period--probably about 1657--a fine
+example is _The Jewish Rabbi_, and of his latest the _Old Man_, both in
+the National Gallery.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+PAINTERS OF GENRE
+
+
+The painters of _genre_, by the number, quality, and diversity of whose
+pictures the Dutch School is specially distinguished, may be roughly
+divided into three classes; namely, those who studied the upper, the
+middle, and the lower classes respectively. But as Holland was a
+republic, and the great stream of its art welled up from the earth and
+was not showered upon it from above, it will be found convenient to
+reverse the social order in considering them, and begin with the
+immediate successors of Frans Hals, whose influence was without doubt a
+very considerable factor in the development of Adrian Brouwer and Adrian
+and Isaac Ostade.
+
+ADRIAN BROUWER, now generally classed under the Flemish School, was
+born at Oudenarde in 1606. But he went early to Haarlem, and it was not
+until about 1630 that he settled at Antwerp, where he died in 1641. He
+was a pupil of Frans Hals, and acquired from him not only his spirited
+and free touch, but also a similar mode of life. His pictures, which for
+the most part represent the lower orders eating and drinking, often in
+furious strife, are extraordinary true and life-like in character, and
+display a singularly delicate and harmonious colouring, which inclines
+to the cool scale, an admirable individuality, and a _sfumato_ of
+surface in which he is unrivalled; so that we can well understand the
+high esteem in which Rubens held them. Owing to his mode of life, and to
+its early close, the number of his works is not large, and they are now
+seldom met with. No gallery is so rich in them as Munich, which
+possesses nine, six of which are masterpieces. _A Party of Peasants at a
+Game of Cards_, affords an example of the brightness and clearness of
+those cool tones in which he evidently became the model of Teniers.
+_Spanish Soldiers Throwing Dice_, is equally harmonious, in a subdued
+brownish tone. _A Surgeon Removing the Plaster from the Arm of a
+Peasant_ is not only most masterly and animated in expression, but is a
+type of his bright, clear, and golden tone, and is singularly free and
+light in touch. _Card-players Fighting_, is in every respect one of his
+best pictures. The momentary action in each figure, all of them being
+individualized with singular accuracy even as regards the kind of
+complexion, is incomparable, the tenderness of the harmony astonishing,
+and the execution of extraordinary delicacy. The only example in the
+National Gallery is the _Three Boors Drinking_, bequeathed by George
+Salting in 1910; and at Hertford House the _Boor Asleep_, though of
+this we may without hesitation accept the description in the catalogue,
+"our painting is of the highest quality, and in the audacity of its
+realism rises almost to grandeur."
+
+ADRIAN VAN OSTADE, said to have been born at Lubeck, was baptized in
+1610 at Haarlem, where he studied under Frans Hals, and he formed a very
+good taste in colouring. Nature guided his brush in everything he
+undertook; he devoted himself almost entirely to painting peasants and
+drunkards, whose gestures and most trifling actions were the subject of
+his most serious meditation. The subjects of his little pictures are not
+more elevated than those of Brouwer, and considerably less than those of
+Teniers--they are nearly always alehouses or kitchens. He is perhaps one
+of the Dutch masters who best understood chiaroscuro. His figures are
+very lively, and he sometimes put them into the pictures of the best
+painters among his countrymen. Nothing can excel his pictures of
+stables, in which the light is spread so judiciously that all one could
+wish is a lighter touch in his drawing, and a little more height in his
+figures. Many of his brother Isaak's pictures are improperly attributed
+to him, which, though painted in the same manner, are never of the real
+excellence of Adrian's.
+
+The _Interior with Peasants_ at Hertford House, and _The Alchymist_ at
+the National Gallery are a characteristic pair of his pictures, which
+were sold in the collection of M. de Jully in 1769 for £164, the former
+being purchased by the third Marquess of Hertford and the latter passing
+into the Peel Collection. _Buying Fish_, at Hertford House, dated
+1669--when the artist was nearly sixty years old, is remarkable for its
+breadth of effect and brilliancy of colour.
+
+JAN STEEN, born at Leyden about the year 1626, died 1679. He first
+received instruction under Nicolas Knupler; and afterwards it is said
+worked with Jan van Goyen, whose daughter he married. An extraordinary
+genius for painting was unfortunately co-existent in Jan Steen with
+jovial habits of no moderate kind. The position of tavern-keeper in
+which he was placed by his family, gave both the opportunity of
+indulging his propensities and also that of depicting the pleasures of
+eating and drinking, of song, card-playing and love-making directly from
+nature. He must have worked with amazing facility, for in spite of the
+time consumed in this mode of life, to which his comparatively early
+death may be attributed, the number of his pictures is very great. His
+favourite subjects were groups like the _Family Jollification_; the
+_Feast of the Bean King_; and that form of diversion illustrating the
+proverb, "_So wie die Alten sungen, so pfeifen auch die Jungen_"; fairs,
+weddings, etc.; he also treated other scenes, such as the Doctor's
+Visit, the Schoolmaster with a generally very unmanageable set of
+boys--of which is a charming example at Dublin. The ludicrous ways of
+children seem especially to have attracted him; accordingly, he depicts
+with great zest the old Dutch custom on St. Nicholas's Day, September
+3rd, of rewarding the good, and punishing the naughty child; or shows a
+mischievous little urchin teasing the cat, or stealing money from the
+pockets of their, alas!--drunken progenitors.
+
+Jan Steen is the most genial painter of the whole Dutch School. His
+humour has made him so popular with the English, that at least
+two-thirds of his pictures are in their possession.
+
+A peculiar cluster of masters, belonging to the Dutch
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXVIII.--TERBORCH
+
+THE CONCERT
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+School, was formed by Gerard Dou. However careful in execution were such
+painters as Terburg, Metsu, and Netscher, yet Gerard Dou and his
+scholars and imitators surpassed them in the development of that
+technical finish with which they rendered the smallest detail with
+meticulous exactitude.
+
+GERARD DOU was born at Leyden on the 7th April 1613, died there 1680. He
+entered Rembrandt's school at fifteen years of age, and in three years
+had attained the position of an independent artist. He devoted himself
+at first to portraiture, and, like his master, made his own face
+frequently his subject. Afterwards he treated scenes from the life
+chiefly of the middle classes. He took particular pleasure in the
+representation of hermits; he also painted scriptural events and
+occasionally still life. His lighting is frequently that of lanterns and
+candles. Most of his pictures contain only from one to three figures,
+and do not exceed about 2 ft. high and 1 ft. 3 in. wide, being often
+smaller. His pictures seldom attain even an animated moral import, and
+may be said to be limited usually to a certain kindliness of sentiment.
+On the other hand, he possessed a trace of his master's feeling for the
+picturesque, and for chiaroscuro. Notwithstanding the incalculable
+minuteness of his execution, the touch of his brush is free and soft,
+and his best pictures look like Nature seen through the camera-obscura.
+His works were so highly estimated in his own time, that the President
+van Spiring, at the Hague, offered him 1000 florins a year for the right
+of pre-emption of his pictures. Considering the time which such finish
+required, and the early age at which he died, the number of his
+pictures--Smith enumerates about 200--is remarkable. In the Louvre are
+the following:--An old woman seated at a window, reading the Bible to
+her husband; this is one of the best among the many representations by
+Dou of a similar kind, being of warm sunny effect, and marvellous
+finish. Also the _Woman with the Dropsy_, which is accounted his
+_chef-d'oeuvre_.
+
+Among the scholars of Gerard Dou, FRANS VAN MIERIS, born at Leyden 1635,
+died 1681, takes the first place. In chiaroscuro, and in delicacy of
+execution he is not inferior to his master. Although his pictures are
+generally very small, yet with their extraordinary minuteness of
+execution it is surprising that, in a life extended only to forty-six
+years, he should have produced so many. The Munich Gallery has most,
+then Dresden, Vienna, Florence, and St. Petersburg. The date, 1656, on a
+picture in the Vienna Gallery, _The Doctor_, shows the painter to have
+attained the summit of his art at twenty-one years of age. Another dated
+1660, in the same gallery, executed for the Archduke Leopold, is one of
+his best. The scene is a shop with a young woman showing a gentleman,
+who has taken her by the chin, various handkerchiefs and stuffs. In the
+Munich Gallery is _A Soldier_, dated 1662, of admirable transparency and
+softness. Also _A Lady_ in a yellow satin dress fainting in the presence
+of the doctor. In the Hague Gallery is _A Boy Blowing Soap-bubbles_,
+dated 1663. This is a charming little picture of great depth of the
+brownish tone. Also _The Painter and His Wife_, whose little shock dog
+he is teasing; very naïve and lively in the heads, and most delicately
+treated in a subdued but clear tone. In the Dresden Gallery are Mieris
+again and his wife before her portrait. This is one of his most
+successful pictures for chiaroscuro, tone, and spirited handling.
+
+NICOLAS MAES, already mentioned, born at
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXIX.--GABRIEL METSU
+
+THE MUSIC LESSON
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+Dordrecht 1632, died 1693, was actually a pupil of Rembrandt. His much
+prized and rare _genre_ pictures treat very simple subjects, and consist
+seldom of more than two or three figures, generally of women. The
+naïvete and homeliness of his feeling, with the addition sometimes of a
+trait of kindly humour; the admirable lighting, and a touch resembling
+Rembrandt in impasto and vigour, render his pictures very attractive. In
+the National Gallery, besides _The Card Players_, are _The Cradle_, _The
+Dutch Ménage_, dated 1655; and _The Idle Servant_: all these are
+admirable, and the last-named a _chef-d'oeuvre_.
+
+PETER DE HOOGH (1629-1677) decidedly belongs to the numerous artistic
+posterity of Rembrandt, possibly through Karel Fabritius, and stands
+nearer to Vermeer and to Maes, than to any other painter. His biography
+can only be gathered from the occasional dates on his pictures,
+extending from 1658 to 1670. Although he impresses the eye by the same
+effects as Maes, yet he is also very different from him. He has not his
+humour, and seldom his kindliness, and his figures, which are either
+playing cards, smoking or drinking, or engaged in the transaction of
+some household duty,--with faces that say but little--have generally
+only the interest of a peaceful or jovial existence. If Maes takes the
+lead in warm lighting, Peter de Hoogh may be considered _par excellence_
+the painter of full and clear sunlight. If, again, Maes shows us his
+figures almost exclusively in interiors, Peter de Hoogh places them most
+frequently in the open air--in courtyards. In the representation of the
+poetry of light, and in that marvellous brilliancy and clearness with
+which he calls it forth in various distances till the background is
+reached, which is generally illumined by a fresh beam, no other master
+can compare with him. His prevailing local colour is red, repeated with
+greater delicacy in various planes of distance. This colour fixes the
+rest of the scale. His touch is of great delicacy; his impasto
+admirable.
+
+GERARD TERBURG, born at Zwol 1608, died 1681, learned painting under his
+father, and when still young visited Germany and Italy, painting
+numerous portraits on a small scale, and occasionally the size of life.
+But his place in the history of art is owing principally to a number of
+pictures, seldom representing more than three, and often only one
+figure, taken from the wealthier classes, in which great elegance of
+costume, and of all accompanying circumstances, is rendered with the
+finest keeping, and with a highly delicate but by no means over-smooth
+execution. He may be considered as the originator of this class of
+pictures, in which, after his example, several other Dutch painters
+distinguished themselves. With him the chief mass of light is generally
+formed by the white satin dress of a lady, which gives the tone for the
+prevailing cool harmony of the picture. Among his pictures we
+occasionally find some which, taken successively, represent several
+different moments of one scene. Thus in the Dresden Gallery, there are
+two good pictures: the one of an officer writing a letter, while a
+trumpter waits for it; the other of a girl in white satin washing her
+hands in a basin held before her by a maid-servant; while at Munich, is
+another fine work, in which the trumpeter is offering the young lady the
+letter, who owing to the presence of the maid, who evidently
+disapproves, is uncertain whether to take the missive. Finally, in the
+Amsterdam Gallery, the celebrated picture known by the title of _Conseil
+paternel_, furnishes
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXX.--PIETER DE HOOCH
+
+INTERIOR OF A DUTCH HOUSE
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+the closing scene. The maid has betrayed the affair to the father, and
+he is delivering a lecture to the young lady, in whom by turning her
+back on the spectator, the painter has happily expressed the feeling of
+shame; good repetitions are in the Berlin Museum, and in the Bridgewater
+Gallery. But Terburg's perfection as regards the clearness and harmony
+of his silvery tone is shown in a picture at Cassel, representing a
+young lady in white satin sitting playing the lute at a table.
+
+JAN VERMEER OF DELFT (1632-1675) was certainly a pupil of Fabritius, and
+thus "grandson" of Rembrandt. To class him with painters of _genre_
+seems almost a profanation of the exquisite sense of beauty with which,
+almost alone among the Dutch painters, he seems to have been endowed. It
+is like classing Walter Pater with art critics. But as Vermeer had to
+express himself in some form, it is perhaps fortunate that the school
+had developed this kind of poetic portraiture, under Terburg, Metsu and
+others, to a point where a genius like Vermeer could use it as the
+vehicle of his fascinating self-revelations. In landscape we have the
+_View of Delft_, at the Hague, which has shown the nineteenth century
+painters more than they could ever see in their more famous
+predecessors; but it is in the simple compositions like _The Letter
+Reader_ at Amsterdam, _The Proposal_, at Dresden, or the _Lady at the
+Virginals_, in the National Gallery, that he displays his greatest power
+and charm.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+PAINTERS OF ANIMALS
+
+
+As a link between the painters of _genre_ and the landscapists, we may
+here mention some of the numerous artists who either made landscape the
+background for groups of figures and animals, or peopled their
+landscapes with groups--it matters not which way we put it. Among these
+we shall find several of the most famous, or at any rate the most
+popular artists of the Dutch School.
+
+PHILIPS WOUVERMAN (1619-1668), whose reputation during the last century
+was greater than that of almost any of the Dutch painters except
+Rembrandt and Dou, is said to have studied under Hals, but it is more
+certain that the master from whom he learnt most, if not all, was Jan
+Wynants at Haarlem, whose whole manner in landscape he quickly succeeded
+in acquiring, and surpassed him in his facility with horsemen and other
+figures.
+
+Wouverman's works have all the excellences that may be expected from
+high finishing, correctness, agreeable composition and colouring. It
+does not appear that he was ever in Italy, or even quitted the city of
+Haarlem, though it would seem probable that his more elaborate
+compositions owed something to other influences than those of Hals or
+Wynants. In his earlier pictures there are no horses, but later in his
+career he generally subordinated his landscapes to the groups or
+subjects for which he is most famous. In the National Gallery, among
+eleven examples, are a _Halt of Officers_, _Interior of a Stable_, _A
+Battle_, _The Bohemians_, and _Shoeing a Horse_, all of which contain
+numerous figures, mounted and unmounted--and there is nearly always a
+white horse.
+
+With all his success, he died a poor man, and it is related that in his
+last hours he burned a box filled with his studies and drawings, saying,
+"I have been so ill repaid for all my labours, that I would not have
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXXI.--JAN VERMEER
+
+THE LACE MAKER
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+those designs engage my son to embrace so miserable a profession as
+mine." This son followed his advice, and became a Chartreux friar. Peter
+and Jan Wouverman were his brothers. The former painted hawking scenes,
+and his horses, though well designed, were not equal to those of
+Philips. The latter is represented in the National Gallery by a
+landscape in which the spirit of Wynant's, rather than that of
+Philips's, is discernible.
+
+At Hertford House, out of seven examples, two are of more than usual
+excellence, and well represent his earlier and later manners. _The
+Afternoon Landscape with a White Horse_ (No. 226 in Room XIII), which
+Smith (in his Catalogue Raisonné), characterizes as possessing unusual
+freedom of pencilling, and powerful effect, dates from the transition
+from the early to the middle period, and is a very effective picture, as
+well as being very characteristic. The _Horse Fair_ (No. 65, in Room
+XVI), is not only much larger than the other--it measures 25 x 35
+inches--but is a really important picture. Lord Hertford paid £3200 for
+it in 1854. It was engraved by Moyrean, for his series of a hundred
+prints after Wouverman, under the title of _Le Grand Marché aux
+Chevaux_. It is thus described by Smith:--"This very capital picture
+exhibits an open country divided in the middle distance by a river whose
+course is lost among the distant mountains. The principal scene of
+activity is represented along the front and second grounds, on which may
+be numbered about twenty-four horses, exhibiting that noble animal in
+every variety of action, and nearly fifty persons. On the right of the
+picture is a coach, drawn by four fine grey horses, and in front of this
+object are a grey and a bay horse, on the latter of which are mounted a
+man and a boy. In advance of them is a group of four horses and several
+persons, among whom may be noticed a cavalier and a lady observing the
+paces of a horse which a jockey and his master are showing off. A
+gentleman on a black horse seems also to be watching the action of the
+animal. Near this person is a mare lying down, and a foal standing by it
+which a boy is approaching. On the opposite side of the picture is a
+gentleman on a cream-coloured horse, near two spirited greys, one of
+which is kicking, and a woman, a man and a boy are escaping from its
+heels. From thence the eye looks over an open space occupied by men and
+horses, receding in succession to the bank of the river, along which are
+houses and tents concealed in part by trees. This picture is painted
+throughout with great care and delicacy in what is termed the last
+manner of the master, remarkable for the prevalent grey or silvery hues
+of colouring."
+
+ALBERT CUYP, born at Dortrecht 1620, died there about 1672. Of the life
+of this great painter little more is known with any certainty than that
+he was the scholar of his father, Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp. Cattle form a
+prominent feature in many of his works, though never so highly finished
+as in those of Paul Potter or Adrian van de Velde; indeed, in many of
+Cuyp's pictures, they are quite subordinate. His favourite subjects, a
+landscape with a river, with cattle lying or standing on its banks, and
+landscapes with horsemen in the foreground, were suggested to him no
+doubt by the country about Dortrecht and the river Maas: but he also
+painted winter landscapes, and especially views of rivers where the
+broad extent of water is animated by vessels. Sometimes, too, with great
+perfection, fowls as large as life, hens, ducks, etc., and still life.
+He also painted portraits, though less successfully. However great the
+skill displayed in the composition of his works, their principal charm
+lies in the beauty and truthfulness of their peculiar lighting. No other
+painter, with the exception of Claude, has so well understood the cool
+freshness of morning, the bright but misty light of a hot noon, or the
+warm glow of a clear sunset. The effect of his pictures is further
+enhanced by the skill with which he avails himself of the aid of
+contrasts; as for example, dark, rich colours of the reposing cattle as
+seen against the bright sky. In his own country no picture of his, till
+the year 1750, ever sold for more than thirty florins. Indeed, Kugler
+was informed by a Dutch friend, that in past times, when a picture found
+no bidder, the auctioneer would offer to throw in "a little Cuyp" in
+order to induce a sale. The merit of having first given him his due rank
+belongs to the English, who as early as 1785, gave at the sale of Linden
+van Slingelandt's collection at Dortrecht high prices for Cuyp's works;
+About nine-tenths of his pictures are consequently to be found in
+England.
+
+One of his finest works is the landscape, in bright, warm, morning
+light, with two cows reposing in the foreground, and a woman conversing
+with a horseman, in the National Gallery (No. 53). The whole picture
+breathes a cheerful and rural tranquillity. In his mature time, these
+admirable qualities are seen in higher development. In the Louvre (No.
+104), is another fine example--a scene with six cows, a shepherd blowing
+the horn, and two children listening to him. This is admirably arranged,
+of greater truthfulness as regards the form and colouring of the cattle
+than usual, and with the warm lighting of the sky executed with equal
+decision and softness. This picture is one of the master's chief
+productions, being also about 4 ft. high by 6 ft. wide. Another with
+three horsemen, and a servant carrying partridges, and in the centre a
+meadow with cattle, is also in the Louvre. This is less attractive in
+subject, but ranks equally high as a work of art. In Buckingham Palace
+are two pictures, one with three cows reposing, and one standing by a
+clear stream, near them a herdsman and a woman; other cows are in water
+near the ruins of a castle. In this picture, we see Cuyp in every
+respect at his culminating point of excellence. Not less fine, and of
+singular force of colour, is the landscape, with a broad river running
+through it, and a horseman under a tree in conversation with a
+countryman.
+
+PAUL POTTER, born at Enckhuysen 1625, died at Amsterdam 1654. Although
+the scholar of his father, Pieter Potter, who was but a mediocre
+painter, he made such astonishing progress as to rank at the age of 15
+as a finished artist. He removed very early to the Hague, where his
+talents met with universal recognition, including that of Prince Maurice
+of Orange, and where he married. In the year 1652, however, he removed
+to Amsterdam at the instance of one of his chief patrons, the
+Burgomaster Tulp. Of the masters who have striven pre-eminently after
+truth he is, beyond all question, one of the greatest that ever lived.
+In order to succeed in this aim, he acquired a correctness of drawing, a
+kind of modelling which imparts an almost plastic effect to his animals,
+an extraordinary execution of detail in the most solid impasto, and a
+truth of colouring which harmonises astonishingly with the time of day.
+In his landscapes, which generally consist of a few willows in the
+foreground, and of a wide view over meadows, the most delicate
+graduation of aërial perspective is seen. With few exceptions, his
+animals are small, and his pictures proportionately moderate in size. By
+the year 1647 he had attained his full perfection. Of this date is the
+celebrated group called _The Young Bull_, in the Hague Gallery. All the
+figures in this are as large as life, and so extraordinarily true to
+nature as not only to appear real at a certain distance, but even to
+keep up the illusion when seen near.
+
+A picture dated 1649, now in Buckingham Palace, of two cows and a young
+bull in a pasture, combines with his customary fidelity to nature a more
+than common power of effect, and breadth and freedom of treatment. To
+the same year belongs also The _Farmyard_, formerly in the Cassel
+Gallery, now in that of S. Petersburg, which, according to Smith, fully
+deserves its celebrity both for the clearness and warmth of the sunset
+effect, as well as for its masterly execution. To 1650 belongs the
+picture of _Orpheus_, charming the animal world by the strains of his
+lyre, in the Amsterdam Museum. Here we see that the master had also
+studied wild animals. He is most successful in the bear. In the same
+gallery is another _chef-d'oeuvre_ of the same year--a hilly landscape
+with a shepherdess singing to her child, a shepherd playing on the
+bagpipe, and oxen, sheep, and goats around.
+
+The names of Weenix and Hondecoeter are so inseparably associated in the
+popular mind as painters of birds, whose respective works are not
+readily distinguishable moreover by the casual observer, that a short
+excursion into their family histories is advisable, for the purpose of
+showing how it was that this particular branch of the art was so
+successfully practised by the two. Moreover, as there were three
+Hondecoeters and two Weenixes who were painters, it is necessary to say
+something about each of them.
+
+MELCHIOR HONDECOETER, the best known, was of an ancient and noble
+family. He was instructed till the age of seventeen by his father
+Gysbert, who was a tolerable painter. Giles Hondecoeter, his
+grandfather, painted live birds admirably, but chiefly cocks and hens in
+the taste of Savery and Vincaboom. Melchior was born in 1636, and
+studied for a time with his father; but meantime his aunt Josina had
+married Jan Baptist Weenix, and a son was born to them, Jan Weenix, who
+inherited from old Giles Hondecoeter, his grandfather, his talent for
+painting poultry, and from his father, Jan Baptist Weenix, he acquired
+the benefit of several influences which were not shared by his cousin
+Melchior.
+
+JAN BAPTIST WEENIX, who was nicknamed "Rattle," was born at Amsterdam
+about 1621. His father was an architect, who bred his son up to that
+profession, but he was afterwards put to study painting under Abraham
+Bloemart. Soon after his marriage with Josina he was seized with the
+desire to visit Italy, and he set off alone to Rome, promising to return
+in four months. In Rome, however, he was so well received that he stayed
+there four years, and Italianized himself to an extent that may be seen
+in a picture in the Wallace Collection, a _Coast Scene with Classic
+Ruins_, which he signs _Gio. Batta. Weenix_. Though he returned to
+Holland and settled near Utrecht, his manner was sensibly modified by
+his sojourn in Rome.
+
+JAN WEENIX, who was born at Amsterdam in 1649, though he succeeded in so
+far assimilating his father's style that his earlier works are often
+confused with those of "Giovanni Battista," did not acquire the energy
+or the dramatic force displayed by Melchior Hondecoeter in representing
+live birds and animals, though he sometimes surpassed him in the finish
+and the harmony of his decorative arrangements of dead game and still
+life. Accordingly the one usually painted dead and the latter live
+birds. In other respects there is not much to distinguish their works.
+
+NICHOLAS BERCHEM was the only other pupil of Jan Baptist Weenix of whom
+we know anything. Berchem had other masters, beginning with his father,
+who was a painter of fish and tables covered with plates, china dishes,
+and such like. Having given his son the first rudiments of his art he
+found himself unequal to the task of cultivating the excellent
+disposition he observed in him, and therefore placed him with Van Goyen,
+Nicholas Moyaert, Peter Grebber, Jan Wils, and lastly with Jan Baptist
+Weenix, all of whom had the honour of assisting to form so excellent a
+painter. Indefatigable at his easel, Berchem acquired a manner both easy
+and expeditious; to see him work, painting appeared a mere diversion to
+him.
+
+His wife was the daughter of his instructor, Jan Wils, and was so
+avaricious that she allowed him no rest. Busy as he was by nature, she
+used to sit under his studio, and when she neither heard him sing nor
+stir, she struck upon the ceiling to rouse him. She got from him all the
+money he earned by his labour, so that he was obliged to borrow from his
+scholars when he wanted money to buy prints that were offered him, which
+was the only pleasure he had. _The Musical Shepherdess_ at Hertford
+House is a good example of his style, and the description of it in
+Smith's catalogue shows in what estimation the artist was held in early
+Victorian days:--"This beautiful pastoral scene represents a bold rocky
+coast under the appearance of the close of day. The rustics have ended
+their labours and are recreating with music and dancing. A group
+composed of two peasants and a like number of women occupies the
+foreground; one of the latter, attired in a blue mantle, is gaily
+striking a tambourine, and dancing to the music; her companion in a
+yellow dress sits near her; the shepherds also are seated, and one of
+them appears to have just ceased playing a pipe which he holds. The
+goats are browsing near them. Painted in the artist's most fascinating
+style."
+
+That Berchem had been to Italy is pretty certain, and though no
+authentic account of his visit is recorded, there is a story that when
+Jacob Ruisdael went to Rome as a young man, Nicholas Berchem was the
+first acquaintance he met, and that their friendship was of long
+standing. Their frequent walks round about Rome gave them the
+opportunity of working together from Nature, and one day a cardinal
+seeing them at work, inquired what they were doing. His eminence was
+agreeably impressed with their drawings, and invited them to visit him
+in Rome. The painters returned to their work, where they met with a
+second _rencontre_ of a very different nature; a gang of thieves robbed
+and stripped them of their clothes. They returned in their shirts to the
+city, and called on the cardinal, who took pity upon them, ordered them
+clothes, and afterwards employed them in several considerable works in
+his palace.
+
+Berchem at one time took up his abode in the Castle of Bentheim, and as
+both he and Ruisdael have left several pictures of this castle it may be
+inferred that they worked there together, as at Rome.
+
+Apart from personal friendship there is nothing to connect Berchem with
+Ruisdael, the popularity of the former being derived from qualities of a
+totally different nature from those which raise Ruisdael far above any
+of his contemporaries as a landscape painter.
+
+JAN VAN HUYSUM was born at Amsterdam in 1682. His father, Justus Van
+Huysum, who dealt in pictures, was himself a middling painter in most
+kinds of painting. He taught his son to paint screens, figures and vases
+on wood, landscape, and sometimes flowers; but the son being arrived at
+a reasoning age perceived that to work in every branch of his art was
+the way to excel in none, therefore he confined himself to flowers,
+fruit, and landscape, and quitting his father's school set up for
+himself.
+
+No one before Van Huysum attained so perfect a manner of representing
+the beauty of flowers and the down and bloom of fruit; for he painted
+with greater freedom than Velvet Breughel and Mignon, with more
+tenderness and nature than Mario di Fiori, Andrea Belvedere, Michel de
+Campidoglio or Daniel Seghers; with more mellowness than de Heem, and
+with more vigour of colouring than Baptist Monoyer.
+
+His pictures of flowers and fruit pleasing an English gentleman, he
+introduced them into his own country, where they came into vogue and
+yielded a high price. To express the motions of the smallest insects
+with justice he used to contemplate them through the microscope with
+great attention. At the times of the year when the flowers were in
+bloom, and the fruit in perfection, he used to design them in his own
+garden, and the Sieur Gulet and Voorhelm sent him the most beautiful
+productions in those kinds they could pick up.
+
+His reputation rose to such a height that all the curious in painting
+sought his works with great eagerness, which encouraged him to raise his
+prices so high that his pictures at last grew out of the reach of any
+but princes and men of the greatest fortune. He was the first flower
+painter that ever thought of laying them on light grounds, which
+requires much greater art than to paint them on dark ones.
+
+Van Huysum died at Amsterdam in 1749. He never had any pupil but a young
+woman named Haverman, and his brother Michael. Two other brothers have
+distinguished themselves in painting, one named Justus, who painted
+battles, and died at twenty-two years old, the other named James, who
+ended his days in England in 1740. He copied the pictures of his brother
+John so well as to deceive the connoisseurs: he had usually £20 for each
+copy. For the originals, it may be noted, from a thousand to fourteen
+hundred florins was paid.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+PAINTERS OF LANDSCAPE
+
+
+Coming now to the landscape painters we find that JAN VAN GOYEN, born at
+Leyden in 1596, was destined to exert a really powerful influence,
+inasmuch as he was the founder, as is generally acknowledged, of the
+Dutch school of homely native landscape. Beginning with figure subjects,
+he discovered in their landscape backgrounds his real _métier_, and
+seems only to have realized his great gifts when he looked further into
+nature than was possible when painting a foreground picture. He appears
+to have been by nature or by inclination long-sighted, and he is never
+so happy as when painting distance, either along the banks of a river or
+looking out to sea. This extended gaze taught him something of
+atmosphere that few painters beside himself ever acquired, and helped
+him to the mastery of tone which appears to have influenced so many of
+his followers, as for example Van de Velde in the painting of
+sea-pieces.
+
+JAN WYNANTS, born at Haarlem about 1620, and still living in 1677, was
+the first master who applied all the developed qualities of the Dutch
+School to the treatment of landscape painting. In general his prevailing
+tone is clear and bright, more especially in the green of his trees and
+plants, which in many cases, merges into blue. One of his
+characteristics is a fallen tree trunk in the foreground, as may be seen
+in three out of the six examples in the National Gallery. The
+carefulness of his execution explains how it was that in so long a life
+he only produced a moderate number of pictures. Smith's catalogue
+contains about 214. These differ much according to their different
+periods. In his first manner peasants' cottages or ruins play an
+important part, and the view is more or less shut in by trees of a heavy
+dark green, the execution solid and careful. In his middle time he
+generally paints open views of a rather uneven country, diversified by
+wood and water. That Wynants retained his full skill even in advanced
+life is proved by a picture dated 1672, in the Munich Gallery,
+representing a road leading to a fenced wood and a sandhill, near which
+in the foreground are some cows (by Lingelbach) being driven along. In
+his last manner a heavy uniformly brown tone is often observable.
+
+It is his genuine feeling for nature that makes Wynant's pictures so
+popular in England, where we meet with a considerable number of his best
+works.
+
+JACOB RUISDAEL (born at Haarlem 1628, died there 1682) is supposed to
+have developed under the influence of a school there that was opposing
+Van Goyen's tone treatment by local colour. Though not always the most
+charming, Ruisdael is certainly the greatest and the most profound of
+the Dutch landscape painters. His wide expanses of sky, earth or sea,
+with their tender gradations of aërial perspective, diversified here and
+there by alternations of sunshine and shadow, attract us as much by the
+pathos as by the picturesqueness of their character. His scenes of
+mountainous districts with foaming waterfalls; or bare piles of rock and
+sombre lakes are imbued with a feeling of melancholy. Ruisdael's work
+may be well studied in the six examples at Hertford House, and the
+fourteen in the National Gallery. Among his finer works in Continental
+collections the following are some of those selected by Kugler for
+description. At the Hague is one of his wide expanses--a view of the
+country around Haarlem, the town itself looking small on the horizon,
+under a lofty expanse of cloudy sky in the foreground a bleaching-ground
+and some houses reminding us, by the manner in which they are
+introduced, of Hobbema. The prevailing tone is cool, the sky singularly
+beautiful, and the execution wonderfully delicate. A flat country with a
+road leading to a village, and fields with wheatsheaves, is in the
+Dresden Gallery. This is temperate in colouring and beautifully lighted.
+Equally fine is an extensive view over a hilly but bare country, through
+which a river runs; in the Louvre. The horseman and beggar on a bridge
+are by Wouvermans: here the grey-greenish harmony of the tone is in fine
+accordance with the poetic grandeur of the subject. A hill covered with
+oak woods, with a peasant hastening to a hut to escape the gathering
+shower, is in the Munich Gallery. The golden warmth of the trees and
+ground, and the contrast between the deep clear chiaroscuro and soft
+rain-clouds, and the bright gleam of sunshine, render this picture one
+of the finest by this master.
+
+The peculiar charm which is seen in Holland by the combination of lofty
+trees and calm water is fully represented in the following works:--_The
+Chase_; in the Dresden Gallery. Here in the still water in the
+foreground--through which a stag-hunt (by Adrian van de Velde) is
+passing--clouds, warm with morning sunlight, appear reflected. In this
+picture, remarkable as it is for size, being 3 ft. 10-1/2 in. high, by 5
+ft. 2 in. wide, the sense even of the fresh morning is not without a
+tinge of gentle melancholy. A noble wood of oaks, beeches and elms,
+about the size of the last-mentioned picture, is in the Louvre. In the
+centre, through an opening in the woods, are seen distant hills. The
+cattle and figures upon a flooded road are by Berchem. In power, warmth,
+and treatment, this is also nearly allied to the preceding work. Of his
+waterfalls, the most remarkable are--A picture at the Hague, which is
+particularly striking for its warm lighting, and careful execution.
+Another with Bentheim Castle, so often repeated by Ruisdael, is at
+Amsterdam. In the same collection is a landscape, with rocks, woods, and
+a larger waterfall. This has a grandly poetic character which, with the
+broad and solid handling, plainly shows the influence of Everdingen. The
+same remark may be applied to the waterfall, No. 328, in the Munich
+Gallery. Here the dark, rainy sky, enhances the sublime impression made
+by the foaming torrent that rushes down the rocky masses. Another work
+worthy to rank with the fore-going is _The Jewish Cemetry_, in the
+Dresden Gallery: a pallid sunbeam lights up some of the tombstones,
+between which a torrent impetuously flows.
+
+The _Landscape with Waterfall_ at Hertford House is a good example; the
+_Landscape with a Farm_ in the same collection is another, though in
+this the figures and cattle are by Adrian Van der Velde. Ostade and
+Wouverman are also said to have helped him with his figures, and it is
+possible that one or other of them ought to have some of the credit for
+the beautiful _View on the Shore at Scheveningen_ in the National
+Gallery (No. 1390). The _Landscape with Ruins_ (No. 746) is perhaps the
+finest of the others there.
+
+WILLEM VAN DE VELDE, the younger, born at Amsterdam 1633, died at
+Greenwich 1707. His first master was his father, Willem van de Velde the
+elder, but his principal instructor was Simon de Vlieger. The earlier
+part of his professional life was spent in Holland, where, besides
+numerous pictures of the various aspects of marine scenery, he painted
+several well-known sea-fights in which the Dutch had obtained the
+victory over the English. He afterwards followed his father to England,
+where he was greatly patronized by Charles II. and James II. for whom,
+in turn, he painted the naval victories of the English over the Dutch.
+He was also much employed by amateurs of art among the English nobility
+and gentry. There is no question that Willem van de Velde the younger is
+the greatest marine painter of the whole Dutch School. His perfect
+knowledge of lineal and aërial perspective, and the incomparable
+technique which he inherited from his school, enabled him to represent
+the sea and the sky with the utmost truth of form, atmosphere and
+colour, and to enliven the scene with the purest feeling for the
+picturesque, with the most natural incidents of sea-faring life.
+
+Two of his pictures at Amsterdam are particularly remarkable;
+representing the English flagship _The Prince Royal_ striking her
+colours in the fight with the Dutch fleet of 1666; and its companion,
+four English men-of-war brought in as prizes at the same fight. Here the
+painter has represented himself in a small boat, from which he actually
+witnessed the battle. This accounts for the extraordinary truth with
+which every particular of the scene is rendered in such small pictures,
+which, combined with their delicate greyish tone, and the mastery of the
+execution, render them two of his finest works. A view of the city of
+Amsterdam, dated 1686, taken from the river, is an especially good
+specimen of his large pictures. It is about 5 ft. high by 10 ft. wide.
+The vessels in the river are arranged with great feeling for the
+picturesque, and the treatment of details is admirable. His greatest
+successes, however, are in the representation of calm seas, as may be
+seen in a small picture at Munich. In the centre of the middle distance
+is a frigate, and in the foreground smaller vessels. The fine silvery
+tone in which the whole is kept finds a sufficient counter-balance of
+colour in the yellowish sun-lit clouds, and in the brownish vessels and
+their sails. Nothing can be more exquisite than the tender reflections
+of these in the water. Of almost similar beauty is a picture of about
+the same size, with four vessels, in the Cassel Gallery, which is signed
+and dated 1653. As a contrast to this class of works, may be mentioned
+_The Gathering Tempest_, in the Munich Gallery. This is brilliantly
+lighted, and of great delicacy of tone in the distance, though the
+foreground has somewhat darkened.
+
+MEINDERT HOBBEMA (1638-1709) was a friend as well as a pupil of Jacob
+Ruisdael. The fact that such distinguished painters as Adrian van de
+Velde, Wouvermans, Berchem, and Lingelbach, executed the figures and
+animals in his pictures proves the esteem in which he was held by his
+contemporaries; nevertheless it is evident that the public was slow in
+conceding to him the rank which he deserved, for his name is not found
+for more than a century after his death in any even of the most
+elaborate dictionaries of art, while the catalogues of the most
+important picture sales in Holland make no mention of him at all up to
+the year 1739; when a picture by him, although much extolled, was sold
+for only 71 florins, and even in 1768 one of his masterpieces only
+fetched 300 florins. The English were the first to discover his merits.
+
+The peculiar characteristics of this master, who next to Ruisdael, is
+confessedly at the head of landscape painters of the Dutch School, will
+be best appreciated by comparing him with his rival. In two most
+important qualities--fertility of inventive genius, and poetry of
+feeling--he is decidedly inferior: the range of his subjects being far
+narrower. His most frequent scenes are villages surrounded by trees,
+such as are frequently met with in the districts of Guelderland, with
+winding pathways leading from house to house. A water-mill occasionally
+forms a prominent feature. Often, too, he represents a slightly uneven
+country, diversified by groups or rows of trees, wheat-fields, meadows,
+and small pools. Occasionally he gives us a view of part of a town, with
+its gates, canals with sluices, and quays with houses; more rarely, the
+ruins of an old castle, with an extensive view of a flat country, or
+some stately residence. In the composition of all these pictures,
+however, we do not find that elevated and picturesque taste which
+characterises Ruisdael; on the contrary they have a thoroughly
+portrait-like appearance, decidedly prosaic, but always surprizingly
+truthful. The greater number of Hobbema's pictures are as much
+characterized by a warm and golden tone as those of Ruisdael by the
+reverse; his greens being yellowish in the lights and brownish in the
+shadows--both of singular transparency. In pictures of this kind the
+influence of Rembrandt is perhaps perceptible, and they are superior in
+brilliancy to any work by Ruisdael. While these works chiefly present us
+with the season of harvest and sunset-light, there are others in a cool,
+silvery, morning lighting, and with the bright green of spring, that
+surpass Ruisdael's in clearness. His woods also, owing to the various
+lights that fall on them, are of greater transparency.
+
+As almost all the galleries on the Continent were formed at a period
+when the works of Hobbema were little prized (Ticcozzi's _Dictionary_,
+in 1818, does not include his name), they either possess no specimens,
+or some of an inferior class, so that no adequate idea can be formed of
+him. The most characteristic example to be met with on the Continent is
+a landscape in the Berlin Museum, No. 886, an oak wood, with scattered
+lights, a calm piece of water in the foreground, and a sun-lit village
+in the distance. Of the eight pictures in the National Gallery from his
+hand, most are good, and one world-famous--_The Avenue, Middelharnis_,
+which may be called his masterpiece. This was painted in 1689, when he
+had reached the age of fifty. His diploma picture, painted in 1663, is
+at Hertford House, together with four other interesting examples, all of
+which repay careful study.
+
+
+
+
+GERMAN SCHOOLS
+
+
+The origins of the German Schools of painting are obscure, but it is
+fairly certain that Cologne was the first place in which the art was
+soonest established to any considerable extent. Here, as in the
+Netherlands, we cannot find any traces of immediate Italian influences.
+The first painter who can be identified with any certainty is WILHELM
+VON HERLE, called MEISTER WILHELM, whose activity is not traceable
+earlier than about 1358. Most of the pictures formerly attributed to him
+have, however, been assigned to his pupil HERMANN WYNRICH VON WESEL, who
+on the death of his master in 1378 married his widow and continued his
+practice, until his death somewhere about 1414. His most important works
+were six panels of the High Altar of the Cathedral, the so-called
+_Madonna of the Pea Blossoms_ and two _Crucifixions_ at Cologne, and the
+_S. Veronica_ at Munich, dated 1410.
+
+More important was STEPHEN LOCHNER, who died at Cologne in 1451. His
+influence was widespread and his school apparently numerous, until, in
+1450, Roger van der Weyden, returning from Italy, stopped at Cologne and
+painted his large triptych, which eclipsed Lochner. From this time
+onwards the school of Cologne is represented by painters whose names are
+not known, and who are accordingly distinguished by the subjects of
+their works; such as _The Master of the Glorification of the Virgin_,
+_The Master of S. Bartholomew_, etc., until we come to Bartel Bruyn
+(_c._ 1493-1553), a portrait painter who is represented at Berlin, and
+by a picture of Dr Fuchsius bequeathed to the National Gallery by George
+Salting.
+
+In other parts of Germany, particularly in Nuremberg, Ulm, Augsburg, and
+Basle, various names of painters of the latter half of the fourteenth
+century have survived, but their works are of little interest except to
+the connoisseur as showing the influence under which the two great
+artists of the sixteenth century, Albert Dürer and Hans Holbein, and one
+or two lesser lights like Lucas Cranach, Albert Altdorfer, and Adam
+Elsheimer, were formed.
+
+In Germany the taste for the fantastic in art peculiar to the Middle
+Ages, though it engendered clever and spirited works such as those of
+Quentin Massys and Lucas van Leyden, was still unfavourable to the
+cultivation of pure beauty, scenes from the Apocalypse, Dances of Death,
+etc., being among the favourite subjects for art. On the other hand, the
+pictorial treatment of antique literature, a world so suggestive of
+beautiful forms, was so little comprehended by the German mind that they
+only sought to express it through the medium of those fantastic ideas
+with very childish and even tasteless results. We must also remember
+that that average education of the various classes of society which the
+fine arts require for their protection stood on a very low footing in
+Germany. In Italy the favour with which works of art was regarded was
+far more widely extended. This again gave rise to a more elevated
+personal position on the part of the artist, which in Italy was not only
+one of more consideration, but of incomparably greater independence. In
+this latter respect Germany was so
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXXII.
+
+"THE MASTER OF ST BARTHOLOMEW"
+
+TWO SAINTS
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+deficient that the genius of Albert Dürer and Holbein was miserably
+cramped and hindered in development by the poverty and littleness of
+surrounding circumstances. It is known that of all the German princes no
+one but the Elector Frederick the Wise ever gave Albert Dürer a
+commission for pictures, while a writing addressed by the great painter
+to the magistracy of Nuremberg tells us that his native city never gave
+him employment even to the value of 500 florins. At the same time his
+pictures were so meanly paid, that for the means of subsistence, as he
+says himself, he was compelled to devote himself to engraving. How far
+more such a man as Dürer would have been appreciated in Italy or in the
+Netherlands is further evidenced in the above-mentioned writing, where
+he states that he was offered 200 ducats a year in Venice and 300
+Philips-gulden in Antwerp, if he would settle in either of those cities.
+And Holbein fared still worse: there is no evidence whatever that any
+German prince ever troubled himself at all about the great painter while
+at Basle, and his art was so little cared for that necessity compelled
+him to go to England, where a genius fitted for the highest undertakings
+of historical painting was limited to the sphere of portraiture. The
+crowning impediments finally, which hindered the progress of German art,
+and perverted it from its true aim, were the Reformation, which narrowed
+the sphere of ecclesiastical works, and the pernicious imitation of the
+great Italian masters which ensued.
+
+LUCAS CRANACH, born in 1472, received his first instructions in art from
+his father, his later teaching probably from Matthew Grunewald. In some
+instances he attained to the expression of dignity, earnestness and
+feeling, but generally his characteristics are a naïve and childlike
+cheerfulness and a gentle and almost timid grace. The impression
+produced by his style of representation reminds one of the "Volksbücher"
+and "Volkslieder." Many of his church pictures have a very peculiar
+significance: in these he stands forth properly speaking as the painter
+of the Reformation. Intimate both with Luther and Melanchthon, he seizes
+on the central aim of their doctrine, viz., the insufficiency of good
+works and the sole efficacy of faith. His mythological subjects appeal
+directly to the eye like real portraits; and sometimes also by means of
+a certain grace and naïveté of motive. We may cite as an instance the
+Diana seated on a stag in a small picture at Berlin, No. 564. _The
+Fountain of Youth_, also at Berlin, No. 593, is a picture of peculiar
+character; a large basin surrounded by steps and with a richly adorned
+fountain forms the centre. On one side, where the country is stony and
+barren, a multitude of old women are dragged forward on horses, waggons
+or carriages, and with much trouble are got into the water. On the other
+side of the fountain they appear as young maidens splashing about and
+amusing themselves with all kinds of playful mischief; close by is a
+large pavilion into which a herald courteously invites them to enter and
+where they are arrayed in costly apparel. A feast is prepared in a
+smiling meadow, which seems to be followed by a dance; the gay crowd
+loses itself in a neighbouring grove. The men unfortunately have not
+become young, and retain their grey beards. The picture is of the year
+1546, the seventy-fourth of Cranach's age.
+
+ALBERT ALTDORFER was born 1488 at Altdorf, near Landshuth, in Bavaria,
+and settled at Ratisbon, where he died 1528. He invested the fantastic
+tendency of the time with a poetic feeling--especially in
+landscape--and he developed it so as to attain a perfection in this
+sort of romantic painting that no other artist had reached. In his later
+period he was strongly influenced by Italian art. Altdorfer's principal
+work is in the Munich Gallery, and is thus described by Schlegel:--
+
+"It represents the Victory of Alexander the Great over Darius; the
+costume is that of the artist's own day, as it would be treated in the
+chivalrous poems of the middle ages--man and horse are sheathed in plate
+and mail, with surcoats of gold or embroidery; the chamfrons upon the
+heads of the horses, the glittering lances and stirrups, and the variety
+of the weapons, form altogether a scene of indescribable splendour and
+richness.... It is, in truth, a little world on a few square feet of
+canvas; the hosts of combatants who advance on all sides against each
+other are innumerable, and the view into the background appears
+interminable. In the distance is the ocean, with high rocks and a rugged
+island between them; ships of war appear in the offing and a whole fleet
+of vessels--on the left the moon is setting--on the right the sun
+rising--both shining through the opening clouds--a clear and striking
+image of the events represented. The armies are arranged in rank and
+column without the strange attitudes, contrasts, and distortions
+generally exhibited in so-called battle-pieces. How indeed would this
+have been possible with such a vast multitude of figures? The whole is
+in the plain and severe, or it may be the stiff manner of the old style.
+At the same time the character and execution of these little figures is
+most masterly and profound. And what variety, what expression there is,
+not merely in the character of the single warriors and knights, but in
+the hosts themselves! Here crowds of black archers rush down troop after
+troop from the mountain with the rage of a foaming torrent; on the
+other side high upon the rocks in the far distance a scattered crowd of
+flying men are turning round in a defile. The point of the greatest
+interest stands out brilliantly from the centre of the whole--Alexander
+and Darius both in armour of burnished gold; Alexander on Bucephalus
+with his lance in rest advances before his men and presses on the flying
+Darius, whose charioteer has already fallen on his white horses, and who
+looks back upon his conqueror with all the despair of a vanquished
+monarch."
+
+ALBERT DÜRER (1471-1528), by his overpowering genius, may be called the
+sole representative of German art of his period. He was gifted with a
+power of conception which traced nature through all her finest shades,
+and with a lively sense, as well for the solemn and the sublime, as for
+simple grace and tenderness; above all, he had an earnest and truthful
+feeling in art united with a capacity for the most earnest study. These
+qualities were sufficient to place him by the side of the greatest
+artists whom the world has ever seen.
+
+One of the earliest portraits by Albert Dürer known to us is that of his
+father, Albert Dürer, the goldsmith, dated 1497, in our National
+Gallery. In the year 1644, another version of this picture, which was
+engraved by Hollar, was in the collection of the Earl of Arundel, and is
+now in that of the Duke of Northumberland, at Syon House. Of about the
+same time--that is to say, before 1500--are the portraits of Oswald
+Krell, at Munich, of Frederick the Wise, at Berlin, and of himself, at
+the Prado.
+
+Several of Albert Dürer's pictures of the year 1500 are known to us. The
+first and most important is his own portrait in the Munich Gallery,
+which represents him full face with his hand laid on the fur trimming
+of his robe.
+
+His finest picture of the year 1504 is an _Adoration of the Kings_,
+originally painted for Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony,
+subsequently presented by the Elector Christian II. to the Emperor
+Rudolph II., and finally, on the occasion of an exchange of pictures,
+transferred from Vienna to Florence, where it now hangs in the Tribune
+of the Uffizi. The heads are of thoroughly realistic treatment; the
+Virgin a portrait from some model of no attractive character; the second
+King a portrait of the painter himself. The landscape background exactly
+resembles that in the well-known engraving of S. Eustace, the period of
+which is thus pretty nearly defined. It is carefully painted in a fine
+body of colour.
+
+In 1505 Dürer made a second journey into Upper Italy, and remained a
+considerable time at Venice. Of his occupations in this city the letters
+written to his friend Wilibald Pirckheimer which have come down to us
+give many interesting particulars. He there executed for the German
+Company a picture known as _The Feast of Rose Garlands_, which brought
+him great fame, and by its brilliant colouring silenced the assertion of
+his envious adversaries "that he was a good engraver, but knew not how
+to deal with colours." In the centre of a landscape is the Virgin seated
+with the Child and crowned by two angels; on her right is a Pope with
+priests kneeling; on her left the Emperor Maximilian I. with knights;
+various members of the German Company are also kneeling; all are being
+crowned with garlands of roses by the Virgin, the Child, S.
+Dominick--who stands behind the Virgin--and by angels. The painter and
+his friend Pirckheimer are seen standing in the background on the
+right; the painter holds a tablet with the inscription, "Albertus Dürer
+Germanus, MDVI." This picture, which is one of his largest and finest,
+was purchased from the church at a high price by the Emperor Rudolph II.
+for his gallery at Prague, where it remained until sold in 1782 by the
+Emperor Joseph II. It then became the property of the Præmonstratensian
+monastery of Stratow at Prague, where it still exists, though in very
+injured condition and greatly over-painted. In the Imperial Gallery at
+Vienna may be seen an old copy which conveys a better idea of the
+picture than the original.
+
+With these productions begins the zenith of this master's fame, in which
+a great number of works follow one another within a short period. Of
+these we first notice a picture of 1508, in the Imperial Gallery at
+Vienna, painted for Duke Frederick of Saxony, and which afterwards
+adorned the gallery of the Emperor Rudolph II. It represents _The
+Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand Saints_. In the centre of the picture
+stand the master and his friend Pirckheimer as spectators, both in black
+dresses. Dürer has a mantle thrown over his shoulder in the Italian
+fashion, and stands in a firm attitude. He folds his hands and holds a
+small flag, on which is inscribed, "Iste faciebat anno domini 1508
+Albertus Dürer Alemanus." There are a multitude of single groups
+exhibiting every species of martyrdom, but there is a want of general
+connection of the whole. The scenes in the background, where the
+Christians are led naked up the rocks, and are precipitated down from
+the top, are particularly excellent. The whole is very minute and
+miniature-like; the colouring is beautifully brilliant, and it is
+painted (the accessories particularly) with extraordinary care.
+
+To 1511 belongs also one of his most celebrated pictures, _The Adoration
+of the Trinity_, which is also at Vienna, painted for the chapel of the
+Landauer Brüderhaus in Nuremberg. Above in the centre of the picture are
+seen the First Person, who holds the Saviour in his arms, while the Holy
+Spirit is seen above; some angels spread out the priestly mantle of the
+Almighty, whilst others hover near with the instruments of Christ's
+passion. On the left hand a little lower down is a choir of females with
+the Virgin at their head; on the right are the male saints with St John
+the Baptist. Below all these kneel a host of the blessed of all ranks
+and nations extending over the whole of this part of the picture.
+Underneath the whole is a beautiful landscape, and in a corner of the
+picture the artist himself richly clothed in a fur mantle, with a tablet
+next him with the words, "Albertus Dürer Noricus faciebat anno a
+Virginis partu, 1511." It may be assumed beyond doubt that he held in
+particular esteem those pictures into which he introduced his own
+portrait.
+
+In the Vienna Gallery is also a picture of the year 1512, the Virgin
+holding the naked Child in her arms. She has a veil over her head and
+blue drapery. Her face is of the form usual with Albert Dürer, but of a
+soft and maidenly character; the Child is beautiful--the countenance
+particularly so. It is painted with exceeding delicacy of finish.
+
+Two altar-pieces of his earliest period must be mentioned. One is in the
+Dresden Gallery, consisting of three pictures painted in tempera on
+canvas, representing the Virgin, S. Anthony, and S. Sebastian
+respectively. Although this is probably one of his very earliest works,
+it is remarkable for the novelty of its treatment and its independence
+of tradition.
+
+The other, a little later, is in the Munich Gallery (Nos. 240-3),
+painted at the request of the Paumgartner family, for S. Catherine's
+Church at Nuremberg, was brought to Munich in 1612 by Maximilian I. The
+subject of the middle picture is the Nativity; the Child is in the
+centre, surrounded by little angels, whilst the Virgin and Joseph kneel
+at the side. The wings contain portraits of the two donors under the
+form of S. George and S. Eustace represented as knights in steel armour,
+each with his standard, and the former holding the slain dragon.
+
+The year 1526 was distinguished by the two pictures of the four
+Apostles: John and Peter, Mark and Paul; the figures are the size of
+life. These, which are the master's grandest work, and the last of
+importance executed by him, are now in the Munich Gallery. We know with
+certainty that they were presented by Albert Dürer himself to the
+council of his native city in remembrance of his career as an artist,
+and at the same time as conveying to his fellow-citizens an earnest and
+lasting exhortation suited to that stormy period. In the year 1627,
+however, the pictures were allowed to pass into the hands of the Elector
+Maximilian I. of Bavaria. The inscriptions selected by the painter
+himself might have given offence to a Catholic prince, and were
+therefore cut off and joined to the copies by John Fischer, which were
+intended to indemnify the city of Nuremberg for the loss of the
+originals. These copies are still in the collection of the Landauer
+Brüderhaus at Nuremberg.
+
+These pictures are the fruit of the deepest thought which then stirred
+the mind of Albert Dürer, and are executed with overpowering force.
+Finished as they are, they form the first complete work of art produced
+by Protestantism. As the inscription taken from the Gospels and
+Epistles of the Apostles contains pressing warnings not to swerve from
+the word of God, nor to believe in the doctrines of false prophets, so
+the figures themselves represent the steadfast and faithful guardians of
+that holy Scripture which they bear in their hands. There is also an old
+tradition, handed down from the master's own times, that these figures
+represent the four temperaments. This is confirmed by the pictures
+themselves; and though at first sight it may appear to rest on a mere
+accidental combination, it serves to carry out more completely the
+artist's thought, and gives to the figures greater individuality. It
+shows how every quality of the human mind may be called into the service
+of the Divine Word. Thus in the first picture, we see the whole force of
+the mind absorbed in contemplation, and we are taught that true
+watchfulness in behalf of the Scripture must begin by devotion to its
+study.
+
+S. John stands in front, the open book in his hand; his high forehead
+and his whole countenance bear the impress of earnest and deep thought.
+This is the melancholic temperament, which does not shrink from the most
+profound inquiry. Behind him S. Peter bends over the book, and gazes
+earnestly at its contents--a hoary head, full of meditative repose. This
+figure represents the phlegmatic temperament, which reviews its own
+thoughts in tranquil reflection. The second picture shows the outward
+operation of the conviction thus attained and its relation to daily
+life. S. Mark in the background is the man of sanguine temperament; he
+looks boldly round, and appears to speak to his hearers with animation,
+earnestly urging them to share those advantages which he has himself
+derived from the Holy Scriptures. S. Paul, on the contrary, in the
+foreground, holds the book and sword in his hands; he looks angrily and
+severely over his shoulder, ready to defend the Word, and to annihilate
+the blasphemer with the sword of God's power. He is the representative
+of the choleric temperament.
+
+We know of no important work of a later date than that just described.
+His portrait in a woodcut of the year 1527 represents him earnest and
+serious in demeanour, as would naturally follow from his advancing age
+and the pressure of eventful times. His head is no longer adorned with
+those richly flowing locks, on which in his earlier days he had set so
+high a value, as we learn from his pictures and from jests still
+recorded of him. With the departure of Hans Holbein to England in 1528
+and the death of Albert Dürer in the same year, that excellence to which
+they had raised German art passed away, and centuries saw no sign of its
+revival.
+
+Of HANS HOLBEIN, born at Augsburg in 1498, we shall have more to say in
+a later chapter, when considering the origins of English portraiture.
+But as in the case of Van Dyck, and in fact of every great portrait
+painter, his excellence in this particular branch of his art was but one
+result of his being a born artist and first exercising his talents in a
+much wider field. In Holbein the realistic tendency of the German School
+attained its highest development, and he may, next to Dürer, be
+pronounced the greatest master in it. While Dürer's art exhibits a close
+affinity with the religious ideas of the Middle Ages, Holbein appears to
+have been imbued with more modern and more material sentiments, and
+accordingly we find him excelling Dürer in closeness and delicacy of
+observation in the delineation of nature. A proof of this is afforded by
+the evidence of Erasmus, who said that as regards the portraits painted
+of him by both these artists, that by Holbein was the most like. In
+feeling for beauty of form, also in grace of movement, in colouring, and
+in the actual art of painting--in which his father had thoroughly
+instructed him--Holbein is to be placed above Dürer. That he did not
+rival the great Italians of his time in "historical" painting can only
+be ascribed to the circumstances of his life in Germany, where such
+subjects were not in fashion.
+
+Of his pictures executed before he left his native country the greater
+number are at Basle and Augsburg, and are therefore less familiar to the
+general public than his later works. A notable exception is the famous
+_Meyer Madonna_, the original of which is at Darmstadt, but a version
+now relegated, somewhat harshly, to the "copyist" is in the Dresden
+Gallery, and certainly exhibits as much of the spirit of the master as
+will serve for an example of his powers. It represents the Virgin as
+Queen of Heaven, standing in a niche, with the Child in her arms, and
+with the family of the Burgomaster Jacob Meyer of Basle kneeling on
+either side of her. With the utmost life and truth to nature, which
+brings these kneeling figures actually into our presence, says Kugler,
+there is combined in a most exquisite degree an expression of great
+earnestness, as if the mind were fixed on some lofty object. This is
+shown not merely by the introduction of divine beings into the circle of
+human sympathies, but particularly in the relation so skilfully
+indicated between the Holy Virgin and her worshippers, and in her
+manifest desire to communicate to those who are around her the sacred
+peace and tranquillity expressed in her own countenance and attitude,
+and implied in the infantine grace of the Saviour. In the direct union
+of the divine with the human, and in their reciprocal harmony, there is
+involved a devout and earnest purity of feeling such as only the older
+masters were capable of representing.
+
+Another of his most beautiful pictures painted in Germany is the
+portrait of Erasmus, dated 1523. This was sent by Erasmus to Sir Thomas
+More, at Chelsea, with a letter recommending Holbein to his care, and as
+it is still in this country--in the collection of the Earl of Radnor at
+Longford Castle--it is not perhaps too much to hope that it may one of
+these days find its way into the National Gallery--perhaps when the
+alterations to the front entrance are completed. This picture has for a
+very long time been regarded as one of Holbein's very finest portraits.
+Mr W. Barclay Squire, in the sumptuous catalogue of the Radnor
+collection compiled by him, quotes the opinion of Sir William Musgrave,
+written in 1785, "I am not sure whether it is not the finest I have
+seen"; and that of Dr Waagen, "Alone worth a pilgrimage to Longford.
+Seldom has a painter so fully succeeded in bringing to view the whole
+character of so original a mind as in this instance. In the mouth and
+small eyes may be seen the unspeakable studies of a long life ... the
+face also expresses the sagacity and knowledge of a life gained by long
+experience ... the masterly and careful execution extends to every
+portion ... yet the face surpasses everything else in delicacy of
+modelling."
+
+Cruel, indeed, was England to have transplanted the one artist who might
+have saved Germany from the artistic destitution from which she has
+suffered ever since!
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXXIII.--HANS HOLBEIN
+
+PORTRAIT OF CHRISTINA, DUCHESS OF MILAN
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+
+
+
+_FRENCH SCHOOL_
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
+
+
+When we consider the peculiar beauty of the architecture and
+ecclesiastical sculpture in France during the Middle Ages and the period
+of the renaissance, and of the enamels, ivories, and other small works
+of art, it is wrong to regret that painting was not also practised by
+the French as assiduously as it was in Italy. For there can be no doubt
+that in being confined to one channel the artistic impulses of a people
+cut deeper than if dissipated in various directions. We may suppose,
+indeed, that if those of the French had found their outlet in painting
+alone, we should have pictures of wonderful beauty, of a beauty moreover
+of a markedly different kind from that of the Italian or Spanish or
+Netherlandish pictures. But on the other hand we should have perhaps
+lost the amazing fascination of Chartres, and the delights of Limoges
+enamel and ivories.
+
+As it happens, the earliest mention to be made of painting in France is
+the arrival of Leonardo da Vinci at Amboise in 1516, whither he had come
+from Milan in the train of the young king François I. Unfortunately he
+was by this time sixty-four years old, and in less than three years he
+died. At about the same time there was a court painter in the employment
+of François--under the official designation of _varlet de
+chambre_--named JEHAN CLOUET, who is supposed to have been of Flemish
+extraction. Nothing very definite is known about him or his work, but he
+had a son FRANÇOIS CLOUET, who seems to have been born at about the time
+of Leonardo's arrival, and who succeeded to his father's office. At the
+funeral of François I. in 1547 he was ordered to make an _effige du dict
+feu roy_, and he continued to be the official court painter to Henri II.
+(whose posthumous portrait he was also ordered to paint), François II.,
+and Charles IX. He died in 1572. Every portrait of this period is
+attributed to him, just as was the case with Holbein in England. Neither
+of the two examples at the National Gallery can be safely ascribed to
+him. The little head of the Emperor Charles V., king of Spain, at
+Hereford House, is identical in style and in dimensions with that of
+Francis I., king of France, in the Museum at Lyons, which is attributed
+to Jean Clouet. Both may have been painted when Charles V. passed
+through Paris in 1539, but whether by Jean or one of his disciples
+cannot be said with certainty.
+
+Not until the very end of the sixteenth century were born Claude Gellée
+and Nicholas Poussin, the only two Frenchmen who were painters of
+considerable importance before the close of the seventeenth. Nor did
+either of these two contribute anything to the glory of their country by
+practice or by precept within its confines, both of them passing most of
+their lives and painting their best works in Italy and under Italian
+influence.
+
+NICHOLAS POUSSIN was born at Villiers near Les Andelys on the banks of
+the Seine, in 1594, where he studied for some time under Quentin Varin
+till he was eighteen. After this he was in Paris, but in 1624 he went to
+Rome where he lived with Du Quesnoy. His first success was obtained by
+the execution of two historical pieces which were commissioned by
+Cardinal Barberini on his return from an Embassy to France. These were
+_The Death of Germanicus_ and _The Capture of Jerusalem_. His next works
+were _The Martyrdom of S. Erasmus_, _The Plague at Ashdod_, of which a
+replica is in the National Gallery, and _The Seven Sacraments_ now at
+Belvoir Castle. By these he acquired such fame that on his return to
+Paris in 1640, Louis XIII. appointed him royal painter, and in order to
+keep him at home provided him with apartments in the Tuileries and a
+salary of £120 a year. Within two years, however, Poussin was back in
+Rome, and after twenty-three years' unbroken success died there in 1665
+in his seventy-second year.
+
+Poussin was a most conscientious painter, devoting himself seriously in
+his earlier years to the study both of the antique and of practical
+anatomy. Besides being the intimate friend of Du Quesnoy, he was a
+devout pupil of Domenichino, for whom he had the greatest reverence. It
+is not surprising therefore to find in his earlier works, such as the
+_Plague at Ashdod_, a certain academic dulness and lack of spontaneity.
+He was not the forerunner of a new epoch, but one of the last upholders
+of the old. He was trying to arrest decay, to infuse a healthier spirit
+into a declining art, so that he errs on the side of correctness. The
+influence of Titian, however, was too strong for him to remain long
+within the narrowest limits, as may be seen in the _Bacchanalian Dance_,
+No. 62 in the National Gallery, which was probably one of a series
+painted for Cardinal Richelieu during the short time that Poussin was in
+Paris in 1641. In this and in No. 42, the _Bacchanalian Festival_ as
+well as in _The Shepherds in Arcadia_, in the Louvre, we get a
+surprisingly strong reminiscence of Titian, more especially in the
+brown tones of the flesh and the deep blue of the sky.
+
+As the result of conscientious study of the human body the figures in
+these pictures are full of life--for correctness of drawing is the first
+requisite of lively painting without which all the others are useless.
+The fact that over two hundred prints have been engraved after his
+pictures is a proof of his popularity at one time or another, and though
+at the present time his reputation is not as widely recognised as in
+former years, it is certainly as high among those whose judgment is
+independent of passing fashions. As evidence of the soundness of his
+principles, the following is perhaps worth quoting:--
+
+"There are nine things in painting," Poussin wrote in a letter to M. de
+Chambrai, the author of a treatise on painting, "which can never be
+taught and which are essential to that art. To begin with, the subject
+of it should be noble, and receive no quality from the person who treats
+it; and to give opportunity to the painter to show his talents and his
+industry it must be chosen as capable of receiving the most excellent
+form. A painter should begin with disposition (or as we should say,
+composition), the ornament should follow, their agreement of the parts,
+beauty, grace, spirit, costume, regard to nature and probability; and
+above all, judgment. This last must be in the painter himself and cannot
+be taught. It is the golden bough of Virgil that no one can either find
+or pluck unless his lucky star conducts him to it."
+
+GASPAR POUSSIN, whose name was really Gaspard Dughet, was brother-in-law
+of Nicholas, and acquired his name from being his pupil. He was nineteen
+years his junior, and survived him by ten years. He was born in Rome of
+French parents, and died there in 1675, and though he travelled a good
+deal in Italy he never appears to have visited France. His Italian
+landscapes are very beautiful, and we are fortunate in the possession of
+one which is considered his best, No. 31 in the National Gallery,
+_Landscape with Figures_, _Abraham and Isaac_. Scarcely less fine is the
+_Calling of Abraham_, No. 1159, especially in the middle and far
+distance. The sacred figures, it may as well be said, are of little
+concern in the compositions, though useful for purposes of identifying
+the pictures.
+
+CLAUDE GELLÉE, nowadays usually spoken of as Claude, was born at
+Chamagne in Lorraine in 1600. Accordingly he has been styled Claude
+Lorraine, le Lorraine, de Lorrain, Lorrain, or Claudio Lorrenese with
+wonderful persistency through the ages, though there was no mystery
+about his surname and it would have served just as well. He was brought
+up in his father's profession of pastrycook, and in that capacity he
+went to Rome seeking for employment. As it happened he found it in the
+house of a landscape painter, Agostino Tassi, who had been a pupil of
+Paul Bril, and he not only cooked for him but mixed his colours as well,
+and soon became his pupil. Later he was studying under a German painter,
+Gottfried Wals, at Naples. A more important influence on him, however,
+was that of Joachim Sandrart, one of the best of the later German
+painters, whom he met in Rome.
+
+Claude's earliest pictures of any importance were two which were painted
+for Pope Urban VII. in 1639, when he was just upon forty years old.
+These are the _Village Dance_ and the _Seaport_, now in the Louvre. The
+_Seaport at Sunset_ and _Narcissus and Echo_ in the National Gallery
+(Nos. 5 and 19) are dated 1644--the former on the canvas and the latter
+on the sketch for it in the _Liber Veritatis_, where it is stated that
+it was painted for an English patron.
+
+The _Liber Veritatis_, it should be observed, is the title given to a
+portfolio of over two hundred drawings in pen and bistre, or Indian ink,
+which is now in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire. Most of these
+were made from pictures which had been painted, not as sketches or
+designs preparatory to painting them, and in some instances there are
+notes on the back of them giving the date, purchaser, and other
+particulars relating to them. So great was the vogue for Claude's
+landscapes in England during the eighteenth century that as early as
+1730 or 1740 a good many of his drawings, which had been collected by
+Jonathan Richardson, Dr. Mead and others, were engraved by Arthur Pond
+and John Knapton; and in 1777 a series of about two hundred of the Duke
+of Devonshire's drawings was published by Alderman Boydell, which had
+been etched and mezzotinted by Richard Earlom, under the title of _Liber
+Veritatis_. This was the model on which Turner founded the publication
+of his own sketches under the title of _Liber Studiorum_. Thus, if
+Claude exerted little influence on the art of his own country, it can
+hardly be said that he exerted none elsewhere, for Turner was by no
+means the first Englishman to fall under his spell. Richard Wilson, the
+first English landscape painter, was undoubtedly influenced by him, both
+from an acquaintance with his drawings in English collections and from
+the study of his works when in Rome.
+
+In this connection we may consider the two landscapes, numbered 12 and
+14 in the National Gallery Catalogue, as our most important examples by
+this master, for Turner bequeathed to the nation his two most important
+pictures _The Sun Rising Through a Vapour_ and _Dido Building Carthage_,
+on condition that they should be hung between these two by Claude. The
+Court of Chancery could annul the condition, but they could not nullify
+the effect of Claude's influence on Turner or alter the judgment of
+posterity with regard to the relations of the two painters to each other
+and to art in general, and the Director has wisely observed the wishes
+of Turner in still hanging the four pictures together, the Court of
+Chancery notwithstanding. Both of Claude's are inscribed, besides being
+signed and dated, as follows:
+
+     No. 12. Mariage d'Isaac avec Rebeca, Claudio Gil. inv. Romae 1648.
+
+     No. 14. La Reine de Saba va trover Salomon. Clavde Gil. inv. faict
+     pour son altesse le duc de Buillon à Roma 1648.
+
+Both pictures are familiar in various engravings of them, and though the
+present fashion leads many people in other directions, there can be no
+doubt that the appreciation of Claude in this country is never likely to
+die out, and is only waiting for a turn of the wheel to revive with
+increased vigour.
+
+Meantime, however, France was not entirely destitute of painters, and
+though without Claude, Poussin or Dughet, who preferred to exercise
+their art in Rome, she anticipated England by over a century in that
+most important step, the foundation of an Academy of Painting. Not many
+of the names of its original members ever became famous--as may be said
+in our own country--but among them was SEBASTIEN BOURDON (1616-1671),
+whose work was so much admired by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Bourdon, also,
+wandered away from France; within four years after the foundation of
+the Academy, namely, in 1652, he went to Stockholm, and was appointed
+principal painter to Queen Christina. On her abdication, however, in
+1663, he returned to Paris, and enjoyed a great success in painting
+landscapes, and historical subjects. _The Return of the Ark from
+Captivity_, No. 64 in the National Gallery Catalogue, was presented by
+that distinguished patron of the arts, Sir George Beaumont, to whom it
+was bequeathed by Sir Joshua Reynolds, as being one of his most
+treasured possessions. "I cannot quit this subject," he writes in the
+fourteenth Discourse, alluding to poetry in landscape, "without
+mentioning two examples, which occur to me at present, in which the
+poetical style of landscape may be seen happily executed; the one is
+_Jacob's Dream_, by Salvator Rosa, and the other, _The Return of the Ark
+from Captivity_, by Sebastian Bourdon. With whatever dignity those
+histories are presented to us in the language of scripture, this style
+of painting possesses the same power of inspiring sentiments of grandeur
+and sublimity, and is able to communicate them to subjects which appear
+by no means adapted to receive them. A ladder against the sky has no
+very promising appearance of possessing a capacity to excite any heroic
+ideas, and the Ark in the hands of a second-rate master would have
+little more effect than a common waggon on the highway; yet those
+subjects are so poetically treated throughout, the parts have such a
+correspondence with each other, and the whole and every part of the
+scene is so visionary, that it is impossible to look at them without
+feeling in some measure the enthusiasm which seems to have inspired the
+painters."
+
+EUSTACHE LE SUEUR, born in the same year as Sebastien Bourdon (1616),
+was another of the original members of the Academy, and was employed by
+the King at the Louvre. His most famous work was the decorations of the
+cloister at the monastery of La Chartreuse (now in the Louvre) of which
+Horace Walpole speaks so ecstatically in the preface to the last volume
+of the _Anecdotes of Painting_. "The last scene of S. Bruno expiring"
+(he writes) "in which are expressed all the stages of devotion from the
+youngest mind impressed with fear to the composed resignation of the
+Prior, is perhaps inferior to no single picture of the greatest master.
+If Raphael died young, so did Le Sueur; the former had seen the antique,
+the latter only prints from Raphael; yet in the Chartreuse, what airs of
+heads! What harmony of colouring! What aërial perspective! How Grecian
+the simplicity of architecture and drapery! How diversified a single
+quadrangle though the life of a hermit be the only subject, and devotion
+the only pathetic!"
+
+PHILIPPE DE CHAMPAIGNE was another of the original members. He was born
+at Brussels in 1602, and did not come to Paris till 1621, where he was
+soon afterwards employed in the decoration of the Luxembourg Palace. But
+he was chiefly a portrait painter, his principal works being the fine
+full-length of Cardinal Richelieu, and another of his daughter as a nun
+of Port Royal, both of which are in the Louvre. There are four in the
+Wallace Collection, but perhaps the most familiar to the English public
+is the canvas at the National Gallery (No. 798), painted for the Roman
+sculptor Mocchi, to make a bust from, with a full face and two profiles
+of Richelieu. As a portrait this is exceedingly interesting, the more so
+from having an inscription over one of the heads, "de ces deux profiles
+cecy est le meilleur." The full length of the Cardinal presented by Mr.
+Charles Butler in 1895 (No. 1449), is a good example, which cannot
+however but suffer by juxtaposition with more accomplished works.
+
+But it was not until the close of the seventeenth century that portrait
+painting in France became anything like a fine art, and even then it did
+not get beyond being formal and magnificent. The two principal exponents
+were HYACINTHE RIGAUD and NICOLAS LARGILLIÈRE, both of whose works have
+a sort of grandeur but little subtlety or charm.
+
+Rigaud was born in 1659, at Perpignan in the extreme south of France,
+and studied at Montpelier in his youth, then at Lyons on his way to
+Paris--much as a Scottish artist might have studied first at Glasgow,
+then at Birmingham on his way to London. On the advice of Lebrun he
+devoted himself specially to portrait painting, which he did with such
+success that in 1700 he was elected a member of the Academy. He painted
+Louis XIV. more often than Largillière or any other painter, and in his
+later years (he lived till 1743) Louis XV. his great-grandson. He is
+said to have shared with Kneller the distinction, such as it may be, of
+having painted at least five monarchs.
+
+Rigaud is best known in these days by the fine prints after his
+portraits by the French engravers. Of his brushwork we are only able to
+judge by the two doubtful versions at the National Gallery and the
+Wallace Collection respectively, of the fine portrait at Versailles of
+_Cardinal Fleury_. The group of _Lulli and the Musicians of the French
+Court_, which was purchased for the National Gallery in 1906 is not by
+him, and it is difficult to understand why the public money should have
+been wasted on it, or at least on the inscription attributing it to
+him.
+
+Nicolas de Largillière was three years older than Rigaud and survived
+him by another three. He was born in Paris in 1656 and died six months
+before completing his ninetieth year. Early in life he went as a pupil
+to Antwerp, under Antoine Goubeau, and he is said to have worked in
+England as an assistant to Sir Peter Lely during the later years of that
+master. On his return to France he was received into the Royal
+Academy--in 1686.
+
+In the Wallace Collection is an interesting example of his work, the
+large group of the French Royal Family, in which four living generations
+are portrayed and the bronze effigies of two more. Henri IV. and Louis
+XIII., the grandfather and father of the reigning monarch, Louis XIV.,
+the Dauphin his son, the Duc de Bourgogne his grandson, and the Duc
+d'Anjou, his great-grandson--afterwards Louis XV., are all included in
+this formal group, which is a useful lesson in history as well as in
+painting.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
+
+
+ANTOINE WATTEAU was born at Valenciennes in 1684, and died near there
+about thirty-seven years later of consumption. Valenciennes really
+belonged to Flanders, and had only lately been annexed to France, so
+that Watteau owed something of his art to Flemish rather than to French
+sources. At the same time it cannot be said that his development would
+have been the same if he had gone to Brussels or Antwerp instead of to
+Paris to study, for though the works of Rubens and Van Dyck were from
+his earliest years his chief attraction, the influence of the French
+artist Claude Gillot, as well as that of Audran, the keeper of the
+Luxembourg Palace, without doubt exerted a very decided help in
+determining the future course of his work.
+
+When living with Audran, Watteau had every opportunity for studying the
+works of the older masters, especially those of Rubens, whose
+decorations, executed for Marie de Medici, had not at that time been
+removed to the Louvre. Besides copying from these older pictures,
+Watteau was employed by Audran in the execution of designs for wall
+decorations, etc.
+
+Watteau's two earliest pictures still in existence are supposed to be
+the _Départ de Troupe_ and the _Halte d'Armée_, which were the first of
+a series of military pictures on a small scale. To an early period also
+belong the _Accordée de Village_, at the Soane Museum in Lincoln's Inn
+Fields, the _Mariée de Village_ at Potsdam, and the _Wedding
+Festivities_ in the Dublin National Gallery.
+
+In 1712 other influences began to work upon him. In this year he came
+into contact with Crozat, the famous collector, in whose house he became
+familiar with a fresh batch of the Flemish and Italian masterpieces. It
+was at this time that he was approved by the Royal Academy, though he
+took five years over his Diploma picture, "_Embarquement pour l'Île de
+Cythère_," which is now in the Louvre. Meantime the influence of Rubens
+and the Italian masters--especially the Venetians, had greatly widened
+and deepened his art, and these influences, acting on his peculiarly
+sensitive temperament and poetical spirit, had a magical effect,
+transforming the actual scenes of Paris and Versailles, which he painted
+into enchanted places in
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXXIV.--ANTOINE WATTEAU
+
+L'INDIFFÉRENT
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+fairyland, as he transformed the formal actual painting of the period of
+Louis XIV. into the romantic school of the eighteenth century in France.
+The setting of the famous pictures in the Wallace Collection, catalogued
+as _The Music-Party_ or _Les Charnes de la Vie_ (No. 410), is a view of
+the Champs Elysées taken from the gallery of the Tuileries. Who would
+have thought it? And what does it matter, except to show how entirely
+Watteau revolutionized the pompous and prosaic methods of his time by
+investing the actual with poetry and romance.
+
+Two other pictures at Hertford House, Nos. 389 and 391, were painted in
+the Champs Elysées, and the figures are, for the most part, the same in
+both, all three of these pictures are fine examples of the artist's
+power of broad and spirited treatment, combined with extreme delicacy
+and refinement of conception.
+
+Three other pictures at Hertford House are equally delightful examples
+of another class of subject, namely groups of figures dressed in the
+parts of actors in Italian comedy. From a note in the Catalogue we learn
+that a company of Italian comedians were in Paris in the sixteenth
+century, but were banished by Louis Quatorze in 1697 for a supposed
+affront to Madame de Maintenon. In 1716, however, they were recalled by
+the Regent, the Duc d'Orléans, and became once more the delight of
+Paris. Several of the figures in the Italian comedy had already passed
+into French popular drama, and in Watteau's time there seems to have
+been a fluctuating company, according as one actor or actress or another
+developed a part, and to Pantalone, Arlecchino, Dottore and Columbina
+were now added Pierrot--or Gilles--Mezetin, a sort of double of Pierrot,
+Scaramouche and Scapin. The vague web of courtship, dalliance, intrigue
+and jealousy called up by these characters attracted Watteau to employ
+them in his compositions, and to make them also the medium of the more
+sincere sentiments of conjugal love and friendship,--as in _The Music
+Lesson_, _Gilles and his Family_ and _Harlequin and Columbine_, at
+Hertford House. All of these three were engraved in Watteau's life-time
+or shortly after his death, and the verses sub-joined to the engravings
+are a charming rendering of the sentiment underlying the pictures.
+
+In _The Music Lesson_ we see the half length figures of a lady, seated,
+reading a music book, and of a man playing a lute opposite to her.
+Another man looks at the book over the lady's shoulder, and two little
+children's faces appear at her knee. The verses are as follows:--
+
+    Pour nous prouver que cette belle
+    Trouve l'hymen un noeud fort doux
+    Le peintre nous la peint fidelle
+    À suivre le ton d'un Époux.
+
+    Les enfants qui sont autour d'elle
+    Sont les fruits de son tendre amour
+    Dont ce beau joueur de prunelle
+    Pouvait bien goûter quelque jour.
+
+In _Gilles and his Family_ we have a three-quarter length full-face
+portrait of le Sieur de Sirois, a friend of Watteau, with these verses
+under the engraving:--
+
+    Sous un habit de mezzetin
+    Ce gros brun au riant visage
+    Sur la guitarre avec sa main
+    Fait un aimable badinage.
+
+    Par les doux accords de sa voix
+    Enfants d'une bouche vermeille
+    Du beau sexe tant à la fois
+    Il charme les yeux et l'oreille.
+
+In the little _Lady at her Toilet_ (No. 439) we see the influence of
+Paul Veronese, though it is probable that this was not painted until he
+visited London in the later part of his short life. For there is a
+similar piece called _La Toilette du Matin_ which was engraved by a
+French artist who had settled in England, Philip Mercier, and on whose
+work the influence of Watteau is very noticeable.
+
+_Le Rendez-vous de Chasse_ (No. 416), which is of the same size, and in
+character similar to _Les Amusements Champêtres_ (No. 391), is the last
+by Watteau of which we have any certain knowledge. It was painted in
+1720, the year before his death, when his health prevented him from
+making any sustained effort. It is said to have been a commission from
+his friends M. and Mme. de Julienne, in whose shooting-box at Saint
+Maur, between the woods of Vincennes and the river, he went to repose
+from time to time.
+
+NICHOLAS LANCRET was only by six years Watteau's junior, so that he can
+hardly be considered as a pupil or even a disciple, but only as an
+imitator of Watteau. He was the pupil of Claude Gillot, and afterwards
+his assistant, and it was not unnatural that a close friendship should
+have been formed between Lancret and Watteau, or that it should have
+been dissolved by the deliberate imitation by the former of the latter's
+style--seeing how successful the imitation was. Two of the pictures by
+Lancret at Hertford House, Nos. 422, _Conversation Galante_ and 440,
+_Fête in a Wood_, are fair examples of how close, at one period of his
+career, the imitation became. The latter is the _Bal dans un Bois_ which
+was exhibited at the Place Dauphiné, and was complained of by Watteau on
+account of its close resemblance to his own work.
+
+Another in the Wallace Collection belongs to the same early period of
+Watteau's influence. The _Italian Comedians by a Fountain_ (No. 465),
+being attributed to Watteau in the sale, in 1853, at which it was bought
+for Lord Hertford. His lordship was particularly anxious to secure this
+picture, "Between _you_ and _I_," he writes, with the quaint
+regardlessness of grammar peculiar to the Victorian nobility, "(and to
+no other person but you should I make this _confidence_), I must have
+the Lancret called Watteau in the Standish Collection. So I depend upon
+you for _getting it for me_. I need not beg you not to mention a word
+about this to _anybody_, either _before_ or _after_ the sale." And
+again, "I _depend_ upon your getting the Lancret (Watteau in the
+Catalogue) for me. I have no doubt it will sell for a good sum, most
+likely more than it is worth, but we _must_ have it ... I leave it to
+you, but I must have it, unless by some unheard of chance it was to go
+beyond 3000 guineas." He was fortunate indeed in getting it for £735.
+
+_Mademoiselle Camargo Dancing_ (No. 393), and _La Belle Grecque_ (No.
+450), in the Wallace Collection, are good examples of the Comedian
+motive treated with more actuality, yet with no less grace. The four
+little allegorical pieces in the National Gallery, _The Four Ages of
+Man_, are more lively if less romantic, being composed more for the
+characters illustrating the subject than for poetical setting.
+
+JEAN BAPTISE JOSEPH PATER was actually a pupil of Watteau. He was ten
+years his junior, but was equally unhappy on account of his health, and
+died at forty. Like Lancret, he incurred Watteau's displeasure for a
+similar reason, though in his case it was rather the fear of what he
+would do than what he did that was the cause of Watteau's displeasure.
+At the same time, the names of both Lancret and Pater are inseparable
+from that of Watteau in the history of painting, and, both in their
+choice of subject and their treatment of it, they are hardly
+distinguishable to the casual observer. Watteau, it need hardly be said,
+was far above the other two, but it was fortunate indeed that his
+romantic genius had two such gifted imitators as Lancret and Pater--or
+to put it the other way, that they had such a master to imitate, without
+whom neither their work nor their influence would have been nearly as
+great as it was.
+
+FRANÇOIS BOUCHER, though doubtless influenced by Watteau, more
+especially at the outset of his brilliant career, was nevertheless
+independent of him in carrying forward the art painting in his country,
+choosing rather to revert to the patronage of the Court like his
+predecessors Le Brun, Rigaud, and Largillière than to devote himself to
+the expression of his own ideas and feelings. Being a pupil of François
+Le Moine, whose principal work was the decoration of Versailles, it is
+not unnatural that Boucher should have succumbed to the influence of
+Royalty, especially when exerted in his favour by as charming and as
+powerful an agent as Madame de Pompadour. Another early influence which
+shaped his artistic tendencies as well as his fortunes was that of Carle
+van Loo, in whose honour his countrymen coined the verb _vanlotiser_--to
+frivol agreeably--- on account of the popularity which he achieved as a
+painter of elegant trifles. There is a picture by Carle van Loo in the
+Wallace Collection entitled _The Grand Turk giving a Concert to his
+Mistress_ (No. 451), painted in 1737, which is a fair example of his
+proficiency in this direction, and there are one or two portraits
+scattered about the country which he painted when over here for a few
+months towards the end of his life. He died in Paris on the 15th July
+1765, and Boucher was immediately appointed his successor as principal
+painter to Louis XV.
+
+Madame de Pompadour was more than a patron to him, she was a matron! She
+made an intimate friend and adviser of him, and it is to her that he
+owed most of his advancement at Court, which continued after her death.
+The full-length portrait of her at Hertford House (No. 418) was
+commissioned by her in 1759, and remained in her possession till her
+death in 1764. It was purchased by Lord Hertford in 1868 for 28,000
+francs. In the Jones Collection at the South Kensington Museum is
+another portrait of her, and a third in the National Gallery at
+Edinburgh, not to mention those in private collections. The two
+magnificent cartoons on the staircase at Hertford House, called the
+_Rising and Setting of the Sun_, she begged from the king. These were
+ordered in 1748 as designs to be executed in tapestry at the Manufacture
+Royale des Gobelins, by Cozette and Audran, according to the catalogue
+of the Salon in 1753 when they were exhibited. They are characterised by
+the brothers de Goncourt as _le plus grand effort du peintre, les deux
+grandes machines de son oeuvre_; and the writer of the catalogue of
+Madame de Pompadour's pictures when they were sold in 1766 testifies
+thus to the artist's own opinion of them: "J'ai entendu plusieurs fois
+dire par l'auteur qu'ils étaient du nombre de ceux dont il était le plus
+satisfait." They were then sold for 9800 livres, and Lord Hertford paid
+20,200 francs for them in 1855.
+
+Even without these _chefs d'oeuvre_ the Wallace Collection is richer
+than any other gallery in the works of Boucher, with twenty-four
+examples (in all), of which few if any are of inferior quality. But it
+must be confessed that the abundance of Boucher's work does not enhance
+its artistic value, and we have to think of him, in comparison with
+Watteau and his school, rather as a great decorator than a great
+painter. With all his skill and charm, that is to say, there is not one
+of his canvases that we could place beside a picture by Watteau on
+anything like equal terms. Superficially it may be equally or possibly
+more attractive, but inwardly there is no comparison. Let us hear what
+Sir Joshua Reynolds has to say of him:--
+
+"Our neighbours, the French, are much in this practice of extempore
+invention, and their dexterity is such as even to excite admiration, if
+not envy; but how rarely can this praise be given to their finished
+pictures! The late Director of their Academy, Boucher, was eminent in
+this way. When I visited him some years since in France, I found him at
+work on a very large picture without drawings or models of any kind. On
+my remarking this particular circumstance, he said, when he was young,
+studying his art, he found it necessary to use models, but he had left
+them off for many years.... However, in justice, I cannot quit this
+painter without adding that in the former part of his life, when he was
+in the habit of having recourse to nature, he was not without a
+considerable degree of merit--enough to make half the painters of his
+country his imitators: he had often grace and beauty, and good skill in
+composition, but I think all under the influence of a bad taste; his
+imitators are, indeed, abominable."
+
+Twenty-one years elapsed between the birth of Boucher and the next
+painter of anything like his ability, namely, JEAN BAPTISTE GREUZE. He
+was a native of Tournous, near Macon, and lived to see the century out,
+dying in 1805, at the age of seventy-eight. His popularity is nowadays
+due chiefly to his heads of young girls, which he painted in his later
+life with admirable skill, but with a sentimentality that almost repels.
+The famous example in the National Gallery is more free from the sickly
+sweetness that spoils most of them, and reminds us that he could paint
+more serious works, and paint them exceedingly well. He first came into
+notice by pictures like _La Lecture du Bible_, _La Malédiction
+Paternelle_, or _Le Fils Puni_, which are now to be seen--though
+generally passed by--at the Louvre, and his style was imitated in later
+years in England by Wheatley and others of that school with more or less
+success. It was a great blow to him, and one which seriously affected
+his career when the Academy censured his Diploma picture, _The Emperor
+Severus reproaching Caracalla_. But for this we might have had more than
+these sentimental young ladies from a hand that was undoubtedly worthy
+of better things. However, as Lord Hertford admired them sufficiently to
+include no less than twenty-one of them in his collection, we ought not
+to be severe in criticising them, and we may quote the description of
+_The Souvenir_ (No. 398) given by John Smith, in his Catalogue Raisonné
+in 1837, as showing the esteem in which it was held.
+
+"_The Souvenir._ An interesting female, about fifteen years of age,
+pressing fondly to her bosom a little red and white spaniel dog; the pet
+animal appears to remind her of some favourite object, for whose safety
+and return she is breathing an earnest wish; her fair oval countenance
+and melting eyes are directed upwards, and her ruby lips are slightly
+open; her light hair falls negligently on her shoulder, and is
+tastefully braided
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXXV.--JEAN-BAPTISTE GREUZE
+
+THE BROKEN PITCHER
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+with a crimson riband and pearls. She is attired in a morning dress,
+consisting of a loose gown and a brownish scarf, the latter of which
+hangs across her arm. Upon a tree behind her is inscribed the name of
+the painter. This beautiful production of art abounds in every
+attractive charm which gives interest to the master's works."
+
+Very different, and far superior to Greuze, was JEAN HONORÉ FRAGONARD,
+born at Grasse, in the Alpes Maritimes, in 1732. In England his name was
+almost unknown until within quite recent years, and the National Gallery
+has only one picture by him, which was bequeathed by George Salting in
+1910. Fortunately he is well represented in the Wallace Collection,
+three at least of the nine examples being in his most brilliant manner.
+
+Fragonard's father was a glover. In 1750 the family moved to Paris, and
+the boy was put into a notary's office. The usual signs of
+disinclination for office work and a passion for art having duly
+appeared, he was sent to Boucher, who advised him to go and study under
+Chardin. This he did for a short time, but finding it dull--for Chardin
+was not as great a teacher as he was a painter--he went back to Boucher
+as an assistant. In 1752 he won the Prix de Rome, although he had never
+attended the Academy Schools, and in 1756 started for Italy.
+
+Reynolds had just returned from Rome at the date of Fragonard's capture
+of the opportunity of going there, and we know from the _Discourses_ how
+he spent his time there and what direction his studies took. Fragonard
+pursued an exactly opposite course, being advised thereto by Boucher,
+who said to him, "If you take Michelangelo and Raphael seriously, you
+are lost." Feeling that the advice was suitable to himself, if not
+sound on general principles, Fragonard devoted himself to the lighter
+and more sparkling works of Tiepolo and others of the seventeenth and
+eighteenth centuries. He also made a tour in South Italy and Sicily with
+Hubert Robert, the landscape painter, and the Abbé Saint Non, the latter
+of whom published a number of etchings he made after Fragonard's
+drawings, under the title of _Voyages de Naples et de Sicile_.
+
+On returning to Paris in 1761 his first success was the large
+composition of _Callirhoé and Coresus_, which was exhibited at the Salon
+in 1765, and is now in the Louvre. But he soon abandoned the grand
+style, chiefly, it is probable, owing to the patronage of the idle or
+industrious rich who showered commissions upon him, for smaller and more
+sociable pictures with which to adorn and enliven their houses. The
+beautiful, but exceedingly improper picture at Hertford House, called
+_The Swing_--or in French, _Les Hazards heureux de l'Escarpolette_,
+appears to have been commissioned by the Baron de St. Julien, within the
+next year or two, for in the memoirs of Cotté a conversation is recorded
+which shows that the Baron had asked another painter, Doyen, to paint
+it. "Who would have believed," says the indignant Doyen, "that within a
+few days of my picture of Ste. Geneviéve being exhibited at the Salon, a
+nobleman would have sent for me to order a picture on a subject like
+this." He then goes on to relate how the Baron explained to him exactly
+what he required. We cannot entirely acquit Fragonard of all blame in
+accepting such a commission, but he was a young man, just starting as a
+professional artist, with the example of Boucher before him, and it
+would hardly have seemed wise to begin his career by offending a noble
+patron. The whole incident throws a glaring light on the conditions
+under which the art of France flourished in the Louis Quinze period,
+when Boucher was everybody and Chardin nobody.
+
+For the real Fragonard we may turn to _Le Chiffre d'Amour_, or the "Lady
+carving an initial," as the prosaic diction of the Wallace Collection
+has it (No. 382). In this the equal delicacy of the sentiment and of the
+painting combine to effect a little masterpiece of Louis Quinze art. It
+is simple and natural, and entirely free from the besetting sins of so
+slight a picture triviality, affectation, empty prettiness, or simply
+silliness. In its way it is perfect, and for that perfection is for ever
+reserved the popularity which we find temporarily accorded to pictures
+like Frith's _Dolly Varden_ or Millais' _Bubbles_.
+
+Another of the Hertford House examples, the portrait of a Boy as
+Pierrot, is equally entitled to be popular for all time, and like
+Reynolds's _Strawberry Girl_, might well be called "one of the
+half-dozen original things" which no artist ever exceeded in his life's
+work. A comparison between the two pictures, which were probably painted
+within a few years of each other, will serve to show the difference
+between the English and French Schools at this period. On the one
+hand--to put it very shortly indeed--we see Fragonard influenced by
+Tiepolo, France, and Louis XV.; on the other, Sir Joshua, influenced by
+Michelangelo and Raphael, England, and George III.
+
+The mention of JEAN BAPTISTE SIMEON CHARDIN among this brilliant and
+frivolous galaxy seems almost out of place. "He is not so much an
+eighteenth-century French artist," Lady Dilke says of him, "as a French
+artist of pure race and type. Though he treated subjects of the
+humblest and most unpretentious class, he brought to their rendering not
+only deep feeling and a penetration which divined the innermost truths
+of the simplest forms of life, but a perfection of workmanship by which
+everything he handled was clothed with beauty." That the Wallace
+Collection includes no work from his hand is perhaps regrettable, but
+truly Chardin was someone apart from all the magnificence that dazzles
+us there. His was the treasure of the humble.
+
+The effects of the Revolution upon French painting were as surprising as
+they were great. That the gay and frivolous art of Boucher and Fragonard
+should have suddenly ceased might have been considered inevitable; but
+whereas in Holland, when the Spanish yoke had been thrown off, and a
+Republic proclaimed, a vigorous democratic school arose under Frans
+Hals; and in England during the Commonwealth the artistic influence
+which was beginning to be spread by Charles I. and Buckingham utterly
+ceased; in France an artistic Dictator arose, as we may well call him,
+in the person of JACQUES LOUIS DAVID, who not only made painting a part
+of the revolutionary propaganda, but succeeded under the Emperor
+Napoleon also in maintaining his position as painter to the Government,
+and thereby imposing on his country a style of art which had a great
+influence on the whole course of French painting for many years to come.
+But the most remarkable thing was that it was to the classics that this
+revolutioniser went for inspiration. The explanation is to be found in
+the fact that he was bitterly aggrieved by the attitude of the Academy
+to him as a young man, and in the accident of his famous picture of
+Brutus synchronising with the events of 1789. He was at once hailed as a
+deliverer, and made, as it were, painter to the Revolution.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXXVI.--FRAGONARD
+
+L'ÉTUDE
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+But what was even more important in the influence he exerted at this
+time was his actual appointment as President of the Convention, which
+gave him the power to revenge himself upon the Academy, which he did by
+extinguishing it in 1793, and to remove any inconvenient rivals by
+indicting them as aristocrats. Of the older painters, Fragonard and
+Greuze were the only important ones left, and as they could not under
+the altered circumstances be considered as rivals to the classical
+David, they both saw the century out. Fragonard simply ceased painting
+for want of patrons, and David was good enough to procure him a post in
+the Museum des Arts, or he would have starved. Unfortunately he
+attempted to adapt himself to the new style, and was promptly ejected
+from his post--ostensibly on his previous connection with royalty--and
+was wise enough to fly to his native town in the south.
+
+During the first quarter of the nineteenth century the dictatorship of
+David was supreme. How it was finally overthrown we shall see in another
+chapter.
+
+
+
+
+_THE ENGLISH SCHOOL_
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE EARLY PORTRAIT PAINTERS
+
+
+In the preface to the _Anecdotes of Painting_ written in 1762, Horace
+Walpole observes that this country had not a single volume to show on
+the works of its painters. "In truth," he continues, "it has very rarely
+given birth to a genius in that profession. Flanders and Holland have
+sent us the greatest men that we can boast. This very circumstance may
+with reason prejudice the reader against a work, the chief business of
+which must be to celebrate the art of a country which has produced so
+few good artists. This objection is so striking, that instead of calling
+it _The Lives of English Painters_, I have simply given it the title of
+_Anecdotes of Painting in England_."
+
+As Walpole's work was merely a compilation from the voluminous notes of
+George Vertue, a painstaking antiquary who had collected every scrap of
+information he could acquire in the early years of the eighteenth
+century, his conclusions can hardly be questioned, and the foundation of
+the English school of painting is therefore generally assumed to have
+been effected by Reynolds. But as Wren's Cathedral replaced an older one
+which was destroyed by the fire of London, and as that was reared on
+the foundation of a Roman temple, so we find that the art of painting in
+England was certainly practised in earlier times, and but for certain
+circumstances much more of it would have survived than is now to be
+found.
+
+In other countries, as we have seen, the Church was in earlier times the
+greatest if not the only patron of the arts, and there is plenty of
+evidence to show that in England, too, from the reign of Henry III.
+onwards till the Reformation, our churches were decorated with frescoes.
+This evidence is of two kinds; first, entries in royal and other
+accounts, directing payment for specified work; and secondly, the
+remains of fresco painting in our cathedrals and churches. The former is
+of little interest except to the antiquary. The latter has suffered so
+much from neglect or actual destruction as to be considered unworthy of
+the attention of either the artist in search of inspiration or the
+critic in pursuit of anything to criticise; but when every
+inconsiderable production in the little world of English art has had its
+bulky quarto written upon it, it is curious that no one has yet
+discovered what a splendid harvest awaits the investigation of these old
+frescoes all over the country.
+
+As it is, we have only to note that as religion was so important an
+influence on painting in other countries so was it in England, only
+unfortunately as a destroying and not a cherishing influence. Granting
+the probability that there were few, if any, of our English frescoes
+which would be comparable in artistic interest with those in Italy,
+where the art was so sedulously cultivated, it must nevertheless be
+remembered that only a fragment remains here and there out of all the
+work which must have been produced, and that after the Reformation even
+those works which did survive were treated with positive as well as
+negative obloquy, so that where they have been preserved at all it is
+only by having been whitewashed over or otherwise hidden and damaged.
+
+Even worse than the Reformation in 1530, was the Puritan outburst a
+century later, which not only destroyed works of art, but extinguished
+all hope of their being created. Is it to be wondered at, then, that the
+foundation of the English School of painting should have been postponed
+for a century more?
+
+At the same time it is interesting to note that the little painting
+which did creep into England in the sixteenth century, was of the very
+kind that formed the chief feature of the English School when it was
+finally established, namely portraiture. Here again we see the influence
+of religion; for to the reformed church, at least as interpreted by the
+English temperament, the second commandment was and is still second only
+in number, not in importance. To Protestant or Puritan the idea of a
+picture in a church was anathema. As late as 1766, when Benjamin West
+offered to decorate St. Paul's Cathedral with a painting of Moses
+receiving the tables of the law on Mount Sinai, the Bishop exclaimed, "I
+have heard of the proposition, and as I am head of the Cathedral of the
+Metropolis, I will not suffer the doors to be opened to introduce
+popery."
+
+The painting of a portrait, however, was a very different matter, and
+from the earliest times appears to have appealed with peculiar strength
+to the vanity of Britons. Loudly as they protested against the iniquity
+of bowing down to and worshipping the likeness of anything in heaven
+above or in the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth, they
+were never averse to giving others an opportunity of bowing down to and
+worshipping the likenesses of themselves; and while religion fostered
+the arts in other countries, self-importance kept them alive in this.
+The portrait of Richard II. in Westminster Abbey, if not actually an
+instance of this, certainly happens to seem like one.
+
+With the exception of Jan de Mabuse, who is said to have been in England
+for a short time during the reign of Henry VII., the first painter of
+any importance in this country was Hans Holbein. Hearing that money was
+to be made by painting portraits at the English Court, he forsook his
+native town, his religious art, and his wife, and came to stay with Sir
+Thomas More at Chelsea, with an introduction from Erasmus. Arriving in
+1527, he started business by making a sketch in pen and ink of More's
+entire family, with which marvellous work, still preserved in the Museum
+at Basle, the history of modern English painting may fairly be said to
+have begun; for though it was long before a native of England was
+forthcoming who was of sufficient force to carry on the tradition, the
+seed was sown, and in due course the plant appeared, and after many
+vicissitudes, at last flourished.
+
+The immediate effect may be noted by mentioning here the names of
+GUILLIM STREETES, who was possibly English born, and JOHN BETTES who
+certainly was. To the former is attributed the large whole-length
+portrait at Hampton Court of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, in a suit of
+bright red. Another portrait of Howard belongs to the Duke of Norfolk,
+having been presented to his ancestor by Sir Robert Walpole. Both were
+exhibited at the Tudor Exhibition in 1892. Streetes was painter to King
+Edward VI., and according to Stype he was paid fifty marks, in 1551,
+"for recompense of three great tables whereof two were the pictures of
+his Highness sent to Sir Thomas Hoby and Sir John Mason (ambassadors
+abroad), the third a picture of the late Earl of Surrey attainted, and
+by the Councils' commandment fetched from the said Guillim's house."
+Horace Walpole was under the impression that this was the Duke of
+Norfolk's picture, but the Hampton Court Catalogue claims the other one
+as the work of Streetes.
+
+In the National Gallery is a bust portrait of Edmund Butts, physician to
+Henry VIII., which is inscribed _faict par Johan Bettes Anglois_, and
+with the date 1545. In this the influence of Holbein is certainly
+discernible, though not all pervading. There were two brothers, THOMAS
+and JOHN BETTES who are mentioned by Meres with several other English
+painters in _Palladis Tamia_, published in 1598--"As Greece had moreover
+their painters, so in England we have also these, William and Francis
+Segar, brethren, Thomas and John Bettes, Lockie, Lyne, Peake, Peter
+Cole, Arnolde, Marcus (Mark Garrard)," etc. Walpole, quoting this, adds,
+"I quote this passage to prove to those who learn one or two names by
+rote that every old picture you see is not by Holbein." At the same time
+it must be admitted that until some considerable fund of information
+concerning these early days of painting is brought to light, there is
+very little to be said about any one except Holbein till almost the end
+of the sixteenth century.
+
+That Holbein was "a wonderful artist," as More wrote to Erasmus, is not
+to be denied. But in placing him among the very greatest, we must not
+forget that his range was somewhat limited. We might nowadays call him a
+specialist, for in England he painted nothing but portraits, and very
+few of his pictures contained anything besides the single figure, or
+head, of the subject. The famous exception is the large picture called
+_The Ambassadors_, which was purchased at an enormous price from the
+Longford Castle collection, and is now in the National Gallery.
+Important and interesting as this is as showing us how Holbein could
+fill a large canvas, there is no doubt that he is far happier in simple
+portraiture, and that the £60,000 expended on _Christina Duchess of
+Milan_ was, relatively, a better investment for the nation. In the
+famous half-lengths like the _George Gisze_ at Berlin (which was painted
+in London) and the _Man with the Hawk_, where the portrait is surrounded
+by accessories, Holbein is perhaps at his very best; but it is as a
+painter of heads, simply, that he influenced the English School, and set
+an example which, alas! has never been attainable since.
+
+For one thing, which is apart altogether from talent or genius,
+Holbein's method was never followed in later times, namely, the practice
+of making carefully finished drawings in crayon before painting a
+portrait in oils. He was a wonderful draughtsman, and in the series of
+over eighty drawings at Windsor we have even more life-like images of
+the persons represented than their finished portraits. I am not aware
+that any portrait drawings exists of Holbein's contemporaries or
+successors in England earlier than one or two by Van Dyck. There are a
+good many belonging to the seventeenth century, but with one or two
+exceptions they are little more than sketches. And though sketches have
+only survived by accident, as it were, not being intended for anything
+more than the artist's own purposes, finished drawings would have been
+kept, like Holbein's, with much greater care.
+
+In a word, then, Holbein's first and chief business was in rendering the
+likeness of the sitter. Being a
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXXVII.--HANS HOLBEIN
+
+ANNE OF CLEVES
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+born genius, he accomplished far more than this; but it is important in
+tracing the development of the English School of painting to remember
+that its origin was not in the idealization of religious sentiment, but
+in the realization of the human features. From the time of the first
+great genius to that of the next, exactly a century later, there is
+hardly a portrait in existence that is valued for anything but its
+historic or personal interest. Between Holbein and Van Dyck is a great
+gap, in which the only names of Englishmen are those of the
+miniaturists, Hilliard and Oliver, who were veritably of the seed of
+Holbein, but only in little.
+
+Van Dyck struck deeper into the English soil, and loosened it
+sufficiently for the growth of larger stuff, if still somewhat coarse,
+like the work of William Dobson and Robert Walker. To Van Dyck succeeded
+Peter Lely, who boldly and worthily assumed the mantle of Van Dyck, and
+kept English portraiture alive throughout the dismal period of the
+Commonwealth. After the Restoration he was still in power, and under him
+flourished one or two painters of English birth, like Greenhill and
+Riley, who in turn gave way to others under Kneller without ceding the
+monopoly to foreigners. From these came Jervas, Richardson, and, most
+important, Hudson, who was Reynolds's master, and so we arrive at the
+beginning of what is now generally known as the English School.
+
+Another source, however, must here be mentioned as joining the main
+stream, and contributing a solid body of water to it, chiefly below the
+surface, namely the art of WILLIAM HOGARTH. Being essentially English,
+and without any artistic forefathers, it is not surprising that he left
+less perceptible impressions on his immediate successors than the more
+accomplished and educated Reynolds; but the solid force of his
+character, as exemplified in his career and his works, is hardly a less
+important factor in the development of the English School, while from
+his outspoken opinions on the state of the arts in his time he is one of
+the most valuable sources of its history.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+WILLIAM HOGARTH
+
+
+WILLIAM HOGARTH occupies a curious position in the history of English
+painting. There was nothing ever quite like him in any country--except
+Greuze in France; for though a comparison between two such opposites,
+seems at first sight absurd, it must be remembered that French and
+English painting in the middle of the eighteenth century were no less
+far apart. Both Greuze and Hogarth, in their own fashion, tried to
+preach moral lessons in paint, the one in the over-refined atmosphere of
+French surroundings, the other in the coarse language of England in his
+time.
+
+Hogarth's chief characteristic was his blunt, honest, bull-dog
+Englishness, which at the particular moment of his appearance on the
+artistic stage was a quality which was eminently serviceable to English
+painting. Though of humble parents, his honest and forceful character
+won for him the daughter of Sir James Thornhill in marriage (by
+elopement) and his sturdy talent in painting secured for him his
+father-in-law's forgiveness and encouragement. Thornhill came of a good,
+old Wiltshire family, and had been knighted by George I. for his
+sterling merits as much as for his skill in painting and decorating the
+royal palaces and the houses of noblemen. His place among English
+artists is not a very high one, but he deserves the credit of having
+stood out against the monopoly that was being established by foreigners
+in this country in every department of artistic work, and in this sense
+he is a still earlier forerunner of the great English painters, than his
+more forcible son-in-law.
+
+If Hogarth had been content to follow the beaten track of portraiture as
+his main pursuit, and let the country's morals take care of themselves,
+he would in all probability have attained much greater heights as a
+painter. But his nature would not allow him to do this. His character
+was too strong and his originality too uncontrollable. There is enough
+evidence among the works which have survived him, especially in those
+which were never finished, to show that his accomplishments in oil
+painting were of a very high order indeed. I need only refer to the
+famous head in the National Gallery known as _The Shrimp Girl_ to
+explain what I mean. In this surprisingly vivacious and charming sketch
+we see something that is not inferior to Hals, in its broad truth and
+its quick seizure of the essentials of what had to be rendered. In
+another unfinished piece, which is now in the South London Art Gallery
+at Camberwell, we see the same powerful qualities differently exhibited,
+for it is not a single head this time, but a sketch of a ballroom where
+everybody is dancing, except one gentleman who is even more vivid than
+the rest, in the act of mopping his head at the open window. There is
+nothing grotesque in this picture, but it is all perfectly life-like and
+wonderfully sketched in.
+
+In his finished pictures Hogarth does not appear to such great
+advantage--I mean as a painter; but it must be remembered that in his
+day there was little example for him to follow in the higher departments
+of his art. Nor had he ever been out of England to see fine pictures on
+the Continent. Not only this, but as his work was intended especially to
+appeal to ordinary people, it is hardly to be expected that he would
+express himself in terms other than might most quickly appeal to them.
+His most famous works, indeed, were executed as well as designed for the
+engraver, namely _The Harlot's Progress_, _The Rake's Progress_,
+_Marriage à la Mode_, and _The Election_, each of which consisted of a
+series of several minutely finished pictures. In portraiture he showed
+finer qualities, it is true; but even in these he was thinking more of
+getting the most out of his model, according to his forcible character,
+than of any technical refinements for which he might be handed down to
+posterity as a great painter.
+
+It was easy enough for Reynolds to sneer at Hogarth for his vulgarity,
+when he was trying to impress upon his pupils the importance of painting
+in the grand style. "As for the various departments of painting," he
+says in his third Discourse, "which do not presume to make such high
+pretensions, they are many. None of them are without their merit, though
+none enter into competition with this universal presiding idea of the
+art. The painters who have applied themselves more particularly to low
+and vulgar characters, and who express with precision the various shades
+of passion as they are exhibited by vulgar minds (such as we see in the
+works of Hogarth), deserve great praise; but as their genius has been
+employed on low and confined subjects, the praise which we must give
+must be as limited as its object." And yet it was in following an
+example set by Hogarth in portrait painting that Reynolds gained his
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXXVIII.--WILLIAM HOGARTH
+
+THE SHRIMP GIRL
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+first success in that art. I mean the full-length portrait of Captain
+Keppel, painted in 1752. This originality and boldness in disregarding
+the tame but universal convention in posing the sitter was peculiarly
+Hogarth's own. With him it amounted almost to perverseness. He would not
+let anybody "sit" to him, if he could help it. When he did, as in the
+portraits of Quinn, the actor, and Hoadly, Bishop of Winchester, in the
+National Gallery, the result is not the happiest; for, with all their
+force, these portraits lack the grace that a conventional pose requires
+to render it acceptable in the terms of its convention. If a man must
+put on the accepted evening dress of his time, he must see that it
+conforms in the spirit as well as in the letter of the fashion, or he
+will only look like a dressed-up greengrocer. Hogarth was too sturdy and
+too wilful to put on court clothes. If he had to, he struggled with
+them.
+
+Hogarth's father was a man of literary tastes, and a scholar. He had
+written a supplement to Littleton's Latin Dictionary, but was unable to
+get it published. "I saw the difficulties," writes the artist, "under
+which my father laboured; the many inconveniences he endured from his
+dependence, living chiefly on his pen, and the cruel treatment he met
+with from booksellers and printers. I had before my eyes the precarious
+situation of men of classical education; it was therefore conformable to
+my wishes that I was taken from school and served a long apprenticeship
+to a silver-plate engraver." This is printed in Allan Cunningham's _Life
+of Hogarth_, together with many more extracts from autobiographical
+memoranda, from which we may learn at first hand a great deal of
+information bearing on the state of painting at this period, and the
+circumstances under which it received such a stimulus from Hogarth,
+before the sun had fully risen (in the person of Reynolds) to illumine
+the whole period of British art.
+
+"As I had naturally a good eye and fondness for drawing," Hogarth
+continues, "_shows_ of all sorts gave me uncommon pleasure when young,
+and mimicry, common to all children, was remarkable in me. An early
+access to a neighbouring painter drew my attention from play, and I was
+at every possible opportunity engaged in making drawings.... My
+exercises at school were more remarkable for the ornaments which adorned
+them than for the exercise itself. In the former I soon found that
+blockheads with better memories would soon surpass me, but for the
+latter I was particularly distinguished.
+
+"The painting of St. Paul's and Greenwich Hospital, which were at that
+time going on, ran in my head, and I determined that silver-plate
+engraving should be followed no longer than necessity obliged me to it.
+Engraving on copper was, at twenty years of age, my utmost ambition. To
+attain that it was necessary that I should learn to draw objects
+something like nature, instead of the monsters of heraldry, and the
+common methods of study were much too tedious for one who loved his
+pleasure and came so late to it.... This led me to consider whether a
+shorter road than that usually travelled was not to be found.... I had
+learned by practice to copy with tolerable correctness in the ordinary
+way, but it occurred to me that there were many disadvantages attending
+this method of study, as having faulty originals, etc.; and even when
+the prints or pictures to be imitated were by the best masters, it was
+little more than pouring water out of one vessel into another. Many
+reasons led me to wish that I could find a shorter path--fix forms and
+characters in my mind--and, instead of copying the lines, try to read
+the language, and if possible find the grammar of the art, by bringing
+into one focus the various observations I had made, and then trying by
+my power on the canvas how far my plan enabled me to combine and apply
+them to practice....
+
+"I had one material advantage over my competitors, viz., the early habit
+I acquired of retaining in my mind's eye, without coldly copying on the
+spot, whatever I intended to imitate.... Instead of burdening the memory
+with musty rules, or tiring the eye with copying dry or damaged
+pictures, I have ever found studying from nature the shortest and safest
+way of obtaining knowledge in my art...."
+
+"I entertained some thoughts," he writes again, "of succeeding in what
+the puffers in books call the great style of history painting, so that,
+without having had a stroke of this grand business before, I quitted
+small portraits and familiar conversations, and with a smile at my own
+temerity commenced history painter, and on a great staircase at St.
+Bartholomew's Hospital painted two Scripture stories, _The Pool of
+Bethesda_ and _The Good Samaritan_, with figures seven feet high. These
+I presented to the charity, and thought that they might serve as a
+specimen to show that, were there an inclination in England for
+encouraging historical pictures, such a first essay might prove the
+painting them more easily attainable than is generally imagined. But as
+Religion, the great promoter of this style in other countries, rejected
+it in England, and I was unwilling to sink into a
+portrait-manufacturer--and still ambitious of being singular, I soon
+dropped all expectations of advantage from that source, and returned to
+the pursuit of my former dealings with the public at large."
+
+Few seemed disposed to recognise, in any of Hogarth's works, a higher
+aim than that of raising a laugh. Somerville, the poet, dedicated his
+_Rural Games_ to Hogarth in these words--"Permit me, Sir, to make choice
+of you for my patron, being the greatest master in the burlesque way.
+Your province is the town--leave me a small outride in the country, and
+I shall be content." Fielding had a different opinion of his merits: "He
+who would call the ingenious Hogarth a burlesque painter would in my
+opinion do him very little honour, for sure it is much easier, much less
+the subject of admiration, to paint a man with a nose, or any other
+feature of a preposterous size, or to expose him in some absurd or
+monstrous attitude, than to express the affections of man on canvas. It
+hath been thought a vast commendation of a painter to say his figures
+seem to breathe, but surely it is a much greater and nobler applause
+that they appear to think."
+
+In answer to criticism of his _Analysis of Beauty_, Hogarth writes:
+"Among other crimes of which I am accused, it is asserted that I have
+abused the 'Great Masters'; this is far from being just. So far from
+attempting to lower the ancients, I have always thought, and it is
+universally admitted, that they knew some fundamental principles in
+nature which enabled them to produce works that have been the admiration
+of succeeding ages; but I have not allowed this merit to those
+leaden-headed imitators, who, having no consciousness of either symmetry
+or propriety, have attempted to mend nature, and in their truly ideal
+figures, gave similar proportions to a Mercury and a Hercules."
+
+Another and a better spirit influenced him in the following passage--he
+is proposing to seek the principles of beauty in nature instead of
+looking for them in mere learning. His words are plain, direct, and
+convincing. "Nature is simple, plain, and true in all her works, and
+those who strictly adhere to her laws, and closely attend to her
+appearances in their infinite varieties are guarded against any
+prejudicial bias from truth; while those who have seen many things that
+they cannot well understand, and read many books which they do not fully
+comprehend, notwithstanding all their parade of knowledge, are apt to
+wander about it and about it; perplexing themselves and their readers
+with the various opinions of other men. As to those painters who have
+written treatises on painting, they were in general too much taken up
+with giving rules for the operative part of the art, to enter into
+physical disquisitions on the nature of the objects."
+
+After this it would be unfair to withhold the praise of Benjamin West
+(who succeeded Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy)--a painter,
+prudent in speech, and frugal in commendation. "I remember, when I was a
+lad," says Smith, in his account of Nollekens, "asking the late
+venerable President West what he thought of Hogarth's _Analysis of
+Beauty_, and his answer was, 'It is a work of the highest value to
+everyone studying the art. Hogarth was a strutting consequential little
+man, and made himself many enemies by that book; but now that most of
+them are dead, it is examined by disinterested readers, unbiassed by
+personal animosities, and will be more and more read, studied and
+understood.'"
+
+In his memoranda respecting the establishment of an Academy of Art in
+England, Hogarth writes well and wisely. Voltaire asserts that after
+the establishment of the French Academy not one work of genius appeared,
+for all the painters became mannerists and imitators. Hogarth agrees
+with him, declaring that "the institution will serve to raise and
+pension a few bustling and busy men, whose whole employment will be to
+tell a few simple students when a leg is too long, or an arm too short.
+More will flock to the study of art than genius sends; the hope of
+profit, or the thirst of distinction, will induce parents to push their
+offspring into the lecture-room, and many will appear and but few be
+worthy. The paintings of Italy form a sort of ornamental fringe to their
+gaudy religion, and Rome is the general storeshop of Europe. The arts
+owe much to Popery, and Popery owes much of its universality to the
+arts. The French have attained to a sort of foppish magnificence in art;
+in Holland, selfishness is the ruling passion, and in England vanity is
+united with selfishness. Portrait-painting, therefore, has succeeded,
+and ever will succeed better in England than in any other country, and
+the demand will continue as new faces come into the market.
+
+"Portrait painting is one of the ministers of vanity, and vanity is a
+munificent patroness; historical painting seeks to revive the memory of
+the dead, and the dead are very indifferent paymasters. Paintings are
+plentiful enough in England to keep us from the study of nature; but
+students who confine their studies to the works of the dead, need never
+hope to live themselves; they will learn little more than the names of
+the painters: true painting can only be learnt in one school, and that
+is kept by Nature."
+
+Hogarth disliked a formal school, says Cunningham, because he was the
+pupil of nature, and foresaw that students would flock to it from the
+feeling of trade rather than the impulse of genius, and that it become a
+manufactory for conventional forms and hereditary graces. Opulent
+collectors were filling their galleries with the religious paintings of
+the Romish Church, and vindicating their purchases by representing these
+works as the only patterns of all that is noble in art and worthy of
+imitation. Hogarth perceived that all this was not according to the
+natural spirit of the nation; he well knew that our island had not yet
+poured out its own original mind in art, as it had done in poetry; and
+he felt assured that such a time would come, if native genius were not
+overlaid systematically by mock patrons and false instructors.
+
+"As a painter," says Walpole, "Hogarth has slender merit." "What is the
+merit of a painter?" Cunningham concludes. "If it be to represent
+life--to give us an image of man--to exhibit the workings of his
+heart--to record the good and evil of his nature--to set in motion
+before us the very beings with whom earth is peopled--to shake us with
+mirth--to sadden us with woeful reflection--to please us with natural
+grouping, vivid action, and vigorous colouring--Hogarth has done all
+this--and if he that has done so be not a painter, who will show us
+one?"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS AND THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
+
+
+Whether or not SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS is entitled to be ranked among the
+very greatest painters, there can be no question that he has a place
+among the most famous, not only on account of his actual painting, but
+also because of the influence exerted by his whole-hearted devotion to
+his art, and his strong character in forming, out of such unpromising
+elements, a really vigorous school of painting in this country. The
+example he set in the strenuous exercise of his profession, the precepts
+he laid down for the guidance of students, and the dignity with which he
+invested the whole practice of painting which, until he came, had
+degenerated into a mere business, were of incalculable benefit to his
+own and succeeding ages, and Edmund Burke was paying him no empty
+compliment but only stating the bare truth when he said that Sir Joshua
+Reynolds was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant
+arts to the other glories of his country.
+
+Joshua Reynolds was born at Plympton in Devonshire on the 16th July
+1723; the son of the Rev. Samuel Reynolds and his wife Theophila Potter.
+He was on every side connected with the Church, for both his father and
+his grandfather were in holy orders, his mother was the daughter of a
+clergyman, and his maternal grandmother also. His father's elder
+brother, too, was a clergyman, a fellow of Eton College and Canon of St.
+Peter's, Exeter. So that here, as in Italy, we start with a basis of
+religion.
+
+The young artist's first essays were made in copying several little
+things done by his elder sisters, and he afterwards took great delight
+in copying such prints as he met with in his father's books,
+particularly those in Plutarch's _Lives_, and in Jacob Cats's _Book of
+Emblems_, which his great-grandmother by his father's side, a Dutch
+woman, had brought from Holland. When he was only eight years old he
+read with great avidity a book called _The Jesuits Perspective_, an
+architectural, not a religious work, and made himself so completely
+master of it that he never afterwards had occasion to study any other
+treatise on the subject. In fact, a drawing which he then made of
+Plympton School so filled his father with wonder that he said to him,
+"Now this exemplifies what the author of the _Perspective_ says in his
+preface--that by observing the rules laid down in his book a man may do
+wonders, for this is wonderful!"
+
+From these attempts he proceeded to draw likenesses of his friends and
+relations with tolerable success. But what most strongly confirmed him
+in his love of the art was Richardson's _Treatise on Painting_, the
+perusal of which so delighted and inflamed his mind, that Raphael
+appeared to him superior to the most illustrious names of ancient or
+modern times--a notion which he loved to indulge all the rest of his
+life.
+
+Before he was eighteen years old his father placed him as a pupil with
+Thomas Hudson, who was then the most distinguished portrait-painter in
+England; but having some disagreement with his master, the young man
+returned to Devonshire, where he practised portrait painting with more
+or less success until in 1749 he accompanied Admiral Keppel to the
+Mediterranean, and remained for two or three years studying the old
+masters in Italy.
+
+As this period of Reynold's career had so determining an influence not
+only on himself but on the whole course of the history of painting in
+England--inasmuch as it formed the greater part of the groundwork of his
+discourses when President of the Royal Academy, it is worth having an
+account of it at first hand from the painter himself. "It has frequently
+happened," he says, "as I was informed by the Keeper of the Vatican,
+that many of those whom he had conducted through the various apartments
+of that edifice when about to be dismissed, have asked for the works of
+Raphael, and would not believe that they had already passed through the
+room where they are preserved, so little impression had those
+performances made on them. One of the first painters now in France once
+told me that this circumstance happened to himself, though he now looks
+on Raphael with that veneration which he deserves from all painters and
+lovers of the art. I remember very well my own disappointment when I
+first visited the the Vatican: but on confessing my feelings to a
+brother student, of whose ingenuousness I had a high opinion, he
+acknowledged that the works of Raphael had the same effect on him, or
+rather that they did not produce the effect which he expected. This was
+a great relief to my mind, and on inquiry further of other students I
+found that those persons only who from natural imbecility appeared to be
+incapable of ever relishing those divine performances, made pretensions
+to instantaneous raptures on first beholding them.
+
+"In justice to myself, however, I must add that though disappointed and
+mortified at not finding myself enraptured with the works of this great
+master, I did not for a moment conceive or suppose that the name of
+Raphael, and those admirable paintings in particular, owed their
+reputation to the ignorance and prejudice of mankind; on the contrary,
+my not relishing them as I was conscious I ought to have done was one of
+the most humiliating circumstances that ever happened to me. I found
+myself in the midst of works executed upon principles with which I was
+unacquainted: I felt my ignorance, and stood abashed. All the indigested
+notions of painting which I had brought with me from England where the
+art was in the lowest state it had ever been in (it could not indeed be
+lower) were to be totally done away and eradicated from my mind. It was
+necessary, as it is expressed on a very solemn occasion, that I should
+become _as a little child_.
+
+"Notwithstanding my disappointment, I proceeded to copy some of those
+excellent works. I viewed them again and again; I even affected to feel
+their merit and to admire them more than I really did. In a short time a
+new taste and new perceptions began to dawn upon me, and I was convinced
+that I had originally formed a false opinion of the perfection of art,
+and that this great painter was well entitled to the high rank which he
+holds in the estimation of the world."
+
+"When I was at Venice," he writes in a note on Du Fresnoy's _Art of
+Painting_ about the chiaroscuro of Titian, Paul Veronese and Tintoretto,
+"the method I took to avail myself of their principles was this. When I
+observed an extraordinary effect of light and shade in any picture, I
+took a leaf of my pocket-book and darkened every part of it in the same
+gradation of light and shade as the picture, leaving the white paper
+untouched to represent the light, and this without any attention to the
+subject or to the drawing of the figures. After a few experiments I
+found the paper blotted nearly alike; their general practice appeared to
+be to allow not above a quarter of the picture for the light, including
+in this portion both the principal and secondary lights; another quarter
+to be as dark as possible, and the remaining half kept in mezzotint or
+half shadow.
+
+"Rubens appears to have admitted rather more light than a quarter, and
+Rembrandt much less, scarce an eighth; by this conduct Rembrandt's light
+is extremely brilliant, but it costs too much, the rest of the picture
+is sacrificed to this one object."
+
+The results of these studies in Rome and Venice were at once observable
+on his return to England in the beautiful portrait of _Giuseppe Marchi_,
+one of the treasures belonging to the Royal Academy. It was altogether
+too much for the ignorant British artists, and it excited lively
+comment. What chiefly attracted the public notice, however, was the
+whole-length portrait which he painted of his friend and patron Admiral
+Keppel. On the appearance of this Reynolds was not only universally
+acknowledged to be at the head of his profession, but to be the greatest
+painter that England had seen since Van Dyck. The whole interval, as
+Malone observes, between the time of Charles I. and the conclusion of
+the reign of George II. seemed to be annihilated, and the only question
+was whether the new painter or Van Dyck were the more excellent.
+Reynolds very soon saw how much animation might be obtained by deviating
+from the insipid manner of his immediate predecessors, and instead of
+confining himself to mere likeness he dived, as it were, into the minds
+and habits and manners of those who sat to him, and accordingly the
+majority of his portraits are so appropriate and characteristic that the
+many illustrious persons whom he has delineated are almost as well known
+to us as if we had seen and conversed with them.
+
+Very soon after his return from Italy his acquaintance with Dr Johnson
+commenced, and their intimacy continued uninterrupted to the time of
+Johnson's death. How much he profited thereby, especially in the
+practice of art, he has recorded in a paper which was intended to form a
+part of one of his discourses. "I remember," he writes, "Mr Burke
+speaking of the _Essays_ of Sir Francis Bacon, said he thought them the
+best of his works. Dr Johnson was of opinion 'that their excellence and
+their value consisted in being the observations of a strong mind
+operating upon life; and in consequence you find there what you seldom
+find in other books,' It is this kind of excellence which gives a value
+to the performances of artists also.... The observations which he made
+on poetry, on life, and on everything about us, I applied to our art;
+with what success others must judge. Perhaps an artist in his studies
+should pursue the same conduct, and instead of patching up a particular
+work on the narrow plan of imitation, rather endeavour to acquire the
+art and power of thinking."
+
+In another passage from his memoranda, quoted by Malone, Sir Joshua lets
+us into some more of the secrets of his pre-eminence in his art, both of
+painter and preceptor: for we are to remember that the British School of
+painting owes more to the influence of Reynolds than perhaps any other
+school to the example of one man:--
+
+"I considered myself as playing a great game," he writes, "and instead
+of beginning to save money, I laid it out faster than I got it in,
+purchasing the best examples of art that could be procured; for I even
+borrowed money for this purpose. The possessing portraits by Titian, Van
+Dyck, Rembrandt, etc., I considered as the best kind of wealth. By
+studying carefully the works of great masters, this advantage is
+obtained--we find that certain niceties of expression are capable of
+being executed, which otherwise we might suppose beyond the reach of
+art. This gives us a confidence in ourselves, and we are thus incited to
+endeavour at not only the same happiness of execution but also at other
+congenial excellencies. Study indeed consists in learning to see nature,
+and may be called the art of using other men's minds. By this kind of
+contemplation and exercise we are taught to think in their way, and
+sometimes to attain their excellence. Thus, for instance, if I had never
+seen any of the works of Correggio, I should never perhaps have remarked
+in nature the expression which I find in one of his pieces; or if I had
+remarked it I might have thought it too difficult, or perhaps impossible
+to be executed.
+
+"My success and continual improvement in my art (if I may be allowed
+that expression), may be ascribed in a good measure to a principle which
+I will boldly recommend to imitation; I mean the principle of honesty;
+which in this as in all other instances is according to the vulgar
+proverb certainly the best policy: I always endeavoured to do my best.
+
+"My principal labour was employed on the whole together, and I was never
+weary of changing and trying different modes and different effects. I
+had always some scheme in my mind, and a perpetual desire to advance. By
+constantly endeavouring to do my best, I acquired a power of doing that
+with spontaneous facility that which at first was the effort of my whole
+mind."
+
+"I had not an opportunity of being early initiated in the principles of
+colouring"; he continues, "no man indeed could teach me. If I have never
+been settled with respect to colouring, let it at the same time be
+remembered that my unsteadiness in this respect proceeded from an
+inordinate desire to possess every kind of excellence that I ever saw in
+the works of others, without considering that there are in colouring, as
+in style, excellencies which are incompatible with each other.... I
+tried every effect of colour, and by leaving out every colour in its
+turn, showed every colour that I could do without it. As I alternately
+left out every
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXXIX.--SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS
+
+LADY COCKBURN AND HER CHILDREN
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+colour, I tried every new colour; and often, as is well known,
+failed.... My fickleness in the mode of colouring arose from an eager
+desire to attain the highest excellence."
+
+In the year 1759 Reynolds began to write, and three of his essays were
+printed in the _Idler_, which was conducted by Dr. Johnson. Northcote
+records that at the same time he committed to paper a variety of remarks
+which afterwards served him as hints for his discourses. One or two of
+these will give us as good an idea as we are likely to get from
+elsewhere of what are the first requisites of a successful painter.
+
+"It is absolutely necessary that a painter, as the first requisite,
+should endeavour as much as possible to form to himself an idea of
+perfection not only of beauty, but of what is perfection in a picture.
+This conception he should always have fixed in his view, and unless he
+has this view we shall never see any approaches towards perfection in
+his works; for it will not come by chance.
+
+"If a man has nothing of that which is called genius, that is, if he is
+not carried away, if I may so say, by the animation, the fire of
+enthusiasm, all the rules in the world will never make him a painter.
+
+"He who possesses genius is enabled to see a real value in those things
+which others disregard and overlook. He perceives a difference in cases
+where inferior capacities see none; as the fine ear for music can
+distinguish an evident variation in sounds which to another ear more
+dull seem to be the same. This example will also apply to the eye in
+respect to colouring."
+
+In the beginning of the year 1760, Reynolds moved into the house on the
+west side of Leicester Square which he occupied for the rest of his
+life. It is now tenanted by Messrs. Puttick & Simpson, the Auctioneers.
+Northcote has usefully recorded the following details his studio. His
+painting-room was of an octagonal form, about twenty feet long and about
+sixteen in breath. The window which gave the light to this room was
+square, and not much larger than one half the size of a common window in
+a private house, whilst the lower part of this window was nine feet four
+inches from the floor. The chair for his sitters was raised eighteen
+inches from the floor, and turned round on castors. His palettes were
+those which are held by a handle, not those held on the thumb. The
+sticks of his pencils (brushes) were long, measuring about nineteen
+inches. He painted in that part of the room nearest the window, and
+never sat down when he worked. As the actual methods of a great artist
+are possibly of more value in a history of painting than the subjects,
+or even the prices, of his pictures, I venture to quote the following
+extracts from various parts of Sir Joshua's own memoranda:--
+
+Never give the least touch with your pencil (_i.e._ brush) till you have
+present in your mind a perfect idea of your future work.
+
+Paint at the greatest possible distance from your sitter, and place the
+picture ... near to the sitter, or sometimes under him, so as to see
+both together.
+
+In beautiful faces keep the whole circumference about the eye in a
+mezzotinto, as seen in the works of Guido and the best of Carlo Maratti.
+
+Endeavour to look at the subject or sitter from which you are painting,
+as if it was a picture. This will in some degree render it more easy to
+be copied.
+
+In painting consider the object before you, whatever it may be, as more
+made out by light and shadow than by lines.
+
+A student should begin his career by a careful finishing and making out
+the parts; as practice will give him freedom and facility of hand: a
+bold and unfinished manner is commonly the habit of old age.
+
+On painting a head--
+
+Let those parts which turn or retire from the eye be of broken or mixed
+colours, as being less distinguished and nearer the borders.
+
+Let all your shadows be of one colour: glaze them till they are so.
+
+Use red colours in the shadows of the most delicate complexions, but
+with discretion.
+
+Contrive to have a screen with red or yellow colour on it, to reflect
+the light on the shaded part of the sitter's face.
+
+Avoid the chalk, the brick dust, and the charcoal, and think on a pearl
+and a ripe peach.
+
+Avoid long continued lines in the eyes, and too many sharp ones.
+
+Take care to give your figure a sweep or sway.
+
+Outlines in waves, soft, and almost imperceptible against the
+background.
+
+Never make the contour too coarse.
+
+Avoid also those outlines and lines which are equal, which make
+parallels, triangles, etc.
+
+The parts which are nearest to the eye appear most enlightened, deeper
+shadowed, and better seen.
+
+Keep broad lights and shadows, and also principal lights and shadows.
+
+Where there is the deepest shadow it is accompanied by the brightest
+light.
+
+Let nothing start out or be too strong for its place.
+
+Squareness has grandeur; it gives firmness to the forms; a serpentine
+line in comparison appears feeble and tottering.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One is apt to forget in these enlightened days how greatly the art of
+painting benefited by the establishment of public exhibitions.
+Farington's observations on this point, occasioned by the inauguration
+of the exhibitions at the Society of Arts from 1760, until the
+foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768, are both instructive and
+amusing.
+
+"The history of our exhibitions," he says "affords the strongest
+evidence of their impressive effect upon public taste. At their
+commencement, though men of enlightened minds could distinguish and
+appreciate what was excellent, the admiration of the _many_ was confined
+to subjects either gross or puerile, and commonly to the meanest efforts
+of intellect; whereas at this time (1819) the whole train of subjects
+most popular in the earlier exhibitions have disappeared. The loaf and
+cheese that could provoke hunger, the cat and canary bird, and the dead
+mackerel on a deal board, have long ceased to produce astonishment and
+delight; while truth of imitation now finds innumerable admirers though
+combined with the highest qualities of beauty, grandeur and taste.
+
+"To our public exhibitions, and to arrangements that followed in
+consequence of their introduction this change must be chiefly
+attributed. The present generation appears to be composed of a new and,
+at least with respect to the arts, a superior order of beings. Generally
+speaking, their thoughts, their feelings and language, differ entirely
+from what they were sixty years ago. The state of the public mind,
+incapable of discriminating excellence from inferiority proved
+incontrovertibly that a right sense of art in the spectator can only be
+acquired by long and frequent observation, and that without proper
+opportunities to improve the mind and the eye, a nation would continue
+insensible of the true value of the fine arts."
+
+In view of these very pertinent observations it is worth inquiring a
+little as to the origin of exhibitions in England, and the stimulus
+given by them to British art before the institution of the Royal
+Academy. From the introduction to book written by Edward Edwards, in
+continuation of Walpole's "Anecdotes of Painters," and published in
+1808, I extract the following account of them, as far as possible using
+his own quaint phraseology.
+
+Although the study of the human form had long been cultivated and
+encouraged in Italy and France by national schools or academies, yet in
+England until the eighteenth century such seminaries were unknown; and
+it is therefore difficult to trace the origin or ascertain the precise
+period when those nurseries of art were first attempted in this country,
+especially as every establishment of that kind was, at first, of a
+private and temporary nature, depending chiefly upon the protection of
+some artist of rank and reputation in his day. The first attempt towards
+the establishment of an academy is mentioned by Walpole as having been
+formed by several artists under Sir Godfrey Kneller in 1711. Afterwards
+we find, by other accounts in the same author, which are corroborated by
+authentic information, that Sir James Thornhill formed an academy in his
+own house, in the Piazza, Covent Garden. But this was not of long
+duration, for it commenced in 1724 and died in 1734; which reduced the
+artists again to seek some new seminary; for the public of that day were
+so little acquainted with the use of such schools, that they were even
+suspected of being held for immoral purposes.
+
+After the death of Thornhill a few of the artists (chiefly foreigners),
+finding themselves without the necessary example of the living model,
+formed a small society and established their regular meetings of study
+in a convenient apartment in Greyhound Court, Arundel Street. The
+principal conductor of this school was Michael Moser, who when the Royal
+Academy was established was appointed keeper. Here they were visited by
+artists such as Hogarth, Wills, and Ellis, who were so well pleased with
+the propriety of their conduct, and so thoroughly convinced of the
+utility of the institution, that a general union took place, and the
+members thereby becoming numerous, they required and sought for a more
+convenient situation and accommodation for their school. By the year
+1739 they were settled in Peter's Court, St Martin's Lane, where the
+study of the human figure was carried on till 1767, when they removed to
+Pall Mall.
+
+But a permanent and conspicuous establishment was still wanting, and on
+this account the principal artists had several meetings with a view to
+forming a public academy. This they did not succeed in doing; but they
+were so far from being discouraged that they continued their meetings
+and their studies, and the next effort they made towards acquiring the
+attention of the public was connected with the Foundling Hospital. This
+institution was incorporated in 1739, and a few years later the present
+building was erected; but as the income of the charity could not, with
+propriety, be expended upon decorations, many of the principal artists
+of that day voluntarily exerted their talents for the purpose of
+ornamenting several apartments of the Hospital which otherwise must
+have remained without decoration. The pictures thus produced, and
+generously given, were permitted to be seen by any visitor upon proper
+application. The spectacle was so new that it made a considerable
+impression upon the public, and the favourable reception these works
+experienced impressed the artists with an idea of forming a public
+exhibition, which scheme was carried into full effect with the help of
+the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce,
+who lent their great room for the purpose.
+
+The success of this, the first, public display of art was more than
+equal to the general expectation. Yet there were some circumstances,
+consequent to the arrangement of the pictures, with which the artists
+were very justly dissatisfied; they were occasioned by the following
+improprieties. The Society in the same year had offered premiums for the
+best painting of history and landscape, and it was one of the conditions
+that the pictures produced by the candidates should remain in their
+great room for a certain time; consequently they were blended with the
+rest, and formed part of the exhibition. As soon as it was known which
+performances had obtained the premiums, it was naturally supposed, by
+such persons who were deficient in judgment, that those pictures were
+the best in the room, and consequently deserved the chief attention.
+This partial, though unmerited, selection gave displeasure to the
+artists in general. Nor were they pleased with the mode of admitting the
+spectators, for every member of the Society had the discretionary
+privilege of introducing as many persons as he chose, by means of
+gratuitous tickets; and consequently the company was far from being
+select, or suited to the wishes of the exhibition. These circumstances,
+together with the interference of the Society in the concern of the
+exhibition, determined the principal artists to withdraw themselves,
+which they did in the next year.
+
+Encouraged by the success of their first attempt, they engaged the great
+room in Spring Garden, and their first exhibition at that place opened
+on the 9th May 1761. Here they found it necessary to change their mode
+of admission, which they did by making the catalogue the ticket of
+admission; consequently one catalogue would admit a whole family in
+succession, for a shilling, which was its price; but this mode of
+admittance was still productive of crowd and disorder, and it was
+therefore altered the next year. This exhibition, which was the second
+in this country, contained several works of the best English artists,
+among which many of the pictures were equal to any masters then living
+in Europe; and so strikingly conspicuous were their merits, and so
+forcible was the effect of this display of art, that it drew from the
+pen of Roubilliac, the sculptor, the following lines, which were stuck
+up in the exhibition room, and were also printed in the _St James's
+Chronicle_:--
+
+    Prétendu Connoiseur qui sur l'Antique glose,
+    Idolatrant le hom, sans connoitre la Chose,
+    Vrai Peste des beaux Arts, sans Gout sans Equité,
+    Quitez ce ton pedant, ce mépris affecté,
+    Pour tout ce que le Tems n'a pas encore gaté.
+
+    Ne peus tu pas, en admirant
+    Les Maitres de la Grece, ceux d l'Italie
+    Rendre justice également
+    A ceux qu'a nourris ta Patrie?
+
+    Vois ce Salon, et tu perdras
+    Cette prévention injuste,
+    Et bien étonné conviendras
+    Qu'il ne faut pas qu'un Mecenas
+    Pour revoir le Siècle d'Auguste.
+
+"In the following season," says Edwards, "they ventured to fix the price
+of _admission_ at one shilling each person, but had the precaution to
+affix a conciliatory preface to their catalogue, which was given
+gratis," As it is becoming more and more usual of late years to preface
+a catalogue with a signed article, or, as in a recent instance, a
+facsimile letter, it is interesting to know that this "conciliatory
+preface" was written by Dr Johnson. As a document its value in the
+history of the British School of Painting demands its reproduction here
+in full:--
+
+"The public may justly require to be informed of the nature and extent
+of every design for which the favour of the public is openly solicited.
+The artists who were themselves the first promoters of an exhibition in
+this nation, and who have now contributed to the following catalogue,
+think it therefore necessary to explain their purpose, and justify their
+conduct. An exhibition of the works of art being a spectacle new in this
+kingdom, has raised various opinions and conjectures among those who are
+unacquainted with the practice in foreign nations. Those who set their
+performances to general view, have been too often considered as the
+rivals of each other; as men actuated, if not by avarice, at least by
+vanity, and contending for superiority of fame, though not for a
+pecuniary prize. It cannot be denied or doubted, that all who offer
+themselves to criticism are desirous of praise; this desire is not only
+innocent but virtuous, while it is undebased by artifice, and unpolluted
+by envy; and of envy or artifice those men can never be accused, who
+already enjoying all the honours and profits of their profession are
+content to stand candidates for public notice, with genius yet
+unexperienced, and diligence yet unrewarded; who without any hope of
+increasing their own reputation or interest, expose their names and
+their works, only that they may furnish an opportunity of appearance to
+the young, the diffident, and the neglected. The purpose of this
+exhibition is not to enrich the artist, but to advance the art; the
+eminent are not flattered with preference, nor the obscure insulted with
+contempt; whoever hopes to deserve public favour, is here invited to
+display his merit. Of the price put upon this exhibition some account
+may be demanded. Whoever sets his work to be shewn, naturally desires a
+multitude of spectators; but his desire defeats its own end, when
+spectators assemble in such numbers as to obstruct one another.
+
+"Though we are far from wishing to diminish the pleasures, or to
+depreciate the sentiments of any class of the community, we know,
+however, what every one knows, that all cannot be judges or purchasers
+of works of art. Yet we have already found by experience, that all are
+desirous to see an exhibition. When the terms of admission were low, our
+room was throng'd with such multitudes, as made access dangerous, and
+frightened away those, whose approbation was most desired.
+
+"Yet because it is seldom believed that money is got but for the love of
+money, we shall tell the use which we intend to make of our expected
+profits. Many artists of great abilities are unable to sell their works
+for their due price; to remove this inconvenience, an annual sale will
+be appointed, to which every man may send his works, and send them, if
+he will, without his name. These works will be reviewed by the committee
+that conduct the exhibition; a price will be secretly set on every
+piece, and registered by the secretary; if the piece exposed for sale is
+sold for more, the whole price shall be the artist's; but if the
+purchasers value it at less than
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XL.--SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS
+
+THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+the committee, the artist shall be paid the deficiency from the profits
+of the exhibition."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This mode of admission was found to answer all the wished-for purposes,
+and the visitors, who were highly respectable, were also perfectly
+gratified with the display of art, which, for the first time, they
+beheld with ease and pleasure to themselves.
+
+The exhibition, thus established, continued at Spring Garden Room, under
+the direction and management of the principal artists by whom it was
+first promoted, and they were soon also joined by many of those who had
+continued to exhibit in the Strand (_i.e._ at the Society of Arts,
+etc.), which party being mostly composed of young men, and others who
+chose to become candidates for the premiums given by the Society,
+thought it prudent to remain under their protection. But the Society
+finding that those who continued with them began to diminish in their
+numbers, and that the exhibition interfered with their own concerns, no
+longer indulged them with the use of their room, and the exhibitions at
+that place terminated in 1764. These artists, who were mostly the
+younger part of the profession at that time, thereupon engaged a large
+room in Maiden Lane, where they exhibited in 1765 and 1766. But this
+situation not being favourable, they engaged with Mr Christie, in
+building his room near Pall Mall, and the agreement was that they should
+have it for their use during one month every year, in the spring. Here
+they contrived to support a feeble exhibition for eight years, when
+their engagements interfering with Mr Christie's auctions, he purchased
+their share of the premises, and they made their last removal to a room
+in S. Alban's Street, where they exhibited the next season, but never
+after attempted to attract public notice. It may be observed that while
+this Society continued there were annually three exhibitions of the
+works of English artists, namely, the Royal Academy, the Chartered
+Society, and that last mentioned, the members of which styled themselves
+the Free Society of Artists. Their exhibition was considerably inferior
+to those of their rivals. By the Chartered Society, Edwards means the
+artists who formed the exhibition at the Spring Garden Room, who in 1765
+obtained a Charter from the king. Owing partly to internal
+disagreements, but more no doubt to the foundation of the Royal Academy
+in 1768, this Society gradually diminished in importance, until Edwards
+could write of their exhibition in 1791 that "the articles they had then
+collected were very insignificant, most of which could not be considered
+as works of art; such as pieces of needlework, subjects in human hair,
+cut paper, and such similar productions as deserve not the
+recommendation of a public exhibition,"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To the first exhibition of the Royal Academy, which was opened on the
+2nd of January 1769, Reynolds sent three pictures:--
+
+_The Duchess of Manchester and her son, as Diana disarming Cupid._
+
+_Lady Blake, as Juno receiving the Cestus of Venus._
+
+_Miss Morris as Hope nursing Love._
+
+That all of them were, so to speak, "fancy portraits" is not entirely
+without significance. Portraiture, the painters bread and butter, was
+apparently deemed hardly suitable for the occasion, and among a list of
+the pictures which attracted most attention Northcote only includes the
+portraits of the _King and Queen_ by Nathaniel Dance, _Lady Molyneux_ by
+Gainsborough, and the _Duke of Gloucester_ by Cotes. The rest are as
+follows:--_The Departure of Regulus from Rome_, and _Venus lamenting the
+Death of Adonis_, by Benjamin West; _Hector and Andromache_, and _Venus
+directing Aeneas and Achates_, by Angelica Kauffmann; _A Piping Boy_,
+and _A Candlelight Piece_, by Nathaniel Hone; _An Altar-Piece_ of the
+Annunciation by Cipriani; _Hebe_, and _A Boy Playing Cricket_, by Cotes;
+A landscape by Barrett, and _Shakespeare's Black-smith_, by Penny.
+
+In all, Reynolds exhibited two hundred and fifty-two pictures during the
+thirty-two years of his life in which exhibitions existed, namely from
+1760 to 1791; of which two hundred and twenty-eight went to the Royal
+Academy.
+
+Of these, or most of them, ample records and criticisms may be found in
+the copious literature which has grown up around his name. For our
+present purpose a glance at his influence, his methods, and his
+circumstances has seemed to me to be more in point, and as a succinct
+estimate of the man and his work from one of his most illustrious
+contemporaries, the following passage may be added by way of
+conclusion:--
+
+"Sir Joshua Reynolds," wrote Edmund Burke six years after the painter's
+death, "was on very many accounts one of the most memorable men of his
+time. He was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant
+arts to the other glories of his country. In taste, in grace, in
+facility, in happy invention, and in the richness and harmony of
+colouring, he was equal to the great masters of the renowned ages. In
+portraiture he went beyond them, for he communicated to that description
+of the art, in which English artists are the most engaged, a fancy and a
+dignity derived from the higher branches, which even those who
+professed, them in a superior manner, did not always preserve when they
+delineated individual nature. His portraits remind the spectator of the
+invention of history and the amenity of landscape. In painting portraits
+he appeared not to be raised upon that platform, but to descend to it
+from a higher sphere. His paintings illustrate his lessons, and his
+lessons seem to be derived from his paintings. He possessed the theory
+as perfectly as the practice of his art. To be such a painter, he was a
+profound and penetrating philosopher."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH (1727-1788), whose name we can seldom help thinking
+of whenever we hear that of Reynolds, was in many ways the very
+antithesis of his more illustrious rival. In his private life he most
+certainly was, and so far as his practical influence on his
+contemporaries is concerned, he is altogether overshadowed by the first
+President of the Royal Academy. With respect to their works there is a
+diversity of opinion, and it is largely a matter of personal feeling
+whether we prefer those of the one or of the other. Both were great
+artists, and on the common ground of portraiture they contended so
+equally, and in some cases with such similarity of method, that it is
+impossible to say impartially which was the greater. How is it possible
+to decide except on the ground of individual taste, as to whether we
+would rather lose Gainsborough or Reynolds as a portrait painter,
+without considering for a moment that the former was a great landscape
+painter as well? And, putting aside Wilson, whose landscape was
+essentially Italian, whether executed in Italy or not, the first
+landscape painter in England was Gainsborough. We are so accustomed to
+bracket him with Reynolds as a great portrait painter, so thrilled over
+the sale of a Gainsborough portrait for many thousands of pounds, that
+we are apt to forget him altogether as a landscape painter. And yet two
+or three of his best works in the National Gallery are landscapes, and
+two of them at least famous ones--_The Market Cart_ and _The Watering
+Place_. How many more beautiful landscapes by him there must be in
+existence it is impossible to say, but there can be no doubt that there
+are not a few which are only waiting their turn for a fashionable
+market, but are now reposing unappreciated in private hands. In the
+Metropolitan Museum at New York is a splendid example, the like of which
+I have never seen in this country, but which is so much closer in
+feeling to his numerous drawings and sketches in chalk or pencil that it
+is impossible to believe that no similar examples exist. If we could
+only bring them to light!
+
+The fact is that the state of society in the middle of the eighteenth
+century was, with all its brilliance and intellect, the cause of
+hampering the natural development of the three great painters of that
+period. Reynolds came back from his stay in Italy an ardent disciple of
+the grand style, burning to follow the example of Raphael and
+Michelangelo. Romney, too, was all for Italian art, but looked further
+back, and worshipped the classics. Gainsborough was a born landscape
+painter, and his whole time was devoted, when he was not executing
+commissions for portraits, to making sketches and studies of woods and
+valleys and trees. But so bent on having their likenesses handed about
+were the brilliant personages of their time, that Reynolds, Gainsborough
+and Romney were compelled in spite of themselves to turn their
+attention to portraiture, to the exclusion of every other branch of
+their art, and as portrait painters they have made themselves and their
+country famous.
+
+In the numerous sketches and studies that Gainsborough has left us, we
+can see how much we have lost in gaining his wonderful portraits. He
+loved landscape, from his earliest youth to his dying day. Loved it for
+itself. For among all the drawings of his which I have ever seen, I do
+not remember one which can be identified as any particular place. In the
+eighteenth century there was a perfect mania among the smaller fry for
+making topographical drawings, in pencil or water-colour, views of some
+town or mountain or castle. But with Gainsborough the place was
+nothing--it was the spirit of it that charmed him. A cottage in a wood,
+a glade, a country road, a valley, was to him a beautiful scene,
+whatever it was called or wherever it happened to be, and out of it
+accordingly he made a beautiful picture, or at least a drawing. That his
+pictures of landscape are so extraordinarily few while his drawings are
+so numerous, may be accounted for in a great measure by the exigences of
+portrait painting, but not entirely; and the probability is that there
+are many more which are now forgotten.
+
+For an estimate of Thomas Gainsborough both in regard to his place in
+the story of the English School and to the abilities and methods by
+which he attained it, it is needless to look elsewhere than to that of
+Sir Joshua Reynolds, contained in the discourse delivered shortly after
+Gainsborough's death:--
+
+"When such a man as Gainsborough rises to great fame without the
+assistance of an academical education, without travelling to Italy, or
+any of those preparatory studies which have been so often recommended,
+he is produced
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XLI.--THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
+
+THE MARKET CART
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+as an instance how little such studies are necessary, since so great
+excellence may be acquired without them. This is an inference not
+warranted by the success of any individual, and I trust that it will not
+be thought that I wish to make this use of it.
+
+"It must be remembered that the style and department of art which
+Gainsborough chose, and in which he so much excelled, did not require
+that he should go out of his own country for the objects of his study;
+they were everywhere about him; he found them in the streets, and in the
+fields; and from the models thus accidentally found he selected with
+great judgment such as suited his purpose. As his studies were directed
+to the living world principally, he did not pay a general attention to
+the works of the various masters, though they are, in my opinion, always
+of great use even when the character of our subject requires us to
+depart from some of their principles. It cannot be denied that
+excellence in the department of the art which he professed may exist
+without them, that in such subjects and in the manner that belongs to
+them the want of them is supplied, and more than supplied, by natural
+sagacity and a minute observation of particular nature. If Gainsborough
+did not look at nature with a poet's eye, it must be acknowledged that
+he saw her with the eye of a painter; and gave a faithful, if not a
+poetical, representation of what he had before him.
+
+"Though he did not much attend to the works of the great historical
+painters of former ages, yet he was well aware that the language of the
+art--the art of imitation--must be learned somewhere; and as he knew he
+could not learn it in an equal degree from his contemporaries, he very
+judiciously applied himself to the Flemish school, who are undoubtedly
+the greatest masters of one necessary branch of art, and he did not
+need to go out of his country for examples of that school; from _that_
+he learned the harmony of colouring, the management and disposition of
+light and shadow, and every means of it which the masters practised to
+ornament and give splendour to their works. And to satisfy himself, as
+well as others, how well he knew the mechanism and artifice which they
+employed to bring out that tone of colour which we so much admire in
+their works, he occasionally made copies from Rubens, Teniers and Van
+Dyck, which it would be no disgrace to the most accurate connoisseur to
+mistake at the first sight for the works of those masters. What he thus
+learned he applied to the originals of nature, which he saw with his own
+eyes, and imitated not in the manner of those masters but in his own.
+
+"Whether he most excelled in portraits, landscapes, or fancy pictures,
+it is difficult to determine; whether his portraits were most admirable
+for exact truth of resemblance, or his landscapes for a portrait-like
+representation of nature, such as we see in the works of Rubens,
+Ruisdael, or others of those schools. In his fancy pictures, when he had
+fixed on his object of imitation, whether it was the mean and vulgar
+form of the woodcutter, or a child of an interesting character, as he
+did not attempt to raise the one, so neither did he lose any of the
+natural grace and elegance of the other; such a grace and such an
+elegance as are more frequently found in cottages than in courts. This
+excellence was his own, the result of his particular observation and
+taste; for this he was certainly not indebted to the Flemish school, nor
+indeed to any school; for his grace was not academic, or antique, but
+selected by himself from the great school of nature....
+
+"Upon the whole we may justly say that whatever he attempted he carried
+to a high degree of excellence. It is to the credit of his good sense
+and judgment that he never did attempt that style of historical painting
+for which his previous studies had made no preparation.
+
+"The peculiarity of his manner or style," Reynolds continues a little
+later, "or we may call it the language in which he expressed his ideas,
+has been considered by many as his greatest defect.... A novelty and
+peculiarity of manner, as it is often a cause of our approbation, so
+likewise it is often a ground of censure, as being contrary to the
+practice of other painters, in whose manner we have been initiated, and
+in whose favour we have perhaps been prepossessed from our infancy: for
+fond as we are of novelty, we are upon the whole creatures of habit.
+However, it is certain that all those odd scratches and marks which on a
+close examination are so observable in Gainsborough's pictures, and
+which even to experienced painters appear rather the effect of accident
+than design; this chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance, by a
+kind of magic, at a certain distance assumes form, and all the parts
+seem to drop into their proper places; so that we can hardly refuse
+acknowledging the full effect of diligence under the appearance of
+chance and hasty negligence.
+
+"That Gainsborough himself considered this peculiarity in his manner,
+and the power it possesses of exciting surprise, as a beauty in his
+works, I think may be inferred from the eager desire which we know he
+always expressed, that his pictures at the exhibition should be seen
+near as well as at a distance.
+
+"The slightness which we see in his best works cannot always be imputed
+to negligence. However they may appear to superficial observers,
+painters know very well that a steady attention to the general effect
+takes up more time and is much more laborious to the mind than any mode
+of high finishing or smoothness without such attention. His handling,
+the manner of leaving the colours, or, in other words, the methods he
+used for producing the effect, had very much the appearance of the work
+of an artist who had never learnt from others the usual and regular
+practice belonging to the art; but still, like a man of strong intuitive
+perception of what was required, he found a way of his own to accomplish
+his purpose."
+
+To Reynolds's opinion of this technique as applied to portraits, we may
+listen with even more attention. "It must be allowed," he continues,
+"that this hatching manner of Gainsborough did very much contribute to
+the lightness of effect which is so eminent a beauty in his pictures;
+as, on the contrary, much smoothness and uniting the colours is apt to
+produce heaviness. Every artist must have remarked how often that
+lightness of hand which was in his dead-colour (or first painting)
+escaped in the finishing when he had determined the parts with more
+precision; and another loss which he often experiences, which is of
+greater consequence: while he is employed in the detail, the effect of
+the whole together is either forgotten or neglected. The likeness of a
+portrait, as I have formerly observed, consists more in preserving the
+general effect of the countenance than in the most minute finishing of
+the features or any of the particular parts. Now, Gainsborough's
+portraits were often little more in regard to finishing or determining
+the form of the features, than what generally attends a first painting;
+but as he was always attentive to the general effect, or whole
+together, I have often imagined that this unfinished manner contributed
+even to that striking resemblance for which his portraits are so
+remarkable."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE CLOSE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
+
+
+Not until the year of Gainsborough's death, 1788, was there born another
+landscape painter. This was JOHN CROME, and he too came from the east of
+England, nearest to Holland, being born in Norfolk, the neighbouring
+county to Gainsborough's native Suffolk. Within ten years more, two
+still greater landscapists were born, also in the east, Constable in
+Essex, still closer to Sudbury, and Turner in London.
+
+John Crome--Old Crome, as he is usually called to distinguish him from
+his less distinguished son, John Bernay Crome--was born at Norwich, and
+had to support himself most of his life by teaching drawing, not to
+professional pupils unfortunately; but incidentally he founded "The
+Norwich School" of landscape painters, who loyally carried forward the
+traditions he had inculcated. But having to spend his time as a
+drawing-master, he was not free like the old Dutch painters to put out
+pictures when and as often as he would, and his work in oils is
+therefore comparatively scarce. The three examples at the National
+Gallery are typical of his varied powers, _The Slate Quarries_,
+_Household Heath_, and _Porringland Oak_ are all of them masterpieces.
+
+JOHN SELL COTMAN, born in 1782, was, after Crome, the most considerable
+of the Norwich School. He, too, was compelled to earn a livelihood by
+being a drawing-master, for there was not as yet a sufficient market,
+nor for some time later, for landscape pictures, to support existence,
+however humble. Cotman devoted much of his energies to water-colours,
+and he is better known in this branch of the art than in painting; that
+is the only excuse for the National Gallery in having purchased as his
+the very inferior picture called _A Galliot in a Gale_. The other
+example, _Wherries on the Yare_, is more worthy of him, though it by no
+means exhibits all his wonderful power and fascination.
+
+In GEORGE MORLAND (1763-1804) we have something more and something less
+than a landscape painter. Landscape to him was not what it was to
+Wilson, Gainsborough or Crome,--the only end in view; nor was it merely
+a background for his subjects. But, as it generally happened, it was
+both. To Morland, the landscape and the figures were one and the same
+thing. Out of the fulness of his heart he painted pictures of _Boys
+Robbing an Orchard_, _Horses in a Stable_, or a _Farmer on Horseback_
+staying to talk to a group of gypsies beside a wood, and whether or not
+the picture might be classed as a landscape depended entirely on the
+nature of the scene itself. Whatever he saw or chose to see he painted
+with equal skill and with equal charm; and as his choice of vision lay
+in the simple everyday life that surrounded him, his variety is not the
+least of his attractions.
+
+The fact that his mother was a Frenchwoman (his father was Henry
+Morland, the painter of the delightful pair of half-lengths, _The
+Laundry Maids_) suggests to my mind the wild surmise that she may have
+been the daughter of Chardin. For in the technique as well as in the
+temperament of Morland,--making allowance for difference of
+circumstances,--there is something remarkably akin to those of the great
+Frenchman. Both eschewed the temptation to become fashionable, both
+painted the humble realities of middle-class life with a zest that could
+not possibly have been affected, and both painted them with much the
+same extraordinary charm. At his best, Morland is not much inferior to
+Chardin, and but for his unfortunate wildness and his susceptibility to
+the temptations of strong drink, he might easily have excelled the
+other. The feeling exhibited in two such different subjects as Lord
+Glenconner's _Boys Robbing an Orchard_, and _The Interior of a Stable_,
+in the National Gallery, certainly equals that of Chardin's most famous
+pieces, I mean the feeling for the particular scene he is depicting. The
+nearest, in fact the only, approach that Morland made to portrait
+painting was in such pieces as _The Fortune Teller_ in the National
+Gallery, which brings to mind the "Conversation Pieces," introduced by
+Hogarth and Highmore into English painting, but which were never widely
+attempted. In the Portfolio monograph "English Society in the Eighteenth
+Century" I tried to collect as many examples as I could of this form of
+art, but found it difficult to fill even a small volume, so entirely was
+the single figure portrait the vogue. A few notable instances are worth
+mentioning, if only as exceptions to the general rule. Gainsborough's
+_Ladies Walking in the Mall_, belonging to Sir Audley Neeld; Reynolds's
+large group of _The Marlborough Family_ at Blenheim, and a very early
+group of _The Elliott Family_, consisting of eleven figures, belonging
+to Lord St Germans; John Singleton Copley's _Children of Francis
+Sitwell, Esq._, at Renishaw; and lastly Zoffany's _Family Party_, at
+Panshanger.
+
+For life-like representation of the English people we look to Hogarth
+and Morland, and yet nothing could be more different than the motives
+which inspired the two, and the way they went to work upon their
+subject. Hogarth was above all things theatrical, Morland natural.
+Hogarth first conceived his idea, then laid his scene, and lastly
+peopled it with actual characters as they appeared--individually--before
+him. Morland simply looked about him and painted what he happened to see
+at the precise moment when what he saw coincided with his natural
+inclination, or we may even say inspiration, to paint it. It was much
+the same difference as between the work of Zola and that of Thomas
+Hardy. The one had a moral to preach, the other a story to tell.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the most we hear of GEORGE ROMNEY nowadays is the price that has
+been paid for one of his portraits at Christie's, it is refreshing as
+well as informative to turn to the criticism of one of his greatest
+though not in these times so highly priced contemporaries, I mean John
+Flaxman. "When Romney first began to paint," he writes, "he had seen no
+gallery of pictures nor the fine productions of ancient sculpture; but
+then women and children were his statues, and all objects under the
+canopy of heaven formed his school of painting. The rainbow, the purple
+distance, or the silver lake, taught him colouring; the various actions
+and passions of the human figure, with the forms of clouds, woods, and
+mountains or valleys, afforded him studies of composition. Indeed, his
+genius bore a strong resemblance to the scenes he was born in; like
+them, it partook of the grand and beautiful; and like them also, the
+bright sunshine and enchanting prospects of his fancy were occasionally
+overspread with mist and gloom. On his arrival in Italy he was witness
+to new scenes of art and sources of study of which he could only have
+supposed previously that something
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XLII.--GEORGE ROMNEY
+
+THE PARSON'S DAUGHTER
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+of the kind might exist; for he there contemplated the purity and
+perfection of ancient sculpture, the sublimity of Michelangelo's Sistine
+Chapel, and the simplicity of Cimabue and Giotto's schools. He perceived
+those qualities distinctly, and judiciously used them in viewing and
+imitating nature; and thus his quick perception and unwearied
+application enabled him, by a two years' residence abroad, to acquire as
+great a proficiency in art as is usually attained by foreign studies of
+a much longer duration.
+
+"After his return, the novelty and sentiment of his original subjects
+were universally admired. Most of these were of the delicate class, and
+each had its peculiar character. Titania with her Indian votaries was
+arch and sprightly; Milton dictating to his daughters, solemn and
+interesting. Several pictures of Wood Nymphs and Bacchantes charmed by
+their rural beauty, innocence, and simplicity. The most pathetic,
+perhaps, of all his works was never finished--Ophelia with the flowers
+she had gathered in her hand, sitting on the branch of a tree, which was
+breaking under her, whilst the moody distraction in her lovely
+countenance accounts for the insensibility to danger. Few painters have
+left so many examples in their works of the tender and delicate
+affections; and several of his pictures breathe a kindred spirit with
+the _Sigismonda_ of Correggio. His cartoons, some of which have
+unfortunately perished, were examples of the sublime and terrible, at
+that time perfectly new in English art. As Romney was gifted with
+peculiar powers for historical and ideal painting, so his heart and soul
+were engaged in the pursuit of it whenever he could extricate himself
+from the importunate business of portrait painting. It was his delight
+by day and study by night, and for this his food and rest were often
+neglected. His compositions, like those of the ancient pictures and
+basso-relievos, told their story by a single group of figures in the
+front, whilst the background is made the simplest possible, rejecting
+all unnecessary episode and trivial ornament, either of secondary groups
+or architectural subdivision. In his compositions the beholder was
+forcibly struck by the sentiment at the first glance: the gradations and
+varieties of which he traced through several characters, all conceived
+in an elevated spirit of dignity and beauty, with a lively expression of
+nature in all the parts. His heads were various--the male were decided
+and grand, the female lovely. His figures resembled the antique--the
+limbs were elegant and finely formed. His drapery was well understood,
+either forming the figure into a mass with one or two deep folds only,
+or by its adhesion and transparency discovering the form of the figure,
+the lines of which were finely varied with the union or expansion of
+spiral or cascade folds, composing with or contrasting the outline and
+chiaroscuro. Few artists since the fifteenth century have been able to
+do so much in so many different branches; for besides his beautiful
+compositions and pictures, which have added to the knowledge and
+celebrity of the English School, he modelled like a sculptor, carved
+ornaments in wood with great delicacy, and could make an architectural
+design in a fine taste, as well as construct every part of the
+building."
+
+After the death of Reynolds and the retirement of Romney, in the last
+decade of the eighteenth century, the field of portraiture was left
+vacant--in London at least--for JOHN HOPPNER, whose name is now
+generally included with those of Lawrence and Raeburn among the first
+six portrait painters of the British
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XLIII.--GEORGE ROMNEY
+
+MRS ROBINSON--"PERDITA"
+
+_Hertford House, London_]
+
+School. His fame in recent years has certainly exceeded his merits, but
+it is due to him to say that he was a conscientious artist, and a firm
+upholder of the tradition of Reynolds, so far as in him lay. The old
+King had always disliked Reynolds, and Hoppner was not well enough
+advised to hold his tongue on the subject of the master: worse than
+this, he openly accepted the patronage of the Prince of Wales, and by so
+doing opened the door for the admission of Lawrence as royal painter
+much sooner than was at all necessary. The story of their rivalry is
+thus--in substance--sketched by Allan Cunningham, their
+contemporary:--The light of the Prince of Wales's countenance was of
+itself sufficient to guide the courtly and beautiful to Hoppner's easel.
+Suffice it to say that before he was forty years of age (he was born in
+1759), he had been enabled to exhibit no less than fifteen ladies of
+quality--for so are they named in the catalogues--a score of ladies of
+lower degree, and noblemen unnumbered. But by this time another star had
+arisen, destined to outshine that of Hoppner; though some at that
+period, willing to flatter the older practitioner, called it a meteor
+that would but flash and disappear--we allude to Lawrence. Urged upon
+the Academy by the King and Queen, and handed up to public notice by
+royal favour, this new aspirant rose rapidly in the estimation of the
+public; and by the most delicate flattery, both with tongue and pencil,
+became a formidable rival to the painter whom it was the Prince's
+pleasure to befriend. The factions of Reynolds and Romney seemed revived
+in those of Hoppner and Lawrence. If Hoppner resided in Charles Street,
+at the gates of Carlton House, and wrote himself "portrait painter to
+the Prince of Wales," Lawrence likewise had his residence in the Court
+end of the town, and proudly styled himself--and that when only
+twenty-three years old--"portrait painter in ordinary to His Majesty."
+In other respects, too, were honours equally balanced between them; they
+were both made Royal Academicians, but in this, youth had the start of
+age--Lawrence obtained that distinction first. Nature, too, had been
+kind--some have said prodigal--to both; they were men of fine address,
+and polished by early intercourse with the world and by their trade of
+portrait painting could practise all the delicate courtesies of
+drawing-room and boudoir; but in that most fascinating of all flattery,
+the art of persuading, with brushes and fine colours, very ordinary
+mortals that beauty and fine expression were their portions, Lawrence
+was soon without a rival.
+
+The preference of the King and Queen for Lawrence was for a time
+balanced by the affection of the Prince of Wales for Hoppner; the Prince
+was supposed to have the best taste, and as he kept a court of his own
+filled with the young nobility, and all the wits of that great faction
+known by the name of Whig, Hoppner had the youth and beauty of the land
+for a time; and it cannot be denied that he was a rival in every way
+worthy of contending with any portrait-painter of his day. The bare list
+of his exhibited portraits will show how and by whom he was supported.
+It is well said by Williams, in his _Life of Lawrence_, that "the more
+sober and homely ideas of the King were not likely to be a passport for
+any portrait-painter to the variety of ladies, and hence Mr. Hoppner for
+a long time almost monopolised the female beauty and young fashion of
+the country."
+
+This rivalry continued for a time in the spirit of moderation--but only
+for a time. Lawrence, the gentler and the smoother of the two, kept
+silence longest; the warm nature of Hoppner broke out at last. "The
+ladies of Lawrence," he said, "show a gaudy dissoluteness of taste, and
+sometimes trespass on moral as well as professional decorum." For his
+own he claimed, by implication, purity of look as well as purity of
+style. This sarcastic remark found wings in a moment, and flew through
+all the coteries and through both courts; it did most harm to him who
+uttered it; all men laughed, and then began to wonder how Lawrence,
+limner to perhaps the purest court in Europe, came to bestow indecorous
+looks on the meek and sedate ladies of quality of St. James's and
+Windsor, while Hoppner, limner to the court of a gallant young prince,
+who loved mirth and wine, the sound of the lute and the music of ladies'
+feet in the dance, should to some of its gayest and giddiest ornaments
+give the simplicity of manner and purity of style which pertained to the
+Quaker like sobriety of the other. Nor is it the least curious part of
+the story that the ladies, from the moment of the sarcasm of Hoppner,
+instead of crowding to the easel of him who dealt in the loveliness of
+virtue, showed a growing preference for the rival who "trespassed on
+moral as well as on professional decorum." After this, Lawrence had
+plenty of the fairest sitters.
+
+
+
+
+_THE NINETEENTH CENTURY_
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT
+
+
+In the preceding chapters we have traced the development of painting for
+five centuries--from the beginning of the fourteenth, that is to say, to
+the end of the eighteenth--in Italy, in the Netherlands, in Germany, in
+Spain, and lastly in France and England. In the nineteenth the story is
+confined to the last two alone, as with one or two minute exceptions the
+art of painting had by this time entirely ceased to be worth
+consideration in any of the others. Only in France and England, where it
+had been most recently established, was it to continue; and besides
+continuing, reach out with the most astonishing vigour to snatch at and
+grasp fruits that no one before would have dreamt of being within its
+reach.
+
+Between France and England--if by the latter we may be taken to mean
+Great Britain, and include within its artists those who have
+acclimatised themselves within her shores--the honours of the
+achievement are pretty equally divided, though it will have to be left
+to individual choice to decide exactly on which side the balance of
+credit is due. A mere list of the greatest names is not sufficient to
+apportion the praise, though as a preliminary step it may be of value in
+clearing the issue. Let us take a dozen on either side, and see how they
+look.
+
+_England._
+
+Lawrence.
+Constable.
+Turner.
+De Wint.
+Nasmyth.
+Stevens.
+Whistler.
+Cotman.
+Cox.
+Watts.
+Rossetti.
+Hunt.
+
+_France._
+
+David.
+Géricault.
+Ingres.
+Delacroix.
+Corot.
+Millet.
+Daubigny.
+Courbet.
+Daumier.
+Decamps.
+Manet.
+Degas.
+
+Among these Turner stands out conspicuously from the rest, and he would
+be included by anyone in a list of twenty, or perhaps a dozen, of the
+greatest painters in the world. But oddly enough his influence on the
+art in general has been comparatively small, if we are to judge by its
+effects on other painters up to the present, while that of Constable has
+been considerably greater. Manet, again, and Delacroix, have
+accomplished far more for the history of painting than any other two in
+our lists--and yet their names are scarcely known outside the circle of
+those who know anything at all about painting.
+
+For the English public at large an entirely different list would
+probably prove the superiority of their own race to their complete
+satisfaction--in spite of Meissonier, Doré, and Bouguereau on the other
+side. But that is only because the British public, owing to the
+monopoly
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XLIV.--JACQUES LOUIS DAVID
+
+PORTRAIT OF MME. RÉCAMIER
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+enjoyed by the Royal Academy, have never had a chance of judging for
+themselves what they approve of and what they do not, and their taste
+has been vitiated for generations by the exhibition of what this
+self-constituted authority, no doubt unconsciously, conceives to be best
+for them--and which, as might be expected, is usually found to coincide
+pretty nearly with the sort of thing they are capable of producing
+themselves. Hogarth's predictions at the time the Academy was instituted
+have in a great measure come perfectly true, and the only benefit that
+it has been to the English School of painting is that it has kept it
+going. How far this may be called a benefit is at least arguable, but in
+the main it is probable that if so many bad pictures had not been
+painted, there would not have been so many good ones. On the other hand,
+the removal of a man like Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema from his native
+sphere of influence is quite enough to account for the unlooked-for
+flowering of blossoms like the brothers Maris, Bosboom, Israels, and
+Mauve in the Dutch garden, and if that is so, one need not grudge him
+his interment amongst Nelson, Wellington, and other heroes of our own.
+
+In a word, the history of painting in the nineteenth century is Revolt.
+What it is going to be in the twentieth I am fortunately not called upon
+to say; but if I may throw out an opinion based upon what is already
+happening, I should say that no word has yet been coined which will
+adequately express it.
+
+In the last century the issues were simple, and can be easily expressed.
+On the one side was the complacent body of practitioners following to
+the best of their ability the practice of painting as handed down to
+them in a variety of different forms, just as the Byzantine craftsmen
+earned their living when they were so rudely disturbed by Cimabue and
+his school. On the other was a small but ever-increasing number of
+individuals who, like Cimabue, began to think things out for themselves,
+but, unlike him, did not succeed in effecting a popular triumph
+without--if at all--first raising both the painters and the public to a
+pitch of fury. It is indeed curious to read Vasari and modern historians
+side by side, and to wonder if, after all, Vasari knew or told
+everything, in his desire to glorify the art, or whether Giotto and
+other innovators were not in fact burnt at the stake. Probably not.
+Gallileo, as we know, and Savonarola suffered for their crimes. But they
+were working against the Church, and the artists were working for it.
+
+In the nineteenth century, painting had altogether broken away from the
+Church, and so it had to fight its own battles out in the street, or in
+the law courts. That is what has given it such a swagger and strength.
+It no longer looks to its protector, it will hit you in the face before
+you know where you are. The feeble kind, only, looks to Academies for
+support, and thereby becomes feebler still.
+
+In the present chapter, accordingly, we shall hear no more of the
+Madonnas, the Holy Families, and all the sacred and profane subjects on
+which the old masters exercised their genius. Five centuries of painting
+had established the art in a position of independence; and in a
+sixth--that is to say, the nineteenth--it began to assert itself, and to
+prove that its education was not in itself an end, but only a means to
+various ends. Instead of following out the fortunes of each painter,
+therefore, and attempting to set in any sort of order the reputations of
+artists before sufficient time has elapsed for them to cool, I propose
+to confine myself in the remaining pages to the broad issues raised
+during this period between the painters, the critics, and the public.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+EUGÈNE DELACROIX
+
+
+The man who began all this street fighting was a Frenchman--Eugène
+Delacroix. While still a youth he was bullied, and the bully was such a
+redoubtable giant that it took somebody with the grit and genius of
+Delacroix to tackle him, but tackle him he did. The story of the fight,
+which is a long and glorious one, is so admirably told in Madame Bussy's
+life of Delacroix, that I have obtained permission to give the essence
+of it in her own words.
+
+In the Salon of 1822 was exhibited Delacroix's picture of _Dante and
+Virgil_, which is now in the Louvre, and evoked the first of those
+clamours of abuse which were barely stilled before the artist's death.
+For nearly thirty years all French painters, with the exception of Gros
+and Prudhon; had shown themselves unquestioning disciples of the school
+founded by Jacques Louis David, whose masterful character and potent
+personality had reduced all art to a system; and Delacroix himself spoke
+of him with sympathy and admiration. The chief dogma of David's school
+was that the nearest approach to the _beau ideal_ permitted to the human
+race had been attained by the Greeks, and that all art must conform as
+closely as possible to theirs. Unfortunately, the chief specimens of
+Greek art known at that time were those belonging to a decadent
+period--neither the Elgin marbles nor the Venus of Milo were accessible
+before 1816--so that the works from which they drew their inspiration
+were without character in themselves, or merely the feeble and
+attenuated copies of ancient Rome. In the pictures of this school,
+accordingly, we find only the monotonous perfection of rounded and
+well-modelled limbs, classical features and straight noses. Colour, to
+the sincere Davidian, was a vain and frivolous accessory, serving only
+to distract attention from the real purpose of the work, which was to
+aim at moral elevation as well as at ideal beauty. Everything in the
+picture was to be equally dwelt upon; there was no sacrifice, no
+mystery. "These pictures," says Delacroix, "have no epidermis ...they
+lack the atmosphere, the lights, the reflections which blend into an
+harmonious whole, objects the most dissimilar in colour."
+
+By the untimely death of Géricault, whose _Raft of the Medusa_ had
+already caused a flutter in 1819, Delacroix was left at the head of the
+revolt against this pseudo-classicism; and amid the storm that greeted
+the _Dante and Virgil_ it is interesting to find Thiers writing of him
+in the following strain:--"It seems to me that no picture [in the Salon]
+reveals the future of a great painter better than M. Delacroix's, in
+which we see an outbreak of talent, a burst of rising superiority which
+revives the hopes that had been slightly discouraged by the too moderate
+merits of all the rest.... I think I am not mistaken; M. Delacroix has
+genius; let him go on with confidence, and devote himself to immense
+labour, the indispensable condition of talent." Delécluze, by the by,
+the critic-in-chief of the Davidian School, had characterised the
+picture as _une véritable tartouillade_.
+
+In 1824 the Salon included two pictures which may be regarded as
+important documents in the history of painting. One of these was
+Constable's _Hay Wain_--now
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XLV.--EUGÈNE DELACROIX
+
+DANTE AND VIRGIL
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+in our National Gallery--which had been purchased by a Frenchman; the
+other was Delacroix's _Massacre of Scio_, the first to receive the
+enlightenment afforded by the Englishman's methods, which spread so
+widely over the French School. It was said that Delacroix entirely
+repainted his picture on seeing Constable's; but his pupil, Lassalle
+Bordes, is probably nearer the truth in saying that the master being
+dissatisfied with its general tone, which was too chalky, transformed it
+by means of violent glazings. The critics were no less noisy over this
+picture than the last. "A painter has been revealed to us," said one,
+"but he is a man who runs along the housetops." "Yes," answered
+Baudelaire, "but for that one must have a sure foot, and an eye guided
+by an inward light."
+
+When the Salon opened again in 1827, after an interval of three years,
+the public were astonished to find how large a number of painters had
+abandoned Davidism and openly joined the ranks of the enemy. Delacroix
+himself exhibited the _Marino Faliero_ (now at Hertford House) and
+eleven others. The gauntlet was flung down, and war began in deadly
+earnest between the opposing parties. It was at this time that the terms
+Romanticism and Romantic came into common use. Delacroix always resented
+being labelled as a Romantic, and would only acknowledge that the term
+might be justly applied to him when used in its widest signification.
+"If by my Romanticism," he wrote, "is meant the free expression of my
+personal impressions, my aversion from the stereotypes invariably
+produced in the schools, and my repugnance to academic receipts, then I
+must admit I am Romantic."
+
+Here we have the plain truth about the painting of the nineteenth
+century--and after! The critics were unanimous in their violent
+condemnation of Delacroix's works: "the compositions of a sick man in
+delirium," "the fanaticism of ugliness," "barbarous execution," "an
+intoxicated broom"--such are some of the terms of abuse showered upon
+him. The gentlest among them commiserate the talent which here and there
+can be seen "struggling with the systematic _bizarrerie_ and the
+disordered technique of the artist, just as gleams of reason and
+sometimes flashes of genius may be seen pitiably shining through the
+speech of a madman." The final touch to Delacroix's disgrace was given
+by the Directeur des Beaux Arts sending for him and recommending him to
+study drawing from casts, warning him at the same time that unless he
+could change his style he must expect neither commissions nor
+recognition from the State!
+
+The year 1830 has given its name to that brilliant generation of poets,
+novelists, painters and philosophers which, as Théophile Gautier says
+with just pride, "will make its mark on the future and be spoken of as
+one of the climacteric epochs of the human mind." The revolution of July
+inspired Delacroix with one of his most interesting pictures. _Le 28
+Juillet_ is the only one of his works in which he depicts modern life,
+and was a striking refutation to those who complained that modern
+costume is too ugly or prosaic to be treated in painting. "Every old
+master," Baudelaire usefully pointed out, "has been modern in his day.
+The greater number of fine portraits of former times are dressed in the
+costume of their period. They are perfectly harmonious because the
+costumes, the hair, and even the attitude and expression (each period
+has its own), form a whole of complete vitality." _Le 28 Juillet_ gives
+us the very breath and spirit of modern street fighting. Though the
+public
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XLVI.--JOHN CONSTABLE
+
+THE HAY WAIN
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+remained hostile and the jury bestowed none of its prizes, as before,
+the Government acknowledged the artist's talent and politics by making
+him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Further, from 1833 to 1853 he
+was intermittently employed in decorating the Chamber of Deputies, the
+Senate, and other public buildings. In 1855 he showed at the Great
+Exhibition a series of thirty-five of his most important pictures, the
+effect of which was immense. For the first and only time in his life he
+enjoyed a triumph, none the less great because his life-long rival
+Ingres also took the opportunity of exhibiting a selection of his works
+in the same building. But in spite of this success, and in spite of his
+being elected an Academician in 1857, the critics remained incorrigible.
+His pictures in the Salon of 1859 once more called forth one of those
+storms of abuse that Delacroix had the gift of arousing. Weary and
+disheartened--"All my life long I have been livré aux bêtes," was his
+bitter exclamation--he vowed to exhibit no more, and kept his word.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+RUSKIN AGAINST THE PHILISTINES
+
+
+IN England, meantime, great things were being accomplished amid peaceful
+surroundings. In portraiture Lawrence soon became supreme, and what
+excellence he possessed was accentuated on his death in 1830 by the
+appointment of Sir Martin Archer Shee as his successor in the Presidency
+of the Royal Academy. That was the end of portraiture in England until a
+new school arose. But it was in landscape that our country occupied the
+field in the first half of the nineteenth century, and tilled it with
+the astonishing results that are usually the effect of doing much and
+saying little. The work accomplished by Turner, Constable, and Cotman,
+in the first half of the century, to say nothing of Crome and one or two
+of the older men who were still alive, has never been equalled in any
+country, and yet less was heard about the execution of it than would
+keep a modern journalist in bread and cheese for a week. Turner, who
+wouldn't sell his pictures, and Constable, who couldn't, between them
+filled up the measure of English art without any other aid than that of
+the materials with which they recorded their gorgeous communion with
+nature. When Ruskin stepped in with the "Modern Painters," originally
+designed as a vindication of Turner against certain later-day critics,
+Turner's comment was, "He knows a great deal more about my pictures than
+I do. He puts things into my head and points out meanings in them that I
+never intended." That was in 1843, when Turner was well on in his third
+manner--within eight years of his death. But let us go back to the
+beginning.
+
+Until he developed his latest manner, Turner was about the most popular
+artist that ever lived. His pictures were not above the comprehension of
+the public, educated or otherwise, and no effort was either needed or
+demanded to understand them. In the diary of a provincial amateur,
+Thomas Greene, are recorded an impression of Turner's work as early as
+1797:--"Visited the Royal Exhibition. Particularly struck with a
+sea-view by Turner ...the whole composition bold in design and masterly
+in execution. I am entirely unacquainted with the artist, but if he
+proceeds as he has begun, he cannot fail to become the first in his
+department." And again in 1799:--"Was again struck and delighted with
+Turner's landscapes.... Turner's views are not mere ordinary transcripts
+of nature,--he always throws some peculiar and striking _character_ into
+the scene he represents."
+
+Brought up as a topographical draughtsman, he made no departure till
+quite late in life from the conventional method of depicting scenery;
+but being a supremely gifted artist, he was capable of utilising this
+method as no other before or since has ever succeeded in doing. The
+accepted method was good enough for him, and he laid his paint upon the
+canvas as anybody else had done before him, and as many of our
+present-day painters would do well to do after him--if only they had the
+genius in them to "make the instrument speak." The impressions created
+on our mind by Turner's earlier pictures are not conveyed by dots,
+cubes, streaks, or any device save that of pigment laid upon the canvas
+in such a manner as seemed to the artist to reproduce what he saw in
+nature. That he did this with surprising and altogether exceptional
+skill is the proof of his genius. Unflagging energy and devotion to his
+art enabled him to realise, not all, but a wonderful number of the
+beauties he saw in the world, with an experience that few beside him
+have ever taken the trouble to acquire. When barely thirty years old--in
+1805--he was already considered as the first of living landscape
+painters, and was thus noticed by Edward Dayes (the teacher of
+Girtin):--"Turner may be considered as a striking instance of how much
+may be gained by industry, if accompanied with perseverance, even
+without the assistance of a master. The way he acquired his professional
+powers was by borrowing when he could a drawing or picture to copy; or
+by making a sketch of any one in the exhibition early in the morning and
+finishing it up at home. By such practice, and a patient perseverance,
+he has overcome all the difficulties of the art." Turner himself used to
+say that his best academy was "the fields and Dr Monro's parlour"--where
+Girtin and other young artists met and sketched and copied the drawings
+in the doctor's collection. Burnet, in his notice of "Turner and his
+Works," suggests that John Robert Cozens had paved the way for both
+Girtin and Turner in striking out a broad effect of light and shade.
+"The early pictures of Turner," he observes, "possess the breadth, but
+are destitute of the brilliant power of light and colour afterwards
+pervading his works, and ultimately carried to the greatest extreme in
+his last pictures. Breadth of light seems to have been latterly his
+chief aim, supported by the contrast of hot and cold colour; two of his
+unfinished pictures exemplified the principle; they were divided into
+large masses of blue where the water or sky was to come and the other
+portions laid out in broad orange yellow, falling into delicate brown
+where the trees and landscapes were to be placed. This preparation,
+while it secured the greatest breadth, would have shone through the
+other colours when finished, giving the luminous quality observable in
+his pictures. In many instances his works sent for exhibition to the
+British Institution had little more than this brilliant foundation,
+which was worked into detail and completed in the varnishing days,
+Turner being the first in the morning and the last to leave; his
+certainty in the command over his colour, and the dexterity in his
+handling, seemed to convert in a few hours 'an unsubstantial pageant'
+into a finished landscape. These _ad captandum_ effects, however, are
+not what his fame will depend on for perpetuity; his finest pictures are
+the production of great study in their composition, careful and repeated
+painting in the detail, and
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XLVII.--J. M. W. TURNER
+
+CROSSING THE BROOK
+
+_National Gallery of British Art, London_]
+
+a natural arrangement of the colour and breadth of the chiaroscuro."
+
+Whether or not we agree with all of Burnet's opinions, we shall be more
+likely to learn the truth about Turner from prosaic contemporaries of
+his earlier years than from all the rhapsodies of later days. How
+significant, when stripped of its amusing circumstances, is the simple
+fact related thus by Leslie:--"In 1839, when Constable exhibited his
+_Opening of Waterloo Bridge_, it was placed in one of the small rooms
+next to a sea-piece by Turner--a grey picture, beautiful and true, but
+with no positive colour in any part of it. Constable's picture seemed as
+if painted with liquid gold and silver, and Turner came several times
+while he was heightening with vermilion and lake the decorations and
+flags of the city barges. Turner stood behind him looking from the
+_Waterloo Bridge_ to his own picture, and at last brought his palette
+from the great room where he was touching another picture, and putting a
+round daub of red lead, somewhat bigger than a shilling, on his grey
+sea, went away without saying a word. The intensity of this red lead,
+made more vivid by the coolness of his picture, caused even the
+vermilion and lake of Constable to look weak. I came into the room just
+after Turner had left it. "He has been here," said Constable, "and fired
+a gun." On the opposite wall was a picture by Jones of Shadrach Meshach
+and Abednego in the Furnace. "A coal," said Cooper, "has bounced across
+the room from Jones's picture and set fire to Turner's sea." Turner did
+not come in again for a day and a half, and then in the last moment
+allowed for painting, he glazed the scarlet seal he had put on his
+picture, and shaped it into a buoy."
+
+It was in 1835, after an unbroken popular triumph lasting over thirty
+years, that the critics openly rounded on him. The occasion seized by
+_Blackwood's Magazine_ was the exhibition of his first Venetian picture
+exhibited in that year--it is now in the Metropolitan Museum in New
+York. "What is Venice in this picture?" wrote Blackwood's critic. "A
+flimsy, whitewashed, meagre assemblage of architecture, starting off
+ghost-like into unnatural perspective, as if frightened at the affected
+blaze of some dogger vessels (the only attempt at richness in the
+picture). The greater part of the picture is white, disagreeable white,
+without light or transparency, and the boats with their red worsted
+masts are as gewgaw as a child's toy which he may have cracked to see
+what it is made of. As to Venice, nothing can be more unlike its
+character."
+
+Ruskin was then only sixteen years old, but eight years later appeared
+in print the first volume of "Modern Painters," "by an undergraduate of
+Oxford," as the result of his growing indignation at this and subsequent
+attacks on Turner. Without following Ruskin into the dubious regions
+whither the pursuit of his romantic fancies ultimately led him, we may
+in fairness quote the opening sentence of his second chapter, "Of Truth
+of Colour," which will help us, moreover, in understanding the
+conditions under which painting was being conducted at this period.
+"There is nothing so high in art," he says, "but that a scurrile jest
+can reach at, and often the greater the work the easier it is to turn it
+into ridicule. To appreciate the science of Turner's colour would
+require the study of a life; but to laugh at it requires little more
+than the knowledge that the yolk of egg is yellow and spinage green; a
+fund of critical information on which the remarks of most of our
+leading periodicals have been of late years exclusively based. We
+shall, however, in spite of the sulphur and treacle criticisms of our
+Scotch connoisseurs, and the eggs and spinage of our English ones,
+endeavour to test the works of this great colourist by a knowledge of
+nature somewhat more extensive than is to be gained by an acquaintance,
+however formed, with the apothecary's shop or the dinner table."
+
+So much for the critics. For the artist, if Ruskin said more than Turner
+himself could understand, he has summed up his achievement in a few
+passages which may possibly outlast the works themselves. "There has
+been marked and constant progress in his mind; he has not, like some few
+artists, been without childhood; his course of study has been as
+evidently as it has been swiftly progressive; and in different stages of
+the struggle, sometimes one order of truth, sometimes another, has been
+aimed at or omitted. But from the beginning to the present height of his
+career he has never sacrificed a greater truth to a less. As he
+advanced, the previous knowledge or attainment was absorbed in what
+succeeded, or abandoned only if incompatible, and never abandoned
+without a gain: and his present works present the sum and perfection of
+his accumulated knowledge, delivered with the impatience and passion of
+one who feels too much, and has too little time to say it in, to pause
+for expression or ponder over his syllables." And again of his latest
+works--"There is in them the obscurity, but the truth, of prophecy; the
+instinctive and burning language, which would express less if it uttered
+more; which is indistinct only by its fulness, and dark with its
+abundant meaning. He feels now, with long-trained vividness and keenness
+of sense, too bitterly, the impotence of the hand and the vainness of
+the colour to catch one shadow or one image of the glory which God has
+revealed to him. He has dwelt and communed with Nature all the days of
+his life: he knows her now too well, he cannot falter over the material
+littlenesses of her outward form: he must give her soul, or he has done
+nothing, and he cannot do this with the flax, the earth, and the oil. 'I
+cannot gather the beams out of the east, or I would make _them_ tell you
+what I have seen; but read this, and interpret this, and let us remember
+together. I cannot gather the gloom out of the night sky, or I would
+make that teach you what I have seen; but read this, interpret this, and
+let us feel together. And if you have not that within you which I can
+summon to my aid, if you have not the sun in your spirit, and the
+passion in your heart, which my words may awaken, though they be
+indistinct and swift, leave me; for I will give you no patient mockery,
+no laborious insult of that glorious Nature, whose I am and whom I
+serve. Let other servants imitate the voice and the gesture of their
+master, while they forget his message. Hear that message from me; but
+remember that the teaching of Divine truth must still be a mystery.'"
+
+Within a very few years Ruskin was performing a more useful service for
+the English School of painting than that of gilding the fine gold of its
+greatest genius. Whether or not he was aware of the fact, young Holman
+Hunt had borrowed a copy of "Modern Painters," which, he says, entirely
+changed his opinions as to the views held by society at large concerning
+art, and in 1849 there were exhibited Hunt's _Rienzi_, Rossetti's
+_Girlhood of Mary Virgin_, and Millais' _Lorenzo and Isabella_, each
+inscribed with the mystic letters "P.R.B.," meaning "Pre-Raphaelite
+Brotherhood." It is interesting to note that this alliance was formed
+when the three young artists were looking over a book of engravings of
+the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa.
+
+In the following year Hunt exhibited the _British Family_, Millais, _The
+Carpenter's Shop_, and Rossetti the _Ecce Ancilla Domini_, and in 1851
+were Hunt's _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ and three by Millais. The fury of
+the critics had now reached a point at which some notice had to be taken
+of it--as of a man in an apopleptic fit. That of the Times in
+particular:--"These young artists have unfortunately become notorious by
+addicting themselves to an antiquated style, false perspective, and
+crude colour of remote antiquity. We want not to see what Fuseli termed
+drapery "snapped instead of folded," faces bloated into apoplexy, or
+extenuated into skeletons; colour borrowed from the jars in a druggist's
+shop, and expression forced into caricature. That morbid infatuation
+which sacrifices truth, beauty, and genuine feeling to mere eccentricity
+deserves no quarter at the hands of the public." It was in disapproval
+of the tone of this outburst that the author of "Modern Painters"
+addressed his famous and useful letter to the _Times_, vindicating the
+artists, and following it up with another in which he wishes them all
+"heartily good speed, believing in sincerity that if they temper the
+courage and energy which they have shown in the adoption of their
+systems with patience and discretion in framing it, and if they do not
+suffer themselves to be driven by harsh and careless criticism into
+rejection of the ordinary means of obtaining influence over the minds of
+others, they may, as they gain experience, lay in our England the
+foundation of a school of art nobler than the world has seen for three
+hundred years."
+
+If any one of this strenuous young band had been a painter of the first
+rank, this prediction might have been abundantly verified. But it must
+be owned that none of them was. Holman Hunt came nearest to being, and
+Millais probably thought he was, when he had abandoned his early
+principles and shaped for the Presidency of the Academy. Rossetti had
+more genius in him than the others, but it came out in poetry as well as
+in painting, and perhaps in more lasting form. As it was, the effects of
+the revolution were widespread and entirely beneficial; but those
+effects must not be looked for in the works of any one particular
+artist, but rather in the general aspect of English art in the
+succeeding half century, and perhaps to-day. It broke up the soil. The
+flowers that came up were neither rare nor great, but they were many,
+varied, and pleasing, and in every respect an improvement on the
+evergreens and hardy annuals with which the English garden had become
+more and more encumbered from want of intelligent cultivation. More than
+this, the freedom engendered of revolt had now encouraged the young
+artist to feel that he was no longer bound to paint in any particular
+fashion. People's eyes were opened to possibilities as well as to
+actualities; and though they were prone to close again under the
+soporific influence of what was regular and conventional, they were
+capable of opening again, perhaps with a start, but without the
+necessity for a surgical operation. In 1847, for example, George
+Frederick Watts had offered to adorn, free of charge, the booking-hall
+of Euston Station, and had been refused--Watts, by the by, was quite
+independent of the Pre-Raphaelites--whereas in 1860 the Benchers of
+Lincoln's Inn accepted his _School of Legislature_, and in 1867 he was
+elected an academician.
+
+Two somewhat remarkable effects of the movement are attributed to it by
+Mr Edmund Gosse (in a note on the work of Alfred Hunt, written in
+1884), which are probably typical of many more. The Liverpool Academy,
+founded in 1810, had an annual grant of £200 from the Corporation. In
+1857 it gave a prize to Millais' _Blind Girl_ in preference to the most
+popular picture of the year (Abraham Solomon's _Waiting for the
+Verdict_), and so great was the public indignation that pressure was
+brought to bear on the Corporation, the grant was withdrawn, and the
+Academy ruined.
+
+In the other instance we may not go the whole way with Mr Gosse, when in
+speaking of the Pre-Raphaelite principle he says that "the school of
+Turnerian landscape was fatally affected by them," or that all the
+landscape painters, except Alfred Hunt, "accepted the veto which the
+Pre-Raphaelites had tacitly laid upon composition or a striving after an
+artificial harmony of forms in landscape." But to a certain extent their
+influence undoubtedly was prejudicial in that respect. In suggesting
+another reason for the cessation of Turner s influence he is quite as
+near the mark, namely, the action of the Royal Academy in admitting no
+landscape painters to membership. At Turner's death in 1851 there were
+only three, among whom was Creswick. "This popular artist," says Mr
+Gosse, "was the Upas tree under whose shadow the Academical patronage of
+landscape died in England. From his election as an associate in 1842 to
+that of Vicat Cole in 1869, no landscape painter entered the doors of
+the Royal Academy." Of this august body we shall have something to say
+later on.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+MANET AND WHISTLER AGAINST THE WORLD
+
+
+Let us now cross the channel again, and see what is going on there, in
+1863. Evidently there is something on, or there would not be so much
+excitement. As we approach the Capital we are aware of one name being
+prominent in the general uproar--that of ÉDOUARD MANET.
+
+Manet's revolt against tradition began before he became an artist, as
+was in fact necessary, or he would never have been allowed to become
+one. The traditions of the Bourgoisie were sacred, and their power and
+importance since the revolution of 1848 not to be lightly set aside. But
+young Manet was so determined that he was at last allowed by his
+bourgeois parents to have his way, and was sent to study under that very
+rough diamond Couture. Now again his "revolting" qualities showed
+themselves, this time in the life class. Théodore Duret, his friend and
+biographer, puts it so amusingly that a quotation, untranslated, is
+imperative:--"Cette repulsion qui se développe chez Manet pour l'art de
+la tradition," he says, "se manifeste surtout par le mépris qu'il
+témoigne aux modèles posant dans l'atelier et à l'étude du nu telle
+qu'elle était alors conduite. Le culte de l'antique comme on le
+comprenait dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle parmi les peintres
+avait amené la recherche de modèles speciaux. On leur demandait des
+formes pleines. Les hommes en particulier devaient avoir une poitrine
+large et bombée, un torse puissant, des membres musclés. Les individus
+doués des qualités requises qui posaient alors dans les ateliers,
+s'etaient habitués à prendre des attitudes prétendues expressive et
+heroïques, mais toujours tendues et conventionelles, d'où l'imprévu
+était banni. Manet, porté vers le naturel et épris de recherches,
+s'irritait de ces poses d'un type fixe et toujours les mêmes. Aussi
+faisait-il tres mauvais ménage avec les modèles. Il cherchait à en
+obtenir des poses contraires à leurs habitudes, auxquelles ils se
+refusaient. Les modèles connus qui avaient vu les morceaux faits d'après
+leurs torses conduire certains élèves à l'école de Rome, alors la
+suprême récompense, et qui dans leur orgueil s'attribuaient presqu'une
+part du succès, se revoltaient de voir un tout jeune homme ne leur
+témoigner aucun respect. Il paraît que fatigué de l'eternelle étude du
+nu, Manet aurait essayé de draper et même d'habiller les modèles, ce qui
+aurait causé parmi eux une véritable indignation."
+
+It was in 1863 that the storm of popular fury burst over Manet's head,
+on the exhibition of his first important picture, painted three years
+before, generally known as _Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe_. This wonderful
+canvas was something so new and so surprising that it was rejected by
+the jury of the Salon. But in company with less conspicuous though
+equally unacceptable pieces by such men as Bracquemond, Cazin,
+Fantin-Latour, Harpignies, Jongkind, J. P. Laurens, Le Gros, Pissarro,
+Vollon, and Whistler, it was accorded an exhibition, alongside the
+official Salon, which was called _le Salon des refusés_. Being the
+largest and most conspicuous work shown, it attracted no less attention
+than if it had been officially hung, and probably much more. "Ainsi ce
+Déjeuner sur l'herbe," says M. Duret, "venait-il faire comme une énorme
+tache. Il donnait la sensation de quelquechose outré. Il heurtait la
+vision. Il produisait, sur les yeux du public de ce temps, l'effet de la
+pleine lumière sur les yeux du hibou."
+
+There was more than one reason for this remarkable picture surprising
+and shocking the sensibilities of the public. It represents a couple of
+men in everyday bourgeois costume, one sitting and the other reclining
+on the grass under trees, while next to one of them is seated a young
+woman, her head turned to the spectator, in no costume at all. A
+profusion of _articles de déjeuner_ is beside her, and it is evident
+that they are only waiting to arrange the meal till a second young
+woman, who is seen bathing in the near background, is ready to join
+them. The subject and composition are reminiscent of Giorgione's
+beautiful and famous _Fête Champêtre_, in the Louvre, and Manet quite
+frankly and in quite good faith pleaded Giorgione as his precedent when
+assailed on grounds of good taste. But unfortunately he had not put his
+male figures in "fancy dress," and the public could hardly be expected
+to realise that Giorgione had not, either. As for the painting, it was a
+revelation. He had broken every canon of tradition--and yet it was a
+marvellous success!
+
+Another outburst greeted the appearance of the wonderful _Olympia_ in
+1865, this time in the official catalogue. This is now enshrined in the
+Louvre. It was painted in 1863, but fortunately, perhaps, Manet had not
+the courage to exhibit it then--for who can tell to what length the fury
+of the Philistines might not have been goaded by two such shocks? As it
+was, this second violation of the sacred traditions of the nude, which
+had been exclusively reserved for allegorical subjects, was considered
+an outrage; and the innocent, natural model, of by no means voluptuous
+appearance, was regarded as a disgraceful intrusion into the chaste
+category of nymphs and goddesses. As a painter, however, Manet had shown
+himself unmistakably as the great figure of
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XLVIII.--ÉDOUARD MANET
+
+OLYMPIA
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+the age, and if we have to go to Paris or to New York to catch a glimpse
+of any of his work, it is partly because we are too backward in seizing
+opportunities so eagerly snapped up by others.
+
+The next great storm in the artistic world followed in the wake of one
+of Manet's companions in adversity at the _Salon des Refusés_--JAMES
+M'NEILL WHISTLER, who left Paris and settled with his mother in Chelsea
+in the late 'sixties. That he should have existed for fifteen whole
+years without breaking forth into strife is so extraordinary that we are
+almost tempted to attribute it to the influence of his mother, who used
+to bring him to the old church on Sundays, as the present writer dimly
+remembers. In this case it was not the public, but the critic, John
+Ruskin, who so deftly dropped the fat into the fire. Having, as we saw,
+taken up the cudgels for poor Turner against the public in 1843, and for
+the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1850, he now, in 1877, ranged himself
+on the other side, and accused Whistler of impertinence in "flinging a
+pot of paint in the face of the public." The action for libel which
+Whistler commenced in the following year resulted in strict fact in a
+verdict of one farthing damages for the libelled one; but in reality the
+results were much farther reaching. The artist had vindicated not only
+himself, but his art, from the attacks of the ignorant and bumptious.
+"Poor art!" Whistler wrote, "What a sad state the slut is in, an these
+gentlemen shall help her. The artist alone, by the way, is to no purpose
+and remains unconsulted; his work is explained and rectified without
+him, by the one who was never in it--but upon whom God, always good
+though sometimes careless, has thrown away the knowledge refused to the
+author, poor devil!" This recalls Turner's comment on Ruskin's
+eulogies--which Whistler had probably never heard of--and making every
+allowance for Whistler's fiery, combative nature, and sharp pen, there
+is much truth, and truth that needed telling, in his contention. "Art,"
+he continues, "that for ages has hewn its own history in marble, and
+written its own comments on canvas, shall it suddenly stand still, and
+stammer, and wait for wisdom from the passer-by? For guidance from the
+hand that holds neither brush nor chisel? Out upon the shallow conceit!"
+
+Of the hopeless banality of the critics during this period there are
+plenty of examples to be found without looking very far. Several of the
+most amusing have been embodied in a little volume of "Whistler
+Stories," lately compiled by Mr Don C. Seitz of New York. Here we find
+_The Standard's_ little joke about Whistler paying his costs in the
+action--apart from those allowed on taxation, that is to say--"But he
+has only to paint, or, as we believe he expresses it 'knock off' three
+or four 'symphonies' or 'harmonies'--or perhaps he might try his hand at
+a Set of Quadrilles in Peacock Blue?--and a week's labour will set all
+square." Then there is this priceless revelation of his art when
+questioning his class in Paris. "Do you know what I mean when I say
+tone, value, light, shade, quality, movement, construction, etc.?"
+_Chorus_, "Oh, yes, Mr Whistler!" "I'm glad, for it's more than I do
+myself." More serious was the verdict of Sir George Scharf, keeper of
+the National Gallery, when (in 1874) there was a proposal to purchase
+the portrait of Carlyle. "Well," he said, icily, on looking at the
+picture, "and has painting come to this!"
+
+High place, it would seem, did not always conduce to an appreciation of
+high art. Here is the opinion of Sir Charles Eastlake, F.R.I.B.A., also
+keeper of the
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XLIX.--J. M. WHISTLER
+
+LILLIE IN OUR ALLEY
+
+_In the possession of John J. Cowan, Esq._]
+
+National Gallery, published in 1883, on one of Rembrandt's pictures in
+the Louvre:--
+
+"_The Bath_, a very ugly and offensive picture, in which the principal
+object is the ill-proportioned figure of a naked woman, distinguished by
+flesh tones whose colour suggests the need of a bath rather than the
+fact that it has been taken. The position of the old servant wiping the
+woman's feet is not very intelligible, and the drawing of the bather's
+legs is distinctly defective. The light and shade of the picture, though
+obviously untrue to natural effect, are managed with the painter's usual
+dexterity."
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE ROYAL ACADEMY
+
+
+The last revolt of the nineteenth century was effected in a peaceable
+and business-like, but none the less successful manner, by the
+establishment, in 1886, of the New English Art Club as a means of
+defence against the mighty _vis inertiæ_ of the Royal Academy. As an
+example of the disadvantage under which any artist laboured who did not
+bow down to the great Idol, I venture to quote a few sentences from the
+report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords appointed to
+inquire into the administration of the Chantrey Trust, in 1904:----
+
+"With five exceptions, all the works in the collection have been bought
+from summer exhibitions of the Royal Academy."
+
+"It is admitted by those most friendly to the present system that the
+Chantrey collection regarded as a national gallery of modern British art
+is incomplete, and in a large degree unrepresentative. The works of
+many of the most brilliant and capable artists who worked in the last
+quarter of the nineteenth century are missing from the gallery, and the
+endeavour to account for these omissions has formed one main branch of
+the inquiry."
+
+"It has been stated that while containing some fine works of art, it is
+lacking in variety and interest, and while failing to give expression to
+much of the finest artistic feeling of its period, it includes not a few
+works of minor importance. Full consideration of the evidence has led
+the Committee to regard this view as approximately correct."
+
+Up to 1897, when the collection was handed over to the nation, little
+short of £50,000 had been spent upon it. And with five exceptions,
+amounting to less than £5000, the whole of that money had been expended
+on such works alone as were permitted by the Academy to be exhibited on
+their walls.
+
+Of the £5000, it may be noted, £2200 was well laid out on Watts's
+_Psyche_; but with regard to the very first purchase made, in 1877, for
+£1000,--Hilton's _Christ Mocked_, which had been painted as an
+altar-piece for S. Peter's, Eaton Square, in 1839, the following
+question and answer are full of bitter significance for the poor artist
+of the time:----
+
+     Lord Ribblesdale.--Was Mr Hilton's picture offered by the Vicar and
+     Churchwardens?
+
+     The Secretary to the Royal Academy.--Yes, it was offered by
+     them--one of the Churchwardens was the late Lord Maghermorne--he
+     was then Sir James M'Garrell Hogg--he was a great friend of Sir
+     Francis Grant who was the President, and he offered it to him for
+     the Chantrey Collection.
+
+When repeatedly pressed by the Committee for the reasons why so few
+purchases were made outside the Academy exhibitions, the President, Sir
+Edward Poynter, repeatedly pleaded the impossibility of a Council of
+Ten, all of whom must see pictures before they are bought, travelling
+about in search of them. In view of this apparent--but obviously
+unreal--difficulty, the following questions were then put by the Earl of
+Lytton:----
+
+420. Without actually changing the terms of the will, has the question
+of employing an agent for the purpose of finding out what pictures were
+available and giving advice upon them ever been suggested?--No.
+
+421. That would come within the term of the will, would it not, the
+final voting being, as it is now, in the hands of the Academy; it would
+be open to the Council to appoint an agent, as was suggested just now,
+of going to Scotland, and going about the country making suggestions as
+to pictures which in his opinion might be bought?--The question has
+never arisen.
+
+422. But that could be done, could it not?--I suppose that could be done
+under the terms of the will, but I do not suppose that the Academy would
+ever do it.
+
+As a comment on this let us turn to the "Autobiography of W. P. Frith R.
+A." (Chapter xl.):--"A portion of the year ... was spent in the service
+of the winter Exhibition of Old Masters. My duties took me into strange
+places.... One of my first visits was paid to a huge mansion in the
+North.... I visited thirty-eight different collections of old masters
+and named for selection over three hundred pictures.... The pictures of
+Reynolds are so much desired for the winter Exhibition that neither
+trouble nor expense are spared in searching for them; so hearing of one
+described to me as of unusual splendour, I made a journey into Wales
+with the solitary Reynolds for its object."
+
+Here, where it is not a question of a Trust for the benefit of the
+public and for the encouragement of artists, there appears to have been
+no trouble or expense spared. But the real reason for the Academic
+selection leapt naïvely from the mouth of the President a little later,
+in reply to question 545.--"The best artists come into the Academy
+ultimately. I do not say that there have been no exceptions, but as a
+general rule all the best artists ultimately become Academicians. It is
+natural, if we want the best pictures that we should go to the best
+artists."
+
+On this point the answer to a question put by Lord Lytton to one of the
+forty, Sir William Richmond, K.C.B., is of value, as showing that the
+grievances of "the outsiders" were not imaginary:--
+
+767. I just want to ask you one more question. When you said that in
+your opinion the walls of the Academy have had priority of claim in the
+past, have you any particular reason for that statement?--Yes. I may
+mention this to show that I am consistent. Before I was an Associate of
+the Royal Academy, I fought hard for what are called, in rather
+undignified language, the outsiders, and I was anxious that men should
+be elected Associates of the Royal Academy not necessarily because they
+exhibit on the Royal Academy walls, but because they are competent
+painters. That was my fight upon which I stood; and I refused to send a
+picture to the Royal Academy on the understanding that if I did I should
+probably be elected Associate that year, and also that my picture would
+be bought by the Chantrey Fund. My answer to that was, "If my picture is
+good enough to be purchased for the Chantrey Bequest my picture can be
+purchased from the walls of the Grosvenor Gallery as well as from the
+walls of the Royal Academy. That seems to me to be justice."
+
+The "New English," then, had some justification for their establishment;
+and although they did not make very much headway before the close of the
+nineteenth century, they find themselves at the opening of the twentieth
+in a position to determine to a very considerable extent what the future
+of English painting is to be, just as the Academy succeeded in
+determining it before they came into existence.
+
+For the Academy everything that was vital in English art in the last
+half century had no existence--was simply ignored. For the New English,
+it was the seed that flowered, under their gentle influence, into the
+many varieties of blossoms with which our garden is already filled. To
+the Academy there was no such thing as change or development--their ears
+were deaf to any innovation, their eyes were blind to any fresh beauty.
+To others, every new movement foretold its significance, and the century
+closed with the recognition of the fact that art must live and develop
+if it is to be anything but a comfortable means of subsistence for a
+self-constituted authority of forty and their friends.
+
+Let me be allowed to conclude this chapter, and my imperfect efforts to
+indicate the energies of six centuries of art in so small a space, with
+a passage from a lecture delivered in 1882 by Mr Selwyn Image, now Slade
+Professor at Oxford, which embodies the spirit in the air at that time,
+and foreshadows what was to come. "I do not feel that we have come here
+to sing a requiem for art this afternoon," he said. "As a giant it will
+renew its strength and rejoice to run its course. I am not a prophet, I
+cannot tell you just what that course is going to be. Nor is it possible
+to estimate what is around us with the same security, with the same
+value, that we estimate what has passed--you must be at a certain
+distance to take things in. But in contemporary art we can notice some
+characteristics, which are quite at one with what we call the modern
+spirit; and extremely suggestive--for they seem to indicate movement,
+and therefore life, in this imaginative sphere, just as there is
+movement and life in the sphere of science or of social interests. For
+instance, in modern representative work ... I think anyone comparing it
+as a whole with the work of the old masters, will be struck as against
+their distinctness, containedness, simplicity and serenity; with its
+complexity, restlessness, and vagueness, and emotion, and suggestiveness
+in place of delineation, and impressionism in place of literal
+transcription--and this alike in execution and motive. I do not mean to
+say that these qualities are better than the qualities that preceded
+them, or worse--but only that they are different, only that they are of
+the modern spirit--only that they indicate movement and life; and so far
+that is hopeful--is it not?"
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+_INDEX_
+
+
+Academy of Painting, the French, 231
+
+---- the Royal, 279, 286, 329-333
+
+Alamanus, Giovanni or Johannes, 60, 61
+
+Allegri, Antonio, or Correggio, 58
+
+Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence, 307
+
+Altdorfer, Albert, 212, 214-216
+
+Angelico, Fra, 19
+
+Animal Painters, 154, 191-202
+
+Aretino, Spinello, 17
+
+Arnolde, 255
+
+
+Backer, 174
+
+Balen, Henry van, 159, 162
+
+Barret, 287
+
+Basaiti, Marco, 63, 74
+
+Bassano, Jacopo da, 98-99
+
+Bastiani, Lazzaro di, 75-76
+
+Baudelaire, 311, 312
+
+Bazzi, Giovanni Antonio (Sodoma), 57
+
+Bellini, Gentile, 70, 72-73, 76, 81
+
+---- Giovanni, 62, 63, 66, 70-72, 76, 81, 82, 83, 94
+
+---- Jacopo, 66, 69, 70, 75
+
+Belvedere, Andrea, 201
+
+Berchem, Nicholas, 199-201, 205, 208
+
+Beruete, Senor, quoted, 113, 115, 116, 118, 177
+
+Bettes, John, 254, 255
+
+---- Thomas, 255
+
+Bol, 165
+
+Boltraffio, Giovanni Antonio, 57
+
+Bonifazio Veronese or Veneziano, 97-98
+
+Bordes, Lassalle, 311
+
+Bosboom, 307
+
+Botticelli, Sandro, 26, 28-32, 33
+
+Botticini, Francesco, 32
+
+Boucher, François, 241-243, 245, 246, 247, 248
+
+Bouguereau, 306
+
+Bourdon, Sebastien, 231-232
+
+Bouts, Dirk, 132
+
+Bracquemond, 325
+
+Bril, Paul, 229
+
+Broederlam, Melchior, 121, 122, 124
+
+Brouwer, Adrian, 157, 158, 173, 183-185
+
+Brueghel, Jan, or Velvet Brueghel, 141, 201
+
+----- Pieter (or Peasant), 141
+
+---- ---- his son, 141
+
+Brun, Le, 234-241
+
+Bruyn, Bartel, 212
+
+Buonarroti. _See_ Michelangelo
+
+Burnet, on Turner, 315
+
+Byzantine Art, 59, 124
+
+
+Caliari, Paolo, 102-103
+
+Campidoglio, Michel de, 201
+
+Canale, Antonio, 108
+
+Caro-Delvaille, quoted, 79, 87, 91, 92
+
+Carpaccio, Vittore, 75, 76-78
+
+Carracci, the, 106, 182
+
+---- Agostino, 106, 107, 108
+
+---- Annibale, 106, 107
+
+---- Lodovico, 106, 107
+
+Catalonia, School of, 109
+
+Catena, Vincenzo, 72, 73
+
+Cazin, 325
+
+Champaigne, Philippe de, 233-234
+
+Chantrey Trust, the, 329
+
+Chardin, 245, 247, 296, 297
+
+Chartered Society, the, 286
+
+Cimabue, Giovanni, 1-9, 10, 11, 124, 125, 308
+
+Claude (or Claude Lorraine, or Gellée), 226, 229-231
+
+Cleef, Joos van, 142
+
+Clouet, François, 226
+
+---- Jehan or Jean, 226
+
+Cole, Peter, 255
+
+---- Vicat, 323
+
+Conegliano, Cima da, 72, 73-74
+
+Constable, 295, 306, 310, 314, 317
+
+Cook, Herbert, quoted, 80, 83, 87
+
+Copley, John Singleton, 297
+
+Corot, 306
+
+Correggio, 58
+
+Cotes, 287
+
+Cotman, John Sell, 295-296, 306, 314
+
+Courbet, 306
+
+Couture, 324
+
+Cox, 306
+
+Cozens, John Robert, 316
+
+Cranach, Lucas, 212, 213-214
+
+Credi, Lorenzo di, 49
+
+Creswick, 323
+
+Crivelli, Carlo, 63, 64
+
+Crome, John, or Old Crome, 295, 314
+
+---- John Bernay, his son, 295
+
+Crowe and Cavalcaselle, quoted, 122
+
+Cunningham, Allan, "Life of Hogarth," 261, 266, 267, 301
+
+Cuyp, Albert, 194-196
+
+---- Jacob Gerritz, 194
+
+
+Dance, Nathaniel, 286
+
+Daubigny, 306
+
+Daumier, 306
+
+David, Jacques Louis, 248, 249, 306, 309
+
+Dayes, Edward, quoted, on Turner, 315
+
+Decamps, 306
+
+Degas, 306
+
+Delacroix, Eugène, 306, 309-313
+
+Diana, Benedetto, 75
+
+Dilke, Lady, quoted, 247
+
+Dobson, William, 257
+
+Dolce, Carlo, 108
+
+---- Ludovico, on Titian, 80, 81
+
+Domenichino, 107-108, 227
+
+Donatello, 23, 70
+
+Doré, 306
+
+Dou, Gerard, 187, 188, 192
+
+Doyen, 246
+
+Duccio of Siena, 5, 6, 59, 124, 125
+
+Dürer, Albert, 70, 140, 175, 181, 212, 213, 215-222, 223
+
+Duret, Théodore, quoted, on Manet, 324-325
+
+Dyck, Anthony van, 156, 157, 160-163, 165, 166, 178, 236, 272
+
+----  ---- in England, 256-257
+
+Dutch School, 165-210
+
+
+Eclectics, the, 105
+
+Edwards, Edward, quoted, on Art Exhibitions, 279
+
+Elsheimer, Adam, 158, 212
+
+Emilia, Schools of, 57
+
+English School, early Portrait Painters of, 251-258
+
+---- in Eighteenth Century, 295-298
+
+---- spirit of revolt in Nineteenth Century, 305 _et seq._
+
+Everdingen, 157, 205
+
+Exhibitions of Painting, 278
+
+Eyck, Hubert van, 121, 125, 126, 127, 143, 150
+
+---- Jan van, 121, 125, 129-131, 133, 134, 150
+
+
+Fabriano, Gentile da, 65, 70
+
+Fabritius, Karel, 189
+
+Fantin-Latour, 325
+
+Fiori, Mario di, 201
+
+Flaxman, John, on Romney, 298-300
+
+Flemish School, 121-163
+
+Floris, Franz, 144
+
+Foppa, Vincenzo, 57
+
+Fragonard, Jean Honoré, 245, 248, 249
+
+Francesco, Piero della, 49
+
+Franciabigio, 45
+
+Free Society of Artists, 286
+
+French Academy of Painting, 231
+
+French School in Seventeenth Century, 225-235
+
+---- in Eighteenth Century, 235-249
+
+---- in Nineteenth Century, 305
+
+Frith, W. P., quoted, 331
+
+Fyt, Jan, 154, 157
+
+
+Gaddi, Taddeo, 18
+
+Gainsborough, Thomas, 286, 288-295, 297
+
+Garrard, Mark, 255
+
+Gellée, Claude, or Claude, 226, 229-231
+
+Genre Painters of Dutch School, 183-191
+
+Géricault, 306, 310
+
+German Schools, 211-224
+
+Ghirlandaio, Domenico, 43, 310
+
+Giambono, Michele, 60, 61
+
+Gillot, Claude, 236, 239
+
+Giorgione, 76, 79, 81, 82, 83, 86, 97
+
+Giotto di Bondone, 10-18, 24, 66, 124, 308
+
+Girtin, 315, 316
+
+Gossaert, Jan, or Mabuse, 136, 138, 139, 143, 254
+
+Gosse, Edmund, quoted, 322, 323
+
+Goubeau, Antoine, 235
+
+Goya, Francisco, 119-120
+
+Goyen, Jan van, 186, 199, 202-203, 204
+
+Grebber, Peter, 199
+
+Greco, El, 110
+
+Greene, Thomas, quoted, on Turner, 314
+
+Greenhill, 257
+
+Gros, Le, 309, 325
+
+Greuze, Jean Baptiste, 243-245, 249, 258
+
+Gruenewald, Matthew, 213
+
+Guardi, Francesco, 108
+
+Guercino, 108
+
+
+Hals, Frans, 165-169, 173, 178, 179, 181, 183, 184, 192, 248
+
+Harpignies, 325
+
+Heem, de, 201
+
+Heemskirk, Martin, 144
+
+Helst, Bartholomew van der, 165, 170-171, 174
+
+Herle, Wilhelm van, or Meister Wilhelm, 211
+
+Herrera, Francisco de, 111
+
+Highmore, 297
+
+Hilliard, 257
+
+Hobbema, Meindert, 208-210
+
+Hogarth, William, 257, 258-267, 280, 297, 298, 307
+
+Holbein, Hans, 175, 212, 213, 222-224
+
+---- in England, 254
+
+Hondecoeter, Giles, 197, 198
+
+---- Gysbert, 198
+
+---- Melchior, 154, 198, 199
+
+Hone, Nathaniel, 287
+
+Honthorst, Gerard, 169-170
+
+Hoogh, Peter de, 189, 190
+
+Hudson, Thomas, 257, 269
+
+Hunt, Alfred, 323
+
+---- Holman, 134, 306, 320, 321, 322
+
+Huysum, James van, 202
+
+---- Jan van, 201-202
+
+---- Justus van, 202
+
+---- Michael van, 203
+
+
+Image, Mr Selwyn, quoted, 333
+
+Ingres, 306
+
+Israels, 307
+
+
+Jervas, 257
+
+John of Bruges, 125, 126
+
+Jongkind, 325
+
+Jordaens, Jacob, 156, 157, 160, 163
+
+
+Kauffmann, Angelica, 287
+
+Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 234, 257, 279
+
+Knupler, Nicolas, 186
+
+Kugler, quoted, 13, 61, 67, 75, 77, 95,
+97, 99, 101, 103, 107, 181, 182, 195, 204, 223
+
+
+Lancret, Nicholas, 239-240, 241
+
+Landscape, painters of, 202-210
+
+Largillière, Nicholas, 234, 235, 241
+
+Lastman, Peter, 180
+
+Laurens, J. P., 325
+
+Lawrence, 300, 301-303, 306, 313
+
+Le Brun, 234, 241
+
+Le Gros, 309, 325
+
+Le Moine, François, 241
+
+Le Sueur, Eustache, 232-233
+
+Lefort, quoted, on Velasquez, 115
+
+Lely, Sir Peter, 165, 235, 257
+
+Leyden, Lucas van, 138, 212
+
+Lingelbach, 203, 208
+
+Lippi, Fra Filippo, 21, 26, 29
+
+---- Filippino, 22
+
+Lochner, Stephen, 211
+
+Lockie, 255
+
+Lombardy, Schools of, 57
+
+Longhi, Pietro, 108
+
+Loo, Carle van, 241
+
+Lorenzetti, Pietro, 17
+
+Lorraine, Claude, 226, 229-231
+
+Lotto, Lorenzo, 63, 72, 96-97
+
+Luini, Bernardino, 57
+
+Lyne, 255
+
+
+Mabuse, Jan van, 136, 138, 139, 143, 254
+
+Maes, Nicolas, 180, 188-189
+
+Manet, Édouard, 306, 324-327
+
+Mansueti, Giovanni, 75
+
+Mantegna, Andrea, 67-70, 71, 72, 146, 151
+
+Maratti, Carlo, 108
+
+Maris, the Brothers, 307
+
+Masaccio, 18, 21, 24-26
+
+Masolino, 26
+
+Massys, Jan, 141
+
+---- Quentin, 136-138, 141, 212
+
+Mauve, 307
+
+Meissonier, 306
+
+Memling, Hans, 132, 133-136, 150
+
+Mengs, Raphael, 85
+
+Messina, Antonello da, 71, 72, 126, 129
+
+Metsu, 191
+
+Michelangelo, 26, 40-46, 66, 95, 100
+
+Mieris, Frans van, 188
+
+Millais, 320, 321, 322, 323
+
+Millet, 306
+
+Moine, François le, 241
+
+Monoyer, Baptiste, 201
+
+Montagna, Bartolommeo, 63
+
+Mor, Sir Antonio, 142
+
+Morland, George, 296-298
+
+---- Henry, his father, 296
+
+Moroni, 75
+
+Moser, Michael, 280
+
+Moyaert, Nicholas, 199
+
+Murano, Antonio da, 60
+
+Murillo, Bartolomé Estéban, 118-119
+
+Muther, Dr, quoted, 32, 177, 178
+
+
+Nasmyth, 306
+
+New English Art Club, 329, 333
+
+Norwich School, 295
+
+
+Oil Painting, introduction of, 126
+
+Oliver, 257
+
+Oort, Adam van, 145
+
+Orcagna, Andrea, 16
+
+Orley, Bernard van, 140, 143
+
+Ostade, Adrian van, 173, 183, 185, 206
+
+---- Isaac van, 183, 185
+
+Ouwater, 13
+
+
+Pacheco, 110-111
+
+Padua, School of, 66
+
+Palma, Giovane, 78
+
+---- Vecchio, 78, 96, 98
+
+Parma, School of, 58
+
+Pater, Jean Baptiste Joseph, 240-241
+
+Peake, 255
+
+Penny, 287
+
+Perugian or Umbrian School, 48, 49, 51
+
+Perugino, Pietro, 48, 49
+
+Pinas, 180
+
+Piombo, Sebastiano del, 94-96
+
+Pisanello, Vittore, 64, 65
+
+Pissarro, 325
+
+Pollaiuolo, Antonio, 26-28, 30
+
+Pontormo, 45
+
+Pot, Hendrik Gerritz, 169
+
+Potter, Paul, 196
+
+---- Pieter, 196
+
+Poussin, Gaspard (Gaspard Dughet), 228-229, 231
+
+---- Nicholas, 226-228
+
+Poynter, Sir Edward, 331
+
+Predis, Ambrogio di, 36, 57
+
+Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 134, 320, 323, 327
+
+Previtali, Andrea, 74
+
+Prudhon, 309
+
+
+Quattrocentists, the Earlier, 18-26
+
+---- the Later, 26 _et seq._
+
+
+Raeburn, 300
+
+Raphael, 26, 45, 47-57
+
+---- Sir Joshua Reynolds on, 85, 270
+
+Rembrandt van Ryn, 165, 166, 171-183, 192
+
+Reni, Guido, 108
+
+Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 267-278, 286-288, 289
+
+---- quoted, on Boucher, 243
+
+---- ---- on Bourdon, 232, 233
+
+---- ---- on Gainsborough, 290-294
+
+---- ---- on Hogarth, 260
+
+---- ---- on Rubens and Titian, 93-94
+
+---- ---- on Titian and Raphael, 85
+
+---- ---- on Veronese, 105
+
+---- revival of English School due to, 150
+
+---- _Refs._ to, 245, 247, 251, 257, 297, 301, 331, 332
+
+Ribera, 110
+
+Richardson, 257
+
+Ridolfi, quoted, 84
+
+Rigaud, Hyacinthe, 234, 241
+
+Riley, 257
+
+Robert, Hubert, 246
+
+Robusti, Jacopo. _See_ Tintoretto
+
+Romano, Giulio, 55
+
+Romney, George, 100, 152, 289, 298-300, 301
+
+Rossetti, 134, 306, 321, 322
+
+Rowlandson, 89
+
+Royal Academy, the, 329-333
+
+---- foundation of, 279, 286
+
+Rubens, Peter Paul, 143-157
+
+---- and Van Dyck, 161-162
+
+---- and Velasquez, 112, 149
+
+---- pupils of, 157-163
+
+---- _Refs._ to, 89, 93, 114, 117, 158, 160,
+165, 167, 176, 179, 182, 184, 235, 236, 271
+
+Rucellai Madonna, the, 5
+
+Ruisdael, Jacob, 157, 200, 204-206, 208, 209
+
+Ruskin against the Philistines, 313-323
+
+---- on Whistler, 327
+
+
+Sandrart, Joachim, 229
+
+---- quoted, 180
+
+Sansovino, 89, 102
+
+Sarto, Andrea del, 41, 45
+
+Scharf, Sir George, 328
+
+Schlegel, on Altdorfer, 215
+
+Schongauer, Martin, 134
+
+Scorel, Jan, 140
+
+Sebastiani, Lazzaro di. _See_ Bastiani
+
+Segar, Francis, 255
+
+---- William, 255
+
+Seghers, Daniel, 201
+
+Semitecolo, Nicolo, 59
+
+Shee, Sir Martin Archer, 313
+
+Signorelli, Luca, 49
+
+Smith, John, Catalogue Raisonné, quoted, 193, 199, 244, 265
+
+Snyders, Frans, 154, 157, 159-160, 163
+
+Sodoma, 57
+
+Spanish School, 108-120
+
+Spinello of Arezzo, or Aretino, 17
+
+Squarcione, Francesco, 62, 63, 66-67, 70
+
+Steen, Jan, 186-187
+
+Stevens, 306
+
+Streetes, Guillim, 254, 255
+
+Strozzi, Bernard, 113
+
+Sueur, Eustache le, 232-233
+
+Swanenburg, Jacob van, 175, 180
+
+
+Tassi, Agostino, 229
+
+Teniers, Abraham, 158
+
+---- David, the Elder, 157, 158
+
+---- ---- the Younger, 157, 158, 159, 163, 185
+
+Terburg, Gerard, 190-191
+
+Thornhill, Sir James, 258, 279
+
+Thulden, Theodore van, 156
+
+Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista, 108
+
+Tintoretto, Il, 99-102, 103, 104, 105, 113, 114, 117
+
+Titian, 78-94, 100, 102, 103, 104, 105, 117, 179
+
+Turner, 295, 306, 314-320, 323, 327
+
+---- Claude's influence on, 230, 231
+
+Tuscan Schools, 1-58
+
+
+Uccello, Paolo, 23-24, 25
+
+Umbrian or Perugian School, 48, 49, 51
+
+
+Vaga, Piero del, 45
+
+Van Balen, Henry, 159, 162
+
+Van Cleef, Joos, 142
+
+Van de Velde, Adrian, 203, 206, 208
+
+---- Willem, the Elder, 206
+
+---- ---- the Younger, 206-208
+
+Van der Helst, Bartholomew, 165, 170-171, 174
+
+Van der Weyden, Roger, 132-134, 211
+
+Van Dyck, Anthony, 156, 157, 160-163, 165, 166, 178, 236, 272
+
+---- ---- in England, 256, 257
+
+Van Eyck, Hubert, 121, 125, 126, 127, 143, 150
+
+---- Jan, 121, 125, 127, 131, 133, 134, 150
+
+Van Goyen, Jan, 186, 199, 202-203, 204
+
+Van Huysum, James, 202
+
+---- Jan, 201-202
+
+---- Justus, 202
+
+---- Michael, 202
+
+Van Leyden, Lucas, 138, 212
+
+Van Loo, Carle, 241
+
+Van Mabuse, Jan, 136, 138, 139, 143, 254
+
+Van Mieris, Frans, 188
+
+Van Oort, Adam, 145
+
+Van Orley, Bernard, 140, 143
+
+Van Ostade, Adrian, 173, 183, 185, 206
+
+---- Isaac, 183, 185
+
+Van Swanenburg, Jacob, 175, 180
+
+Van Thulden, Theodore, 156
+
+Vasari, quoted, on Andrea del Sarto, 41
+
+---- on Botticelli, 28, 30, 32
+
+---- on Cimabue, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9
+
+---- on Fra Angelico, 20
+
+---- on Fra Filippo Lippi, 21, 22, 23
+
+---- on Giotto, 10
+
+---- on introduction of oil painting, 126, 127, 129
+
+---- on Leonardo da Vinci, 34, 37, 39, 40
+
+---- on Masaccio, 25, 26
+
+---- on Michelangelo, 42, 43, 44, 45
+
+---- on Pollaiuolo, 26, 27, 28
+
+---- on the Quattrocentists, 18
+
+---- on Raphael, 47
+
+---- on Spinello of Aretino, 82, 86
+
+---- on Titian, 82, 86
+
+---- _Refs._ to, 173, 308
+
+Vecellio, Tiziano. _See_ Titian
+
+Velasquez, 89, 109, 110-118, 120, 163, 178, 179
+
+Venetian Schools, 59-108
+
+Verhaegt, Tobias, 145
+
+Vermeer of Delft, Jan, 189, 191
+
+Veronese, Paolo, 103-104, 105
+
+Verrocchio, Andrea, 34, 35, 49
+
+Vertue, George, 251
+
+Vinci, Leonardo da, 26, 33-40, 49, 57, 225
+
+Vivarini Family, the, 59, 60
+
+---- Antonio, 62, 63, 65
+
+---- Bartolommeo, 62
+
+---- Luigi, or Alvise, 62
+
+Vlieger, Simon de, 206
+
+Vollon, 325
+
+Volterra, Daniele da, 18
+
+---- Francesco da, 18
+
+Vos, Simon de, 156
+
+
+Waagen, Dr, quoted, 95, 122-123, 143, 146, 153, 157, 224
+
+Walker, Robert, 257
+
+Walpole, quoted, 251, 252, 267
+
+Wals, Gottfried, 229
+
+Watteau, Antoine, 235-239, 240, 241
+
+Watts, George Frederick, 306, 322
+
+Weenix, Jan Baptist, 154, 197, 198, 199
+
+---- ---- his son, 154, 198
+
+Wesel, Hermann Wynrich von, 211
+
+West, Benjamin, 253, 256, 287
+
+Weyden, Roger van der, 132-134, 211
+
+Whistler, James M'Neill, 306, 325, 327
+
+Wilhelm, Meister, 211
+
+Wills, 280
+
+Wils, Jan, 199
+
+Wilson, Richard, 230, 288, 296
+
+Wint, Peter de, 306
+
+Wouvermans, Philip, 192-193, 205, 206, 208
+
+Wyczewa, M. de, quoted, 117
+
+Wynants, Jan, 192, 203-204
+
+
+Zampieri, Domenico, or Domenichino, 107-108
+
+Zoffany, 297
+
+Zurbaran, 110
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] National Gallery Catalogue.
+
+[2] "Titien," par Henry Caro-Delvaille. Librairie Félix Alcan.
+
+[3] An old copy of this picture is in the Edinburgh Gallery.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Six Centuries of Painting, by Randall Davies
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Six Centuries of Painting, by Randall Davies
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
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+Title: Six Centuries of Painting
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+Author: Randall Davies
+
+Release Date: July 28, 2009 [EBook #29532]
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+Language: English
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIX CENTURIES OF PAINTING ***
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+cellpadding="10" style="background-color: #ccccff;
+border:4px double gray;text-align:center;
+font-size:110%;margin:5% auto 15% auto;
+font-weight:900;">
+  <tr>
+    <td valign="top">
+      The images may be viewed full-size by clicking on them.<br />(note of e-text creator.)
+  </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/cover.jpg">
+<img src="images/cover_th.png"
+class="top15" width="300" height="400" alt="Cover of the book" /></a><br />
+</div>
+
+
+<h1>SIX CENTURIES OF PAINTING</h1>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="FRONT" id="FRONT"></a>
+<a href="images/frontis.jpg">
+<img src="images/frontis_th.png" width="300" height="472" alt="VITTORE PISANO
+(CALLED PISANELLO)
+ST ANTHONY AND ST GEORGE
+National Gallery, London" /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">VITTORE PISANO<br />
+(CALLED PISANELLO)<br />
+ST ANTHONY AND ST GEORGE<br />
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2>SIX CENTURIES OF</h2>
+
+<h1 class="top3">PAINTING</h1>
+
+<p class="c smcap">BY</p>
+
+<h3 class="top3">RANDALL DAVIES</h3>
+
+<p class="c"><img src="images/001.png"
+alt="logo"
+width="250"
+height="341"
+/></p>
+
+
+<h3 class="top3">LONDON : T. C. &amp; E. C. JACK</h3>
+
+<p class="c">67 LONG ACRE, W.C., <span class="smcap">and</span> EDINBURGH</p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table summary="toc"
+cellspacing="5"
+cellpadding="2"
+border="0">
+<tr style="line-height:20px;"><td colspan="2" align="left"><a href="#TUSCAN_SCHOOLS">TUSCAN SCHOOLS&mdash;</a></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td colspan="2" align="right" class="smcap2">PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#I">I</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Giovanni Cimabue</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#II">II</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Giotto di Bondone</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#III">III</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">The Earlier Quattrocentists</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_18">18</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#IV">IV</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">The Later Quattrocentists</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#V">V</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Leonardo da Vinci</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#VI">VI</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Michelangelo Buonarroti</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#VII">VII</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Raffaello di Santi</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_47">47</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="line-height:50px;"><td colspan="2" align="left"><a href="#VENETIAN_SCHOOLS">VENETIAN SCHOOLS&mdash;</a></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#Ia">I</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">The Vivarini and Bellini</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_59">59</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#IIa">II</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Tiziano Vecellio</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#IIIa">III</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Paolo Veronese and Il Tintoretto</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_99">99</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="line-height:50px;"><td colspan="2" align="left"><a href="#SPANISH_SCHOOL">SPANISH SCHOOL&mdash;</a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_109">109</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="line-height:50px;"><td colspan="2" align="left"><a href="#FLEMISH_SCHOOL">FLEMISH SCHOOL&mdash;</a></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#Ib">I</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Hubert and Jan van Eyck</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_121">121</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#IIb">II</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Peter Paul Rubens</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#IIIb">III</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">The Pupils of Rubens</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="line-height:50px;"><td colspan="2" align="left"><a href="#Dutch_School">DUTCH SCHOOL&mdash;</a></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#Ic">I</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Frans Hals</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#IIc">II</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Rembrandt van Ryn</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#IIIc">III</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Painters of <i>Genre</i></span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_183">183</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#IVc">IV</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Painters of Animals</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_191">191</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#Vc">V</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Painters of Landscape</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_202">202</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="line-height:50px;"><td colspan="2" align="left"><a href="#GERMAN_SCHOOLS">GERMAN SCHOOLS&mdash;</a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_211">211</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="line-height:50px;"><td colspan="2" align="left"><a href="#FRENCH_SCHOOL">FRENCH SCHOOL&mdash;</a></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#Id">I</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">The Seventeenth Century</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_225">225</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#IId">II</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">The Eighteenth Century</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_235">235</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="line-height:50px;"><td colspan="2" align="left"><a href="#THE_ENGLISH_SCHOOL">THE ENGLISH SCHOOL&mdash;</a></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#Ie">I</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">The Early Portrait Painters</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_251">251</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#IIe">II</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">William Hogarth</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_258">258</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#IIIe">III</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_267">267</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#IVe">IV</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">The Close of the Eighteenth Century</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_295">295</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="line-height:50px;"><td colspan="2" align="left"><a href="#THE_NINETEENTH_CENTURY">THE NINETEENTH CENTURY&mdash;</a></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#If">I</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">The Spirit of Revolt</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_305">305</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#IIf">II</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Eugène Delacroix</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_309">309</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#IIIf">III</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Ruskin Against the Philistines</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_313">313</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#IVf">IV</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Manet and Whistler Against the World</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_324">324</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#Vf">V</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">The Royal Academy</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_329">329</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="line-height:50px;"><td colspan="2" align="left"><a href="#INDEX">INDEX</a></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_335">335</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+<table summary="illustrations"
+cellspacing="2"
+cellpadding="5"
+border="0">
+
+<tr><td valign="top">&nbsp;</td><td><span class="smcap">Vittore Pisano</span> (called <span class="smcap">Pisanello</span>)&mdash;St Anthony and St George</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#FRONT"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+<tr class="smcap"><td align="right">PLATE</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right">FACING&nbsp;PAGE</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_I">I</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Filippo Lippi</span>&mdash;The Annunciation</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_22">22</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_II">II</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Sandro Botticelli</span>(?)&mdash;The Virgin and Child</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_III">III</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Sandro Botticelli</span>&mdash;Portrait of a Young Man</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_IV">IV</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Sandro Botticelli</span>&mdash;The Nativity</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_V">V</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Leonardo Da Vinci</span>&mdash;The Virgin of the Rocks</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_36">36</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_VI">VI</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Pietro Perugino</span>&mdash;Central Portion of Altar-Piece</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_50">50</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_VII">VII</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Raphael</span>&mdash;The Ansidei Madonna</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_52">52</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_VIII">VIII</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Raphael</span>&mdash;La Belle Jardinière</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_52">52</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">Louvre, Paris</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_IX">IX</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Raphael</span>&mdash;Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">Louvre, Paris</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_X">X</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Correggio</span>&mdash;Mercury, Cupid, and Venus</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XI">XI</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Andrea Mantegna</span>&mdash;The Madonna della Vittoria</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_68">68</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">Louvre, Paris</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XII">XII</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Giovanni Bellini</span>&mdash;The Doge Loredano</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_72">72</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XIII">XIII</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Giorgione</span>&mdash;Venetian Pastoral</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">Louvre, Paris</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XIV">XIV</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Titian</span>&mdash;Portrait said to be of Ariosto</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XV">XV</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Titian</span>&mdash;The Holy Family</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XVI">XVI</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Titian</span>&mdash;The Entombment</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_88">88</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">Louvre, Paris</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XVII">XVII</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Tintoretto</span>&mdash;St George and the Dragon</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_102">102</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XVIII">XVIII</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Velazquez</span>&mdash;The Infante Philip Prosper</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_112">112</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">Imperial Gallery, Vienna</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XIX">XIX</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Velazquez</span>&mdash;The Rokeby Venus</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XX">XX</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Murillo</span>&mdash;A Boy Drinking</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_120">120</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XXI">XXI</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Jan van Eyck</span>&mdash;Jan Arnolfini and His Wife</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_128">128</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XXII">XXII</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Jan van Eyck</span>&mdash;Portrait of the Painter's Wife</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_132">132</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">Town Gallery, Bruges</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XXIII">XXIII</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Jan Mabuse</span>&mdash;Portrait of Jean Carondelet</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">Louvre, Paris</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XXIV">XXIV</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Sir Peter Paul Rubens</span>&mdash;Portrait of Hélène Fourment,<br />the Artist's Second Wife, and two of Her Children</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_150">150</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">Louvre, Paris</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XXV">XXV</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Frans Hals</span>&mdash;Portrait of a Lady</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_168">168</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">Louvre, Paris</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XXVI">XXVI</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Rembrandt</span>&mdash;Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_176">176</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">Louvre, Paris</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XXVII">XXVII</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Rembrandt</span>&mdash;Portrait of an Old Lady</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_182">182</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XXVIII">XXVIII</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Terborch</span>&mdash;The Concert</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_186">186</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">Louvre, Paris</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XXIX">XXIX</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Gabriel Metsu</span>&mdash;The Music Lesson</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_188">188</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XXX">XXX</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Pieter de Hooch</span>&mdash;Interior of a Dutch House</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_190">190</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XXXI">XXXI</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Jan Vermeer</span>&mdash;The Lace Maker</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_192">192</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">Louvre, Paris</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XXXII">XXXII</a>.</td><td> "<span class="smcap">The Master of St Bartholomew</span>"&mdash;Two Saints</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_212">212</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XXXIII">XXXIII</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Hans Holbein</span>&mdash;Portrait of Christina, Duchess of Milan</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_224">224</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XXXIV">XXXIV</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Antoine Watteau</span>&mdash;L'Indifférent</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_236">236</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">Louvre, Paris</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XXXV">XXXV</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Jean-baptiste Greuze</span>&mdash;The Broken Pitcher</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_244">244</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">Louvre, Paris</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XXXVI">XXXVI</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Jean Honoré Fragonard</span>&mdash;L'Étude</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_248">248</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">Louvre, Paris</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XXXVII">XXXVII</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Hans Holbein</span>&mdash;Anne of Cleves</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_256">256</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">Louvre, Paris</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XXXVIII">XXXVIII</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">William Hogarth</span>&mdash;The Shrimp Girl</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_260">260</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XXXIX">XXXIX</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Sir Joshua Reynolds</span>&mdash;Lady Cockburn and Her Children</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_274">274</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XL">XL</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Sir Joshua Reynolds</span>&mdash;The Age of Innocence</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_284">284</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XLI">XLI</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Thomas Gainsborough</span>&mdash;The Market Cart</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_290">290</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XLII">XLII</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">George Romney</span>&mdash;The Parson's Daughter</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_298">298</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XLIII">XLIII</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">George Romney</span>&mdash;Mrs Robinson&mdash;"Perdita"</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_300">300</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">Hertford House, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XLIV">XLIV</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Jacques Louis David</span>&mdash;Portrait of Mme. Récamier</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_306">306</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">Louvre, Paris</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XLV">XLV</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Eugène Delacroix</span>&mdash;Dante and Virgil</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_310">310</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">Louvre, Paris</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XLVI">XLVI</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">John Constable</span>&mdash;The Hay Wain</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_312">312</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XLVII">XLVII</a>.</td><td> J. M. W. <span class="smcap">Turner</span>&mdash;Crossing the Brook</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_316">316</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">National Gallery of British Art, London</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XLVIII">XLVIII</a>.</td><td> <span class="smcap">Édouard Manet</span>&mdash;Olympia</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_326">326</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">Louvre, Paris</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td  valign="top" align="right"><a href="#PL_XLIX">XLIX</a>.</td><td> J. M. <span class="smcap">Whistler</span>&mdash;Lillie in Our Alley</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_328">328</a></td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size:small;"><td  valign="top" colspan="3" align="center">In the possession of John J. Cowan, Esq.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+<h3><i>INTRODUCTORY</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>So far as it concerns pictures painted upon panel or canvas in tempera
+or oils, the history of painting begins with Cimabue, who worked in
+Florence during the latter half of the thirteenth century. That the art
+was practised in much earlier times may readily be admitted, and the
+life-like portraits in the vestibule at the National Gallery taken from
+Greek tombs of the second or third century are sufficient proofs of it;
+but for the origin of painting as we are now generally accustomed to
+understand the term we need go no further back than to Cimabue and his
+contemporaries, from whose time the art has uninterruptedly developed
+throughout Europe until the present day.</p>
+
+<p>Oddly enough it is to the Christian Church, whose early fathers put
+their heaviest ban upon all forms of art, that this development is
+almost wholly due. The reaction against paganism began to die out when
+the Christian religion was more firmly established, and representations
+of Christ and the Saints executed in mosaic became more and more to be
+regarded as a necessary, or at any rate a regular embellishment of the
+numerous churches which were built. For these mosaics panel paintings
+began in time to be substituted; but it was long before any of the human
+feeling of art was to be found in them. The influence of S. Francis of
+Assisi was needed to prepare the way, and it was only towards the close
+of the thirteenth century that the breath of life began to be infused
+into these conventional representations, and painting became a living
+art.</p>
+
+<p>As it had begun in Italy, under the auspices of the Church, so it
+chiefly developed in that country; at first in Florence and Siena, later
+in Rome, whither its greatest masters were summoned by the Pope, and in
+Venice, where, farther from the ecclesiastical influence, it flourished
+more exuberantly, and so became more capable of being transplanted to
+other countries. In Germany, however, and the Low Countries it had
+appeared early enough to be considered almost as an independent growth,
+though not till considerably later were the northern schools capable of
+sustaining the reputation given them by the Van Eycks and Roger Van der
+Weyden.</p>
+
+<p>But for the effects of the Renaissance in Italy in the fifteenth century
+it is questionable whether painting would ever have spread as it did in
+the sixteenth and seventeenth to Spain and France. But by the close of
+the fifteenth century such enormous progress had been made by the
+Italian painters towards the realisation of human action and emotion in
+pictures, that from being merely an accessory of religious
+establishments, painting had become as much a part of the recognised
+means of intellectual enjoyment of everyday life as music, sculpture, or
+even the refinements of food and clothing.</p>
+
+<p>Portraiture, in particular, had gradually advanced to a foremost place
+in painting. Originally it was used exclusively for memorials of the
+dead&mdash;as we have seen in the case of the paintings from the Greek
+tombs&mdash;and on coins and medals. But gradually the practice arose, as
+painters became more skilful in representing the appearance of the
+model, of introducing the features and figures of actual personages into
+religious pictures, in the character of "donors," and as these increased
+in importance, the sacred personages were gradually relegated to the
+background, and ultimately dispensed with altogether. At the beginning
+of the sixteenth century we find Hans Holbein (as an example)
+recommended by Erasmus to Sir Thomas More as a portrait painter who
+wished to try his fortunes in England; and during the rest of his life
+painting practically nothing but portraits.</p>
+
+<p>By the end of the sixteenth century, if not earlier, painting had become
+almost as much a business as an art, not only in Italy but in most other
+countries in Europe, and was established in each country more or less
+independently. So that making every allowance for the various foreign
+influences that affected each different country, it is convenient to
+trace the development of painting in each country separately, and we
+arrange our chapters accordingly under the titles of Tuscan and Venetian
+(the two main divisions of Italian painting), Spanish, Flemish, Dutch,
+German, French, and British Schools. In each country, as might be
+expected&mdash;and especially in Italy&mdash;there are subdivisions; but, broadly
+speaking, the lover of pictures will be quite well enough equipped for
+the enjoyment of them if he is able to recognise their country, and
+roughly their period, without troubling about the particular district or
+personal influence of their origin.</p>
+
+<p>For while it is undoubtedly true that the more one knows about the
+history of painting in general the greater will be the appreciation of
+the various excellences which tend to perfection, it is absolutely
+ridiculous to suppose that only the learned in such matters are capable
+of deriving enjoyment from a beautiful picture, or of expressing an
+opinion upon it. In the first place, the picture is intended for the
+public, and the public have therefore the best right to say whether it
+pleases them or not&mdash;and why. And it may be noted as a positive fact
+that whenever the public, in any country, have a free choice in matters
+of art, that choice generally turns out to be right, and is ultimately
+endorsed by the best critics. Most of the vulgar art to be found in
+advertisements and the illustrated papers is put there by ignorant and
+vulgar providers, who imagine that the whole public are as ignorant and
+vulgar as themselves; whereas whenever a better standard of taste is
+given an opportunity, it never fails to find a welcome. Until Sir Henry
+Wood inaugurated the present régime, the Promenade Concerts at Covent
+Garden were popularly supposed to represent the national taste in music.
+Until the Temple Classics and Every Man's Library were published it was
+commonly supposed that the people at large cared for nothing but Bow
+Bells, the Penny Novelette, or such unclassical if alluring provender.
+In the domain of painting, the Royal Academy has such a firm and ancient
+hold on the popular imagination of the English that its influence is
+difficult to dispel; but there are many signs that its baneful
+ascendency is at length on the decline; and it is well known that the
+National Gallery is attracting more and more visitors and Burlington
+House less and less as the years go on.</p>
+
+<p>In the following attempt at a general survey of the history of
+painting&mdash;imperfect or ill-proportioned as it may appear to this or that
+specialist or lover of any particular school&mdash;I have thought it best to
+assume a fair amount of ignorance of the subject on the part of the
+reader, though without, I hope, taking any advantage of it, even if it
+exists; and I have therefore drawn freely upon several old histories and
+handbooks for both facts and opinions concerning the old masters and
+their works. In some cases, I think, a dead lion is decidedly better
+than a live dog.</p>
+
+<p class="r">R. D.</p>
+
+<p class="smcap" style="font-size:small;">Chelsea, 1914.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">Page 1</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="TUSCAN_SCHOOLS" id="TUSCAN_SCHOOLS"></a><i>TUSCAN SCHOOLS</i></h2>
+
+
+
+<h3 class="top5"><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h3>
+
+<p class="head">GIOVANNI CIMABUE</p>
+
+
+<p>B<span class="smcap">y</span> the will of God, in the year 1240, we are told by Vasari, <span class="smcap">Giovanni
+Cimabue</span>, of the noble family of that name, was born in the city of
+Florence, to give the first light to the art of painting. Vasari's
+"Lives of the Painters" was first published in Florence in 1550, and
+with all its defects and all its inaccuracies, which have afforded so
+much food for contention among modern critics, it is still the principal
+source of our knowledge of the earlier history of painting as it was
+revived in Italy in the thirteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>Making proper allowance for Vasari's desire to glorify his own city, and
+to make a dignified commencement to his work by attributing to Cimabue
+more than was possibly his due, we need not be deterred by the very
+latest dicta of the learned from accepting the outlines of his life of
+Cimabue as an embodiment of the tradition of the time in which he
+lived&mdash;two centuries and a quarter after Cimabue&mdash;and, until
+contradicted by positive evidence, as worthy of general credence. In the
+popular mind Cimabue still remains "The Father of modern painting," and
+though his renown may have attracted more pictures and more legends to
+his name<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">2</a></span> than properly belong to him, it is certain that Dante, his
+contemporary, wrote of him thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Credette Cimabue nella pintura</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Tener lo campo, ed ora ha Giotto il grido</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Si che la fama di colui s'oscura.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>This is at least as important as anything written by a contemporary of
+William Shakespeare; and even if we are required to believe that some of
+his most important works are by another hand, his influence on the
+history of art is beyond question. Let us then follow Vasari a little
+further, and we shall find, at any rate, what is typical of the
+development of genius.</p>
+
+<p>"This youth," Vasari continues, "being considered by his father and
+others to give proof of an acute judgment and a clear understanding, was
+sent to Santa Maria Novella to study letters under a relation who was
+then master in grammar to the novices of that convent. But Cimabue,
+instead of devoting himself to letters, consumed the whole day in
+drawing men, horses, houses, and other various fancies on his books and
+different papers&mdash;an occupation to which he felt himself impelled by
+nature."</p>
+
+<p>This is exactly what is recorded of Reynolds, it may be noted, and very
+much the same as in the case of Gainsborough, Benjamin West&mdash;and many a
+modern painter.</p>
+
+<p>"This natural inclination was favoured by fortune, for the governors of
+the city had invited certain Greek (probably Byzantine) painters to
+Florence, for the purpose of restoring the art of painting, which had
+not merely degenerated but was altogether lost. These artists, among
+other works, began to paint the chapel of the Gondi in Santa Maria
+Novella, and Cimabue, often escaping from the school, and having
+already<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">3</a></span> made a commencement of the art he was so fond of, would stand
+watching these masters at their work. His father, and the artists
+themselves, therefore concluded that he must be well endowed for
+painting, and thought that much might be expected from him if he devoted
+himself to it. Giovanni was accordingly, much to his delight, placed
+with these masters, whom he soon greatly surpassed both in design and
+colouring. For they, caring little for the progress of art, executed
+their works not in the excellent manner of the ancient Greeks, but in
+the rude modern style of their own day. Wherefore, though Cimabue
+imitated them, he very much improved the art, relieving it greatly from
+their uncouth manner and doing honour to his country by the name that he
+acquired and by the works which he performed. Of this we have evidence
+in Florence from the pictures which he painted there&mdash;as for example the
+front of the altar of Saint Cecilia and a picture of the Virgin, in
+Santa Croce, which was and still is (<i>i.e.</i> in 1550) attached to one of
+the pilasters on the right of the choir."</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately the very first example cited pulls us up short alongside
+the official catalogue of the Uffizi Gallery (where the picture was
+placed in 1841), in which it is catalogued (No. 20) as "Unknown ...
+Vasari erroneously attributes it to Cimabue."</p>
+
+<p>Tiresome as it may seem to be thus distracted, at the very outset, by
+the question of authenticity, it is nevertheless desirable to start with
+a clear understanding that in surveying in a general way the history and
+development of painting, it will be quite hopeless to wait for the final
+word on the supposed authorship of every picture mentioned. In this
+instance, as it happens, there is no reason to question the modern
+catalogue, though that is by no means the same thing as denying that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">4</a></span>
+Cimabue painted the picture which existed in the church of S. Cecilia in
+Vasari's time. Is it more likely, it may be asked, that Vasari, who is
+accused of unduly glorifying Cimabue, would attribute to him a work not
+worthy of his fame, or that during the three centuries since Vasari
+wrote a substitution was effected? The other picture, the <i>Madonna and
+Child Enthroned</i>, which found its way into our National Gallery in 1857,
+is still officially catalogued as the work of Cimabue, and it is to be
+hoped that this precious relic, together with the Madonnas in the
+Louvre, the Florence Academy, and in the lower church at Assisi, may be
+long spared to us by the authority of the critics as "genuine
+productions" of the beloved master.</p>
+
+<p>On the general question, however, let me reassure the reader by stating
+that so far as possible I have avoided the mention of any pictures, in
+the following pages, about which there is any grave doubt, save in a few
+cases where tradition is so firmly established that it seems heartless
+to disturb it until final judgment is entered&mdash;of which the following
+examples of Cimabue's reputed work may be taken as types. The latest
+criticism seeks to deprive him of every single existing picture he is
+believed to have painted; those mentioned by Vasari which have perished
+may be considered equally unauthentic, but, as before mentioned, his
+account of them gives us as well as anything else the story of the
+beginnings of the art.</p>
+
+<p>Having afterwards undertaken, Vasari continues, to paint a large picture
+in the Abbey of the Santa Trinità in Florence for the monks of
+Vallombrosa, he made great efforts to justify the high opinion already
+formed of him and showed greater powers of invention, especially in the
+attitude of the Virgin, whom he depicted with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">5</a></span> the child in her arms and
+numerous angels around her, on a gold ground. This is the picture now in
+the Accademia in Florence. The frescoes next described are no longer in
+existence:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Cimabue next painted in fresco at the hospital of the Porcellana at the
+corner of the Via Nuova which leads into the Borgo Ogni Santi. On the
+front of this building, which has the principal door in the centre, he
+painted the Virgin receiving the Annunciation from the angel, on one
+side, and Christ with Cleophas and Luke on the other, all the figures
+the size of life. In this work he departed more decidedly from the dry
+and formal manner of his instructors, giving more life and movement to
+the draperies, vestments and other accessories, and rendering all more
+flexible and natural than was common to the manner of those Greeks whose
+work were full of hard lines and sharp angles as well in mosaic as in
+painting. And this rude unskilful manner the Greeks had acquired not so
+much from study or settled purpose as from having servilely followed
+certain fixed rules and habits transmitted through a long series of
+years by one painter to another, while none ever thought of the
+amelioration of his design, the embellishment of his colouring, or the
+improvement of his invention."</p>
+
+<p>After describing Cimabue's activities at Pisa and Assisi with equal
+circumstance, Vasari passes to the famous <i>Rucellai Madonna</i>, now
+supposed to be by the hand of Duccio of Siena. However doubtful the
+story may appear in the light of modern criticism, historical or
+artistic, it certainly forms part of the history of painting&mdash;for its
+spirit if not for its accuracy&mdash;and as such it can never be too often
+quoted:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"He afterwards painted the picture of the Virgin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">6</a></span> for the Church of
+Santa Maria Novella, where it is suspended on high between the chapel of
+the Rucellai family and that of the Bardi. This picture is of larger
+size than any figure that had been painted down to those times, and the
+angels surrounding it make it evident that although Cimabue still
+retained the Greek manner, he was nevertheless gradually approaching the
+mode of outline and general method of modern times. Thus it happened
+that this work was an object of so much admiration to the people of that
+day&mdash;they having never seen anything better&mdash;that it was carried in
+solemn procession, with the sound of trumpets and other festal
+demonstration, from the house of Cimabue to the Church, he himself being
+highly rewarded and honoured for it. It is further reported, and may be
+read in certain records of old painters, that while Cimabue was painting
+this picture in a garden near the gate of S. Pietro, King Charles the
+Elder of Anjou passed through Florence, and the authorities of the city,
+among other marks of respect, conducted him to see the picture of
+Cimabue. When this work was thus shown to the King, it had not before
+been seen by anyone; wherefore all the men and women of Florence
+hastened in great crowds to admire it, making all possible demonstration
+of delight."</p>
+
+<p>Now whether or not Vasari was right in crediting Cimabue with these
+honours in Florence instead of Duccio in Siena, makes little difference
+in the story of the origin and early development of the art of painting.
+One may doubt the accuracy of the mosaic account of the Creation, the
+authorship of the Fourth Gospel or the Shakespearean poems, or the list
+of names of the Normans who are recorded to have fought with William the
+Conqueror. But what if one may? The Creation, the poems and plays of
+Shakespeare and the battle of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">7</a></span>Hastings are all of them historic facts,
+and neither science, nor literature, nor history is a penny the worse
+for the loose though perfectly understandable conditions under which
+these facts have been handed down to us. When we come down to times
+nearer to our own the accuracy of data is more easily ascertainable,
+though the confusion arising out of them often obscures their real
+significance; but in looking for origins we are content to ignore the
+details, provided we can find enough general information on which to
+form an idea of them. To these first chapters of Vasari, then, we need
+not hesitate to resort for the main sources of the earlier history of
+painting. Even so far as we have gone we have learnt several important
+facts as to the nature of the foundations on which the glorious
+structure was to be raised.</p>
+
+<p>First of all, it is apparent that the practice of painting, though
+strictly forbidden by the earliest Fathers of the Church, was used by
+the faithful in the Eastern churches for purposes of decoration, and was
+introduced into Italy&mdash;we may safely say Tuscany&mdash;for the same purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Second, that being transplanted into this new soil, it put forth such
+wonderful blossoms that it came to be cultivated with much more regard;
+and from being merely a necessary or conventional ornament of certain
+portions of the church, was soon accounted its greatest glory.</p>
+
+<p>Third, that it was accorded popular acclamation.</p>
+
+<p>Fourth, that its most attractive feature in the eyes of beholders was
+its life-like representation of the human form and other natural
+objects.</p>
+
+<p>Prosaic as these considerations may appear, they are nevertheless the
+fundamental principles that underlie the whole of the subsequent
+development of painting;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">8</a></span> and unless every picture in the world were
+destroyed, and the art of painting wholly lost for at least a thousand
+years, there could not be another picture produced which would not refer
+back through continuous tradition to one or every one of them. First,
+the basis of religion. Second, the development peculiar to the soil.
+Third, the imitation of nature. Fourth, the approbation of the
+public&mdash;there we have the four cardinal points in the chart of painting.</p>
+
+<p>It would be easy enough to contend that painting had nothing whatever to
+do with religion&mdash;if only by reference to the godless efforts of some of
+the modernists; but such a contention could only be based on the
+imperfect recognition of what religion actually means. In Italy in the
+thirteenth century, as in Spain in the seventeenth, it meant the Church
+of Rome. In Germany of the sixteenth, as in England in the eighteenth,
+it meant something totally different. To put it a little differently,
+all painting that is worth so calling has been done to the glory of God;
+and after making due allowance for human frailties of every variety, it
+is hard to say that among all the hundreds of great and good painters
+there has ever been one who was not a good man.</p>
+
+<p>As for the influence of environment, or nationality, this is so
+universally recognised that the term "school" more often means locality
+than tuition. We talk generally of the French, English, or Dutch
+schools, and more particularly of the Paduan, Venetian, or Florentine.
+It is only when we hesitate to call our national treasure a Botticelli
+or a Bellini that we add the words "school of" to the name of the master
+who is fondly supposed to have inspired its author. The difference
+between a wood block of the early eighteenth century executed in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">9</a></span>
+England and Japan respectively may be cited as an extreme instance of
+the effect of locality on idea, when the method is identical.</p>
+
+<p>With reference to the imitation of nature, at the mere mention of which
+modernists become so furious, it is worth recalling that the earliest
+story about painting relates to Zeuxis, who is said to have painted a
+bunch of grapes with such skill that the birds ignored the fruit and
+pecked at the picture. In later times we hear of Rembrandt being the
+butt of his pupils, who, knowing his love of money, used to paint coins
+on the floor; and there are plenty of stories of people painting flies
+and other objects so naturally as to deceive the unwary spectator.
+Vasari is continually praising his compatriots for painting "like the
+life."</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, the approbation, or if possible the acclamation, of the public
+has seldom if ever been unconsidered by the artist. Where it has, it has
+only been the greatest genius that has been able to exist without it. A
+man who has anything to say must have somebody to say it to; and though
+a painter may seem to be wasting the best part of his life in trying to
+make the people understand what he has to say in his language instead of
+talking to them in their own common tongue, it is rarely that he fails
+in the end, even if, alas for him, the understanding comes too late to
+be of any benefit to himself.</p>
+
+<p>Cimabue's last work is said to be a figure, which was left unfinished,
+of S. John, in mosaic, for the Duomo at Pisa. This was in 1302, which is
+supposed to be the date of his death, though Vasari puts it two years
+earlier, at the time he was engaged with the architect Arnolfo Lapi in
+superintending the building of the Duomo in Florence, where he is
+buried.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">10</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h3>
+
+<p class="head">GIOTTO DI BONDONE</p>
+
+
+<p>W<span class="smcap">hile</span> according all due honour, and probably more, to Cimabue as the
+originator of modern painting, it is to his pupil, <span class="smcap">Giotto</span>, that we are
+accustomed to look for the first developments of its possibilities. Had
+Cimabue's successors been as conservative as his instructors, we might
+still be not very much better off than if he had never lived. For much
+as there is to admire in Cimabue's painting, it is only the first flush
+of the dawn which it heralded, and though containing the germ of the
+future development of the art, is yet without any of the glory which in
+the fulness of time was to result from it.</p>
+
+<p>To Giotto, Vasari considers, "is due the gratitude which the masters in
+painting owe to Nature, seeing that he alone succeeded in resuscitating
+art and restoring her to a path that may be called the true one; and
+that the art of design, of which his contemporaries had little if any
+knowledge, was by his means effectually recalled to life." This seems to
+detract in some degree from his eulogies of Cimabue; but it is to the
+last sentence that our attention should be directed, which implies that
+in profiting by the master's example he succeeded in extending the
+possibilities of the new art beyond its first limits. Cimabue, we may
+believe, drew his Virgins and Saints from living models, whereas his
+predecessors had merely repeated formulas laid down for them by long
+tradition. Giotto went further, and extended his scope to the world at
+large. For the plain gold background he substituted the landscape,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</a></span> thus
+breaking down, as it were, a great wall, and seeing beyond it. Nor was
+this innovation merely a technical one&mdash;it was the man's nature that
+effected it and made his art a living thing.</p>
+
+<p>Giotto, who was born in 1276, was the son of a simple husbandman, who
+lived at Vespignano, about fourteen miles from Florence. Cimabue chanced
+upon the boy when he was only about ten years old, tending his father's
+sheep, and was astonished to find that he was occupied in making a
+drawing of one of them upon a smooth piece of rock with a sharp stone.
+He was so pleased with this that he asked to be allowed to take him back
+to Florence, and the boy proved so apt a pupil that before very long he
+was regularly employed in painting.</p>
+
+<p>His influence was not confined to Florence, or even to Tuscany, but the
+whole of Italy was indebted to him for a new impulse in art, and he is
+said to have followed Pope Clement V. to Avignon and executed many
+pictures there. Giotto was not only a painter, but his name is also
+famous in the history of architecture: the wonderful Campanile adjoining
+the Duomo in Florence was designed by him, and the foundations laid and
+the building erected under his instructions. On sculpture too he
+exercised a considerable influence, as may be seen in the panels and
+statues which adorn the lower part of the tower, suggested if not
+actually designed by Giotto, and carved by Andrea Pisano.</p>
+
+<p>Chief of the earlier works of Giotto are his frescoes in the under
+church at Assisi, and in these may be seen the remarkable fertility of
+invention with which he endowed his successors. Instead of the
+conventional Madonna and Child, and groups of saints and angels, we have
+here whole legends represented in a series of pictures of almost
+dramatic character. In the four <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</a></span>triangular compartments of the groined
+vaulting are the three vows of the Franciscan Order, namely, Poverty,
+Chastity, and Obedience, and in the fourth the glorification of the
+saint. In the first, the Vow of Poverty, it is significant to find that
+he has taken his subject from Dante. Poverty appears as a woman whom
+Christ gives in marriage to S. Francis: she stands among thorns; in the
+foreground are two youths mocking her, and on either side a group of
+angels as witnesses of the holy union. On the left is a youth, attended
+by an angel, giving his cloak to a poor man; on the right are the rich
+and great, who are invited by an angel to approach, but turn scornfully
+away. The other designs appear to be Giotto's own invention. Chastity,
+as a young woman, sits in a fortress surrounded by walls, and angels pay
+her devotion. On one side are laymen and churchmen led forward by S.
+Francis, and on the other Penance, habited as a hermit, driving away
+earthly love and impurity. S. Francis in glory is more conventional, as
+might be expected from the nature of the subject.</p>
+
+<p>In the ancient Basilica of S. Peter in Rome Giotto made the celebrated
+mosaic of the <i>Navicella</i>, which is now in the vestibule of S. Peter's.
+It represents a ship, in which are the disciples, on a stormy sea.
+According to the early Christian symbolisation the ship denoted the
+Church. In the foreground on the right the Saviour, walking on the
+waves, rescues Peter. Opposite sits a fisherman in tranquil expectation,
+typifying the confident hope of the simple believer. This mosaic has
+frequently been moved, and has undergone so much restoration that only
+the composition can be attributed to Giotto.</p>
+
+<p>Of the paintings of scriptural history attributed to Giotto very few
+remain, and the greater part of those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</a></span> have in recent times been
+pronounced to be the work of his followers. Foremost, however, among the
+undoubted examples are paintings in the Chapel of the Madonna dell'Arena
+at Padua, which was erected in 1303. In thirty-eight pictures, extending
+in three rows along the wall, is contained the life of the Virgin. The
+ground of the vaulting is blue studded with gold stars, among which
+appear the heads of Christ and the prophets, while above the arch of the
+choir is the Saviour in a glory of angels. Combined with these sacred
+scenes and personages are introduced fitting allusions to the moral
+state of man, the lower part of the side walls containing, in medallions
+painted in monochrome, allegorical figures of the virtues and vices&mdash;the
+former feminine and ideal, the latter masculine and individual&mdash;while
+the entrance wall is covered with the wonderful <i>Last Judgment</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Here, as in his allegorical pieces, Giotto appears as a great innovator,
+a number of situations suggested by the Scriptures being now either
+represented for the first time or seen in a totally new form. Well-known
+subjects are enriched with numerous subordinate figures, making the
+picture more truthful and more intelligible; as in the Flight into
+Egypt, where the Holy Family is accompanied by a servant, and three
+other figures are introduced to complete the composition. In the Raising
+of Lazarus, too, the disciples behind the Saviour on the one side and
+the astonished multitude on the other form two choruses, an arrangement
+which is followed, but with considerable modification, in Ouwater's
+unique picture of the same subject now in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum at
+Berlin. This approach to dramatic reality sometimes assumes a character
+which, as Kugler puts it, oversteps the strict limits of the higher
+ecclesiastical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span> style. It is worth noting, however, that the early
+Netherlandish school&mdash;as we shall see in a later chapter&mdash;developed this
+characteristic to a far greater extent, continuing the tradition handed
+down, quite independently of Giotto, through illuminated manuscripts,
+and with less of that expression of the highest religious or moral
+feeling which is so evident in Giotto.</p>
+
+<p>The few existing altar-pieces of Giotto are less important than his
+frescoes, inasmuch as they do not admit of the exhibition of his higher
+and most original gifts. Two signed examples are a <i>Coronation of the
+Virgin</i> in Santa Croce at Florence, and a <i>Madonna</i>, with saints and
+angels on the side panels, originally in S. Maria degli Angeli at
+Bologna, and now in the Brera at Milan. The latter, however, is not now
+recognised as his. The earliest authentic example is the so-called
+Stefaneschi altar-piece, painted in 1298 for the same patron who
+commissioned the <i>Navicella</i>. Giotto's highest merit consists especially
+in the number of new subjects which he introduced, in the life-like and
+spiritual expression with which he heightened all familiar occurrences
+and scenes, and in the choice of the moment of representation. In all
+these no earlier Christian painter can be compared with him. Another and
+scarcely less important quality he possessed is in the power of
+conveying truth of character. The faces introduced into some of his
+compositions bear an inward guarantee of their lively resemblance to
+some living model, and this characteristic seems to have been eagerly
+seized upon by his immediate followers for emulation, as is noticeable
+in two of the principal works&mdash;in the Bargello at Florence, and in the
+church of the Incoronata at Naples&mdash;formerly attributed to him but now
+relegated to his pupils. The portrait of Dante in a fresco on the wall
+of the Bargello<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span> shows a deep and penetrating mind, and in the
+<i>Sacraments</i> at Naples we find heads copied from life with obvious
+fidelity and such a natural conception of particular scenes as brings
+them to the mind of the spectator with extraordinary distinctness.</p>
+
+<p>Of Giotto's numerous followers in the fourteenth century it is
+impossible in the present work to give any particular account, but of
+his influence at large on the practice as on the treatment and
+conception of painting at this stage of its development, one or two
+examples may be cited as typical of the progress he urged, such as the
+frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa. This wonderful cloister, which
+measures four hundred feet in length and over a hundred in
+width&mdash;traditionally the dimensions of Noah's ark&mdash;was founded by the
+Archbishop Ubaldo, before 1200, on his return from Palestine bringing
+fifty-three ships laden with earth from the Holy Land. On this soil it
+was erected, and surrounded by high walls in 1278. The whole of these
+walls were afterwards adorned with paintings, in two tiers.</p>
+
+<p>So far as concerns the history of painting, the question of the
+authorship of these frescoes&mdash;which are by several distinct hands&mdash;is
+altogether subordinate to that of the subjects depicted and the manner
+in which they are treated, and we shall learn more from a general survey
+of them than by following out the fortunes of particular painters. The
+earliest are those on the east side, near the chapel, but more important
+are those on the north, of about the middle of the fourteenth century,
+which show a decided advance, both in feeling and execution, beyond
+Giotto. The first is <i>The Triumph of Death</i>, in which the supernatural
+is tempered with representations of what is mortal to an extent that
+already shows that painting was not to be confined to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</a></span> religious uses
+alone. All the pleasures and sorrows of life are here represented, on
+the earth; it is only in the sky that we see the demons and angels. On
+one side is a festive company of ladies and cavaliers, with hawks and
+dogs, seated under orange trees, with rich carpets at their feet, all
+splendidly dressed. A troubadour and a singing girl amuse them with
+songs, <i>amorini</i> flutter around them and wave their torches. On the
+other side is another group, also a hunting party, on splendidly
+caparisoned horses, and accompanied by a train of attendants. On the
+mountains in the background are several hermits, who in contrast to the
+votaries of pleasure have attained in a life of contemplation and
+abstinence the highest term of human existence. Many of the figures are
+traditionally supposed to be portraits.</p>
+
+<p>The centre foreground is devoted to the less fortunate on earth, the
+beggars and cripples, and also corpses of the mighty; and with these we
+may turn to the allegorical treatment of the subject. To the first group
+descends the angel of death, swinging a scythe, and to her the
+unfortunate are stretching out their arms in supplication for an end to
+their sorrows. The second group, it will be seen, are tracing a path
+which leads to three open coffins in which lie the bodies of three
+princes in different stages of decay, while a monk on crutches&mdash;intended
+for S. Macarius&mdash;is pointing to them. The air is filled with angels and
+demons, some of whom receive the souls of the dead.</p>
+
+<p>A second picture is <i>The Last Judgment</i>, and a third <i>Hell</i>, the
+resemblance between which and the great altar-piece in the Strozzi
+Chapel in Santa Maria Novella at Florence, painted by Andrea Orcagna in
+1357, was formerly considered proof of the same authorship. They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</a></span> are
+now attributed to an unknown disciple of Pietro Lorenzetti, who was
+painting in Siena between 1306 and 1348, and is assumed to have been a
+pupil of Duccio.</p>
+
+<p>The fourth picture, apparently by another hand&mdash;possibly that of
+Lorenzetti himself&mdash;is <i>The Life of the Hermits</i> in the wilderness of
+Thebais, composed of a number of single groups in which the calm life of
+contemplation is represented in the most varied manner. In front flows
+the Nile, and a number of hermits are seen on its banks still subjected
+to earthly occupations; they catch fish, hew wood, carry burdens to the
+city, etc. Higher up, in the mountains, they are more estranged from the
+world, but the Tempter follows them in various disguises, sometimes
+frightful, sometimes seducing. As a whole this composition is
+constructed in the ancient manner&mdash;as in Byzantine art&mdash;several series
+rising one above the other, each of equal size, and without any
+pretension to perspective: the single groups, at the same time, are
+executed with much grace and feeling.</p>
+
+<p>Next to this are six pictures of the history of S. Ranieri, and as many
+of the lives of S. Efeso and S. Potito. The latter are known to have
+been painted in 1392 by Spinello of Arezzo, or Spinello Aretino as he is
+called, of whose work we have some fragments in the National
+Gallery&mdash;alas too few! Two of these fragments are from his large fresco
+<i>The Fall of the Rebellious Angels</i>, painted for the church of S. Maria
+degli Angeli at Arezzo, which after being whitewashed over were rescued
+on the conversion of the church to secular uses. Vasari relates that
+when Spinello had finished this work the devil appeared to him in the
+night as horrible and deformed as in the picture, and asked him where he
+had seen him in so frightful a form, and why he had treated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</a></span> him so
+ignominiously. Spinello awoke from his dream with horror, fell into a
+state of abstraction, and soon afterwards died.</p>
+
+<p>On the third part of the south wall is represented the history of Job,
+in a series of paintings which were formerly attributed to Giotto
+himself, though it is now recognised that they cannot be of an earlier
+date than about 1370.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Temptation of Job</i> is by Taddeo Gaddi, and the others, painted in
+1372, are probably by Francesco da Volterra&mdash;not to be confused with the
+sixteenth century painter Daniele da Volterra.</p>
+
+<p>The paintings on the west wall are of inferior workmanship, while those
+on the north were the crowning achievement of Benozzo Gozzoli a century
+later.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h3>
+
+<p class="head">THE EARLIER QUATTROCENTISTS</p>
+
+
+<p>C<span class="smcap">oming</span> to the second period in the development of the new art&mdash;roughly,
+that is to say, from 1400 to 1450&mdash;Vasari observes that even where there
+is no great facility displayed, yet the works evince great care and
+thought; the manner is more free and graceful, the colouring more varied
+and pleasing; more figures are employed in the compositions, and the
+drawing is more correct inasmuch as it is closer to nature. It was
+Masaccio, he says, who during this period superseded the manner of
+Giotto in regard to the painting of flesh, draperies, buildings, etc.,
+and also restored the practice of foreshortening and brought to light
+that modern manner which has been followed by all artists. More natural
+attitudes, and more effectual expression of feeling in the gestures<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span> and
+movements of the body resulted, as art seeking to approach the truth of
+nature by more correct drawing and to exhibit so close a resemblance to
+the face of the living person that each figure might at once be
+recognised. <i>Thus these masters constantly endeavoured to reproduce what
+they beheld in nature and no more; their works became consequently more
+carefully considered and better understood.</i> This gave them courage to
+lay down rules for perspective and to carry the foreshortenings
+precisely to the point which gives an exact imitation of the relief
+apparent in nature and the real form. Minute attention to the effects of
+light and shade and to various technical difficulties ensued, and
+efforts were made towards a better order of composition. Landscapes also
+were attempted; tracts of country, trees, shrubs, flowers, clouds, the
+air, and other natural objects were depicted with some resemblance to
+the realities represented; insomuch that the art might be said not only
+to have become ennobled, but to have attained to that flower of youth
+from which the fruit afterwards to follow might reasonably be looked
+for.</p>
+
+<p>Foremost among the painters of this period was <span class="smcap">Fra Angelico</span>, or to give
+him his proper title, Frate Giovanni da Fiesole, who was born in 1387
+not far from Florence, and died in 1455. When he was twenty years old he
+joined the order of the preaching friars, and all his painting is
+devoted to religious subjects. He was a man of the utmost simplicity,
+and most holy in every act of his life. He disregarded all worldly
+advantages. Kindly to all, and temperate in all his habits, he used to
+say that he who practised the art of painting had need of quiet, and
+should live without cares and anxious thoughts; adding that he who would
+do the work of Christ should perpetually remain with Christ. He was most
+humble and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</a></span> modest, and in his painting he gave evidence of piety and
+devotion as well as of ability, and the saints that he painted have more
+of the air of sanctity than have those of any other master.</p>
+
+<p>It was the custom of Fra Angelico to abstain from retouching or
+improving any painting once finished. He altered nothing, but left all
+as it was done the first time, believing, as he said, that such was the
+will of God. It is also affirmed that he would never take his brushes in
+hand until he had first offered a prayer, and he is said never to have
+painted a crucifix without tears streaming from his eyes, and in the
+countenance and attitude of his figures it is easy to perceive proof of
+his sincerity, his goodness, and the depth of his devotion to the
+religion of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>This is well seen in the picture of the <i>Coronation of the Virgin</i>,
+which is now in the Louvre (No. 1290). "Superior to all his other
+works," Vasari says of this masterpiece, "and one in which he surpassed
+himself, is a picture in the Church of San Domenico at Fiesole; in this
+work he proves the high quality of his powers as well as the profound
+intelligence he possessed of the art he practised. The subject is the
+Coronation of the Virgin by Jesus Christ; the principal figures are
+surrounded by a choir of angels, among whom are a vast number of saints
+and holy personages, male and female. These figures are so numerous, so
+well executed in attitudes, so various, and with expressions of the head
+so richly diversified, that one feels infinite pleasure and delight in
+regarding them. Nay, one is convinced that those blessed spirits can
+look no otherwise in heaven itself, or, to speak under correction, could
+not if they had forms appear otherwise; for all the saints male and
+female assembled here have not only life and expression<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</a></span> most delicately
+and truly rendered, but the colouring also of the whole work would seem
+to have been given by the hand of a saint or of an angel like
+themselves. It is not without sufficient reason therefore that this
+excellent ecclesiastic is always called Frate Giovanni Angelico. The
+stories from the life of Our Lady and of San Domenico which adorn the
+predella, moreover, are in the same divine manner; and I for myself can
+affirm with truth that I never see this work but it appears something
+new, nor can I ever satisfy myself with the sight of it or have enough
+of beholding it."</p>
+
+<p>No less beautiful are the five compartments of the predella to the
+altar-piece still in San Domenico at Fiesole&mdash;which were purchased for
+the National Gallery in 1860 at the then alarming price of £3500&mdash;with
+no less than two hundred and sixty little figures of saintly personages,
+"so beautiful," as Vasari says, "that they appear to be truly beings of
+Paradise."</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">FRA FILIPPO LIPPI</span>, born in Florence about 1406, and dying there in 1469,
+was the exact antithesis of Fra Angelico, both in his private life and
+in the method of his painting. He was just as earthly in both respects
+as Fra Angelico was heavenly. As a child he was put with the Carmelites,
+and as he showed an inclination for drawing rather than for study, he
+was allowed every facility for studying the newly painted chapel of the
+Branacci, and followed the manner of Masaccio so closely that it was
+said that the spirit of that master had entered into his body. It is
+only fair to Masaccio to add that this means his artistic spirit, for
+Filippo's moral character was by no means exemplary. The story of one of
+his best-known works, <i>The Nativity</i>, which is now in the Louvre (No.
+1343), is thus related by Vasari:&mdash;"Having received a commission from
+the nuns of Santa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</a></span> Margherita, at Prato, to paint a picture for the high
+altar of their church, he chanced one day to see the daughter of
+Francesco Buti, a citizen of Florence, who had been sent to the convent
+as a novice. Filippo, after a glance at Lucrezia&mdash;for that was her
+name&mdash;was so taken with her beauty that he prevailed upon the nuns to
+allow him to paint her as the Virgin. This resulted in his falling so
+violently in love with her that he induced her to run away with him.
+Resisting every effort of her father and of the nuns to make her leave
+Filippo, she remained with him, and bore him a son who lived to be
+almost as famous a painter as his father. He was called Filippino
+Lippi."</p>
+
+<p>The picture of S. John and six saints in the National Gallery (No. 677)
+also recalls the story of his wildness, inasmuch as it came from the
+Palazzo Medici, where Filippo worked for the great Cosimo di Medici. It
+was well known that Filippo paid no attention to his work when he was
+engaged in the pursuit of his pleasures, and so Cosimo shut him up in
+the palace so that he might not waste his time in running about while
+working for him. But Filippo after a couple of days' confinement made a
+rope out of his bed clothes, and let himself down from the window, and
+for several days gave himself up to his own amusements. When Cosimo
+found that he had disappeared, he had search made for him, and at last
+Filippo returned; after which Cosimo was afraid to shut him up again in
+view of the risk he had run in descending from the window.</p>
+
+<p>Vasari considers that Filippo excelled in his smaller pictures&mdash;"In
+these he surpassed himself, imparting to them a grace and beauty than
+which nothing finer could be imagined. Examples of this may be seen in
+the predellas of all the works painted by him. He was indeed an</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="PL_I" id="PL_I"></a>
+<a href="images/plate01.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate01_th.png" width="500" height="223" alt="PLATE I.&mdash;FILIPPO LIPPI
+
+THE ANNUNCIATION
+
+National Gallery, London" /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">PLATE I.&mdash;FILIPPO LIPPI<br />
+THE ANNUNCIATION<br />
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">artist of such power that in his own time he was surpassed by none;
+therefore it is that he has not only been always praised by
+Michelangelo, but in many particulars has been imitated by him."</p>
+
+<p>As a contributor to the progress of the art of painting he is credited
+by Vasari with two innovations, which may be seen in his paintings in
+the church of San Domenico at Prato, namely (1) the figures being larger
+than life, and thereby forming an example to later artists for giving
+true grandeur to large figures; and (2) certain figures clothed in
+vestments but little used at that time, whereby the minds of other
+artists were awakened and began to depart from that sameness which
+should rather be called obsolete monotony than antique simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>It is noticeable that despite his bad character&mdash;which is said to have
+been the cause of his death by poison&mdash;all his work was in religious
+subjects. He was painting the chapel in the Church of Our Lady at
+Spoleto when, in 1469, he died.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Paolo Uccello</span>, as he was called, was born at Florence in 1397, and died
+there in 1475. His real name was Paolo di Dono, but he was so fond of
+painting animals and birds&mdash;especially the latter&mdash;that he officially
+signed himself as Paolo Uccello. He devoted so much of his time,
+however, to the study of perspective, that both his life and his work
+suffered thereby. His wife used to relate that he would stand the whole
+night through beside his writing table, and when she entreated him to
+come to bed, would only say, "Oh, what a delightful thing is this
+perspective!" Donatello, the sculptor, is said to have told him that in
+his ceaseless study of perspective he was leaving the substance for the
+shadow; but Donatello was not a painter.</p>
+
+<p>Before his time the painters had not studied the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</a></span> question of
+perspective scientifically. Giotto had made no attempt at it, and
+Masaccio only came nearer to realising it by chance. Brunelleschi, the
+architect, laid down its first principles, but it was Uccello who first
+put these principles into practice in painting, and thereby paved the
+way for his successors to walk firmly upon.</p>
+
+<p>How he struggled with the difficulties of this vitally important subject
+may be seen in the large battle-piece at the National Gallery, and
+however crude and absurd this fine composition may seem at first sight
+to those who are only accustomed to looking at modern pictures, it must
+be remembered that Uccello is here struggling, as it were, with a savage
+monster which to succeeding painters has, through his efforts, been a
+submissive slave.</p>
+
+<p>This picture is one of four panels executed for the Bartolini family.
+One of the others is in the Louvre, and a third in the Uffizi.
+Another&mdash;or indeed almost the only other&mdash;work of Uccello which is now
+to be seen is the colossal painting in monochrome (<i>terra-verde</i>) on the
+wall of the cathedral at Florence. Strangely enough, this equestrian
+portrait commemorates an Englishman, Sir John Hawkwood, whose name is
+Italianized in the inscription into Giovanni Acuto. He was born at Sible
+Hedingham in Essex, the son of a tanner, and adventuring under Edward
+III. into France, found his way to Florence, where he served the State
+so well that they interred him, on his death in 1393, at the public
+expense, and subsequently commissioned Uccello to execute his monument.</p>
+
+<p>With all his devotion to science, the artist has committed the strange
+mistake of making the horse stand on two legs on the same side, the
+other two being lifted.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">To Masaccio</span>, born in or about 1400, and dying in 1443, we owe a great
+step in art towards realism. It was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</a></span> he, says Vasari, who first attained
+the clear perception that <i>painting is only the close imitation, by
+drawing and colouring simply, of all the forms presented by nature
+showing them as they are produced by her, and that whoever shall most
+perfectly effect this may be said to have most nearly approached the
+summit of excellence</i>. The conviction of this truth, he adds, was the
+cause of Masaccio's attaining so much knowledge by means of perpetual
+study that he may be accounted among the first by whom art was in a
+measure delivered from rudeness and hardness; it was he who led the way
+to the realisation of beautiful attitudes and movements which were never
+exhibited by any painter before his day, while he also imparted a life
+and force to his figures, with a certain roundness and relief which
+render them truly characteristic and natural. Possessing great
+correctness of judgment, Masaccio perceived that all figures not
+sufficiently foreshortened to appear standing firmly on the plane
+whereon they are placed, but reared up on the points of their feet, must
+needs be deprived of all grace and excellence in the most important
+essentials. It is true that Uccello, in his studies of perspective, had
+helped to lessen this difficulty, but Masaccio managed his
+foreshortenings with much greater skill (though doubtless with less
+science) and succeeded better than any artist before him. Moreover, he
+imparted extreme softness and harmony to his paintings, and was careful
+to have the carnations of the heads and other nude parts in accordance
+with the colours of the draperies, which he represented with few and
+simple folds as they are seen in real life.</p>
+
+<p>Masaccio's principal remaining works are his frescoes in the famous
+Branacci Chapel at the Carmine convent in Florence. The work of
+decorating the chapel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">26</a></span> was begun by Masolino, but finished by Masaccio
+and Filippo Lippi. Vasari states it as a fact that all the most
+celebrated sculptors and painters had become excellent and illustrious
+by studying Masaccio's work in this chapel, and there is good reason to
+believe that Michelangelo and Raphael profited by their studies there,
+without mentioning all the names enumerated by Vasari. Seeing how
+important the influence of Masaccio was destined to become, I have
+ventured to italicise Vasari's opinions on the causes which operated in
+creating the Florentine style and in raising the art of painting to
+heights undreamt of by its earliest pioneers.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h3>
+
+<p class="head">THE LATER QUATTROCENTISTS</p>
+
+
+<p>T<span class="smcap">hree</span> names stand out conspicuously from the ranks of Florentine
+painters in the latter half of the fifteenth century. But progress being
+one of the essential characteristics of the art at this period, as in
+all others, it is not surprising that the order of their fame coincides
+(inversely) pretty nearly with that of their date. First, <span class="smcap">Antonio
+Pollaiuolo</span>; second, <span class="smcap">Sandro Botticelli</span>; and lastly, <span class="smcap">Leonardo da Vinci</span>.</p>
+
+<p>It is important to note that Pollaiuolo was first apprenticed to a
+goldsmith, and attained such proficiency in that craft that he was
+employed by Lorenzo Ghiberti in the carving of the gates of the
+Baptistry, and subsequently set up a workshop for himself. In
+competition with Finiguerra he "executed various stories," says Vasari,
+"wherein he fully equalled his competitor in careful execution, while he
+surpassed him in beauty of design. The guild of merchants, being
+convinced</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_II" id="PL_II"></a>
+<a href="images/plate02.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate02_th.png" width="300" height="296" alt="PLATE II.&mdash;SANDRO BOTTICELLI (?)
+
+THE VIRGIN AND CHILD
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE II.&mdash;SANDRO BOTTICELLI (?)<br />
+
+THE VIRGIN AND CHILD<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">of his ability, resolved to employ him to execute certain stories in
+silver for the altar of San Giovanni, and he performed them so
+excellently that they were acknowledged to be the best of all those
+previously executed by various masters.... In other churches also in
+Florence and Rome, and other parts of Italy, his miraculous enamels are
+to be seen."</p>
+
+<p>Now whether or not Antonio, like others, continued to exercise this
+craft, the account given by Vasari, as follows, of his learning to paint
+is extremely significant as showing how painting was regarded in
+relation to the kindred arts so widely practised in
+Florence:&mdash;"Eventually, considering that this craft did not secure a
+long life to the work of its masters, Antonio, desiring for his labours
+a more enduring memory, resolved to devote himself to it no longer; and
+his brother Piero being a painter, he joined himself to him for the
+purpose of learning the modes of proceeding in painting. He then found
+this to be an art so different from that of the goldsmith that he wished
+he had never addressed himself to it. But being impelled by shame rather
+than any advantage to be obtained, he acquired a knowledge of the
+processes used in painting in the course of a few months, and became an
+excellent master."</p>
+
+<p>As early as 1460 he had painted the three large canvases of <i>Hercules</i>
+for Lorenzo de'Medici, now no longer existing, but probably reflected in
+the two small panels of the same subject in the Uffizi. These alone are
+enough to mark him as one of the greatest artists of his time. The
+magnificent <i>David</i>, at Berlin, soon followed, and the little <i>Daphne
+and Apollo</i> in our National Gallery. These were all accomplished
+unaided, but a little later he worked in concert with his brother Piero,
+to whom we are told to attribute parts of the painting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</a></span> of the large <i>S.
+Sebastian</i> in the National Gallery, painted in 1475 for Antonio Pucci,
+from whose descendant it was purchased. "For the chapel of the Pucci in
+the church of San Sebastian," says Vasari, "Antonio painted the
+altar-piece&mdash;a remarkable and wonderfully executed work with numerous
+horses, many nude figures, and singularly beautiful foreshortenings.
+Also the portrait of S. Sebastian taken from life, that is to say, from
+Gino di Ludovico Capponi. This picture has been more extolled than any
+by Antonio. He has evidently copied nature to the utmost of his power,
+as we see more especially in one of the archers, who, bending towards
+the ground, and resting his bow against his breast, is employing all his
+force to prepare it for action; the veins are swelling, the muscles
+strained, and the man holds his breath as he applies all his strength to
+the effort. All the other figures in the diversity of their attitudes
+clearly prove the artist's ability and the labour he has bestowed on the
+work."</p>
+
+<p>It is in his superb rendering of the figure, especially in the nude,
+that Antonio Pollaiuolo marks a decisive step in the progress of
+painting, and is entitled to be regarded as "the first modern artist to
+master expression of the human form, its spirit, and its action." But
+for him we should miss much of the strength and vigour that
+distinguishes the real from the false Botticelli.</p>
+
+<p>"In the same time with the illustrious Lorenzo de Medici, the elder,"
+Vasari writes, "which was truly an age of gold for men of talent, there
+flourished a certain Alessandro, called after our custom Sandro, and
+further named di Botticello, for a reason which we shall presently see.
+His father, Mariano Filipepi, a Florentine citizen, brought him up with
+care; but although the boy readily acquired whatever he had a mind to
+learn,</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_III" id="PL_III"></a>
+<a href="images/plate03.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate03_th.png" width="300" height="388" alt="PLATE III.&mdash;SANDRO BOTTICELLI
+
+PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE III.&mdash;SANDRO BOTTICELLI<br />
+
+PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">yet he was always discontented, nor would he take any pleasure in
+reading, writing, or accounts; so that his father turned him over in
+despair to a friend of his called Botticello, who was a goldsmith.</p>
+
+<p>"There was at that time a close connection and almost constant
+intercourse between the goldsmiths and the painters, wherefore Sandro,
+who had remarkable talent and was strongly disposed to the arts of
+design, became enamoured of painting and resolved to devote himself
+entirely to that vocation. He acknowledged his purpose forthwith to his
+father, who accordingly took him to Fra Filippo. Devoting himself
+entirely to the vocation he had chosen, Sandro so closely followed the
+directions and imitated the manner of his master, that Filippo conceived
+a great love for him, and instructed him so effectually that Sandro
+rapidly attained a degree in art that none could have predicted for
+him."</p>
+
+<p>The influence of the Giottesque tradition which was thus handed on to
+the youthful Botticelli by Filippo Lippi is traceable in the beautiful
+little <i>Adoration of the Magi</i>&mdash;the oblong, not the <i>tondo</i>&mdash;in the
+National Gallery (No. 592). This was formerly attributed to Filippino
+Lippi, but is now universally recognised as one of Sandro's very
+earliest productions, when still under the immediate influence of
+Filippo, and prior to the <i>Fortitude</i>, painted before 1470, which is now
+in the Uffizi, and is the first picture mentioned by Vasari,
+thus&mdash;"While still a youth he painted the figure of Fortitude among
+those pictures of the virtues which Antonio and Pietro Pollaiuolo were
+executing in the Mercatanzia or Tribunal of Commerce in Florence. In
+Santo Spirito (Vasari continues, naming a picture which is probably <i>The
+Virgin Enthroned</i>, now at Berlin (No. 106)), he painted a picture for
+the Bardi family; this work he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span> executed with great diligence, and
+finished it very successfully, depicting the olive and palm trees with
+extraordinary care."</p>
+
+<p>The influence of Pollaiuolo is more evident in his two next productions,
+the two small panels of <i>Holofernes</i> and the <i>Portrait of a Man with a
+Medal</i>, in the Uffizi, and again in the <i>S. Sebastian</i> now at Berlin,
+which was painted in 1473.</p>
+
+<p>About 1476 the second <i>Adoration of the Magi</i> in the National Gallery
+was painted, and a year or two later the famous and more splendid
+picture of the same subject which is in the Uffizi. With this he
+established his reputation, showing himself unmistakably as an artist of
+profound feeling and noble character besides being a skilful painter. It
+was commissioned for the church of Santa Maria Novella. "In the face of
+the oldest of the kings," says Vasari, "there is the most lively
+expression of tenderness as he kisses the foot of the Saviour, and of
+satisfaction at the attainment of the purpose for which he had
+undertaken his long journey. This figure is the portrait of Cosimo
+de'Medici, the most faithful and animated likeness of all now known of
+him. The second of the kings is the portrait of Giuliano de' Medici,
+father of Pope Clement VII., and he is presenting his gift with an
+expression of the most devout sincerity. The third, who is likewise
+kneeling, seems to be offering thanksgiving as well as adoration; this
+is the likeness of Giovanni, the son of Cosimo.</p>
+
+<p>"The beauty which Sandro has imparted to these heads cannot be
+adequately described; all the figures are in different attitudes, some
+seen full face, others in profile, some almost entirely turned away,
+others bent down; and to all the artist has given an appropriate
+expression, whether old or young, showing numerous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</a></span> peculiarities, which
+prove the mastery he possessed over his art. He has even distinguished
+the followers of each king, so that one can see which belong to one and
+which to another. It is indeed a most wonderful work; the composition,
+the colouring, and the design are so beautiful that every artist to-day
+is amazed at it, and at the time it acquired so great a fame for Sandro
+that Pope Sixtus IV. appointed him superintendent of the painting of the
+chapel he had built in Rome."</p>
+
+<p>The visit to Rome was in 1481, and meantime Botticelli had produced the
+wayward <i>Primavera</i>, and the more stern and harsh <i>S. Augustine</i> in the
+church of Ognissanti. Of his frescoes in the Pope's chapel nearly all
+have survived, including <i>Moses slaying the Egyptian</i>, <i>The Temptation</i>,
+and <i>The Destruction of Korah's Company</i>, besides such of the heads of
+the Popes as were not painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio and his other
+assistants in the work.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to Florence in 1482, he was for twenty years without a rival
+in the city&mdash;after the departure of Leonardo to Milan&mdash;and he appears to
+have been subjected to no new influences, but steadily to have developed
+the immense forces within him. Before 1492 may be dated the two examples
+in the National Gallery, the <i>Portrait of a Youth</i> and the fascinating
+<i>Mars and Venus</i>, which was probably intended as a decoration for some
+large piece of furniture. The beautiful and extraordinarily life-like
+frescoes in the Louvre (the only recognised works of the master in that
+Gallery) from the Villa Lemmi, representing Giovanna Tornabuoni with
+Venus and the Graces, and Lorenzo Tornabuoni with the Liberal Arts, are
+assigned to 1486. Of this period are also the more familiar <i>Birth of
+Venus</i>; <i>The Tondo of the Pomegranate</i> and the <i>Annunciation</i> in the
+Uffizi,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</a></span> and the San Marco altar-piece, the <i>Coronation of the Virgin</i>
+in the Florence Academy.</p>
+
+<p>To the influence of Savonarola, however great or little that may have
+been, is attributed the seriousness of his latest work. Professor Muther
+characterises Botticelli as "the Jeremiah of the Renaissance," but
+whether or not this is a rhetorical overstatement, the "tendency to
+impassioned and feverish action, so evident in the famous <i>Calumny of
+Apelles</i>, reflects, no doubt, the agitation of his spiritual stress."<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor" title="Go to footnote 1.">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>This is the latest of Sandro's works which are in public galleries, and
+there is every probability that the last years of his life were not very
+productive. "This master is said to have had an extraordinary love for
+those whom he knew to be zealous students in art," Vasari tells us, "and
+is affirmed to have gained considerable sums of money, but being a bad
+manager and very careless, all came to nothing. Finally, having become
+old, unfit for work, and helpless, he was obliged to go on crutches,
+being unable to stand upright, and so died, after long illness and
+decrepitude, in his seventy-eighth year. He was buried at Florence, in
+the church of Ognissanti in the year 1510."</p>
+
+<p>The large and beautiful <i>Assumption of the Virgin</i>, with the circles of
+saints and angels, in the National Gallery, which has only of late years
+been taken out of the catalogue of Botticelli's works, is now said to
+have been executed by his early pupil <span class="smcap">Francesco Botticini</span> (<i>c.</i>
+1446-1497) in 1470 or thereabouts. "In the church of San Pietro," Vasari
+writes of Botticelli, "he executed a picture for Matteo Palmieri, with a
+very large number of figures. The subject is the Assumption of our Lady,
+and the zones or circles of heaven are</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_IV" id="PL_IV"></a>
+<a href="images/plate04.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate04_th.png" width="300" height="405" alt="PLATE IV.&mdash;SANDRO BOTTICELLI
+
+THE NATIVITY
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE IV.&mdash;SANDRO BOTTICELLI<br />
+
+THE NATIVITY<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">there painted in their order. The patriarchs, prophets, apostles,
+evangelists, martyrs, confessors, doctors, virgins, and the hierarchies;
+all of which was executed by Sandro according to the design furnished to
+him by Matteo, who was a very learned and able man. The whole work was
+conducted and finished with the most wonderful skill and care; at the
+foot were the portraits of Matteo and his wife kneeling. But although
+this picture is exceedingly beautiful, and ought to have put envy to
+shame, yet there were certain malevolent and censorious persons who, not
+being able to fix any other blame upon it, declared that Matteo and
+Sandro had fallen into grievous heresy." It is apparent that the picture
+has suffered intentional injury, and it is known that in consequence of
+this supposed heresy the altar which it adorned was interdicted and the
+picture covered up.</p>
+
+<p>In view of all the circumstances it is certain that it was designed by
+Botticelli, and very possibly executed under his immediate supervision
+and with some assistance from him. If we do not see the real Botticelli
+in it, we see his influence and his power far more clearly than in the
+numerous <i>tondi</i> of Madonna and Child that have been assigned to him in
+less critical ages than our own. For the real Botticelli was something
+very real indeed, and though it was easy enough to imitate his
+mannerisms, neither the style nor the spirit of his work were ever
+within reach of his closest followers.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h3>
+
+<p class="head">LEONARDO DA VINCI</p>
+
+
+<p>T<span class="smcap">welve</span> years younger than Botticelli was <span class="smcap">Leonardo da Vinci</span> (1452-1520),
+whose career as a painter <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span>commenced in the workshop of Andrea
+Verrocchio, goldsmith, painter, and sculptor. That so extraordinary a
+genius should have fixed upon painting for his means of expression
+rather than any of his other natural gifts is the most telling evidence
+of the pre-eminence earned for that art by the efforts of those whose
+works we have been considering. For once we may go all the way with
+Vasari, and accept his estimate of him as even moderate in comparison
+with those of modern writers. "The richest gifts," he writes, "are
+sometimes showered, as by celestial influence, on human creatures, and
+we see beauty, grace, and talent so united in a single person that
+whatever the man thus favoured may turn to, his every action is so
+divine as to leave all other men far behind him, and to prove that he
+has been specially endowed by the hand of God himself, and has not
+obtained his pre-eminence by human teaching. This was seen and
+acknowledged by all men in the case of Leonardo da Vinci, in whom, to
+say nothing of the beauty of his person, which was such that it could
+never be sufficiently extolled, there was a grace beyond expression
+which was manifested without thought or effort in every act and deed,
+and who besides had so rare a gift of talent and ability that to
+whatever subject he turned, however difficult, he presently made himself
+absolute master of it. Extraordinary strength was in him joined with
+remarkable facility, a mind of regal boldness and magnanimous daring.
+His gifts were such that his fame extended far and wide, and he was held
+in the highest estimation not in his own time only, but also and even to
+a greater extent after his death; and this will continue to be in all
+succeeding ages. Truly wonderful indeed and divinely gifted was
+Leonardo."</p>
+
+<p>To his activities in directions other than painting,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</a></span> I need not allude
+except to say that they account in a great measure for the scarcity of
+the pictures he has left us, and to emphasise the significance of his
+having painted at all. To a man of such supreme genius the circumstances
+in which he found himself, rather than any particular technical
+facility, determined the course of his career, and in another age and
+another country he might have been a Pheidias or a Newton, a Shakespeare
+or a Beethoven.</p>
+
+<p>But if the pictures he has left us are few in number&mdash;according to the
+present estimate not more than a dozen&mdash;they are altogether greater than
+anything else in the realm of painting, and with their marvellous beauty
+and subtlety have probably had a wider influence, both on painters and
+on lovers of painting, than those of any other master. They seem to be
+endowed with a spirit of something beyond painting itself, and in the
+presence of <i>The Last Supper</i> or the <i>Mona Lisa</i> the babble of
+conflicting opinions on questions of style, technique, and what not is
+silenced.</p>
+
+<p>Similarly, in writing of Leonardo's pictures, every one of which is a
+masterpiece, it seems superfluous to say even a word about what the
+whole world already knows so well. All that can be usefully added is a
+little of the tradition, where it is sufficiently authenticated,
+relating to the circumstances under which they came into existence, and
+such of the circumstances of his life as concern their production.</p>
+
+<p>When still quite a youth Leonardo was apprenticed to Andrea Verrocchio,
+and the story goes that it was the marvellous painting of the angel, by
+the pupil, in the master's <i>Baptism</i> in the Academy at Florence, that
+induced Verrocchio to abandon painting and devote himself entirely to
+sculpture. This angel has been attributed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span> to the hand of Leonardo from
+the earliest times, but can hardly be taken, at any rate in its present
+condition, as a decided proof of the genius that was to be displayed in
+manhood. More certain are the <i>S. Jerome</i> in the Vatican, and the
+<i>Adoration of the Kings</i> in the Uffizi, though neither is carried beyond
+the earlier stages of "under-painting." A few finished portraits are now
+assigned with tolerable certainty to his earlier years; but for his
+famous masterpieces we must jump to the year 1482, when he left Florence
+and went to Milan, where for the next sixteen years he was
+intermittently engaged in the execution of the great equestrian statue,
+which was destroyed by the French mercenaries before it was actually
+completed.</p>
+
+<p>It appears that he was recommended by Lorenzo de'Medici to Lodovico il
+Moro, Duke of Milan, probably for the very purpose of executing this
+statue. However that may be, it is now certain that in 1483 he was
+commissioned by the Franciscan monks to paint a picture of the Virgin
+and Child for their church of the Conception, and that between 1491 and
+1494 Leonardo and his assistant, Ambrogio di Predis, petitioned the Duke
+for an arbitration as to price. This was the famous <i>Virgin of the
+Rocks</i>, now in the Louvre, and the similar, and though not precisely
+identical, composition in our National Gallery is generally supposed to
+be a replica, painted by Ambrogio under the supervision of, and possibly
+with some assistance from, Leonardo himself.</p>
+
+<p>Between 1495 and 1498 Leonardo was engaged on the painting of <i>The Last
+Supper</i>. In the Forster Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum is a
+notebook which contains his first memoranda for the wonderful design of
+this masterpiece. At Windsor are studies for the heads of S. Matthew, S.
+Philip, and</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_V" id="PL_V"></a>
+<a href="images/plate05.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate05_th.png" width="300" height="455" alt="PLATE V.&mdash;LEONARDO DA VINCI
+
+THE VIRGIN OF THE ROCKS
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE V.&mdash;LEONARDO DA VINCI<br />
+
+THE VIRGIN OF THE ROCKS<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Judas, and for the right arm of S. Peter. That of the head of the Christ
+in the Brera at Milan has been so much "restored" that it can hardly be
+regarded as Leonardo's work. Vasari's account of the delays in the
+completion of the painting is better known, and probably less
+trustworthy, than one or two notices of about the same date, quoted by
+Mr H. P. Horne, in translating and commenting on Vasari. In June 1497,
+when the work had been in progress over two years, Duke Lodovico wrote
+to his secretary "to urge Leonardo, the Florentine, to finish the work
+of the Refectory which he has begun, ... and that articles subscribed by
+his hand shall be executed which shall oblige him to finish the work
+within the time that shall be agreed upon." Matteo Bandello, in the
+prologue to one of his <i>Novelle</i>, describes how he saw him actually at
+work&mdash;"Leonardo, as I have more than once seen and observed him, used
+often to go early in the morning and mount the scaffolding (for <i>The
+Last Supper</i> is somewhat raised above the ground), and from morning till
+dusk never lay the brush out of his hand, but, oblivious of both eating
+and drinking, paint without ceasing. After that, he would remain two,
+three, or four days without touching it: yet he always stayed there,
+sometimes for one or two hours, and only contemplated, considered, and
+criticised, as he examined with himself the figures he had made."</p>
+
+<p>Vasari's story of the Prior's head serving for that of Judas is related
+with less colour, but probably more truth, in the Discourses of G. B.
+Giraldi, who says that when Leonardo had finished the painting with the
+exception of the head of Judas, the friars complained to the Duke that
+he had left it in this state for more than a year. Leonardo replied that
+for more than a year he had gone every morning and evening into the
+Borghetto,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</a></span> where all the worst sort of people lived, yet he could never
+find a head sufficiently evil to serve for the likeness of Judas: but he
+added, "If perchance I shall not find one, I will put there the head of
+this Father Prior who is now so troublesome to me, which will become him
+mightily."</p>
+
+<p>In 1500 Leonardo was back again in Florence, and his next important work
+was the designing, though probably not the actual painting, of the
+beautiful picture in the Louvre, <i>The Virgin and Child with S. Anne</i>,
+the commission for which had been given to Filippino Lippi, but resigned
+by him on Leonardo's return. In 1501 Isabella d'Este wrote to know
+whether Leonardo was still in Florence, and what he was doing, as she
+wished him to paint a picture for her in the palace at Mantua, and in
+the reply of the Vicar-General of the Carmelites we have a valuable
+account of the artist and his work. "As far as I can gather," he writes,
+"the life of Leonardo is extremely variable and undetermined. Since his
+arrival here he has only made a sketch in a cartoon. It represents a
+Christ as a little child of about a year old, reaching forward out of
+his mother's arms towards a lamb. The mother, half rising from the lap
+of S. Anne, catches at the child as though to take it away from the
+lamb, the animal of sacrifice signifying the Passion. S. Anne, also
+rising a little from her seat, seems to wish to restrain her daughter
+from separating the child from the lamb; which perhaps is intended to
+signify the Church, that would not wish that the Passion of Christ
+should be hindered. These figures are as large as life, but they are all
+contained in a small cartoon, since all of them sit or are bent; the
+figure of the Virgin is somewhat in front of the other, turned towards
+the left. This sketch is not yet finished. He has not executed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</a></span> any
+other work, except that his two assistants paint portraits and he, at
+times, lends a hand to one or another of them. He gives profound study
+to geometry, and grows most impatient of painting."</p>
+
+<p>The history of this cartoon&mdash;as indeed of the Louvre picture&mdash;is
+somewhat obscure, but it is certain that the beautiful cartoon of the
+same subject in the possession of the Royal Academy is not the one above
+described.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, there is the famous&mdash;or, may we say, now more famous than
+ever&mdash;portrait of <i>Mona Lisa</i>. "Whoever wishes to know how far art can
+imitate nature," Vasari writes, "may do so in this head, wherein every
+detail that could be depicted by the brush has been faithfully
+reproduced. The eyes have the lustrous brightness and watery sheen that
+is seen in life, and around them are all those rosy and pearly tints
+which, like the eyelashes too, can only be rendered by means of the
+deepest subtlety; the eyebrows also are painted with the closest
+exactitude, where fuller and where more thinly set, in a manner that
+could not be more natural. The nose, with its beautiful and delicately
+roseate nostrils, seems to be alive. The mouth, wonderful in its
+outline, shows the lips perfectly uniting the rose tints of their colour
+with that of the face, and the carnation of the cheek appears rather to
+be flesh and blood than only painted. Looking at the pit of the throat
+one can hardly believe that one cannot see the beating of the pulse, and
+in truth it may be said that the whole work is painted in a manner well
+calculated to make the boldest master tremble.</p>
+
+<p>"Mona Lisa was exceedingly beautiful, and while Leonardo was painting
+her portrait he kept someone constantly near her to sing or play, to
+jest or otherwise amuse her, so that she might continue cheerful, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</a></span>
+keep away the melancholy that painters are apt to give to their
+portraits. In this picture there is a smile so pleasing that the sight
+of it is a thing that appears more divine than human, and it has ever
+been considered a marvel that it is not actually alive."</p>
+
+<p>It is worth observing that while these rapturous expressions of wonder
+at the life-like qualities of the portrait may seem somewhat tame and
+childish in comparison with the appreciation accorded to Leonardo's work
+in these times&mdash;notably that of Walter Pater in this case&mdash;they are in
+reality at the root of all criticism. If Vasari, as I have already
+pointed out, pitches upon this quality of life-likeness and direct
+imitation of nature for his particular admiration, it is only because
+the first and foremost object of the earlier painters was in fact to
+represent the life; and though in the rarefied atmosphere of modern talk
+about art these naïve criticisms may seem out of date, it is significant
+that between Vasari and ourselves there is little, if any, difference of
+opinion as to which masters were the great ones, and which were not.
+"Truly divine" is a phrase in which he sums up the impressions created
+in his mind by the less material qualities of some of the greatest, but
+before even the greatest could create such an impression they must have
+learnt the rudiments of the art in the school of nature.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h3>
+
+<p class="head">MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI</p>
+
+
+<p>I<span class="smcap">n</span> the opening years of the sixteenth century the art of painting had
+attained such a pitch of excellence that unless carried onward by a
+supreme genius it could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</a></span> hardly hope to escape from the common lot of
+all things in nature, and begin to decline. After Botticelli and
+Leonardo, the works of Andrea del Sarto, "the perfect painter" as he has
+been called, fall rather flat; and no less a prodigy than Michelangelo
+was capable of excelling his marvellous predecessors, or than Raphael of
+rivalling them.</p>
+
+<p>Vasari prefaces his life to <span class="smcap">Andrea del Sarto</span> (1486-1531) with something
+more definite than his usual rhetorical flourishes. "At length we have
+come," he says, "after having written the lives of many artists
+distinguished for colour, for design, or for invention, to that of the
+truly excellent Andrea del Sarto, in whom art and nature combined to
+show all that may be done in painting when design, colouring, and
+invention unite in one and the same person. Had he possessed a somewhat
+bolder and more elevated mind, had he been distinguished for higher
+qualifications as he was for genius and depth of judgment in the art he
+practised, he would beyond all doubt have been without an equal. But
+there was in his nature a certain timidity of mind, a sort of diffidence
+and want of strength, which prevented those evidences of ardour and
+animation which are proper to the highest characters from ever appearing
+in him which, could they have been added to his natural advantages,
+would have made him truly a divine painter, so that his works are
+wanting in that grandeur, richness, and force which are so conspicuous
+in those of many other masters.</p>
+
+<p>"His figures are well drawn, and entirely free from errors, and perfect
+in all their proportions, and for the most part are simple and chaste.
+His airs of heads are natural and graceful in women and children, while
+both in youth and old men they are full of life and animation. His
+draperies are marvellously beautiful. His nudes are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</a></span> admirably executed,
+simple in drawing, exquisite in colouring&mdash;nay, they are truly divine."</p>
+
+<p>And yet? Well, let us turn to Michelangelo.</p>
+
+<p>"While the best and most industrious artists," says Vasari, "were
+labouring by the light of Giotto and his followers to give the world
+examples of such power as the benignity of their stars and the varied
+character of their fantasies enabled them to command, and while desirous
+of imitating the perfection of Nature by the excellence of Art, they
+were struggling to attain that high comprehension which many call
+intelligence, and were universally toiling, but for the most part in
+vain, the Ruler of Heaven was pleased to turn the eyes of his clemency
+towards earth, and perceiving the fruitlessness of so many labours, the
+ardent studies pursued without any result, and the presumptuous
+self-sufficiency of men which is farther from truth than is darkness
+from light, he resolved, by way of delivering us from such great errors,
+to send to the world a spirit endowed with universality of power in each
+art, and in every profession, one capable of showing by himself alone
+what is the perfection of art in the sketch, the outline, the shadows,
+or the lights; one who could give relief to painting and with an upright
+judgment could operate as perfectly in sculpture; nay, who was so highly
+accomplished in architecture also, that he was able to render our
+habitations secure and commodious, healthy and cheerful,
+well-proportioned, and enriched with the varied ornaments of art."</p>
+
+<p>A more prosaic passage follows presently, occasioned by the innuendoes
+of Condivi as to Vasari's intimacy with Michelangelo and his knowledge
+of the facts of his life at first hand. Vasari meets this accusation by
+quoting the following document relating to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</a></span> apprenticeship of
+Michelangelo to Domenico Ghirlandaio when fourteen years old. "1488. I
+acknowledge and record this first day of April that I, Lodovico di
+Buonarroti, have engaged Michelangelo my son to Domenico and David di
+Tommaso di Currado for the three years next to come, under the following
+conditions: That the said Michelangelo shall remain with the above named
+all the said time, to the end that they may teach him to paint and to
+exercise their vocation, and that the above named shall have full
+command over him paying him in the course of these three years
+twenty-four florins as wages...."</p>
+
+<p>Besides this teaching in his earliest youth, it is considered probable
+that in 1494, when he visited Bologna, he came under influences which
+resulted in the execution at about that time of the unfinished
+<i>Entombment</i> and the <i>Holy Family</i>, which are two of our greatest
+treasures in the National Gallery. As he took to sculpture, however,
+before he was out of Ghirlandaio's hands, there are few traces of any
+activity in painting until 1506, when he was engaged on the designs for
+the great battle-piece for the Council Hall at Florence. The one easel
+picture of which Vasari makes any mention, the <i>tondo</i> in the Uffizi, is
+the only one besides those already noted which is known to exist. "The
+Florentine citizen, Angelo Doni," Vasari says, "desired to have some
+work from his hand as he was his friend; wherefore Michelangelo began a
+circular painting of Our Lady for him. She is kneeling, and presents the
+Divine Child to Joseph. Here the artist has finely expressed the delight
+with which the Mother regards the beauty of her Son, as is clearly
+manifest in the turn of her head and fixedness of her gaze; equally
+evident is her wish that this contentment shall be shared by that pious
+old man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</a></span> who receives the babe with infinite tenderness and reverence.
+Nor was this enough for Michelangelo, since the better to display his
+art he has grouped several undraped figures in the background, some
+upright, some half recumbent, and others seated. The whole work is
+executed with so much care and finish that of all his pictures, which
+indeed are but few, this is considered the best."</p>
+
+<p>After relating the story of the artist's quarrel with his friend over
+the price of this masterpiece (for which he at first only asked sixty
+ducats), Vasari goes on to describe the now lost cartoons for the great
+fresco in the Council Hall at Florence, in substance as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"When Leonardo was painting in the great hall of the Council, Piero
+Soderini, who was then Gonfaloniere, moved by the extraordinary ability
+which he perceived in Michelangelo [he calls him in a letter a young man
+who stands above all his calling in Italy; nay, in all the world],
+caused him to be entrusted with a portion of the work, and our artist
+began a very large cartoon representing the Battle of Pisa. It
+represented a vast number of nude figures bathing in the Arno, as men do
+on hot days, when suddenly the enemy is heard to be attacking the camp.
+The soldiers spring forth in haste to arm themselves. One is an elderly
+man, who to shelter himself from the heat has wreathed a garland of ivy
+round his head, and, seated on the ground, is labouring to draw on his
+hose, hindered by his limbs being wet. Hearing the sound of the drums
+and the cries of the soldiers he struggles violently to get on one of
+his stockings; the action of the muscles and distortion of the mouth
+evince the zeal of his efforts. Drummers and others hasten to the camp
+with their clothes in their arms, all in the most singular attitudes;
+some standing,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</a></span> others kneeling or stooping; some falling, others
+springing high into the air and exhibiting the most difficult
+foreshortenings.... The artists were amazed as they realised that the
+master had in this cartoon laid open to them the very highest resources
+of art; nay, there are some who still declare that they have never seen
+anything to equal it, either from his hand or any other, and they do not
+believe that genius will ever more attain to such perfection. Nor is
+this an exaggeration, for all who have designed from it and copied
+it&mdash;as it was the habit for both natives and strangers to do&mdash;have
+become excellent in art, amongst whom were Raphael, Andrea del Sarto,
+Franciabigio, Pontormo, and Piero del Vaga."</p>
+
+<p>In 1508 Michelangelo began to prepare the cartoons for the ceiling of
+the Sistine Chapel. Space forbids me to attempt any description of
+these, but the story of their completion as related by Vasari can hardly
+be omitted. "When half of them were nearly finished," he says, "Pope
+Julius, who had gone more than once to see the work&mdash;mounting the
+ladders with the artist's help&mdash;insisted on having them opened to public
+view without waiting till the last touches were given, and the chapel
+was no sooner open than all Rome hastened thither, the Pope being first,
+even before the dust caused by removing the scaffold had subsided. Then
+it was that Raphael, who was very prompt in imitation, changed his
+manner, and to give proof of his ability immediately executed the
+frescoes with the Prophets and Sibyls in the church of the Pace.
+Bramante (the architect) also laboured to convince the Pope that he
+would do well to entrust the second half to Raphael.... But Julius, who
+justly valued the ability of Michelangelo, commanded that he should
+continue the work, judging from what he saw of the first half that he
+would be able to improve<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</a></span> the second. Michelangelo accordingly finished
+the whole in twenty months, without help. It is true that he often
+complained that he was prevented from giving it the finish he would have
+liked owing to the Pope's impatience, and his constant inquiries as to
+when it would be finished, and on one occasion he answered, "It will be
+finished when I shall have done all that I believe necessary to satisfy
+art." "And we command," replied Julius, "that you satisfy our wish to
+have it done quickly," adding finally that if it were not at once
+completed he would have Michelangelo thrown headlong from the
+scaffolding. Hearing this, the artist, without taking time to add what
+was wanting, took down the remainder of the scaffolding, to the great
+satisfaction of the whole city, on All Saints' Day, when the Pope went
+into his chapel to sing Mass."</p>
+
+<p>Michelangelo had much wished to retouch some portions of the work <i>a
+secco</i>, as had been done by the older masters who had painted the walls;
+and to add a little ultramarine to some of the draperies, and gild other
+parts, so as to give a richer and more striking effect. The Pope, too,
+would now have liked these additions to be made, but as Michelangelo
+thought it would take too long to re-erect the scaffolding, the pictures
+remained as they were. The Pope would sometimes say to him, "Let the
+chapel be enriched with gold and bright colours; it looks poor." To
+which Michelangelo would reply, "Holy Father, the men of those days did
+not adorn themselves with gold; those who are painted here less than
+any; for they were none too rich. Besides, they were holy men, and must
+have despised riches and ornaments."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h3>
+
+<p class="head">RAFFAELLO DI SANTI</p>
+
+
+<p>T<span class="smcap">he</span> character and the influence of <span class="smcap">Raphael</span> are well expressed in the
+following sentences with which Vasari concludes his biography:&mdash;"O happy
+and blessed spirit! every one speaks with interest of thee; celebrates
+thy deeds; admires thee in thy works! Well might Painting die when this
+noble artist ceased to live; for when his eyes were closed she remained
+in darkness. For us who survive him it remains to imitate the excellent
+method which he has left for our guidance; and as his great qualities
+deserve, and our duty bids us, to cherish his memory in our hearts, and
+keep it alive in our discourse by speaking of him with the high respect
+which is his due. For through him we have the art in all its extent
+carried to a perfection which could hardly have been looked for; and in
+this universality let no human being ever hope to surpass him. And,
+beside this benefit which he conferred on Art as her true friend, he
+neglected not to show us how every man should conduct himself in all the
+relations of life. Among his rare gifts there is one which especially
+excites my wonder; I mean, that Heaven should have granted him to infuse
+a spirit among those who lived around him so contrary to that which is
+prevalent among professional men. The painters&mdash;I do not allude to the
+humble-minded only, but to those of an ambitious turn, and many of this
+sort there are&mdash;the painters who worked in company with Raphael lived in
+perfect harmony, as if all bad feelings were extinguished in his
+presence, and every base, unworthy thought had passed from their minds.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</a></span>
+This was because the artists were at once subdued by his obliging
+manners and by his surpassing merit, but more than all by the spell of
+his natural character, which was so full of affectionate kindness, that
+not only men, but even the very brutes, respected him. He always had a
+great number of artists employed for him, helping them and teaching them
+with the kindness of a father to his children, rather than as a master
+directing his scholars. For which reason it was observed he never went
+to court without being accompanied from his very door by perhaps fifty
+painters who took pleasure in thus attending him to do him honour. In
+short, he lived more as a sovereign than as a painter. And thus, O Art
+of Painting! thou too, then, could account thyself most happy, since an
+artist was thine, who, by his skill and by his moral excellence exalted
+thee to the highest heaven!"</p>
+
+<p>Raphael was the son of Giovanni Sanzio, or di Santi, of Urbino. He
+received his first education as an artist from his father, whom,
+however, he lost in his eleventh year. As early as 1495 probably, he
+entered the school of Pietro Perugino, at Perugia, where he remained
+till about his twentieth year.</p>
+
+<p>The "Umbrian School," in which Raphael received his first education, and
+in which he is accordingly placed, is distinguished from the Florentine,
+of which it may be said to have been an offshoot, by several
+well-defined characteristics. Chief of these are, first, the more
+sentimental expression of religious feeling, and second, the greater
+attention paid to distance as compared with the principal figures; both
+of which are explainable on the ground of local circumstances. They
+reflect the difference between the bustling intellectual activity of
+Florence and the dreamy existence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</a></span> but broader horizon of the dwellers
+in the upper valley of the Tiber. In the beautiful <i>Nativity</i> of <span class="smcap">Piero
+della Francesca</span> (No. 908 in the National Gallery) we see something akin
+to the Florentine pictures, and yet something more besides. Piero shared
+with Paolo Uccello the eager desire to discover the secrets of
+perspective; but in addition he seems to have been influenced by the
+study of nature herself, in the open air, as Uccello never was. His
+pupil, <span class="smcap">Luca Signorelli</span> (1441-1523), was more formal and less
+naturalistic, as may be seen by a comparison between the <i>Circumcision</i>
+(No. 1128 in the National Gallery) and Piero's <i>Baptism of Christ</i> on
+the opposite wall. <span class="smcap">Pietro Perugino</span> (1446-1523)&mdash;his real name was
+Vannucci&mdash;was influenced both by Signorelli and by Verrocchio. In the
+studio of the latter he had probably worked with Leonardo and Lorenzo di
+Credi, so that in estimating the influences which went to form the art
+of Raphael we need not insist too strongly on the distinction between
+"Umbrian" and "Florentine."</p>
+
+<p>Raphael's first independent works (about 1500) are entirely in
+Perugino's style. They bear the general stamp of the Umbrian School, but
+in its highest beauty. His youthful efforts are essentially youthful,
+and seem to contain the earnest of a high development. Two are in the
+Berlin Museum. In the one (No. 141) called the <i>Madonna Solly</i>, the
+Madonna reads in a book; the Child on her lap holds a goldfinch. The
+other (No. 145), with heads of S. Francis and S. Jerome, is better.
+Similar to it, but much more finished and developed, is a small round
+picture, the <i>Madonna Casa Connestabile</i>, now at St. Petersburg.</p>
+
+<p>A more important picture of this time is the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">50</a></span> <i>Coronation of the
+Virgin</i>, painted for the church of S. Francesco at Perugia in 1503, but
+now in the Vatican. In the upper part, Christ and the Madonna are
+throned on clouds and surrounded by angels with musical instruments;
+underneath, the disciples stand around the empty tomb. In this lower
+part of the picture there is a very evident attempt to give the figures
+more life, motion, and enthusiastic expression than was before attempted
+in the school.</p>
+
+<p>After this, Raphael appears to have quitted the school of Perugino, and
+to have commenced an independent career: he executed at this time some
+pictures in the neighbouring town of Città di Castello. With all the
+features of the Umbrian School, they already show the freer impulse of
+his own mind,&mdash;a decided effort to individualize. The most excellent of
+these, and the most interesting example of this first period of
+Raphael's development, is the <i>Marriage of the Virgin</i> (Lo Sposalizio),
+inscribed with his name and the date 1504, now in the Brera at Milan.
+With much of the stiffness and constraint of the old school, the figures
+are noble and dignified; the countenances, of the sweetest style of
+beauty, are expressive of a tender, enthusiastic melancholy, which lends
+a peculiar charm to this subject.</p>
+
+<p>In 1504 Raphael painted the two little pictures in the Louvre, <i>S.
+George</i> and <i>S. Michael</i> (Nos. 1501-2) for the Duke of Urbino. <i>The
+Knight Dreaming</i>, a small picture, now in the National Gallery (No.
+213), is supposed to have been painted a year earlier.</p>
+
+<p>In the autumn of 1504 Raphael went to Florence. Tuscan art had now
+attained its highest perfection, and the most celebrated artists were
+there contending for the palm. From this period begins his
+emancipation</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_VI" id="PL_VI"></a>
+<a href="images/plate06.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate06_th.png" width="300" height="582" alt="PLATE VI.&mdash;PIETRO PERUGINO
+
+CENTRAL PORTION OF ALTAR-PIECE
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE VI.&mdash;PIETRO PERUGINO<br />
+
+CENTRAL PORTION OF ALTAR-PIECE<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">from the confined manner of Perugino's school; the youth ripens into
+manhood and acquires the free mastery of form.</p>
+
+<p>To this time belong the celebrated <i>Madonna del Granduca</i>, now in the
+Pitti Gallery, and another formerly belonging to the Duke of Terra
+Nuova, and now at Berlin (No. 247a). In the next year we find him
+employed on several large works in Perugia; these show for the first
+time the influence of Florentine art in the purity, fullness, and
+intelligent treatment of form; at the same time many of the motives of
+the Peruginesque school are still apparent. The famous <i>Cowper Madonna</i>,
+recently sold to an American for £140,000, also belongs to the year
+1505, when the blending of the two influences resulted in a picture
+which has been extolled by the sanest of critics as "the loveliest of
+Raphael's Virgins." An altar-piece, executed for the church of the
+Serviti at Perugia, inscribed with the date 1506, is the famous <i>Madonna
+dei Ansidei</i>, purchased for the National Gallery from the Duke of
+Marlborough. Besides the dreamy religious feeling of the School of
+Perugia, we perceive here the aim at a greater freedom, founded on
+deeper study.</p>
+
+<p>Raphael was soon back in Florence, where he remained until 1508. The
+early paintings of this period betray, as might be expected, many
+reminiscences of the Peruginesque school, both in conception and
+execution; the later ones follow in all essential respects the general
+style of the Florentines.</p>
+
+<p>One of the earliest is the <i>Virgin in the Meadow</i>, in the Belvedere
+Gallery at Vienna. Two others show a close affinity with this
+composition; one is the <i>Madonna del Cardellino</i>, in the Tribune of the
+Uffizi,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">52</a></span> in which S. John presents a goldfinch to the infant Christ. The
+other is the so-called <i>Belle Jardinière</i>, inscribed 1507, in the
+Louvre.</p>
+
+<p>It is interesting to observe Raphael's progress in the smaller pictures
+which he painted in Florence&mdash;half-figures of the Madonna and Child.
+Here again the earliest are characterised by the tenderest feeling,
+while a freer and more cheerful enjoyment of life is apparent in the
+later ones. The <i>Madonna della Casa Tempi</i>, at Munich, is the first of
+this series. In the picture from the Colonna Palace at Rome, now in the
+Berlin Museum (No. 248), the same childlike sportiveness, the same
+maternal tenderness, are developed with more harmonious refinement. A
+larger picture, belonging to the middle time of his Florentine period,
+is in the Munich Gallery&mdash;the <i>Madonna Canignani</i>, which presents a
+peculiar study of artificial grouping, in a pyramidal shape. Among the
+best pictures of the latter part of this Florentine period are the <i>S.
+Catherine</i>, now in the National Gallery, formerly in the Aldobrandini
+Gallery at Rome, and two large altar-pieces. One of these is the
+<i>Madonna del Baldacchino</i>, in the Pitti Gallery. The other, <i>The
+Entombment</i>, painted for the church of S. Francesco at Perugia, is now
+in the Borghese Gallery at Rome. This is the first of Raphael's
+compositions in which an historical subject is dramatically developed;
+but in this respect the task exceeded his powers. The composition lacks
+repose and unity of effect; the movements are exaggerated and mannered;
+but the figure of the Saviour is extremely beautiful, and may be placed
+among the greatest of the master's creations.</p>
+
+<p>About the middle of the year 1508, when only in his twenty-fifth year,
+Raphael was invited by Pope</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_VII" id="PL_VII"></a>
+<a href="images/plate07.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate07_th.png" width="300" height="432" alt="PLATE VII.&mdash;RAPHAEL
+
+THE ANSIDEI MADONNA
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE VII.&mdash;RAPHAEL<br />
+
+THE ANSIDEI MADONNA<br />
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_VIII" id="PL_VIII"></a>
+<a href="images/plate08.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate08_th.png" width="300" height="447" alt="PLATE VIII.&mdash;RAPHAEL
+
+LA BELLE JARDINIÈRE
+
+Louvre, Paris" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE VIII.&mdash;RAPHAEL<br />
+
+LA BELLE JARDINIÈRE<br />
+
+<i>Louvre, Paris</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">Julius II. to decorate the state apartments in the Vatican. With these
+works commences the third period of his development, and in these he
+reached his highest perfection. The subjects, more important than any in
+which he had hitherto been occupied, gave full scope to his powers; and
+the proximity of Michelangelo, who at this time began the painting of
+the Sistine Chapel, excited his emulation.</p>
+
+<p>At this period, just before the Reformation, the Papal power had reached
+its proudest elevation. To glorify this power&mdash;to represent Rome as the
+centre of spiritual culture&mdash;were the objects of the paintings in the
+Vatican. They cover the ceilings and walls of three chambers and a large
+saloon, which now bear the name of the "Stanze of Raphael."</p>
+
+<p>The execution of these paintings principally occupied Raphael to the
+time of his death, and were only completed by his scholars.</p>
+
+<p>In 1513 and 1514 Raphael also executed designs for the ten tapestries
+intended to adorn the Sistine Chapel, representing events from the lives
+of the apostles. Seven of these magnificent cartoons are now in the
+South Kensington Museum.</p>
+
+<p>Beside these important commissions executed for the Papal court, during
+twelve years, many claims were made on him by private persons. Two
+frescoes executed for Roman churches may be mentioned. One, in S. Maria
+della Pace, represents four Sibyls surrounded by angels, which it is
+interesting to compare with the Sibyls of Michelangelo. In each we find
+the peculiar excellence of the two great masters; Michelangelo's figures
+are grand, sublime, profound, while the fresco of the Pace exhibits
+Raphael's serene and ingenious grace. In a second fresco, the prophet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</a></span>
+Isaiah and two angels, in the church of S. Agostino at Rome, the
+comparison is less favourable to Raphael, the effort to rival the
+powerful style of Michelangelo being rather too obvious.</p>
+
+<p>Like all other artists, Raphael is at his best when, undisturbed by
+outside influences, he follows the free original impulse of his own
+mind. His peculiar element was grace and beauty of form, in so far as
+these are the expression of high moral purity.</p>
+
+<p>The following works of his third period are especially deserving of
+mention.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Aldobrandini Madonna</i>, now in the National Gallery&mdash;in which the
+Madonna is sitting on a bench, and bends down to the little S. John, her
+left arm round him. The <i>Madonna of the Duke of Alba</i>, in the Hermitage
+at St. Petersburg. <i>La Vierge au voile</i>, in the Louvre; the Madonna is
+seated in a kneeling position, lifting the veil from the sleeping Child
+in order to show him to the little S. John. The <i>Madonna della
+Seggiola</i>, in the Pitti at Florence (painted about 1516), a circular
+picture. The <i>Madonna della Tenda</i> at Munich; a composition similar to
+the last, except that the Child is represented in more lively action,
+and looking upwards.</p>
+
+<p>A series of similar, but in some instances more copious compositions,
+belong to a still later period; they are in a great measure the work of
+his scholars, painted after his drawings, and only partly worked upon by
+Raphael himself. Indeed many pictures of this class should perhaps be
+considered altogether as the productions of his school, at a time when
+that school was under his direct superintendence, and when it was
+enabled to imitate his finer characteristics in a remarkable degree.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In this class are the <i>Madonna dell'Impannata</i>, in the Pitti, which
+takes its name from the oiled-paper window in the background. The large
+picture of a <i>Holy Family</i> in the Louvre, painted in 1518, for Francis
+I., is peculiarly excellent. The whole has a character of cheerfulness
+and joy: an easy and delicate play of graceful lines, which unite in an
+intelligible and harmonious whole. Giulio Romano assisted in the
+execution.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to the large altar-pieces of his later period in which
+several Saints are assembled round the Madonna, it is to be observed
+that Raphael has contrived to place them in reciprocal relation to each
+other, and to establish a connection between them; while the earlier
+masters either ranged them next to one another in simple symmetrical
+repose, or disposed them with a view to picturesque effect.</p>
+
+<p>Of these the <i>Madonna di Foligno</i>, in the Vatican, is the earliest. In
+the upper part of the picture is the Madonna with the Child, enthroned
+on the clouds in a glory, surrounded by angels. Underneath, on one side,
+kneels the donor, behind him stands S. Jerome. On the other side is S.
+Francis, kneeling, while he points with one hand out of the picture to
+the people, for whom he entreats the protection of the Mother of Grace;
+behind him is S. John the Baptist, who points to the Madonna, while he
+looks at the spectator as if inviting him to worship her.</p>
+
+<p>The second, the <i>Madonna del Pesce</i> has much more repose and grandeur as
+whole, and unites the sublime and abstract character of sacred beings
+with the individuality of nature in the happiest manner. It is now in
+Madrid, but was originally painted for S. Domenico at Naples, about
+1513. It represents the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</a></span> Madonna and Child on a throne; on one side is
+S. Jerome; on the other the guardian angel with the young Tobias who
+carries a fish (whence the name of the picture). The artist has imparted
+a wonderfully poetic character to the subject. S. Jerome, kneeling on
+the steps of the throne, has been reading from a book to the Virgin and
+Child, and appears to have been interrupted by the entrance of Tobias
+and the Angel. The infant Christ turns towards them, but at the same
+time lays his hand on the open book, as if to mark the place. The Virgin
+turns towards the Angel, who introduces Tobias; while the latter
+dropping on his knees, looks up meekly to the Divine Infant. S. Jerome
+looks over the book to the new-comers, as if ready to proceed with his
+occupation after the interruption.</p>
+
+<p>But the most important is the famous <i>Madonna di San Sisto</i>, at Dresden.
+Here the Madonna appears as the queen of the heavenly host, in a
+brilliant glory of countless angel-heads, standing on the clouds, with
+the eternal Son in her arms; S. Sixtus and S. Barbara kneel at the
+sides. Both of them seem to connect the picture with the real
+spectators. This is a rare example of a picture of Raphael's later time,
+executed entirely by his own hand.</p>
+
+<p>Two large altar pictures still claim our attention; they also belong to
+Raphael's later period. One is the <i>Christ Bearing the Cross</i>, in
+Madrid, known by the name of <i>Lo Spasimo di Sicilia</i>, from the convent
+of Santa Maria dello Spasimo at Palermo, for which it was painted. Here,
+as in the tapestries, we again find a finely conceived development of
+the event, and an excellent composition. The other is the
+<i>Transfiguration</i>, now in the Vatican, formerly in S. Pietro at
+Montorio.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_IX" id="PL_IX"></a>
+<a href="images/plate09.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate09_th.png" width="300" height="369" alt="PLATE IX.&mdash;RAPHAEL
+
+PORTRAIT OF BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE
+
+Louvre, Paris" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE IX.&mdash;RAPHAEL<br />
+
+PORTRAIT OF BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE<br />
+
+<i>Louvre, Paris</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</a></span></p>
+<p>This was the last work of the master (left unfinished at his death); the
+one which was suspended over his coffin, a trophy of his fame, for
+public homage.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot believe myself in Rome," wrote Count Castiglione, on the death
+of the master, "now that my poor Raphael is no longer here." Men
+regarded his works with religious veneration as if God had revealed
+himself through Raphael as in former days through the prophets. His
+remains were publicly laid out on a splendid catafalque, while his last
+work, the <i>Transfiguration</i>, was suspended over his head. He was buried
+in the Pantheon, under an altar adorned by a statue of the Holy Virgin,
+a consecration offering from Raphael himself. Doubts having been raised
+as to the precise spot, a search was made in the Pantheon in 1833, and
+Raphael's bones were found; the situation agreeing exactly with Vasari's
+description of the place of interment. On the 18th of October, in the
+same year, the relics were reinterred in the same spot with great
+solemnities.</p>
+
+<p class="top3">The schools of Lombardy and the Emilia, which derive their
+characteristics from Florentine rather than from Venetian influences,
+may here be briefly mentioned before turning to the consideration of the
+Venetian School. In 1482, it will be remembered, Leonardo went to Milan,
+where he remained till the end of the century; and the extent of his
+influence may be judged from many of the productions of <span class="smcap">Bernadino Luini</span>
+(1475-1532) and <span class="smcap">Giovanni Antonio Bazzi</span>, known as <span class="smcap">Sodoma</span> (1477-1549). Of
+<span class="smcap">Ambrogio di Predis</span> we have already heard in connection with the painting
+of our version of Leonardo's <i>Virgin of the Rocks</i>. <span class="smcap">Giovanni Antonio</span>
+<span class="smcap">Boltraffio</span> (1467-1516) was a pupil of <span class="smcap">Vincenzo Foppa</span>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</a></span> but he soon
+abandoned the manner of the old Lombard School, and came under the
+influence of the great Florentine, of whom he became a most enthusiastic
+disciple.</p>
+
+<p>More independent&mdash;indeed, he is officially characterised as "an isolated
+phenomenon in Italian Art"&mdash;was <span class="smcap">Antonio Allegri</span>, commonly called
+<span class="smcap">Correggio</span>, from the place of his birth. In 1518 he settled at Parma,
+where he remained till 1530, so that he is usually catalogued as of the
+School of Parma, which for an isolated phenomenon serves as well as any
+other. Of late years his popularity has been somewhat diminished by the
+increasing demands of private collectors for works which are
+purchasable, and most of Correggio's are in public galleries. At Dresden
+are some of the most famous, notably the <i>Nativity</i>, called "La Notte,"
+from its wonderful scheme of illumination, and two or three large
+altar-pieces. The <i>Venus Mercury and Cupid</i> in our National Gallery,
+though sadly injured, is still one of his masterpieces. It was purchased
+by Charles I. with the famous collection of the Duke of Mantua. Our
+<i>Ecce Homo</i> is entitled to rank with it, as is also the little <i>Madonna
+of the Basket</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_X" id="PL_X"></a>
+<a href="images/plate10.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate10_th.png" width="300" height="506" alt="PLATE X.&mdash;CORREGGIO
+
+MERCURY, CUPID, AND VENUS
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE X.&mdash;CORREGGIO<br />
+
+MERCURY, CUPID, AND VENUS<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="VENETIAN_SCHOOLS" id="VENETIAN_SCHOOLS"></a><i>VENETIAN SCHOOLS</i></h2>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="Ia" id="Ia"></a>I</h3>
+
+<p class="head">THE VIVARINI AND BELLINI</p>
+
+
+<p>I<span class="smcap">n</span> Venice the Byzantine style appears to have offered a more stubborn
+resistance to the innovators than in Tuscany, or, in fact, in any other
+part of Italy. Few, if any, of the allegorical subjects with which
+Giotto and his scholars decorated whole buildings are to be found here,
+and the altar pictures retain longer than anywhere else the gilt
+canopied compartments and divisions, and the tranquil positions of
+single figures. It was not until a century after the death of Cimabue
+and Duccio that the real development of the Venetian School was
+manifested, so that when things did begin to move the conditions were
+not the same, and the results accordingly were something substantially
+different.</p>
+
+<p>The influence of the Byzantine style still hangs heavily over the work
+of <span class="smcap">Nicolo Semitecolo</span>, who was working in Venice in the middle of the
+fourteenth century, as may be seen in the great altar-piece ascribed to
+him in the Academy&mdash;the Coronation of the Virgin with fourteen scenes
+from the life of Christ. In this work there is little of the general
+advancement visible in other parts of Italy. It corresponds most nearly
+with the work of Duccio of Siena, though without attaining his
+excellence; while the gold hatchings and olive brown tones are still
+Byzantine.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</a></span></p>
+
+<p>An altar-piece, by <span class="smcap">Michele Giambono</span>, also in the Academy, painted during
+the first half of the fifteenth century, shows a more decided advance,
+and even anticipates some of the later excellences of the Venetian
+School. The drapery is in the long and easy lines which we see in the
+Tuscan pictures of the period, and what is especially significant, in
+view of the subsequent development of Venetian painting, the colouring
+is rich, deep, and transparent, and the flesh tints unusually soft and
+warm. This is signed by Giambono, and is one of his most important
+works, as well as the most complete, as it exists in its original state
+as an <i>ancona</i> or altar-piece divided into compartments by canopies of
+joiners' work. It is unusual in form, inasmuch as the central panel,
+though slightly larger than the pair on either side, contains but a
+single figure. This figure was generally supposed to be the Saviour, but
+it has recently been pointed out that it is S. James the Great, the
+others being SS. John the Evangelist, Philip Benizi, Michael, and Louis
+of Toulouse. Some of Giambono's finest work was in mosaic, and the walls
+and roof of the Cappella de'Mascoli in S. Mark's may be regarded as the
+highest achievement in mosaic of the early Venetian School. While this
+species of decoration had given place to fresco painting elsewhere, it
+was here, in 1430, brought to a pitch of perfection by Giambono which
+entitles this work to a prominent place in the history of painting.</p>
+
+<p>But the two chief pioneers of the early fifteenth century were Giovanni,
+or <span class="smcap">Johannes Alamanus</span>, and <span class="smcap">Antonio da Murano</span>. The former appears from his
+surname to have been of German origin, the latter belonged to the family
+of <span class="smcap">Vivarini</span>, and they used to work together on the same pictures. Two
+excellent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</a></span> examples of this combination are in the Academy at Venice.
+The one, dated 1440, is a Coronation of the Virgin, with many figures,
+including several boys, and numerous saints seated. In the heads of the
+saints we may trace the hand of Alamanus, in the Germanic type of
+countenance which recalls the style of Stephen of Cologne. A repetition
+of this, if it is not actually the original, is in S. Pantalone at
+Venice. The other picture, dated 1446, of enormous dimensions,
+represents the Virgin enthroned, beneath a canopy sustained by angels,
+with the four Fathers of the Church at her side. The colouring is fully
+as flowing and splendid as that of Giambono.</p>
+
+<p>We do not recognise here, as Kugler rightly observes, the influence of
+the school of Giotto, but rather the types of the Germanic style
+gradually assuming a new character, possibly owing to the social
+condition of Venice itself. There was something perhaps in the nature of
+a rich commercial aristocracy of the middle ages calculated to encourage
+that species of art which offered the greatest splendour and elegance to
+the eye; and this also, if possible, in a portable form; thus preferring
+the domestic altar or the dedication picture to wall decorations in
+churches. The contemporary Flemish paintings, under similar conditions,
+exhibit analogous results. With regard to colour, the depth and
+transparency observable in the works of the old Venetian School had long
+been a distinguishing feature in the Byzantine paintings on wood, and
+may therefore be traceable to this source without assuming an influence
+on the part of Padua, or from the north through Giovanni Alamanus.</p>
+
+<p>The two side panels of an altar-piece, representing severally SS. Peter
+and Jerome, and SS. Francis and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</a></span> Mark, now in the National Gallery (Nos.
+768 and 1284), are ascribed to Antonio Vivarini alone, though the centre
+panel, the Virgin and Child, now in the Poldi Pezzoli collection at
+Milan is said to be the joint work of Alamanus and Antonio. However that
+may be, there is no longer any dispute about the fascinating Adoration
+of the Kings in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum at Berlin, formerly supposed
+to be the work of Gentile da Fabriano, but now catalogued as that of
+Antonio.</p>
+
+<p>In 1450 the name of Alamanus disappears altogether, and that of
+<span class="smcap">Bartolommeo Vivarini</span>, Antonio's younger brother, replaces it in an
+inscription upon the great altar-piece commissioned by Pope Nicholas V.
+in commemoration of Cardinal Albergati, now in the Pinacoteca of
+Bologna. The change is noticeable as introducing the Paduan influence of
+Squarcione, under whom Bartolommeo had studied, instead of the northern
+influence of Alamanus, into Antonio's workshop, and while this work of
+1450, as might be supposed, bears a general resemblance to that of 1446,
+the change of partnership is at least perceptible, and had a determining
+influence on the development of the Venetian style.</p>
+
+<p>A slightly earlier work of Bartolommeo alone is a Madonna and Child
+belonging to Sir Hugh Lane, signed and dated 1448. An altar-piece in the
+Venice Academy is dated 1464, a Madonna and Four Saints, in the Frari,
+1482, and S. Barbara, in the Academy, 1490. Bartolommeo is supposed to
+have died in 1499.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Alvise</span>, or <span class="smcap">Luigi, Vivarini</span> was the son of Antonio, and though he worked
+under him and his uncle Bartolommeo, as well as under Giovanni Bellini,
+the Paduan influence is apparent in his work. He was born in 1447, and
+his first dated work is an altar-piece at Montefiorentino, in 1475. In
+the Academy at Venice is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</a></span> a Madonna dated 1480, and at Naples a Madonna
+with SS. Francis and Bernard, 1485. Another Madonna at Vienna is dated
+1489, and the large altar-piece in the Basilica at the Kaiser Friedrich
+Museum in Berlin is assigned to about the same time. This is the first
+of his works in which the influence of Bellini rather than that of his
+family is traceable, while of the "Redentore" Madonna at Venice, of
+about five years later, Mr Bernhard Bernson says that, "As a composition
+no work of the kind by Giovanni Bellini even rivals it." In 1498 he had
+advanced so far as to be spoken of as anticipating Giorgione and Titian,
+in the effect of light and in the roundness and softness of the figures
+of the <i>Resurrection</i>, at Bragora. His last work, the altar-piece at the
+Frari, was completed after his death in 1504 by his pupil Basaiti.
+Bartolommeo Montagna, Jacopo da Valenza and Lorenzo Lotto were the chief
+of his other pupils.</p>
+
+<p>In connection with the Vivarini must be mentioned <span class="smcap">Carlo Crivelli</span>, who
+studied with Bartolommeo under Antonio and Squarcione. But there was
+something fierce and uncongenial about Crivelli which takes him out of
+the main body of Venetian painters, and seems to have given him more
+pride in being made a knight than in his pictorial achievements,
+remarkable as they were. In his ornamentation of every detail with gold
+and jewels he recalls the style of Antonio Vivarini, but while the
+master used it as accessory merely, Crivelli positively revelled in it.
+An inventory of the precious stones, ornaments, fruits and flowers, and
+other detached items in the great "Demidoff Altar-Piece" in the National
+Gallery would fill several pages. Of the eight examples in this gallery
+the earliest is probably the <i>Dead Christ</i>, presumably painted in 1472.
+The Demidoff altar-piece<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</a></span> is dated 1476. The <i>Annunciation</i> (No. 739),
+which may be considered his masterpiece, was ten years later. In 1490
+Crivelli was knighted by Prince Ferdinand of Capua, and from that date
+onward he was careful to add to his signature the title <i>Miles</i>&mdash;as
+appears in our <i>Madonna and Child Enthroned</i>, with SS. Jerome and
+Sebastian&mdash;called the Madonna della Rondine:&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Carolus Crivellus Venetus Miles Pinxit.</span> This was painted for the Odoni
+Chapel in S. Francesco at Matelica, the coat of arms of the family being
+painted on the step.</p>
+
+<p>Our <i>Annunciation</i> was executed for the convent of the Santissima
+Annunziata at Ascoli, and is dated 1486. Three coats of arms on the
+front of the step at the bottom of the picture are those of the Bishop
+of Ascoli, Pope Innocent VII., the reigning Pontiff, and the City of
+Ascoli. Between these are the words <i>Libertas Ecclesiastica</i>, in
+allusion to the charter of self-government given in 1482 by the Pope to
+the citizens of Ascoli. The patron saint of the city, S. Emidius, is
+represented as a youth kneeling beside the Archangel, holding in his
+hands a model of it. The Virgin is seen through the open door of a
+house, and in an open loggia above are peacocks and other birds. Amid
+all the rich detail, the significance of the group of figures at the top
+of a flight of steps must not be missed, amongst which a child and a
+poet are the only two who are represented as noticing the mystic event.</p>
+
+<p>Another painter of the earlier half of the fourteenth century may be
+mentioned here, though as he was more famous as a medallist his
+influence on the main course of painting is not observable. <span class="smcap">Vittore
+Pisano</span>, called <span class="smcap">Pisanello</span>, was born in Verona before 1400, and died in
+1455. Of the few pictures attributed to him we are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span> fortunate in having
+two such beautiful examples as the <i>SS. Anthony and George</i> and <i>The
+Vision of S. Eustace</i> in the National Gallery. Both exhibit his two most
+noticeable characteristics, namely, the minute care and exquisite
+feeling that made him the most famous of medallists, and his wonderful
+drawing of animals. The latter, it is worth remarking, was attributed by
+a former owner to Albert Dürer. The other is signed "Pisanus"; in the
+frame are inserted casts of two of his medals, representing Leonello
+d'Este, his patron, and a profile of himself.</p>
+
+<p>Another very considerable factor in the development of Venetian painting
+was the influence of <span class="smcap">Gentile da Fabriano</span> (<i>c.</i> 1360-1430), who settled
+in Venice in the latter part of his life, and there formed the closest
+intimacy with Antonio Vivarini. The remarkable <i>Adoration of the Kings</i>
+in the Berlin Museum was until lately given to Gentile, though it is now
+catalogued as the work of Antonio. Of Gentile's education little is
+known, and of the numerous works which he executed at Fabriano, in Rome
+and in Venice very few have survived. From those that exist, however, we
+can form an estimate of his talents and of the difference between his
+earlier and later styles. To the first belong a fresco of the Madonna in
+the Cathedral at Orvieto, and the beautiful picture of the Madonna and
+saints which is now in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum at Berlin. Also the
+fine <i>Adoration of the Kings</i>, inscribed with his name and the date
+1423, formerly in the sacristy of S. Trinità at Florence, and now in the
+Accademia. This, his masterpiece, is one of the finest conceptions of
+the subject as well as one of the most excellent productions of the
+schools descended from Giotto. Of his later period the <i>Coronation of
+the Virgin</i> (called the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</a></span> <i>Quadro della Romita</i>) in the Brera gallery at
+Milan is one of the finest. In many respects his work is like that of
+Fra Angelico, and was aptly characterised by Michelangelo when he said
+that "Gentile's pictures were like his name." Apart from the influence
+of the Paduan School, which will next be noticed, the Venetian owed most
+to Gentile da Fabriano, if only as the master of Jacopo Bellini, whose
+son, Giovanni Bellini, may be regarded as the real head of the Venetian
+School as developed by his pupils Giorgione and Titian at the opening of
+the sixteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>Whether or not Giotto left any actual pupils in Padua after completing
+the frescoes in the chapel of the arena there, it must be admitted that
+the older school of painting in Padua, which centred round the church
+containing the body of S. Anthony, was an offshoot of the Florentine,
+and that as Giotto was the great leader in Florence he must be
+considered the same here; though his followers differ so much from each
+other in style that beyond their indebtedness to their founder they have
+no distinctive feature in common. But with the opening of the fifteenth
+century one particular tendency was developed under the fostering
+influence of <span class="smcap">Francesco Squarcione</span>, born in 1394, which affected in a
+very sensible degree the style of the great painters of the next
+generation in Venice. This, in a word, was the cult of the antique.</p>
+
+<p>Among the Florentines, as we have seen, the study of form was chiefly
+pursued on the principle of direct reference to nature, the especial
+object in view being an imitation in two dimensions of the actual
+appearances and circumstances of life existing in three. In the Paduan
+School it now came to be very differently developed, namely, by the
+study of the masterpieces of antique<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span> sculpture, in which the common
+forms of nature were already raised to a high ideal of beauty. This
+school has consequently the merit, as Kugler points out, of applying the
+rich results of an earlier, long-forgotten excellence in art to modern
+practice. Of a real comprehension of the idealising principle of classic
+art there does not appear any trace; what the Paduans borrowed from the
+antique was limited primarily to mere outward beauty. Accordingly in the
+earliest examples we find the drapery treated according to the antique
+costume, and the general arrangement more resembling bas-relief than
+rounded groups. The accessories display in like manner a special
+attention to antique models, particularly in the architecture, and the
+frequent introduction of festoons of fruit; while the exaggerated
+sharpness in the marking of the forms due to the combined influence of
+the study of the antique and the naturalising tendency of the time,
+sometimes borders on excess.</p>
+
+<p>The immediate cause of this almost sudden outbreak of the cult of the
+antique&mdash;whatever natural forces were behind it&mdash;was the visit of
+Squarcione to Greece, and Southern Italy, to collect specimens of the
+remains of ancient art. On his return to Padua his collection soon
+attracted a great number of pupils anxious to avail themselves of the
+advantages it offered; and by these pupils, who poured in from all parts
+of Italy, the manner of the school was afterwards spread throughout a
+great portion of the country. Squarcione himself is better known as a
+teacher than as an artist, the few of his remaining works being of no
+great importance. There is no example in the National Gallery, but of
+the work of his great pupil, Mantegna, we have as much, at any rate, as
+will serve to commemorate the master.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Andrea Mantegna</span> was born at Vicenza in 1431,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</a></span> and when no more than ten
+years old was inscribed in the guild of Padua as pupil and adopted son
+of Squarcione. As early as 1448 he had painted an altar-piece for Santa
+Sophia, now lost, and in 1452 the fresco in San Antonio. In 1455 he was
+engaged with Nicolo Pizzolo (Donatello's assistant), and others, on the
+six frescoes in the Eremitani Church at Padua. The whole of the left
+side of the chapel of SS. James and Christopher&mdash;the life of S.
+James&mdash;and the martyrdom of S. Christopher are his, and in these, his
+earliest remaining works, we already see the result of pedantic
+antiquarianism combined with his extraordinary individuality.</p>
+
+<p>In 1460 he went to Mantua, where he remained for the greater part of his
+life, visiting Florence in 1466 and Rome in 1488.</p>
+
+<p>Among his earlier works are the small <i>Adoration of the Kings</i> in the
+Uffizi at Florence, the <i>Death of the Virgin</i> and the <i>S. George</i> in the
+Venice Academy. From 1484 to 1494 he was intermittently engaged on the
+nine great cartoons of <i>The Triumph of Cæsar</i>, which are now at Hampton
+Court, having been acquired by Charles I. with many other gems from the
+Duke of Mantua's collection. On the completion of these he painted the
+celebrated <i>Madonna della Vittoria</i>, now in the Louvre&mdash;a large
+altar-piece representing a Madonna surrounded by saints, with Francesco
+Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, and his wife, kneeling at her feet. It is a
+dedication picture for a victory obtained over Charles VIII. of France
+in 1495. It is no less remarkable for its superb execution than for a
+softer treatment of the flesh than is usual in Mantegna's work. Two
+other pictures in the Louvre are, however, distinguished by similar
+qualities&mdash;the <i>Parnassus</i>, painted in 1497, and the <i>Triumph of
+Virtue</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XI" id="PL_XI"></a>
+<a href="images/plate11.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate11_th.png" width="300" height="523" alt="PLATE XI.&mdash;ANDREA MANTEGNA
+
+THE MADONNA DELLA VITTORIA
+
+Louvre, Paris" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XI.&mdash;ANDREA MANTEGNA<br />
+
+THE MADONNA DELLA VITTORIA<br />
+
+<i>Louvre, Paris</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</a></span></p>
+<p>In our own collection we have <i>The Agony in the Garden</i>, painted in
+1459&mdash;to which I shall refer presently&mdash;two monochrome paintings (Nos.
+1125 and 1145), the beautiful <i>Virgin and Child Enthroned</i>, with SS.
+Mary Magdalen and John the Baptist, which is comparable with the more
+famous Louvre <i>Madonna</i>, and, lastly, the <i>Triumph of Scipio</i>, in
+monochrome, painted for Francesco Cornaro, a Venetian nobleman,
+completed in 1506, only a few months before the painter's death. In this
+we see that Mantegna's antiquarianism was not simply a youthful phase,
+but lasted till the very end of his career. The subject is the reception
+of the Phrygian mother of the gods among the recognised divinities of
+the Roman State, as is indicated on the plinth by the inscription. In
+the centre is Claudia Quinta about to kneel before the bust of the
+goddess. Behind is Scipio, and in the background are monuments to his
+family. The composition includes twenty-two figures. It is significant
+that the subject and its treatment are so entirely classic as only to be
+appreciated by references to Latin literature.</p>
+
+<p>Another significance attaches to the <i>Agony in the Garden</i> above
+mentioned, which is one of the very earliest, as the <i>Scipio</i> is the
+very latest, of Mantegna's pictures, being painted before he left Padua
+to go to Mantua. In this we find that the original suggestion for the
+design appears to have been taken from a drawing in the sketch-book of
+his father-in-law, Jacopo Bellini, which is now in the British Museum;
+and the same design appears to have served Giovanni Bellini in the
+composition of the picture in our gallery (No. 726). This takes us back
+to Venice, and accounts for the Paduan influence traceable in the works
+of the Bellini family and their pupils.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Jacopo Bellini</span>, whose considerable talents have been somewhat obscured
+by the fame of his two sons, Gentile and Giovanni, was originally a
+pupil of Gentile da Fabriano, after whom he named his eldest son. He was
+working in Padua in the middle of the fifteenth century, in rivalry with
+Squarcione, and in 1453 his daughter Nicolosia married Andrea Mantegna.
+Thus it happened that both of his sons came under the influence of
+Mantegna, and evidently, too, of the sculptor Donatello, when working at
+Padua between 1450 and 1460.</p>
+
+<p>Very few authentic pictures by Jacopo are known to us. <i>A Crucifixion</i>
+(much repainted) was in the sacristy of the Episcopal Palace at Verona;
+and another, which recalls the treatment of his master, Gentile da
+Fabriano, at Lovere, near Bergamo. In the sketch-book above mentioned,
+the contents of which consist of sacred subjects, and studies from the
+antique, both in architecture and in costume, we see the peculiar
+tendency of the Paduan School expressed in the most complete and
+comprehensive manner. These drawings constitute the most remarkable link
+of connection between Mantegna and the sons of Jacopo Bellini, all three
+of whom must have studied from them. The book was inherited by Gentile
+on his mother's death, and bequeathed by him to his brother on condition
+that he should finish the picture of <i>S. Mark</i>, on which Gentile was
+engaged at the time of his death.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Giovanni Bellini</span> was born in 1428 or 1430 and lived to 1516. Albert
+Dürer, writing from Venice in 1506, says that "he is very old, but is
+still the best in painting."</p>
+
+<p>The greater number of Bellini's pictures are to be found in the
+galleries and churches in Venice, all of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</a></span> those which are dated being
+the work of his old age. Of his earlier pictures we are fortunate in
+having two fine examples in the National Gallery, <i>Christ's Agony in the
+Garden</i> (No. 726) and <i>The Blood of the Redeemer</i> (No. 1233). In both of
+these the influence of his famous brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna, is
+traceable,&mdash;the former being till lately attributed to him. Both
+Giovanni and Gentile worked in Padua, where Mantegna was established, in
+1460 or thereabouts, and where another influence, that of the sculptor
+Donatello, must have had its effect on the young brothers. Similar in
+character, and even more beautiful in some respects, is the <i>Redeemer</i>,
+a single half figure in a landscape, recently acquired for the
+Louvre&mdash;the first authentic example of the master in that collection.</p>
+
+<p>In 1464, Giovanni had returned to Venice, and it was some years before
+the severe Paduan influence melted before "the sensuous feeling of the
+true Venetian temperament." In 1475, however, the arrival of Antonello
+da Messina in Venice, bringing with him the practice of painting in oil,
+effected a revolution, in which Giovanni, if not one of the foremost,
+was certainly one of the most successful in adopting the new method. His
+later works, so far from showing any diminution of power, may be said to
+anticipate the Venetian style of the sixteenth century in the clearest
+manner. One of the chief, dated 1488, is the large altar-piece in the
+sacristy of S. Maria di Frari, a <i>Madonna Enthroned</i> with two angels and
+four saints. The two little angels are of the utmost beauty; the one is
+playing on a lute, and listens with head inclined to hear whether the
+instrument is in tune; the other is blowing a pipe. The whole is
+perfectly finished and of a splendid effect of colour. To the year 1486
+belongs a <i>Madonna Enthroned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">72</a></span> with Six Saints</i>, now in the Academy at
+Venice. The famous head of the Doge Loredano in the National Gallery
+must have been painted in or after 1501. In 1507, he completed the large
+picture of <i>S. Mark Preaching at Alexandria</i>, now in the Brera Gallery
+at Milan, begun by his brother Gentile. Within three years of his death,
+namely in 1513, he could produce such a masterwork as the altar-piece in
+S. Giovanni Crisostomo. His last work, the landscape in which was
+finished by Titian, is dated 1514. This is the famous <i>Bacchanal</i> now in
+the collection of the Duke of Northumberland.</p>
+
+<p>The influence of Bellini on the Venetian School was paramount, and his
+noble example helped more than anything else to develop the excellences
+observable in the works of Cimada Conegliano, Vincenzo Catena, Lorenzo
+Lotto, Palma Vecchio and Basaiti, to say nothing of his great pupils
+Titian and Giorgione. It is impossible to conjecture what course the
+genius of this younger generation would have taken without his guidance,
+but when we consider that in 1500 Bellini was seventy years old, and had
+stored within his mind the experience of his early association with his
+brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna in Padua, the introduction of the use of
+oil paints by Antonello da Messina in 1475, since which date he had
+sedulously developed the new practice; when we also take into account
+the dignity and gravity of his own works, and the indication they afford
+of the man himself, it is not difficult to judge how much his pupils and
+successors owed to him.</p>
+
+<p>The works of <span class="smcap">Gentile Bellini</span>, the elder brother of Giovanni, are of less
+importance, but of considerable interest, especially in view of his
+journey to Constantinople in 1479 at the request of the Sultan, whose
+portrait he painted there in the following year. A replica</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XII" id="PL_XII"></a>
+<a href="images/plate12.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate12_th.png" width="300" height="410" alt="PLATE XII.&mdash;GIOVANNI BELLINI
+
+THE DOGE LOREDANO
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XII.&mdash;GIOVANNI BELLINI<br />
+
+THE DOGE LOREDANO<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">73</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">of this portrait has been bequeathed to the National Gallery by Sir
+Henry Layard, and it is to be hoped that the difficulties raised by the
+Italian government as to its removal from Venice will shortly be
+overcome. The picture of <i>S. Mark Preaching at Alexandria</i> already
+mentioned as having been finished by Giovanni, is remarkable for the
+Oriental costumes of all the figures in it. Gentile's pictures are often
+ascribed to his brother; in two examples at the National Gallery (Nos.
+808 and 1440) there is actually a false signature on a cartellino. In
+the latter instance Messrs Ludwig and Molmenti are still of opinion that
+the picture is the work of Giovanni.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Vincenzo Catena</span> (<i>c.</i> 1470-1530) is not known to have been a pupil of
+Bellini, but he began by so modelling his style upon him that one of his
+works in the National Gallery was until quite lately officially ascribed
+to him, namely the <i>S. Jerome in his Study</i>. Another, a later work, <i>A
+Warrior Adoring the Infant Christ</i> was similarly ascribed to Giorgione.
+This is a proof that Catena was very susceptible to various influences,
+and was "an artist of extraordinary suppleness of mind, never too old to
+learn or to appreciate new ideals and new sentiments." In a manner more
+his own is the <i>Madonna with Four Saints</i> in the Berlin Gallery (No.
+19). The <i>S. Jerome</i> and the <i>Warrior</i> are among the most popular
+pictures in the National Gallery&mdash;partly perhaps on account of their
+supposed illustrious parentage, but by no means entirely. A painter who
+could so absorb the characteristics of two such masters must needs be a
+master himself.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Cima da Conegliano</span>, so called from his birthplace in Friuli&mdash;the rocky
+height of which serves as a background in some of his pictures&mdash;settled
+in Venice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">74</a></span> in 1490, when he was about thirty years old. The influence of
+Bellini may be seen in the temperamental as well as the technical
+qualities of his work, which is distinguished by sound drawing and
+proportion, fine and brilliant colour, as well as by sympathetic types
+of countenance. One of his best and earliest pictures is the <i>S. John
+the Baptist</i> with four other saints, in Santa Maria del Orto in Venice.
+Another is the <i>Madonna with S. Jerome and S. Louis</i>, now in the Vienna
+Gallery. A smaller but peculiarly attractive piece is the <i>S. Anianus of
+Alexandria</i> healing a shoemaker's wounded hand, at Berlin, distinguished
+for its beautiful clear colours and the life-like character of the
+heads.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Andrea Previtali</span>, born in Bergamo in 1480, came to Venice to study under
+Bellini, whom he succeeded in imitating with remarkable success. <i>The
+Mystic Marriage of S. Catherine</i> (No. 1409) in the National Gallery was
+formerly attributed to Bellini. If he had not the originality to carry
+the art any farther, his pictures are nevertheless a decided and very
+agreeable proof of the advance that was being made in it at the
+beginning of the sixteenth century, before the full splendour of
+Giorgione and Titian had unfolded.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Marco Basaiti</span>, though probably not a pupil of Bellini, nevertheless
+acquired many of his characteristics. The picture in the National
+Gallery known as <i>The Madonna of the Meadow</i> was until lately assigned
+to Bellini, and another of his, in the Giovanelli Palace at Venice,
+which is identical in technique, tone, and general effect with this one,
+is still so ascribed. Whether or not he learnt from Bellini, he was
+certainly an assistant to Alvise Vivarini, on whose death he completed
+the large altar-piece in the Church of S. Maria<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</a></span> de Friari at Venice,
+representing <i>S. Ambrose surrounded by Saints</i>. His <i>Christ on the Mount
+of Olives</i> and <i>The Calling of Zebedee</i>, both dated 1510, are now in the
+Academy at Venice, and together with the <i>Portrait of a Man</i>, dated
+1521, in the Bergamo Gallery, and <i>The Assumption</i> in S. Pietro Martire
+at Murano, may be considered his best performances.</p>
+
+<p>More remote from Bellini, yet not so far as to be entirely free from his
+influence in some of their more important compositions, was the school
+formed by <span class="smcap">Lazzaro di Bastiani</span> or <span class="smcap">Sebastiani</span>, of which the chief ornament
+was Vittore Carpaccio, and among the lesser ones Giovanni Mansueti and
+Benedetto Diana. The history of this independent group of painters has
+only of late years been elucidated; Kugler, after a page devoted to
+Carpaccio, dismissed them with the remark that Mansueti and Bastiani
+were both pupils of Carpaccio, and that Benedetto Diana was "less
+distinguished." Our national collection was without any example until
+1896, when Mansueti's <i>Symbolic representation of the Crucifixion</i> was
+purchased. In 1905 the National Art-Collections Fund secured Bastiani's
+<i>Virgin and Child</i>, and in 1910 Sir Claude Phillips presented Diana's
+<i>Christ Blessing</i>. Alas! that we are still without anything from the
+hand of Vittore Carpaccio. Seven portraits by Moroni do not fill a gap
+like this.</p>
+
+<p>The name of Lazzaro de Bastiani first occurs in Venice as a witness to
+his brother's will in 1449, and as early as 1460 he was painting an
+altar-piece for the Church of San Samuele. Ten years later, the brothers
+of the Scuolo di San Marco ordered a picture of the <i>Story of David</i>
+from him, promising him the same payment as they gave to Jacobo Bellini,
+who had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</a></span> working for them with his two sons Gentile and Giovanni.
+In 1474, another proof of his rank and repute as a painter is afforded
+by a letter from a gentleman in Constantinople, asking for a picture by
+him, but that Giovanni Bellini should paint it in the event of Bastiani
+being already dead. He was thus, it would seem, preferred to Bellini,
+though it will be remembered that five years later, when the Sultan
+expressed the wish that a distinguished portrait-painter should be sent
+him from Venice, it was Gentile Bellini who was nominated. All the same,
+Gentile was a portrait-painter, and Bastiani was not; and it is fairly
+evident that the latter was at least in the front rank. One of his
+best-known pictures the <i>Vergine dai begli occhi</i> in the Ducal Palace at
+Venice used to be attributed to Giovanni Bellini; but though he appears
+to have drawn inspiration for his larger and more important compositions
+from Jacobo Bellini, his style was chiefly developed through that of
+Giambono. His most important work is now in the Academy at Vienna&mdash;an
+altar-piece painted for the Church of Corpus Domini, Venice, <i>S.
+Veneranda Enthroned</i>. In the Imperial Gallery at Vienna are a <i>Last
+Communion</i> and <i>Funeral of S. Girolamo</i>. In the Academy at Venice are
+<i>S. Anthony of Padua</i>, seated between the branches of a walnut-tree,
+with Cardinal Bonaventura and Brother Leo on either side, a large
+picture of a <i>Miracle of the Holy Cross</i>, and a remarkable rendering of
+<i>The Madonna Kneeling</i>, the child being laid under an elaborate canopy.
+An <i>Entombment</i> in the Church of S. Antonino at Venice is reminiscent of
+Giovanni Bellini at his best.</p>
+
+<p>In 1508, the name of <span class="smcap">Vittore Carpaccio</span> occurs with that of Bastiani in
+connection with the frescoes of Giorgione upon the façade of the Fondaco
+de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span> Tedeschi, about which there was a dispute. To Carpaccio we are
+indebted for the most vivid realization of the contemporary life of
+Venice; for although his subjects were nominally taken from sacred
+history or legend, they are treated in a thoroughly secular fashion,
+giving the clearest idea of the buildings, people, and costume of the
+Venice of his time, with the greatest variety and richest development.
+His object is not only to represent single events, but a complete scene,
+and while we observe this characteristic in one or two pictures by the
+Bellini, Carpaccio not only shows it much oftener, but carries it to a
+much fuller development&mdash;possibly influenced by the Netherlandish
+masters.</p>
+
+<p>Many of his works are in the Academy at Venice; eight large pictures,
+painted between 1490 and 1495, represent the history of S. Ursula and
+the eleven thousand virgins. Such a wealth of charming material might
+have embarrassed a less capable painter, but "the monotonous incident
+which forms the groundwork of many of them," as Kugler coldly puts it,
+"is throughout varied and elevated by a free style of grouping and by
+happy moral allusions." Another series is that of the <i>Miracles of the
+Holy Cross</i>, among which may be especially noticed the cure of a man
+possessed by a devil; the scene is laid in the loggia of a Venetian
+palace, and is watched from below by a varied group of figures on the
+Canal and its banks. Larger and broader treatment may be seen in the
+<i>Presentation in the Temple</i>, painted in 1510, which is also in the
+Academy, and in the altar-piece of <i>S. Vitale</i>, dated 1514. This last
+brings Carpaccio into closer comparison with the later Venetian
+painters, being in the nature of a <i>Santa Conversazione</i>, where the holy
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</a></span>personages are grouped in some definite relation to each other, and not
+independent figures.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Palma Vecchio</span> (1480-1528), so called to distinguish him from Giacomo
+Palma the younger&mdash;Palma Giovane,&mdash;was so much influenced by Giorgione
+and Titian that his indebtedness to Bellini appears to have been
+comparatively slight. The beautiful <i>Portrait of a Poet</i> in the National
+Gallery has been attributed both to Giorgione and to Titian.</p>
+
+<p>The number of pictures which are now permitted by the experts to be
+called Giorgione's is so small, that we may learn more about him as an
+influence on the work of other painters&mdash;especially Titian&mdash;than from
+the meagre materials available for his own biography. The only
+unquestioned examples of his work are three pictures at the Uffizi, <i>The
+Trial of Moses</i>, <i>The Judgment of Solomon</i>, and <i>The Knight of Malta</i>;
+the <i>Venus</i> at Dresden; <i>The Three Philosophers</i> at Vienna; and the
+famous <i>Concert Champêtre</i> in the Louvre. But until the critics deprive
+him even of these, we are able to agree that "his capital achievement
+was the invention of the modern spirit of lyrical passion and romance in
+pictorial art, and his magical charm has never been equalled."</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="IIa" id="IIa"></a>II</h3>
+
+<p class="head">TIZIANO VECELLIO</p>
+
+
+<p>T<span class="smcap">itian</span> occupies almost, if not quite, as important a place in the
+history of painting as does Shakespeare in that of literature. His fame,
+his popularity, the wide range as well as the immense quantity of his
+works, entitle him to be ranked with our poet, if only for the</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XIII" id="PL_XIII"></a>
+<a href="images/plate13.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate13_th.png" width="300" height="237" alt="PLATE XIII.&mdash;GIORGIONE
+
+VENETIAN PASTORAL
+
+Louvre, Paris" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XIII.&mdash;GIORGIONE<br />
+
+VENETIAN PASTORAL<br />
+
+<i>Louvre, Paris</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">79</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">enormous influence they have both exercised on posterity: and without
+carrying the parallel farther than the limits imposed by the difference
+of their circumstances and their method of expression, it may fairly be
+said that Titian, in painting, stands for us to-day much as Shakespeare
+stands for in letters. "Titian," says M. Caro Delvaille,<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor" title="Go to footnote 2.">[2]</a> "is the
+father of modern painting. As the blood of the patriarchs of old infused
+the veins of a whole race, so the genius of the most productive of
+painters was destined to infuse those of artists through all the ages
+even to the present day. He bequeathed, in his enormous <i>&oelig;uvre</i>, a
+heritage in which generations of painters have participated."</p>
+
+<p>Not only was he the father of modern painting, but he was himself the
+first modern painter, just as Shakespeare was, to all present intents
+and purposes, the first modern writer. Among a thousand readers of
+Shakespeare, there is possibly not more than one who has ever read a
+line of Chaucer, or who has ever heard of any of his other predecessors.
+So it is with Titian. To the connoisseur, Titian is one of the latest
+painters; to the public he is the earliest. "In certain of his
+portraits," we read in the National Gallery Catalogue, "he ranks with
+the supreme masters; in certain other aspects he is seen as the greatest
+academician, as perhaps he was the first."</p>
+
+<p>As it happens, too, Titian stands in much the same relation to Giorgione
+as Shakespeare did to Marlowe. Giorgione was really the great innovator,
+and Giorgione died young, leaving Titian to carry on the work. It has
+always been supposed that Titian and Giorgione, like Marlowe and
+Shakespeare, were born within the same year; but in this respect the
+parallel is no longer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">80</a></span> admissible, as Mr Herbert Cook has shown to the
+verge of actual proof that the story of Titian being born in 1577, and
+having lived to be ninety-nine years old, is unworthy of acceptance. If
+this were merely a question of biography, it would not be worth dwelling
+upon; but as it seriously affects the whole study of early Venetian
+painting, it is necessary to point out that the probability, according
+to a critical study of all the evidence available, is that Titian was
+not born till 1488 or 1489, and was thus really the pupil rather than
+the contemporary of Giorgione, and therefore more slightly influenced by
+Giovanni Bellini than has been generally supposed.</p>
+
+<p>Without going into all the evidence adduced by Mr Cook (<i>Reviews and
+Appreciations,</i> Heinemann, 1913) it is nevertheless pretty evident that
+in the account given by his friend and contemporary, Lodovico Dolce,
+published in 1557, we have the most authentic story of Titian's early
+years, and from this it is quite clear that Titian was considerably
+younger than Giorgione. "Being born at Cadore," he writes, "of
+honourable parents, he was sent, when a child of nine years old, by his
+father to Venice, to the house of his father's brother, in order that he
+might be put under some proper master to study painting; his father
+having perceived in him even at that tender age strong marks of genius
+towards the art.... His uncle directly carried the child to the house of
+Sebastanio, father of the <i>gentilissimo</i> Valerio and of Francesco
+Zuccati (distinguished masters of the art of mosaic, ...) to learn the
+principles of the art. From them he was removed to Gentile Bellini,
+brother of Giovanni, but much inferior to him, who at that time was at
+work with his brother in the Grand Council Chamber. But Titian, impelled
+by nature to greater excellence and perfection in his art, could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</a></span> not
+endure following the dry and laboured manner of Gentile, but designed
+with boldness and expedition. Whereupon Gentile told him he would make
+no progress in painting because he diverged so much from the old style.
+Thereupon Titian left the stupid Gentile and found means to attach
+himself to Giovanni Bellini; but not perfectly pleased with his manner,
+he chose Giorgio da Castel Franco. Titian, then, drawing and painting
+with Giorgione, as he was called, became in a short time so accomplished
+in art that when Giorgione was painting (in 1507-8) the façade of the
+Fondaco de'Tedeschi, or Exchange of the German merchants, which looks
+towards the Grand Canal, Titian was allotted the other side which faces
+the market place, being at the time scarcely twenty years old. Here he
+represented a Judith of wonderful design and colour, so remarkable
+indeed, that when the work came to be uncovered it was commonly thought
+to be the work of Giorgione, and all the latter's friends congratulated
+him (Giorgione) as being by far the best thing he had produced.
+Whereupon Giorgione, in great displeasure, replied that the work was
+from the hand of his pupil, who showed already how he could surpass his
+master and (what is more) Giorgione shut himself up for some days at
+home, as if in despair, seeing that a young (<i>i.e.</i> younger) man knew
+more than he did."</p>
+
+<p>Again, in speaking of the famous altar-piece&mdash;the <i>Assumption</i>, now in
+the Academy at Venice&mdash;painted by Titian in 1516, Dolce mentions him
+twice as "giovinetto." "Not long afterwards he was commissioned to paint
+a large picture for the high altar of the Church of the Frate Minori,
+where Titian, quite a young man, painted in oil the Virgin ascending to
+Heaven.... This was the first public work which he painted in oil,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</a></span> and
+he did it in a very short time, and while still a young man."</p>
+
+<p>Vasari's account of Titian's early years is substantially the same, but
+unfortunately opens with the statement that he was "born in the year
+1480." This might easily have been a slip of the pen or a printer's
+mistake for 1488 or 1489, and subsequent passages in the life bear out
+this supposition. But partly because Titian was a Venetian and not a
+Florentine, and partly, no doubt, because he was still alive, and had
+been producing picture after picture for over sixty years at the time
+Vasari published his second edition in 1568, the whole account is so
+confused and inaccurate that its credit has been severely shaken by
+modern critics, with the result that it is hardly nowadays considered
+authentic in any respect. The following extracts, however, there seems
+no reason to question:&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"About the year 1507, Giorgione not being satisfied [with the
+old-fashioned methods of Bellini and others] began to give his works an
+unwonted softness and relief, painting them in a very beautiful manner."
+And a little later "Having seen the manner of Giorgione, Titian early
+resolved to abandon that of Gian Bellino, although well grounded
+therein. He now, therefore, devoted himself to this purpose, and in a
+short time so closely imitated Giorgione that his pictures were
+sometimes taken for those of this master, as will be related below.
+Increasing in age, judgment and facility of hand, our young artist
+executed numerous works in fresco.... At the time when he began to adopt
+the manner of Giorgione, being then not more than eighteen, he took the
+portrait of a gentleman of the Barberigo family, who was his friend, and
+this was considered very beautiful, the colouring being true and
+natural, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</a></span> hair so distinctly painted that each one could be counted,
+as might also the stitches in a satin doublet painted in the same work;
+in a word, it was so well and carefully done that it would have been
+taken for a work of Giorgione if Titian had not written his name on the
+dark ground."</p>
+
+<p>With this we may leave the question of Titian's birth date, and consider
+the exceptional interest attaching to the question of this Barberigo
+portrait. According to Mr. Cook, and also, under reserve, to several
+other eminent authorities, it is no other than the so-called <i>Ariosto</i>,
+which was purchased for the National Gallery in 1904. The chief
+difficulties in deciding the question are, first, whether it is possible
+that a youth of eighteen could have painted such a masterpiece, second,
+that the signature <i>Titianus</i> is supposed not to have been used by the
+artist before about 1520, and lastly, that the head, at any rate, is
+decidedly more in the manner of Giorgione than that of Titian. This
+last, of course, did not trouble Vasari, and his testimony is therefore
+all the more valuable; but all difficulties vanish if we accept Mr.
+Cook's theory that the portrait was begun by Giorgione in 1508, was left
+incomplete at his sudden death in 1510, and finished by Titian in 1520.
+That is to say, the head and general design is that of Giorgione, the
+marvellous finish of the sleeve and other parts that of Titian.</p>
+
+<p>Of works left unfinished at a master's death and completed by a pupil
+there are numerous instances; the famous <i>Bacchanal</i> at Alnwick is one
+which takes us a step further in Titian's career. This was begun by
+Giovanni Bellini, and Titian was invited by the Duke of Ferrara, in
+1516, to finish it. The landscape is entirely his. To complete the
+decoration of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</a></span> apartment in which the picture was hung, he was
+called upon to paint two others of the same size, one the <i>Triumph of
+Bacchus</i>, or as it is usually called <i>Bacchus and Ariadne</i> (now in the
+National Gallery) and the other a similar subject, the <i>Bacchanal</i>, now
+in the Prado (No. 418, formerly 450).</p>
+
+<p>Ridolfi, in his life of Titian characterises our picture as one to whose
+unparalleled merits he is inadequate to do justice; "There is," he says,
+"such a graceful expression in the figure of Ariadne, such beauty in the
+children&mdash;so strongly marked both in the looks and attitudes is the
+joyous character of the licentious votaries of Bacchus&mdash;the roundness
+and correct drawing of the man entwined with snakes, the magnificence of
+the sky and landscape, the sporting play of the leaves and branches of
+the most vivid tints, and the detailed herbage on the ground tending to
+enliven the scene, and the rich tone of colour throughout, form
+altogether such a whole that hardly any other work of Titian can stand
+in competition with it."</p>
+
+<p>In the composition of the second picture, <i>The Bacchanal</i> at Madrid, a
+number of the votaries of Bacchus are assembled on the bank of a
+rivulet, flowing with red wine from a hill in the distance; some of them
+are distributing the liquor to their associates, while a nymph and two
+men are dancing. The nymph is supposed to be a portrait of Violante,
+Titan's mistress, as he has painted, in allusion to her name, a violet
+on her breast and his own name round her arm. Her light drapery is
+raised by the breeze, and discovers the beautiful form and <i>morbidezza</i>
+of her limbs. In the foreground Ariadne lies asleep, her head resting on
+a rich vase in place of a pillow.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor" title="Go to footnote 3.">[3]</a></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XIV" id="PL_XIV"></a>
+<a href="images/plate14.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate14_th.png" width="300" height="378" alt="PLATE XIV.&mdash;TITIAN
+
+PORTRAIT SAID TO BE OF ARIOSTO
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XIV.&mdash;TITIAN<br />
+
+PORTRAIT SAID TO BE OF ARIOSTO<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">85</a></span></p>
+<p>Cumberland says that Raphael Mengs, who lived long at Madrid at the time
+when this picture was in the reception room of the New Palace, was of
+opinion that Titian's superior taste was nowhere more strikingly
+displayed, and remarks that he himself could never pass by it without
+surprise and admiration, more particularly excited by the beauty of the
+sleeping Ariadne in the foreground.</p>
+
+<p>Respecting the merits of both pictures the testimony of Agostino
+Carracci should not be omitted; when he viewed them in the possession of
+the Duke of Ferrara he declared that he considered them the first in the
+world, and that no one could say he was acquainted with the most
+marvellous works of art without having seen them.</p>
+
+<p>Commenting upon another picture of Titian's early period, Sir Joshua
+Reynolds delivers himself of the following criticisms on Titian as
+compared with Raphael, "It is to Titian that we must turn," he says, "to
+find excellence in regard to colour, and light and shade in the highest
+degree. He was both the first and the greatest master of this art; by a
+few strokes he knew how to mark the general image and character of
+whatever object he attempted, and produced by this alone a truer
+representation of nature than his master, Giovanni Bellini, or any of
+his predecessors, who finished every hair. His greatest object was to
+express the general colour, to preserve the masses of light and shade,
+and to give by opposition the idea of that solidity which is inseparable
+from natural objects....</p>
+
+<p>"Raphael and Titian seemed to have looked at nature for different
+purposes; they both had the power of extending their view to the whole,
+but one looked only at the general effect as produced by form, the
+other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">86</a></span> as produced by colour. We cannot refuse Titian the merit of
+attending to the general form of the object, as well as colour; but his
+deficiency lay&mdash;a deficiency at least when he is compared with
+Raphael&mdash;in not possessing the power, like him, of correcting the form
+of his model by any general idea of beauty in his own mind. Of this his
+<i>St. Sebastian with other Saints</i> (in the Vatican) is a particular
+instance. This figure appears to be a most exact representation both of
+the form and colour of the model which he then happened to have before
+him, and has all the force of nature, and the colouring of flesh itself;
+but unluckily the model was of a bad form, especially the legs. Titian
+has with much care preserved these defects, as he has imitated the
+beauty and brilliancy of the colouring...."</p>
+
+<p>Of the Sebastian, Vasari says very much the same as Reynolds. "He is
+nude," he writes, "and has been exactly copied from the life without the
+slightest admixture of art, no efforts for the sake of beauty have been
+sought in any part&mdash;trunk or limbs; all is as nature left it, so that it
+might seem to be a sort of cast from the life. It is nevertheless
+considered very fine, and the figure of our Lady with the infant in her
+arms, whom all the other figures are looking at, is also accounted most
+beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>Two more of the pictures of Titian's earliest period are in the National
+Gallery&mdash;the <i>Christ appearing to Mary Magdalen</i> (No. 270), and the
+<i>Holy Family</i> (No. 4). The former is ascribed to about the year 1514,
+partly on the ground that the group of buildings in the landscape is
+identical, line for line, with that in the Dresden <i>Venus</i> painted by
+Giorgione but completed by Titian after his death. The same landscape
+also occurs in the beautiful little <i>Cupid</i> in the Vienna</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XV" id="PL_XV"></a>
+<a href="images/plate15.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate15_th.png" width="300" height="223" alt="PLATE XV.&mdash;TITIAN
+
+THE HOLY FAMILY
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XV.&mdash;TITIAN<br />
+
+THE HOLY FAMILY<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">Academy, and, as Mr Herbert Cook suggests, possibly represents some
+cherished spot in Titian's memory connected with his mountain home at
+Pieve di Cadore.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Holy Family</i>, above mentioned, is a most charming example of the
+<i>sacra conversazione</i> as developed by Titian from the somewhat formal
+and austere conception of Bellini and his contemporaries into something
+eminently characteristic of the secular side of his genius. The very
+titles of two of his most beautiful and most famous pictures of this
+sort proclaim the hold they have taken on the popular mind. The one is
+the <i>Madonna of the Cherries</i>, in the Vienna Gallery. The other is the
+<i>Madonna with the Rabbit</i>, in the Louvre. In our picture the
+distinguishing feature is the kneeling shepherd, with his little
+water-cask slung on his belt, who puts us at once in touch with the
+whole scene by the simple appeal to our common human experience. Raphael
+could move our religious feelings to revere the godhead in the child,
+but could seldom, like Titian, stir our human emotions and bring home to
+us that Christ was born on earth for our sakes.</p>
+
+<p>If this particular characteristic of Titian were confined to the
+pastoral setting of these Holy Conversations, it might be taken as
+merely accidental, and without further significance than should be
+accorded to a youthful fancy. But in the wonderful <i>Entombment</i>, now in
+the Louvre, in which he displays "the full splendour of his early
+maturity," the human element is such an important factor in the
+presentment of the divine tragedy that even a painter, M.
+Caro-Delvaille, must postpone his description of the picture to
+sentences like these:&mdash;"Sur un ciel tourmenté," he writes, in phrases
+which it is impossible to render adequately in English, "se profile le
+groupe tragique. Aucun<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</a></span> geste superflu; le drame est intérieur. La
+Douleur plane dans l'air alourdi du crépuscule, comme une aile
+fatale&mdash;Jésus est mort! Le grand cadavre livide, que les apôtres
+angoissés soutiennent, n'a rien dans sa robustesse inerte de la
+dépouille émaciée des Christs mystiques. Le fils de Dieu semble un
+patriarche douloureusement frappé par le décret d'en haut.</p>
+
+<p>"Une âpreté primitive, où les larmes se cachent comme une faiblesse,
+communique a l'&oelig;uvre un pathétique si poignant que le mystère de la
+mort s'étend jusqu'à nous.</p>
+
+<p>"La Vierge et la Madeleine sont là. Elle, la Mère, doute de la réalité,
+tant elle souffre! Son regard fixe sur le corps chéri, elle ne peut
+croire que tout est consommé. La pécheresse pitoyable la prend dans ses
+bras pour essayer de l'arracher à l'horreur de cette vision.</p>
+
+<p>"Drame humain et divin! ne sont-ce point des fils qui ramènent le
+cadavre de leur père à la poussière? Tous ceux qui passèrent par ces
+épreuves se souviennent de ce deuil qui semble se prolonger dans la
+nature entière."</p>
+
+<p>Titian's first period may be said to end in 1530, by which time he had
+completed the famous <i>Peter Martyr</i>, which was destroyed by fire in
+1867. In 1530, too, Titian's wife died. This event of itself need not be
+supposed to have greatly influenced his career, as there is no evidence
+of her having appealed to his artistic nature as did his daughter
+Lavinia. As it happened, however, a more certain influence was nearly
+coincident with this event&mdash;the arrival in Venice of the notorious
+Aretine, who, chiefly as it appears, with an eye to business, entered
+into the most intimate relations with Titian. The accession of the
+sculptor</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XVI" id="PL_XVI"></a>
+<a href="images/plate16.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate16_th.png" width="300" height="209" alt="PLATE XVI.&mdash;TITIAN
+
+THE ENTOMBMENT
+
+Louvre, Paris" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XVI.&mdash;TITIAN<br />
+
+THE ENTOMBMENT<br />
+
+<i>Louvre, Paris</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">Sansovino to the comradeship earned for the group the name of the
+Triumvirate.</p>
+
+<p>So far from Titian being corrupted by the society of Aretine, there is
+direct evidence in one of the poet's letters to him that he was not.
+"You must come to our feast to-night," he writes, "but I may as well
+warn you that you had better leave early, as I know how particular you
+are about certain things." Nor is there anything in the artist's works
+of this next period&mdash;which we may roughly date from 1530 to 1550, that
+betrays a more serious devotion to the sensual side of life than can be
+accounted for by the demands of the high and mighty patrons that Aretine
+was soon to find for him. As an artist he looked upon woman as a
+beautiful creature, as a man he most probably never troubled about her,
+or was troubled by her. There is no proof that any of his pictures are
+rightly called "Titian's mistress," and we may conclude that he was as
+good a husband and a father as was Rubens, who revelled in painting
+woman, or Velasquez, who seems to have frankly disliked it. Like
+Rowlandson, whom the general public only know as a caricaturist, but who
+when he once got away from London was the most pure minded and poetical
+artist, so Titian, when once dissociated from the demands of corrupt
+patrons, like Philip II., never reveals himself as having fallen under
+the influence of Aretine&mdash;if indeed at all. The <i>Danaë</i> and the <i>Venus
+and a Musician</i> at the Prado are the only examples it is possible to
+cite&mdash;unless it be the <i>Venus</i>, to which popular opinion would hardly
+deny its place of honour in the Tribune at the Uffizi.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time the difference in circumstances, the fuller, richer
+life that he must have led in these years of patronage and prosperity,
+accounts for a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</a></span>certain "shallowness and complacency" which
+distinguishes his work during this period as sharply from that which
+preceded as from that which followed it; and fine as is his
+accomplishment during these years, especially in portraiture, it
+includes fewer of those masterpieces which appeal to the heart as much
+as to the eye.</p>
+
+<p>To 1538 belongs the large and beautiful picture of the <i>Presentation of
+the Virgin Mary in the Temple</i>, painted for the Scuola della Carità in
+Venice, which is now occupied by the Academy, where it still hangs, as
+is said, in its original place. It is twenty-two feet in length, and
+contains several portraits, among which are those of his daughter
+Lavinia (the Virgin, as is supposed), Andrea Franchescini, grand
+chancellor of Venice, in a scarlet robe; next him, in black, Lazzaro
+Crasso, a lawyer, and certain monks of the convent following them.</p>
+
+<p>We now find Titian employed by the Duke of Urbino on some of the
+principal works of this period. Among these were the Uffizi <i>Venus</i>,
+said to be a portrait of the Duchess herself. The <i>Girl in a Fur Mantle</i>
+at Vienna, portraits of the Duke and of the Duchess (1537), and the
+so-called <i>La Bella</i> at the Uffizi. The so-called <i>Duke of Norfolk</i> at
+the Pitti, supposed to represent the young Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino.
+Also the <i>Isabella d'Este</i> at Vienna, and somewhat earlier, the
+<i>Cardinal Ippolito</i> in Hungarian dress, at the Pitti; and the <i>Daughter
+of Robert Strozzi</i>, at Berlin.</p>
+
+<p>The large <i>Ecce Homo</i> in the Vienna Gallery, dated 1543, measuring 11
+ft. 3 in. by 7 ft. 7 in. was for some years in London, and with better
+fortune might still be in this country if not in our national
+collection. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</a></span> was one of the nineteen pictures by Titian in the
+wonderful collection of Rubens, which the Duke of Buckingham persuaded
+him to sell to him for a fabulous price. The collection was shipped to
+England in 1625, when the pictures were taken to York House in the
+Strand, and the statues and gems to Chelsea. In 1649 a portion of the
+collection was sold at Brussels, and the <i>Ecce Homo</i> was purchased there
+by the Archduke Leopold for his gallery at Prague, which now forms part
+of that at Vienna. The Earl of Arundel offered the Duke of Buckingham
+£7000 for it&mdash;an unheard of price, especially when we remember the
+greater value of money at that time.</p>
+
+<p>With another masterpiece&mdash;fortunately still preserved in the Prado,
+though not entirely uninjured by fire&mdash;we may close the second period.
+This is the magnificent equestrian portrait of <i>The Emperor Charles V.</i>
+which was painted at Augsburg in 1548. A few years later the Emperor
+abdicated in favour of his egregious son, Philip II., of whom Titian
+painted three portraits in succession. The second of these, now in the
+Prado, has an especial interest for us, inasmuch as it was painted for
+the benefit or the enticement of Queen Mary before her marriage to
+Philip. As might be expected, it is a highly flattering likeness,&mdash;in
+white and gold, in half armour. To quote M. Caro-Delvaille, this king of
+<i>auto da fés</i> and sunken galleys is here nothing more than a gallant
+cavalier&mdash;neurasthenic but elegant. For England was also painted the
+<i>Venus and Adonis</i>, in 1554; but unfortunately the original is now in
+Madrid, and only a copy in our National Gallery. However, the remains of
+Philip are there too, and not in Westminster Abbey!</p>
+
+<p>A copy of another famous picture painted by Titian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</a></span> for the Emperor
+Charles V. was also in the collection of the Duke of Buckingham, who
+probably brought it with him when he returned from his madcap expedition
+with Prince Charles to Madrid. It is described in his catalogue as "One
+great Piece of the Emperor Charles, a copy called Titian's Glory, being
+the principal in Spain, now in the Escurial." This was the great
+<i>Paradise</i>, or Apotheosis of Charles V. which Charles took with him into
+Spain at the time of his abdication and placed in the monastery of St.
+Juste, in Estramadura, to which he retired. After his death it was
+removed by Philip II. to Madrid.</p>
+
+<p>Of the two versions of <i>The Crowning with Thorns</i>, the earlier one at
+the Louvre, painted in 1560, is more familiar to, and probably more
+popular with, the general public than the much later one at Munich
+painted in 1571. But for the real merits of the two we need not hesitate
+to accept M. Caro-Delvaille's judgment, since if he had any bias it
+would be in favour of his own country's treasure. The former he
+characterises as an incoherent composition, in which useless
+gesticulation diminishes the dramatic effect, while striving to force
+it; and adds that all the false romanticism of painting comes from this
+sort of theatrical pathos. Of the other he writes "It was the picture at
+the Louvre which shocked me with its violent declamation and its forced
+blows that never hit anything. But here at Munich a mystery so profound
+broods over the drama that the melodramatic element disappears. The
+scene becomes tragic, lamentable, hopelessly sad. The great artist with
+a brush that trembles in his aged hands paints but the sentiment of it,
+to exhale from his work like a plaintive sigh. The veil of death
+descends and spreads over life.... Titian might seem to have painted it
+as an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</a></span> offering to Rembrandt when he, too, should feel the approach of
+death."</p>
+
+<p>Another of his latest pictures, the <i>Adam and Eve in Paradise</i>, is in
+the Prado (No. 429, formerly 456). This was copied, or one might almost
+say travestied, by Rubens when he was at Madrid in 1629, and his work
+was hung in the same room with it. As the colouring is of a lower tone
+than is usual with Titian, and the attitudes of the figures extremely
+simple and natural, the contrast is all the more marked, and was well
+expressed by Cumberland, who said that "when we contemplate Titian's
+picture of Adam and Eve we are convinced they never wore clothes; turn
+to the copy, and the same persons seem to have laid theirs aside."</p>
+
+<p>A more generous comparison between these two painters is made by
+Reynolds in a note on du Fresnoy's poem on Painting respecting the
+qualities of regularity and uniformity. "An instance occurs to me where
+those two qualities are separately exhibited by two great painters,
+Rubens and Titian: the picture of Rubens is in the Church of S.
+Augustine at Antwerp, the subject (if that may be called a subject where
+no story is represented) is the Virgin and Infant Christ placed high in
+the picture on a pedestal with many saints about them and as many below
+them, with others on the steps to serve as a link to unite the upper and
+lower part of the picture. The composition of this picture is perfect in
+its kind; the artist has shown the greatest skill in composing and
+contrasting more than twenty figures without confusion and without
+crowding; the whole appearing as much animated and in motion as it is
+possible where nothing is to be done.</p>
+
+<p>"The picture of Titian which we would oppose to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</a></span> this is in the Church
+of the S. Frari at Venice (the "Pesaro Madonna," where the two donors
+kneel below the Virgin enthroned). One peculiar character of this piece
+is grandeur and simplicity, which proceed in a great measure from the
+regularity of the composition, two of the principal figures being
+represented kneeling directly opposite to each other, and nearly in the
+same attitude. This is what few painters would have had the courage to
+venture; Rubens would certainly have rejected so unpicturesque a mode of
+composition had it occurred to him. Both these pictures are excellent in
+their kind, and may be said to characterize their respective authors.
+There is a bustle and animation in the work of Rubens, a quiet solemn
+majesty in that of Titian. The excellence of Rubens is the picturesque
+effect he produces; the superior merit of Titian is in the appearance of
+being above seeking after any such "artificial excellence."</p>
+
+<p>The most important artist besides Titian who was a pupil of Giorgione
+was <span class="smcap">Sebastiano Del Piombo</span>, as he was called&mdash;his father's name was
+<span class="smcap">Luciani</span>. But as two other notable influences determined his career, he
+is not to be taken as typical of the Venetian School in general or that
+of Giorgione in particular. Born in Venice about the year 1485, he first
+studied under Giovanni Bellini, as appears from the signature as well as
+from the style of a <i>Pietà</i> by him in the Layard collection, which we
+may hope soon to see in the National Gallery. Of his Giorgionesque
+period there is only one important picture known to us, the beautiful
+altar-piece in S. Giovanni Crisostomo in Venice, which is not far
+removed from the richness of Titian's earlier work. The picture
+represents the mild and dignified S. Chrysostom seated, reading aloud at
+a desk in an open hall; S. John the Baptist leaning on his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">95</a></span> cross is
+looking attentively at him; behind him are two male and on the left two
+female saints listening devoutly, and in the foreground the Virgin
+looking majestically out of the picture at the spectator&mdash;a splendid
+type of the full and grand Venetian ideal of female beauty of that time.
+The true expression of a <i>Santa Conversazione</i> could not be more
+worthily given than in the relation in which the listeners stand to the
+reader, and in glow of colour this work is not inferior to the best of
+Giorgione's or Titian's.</p>
+
+<p>As early as 1510, however, he not only left Venice, but also his
+Venetian manner. He was invited to Rome by the rich banker and patron of
+the arts, Agostino Chigi, where he met Raphael, and with astonishing
+versatility succeeded as well in emulating the excellences of that
+master as he had those of Bellini and Giorgione. The half-length
+<i>Daughter of Herodias</i> bequeathed to the National Gallery by George
+Salting is dated 1510, and in 1512 he painted the famous <i>Fornarina</i> in
+the Uffizi, which until the middle of the last century was supposed to
+be a <i>chef d'&oelig;uvre</i> of Raphael. To this period also belongs the <i>S.
+John in the Desert</i>, at the Louvre.</p>
+
+<p>Within the next seven years a still mightier influence found him, that
+of Michelangelo, and how far he was capable of responding to it may be
+judged by our great <i>Raising of Lazarus</i>, painted at Rome in 1517-19 for
+Giulio de'Medici, afterwards Pope Clement VII., to be placed with
+Raphael's <i>Transfiguration</i> in the Cathedral of Narbonne. Both pictures
+were publicly exhibited in Rome, and by some people Sebastiano's was
+preferred to Raphael's. According to Waagen the whole composition was
+designed by Michelangelo, with whom Sebastiano had entered into the
+closest intimacy; and Kugler states that the group of Lazarus and those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">96</a></span>
+around him was actually drawn by the master. However that may be, we can
+hardly fail to see how entirely the Venetian influence is obscured by
+that of the great Florentine, and to recognise the extraordinary genius
+of a painter who could do something more than imitate from such masters
+as Bellini, Giorgione, Raphael and Michelangelo.</p>
+
+<p>The last traces of the Vivarini influence are to be seen in the earlier
+works of <span class="smcap">Lorenzo Lotto</span>(1480-1556), who was a pupil of Alvise, though his
+pictures after 1508, when he had left Venice, Treviso and Reccanti,
+where he had been employed, show the effect of his changed surroundings.
+To this date is assigned the <i>Portrait of a Young Man</i>, at Hampton
+Court. At Rome in 1509 he was painting with Raphael in the Vatican, and
+in his next dated work, the <i>Entombment</i>, at Jesi, the echoes of
+Raphael's Disputation and the <i>School of Athens</i> are clear. The Dresden
+<i>Madonna and Child with S. John</i> was probably painted at Bergamo in
+1518, and the <i>Madonna and Saints</i>, lately bequeathed to the National
+Gallery, is dated 1521.</p>
+
+<p>At Madrid is a picture by him of <i>A Bride and Bridegroom</i> dated 1523, to
+which year probably belongs the <i>Family Group</i> in the National Gallery.
+These are early instances of the comparatively rare inclusion of more
+than a single figure in a pure portrait. In our example the father and
+mother and two children are composed into a delightful picture, in which
+for once we may see the actual people of the time in something like
+their natural surroundings, instead of being posed, however effectively,
+to assist in the representation of some historic or legendary scene.</p>
+
+<p>In 1527 Lotto was back again in Venice, and was probably influenced by
+Palma Vecchio when he painted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</a></span> the superb portrait of the sculptor
+<i>Odoni</i>, which is at Hampton Court. A little later the influence of
+Titian is more visible. Two other portraits are in our National Gallery,
+those of the Protonotary Juliano and of Agostino and Niccolo della
+Torre.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Bonifazio di Pitati</span> (1487-1553), sometimes called Bonifazio Veronese or
+Veneziano, was born at Verona, but studied in Venice under Palma
+Vecchio. The influence of his native city distinguishes his work in some
+degree from the pure Venetian, as it did that of the more famous Paolo
+in later years; but the atmosphere created by Giorgione was so strong as
+to cause Bonifazio's masterpiece (if we except the <i>Dives and Lazarus</i>
+at the Academy in Venice) to be attributed until quite lately to
+Giorgione. It is thus described by Kugler:&mdash;"A picture in the Brera in
+Milan, very deserving of notice, is perhaps one of Giorgione's most
+beautiful works; it is historic in subject, but romantic in conception.
+The subject is the finding of Moses; all the figures are in the rich
+costume of Giorgione's time. In the centre the princess sits under a
+tree, and looks with surprise at the child who is brought to her by a
+servant. The seneschal of the princess, with knights and ladies, stand
+around. On one side are seated two lovers on the grass, on the other
+side musicians and singers, pages with dogs, a dwarf with an ape, etc.
+It is a picture in which the highest earthly splendour and enjoyment are
+brought together, and the incident from Scripture only gives it a more
+pleasing interest. The costume, however inappropriate to the story,
+disturbs the effect as little as in other Venetian pictures of the same
+period, since it refers more to a poetic than to a mere historic truth,
+and the period itself was rich in poetry; its costume too assists the
+display of a romantic splendour. This picture,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</a></span> with all its glow of
+colour, is softer than the earlier works of the master, and reminds us
+of Titian...."</p>
+
+<p>The beautiful <i>Santa Conversazione</i> in the National Gallery, again,
+which was formerly in the Casa Terzi at Bergamo, was there attributed to
+Palma Vecchio. Here the Virgin in a rose-coloured mantle is the centre
+of the composition, with the Child on her knee, whose foot the little S.
+John is bending to kiss. On the right is S. Catherine and on the left S.
+James the Less and S. Jerome. In the landscape are seen a shepherd lying
+beside his flock, while other shepherds are fleeing from a lion who has
+seized their dog. A copy of this composition is in the Academy at
+Venice.</p>
+
+<p>Oddly enough it was a pupil of Bonifazio who employed the grand Venetian
+manner in the humbler and more commonplace walks of life, and neglecting
+alike the <i>Sacra Conversazione</i> and the pompous scenes of festivity,
+developed into the first Italian painter of <i>genre</i>. This was <span class="smcap">Jacopo da
+Ponte</span>, called from his birthplace <span class="smcap">Bassano</span>, who was working in Venice
+under Bonifazio as early as 1535. He afterwards returned to Bassano, and
+selecting those scenes in which he could most extensively introduce
+cottages, peasants, and animals, he connected them with events from
+sacred history or mythology. A peculiar feature by which his pictures
+may be known is the invariable and apparently intentional hiding of the
+feet of his figures, for which purpose sheep and cattle and household
+utensils are introduced. He confines himself to a bold, straightforward
+imitation of familiar objects, united, however, with pleasing
+composition, colour, and chiaroscuro. His colours, indeed, sparkle like
+gems, particularly the greens, in which he displays a brilliancy quite
+peculiar to himself. His lights are boldly infringed on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</a></span> objects,
+and are seldom introduced except on prominent parts of the figures. In
+accordance with this treatment his handling is spirited and peculiar,
+somewhat in the manner of Rembrandt; and what on close inspection
+appears dark and confused, forms at a distance the very strength and
+magic of his colouring. The picture of the <i>Good Samaritan</i> in the
+National Gallery is a good example, and was formerly in the collection
+of Reynolds, who it is said always kept it in his studio. The <i>Portrait
+of a Man</i> (No. 173) is excelled by that of an <i>Old Man</i> at Berlin.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="IIIa" id="IIIa"></a>III</h3>
+
+<p class="head">PAOLO VERONESE AND IL TINTORETTO</p>
+
+
+<p>I<span class="smcap">t</span> cannot be said that the Venetian artists of the second half of the
+sixteenth century equalled in their collective excellence the great
+masters of the first, but in single instances they are frequently
+entitled to rank beside them. At the head of these is <span class="smcap">Jacopo Robusti</span>
+(1518-1594), called <span class="smcap">Il Tintoretto</span> (the dyer), in allusion to his
+father's trade. He was one of the most vigorous painters in all the
+history of art; one who sought rather than avoided the greatest
+difficulties, and who possessed a true feeling for animation and
+grandeur. If his works do not always charm, it should be imputed to the
+foreign and non-Venetian element which he adopted, but never completely
+mastered; and also to the times in which he lived, when Venetian art had
+fallen somewhat into the mistaken way of colossal and rapid
+productiveness. His off-hand style, as Kugler calls it, is always full
+of grand and significant detail, and with a few patches of colour he
+sometimes achieves the liveliest forms and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</a></span>expressions. But he fails in
+that artistic arrangement of the whole and in that nobility of motives
+in the parts which are necessary exponents of a really high ideal. His
+compositions are achieved less by finely studied degrees of
+participation in the principal action than by great masses of light and
+shade. Attitudes and movements are taken immediately from common life,
+not chosen from the best models. With Titian the highest ideal of
+earthly happiness in existence is expressed by beauty; with Tintoretto
+in mere animal strength, sometimes of an almost rude character.</p>
+
+<p>For a short time he was a pupil of Titian, but for some unknown reason
+he soon left him, and struck out for himself. In the studio which he
+occupied in his youth he had inscribed, as a definition of the style he
+professed, "The drawing of Michelangelo, the colouring of Titian." He
+copied the works of the latter, and also designed from casts of
+Florentine and antique sculpture, particularly by lamplight&mdash;as did
+Romney a couple of centuries later&mdash;to exercise himself in a more
+forcible style of relief. He also made models for his works, which he
+lighted artificially, or hung up in his room, in order to master
+perspective. By these means he united great strength of shadow with the
+Venetian colouring, which gives a peculiar character to his pictures,
+and is very successful when limited to the direct imitation of nature.
+But apart from the impossibility of combining two such totally different
+excellences as the colouring of Titian and the drawing of Michelangelo,
+it appears that Tintoretto's acquaintance with the works of the latter
+only developed his tendency to a naturalistic style. That which with
+Michelangelo was the symbol of a higher power in nature was adopted by
+Tintoretto in its literal form. Most of his defects,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</a></span> it is probable,
+arose from his indefatigable vigour, which earned for him the nickname
+of <i>Il Furioso</i>. Sebastian del Piombo said that Tintoretto could paint
+as much in two days as would occupy him two years. Other sayings were
+that he had three brushes, one of gold, one of silver, and a third of
+brass, and that if he was sometimes equal to Titian he was often
+inferior to Tintoretto! In this last category Kugler puts two of his
+earliest works, the enormous <i>Last Judgment</i>, and <i>The Golden Calf</i>, in
+the church of S. Maria dell'Orto, while on his much later <i>Last Supper</i>
+he is still more severe. "Nothing more utterly derogatory," he writes,
+"both to the dignity of art and to the nature of the subject can be
+imagined. S. John is seen with folded arms, fast asleep, while others of
+the Apostles with the most burlesque gestures are asking, 'Lord, is it
+I?' Another Apostle is uncovering a dish which stands on the floor
+without remarking that a cat has stolen in and is eating from it. A
+second is reaching towards a flask; a beggar sits by, eating. Attendants
+fill up the picture. To judge from an overthrown chair the scene appears
+to have been a revel of the lowest description. It is strange that a
+painter should venture on such a representation of this subject scarcely
+a hundred years after the creation of Leonardo da Vinci's <i>Last
+Supper</i>."</p>
+
+<p>It was in 1548, when but thirty years old, that Tintoretto first became
+famous, with the large <i>Miracle of S. Mark</i>, now in the Venice Academy.
+This is perhaps his finest as well as his most celebrated work; but the
+greatest monument to his industry and general ability is the Scuola
+di'San Rocco, where he began to work in 1560 under a contract to produce
+three pictures a year for an annuity of a hundred ducats. In all there
+are sixty-two of his pictures in this building, the greater<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</a></span> part of
+them very large, the figures throughout being of the size of life. <i>The
+Crucifixion</i>, painted in 1565, is the most extensive of them, and on the
+whole the most perfect. In 1590, four years before his death, he
+completed the enormous <i>Paradise</i> in the Sala del Gran Consiglio,
+measuring seventy-four feet in length and thirty in height.</p>
+
+<p>In the National Gallery we have three characteristic examples,
+fortunately on a smaller scale, namely, the <i>S. George</i> on a white
+horse, which, with its greyish flesh tones and the blue of the
+princess's mantle, is cooler in tone than the generality of his
+pictures; <i>Christ washing the Disciples' Feet</i>, and the very beautiful
+and radiant <i>Origin of the Milky Way</i>, purchased from Lord Darnley in
+1890. At Hampton Court a still finer example, <i>The Nine Muses</i>, is so
+discoloured by age and hung in such a difficult light that it is
+impossible to enjoy its full beauty.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Paolo Caliari</span>, better known as <span class="smcap">Veronese</span>, was born ten years later than
+Tintoretto, and died six years before him (1528-1588). He studied in his
+native city of Verona till he was twenty, and after working for some
+time at Mantua he came to Venice in 1555, where he was quickly
+recognised by Titian and by Sansovino, the sculptor and Director of
+Public Buildings, and was commissioned in that year to paint a
+<i>Coronation of the Virgin</i> and other works in the church of S.
+Sebastian. The <i>Martyrdom of S. Giustino</i>, now in the Uffizi, and the
+<i>Madonna and Child</i> in the Louvre are also among his earlier works. As
+early as 1562 he was at work on the enormous <i>Feast at Cana</i>, now in the
+Louvre, and a similar work at Dresden is of the same date. In 1564 he
+went to Rome, where he studied the works of Raphael and Michelangelo. On
+his return to Venice in</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XVII" id="PL_XVII"></a>
+<a href="images/plate17.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate17_th.png" width="300" height="460" alt="PLATE XVII.&mdash;TINTORETTO
+
+ST GEORGE AND THE DRAGON
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XVII.&mdash;TINTORETTO<br />
+
+ST GEORGE AND THE DRAGON
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">1565&mdash;after visiting Verona, where he painted in his parish church, and
+also married&mdash;he was employed to decorate the Ducal Palace, but much of
+his best work there was destroyed by fire. Two of his most important
+works completed before 1573 are in the Academy at Venice, <i>The Battle of
+Lepanto</i> and the <i>Feast in the House of Levi</i>. In this last he incurred
+strictures from the Inquisition more severe than those of Kugler upon
+Tintoretto's <i>Last Supper</i>, and possibly with as much reason, it being
+objected that the introduction of German soldiery, buffoons, and a
+parrot was "irreligious." His <i>Family of Darius</i>, now in the National
+Gallery, was one of his latest works.</p>
+
+<p>Veronese, even more than Titian, whom in colouring he sought to emulate,
+and Tintoretto, whom in this respect he certainly excelled, expresses
+the spirit of the Venetians of his time&mdash;a powerful and noble race of
+human beings, as Kugler calls them, elate with the consciousness of
+existence, and in full enjoyment of all that renders earth attractive.
+By the splendour of his colour, assisted by rich draperies and other
+materials, by a very clear and transparent treatment of the shadows, he
+infused a magic into his great canvases which surpasses almost all the
+other masters of the Venetian School. Never had the pomp of colour, on a
+large scale, been so exalted and glorified as in his works. This, his
+peculiar quality, is most decidedly and grandly developed in scenes of
+worldly splendour; he loved to paint festive subjects for the
+refectories of rich convents, suggested of course from particular
+passages in the Scriptures, but treated with the greatest freedom,
+especially as regards the costume, which is always of his own time.
+Instead, therefore, of any religious sentiment, we are presented with a
+display of the most cheerful human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</a></span> scenes and the richest worldly
+splendour. That which distinguishes him from Tintoretto, and which in
+his later period, after the death of Titian and Michelangelo, earned for
+him the rank of the first living master, was that beautiful vitality,
+that poetic feeling, which as far as it was possible he infused into a
+declining period of art. At the same time it becomes more and more
+evident, as our attention is turned to the deeper and nobler spirit of
+the earlier masters in Venice, that the beauty of his figures is more
+addressed to the senses than to the soul, and that his naturalistic
+tendencies are often allowed to run wild.</p>
+
+<p>The most celebrated, and as it happens the most historically
+interesting, of his great pictures is the <i>Feast at Cana</i>, in the
+Louvre, measuring thirty feet wide and twenty feet high. This was
+formerly in the refectory of S. Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. The scene is
+a brilliant atrium, surrounded by majestic pillars. The tables at which
+the guests are seated form three sides of a parallelogram. The guests
+are supposed to be almost entirely contemporary portraits, so that the
+figures of Christ and His mother, of themselves insignificant enough,
+lose even more in the general interest of the subject. Servants occupy
+the foreground, while on the raised balustrades and the balconies of
+distant houses are innumerable onlookers. The most remarkable feature of
+the whole composition is a group of musicians in the centre of the
+foreground, which are portraits of the artist himself and Tintoretto,
+playing on violon-cellos, and Titian, in a red robe, with the
+contra-bass.</p>
+
+<p><i>Christ in the House of Simon</i>, the Magdalen washing His feet, is
+another scarcely less gigantic picture in the Louvre; but it is much
+simpler in arrangement, and is distinguished by the fineness of the
+heads, especially<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</a></span> that of the Christ. An interesting piece of technical
+criticism on the <i>Feast at Cana</i> occurs in Reynolds's Eighth
+Discourse:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Another instance occurs to me," he says, "where equal liberty may be
+taken in regard to the management of light. Though the general practice
+is to make a large mass about the middle of the picture surrounded by
+shadow, the reverse may be practised, and the spirit of rule may still
+be preserved.... In the great composition of Paul Veronese, the
+<i>Marriage at Cana</i>, the figures are for the most part in half shadow;
+the great light is in the sky; and indeed the general effect of this
+picture, which is so striking, is no more than what we often see in
+landscapes, in small pictures of fairs and country feasts; but those
+principles of light and shadow, being transferred to a large scale, to a
+space containing near a hundred figures as large as life, and conducted
+to all appearance with as much facility and with an attention as
+steadily fixed upon the <i>whole together</i> as if it were a small picture
+immediately under the eye, the work justly excites our admiration; the
+difficulty being increased as the extent is enlarged."</p>
+
+<p class="top3">With the death of the great Venetians, Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul
+Veronese, in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, the history of
+Italian painting of the first rank comes to an end. In Florence, the
+imitation of Michelangelo was the chief object striven after, and, as
+might be expected, the attempt was not eminently successful. The greater
+number of the Italian painters of the early seventeenth century who
+attained any fame are known by the name of Eclectics, from their having
+endeavoured, instead of imitating any one of their great predecessors,
+to select and unite the best qualities of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">106</a></span> each, without, however,
+excluding the direct study of nature. The fallacy of this aim, when
+carried to an extreme, is, of course, that the greatness of the earlier
+masters consisted really in their individual and peculiar qualities, and
+to endeavour to unite characteristics essentially different involves a
+contradiction.</p>
+
+<p>The most important of the Eclectic schools was that of the Carracci, at
+Bologna, which was founded by <span class="smcap">Lodovico Carracci</span> (<i>c</i>. 1555-1619), a
+scholar of Prospero Fontana and Passignano at Florence. In his youth he
+was nicknamed "the ox," partly from his slowness, but possibly also for
+his study of long-forgotten methods, by which he arrived at the decision
+that reform was necessary to counteract the independence of the
+mannerists. He therefore obtained the assistance of his two nephews,
+<span class="smcap">Agostino</span> and <span class="smcap">Annibale Carracci</span>, sons of a tailor, and in concert with
+them opened an academy at Bologna in 1589. This he furnished with casts,
+drawings, and engravings, and provided living models and gave
+instruction in perspective, anatomy, etc. In spite of opposition this
+academy became more and more popular, and before long all the other
+schools of art in Bologna were closed.</p>
+
+<p>The principles of their teaching was succinctly expressed in a sonnet
+written by Agostino, in substance as follows:&mdash;"Let him who wishes to be
+a good painter acquire the design of Rome, Venetian action and
+chiaroscuro, the dignified colouring of Lombardy (that is to say, of
+Leonardo da Vinci), the terrible manner of Michelangelo, Titian's truth
+and nature, the sovereign purity of Correggio, and the perfect symmetry
+of Raphael. The decorum and well-grounded study of Tibaldi, the
+invention of the learned Primaticcio, and a <i>little</i> of the grace of
+Parmigiano."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">107</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This "patchwork ideal," as Kugler calls it, was, however, but a
+transition step in the history of the Carracci and their art. In the
+prime of their activity they threw off a great deal of their
+eclecticism, and attained an independence of their own. The merit of
+Lodovico is chiefly that of a reformer and a teacher, and the pictures
+by Agostino are few and of no great account. But in Annibale we find
+much more than imitation of the characteristics of great masters. In his
+earlier works there are rather obvious traces of Correggio and Paul
+Veronese, but under the influence of the works of Raphael and
+Michelangelo and of the antique, as he understood it, he developed a
+style of his own. Though in recent years he is a little out of fashion
+with the public, there is no question about his having a place among the
+greater artists. To show how opinion can change, I venture to quote a
+passage from a letter written to me on the subject of Carracci's <i>The
+Three Maries</i>, lately presented to the National Gallery by the Countess
+of Carlisle:&mdash;"I saw the gallery at Castle Howard in 1850. <i>The Three
+Maries</i> was then still regarded as one of <i>the</i> great pictures of the
+world; and they told the story of how Lord Carlisle and Lord Ellesmere
+and Lord&mdash;&mdash;, who shared the Paris purchases [after the Peace of 1815]
+between them, had to cast lots for this, because it was thought to be
+worth more than all the rest of the spoil."</p>
+
+<p>The most important, or at any rate one of the most popular, of the
+pupils of Carracci was <span class="smcap">Domenico Zampieri</span>, commonly called <span class="smcap">Domenichino</span>
+(1581-1641). If we are less enthusiastic about him at the present, it
+may still be remembered that Constable particularly admired him, but it
+is significant that the four examples in the National Gallery are
+numbered 48, 75, 77 and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</a></span> 85&mdash;there is no more recent acquisition. He had
+great facility, and his compositions&mdash;not always original&mdash;are treated
+with great charm if with no real depth. His most famous picture, the
+<i>Communion of S. Jerome</i>, now in the Vatican, is closely imitated from
+Agostino Carracci's.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Guido Reni</span> (1575-1642), even more popular in the eighteenth and early
+nineteenth centuries than Domenichino, was as skilful in some respects,
+but hardly as admirable. The <i>Ecce Homo</i>, bequeathed by Samuel Rogers to
+the National Gallery, is an excellent example of his ability to charm
+the sentimentalist, and if ever there should be a popular revival of
+taste in the direction of the now neglected school of the Carracci, he
+will possibly resume all the honour formerly paid to him. The same can
+hardly be predicted for the far inferior Carlo Maratti, Guercino, and
+Carlo Dolce.</p>
+
+<p>Space forbids me more than the bare mention in these pages of the
+brilliant revival of painting in Venice during the earlier part of the
+eighteenth century by <span class="smcap">Antonio Canale</span> (1697-1768), <span class="smcap">Giovanni Battista
+Tiepolo</span> (1692-1769), <span class="smcap">Pietro Longhi</span> (1702-1785), and <span class="smcap">Francesco Guardi</span>
+(1712-1793). Charming as their excellent accomplishments were, they must
+give place to more important claims awaiting our attention in other
+countries.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="SPANISH_SCHOOL" id="SPANISH_SCHOOL"></a><i>SPANISH SCHOOL</i></h2>
+
+
+<p>One of the sensations of the Exhibition of Spanish Old Masters at the
+Grafton Gallery in the autumn of 1913 was an altar panel, dated 1250,
+which was acquired by Mr Roger Fry in Paris, and catalogued as of the
+"Early Catalan School." In view of the fact that this picture is
+"certainly to be regarded as one of the very oldest of primitive
+pictures painted on wood in any country ... a decade earlier than the
+picture by Margaritone in the National Gallery," it seems somewhat
+dogmatic to assert that while retaining a strongly Byzantine character
+"the style is distinctly that of Catalonia." What was the style of
+Catalonia?</p>
+
+<p>So far as the history of the art is concerned, the chapter on Spain is,
+with one exception, a very short and a singularly uninteresting one,
+whether Mr Fry's panel was painted in Catalonia or whether it was not;
+and in spite of every effort to find in this uncongenial country that
+expansion of painting that might reasonably have been expected to flow
+from Italy and moisten its barren soil for the production of so
+wonderful a genius as Velasquez, there is positively nothing earlier
+than Velasquez, and not very much after him, that has more than what we
+may call a documentary interest. While in Italy or the Netherlands the
+names of scores of painters earlier than the seventeenth century are
+endeared to us by the recollection of the works they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</a></span> have left us, the
+enumeration of those of the few Spaniards of whom we have any knowledge
+awakens no such thrill, and if we have ever heard of them, their works
+mean little more to us than their names. Only when we come within touch
+of Velasquez does our interest awaken&mdash;as in the case of Ribera and
+Zurbaran&mdash;and that is less because of them than because of Velasquez. El
+Greco was not a Spaniard by birth, but a Cretan; and if he were ranged
+with the Italians, to whom he more properly belongs, he would scarcely
+be more famous than some Bolognese masters whose names are now&mdash;or
+perhaps we ought to say, at the present moment&mdash;almost forgotten. The
+announcement that one of his portraits has been sold to an American for
+£30,000 is of commercial rather than of artistic interest.</p>
+
+<p>If one had to sum up the career and the art of Velasquez in a sentence,
+it might be done by calling him a Court painter who never flattered.
+After recording his life from the time when he left his master Pacheco
+to enter the service of Philip IV. to the day that he died in it, we
+shall find that only a bare percentage of his work was not commissioned
+by the king; and in all his pictures which were not simply portraits
+there is little if anything to be found which is not as literal and
+truthful a presentment of the model in front of him as the life-like
+representations of Philip and those about his Court, of which the
+supreme quality is that of living resemblance, or to put it in more
+general terms, vivid realism. Gifted as he must have been with an
+extraordinary vision and a still rarer, if not unique, ability to put
+down on canvas what he saw, he confined himself entirely within the
+limits of actuality, and thereby attained to heights which his great
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</a></span>contemporaries Rubens and Rembrandt in their noblest flights of
+imagination never reached.</p>
+
+<p>Velasquez was baptised on the 6th of June 1599, in the church of S.
+Peter at Seville. He was the son of well-to-do parents; his father, a
+native of Seville, was named Juan Rodriguez de Silva, his mother
+Geronima Velasquez. At thirteen years old he had displayed so strong an
+inclination towards painting that he was put to study under Francisco de
+Herrera, then the most considerable painter in Spain (his son, also
+Francisco, was the painter of the <i>Christ Disputing with the Doctors</i>,
+in the National Gallery), but owing to Herrera's violent temper
+Velasquez was shortly transferred to the studio of Francisco Pacheco,
+whose daughter he eventually married.</p>
+
+<p>Pacheco who was, besides being an accomplished artist, a man of literary
+tastes, and much sought after in Seville by the more intellectual class
+of society, was exceedingly proud of his pupil, and said of him that he
+was induced to bestow the hand of his daughter upon him "by the
+rectitude of his conduct, the purity of his morals, and his great
+talents, and from the high expectation he entertained of his natural
+abilities and transcendent genius," adding that the honour of having
+been his instructor was far greater than that of being his
+father-in-law, and that he felt it no demerit to be surpassed by so
+brilliant a pupil.</p>
+
+<p>In 1649 Pacheco published a book on painting, in which we are told that
+the first attempts of Velasquez were studies in still life, or simple
+compositions of actual figures, called <i>bodegones</i> in Spanish, of which
+we have a fair example at the National Gallery in the <i>Christ at the
+House of Martha</i>. Sir Frederick Cook, at Richmond, has another, an <i>Old
+Woman Frying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</a></span> Eggs</i>, and the Duke of Wellington two more, of which <i>The
+Water Carrier of Seville</i> is probably the summit of the young painter's
+achievement before he left Seville, in 1623, and entered the service of
+Philip IV. as Court painter.</p>
+
+<p>His first portrait of the king was the magnificent whole length in the
+Prado Gallery, now numbered 1182, standing in front of a table with a
+letter in his right hand. No. 1183 is the head of the same portrait,
+possibly done as a study for it. Philip was so pleased with this that he
+ordered all existing portraits of himself to be removed from the palace,
+and appointed Velasquez exclusively as his painter.</p>
+
+<p>Another of his earliest successes at Court was the whole length portrait
+of the king's brother, Don Carlos, holding a glove in his right hand;
+and the picture now in the Museum at Rouen of <i>A Geographer</i> is probably
+of this date.</p>
+
+<p>In 1628, when Velasquez was still quite young, and had fallen under no
+influence save that of Pacheco and the school of Seville, he was charged
+by the king to entertain Rubens, who came to the Spanish Court on a
+diplomatic mission, and show him all the treasures in the palace. If any
+one could influence Velasquez, we might suppose it would have been
+Rubens, who was not only a great painter, but a man of the most
+captivating manners and disposition, ever ready to help younger artists.
+But not only did he have no perceptible effect on the style of
+Velasquez, but in the picture of <i>The Topers</i>, which must have been
+painted while Rubens was at Madrid, or very shortly after he left, we
+can almost see a determination not to be influenced by him; for the
+subject was a favourite one of Rubens's, and yet there is nothing in
+this most realistic presentment of</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XVIII" id="PL_XVIII"></a>
+<a href="images/plate18.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate18_th.png" width="300" height="410" alt="PLATE XVIII.&mdash;VELAZQUEZ
+
+THE INFANTE PHILIP PROSPER
+
+Imperial Gallery, Vienna" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XVIII.&mdash;VELAZQUEZ<br />
+
+THE INFANTE PHILIP PROSPER<br />
+
+<i>Imperial Gallery, Vienna</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">actual figures under the title of Bacchus and his votaries which has
+anything at all in common with the florid and imaginative compositions
+of the Flemish painter. Velasquez had begun as a realist, and a realist
+he was to continue till the end of his days.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after painting this picture he left his native country for the
+first time, and visited Venice and Rome. At Venice he made copies of
+Tintoretto's <i>Last Supper</i> and <i>Crucifixion</i>; but little if any of
+Tintoretto's influence is to be seen in the two pictures he painted in
+Rome&mdash;<i>The Forge of Vulcan</i> and <i>Joseph's Coat</i>, both of which are still
+as realistic as ever in treatment, though showing great advances in
+technical skill. Soon after his return to Spain in 1631, he probably
+painted the magnificent whole length <i>Philip IV.</i> in the National
+Gallery, which compares so well, on examination with the more popular
+and showy <i>Admiral Pulido Pareja</i> purchased some years ago from Longford
+Castle. Senor Beruete, who has studied the work of Velasquez more
+closely and more intelligently than any one else, considers that whereas
+there is not a single touch upon the former that is not from the brush
+of Velasquez, the latter cannot be properly attributed to him at
+all&mdash;any more than can another popular favourite, the <i>Alexandro del
+Borro</i> in the Berlin Gallery, now given to Bernard Strozzi.</p>
+
+<p>To this period may be also assigned the <i>Christ at the Column</i> in the
+National Gallery, a picture which though not at first sight attractive,
+is nevertheless as fine in technique, and in sentiment, as any other
+picture in the Spanish room, and deserves far more attention than is
+usually given to it. Its simple realism and its pathetic sweetness are
+qualities which are wanting in many a more showy or sensational
+composition, and the more it is studied the nearer we find we are
+getting to the real excellences<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</a></span> that distinguish Velasquez from any
+painter who has ever lived. The <i>Crucifixion</i> at the Prado is perhaps
+more wonderful, but the familiar subject helps the imagination of the
+spectator to admire it, whereas the unfamiliar setting of our picture is
+apt at first sight to repel.</p>
+
+<p>The most important composition undertaken by Velasquez in this middle
+period of his career&mdash;that is to say between his two visits to Italy in
+1629 and 1649&mdash;is the famous <i>Surrender of Breda</i>, or, as it is
+sometimes called, <i>The Lances</i>. Soon after his arrival in Madrid he had
+once painted an historical subject, <i>The Expulsion of the Moors</i>, in
+competition with his rivals who had asserted that he could paint nothing
+but heads. In this competition the prize was awarded to him, but as the
+picture has perished we are unable to judge of its merits for ourselves.
+But apart from this, and such unimportant groups of figures as we have
+mentioned, he had been occupied wholly in painting single portraits, and
+it is a marvellous proof of his genius that he should produce such a
+masterpiece of composition as <i>The Lances</i> with so little practice in
+this branch of his art. Here, at least, we might have expected to trace
+the influence of Rubens, but there is actually no sign of it; and if he
+sought any inspiration at all from other painters, it was from what he
+recalled of Tintoretto's work which he had seen and studied in Venice.</p>
+
+<p>In the king's eldest boy, <i>Baltazar Carlos</i>, who was born in 1629,
+Velasquez found a model for two or three of his most charming pictures.
+One is at Castle Howard; a second the equestrian portrait, on a
+galloping pony, at the Prado; and a third the full length hunting
+portrait, also at the Prado, in which we see the little prince standing
+under a tree, gun in hand, with an enormous dog<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</a></span> lying beside him.
+Another is at Vienna, representing him as of about eleven years old,
+full length, with his hand resting on the back of a chair. All of these
+owe some of their charm to the youth and attractive personality of the
+subject; but if we want to see the power of Velasquez without any
+outside element to help us to appreciate it, there is the portrait of
+the sculptor <i>Martinez Montanes</i> at the Prado. "The head is wonderful in
+its colour and its modelling," writes Senor Beruete; "and what a lesson
+in technique! The eyes, lightly touched with colour, are set deep in
+their sockets, and surmounted by a strongly marked forehead. The high
+lights are of a rich <i>impasto</i>, manipulated with extraordinary skill;
+the greyer tones of the flesh, so true and so delicate, are painted in a
+way that brings out with marvellous truth, both the soft parts of the
+cheeks and the harder structure of the face, under which one can follow
+the bones of the nose and forehead.... Everything in the picture is
+spontaneous, and one can see that it is a pledge of friendship given by
+one artist to another; there is nothing here of that artificial
+arrangement that spoils commissioned portraits even when they are the
+work of a painter as independent as Velasquez was. One feels here the
+assurance of an artist who knows that his work will be understood by his
+friend in the spirit in which it was executed." M. Lefort, the French
+critic, is even more enthusiastic. "Ah! these redoubtable neighbours,"
+he exclaims, seeing it surrounded by the works of other painters at the
+Prado. "This canvas makes them look like mere imitations&mdash;dead
+conventional likenesses. Van Dyck is dull, Rubens oily, Tintoret yellow;
+it is Velasquez alone who can give us the illusion of life in all its
+fulness!"</p>
+
+<p>In 1649 Velasquez paid his second visit to Rome,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">116</a></span> where he painted the
+famous portrait of His Holiness, <i>Pope Innocent X.</i> which is now in the
+Doria palace. This is exceptional in treatment, inasmuch as it is the
+only portrait by Velasquez in which the subject is seated&mdash;excepting of
+course equestrian portraits&mdash;and instead of the usual quiet tones of
+grey and brown which he was so fond of employing, the picture of the
+Pope is a radiant harmony of rose red and white. In its realism it is
+even more surprising than most of the other portraits, considering how
+ugly the face had to be made to resemble nature, although the sitter was
+of a still higher rank than Velasquez's royal master.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to Madrid in 1651, Velasquez never again left Spain, and the
+remaining twenty years of his life may be considered the third period of
+his artistic development, inasmuch as no special influence was exerted
+upon him outside the ordinary and somewhat tedious course of his
+employment at the Court. To this period are assigned twenty-six
+pictures&mdash;Senor Beruete only admits the authenticity of eighty-three in
+all, it may be mentioned&mdash;twelve of which are royal portraits, seven
+those of buffoons and dwarfs, three mythological and two sacred
+subjects, and the two famous pieces of real life, <i>Las Meninas</i> and <i>Las
+Hilanderas</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Of the royal portraits those of the <i>Infanta Margarita</i> are among the
+most fascinating, no less from their technical excellence than on
+account of the youthful charm of the little Princess. The one at Vienna
+represents her as about three years old, dressed in red, standing by a
+little table. Of this, Senor Beruete says that it is "one of the most
+beautiful inspirations of Velasquez, and perhaps one that reveals better
+than any other his power as a colourist; it is a flower, perfumed with
+every infantine grace." Another standing portrait, though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">117</a></span> only a half
+length, when she was not many years older, is that in the Salon Carré at
+the Louvre, which is more familiar to us being nearer home and more
+often reproduced. M. de Wyczewa praises it thus:&mdash;"The perfect
+<i>chefs-d'&oelig;uvre</i> collected in this glorious salon pale in the presence
+of this child portrait; not one of them can bear comparison with this
+simple yet powerful painting, which seems to aim only at external
+resemblance and without other effort to attain a mysterious beauty of
+form and colour." At Frankfort again is a charming picture of the little
+Princess, whole length, at the age of six or seven&mdash;a replica of which
+is at Vienna. She is dressed in greyish white with trimmings of black,
+and her hoop skirt is so enormous that her arms have to be stretched out
+straight to allow her hands to reach the edge of her coat.</p>
+
+<p>Of the three mythological subjects two are in the Prado, namely the
+<i>Mars</i> and the <i>Mercury and Argus</i>, while the third and most beautiful
+is the <i>Venus at the Mirror</i> recently purchased for our national
+collection. These were all of them painted for the decoration of the
+royal palaces, and we may therefore suppose that the artist was not
+entirely at liberty either in the choice of his subject or in his method
+of treating it. Certainly he does not seem to have been fond of painting
+the nude, unless with men, and it is noticeable that he has posed his
+model in this case with more modesty and reserve than is to be observed
+in the pictures of Rubens and Titian. The Holy Church was sternly averse
+to this class of painting, in which, accordingly, none of the Spanish
+school indulged; but at the same time the royal galleries did not
+exclude the most exuberant fancies of Rubens, Titian, Tintoretto, and
+others, and Velasquez was in all probability commissioned by Philip to
+paint<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</a></span> this Venus&mdash;and another which has perished&mdash;along with the Mars
+and Mercury without regard to the ecclesiastical authorities. But it is
+hardly surprising if Velasquez availed himself less fully of the
+privilege than a Flemish or Italian painter would no doubt have done,
+and has given us so chaste and beautiful a realisation of the goddess.
+Having regard to the scepticism with which this masterpiece was received
+in England at the time of its purchase for the nation it is worth
+quoting Senor Beruete's remarks upon it in that connection. "The
+authenticity of this work," he writes "has found numerous doubters in
+Spain, less on account of its subject&mdash;being the only nude female figure
+in the whole <i>&oelig;uvre</i> of Velasquez&mdash;than because so few people ever
+suspected its existence; but after it was exhibited at Manchester in
+1857 and in London in 1890, it was recognised that its attribution to
+Velasquez was well founded. At the sight of the canvas all doubt
+vanishes. There, indeed, is the style, the inimitable technique of
+Velasquez."</p>
+
+<p>This, from the connoisseur who has devoted years of study to the work of
+the master, and who rejects such well established examples as the
+Dulwich <i>Philip IV.</i> and the <i>Admiral Pulido Pareja</i>, is surely more
+conclusive than the academic pedantry of ignorance masquerading as
+authority.</p>
+
+<p class="top3"><span class="smcap">Bartolomé Estéban Murillo</span> (1617-1682) has always been accounted the most
+popular of the Spanish painters, and it is only in recent times that his
+popularity has faded into comparative insignificance on the fuller
+recognition and understanding of the genius of Velasquez. The intensely
+Anglican feeling in this country during the eighteenth and nineteenth
+centuries</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XIX" id="PL_XIX"></a>
+<a href="images/plate19.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate19_th.png" width="300" height="210" alt="PLATE XIX.&mdash;VELAZQUEZ
+
+THE ROKEBY VENUS
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XIX.&mdash;VELAZQUEZ<br />
+
+THE ROKEBY VENUS<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">seems to have found peculiar relief in the sentimental aspirations of
+the followers of Raphael in the rendering of religious subjects from the
+Romish point of view. At the present time we are readier to estimate
+Murillo's justly high place in the annals of painting by such a picture
+as his own portrait, lent by Lord Spencer to the recent Exhibition, than
+to allow it on the strength of our recollection of the Madonnas and Holy
+Families, Immaculate Conceptions and Assumptions, of which there exist
+so many copies in the dining rooms of country rectories. The <i>Boy
+Drinking</i>, which is here reproduced, if it is the least "important" of
+the four examples in the National Gallery, is certainly not the least
+excellent.</p>
+
+<p>From the miserable state into which Spain had fallen by the end of the
+seventeenth century, it could hardly be expected that anything further
+in the nature of art would result, and it was not until towards the end
+of the eighteenth that another genius arose, in the person of <span class="smcap">Francisco
+Goya</span> (1746-1828). Of this extraordinary phenomenon in the firmament of
+art it is impossible to say more than a very few words in this place.
+Like a meteor, he is rather to be pointed at than talked about, when
+there are so many stars and planets whose regular courses have to be
+observed and recorded. He was like a sharp knife drawn across the face
+of Spain, gashing it here and there, but for the most part just touching
+it lightly enough to sting and to leave a mark. As a Court painter he
+was an unqualified success, his salary under Charles IV. rising in ten
+years from 15,000 to 50,000 reals; but his official productions are not
+the less devoid of interest on that account, and are sometimes the more
+satirical from the necessity for concealment. In his more outspoken
+works,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</a></span> such as the <i>Disasters of War</i>, and the series of prints called
+<i>Los Caprichos</i> and <i>Tauromachia</i>, he is too brutal not to affect the
+ordinary observer's judgment upon his artistic qualities. Velasquez
+himself could scarcely stop short enough, when painting dwarfs and
+idiots and cripples, to let us admire his genius unhampered by shivers
+of repulsion. Goya, being exactly the opposite of Velasquez in
+temperament, had no scruples about expressing the utmost of his subject;
+and even in decorating a church was reproved for "falling short of the
+standard of chastity" required. But between the extremes of brutality
+and conventionalism there is such a wide expanse of pure joy of painting
+that nothing can diminish the reputation of Goya, however much it is
+likely to be enhanced. To the modern Spanish painter he is probably as
+fixed a beacon as Velasquez.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XX" id="PL_XX"></a>
+<a href="images/plate20.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate20_th.png" width="300" height="389" alt="PLATE XX.&mdash;MURILLO
+
+A BOY DRINKING
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XX.&mdash;MURILLO<br />
+
+A BOY DRINKING
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="FLEMISH_SCHOOL" id="FLEMISH_SCHOOL"></a><i>FLEMISH SCHOOL</i></h2>
+
+<h3><a name="Ib" id="Ib"></a>I</h3>
+
+
+<p class="head">HUBERT AND JAN VAN EYCK</p>
+
+
+<p>I<span class="smcap">n</span> 1383, on the death of Louis de Maele, his son-in-law Philip the
+Hardy, Duke of Burgundy, assumed the government of Flanders. In the same
+year Philip founded the Carthusian Convent at Dijon and employed a
+Flemish painter named Melchin Broederlam to embellish two great shrines
+within it. To the strong-handed policy of Philip and his successors
+during the ensuing century may be attributed the rise of Netherlandish
+art which, though existing before their time, required their vigorous
+repression of intestine feuds to give it an opportunity of developing.
+Under Louis and his predecessors Flanders and its cities had risen to
+great commercial importance, but its rulers had neither the strength nor
+the prestige to keep the turbulent spirit of their subjects in due
+bounds. The school of painting which now arose so rapidly to perfection
+under the Dukes of Burgundy thus owed a portion of its progress to the
+wealth and independence of the commercial classes. The taste, power, and
+cultivation of a Court gave it an additional spur; and the clergy
+throwing in their weight, added their support in aid of art.</p>
+
+<p>Two wings of one of the Dijon shrines are still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</a></span> preserved in the museum
+there, and in these Messrs Crowe and Cavalcaselle observe the
+characteristics of much that was to follow:&mdash;"Although Melchior's style
+was founded on the study of the painters of the Rhine, his composition
+was similar to the later productions of the Flemish school. A tendency
+to realism already marks this early Fleming, and is the distinctive
+feature of a manner in which the painter strives to imitate nature in
+its most material forms. Idealism and noble forms are lacking, but
+Broederlam is a fair imitator of the truth. Distinctive combination and
+choice of colours in draperies, and vigorous tone, characterise him as
+they do the early works at Bruges and other cities of the Netherlands
+which may be judged by his standard." And again, "the painter evidently
+struggled between the desire to give a material imitation, and the
+inspirations of graceful teachers like those of Cologne.... Penetrated
+with similar ideas the early Flemings might under similar circumstances
+have risen to a sweet and dignified conception of nature; and if we fail
+to discover that they attained this aim we must attribute the failure to
+causes peculiar to Flanders. Amongst these we may class the social
+status of the Flemish painters, whose positions in the household of
+princes subjected them perhaps to caprices unfavourable to the
+development of high aspirations, or the contemplation and free communion
+with self which are the soul of art."</p>
+
+<p>It is interesting to compare these observations, so far as they refer to
+the realism which characterises Netherlandish painting, with those of Dr
+Waagen, who it will be seen explains it on the broader grounds of
+national temperament. "Early Netherlandish painting," he contends, "in
+its freedom from all foreign influence, exhibits the contrast between
+the natural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</a></span> feeling of the Greek and the German races respectively in
+the department of art&mdash;these two races being the chief representatives
+of the cultivation of the ancient and the modern world. In this
+circumstance consists the high significance of this school when
+considered in reference to the general history of art. While it is
+characteristic of the Greek feeling&mdash;from which was derived the
+Italian&mdash;to idealise,&mdash;and to idealise, be it observed, not only the
+conceptions of the ideal world but even such material objects as
+portraits,&mdash;by the simplification of forms and the prominence given to
+the more important parts of a work of art, the early Netherlanders, on
+the other hand, conferred a portrait-like character upon the most ideal
+personifications of the Virgin, the Apostles, Prophets, and Martyrs, and
+in actual portraiture aimed at rendering even the most accidental
+peculiarities of nature, like warts and wrinkles, with excruciating
+fidelity.</p>
+
+<p>"While the Greeks expressed the various features of outward nature&mdash;such
+as rivers, fountains, hills, trees, etc.&mdash;under abstract human forms,
+the Netherlanders endeavoured to express them as they had seen them in
+nature, and with a truth which extended to the smallest details.</p>
+
+<p>"In opposition to the ideal, and what may be called the personifying
+tendency of the Greeks, the Netherlanders developed a purely realistic
+and landscape school.</p>
+
+<p>"In this respect the other Teutonic nations are found to approach them
+most nearly, the Germans first, and then the English."</p>
+
+<p>But whatever may have been the causes which produced the distinguishing
+features of Netherlandish painting, we have still to enquire the origin
+from which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</a></span> the practice of painting in northern Europe proceeded. For
+in taking Melchior Broederlam as a starting-point we are only going as
+far back&mdash;with the exception of certain rude wall paintings&mdash;as the
+earliest examples take us; and having seen how in Italy the whole
+history of the art is traceable to Cimabue, Duccio, and Giotto, through
+the Byzantines, at least a century before Broederlam comes under our
+notice, we might naturally conclude that it was from Italy that it
+spread to Cologne, and from Cologne to the Netherlands. So far as is
+known, however, this was not the case, and we must look elsewhere than
+to Italy for the influences which formed this school. Nevertheless it
+was a collateral branch of the same stock&mdash;Byzantine art&mdash;and the family
+resemblance comes out none the less strongly from the two branches
+having developed under different circumstances. In Italy, as we have
+seen, the Byzantine seed, sown in such fertile soil, attained suddenly a
+great luxuriance. In the north, transplanted by Charlemagne to
+Aix-la-Chapelle in the ninth century, it grew slowly and more timidly,
+but none the less surely, under the cover of Monasticism, in the
+manuscripts illuminated with miniatures; and thus when it did burst
+forth into fuller blossom, the boldness of the Italian masters, who
+worked at large in fresco, was wanting, and a detailed and almost
+meticulous realism was its chief characteristic. Another point worth
+noticing is that though primarily introduced for religious purposes, as
+in Italy, namely the decoration of the cathedral erected by Charlemagne
+at Aix-la-Chapelle, the paintings in his palace showed forth events in
+his own life, such as his campaigns in Spain, seiges of towns and feats
+of arms by Frankish warriors. At Upper Ingelheim, likewise, his chapel
+was adorned with scenes from the Old and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</a></span> New Testaments, while the
+banqueting hall exhibited on one wall the deeds of great Pagan rulers,
+such as Cyrus, Hannibal, and Alexander, and on the other those of
+Constantine and Theodosius, the seizure of Acquitaine by Pepin, and
+Charlemagne's own conquest over the Saxons and finally himself enthroned
+as conqueror. Although no trace remains of these paintings, contemporary
+manuscripts executed by his order are still in existence in the
+libraries of Paris, Trèves, and elsewhere from which we can form some
+idea of the style in which they were rendered and of the source from
+which they were derived.</p>
+
+<p>Of these we need only mention the Vulgate decorated by <span class="smcap">John of Bruges</span>,
+painter to King Charles V. of France, in 1371, which contains a portrait
+of the king in profile with a figure kneeling before him, and a few
+small historical subjects. From these it is evident that the art of
+painting, at any rate in little, had made considerable progress in the
+Netherlands at that date, and the express designation of <i>pictor</i>
+applied to John of Bruges, while the ordinary miniaturist was called
+<i>illuminator</i>, shows the probability of his having painted pictures on a
+larger scale. The high development of realistic feeling as it first
+appears to us in the pictures of Hubert and Jan van Eyck is thus partly
+accounted for, especially when we also consider the wholesale
+destruction of larger works of art that took place in the disturbed
+condition of the Netherlands in the sixteenth century. The main points,
+however, to be borne in mind is that whereas Cimabue and Duccio started
+painting on walls under the influence of Byzantine teachers, Hubert van
+Eyck, a century later, began painting on wooden panels under that of
+illuminators and painters in books.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To these, nevertheless, there must be added another scarcely less
+important, namely, that the early Italians were ignorant of the use of
+what we now call oil paints, and worked entirely in tempera&mdash;that is to
+say, there was no admixture of oil or varnish with their pigments. To
+Hubert van Eyck is attributed the invention of the modern practice, as
+Vasari relates with more colour than historic truth in his life of
+Antonello da Messina, who is supposed to have carried it into Italy. Be
+that as it may, the works of the van Eycks and their successors are all
+in oils, and there is no doubt that the employment of this medium from
+the first considerably influenced the style, colour, and execution of
+all the works of this school.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hubert van Eyck</span> who according to the common acceptation was born in the
+year 1366 at Maaseyck, a small town not far from Maestricht, must have
+been settled before the year 1412 in Bruges, when we hear of him as a
+member of the Brotherhood of the Virgin with Rays.</p>
+
+<p>There can be little doubt that Hubert van Eyck was acquainted with the
+work of this John of Bruges, and that it had a considerable influence on
+him. But while on the one hand he carried the realistic tendencies of
+such works to an extraordinary pitch of excellence, it is evident that
+in many essential respects he was actuated by a more ideal feeling and
+imparted to the realism of his contemporaries, by means of his far
+richer powers of representation, greater distinctness, truth to nature,
+and variety of expression. Throughout his works is seen an elevated and
+highly energetic conception of the stern import of his labours in the
+service of the Church.</p>
+
+<p>The prevailing arrangement of his subjects is symmetrical, holding fast
+to the earliest rules of ecclesiastical art. His heads appear to aim at
+an ideal beauty and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</a></span> dignity only combined with actual truth to nature.
+His draperies exhibit the purest taste and softness of folds, the
+realistic principle being apparent in that greater attention to detail
+which a delicate indication of the material of the drapery necessitates.
+Nude figures are studied from nature with the utmost fidelity; undraped
+portions of figures are also given with much truth, especially the
+hands. But what is the principal distinguishing characteristic of his
+art is the hitherto unprecedented power, depth, transparency and harmony
+of his colouring. Whatever want of exact truth there may be in the story
+as related by Vasari's story of the discovery of oil painting, there is
+no doubt that Hubert Van Eyck succeeded in preparing so transparent a
+varnish that he could apply it without disadvantage to all colours.</p>
+
+<p>The chief work by Hubert Van Eyck is the large altar-piece painted for
+the cathedral of S. Bavon at Ghent;&mdash;parts of this have been removed and
+are now in the Berlin Gallery, and supplemented with excellent copies of
+the rest, the whole of the wonderful composition may there be well
+studied; a large photograph of the whole altar piece may also be seen in
+the library at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which shows how the work
+was originally designed. It was painted for Jodocus Vyts, Burgomaster of
+Ghent, and his wife Elizabeth, for their mortuary chapel in the
+cathedral.</p>
+
+<p>The subject of the three central panels of the upper portion is the
+Deity seated between <i>the Virgin and S. John the Baptist</i>. Underneath
+these, of the same width, is the famous <i>Adoration of the Lamb</i>. These
+together formed the back of the altar-piece, and were covered by wings
+which opened out on hinges on either side.</p>
+
+<p>The three large figures of the upper part are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</a></span>designed with all the
+dignity and statuesque repose belonging to an earlier style, and they
+are painted on a ground of gold and tapestry, as was constantly the
+practice in earlier times: but united with the traditional type we
+already find a successful representation of life and nature in all their
+truth. They stand as it were on the frontier of two different styles,
+and from the excellence of both form a wonderful and most impressive
+whole. The Heavenly Father sits directly fronting the spectator, in all
+the solemnity of ancient dignity, His right hand raised to give the
+benediction to the Lamb and to all the multitude of figures below; in
+His left hand is a crystal sceptre; on His head the triple crown, the
+emblem of the Trinity. The features are such as are ascribed to Christ
+by the traditions of the Church, but noble and well proportioned; the
+expression is forcible, though passionless.</p>
+
+<p>The tunic and the mantle of this figure are of a deep red, the latter
+being fastened over the breast by a clasp, and falling down in ample
+folds over the feet. Behind, as high as the head, is a hanging of green
+tapestry which is ornamented with a golden pelican&mdash;a symbol of the
+Redeemer. Behind the head the ground is gold, and on it in a semicircle
+are three inscriptions describing the Trinity as almighty, all-good, and
+all-bountiful. The figures of S. John and of the Virgin display equal
+majesty; both are reading holy books, as they turn towards the centre
+figure. The countenance of S. John expresses ascetic seriousness, but in
+that of the Virgin we find a serene grace and a purity of form which
+approach very nearly to the happier effects of Italian art.</p>
+
+<p>The arrangement of the lower central picture, the worship of the Lamb,
+is strictly symmetrical, as the mystic nature of the allegorical subject
+might seem to</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XXI" id="PL_XXI"></a>
+<a href="images/plate21.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate21_th.png" width="300" height="397" alt="PLATE XXI.&mdash;JAN VAN EYCK
+
+JAN ARNOLFINI AND HIS WIFE
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XXI.&mdash;JAN VAN EYCK<br />
+
+JAN ARNOLFINI AND HIS WIFE<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">have demanded; but there is such beauty in the landscape, in the pure
+atmosphere, in the bright green of the grass, in the masses of trees and
+flowers&mdash;even in single figures which stand out from the four principal
+groups&mdash;that we no longer perceive either hardness or severity in this
+symmetry.</p>
+
+<p>The landscape of this composition and that part of it containing the
+patriarchs and prophets are generally supposed to have been completed by
+<span class="smcap">Jan Van Eyck</span> (<i>c.</i> 1385-1441), whose name till within a comparatively
+recent period had almost obscured that of Hubert. For although there is
+little doubt that the elder brother was the first to develop the new
+method of painting, yet the fame of it did not extend beyond Belgium and
+across the Alps until after the death of Hubert, when the celebrity it
+so speedily acquired throughout Europe was transferred to Jan Van Eyck.
+Within fifteen years after his death, 1455, Jan was commemorated in
+Italy as the greatest painter of the century, while the name of Hubert
+was not even mentioned. It was Jan van Eyck to whom Antonello da Messina
+is said by Vasari to have resorted in Bruges in order to learn the new
+style of painting; he alone also is mentioned in Vasari's first edition
+of 1550, Hubert not until the second edition in 1568, and then only
+incidentally.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately there are in existence various authentic pictures by Jan Van
+Eyck in which his original powers are more easily recognised than in the
+part he took in the execution of the great altar-piece at Ghent, in
+which he doubtless accommodated himself with proper fraternal piety both
+to the composition and to the style of his elder brother&mdash;who was also
+his master. In these we can see that he possessed neither the enthusiasm
+for the rich imagery and symbolism of the ecclesiastical art<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</a></span> of the
+Middle Ages, nor that feeling for beauty in human forms or in drapery
+which belonged to his elder brother. His feeling, on the other hand, led
+him to the closest and truest conception of individual nature. Where he
+had to paint portraits only&mdash;a task which was most congenial to the
+tendency of his mind&mdash;he attained a life-like truth of form and
+colouring in every part, extending even to the minutest details, such as
+no other artist of his time could rival, and which art in general has
+seldom produced. In his actual brush work he shows greater facility than
+was ever attained by Hubert, by which he was enabled to render the
+material of every substance with marvellous fidelity.</p>
+
+<p>What little we know of the personal history of Jan Van Eyck is of
+exceptional interest, inasmuch as we find him employed on diplomatic
+errands to foreign countries, like his great successor Rubens; and as it
+happens he landed in England, though not intentionally, in the course of
+one of these voyages, being driven into Shoreham and Falmouth by adverse
+weather. It was in 1425 that he was taken into the service of Philip
+III., Duke of Burgundy, as painter and "varlet de chambre," shortly
+after which he went to Lille. In the following year he was sent on a
+pilgrimage as the Duke's proxy, and again on two secret missions. In
+1428 he went with the Duke's Embassy to the King of Portugal which was
+to sue for the hand of Isabella, the Portuguese princess. It was on this
+occasion that he was driven on to our shores. Arriving at Lisbon he
+painted two portraits of Isabella, one of which was sent home by sea and
+the other overland. After a happy and successful career he died in 1441
+at Bruges, where he had married and settled down on his return from
+Portugal.</p>
+
+<p>The most beautiful example of Jan Van Eyck's work<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</a></span> in England is the
+portrait of Jean Arnolfini and Jeanne de Chenany his wife, now in the
+National Gallery (No. 186). This is dated with the charming inscription,
+"Johannes de Eyck fuit hic 1434"&mdash;that is to say, instead of simply
+signing the picture, he writes, "Jan Van Eyck was here, 1434." No other
+picture shows so high a development of the master's extraordinary power
+and charm. Besides every other quality peculiar to him, we observe here
+a perfection of tone and of chiaroscuro which no other specimen of this
+whole period affords. It is recorded that Princess Mary, sister of
+Charles V. and Governess of the Netherlands, purchased this picture from
+a barber to whom it belonged at the price of a post worth a hundred
+gulden a year. Among its subsequent possessors were Don Diego de
+Guevara, majordomo of Joan, Queen of Castile, by whom it was presented
+to Margaret of Austria. In 1530 it was acquired by Mary of Hungary, and
+later it returned to Spain. In 1789 it was in the palace at Madrid, and
+soon after it was taken by one of the French Generals, in whose quarters
+Major-General Hay found it after the battle of Waterloo.</p>
+
+<p>Two other portraits in the National Gallery bear the signature of Jan
+Van Eyck. No. 222, An elderly man, head and shoulders, on the frame of
+which is the painter's motto, "als ich can," and his signature,
+"Johannes de Eyck me fecit anno 1433, 21 Octobris." The other, No. 290,
+is a younger man, half length, standing inside an open window, on the
+sill of which is inscribed "&#932;&#953;&#956;&#8001;&#952;&#949;&#959;&#962;,"
+and "Léal Souvenir,"
+and below the date and signature, "Actum anno domini 1432, 10 die
+Octobris a Iohanne de Eyck."</p>
+
+<p>Among the Netherlandish scholars and followers of the Van Eycks of whom
+any record has been preserved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</a></span> some appear to have been gifted with
+considerable powers, though none attained the excellence of their great
+precursors. Although a number of works representing this school still
+exist in the various countries of Europe, yet compared with the actual
+abundance of them at one time they constitute but a scanty remnant.</p>
+
+<p>Though not actually a pupil of Jan Van Eyck, <span class="smcap">Roger Van der Weyden</span>
+acquired after him the greatest celebrity. As early as 1436 he filled
+the honourable post of official painter to the city of Brussels. The
+chief work executed by him in this capacity was an altar-piece for the
+Chamber of Justice in Hôtel de Ville. According to the custom of the
+time, it set forth in the most realistic fashion examples of stern
+observance of the law for the admonition of those placed in authority.
+The principal picture showed how Herkenbald, a judge in the eleventh
+century, executed his own nephew (convicted of a grave crime, but who
+would otherwise have escaped the penalty of the law) with his own hands;
+and how the sacramental wafer which, on the plea of murder, was denied
+to him by the priest, reached the lips of the upright judge by means of
+a miracle. The wings contained an example of the justice of the Emperor
+Trajan. These pictures are unfortunately no longer in existence, having
+probably been burned when Brussels was besieged in 1695.</p>
+
+<p>In the Museum of the Hospital at Beaune is one of the most important of
+his works still in existence, <i>The Last Judgment</i>, though in this it is
+generally supposed he was assisted by Dirk Bouts and Hans Memling. It
+contains several portraits, notably those of the Pope, Eugenius IV., who
+stands behind the Apostles in the right wing, and next to him Philip the
+Good. The crowned female in the opposite wing is probably Philip's</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XXII" id="PL_XXII"></a>
+<a href="images/plate22.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate22_th.png" width="300" height="387" alt="PLATE XXII.&mdash;JAN VAN EYCK
+
+PORTRAIT OF THE PAINTER&#39;S WIFE
+
+Town Gallery, Bruges" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XXII.&mdash;JAN VAN EYCK<br />
+
+PORTRAIT OF THE PAINTER&#39;S WIFE<br />
+
+<i>Town Gallery, Bruges</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">second wife, Isabella of Portugal, whose portrait Jan Van Eyck went to
+Lisbon to paint before her marriage. On the outer sides are excellently
+painted portraits of the founder of the Hospital, Nicolas Rolin, and his
+wife. This work has been classed with the Van Eycks' <i>Adoration of the
+Lamb</i>, and the <i>Adoration of the Shepherds</i> by Hugo Van der Goes, as
+crystallizing the finest expression of early northern painting.</p>
+
+<p>In 1450 he visited Italy, where he painted the beautiful little
+altar-piece which is now in the Städel Institute at Frankfort, for Piero
+and Giovanni de'Medici.</p>
+
+<p>Another very fine example of his work is the triptych, now in the Berlin
+Museum, executed for Pierre Bladelin. In the centre is the Nativity,
+with a portrait of Bladelin kneeling, and angels. On the one side is the
+annunciation of the Redeemer to the ruler of the West&mdash;the Emperor
+Augustus&mdash;by the agency of the Tiburtine Sibyl; on the other to those of
+the East&mdash;the Three Kings&mdash;who are keeping watch on a mountain, where
+the child appears to them in a star.</p>
+
+<p>One of the largest as well as of the finest of the master's works is a
+triptych in the Munich Gallery&mdash;the <i>Adoration of the Kings</i>, with the
+<i>Annunciation</i> and the <i>Presentation in the Temple</i> in the wings. The
+figure of the Virgin in the <i>Presentation</i> is particularly pleasing for
+its simple and unaffected realism. <i>S. Luke painting the Virgin</i>, also
+in the Munich Gallery, is ascribed to Roger.</p>
+
+<p>No painter of this school, the Van Eycks even not excepted, exercised so
+great and widely extended an influence as Roger Van der Weyden. Not only
+were Hans Memling&mdash;the greatest master of the next generation in
+Belgium&mdash;and his own son, also named Roger, his pupils, but innumerable
+works other than pictures<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</a></span> were produced, such as miniatures,
+block-books, and engravings, in which his form of art is recognisable.
+It was under his auspices that the realistic tendency of the Van Eycks
+pervaded all Germany; for it was only after the death of Jan Van Eyck,
+in 1441, that the widespread fame of Roger Van der Weyden induced
+Germans to visit his studio at Brussels. Martin Schongauer, one of the
+greatest German masters of the sixteenth century, is known to have been
+his pupil, and it is certain that there must have been many others.</p>
+
+<p>It is in <span class="smcap">Hans Memling</span> (<i>c.</i> 1435-1494), whom Vasari states to have been
+the pupil of Roger, that the early Netherlandish School attains the
+highest delicacy of artistic development. His poetical and profoundly
+human qualities had a special attraction for the "Pre-Raphaelite
+Brotherhood" inaugurated by Rossetti and Holman Hunt in the middle of
+the nineteenth century. This unusual tenderness of feeling is probably
+also the origin of the legend that Memling was taken into the Hospital
+of S. John at Bruges&mdash;where he painted most of his masterpieces&mdash;as a
+sick soldier after the battle of Nancy. In feeling for beauty and grace
+he was more gifted than any painter except Hubert Van Eyck, and this
+quality, conspicuous amid the somewhat ugly realism of most of his
+contemporaries, has ensured him perhaps a little more popularity than is
+rightly his share. Compared with the works of his master, Roger Van der
+Weyden, his figures are certainly of better proportions and less
+meagreness of form; his hands and feet truer to nature; the heads of his
+women are sweeter, and those of his men less severe. His outlines are
+softer, and in the modelling of his flesh parts more delicacy of half
+tones is observable. His colours are still more luminous and
+transparent. On the other hand he is inferior to Van der Weyden in the
+carrying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</a></span> out of detail, such as the materials of his draperies or the
+rendering of the full brilliancy of gold.</p>
+
+<p>In 1467 Memling was a master painter at Bruges, and painted the portrait
+of the medallist, Nicolas Spinelli, which is now in the Royal Museum at
+Antwerp, and a small altar-piece now at Chatsworth. His most famous
+works, those in the Hospital at Bruges, belong to a somewhat later date,
+the <i>Shrine of S. Ursula</i> not being completed till 1489. The <i>Adoration
+of the Kings</i> and the altar-piece were some ten years earlier. The
+famous shrine of S. Ursula is about four feet in length, and the whole
+of the outside is adorned with painting. On each side of the cover are
+three medallions, a large one in the centre and two smaller at the
+sides. The latter contain angels playing on musical instruments; in the
+centre on one side is a Coronation of the Virgin, on the other the
+Glorification of S. Ursula and her companions, with two figures of
+Bishops. On the gable-ends are the Virgin and Child with two sisters of
+the hospital kneeling before them, and S. Ursula with the arrow, the
+instrument of her martyrdom, and virgins seeking protection under her
+mantle. On the longer sides of the reliquary itself, in six rather
+larger compartments, is painted the history of S. Ursula.</p>
+
+<p>Of about the same period, possibly a little earlier, is the <i>Marriage of
+S. Catherine</i>, which is also in S. John's Hospital at Bruges. The
+central figure is that of the Virgin, seated under a porch, with
+tapestry hanging down behind it; two angels hold a crown over her head:
+beside her is S. Catherine kneeling, whose head is one of the finest
+ever painted by Memling. Behind her is an angel playing on the organ,
+and further back S. John the Baptist. On the other side kneels S.
+Barbara, reading: behind her another angel holds a book to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</a></span> Virgin,
+and still further back is S. John the Evangelist, a figure of great
+beauty, and of a singularly mild and thoughtful character. Through the
+arcades of the porch we look out, on either side of the throne, on a
+rich landscape, in which are represented scenes from the lives of the
+two S. Johns. The panel on the right contains the beheading of the
+Baptist, on the left the Evangelist in the Isle of Patmos, where the
+vision of the Apocalypse appears to him&mdash;the Almighty on a throne in a
+glory of dazzling light, encompassed with a rainbow.</p>
+
+<p>The whole forms a work strikingly poetical and most impressive in
+character; it is highly finished, both in drawing and composition.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Ian Gossaert</span> (<i>c.</i> 1472-1535), called <span class="smcap">Jan van Mabuse</span> from his native
+town of Maubeuge, was the son of a bookbinder who worked for the Abbey
+of Sainte-Aldegonde. It is possible therefore that he might have formed
+an early acquaintance with illuminated manuscripts before studying the
+art of painting in the studio of a master. Memling, Gerard, David, and
+Quentin Massys have been suggested as his instructors, but it is not
+known for certain that he was actually a pupil of any of them. In 1508
+he went to Italy, where he appears to have been greatly influenced both
+by the work of the Renaissance painters and by the antique. The
+<i>Adoration of the Kings</i>, which was lately purchased from Castle Howard
+for the National Gallery for £40,000, was painted before he went to
+Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the end of the fifteenth century, in consequence of the transfer
+of commerce from Bruges to Antwerp, this latter city first became and
+long continued the centre of art, and especially of Netherlandish
+painting. Here it is that we find <span class="smcap">Quentin Massys</span>, the greatest Belgian
+painter of this later time. He was born</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XXIII" id="PL_XXIII"></a>
+<a href="images/plate23.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate23_th.png" width="300" height="384" alt="PLATE XXIII.&mdash;JAN MABUSE
+
+PORTRAIT OF JEAN CARONDELET
+
+Louvre, Paris" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XXIII.&mdash;JAN MABUSE<br />
+
+PORTRAIT OF JEAN CARONDELET<br />
+
+<i>Louvre, Paris</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">probably in 1466. His father is said to have been a blacksmith and
+clockmaker, and there is a tradition that Quentin only forsook the
+hammer for the brush at instigation of a tender passion for a beautiful
+lady. Be that as it may, he is an important figure in the history of
+Belgian art. He distinguishes, broadly speaking, the close of the last
+period and the beginning of the next. A number of pictures representing
+sacred subjects exhibit, with little feeling for real beauty of form,
+such delicacy of features, beauty and earnestness of feeling, tenderness
+and clearness of colouring and skill in finish, as worthily recall the
+religious painting of the Middle Ages, though at the very end of them.
+In his draperies, especially, we observe a charm which is peculiar to
+Massys. At the same time, in the subordinate figures introduced into
+sacred subjects, such as the executioners, etc., he seems to take
+pleasure in coarse and tasteless caricatures.</p>
+
+<p>In subjects taken from common life, such as money changers, loving
+couples, or ugly old women, he uses his brush with evident zest, and
+with great success. The pictures of his later period are also
+distinguished from those of other painters by the large size of the
+figures, which for the first time in his country are of three-quarters
+or even actual life size.</p>
+
+<p>Among his most original and attractive pictures are the half-length
+figures of Christ and the Virgin. These must have been very popular in
+his own time, for he has left several repetitions of them. Two heads of
+this class are at Antwerp, and two others of equal beauty are in the
+National Gallery in one frame (No. 295).</p>
+
+<p>The most celebrated of his subject pictures is that known by the name of
+<i>The Misers</i>, or <i>The Money Changers</i>, at Windsor Castle&mdash;of which there
+are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</a></span> numerous copies, and this is not supposed to be the original. <i>The
+Money Changer and His Wife</i> at the Louvre is undoubtedly his.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Lucas van Leyden</span>, as he was called (his real name being Luc Jacobez),
+was born in 1494, and died in 1533. He was a pupil of a little known
+artist, Cornelis Engelbrechstein, who was a follower if not a pupil of
+Memling. Lucas was an artist of multifarious powers and very early
+development. He painted admirably&mdash;though his authenticated works are
+very scarce&mdash;drew, and engraved. He pursued the path of realism in the
+treatment of sacred subjects, but with less beauty or elevation of mind.
+His heads are generally of a very ugly character. At the same time his
+form of expression found sympathy in the feeling of the period, and by
+the skill with which it was expressed, especially in his engravings,
+attracted a number of followers. In scenes from common life he is full
+of truth and delicate observation of nature, though showing now and then
+a somewhat coarse sense of humour. One of his most important works is a
+large composition of <i>The Last Judgment</i>, which is at Leyden.</p>
+
+<p>Very early in the sixteenth century&mdash;beginning in fact, as we have seen,
+with Jan Mabuse in 1508&mdash;the Netherlandish and German artists made it
+the fashion to repair to Italy, attracted by the reputation of the great
+masters; so that from this time onwards their work ceases to exhibit the
+purely northern characteristics of their predecessors. For it appears
+that precisely those qualities most opposed to their own native feeling
+for art made the deepest impression on their minds; more especially such
+general qualities as grandeur, beauty, simplicity of forms, drawing of
+the nude, unrestrained freedom, boldness, and grace of movement&mdash;in
+short,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</a></span> all that is comprised in art under the term "ideal."</p>
+
+<p>But the attempt to appropriate all these qualities could lead to no
+successful result. Being based on no inherent want on the part of their
+own original feeling for art, it became only the outward imitation of
+something foreign to themselves, and they never therefore succeeded in
+mastering the complete understanding of form, or in adopting the true
+feeling for beauty of line or grace of movement; and in aiming at them
+they only degenerated into artificiality, exaggeration in drawing, and
+violence in attitude. The pictures of this class, even of religious
+subjects, have accordingly but little to attract the eye, and when they
+selected scenes from ancient mythology, and allegories decked out with
+an ostentation of learning, the result is positively disagreeable.</p>
+
+<p>The most satisfactory productions of this period will be found in the
+department of portrait painting, which, by its nature, threw the artist
+upon the exercise of his own original feeling for art. As in every other
+respect this epoch is far more important as a link in the chain of
+history than from any pleasure arising from its own works, it will be
+sufficient to mention only the more important painters and a few of
+their principal pictures.</p>
+
+<p>The first painter who deserted his native style of art was, as before
+mentioned, Jan Mabuse. After the large <i>Adoration of the Kings</i> in the
+National Gallery the most important picture of his pre-Italian period is
+the <i>Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane</i> at Berlin. Nearly all his works
+subsequent to 1512, by which time he had settled in Brussels, are
+characterised by all the faults above mentioned. Their redeeming quality
+is their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</a></span> masterly treatment. Among those of religious subjects the
+smallest are as a rule the best. The <i>Ecce Homo</i> at Antwerp, so
+frequently copied by contemporary painters, is a specimen of masterly
+modelling and vigorous colour. He is less successful with his life-size
+<i>Adam and Eve</i>, of which there are repetitions at Brussels, Hatfield,
+Hampton Court and Berlin. But his most unpleasing efforts are the
+mythological subjects such as the <i>Danaë</i> at Munich, and the <i>Neptune
+and Amphitrite</i> at Berlin. On the other hand, his portraits are
+attractive both from being more original, and less influenced by his
+acquired mannerisms of style Four of these are in the National Gallery,
+and the <i>Girl weighing Gold Pieces</i>, in the Berlin gallery, is also
+worthy of mention.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Bernard van Orley</span>, born at Brussels in 1471, is characterised in the
+catalogue of the National Gallery as "taking his place after Massys and
+Mabuse on the downward slope of Netherlandish painting." He has been
+immortalised by the fine portrait head of him by Albert Dürer which is
+now in the Dresden Gallery. He was Court painter to Margaret of Austria,
+Governess of the Low Countries, and retained the same post under her
+successor, Mary of Hungary. He is said to have visited Rome in 1509, and
+there made the acquaintance of Raphael, whose influence is certainly
+apparent, though hardly his inspiration, in the <i>Holy Family</i> in the
+Louvre. A more Netherlandish work, both in feeling and in treatment, is
+the <i>Pietà</i> in the Gallery at Brussels.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Ian Scorel</span>, born in 1495, was a pupil of Mabuse, and appears to have
+been the first to introduce the Italian style into his native
+country&mdash;Holland. When on a pilgrimage to Palestine he happened to pass<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</a></span>
+through Rome at the time his countryman was raised to the papal dignity
+as Adrian VI., and after painting his portrait he was appointed overseer
+of the art treasures of the Vatican. Returning to Utrecht, where he
+died, he painted the picture of the <i>Virgin and Child</i>, with donors,
+which is now in the Town Hall.</p>
+
+<p>A fine portrait by Scorel of Cornelius Aerntz van der Dussen is in the
+Berlin Gallery.</p>
+
+<p>The decided and strongly realistic style in which Quentin Massys had
+painted scenes from common life, as for instance the Misere or Money
+Changers, became the model for various painters in their treatment of
+similar subjects. First among these was his son, <span class="smcap">Jan Massys</span>, born about
+1500, who followed closely but rather clumsily in his father's
+footsteps, and need only be mentioned for carrying on the tradition.
+More interesting were the Breughels, namely, <span class="smcap">Pieter Breughel</span> the elder,
+born about 1520, called Peasant Breughel, and his two sons Pieter and
+Jan. Old Breughel is best studied at Vienna, where there are good
+examples of his various subjects, notably a <i>Crucifixion</i> and <i>The Tower
+of Babel</i>&mdash;both dated 1563&mdash;and secular scenes like <i>A Peasant Wedding</i>
+and a <i>Fight between Carnival and Lent</i>, which are full of clever and
+droll invention.</p>
+
+<p>His elder son, Pieter, was called Hell Breughel, from his choice of
+subject. He is far inferior to his father or to his younger brother Jan,
+called Velvet Breughel, born in 1568. Though more especially a landscape
+painter, Jan also takes an important place in the development of subject
+pictures, which, though seldom rising above a somewhat coarse reality,
+are of a lively character, and worthy forerunners of the more
+accomplished productions of Teniers, Ostade, and Brouwer.</p>
+
+<p>It is in portrait painting, however, that the Netherlandish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">142</a></span> School
+chiefly distinguished itself during its decline in the seventeenth
+century, and had all its sons remained in the country to enhance its
+glory, it is probable that the effect on the general practice of
+painting would have been more than beneficial. But portrait painters
+have not always been content to sit at home and wait for sitters to come
+to them, especially when the state of society in which they happen to
+find themselves makes waiting rather a long and tedious process. From
+the Reformation onwards, for over two centuries, there was a steady
+demand for portrait painters in England, and after the foundation of a
+really English school of painting by Reynolds in the middle of the
+eighteenth century, the stream of foreign, especially Netherlandish,
+talent never entirely ceased to flow. But confining ourselves for the
+present to the sixteenth century, we find that all the considerable
+Netherlandish portrait painters were employed for the most part outside
+their own country.</p>
+
+<p>Typical of these is <span class="smcap">Joos van Cleef</span>, of Antwerp, who died in 1540.
+According to Vasari he visited Spain and painted portraits for the Court
+of France. At all events it is certain that he worked for a time in
+England, where the great success of Sir Antonio Mor is said to have
+disordered his brain. The few pictures that can be assigned to him with
+any certainty thoroughly justify the high reputation he enjoyed in his
+time&mdash;the two male portraits for example at Berlin and Munich, the
+portraits of himself and his wife at Windsor, and his own at Althorp.
+His style may be classed as between that of Holbein and Antonio Mor. His
+well-drawn forms are decided without being hard, and his warm and
+transparent colouring recalls the great masters of the Venetian School.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="IIb" id="IIb"></a>II</h3>
+
+<p class="head">PETER PAUL RUBENS</p>
+
+<p>D<span class="smcap">r</span> Waagen thus summarises the history of painting in the Netherlands
+during the interval of about a century and a half that elapsed between
+the death of Jan van Eyck in 1440 and the birth of <span class="smcap">Peter Paul Rubens</span> in
+1577.</p>
+
+<p>"The great school of the brothers van Eyck," he writes, "which united
+with a profound and genuine enthusiasm for religious subjects a pure and
+healthy feeling for nature, and a talent for portraying her minutest
+details with truth and fidelity, had continued till the end of the
+fifteenth century, and in some instances even later, to produce the most
+admirable works, combining the utmost technical perfection in touch and
+finish with most vivid and beautiful colouring. To this original school,
+however, had succeeded a perverted rage for imitating the Italian
+masters, which had been introduced into the Netherlands by a few
+painters of talent, particularly by Jean Mabuse and Bernard van Orley.
+To display their science by throwing their figures into forced and
+difficult positions and strongly marking the muscles, by which they
+thought to emulate the grandeur of Michel Angelo, and to exhibit their
+learning by the choice of mythological and allegorical subjects, became
+the aim of succeeding painters, and before these false and artificial
+views of art, the spirit of religious enthusiasm and the pure, naïve
+perception of the truth and beauty of nature gradually disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"In proportion as the Flemish painters lost the proper conception of
+form, and the feeling for delicacy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</a></span> and beauty of outline, it followed
+of course that they became more and more removed from nature in their
+desire to rival each other in the forced attitudes of their figures, and
+in the exhibition of nudity, until at last such disgusting caricatures
+were produced as we find in the works of Martin Heemskirk or Franz
+Floris, artists who were even deficient in good colouring, the old
+inheritance of the school.</p>
+
+<p>"Some few painters, however, whose feeling for truth and nature repelled
+them instinctively from a path so far removed from both, took to
+portraying scenes of real life with considerable humour and vivacity; or
+they delineated nature in her commonest aspects with great minuteness of
+detail; and thus <i>tableaux de genre</i> and landscape originated. Although
+a few isolated efforts to introduce a better state of things were
+visible towards the end of the sixteenth century, it was reserved for a
+mind of no common power to bring about a complete revolution."</p>
+
+<p>That Rubens was possessed of a "mind of no common power" will be readily
+admitted. He was an extraordinary person, in whom were combined such a
+variety of excellent qualities that there seems to have been no room
+left in him for any of the inferior ones which are usually necessary, as
+one must almost admit, for an alloy that will harden the finer metal for
+the practical purposes of success. With all his feeling for religion, he
+was seldom prudish; his amazing vitality never led him into excess or
+intemperance. His intense patriotism was all for peace; classical
+learning never made him dry or bumptious, nor the favour of kings
+servile. As fine a gentleman as Buckingham, he had no enemies.</p>
+
+<p>Something more than temperament and natural ability, however, was
+necessary to make Rubens<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">145</a></span> exactly what he turned out to be, and that was
+environment. Had he remained in Flanders all his life we should have
+been deprived of much that is most characteristic in his art. He was too
+big, that is to say, for the flower pot. He needed to be bedded out, so
+that his exuberant natural genius might have the proper opportunities
+for expanding under suitable conditions. It was in Venice and Mantua, in
+Florence and Rome that he found himself, and took his measure from the
+giants.</p>
+
+<p>Rubens was born in 1577 at Cologne, where his father, a jurist of
+considerable attainments, had taken refuge from the disturbances at
+Antwerp in 1566. He was christened Peter Paul in honour of the saints on
+whose festival his birthday fell&mdash;29th June. At the age of sixteen he
+was placed as a page in the household of the widowed Countess of
+Lalaing, but as he showed a remarkable love for drawing he was
+apprenticed first to Tobias Verhaegt, a landscape painter, and then to
+Adam Van Oort. The latter was so unsuitable a master, however, that
+Rubens was soon committed to the care of Otto Vennius, at that time
+Court painter to the Infanta Isabella and the Archduke Albert, her
+husband; he prospered so well that in 1600 Vennius advised him to go to
+Italy to finish his education as a painter.</p>
+
+<p>Rubens was now in his twenty-third year, and besides being proficient in
+painting he was so well grounded in the classics and in general
+education and manners that he was recommended by the Archduke to
+Vincenzio, Duke of Gonzaga, whose palace at Mantua was famous for
+containing an immense collection of art treasures, a great part of which
+within the next quarter of a century were purchased by King Charles, the
+Duke of Buckingham, and the Earl of Arundel. The influence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">146</a></span> exerted on
+the young painter by surroundings like these is exemplified in a note by
+Waagen:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Rubens during his residence at Mantua was so pleased with the <i>Triumph
+of Julius Cæsar</i> by Mantegna (the large cartoons now at Hampton Court
+Palace), that he made a free copy of one of them. His love for the
+fantastic and pompous led him to choose that with the elephants carrying
+the candelabra; but his ardent imagination, ever directed to the
+dramatic, could not be contented with this. Instead of a harmless sheep,
+which, in Mantegna, is walking by the side of the foremost elephant,
+Rubens has introduced a lion and a lioness, which growl angrily at the
+elephant. The latter is looking furiously round, and is on the point of
+striking the lion a blow with his trunk."</p>
+
+<p>That Rubens should have been so specially attracted by Mantegna may seem
+a little surprising, until we remember that both were lovers and
+students of classical antiquities&mdash;a fact that is often forgotten in
+recalling only the principal achievements of either. But it is important
+to know what sort of foundations underlie the most splendid erections if
+we wish to understand how they came into existence and what their place
+is in the history of the arts. A glance through Lemprière's <i>Dictionary</i>
+may furnish a modern Academician with a subject for a popular
+picture,&mdash;but that is stucco rather than foundation. The roots of tall
+trees go deep. Rubens when he was in Rome studied the antiquities of the
+place with the utmost diligence and zeal, as is evidenced by a book
+published by his brother Philip in 1608.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the autumn of this year that he received the news, when at
+Genoa, of his mother's illness, which induced him to return to Antwerp
+forthwith. On his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">147</a></span> arrival he found she had died before the messenger
+had reached Genoa.</p>
+
+<p>After four months of mourning he was ready to return to Flanders; his
+sojourn of eight years in Italy had so far influenced him that he might
+have remained there indefinitely had it not been for the Archduke and
+the Infanta pressing him to remain at Brussels and attach himself to
+their Court. Another circumstance may possibly have weighed with him;
+for within a year we find him married to Elizabeth Brant, the daughter
+of a magistrate of Antwerp, and it was not at Brussels, but at Antwerp,
+that he took up his quarters. Here he proceeded to build a wonderful
+house&mdash;said to have cost him 60,000 florins&mdash;after designs of his own in
+the Italian style, which he filled with the treasures he had collected
+in Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Rubens's first pictures were nearly all of them religious subjects.
+Before he went to Italy he had painted an <i>Adoration of the Kings</i>, a
+<i>Holy Trinity</i>, and the <i>Dead Christ in the Arms of God the Father</i>,
+which was engraved by Bolswert. When Vincenzio sent him to Rome to copy
+pictures there for him, he found time to execute a commission which he
+received from the Archduke Albert to paint three pictures for the Church
+of Santa Croce di Gerusalamme, namely, the <i>Crowning with Thorns</i>, the
+<i>Crucifixion</i>, and the <i>Finding of the Cross</i>. A year later&mdash;after
+returning from a journey to Madrid&mdash;he painted the altar-piece for the
+Church of Santa Maria in Vallicella, in which the influence of Paul
+Veronese is conspicuous. At Genoa, he painted the Circumcision and S.
+Ignatius for the church of the Jesuits.</p>
+
+<p>One of the first pictures which he painted on his return to Antwerp was
+an altar-piece for the private<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">148</a></span> chapel of the Archduke Albert, of the
+Holy Family. This picture was so much admired that the members of the
+fraternity of S. Ildefonso, at the head of which was the Archduke
+Albert, commissioned him to paint an altar-piece for the Chapel of the
+Order of S. James near Brussels. This picture, which is now at Vienna,
+represents the Virgin enthroned, surrounded by four female saints,
+putting the Cloak of the Order on the shoulders of S. Ildefonso. On the
+wings are the portraits of the Archduke and Isabella, with their patron
+saints.</p>
+
+<p>Thus we find that, like the earliest painters in his own country as well
+as in Italy, the beginning of Rubens's art was under the influence of
+the Church. Further, we find that the most celebrated work of his
+earlier period, the <i>Descent from the Cross</i>, in the cathedral at
+Antwerp, was undertaken in circumstances which abundantly show how
+thoroughly he was imbued with the principles of the religion he
+professed. The story is that when preparing the foundations of his new
+house he had unwittingly trespassed upon a piece of ground belonging to
+the Company of Arquebusiers at Antwerp. A lawsuit was threatened, and
+Rubens, with all the vivacity of his nature, prepared measures of
+resistance. But when his friend Rockox, a lawyer, had proved him that he
+was in the wrong, he immediately drew back, and offered to paint a
+picture by way of compensation. The offer was accepted, and the
+Arquebusiers asked for a representation of their patron, S. Christopher,
+to be placed in his chapel in the cathedral. In the magnificent spirit
+which always distinguished the man, he presented to his adversaries not
+merely the figure of the great Saint, but an elaborate and significant
+illustration of his name (Christ-bearer). Thus, in the centre, the
+disciples are lifting the Saviour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">149</a></span> from the Cross; in the wings the
+Visitation&mdash;S. Simeon with Christ in his arms, S. Christopher with
+Christ on his shoulders, and an old hermit bearing a light.</p>
+
+<p>Among the earlier examples of secular pictures one of the most famous is
+the portrait of himself and his bride, which is now in the Munich
+Gallery. This was painted in 1609, when Rubens was over thirty years
+old.</p>
+
+<p>In 1627 Rubens went to Madrid on a diplomatic errand, but still as a
+painter, as we shall see when discussing his relations with Velasquez.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the end of the year 1629 he was sent on another diplomatic
+mission, this time to England. The choice of an ambassador could not
+have fallen on anyone better calculated to suit the personal character
+of Charles I., who was a passionate lover of art and easily captivated
+by men of cultivated intellect and refined manners. Rubens therefore, in
+whom the most admirable and attractive qualities were united to the
+rarest genius as an artist, soon succeeded in winning the attention and
+regard of the king. At Paris, too, Rubens had made friends with
+Buckingham, who had purchased his whole collection of statues,
+paintings, and other works of art for about ten thousand pounds.</p>
+
+<p>It was during his stay in London that he painted the picture now in the
+National Gallery, called <i>Peace and War</i> (No. 46). This was intended as
+an allegory representing the blessings of peace and the horrors of war,
+which he presented to the king as a tangible recommendation of the
+pacific measures which he had come to propose. After the dispersion of
+the Royal Collection during the Commonwealth this picture was acquired
+by the Doria family at Genoa, where it was called, oddly enough,
+<i>Rubens's Family</i>. As a matter of fact the children are those of
+Balthazar Gerbier. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">150</a></span> also painted the <i>S. George and the Dragon</i>,
+which is now at Windsor Castle, and made the sketches for the nine
+pictures on the ceiling of the Banqueting Hall&mdash;now the United Service
+Institution Museum&mdash;in Whitehall. It was on this occasion, too, that he
+received the honour of knighthood from Charles I., who is said to have
+presented him with his own sword.</p>
+
+<p>In the following year, 1630, Rubens married his second wife, Helena
+Fourment, who was only sixteen years old&mdash;he was now fifty-two or
+fifty-three. She belonged to one of the richest and most respectable
+families in Antwerp, and was by no means unworthy of the compliment of
+being painted in the character of the Virgin receiving instruction from
+S. Anne, in the picture which is still at Antwerp.</p>
+
+<p>In 1633 his painting was again interrupted by a diplomatic mission, this
+time to Holland; and his remaining years were subject to more
+distressing interruptions, from the gout, to which he finally succumbed
+in 1640.</p>
+
+<p>When we come to consider the English School of painting we shall see how
+much of its revival in the middle of the eighteenth century was due to
+the personality as well as to the genius of Sir Joshua Reynolds. In the
+Netherlands, likewise, it was not merely a great painter that was
+required to raise the art to life, but a great personality as well; and
+to the influence of Rubens may be attributed much if not all of the
+extraordinary fertility of the Flemish and Dutch Schools of the
+seventeenth century. Making every allowance for the difference in the
+times in which the Van Eycks and Rubens were working, there is no doubt
+that the former lived in too rarefied an atmosphere ever to influence
+their fellows, and with the exception of Hans Memling they left no</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XXIV" id="PL_XXIV"></a>
+<a href="images/plate24.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate24_th.png" width="300" height="412" alt="PLATE XXIV.&mdash;RUBENS
+
+PORTRAIT OF HÉLÈNE FOURMENT, THE ARTIST&#39;S SECOND WIFE, AND TWO CHILDREN
+
+Louvre, Paris" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XXIV.&mdash;RUBENS<br />
+
+PORTRAIT OF HÉLÈNE FOURMENT, THE ARTIST&#39;S SECOND WIFE, AND TWO CHILDREN<br />
+
+<i>Louvre, Paris</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">151</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">one worthy to carry on their tradition. Rubens showed his contemporaries
+that art was a mistress who could be served in many ways that were yet
+unthought of, and that she did not by any means disdain the tribute of
+other than religious votaries. Beginning, as we have pointed out, with
+sacred subjects, Rubens soon turned to the study of the classics, and
+found in them not so much the classical severity that Mantegna had
+sought for as the pagan spirit of fulness and freedom. "I am convinced
+that to reach the highest perfection as a painter," he himself writes
+"it is necessary, not only to be acquainted with the ancient statues,
+but we must be inwardly imbued with the thorough comprehension of them.
+An insight into the laws which pertain to them is necessary before they
+can be turned to any real account in painting. This will prevent the
+artist from transferring to the canvas that which in sculpture is
+dependent on the material employed&mdash;marble, for instance. Many
+inexperienced and indeed experienced painters do not distinguish the
+material from the form which it expresses&mdash;the stone from the figure
+which is carved in it; that which the artist forces from the dead
+marble, from the universal laws of art which are independent of it.</p>
+
+<p>"One leading rule may be laid down, that inasmuch as the best statues of
+antiquity are of great value for the painter, the inferior ones are not
+only worthless but mischievous: for while beginners fancy they can
+perform wonders if they can borrow from these statues, and transfer
+something hard, heavy, with sharp outlines and an exaggerated anatomy to
+their canvas, this can only be done by outraging the truth of nature,
+since instead of representing flesh with colours, they do but give
+colour to marble.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">152</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"In studying even the best of the antique statues, the painter must
+consider and avoid many things which are not connected with the art of
+the sculptor, but solely with the material in which he worked. I may
+mention particularly the difference in the shading. In nature, owing to
+the transparency of the flesh, the skin, and the cartilages, the shading
+of many parts is moderated, which in sculpture appear hard and abrupt,
+for the shadows become doubled, as it were, owing to the natural and
+unavoidable thickness of the stone. To this must be added that certain
+less important parts which lie on the surface of the human body, as the
+veins, folds of the skin, etc., which change their appearance with every
+movement, and which owing to the pliancy of the skin become easily
+extended or contracted, are not expressed at all in the works of
+sculptors in general&mdash;though it is true that sculptors of high talent
+have marked them in some degree. The painter, however, must never omit
+to introduce them&mdash;with proper discretion.</p>
+
+<p>"In the manner in which lights fall, too, statues are totally different
+from nature; for the natural brilliancy of marble, and its own light,
+throws out the surface far more strongly than in nature, and even
+dazzles the eye."</p>
+
+<p>I have quoted rather more of this passage (from Mrs Jameson's
+translation) than I at first intended, because it discloses one of the
+most important secrets of the successful painting of figures, by other
+artists besides Rubens himself&mdash;George Romney for example. The
+advantages of a "classical education" at our English public schools and
+universities are questioned, and there can be no doubt that for the bulk
+of the pupils they are questionable. But Rubens shows that the case is
+exactly the same for painters studying classical art as for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">153</a></span> scholars
+acquainting themselves with classical literature. A superficial study of
+the antique, just because it is antique, is of no use at all, but rather
+a hindrance. But if the study is properly undertaken, there is no surer
+foundation, in art or literature, on which to build. It makes no
+difference what is built; the foundation is there, beneath the surface,
+and whatever is placed upon it will stand for all time.</p>
+
+<p>The remarkable freedom and originality of Rubens's treatment of
+classical subjects is thus accounted for. Under the surface is his
+familiarity with the antique, but instead of carrying this above ground,
+he builds on it a palace in accordance with the times and circumstances
+in which he lived. The principles of classical art underlie the modern
+structure. Among his numerous works of classical mythology the picture
+at Munich of <i>Castor and Pollux</i> carrying off the daughters of Leucippus
+is worthy of being first mentioned. The Dioscuri mounted on spirited
+steeds, one of which is wildly rearing, are in the act of capturing the
+two damsels. The calm expression of strength in the male, and the
+violent but fruitless resistance of the female figures, form a striking
+contrast. Although the former are merely represented as two coarse and
+powerful men, and the women have only common and rather redundant forms
+and Flemish faces, yet the picture produces as a whole such a striking
+effect, owing to the admirable manner in which the subject is conceived,
+the power of imagination which it displays, and the exquisite colouring
+and tone, that it would never occur to any unprejudiced spectator to
+regret the absence of antique forms and character.</p>
+
+<p>Two other pictures of this class are singled out for description by
+Waagen as masterpieces. One is the <i>Rape of Proserpine</i>, at
+Blenheim,&mdash;Pluto in his car,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">154</a></span> drawn by fiery brown steeds, is carrying
+off the goddess, who is struggling in his arms. The other is the <i>Battle
+of the Amazons</i>, in the Munich Gallery, which was painted by Rubens for
+Van der Geest. With great judgment he has chosen the moment when the
+Amazons are driven back by the Greeks over the river Thermodon: the
+battle takes place upon a bridge, and thus the horror of the scene is
+carried to the highest pitch.</p>
+
+<p>Both in Flanders and in Italy Rubens had been brought into close contact
+with all the magnificence and splendour which belonged to those gorgeous
+times, and he delighted in representing the pomp of worldly state and
+everything connected with it. Of all sacred subjects none afforded such
+a rich field for display as the <i>Adoration of the Kings</i>; he has painted
+this subject no less than twelve times, and his fancy appears quite
+inexhaustible in the invention of the rich offerings of the eastern
+sages. Among the subjects of a secular character the history of Marie
+de'Medici, the triumph of the Emperor Charles V., and the Sultan at the
+head of his Army, gave him abundant opportunities of portraying Oriental
+and European pageantry, with rich arms and regalia, and all the pomp and
+circumstance of war. Profusion&mdash;pouring forth of abundance, that was one
+of Rubens's most salient characteristics. Exuberance, plenty, fatness.</p>
+
+<p>As a painter of animals, again, Rubens opened out a new field for the
+energy of his fellow-countrymen, which was tilled so industriously by
+Frans Snyders and Jan Fyt, and in a lesser degree by the Dutchmen Jan
+Weenix, father and son, and Hondecoeter. That the naïve instincts,
+agility, and vivacity of animals must have had a great attraction for
+Rubens is easily understood. Those which are remarkable for their
+courage,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">155</a></span> strength, intelligence, swiftness&mdash;as lions, tigers, wild
+boars, wolves, horses, dogs&mdash;particularly interested him. He paid
+special attention to animals, seized every opportunity of studying them
+from nature, and attained the most wonderful skill and facility in
+painting them. It is related that he had a remarkably fine and powerful
+lion brought to his house in order to study him in every variety of
+attitude, and that on one occasion observing him yawn, he was so pleased
+with the action that he wished to paint it. He therefore desired the
+keeper to tickle the animal under the chin to make him repeatedly open
+his jaws: at length the lion became savage at this treatment, and cast
+such furious glances at his keeper, that Rubens attended to his warning
+and had the beast removed. The keeper is said to have been torn to
+pieces by the lion shortly afterwards: apparently the animal had never
+forgotten the affront put upon him.</p>
+
+<p>By such means&mdash;though it is to be hoped not always with such lamentable
+results&mdash;Rubens succeeded in seizing and portraying the peculiar
+character and instinct of animals&mdash;their quick movements and
+manifestations of strength&mdash;with such perfect truth and energy that not
+one among the modern painters has approached him in this
+respect&mdash;certainly not Landseer, as Mrs Jameson would ask us to believe.</p>
+
+<p>The celebrated <i>Wolf Hunt</i>, in the collection of Lord Ashburton, was one
+of the earliest, painted in 1612 for the Spanish General Legranes only
+three years after Rubens's return from Italy. In this picture, his bold
+creative fancy and dramatic turn of mind are remarkably
+conspicuous&mdash;even at this early stage in his career. Catherine Brant,
+his first wife, on a brown horse, with a falcon in her hand, is near her
+husband; a second huntsman on horseback, three on foot, another old
+wolf<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">156</a></span> and three young ones, with several dogs, complete the composition,
+which is most carefully painted in a clear and powerful tone throughout.</p>
+
+<p>Of scenes of peasant life, one of his earliest, and yet the most famous,
+is the <i>Kermesse</i>, which is now in the Louvre. A boisterous, merry party
+of about seventy persons are assembled in front of a country ale-house;
+several are wildly dancing in a circle, others are drinking and
+shouting; others, again, are making love.</p>
+
+<p><i>The Garden of Love</i>, equally famous, was one of Rubens's latest
+pictures. Of this there are several versions in existence, of which
+those at Dresden and Madrid may be considered as originals. Several
+loving couples in familiar conversation are lingering before the
+entrance of a grotto, the front of which is ornamented with a rustic
+portico. Amongst them we recognise the portraits of Rubens and his
+second wife, his pupil Van Dyck, and Simon de Vos.</p>
+
+<p>As Rubens united to such great and various knowledge the disposition to
+communicate it to others in the most friendly and candid manner, it was
+natural that young painters of talent who were admitted into his atelier
+should soon attain a high degree of skill and cultivation.</p>
+
+<p>At "the House in the Wood," not far from the Hague, there is a salon
+decorated entirely by the pupils of Rubens. The principal picture, which
+is one of the largest oil paintings in the world, is by Jacob Jordaens,
+and represents the triumph of Prince Frederick Henry&mdash;the object of the
+whole scheme being the glorification of the House of Orange, in 1649.
+Most of the other pictures are of Theodore van Thulden, who in these
+works has emulated his illustrious master in the force and brilliance of
+his colouring.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">157</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But it is not in any particular salon or palace that we must look for
+the effects of Rubens' influence; it was far wider than to be able to be
+contained within four walls. In portraiture he gave us Van Dyck; in
+historical subjects, Jacob Jordaens; in animal painting and still life,
+Frans Snyders, Jan Fyt, and the brothers Weenix. In pictures of everyday
+life he gave us Adrian Brouwer and David Teniers; in landscape,
+Everdingen, Ruisdael and Waterloo. "Thus was the art of painting in the
+Netherlands remodelled in every department," says Waagen in the
+concluding sentence of his memoir, "by the energies of a single great
+and gifted mind. Thus was Rubens the originator of its second great
+epoch, to which we are indebted for such numerous and masterly
+performances in every branch of the art."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="IIIb" id="IIIb"></a>III</h3>
+
+<p class="head">THE PUPILS OF RUBENS</p>
+
+
+<p>D<span class="smcap">avid</span> T<span class="smcap">eniers</span> the elder, who was born at Antwerp in 1582, received the
+first rudiments of his art from Rubens, who soon perceived in him the
+happy advances towards excelling in his profession that raised him to
+the head of his school. The prejudice in favour of his son, David
+Teniers the younger, is so great that the father is generally esteemed
+but a middling painter; and his pictures not worth the inquiry of a
+collector. His hand is so little distinguished, however, that the
+paintings of the father are often taken for those of the son. The father
+was certainly the inventor of the manner, which the son, who was his
+pupil, only improved with what little was wanting to perfection.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">158</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Rubens was astonished at his early success, and though he followed the
+manner of Adrian Brouwer, looked on him as his most deserving pupil by
+the brightness of genius that he showed. He soon saved enough money to
+undertake the journey to Italy, and when at Rome he established himself
+with Adam Elsheimer, who was then in great vogue. In Elsheimer's manner
+he soon became a perfect master, without neglecting at the same time the
+study of other and greater masters, endeavouring to penetrate into the
+deepest mysteries of their practice. An abode of ten years in Italy, and
+the influence of Elsheimer combined with that of Rubens, formed him into
+what he became.</p>
+
+<p>When he returned to his own country he employed himself entirely in
+painting small pictures filled with figures of people drinking and
+merry-making, and numbers of peasants and country women. He displayed so
+much taste in these that the demand for them was universal. Even Rubens
+thought them an ornament to his collection.</p>
+
+<p>Teniers drew his own character in his pictures, and in the subjects he
+usually expressed everything tends to joy and pleasure. Always employed
+in copying after nature whatsoever presented itself, he taught his two
+sons, David and Abraham, to follow his example, and accustomed them to
+paint nothing but from that infallible model, by which means they both
+became excellent painters. These were his only disciples, and he died at
+Antwerp in 1649.</p>
+
+<p>The only distinction between his works and those of his son, David
+Teniers the younger, is that in the latter you discover a finer touch, a
+fresher brush, a greater choice of attitudes, and a better disposition
+of the figures. The father, too, retained something of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">159</a></span> tone of
+Italy in his colouring, which was stronger than his son's; but his
+pictures have less harmony and union&mdash;though to tell the truth, when the
+father took pains to finish his picture, he very nearly resembled his
+son.</p>
+
+<p>The latter, <span class="smcap">David Teniers</span> the younger, was born in 1610. He was
+nicknamed the Ape of painting, from his powers of imitation. The
+Archduke Leopold William made him a gentleman of his bedchamber, and he
+made copies of all his pictures. He came to England to buy several
+Italian pictures for Count Fuensaldegna, who on his return heaped
+favours upon him. Don John of Austria and the King of Spain set so great
+a value upon his pictures that they built a gallery set apart to
+preserve them&mdash;there are no less than fifty-two in the Prado Gallery
+to-day.</p>
+
+<p>His principal talent was landscape adorned with small figures. He
+painted men drinking and smoking, alchemists, corps de garde,
+temptations of S. Anthony, and country fairs and merry-makings. His
+small pictures are superior to his large ones. His execution displays
+the greatest ease; the leafing of his trees is light, his skies are
+admirable: his small figures have an exquisite expression and a most
+lively touch, and the characters are marked out with the greatest truth.
+From the thinness of the colours his works seem to have been finished at
+once; they are generally clear in all their parts, and Teniers had the
+art, without dark shades, to relieve his lights by other lights, so well
+managed as to produce the effect he wanted, an art which few besides
+himself have attained. He died at Antwerp in 1694.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Frans Snyders</span> was born at Antwerp in the year 1587, ten years later,
+that is to say, than Rubens. He received his first instruction in the
+art of painting from Henry van Balen. His genius at first displayed
+itself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">160</a></span> only in painting fruit. He afterwards attempted animals, in
+which kind of study he succeeded so well that he surpassed all that had
+ever excelled before him. He stayed for some time in Italy, and the
+works he met with there by Castiglione proved a spur to his genius to
+attempt outdoing him in painting animals. When he returned to Flanders
+he fixed his ordinary abode at Brussels, where he was made painter to
+the Archduke and Duchess, and became attached to the house of Spain.
+Twenty-two of his pictures are in the Prado Gallery.</p>
+
+<p>When Snyders required large figures in his compositions both Rubens and
+Jordaens took pleasure in assisting him, and Rubens in turn borrowed the
+assistance of Snyders to paint the ground of his pictures; thus they
+mutually assisted each other in their labours, while Snyders' manly and
+vigorous manner was quite able to hold its own even when joined with
+that of the great master.</p>
+
+<p>A<span class="smcap">nthony van</span> D<span class="smcap">yck</span> was born at Antwerp in 1599, less than three months
+before Velasquez at Seville. Both became so famous in their capacity of
+Court painters that the rest of their achievement is popularly regarded
+as little more than a bye-product.</p>
+
+<p>In the case of Van Dyck there is the more excuse for the English public,
+inasmuch as, like Holbein before him, he was exclusively employed while
+in this country in the production of portraits; and as "his works are so
+frequent in England," as Horace Walpole observes in the opening sentence
+of his memoir in the "Anecdotes of Painting," "that the generality of
+our people can scarce avoid thinking him their countryman," it is easy
+enough to forget that he only spent the last nine years of his life
+here.</p>
+
+<p>Again, the insatiable craze of the English and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">161</a></span> American public for
+portraits has helped to obscure the extent of Van Dyck's capabilities in
+other directions, and while the National Gallery contains not a single
+subject-piece from his hand, more and more thousands are continually
+spent in the acquisition of more and more portraits. The bewitching
+<i>Cupid and Psyche</i> in Queen Mary's closet at Hampton Court, painted a
+year before his death, is scarcely known to exist!</p>
+
+<p>At the same time it would be useless to deny that Van Dyck's principal
+claim to his place among the greatest masters rests chiefly upon
+portraiture. The point I wish to make is that portrait painting never
+yet made a great master, but that none but a great master ever became a
+great portrait painter; and so long as we are only permitted to see the
+particular achievement of the artist in our public galleries, so long is
+it likely that we shall continue to be flooded with mediocre likenesses
+of fashionable people by painters whose highest or whose only
+achievement they constitute. Anyone can write a "short story" for the
+cheaper sort of modern journal; only writers like Hardy, Stevenson, or
+Kipling can give us a masterpiece in little.</p>
+
+<p>It was said that Rubens advised Van Dyck to devote himself to
+portraiture out of jealousy: but that is hardly in accordance with what
+we know of his generous nature. If the advice was given at all we may be
+sure that it was given in a friendly spirit. But there was something in
+the temperament of Van Dyck which peculiarly fitted him for the Court,
+apart from any question as to his excellence in any particular branch of
+his art, and it is evident that the personality of Rubens, and his
+connection with the rich and mighty of the earth, influenced him almost
+as much as did his art. How much he owed to Rubens, and how much Rubens<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">162</a></span>
+owed to him in painting is a matter that is arguable. He had been
+several years with Van Balen before he entered the studio of Rubens,
+when eighteen years old, not as a pupil but as an assistant. Here he not
+only had the practical task of painting Rubens's compositions for him,
+in company with numerous others, but had also the advantage of studying
+the works of Titian and other of the great Italian masters in Rubens's
+famous collection. If the hand of Van Dyck is traceable in some of the
+pictures of Rubens at this period, so the spirit of Rubens is very
+obvious in those of Van Dyck. The chief thing to be remembered is that
+in these early days he was not painting portraits. His earliest works,
+in which the influence of Titian is perceptible as well as that of
+Rubens, are the <i>Christ bearing the Cross</i>, in S. Paul's at Antwerp,
+painted in 1618; the <i>S. Sebastian</i> at Munich, and the <i>Christ Mocked</i>,
+at Berlin. The familiar portrait of <i>Cornelius van der Geest</i> in the
+National Gallery, is one of his very earliest, probably before 1620.
+Again, on his first visit to Genoa, in 1621, on the advice of Rubens,
+his ambition was not to paint portraits, as on his second visit some
+years later, but to rival Rubens in the composition of great historical
+pieces. It was not until 1627, when he left behind him in Genoa the
+superb series of Balbi, Brignole-Sala, Cattaneo, and Lomellini
+portraits, and returned to Antwerp to undertake those such as the <i>Le
+Roys</i> at Hertford House, or the <i>Beatrice de Cusance</i> at Windsor, that
+he had really become a portrait painter. Even then, he was still
+determined not to yield to Rubens at Antwerp, and painted, amongst other
+subjects, the <i>Rinaldo and Armida</i> for Charles I. It was only at the
+solicitation of George Geldorp, a schemer as well as a painter, that he
+consented at length, in 1632, to come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">163</a></span> to England; and it was only the
+welcome afforded to him by Charles that induced him to settle here.</p>
+
+<p>Two considerations of personal vanity may be suggested as actuating
+Charles to be specially indulgent to Van Dyck&mdash;an indulgence of which
+the results posterity should not omit to credit to the sad account of
+the martyr&mdash;first, that his father had failed to retain the painter in
+his service, and second, that Velasquez, who had made a sketch of him on
+his mad visit to Madrid in 1623, was then immortalising Philip.
+Velasquez being out of the question, why not Van Dyck! An excellent
+idea! Especially when instead of dwarfs, buffoons, and idiots, the
+English Court contained some exceedingly fine material besides the royal
+family for the artist to exercise his talent upon.</p>
+
+<p>After this, Flanders knew Van Dyck no more, save for a year or two's
+sojourn from 1633-1635 when he painted one or two magnificent portraits,
+and then returned to England, where he died in 1641. With the death of
+Rubens the year before, Flemish painting had suffered another eclipse;
+and though Snyders lived till 1657, and Jordaens and the younger Teniers
+continued till late in the century, no fresh seedlings appeared, and the
+soil again became barren. Rubens and Van Dyck were both too big for the
+little garden&mdash;their growth overspread Europe.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">164</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">165</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="Dutch_School" id="Dutch_School"></a><i>DUTCH SCHOOL</i></h2>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="Ic" id="Ic"></a>I</h3>
+
+<p class="head">Frans Hals</p>
+
+
+<p>M<span class="smcap">eantime</span> we must turn our attention to Holland, where <span class="smcap">Frans Hals</span>, who
+was born only three years later than Rubens, namely in 1580, was the
+forerunner of Rembrandt, Van der Helst, Bol, Lely, and a host more of
+greater or less painters, who made their country as famous in the
+seventeenth century for art as their fathers had made it in the
+sixteenth for arms. Without going into the complications of the
+political history of the Netherlands at this period, it is important
+nevertheless to remember that while the Flemish provinces remained
+Catholic under Spain, the northern states, after heroic struggles,
+formed themselves into a Republic; so that while it is difficult to draw
+a hard and fast line between what was Dutch and what was Flemish in
+estimating the influence of one particular painter upon another, there
+is no question at all as to vital difference between the conditions
+which led to the production of the pictures of the two schools. The
+Flemish pictures were for the Church and for the Court, the Dutch for
+the house, the Guildhall, or the bourgeoisie. The former were
+aristocratic, the latter democratic. Rubens and Van Dyck were
+aristocrats, Hals and Rembrandt democrats. Rubens painted altar-pieces,
+for the great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">166</a></span> churches or cathedrals or for the chapels of his patrons.
+Rembrandt painted Bible stories for whoever would purchase them. Van
+Dyck painted the portraits of kings and nobles. Hals painted the rough
+soldiers and sailors, singly, or in the great groups into which they
+formed themselves as Guilds. For the first time in the history of
+painting, neither Church nor Court were its patrons.</p>
+
+<p>In any age or under any circumstances Frans Hals would have seemed a
+remarkable painter, but to measure his extraordinary genius to its full
+height we must try to realise what those times and those circumstances
+were. In Florence and Venice, as we have seen, there were great schools
+of painting, and in Florence especially, the whole city existed in an
+atmosphere of art. There was no escape from it. In Haarlem, where Hals
+spent his youth (he was born in Antwerp), there was no such state of
+affairs. There were no chapels to be decorated, no courtiers to be
+flattered. The country was seething with the effects of war, and the
+whole population were ready for it again at a moment's notice. There
+were plenty of heroes&mdash;every man was one&mdash;but not of the romantic sort.
+They were all bluff, hardy fellows, who wanted to get on with their
+business. Who would have thought that they wanted to have their
+portraits painted? And who, accordingly, could have induced them to do
+so except a bluff, roystering genius like Hals, who slashed them down on
+canvas before they had time to stop him? Once it got wind that Hals was
+such a good fellow, and that he dashed off a portrait to the life in as
+little time as it took to pass the time of day with him, he had plenty
+of business, and from painting single portraits he was commissioned to
+glorify the Guilds by depicting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">167</a></span> their banquets, which he did with
+almost as much speed and considerably more fidelity than the limelight
+man at a City dinner in these times. His first great group&mdash;<i>The Archers
+of S. George</i>, at Haarlem&mdash;has all the appearance of being painted
+instantaneously as the banqueters stood around the table before
+dispersing.</p>
+
+<p>When we think of the cultured Rubens, brought up in the atmosphere of
+Courts, and studying for years among the finest paintings and painters
+in Italy, and compare him with this low, ignorant fellow, who had never
+been outside the Netherlands, do we not find his genius still more
+amazing? Nowadays we see a portrait by Hals surrounded with the finest
+works of the greatest painters in all times and in all lands, and see
+how well it stands the comparison. But our admiration must be increased
+a hundredfold, when we know that he was without any of the training or
+tradition of a great artist, and that it must have been by sheer
+character and genius alone that he forced his art upon his commercial,
+though heroic public.</p>
+
+<p>One thing especially it is interesting to notice about the Dutch
+portraits of the early Republican period, namely, that they are
+obviously inspired by the pleasure of having a living, speaking likeness
+rather than by pride and ostentation. Bluff and swaggering as some of
+Hals's portraits of men appear to be&mdash;notably <i>The Laughing Cavalier</i>,
+at Hertford House&mdash;that is only because the subjects were bluff and
+swaggering fellows&mdash;swaggering, that is to say, in the consciousness of
+their ability and their readiness to defend their country and their
+homes again, if need be, against the tyrant. But these swaggerers are
+the exception, and the prevailing impression conveyed is that of
+honest,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">168</a></span> if determined, bluffness. They are not posing, these jolly
+Dutchmen, they are sitting or standing, for Hals to paint them just as
+they would sit or stand to be measured for a suit of clothes. Look at
+the heads of the man and the woman in the National Gallery. Could
+anything be more natural and unassuming? Look at the <i>Laughing
+Cavalier</i>, and ask if it is not the man himself, as Hals saw and knew
+him, not a faked up hero? Hals caught him in his best clothes, that is
+all. He did not put them on to be painted in&mdash;he was out on a jaunt.
+Look at Hals's women, how pleased they are to be painted, just as they
+are.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Hals, he was a good, honest fellow, though sadly given to drink and
+low company. But for sheer genius he has never had an equal. The vast
+number of his paintings&mdash;many of which now only exist in copies&mdash;shows
+that with every predilection to ease and comfort, he could not help
+painting&mdash;it simply welled out of him. It was a natural gift which seems
+to have needed no labour and no study.</p>
+
+<p>It is certain that this fecundity was a very potent factor in the
+development of the Dutch School of painting. Had Hals confined his
+talent to painting the portraits of the highest in the land, which would
+never have been seen by the public at large, it is improbable that such
+a business-like community would have produced many painters. But Hals
+must have popularised painting much more than we generally suppose. An
+example occurs to me in the picture of <i>The Rommelpot Player</i>, of which
+no less than thirteen versions are enumerated by De Groot, none of which
+can claim to be the original. One is at Wilton, another in Sir Frederick
+Cook's gallery at Richmond, and a third at Arthingworth Hall in
+Northamptonshire.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XXV" id="PL_XXV"></a>
+<a href="images/plate25.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate25_th.png" width="300" height="407" alt="PLATE XXV.&mdash;FRANS HALS
+
+PORTRAIT OF A LADY
+
+Louvre, Paris" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XXV.&mdash;FRANS HALS<br />
+
+PORTRAIT OF A LADY<br />
+
+<i>Louvre, Paris</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">169</a></span></p>
+<p>The subject is an old beggar man playing in front of the door of a
+cottage on a ridiculous instrument consisting of an earthen pot covered
+over like a jampot with a lid of parchment, on which he makes a rude
+noise with a stick, to the intense delight of a group of children. A
+picture like this, then, it is evident, instead of hanging in solitary
+confinement in the house of a great person, was so widely popular that
+it was copied on all sides, and must have been seen by thousands of
+people.</p>
+
+<p>Next to Hals, in point of time, was <span class="smcap">Hendrik Gerritz Pot</span>, who was born,
+probably at Haarlem, in 1585. It is to him rather than to Ostade, who
+was a quarter of a century later, that we must trace the origin of
+smaller <i>genre</i> pictures of the Dutch School which in later years became
+its principal product. Pot's works are neither very important nor very
+numerous, but as a portrait painter he is represented in the Louvre by a
+portrait of Charles I., which was probably painted when he was in
+England in 1631 or thereabouts; while at Hampton Court is a beautiful
+little piece by him which is catalogued under the title of <i>A Startling
+Introduction</i>. This belonged to Charles I., for his cypher is branded on
+the back of the panel on which it is painted, and it was sold by the
+Commonwealth as "a souldier making a strange posture to a Dutch lady by
+Bott." The painter's monogram H.P. appears on the large chimney piece
+before which the "soldier" is standing.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gerard Honthorst</span>, born at Utrecht in 1590, can hardly be said to belong
+to the Dutch School at all. When he was only twenty he went to Rome,
+where his devotion to painting effects of candle-light earned him the
+sobriquet of "Gherardo della Notte." In 1628 he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">170</a></span> was elected Dean of the
+Guild of St. Luke at Utrecht, but he was in no sense a national painter,
+and neither took nor gave anything in the way of national influence. He
+was in England for a few months in 1628, to which chance we are indebted
+for the picture of the Duke of Buckingham and his family which is in the
+National Portrait Gallery, and another group of the Cavendish family
+which is at Chatsworth. Pictures of the nobility, or of celebrities like
+Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, were more in his
+line than those of his republican patriots, and consequently he plays no
+part in the development of the school we are now considering.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Bartholomew van Der Helst</span>, born in Amsterdam, 1613, died there 1670. He
+is by far the most renowned of the Dutch portrait-painters of this
+period. Although nothing is known as regards the master under whom he
+studied, it is probable that if Hals was not actually his teacher, his
+works were the models whence Van der Helst formed himself. We see this
+in the portrait of Vice-Admiral Kortenaar at Amsterdam, where the
+conception of forms, and the unscumbled character of the strokes of the
+brush, recall Hals. The same may be observed in two larger pictures with
+archers in the Town Hall at Haarlem, where the inartistic arrangement
+and monotony of the otherwise warm flesh tones point to the earlier time
+of the painter. By about the year 1640 his character was more fully
+developed. His arrangement of portrait-pieces with numerous figures
+became very artistic and easy, his tone excellent, and his drawing
+masterly. This standard of excellence he retained till about 1660. The
+following are principal pictures of this period:&mdash;A scene from the
+Archery Guild of Amsterdam in 1639,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">171</a></span> including thirty figures. The
+celebrated picture inscribed 1648, an Archery Festival commemorating the
+Peace of Westphalia, and consisting of a party of twenty-four persons,
+at Amsterdam. The chief charm of this work consists in the strong and
+truthful individuality of every part, both in form and colour; in the
+capital drawing, which is especially conspicuous in the hands; in the
+powerful and clear colouring; and finally, in a kind of execution which
+observes a happy medium between decision and softness. In 1657 he
+executed the picture of the Archery Guild known by the name "het
+Doelenstück" at Amsterdam Gallery. This work represents three of the
+overseers of the Guild, with golden prize vases, and a fourth supposed
+to be the painter himself. It is almost surpassed by a replica on a
+smaller scale executed in the following year, which is now in the
+Louvre. At all events, this picture is in better preservation, and
+offers one of the most typical examples of portrait-painting that the
+Dutch School produced.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="IIc" id="IIc"></a>II</h3>
+
+<p class="head">REMBRANDT VAN RYN</p>
+
+
+<p>B<span class="smcap">ut</span> the greatest of all the Dutch painters, in some ways the greatest
+painter that has ever lived, was <span class="smcap">Rembrandt van Ryn</span> (1606-1669). Beside
+him all the rest seem merely commonplace, and their works the product of
+this or that demand, according to their different times and
+circumstances, executed with more or less skill. For Rembrandt there
+seems no place among them all&mdash;he must stand somewhere alone;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">172</a></span> and there
+is no standard by which to judge his perfections and imperfections
+except the man himself.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the greatest difference between Rembrandt and any other painter
+is that he never seems to have tried to please the public, but only
+painted to please himself. It is for this reason, no doubt, that he was
+never popular with the public, and is never likely to be; but just as
+Beethoven is only understandable by the really musical soul, so
+Rembrandt's appeal is to those who have the feeling for something in
+painting beyond the mere representation of familiar or heroic scenes and
+persons on canvas. For the public it is enough that one of his
+landscapes should be sold for £100,000, and they all flock to see it;
+but put a fine Rembrandt portrait in a shop-window without a name to it,
+and there would be little fear of the pavement being blocked.</p>
+
+<p>This failure of Rembrandt to please the public of his own day brings out
+the truth that the practice of painting had up to then subsisted only so
+long as it supplied a popular demand; and when we come to consider what
+that demand was, we find that it is for nothing else but a pleasing
+representation of natural objects, which may or may not embody some
+sentimental or historical association, but must first and foremost be a
+fair representation of more or less familiar things.</p>
+
+<p>The oldest story about pictures is that of Zeuxis and the bunch of
+grapes, which relates that he painted the fruit so like nature that the
+birds came and pecked at the painting&mdash;some versions, I believe, adding
+that the fruit itself was there but they preferred the painting. Similar
+stories with innumerable variations are told of later artists. Rembrandt
+himself is said to have been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">173</a></span> deceived by his pupils who, knowing he was
+careful about collecting money in small quantities, however extravagant
+he might be in spending it, painted coins on the floor of the studio,
+and enjoyed the joke of seeing him stoop to pick them up. We have heard,
+too, of flies painted with surprising skill in conspicuous places to
+deceive the unwary. But apart from these little pleasantries, one has
+only to remember how the earlier writers on painting have expressed
+themselves to see how much importance, consciously or unconsciously, was
+attached to life-like resemblance to the object painted. Vasari is
+constantly using phrases in which he extols the painter for having made
+a figure look like the life, as though that were the real thing to be
+aimed at. We remember Ben Jonson's lines under Shakespeare's
+portrait&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Wherein the graver had a strife</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">With nature to outdo the life."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>And though Ben Jonson was not a critic, and if he had been there was
+little enough art in his time in England for him to criticize, still he
+expresses the general feeling of the public for any work of art.</p>
+
+<p>With the Dutch people this was most certainly the case, and the
+popularity of the painters of scenes of everyday life is a proof of it.
+That Hals, Brouwer, or Ostade were great painters was not half so
+important to them, if indeed they thought of it all, as that they were
+capable of turning out pictures which reflected their everyday life like
+a mirror.</p>
+
+<p>So long as Rembrandt painted portraits like those of the Pellicornes and
+their offspring&mdash;the two pictures at Hertford House&mdash;or a plain
+straightforward group like Dr Tulp's <i>Anatomy Lesson</i> (though in this he
+was already getting away from convention), he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">174</a></span> tolerated. And it was
+not so much his freedom in living and his extravagant notions of the
+pleasures of life that brought about his downfall, as his failure to
+realize that when he took the money subscribed for the group of Captain
+Banning Cocq's Company, the subscribers expected something else for
+their money than a picture (<i>The Night Watch</i>) which might be a
+masterpiece according to the painter's notions, but was certainly not a
+portrait group of the subscribers.</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, for the first time in the history of painting, we find an
+artist definitely at issue with the public. I do not say that this was
+the first time that an artist had failed to please the public, but it is
+the first occasion on which it was decided that if a painter was to
+undertake commissions, he must consider the wishes of the patron, or
+starve. It was something new for a painter of Rembrandt's repute to be
+told that not he, but the persons who commissioned the work, were to be
+the judges of whether or not it was satisfactory.</p>
+
+<p>The consequences were important. For Rembrandt, instead of taking the
+matter as a man of business, devoted the rest of his life to being an
+artist, and leaving the business of painting to men like Backer, Helst,
+and others, betook himself seriously to developing his art irrespective
+of what the public might or might not think of it. As a result, we have
+in the later work of Rembrandt something that the world&mdash;I mean the
+artistic part of it&mdash;would be very sorry to do without. Now the meaning
+of this is, not that Rembrandt was ill-advised in deserting his patrons,
+or in suffering them to desert him, but that for the first time in the
+history of painting an artist had the personality&mdash;I will not say the
+conscious determination&mdash;to realize that his art was something quite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">175</a></span>
+apart from the affairs of this world, and that what he could express on
+canvas was <i>not</i> merely a representation of natural objects designed to
+please his contemporaries, but something more than human, something that
+would appeal to humanity for all time. That many before him had felt
+that of their art, to a lesser or greater degree, is unquestionable&mdash;but
+none of them had ever realised it. Dürer, certainly, may be cited as an
+exception, especially when contrasted with his phlegmatic and
+business-like compatriot Holbein. But then Dürer, a century before, and
+in totally different circumstances, was never assured of regular
+patronage as was Rembrandt.</p>
+
+<p>Rembrandt was the son of a miller named Harmann Geritz, who called
+himself Van Ryn, from the hamlet on the arm of the Rhine which runs
+through Leyden. His mother was the daughter of a baker. He was entered
+as a student at the University of Leyden, his parents being comfortably
+off; but he showed so little taste for the study of the law, for which
+they intended him, that he was allowed to follow his own bent of
+painting, in the studio of a now forgotten painter, Jacob van
+Swanenburg. Here he studied for about three years, after which he went
+to Amsterdam and was for a short time with another painter named
+Lastman, who was a clever but superficial imitator of the Italian School
+then flourishing in Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to Leyden, Rembrandt set up his easel and remained there
+painting till 1631, when he went to Amsterdam. His works during this
+first period are not very well known in this country, but at Windsor and
+at Edinburgh are portraits of his mother, which must belong to it.</p>
+
+<p>The next decade was the happiest and most <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">176</a></span>prosperous in Rembrandt's
+career. At Amsterdam he soon found favour with wealthy patrons, and his
+happiness and success were completed by his marrying Saskia van
+Ulenburgh, the sister of a wealthy connoisseur and art dealer, with whom
+Rembrandt had formed an intimate friendship. To this period belong the
+numerous portraits of himself and Saskia, alone or together, most of
+which are characterized by a barbaric splendour of costume, utterly
+different from the profusion of Rubens, but far more intense. Living
+among the wealthiest Jews in Amsterdam, he seems to have been strongly
+attracted by their orientalism, and while Rubens gloried in natural
+abundance of every sort, and painted the bounty of nature in the full
+sunlight, Rembrandt chose out the treasures of art, and painted costume
+and jewels gleaming out of the darkness. The portraits of himself in a
+cap at Hertford House (No. 52), and of the Old Lady in the National
+Gallery (No. 775), both painted in 1634, are notable examples of this
+period, though they have none of the orientalism to be seen in the
+various portraits of Saskia, or in <i>The Turk</i> at Munich. The two double
+portraits at Hertford House of Jean Pellicorne and his wife with their
+son and daughter respectively, were among the commissions which he
+received after he set up at Amsterdam, and are therefore less
+interesting as self-revelations. Prosperity is not always the best
+condition under which to produce the highest work, and the temperament
+of Rembrandt was so peculiar that there is little wonder that the prim
+Dutchmen were not entirely captivated by his exuberant sensuality, or
+that we ourselves reserve our admiration principally for the more sombre
+and mysterious products of his later years after misfortune began to
+fall upon him.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XXVI" id="PL_XXVI"></a>
+<a href="images/plate26.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate26_th.png" width="300" height="359" alt="PLATE XXVI.&mdash;REMBRANDT
+
+PORTRAIT OF HENDRICKJE STOFFELS
+
+Louvre, Paris" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XXVI.&mdash;REMBRANDT<br />
+
+PORTRAIT OF HENDRICKJE STOFFELS<br />
+
+<i>Louvre, Paris</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">177</a></span></p>
+<p>In 1642 the beloved Saskia died, leaving an only child, Titus, whose
+features are familiar to us in the portrait at Hertford House. As though
+this were not affliction enough, Rembrandt had the mortification of
+offending his patrons over the commission to paint Captain Banning
+Cocq's Company. From this time onward, as the world and Rembrandt
+drifted farther and farther apart, his work becomes more and more
+wonderful.</p>
+
+<p>Dr Muther, in his <i>History of Painting</i>, observes that perhaps it is
+only possible to understand Rembrandt by interpreting his pictures not
+as paintings but as psychological documents. "A picture by Rembrandt in
+the Dresden Gallery," he says, "represents <i>Samson Putting Riddles to
+the Philistines</i>; and Rembrandt's entire activity, a riddle to the
+philistines of his time, has remained puzzling to the present day.... As
+no other man bore his name, so the artist, too, is something unique,
+mocks every historical analysis, and remains what he was, a puzzling,
+intangible, Hamlet nature&mdash;Rembrandt." The author's theory of the
+psychological document is hardly a solution of the admitted puzzle,
+though it is interesting to follow him in tracing it out in Rembrandt's
+religious pictures, from the <i>Samson</i> already mentioned to his last
+dated work, in 1668, the Darmstadt <i>Crucifixion</i>. What distinguishes
+Rembrandt from all painters up to, and considerably later than his time,
+and in particular from those of his own school, is the mental, as
+compared with the physical activity that his pictures represent. Perhaps
+this is only another way of stating Dr Muther's theory of the
+psychological documents, but it enables us to test that theory by
+comparing his work with that of others. In technical skill Beruete
+claims<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">178</a></span> a far higher place for Velasquez, going so far as to say that
+the <i>Lesson in Anatomy</i> is not a lesson in painting. But the difference
+between the two is not as great as that in technique, though infinitely
+wider in the mental process which led to the production of a picture. A
+reproduction of the <i>Portrait of an Old Pole</i>, at S. Petersburg, is in
+front of me, as it happens, as I am writing; and I see in this no
+inferiority in firmness and precision, in truth and vigour, to any
+portrait by Velasquez.</p>
+
+<p>In their technical ability to present the life-like portrait of a real
+man, we can place Rembrandt, Velasquez, Hals, and Van Dyck on pretty
+much of a level; if we had <i>Van der Geest</i>, <i>Montanes</i>, the <i>Old Pole</i>
+and the <i>Laughing Cavalier</i> all in a row, we should find there was not
+much to choose between them for downright realization. But while in the
+work of Velasquez we see the working of a fine and sensitive
+appreciation of his friend's personality, and the most exquisite
+realization of what was before him, in that of Rembrandt we seem to see
+less of the Pole and more of Rembrandt himself. It is as though he were
+singing softly to himself while he was painting, thinking his own
+thoughts: while Velasquez was simply concerned with the appearance and
+the thoughts of his model.</p>
+
+<p>That Rembrandt's pictures are self-revelations, or psychological
+documents, is certainly true; and a proof of it is in the extraordinary
+number of portraits of himself. The famous Dresden picture of himself
+with Saskia on his knee can only be regarded in that light, and that
+brings into the category all the numerous pictures of Saskia and of
+Hendrike Stoffels, who formed so great a part of his life. If to these
+we add, with Dr Muther, his Biblical subjects, we find that there is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">179</a></span>
+not so very much left, and when we turn to the life's work of Rubens,
+Titian, Velasquez, or in fact any of the great painters, the difference
+is at once apparent. So that in the pictures of Rembrandt we may expect
+to find less of what we look for in those of others in the way of
+display, but infinitely more of the qualities which, to whatever extent
+they exist in other artists, are bound to be sacrificed to display. When
+we are asked to a feast, we find the room brilliantly lit, and our host
+the centre of an assemblage for whom he has felt it his duty to make a
+display consistent with his means and his station. If we were to peep
+into his house one night we might find him in a room illumined only with
+his reading-lamp, absorbed in his favourite study; but instead of only
+exchanging a few conventional phrases with him, and passing on to mingle
+with his guests and to enjoy his hospitality, we might sit and talk with
+him into the small hours. That is the difference between the success of
+Hals with his <i>Feast of S. George</i>, and the failure of Rembrandt with
+<i>The Night Watch</i>. Hals was at the feast, and of it. Rembrandt was
+wrapped up in himself, and didn't enter into the spirit of the
+company&mdash;he was carried away by his own. That is why his pictures are so
+dark&mdash;not of deliberate technical purpose, like those of the
+<i>Tenebrosi</i>, but because to him a subject was felt within him rather
+than seen as a picture on so many square feet of canvas. When we call up
+in our own minds the recollection of some event of more than usually
+deep significance in our past, we only see the deathbed, the two
+combatants, the face of the beloved, or whatever it may be; the
+accessories are nothing, unless our imagination is stronger than the
+sentiment evoked, and sets to work to supply them. It is this
+characteristic which so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">180</a></span> sharply distinguishes the work of Rembrandt
+from that of his closest imitators. There is a large picture in the
+National Gallery, <i>Christ Blessing the Children</i>, catalogued as "School
+of Rembrandt," in which we see as near an approach to his manner as to
+justify the attribution, but that is all. I do not know why it has never
+been suggested that this is the work of <span class="smcap">Nicolas Maes</span>, who was actually
+his pupil, and who was one of the few Dutch artists to paint life-sized
+groups, as he is known to have done in his earlier days when still under
+the influence of Rembrandt. <i>The Card Players</i>, close beside it, has
+marked affinities in style, and especially in the very natural
+characterization of the faces, which is also apparent in that of the
+child in the other picture, and another on the extreme left of the
+picture. That it cannot be Rembrandt's is quite evident; the grouping
+and the lighting of it proclaim the picture seen on the canvas, and not
+felt within the artist's own consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>The realistic tendency which, as has already been pointed out, was so
+characteristic of the whole art of the Netherlands, showed the most
+remarkable and original results in the work of an idealist like
+Rembrandt. Sandrart, one of the earliest writers on painting, says that
+Rembrandt "usually painted things of a simple and not thoughtful
+character, but which were pleasing to the eyes, and
+picturesque"&mdash;<i>schilderachtig</i>, as the Netherlanders called it. This
+combination of realism and picturesqueness, assisted by his marvellous
+technical power, put him far above and apart from all his compeers. In
+the absence of any pictures by his masters Van Swanenburg and Pinas, it
+is difficult to ascertain what, if anything, he learnt from them. From
+Peter Lastman we may be sure he learnt nothing in the way of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">181</a></span>technique.
+Kugler&mdash;who in these paragraphs is my principal authority&mdash;suggests that
+it is highly probable that in this respect he formed himself from the
+pictures of Frans Hals, with which he must have been early acquainted in
+the neighbouring town of Haarlem. At all events unexampled freedom,
+spirit, and breadth of his manner is comparable with that of no other
+earlier Dutch master. But all these admirable qualities would offer no
+sufficient compensation for the ugly and often vulgar character of his
+heads and figures, and for the total subversion of all the traditional
+rules of art in costume and accessory, and would fail to account for the
+great admiration which his works enjoy, if he had not been possessed,
+besides, of an intensely artistic individuality.</p>
+
+<p>In his earliest pictures his touch is already masterly and free, but
+still careful, while the colour of the flesh is warm and clear and the
+light full. <i>Dr Tulp's Anatomy</i>, painted in 1632, is the most famous of
+this period. In <i>The Night Watch</i>, at Amsterdam, dated 1642, the light
+is already restricted, falling only on isolated objects; the local tone
+of the flesh is more golden; the touch more spirited and distinct.
+Later, that is to say from about 1654 onwards, the golden flesh tones
+become still more intense, passing sometimes into a brown of less
+transparency, and accompanied frequently with grey and blackish shadows
+and sometimes with rather cool lights. The chief picture of this epoch,
+dated 1661, is <i>The Syndics</i>, also at Amsterdam, a group of six men.
+This, in the depth of the still transparent golden tone, in the
+animation of the heads, and in body and breadth of handling, is a true
+masterpiece.</p>
+
+<p>With respect to his treatment of Biblical subjects, two older writers,
+Kolloff and Guhl, accord him an honour which, as we shall see, Kugler
+gives to Dürer a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">182</a></span> century earlier, namely that of being the painter of
+the true spirit of the Reformed Church. Though it is certain, Kugler
+admits, that no other school of painting in Rembrandt's time&mdash;neither
+that of Rubens, nor that of the Carracci, nor the French nor Spanish
+schools&mdash;rendered the spiritual import of Biblical subjects with the
+purity and depth exhibited by the great Dutch master. Here the kindly
+element of deep sentiment combines most happily with his feeling for
+composition, as in the <i>Descent from the Cross</i>, at Munich, in <i>The Holy
+Family</i>, in the Louvre, and above all in <i>The Woman taken in Adultery</i>,
+in the National Gallery. In this last, a touching truthfulness and depth
+of feeling, with every other grand quality peculiar to Rembrandt, are
+seen in their highest perfection. Of hardly less excellence, also, is
+our <i>Descent from the Cross</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Endowed with so many admirable qualities, it follows that Rembrandt was
+a portrait painter of the highest order, while his peculiar style of
+lighting, his colouring and treatment, distinguish his portraits from
+those by all other masters. Even the works of his most successful
+pupils, who followed his style in this respect, are far behind him in
+energy of conception and execution. The number of his admirable
+portraits is so large that it is difficult to know which to mention as
+most characteristic. No other artist ever painted his own portrait so
+frequently, and some of these may first be mentioned. That in the
+Louvre, dated 1633, represents him in youthful years, fresh and full of
+hope. It is spiritedly painted in the bright tone of his earlier period.
+Another in the same gallery, of the year 1660, painted with
+extraordinary breadth and certainty of hand of that later period, shows
+a man weighed down with the cares of life, with grey hair and deeply
+furrowed forehead.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XXVII" id="PL_XXVII"></a>
+<a href="images/plate27.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate27_th.png" width="300" height="394" alt="PLATE XXVII.&mdash;REMBRANDT
+
+PORTRAIT OF AN OLD LADY
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XXVII.&mdash;REMBRANDT<br />
+
+PORTRAIT OF AN OLD LADY<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">183</a></span></p>
+<p>The one at Hertford House, already mentioned, and two in the National
+Gallery, fall between these extremes. Of other portraits we have already
+mentioned the two Pellicorne groups in the Wallace Collection; and
+another of this earliest period, the very popular <i>Old Woman</i>, in the
+National Gallery, dated 1634. This is of greater interest as showing, if
+anything does, whether it is fair to attribute any of his training to
+the influence of Hals. At any rate this picture is a highly important
+proof that at the early age of twenty-six, the painter was already in
+the full possession of that energy and animation of conception, and of
+that decision of the "broad and marrowy touch" which are so
+characteristic of him. Of his later period&mdash;probably about 1657&mdash;a fine
+example is <i>The Jewish Rabbi</i>, and of his latest the <i>Old Man</i>, both in
+the National Gallery.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="IIIc" id="IIIc"></a>III</h3>
+
+<p class="head">PAINTERS OF GENRE</p>
+
+
+<p>T<span class="smcap">he</span> painters of <i>genre</i>, by the number, quality, and diversity of whose
+pictures the Dutch School is specially distinguished, may be roughly
+divided into three classes; namely, those who studied the upper, the
+middle, and the lower classes respectively. But as Holland was a
+republic, and the great stream of its art welled up from the earth and
+was not showered upon it from above, it will be found convenient to
+reverse the social order in considering them, and begin with the
+immediate successors of Frans Hals, whose influence was without doubt a
+very considerable factor in the development of Adrian Brouwer and Adrian
+and Isaac Ostade.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Adrian Brouwer</span>, now generally classed under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">184</a></span> the Flemish School, was
+born at Oudenarde in 1606. But he went early to Haarlem, and it was not
+until about 1630 that he settled at Antwerp, where he died in 1641. He
+was a pupil of Frans Hals, and acquired from him not only his spirited
+and free touch, but also a similar mode of life. His pictures, which for
+the most part represent the lower orders eating and drinking, often in
+furious strife, are extraordinary true and life-like in character, and
+display a singularly delicate and harmonious colouring, which inclines
+to the cool scale, an admirable individuality, and a <i>sfumato</i> of
+surface in which he is unrivalled; so that we can well understand the
+high esteem in which Rubens held them. Owing to his mode of life, and to
+its early close, the number of his works is not large, and they are now
+seldom met with. No gallery is so rich in them as Munich, which
+possesses nine, six of which are masterpieces. <i>A Party of Peasants at a
+Game of Cards</i>, affords an example of the brightness and clearness of
+those cool tones in which he evidently became the model of Teniers.
+<i>Spanish Soldiers Throwing Dice</i>, is equally harmonious, in a subdued
+brownish tone. <i>A Surgeon Removing the Plaster from the Arm of a
+Peasant</i> is not only most masterly and animated in expression, but is a
+type of his bright, clear, and golden tone, and is singularly free and
+light in touch. <i>Card-players Fighting</i>, is in every respect one of his
+best pictures. The momentary action in each figure, all of them being
+individualized with singular accuracy even as regards the kind of
+complexion, is incomparable, the tenderness of the harmony astonishing,
+and the execution of extraordinary delicacy. The only example in the
+National Gallery is the <i>Three Boors Drinking</i>, bequeathed by George
+Salting in 1910; and at Hertford<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">185</a></span> House the <i>Boor Asleep</i>, though of
+this we may without hesitation accept the description in the catalogue,
+"our painting is of the highest quality, and in the audacity of its
+realism rises almost to grandeur."</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Adrian van Ostade</span>, said to have been born at Lubeck, was baptized in
+1610 at Haarlem, where he studied under Frans Hals, and he formed a very
+good taste in colouring. Nature guided his brush in everything he
+undertook; he devoted himself almost entirely to painting peasants and
+drunkards, whose gestures and most trifling actions were the subject of
+his most serious meditation. The subjects of his little pictures are not
+more elevated than those of Brouwer, and considerably less than those of
+Teniers&mdash;they are nearly always alehouses or kitchens. He is perhaps one
+of the Dutch masters who best understood chiaroscuro. His figures are
+very lively, and he sometimes put them into the pictures of the best
+painters among his countrymen. Nothing can excel his pictures of
+stables, in which the light is spread so judiciously that all one could
+wish is a lighter touch in his drawing, and a little more height in his
+figures. Many of his brother Isaak's pictures are improperly attributed
+to him, which, though painted in the same manner, are never of the real
+excellence of Adrian's.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Interior with Peasants</i> at Hertford House, and <i>The Alchymist</i> at
+the National Gallery are a characteristic pair of his pictures, which
+were sold in the collection of M. de Jully in 1769 for £164, the former
+being purchased by the third Marquess of Hertford and the latter passing
+into the Peel Collection. <i>Buying Fish</i>, at Hertford House, dated
+1669&mdash;when the artist was nearly sixty years old, is remarkable for its
+breadth of effect and brilliancy of colour.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">186</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Jan Steen</span>, born at Leyden about the year 1626, died 1679. He first
+received instruction under Nicolas Knupler; and afterwards it is said
+worked with Jan van Goyen, whose daughter he married. An extraordinary
+genius for painting was unfortunately co-existent in Jan Steen with
+jovial habits of no moderate kind. The position of tavern-keeper in
+which he was placed by his family, gave both the opportunity of
+indulging his propensities and also that of depicting the pleasures of
+eating and drinking, of song, card-playing and love-making directly from
+nature. He must have worked with amazing facility, for in spite of the
+time consumed in this mode of life, to which his comparatively early
+death may be attributed, the number of his pictures is very great. His
+favourite subjects were groups like the <i>Family Jollification</i>; the
+<i>Feast of the Bean King</i>; and that form of diversion illustrating the
+proverb, "<i>So wie die Alten sungen, so pfeifen auch die Jungen</i>"; fairs,
+weddings, etc.; he also treated other scenes, such as the Doctor's
+Visit, the Schoolmaster with a generally very unmanageable set of
+boys&mdash;of which is a charming example at Dublin. The ludicrous ways of
+children seem especially to have attracted him; accordingly, he depicts
+with great zest the old Dutch custom on St. Nicholas's Day, September
+3rd, of rewarding the good, and punishing the naughty child; or shows a
+mischievous little urchin teasing the cat, or stealing money from the
+pockets of their, alas!&mdash;drunken progenitors.</p>
+
+<p>Jan Steen is the most genial painter of the whole Dutch School. His
+humour has made him so popular with the English, that at least
+two-thirds of his pictures are in their possession.</p>
+
+<p>A peculiar cluster of masters, belonging to the Dutch</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XXVIII" id="PL_XXVIII"></a>
+<a href="images/plate28.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate28_th.png" width="300" height="327" alt="PLATE XXVIII.&mdash;TERBORCH
+
+THE CONCERT
+
+Louvre, Paris" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XXVIII.&mdash;TERBORCH<br />
+
+THE CONCERT<br />
+
+<i>Louvre, Paris</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">187</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">School, was formed by Gerard Dou. However careful in execution were such
+painters as Terburg, Metsu, and Netscher, yet Gerard Dou and his
+scholars and imitators surpassed them in the development of that
+technical finish with which they rendered the smallest detail with
+meticulous exactitude.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gerard Dou</span> was born at Leyden on the 7th April 1613, died there 1680. He
+entered Rembrandt's school at fifteen years of age, and in three years
+had attained the position of an independent artist. He devoted himself
+at first to portraiture, and, like his master, made his own face
+frequently his subject. Afterwards he treated scenes from the life
+chiefly of the middle classes. He took particular pleasure in the
+representation of hermits; he also painted scriptural events and
+occasionally still life. His lighting is frequently that of lanterns and
+candles. Most of his pictures contain only from one to three figures,
+and do not exceed about 2 ft. high and 1 ft. 3 in. wide, being often
+smaller. His pictures seldom attain even an animated moral import, and
+may be said to be limited usually to a certain kindliness of sentiment.
+On the other hand, he possessed a trace of his master's feeling for the
+picturesque, and for chiaroscuro. Notwithstanding the incalculable
+minuteness of his execution, the touch of his brush is free and soft,
+and his best pictures look like Nature seen through the camera-obscura.
+His works were so highly estimated in his own time, that the President
+van Spiring, at the Hague, offered him 1000 florins a year for the right
+of pre-emption of his pictures. Considering the time which such finish
+required, and the early age at which he died, the number of his
+pictures&mdash;Smith enumerates about 200&mdash;is remarkable. In the Louvre are
+the following:&mdash;An old woman seated at a window, reading<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">188</a></span> the Bible to
+her husband; this is one of the best among the many representations by
+Dou of a similar kind, being of warm sunny effect, and marvellous
+finish. Also the <i>Woman with the Dropsy</i>, which is accounted his
+<i>chef-d'&oelig;uvre</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Among the scholars of Gerard Dou, <span class="smcap">Frans van Mieris</span>, born at Leyden 1635,
+died 1681, takes the first place. In chiaroscuro, and in delicacy of
+execution he is not inferior to his master. Although his pictures are
+generally very small, yet with their extraordinary minuteness of
+execution it is surprising that, in a life extended only to forty-six
+years, he should have produced so many. The Munich Gallery has most,
+then Dresden, Vienna, Florence, and St. Petersburg. The date, 1656, on a
+picture in the Vienna Gallery, <i>The Doctor</i>, shows the painter to have
+attained the summit of his art at twenty-one years of age. Another dated
+1660, in the same gallery, executed for the Archduke Leopold, is one of
+his best. The scene is a shop with a young woman showing a gentleman,
+who has taken her by the chin, various handkerchiefs and stuffs. In the
+Munich Gallery is <i>A Soldier</i>, dated 1662, of admirable transparency and
+softness. Also <i>A Lady</i> in a yellow satin dress fainting in the presence
+of the doctor. In the Hague Gallery is <i>A Boy Blowing Soap-bubbles</i>,
+dated 1663. This is a charming little picture of great depth of the
+brownish tone. Also <i>The Painter and His Wife</i>, whose little shock dog
+he is teasing; very naïve and lively in the heads, and most delicately
+treated in a subdued but clear tone. In the Dresden Gallery are Mieris
+again and his wife before her portrait. This is one of his most
+successful pictures for chiaroscuro, tone, and spirited handling.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Nicolas Maes</span>, already mentioned, born at</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XXIX" id="PL_XXIX"></a>
+<a href="images/plate29.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate29_th.png" width="300" height="356" alt="PLATE XXIX.&mdash;GABRIEL METSU
+
+THE MUSIC LESSON
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XXIX.&mdash;GABRIEL METSU<br />
+
+THE MUSIC LESSON<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">189</a></span></p>
+<p>Dordrecht 1632, died 1693, was actually a pupil of Rembrandt. His much
+prized and rare <i>genre</i> pictures treat very simple subjects, and consist
+seldom of more than two or three figures, generally of women. The
+naïvete and homeliness of his feeling, with the addition sometimes of a
+trait of kindly humour; the admirable lighting, and a touch resembling
+Rembrandt in impasto and vigour, render his pictures very attractive. In
+the National Gallery, besides <i>The Card Players</i>, are <i>The Cradle</i>, <i>The
+Dutch Ménage</i>, dated 1655; and <i>The Idle Servant</i>: all these are
+admirable, and the last-named a <i>chef-d'&oelig;uvre</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Peter de Hoogh</span> (1629-1677) decidedly belongs to the numerous artistic
+posterity of Rembrandt, possibly through Karel Fabritius, and stands
+nearer to Vermeer and to Maes, than to any other painter. His biography
+can only be gathered from the occasional dates on his pictures,
+extending from 1658 to 1670. Although he impresses the eye by the same
+effects as Maes, yet he is also very different from him. He has not his
+humour, and seldom his kindliness, and his figures, which are either
+playing cards, smoking or drinking, or engaged in the transaction of
+some household duty,&mdash;with faces that say but little&mdash;have generally
+only the interest of a peaceful or jovial existence. If Maes takes the
+lead in warm lighting, Peter de Hoogh may be considered <i>par excellence</i>
+the painter of full and clear sunlight. If, again, Maes shows us his
+figures almost exclusively in interiors, Peter de Hoogh places them most
+frequently in the open air&mdash;in courtyards. In the representation of the
+poetry of light, and in that marvellous brilliancy and clearness with
+which he calls it forth in various distances till the background is
+reached, which is generally illumined<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">190</a></span> by a fresh beam, no other master
+can compare with him. His prevailing local colour is red, repeated with
+greater delicacy in various planes of distance. This colour fixes the
+rest of the scale. His touch is of great delicacy; his impasto
+admirable.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gerard Terburg</span>, born at Zwol 1608, died 1681, learned painting under his
+father, and when still young visited Germany and Italy, painting
+numerous portraits on a small scale, and occasionally the size of life.
+But his place in the history of art is owing principally to a number of
+pictures, seldom representing more than three, and often only one
+figure, taken from the wealthier classes, in which great elegance of
+costume, and of all accompanying circumstances, is rendered with the
+finest keeping, and with a highly delicate but by no means over-smooth
+execution. He may be considered as the originator of this class of
+pictures, in which, after his example, several other Dutch painters
+distinguished themselves. With him the chief mass of light is generally
+formed by the white satin dress of a lady, which gives the tone for the
+prevailing cool harmony of the picture. Among his pictures we
+occasionally find some which, taken successively, represent several
+different moments of one scene. Thus in the Dresden Gallery, there are
+two good pictures: the one of an officer writing a letter, while a
+trumpter waits for it; the other of a girl in white satin washing her
+hands in a basin held before her by a maid-servant; while at Munich, is
+another fine work, in which the trumpeter is offering the young lady the
+letter, who owing to the presence of the maid, who evidently
+disapproves, is uncertain whether to take the missive. Finally, in the
+Amsterdam Gallery, the celebrated picture known by the title of <i>Conseil
+paternel</i>, furnishes</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XXX" id="PL_XXX"></a>
+<a href="images/plate30.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate30_th.png" width="300" height="343" alt="PLATE XXX.&mdash;PIETER DE HOOCH
+
+INTERIOR OF A DUTCH HOUSE
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XXX.&mdash;PIETER DE HOOCH<br />
+
+INTERIOR OF A DUTCH HOUSE<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">191</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">the closing scene. The maid has betrayed the affair to the father, and
+he is delivering a lecture to the young lady, in whom by turning her
+back on the spectator, the painter has happily expressed the feeling of
+shame; good repetitions are in the Berlin Museum, and in the Bridgewater
+Gallery. But Terburg's perfection as regards the clearness and harmony
+of his silvery tone is shown in a picture at Cassel, representing a
+young lady in white satin sitting playing the lute at a table.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Jan Vermeer of Delft</span> (1632-1675) was certainly a pupil of Fabritius, and
+thus "grandson" of Rembrandt. To class him with painters of <i>genre</i>
+seems almost a profanation of the exquisite sense of beauty with which,
+almost alone among the Dutch painters, he seems to have been endowed. It
+is like classing Walter Pater with art critics. But as Vermeer had to
+express himself in some form, it is perhaps fortunate that the school
+had developed this kind of poetic portraiture, under Terburg, Metsu and
+others, to a point where a genius like Vermeer could use it as the
+vehicle of his fascinating self-revelations. In landscape we have the
+<i>View of Delft</i>, at the Hague, which has shown the nineteenth century
+painters more than they could ever see in their more famous
+predecessors; but it is in the simple compositions like <i>The Letter
+Reader</i> at Amsterdam, <i>The Proposal</i>, at Dresden, or the <i>Lady at the
+Virginals</i>, in the National Gallery, that he displays his greatest power
+and charm.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="IVc" id="IVc"></a>IV</h3>
+
+<p class="head">PAINTERS OF ANIMALS</p>
+
+
+<p>A<span class="smcap">s</span> a link between the painters of <i>genre</i> and the landscapists, we may
+here mention some of the numerous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">192</a></span> artists who either made landscape the
+background for groups of figures and animals, or peopled their
+landscapes with groups&mdash;it matters not which way we put it. Among these
+we shall find several of the most famous, or at any rate the most
+popular artists of the Dutch School.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Philips Wouverman</span> (1619-1668), whose reputation during the last century
+was greater than that of almost any of the Dutch painters except
+Rembrandt and Dou, is said to have studied under Hals, but it is more
+certain that the master from whom he learnt most, if not all, was Jan
+Wynants at Haarlem, whose whole manner in landscape he quickly succeeded
+in acquiring, and surpassed him in his facility with horsemen and other
+figures.</p>
+
+<p>Wouverman's works have all the excellences that may be expected from
+high finishing, correctness, agreeable composition and colouring. It
+does not appear that he was ever in Italy, or even quitted the city of
+Haarlem, though it would seem probable that his more elaborate
+compositions owed something to other influences than those of Hals or
+Wynants. In his earlier pictures there are no horses, but later in his
+career he generally subordinated his landscapes to the groups or
+subjects for which he is most famous. In the National Gallery, among
+eleven examples, are a <i>Halt of Officers</i>, <i>Interior of a Stable</i>, <i>A
+Battle</i>, <i>The Bohemians</i>, and <i>Shoeing a Horse</i>, all of which contain
+numerous figures, mounted and unmounted&mdash;and there is nearly always a
+white horse.</p>
+
+<p>With all his success, he died a poor man, and it is related that in his
+last hours he burned a box filled with his studies and drawings, saying,
+"I have been so ill repaid for all my labours, that I would not have</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XXXI" id="PL_XXXI"></a>
+<a href="images/plate31.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate31_th.png" width="300" height="368" alt="LATE XXXI.&mdash;JAN VERMEER
+
+THE LACE MAKER
+
+Louvre, Paris" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">LATE XXXI.&mdash;JAN VERMEER<br />
+
+THE LACE MAKER<br />
+
+<i>Louvre, Paris</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">193</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">those designs engage my son to embrace so miserable a profession as
+mine." This son followed his advice, and became a Chartreux friar. Peter
+and Jan Wouverman were his brothers. The former painted hawking scenes,
+and his horses, though well designed, were not equal to those of
+Philips. The latter is represented in the National Gallery by a
+landscape in which the spirit of Wynant's, rather than that of
+Philips's, is discernible.</p>
+
+<p>At Hertford House, out of seven examples, two are of more than usual
+excellence, and well represent his earlier and later manners. <i>The
+Afternoon Landscape with a White Horse</i> (No. 226 in Room XIII), which
+Smith (in his Catalogue Raisonné), characterizes as possessing unusual
+freedom of pencilling, and powerful effect, dates from the transition
+from the early to the middle period, and is a very effective picture, as
+well as being very characteristic. The <i>Horse Fair</i> (No. 65, in Room
+XVI), is not only much larger than the other&mdash;it measures 25 x 35
+inches&mdash;but is a really important picture. Lord Hertford paid £3200 for
+it in 1854. It was engraved by Moyrean, for his series of a hundred
+prints after Wouverman, under the title of <i>Le Grand Marché aux
+Chevaux</i>. It is thus described by Smith:&mdash;"This very capital picture
+exhibits an open country divided in the middle distance by a river whose
+course is lost among the distant mountains. The principal scene of
+activity is represented along the front and second grounds, on which may
+be numbered about twenty-four horses, exhibiting that noble animal in
+every variety of action, and nearly fifty persons. On the right of the
+picture is a coach, drawn by four fine grey horses, and in front of this
+object are a grey and a bay horse, on the latter of which are mounted a
+man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">194</a></span> and a boy. In advance of them is a group of four horses and several
+persons, among whom may be noticed a cavalier and a lady observing the
+paces of a horse which a jockey and his master are showing off. A
+gentleman on a black horse seems also to be watching the action of the
+animal. Near this person is a mare lying down, and a foal standing by it
+which a boy is approaching. On the opposite side of the picture is a
+gentleman on a cream-coloured horse, near two spirited greys, one of
+which is kicking, and a woman, a man and a boy are escaping from its
+heels. From thence the eye looks over an open space occupied by men and
+horses, receding in succession to the bank of the river, along which are
+houses and tents concealed in part by trees. This picture is painted
+throughout with great care and delicacy in what is termed the last
+manner of the master, remarkable for the prevalent grey or silvery hues
+of colouring."</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Albert Cuyp</span>, born at Dortrecht 1620, died there about 1672. Of the life
+of this great painter little more is known with any certainty than that
+he was the scholar of his father, Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp. Cattle form a
+prominent feature in many of his works, though never so highly finished
+as in those of Paul Potter or Adrian van de Velde; indeed, in many of
+Cuyp's pictures, they are quite subordinate. His favourite subjects, a
+landscape with a river, with cattle lying or standing on its banks, and
+landscapes with horsemen in the foreground, were suggested to him no
+doubt by the country about Dortrecht and the river Maas: but he also
+painted winter landscapes, and especially views of rivers where the
+broad extent of water is animated by vessels. Sometimes, too, with great
+perfection, fowls as large as life, hens, ducks, etc., and still life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">195</a></span>
+He also painted portraits, though less successfully. However great the
+skill displayed in the composition of his works, their principal charm
+lies in the beauty and truthfulness of their peculiar lighting. No other
+painter, with the exception of Claude, has so well understood the cool
+freshness of morning, the bright but misty light of a hot noon, or the
+warm glow of a clear sunset. The effect of his pictures is further
+enhanced by the skill with which he avails himself of the aid of
+contrasts; as for example, dark, rich colours of the reposing cattle as
+seen against the bright sky. In his own country no picture of his, till
+the year 1750, ever sold for more than thirty florins. Indeed, Kugler
+was informed by a Dutch friend, that in past times, when a picture found
+no bidder, the auctioneer would offer to throw in "a little Cuyp" in
+order to induce a sale. The merit of having first given him his due rank
+belongs to the English, who as early as 1785, gave at the sale of Linden
+van Slingelandt's collection at Dortrecht high prices for Cuyp's works;
+About nine-tenths of his pictures are consequently to be found in
+England.</p>
+
+<p>One of his finest works is the landscape, in bright, warm, morning
+light, with two cows reposing in the foreground, and a woman conversing
+with a horseman, in the National Gallery (No. 53). The whole picture
+breathes a cheerful and rural tranquillity. In his mature time, these
+admirable qualities are seen in higher development. In the Louvre (No.
+104), is another fine example&mdash;a scene with six cows, a shepherd blowing
+the horn, and two children listening to him. This is admirably arranged,
+of greater truthfulness as regards the form and colouring of the cattle
+than usual, and with the warm lighting of the sky<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">196</a></span> executed with equal
+decision and softness. This picture is one of the master's chief
+productions, being also about 4 ft. high by 6 ft. wide. Another with
+three horsemen, and a servant carrying partridges, and in the centre a
+meadow with cattle, is also in the Louvre. This is less attractive in
+subject, but ranks equally high as a work of art. In Buckingham Palace
+are two pictures, one with three cows reposing, and one standing by a
+clear stream, near them a herdsman and a woman; other cows are in water
+near the ruins of a castle. In this picture, we see Cuyp in every
+respect at his culminating point of excellence. Not less fine, and of
+singular force of colour, is the landscape, with a broad river running
+through it, and a horseman under a tree in conversation with a
+countryman.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Paul Potter</span>, born at Enckhuysen 1625, died at Amsterdam 1654. Although
+the scholar of his father, Pieter Potter, who was but a mediocre
+painter, he made such astonishing progress as to rank at the age of 15
+as a finished artist. He removed very early to the Hague, where his
+talents met with universal recognition, including that of Prince Maurice
+of Orange, and where he married. In the year 1652, however, he removed
+to Amsterdam at the instance of one of his chief patrons, the
+Burgomaster Tulp. Of the masters who have striven pre-eminently after
+truth he is, beyond all question, one of the greatest that ever lived.
+In order to succeed in this aim, he acquired a correctness of drawing, a
+kind of modelling which imparts an almost plastic effect to his animals,
+an extraordinary execution of detail in the most solid impasto, and a
+truth of colouring which harmonises astonishingly with the time of day.
+In his landscapes, which generally consist of a few willows in the
+foreground, and of a wide view over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">197</a></span> meadows, the most delicate
+graduation of aërial perspective is seen. With few exceptions, his
+animals are small, and his pictures proportionately moderate in size. By
+the year 1647 he had attained his full perfection. Of this date is the
+celebrated group called <i>The Young Bull</i>, in the Hague Gallery. All the
+figures in this are as large as life, and so extraordinarily true to
+nature as not only to appear real at a certain distance, but even to
+keep up the illusion when seen near.</p>
+
+<p>A picture dated 1649, now in Buckingham Palace, of two cows and a young
+bull in a pasture, combines with his customary fidelity to nature a more
+than common power of effect, and breadth and freedom of treatment. To
+the same year belongs also The <i>Farmyard</i>, formerly in the Cassel
+Gallery, now in that of S. Petersburg, which, according to Smith, fully
+deserves its celebrity both for the clearness and warmth of the sunset
+effect, as well as for its masterly execution. To 1650 belongs the
+picture of <i>Orpheus</i>, charming the animal world by the strains of his
+lyre, in the Amsterdam Museum. Here we see that the master had also
+studied wild animals. He is most successful in the bear. In the same
+gallery is another <i>chef-d'&oelig;uvre</i> of the same year&mdash;a hilly landscape
+with a shepherdess singing to her child, a shepherd playing on the
+bagpipe, and oxen, sheep, and goats around.</p>
+
+<p>The names of Weenix and Hondecoeter are so inseparably associated in the
+popular mind as painters of birds, whose respective works are not
+readily distinguishable moreover by the casual observer, that a short
+excursion into their family histories is advisable, for the purpose of
+showing how it was that this particular branch of the art was so
+successfully practised by the two. Moreover, as there were three
+Hondecoeters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">198</a></span> and two Weenixes who were painters, it is necessary to say
+something about each of them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Melchior Hondecoeter</span>, the best known, was of an ancient and noble
+family. He was instructed till the age of seventeen by his father
+Gysbert, who was a tolerable painter. Giles Hondecoeter, his
+grandfather, painted live birds admirably, but chiefly cocks and hens in
+the taste of Savery and Vincaboom. Melchior was born in 1636, and
+studied for a time with his father; but meantime his aunt Josina had
+married Jan Baptist Weenix, and a son was born to them, Jan Weenix, who
+inherited from old Giles Hondecoeter, his grandfather, his talent for
+painting poultry, and from his father, Jan Baptist Weenix, he acquired
+the benefit of several influences which were not shared by his cousin
+Melchior.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Jan Baptist Weenix</span>, who was nicknamed "Rattle," was born at Amsterdam
+about 1621. His father was an architect, who bred his son up to that
+profession, but he was afterwards put to study painting under Abraham
+Bloemart. Soon after his marriage with Josina he was seized with the
+desire to visit Italy, and he set off alone to Rome, promising to return
+in four months. In Rome, however, he was so well received that he stayed
+there four years, and Italianized himself to an extent that may be seen
+in a picture in the Wallace Collection, a <i>Coast Scene with Classic
+Ruins</i>, which he signs <i>Gio. Batta. Weenix</i>. Though he returned to
+Holland and settled near Utrecht, his manner was sensibly modified by
+his sojourn in Rome.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Jan Weenix</span>, who was born at Amsterdam in 1649, though he succeeded in so
+far assimilating his father's style that his earlier works are often
+confused with those of "Giovanni Battista," did not acquire the energy
+or the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">199</a></span> dramatic force displayed by Melchior Hondecoeter in representing
+live birds and animals, though he sometimes surpassed him in the finish
+and the harmony of his decorative arrangements of dead game and still
+life. Accordingly the one usually painted dead and the latter live
+birds. In other respects there is not much to distinguish their works.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Nicholas Berchem</span> was the only other pupil of Jan Baptist Weenix of whom
+we know anything. Berchem had other masters, beginning with his father,
+who was a painter of fish and tables covered with plates, china dishes,
+and such like. Having given his son the first rudiments of his art he
+found himself unequal to the task of cultivating the excellent
+disposition he observed in him, and therefore placed him with Van Goyen,
+Nicholas Moyaert, Peter Grebber, Jan Wils, and lastly with Jan Baptist
+Weenix, all of whom had the honour of assisting to form so excellent a
+painter. Indefatigable at his easel, Berchem acquired a manner both easy
+and expeditious; to see him work, painting appeared a mere diversion to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>His wife was the daughter of his instructor, Jan Wils, and was so
+avaricious that she allowed him no rest. Busy as he was by nature, she
+used to sit under his studio, and when she neither heard him sing nor
+stir, she struck upon the ceiling to rouse him. She got from him all the
+money he earned by his labour, so that he was obliged to borrow from his
+scholars when he wanted money to buy prints that were offered him, which
+was the only pleasure he had. <i>The Musical Shepherdess</i> at Hertford
+House is a good example of his style, and the description of it in
+Smith's catalogue shows in what estimation the artist was held in early
+Victorian days:&mdash;"This beautiful pastoral scene <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">200</a></span>represents a bold rocky
+coast under the appearance of the close of day. The rustics have ended
+their labours and are recreating with music and dancing. A group
+composed of two peasants and a like number of women occupies the
+foreground; one of the latter, attired in a blue mantle, is gaily
+striking a tambourine, and dancing to the music; her companion in a
+yellow dress sits near her; the shepherds also are seated, and one of
+them appears to have just ceased playing a pipe which he holds. The
+goats are browsing near them. Painted in the artist's most fascinating
+style."</p>
+
+<p>That Berchem had been to Italy is pretty certain, and though no
+authentic account of his visit is recorded, there is a story that when
+Jacob Ruisdael went to Rome as a young man, Nicholas Berchem was the
+first acquaintance he met, and that their friendship was of long
+standing. Their frequent walks round about Rome gave them the
+opportunity of working together from Nature, and one day a cardinal
+seeing them at work, inquired what they were doing. His eminence was
+agreeably impressed with their drawings, and invited them to visit him
+in Rome. The painters returned to their work, where they met with a
+second <i>rencontre</i> of a very different nature; a gang of thieves robbed
+and stripped them of their clothes. They returned in their shirts to the
+city, and called on the cardinal, who took pity upon them, ordered them
+clothes, and afterwards employed them in several considerable works in
+his palace.</p>
+
+<p>Berchem at one time took up his abode in the Castle of Bentheim, and as
+both he and Ruisdael have left several pictures of this castle it may be
+inferred that they worked there together, as at Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from personal friendship there is nothing to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">201</a></span> connect Berchem with
+Ruisdael, the popularity of the former being derived from qualities of a
+totally different nature from those which raise Ruisdael far above any
+of his contemporaries as a landscape painter.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Jan Van Huysum</span> was born at Amsterdam in 1682. His father, Justus Van
+Huysum, who dealt in pictures, was himself a middling painter in most
+kinds of painting. He taught his son to paint screens, figures and vases
+on wood, landscape, and sometimes flowers; but the son being arrived at
+a reasoning age perceived that to work in every branch of his art was
+the way to excel in none, therefore he confined himself to flowers,
+fruit, and landscape, and quitting his father's school set up for
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>No one before Van Huysum attained so perfect a manner of representing
+the beauty of flowers and the down and bloom of fruit; for he painted
+with greater freedom than Velvet Breughel and Mignon, with more
+tenderness and nature than Mario di Fiori, Andrea Belvedere, Michel de
+Campidoglio or Daniel Seghers; with more mellowness than de Heem, and
+with more vigour of colouring than Baptist Monoyer.</p>
+
+<p>His pictures of flowers and fruit pleasing an English gentleman, he
+introduced them into his own country, where they came into vogue and
+yielded a high price. To express the motions of the smallest insects
+with justice he used to contemplate them through the microscope with
+great attention. At the times of the year when the flowers were in
+bloom, and the fruit in perfection, he used to design them in his own
+garden, and the Sieur Gulet and Voorhelm sent him the most beautiful
+productions in those kinds they could pick up.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">202</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His reputation rose to such a height that all the curious in painting
+sought his works with great eagerness, which encouraged him to raise his
+prices so high that his pictures at last grew out of the reach of any
+but princes and men of the greatest fortune. He was the first flower
+painter that ever thought of laying them on light grounds, which
+requires much greater art than to paint them on dark ones.</p>
+
+<p>Van Huysum died at Amsterdam in 1749. He never had any pupil but a young
+woman named Haverman, and his brother Michael. Two other brothers have
+distinguished themselves in painting, one named Justus, who painted
+battles, and died at twenty-two years old, the other named James, who
+ended his days in England in 1740. He copied the pictures of his brother
+John so well as to deceive the connoisseurs: he had usually £20 for each
+copy. For the originals, it may be noted, from a thousand to fourteen
+hundred florins was paid.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="Vc" id="Vc"></a>V</h3>
+
+<p class="head">PAINTERS OF LANDSCAPE</p>
+
+
+<p>C<span class="smcap">oming</span> now to the landscape painters we find that <span class="smcap">Jan Van Goyen</span>, born at
+Leyden in 1596, was destined to exert a really powerful influence,
+inasmuch as he was the founder, as is generally acknowledged, of the
+Dutch school of homely native landscape. Beginning with figure subjects,
+he discovered in their landscape backgrounds his real <i>métier</i>, and
+seems only to have realized his great gifts when he looked further into
+nature than was possible when painting a foreground<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">203</a></span> picture. He appears
+to have been by nature or by inclination long-sighted, and he is never
+so happy as when painting distance, either along the banks of a river or
+looking out to sea. This extended gaze taught him something of
+atmosphere that few painters beside himself ever acquired, and helped
+him to the mastery of tone which appears to have influenced so many of
+his followers, as for example Van de Velde in the painting of
+sea-pieces.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Jan Wynants</span>, born at Haarlem about 1620, and still living in 1677, was
+the first master who applied all the developed qualities of the Dutch
+School to the treatment of landscape painting. In general his prevailing
+tone is clear and bright, more especially in the green of his trees and
+plants, which in many cases, merges into blue. One of his
+characteristics is a fallen tree trunk in the foreground, as may be seen
+in three out of the six examples in the National Gallery. The
+carefulness of his execution explains how it was that in so long a life
+he only produced a moderate number of pictures. Smith's catalogue
+contains about 214. These differ much according to their different
+periods. In his first manner peasants' cottages or ruins play an
+important part, and the view is more or less shut in by trees of a heavy
+dark green, the execution solid and careful. In his middle time he
+generally paints open views of a rather uneven country, diversified by
+wood and water. That Wynants retained his full skill even in advanced
+life is proved by a picture dated 1672, in the Munich Gallery,
+representing a road leading to a fenced wood and a sandhill, near which
+in the foreground are some cows (by Lingelbach) being driven along. In
+his last manner a heavy uniformly brown tone is often observable.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">204</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is his genuine feeling for nature that makes Wynant's pictures so
+popular in England, where we meet with a considerable number of his best
+works.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Jacob Ruisdael</span> (born at Haarlem 1628, died there 1682) is supposed to
+have developed under the influence of a school there that was opposing
+Van Goyen's tone treatment by local colour. Though not always the most
+charming, Ruisdael is certainly the greatest and the most profound of
+the Dutch landscape painters. His wide expanses of sky, earth or sea,
+with their tender gradations of aërial perspective, diversified here and
+there by alternations of sunshine and shadow, attract us as much by the
+pathos as by the picturesqueness of their character. His scenes of
+mountainous districts with foaming waterfalls; or bare piles of rock and
+sombre lakes are imbued with a feeling of melancholy. Ruisdael's work
+may be well studied in the six examples at Hertford House, and the
+fourteen in the National Gallery. Among his finer works in Continental
+collections the following are some of those selected by Kugler for
+description. At the Hague is one of his wide expanses&mdash;a view of the
+country around Haarlem, the town itself looking small on the horizon,
+under a lofty expanse of cloudy sky in the foreground a bleaching-ground
+and some houses reminding us, by the manner in which they are
+introduced, of Hobbema. The prevailing tone is cool, the sky singularly
+beautiful, and the execution wonderfully delicate. A flat country with a
+road leading to a village, and fields with wheatsheaves, is in the
+Dresden Gallery. This is temperate in colouring and beautifully lighted.
+Equally fine is an extensive view over a hilly but bare country, through
+which a river runs; in the Louvre. The horseman and beggar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">205</a></span> on a bridge
+are by Wouvermans: here the grey-greenish harmony of the tone is in fine
+accordance with the poetic grandeur of the subject. A hill covered with
+oak woods, with a peasant hastening to a hut to escape the gathering
+shower, is in the Munich Gallery. The golden warmth of the trees and
+ground, and the contrast between the deep clear chiaroscuro and soft
+rain-clouds, and the bright gleam of sunshine, render this picture one
+of the finest by this master.</p>
+
+<p>The peculiar charm which is seen in Holland by the combination of lofty
+trees and calm water is fully represented in the following works:&mdash;<i>The
+Chase</i>; in the Dresden Gallery. Here in the still water in the
+foreground&mdash;through which a stag-hunt (by Adrian van de Velde) is
+passing&mdash;clouds, warm with morning sunlight, appear reflected. In this
+picture, remarkable as it is for size, being 3 ft. 10&frac12; in. high, by 5
+ft. 2 in. wide, the sense even of the fresh morning is not without a
+tinge of gentle melancholy. A noble wood of oaks, beeches and elms,
+about the size of the last-mentioned picture, is in the Louvre. In the
+centre, through an opening in the woods, are seen distant hills. The
+cattle and figures upon a flooded road are by Berchem. In power, warmth,
+and treatment, this is also nearly allied to the preceding work. Of his
+waterfalls, the most remarkable are&mdash;A picture at the Hague, which is
+particularly striking for its warm lighting, and careful execution.
+Another with Bentheim Castle, so often repeated by Ruisdael, is at
+Amsterdam. In the same collection is a landscape, with rocks, woods, and
+a larger waterfall. This has a grandly poetic character which, with the
+broad and solid handling, plainly shows the influence of Everdingen. The
+same remark may be applied to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">206</a></span> waterfall, No. 328, in the Munich
+Gallery. Here the dark, rainy sky, enhances the sublime impression made
+by the foaming torrent that rushes down the rocky masses. Another work
+worthy to rank with the fore-going is <i>The Jewish Cemetry</i>, in the
+Dresden Gallery: a pallid sunbeam lights up some of the tombstones,
+between which a torrent impetuously flows.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Landscape with Waterfall</i> at Hertford House is a good example; the
+<i>Landscape with a Farm</i> in the same collection is another, though in
+this the figures and cattle are by Adrian Van der Velde. Ostade and
+Wouverman are also said to have helped him with his figures, and it is
+possible that one or other of them ought to have some of the credit for
+the beautiful <i>View on the Shore at Scheveningen</i> in the National
+Gallery (No. 1390). The <i>Landscape with Ruins</i> (No. 746) is perhaps the
+finest of the others there.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Willem van de Velde</span>, the younger, born at Amsterdam 1633, died at
+Greenwich 1707. His first master was his father, Willem van de Velde the
+elder, but his principal instructor was Simon de Vlieger. The earlier
+part of his professional life was spent in Holland, where, besides
+numerous pictures of the various aspects of marine scenery, he painted
+several well-known sea-fights in which the Dutch had obtained the
+victory over the English. He afterwards followed his father to England,
+where he was greatly patronized by Charles II. and James II. for whom,
+in turn, he painted the naval victories of the English over the Dutch.
+He was also much employed by amateurs of art among the English nobility
+and gentry. There is no question that Willem van de Velde the younger is
+the greatest marine painter of the whole Dutch School. His perfect
+knowledge of lineal and aërial perspective,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">207</a></span> and the incomparable
+technique which he inherited from his school, enabled him to represent
+the sea and the sky with the utmost truth of form, atmosphere and
+colour, and to enliven the scene with the purest feeling for the
+picturesque, with the most natural incidents of sea-faring life.</p>
+
+<p>Two of his pictures at Amsterdam are particularly remarkable;
+representing the English flagship <i>The Prince Royal</i> striking her
+colours in the fight with the Dutch fleet of 1666; and its companion,
+four English men-of-war brought in as prizes at the same fight. Here the
+painter has represented himself in a small boat, from which he actually
+witnessed the battle. This accounts for the extraordinary truth with
+which every particular of the scene is rendered in such small pictures,
+which, combined with their delicate greyish tone, and the mastery of the
+execution, render them two of his finest works. A view of the city of
+Amsterdam, dated 1686, taken from the river, is an especially good
+specimen of his large pictures. It is about 5 ft. high by 10 ft. wide.
+The vessels in the river are arranged with great feeling for the
+picturesque, and the treatment of details is admirable. His greatest
+successes, however, are in the representation of calm seas, as may be
+seen in a small picture at Munich. In the centre of the middle distance
+is a frigate, and in the foreground smaller vessels. The fine silvery
+tone in which the whole is kept finds a sufficient counter-balance of
+colour in the yellowish sun-lit clouds, and in the brownish vessels and
+their sails. Nothing can be more exquisite than the tender reflections
+of these in the water. Of almost similar beauty is a picture of about
+the same size, with four vessels, in the Cassel Gallery, which is signed
+and dated 1653. As a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">208</a></span>contrast to this class of works, may be mentioned
+<i>The Gathering Tempest</i>, in the Munich Gallery. This is brilliantly
+lighted, and of great delicacy of tone in the distance, though the
+foreground has somewhat darkened.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Meindert Hobbema</span> (1638-1709) was a friend as well as a pupil of Jacob
+Ruisdael. The fact that such distinguished painters as Adrian van de
+Velde, Wouvermans, Berchem, and Lingelbach, executed the figures and
+animals in his pictures proves the esteem in which he was held by his
+contemporaries; nevertheless it is evident that the public was slow in
+conceding to him the rank which he deserved, for his name is not found
+for more than a century after his death in any even of the most
+elaborate dictionaries of art, while the catalogues of the most
+important picture sales in Holland make no mention of him at all up to
+the year 1739; when a picture by him, although much extolled, was sold
+for only 71 florins, and even in 1768 one of his masterpieces only
+fetched 300 florins. The English were the first to discover his merits.</p>
+
+<p>The peculiar characteristics of this master, who next to Ruisdael, is
+confessedly at the head of landscape painters of the Dutch School, will
+be best appreciated by comparing him with his rival. In two most
+important qualities&mdash;fertility of inventive genius, and poetry of
+feeling&mdash;he is decidedly inferior: the range of his subjects being far
+narrower. His most frequent scenes are villages surrounded by trees,
+such as are frequently met with in the districts of Guelderland, with
+winding pathways leading from house to house. A water-mill occasionally
+forms a prominent feature. Often, too, he represents a slightly uneven
+country, diversified by groups or rows of trees, wheat-fields,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">209</a></span> meadows,
+and small pools. Occasionally he gives us a view of part of a town, with
+its gates, canals with sluices, and quays with houses; more rarely, the
+ruins of an old castle, with an extensive view of a flat country, or
+some stately residence. In the composition of all these pictures,
+however, we do not find that elevated and picturesque taste which
+characterises Ruisdael; on the contrary they have a thoroughly
+portrait-like appearance, decidedly prosaic, but always surprizingly
+truthful. The greater number of Hobbema's pictures are as much
+characterized by a warm and golden tone as those of Ruisdael by the
+reverse; his greens being yellowish in the lights and brownish in the
+shadows&mdash;both of singular transparency. In pictures of this kind the
+influence of Rembrandt is perhaps perceptible, and they are superior in
+brilliancy to any work by Ruisdael. While these works chiefly present us
+with the season of harvest and sunset-light, there are others in a cool,
+silvery, morning lighting, and with the bright green of spring, that
+surpass Ruisdael's in clearness. His woods also, owing to the various
+lights that fall on them, are of greater transparency.</p>
+
+<p>As almost all the galleries on the Continent were formed at a period
+when the works of Hobbema were little prized (Ticcozzi's <i>Dictionary</i>,
+in 1818, does not include his name), they either possess no specimens,
+or some of an inferior class, so that no adequate idea can be formed of
+him. The most characteristic example to be met with on the Continent is
+a landscape in the Berlin Museum, No. 886, an oak wood, with scattered
+lights, a calm piece of water in the foreground, and a sun-lit village
+in the distance. Of the eight pictures in the National Gallery from his
+hand, most are good, and one world-famous&mdash;<i>The Avenue, Middelharnis</i>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">210</a></span>
+which may be called his masterpiece. This was painted in 1689, when he
+had reached the age of fifty. His diploma picture, painted in 1663, is
+at Hertford House, together with four other interesting examples, all of
+which repay careful study.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">211</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="GERMAN_SCHOOLS" id="GERMAN_SCHOOLS"></a><i>GERMAN SCHOOLS</i></h2>
+
+
+<p>The origins of the German Schools of painting are obscure, but it is
+fairly certain that Cologne was the first place in which the art was
+soonest established to any considerable extent. Here, as in the
+Netherlands, we cannot find any traces of immediate Italian influences.
+The first painter who can be identified with any certainty is <span class="smcap">Wilhelm
+von Herle</span>, called <span class="smcap">Meister Wilhelm</span>, whose activity is not traceable
+earlier than about 1358. Most of the pictures formerly attributed to him
+have, however, been assigned to his pupil <span class="smcap">Hermann Wynrich von Wesel</span>, who
+on the death of his master in 1378 married his widow and continued his
+practice, until his death somewhere about 1414. His most important works
+were six panels of the High Altar of the Cathedral, the so-called
+<i>Madonna of the Pea Blossoms</i> and two <i>Crucifixions</i> at Cologne, and the
+<i>S. Veronica</i> at Munich, dated 1410.</p>
+
+<p>More important was <span class="smcap">Stephen Lochner</span>, who died at Cologne in 1451. His
+influence was widespread and his school apparently numerous, until, in
+1450, Roger van der Weyden, returning from Italy, stopped at Cologne and
+painted his large triptych, which eclipsed Lochner. From this time
+onwards the school of Cologne is represented by painters whose names are
+not known, and who are accordingly distinguished by the subjects of
+their works; such as <i>The Master of the Glorification<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">212</a></span> of the Virgin</i>,
+<i>The Master of S. Bartholomew</i>, etc., until we come to Bartel Bruyn
+(<i>c.</i> 1493-1553), a portrait painter who is represented at Berlin, and
+by a picture of Dr Fuchsius bequeathed to the National Gallery by George
+Salting.</p>
+
+<p>In other parts of Germany, particularly in Nuremberg, Ulm, Augsburg, and
+Basle, various names of painters of the latter half of the fourteenth
+century have survived, but their works are of little interest except to
+the connoisseur as showing the influence under which the two great
+artists of the sixteenth century, Albert Dürer and Hans Holbein, and one
+or two lesser lights like Lucas Cranach, Albert Altdorfer, and Adam
+Elsheimer, were formed.</p>
+
+<p>In Germany the taste for the fantastic in art peculiar to the Middle
+Ages, though it engendered clever and spirited works such as those of
+Quentin Massys and Lucas van Leyden, was still unfavourable to the
+cultivation of pure beauty, scenes from the Apocalypse, Dances of Death,
+etc., being among the favourite subjects for art. On the other hand, the
+pictorial treatment of antique literature, a world so suggestive of
+beautiful forms, was so little comprehended by the German mind that they
+only sought to express it through the medium of those fantastic ideas
+with very childish and even tasteless results. We must also remember
+that that average education of the various classes of society which the
+fine arts require for their protection stood on a very low footing in
+Germany. In Italy the favour with which works of art was regarded was
+far more widely extended. This again gave rise to a more elevated
+personal position on the part of the artist, which in Italy was not only
+one of more consideration, but of incomparably greater independence. In
+this latter respect Germany was so</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XXXII" id="PL_XXXII"></a>
+<a href="images/plate32.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate32_th.png" width="300" height="518" alt="PLATE XXXII.
+
+&quot;THE MASTER OF ST BARTHOLOMEW&quot;
+
+TWO SAINTS
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XXXII.<br />
+
+&quot;THE MASTER OF ST BARTHOLOMEW&quot;<br />
+
+TWO SAINTS<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">213</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">deficient that the genius of Albert Dürer and Holbein was miserably
+cramped and hindered in development by the poverty and littleness of
+surrounding circumstances. It is known that of all the German princes no
+one but the Elector Frederick the Wise ever gave Albert Dürer a
+commission for pictures, while a writing addressed by the great painter
+to the magistracy of Nuremberg tells us that his native city never gave
+him employment even to the value of 500 florins. At the same time his
+pictures were so meanly paid, that for the means of subsistence, as he
+says himself, he was compelled to devote himself to engraving. How far
+more such a man as Dürer would have been appreciated in Italy or in the
+Netherlands is further evidenced in the above-mentioned writing, where
+he states that he was offered 200 ducats a year in Venice and 300
+Philips-gulden in Antwerp, if he would settle in either of those cities.
+And Holbein fared still worse: there is no evidence whatever that any
+German prince ever troubled himself at all about the great painter while
+at Basle, and his art was so little cared for that necessity compelled
+him to go to England, where a genius fitted for the highest undertakings
+of historical painting was limited to the sphere of portraiture. The
+crowning impediments finally, which hindered the progress of German art,
+and perverted it from its true aim, were the Reformation, which narrowed
+the sphere of ecclesiastical works, and the pernicious imitation of the
+great Italian masters which ensued.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Lucas Cranach</span>, born in 1472, received his first instructions in art from
+his father, his later teaching probably from Matthew Grunewald. In some
+instances he attained to the expression of dignity, earnestness and
+feeling, but generally his characteristics are a naïve and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">214</a></span> childlike
+cheerfulness and a gentle and almost timid grace. The impression
+produced by his style of representation reminds one of the "Volksbücher"
+and "Volkslieder." Many of his church pictures have a very peculiar
+significance: in these he stands forth properly speaking as the painter
+of the Reformation. Intimate both with Luther and Melanchthon, he seizes
+on the central aim of their doctrine, viz., the insufficiency of good
+works and the sole efficacy of faith. His mythological subjects appeal
+directly to the eye like real portraits; and sometimes also by means of
+a certain grace and naïveté of motive. We may cite as an instance the
+Diana seated on a stag in a small picture at Berlin, No. 564. <i>The
+Fountain of Youth</i>, also at Berlin, No. 593, is a picture of peculiar
+character; a large basin surrounded by steps and with a richly adorned
+fountain forms the centre. On one side, where the country is stony and
+barren, a multitude of old women are dragged forward on horses, waggons
+or carriages, and with much trouble are got into the water. On the other
+side of the fountain they appear as young maidens splashing about and
+amusing themselves with all kinds of playful mischief; close by is a
+large pavilion into which a herald courteously invites them to enter and
+where they are arrayed in costly apparel. A feast is prepared in a
+smiling meadow, which seems to be followed by a dance; the gay crowd
+loses itself in a neighbouring grove. The men unfortunately have not
+become young, and retain their grey beards. The picture is of the year
+1546, the seventy-fourth of Cranach's age.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Albert Altdorfer</span> was born 1488 at Altdorf, near Landshuth, in Bavaria,
+and settled at Ratisbon, where he died 1528. He invested the fantastic
+tendency of the time with a poetic feeling&mdash;especially in
+landscape&mdash;and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">215</a></span> he developed it so as to attain a perfection in this
+sort of romantic painting that no other artist had reached. In his later
+period he was strongly influenced by Italian art. Altdorfer's principal
+work is in the Munich Gallery, and is thus described by Schlegel:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It represents the Victory of Alexander the Great over Darius; the
+costume is that of the artist's own day, as it would be treated in the
+chivalrous poems of the middle ages&mdash;man and horse are sheathed in plate
+and mail, with surcoats of gold or embroidery; the chamfrons upon the
+heads of the horses, the glittering lances and stirrups, and the variety
+of the weapons, form altogether a scene of indescribable splendour and
+richness.... It is, in truth, a little world on a few square feet of
+canvas; the hosts of combatants who advance on all sides against each
+other are innumerable, and the view into the background appears
+interminable. In the distance is the ocean, with high rocks and a rugged
+island between them; ships of war appear in the offing and a whole fleet
+of vessels&mdash;on the left the moon is setting&mdash;on the right the sun
+rising&mdash;both shining through the opening clouds&mdash;a clear and striking
+image of the events represented. The armies are arranged in rank and
+column without the strange attitudes, contrasts, and distortions
+generally exhibited in so-called battle-pieces. How indeed would this
+have been possible with such a vast multitude of figures? The whole is
+in the plain and severe, or it may be the stiff manner of the old style.
+At the same time the character and execution of these little figures is
+most masterly and profound. And what variety, what expression there is,
+not merely in the character of the single warriors and knights, but in
+the hosts themselves! Here crowds of black archers rush down troop after
+troop from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">216</a></span> the mountain with the rage of a foaming torrent; on the
+other side high upon the rocks in the far distance a scattered crowd of
+flying men are turning round in a defile. The point of the greatest
+interest stands out brilliantly from the centre of the whole&mdash;Alexander
+and Darius both in armour of burnished gold; Alexander on Bucephalus
+with his lance in rest advances before his men and presses on the flying
+Darius, whose charioteer has already fallen on his white horses, and who
+looks back upon his conqueror with all the despair of a vanquished
+monarch."</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Albert Dürer</span> (1471-1528), by his overpowering genius, may be called the
+sole representative of German art of his period. He was gifted with a
+power of conception which traced nature through all her finest shades,
+and with a lively sense, as well for the solemn and the sublime, as for
+simple grace and tenderness; above all, he had an earnest and truthful
+feeling in art united with a capacity for the most earnest study. These
+qualities were sufficient to place him by the side of the greatest
+artists whom the world has ever seen.</p>
+
+<p>One of the earliest portraits by Albert Dürer known to us is that of his
+father, Albert Dürer, the goldsmith, dated 1497, in our National
+Gallery. In the year 1644, another version of this picture, which was
+engraved by Hollar, was in the collection of the Earl of Arundel, and is
+now in that of the Duke of Northumberland, at Syon House. Of about the
+same time&mdash;that is to say, before 1500&mdash;are the portraits of Oswald
+Krell, at Munich, of Frederick the Wise, at Berlin, and of himself, at
+the Prado.</p>
+
+<p>Several of Albert Dürer's pictures of the year 1500 are known to us. The
+first and most important is his own portrait in the Munich Gallery,
+which represents<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">217</a></span> him full face with his hand laid on the fur trimming
+of his robe.</p>
+
+<p>His finest picture of the year 1504 is an <i>Adoration of the Kings</i>,
+originally painted for Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony,
+subsequently presented by the Elector Christian II. to the Emperor
+Rudolph II., and finally, on the occasion of an exchange of pictures,
+transferred from Vienna to Florence, where it now hangs in the Tribune
+of the Uffizi. The heads are of thoroughly realistic treatment; the
+Virgin a portrait from some model of no attractive character; the second
+King a portrait of the painter himself. The landscape background exactly
+resembles that in the well-known engraving of S. Eustace, the period of
+which is thus pretty nearly defined. It is carefully painted in a fine
+body of colour.</p>
+
+<p>In 1505 Dürer made a second journey into Upper Italy, and remained a
+considerable time at Venice. Of his occupations in this city the letters
+written to his friend Wilibald Pirckheimer which have come down to us
+give many interesting particulars. He there executed for the German
+Company a picture known as <i>The Feast of Rose Garlands</i>, which brought
+him great fame, and by its brilliant colouring silenced the assertion of
+his envious adversaries "that he was a good engraver, but knew not how
+to deal with colours." In the centre of a landscape is the Virgin seated
+with the Child and crowned by two angels; on her right is a Pope with
+priests kneeling; on her left the Emperor Maximilian I. with knights;
+various members of the German Company are also kneeling; all are being
+crowned with garlands of roses by the Virgin, the Child, S.
+Dominick&mdash;who stands behind the Virgin&mdash;and by angels. The painter and
+his friend Pirckheimer are seen standing in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">218</a></span> background on the
+right; the painter holds a tablet with the inscription, "Albertus Dürer
+Germanus, MDVI" This picture, which is one of his largest and finest,
+was purchased from the church at a high price by the Emperor Rudolph II.
+for his gallery at Prague, where it remained until sold in 1782 by the
+Emperor Joseph II. It then became the property of the Præmonstratensian
+monastery of Stratow at Prague, where it still exists, though in very
+injured condition and greatly over-painted. In the Imperial Gallery at
+Vienna may be seen an old copy which conveys a better idea of the
+picture than the original.</p>
+
+<p>With these productions begins the zenith of this master's fame, in which
+a great number of works follow one another within a short period. Of
+these we first notice a picture of 1508, in the Imperial Gallery at
+Vienna, painted for Duke Frederick of Saxony, and which afterwards
+adorned the gallery of the Emperor Rudolph II. It represents <i>The
+Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand Saints</i>. In the centre of the picture
+stand the master and his friend Pirckheimer as spectators, both in black
+dresses. Dürer has a mantle thrown over his shoulder in the Italian
+fashion, and stands in a firm attitude. He folds his hands and holds a
+small flag, on which is inscribed, "Iste faciebat anno domini 1508
+Albertus Dürer Alemanus." There are a multitude of single groups
+exhibiting every species of martyrdom, but there is a want of general
+connection of the whole. The scenes in the background, where the
+Christians are led naked up the rocks, and are precipitated down from
+the top, are particularly excellent. The whole is very minute and
+miniature-like; the colouring is beautifully brilliant, and it is
+painted (the accessories particularly) with extraordinary care.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">219</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To 1511 belongs also one of his most celebrated pictures, <i>The Adoration
+of the Trinity</i>, which is also at Vienna, painted for the chapel of the
+Landauer Brüderhaus in Nuremberg. Above in the centre of the picture are
+seen the First Person, who holds the Saviour in his arms, while the Holy
+Spirit is seen above; some angels spread out the priestly mantle of the
+Almighty, whilst others hover near with the instruments of Christ's
+passion. On the left hand a little lower down is a choir of females with
+the Virgin at their head; on the right are the male saints with St John
+the Baptist. Below all these kneel a host of the blessed of all ranks
+and nations extending over the whole of this part of the picture.
+Underneath the whole is a beautiful landscape, and in a corner of the
+picture the artist himself richly clothed in a fur mantle, with a tablet
+next him with the words, "Albertus Dürer Noricus faciebat anno a
+Virginis partu, 1511." It may be assumed beyond doubt that he held in
+particular esteem those pictures into which he introduced his own
+portrait.</p>
+
+<p>In the Vienna Gallery is also a picture of the year 1512, the Virgin
+holding the naked Child in her arms. She has a veil over her head and
+blue drapery. Her face is of the form usual with Albert Dürer, but of a
+soft and maidenly character; the Child is beautiful&mdash;the countenance
+particularly so. It is painted with exceeding delicacy of finish.</p>
+
+<p>Two altar-pieces of his earliest period must be mentioned. One is in the
+Dresden Gallery, consisting of three pictures painted in tempera on
+canvas, representing the Virgin, S. Anthony, and S. Sebastian
+respectively. Although this is probably one of his very earliest works,
+it is remarkable for the novelty of its treatment and its independence
+of tradition.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">220</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The other, a little later, is in the Munich Gallery (Nos. 240-3),
+painted at the request of the Paumgartner family, for S. Catherine's
+Church at Nuremberg, was brought to Munich in 1612 by Maximilian I. The
+subject of the middle picture is the Nativity; the Child is in the
+centre, surrounded by little angels, whilst the Virgin and Joseph kneel
+at the side. The wings contain portraits of the two donors under the
+form of S. George and S. Eustace represented as knights in steel armour,
+each with his standard, and the former holding the slain dragon.</p>
+
+<p>The year 1526 was distinguished by the two pictures of the four
+Apostles: John and Peter, Mark and Paul; the figures are the size of
+life. These, which are the master's grandest work, and the last of
+importance executed by him, are now in the Munich Gallery. We know with
+certainty that they were presented by Albert Dürer himself to the
+council of his native city in remembrance of his career as an artist,
+and at the same time as conveying to his fellow-citizens an earnest and
+lasting exhortation suited to that stormy period. In the year 1627,
+however, the pictures were allowed to pass into the hands of the Elector
+Maximilian I. of Bavaria. The inscriptions selected by the painter
+himself might have given offence to a Catholic prince, and were
+therefore cut off and joined to the copies by John Fischer, which were
+intended to indemnify the city of Nuremberg for the loss of the
+originals. These copies are still in the collection of the Landauer
+Brüderhaus at Nuremberg.</p>
+
+<p>These pictures are the fruit of the deepest thought which then stirred
+the mind of Albert Dürer, and are executed with overpowering force.
+Finished as they are, they form the first complete work of art produced
+by Protestantism. As the inscription taken from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">221</a></span> Gospels and
+Epistles of the Apostles contains pressing warnings not to swerve from
+the word of God, nor to believe in the doctrines of false prophets, so
+the figures themselves represent the steadfast and faithful guardians of
+that holy Scripture which they bear in their hands. There is also an old
+tradition, handed down from the master's own times, that these figures
+represent the four temperaments. This is confirmed by the pictures
+themselves; and though at first sight it may appear to rest on a mere
+accidental combination, it serves to carry out more completely the
+artist's thought, and gives to the figures greater individuality. It
+shows how every quality of the human mind may be called into the service
+of the Divine Word. Thus in the first picture, we see the whole force of
+the mind absorbed in contemplation, and we are taught that true
+watchfulness in behalf of the Scripture must begin by devotion to its
+study.</p>
+
+<p>S. John stands in front, the open book in his hand; his high forehead
+and his whole countenance bear the impress of earnest and deep thought.
+This is the melancholic temperament, which does not shrink from the most
+profound inquiry. Behind him S. Peter bends over the book, and gazes
+earnestly at its contents&mdash;a hoary head, full of meditative repose. This
+figure represents the phlegmatic temperament, which reviews its own
+thoughts in tranquil reflection. The second picture shows the outward
+operation of the conviction thus attained and its relation to daily
+life. S. Mark in the background is the man of sanguine temperament; he
+looks boldly round, and appears to speak to his hearers with animation,
+earnestly urging them to share those advantages which he has himself
+derived from the Holy Scriptures. S. Paul, on the contrary, in the
+foreground,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">222</a></span> holds the book and sword in his hands; he looks angrily and
+severely over his shoulder, ready to defend the Word, and to annihilate
+the blasphemer with the sword of God's power. He is the representative
+of the choleric temperament.</p>
+
+<p>We know of no important work of a later date than that just described.
+His portrait in a woodcut of the year 1527 represents him earnest and
+serious in demeanour, as would naturally follow from his advancing age
+and the pressure of eventful times. His head is no longer adorned with
+those richly flowing locks, on which in his earlier days he had set so
+high a value, as we learn from his pictures and from jests still
+recorded of him. With the departure of Hans Holbein to England in 1528
+and the death of Albert Dürer in the same year, that excellence to which
+they had raised German art passed away, and centuries saw no sign of its
+revival.</p>
+
+<p>Of <span class="smcap">Hans Holbein</span>, born at Augsburg in 1498, we shall have more to say in
+a later chapter, when considering the origins of English portraiture.
+But as in the case of Van Dyck, and in fact of every great portrait
+painter, his excellence in this particular branch of his art was but one
+result of his being a born artist and first exercising his talents in a
+much wider field. In Holbein the realistic tendency of the German School
+attained its highest development, and he may, next to Dürer, be
+pronounced the greatest master in it. While Dürer's art exhibits a close
+affinity with the religious ideas of the Middle Ages, Holbein appears to
+have been imbued with more modern and more material sentiments, and
+accordingly we find him excelling Dürer in closeness and delicacy of
+observation in the delineation of nature. A proof of this is afforded by
+the evidence of Erasmus, who said that as regards the portraits painted
+of him by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">223</a></span> both these artists, that by Holbein was the most like. In
+feeling for beauty of form, also in grace of movement, in colouring, and
+in the actual art of painting&mdash;in which his father had thoroughly
+instructed him&mdash;Holbein is to be placed above Dürer. That he did not
+rival the great Italians of his time in "historical" painting can only
+be ascribed to the circumstances of his life in Germany, where such
+subjects were not in fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Of his pictures executed before he left his native country the greater
+number are at Basle and Augsburg, and are therefore less familiar to the
+general public than his later works. A notable exception is the famous
+<i>Meyer Madonna</i>, the original of which is at Darmstadt, but a version
+now relegated, somewhat harshly, to the "copyist" is in the Dresden
+Gallery, and certainly exhibits as much of the spirit of the master as
+will serve for an example of his powers. It represents the Virgin as
+Queen of Heaven, standing in a niche, with the Child in her arms, and
+with the family of the Burgomaster Jacob Meyer of Basle kneeling on
+either side of her. With the utmost life and truth to nature, which
+brings these kneeling figures actually into our presence, says Kugler,
+there is combined in a most exquisite degree an expression of great
+earnestness, as if the mind were fixed on some lofty object. This is
+shown not merely by the introduction of divine beings into the circle of
+human sympathies, but particularly in the relation so skilfully
+indicated between the Holy Virgin and her worshippers, and in her
+manifest desire to communicate to those who are around her the sacred
+peace and tranquillity expressed in her own countenance and attitude,
+and implied in the infantine grace of the Saviour. In the direct union
+of the divine with the human, and in their reciprocal harmony, there is
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">224</a></span>involved a devout and earnest purity of feeling such as only the older
+masters were capable of representing.</p>
+
+<p>Another of his most beautiful pictures painted in Germany is the
+portrait of Erasmus, dated 1523. This was sent by Erasmus to Sir Thomas
+More, at Chelsea, with a letter recommending Holbein to his care, and as
+it is still in this country&mdash;in the collection of the Earl of Radnor at
+Longford Castle&mdash;it is not perhaps too much to hope that it may one of
+these days find its way into the National Gallery&mdash;perhaps when the
+alterations to the front entrance are completed. This picture has for a
+very long time been regarded as one of Holbein's very finest portraits.
+Mr W. Barclay Squire, in the sumptuous catalogue of the Radnor
+collection compiled by him, quotes the opinion of Sir William Musgrave,
+written in 1785, "I am not sure whether it is not the finest I have
+seen"; and that of Dr Waagen, "Alone worth a pilgrimage to Longford.
+Seldom has a painter so fully succeeded in bringing to view the whole
+character of so original a mind as in this instance. In the mouth and
+small eyes may be seen the unspeakable studies of a long life ... the
+face also expresses the sagacity and knowledge of a life gained by long
+experience ... the masterly and careful execution extends to every
+portion ... yet the face surpasses everything else in delicacy of
+modelling."</p>
+
+<p>Cruel, indeed, was England to have transplanted the one artist who might
+have saved Germany from the artistic destitution from which she has
+suffered ever since!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XXXIII" id="PL_XXXIII"></a>
+<a href="images/plate33.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate33_th.png" width="300" height="630" alt="PLATE XXXIII.&mdash;HANS HOLBEIN
+
+PORTRAIT OF CHRISTINA, DUCHESS OF MILAN
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XXXIII.&mdash;HANS HOLBEIN<br />
+
+PORTRAIT OF CHRISTINA, DUCHESS OF MILAN<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">225</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="FRENCH_SCHOOL" id="FRENCH_SCHOOL"></a><i>FRENCH SCHOOL</i></h2>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="Id" id="Id"></a>I</h3>
+
+<p class="head">THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY</p>
+
+
+<p>W<span class="smcap">hen</span> we consider the peculiar beauty of the architecture and
+ecclesiastical sculpture in France during the Middle Ages and the period
+of the renaissance, and of the enamels, ivories, and other small works
+of art, it is wrong to regret that painting was not also practised by
+the French as assiduously as it was in Italy. For there can be no doubt
+that in being confined to one channel the artistic impulses of a people
+cut deeper than if dissipated in various directions. We may suppose,
+indeed, that if those of the French had found their outlet in painting
+alone, we should have pictures of wonderful beauty, of a beauty moreover
+of a markedly different kind from that of the Italian or Spanish or
+Netherlandish pictures. But on the other hand we should have perhaps
+lost the amazing fascination of Chartres, and the delights of Limoges
+enamel and ivories.</p>
+
+<p>As it happens, the earliest mention to be made of painting in France is
+the arrival of Leonardo da Vinci at Amboise in 1516, whither he had come
+from Milan in the train of the young king François I. Unfortunately he
+was by this time sixty-four years old, and in less than three years he
+died. At about the same time there was a court painter in the employment
+of François&mdash;under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">226</a></span> the official designation of <i>varlet de
+chambre</i>&mdash;named <span class="smcap">Jehan Clouet</span>, who is supposed to have been of Flemish
+extraction. Nothing very definite is known about him or his work, but he
+had a son <span class="smcap">François Clouet</span>, who seems to have been born at about the time
+of Leonardo's arrival, and who succeeded to his father's office. At the
+funeral of François I. in 1547 he was ordered to make an <i>effige du dict
+feu roy</i>, and he continued to be the official court painter to Henri II.
+(whose posthumous portrait he was also ordered to paint), François II.,
+and Charles IX. He died in 1572. Every portrait of this period is
+attributed to him, just as was the case with Holbein in England. Neither
+of the two examples at the National Gallery can be safely ascribed to
+him. The little head of the Emperor Charles V., king of Spain, at
+Hereford House, is identical in style and in dimensions with that of
+Francis I., king of France, in the Museum at Lyons, which is attributed
+to Jean Clouet. Both may have been painted when Charles V. passed
+through Paris in 1539, but whether by Jean or one of his disciples
+cannot be said with certainty.</p>
+
+<p>Not until the very end of the sixteenth century were born Claude Gellée
+and Nicholas Poussin, the only two Frenchmen who were painters of
+considerable importance before the close of the seventeenth. Nor did
+either of these two contribute anything to the glory of their country by
+practice or by precept within its confines, both of them passing most of
+their lives and painting their best works in Italy and under Italian
+influence.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Nicholas Poussin</span> was born at Villiers near Les Andelys on the banks of
+the Seine, in 1594, where he studied for some time under Quentin Varin
+till he was eighteen. After this he was in Paris, but in 1624 he went to
+Rome where he lived with Du Quesnoy. His first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">227</a></span> success was obtained by
+the execution of two historical pieces which were commissioned by
+Cardinal Barberini on his return from an Embassy to France. These were
+<i>The Death of Germanicus</i> and <i>The Capture of Jerusalem</i>. His next works
+were <i>The Martyrdom of S. Erasmus</i>, <i>The Plague at Ashdod</i>, of which a
+replica is in the National Gallery, and <i>The Seven Sacraments</i> now at
+Belvoir Castle. By these he acquired such fame that on his return to
+Paris in 1640, Louis XIII. appointed him royal painter, and in order to
+keep him at home provided him with apartments in the Tuileries and a
+salary of £120 a year. Within two years, however, Poussin was back in
+Rome, and after twenty-three years' unbroken success died there in 1665
+in his seventy-second year.</p>
+
+<p>Poussin was a most conscientious painter, devoting himself seriously in
+his earlier years to the study both of the antique and of practical
+anatomy. Besides being the intimate friend of Du Quesnoy, he was a
+devout pupil of Domenichino, for whom he had the greatest reverence. It
+is not surprising therefore to find in his earlier works, such as the
+<i>Plague at Ashdod</i>, a certain academic dulness and lack of spontaneity.
+He was not the forerunner of a new epoch, but one of the last upholders
+of the old. He was trying to arrest decay, to infuse a healthier spirit
+into a declining art, so that he errs on the side of correctness. The
+influence of Titian, however, was too strong for him to remain long
+within the narrowest limits, as may be seen in the <i>Bacchanalian Dance</i>,
+No. 62 in the National Gallery, which was probably one of a series
+painted for Cardinal Richelieu during the short time that Poussin was in
+Paris in 1641. In this and in No. 42, the <i>Bacchanalian Festival</i> as
+well as in <i>The Shepherds in Arcadia</i>, in the Louvre, we get a
+surprisingly strong reminiscence of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">228</a></span> Titian, more especially in the
+brown tones of the flesh and the deep blue of the sky.</p>
+
+<p>As the result of conscientious study of the human body the figures in
+these pictures are full of life&mdash;for correctness of drawing is the first
+requisite of lively painting without which all the others are useless.
+The fact that over two hundred prints have been engraved after his
+pictures is a proof of his popularity at one time or another, and though
+at the present time his reputation is not as widely recognised as in
+former years, it is certainly as high among those whose judgment is
+independent of passing fashions. As evidence of the soundness of his
+principles, the following is perhaps worth quoting:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There are nine things in painting," Poussin wrote in a letter to M. de
+Chambrai, the author of a treatise on painting, "which can never be
+taught and which are essential to that art. To begin with, the subject
+of it should be noble, and receive no quality from the person who treats
+it; and to give opportunity to the painter to show his talents and his
+industry it must be chosen as capable of receiving the most excellent
+form. A painter should begin with disposition (or as we should say,
+composition), the ornament should follow, their agreement of the parts,
+beauty, grace, spirit, costume, regard to nature and probability; and
+above all, judgment. This last must be in the painter himself and cannot
+be taught. It is the golden bough of Virgil that no one can either find
+or pluck unless his lucky star conducts him to it."</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gaspar Poussin</span>, whose name was really Gaspard Dughet, was brother-in-law
+of Nicholas, and acquired his name from being his pupil. He was nineteen
+years his junior, and survived him by ten years. He was born<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">229</a></span> in Rome of
+French parents, and died there in 1675, and though he travelled a good
+deal in Italy he never appears to have visited France. His Italian
+landscapes are very beautiful, and we are fortunate in the possession of
+one which is considered his best, No. 31 in the National Gallery,
+<i>Landscape with Figures</i>, <i>Abraham and Isaac</i>. Scarcely less fine is the
+<i>Calling of Abraham</i>, No. 1159, especially in the middle and far
+distance. The sacred figures, it may as well be said, are of little
+concern in the compositions, though useful for purposes of identifying
+the pictures.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Claude Gellée</span>, nowadays usually spoken of as Claude, was born at
+Chamagne in Lorraine in 1600. Accordingly he has been styled Claude
+Lorraine, le Lorraine, de Lorrain, Lorrain, or Claudio Lorrenese with
+wonderful persistency through the ages, though there was no mystery
+about his surname and it would have served just as well. He was brought
+up in his father's profession of pastrycook, and in that capacity he
+went to Rome seeking for employment. As it happened he found it in the
+house of a landscape painter, Agostino Tassi, who had been a pupil of
+Paul Bril, and he not only cooked for him but mixed his colours as well,
+and soon became his pupil. Later he was studying under a German painter,
+Gottfried Wals, at Naples. A more important influence on him, however,
+was that of Joachim Sandrart, one of the best of the later German
+painters, whom he met in Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Claude's earliest pictures of any importance were two which were painted
+for Pope Urban VII. in 1639, when he was just upon forty years old.
+These are the <i>Village Dance</i> and the <i>Seaport</i>, now in the Louvre. The
+<i>Seaport at Sunset</i> and <i>Narcissus and Echo</i> in the National Gallery
+(Nos. 5 and 19) are dated 1644&mdash;the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">230</a></span> former on the canvas and the latter
+on the sketch for it in the <i>Liber Veritatis</i>, where it is stated that
+it was painted for an English patron.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Liber Veritatis</i>, it should be observed, is the title given to a
+portfolio of over two hundred drawings in pen and bistre, or Indian ink,
+which is now in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire. Most of these
+were made from pictures which had been painted, not as sketches or
+designs preparatory to painting them, and in some instances there are
+notes on the back of them giving the date, purchaser, and other
+particulars relating to them. So great was the vogue for Claude's
+landscapes in England during the eighteenth century that as early as
+1730 or 1740 a good many of his drawings, which had been collected by
+Jonathan Richardson, Dr. Mead and others, were engraved by Arthur Pond
+and John Knapton; and in 1777 a series of about two hundred of the Duke
+of Devonshire's drawings was published by Alderman Boydell, which had
+been etched and mezzotinted by Richard Earlom, under the title of <i>Liber
+Veritatis</i>. This was the model on which Turner founded the publication
+of his own sketches under the title of <i>Liber Studiorum</i>. Thus, if
+Claude exerted little influence on the art of his own country, it can
+hardly be said that he exerted none elsewhere, for Turner was by no
+means the first Englishman to fall under his spell. Richard Wilson, the
+first English landscape painter, was undoubtedly influenced by him, both
+from an acquaintance with his drawings in English collections and from
+the study of his works when in Rome.</p>
+
+<p>In this connection we may consider the two landscapes, numbered 12 and
+14 in the National Gallery Catalogue, as our most important examples by
+this master, for Turner bequeathed to the nation his two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">231</a></span> most important
+pictures <i>The Sun Rising Through a Vapour</i> and <i>Dido Building Carthage</i>,
+on condition that they should be hung between these two by Claude. The
+Court of Chancery could annul the condition, but they could not nullify
+the effect of Claude's influence on Turner or alter the judgment of
+posterity with regard to the relations of the two painters to each other
+and to art in general, and the Director has wisely observed the wishes
+of Turner in still hanging the four pictures together, the Court of
+Chancery notwithstanding. Both of Claude's are inscribed, besides being
+signed and dated, as follows:</p>
+
+<ul><li>No. 12. Mariage d'Isaac avec Rebeca, Claudio Gil. inv. Romae 1648.</li>
+
+<li>No. 14. La Reine de Saba va trover Salomon. Clavde Gil. inv. faict
+pour son altesse le duc de Buillon à Roma 1648.</li></ul>
+
+<p>Both pictures are familiar in various engravings of them, and though the
+present fashion leads many people in other directions, there can be no
+doubt that the appreciation of Claude in this country is never likely to
+die out, and is only waiting for a turn of the wheel to revive with
+increased vigour.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, however, France was not entirely destitute of painters, and
+though without Claude, Poussin or Dughet, who preferred to exercise
+their art in Rome, she anticipated England by over a century in that
+most important step, the foundation of an Academy of Painting. Not many
+of the names of its original members ever became famous&mdash;as may be said
+in our own country&mdash;but among them was <span class="smcap">Sebastien Bourdon</span> (1616-1671),
+whose work was so much admired by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Bourdon, also,
+wandered away from France; within four years after the foundation of
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">232</a></span> Academy, namely, in 1652, he went to Stockholm, and was appointed
+principal painter to Queen Christina. On her abdication, however, in
+1663, he returned to Paris, and enjoyed a great success in painting
+landscapes, and historical subjects. <i>The Return of the Ark from
+Captivity</i>, No. 64 in the National Gallery Catalogue, was presented by
+that distinguished patron of the arts, Sir George Beaumont, to whom it
+was bequeathed by Sir Joshua Reynolds, as being one of his most
+treasured possessions. "I cannot quit this subject," he writes in the
+fourteenth Discourse, alluding to poetry in landscape, "without
+mentioning two examples, which occur to me at present, in which the
+poetical style of landscape may be seen happily executed; the one is
+<i>Jacob's Dream</i>, by Salvator Rosa, and the other, <i>The Return of the Ark
+from Captivity</i>, by Sebastian Bourdon. With whatever dignity those
+histories are presented to us in the language of scripture, this style
+of painting possesses the same power of inspiring sentiments of grandeur
+and sublimity, and is able to communicate them to subjects which appear
+by no means adapted to receive them. A ladder against the sky has no
+very promising appearance of possessing a capacity to excite any heroic
+ideas, and the Ark in the hands of a second-rate master would have
+little more effect than a common waggon on the highway; yet those
+subjects are so poetically treated throughout, the parts have such a
+correspondence with each other, and the whole and every part of the
+scene is so visionary, that it is impossible to look at them without
+feeling in some measure the enthusiasm which seems to have inspired the
+painters."</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Eustache le Sueur</span>, born in the same year as Sebastien Bourdon (1616),
+was another of the original<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">233</a></span> members of the Academy, and was employed by
+the King at the Louvre. His most famous work was the decorations of the
+cloister at the monastery of La Chartreuse (now in the Louvre) of which
+Horace Walpole speaks so ecstatically in the preface to the last volume
+of the <i>Anecdotes of Painting</i>. "The last scene of S. Bruno expiring"
+(he writes) "in which are expressed all the stages of devotion from the
+youngest mind impressed with fear to the composed resignation of the
+Prior, is perhaps inferior to no single picture of the greatest master.
+If Raphael died young, so did Le Sueur; the former had seen the antique,
+the latter only prints from Raphael; yet in the Chartreuse, what airs of
+heads! What harmony of colouring! What aërial perspective! How Grecian
+the simplicity of architecture and drapery! How diversified a single
+quadrangle though the life of a hermit be the only subject, and devotion
+the only pathetic!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Philippe de Champaigne</span> was another of the original members. He was born
+at Brussels in 1602, and did not come to Paris till 1621, where he was
+soon afterwards employed in the decoration of the Luxembourg Palace. But
+he was chiefly a portrait painter, his principal works being the fine
+full-length of Cardinal Richelieu, and another of his daughter as a nun
+of Port Royal, both of which are in the Louvre. There are four in the
+Wallace Collection, but perhaps the most familiar to the English public
+is the canvas at the National Gallery (No. 798), painted for the Roman
+sculptor Mocchi, to make a bust from, with a full face and two profiles
+of Richelieu. As a portrait this is exceedingly interesting, the more so
+from having an inscription over one of the heads, "de ces deux profiles
+cecy est le meilleur." The full length of the Cardinal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">234</a></span> presented by Mr.
+Charles Butler in 1895 (No. 1449), is a good example, which cannot
+however but suffer by juxtaposition with more accomplished works.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not until the close of the seventeenth century that portrait
+painting in France became anything like a fine art, and even then it did
+not get beyond being formal and magnificent. The two principal exponents
+were <span class="smcap">Hyacinthe Rigaud</span> and <span class="smcap">Nicolas Largillière</span>, both of whose works have
+a sort of grandeur but little subtlety or charm.</p>
+
+<p>Rigaud was born in 1659, at Perpignan in the extreme south of France,
+and studied at Montpelier in his youth, then at Lyons on his way to
+Paris&mdash;much as a Scottish artist might have studied first at Glasgow,
+then at Birmingham on his way to London. On the advice of Lebrun he
+devoted himself specially to portrait painting, which he did with such
+success that in 1700 he was elected a member of the Academy. He painted
+Louis XIV. more often than Largillière or any other painter, and in his
+later years (he lived till 1743) Louis XV. his great-grandson. He is
+said to have shared with Kneller the distinction, such as it may be, of
+having painted at least five monarchs.</p>
+
+<p>Rigaud is best known in these days by the fine prints after his
+portraits by the French engravers. Of his brushwork we are only able to
+judge by the two doubtful versions at the National Gallery and the
+Wallace Collection respectively, of the fine portrait at Versailles of
+<i>Cardinal Fleury</i>. The group of <i>Lulli and the Musicians of the French
+Court</i>, which was purchased for the National Gallery in 1906 is not by
+him, and it is difficult to understand why the public money should have
+been wasted on it, or at least on the inscription attributing it to
+him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">235</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nicolas de Largillière was three years older than Rigaud and survived
+him by another three. He was born in Paris in 1656 and died six months
+before completing his ninetieth year. Early in life he went as a pupil
+to Antwerp, under Antoine Goubeau, and he is said to have worked in
+England as an assistant to Sir Peter Lely during the later years of that
+master. On his return to France he was received into the Royal
+Academy&mdash;in 1686.</p>
+
+<p>In the Wallace Collection is an interesting example of his work, the
+large group of the French Royal Family, in which four living generations
+are portrayed and the bronze effigies of two more. Henri IV. and Louis
+XIII., the grandfather and father of the reigning monarch, Louis XIV.,
+the Dauphin his son, the Duc de Bourgogne his grandson, and the Duc
+d'Anjou, his great-grandson&mdash;afterwards Louis XV., are all included in
+this formal group, which is a useful lesson in history as well as in
+painting.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="IId" id="IId"></a>II</h3>
+
+<p class="head">THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY</p>
+
+
+<p>A<span class="smcap">ntoine</span> W<span class="smcap">atteau</span> was born at Valenciennes in 1684, and died near there
+about thirty-seven years later of consumption. Valenciennes really
+belonged to Flanders, and had only lately been annexed to France, so
+that Watteau owed something of his art to Flemish rather than to French
+sources. At the same time it cannot be said that his development would
+have been the same if he had gone to Brussels or Antwerp instead of to
+Paris to study, for though the works of Rubens and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">236</a></span> Van Dyck were from
+his earliest years his chief attraction, the influence of the French
+artist Claude Gillot, as well as that of Audran, the keeper of the
+Luxembourg Palace, without doubt exerted a very decided help in
+determining the future course of his work.</p>
+
+<p>When living with Audran, Watteau had every opportunity for studying the
+works of the older masters, especially those of Rubens, whose
+decorations, executed for Marie de Medici, had not at that time been
+removed to the Louvre. Besides copying from these older pictures,
+Watteau was employed by Audran in the execution of designs for wall
+decorations, etc.</p>
+
+<p>Watteau's two earliest pictures still in existence are supposed to be
+the <i>Départ de Troupe</i> and the <i>Halte d'Armée</i>, which were the first of
+a series of military pictures on a small scale. To an early period also
+belong the <i>Accordée de Village</i>, at the Soane Museum in Lincoln's Inn
+Fields, the <i>Mariée de Village</i> at Potsdam, and the <i>Wedding
+Festivities</i> in the Dublin National Gallery.</p>
+
+<p>In 1712 other influences began to work upon him. In this year he came
+into contact with Crozat, the famous collector, in whose house he became
+familiar with a fresh batch of the Flemish and Italian masterpieces. It
+was at this time that he was approved by the Royal Academy, though he
+took five years over his Diploma picture, "<i>Embarquement pour l'Île de
+Cythère</i>," which is now in the Louvre. Meantime the influence of Rubens
+and the Italian masters&mdash;especially the Venetians, had greatly widened
+and deepened his art, and these influences, acting on his peculiarly
+sensitive temperament and poetical spirit, had a magical effect,
+transforming the actual scenes of Paris and Versailles, which he painted
+into enchanted places in</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XXXIV" id="PL_XXXIV"></a>
+<a href="images/plate34.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate34_th.png" width="300" height="407" alt="PLATE XXXIV.&mdash;ANTOINE WATTEAU
+
+L&#39;INDIFFÉRENT
+
+Louvre, Paris" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XXXIV.&mdash;ANTOINE WATTEAU<br />
+
+L&#39;INDIFFÉRENT
+
+<i>Louvre, Paris</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">237</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">fairyland, as he transformed the formal actual painting of the period of
+Louis XIV. into the romantic school of the eighteenth century in France.
+The setting of the famous pictures in the Wallace Collection, catalogued
+as <i>The Music-Party</i> or <i>Les Charnes de la Vie</i> (No. 410), is a view of
+the Champs Elysées taken from the gallery of the Tuileries. Who would
+have thought it? And what does it matter, except to show how entirely
+Watteau revolutionized the pompous and prosaic methods of his time by
+investing the actual with poetry and romance.</p>
+
+<p>Two other pictures at Hertford House, Nos. 389 and 391, were painted in
+the Champs Elysées, and the figures are, for the most part, the same in
+both, all three of these pictures are fine examples of the artist's
+power of broad and spirited treatment, combined with extreme delicacy
+and refinement of conception.</p>
+
+<p>Three other pictures at Hertford House are equally delightful examples
+of another class of subject, namely groups of figures dressed in the
+parts of actors in Italian comedy. From a note in the Catalogue we learn
+that a company of Italian comedians were in Paris in the sixteenth
+century, but were banished by Louis Quatorze in 1697 for a supposed
+affront to Madame de Maintenon. In 1716, however, they were recalled by
+the Regent, the Duc d'Orléans, and became once more the delight of
+Paris. Several of the figures in the Italian comedy had already passed
+into French popular drama, and in Watteau's time there seems to have
+been a fluctuating company, according as one actor or actress or another
+developed a part, and to Pantalone, Arlecchino, Dottore and Columbina
+were now added Pierrot&mdash;or Gilles&mdash;Mezetin, a sort of double of Pierrot,
+Scaramouche and Scapin. The vague web<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">238</a></span> of courtship, dalliance, intrigue
+and jealousy called up by these characters attracted Watteau to employ
+them in his compositions, and to make them also the medium of the more
+sincere sentiments of conjugal love and friendship,&mdash;as in <i>The Music
+Lesson</i>, <i>Gilles and his Family</i> and <i>Harlequin and Columbine</i>, at
+Hertford House. All of these three were engraved in Watteau's life-time
+or shortly after his death, and the verses sub-joined to the engravings
+are a charming rendering of the sentiment underlying the pictures.</p>
+
+<p>In <i>The Music Lesson</i> we see the half length figures of a lady, seated,
+reading a music book, and of a man playing a lute opposite to her.
+Another man looks at the book over the lady's shoulder, and two little
+children's faces appear at her knee. The verses are as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Pour nous prouver que cette belle</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Trouve l'hymen un n&oelig;ud fort doux</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Le peintre nous la peint fidelle</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">À suivre le ton d'un Époux.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Les enfants qui sont autour d'elle</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Sont les fruits de son tendre amour</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Dont ce beau joueur de prunelle</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Pouvait bien goûter quelque jour.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>In <i>Gilles and his Family</i> we have a three-quarter length full-face
+portrait of le Sieur de Sirois, a friend of Watteau, with these verses
+under the engraving:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Sous un habit de mezzetin</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ce gros brun au riant visage</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Sur la guitarre avec sa main</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Fait un aimable badinage.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Par les doux accords de sa voix</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Enfants d'une bouche vermeille</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Du beau sexe tant à la fois</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Il charme les yeux et l'oreille.</span><br />
+</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">239</a></span></p>
+<p>In the little <i>Lady at her Toilet</i> (No. 439) we see the influence of
+Paul Veronese, though it is probable that this was not painted until he
+visited London in the later part of his short life. For there is a
+similar piece called <i>La Toilette du Matin</i> which was engraved by a
+French artist who had settled in England, Philip Mercier, and on whose
+work the influence of Watteau is very noticeable.</p>
+
+<p><i>Le Rendez-vous de Chasse</i> (No. 416), which is of the same size, and in
+character similar to <i>Les Amusements Champêtres</i> (No. 391), is the last
+by Watteau of which we have any certain knowledge. It was painted in
+1720, the year before his death, when his health prevented him from
+making any sustained effort. It is said to have been a commission from
+his friends M. and Mme. de Julienne, in whose shooting-box at Saint
+Maur, between the woods of Vincennes and the river, he went to repose
+from time to time.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Nicholas Lancret</span> was only by six years Watteau's junior, so that he can
+hardly be considered as a pupil or even a disciple, but only as an
+imitator of Watteau. He was the pupil of Claude Gillot, and afterwards
+his assistant, and it was not unnatural that a close friendship should
+have been formed between Lancret and Watteau, or that it should have
+been dissolved by the deliberate imitation by the former of the latter's
+style&mdash;seeing how successful the imitation was. Two of the pictures by
+Lancret at Hertford House, Nos. 422, <i>Conversation Galante</i> and 440,
+<i>Fête in a Wood</i>, are fair examples of how close, at one period of his
+career, the imitation became. The latter is the <i>Bal dans un Bois</i> which
+was exhibited at the Place Dauphiné, and was complained of by Watteau on
+account of its close resemblance to his own work.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">240</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Another in the Wallace Collection belongs to the same early period of
+Watteau's influence. The <i>Italian Comedians by a Fountain</i> (No. 465),
+being attributed to Watteau in the sale, in 1853, at which it was bought
+for Lord Hertford. His lordship was particularly anxious to secure this
+picture, "Between <i>you</i> and <i>I</i>," he writes, with the quaint
+regardlessness of grammar peculiar to the Victorian nobility, "(and to
+no other person but you should I make this <i>confidence</i>), I must have
+the Lancret called Watteau in the Standish Collection. So I depend upon
+you for <i>getting it for me</i>. I need not beg you not to mention a word
+about this to <i>anybody</i>, either <i>before</i> or <i>after</i> the sale." And
+again, "I <i>depend</i> upon your getting the Lancret (Watteau in the
+Catalogue) for me. I have no doubt it will sell for a good sum, most
+likely more than it is worth, but we <i>must</i> have it ... I leave it to
+you, but I must have it, unless by some unheard of chance it was to go
+beyond 3000 guineas." He was fortunate indeed in getting it for £735.</p>
+
+<p><i>Mademoiselle Camargo Dancing</i> (No. 393), and <i>La Belle Grecque</i> (No.
+450), in the Wallace Collection, are good examples of the Comedian
+motive treated with more actuality, yet with no less grace. The four
+little allegorical pieces in the National Gallery, <i>The Four Ages of
+Man</i>, are more lively if less romantic, being composed more for the
+characters illustrating the subject than for poetical setting.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Jean Baptise Joseph Pater</span> was actually a pupil of Watteau. He was ten
+years his junior, but was equally unhappy on account of his health, and
+died at forty. Like Lancret, he incurred Watteau's displeasure for a
+similar reason, though in his case it was rather the fear of what he
+would do than what he did that was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">241</a></span> the cause of Watteau's displeasure.
+At the same time, the names of both Lancret and Pater are inseparable
+from that of Watteau in the history of painting, and, both in their
+choice of subject and their treatment of it, they are hardly
+distinguishable to the casual observer. Watteau, it need hardly be said,
+was far above the other two, but it was fortunate indeed that his
+romantic genius had two such gifted imitators as Lancret and Pater&mdash;or
+to put it the other way, that they had such a master to imitate, without
+whom neither their work nor their influence would have been nearly as
+great as it was.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">François Boucher</span>, though doubtless influenced by Watteau, more
+especially at the outset of his brilliant career, was nevertheless
+independent of him in carrying forward the art painting in his country,
+choosing rather to revert to the patronage of the Court like his
+predecessors Le Brun, Rigaud, and Largillière than to devote himself to
+the expression of his own ideas and feelings. Being a pupil of François
+Le Moine, whose principal work was the decoration of Versailles, it is
+not unnatural that Boucher should have succumbed to the influence of
+Royalty, especially when exerted in his favour by as charming and as
+powerful an agent as Madame de Pompadour. Another early influence which
+shaped his artistic tendencies as well as his fortunes was that of Carle
+van Loo, in whose honour his countrymen coined the verb <i>vanlotiser</i>&mdash;to
+frivol agreeably&mdash;- on account of the popularity which he achieved as a
+painter of elegant trifles. There is a picture by Carle van Loo in the
+Wallace Collection entitled <i>The Grand Turk giving a Concert to his
+Mistress</i> (No. 451), painted in 1737, which is a fair example of his
+proficiency in this direction, and there are one or two portraits
+scattered about the country which he painted when over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">242</a></span> here for a few
+months towards the end of his life. He died in Paris on the 15th July
+1765, and Boucher was immediately appointed his successor as principal
+painter to Louis XV.</p>
+
+<p>Madame de Pompadour was more than a patron to him, she was a matron! She
+made an intimate friend and adviser of him, and it is to her that he
+owed most of his advancement at Court, which continued after her death.
+The full-length portrait of her at Hertford House (No. 418) was
+commissioned by her in 1759, and remained in her possession till her
+death in 1764. It was purchased by Lord Hertford in 1868 for 28,000
+francs. In the Jones Collection at the South Kensington Museum is
+another portrait of her, and a third in the National Gallery at
+Edinburgh, not to mention those in private collections. The two
+magnificent cartoons on the staircase at Hertford House, called the
+<i>Rising and Setting of the Sun</i>, she begged from the king. These were
+ordered in 1748 as designs to be executed in tapestry at the Manufacture
+Royale des Gobelins, by Cozette and Audran, according to the catalogue
+of the Salon in 1753 when they were exhibited. They are characterised by
+the brothers de Goncourt as <i>le plus grand effort du peintre, les deux
+grandes machines de son &oelig;uvre</i>; and the writer of the catalogue of
+Madame de Pompadour's pictures when they were sold in 1766 testifies
+thus to the artist's own opinion of them: "J'ai entendu plusieurs fois
+dire par l'auteur qu'ils étaient du nombre de ceux dont il était le plus
+satisfait." They were then sold for 9800 livres, and Lord Hertford paid
+20,200 francs for them in 1855.</p>
+
+<p>Even without these <i>chefs d'&oelig;uvre</i> the Wallace Collection is richer
+than any other gallery in the works of Boucher, with twenty-four
+examples (in all), of which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">243</a></span> few if any are of inferior quality. But it
+must be confessed that the abundance of Boucher's work does not enhance
+its artistic value, and we have to think of him, in comparison with
+Watteau and his school, rather as a great decorator than a great
+painter. With all his skill and charm, that is to say, there is not one
+of his canvases that we could place beside a picture by Watteau on
+anything like equal terms. Superficially it may be equally or possibly
+more attractive, but inwardly there is no comparison. Let us hear what
+Sir Joshua Reynolds has to say of him:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Our neighbours, the French, are much in this practice of extempore
+invention, and their dexterity is such as even to excite admiration, if
+not envy; but how rarely can this praise be given to their finished
+pictures! The late Director of their Academy, Boucher, was eminent in
+this way. When I visited him some years since in France, I found him at
+work on a very large picture without drawings or models of any kind. On
+my remarking this particular circumstance, he said, when he was young,
+studying his art, he found it necessary to use models, but he had left
+them off for many years.... However, in justice, I cannot quit this
+painter without adding that in the former part of his life, when he was
+in the habit of having recourse to nature, he was not without a
+considerable degree of merit&mdash;enough to make half the painters of his
+country his imitators: he had often grace and beauty, and good skill in
+composition, but I think all under the influence of a bad taste; his
+imitators are, indeed, abominable."</p>
+
+<p>Twenty-one years elapsed between the birth of Boucher and the next
+painter of anything like his ability, namely, <span class="smcap">Jean Baptiste Greuze</span>. He
+was a native of Tournous, near Macon, and lived to see<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">244</a></span> the century out,
+dying in 1805, at the age of seventy-eight. His popularity is nowadays
+due chiefly to his heads of young girls, which he painted in his later
+life with admirable skill, but with a sentimentality that almost repels.
+The famous example in the National Gallery is more free from the sickly
+sweetness that spoils most of them, and reminds us that he could paint
+more serious works, and paint them exceedingly well. He first came into
+notice by pictures like <i>La Lecture du Bible</i>, <i>La Malédiction
+Paternelle</i>, or <i>Le Fils Puni</i>, which are now to be seen&mdash;though
+generally passed by&mdash;at the Louvre, and his style was imitated in later
+years in England by Wheatley and others of that school with more or less
+success. It was a great blow to him, and one which seriously affected
+his career when the Academy censured his Diploma picture, <i>The Emperor
+Severus reproaching Caracalla</i>. But for this we might have had more than
+these sentimental young ladies from a hand that was undoubtedly worthy
+of better things. However, as Lord Hertford admired them sufficiently to
+include no less than twenty-one of them in his collection, we ought not
+to be severe in criticising them, and we may quote the description of
+<i>The Souvenir</i> (No. 398) given by John Smith, in his Catalogue Raisonné
+in 1837, as showing the esteem in which it was held.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>The Souvenir.</i> An interesting female, about fifteen years of age,
+pressing fondly to her bosom a little red and white spaniel dog; the pet
+animal appears to remind her of some favourite object, for whose safety
+and return she is breathing an earnest wish; her fair oval countenance
+and melting eyes are directed upwards, and her ruby lips are slightly
+open; her light hair falls negligently on her shoulder, and is
+tastefully braided</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XXXV" id="PL_XXXV"></a>
+<a href="images/plate35.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate35_th.png" width="300" height="366" alt="PLATE XXXV.&mdash;JEAN-BAPTISTE GREUZE
+
+THE BROKEN PITCHER
+
+Louvre, Paris" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XXXV.&mdash;JEAN-BAPTISTE GREUZE<br />
+
+THE BROKEN PITCHER<br />
+
+<i>Louvre, Paris</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">245</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">with a crimson riband and pearls. She is attired in a morning dress,
+consisting of a loose gown and a brownish scarf, the latter of which
+hangs across her arm. Upon a tree behind her is inscribed the name of
+the painter. This beautiful production of art abounds in every
+attractive charm which gives interest to the master's works."</p>
+
+<p>Very different, and far superior to Greuze, was <span class="smcap">Jean Honoré Fragonard</span>,
+born at Grasse, in the Alpes Maritimes, in 1732. In England his name was
+almost unknown until within quite recent years, and the National Gallery
+has only one picture by him, which was bequeathed by George Salting in
+1910. Fortunately he is well represented in the Wallace Collection,
+three at least of the nine examples being in his most brilliant manner.</p>
+
+<p>Fragonard's father was a glover. In 1750 the family moved to Paris, and
+the boy was put into a notary's office. The usual signs of
+disinclination for office work and a passion for art having duly
+appeared, he was sent to Boucher, who advised him to go and study under
+Chardin. This he did for a short time, but finding it dull&mdash;for Chardin
+was not as great a teacher as he was a painter&mdash;he went back to Boucher
+as an assistant. In 1752 he won the Prix de Rome, although he had never
+attended the Academy Schools, and in 1756 started for Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Reynolds had just returned from Rome at the date of Fragonard's capture
+of the opportunity of going there, and we know from the <i>Discourses</i> how
+he spent his time there and what direction his studies took. Fragonard
+pursued an exactly opposite course, being advised thereto by Boucher,
+who said to him, "If you take Michelangelo and Raphael seriously, you
+are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">246</a></span> lost." Feeling that the advice was suitable to himself, if not
+sound on general principles, Fragonard devoted himself to the lighter
+and more sparkling works of Tiepolo and others of the seventeenth and
+eighteenth centuries. He also made a tour in South Italy and Sicily with
+Hubert Robert, the landscape painter, and the Abbé Saint Non, the latter
+of whom published a number of etchings he made after Fragonard's
+drawings, under the title of <i>Voyages de Naples et de Sicile</i>.</p>
+
+<p>On returning to Paris in 1761 his first success was the large
+composition of <i>Callirhoé and Coresus</i>, which was exhibited at the Salon
+in 1765, and is now in the Louvre. But he soon abandoned the grand
+style, chiefly, it is probable, owing to the patronage of the idle or
+industrious rich who showered commissions upon him, for smaller and more
+sociable pictures with which to adorn and enliven their houses. The
+beautiful, but exceedingly improper picture at Hertford House, called
+<i>The Swing</i>&mdash;or in French, <i>Les Hazards heureux de l'Escarpolette</i>,
+appears to have been commissioned by the Baron de St. Julien, within the
+next year or two, for in the memoirs of Cotté a conversation is recorded
+which shows that the Baron had asked another painter, Doyen, to paint
+it. "Who would have believed," says the indignant Doyen, "that within a
+few days of my picture of Ste. Geneviéve being exhibited at the Salon, a
+nobleman would have sent for me to order a picture on a subject like
+this." He then goes on to relate how the Baron explained to him exactly
+what he required. We cannot entirely acquit Fragonard of all blame in
+accepting such a commission, but he was a young man, just starting as a
+professional artist, with the example of Boucher before him, and it
+would hardly have seemed wise to begin his career by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">247</a></span> offending a noble
+patron. The whole incident throws a glaring light on the conditions
+under which the art of France flourished in the Louis Quinze period,
+when Boucher was everybody and Chardin nobody.</p>
+
+<p>For the real Fragonard we may turn to <i>Le Chiffre d'Amour</i>, or the "Lady
+carving an initial," as the prosaic diction of the Wallace Collection
+has it (No. 382). In this the equal delicacy of the sentiment and of the
+painting combine to effect a little masterpiece of Louis Quinze art. It
+is simple and natural, and entirely free from the besetting sins of so
+slight a picture triviality, affectation, empty prettiness, or simply
+silliness. In its way it is perfect, and for that perfection is for ever
+reserved the popularity which we find temporarily accorded to pictures
+like Frith's <i>Dolly Varden</i> or Millais' <i>Bubbles</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Another of the Hertford House examples, the portrait of a Boy as
+Pierrot, is equally entitled to be popular for all time, and like
+Reynolds's <i>Strawberry Girl</i>, might well be called "one of the
+half-dozen original things" which no artist ever exceeded in his life's
+work. A comparison between the two pictures, which were probably painted
+within a few years of each other, will serve to show the difference
+between the English and French Schools at this period. On the one
+hand&mdash;to put it very shortly indeed&mdash;we see Fragonard influenced by
+Tiepolo, France, and Louis XV.; on the other, Sir Joshua, influenced by
+Michelangelo and Raphael, England, and George III.</p>
+
+<p>The mention of <span class="smcap">Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin</span> among this brilliant and
+frivolous galaxy seems almost out of place. "He is not so much an
+eighteenth-century French artist," Lady Dilke says of him, "as a French
+artist of pure race and type. Though he treated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">248</a></span> subjects of the
+humblest and most unpretentious class, he brought to their rendering not
+only deep feeling and a penetration which divined the innermost truths
+of the simplest forms of life, but a perfection of workmanship by which
+everything he handled was clothed with beauty." That the Wallace
+Collection includes no work from his hand is perhaps regrettable, but
+truly Chardin was someone apart from all the magnificence that dazzles
+us there. His was the treasure of the humble.</p>
+
+<p>The effects of the Revolution upon French painting were as surprising as
+they were great. That the gay and frivolous art of Boucher and Fragonard
+should have suddenly ceased might have been considered inevitable; but
+whereas in Holland, when the Spanish yoke had been thrown off, and a
+Republic proclaimed, a vigorous democratic school arose under Frans
+Hals; and in England during the Commonwealth the artistic influence
+which was beginning to be spread by Charles I. and Buckingham utterly
+ceased; in France an artistic Dictator arose, as we may well call him,
+in the person of <span class="smcap">Jacques Louis David</span>, who not only made painting a part
+of the revolutionary propaganda, but succeeded under the Emperor
+Napoleon also in maintaining his position as painter to the Government,
+and thereby imposing on his country a style of art which had a great
+influence on the whole course of French painting for many years to come.
+But the most remarkable thing was that it was to the classics that this
+revolutioniser went for inspiration. The explanation is to be found in
+the fact that he was bitterly aggrieved by the attitude of the Academy
+to him as a young man, and in the accident of his famous picture of
+Brutus synchronising with the events of 1789. He was at once hailed as a
+deliverer, and made, as it were, painter to the Revolution.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XXXVI" id="PL_XXXVI"></a>
+<a href="images/plate36.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate36_th.png" width="300" height="372" alt="PLATE XXXVI.&mdash;FRAGONARD
+
+L&#39;ÉTUDE
+
+Louvre, Paris" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XXXVI.&mdash;FRAGONARD<br />
+
+L&#39;ÉTUDE
+
+<i>Louvre, Paris</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">249</a></span></p>
+<p>But what was even more important in the influence he exerted at this
+time was his actual appointment as President of the Convention, which
+gave him the power to revenge himself upon the Academy, which he did by
+extinguishing it in 1793, and to remove any inconvenient rivals by
+indicting them as aristocrats. Of the older painters, Fragonard and
+Greuze were the only important ones left, and as they could not under
+the altered circumstances be considered as rivals to the classical
+David, they both saw the century out. Fragonard simply ceased painting
+for want of patrons, and David was good enough to procure him a post in
+the Museum des Arts, or he would have starved. Unfortunately he
+attempted to adapt himself to the new style, and was promptly ejected
+from his post&mdash;ostensibly on his previous connection with royalty&mdash;and
+was wise enough to fly to his native town in the south.</p>
+
+<p>During the first quarter of the nineteenth century the dictatorship of
+David was supreme. How it was finally overthrown we shall see in another
+chapter.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">250</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">251</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_ENGLISH_SCHOOL" id="THE_ENGLISH_SCHOOL"></a><i>THE ENGLISH SCHOOL</i></h2>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="Ie" id="Ie"></a>I</h3>
+
+<p class="head">THE EARLY PORTRAIT PAINTERS</p>
+
+
+<p>I<span class="smcap">n</span> the preface to the <i>Anecdotes of Painting</i> written in 1762, Horace
+Walpole observes that this country had not a single volume to show on
+the works of its painters. "In truth," he continues, "it has very rarely
+given birth to a genius in that profession. Flanders and Holland have
+sent us the greatest men that we can boast. This very circumstance may
+with reason prejudice the reader against a work, the chief business of
+which must be to celebrate the art of a country which has produced so
+few good artists. This objection is so striking, that instead of calling
+it <i>The Lives of English Painters</i>, I have simply given it the title of
+<i>Anecdotes of Painting in England</i>."</p>
+
+<p>As Walpole's work was merely a compilation from the voluminous notes of
+George Vertue, a painstaking antiquary who had collected every scrap of
+information he could acquire in the early years of the eighteenth
+century, his conclusions can hardly be questioned, and the foundation of
+the English school of painting is therefore generally assumed to have
+been effected by Reynolds. But as Wren's Cathedral replaced an older one
+which was destroyed by the fire of London, and as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">252</a></span> that was reared on
+the foundation of a Roman temple, so we find that the art of painting in
+England was certainly practised in earlier times, and but for certain
+circumstances much more of it would have survived than is now to be
+found.</p>
+
+<p>In other countries, as we have seen, the Church was in earlier times the
+greatest if not the only patron of the arts, and there is plenty of
+evidence to show that in England, too, from the reign of Henry III.
+onwards till the Reformation, our churches were decorated with frescoes.
+This evidence is of two kinds; first, entries in royal and other
+accounts, directing payment for specified work; and secondly, the
+remains of fresco painting in our cathedrals and churches. The former is
+of little interest except to the antiquary. The latter has suffered so
+much from neglect or actual destruction as to be considered unworthy of
+the attention of either the artist in search of inspiration or the
+critic in pursuit of anything to criticise; but when every
+inconsiderable production in the little world of English art has had its
+bulky quarto written upon it, it is curious that no one has yet
+discovered what a splendid harvest awaits the investigation of these old
+frescoes all over the country.</p>
+
+<p>As it is, we have only to note that as religion was so important an
+influence on painting in other countries so was it in England, only
+unfortunately as a destroying and not a cherishing influence. Granting
+the probability that there were few, if any, of our English frescoes
+which would be comparable in artistic interest with those in Italy,
+where the art was so sedulously cultivated, it must nevertheless be
+remembered that only a fragment remains here and there out of all the
+work which must have been produced, and that after the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">253</a></span> Reformation even
+those works which did survive were treated with positive as well as
+negative obloquy, so that where they have been preserved at all it is
+only by having been whitewashed over or otherwise hidden and damaged.</p>
+
+<p>Even worse than the Reformation in 1530, was the Puritan outburst a
+century later, which not only destroyed works of art, but extinguished
+all hope of their being created. Is it to be wondered at, then, that the
+foundation of the English School of painting should have been postponed
+for a century more?</p>
+
+<p>At the same time it is interesting to note that the little painting
+which did creep into England in the sixteenth century, was of the very
+kind that formed the chief feature of the English School when it was
+finally established, namely portraiture. Here again we see the influence
+of religion; for to the reformed church, at least as interpreted by the
+English temperament, the second commandment was and is still second only
+in number, not in importance. To Protestant or Puritan the idea of a
+picture in a church was anathema. As late as 1766, when Benjamin West
+offered to decorate St. Paul's Cathedral with a painting of Moses
+receiving the tables of the law on Mount Sinai, the Bishop exclaimed, "I
+have heard of the proposition, and as I am head of the Cathedral of the
+Metropolis, I will not suffer the doors to be opened to introduce
+popery."</p>
+
+<p>The painting of a portrait, however, was a very different matter, and
+from the earliest times appears to have appealed with peculiar strength
+to the vanity of Britons. Loudly as they protested against the iniquity
+of bowing down to and worshipping the likeness of anything in heaven
+above or in the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth, they
+were never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">254</a></span> averse to giving others an opportunity of bowing down to and
+worshipping the likenesses of themselves; and while religion fostered
+the arts in other countries, self-importance kept them alive in this.
+The portrait of Richard II. in Westminster Abbey, if not actually an
+instance of this, certainly happens to seem like one.</p>
+
+<p>With the exception of Jan de Mabuse, who is said to have been in England
+for a short time during the reign of Henry VII., the first painter of
+any importance in this country was Hans Holbein. Hearing that money was
+to be made by painting portraits at the English Court, he forsook his
+native town, his religious art, and his wife, and came to stay with Sir
+Thomas More at Chelsea, with an introduction from Erasmus. Arriving in
+1527, he started business by making a sketch in pen and ink of More's
+entire family, with which marvellous work, still preserved in the Museum
+at Basle, the history of modern English painting may fairly be said to
+have begun; for though it was long before a native of England was
+forthcoming who was of sufficient force to carry on the tradition, the
+seed was sown, and in due course the plant appeared, and after many
+vicissitudes, at last flourished.</p>
+
+<p>The immediate effect may be noted by mentioning here the names of
+<span class="smcap">Guillim Streetes</span>, who was possibly English born, and <span class="smcap">John Bettes</span> who
+certainly was. To the former is attributed the large whole-length
+portrait at Hampton Court of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, in a suit of
+bright red. Another portrait of Howard belongs to the Duke of Norfolk,
+having been presented to his ancestor by Sir Robert Walpole. Both were
+exhibited at the Tudor Exhibition in 1892. Streetes was painter to King
+Edward VI., and according to Stype he was paid fifty marks, in 1551,
+"for recompense of three great tables<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">255</a></span> whereof two were the pictures of
+his Highness sent to Sir Thomas Hoby and Sir John Mason (ambassadors
+abroad), the third a picture of the late Earl of Surrey attainted, and
+by the Councils' commandment fetched from the said Guillim's house."
+Horace Walpole was under the impression that this was the Duke of
+Norfolk's picture, but the Hampton Court Catalogue claims the other one
+as the work of Streetes.</p>
+
+<p>In the National Gallery is a bust portrait of Edmund Butts, physician to
+Henry VIII., which is inscribed <i>faict par Johan Bettes Anglois</i>, and
+with the date 1545. In this the influence of Holbein is certainly
+discernible, though not all pervading. There were two brothers, <span class="smcap">Thomas</span>
+and <span class="smcap">John Bettes</span> who are mentioned by Meres with several other English
+painters in <i>Palladis Tamia</i>, published in 1598&mdash;"As Greece had moreover
+their painters, so in England we have also these, William and Francis
+Segar, brethren, Thomas and John Bettes, Lockie, Lyne, Peake, Peter
+Cole, Arnolde, Marcus (Mark Garrard)," etc. Walpole, quoting this, adds,
+"I quote this passage to prove to those who learn one or two names by
+rote that every old picture you see is not by Holbein." At the same time
+it must be admitted that until some considerable fund of information
+concerning these early days of painting is brought to light, there is
+very little to be said about any one except Holbein till almost the end
+of the sixteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>That Holbein was "a wonderful artist," as More wrote to Erasmus, is not
+to be denied. But in placing him among the very greatest, we must not
+forget that his range was somewhat limited. We might nowadays call him a
+specialist, for in England he painted nothing but portraits, and very
+few of his pictures contained anything besides the single figure, or
+head, of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">256</a></span>subject. The famous exception is the large picture called
+<i>The Ambassadors</i>, which was purchased at an enormous price from the
+Longford Castle collection, and is now in the National Gallery.
+Important and interesting as this is as showing us how Holbein could
+fill a large canvas, there is no doubt that he is far happier in simple
+portraiture, and that the £60,000 expended on <i>Christina Duchess of
+Milan</i> was, relatively, a better investment for the nation. In the
+famous half-lengths like the <i>George Gisze</i> at Berlin (which was painted
+in London) and the <i>Man with the Hawk</i>, where the portrait is surrounded
+by accessories, Holbein is perhaps at his very best; but it is as a
+painter of heads, simply, that he influenced the English School, and set
+an example which, alas! has never been attainable since.</p>
+
+<p>For one thing, which is apart altogether from talent or genius,
+Holbein's method was never followed in later times, namely, the practice
+of making carefully finished drawings in crayon before painting a
+portrait in oils. He was a wonderful draughtsman, and in the series of
+over eighty drawings at Windsor we have even more life-like images of
+the persons represented than their finished portraits. I am not aware
+that any portrait drawings exists of Holbein's contemporaries or
+successors in England earlier than one or two by Van Dyck. There are a
+good many belonging to the seventeenth century, but with one or two
+exceptions they are little more than sketches. And though sketches have
+only survived by accident, as it were, not being intended for anything
+more than the artist's own purposes, finished drawings would have been
+kept, like Holbein's, with much greater care.</p>
+
+<p>In a word, then, Holbein's first and chief business was in rendering the
+likeness of the sitter. Being a</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XXXVII" id="PL_XXXVII"></a>
+<a href="images/plate37.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate37_th.png" width="300" height="406" alt="PLATE XXXVII.&mdash;HANS HOLBEIN
+
+ANNE OF CLEVES
+
+Louvre, Paris" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XXXVII.&mdash;HANS HOLBEIN<br />
+
+ANNE OF CLEVES<br />
+
+<i>Louvre, Paris</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">257</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">born genius, he accomplished far more than this; but it is important in
+tracing the development of the English School of painting to remember
+that its origin was not in the idealization of religious sentiment, but
+in the realization of the human features. From the time of the first
+great genius to that of the next, exactly a century later, there is
+hardly a portrait in existence that is valued for anything but its
+historic or personal interest. Between Holbein and Van Dyck is a great
+gap, in which the only names of Englishmen are those of the
+miniaturists, Hilliard and Oliver, who were veritably of the seed of
+Holbein, but only in little.</p>
+
+<p>Van Dyck struck deeper into the English soil, and loosened it
+sufficiently for the growth of larger stuff, if still somewhat coarse,
+like the work of William Dobson and Robert Walker. To Van Dyck succeeded
+Peter Lely, who boldly and worthily assumed the mantle of Van Dyck, and
+kept English portraiture alive throughout the dismal period of the
+Commonwealth. After the Restoration he was still in power, and under him
+flourished one or two painters of English birth, like Greenhill and
+Riley, who in turn gave way to others under Kneller without ceding the
+monopoly to foreigners. From these came Jervas, Richardson, and, most
+important, Hudson, who was Reynolds's master, and so we arrive at the
+beginning of what is now generally known as the English School.</p>
+
+<p>Another source, however, must here be mentioned as joining the main
+stream, and contributing a solid body of water to it, chiefly below the
+surface, namely the art of <span class="smcap">William Hogarth</span>. Being essentially English,
+and without any artistic forefathers, it is not surprising that he left
+less perceptible impressions on his immediate successors than the more
+accomplished<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">258</a></span> and educated Reynolds; but the solid force of his
+character, as exemplified in his career and his works, is hardly a less
+important factor in the development of the English School, while from
+his outspoken opinions on the state of the arts in his time he is one of
+the most valuable sources of its history.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="IIe" id="IIe"></a>II</h3>
+
+<p class="head">WILLIAM HOGARTH</p>
+
+
+<p>W<span class="smcap">illiam</span> H<span class="smcap">ogarth</span> occupies a curious position in the history of English
+painting. There was nothing ever quite like him in any country&mdash;except
+Greuze in France; for though a comparison between two such opposites,
+seems at first sight absurd, it must be remembered that French and
+English painting in the middle of the eighteenth century were no less
+far apart. Both Greuze and Hogarth, in their own fashion, tried to
+preach moral lessons in paint, the one in the over-refined atmosphere of
+French surroundings, the other in the coarse language of England in his
+time.</p>
+
+<p>Hogarth's chief characteristic was his blunt, honest, bull-dog
+Englishness, which at the particular moment of his appearance on the
+artistic stage was a quality which was eminently serviceable to English
+painting. Though of humble parents, his honest and forceful character
+won for him the daughter of Sir James Thornhill in marriage (by
+elopement) and his sturdy talent in painting secured for him his
+father-in-law's forgiveness and encouragement. Thornhill came of a good,
+old Wiltshire family, and had been knighted by George I. for his
+sterling merits as much as for his skill in painting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">259</a></span> and decorating the
+royal palaces and the houses of noblemen. His place among English
+artists is not a very high one, but he deserves the credit of having
+stood out against the monopoly that was being established by foreigners
+in this country in every department of artistic work, and in this sense
+he is a still earlier forerunner of the great English painters, than his
+more forcible son-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>If Hogarth had been content to follow the beaten track of portraiture as
+his main pursuit, and let the country's morals take care of themselves,
+he would in all probability have attained much greater heights as a
+painter. But his nature would not allow him to do this. His character
+was too strong and his originality too uncontrollable. There is enough
+evidence among the works which have survived him, especially in those
+which were never finished, to show that his accomplishments in oil
+painting were of a very high order indeed. I need only refer to the
+famous head in the National Gallery known as <i>The Shrimp Girl</i> to
+explain what I mean. In this surprisingly vivacious and charming sketch
+we see something that is not inferior to Hals, in its broad truth and
+its quick seizure of the essentials of what had to be rendered. In
+another unfinished piece, which is now in the South London Art Gallery
+at Camberwell, we see the same powerful qualities differently exhibited,
+for it is not a single head this time, but a sketch of a ballroom where
+everybody is dancing, except one gentleman who is even more vivid than
+the rest, in the act of mopping his head at the open window. There is
+nothing grotesque in this picture, but it is all perfectly life-like and
+wonderfully sketched in.</p>
+
+<p>In his finished pictures Hogarth does not appear to such great
+advantage&mdash;I mean as a painter; but it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">260</a></span> must be remembered that in his
+day there was little example for him to follow in the higher departments
+of his art. Nor had he ever been out of England to see fine pictures on
+the Continent. Not only this, but as his work was intended especially to
+appeal to ordinary people, it is hardly to be expected that he would
+express himself in terms other than might most quickly appeal to them.
+His most famous works, indeed, were executed as well as designed for the
+engraver, namely <i>The Harlot's Progress</i>, <i>The Rake's Progress</i>,
+<i>Marriage à la Mode</i>, and <i>The Election</i>, each of which consisted of a
+series of several minutely finished pictures. In portraiture he showed
+finer qualities, it is true; but even in these he was thinking more of
+getting the most out of his model, according to his forcible character,
+than of any technical refinements for which he might be handed down to
+posterity as a great painter.</p>
+
+<p>It was easy enough for Reynolds to sneer at Hogarth for his vulgarity,
+when he was trying to impress upon his pupils the importance of painting
+in the grand style. "As for the various departments of painting," he
+says in his third Discourse, "which do not presume to make such high
+pretensions, they are many. None of them are without their merit, though
+none enter into competition with this universal presiding idea of the
+art. The painters who have applied themselves more particularly to low
+and vulgar characters, and who express with precision the various shades
+of passion as they are exhibited by vulgar minds (such as we see in the
+works of Hogarth), deserve great praise; but as their genius has been
+employed on low and confined subjects, the praise which we must give
+must be as limited as its object." And yet it was in following an
+example set by Hogarth in portrait painting that Reynolds gained his</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XXXVIII" id="PL_XXXVIII"></a>
+<a href="images/plate38.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate38_th.png" width="300" height="369" alt="PLATE XXXVIII.&mdash;WILLIAM HOGARTH
+
+THE SHRIMP GIRL
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XXXVIII.&mdash;WILLIAM HOGARTH<br />
+
+THE SHRIMP GIRL<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">261</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">first success in that art. I mean the full-length portrait of Captain
+Keppel, painted in 1752. This originality and boldness in disregarding
+the tame but universal convention in posing the sitter was peculiarly
+Hogarth's own. With him it amounted almost to perverseness. He would not
+let anybody "sit" to him, if he could help it. When he did, as in the
+portraits of Quinn, the actor, and Hoadly, Bishop of Winchester, in the
+National Gallery, the result is not the happiest; for, with all their
+force, these portraits lack the grace that a conventional pose requires
+to render it acceptable in the terms of its convention. If a man must
+put on the accepted evening dress of his time, he must see that it
+conforms in the spirit as well as in the letter of the fashion, or he
+will only look like a dressed-up greengrocer. Hogarth was too sturdy and
+too wilful to put on court clothes. If he had to, he struggled with
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Hogarth's father was a man of literary tastes, and a scholar. He had
+written a supplement to Littleton's Latin Dictionary, but was unable to
+get it published. "I saw the difficulties," writes the artist, "under
+which my father laboured; the many inconveniences he endured from his
+dependence, living chiefly on his pen, and the cruel treatment he met
+with from booksellers and printers. I had before my eyes the precarious
+situation of men of classical education; it was therefore conformable to
+my wishes that I was taken from school and served a long apprenticeship
+to a silver-plate engraver." This is printed in Allan Cunningham's <i>Life
+of Hogarth</i>, together with many more extracts from autobiographical
+memoranda, from which we may learn at first hand a great deal of
+information bearing on the state of painting at this period, and the
+circumstances under which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">262</a></span> it received such a stimulus from Hogarth,
+before the sun had fully risen (in the person of Reynolds) to illumine
+the whole period of British art.</p>
+
+<p>"As I had naturally a good eye and fondness for drawing," Hogarth
+continues, "<i>shows</i> of all sorts gave me uncommon pleasure when young,
+and mimicry, common to all children, was remarkable in me. An early
+access to a neighbouring painter drew my attention from play, and I was
+at every possible opportunity engaged in making drawings.... My
+exercises at school were more remarkable for the ornaments which adorned
+them than for the exercise itself. In the former I soon found that
+blockheads with better memories would soon surpass me, but for the
+latter I was particularly distinguished.</p>
+
+<p>"The painting of St. Paul's and Greenwich Hospital, which were at that
+time going on, ran in my head, and I determined that silver-plate
+engraving should be followed no longer than necessity obliged me to it.
+Engraving on copper was, at twenty years of age, my utmost ambition. To
+attain that it was necessary that I should learn to draw objects
+something like nature, instead of the monsters of heraldry, and the
+common methods of study were much too tedious for one who loved his
+pleasure and came so late to it.... This led me to consider whether a
+shorter road than that usually travelled was not to be found.... I had
+learned by practice to copy with tolerable correctness in the ordinary
+way, but it occurred to me that there were many disadvantages attending
+this method of study, as having faulty originals, etc.; and even when
+the prints or pictures to be imitated were by the best masters, it was
+little more than pouring water out of one vessel into another. Many
+reasons led me to wish that I could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">263</a></span> find a shorter path&mdash;fix forms and
+characters in my mind&mdash;and, instead of copying the lines, try to read
+the language, and if possible find the grammar of the art, by bringing
+into one focus the various observations I had made, and then trying by
+my power on the canvas how far my plan enabled me to combine and apply
+them to practice....</p>
+
+<p>"I had one material advantage over my competitors, viz., the early habit
+I acquired of retaining in my mind's eye, without coldly copying on the
+spot, whatever I intended to imitate.... Instead of burdening the memory
+with musty rules, or tiring the eye with copying dry or damaged
+pictures, I have ever found studying from nature the shortest and safest
+way of obtaining knowledge in my art...."</p>
+
+<p>"I entertained some thoughts," he writes again, "of succeeding in what
+the puffers in books call the great style of history painting, so that,
+without having had a stroke of this grand business before, I quitted
+small portraits and familiar conversations, and with a smile at my own
+temerity commenced history painter, and on a great staircase at St.
+Bartholomew's Hospital painted two Scripture stories, <i>The Pool of
+Bethesda</i> and <i>The Good Samaritan</i>, with figures seven feet high. These
+I presented to the charity, and thought that they might serve as a
+specimen to show that, were there an inclination in England for
+encouraging historical pictures, such a first essay might prove the
+painting them more easily attainable than is generally imagined. But as
+Religion, the great promoter of this style in other countries, rejected
+it in England, and I was unwilling to sink into a
+portrait-manufacturer&mdash;and still ambitious of being singular, I soon
+dropped all expectations of advantage from that source, and returned to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">264</a></span>
+the pursuit of my former dealings with the public at large."</p>
+
+<p>Few seemed disposed to recognise, in any of Hogarth's works, a higher
+aim than that of raising a laugh. Somerville, the poet, dedicated his
+<i>Rural Games</i> to Hogarth in these words&mdash;"Permit me, Sir, to make choice
+of you for my patron, being the greatest master in the burlesque way.
+Your province is the town&mdash;leave me a small outride in the country, and
+I shall be content." Fielding had a different opinion of his merits: "He
+who would call the ingenious Hogarth a burlesque painter would in my
+opinion do him very little honour, for sure it is much easier, much less
+the subject of admiration, to paint a man with a nose, or any other
+feature of a preposterous size, or to expose him in some absurd or
+monstrous attitude, than to express the affections of man on canvas. It
+hath been thought a vast commendation of a painter to say his figures
+seem to breathe, but surely it is a much greater and nobler applause
+that they appear to think."</p>
+
+<p>In answer to criticism of his <i>Analysis of Beauty</i>, Hogarth writes:
+"Among other crimes of which I am accused, it is asserted that I have
+abused the 'Great Masters'; this is far from being just. So far from
+attempting to lower the ancients, I have always thought, and it is
+universally admitted, that they knew some fundamental principles in
+nature which enabled them to produce works that have been the admiration
+of succeeding ages; but I have not allowed this merit to those
+leaden-headed imitators, who, having no consciousness of either symmetry
+or propriety, have attempted to mend nature, and in their truly ideal
+figures, gave similar proportions to a Mercury and a Hercules."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">265</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Another and a better spirit influenced him in the following passage&mdash;he
+is proposing to seek the principles of beauty in nature instead of
+looking for them in mere learning. His words are plain, direct, and
+convincing. "Nature is simple, plain, and true in all her works, and
+those who strictly adhere to her laws, and closely attend to her
+appearances in their infinite varieties are guarded against any
+prejudicial bias from truth; while those who have seen many things that
+they cannot well understand, and read many books which they do not fully
+comprehend, notwithstanding all their parade of knowledge, are apt to
+wander about it and about it; perplexing themselves and their readers
+with the various opinions of other men. As to those painters who have
+written treatises on painting, they were in general too much taken up
+with giving rules for the operative part of the art, to enter into
+physical disquisitions on the nature of the objects."</p>
+
+<p>After this it would be unfair to withhold the praise of Benjamin West
+(who succeeded Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy)&mdash;a painter,
+prudent in speech, and frugal in commendation. "I remember, when I was a
+lad," says Smith, in his account of Nollekens, "asking the late
+venerable President West what he thought of Hogarth's <i>Analysis of
+Beauty</i>, and his answer was, 'It is a work of the highest value to
+everyone studying the art. Hogarth was a strutting consequential little
+man, and made himself many enemies by that book; but now that most of
+them are dead, it is examined by disinterested readers, unbiassed by
+personal animosities, and will be more and more read, studied and
+understood.'"</p>
+
+<p>In his memoranda respecting the establishment of an Academy of Art in
+England, Hogarth writes well<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">266</a></span> and wisely. Voltaire asserts that after
+the establishment of the French Academy not one work of genius appeared,
+for all the painters became mannerists and imitators. Hogarth agrees
+with him, declaring that "the institution will serve to raise and
+pension a few bustling and busy men, whose whole employment will be to
+tell a few simple students when a leg is too long, or an arm too short.
+More will flock to the study of art than genius sends; the hope of
+profit, or the thirst of distinction, will induce parents to push their
+offspring into the lecture-room, and many will appear and but few be
+worthy. The paintings of Italy form a sort of ornamental fringe to their
+gaudy religion, and Rome is the general storeshop of Europe. The arts
+owe much to Popery, and Popery owes much of its universality to the
+arts. The French have attained to a sort of foppish magnificence in art;
+in Holland, selfishness is the ruling passion, and in England vanity is
+united with selfishness. Portrait-painting, therefore, has succeeded,
+and ever will succeed better in England than in any other country, and
+the demand will continue as new faces come into the market.</p>
+
+<p>"Portrait painting is one of the ministers of vanity, and vanity is a
+munificent patroness; historical painting seeks to revive the memory of
+the dead, and the dead are very indifferent paymasters. Paintings are
+plentiful enough in England to keep us from the study of nature; but
+students who confine their studies to the works of the dead, need never
+hope to live themselves; they will learn little more than the names of
+the painters: true painting can only be learnt in one school, and that
+is kept by Nature."</p>
+
+<p>Hogarth disliked a formal school, says Cunningham, because he was the
+pupil of nature, and foresaw<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">267</a></span> that students would flock to it from the
+feeling of trade rather than the impulse of genius, and that it become a
+manufactory for conventional forms and hereditary graces. Opulent
+collectors were filling their galleries with the religious paintings of
+the Romish Church, and vindicating their purchases by representing these
+works as the only patterns of all that is noble in art and worthy of
+imitation. Hogarth perceived that all this was not according to the
+natural spirit of the nation; he well knew that our island had not yet
+poured out its own original mind in art, as it had done in poetry; and
+he felt assured that such a time would come, if native genius were not
+overlaid systematically by mock patrons and false instructors.</p>
+
+<p>"As a painter," says Walpole, "Hogarth has slender merit." "What is the
+merit of a painter?" Cunningham concludes. "If it be to represent
+life&mdash;to give us an image of man&mdash;to exhibit the workings of his
+heart&mdash;to record the good and evil of his nature&mdash;to set in motion
+before us the very beings with whom earth is peopled&mdash;to shake us with
+mirth&mdash;to sadden us with woeful reflection&mdash;to please us with natural
+grouping, vivid action, and vigorous colouring&mdash;Hogarth has done all
+this&mdash;and if he that has done so be not a painter, who will show us
+one?"</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="IIIe" id="IIIe"></a>III</h3>
+
+<p class="head">SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS AND THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH</p>
+
+
+<p>W<span class="smcap">hether</span> or not <span class="smcap">Sir Joshua Reynolds</span> is entitled to be ranked among the
+very greatest painters, there can be no question that he has a place
+among the most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">268</a></span> famous, not only on account of his actual painting, but
+also because of the influence exerted by his whole-hearted devotion to
+his art, and his strong character in forming, out of such unpromising
+elements, a really vigorous school of painting in this country. The
+example he set in the strenuous exercise of his profession, the precepts
+he laid down for the guidance of students, and the dignity with which he
+invested the whole practice of painting which, until he came, had
+degenerated into a mere business, were of incalculable benefit to his
+own and succeeding ages, and Edmund Burke was paying him no empty
+compliment but only stating the bare truth when he said that Sir Joshua
+Reynolds was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant
+arts to the other glories of his country.</p>
+
+<p>Joshua Reynolds was born at Plympton in Devonshire on the 16th July
+1723; the son of the Rev. Samuel Reynolds and his wife Theophila Potter.
+He was on every side connected with the Church, for both his father and
+his grandfather were in holy orders, his mother was the daughter of a
+clergyman, and his maternal grandmother also. His father's elder
+brother, too, was a clergyman, a fellow of Eton College and Canon of St.
+Peter's, Exeter. So that here, as in Italy, we start with a basis of
+religion.</p>
+
+<p>The young artist's first essays were made in copying several little
+things done by his elder sisters, and he afterwards took great delight
+in copying such prints as he met with in his father's books,
+particularly those in Plutarch's <i>Lives</i>, and in Jacob Cats's <i>Book of
+Emblems</i>, which his great-grandmother by his father's side, a Dutch
+woman, had brought from Holland. When he was only eight years old he
+read with great avidity a book called <i>The Jesuits Perspective</i>, an
+architectural,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">269</a></span> not a religious work, and made himself so completely
+master of it that he never afterwards had occasion to study any other
+treatise on the subject. In fact, a drawing which he then made of
+Plympton School so filled his father with wonder that he said to him,
+"Now this exemplifies what the author of the <i>Perspective</i> says in his
+preface&mdash;that by observing the rules laid down in his book a man may do
+wonders, for this is wonderful!"</p>
+
+<p>From these attempts he proceeded to draw likenesses of his friends and
+relations with tolerable success. But what most strongly confirmed him
+in his love of the art was Richardson's <i>Treatise on Painting</i>, the
+perusal of which so delighted and inflamed his mind, that Raphael
+appeared to him superior to the most illustrious names of ancient or
+modern times&mdash;a notion which he loved to indulge all the rest of his
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Before he was eighteen years old his father placed him as a pupil with
+Thomas Hudson, who was then the most distinguished portrait-painter in
+England; but having some disagreement with his master, the young man
+returned to Devonshire, where he practised portrait painting with more
+or less success until in 1749 he accompanied Admiral Keppel to the
+Mediterranean, and remained for two or three years studying the old
+masters in Italy.</p>
+
+<p>As this period of Reynold's career had so determining an influence not
+only on himself but on the whole course of the history of painting in
+England&mdash;inasmuch as it formed the greater part of the groundwork of his
+discourses when President of the Royal Academy, it is worth having an
+account of it at first hand from the painter himself. "It has frequently
+happened," he says, "as I was informed by the Keeper of the Vatican,
+that many of those whom he had conducted through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">270</a></span> the various apartments
+of that edifice when about to be dismissed, have asked for the works of
+Raphael, and would not believe that they had already passed through the
+room where they are preserved, so little impression had those
+performances made on them. One of the first painters now in France once
+told me that this circumstance happened to himself, though he now looks
+on Raphael with that veneration which he deserves from all painters and
+lovers of the art. I remember very well my own disappointment when I
+first visited the the Vatican: but on confessing my feelings to a
+brother student, of whose ingenuousness I had a high opinion, he
+acknowledged that the works of Raphael had the same effect on him, or
+rather that they did not produce the effect which he expected. This was
+a great relief to my mind, and on inquiry further of other students I
+found that those persons only who from natural imbecility appeared to be
+incapable of ever relishing those divine performances, made pretensions
+to instantaneous raptures on first beholding them.</p>
+
+<p>"In justice to myself, however, I must add that though disappointed and
+mortified at not finding myself enraptured with the works of this great
+master, I did not for a moment conceive or suppose that the name of
+Raphael, and those admirable paintings in particular, owed their
+reputation to the ignorance and prejudice of mankind; on the contrary,
+my not relishing them as I was conscious I ought to have done was one of
+the most humiliating circumstances that ever happened to me. I found
+myself in the midst of works executed upon principles with which I was
+unacquainted: I felt my ignorance, and stood abashed. All the indigested
+notions of painting which I had brought with me from England where the
+art was in the lowest state it had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">271</a></span> ever been in (it could not indeed be
+lower) were to be totally done away and eradicated from my mind. It was
+necessary, as it is expressed on a very solemn occasion, that I should
+become <i>as a little child</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Notwithstanding my disappointment, I proceeded to copy some of those
+excellent works. I viewed them again and again; I even affected to feel
+their merit and to admire them more than I really did. In a short time a
+new taste and new perceptions began to dawn upon me, and I was convinced
+that I had originally formed a false opinion of the perfection of art,
+and that this great painter was well entitled to the high rank which he
+holds in the estimation of the world."</p>
+
+<p>"When I was at Venice," he writes in a note on Du Fresnoy's <i>Art of
+Painting</i> about the chiaroscuro of Titian, Paul Veronese and Tintoretto,
+"the method I took to avail myself of their principles was this. When I
+observed an extraordinary effect of light and shade in any picture, I
+took a leaf of my pocket-book and darkened every part of it in the same
+gradation of light and shade as the picture, leaving the white paper
+untouched to represent the light, and this without any attention to the
+subject or to the drawing of the figures. After a few experiments I
+found the paper blotted nearly alike; their general practice appeared to
+be to allow not above a quarter of the picture for the light, including
+in this portion both the principal and secondary lights; another quarter
+to be as dark as possible, and the remaining half kept in mezzotint or
+half shadow.</p>
+
+<p>"Rubens appears to have admitted rather more light than a quarter, and
+Rembrandt much less, scarce an eighth; by this conduct Rembrandt's light
+is extremely brilliant, but it costs too much, the rest of the picture
+is sacrificed to this one object."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">272</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The results of these studies in Rome and Venice were at once observable
+on his return to England in the beautiful portrait of <i>Giuseppe Marchi</i>,
+one of the treasures belonging to the Royal Academy. It was altogether
+too much for the ignorant British artists, and it excited lively
+comment. What chiefly attracted the public notice, however, was the
+whole-length portrait which he painted of his friend and patron Admiral
+Keppel. On the appearance of this Reynolds was not only universally
+acknowledged to be at the head of his profession, but to be the greatest
+painter that England had seen since Van Dyck. The whole interval, as
+Malone observes, between the time of Charles I. and the conclusion of
+the reign of George II. seemed to be annihilated, and the only question
+was whether the new painter or Van Dyck were the more excellent.
+Reynolds very soon saw how much animation might be obtained by deviating
+from the insipid manner of his immediate predecessors, and instead of
+confining himself to mere likeness he dived, as it were, into the minds
+and habits and manners of those who sat to him, and accordingly the
+majority of his portraits are so appropriate and characteristic that the
+many illustrious persons whom he has delineated are almost as well known
+to us as if we had seen and conversed with them.</p>
+
+<p>Very soon after his return from Italy his acquaintance with Dr Johnson
+commenced, and their intimacy continued uninterrupted to the time of
+Johnson's death. How much he profited thereby, especially in the
+practice of art, he has recorded in a paper which was intended to form a
+part of one of his discourses. "I remember," he writes, "Mr Burke
+speaking of the <i>Essays</i> of Sir Francis Bacon, said he thought them the
+best of his works. Dr Johnson was of opinion 'that their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">273</a></span> excellence and
+their value consisted in being the observations of a strong mind
+operating upon life; and in consequence you find there what you seldom
+find in other books,' It is this kind of excellence which gives a value
+to the performances of artists also.... The observations which he made
+on poetry, on life, and on everything about us, I applied to our art;
+with what success others must judge. Perhaps an artist in his studies
+should pursue the same conduct, and instead of patching up a particular
+work on the narrow plan of imitation, rather endeavour to acquire the
+art and power of thinking."</p>
+
+<p>In another passage from his memoranda, quoted by Malone, Sir Joshua lets
+us into some more of the secrets of his pre-eminence in his art, both of
+painter and preceptor: for we are to remember that the British School of
+painting owes more to the influence of Reynolds than perhaps any other
+school to the example of one man:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I considered myself as playing a great game," he writes, "and instead
+of beginning to save money, I laid it out faster than I got it in,
+purchasing the best examples of art that could be procured; for I even
+borrowed money for this purpose. The possessing portraits by Titian, Van
+Dyck, Rembrandt, etc., I considered as the best kind of wealth. By
+studying carefully the works of great masters, this advantage is
+obtained&mdash;we find that certain niceties of expression are capable of
+being executed, which otherwise we might suppose beyond the reach of
+art. This gives us a confidence in ourselves, and we are thus incited to
+endeavour at not only the same happiness of execution but also at other
+congenial excellencies. Study indeed consists in learning to see nature,
+and may be called<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">274</a></span> the art of using other men's minds. By this kind of
+contemplation and exercise we are taught to think in their way, and
+sometimes to attain their excellence. Thus, for instance, if I had never
+seen any of the works of Correggio, I should never perhaps have remarked
+in nature the expression which I find in one of his pieces; or if I had
+remarked it I might have thought it too difficult, or perhaps impossible
+to be executed.</p>
+
+<p>"My success and continual improvement in my art (if I may be allowed
+that expression), may be ascribed in a good measure to a principle which
+I will boldly recommend to imitation; I mean the principle of honesty;
+which in this as in all other instances is according to the vulgar
+proverb certainly the best policy: I always endeavoured to do my best.</p>
+
+<p>"My principal labour was employed on the whole together, and I was never
+weary of changing and trying different modes and different effects. I
+had always some scheme in my mind, and a perpetual desire to advance. By
+constantly endeavouring to do my best, I acquired a power of doing that
+with spontaneous facility that which at first was the effort of my whole
+mind."</p>
+
+<p>"I had not an opportunity of being early initiated in the principles of
+colouring"; he continues, "no man indeed could teach me. If I have never
+been settled with respect to colouring, let it at the same time be
+remembered that my unsteadiness in this respect proceeded from an
+inordinate desire to possess every kind of excellence that I ever saw in
+the works of others, without considering that there are in colouring, as
+in style, excellencies which are incompatible with each other.... I
+tried every effect of colour, and by leaving out every colour in its
+turn, showed every colour that I could do without it. As I alternately
+left out every</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XXXIX" id="PL_XXXIX"></a>
+<a href="images/plate39.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate39_th.png" width="300" height="371" alt="PLATE XXXIX.&mdash;SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS
+
+LADY COCKBURN AND HER CHILDREN
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XXXIX.&mdash;SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS<br />
+
+LADY COCKBURN AND HER CHILDREN<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">275</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">colour, I tried every new colour; and often, as is well known,
+failed.... My fickleness in the mode of colouring arose from an eager
+desire to attain the highest excellence."</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1759 Reynolds began to write, and three of his essays were
+printed in the <i>Idler</i>, which was conducted by Dr. Johnson. Northcote
+records that at the same time he committed to paper a variety of remarks
+which afterwards served him as hints for his discourses. One or two of
+these will give us as good an idea as we are likely to get from
+elsewhere of what are the first requisites of a successful painter.</p>
+
+<p>"It is absolutely necessary that a painter, as the first requisite,
+should endeavour as much as possible to form to himself an idea of
+perfection not only of beauty, but of what is perfection in a picture.
+This conception he should always have fixed in his view, and unless he
+has this view we shall never see any approaches towards perfection in
+his works; for it will not come by chance.</p>
+
+<p>"If a man has nothing of that which is called genius, that is, if he is
+not carried away, if I may so say, by the animation, the fire of
+enthusiasm, all the rules in the world will never make him a painter.</p>
+
+<p>"He who possesses genius is enabled to see a real value in those things
+which others disregard and overlook. He perceives a difference in cases
+where inferior capacities see none; as the fine ear for music can
+distinguish an evident variation in sounds which to another ear more
+dull seem to be the same. This example will also apply to the eye in
+respect to colouring."</p>
+
+<p>In the beginning of the year 1760, Reynolds moved into the house on the
+west side of Leicester Square which he occupied for the rest of his
+life. It is now tenanted by Messrs. Puttick &amp; Simpson, the Auctioneers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">276</a></span>
+Northcote has usefully recorded the following details his studio. His
+painting-room was of an octagonal form, about twenty feet long and about
+sixteen in breath. The window which gave the light to this room was
+square, and not much larger than one half the size of a common window in
+a private house, whilst the lower part of this window was nine feet four
+inches from the floor. The chair for his sitters was raised eighteen
+inches from the floor, and turned round on castors. His palettes were
+those which are held by a handle, not those held on the thumb. The
+sticks of his pencils (brushes) were long, measuring about nineteen
+inches. He painted in that part of the room nearest the window, and
+never sat down when he worked. As the actual methods of a great artist
+are possibly of more value in a history of painting than the subjects,
+or even the prices, of his pictures, I venture to quote the following
+extracts from various parts of Sir Joshua's own memoranda:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Never give the least touch with your pencil (<i>i.e.</i> brush) till you have
+present in your mind a perfect idea of your future work.</p>
+
+<p>Paint at the greatest possible distance from your sitter, and place the
+picture ... near to the sitter, or sometimes under him, so as to see
+both together.</p>
+
+<p>In beautiful faces keep the whole circumference about the eye in a
+mezzotinto, as seen in the works of Guido and the best of Carlo Maratti.</p>
+
+<p>Endeavour to look at the subject or sitter from which you are painting,
+as if it was a picture. This will in some degree render it more easy to
+be copied.</p>
+
+<p>In painting consider the object before you, whatever it may be, as more
+made out by light and shadow than by lines.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">277</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A student should begin his career by a careful finishing and making out
+the parts; as practice will give him freedom and facility of hand: a
+bold and unfinished manner is commonly the habit of old age.</p>
+
+<p>On painting a head&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Let those parts which turn or retire from the eye be of broken or mixed
+colours, as being less distinguished and nearer the borders.</p>
+
+<p>Let all your shadows be of one colour: glaze them till they are so.</p>
+
+<p>Use red colours in the shadows of the most delicate complexions, but
+with discretion.</p>
+
+<p>Contrive to have a screen with red or yellow colour on it, to reflect
+the light on the shaded part of the sitter's face.</p>
+
+<p>Avoid the chalk, the brick dust, and the charcoal, and think on a pearl
+and a ripe peach.</p>
+
+<p>Avoid long continued lines in the eyes, and too many sharp ones.</p>
+
+<p>Take care to give your figure a sweep or sway.</p>
+
+<p>Outlines in waves, soft, and almost imperceptible against the
+background.</p>
+
+<p>Never make the contour too coarse.</p>
+
+<p>Avoid also those outlines and lines which are equal, which make
+parallels, triangles, etc.</p>
+
+<p>The parts which are nearest to the eye appear most enlightened, deeper
+shadowed, and better seen.</p>
+
+<p>Keep broad lights and shadows, and also principal lights and shadows.</p>
+
+<p>Where there is the deepest shadow it is accompanied by the brightest
+light.</p>
+
+<p>Let nothing start out or be too strong for its place.</p>
+
+<p>Squareness has grandeur; it gives firmness to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">278</a></span> forms; a serpentine
+line in comparison appears feeble and tottering.</p>
+
+<p class="top3">One is apt to forget in these enlightened days how greatly the art of
+painting benefited by the establishment of public exhibitions.
+Farington's observations on this point, occasioned by the inauguration
+of the exhibitions at the Society of Arts from 1760, until the
+foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768, are both instructive and
+amusing.</p>
+
+<p>"The history of our exhibitions," he says "affords the strongest
+evidence of their impressive effect upon public taste. At their
+commencement, though men of enlightened minds could distinguish and
+appreciate what was excellent, the admiration of the <i>many</i> was confined
+to subjects either gross or puerile, and commonly to the meanest efforts
+of intellect; whereas at this time (1819) the whole train of subjects
+most popular in the earlier exhibitions have disappeared. The loaf and
+cheese that could provoke hunger, the cat and canary bird, and the dead
+mackerel on a deal board, have long ceased to produce astonishment and
+delight; while truth of imitation now finds innumerable admirers though
+combined with the highest qualities of beauty, grandeur and taste.</p>
+
+<p>"To our public exhibitions, and to arrangements that followed in
+consequence of their introduction this change must be chiefly
+attributed. The present generation appears to be composed of a new and,
+at least with respect to the arts, a superior order of beings. Generally
+speaking, their thoughts, their feelings and language, differ entirely
+from what they were sixty years ago. The state of the public mind,
+incapable of discriminating excellence from inferiority proved
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">279</a></span>incontrovertibly that a right sense of art in the spectator can only be
+acquired by long and frequent observation, and that without proper
+opportunities to improve the mind and the eye, a nation would continue
+insensible of the true value of the fine arts."</p>
+
+<p>In view of these very pertinent observations it is worth inquiring a
+little as to the origin of exhibitions in England, and the stimulus
+given by them to British art before the institution of the Royal
+Academy. From the introduction to book written by Edward Edwards, in
+continuation of Walpole's "Anecdotes of Painters," and published in
+1808, I extract the following account of them, as far as possible using
+his own quaint phraseology.</p>
+
+<p>Although the study of the human form had long been cultivated and
+encouraged in Italy and France by national schools or academies, yet in
+England until the eighteenth century such seminaries were unknown; and
+it is therefore difficult to trace the origin or ascertain the precise
+period when those nurseries of art were first attempted in this country,
+especially as every establishment of that kind was, at first, of a
+private and temporary nature, depending chiefly upon the protection of
+some artist of rank and reputation in his day. The first attempt towards
+the establishment of an academy is mentioned by Walpole as having been
+formed by several artists under Sir Godfrey Kneller in 1711. Afterwards
+we find, by other accounts in the same author, which are corroborated by
+authentic information, that Sir James Thornhill formed an academy in his
+own house, in the Piazza, Covent Garden. But this was not of long
+duration, for it commenced in 1724 and died in 1734; which reduced the
+artists again to seek some new seminary; for the public of that day were
+so little acquainted with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">280</a></span> the use of such schools, that they were even
+suspected of being held for immoral purposes.</p>
+
+<p>After the death of Thornhill a few of the artists (chiefly foreigners),
+finding themselves without the necessary example of the living model,
+formed a small society and established their regular meetings of study
+in a convenient apartment in Greyhound Court, Arundel Street. The
+principal conductor of this school was Michael Moser, who when the Royal
+Academy was established was appointed keeper. Here they were visited by
+artists such as Hogarth, Wills, and Ellis, who were so well pleased with
+the propriety of their conduct, and so thoroughly convinced of the
+utility of the institution, that a general union took place, and the
+members thereby becoming numerous, they required and sought for a more
+convenient situation and accommodation for their school. By the year
+1739 they were settled in Peter's Court, St Martin's Lane, where the
+study of the human figure was carried on till 1767, when they removed to
+Pall Mall.</p>
+
+<p>But a permanent and conspicuous establishment was still wanting, and on
+this account the principal artists had several meetings with a view to
+forming a public academy. This they did not succeed in doing; but they
+were so far from being discouraged that they continued their meetings
+and their studies, and the next effort they made towards acquiring the
+attention of the public was connected with the Foundling Hospital. This
+institution was incorporated in 1739, and a few years later the present
+building was erected; but as the income of the charity could not, with
+propriety, be expended upon decorations, many of the principal artists
+of that day voluntarily exerted their talents for the purpose of
+ornamenting several apartments of the Hospital which otherwise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">281</a></span> must
+have remained without decoration. The pictures thus produced, and
+generously given, were permitted to be seen by any visitor upon proper
+application. The spectacle was so new that it made a considerable
+impression upon the public, and the favourable reception these works
+experienced impressed the artists with an idea of forming a public
+exhibition, which scheme was carried into full effect with the help of
+the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce,
+who lent their great room for the purpose.</p>
+
+<p>The success of this, the first, public display of art was more than
+equal to the general expectation. Yet there were some circumstances,
+consequent to the arrangement of the pictures, with which the artists
+were very justly dissatisfied; they were occasioned by the following
+improprieties. The Society in the same year had offered premiums for the
+best painting of history and landscape, and it was one of the conditions
+that the pictures produced by the candidates should remain in their
+great room for a certain time; consequently they were blended with the
+rest, and formed part of the exhibition. As soon as it was known which
+performances had obtained the premiums, it was naturally supposed, by
+such persons who were deficient in judgment, that those pictures were
+the best in the room, and consequently deserved the chief attention.
+This partial, though unmerited, selection gave displeasure to the
+artists in general. Nor were they pleased with the mode of admitting the
+spectators, for every member of the Society had the discretionary
+privilege of introducing as many persons as he chose, by means of
+gratuitous tickets; and consequently the company was far from being
+select, or suited to the wishes of the exhibition. These circumstances,
+together with the interference of the Society in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">282</a></span> the concern of the
+exhibition, determined the principal artists to withdraw themselves,
+which they did in the next year.</p>
+
+<p>Encouraged by the success of their first attempt, they engaged the great
+room in Spring Garden, and their first exhibition at that place opened
+on the 9th May 1761. Here they found it necessary to change their mode
+of admission, which they did by making the catalogue the ticket of
+admission; consequently one catalogue would admit a whole family in
+succession, for a shilling, which was its price; but this mode of
+admittance was still productive of crowd and disorder, and it was
+therefore altered the next year. This exhibition, which was the second
+in this country, contained several works of the best English artists,
+among which many of the pictures were equal to any masters then living
+in Europe; and so strikingly conspicuous were their merits, and so
+forcible was the effect of this display of art, that it drew from the
+pen of Roubilliac, the sculptor, the following lines, which were stuck
+up in the exhibition room, and were also printed in the <i>St James's
+Chronicle</i>:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Prétendu Connoiseur qui sur l'Antique glose,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Idolatrant le hom, sans connoitre la Chose,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Vrai Peste des beaux Arts, sans Gout sans Equité,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Quitez ce ton pedant, ce mépris affecté,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Pour tout ce que le Tems n'a pas encore gaté.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ne peus tu pas, en admirant</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Les Maitres de la Grece, ceux d l'Italie</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Rendre justice également</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A ceux qu'a nourris ta Patrie?</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Vois ce Salon, et tu perdras</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Cette prévention injuste,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Et bien étonné conviendras</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Qu'il ne faut pas qu'un Mecenas</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Pour revoir le Siècle d'Auguste.</span><br />
+</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">283</a></span></p>
+<p>"In the following season," says Edwards, "they ventured to fix the price
+of <i>admission</i> at one shilling each person, but had the precaution to
+affix a conciliatory preface to their catalogue, which was given
+gratis," As it is becoming more and more usual of late years to preface
+a catalogue with a signed article, or, as in a recent instance, a
+facsimile letter, it is interesting to know that this "conciliatory
+preface" was written by Dr Johnson. As a document its value in the
+history of the British School of Painting demands its reproduction here
+in full:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The public may justly require to be informed of the nature and extent
+of every design for which the favour of the public is openly solicited.
+The artists who were themselves the first promoters of an exhibition in
+this nation, and who have now contributed to the following catalogue,
+think it therefore necessary to explain their purpose, and justify their
+conduct. An exhibition of the works of art being a spectacle new in this
+kingdom, has raised various opinions and conjectures among those who are
+unacquainted with the practice in foreign nations. Those who set their
+performances to general view, have been too often considered as the
+rivals of each other; as men actuated, if not by avarice, at least by
+vanity, and contending for superiority of fame, though not for a
+pecuniary prize. It cannot be denied or doubted, that all who offer
+themselves to criticism are desirous of praise; this desire is not only
+innocent but virtuous, while it is undebased by artifice, and unpolluted
+by envy; and of envy or artifice those men can never be accused, who
+already enjoying all the honours and profits of their profession are
+content to stand candidates for public notice, with genius yet
+unexperienced, and diligence yet unrewarded; who without any hope of
+increasing their own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">284</a></span> reputation or interest, expose their names and
+their works, only that they may furnish an opportunity of appearance to
+the young, the diffident, and the neglected. The purpose of this
+exhibition is not to enrich the artist, but to advance the art; the
+eminent are not flattered with preference, nor the obscure insulted with
+contempt; whoever hopes to deserve public favour, is here invited to
+display his merit. Of the price put upon this exhibition some account
+may be demanded. Whoever sets his work to be shewn, naturally desires a
+multitude of spectators; but his desire defeats its own end, when
+spectators assemble in such numbers as to obstruct one another.</p>
+
+<p>"Though we are far from wishing to diminish the pleasures, or to
+depreciate the sentiments of any class of the community, we know,
+however, what every one knows, that all cannot be judges or purchasers
+of works of art. Yet we have already found by experience, that all are
+desirous to see an exhibition. When the terms of admission were low, our
+room was throng'd with such multitudes, as made access dangerous, and
+frightened away those, whose approbation was most desired.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet because it is seldom believed that money is got but for the love of
+money, we shall tell the use which we intend to make of our expected
+profits. Many artists of great abilities are unable to sell their works
+for their due price; to remove this inconvenience, an annual sale will
+be appointed, to which every man may send his works, and send them, if
+he will, without his name. These works will be reviewed by the committee
+that conduct the exhibition; a price will be secretly set on every
+piece, and registered by the secretary; if the piece exposed for sale is
+sold for more, the whole price shall be the artist's; but if the
+purchasers value it at less than</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XL" id="PL_XL"></a>
+<a href="images/plate40.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate40_th.png" width="300" height="355" alt="PLATE XL.&mdash;SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS
+
+THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XL.&mdash;SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS<br />
+
+THE AGE OF INNOCENCE<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">285</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">the committee, the artist shall be paid the deficiency from the profits
+of the exhibition."</p>
+
+<p class="top3">This mode of admission was found to answer all the wished-for purposes,
+and the visitors, who were highly respectable, were also perfectly
+gratified with the display of art, which, for the first time, they
+beheld with ease and pleasure to themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The exhibition, thus established, continued at Spring Garden Room, under
+the direction and management of the principal artists by whom it was
+first promoted, and they were soon also joined by many of those who had
+continued to exhibit in the Strand (<i>i.e.</i> at the Society of Arts,
+etc.), which party being mostly composed of young men, and others who
+chose to become candidates for the premiums given by the Society,
+thought it prudent to remain under their protection. But the Society
+finding that those who continued with them began to diminish in their
+numbers, and that the exhibition interfered with their own concerns, no
+longer indulged them with the use of their room, and the exhibitions at
+that place terminated in 1764. These artists, who were mostly the
+younger part of the profession at that time, thereupon engaged a large
+room in Maiden Lane, where they exhibited in 1765 and 1766. But this
+situation not being favourable, they engaged with Mr Christie, in
+building his room near Pall Mall, and the agreement was that they should
+have it for their use during one month every year, in the spring. Here
+they contrived to support a feeble exhibition for eight years, when
+their engagements interfering with Mr Christie's auctions, he purchased
+their share of the premises, and they made their last removal to a room
+in S. Alban's Street, where they exhibited the next season, but never
+after attempted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">286</a></span> to attract public notice. It may be observed that while
+this Society continued there were annually three exhibitions of the
+works of English artists, namely, the Royal Academy, the Chartered
+Society, and that last mentioned, the members of which styled themselves
+the Free Society of Artists. Their exhibition was considerably inferior
+to those of their rivals. By the Chartered Society, Edwards means the
+artists who formed the exhibition at the Spring Garden Room, who in 1765
+obtained a Charter from the king. Owing partly to internal
+disagreements, but more no doubt to the foundation of the Royal Academy
+in 1768, this Society gradually diminished in importance, until Edwards
+could write of their exhibition in 1791 that "the articles they had then
+collected were very insignificant, most of which could not be considered
+as works of art; such as pieces of needlework, subjects in human hair,
+cut paper, and such similar productions as deserve not the
+recommendation of a public exhibition,"</p>
+
+<p class="top3">To the first exhibition of the Royal Academy, which was opened on the
+2nd of January 1769, Reynolds sent three pictures:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>The Duchess of Manchester and her son, as Diana disarming Cupid.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Lady Blake, as Juno receiving the Cestus of Venus.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Miss Morris as Hope nursing Love.</i></p>
+
+<p>That all of them were, so to speak, "fancy portraits" is not entirely
+without significance. Portraiture, the painters bread and butter, was
+apparently deemed hardly suitable for the occasion, and among a list of
+the pictures which attracted most attention Northcote only includes the
+portraits of the <i>King and Queen</i> by Nathaniel Dance, <i>Lady Molyneux</i> by
+Gainsborough,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">287</a></span> and the <i>Duke of Gloucester</i> by Cotes. The rest are as
+follows:&mdash;<i>The Departure of Regulus from Rome</i>, and <i>Venus lamenting the
+Death of Adonis</i>, by Benjamin West; <i>Hector and Andromache</i>, and <i>Venus
+directing Aeneas and Achates</i>, by Angelica Kauffmann; <i>A Piping Boy</i>,
+and <i>A Candlelight Piece</i>, by Nathaniel Hone; <i>An Altar-Piece</i> of the
+Annunciation by Cipriani; <i>Hebe</i>, and <i>A Boy Playing Cricket</i>, by Cotes;
+A landscape by Barrett, and <i>Shakespeare's Black-smith</i>, by Penny.</p>
+
+<p>In all, Reynolds exhibited two hundred and fifty-two pictures during the
+thirty-two years of his life in which exhibitions existed, namely from
+1760 to 1791; of which two hundred and twenty-eight went to the Royal
+Academy.</p>
+
+<p>Of these, or most of them, ample records and criticisms may be found in
+the copious literature which has grown up around his name. For our
+present purpose a glance at his influence, his methods, and his
+circumstances has seemed to me to be more in point, and as a succinct
+estimate of the man and his work from one of his most illustrious
+contemporaries, the following passage may be added by way of
+conclusion:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Sir Joshua Reynolds," wrote Edmund Burke six years after the painter's
+death, "was on very many accounts one of the most memorable men of his
+time. He was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant
+arts to the other glories of his country. In taste, in grace, in
+facility, in happy invention, and in the richness and harmony of
+colouring, he was equal to the great masters of the renowned ages. In
+portraiture he went beyond them, for he communicated to that description
+of the art, in which English artists are the most engaged, a fancy and a
+dignity derived from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">288</a></span> the higher branches, which even those who
+professed, them in a superior manner, did not always preserve when they
+delineated individual nature. His portraits remind the spectator of the
+invention of history and the amenity of landscape. In painting portraits
+he appeared not to be raised upon that platform, but to descend to it
+from a higher sphere. His paintings illustrate his lessons, and his
+lessons seem to be derived from his paintings. He possessed the theory
+as perfectly as the practice of his art. To be such a painter, he was a
+profound and penetrating philosopher."</p>
+
+<p class="top3"><span class="smcap">Thomas Gainsborough</span> (1727-1788), whose name we can seldom help thinking
+of whenever we hear that of Reynolds, was in many ways the very
+antithesis of his more illustrious rival. In his private life he most
+certainly was, and so far as his practical influence on his
+contemporaries is concerned, he is altogether overshadowed by the first
+President of the Royal Academy. With respect to their works there is a
+diversity of opinion, and it is largely a matter of personal feeling
+whether we prefer those of the one or of the other. Both were great
+artists, and on the common ground of portraiture they contended so
+equally, and in some cases with such similarity of method, that it is
+impossible to say impartially which was the greater. How is it possible
+to decide except on the ground of individual taste, as to whether we
+would rather lose Gainsborough or Reynolds as a portrait painter,
+without considering for a moment that the former was a great landscape
+painter as well? And, putting aside Wilson, whose landscape was
+essentially Italian, whether executed in Italy or not, the first
+landscape painter in England was Gainsborough. We are so accustomed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">289</a></span> to
+bracket him with Reynolds as a great portrait painter, so thrilled over
+the sale of a Gainsborough portrait for many thousands of pounds, that
+we are apt to forget him altogether as a landscape painter. And yet two
+or three of his best works in the National Gallery are landscapes, and
+two of them at least famous ones&mdash;<i>The Market Cart</i> and <i>The Watering
+Place</i>. How many more beautiful landscapes by him there must be in
+existence it is impossible to say, but there can be no doubt that there
+are not a few which are only waiting their turn for a fashionable
+market, but are now reposing unappreciated in private hands. In the
+Metropolitan Museum at New York is a splendid example, the like of which
+I have never seen in this country, but which is so much closer in
+feeling to his numerous drawings and sketches in chalk or pencil that it
+is impossible to believe that no similar examples exist. If we could
+only bring them to light!</p>
+
+<p>The fact is that the state of society in the middle of the eighteenth
+century was, with all its brilliance and intellect, the cause of
+hampering the natural development of the three great painters of that
+period. Reynolds came back from his stay in Italy an ardent disciple of
+the grand style, burning to follow the example of Raphael and
+Michelangelo. Romney, too, was all for Italian art, but looked further
+back, and worshipped the classics. Gainsborough was a born landscape
+painter, and his whole time was devoted, when he was not executing
+commissions for portraits, to making sketches and studies of woods and
+valleys and trees. But so bent on having their likenesses handed about
+were the brilliant personages of their time, that Reynolds, Gainsborough
+and Romney were compelled in spite of themselves to turn their
+attention<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">290</a></span> to portraiture, to the exclusion of every other branch of
+their art, and as portrait painters they have made themselves and their
+country famous.</p>
+
+<p>In the numerous sketches and studies that Gainsborough has left us, we
+can see how much we have lost in gaining his wonderful portraits. He
+loved landscape, from his earliest youth to his dying day. Loved it for
+itself. For among all the drawings of his which I have ever seen, I do
+not remember one which can be identified as any particular place. In the
+eighteenth century there was a perfect mania among the smaller fry for
+making topographical drawings, in pencil or water-colour, views of some
+town or mountain or castle. But with Gainsborough the place was
+nothing&mdash;it was the spirit of it that charmed him. A cottage in a wood,
+a glade, a country road, a valley, was to him a beautiful scene,
+whatever it was called or wherever it happened to be, and out of it
+accordingly he made a beautiful picture, or at least a drawing. That his
+pictures of landscape are so extraordinarily few while his drawings are
+so numerous, may be accounted for in a great measure by the exigences of
+portrait painting, but not entirely; and the probability is that there
+are many more which are now forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>For an estimate of Thomas Gainsborough both in regard to his place in
+the story of the English School and to the abilities and methods by
+which he attained it, it is needless to look elsewhere than to that of
+Sir Joshua Reynolds, contained in the discourse delivered shortly after
+Gainsborough's death:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"When such a man as Gainsborough rises to great fame without the
+assistance of an academical education, without travelling to Italy, or
+any of those preparatory studies which have been so often recommended,
+he is produced</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XLI" id="PL_XLI"></a>
+<a href="images/plate41.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate41_th.png" width="300" height="366" alt="PLATE XLI.&mdash;THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
+
+THE MARKET CART
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XLI.&mdash;THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH<br />
+
+THE MARKET CART<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">291</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">as an instance how little such studies are necessary, since so great
+excellence may be acquired without them. This is an inference not
+warranted by the success of any individual, and I trust that it will not
+be thought that I wish to make this use of it.</p>
+
+<p>"It must be remembered that the style and department of art which
+Gainsborough chose, and in which he so much excelled, did not require
+that he should go out of his own country for the objects of his study;
+they were everywhere about him; he found them in the streets, and in the
+fields; and from the models thus accidentally found he selected with
+great judgment such as suited his purpose. As his studies were directed
+to the living world principally, he did not pay a general attention to
+the works of the various masters, though they are, in my opinion, always
+of great use even when the character of our subject requires us to
+depart from some of their principles. It cannot be denied that
+excellence in the department of the art which he professed may exist
+without them, that in such subjects and in the manner that belongs to
+them the want of them is supplied, and more than supplied, by natural
+sagacity and a minute observation of particular nature. If Gainsborough
+did not look at nature with a poet's eye, it must be acknowledged that
+he saw her with the eye of a painter; and gave a faithful, if not a
+poetical, representation of what he had before him.</p>
+
+<p>"Though he did not much attend to the works of the great historical
+painters of former ages, yet he was well aware that the language of the
+art&mdash;the art of imitation&mdash;must be learned somewhere; and as he knew he
+could not learn it in an equal degree from his contemporaries, he very
+judiciously applied himself to the Flemish school, who are undoubtedly
+the greatest <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">292</a></span>masters of one necessary branch of art, and he did not
+need to go out of his country for examples of that school; from <i>that</i>
+he learned the harmony of colouring, the management and disposition of
+light and shadow, and every means of it which the masters practised to
+ornament and give splendour to their works. And to satisfy himself, as
+well as others, how well he knew the mechanism and artifice which they
+employed to bring out that tone of colour which we so much admire in
+their works, he occasionally made copies from Rubens, Teniers and Van
+Dyck, which it would be no disgrace to the most accurate connoisseur to
+mistake at the first sight for the works of those masters. What he thus
+learned he applied to the originals of nature, which he saw with his own
+eyes, and imitated not in the manner of those masters but in his own.</p>
+
+<p>"Whether he most excelled in portraits, landscapes, or fancy pictures,
+it is difficult to determine; whether his portraits were most admirable
+for exact truth of resemblance, or his landscapes for a portrait-like
+representation of nature, such as we see in the works of Rubens,
+Ruisdael, or others of those schools. In his fancy pictures, when he had
+fixed on his object of imitation, whether it was the mean and vulgar
+form of the woodcutter, or a child of an interesting character, as he
+did not attempt to raise the one, so neither did he lose any of the
+natural grace and elegance of the other; such a grace and such an
+elegance as are more frequently found in cottages than in courts. This
+excellence was his own, the result of his particular observation and
+taste; for this he was certainly not indebted to the Flemish school, nor
+indeed to any school; for his grace was not academic, or antique, but
+selected by himself from the great school of nature....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">293</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Upon the whole we may justly say that whatever he attempted he carried
+to a high degree of excellence. It is to the credit of his good sense
+and judgment that he never did attempt that style of historical painting
+for which his previous studies had made no preparation.</p>
+
+<p>"The peculiarity of his manner or style," Reynolds continues a little
+later, "or we may call it the language in which he expressed his ideas,
+has been considered by many as his greatest defect.... A novelty and
+peculiarity of manner, as it is often a cause of our approbation, so
+likewise it is often a ground of censure, as being contrary to the
+practice of other painters, in whose manner we have been initiated, and
+in whose favour we have perhaps been prepossessed from our infancy: for
+fond as we are of novelty, we are upon the whole creatures of habit.
+However, it is certain that all those odd scratches and marks which on a
+close examination are so observable in Gainsborough's pictures, and
+which even to experienced painters appear rather the effect of accident
+than design; this chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance, by a
+kind of magic, at a certain distance assumes form, and all the parts
+seem to drop into their proper places; so that we can hardly refuse
+acknowledging the full effect of diligence under the appearance of
+chance and hasty negligence.</p>
+
+<p>"That Gainsborough himself considered this peculiarity in his manner,
+and the power it possesses of exciting surprise, as a beauty in his
+works, I think may be inferred from the eager desire which we know he
+always expressed, that his pictures at the exhibition should be seen
+near as well as at a distance.</p>
+
+<p>"The slightness which we see in his best works cannot always be imputed
+to negligence. However<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">294</a></span> they may appear to superficial observers,
+painters know very well that a steady attention to the general effect
+takes up more time and is much more laborious to the mind than any mode
+of high finishing or smoothness without such attention. His handling,
+the manner of leaving the colours, or, in other words, the methods he
+used for producing the effect, had very much the appearance of the work
+of an artist who had never learnt from others the usual and regular
+practice belonging to the art; but still, like a man of strong intuitive
+perception of what was required, he found a way of his own to accomplish
+his purpose."</p>
+
+<p>To Reynolds's opinion of this technique as applied to portraits, we may
+listen with even more attention. "It must be allowed," he continues,
+"that this hatching manner of Gainsborough did very much contribute to
+the lightness of effect which is so eminent a beauty in his pictures;
+as, on the contrary, much smoothness and uniting the colours is apt to
+produce heaviness. Every artist must have remarked how often that
+lightness of hand which was in his dead-colour (or first painting)
+escaped in the finishing when he had determined the parts with more
+precision; and another loss which he often experiences, which is of
+greater consequence: while he is employed in the detail, the effect of
+the whole together is either forgotten or neglected. The likeness of a
+portrait, as I have formerly observed, consists more in preserving the
+general effect of the countenance than in the most minute finishing of
+the features or any of the particular parts. Now, Gainsborough's
+portraits were often little more in regard to finishing or determining
+the form of the features, than what generally attends a first painting;
+but as he was always attentive to the general effect, or whole
+together,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">295</a></span> I have often imagined that this unfinished manner contributed
+even to that striking resemblance for which his portraits are so
+remarkable."</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="IVe" id="IVe"></a>IV</h3>
+
+<p class="head">THE CLOSE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY</p>
+
+
+<p>N<span class="smcap">ot</span> until the year of Gainsborough's death, 1788, was there born another
+landscape painter. This was <span class="smcap">John Crome</span>, and he too came from the east of
+England, nearest to Holland, being born in Norfolk, the neighbouring
+county to Gainsborough's native Suffolk. Within ten years more, two
+still greater landscapists were born, also in the east, Constable in
+Essex, still closer to Sudbury, and Turner in London.</p>
+
+<p>John Crome&mdash;Old Crome, as he is usually called to distinguish him from
+his less distinguished son, John Bernay Crome&mdash;was born at Norwich, and
+had to support himself most of his life by teaching drawing, not to
+professional pupils unfortunately; but incidentally he founded "The
+Norwich School" of landscape painters, who loyally carried forward the
+traditions he had inculcated. But having to spend his time as a
+drawing-master, he was not free like the old Dutch painters to put out
+pictures when and as often as he would, and his work in oils is
+therefore comparatively scarce. The three examples at the National
+Gallery are typical of his varied powers, <i>The Slate Quarries</i>,
+<i>Household Heath</i>, and <i>Porringland Oak</i> are all of them masterpieces.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">John Sell Cotman</span>, born in 1782, was, after Crome, the most considerable
+of the Norwich School. He, too, was compelled to earn a livelihood by
+being a drawing-master,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">296</a></span> for there was not as yet a sufficient market,
+nor for some time later, for landscape pictures, to support existence,
+however humble. Cotman devoted much of his energies to water-colours,
+and he is better known in this branch of the art than in painting; that
+is the only excuse for the National Gallery in having purchased as his
+the very inferior picture called <i>A Galliot in a Gale</i>. The other
+example, <i>Wherries on the Yare</i>, is more worthy of him, though it by no
+means exhibits all his wonderful power and fascination.</p>
+
+<p>In <span class="smcap">George Morland</span> (1763-1804) we have something more and something less
+than a landscape painter. Landscape to him was not what it was to
+Wilson, Gainsborough or Crome,&mdash;the only end in view; nor was it merely
+a background for his subjects. But, as it generally happened, it was
+both. To Morland, the landscape and the figures were one and the same
+thing. Out of the fulness of his heart he painted pictures of <i>Boys
+Robbing an Orchard</i>, <i>Horses in a Stable</i>, or a <i>Farmer on Horseback</i>
+staying to talk to a group of gypsies beside a wood, and whether or not
+the picture might be classed as a landscape depended entirely on the
+nature of the scene itself. Whatever he saw or chose to see he painted
+with equal skill and with equal charm; and as his choice of vision lay
+in the simple everyday life that surrounded him, his variety is not the
+least of his attractions.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that his mother was a Frenchwoman (his father was Henry
+Morland, the painter of the delightful pair of half-lengths, <i>The
+Laundry Maids</i>) suggests to my mind the wild surmise that she may have
+been the daughter of Chardin. For in the technique as well as in the
+temperament of Morland,&mdash;making allowance for difference of
+circumstances,&mdash;there is something remarkably akin to those of the great
+Frenchman. Both<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">297</a></span> eschewed the temptation to become fashionable, both
+painted the humble realities of middle-class life with a zest that could
+not possibly have been affected, and both painted them with much the
+same extraordinary charm. At his best, Morland is not much inferior to
+Chardin, and but for his unfortunate wildness and his susceptibility to
+the temptations of strong drink, he might easily have excelled the
+other. The feeling exhibited in two such different subjects as Lord
+Glenconner's <i>Boys Robbing an Orchard</i>, and <i>The Interior of a Stable</i>,
+in the National Gallery, certainly equals that of Chardin's most famous
+pieces, I mean the feeling for the particular scene he is depicting. The
+nearest, in fact the only, approach that Morland made to portrait
+painting was in such pieces as <i>The Fortune Teller</i> in the National
+Gallery, which brings to mind the "Conversation Pieces," introduced by
+Hogarth and Highmore into English painting, but which were never widely
+attempted. In the Portfolio monograph "English Society in the Eighteenth
+Century" I tried to collect as many examples as I could of this form of
+art, but found it difficult to fill even a small volume, so entirely was
+the single figure portrait the vogue. A few notable instances are worth
+mentioning, if only as exceptions to the general rule. Gainsborough's
+<i>Ladies Walking in the Mall</i>, belonging to Sir Audley Neeld; Reynolds's
+large group of <i>The Marlborough Family</i> at Blenheim, and a very early
+group of <i>The Elliott Family</i>, consisting of eleven figures, belonging
+to Lord St Germans; John Singleton Copley's <i>Children of Francis
+Sitwell, Esq.</i>, at Renishaw; and lastly Zoffany's <i>Family Party</i>, at
+Panshanger.</p>
+
+<p>For life-like representation of the English people we look to Hogarth
+and Morland, and yet nothing could be more different than the motives
+which inspired the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">298</a></span> two, and the way they went to work upon their
+subject. Hogarth was above all things theatrical, Morland natural.
+Hogarth first conceived his idea, then laid his scene, and lastly
+peopled it with actual characters as they appeared&mdash;individually&mdash;before
+him. Morland simply looked about him and painted what he happened to see
+at the precise moment when what he saw coincided with his natural
+inclination, or we may even say inspiration, to paint it. It was much
+the same difference as between the work of Zola and that of Thomas
+Hardy. The one had a moral to preach, the other a story to tell.</p>
+
+<p class="top3">When the most we hear of <span class="smcap">George Romney</span> nowadays is the price that has
+been paid for one of his portraits at Christie's, it is refreshing as
+well as informative to turn to the criticism of one of his greatest
+though not in these times so highly priced contemporaries, I mean John
+Flaxman. "When Romney first began to paint," he writes, "he had seen no
+gallery of pictures nor the fine productions of ancient sculpture; but
+then women and children were his statues, and all objects under the
+canopy of heaven formed his school of painting. The rainbow, the purple
+distance, or the silver lake, taught him colouring; the various actions
+and passions of the human figure, with the forms of clouds, woods, and
+mountains or valleys, afforded him studies of composition. Indeed, his
+genius bore a strong resemblance to the scenes he was born in; like
+them, it partook of the grand and beautiful; and like them also, the
+bright sunshine and enchanting prospects of his fancy were occasionally
+overspread with mist and gloom. On his arrival in Italy he was witness
+to new scenes of art and sources of study of which he could only have
+supposed previously that something</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XLII" id="PL_XLII"></a>
+<a href="images/plate42.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate42_th.png" width="300" height="296" alt="PLATE XLII.&mdash;GEORGE ROMNEY
+
+THE PARSON&#39;S DAUGHTER
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XLII.&mdash;GEORGE ROMNEY<br />
+
+THE PARSON&#39;S DAUGHTER<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">299</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">of the kind might exist; for he there contemplated the purity and
+perfection of ancient sculpture, the sublimity of Michelangelo's Sistine
+Chapel, and the simplicity of Cimabue and Giotto's schools. He perceived
+those qualities distinctly, and judiciously used them in viewing and
+imitating nature; and thus his quick perception and unwearied
+application enabled him, by a two years' residence abroad, to acquire as
+great a proficiency in art as is usually attained by foreign studies of
+a much longer duration.</p>
+
+<p>"After his return, the novelty and sentiment of his original subjects
+were universally admired. Most of these were of the delicate class, and
+each had its peculiar character. Titania with her Indian votaries was
+arch and sprightly; Milton dictating to his daughters, solemn and
+interesting. Several pictures of Wood Nymphs and Bacchantes charmed by
+their rural beauty, innocence, and simplicity. The most pathetic,
+perhaps, of all his works was never finished&mdash;Ophelia with the flowers
+she had gathered in her hand, sitting on the branch of a tree, which was
+breaking under her, whilst the moody distraction in her lovely
+countenance accounts for the insensibility to danger. Few painters have
+left so many examples in their works of the tender and delicate
+affections; and several of his pictures breathe a kindred spirit with
+the <i>Sigismonda</i> of Correggio. His cartoons, some of which have
+unfortunately perished, were examples of the sublime and terrible, at
+that time perfectly new in English art. As Romney was gifted with
+peculiar powers for historical and ideal painting, so his heart and soul
+were engaged in the pursuit of it whenever he could extricate himself
+from the importunate business of portrait painting. It was his delight
+by day and study by night, and for this his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">300</a></span> food and rest were often
+neglected. His compositions, like those of the ancient pictures and
+basso-relievos, told their story by a single group of figures in the
+front, whilst the background is made the simplest possible, rejecting
+all unnecessary episode and trivial ornament, either of secondary groups
+or architectural subdivision. In his compositions the beholder was
+forcibly struck by the sentiment at the first glance: the gradations and
+varieties of which he traced through several characters, all conceived
+in an elevated spirit of dignity and beauty, with a lively expression of
+nature in all the parts. His heads were various&mdash;the male were decided
+and grand, the female lovely. His figures resembled the antique&mdash;the
+limbs were elegant and finely formed. His drapery was well understood,
+either forming the figure into a mass with one or two deep folds only,
+or by its adhesion and transparency discovering the form of the figure,
+the lines of which were finely varied with the union or expansion of
+spiral or cascade folds, composing with or contrasting the outline and
+chiaroscuro. Few artists since the fifteenth century have been able to
+do so much in so many different branches; for besides his beautiful
+compositions and pictures, which have added to the knowledge and
+celebrity of the English School, he modelled like a sculptor, carved
+ornaments in wood with great delicacy, and could make an architectural
+design in a fine taste, as well as construct every part of the
+building."</p>
+
+<p>After the death of Reynolds and the retirement of Romney, in the last
+decade of the eighteenth century, the field of portraiture was left
+vacant&mdash;in London at least&mdash;for <span class="smcap">John Hoppner</span>, whose name is now
+generally included with those of Lawrence and Raeburn among the first
+six portrait painters of the British</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XLIII" id="PL_XLIII"></a>
+<a href="images/plate43.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate43_th.png" width="300" height="372" alt="PLATE XLIII.&mdash;GEORGE ROMNEY
+
+MRS ROBINSON&mdash;&quot;PERDITA&quot;
+
+Hertford House, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XLIII.&mdash;GEORGE ROMNEY<br />
+
+MRS ROBINSON&mdash;&quot;PERDITA&quot;<br />
+
+<i>Hertford House, London</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">301</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">School. His fame in recent years has certainly exceeded his merits, but
+it is due to him to say that he was a conscientious artist, and a firm
+upholder of the tradition of Reynolds, so far as in him lay. The old
+King had always disliked Reynolds, and Hoppner was not well enough
+advised to hold his tongue on the subject of the master: worse than
+this, he openly accepted the patronage of the Prince of Wales, and by so
+doing opened the door for the admission of Lawrence as royal painter
+much sooner than was at all necessary. The story of their rivalry is
+thus&mdash;in substance&mdash;sketched by Allan Cunningham, their
+contemporary:&mdash;The light of the Prince of Wales's countenance was of
+itself sufficient to guide the courtly and beautiful to Hoppner's easel.
+Suffice it to say that before he was forty years of age (he was born in
+1759), he had been enabled to exhibit no less than fifteen ladies of
+quality&mdash;for so are they named in the catalogues&mdash;a score of ladies of
+lower degree, and noblemen unnumbered. But by this time another star had
+arisen, destined to outshine that of Hoppner; though some at that
+period, willing to flatter the older practitioner, called it a meteor
+that would but flash and disappear&mdash;we allude to Lawrence. Urged upon
+the Academy by the King and Queen, and handed up to public notice by
+royal favour, this new aspirant rose rapidly in the estimation of the
+public; and by the most delicate flattery, both with tongue and pencil,
+became a formidable rival to the painter whom it was the Prince's
+pleasure to befriend. The factions of Reynolds and Romney seemed revived
+in those of Hoppner and Lawrence. If Hoppner resided in Charles Street,
+at the gates of Carlton House, and wrote himself "portrait painter to
+the Prince of Wales," Lawrence likewise had his residence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">302</a></span> in the Court
+end of the town, and proudly styled himself&mdash;and that when only
+twenty-three years old&mdash;"portrait painter in ordinary to His Majesty."
+In other respects, too, were honours equally balanced between them; they
+were both made Royal Academicians, but in this, youth had the start of
+age&mdash;Lawrence obtained that distinction first. Nature, too, had been
+kind&mdash;some have said prodigal&mdash;to both; they were men of fine address,
+and polished by early intercourse with the world and by their trade of
+portrait painting could practise all the delicate courtesies of
+drawing-room and boudoir; but in that most fascinating of all flattery,
+the art of persuading, with brushes and fine colours, very ordinary
+mortals that beauty and fine expression were their portions, Lawrence
+was soon without a rival.</p>
+
+<p>The preference of the King and Queen for Lawrence was for a time
+balanced by the affection of the Prince of Wales for Hoppner; the Prince
+was supposed to have the best taste, and as he kept a court of his own
+filled with the young nobility, and all the wits of that great faction
+known by the name of Whig, Hoppner had the youth and beauty of the land
+for a time; and it cannot be denied that he was a rival in every way
+worthy of contending with any portrait-painter of his day. The bare list
+of his exhibited portraits will show how and by whom he was supported.
+It is well said by Williams, in his <i>Life of Lawrence</i>, that "the more
+sober and homely ideas of the King were not likely to be a passport for
+any portrait-painter to the variety of ladies, and hence Mr. Hoppner for
+a long time almost monopolised the female beauty and young fashion of
+the country."</p>
+
+<p>This rivalry continued for a time in the spirit of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">303</a></span>moderation&mdash;but only
+for a time. Lawrence, the gentler and the smoother of the two, kept
+silence longest; the warm nature of Hoppner broke out at last. "The
+ladies of Lawrence," he said, "show a gaudy dissoluteness of taste, and
+sometimes trespass on moral as well as professional decorum." For his
+own he claimed, by implication, purity of look as well as purity of
+style. This sarcastic remark found wings in a moment, and flew through
+all the coteries and through both courts; it did most harm to him who
+uttered it; all men laughed, and then began to wonder how Lawrence,
+limner to perhaps the purest court in Europe, came to bestow indecorous
+looks on the meek and sedate ladies of quality of St. James's and
+Windsor, while Hoppner, limner to the court of a gallant young prince,
+who loved mirth and wine, the sound of the lute and the music of ladies'
+feet in the dance, should to some of its gayest and giddiest ornaments
+give the simplicity of manner and purity of style which pertained to the
+Quaker like sobriety of the other. Nor is it the least curious part of
+the story that the ladies, from the moment of the sarcasm of Hoppner,
+instead of crowding to the easel of him who dealt in the loveliness of
+virtue, showed a growing preference for the rival who "trespassed on
+moral as well as on professional decorum." After this, Lawrence had
+plenty of the fairest sitters.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">304</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">305</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_NINETEENTH_CENTURY" id="THE_NINETEENTH_CENTURY"></a><i>THE NINETEENTH CENTURY</i></h2>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="If" id="If"></a>I</h3>
+
+<p class="head">THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT</p>
+
+
+<p>I<span class="smcap">n</span> the preceding chapters we have traced the development of painting for
+five centuries&mdash;from the beginning of the fourteenth, that is to say, to
+the end of the eighteenth&mdash;in Italy, in the Netherlands, in Germany, in
+Spain, and lastly in France and England. In the nineteenth the story is
+confined to the last two alone, as with one or two minute exceptions the
+art of painting had by this time entirely ceased to be worth
+consideration in any of the others. Only in France and England, where it
+had been most recently established, was it to continue; and besides
+continuing, reach out with the most astonishing vigour to snatch at and
+grasp fruits that no one before would have dreamt of being within its
+reach.</p>
+
+<p>Between France and England&mdash;if by the latter we may be taken to mean
+Great Britain, and include within its artists those who have
+acclimatised themselves within her shores&mdash;the honours of the
+achievement are pretty equally divided, though it will have to be left
+to individual choice to decide exactly on which side the balance of
+credit is due. A mere list of the greatest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">306</a></span> names is not sufficient to
+apportion the praise, though as a preliminary step it may be of value in
+clearing the issue. Let us take a dozen on either side, and see how they
+look.</p>
+
+<table summary="dozen"
+cellspacing="0"
+cellpadding="0"
+border="0">
+<tr valign="top" style="font-size:85%;">
+<td>&nbsp; &nbsp; <i>England.</i></td>
+<td>&nbsp; &nbsp; <i>France.</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td class="width">Lawrence.</td><td>David.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Constable.</td><td>Géricault.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Turner.</td><td>Ingres.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>De Wint.</td><td>Delacroix.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Nasmyth.</td><td>Corot.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Stevens.</td><td>Millet.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Whistler.</td><td>Daubigny.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Cotman.</td><td>Courbet.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Cox.</td><td>Daumier.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Watts.</td><td>Decamps.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Rossetti.</td><td>Manet.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Hunt.</td><td>Degas.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p>Among these Turner stands out conspicuously from the rest, and he would
+be included by anyone in a list of twenty, or perhaps a dozen, of the
+greatest painters in the world. But oddly enough his influence on the
+art in general has been comparatively small, if we are to judge by its
+effects on other painters up to the present, while that of Constable has
+been considerably greater. Manet, again, and Delacroix, have
+accomplished far more for the history of painting than any other two in
+our lists&mdash;and yet their names are scarcely known outside the circle of
+those who know anything at all about painting.</p>
+
+<p>For the English public at large an entirely different list would
+probably prove the superiority of their own race to their complete
+satisfaction&mdash;in spite of Meissonier, Doré, and Bouguereau on the other
+side. But that is only because the British public, owing to the
+monopoly</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XLIV" id="PL_XLIV"></a>
+<a href="images/plate44.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate44_th.png" width="300" height="214" alt="PLATE XLIV.&mdash;JACQUES LOUIS DAVID
+
+PORTRAIT OF MME. RÉCAMIER
+
+Louvre, Paris" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XLIV.&mdash;JACQUES LOUIS DAVID<br />
+
+PORTRAIT OF MME. RÉCAMIER<br />
+
+<i>Louvre, Paris</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">307</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">enjoyed by the Royal Academy, have never had a chance of judging for
+themselves what they approve of and what they do not, and their taste
+has been vitiated for generations by the exhibition of what this
+self-constituted authority, no doubt unconsciously, conceives to be best
+for them&mdash;and which, as might be expected, is usually found to coincide
+pretty nearly with the sort of thing they are capable of producing
+themselves. Hogarth's predictions at the time the Academy was instituted
+have in a great measure come perfectly true, and the only benefit that
+it has been to the English School of painting is that it has kept it
+going. How far this may be called a benefit is at least arguable, but in
+the main it is probable that if so many bad pictures had not been
+painted, there would not have been so many good ones. On the other hand,
+the removal of a man like Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema from his native
+sphere of influence is quite enough to account for the unlooked-for
+flowering of blossoms like the brothers Maris, Bosboom, Israels, and
+Mauve in the Dutch garden, and if that is so, one need not grudge him
+his interment amongst Nelson, Wellington, and other heroes of our own.</p>
+
+<p>In a word, the history of painting in the nineteenth century is Revolt.
+What it is going to be in the twentieth I am fortunately not called upon
+to say; but if I may throw out an opinion based upon what is already
+happening, I should say that no word has yet been coined which will
+adequately express it.</p>
+
+<p>In the last century the issues were simple, and can be easily expressed.
+On the one side was the complacent body of practitioners following to
+the best of their ability the practice of painting as handed down to
+them in a variety of different forms, just as the Byzantine craftsmen
+earned their living when they were so rudely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">308</a></span> disturbed by Cimabue and
+his school. On the other was a small but ever-increasing number of
+individuals who, like Cimabue, began to think things out for themselves,
+but, unlike him, did not succeed in effecting a popular triumph
+without&mdash;if at all&mdash;first raising both the painters and the public to a
+pitch of fury. It is indeed curious to read Vasari and modern historians
+side by side, and to wonder if, after all, Vasari knew or told
+everything, in his desire to glorify the art, or whether Giotto and
+other innovators were not in fact burnt at the stake. Probably not.
+Gallileo, as we know, and Savonarola suffered for their crimes. But they
+were working against the Church, and the artists were working for it.</p>
+
+<p>In the nineteenth century, painting had altogether broken away from the
+Church, and so it had to fight its own battles out in the street, or in
+the law courts. That is what has given it such a swagger and strength.
+It no longer looks to its protector, it will hit you in the face before
+you know where you are. The feeble kind, only, looks to Academies for
+support, and thereby becomes feebler still.</p>
+
+<p>In the present chapter, accordingly, we shall hear no more of the
+Madonnas, the Holy Families, and all the sacred and profane subjects on
+which the old masters exercised their genius. Five centuries of painting
+had established the art in a position of independence; and in a
+sixth&mdash;that is to say, the nineteenth&mdash;it began to assert itself, and to
+prove that its education was not in itself an end, but only a means to
+various ends. Instead of following out the fortunes of each painter,
+therefore, and attempting to set in any sort of order the reputations of
+artists before sufficient time has elapsed for them to cool, I propose
+to confine myself in the remaining<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">309</a></span> pages to the broad issues raised
+during this period between the painters, the critics, and the public.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="IIf" id="IIf"></a>II</h3>
+
+<p class="head">EUGÈNE DELACROIX</p>
+
+
+<p>T<span class="smcap">he</span> man who began all this street fighting was a Frenchman&mdash;Eugène
+Delacroix. While still a youth he was bullied, and the bully was such a
+redoubtable giant that it took somebody with the grit and genius of
+Delacroix to tackle him, but tackle him he did. The story of the fight,
+which is a long and glorious one, is so admirably told in Madame Bussy's
+life of Delacroix, that I have obtained permission to give the essence
+of it in her own words.</p>
+
+<p>In the Salon of 1822 was exhibited Delacroix's picture of <i>Dante and
+Virgil</i>, which is now in the Louvre, and evoked the first of those
+clamours of abuse which were barely stilled before the artist's death.
+For nearly thirty years all French painters, with the exception of Gros
+and Prudhon; had shown themselves unquestioning disciples of the school
+founded by Jacques Louis David, whose masterful character and potent
+personality had reduced all art to a system; and Delacroix himself spoke
+of him with sympathy and admiration. The chief dogma of David's school
+was that the nearest approach to the <i>beau ideal</i> permitted to the human
+race had been attained by the Greeks, and that all art must conform as
+closely as possible to theirs. Unfortunately, the chief specimens of
+Greek art known at that time were those belonging to a decadent
+period&mdash;neither the Elgin marbles nor the Venus of Milo were accessible
+before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">310</a></span> 1816&mdash;so that the works from which they drew their inspiration
+were without character in themselves, or merely the feeble and
+attenuated copies of ancient Rome. In the pictures of this school,
+accordingly, we find only the monotonous perfection of rounded and
+well-modelled limbs, classical features and straight noses. Colour, to
+the sincere Davidian, was a vain and frivolous accessory, serving only
+to distract attention from the real purpose of the work, which was to
+aim at moral elevation as well as at ideal beauty. Everything in the
+picture was to be equally dwelt upon; there was no sacrifice, no
+mystery. "These pictures," says Delacroix, "have no epidermis ...they
+lack the atmosphere, the lights, the reflections which blend into an
+harmonious whole, objects the most dissimilar in colour."</p>
+
+<p>By the untimely death of Géricault, whose <i>Raft of the Medusa</i> had
+already caused a flutter in 1819, Delacroix was left at the head of the
+revolt against this pseudo-classicism; and amid the storm that greeted
+the <i>Dante and Virgil</i> it is interesting to find Thiers writing of him
+in the following strain:&mdash;"It seems to me that no picture [in the Salon]
+reveals the future of a great painter better than M. Delacroix's, in
+which we see an outbreak of talent, a burst of rising superiority which
+revives the hopes that had been slightly discouraged by the too moderate
+merits of all the rest.... I think I am not mistaken; M. Delacroix has
+genius; let him go on with confidence, and devote himself to immense
+labour, the indispensable condition of talent." Delécluze, by the by,
+the critic-in-chief of the Davidian School, had characterised the
+picture as <i>une véritable tartouillade</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In 1824 the Salon included two pictures which may be regarded as
+important documents in the history of painting. One of these was
+Constable's <i>Hay Wain</i>&mdash;now</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XLV" id="PL_XLV"></a>
+<a href="images/plate45.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate45_th.png" width="300" height="227" alt="PLATE XLV.&mdash;EUGÈNE DELACROIX
+
+DANTE AND VIRGIL
+
+Louvre, Paris" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XLV.&mdash;EUGÈNE DELACROIX<br />
+
+DANTE AND VIRGIL<br />
+
+<i>Louvre, Paris</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">311</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">in our National Gallery&mdash;which had been purchased by a Frenchman; the
+other was Delacroix's <i>Massacre of Scio</i>, the first to receive the
+enlightenment afforded by the Englishman's methods, which spread so
+widely over the French School. It was said that Delacroix entirely
+repainted his picture on seeing Constable's; but his pupil, Lassalle
+Bordes, is probably nearer the truth in saying that the master being
+dissatisfied with its general tone, which was too chalky, transformed it
+by means of violent glazings. The critics were no less noisy over this
+picture than the last. "A painter has been revealed to us," said one,
+"but he is a man who runs along the housetops." "Yes," answered
+Baudelaire, "but for that one must have a sure foot, and an eye guided
+by an inward light."</p>
+
+<p>When the Salon opened again in 1827, after an interval of three years,
+the public were astonished to find how large a number of painters had
+abandoned Davidism and openly joined the ranks of the enemy. Delacroix
+himself exhibited the <i>Marino Faliero</i> (now at Hertford House) and
+eleven others. The gauntlet was flung down, and war began in deadly
+earnest between the opposing parties. It was at this time that the terms
+Romanticism and Romantic came into common use. Delacroix always resented
+being labelled as a Romantic, and would only acknowledge that the term
+might be justly applied to him when used in its widest signification.
+"If by my Romanticism," he wrote, "is meant the free expression of my
+personal impressions, my aversion from the stereotypes invariably
+produced in the schools, and my repugnance to academic receipts, then I
+must admit I am Romantic."</p>
+
+<p>Here we have the plain truth about the painting of the nineteenth
+century&mdash;and after! The critics were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">312</a></span> unanimous in their violent
+condemnation of Delacroix's works: "the compositions of a sick man in
+delirium," "the fanaticism of ugliness," "barbarous execution," "an
+intoxicated broom"&mdash;such are some of the terms of abuse showered upon
+him. The gentlest among them commiserate the talent which here and there
+can be seen "struggling with the systematic <i>bizarrerie</i> and the
+disordered technique of the artist, just as gleams of reason and
+sometimes flashes of genius may be seen pitiably shining through the
+speech of a madman." The final touch to Delacroix's disgrace was given
+by the Directeur des Beaux Arts sending for him and recommending him to
+study drawing from casts, warning him at the same time that unless he
+could change his style he must expect neither commissions nor
+recognition from the State!</p>
+
+<p>The year 1830 has given its name to that brilliant generation of poets,
+novelists, painters and philosophers which, as Théophile Gautier says
+with just pride, "will make its mark on the future and be spoken of as
+one of the climacteric epochs of the human mind." The revolution of July
+inspired Delacroix with one of his most interesting pictures. <i>Le 28
+Juillet</i> is the only one of his works in which he depicts modern life,
+and was a striking refutation to those who complained that modern
+costume is too ugly or prosaic to be treated in painting. "Every old
+master," Baudelaire usefully pointed out, "has been modern in his day.
+The greater number of fine portraits of former times are dressed in the
+costume of their period. They are perfectly harmonious because the
+costumes, the hair, and even the attitude and expression (each period
+has its own), form a whole of complete vitality." <i>Le 28 Juillet</i> gives
+us the very breath and spirit of modern street fighting. Though the
+public</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XLVI" id="PL_XLVI"></a>
+<a href="images/plate46.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate46_th.png" width="300" height="212" alt="PLATE XLVI.&mdash;JOHN CONSTABLE
+
+THE HAY WAIN
+
+National Gallery, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XLVI.&mdash;JOHN CONSTABLE<br />
+
+THE HAY WAIN<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery, London</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">313</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">remained hostile and the jury bestowed none of its prizes, as before,
+the Government acknowledged the artist's talent and politics by making
+him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Further, from 1833 to 1853 he
+was intermittently employed in decorating the Chamber of Deputies, the
+Senate, and other public buildings. In 1855 he showed at the Great
+Exhibition a series of thirty-five of his most important pictures, the
+effect of which was immense. For the first and only time in his life he
+enjoyed a triumph, none the less great because his life-long rival
+Ingres also took the opportunity of exhibiting a selection of his works
+in the same building. But in spite of this success, and in spite of his
+being elected an Academician in 1857, the critics remained incorrigible.
+His pictures in the Salon of 1859 once more called forth one of those
+storms of abuse that Delacroix had the gift of arousing. Weary and
+disheartened&mdash;"All my life long I have been livré aux bêtes," was his
+bitter exclamation&mdash;he vowed to exhibit no more, and kept his word.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="IIIf" id="IIIf"></a>III</h3>
+
+<p class="head">RUSKIN AGAINST THE PHILISTINES</p>
+
+
+<p>I<span class="smcap">n</span> England, meantime, great things were being accomplished amid peaceful
+surroundings. In portraiture Lawrence soon became supreme, and what
+excellence he possessed was accentuated on his death in 1830 by the
+appointment of Sir Martin Archer Shee as his successor in the Presidency
+of the Royal Academy. That was the end of portraiture in England until a
+new school arose. But it was in landscape that our country occupied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">314</a></span> the
+field in the first half of the nineteenth century, and tilled it with
+the astonishing results that are usually the effect of doing much and
+saying little. The work accomplished by Turner, Constable, and Cotman,
+in the first half of the century, to say nothing of Crome and one or two
+of the older men who were still alive, has never been equalled in any
+country, and yet less was heard about the execution of it than would
+keep a modern journalist in bread and cheese for a week. Turner, who
+wouldn't sell his pictures, and Constable, who couldn't, between them
+filled up the measure of English art without any other aid than that of
+the materials with which they recorded their gorgeous communion with
+nature. When Ruskin stepped in with the "Modern Painters," originally
+designed as a vindication of Turner against certain later-day critics,
+Turner's comment was, "He knows a great deal more about my pictures than
+I do. He puts things into my head and points out meanings in them that I
+never intended." That was in 1843, when Turner was well on in his third
+manner&mdash;within eight years of his death. But let us go back to the
+beginning.</p>
+
+<p>Until he developed his latest manner, Turner was about the most popular
+artist that ever lived. His pictures were not above the comprehension of
+the public, educated or otherwise, and no effort was either needed or
+demanded to understand them. In the diary of a provincial amateur,
+Thomas Greene, are recorded an impression of Turner's work as early as
+1797:&mdash;"Visited the Royal Exhibition. Particularly struck with a
+sea-view by Turner ...the whole composition bold in design and masterly
+in execution. I am entirely unacquainted with the artist, but if he
+proceeds as he has begun, he cannot fail to become the first in his
+department." And again in 1799:&mdash;"Was again struck and delighted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">315</a></span> with
+Turner's landscapes.... Turner's views are not mere ordinary transcripts
+of nature,&mdash;he always throws some peculiar and striking <i>character</i> into
+the scene he represents."</p>
+
+<p>Brought up as a topographical draughtsman, he made no departure till
+quite late in life from the conventional method of depicting scenery;
+but being a supremely gifted artist, he was capable of utilising this
+method as no other before or since has ever succeeded in doing. The
+accepted method was good enough for him, and he laid his paint upon the
+canvas as anybody else had done before him, and as many of our
+present-day painters would do well to do after him&mdash;if only they had the
+genius in them to "make the instrument speak." The impressions created
+on our mind by Turner's earlier pictures are not conveyed by dots,
+cubes, streaks, or any device save that of pigment laid upon the canvas
+in such a manner as seemed to the artist to reproduce what he saw in
+nature. That he did this with surprising and altogether exceptional
+skill is the proof of his genius. Unflagging energy and devotion to his
+art enabled him to realise, not all, but a wonderful number of the
+beauties he saw in the world, with an experience that few beside him
+have ever taken the trouble to acquire. When barely thirty years old&mdash;in
+1805&mdash;he was already considered as the first of living landscape
+painters, and was thus noticed by Edward Dayes (the teacher of
+Girtin):&mdash;"Turner may be considered as a striking instance of how much
+may be gained by industry, if accompanied with perseverance, even
+without the assistance of a master. The way he acquired his professional
+powers was by borrowing when he could a drawing or picture to copy; or
+by making a sketch of any one in the exhibition early in the morning and
+finishing it up at home. By such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">316</a></span> practice, and a patient perseverance,
+he has overcome all the difficulties of the art." Turner himself used to
+say that his best academy was "the fields and Dr Monro's parlour"&mdash;where
+Girtin and other young artists met and sketched and copied the drawings
+in the doctor's collection. Burnet, in his notice of "Turner and his
+Works," suggests that John Robert Cozens had paved the way for both
+Girtin and Turner in striking out a broad effect of light and shade.
+"The early pictures of Turner," he observes, "possess the breadth, but
+are destitute of the brilliant power of light and colour afterwards
+pervading his works, and ultimately carried to the greatest extreme in
+his last pictures. Breadth of light seems to have been latterly his
+chief aim, supported by the contrast of hot and cold colour; two of his
+unfinished pictures exemplified the principle; they were divided into
+large masses of blue where the water or sky was to come and the other
+portions laid out in broad orange yellow, falling into delicate brown
+where the trees and landscapes were to be placed. This preparation,
+while it secured the greatest breadth, would have shone through the
+other colours when finished, giving the luminous quality observable in
+his pictures. In many instances his works sent for exhibition to the
+British Institution had little more than this brilliant foundation,
+which was worked into detail and completed in the varnishing days,
+Turner being the first in the morning and the last to leave; his
+certainty in the command over his colour, and the dexterity in his
+handling, seemed to convert in a few hours 'an unsubstantial pageant'
+into a finished landscape. These <i>ad captandum</i> effects, however, are
+not what his fame will depend on for perpetuity; his finest pictures are
+the production of great study in their composition, careful and repeated
+painting in the detail, and a natural arrangement of the colour and breadth of the chiaroscuro."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XLVII" id="PL_XLVII"></a>
+<a href="images/plate47.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate47_th.png" width="300" height="351" alt="PLATE XLVII.&mdash;J. M. W. TURNER
+
+CROSSING THE BROOK
+
+National Gallery of British Art, London" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XLVII.&mdash;J. M. W. TURNER<br />
+
+CROSSING THE BROOK<br />
+
+<i>National Gallery of British Art, London</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">317</a></span></p>
+<p>Whether or not we agree with all of Burnet's opinions, we shall be more
+likely to learn the truth about Turner from prosaic contemporaries of
+his earlier years than from all the rhapsodies of later days. How
+significant, when stripped of its amusing circumstances, is the simple
+fact related thus by Leslie:&mdash;"In 1839, when Constable exhibited his
+<i>Opening of Waterloo Bridge</i>, it was placed in one of the small rooms
+next to a sea-piece by Turner&mdash;a grey picture, beautiful and true, but
+with no positive colour in any part of it. Constable's picture seemed as
+if painted with liquid gold and silver, and Turner came several times
+while he was heightening with vermilion and lake the decorations and
+flags of the city barges. Turner stood behind him looking from the
+<i>Waterloo Bridge</i> to his own picture, and at last brought his palette
+from the great room where he was touching another picture, and putting a
+round daub of red lead, somewhat bigger than a shilling, on his grey
+sea, went away without saying a word. The intensity of this red lead,
+made more vivid by the coolness of his picture, caused even the
+vermilion and lake of Constable to look weak. I came into the room just
+after Turner had left it. "He has been here," said Constable, "and fired
+a gun." On the opposite wall was a picture by Jones of Shadrach Meshach
+and Abednego in the Furnace. "A coal," said Cooper, "has bounced across
+the room from Jones's picture and set fire to Turner's sea." Turner did
+not come in again for a day and a half, and then in the last moment
+allowed for painting, he glazed the scarlet seal he had put on his
+picture, and shaped it into a buoy."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">318</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was in 1835, after an unbroken popular triumph lasting over thirty
+years, that the critics openly rounded on him. The occasion seized by
+<i>Blackwood's Magazine</i> was the exhibition of his first Venetian picture
+exhibited in that year&mdash;it is now in the Metropolitan Museum in New
+York. "What is Venice in this picture?" wrote Blackwood's critic. "A
+flimsy, whitewashed, meagre assemblage of architecture, starting off
+ghost-like into unnatural perspective, as if frightened at the affected
+blaze of some dogger vessels (the only attempt at richness in the
+picture). The greater part of the picture is white, disagreeable white,
+without light or transparency, and the boats with their red worsted
+masts are as gewgaw as a child's toy which he may have cracked to see
+what it is made of. As to Venice, nothing can be more unlike its
+character."</p>
+
+<p>Ruskin was then only sixteen years old, but eight years later appeared
+in print the first volume of "Modern Painters," "by an undergraduate of
+Oxford," as the result of his growing indignation at this and subsequent
+attacks on Turner. Without following Ruskin into the dubious regions
+whither the pursuit of his romantic fancies ultimately led him, we may
+in fairness quote the opening sentence of his second chapter, "Of Truth
+of Colour," which will help us, moreover, in understanding the
+conditions under which painting was being conducted at this period.
+"There is nothing so high in art," he says, "but that a scurrile jest
+can reach at, and often the greater the work the easier it is to turn it
+into ridicule. To appreciate the science of Turner's colour would
+require the study of a life; but to laugh at it requires little more
+than the knowledge that the yolk of egg is yellow and spinage green; a
+fund of critical information on which the remarks of most of our
+leading<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">319</a></span> periodicals have been of late years exclusively based. We
+shall, however, in spite of the sulphur and treacle criticisms of our
+Scotch connoisseurs, and the eggs and spinage of our English ones,
+endeavour to test the works of this great colourist by a knowledge of
+nature somewhat more extensive than is to be gained by an acquaintance,
+however formed, with the apothecary's shop or the dinner table."</p>
+
+<p>So much for the critics. For the artist, if Ruskin said more than Turner
+himself could understand, he has summed up his achievement in a few
+passages which may possibly outlast the works themselves. "There has
+been marked and constant progress in his mind; he has not, like some few
+artists, been without childhood; his course of study has been as
+evidently as it has been swiftly progressive; and in different stages of
+the struggle, sometimes one order of truth, sometimes another, has been
+aimed at or omitted. But from the beginning to the present height of his
+career he has never sacrificed a greater truth to a less. As he
+advanced, the previous knowledge or attainment was absorbed in what
+succeeded, or abandoned only if incompatible, and never abandoned
+without a gain: and his present works present the sum and perfection of
+his accumulated knowledge, delivered with the impatience and passion of
+one who feels too much, and has too little time to say it in, to pause
+for expression or ponder over his syllables." And again of his latest
+works&mdash;"There is in them the obscurity, but the truth, of prophecy; the
+instinctive and burning language, which would express less if it uttered
+more; which is indistinct only by its fulness, and dark with its
+abundant meaning. He feels now, with long-trained vividness and keenness
+of sense, too bitterly, the impotence of the hand and the vainness of
+the colour to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">320</a></span> catch one shadow or one image of the glory which God has
+revealed to him. He has dwelt and communed with Nature all the days of
+his life: he knows her now too well, he cannot falter over the material
+littlenesses of her outward form: he must give her soul, or he has done
+nothing, and he cannot do this with the flax, the earth, and the oil. 'I
+cannot gather the beams out of the east, or I would make <i>them</i> tell you
+what I have seen; but read this, and interpret this, and let us remember
+together. I cannot gather the gloom out of the night sky, or I would
+make that teach you what I have seen; but read this, interpret this, and
+let us feel together. And if you have not that within you which I can
+summon to my aid, if you have not the sun in your spirit, and the
+passion in your heart, which my words may awaken, though they be
+indistinct and swift, leave me; for I will give you no patient mockery,
+no laborious insult of that glorious Nature, whose I am and whom I
+serve. Let other servants imitate the voice and the gesture of their
+master, while they forget his message. Hear that message from me; but
+remember that the teaching of Divine truth must still be a mystery.'"</p>
+
+<p>Within a very few years Ruskin was performing a more useful service for
+the English School of painting than that of gilding the fine gold of its
+greatest genius. Whether or not he was aware of the fact, young Holman
+Hunt had borrowed a copy of "Modern Painters," which, he says, entirely
+changed his opinions as to the views held by society at large concerning
+art, and in 1849 there were exhibited Hunt's <i>Rienzi</i>, Rossetti's
+<i>Girlhood of Mary Virgin</i>, and Millais' <i>Lorenzo and Isabella</i>, each
+inscribed with the mystic letters "P.R.B.," meaning "Pre-Raphaelite
+Brotherhood." It is interesting to note that this alliance was formed
+when the three young<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">321</a></span> artists were looking over a book of engravings of
+the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa.</p>
+
+<p>In the following year Hunt exhibited the <i>British Family</i>, Millais, <i>The
+Carpenter's Shop</i>, and Rossetti the <i>Ecce Ancilla Domini</i>, and in 1851
+were Hunt's <i>Two Gentlemen of Verona</i> and three by Millais. The fury of
+the critics had now reached a point at which some notice had to be taken
+of it&mdash;as of a man in an apopleptic fit. That of the Times in
+particular:&mdash;"These young artists have unfortunately become notorious by
+addicting themselves to an antiquated style, false perspective, and
+crude colour of remote antiquity. We want not to see what Fuseli termed
+drapery "snapped instead of folded," faces bloated into apoplexy, or
+extenuated into skeletons; colour borrowed from the jars in a druggist's
+shop, and expression forced into caricature. That morbid infatuation
+which sacrifices truth, beauty, and genuine feeling to mere eccentricity
+deserves no quarter at the hands of the public." It was in disapproval
+of the tone of this outburst that the author of "Modern Painters"
+addressed his famous and useful letter to the <i>Times</i>, vindicating the
+artists, and following it up with another in which he wishes them all
+"heartily good speed, believing in sincerity that if they temper the
+courage and energy which they have shown in the adoption of their
+systems with patience and discretion in framing it, and if they do not
+suffer themselves to be driven by harsh and careless criticism into
+rejection of the ordinary means of obtaining influence over the minds of
+others, they may, as they gain experience, lay in our England the
+foundation of a school of art nobler than the world has seen for three
+hundred years."</p>
+
+<p>If any one of this strenuous young band had been a painter of the first
+rank, this prediction might have been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">322</a></span> abundantly verified. But it must
+be owned that none of them was. Holman Hunt came nearest to being, and
+Millais probably thought he was, when he had abandoned his early
+principles and shaped for the Presidency of the Academy. Rossetti had
+more genius in him than the others, but it came out in poetry as well as
+in painting, and perhaps in more lasting form. As it was, the effects of
+the revolution were widespread and entirely beneficial; but those
+effects must not be looked for in the works of any one particular
+artist, but rather in the general aspect of English art in the
+succeeding half century, and perhaps to-day. It broke up the soil. The
+flowers that came up were neither rare nor great, but they were many,
+varied, and pleasing, and in every respect an improvement on the
+evergreens and hardy annuals with which the English garden had become
+more and more encumbered from want of intelligent cultivation. More than
+this, the freedom engendered of revolt had now encouraged the young
+artist to feel that he was no longer bound to paint in any particular
+fashion. People's eyes were opened to possibilities as well as to
+actualities; and though they were prone to close again under the
+soporific influence of what was regular and conventional, they were
+capable of opening again, perhaps with a start, but without the
+necessity for a surgical operation. In 1847, for example, George
+Frederick Watts had offered to adorn, free of charge, the booking-hall
+of Euston Station, and had been refused&mdash;Watts, by the by, was quite
+independent of the Pre-Raphaelites&mdash;whereas in 1860 the Benchers of
+Lincoln's Inn accepted his <i>School of Legislature</i>, and in 1867 he was
+elected an academician.</p>
+
+<p>Two somewhat remarkable effects of the movement are attributed to it by
+Mr Edmund Gosse (in a note on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">323</a></span> the work of Alfred Hunt, written in
+1884), which are probably typical of many more. The Liverpool Academy,
+founded in 1810, had an annual grant of £200 from the Corporation. In
+1857 it gave a prize to Millais' <i>Blind Girl</i> in preference to the most
+popular picture of the year (Abraham Solomon's <i>Waiting for the
+Verdict</i>), and so great was the public indignation that pressure was
+brought to bear on the Corporation, the grant was withdrawn, and the
+Academy ruined.</p>
+
+<p>In the other instance we may not go the whole way with Mr Gosse, when in
+speaking of the Pre-Raphaelite principle he says that "the school of
+Turnerian landscape was fatally affected by them," or that all the
+landscape painters, except Alfred Hunt, "accepted the veto which the
+Pre-Raphaelites had tacitly laid upon composition or a striving after an
+artificial harmony of forms in landscape." But to a certain extent their
+influence undoubtedly was prejudicial in that respect. In suggesting
+another reason for the cessation of Turner s influence he is quite as
+near the mark, namely, the action of the Royal Academy in admitting no
+landscape painters to membership. At Turner's death in 1851 there were
+only three, among whom was Creswick. "This popular artist," says Mr
+Gosse, "was the Upas tree under whose shadow the Academical patronage of
+landscape died in England. From his election as an associate in 1842 to
+that of Vicat Cole in 1869, no landscape painter entered the doors of
+the Royal Academy." Of this august body we shall have something to say
+later on.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">324</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="IVf" id="IVf"></a>IV</h3>
+
+<p class="head">MANET AND WHISTLER AGAINST THE WORLD</p>
+
+
+<p>L<span class="smcap">et</span> us now cross the channel again, and see what is going on there, in
+1863. Evidently there is something on, or there would not be so much
+excitement. As we approach the Capital we are aware of one name being
+prominent in the general uproar&mdash;that of <span class="smcap">Édouard Manet</span>.</p>
+
+<p>Manet's revolt against tradition began before he became an artist, as
+was in fact necessary, or he would never have been allowed to become
+one. The traditions of the Bourgoisie were sacred, and their power and
+importance since the revolution of 1848 not to be lightly set aside. But
+young Manet was so determined that he was at last allowed by his
+bourgeois parents to have his way, and was sent to study under that very
+rough diamond Couture. Now again his "revolting" qualities showed
+themselves, this time in the life class. Théodore Duret, his friend and
+biographer, puts it so amusingly that a quotation, untranslated, is
+imperative:&mdash;"Cette repulsion qui se développe chez Manet pour l'art de
+la tradition," he says, "se manifeste surtout par le mépris qu'il
+témoigne aux modèles posant dans l'atelier et à l'étude du nu telle
+qu'elle était alors conduite. Le culte de l'antique comme on le
+comprenait dans la première moitié du <span class="smcap">xix</span><sup>e</sup> siècle parmi les peintres
+avait amené la recherche de modèles speciaux. On leur demandait des
+formes pleines. Les hommes en particulier devaient avoir une poitrine
+large et bombée, un torse puissant, des membres musclés. Les individus
+doués des qualités requises qui posaient alors dans les ateliers,
+s'etaient habitués à prendre des attitudes prétendues expressive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">325</a></span> et
+heroïques, mais toujours tendues et conventionelles, d'où l'imprévu
+était banni. Manet, porté vers le naturel et épris de recherches,
+s'irritait de ces poses d'un type fixe et toujours les mêmes. Aussi
+faisait-il tres mauvais ménage avec les modèles. Il cherchait à en
+obtenir des poses contraires à leurs habitudes, auxquelles ils se
+refusaient. Les modèles connus qui avaient vu les morceaux faits d'après
+leurs torses conduire certains élèves à l'école de Rome, alors la
+suprême récompense, et qui dans leur orgueil s'attribuaient presqu'une
+part du succès, se revoltaient de voir un tout jeune homme ne leur
+témoigner aucun respect. Il paraît que fatigué de l'eternelle étude du
+nu, Manet aurait essayé de draper et même d'habiller les modèles, ce qui
+aurait causé parmi eux une véritable indignation."</p>
+
+<p>It was in 1863 that the storm of popular fury burst over Manet's head,
+on the exhibition of his first important picture, painted three years
+before, generally known as <i>Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe</i>. This wonderful
+canvas was something so new and so surprising that it was rejected by
+the jury of the Salon. But in company with less conspicuous though
+equally unacceptable pieces by such men as Bracquemond, Cazin,
+Fantin-Latour, Harpignies, Jongkind, J. P. Laurens, Le Gros, Pissarro,
+Vollon, and Whistler, it was accorded an exhibition, alongside the
+official Salon, which was called <i>le Salon des refusés</i>. Being the
+largest and most conspicuous work shown, it attracted no less attention
+than if it had been officially hung, and probably much more. "Ainsi ce
+Déjeuner sur l'herbe," says M. Duret, "venait-il faire comme une énorme
+tache. Il donnait la sensation de quelquechose outré. Il heurtait la
+vision. Il produisait, sur les yeux du public de ce temps, l'effet de la
+pleine lumière sur les yeux du hibou."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">326</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was more than one reason for this remarkable picture surprising
+and shocking the sensibilities of the public. It represents a couple of
+men in everyday bourgeois costume, one sitting and the other reclining
+on the grass under trees, while next to one of them is seated a young
+woman, her head turned to the spectator, in no costume at all. A
+profusion of <i>articles de déjeuner</i> is beside her, and it is evident
+that they are only waiting to arrange the meal till a second young
+woman, who is seen bathing in the near background, is ready to join
+them. The subject and composition are reminiscent of Giorgione's
+beautiful and famous <i>Fête Champêtre</i>, in the Louvre, and Manet quite
+frankly and in quite good faith pleaded Giorgione as his precedent when
+assailed on grounds of good taste. But unfortunately he had not put his
+male figures in "fancy dress," and the public could hardly be expected
+to realise that Giorgione had not, either. As for the painting, it was a
+revelation. He had broken every canon of tradition&mdash;and yet it was a
+marvellous success!</p>
+
+<p>Another outburst greeted the appearance of the wonderful <i>Olympia</i> in
+1865, this time in the official catalogue. This is now enshrined in the
+Louvre. It was painted in 1863, but fortunately, perhaps, Manet had not
+the courage to exhibit it then&mdash;for who can tell to what length the fury
+of the Philistines might not have been goaded by two such shocks? As it
+was, this second violation of the sacred traditions of the nude, which
+had been exclusively reserved for allegorical subjects, was considered
+an outrage; and the innocent, natural model, of by no means voluptuous
+appearance, was regarded as a disgraceful intrusion into the chaste
+category of nymphs and goddesses. As a painter, however, Manet had shown
+himself unmistakably as the great figure of</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XLVIII" id="PL_XLVIII"></a>
+<a href="images/plate48.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate48_th.png" width="300" height="202" alt="PLATE XLVIII.&mdash;ÉDOUARD MANET
+
+OLYMPIA
+
+Louvre, Paris" />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XLVIII.&mdash;ÉDOUARD MANET<br />
+
+OLYMPIA<br />
+
+<i>Louvre, Paris</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">327</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">the age, and if we have to go to Paris or to New York to catch a glimpse
+of any of his work, it is partly because we are too backward in seizing
+opportunities so eagerly snapped up by others.</p>
+
+<p>The next great storm in the artistic world followed in the wake of one
+of Manet's companions in adversity at the <i>Salon des Refusés</i>&mdash;<span class="smcap">James
+M'Neill Whistler</span>, who left Paris and settled with his mother in Chelsea
+in the late 'sixties. That he should have existed for fifteen whole
+years without breaking forth into strife is so extraordinary that we are
+almost tempted to attribute it to the influence of his mother, who used
+to bring him to the old church on Sundays, as the present writer dimly
+remembers. In this case it was not the public, but the critic, John
+Ruskin, who so deftly dropped the fat into the fire. Having, as we saw,
+taken up the cudgels for poor Turner against the public in 1843, and for
+the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1850, he now, in 1877, ranged himself
+on the other side, and accused Whistler of impertinence in "flinging a
+pot of paint in the face of the public." The action for libel which
+Whistler commenced in the following year resulted in strict fact in a
+verdict of one farthing damages for the libelled one; but in reality the
+results were much farther reaching. The artist had vindicated not only
+himself, but his art, from the attacks of the ignorant and bumptious.
+"Poor art!" Whistler wrote, "What a sad state the slut is in, an these
+gentlemen shall help her. The artist alone, by the way, is to no purpose
+and remains unconsulted; his work is explained and rectified without
+him, by the one who was never in it&mdash;but upon whom God, always good
+though sometimes careless, has thrown away the knowledge refused to the
+author, poor devil!" This recalls Turner's comment on Ruskin's
+eulogies&mdash;which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">328</a></span> Whistler had probably never heard of&mdash;and making every
+allowance for Whistler's fiery, combative nature, and sharp pen, there
+is much truth, and truth that needed telling, in his contention. "Art,"
+he continues, "that for ages has hewn its own history in marble, and
+written its own comments on canvas, shall it suddenly stand still, and
+stammer, and wait for wisdom from the passer-by? For guidance from the
+hand that holds neither brush nor chisel? Out upon the shallow conceit!"</p>
+
+<p>Of the hopeless banality of the critics during this period there are
+plenty of examples to be found without looking very far. Several of the
+most amusing have been embodied in a little volume of "Whistler
+Stories," lately compiled by Mr Don C. Seitz of New York. Here we find
+<i>The Standard's</i> little joke about Whistler paying his costs in the
+action&mdash;apart from those allowed on taxation, that is to say&mdash;"But he
+has only to paint, or, as we believe he expresses it 'knock off' three
+or four 'symphonies' or 'harmonies'&mdash;or perhaps he might try his hand at
+a Set of Quadrilles in Peacock Blue?&mdash;and a week's labour will set all
+square." Then there is this priceless revelation of his art when
+questioning his class in Paris. "Do you know what I mean when I say
+tone, value, light, shade, quality, movement, construction, etc.?"
+<i>Chorus</i>, "Oh, yes, Mr Whistler!" "I'm glad, for it's more than I do
+myself." More serious was the verdict of Sir George Scharf, keeper of
+the National Gallery, when (in 1874) there was a proposal to purchase
+the portrait of Carlyle. "Well," he said, icily, on looking at the
+picture, "and has painting come to this!"</p>
+
+<p>High place, it would seem, did not always conduce to an appreciation of
+high art. Here is the opinion of Sir Charles Eastlake, F.R.I.B.A., also
+keeper of the</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="PL_XLIX" id="PL_XLIX"></a>
+<a href="images/plate49.jpg">
+<img src="images/plate49_th.png" width="300" height="483" alt="PLATE XLIX.&mdash;J. M. WHISTLER
+
+LILLIE IN OUR ALLEY
+
+In the possession of John J. Cowan, Esq." />
+</a><br /><span class="caption">PLATE XLIX.&mdash;J. M. WHISTLER<br />
+
+LILLIE IN OUR ALLEY<br />
+
+<i>In the possession of John J. Cowan, Esq.</i></span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">329</a></span></p>
+<p class="noindent">National Gallery, published in 1883, on one of Rembrandt's pictures in
+the Louvre:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>The Bath</i>, a very ugly and offensive picture, in which the principal
+object is the ill-proportioned figure of a naked woman, distinguished by
+flesh tones whose colour suggests the need of a bath rather than the
+fact that it has been taken. The position of the old servant wiping the
+woman's feet is not very intelligible, and the drawing of the bather's
+legs is distinctly defective. The light and shade of the picture, though
+obviously untrue to natural effect, are managed with the painter's usual
+dexterity."</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="Vf" id="Vf"></a>V</h3>
+
+<p class="head">THE ROYAL ACADEMY</p>
+
+
+<p>T<span class="smcap">he</span> last revolt of the nineteenth century was effected in a peaceable
+and business-like, but none the less successful manner, by the
+establishment, in 1886, of the New English Art Club as a means of
+defence against the mighty <i>vis inertiæ</i> of the Royal Academy. As an
+example of the disadvantage under which any artist laboured who did not
+bow down to the great Idol, I venture to quote a few sentences from the
+report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords appointed to
+inquire into the administration of the Chantrey Trust, in 1904:&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"With five exceptions, all the works in the collection have been bought
+from summer exhibitions of the Royal Academy."</p>
+
+<p>"It is admitted by those most friendly to the present system that the
+Chantrey collection regarded as a national gallery of modern British art
+is incomplete,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">330</a></span> and in a large degree unrepresentative. The works of
+many of the most brilliant and capable artists who worked in the last
+quarter of the nineteenth century are missing from the gallery, and the
+endeavour to account for these omissions has formed one main branch of
+the inquiry."</p>
+
+<p>"It has been stated that while containing some fine works of art, it is
+lacking in variety and interest, and while failing to give expression to
+much of the finest artistic feeling of its period, it includes not a few
+works of minor importance. Full consideration of the evidence has led
+the Committee to regard this view as approximately correct."</p>
+
+<p>Up to 1897, when the collection was handed over to the nation, little
+short of £50,000 had been spent upon it. And with five exceptions,
+amounting to less than £5000, the whole of that money had been expended
+on such works alone as were permitted by the Academy to be exhibited on
+their walls.</p>
+
+<p>Of the £5000, it may be noted, £2200 was well laid out on Watts's
+<i>Psyche</i>; but with regard to the very first purchase made, in 1877, for
+£1000,&mdash;Hilton's <i>Christ Mocked</i>, which had been painted as an
+altar-piece for S. Peter's, Eaton Square, in 1839, the following
+question and answer are full of bitter significance for the poor artist
+of the time:&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>Lord Ribblesdale.&mdash;Was Mr Hilton's picture offered by the Vicar and
+Churchwardens?</p>
+
+<p>The Secretary to the Royal Academy.&mdash;Yes, it was offered by
+them&mdash;one of the Churchwardens was the late Lord Maghermorne&mdash;he
+was then Sir James M'Garrell Hogg&mdash;he was a great friend of Sir
+Francis Grant who was the President, and he offered it to him for
+the Chantrey Collection.</p></div>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">331</a></span></p>
+<p>When repeatedly pressed by the Committee for the reasons why so few
+purchases were made outside the Academy exhibitions, the President, Sir
+Edward Poynter, repeatedly pleaded the impossibility of a Council of
+Ten, all of whom must see pictures before they are bought, travelling
+about in search of them. In view of this apparent&mdash;but obviously
+unreal&mdash;difficulty, the following questions were then put by the Earl of
+Lytton:&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>420. Without actually changing the terms of the will, has the question
+of employing an agent for the purpose of finding out what pictures were
+available and giving advice upon them ever been suggested?&mdash;No.</p>
+
+<p>421. That would come within the term of the will, would it not, the
+final voting being, as it is now, in the hands of the Academy; it would
+be open to the Council to appoint an agent, as was suggested just now,
+of going to Scotland, and going about the country making suggestions as
+to pictures which in his opinion might be bought?&mdash;The question has
+never arisen.</p>
+
+<p>422. But that could be done, could it not?&mdash;I suppose that could be done
+under the terms of the will, but I do not suppose that the Academy would
+ever do it.</p>
+
+<p>As a comment on this let us turn to the "Autobiography of W. P. Frith R.
+A." (Chapter xl.):&mdash;"A portion of the year ... was spent in the service
+of the winter Exhibition of Old Masters. My duties took me into strange
+places.... One of my first visits was paid to a huge mansion in the
+North.... I visited thirty-eight different collections of old masters
+and named for selection over three hundred pictures.... The pictures of
+Reynolds are so much desired for the winter Exhibition that neither
+trouble nor expense are spared in searching for them; so hearing of one
+described to me as of unusual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">332</a></span> splendour, I made a journey into Wales
+with the solitary Reynolds for its object."</p>
+
+<p>Here, where it is not a question of a Trust for the benefit of the
+public and for the encouragement of artists, there appears to have been
+no trouble or expense spared. But the real reason for the Academic
+selection leapt naïvely from the mouth of the President a little later,
+in reply to question 545.&mdash;"The best artists come into the Academy
+ultimately. I do not say that there have been no exceptions, but as a
+general rule all the best artists ultimately become Academicians. It is
+natural, if we want the best pictures that we should go to the best
+artists."</p>
+
+<p>On this point the answer to a question put by Lord Lytton to one of the
+forty, Sir William Richmond, K.C.B., is of value, as showing that the
+grievances of "the outsiders" were not imaginary:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>767. I just want to ask you one more question. When you said that in
+your opinion the walls of the Academy have had priority of claim in the
+past, have you any particular reason for that statement?&mdash;Yes. I may
+mention this to show that I am consistent. Before I was an Associate of
+the Royal Academy, I fought hard for what are called, in rather
+undignified language, the outsiders, and I was anxious that men should
+be elected Associates of the Royal Academy not necessarily because they
+exhibit on the Royal Academy walls, but because they are competent
+painters. That was my fight upon which I stood; and I refused to send a
+picture to the Royal Academy on the understanding that if I did I should
+probably be elected Associate that year, and also that my picture would
+be bought by the Chantrey Fund. My answer to that was, "If my picture is
+good enough to be purchased for the Chantrey Bequest my picture can be
+purchased from the walls of the Grosvenor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">333</a></span> Gallery as well as from the
+walls of the Royal Academy. That seems to me to be justice."</p>
+
+<p>The "New English," then, had some justification for their establishment;
+and although they did not make very much headway before the close of the
+nineteenth century, they find themselves at the opening of the twentieth
+in a position to determine to a very considerable extent what the future
+of English painting is to be, just as the Academy succeeded in
+determining it before they came into existence.</p>
+
+<p>For the Academy everything that was vital in English art in the last
+half century had no existence&mdash;was simply ignored. For the New English,
+it was the seed that flowered, under their gentle influence, into the
+many varieties of blossoms with which our garden is already filled. To
+the Academy there was no such thing as change or development&mdash;their ears
+were deaf to any innovation, their eyes were blind to any fresh beauty.
+To others, every new movement foretold its significance, and the century
+closed with the recognition of the fact that art must live and develop
+if it is to be anything but a comfortable means of subsistence for a
+self-constituted authority of forty and their friends.</p>
+
+<p>Let me be allowed to conclude this chapter, and my imperfect efforts to
+indicate the energies of six centuries of art in so small a space, with
+a passage from a lecture delivered in 1882 by Mr Selwyn Image, now Slade
+Professor at Oxford, which embodies the spirit in the air at that time,
+and foreshadows what was to come. "I do not feel that we have come here
+to sing a requiem for art this afternoon," he said. "As a giant it will
+renew its strength and rejoice to run its course. I am not a prophet, I
+cannot tell you just what that course is going to be. Nor is it possible
+to estimate what is around us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">334</a></span> with the same security, with the same
+value, that we estimate what has passed&mdash;you must be at a certain
+distance to take things in. But in contemporary art we can notice some
+characteristics, which are quite at one with what we call the modern
+spirit; and extremely suggestive&mdash;for they seem to indicate movement,
+and therefore life, in this imaginative sphere, just as there is
+movement and life in the sphere of science or of social interests. For
+instance, in modern representative work ... I think anyone comparing it
+as a whole with the work of the old masters, will be struck as against
+their distinctness, containedness, simplicity and serenity; with its
+complexity, restlessness, and vagueness, and emotion, and suggestiveness
+in place of delineation, and impressionism in place of literal
+transcription&mdash;and this alike in execution and motive. I do not mean to
+say that these qualities are better than the qualities that preceded
+them, or worse&mdash;but only that they are different, only that they are of
+the modern spirit&mdash;only that they indicate movement and life; and so far
+that is hopeful&mdash;is it not?"</p>
+
+
+<p class="c top15">THE END</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">335</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a><i>INDEX</i></h2>
+<ul>
+<li>Academy of Painting, the French, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; the Royal, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329-333</a></li>
+<li>Alamanus, Giovanni or Johannes, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+<li>Allegri, Antonio, or Correggio, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
+<li>Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+<li>Altdorfer, Albert, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214-216</a></li>
+<li>Angelico, Fra, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+<li>Animal Painters, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191-202</a></li>
+<li>Aretino, Spinello, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
+<li>Arnolde, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Backer, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li>
+<li>Balen, Henry van, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
+<li>Barret, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li>
+<li>Basaiti, Marco, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+<li>Bassano, Jacopo da, <a href="#Page_98">98-99</a></li>
+<li><a name="Bastiani" id="Bastiani"></a>Bastiani, Lazzaro di, <a href="#Page_75">75-76</a></li>
+<li>Baudelaire, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li>
+<li>Bazzi, Giovanni Antonio (Sodoma), <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+<li>Bellini, Gentile, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72-73</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Giovanni, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70-72</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Jacopo, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+<li>Belvedere, Andrea, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+<li>Berchem, Nicholas, <a href="#Page_199">199-201</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+<li>Beruete, Senor, quoted, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li>
+<li>Bettes, John, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Thomas, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+<li>Bol, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+<li>Boltraffio, Giovanni Antonio, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+<li>Bonifazio Veronese or Veneziano, <a href="#Page_97">97-98</a></li>
+<li>Bordes, Lassalle, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li>
+<li>Bosboom, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+<li>Botticelli, Sandro, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28-32</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+<li>Botticini, Francesco, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+<li>Boucher, François, <a href="#Page_241">241-243</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li>
+<li>Bouguereau, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+<li>Bourdon, Sebastien, <a href="#Page_231">231-232</a></li>
+<li>Bouts, Dirk, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+<li>Bracquemond, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>Bril, Paul, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+<li>Broederlam, Melchior, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
+<li>Brouwer, Adrian, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183-185</a></li>
+<li>Brueghel, Jan, or Velvet Brueghel, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Pieter (or Peasant), <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; his son, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+<li>Brun, Le, <a href="#Page_234">234-241</a></li>
+<li>Bruyn, Bartel, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+<li>Buonarroti. <i>See</i> <a href="#Michelangelo">Michelangelo</a></li>
+<li>Burnet, on Turner, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+<li>Byzantine Art, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Caliari, Paolo, <a href="#Page_102">102-103</a></li>
+<li>Campidoglio, Michel de, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+<li>Canale, Antonio, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+<li>Caro-Delvaille, quoted, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+<li>Carpaccio, Vittore, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76-78</a></li>
+<li>Carracci, the, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Agostino, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Annibale, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Lodovico, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+<li>Catalonia, School of, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li>
+<li>Catena, Vincenzo, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
+<li>Cazin, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>Champaigne, Philippe de, <a href="#Page_233">233-234</a></li>
+<li>Chantrey Trust, the, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+<li>Chardin, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+<li>Chartered Society, the, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+<li>Cimabue, Giovanni, <a href="#Page_1">1-9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+<li>Claude (or Claude Lorraine, or Gellée), <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229-231</a></li>
+<li>Cleef, Joos van, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+<li>Clouet, François, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Jehan or Jean, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+<li>Cole, Peter, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Vicat, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+<li>Conegliano, Cima da, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73-74</a></li>
+<li>Constable, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+<li>Cook, Herbert, quoted, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
+<li>Copley, John Singleton, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+<li>Corot, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+<li>Correggio, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
+<li>Cotes, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li>
+<li>Cotman, John Sell, <a href="#Page_295">295-296</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+<li>Courbet, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+<li>Couture, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li>
+<li>Cox, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+<li>Cozens, John Robert, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+<li>Cranach, Lucas, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213-214</a></li>
+<li>Credi, Lorenzo di, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+<li>Creswick, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+<li>Crivelli, Carlo, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+<li>Crome, John, or Old Crome, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; John Bernay, his son, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+<li>Crowe and Cavalcaselle, quoted, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+<li>Cunningham, Allan, "Life of Hogarth," <a href="#Page_261">261</a>,
+<a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">336</a></span></li>
+<li>Cuyp, Albert, <a href="#Page_194">194-196</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Jacob Gerritz, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Dance, Nathaniel, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+<li>Daubigny, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+<li>Daumier, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+<li>David, Jacques Louis, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+<li>Dayes, Edward, quoted, on Turner, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+<li>Decamps, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+<li>Degas, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+<li>Delacroix, Eugène, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309-313</a></li>
+<li>Diana, Benedetto, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+<li>Dilke, Lady, quoted, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li>
+<li>Dobson, William, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+<li>Dolce, Carlo, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Ludovico, on Titian, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+<li>Domenichino, <a href="#Page_107">107-108</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li>
+<li>Donatello, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+<li>Doré, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+<li>Dou, Gerard, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+<li>Doyen, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li>
+<li>Duccio of Siena, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+<li>Dürer, Albert, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215-222</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li>
+<li>Duret, Théodore, quoted, on Manet, <a href="#Page_324">324-325</a></li>
+<li>Dyck, Anthony van, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160-163</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash;  &mdash;&mdash; in England, <a href="#Page_256">256-257</a></li>
+<li>Dutch School, <a href="#Page_165">165-210</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Eclectics, the, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
+<li>Edwards, Edward, quoted, on Art Exhibitions, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+<li>Elsheimer, Adam, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+<li>Emilia, Schools of, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+<li>English School, early Portrait Painters of, <a href="#Page_251">251-258</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; in Eighteenth Century, <a href="#Page_295">295-298</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; spirit of revolt in Nineteenth Century, <a href="#Page_305">305</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+<li>Everdingen, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
+<li>Exhibitions of Painting, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+<li>Eyck, Hubert van, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Jan van, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129-131</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Fabriano, Gentile da, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+<li>Fabritius, Karel, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+<li>Fantin-Latour, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>Fiori, Mario di, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+<li>Flaxman, John, on Romney, <a href="#Page_298">298-300</a></li>
+<li>Flemish School, <a href="#Page_121">121-163</a></li>
+<li>Floris, Franz, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li>
+<li>Foppa, Vincenzo, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+<li>Fragonard, Jean Honoré, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+<li>Francesco, Piero della, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+<li>Franciabigio, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+<li>Free Society of Artists, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+<li>French Academy of Painting, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+<li>French School in Seventeenth Century, <a href="#Page_225">225-235</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; in Eighteenth Century, <a href="#Page_235">235-249</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; in Nineteenth Century, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+<li>Frith, W. P., quoted, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+<li>Fyt, Jan, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Gaddi, Taddeo, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
+<li>Gainsborough, Thomas, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288-295</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+<li>Garrard, Mark, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+<li>Gellée, Claude, or Claude, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229-231</a></li>
+<li>Genre Painters of Dutch School, <a href="#Page_183">183-191</a></li>
+<li>Géricault, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+<li>German Schools, <a href="#Page_211">211-224</a></li>
+<li>Ghirlandaio, Domenico, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+<li>Giambono, Michele, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+<li>Gillot, Claude, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li>
+<li>Giorgione, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+<li>Giotto di Bondone, <a href="#Page_10">10-18</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+<li>Girtin, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+<li>Gossaert, Jan, or Mabuse, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+<li>Gosse, Edmund, quoted, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+<li>Goubeau, Antoine, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li>
+<li>Goya, Francisco, <a href="#Page_119">119-120</a></li>
+<li>Goyen, Jan van, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202-203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+<li>Grebber, Peter, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+<li>Greco, El, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li>
+<li>Greene, Thomas, quoted, on Turner, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+<li>Greenhill, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+<li>Gros, Le, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>Greuze, Jean Baptiste, <a href="#Page_243">243-245</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+<li>Gruenewald, Matthew, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+<li>Guardi, Francesco, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+<li>Guercino, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Hals, Frans, <a href="#Page_165">165-169</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li>
+<li>Harpignies, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>Heem, de, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+<li>Heemskirk, Martin, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li>
+<li>Helst, Bartholomew van der, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170-171</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li>
+<li>Herle, Wilhelm van, or Meister Wilhelm, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+<li>Herrera, Francisco de, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
+<li>Highmore, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+<li>Hilliard, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+<li>Hobbema, Meindert, <a href="#Page_208">208-210</a></li>
+<li>Hogarth, William, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258-267</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+<li>Holbein, Hans, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222-224</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; in England, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+<li>Hondecoeter, Giles, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Gysbert, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Melchior, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+<li>Hone, Nathaniel, <a href="#Page_287">287</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">337</a></span></li>
+<li>Honthorst, Gerard, <a href="#Page_169">169-170</a></li>
+<li>Hoogh, Peter de, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li>
+<li>Hudson, Thomas, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+<li>Hunt, Alfred, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Holman, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+<li>Huysum, James van, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Jan van, <a href="#Page_201">201-202</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Justus van, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Michael van, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Image, Mr Selwyn, quoted, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>Ingres, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+<li>Israels, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Jervas, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+<li>John of Bruges, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li>
+<li>Jongkind, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>Jordaens, Jacob, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Kauffmann, Angelica, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li>
+<li>Kneller, Sir Godfrey, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+<li>Knupler, Nicolas, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+<li>Kugler, quoted, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Lancret, Nicholas, <a href="#Page_239">239-240</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+<li>Landscape, painters of, <a href="#Page_202">202-210</a></li>
+<li>Largillière, Nicholas, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+<li>Lastman, Peter, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+<li>Laurens, J. P., <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>Lawrence, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301-303</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+<li>Le Brun, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+<li>Le Gros, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>Le Moine, François, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+<li>Le Sueur, Eustache, <a href="#Page_232">232-233</a></li>
+<li>Lefort, quoted, on Velasquez, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+<li>Lely, Sir Peter, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+<li>Leyden, Lucas van, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+<li>Lingelbach, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+<li>Lippi, Fra Filippo, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Filippino, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+<li>Lochner, Stephen, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+<li>Lockie, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+<li>Lombardy, Schools of, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+<li>Longhi, Pietro, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+<li>Loo, Carle van, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+<li>Lorenzetti, Pietro, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
+<li>Lorraine, Claude, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229-231</a></li>
+<li>Lotto, Lorenzo, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96-97</a></li>
+<li>Luini, Bernardino, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+<li>Lyne, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Mabuse, Jan van, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+<li>Maes, Nicolas, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188-189</a></li>
+<li>Manet, Édouard, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324-327</a></li>
+<li>Mansueti, Giovanni, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+<li>Mantegna, Andrea, <a href="#Page_67">67-70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+<li>Maratti, Carlo, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+<li>Maris, the Brothers, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+<li>Masaccio, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24-26</a></li>
+<li>Masolino, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li>
+<li>Massys, Jan, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Quentin, <a href="#Page_136">136-138</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+<li>Mauve, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+<li>Meissonier, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+<li>Memling, Hans, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133-136</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
+<li>Mengs, Raphael, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+<li>Messina, Antonello da, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+<li>Metsu, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+<li><a name="Michelangelo" id="Michelangelo"></a>Michelangelo, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40-46</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+<li>Mieris, Frans van, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+<li>Millais, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+<li>Millet, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+<li>Moine, François le, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+<li>Monoyer, Baptiste, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+<li>Montagna, Bartolommeo, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+<li>Mor, Sir Antonio, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+<li>Morland, George, <a href="#Page_296">296-298</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Henry, his father, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+<li>Moroni, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+<li>Moser, Michael, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+<li>Moyaert, Nicholas, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+<li>Murano, Antonio da, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li>
+<li>Murillo, Bartolomé Estéban, <a href="#Page_118">118-119</a></li>
+<li>Muther, Dr, quoted, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Nasmyth, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+<li>New English Art Club, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>Norwich School, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Oil Painting, introduction of, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li>
+<li>Oliver, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+<li>Oort, Adam van, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+<li>Orcagna, Andrea, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li>
+<li>Orley, Bernard van, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+<li>Ostade, Adrian van, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Isaac van, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+<li>Ouwater, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Pacheco, <a href="#Page_110">110-111</a></li>
+<li>Padua, School of, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
+<li>Palma, Giovane, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Vecchio, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+<li>Parma, School of, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
+<li>Pater, Jean Baptiste Joseph, <a href="#Page_240">240-241</a></li>
+<li>Peake, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+<li>Penny, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li>
+<li>Perugian or Umbrian School, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+<li>Perugino, Pietro, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+<li>Pinas, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+<li>Piombo, Sebastiano del, <a href="#Page_94">94-96</a></li>
+<li>Pisanello, Vittore, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+<li>Pissarro, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>Pollaiuolo, Antonio, <a href="#Page_26">26-28</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+<li>Pontormo, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+<li>Pot, Hendrik Gerritz, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
+<li>Potter, Paul, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Pieter, <a href="#Page_196">196</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">338</a></span></li>
+<li>Poussin, Gaspard (Gaspard Dughet), <a href="#Page_228">228-229</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Nicholas, <a href="#Page_226">226-228</a></li>
+<li>Poynter, Sir Edward, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+<li>Predis, Ambrogio di, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+<li>Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li>Previtali, Andrea, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+<li>Prudhon, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Quattrocentists, the Earlier, <a href="#Page_18">18-26</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; the Later, <a href="#Page_26">26</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+<li class="letr">Raeburn, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+<li>Raphael, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47-57</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Sir Joshua Reynolds on, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+<li>Rembrandt van Ryn, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171-183</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+<li>Reni, Guido, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+<li>Reynolds, Sir Joshua, <a href="#Page_267">267-278</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286-288</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; quoted, on Boucher, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; on Bourdon, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; on Gainsborough, <a href="#Page_290">290-294</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; on Hogarth, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; on Rubens and Titian, <a href="#Page_93">93-94</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; on Titian and Raphael, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; on Veronese, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; revival of English School due to, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Refs.</i> to, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li>
+<li>Ribera, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li>
+<li>Richardson, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+<li>Ridolfi, quoted, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+<li>Rigaud, Hyacinthe, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+<li>Riley, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+<li>Robert, Hubert, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li>
+<li>Robusti, Jacopo. <i>See</i> <a href="#Tintoretto">Tintoretto</a></li>
+<li>Romano, Giulio, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+<li>Romney, George, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298-300</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+<li>Rossetti, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+<li>Rowlandson, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+<li>Royal Academy, the, <a href="#Page_329">329-333</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; foundation of, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+<li>Rubens, Peter Paul, <a href="#Page_143">143-157</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; and Van Dyck, <a href="#Page_161">161-162</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; and Velasquez, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; pupils of, <a href="#Page_157">157-163</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Refs.</i> to, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li>
+<li>Rucellai Madonna, the, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li>Ruisdael, Jacob, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204-206</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+<li>Ruskin against the Philistines, <a href="#Page_313">313-323</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; on Whistler, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Sandrart, Joachim, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; quoted, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+<li>Sansovino, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+<li>Sarto, Andrea del, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+<li>Scharf, Sir George, <a href="#Page_328">328</a></li>
+<li>Schlegel, on Altdorfer, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+<li>Schongauer, Martin, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li>
+<li>Scorel, Jan, <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li>
+<li>Sebastiani, Lazzaro di. <i>See</i> <a href="#Bastiani">Bastiani</a></li>
+<li>Segar, Francis, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; William, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+<li>Seghers, Daniel, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+<li>Semitecolo, Nicolo, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+<li>Shee, Sir Martin Archer, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+<li>Signorelli, Luca, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+<li>Smith, John, Catalogue Raisonné, quoted, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li>
+<li>Snyders, Frans, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159-160</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+<li>Sodoma, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+<li>Spanish School, <a href="#Page_108">108-120</a></li>
+<li>Spinello of Arezzo, or Aretino, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
+<li>Squarcione, Francesco, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66-67</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+<li>Steen, Jan, <a href="#Page_186">186-187</a></li>
+<li>Stevens, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+<li>Streetes, Guillim, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+<li>Strozzi, Bernard, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li>
+<li>Sueur, Eustache le, <a href="#Page_232">232-233</a></li>
+<li>Swanenburg, Jacob van, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Tassi, Agostino, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+<li>Teniers, Abraham, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; David, the Elder, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; the Younger, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+<li>Terburg, Gerard, <a href="#Page_190">190-191</a></li>
+<li>Thornhill, Sir James, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+<li>Thulden, Theodore van, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li>
+<li>Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+<li><a name="Tintoretto" id="Tintoretto"></a>Tintoretto, Il, <a href="#Page_99">99-102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+<li><a name="Titian" id="Titian"></a>Titian, <a href="#Page_78">78-94</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+<li>Turner, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314-320</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Claude's influence on, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+<li>Tuscan Schools, <a href="#Page_1">1-58</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Uccello, Paolo, <a href="#Page_23">23-24</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+<li>Umbrian or Perugian School, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Vaga, Piero del, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+<li>Van Balen, Henry, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
+<li>Van Cleef, Joos, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+<li>Van de Velde, Adrian, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Willem, the Elder, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; the Younger, <a href="#Page_206">206-208</a></li>
+<li>Van der Helst, Bartholomew, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170-171</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li>
+<li>Van der Weyden, Roger, <a href="#Page_132">132-134</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+<li>Van Dyck, Anthony, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160-163</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; in England, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">339</a></span></li>
+<li>Van Eyck, Hubert, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Jan, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
+<li>Van Goyen, Jan, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202-203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+<li>Van Huysum, James, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Jan, <a href="#Page_201">201-202</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Justus, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Michael, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+<li>Van Leyden, Lucas, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+<li>Van Loo, Carle, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+<li>Van Mabuse, Jan, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+<li>Van Mieris, Frans, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+<li>Van Oort, Adam, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+<li>Van Orley, Bernard, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+<li>Van Ostade, Adrian, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Isaac, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+<li>Van Swanenburg, Jacob, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+<li>Van Thulden, Theodore, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li>
+<li>Vasari, quoted, on Andrea del Sarto, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; on Botticelli, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; on Cimabue, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; on Fra Angelico, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; on Fra Filippo Lippi, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; on Giotto, <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; on introduction of oil painting, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; on Leonardo da Vinci, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; on Masaccio, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; on Michelangelo, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; on Pollaiuolo, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; on the Quattrocentists, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; on Raphael, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; on Spinello of Aretino, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; on Titian, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; <i>Refs.</i> to, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+<li>Vecellio, Tiziano. <i>See</i> <a href="#Titian">Titian</a></li>
+<li>Velasquez, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110-118</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+<li>Venetian Schools, <a href="#Page_59">59-108</a></li>
+<li>Verhaegt, Tobias, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+<li>Vermeer of Delft, Jan, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+<li>Veronese, Paolo, <a href="#Page_103">103-104</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
+<li>Verrocchio, Andrea, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+<li>Vertue, George, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+<li>Vinci, Leonardo da, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33-40</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+<li>Vivarini Family, the, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Antonio, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Bartolommeo, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Luigi, or Alvise, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+<li>Vlieger, Simon de, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+<li>Vollon, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>Volterra, Daniele da, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; Francesco da, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
+<li>Vos, Simon de, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Waagen, Dr, quoted, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122-123</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+<li>Walker, Robert, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+<li>Walpole, quoted, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+<li>Wals, Gottfried, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+<li>Watteau, Antoine, <a href="#Page_235">235-239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+<li>Watts, George Frederick, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+<li>Weenix, Jan Baptist, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; his son, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li>
+<li>Wesel, Hermann Wynrich von, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+<li>West, Benjamin, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li>
+<li>Weyden, Roger van der, <a href="#Page_132">132-134</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+<li>Whistler, James M'Neill, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li>Wilhelm, Meister, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+<li>Wills, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+<li>Wils, Jan, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+<li>Wilson, Richard, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+<li>Wint, Peter de, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+<li>Wouvermans, Philip, <a href="#Page_192">192-193</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+<li>Wyczewa, M. de, quoted, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+<li>Wynants, Jan, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203-204</a></li>
+<li class="letr">Zampieri, Domenico, or Domenichino, <a href="#Page_107">107-108</a></li>
+<li>Zoffany, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+<li>Zurbaran, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3 class="top5">FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+<ol>
+<li class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a title="Return to text." href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> National Gallery Catalogue.</p></li>
+
+<li class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a title="Return to text." href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> "Titien," par Henry Caro-Delvaille. Librairie Félix Alcan.</p></li>
+
+<li class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a title="Return to text." href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> An old copy of this picture is in the Edinburgh Gallery.</p></li>
+</ol>
+</div>
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Six Centuries of Painting, by Randall Davies
+
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Six Centuries of Painting, by Randall Davies
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Six Centuries of Painting
+
+Author: Randall Davies
+
+Release Date: July 28, 2009 [EBook #29532]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIX CENTURIES OF PAINTING ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Chuck Greif and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SIX CENTURIES OF PAINTING
+
+[Illustration; VITTORE PISANO
+
+(CALLED PISANELLO)
+
+ST ANTHONY AND ST GEORGE
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+
+
+
+SIX CENTURIES OF
+
+PAINTING
+
+BY
+
+RANDALL DAVIES
+
+[Illustration]
+
+LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
+
+67 LONG ACRE, W.C., AND EDINBURGH
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+TUSCAN SCHOOLS--                                                    PAGE
+
+I. GIOVANNI CIMABUE                                                    1
+
+II. GIOTTO DI BONDONE                                                 10
+
+III. THE EARLIER QUATTROCENTISTS                                      18
+
+IV. THE LATER QUATTROCENTISTS                                         26
+
+V. LEONARDO DA VINCI                                                  33
+
+VI. MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI                                           40
+
+VII. RAFFAELLO DI SANTI                                               47
+
+
+VENETIAN SCHOOLS--
+
+I. THE VIVARINI AND BELLINI                                           59
+
+II. TIZIANO VECELLIO                                                  78
+
+III. PAOLO VERONESE AND IL TINTORETTO                                 99
+
+
+SPANISH SCHOOL                                                       109
+
+
+FLEMISH SCHOOL--
+
+I. HUBERT AND JAN VAN EYCK                                           121
+
+II. PETER PAUL RUBENS                                                143
+
+III. THE PUPILS OF RUBENS                                            157
+
+
+DUTCH SCHOOL--
+
+I. FRANS HALS                                                        165
+
+II. REMBRANDT VAN RYN                                                171
+
+III. PAINTERS OF _GENRE_                                             183
+
+IV. PAINTERS OF ANIMALS                                              191
+
+V. PAINTERS OF LANDSCAPE                                             202
+
+
+GERMAN SCHOOLS                                                       211
+
+
+FRENCH SCHOOL--
+
+I. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY                                           225
+
+II. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY                                           235
+
+
+THE ENGLISH SCHOOL--
+
+I. THE EARLY PORTRAIT PAINTERS                                       251
+
+II. WILLIAM HOGARTH                                                  258
+
+III. SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS AND THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH                     267
+
+IV. THE CLOSE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY                              295
+
+
+THE NINETEENTH CENTURY--
+
+I. THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT                                              305
+
+II. EUGENE DELACROIX                                                 309
+
+III. RUSKIN AGAINST THE PHILISTINES                                  313
+
+IV. MANET AND WHISTLER AGAINST THE WORLD                             324
+
+V. THE ROYAL ACADEMY                                                 329
+
+
+INDEX                                                                335
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+VITTORE PISANO (called PISANELLO)--St Anthony
+and St George                                            _Frontispiece_
+National Gallery, London
+
+PLATE                                                        FACING PAGE
+
+I. FILIPPO LIPPI--The Annunciation                                    22
+National Gallery, London
+
+II. SANDRO BOTTICELLI(?)--The Virgin and Child                        26
+
+National Gallery, London
+
+III. SANDRO BOTTICELLI--Portrait of a Young Man                       28
+National Gallery, London
+
+IV. SANDRO BOTTICELLI--The Nativity                                   32
+National Gallery, London
+
+V. LEONARDO DA VINCI--The Virgin of the Rocks                         36
+National Gallery, London
+
+VI. PIETRO PERUGINO--Central Portion of Altar-Piece                   50
+National Gallery, London
+
+VII. RAPHAEL--The Ansidei Madonna                                     52
+National Gallery, London
+
+VIII. RAPHAEL--La Belle Jardiniere                                    52
+Louvre, Paris
+
+IX. RAPHAEL--Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione                       56
+Louvre, Paris
+
+X. CORREGGIO--Mercury, Cupid, and Venus                               58
+National Gallery, London
+
+XI. ANDREA MANTEGNA--The Madonna della Vittoria                       68
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XII. GIOVANNI BELLINI--The Doge Loredano                              72
+National Gallery, London
+
+XIII. GIORGIONE--Venetian Pastoral                                    78
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XIV. TITIAN--Portrait said to be of Ariosto                           84
+National Gallery, London
+
+XV. TITIAN--The Holy Family                                           86
+National Gallery, London
+
+XVI. TITIAN--The Entombment                                           88
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XVII. TINTORETTO--St George and the Dragon                           102
+National Gallery, London
+
+XVIII. VELAZQUEZ--The Infante Philip Prosper                         112
+Imperial Gallery, Vienna
+
+XIX. VELAZQUEZ--The Rokeby Venus                                     118
+National Gallery, London
+
+XX. MURILLO--A Boy Drinking                                          120
+National Gallery, London
+
+XXI. JAN VAN EYCK--Jan Arnolfini and His Wife                        128
+National Gallery, London
+
+XXII. JAN VAN EYCK--Portrait of the Painter's Wife                   132
+Town Gallery, Bruges
+
+XXIII. JAN MABUSE--Portrait of Jean Carondelet                       136
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XXIV. SIR PETER PAUL RUBENS--Portrait of Helene Fourment,
+the Artist's Second Wife, and two of Her Children                    150
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XXV. FRANS HALS--Portrait of a Lady                                  168
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XXVI. REMBRANDT--Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels                     176
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XXVII. REMBRANDT--Portrait of an Old Lady                            182
+National Gallery, London
+
+XXVIII. TERBORCH--The Concert                                        186
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XXIX. GABRIEL METSU--The Music Lesson                                188
+National Gallery, London
+
+XXX. PIETER DE HOOCH--Interior of a Dutch House                      190
+National Gallery, London
+
+XXXI. JAN VERMEER--The Lace Maker                                    192
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XXXII. "THE MASTER OF ST BARTHOLOMEW"--Two Saints                    212
+National Gallery, London
+
+XXXIII. HANS HOLBEIN--Portrait of Christina, Duchess of
+Milan                                                                224
+National Gallery, London
+
+XXXIV. ANTOINE WATTEAU--L'Indifferent                                236
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XXXV. JEAN-BAPTISTE GREUZE--The Broken Pitcher                       244
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XXXVI. JEAN HONORE FRAGONARD--L'Etude                                248
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XXXVII. HANS HOLBEIN--Anne of Cleves                                 256
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XXXVIII. WILLIAM HOGARTH--The Shrimp Girl                            260
+National Gallery, London
+
+XXXIX. SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS--Lady Cockburn and Her Children           274
+National Gallery, London
+
+XL. SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS--The Age of Innocence                        284
+National Gallery, London
+
+XLI. THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH--The Market Cart                            290
+National Gallery, London
+
+XLII. GEORGE ROMNEY--The Parson's Daughter                           298
+National Gallery, London
+
+XLIII. GEORGE ROMNEY--Mrs Robinson--"Perdita"                        300
+Hertford House, London
+
+XLIV. JACQUES LOUIS DAVID--Portrait of Mme. Recamier                 306
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XLV. EUGENE DELACROIX--Dante and Virgil                              310
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XLVI. JOHN CONSTABLE--The Hay Wain                                   312
+National Gallery, London
+
+XLVII. J. M. W. TURNER--Crossing the Brook                           316
+National Gallery of British Art, London
+
+XLVIII. EDOUARD MANET--Olympia                                       326
+Louvre, Paris
+
+XLIX. J. M. WHISTLER--Lillie in Our Alley                            328
+In the possession of John J. Cowan, Esq.
+
+
+
+
+_INTRODUCTORY_
+
+
+So far as it concerns pictures painted upon panel or canvas in tempera
+or oils, the history of painting begins with Cimabue, who worked in
+Florence during the latter half of the thirteenth century. That the art
+was practised in much earlier times may readily be admitted, and the
+life-like portraits in the vestibule at the National Gallery taken from
+Greek tombs of the second or third century are sufficient proofs of it;
+but for the origin of painting as we are now generally accustomed to
+understand the term we need go no further back than to Cimabue and his
+contemporaries, from whose time the art has uninterruptedly developed
+throughout Europe until the present day.
+
+Oddly enough it is to the Christian Church, whose early fathers put
+their heaviest ban upon all forms of art, that this development is
+almost wholly due. The reaction against paganism began to die out when
+the Christian religion was more firmly established, and representations
+of Christ and the Saints executed in mosaic became more and more to be
+regarded as a necessary, or at any rate a regular embellishment of the
+numerous churches which were built. For these mosaics panel paintings
+began in time to be substituted; but it was long before any of the human
+feeling of art was to be found in them. The influence of S. Francis of
+Assisi was needed to prepare the way, and it was only towards the close
+of the thirteenth century that the breath of life began to be infused
+into these conventional representations, and painting became a living
+art.
+
+As it had begun in Italy, under the auspices of the Church, so it
+chiefly developed in that country; at first in Florence and Siena, later
+in Rome, whither its greatest masters were summoned by the Pope, and in
+Venice, where, farther from the ecclesiastical influence, it flourished
+more exuberantly, and so became more capable of being transplanted to
+other countries. In Germany, however, and the Low Countries it had
+appeared early enough to be considered almost as an independent growth,
+though not till considerably later were the northern schools capable of
+sustaining the reputation given them by the Van Eycks and Roger Van der
+Weyden.
+
+But for the effects of the Renaissance in Italy in the fifteenth century
+it is questionable whether painting would ever have spread as it did in
+the sixteenth and seventeenth to Spain and France. But by the close of
+the fifteenth century such enormous progress had been made by the
+Italian painters towards the realisation of human action and emotion in
+pictures, that from being merely an accessory of religious
+establishments, painting had become as much a part of the recognised
+means of intellectual enjoyment of everyday life as music, sculpture, or
+even the refinements of food and clothing.
+
+Portraiture, in particular, had gradually advanced to a foremost place
+in painting. Originally it was used exclusively for memorials of the
+dead--as we have seen in the case of the paintings from the Greek
+tombs--and on coins and medals. But gradually the practice arose, as
+painters became more skilful in representing the appearance of the
+model, of introducing the features and figures of actual personages into
+religious pictures, in the character of "donors," and as these increased
+in importance, the sacred personages were gradually relegated to the
+background, and ultimately dispensed with altogether. At the beginning
+of the sixteenth century we find Hans Holbein (as an example)
+recommended by Erasmus to Sir Thomas More as a portrait painter who
+wished to try his fortunes in England; and during the rest of his life
+painting practically nothing but portraits.
+
+By the end of the sixteenth century, if not earlier, painting had become
+almost as much a business as an art, not only in Italy but in most other
+countries in Europe, and was established in each country more or less
+independently. So that making every allowance for the various foreign
+influences that affected each different country, it is convenient to
+trace the development of painting in each country separately, and we
+arrange our chapters accordingly under the titles of Tuscan and Venetian
+(the two main divisions of Italian painting), Spanish, Flemish, Dutch,
+German, French, and British Schools. In each country, as might be
+expected--and especially in Italy--there are subdivisions; but, broadly
+speaking, the lover of pictures will be quite well enough equipped for
+the enjoyment of them if he is able to recognise their country, and
+roughly their period, without troubling about the particular district or
+personal influence of their origin.
+
+For while it is undoubtedly true that the more one knows about the
+history of painting in general the greater will be the appreciation of
+the various excellences which tend to perfection, it is absolutely
+ridiculous to suppose that only the learned in such matters are capable
+of deriving enjoyment from a beautiful picture, or of expressing an
+opinion upon it. In the first place, the picture is intended for the
+public, and the public have therefore the best right to say whether it
+pleases them or not--and why. And it may be noted as a positive fact
+that whenever the public, in any country, have a free choice in matters
+of art, that choice generally turns out to be right, and is ultimately
+endorsed by the best critics. Most of the vulgar art to be found in
+advertisements and the illustrated papers is put there by ignorant and
+vulgar providers, who imagine that the whole public are as ignorant and
+vulgar as themselves; whereas whenever a better standard of taste is
+given an opportunity, it never fails to find a welcome. Until Sir Henry
+Wood inaugurated the present regime, the Promenade Concerts at Covent
+Garden were popularly supposed to represent the national taste in music.
+Until the Temple Classics and Every Man's Library were published it was
+commonly supposed that the people at large cared for nothing but Bow
+Bells, the Penny Novelette, or such unclassical if alluring provender.
+In the domain of painting, the Royal Academy has such a firm and ancient
+hold on the popular imagination of the English that its influence is
+difficult to dispel; but there are many signs that its baneful
+ascendency is at length on the decline; and it is well known that the
+National Gallery is attracting more and more visitors and Burlington
+House less and less as the years go on.
+
+In the following attempt at a general survey of the history of
+painting--imperfect or ill-proportioned as it may appear to this or that
+specialist or lover of any particular school--I have thought it best to
+assume a fair amount of ignorance of the subject on the part of the
+reader, though without, I hope, taking any advantage of it, even if it
+exists; and I have therefore drawn freely upon several old histories and
+handbooks for both facts and opinions concerning the old masters and
+their works. In some cases, I think, a dead lion is decidedly better
+than a live dog.
+
+R. D.
+
+CHELSEA, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+_TUSCAN SCHOOLS_
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+GIOVANNI CIMABUE
+
+
+By the will of God, in the year 1240, we are told by Vasari, GIOVANNI
+CIMABUE, of the noble family of that name, was born in the city of
+Florence, to give the first light to the art of painting. Vasari's
+"Lives of the Painters" was first published in Florence in 1550, and
+with all its defects and all its inaccuracies, which have afforded so
+much food for contention among modern critics, it is still the principal
+source of our knowledge of the earlier history of painting as it was
+revived in Italy in the thirteenth century.
+
+Making proper allowance for Vasari's desire to glorify his own city, and
+to make a dignified commencement to his work by attributing to Cimabue
+more than was possibly his due, we need not be deterred by the very
+latest dicta of the learned from accepting the outlines of his life of
+Cimabue as an embodiment of the tradition of the time in which he
+lived--two centuries and a quarter after Cimabue--and, until
+contradicted by positive evidence, as worthy of general credence. In the
+popular mind Cimabue still remains "The Father of modern painting," and
+though his renown may have attracted more pictures and more legends to
+his name than properly belong to him, it is certain that Dante, his
+contemporary, wrote of him thus:--
+
+    Credette Cimabue nella pintura
+    Tener lo campo, ed ora ha Giotto il grido
+    Si che la fama di colui s'oscura.
+
+This is at least as important as anything written by a contemporary of
+William Shakespeare; and even if we are required to believe that some of
+his most important works are by another hand, his influence on the
+history of art is beyond question. Let us then follow Vasari a little
+further, and we shall find, at any rate, what is typical of the
+development of genius.
+
+"This youth," Vasari continues, "being considered by his father and
+others to give proof of an acute judgment and a clear understanding, was
+sent to Santa Maria Novella to study letters under a relation who was
+then master in grammar to the novices of that convent. But Cimabue,
+instead of devoting himself to letters, consumed the whole day in
+drawing men, horses, houses, and other various fancies on his books and
+different papers--an occupation to which he felt himself impelled by
+nature."
+
+This is exactly what is recorded of Reynolds, it may be noted, and very
+much the same as in the case of Gainsborough, Benjamin West--and many a
+modern painter.
+
+"This natural inclination was favoured by fortune, for the governors of
+the city had invited certain Greek (probably Byzantine) painters to
+Florence, for the purpose of restoring the art of painting, which had
+not merely degenerated but was altogether lost. These artists, among
+other works, began to paint the chapel of the Gondi in Santa Maria
+Novella, and Cimabue, often escaping from the school, and having
+already made a commencement of the art he was so fond of, would stand
+watching these masters at their work. His father, and the artists
+themselves, therefore concluded that he must be well endowed for
+painting, and thought that much might be expected from him if he devoted
+himself to it. Giovanni was accordingly, much to his delight, placed
+with these masters, whom he soon greatly surpassed both in design and
+colouring. For they, caring little for the progress of art, executed
+their works not in the excellent manner of the ancient Greeks, but in
+the rude modern style of their own day. Wherefore, though Cimabue
+imitated them, he very much improved the art, relieving it greatly from
+their uncouth manner and doing honour to his country by the name that he
+acquired and by the works which he performed. Of this we have evidence
+in Florence from the pictures which he painted there--as for example the
+front of the altar of Saint Cecilia and a picture of the Virgin, in
+Santa Croce, which was and still is (_i.e._ in 1550) attached to one of
+the pilasters on the right of the choir."
+
+Unfortunately the very first example cited pulls us up short alongside
+the official catalogue of the Uffizi Gallery (where the picture was
+placed in 1841), in which it is catalogued (No. 20) as "Unknown ...
+Vasari erroneously attributes it to Cimabue."
+
+Tiresome as it may seem to be thus distracted, at the very outset, by
+the question of authenticity, it is nevertheless desirable to start with
+a clear understanding that in surveying in a general way the history and
+development of painting, it will be quite hopeless to wait for the final
+word on the supposed authorship of every picture mentioned. In this
+instance, as it happens, there is no reason to question the modern
+catalogue, though that is by no means the same thing as denying that
+Cimabue painted the picture which existed in the church of S. Cecilia in
+Vasari's time. Is it more likely, it may be asked, that Vasari, who is
+accused of unduly glorifying Cimabue, would attribute to him a work not
+worthy of his fame, or that during the three centuries since Vasari
+wrote a substitution was effected? The other picture, the _Madonna and
+Child Enthroned_, which found its way into our National Gallery in 1857,
+is still officially catalogued as the work of Cimabue, and it is to be
+hoped that this precious relic, together with the Madonnas in the
+Louvre, the Florence Academy, and in the lower church at Assisi, may be
+long spared to us by the authority of the critics as "genuine
+productions" of the beloved master.
+
+On the general question, however, let me reassure the reader by stating
+that so far as possible I have avoided the mention of any pictures, in
+the following pages, about which there is any grave doubt, save in a few
+cases where tradition is so firmly established that it seems heartless
+to disturb it until final judgment is entered--of which the following
+examples of Cimabue's reputed work may be taken as types. The latest
+criticism seeks to deprive him of every single existing picture he is
+believed to have painted; those mentioned by Vasari which have perished
+may be considered equally unauthentic, but, as before mentioned, his
+account of them gives us as well as anything else the story of the
+beginnings of the art.
+
+Having afterwards undertaken, Vasari continues, to paint a large picture
+in the Abbey of the Santa Trinita in Florence for the monks of
+Vallombrosa, he made great efforts to justify the high opinion already
+formed of him and showed greater powers of invention, especially in the
+attitude of the Virgin, whom he depicted with the child in her arms and
+numerous angels around her, on a gold ground. This is the picture now in
+the Accademia in Florence. The frescoes next described are no longer in
+existence:--
+
+"Cimabue next painted in fresco at the hospital of the Porcellana at the
+corner of the Via Nuova which leads into the Borgo Ogni Santi. On the
+front of this building, which has the principal door in the centre, he
+painted the Virgin receiving the Annunciation from the angel, on one
+side, and Christ with Cleophas and Luke on the other, all the figures
+the size of life. In this work he departed more decidedly from the dry
+and formal manner of his instructors, giving more life and movement to
+the draperies, vestments and other accessories, and rendering all more
+flexible and natural than was common to the manner of those Greeks whose
+work were full of hard lines and sharp angles as well in mosaic as in
+painting. And this rude unskilful manner the Greeks had acquired not so
+much from study or settled purpose as from having servilely followed
+certain fixed rules and habits transmitted through a long series of
+years by one painter to another, while none ever thought of the
+amelioration of his design, the embellishment of his colouring, or the
+improvement of his invention."
+
+After describing Cimabue's activities at Pisa and Assisi with equal
+circumstance, Vasari passes to the famous _Rucellai Madonna_, now
+supposed to be by the hand of Duccio of Siena. However doubtful the
+story may appear in the light of modern criticism, historical or
+artistic, it certainly forms part of the history of painting--for its
+spirit if not for its accuracy--and as such it can never be too often
+quoted:--
+
+"He afterwards painted the picture of the Virgin for the Church of
+Santa Maria Novella, where it is suspended on high between the chapel of
+the Rucellai family and that of the Bardi. This picture is of larger
+size than any figure that had been painted down to those times, and the
+angels surrounding it make it evident that although Cimabue still
+retained the Greek manner, he was nevertheless gradually approaching the
+mode of outline and general method of modern times. Thus it happened
+that this work was an object of so much admiration to the people of that
+day--they having never seen anything better--that it was carried in
+solemn procession, with the sound of trumpets and other festal
+demonstration, from the house of Cimabue to the Church, he himself being
+highly rewarded and honoured for it. It is further reported, and may be
+read in certain records of old painters, that while Cimabue was painting
+this picture in a garden near the gate of S. Pietro, King Charles the
+Elder of Anjou passed through Florence, and the authorities of the city,
+among other marks of respect, conducted him to see the picture of
+Cimabue. When this work was thus shown to the King, it had not before
+been seen by anyone; wherefore all the men and women of Florence
+hastened in great crowds to admire it, making all possible demonstration
+of delight."
+
+Now whether or not Vasari was right in crediting Cimabue with these
+honours in Florence instead of Duccio in Siena, makes little difference
+in the story of the origin and early development of the art of painting.
+One may doubt the accuracy of the mosaic account of the Creation, the
+authorship of the Fourth Gospel or the Shakespearean poems, or the list
+of names of the Normans who are recorded to have fought with William the
+Conqueror. But what if one may? The Creation, the poems and plays of
+Shakespeare and the battle of Hastings are all of them historic facts,
+and neither science, nor literature, nor history is a penny the worse
+for the loose though perfectly understandable conditions under which
+these facts have been handed down to us. When we come down to times
+nearer to our own the accuracy of data is more easily ascertainable,
+though the confusion arising out of them often obscures their real
+significance; but in looking for origins we are content to ignore the
+details, provided we can find enough general information on which to
+form an idea of them. To these first chapters of Vasari, then, we need
+not hesitate to resort for the main sources of the earlier history of
+painting. Even so far as we have gone we have learnt several important
+facts as to the nature of the foundations on which the glorious
+structure was to be raised.
+
+First of all, it is apparent that the practice of painting, though
+strictly forbidden by the earliest Fathers of the Church, was used by
+the faithful in the Eastern churches for purposes of decoration, and was
+introduced into Italy--we may safely say Tuscany--for the same purpose.
+
+Second, that being transplanted into this new soil, it put forth such
+wonderful blossoms that it came to be cultivated with much more regard;
+and from being merely a necessary or conventional ornament of certain
+portions of the church, was soon accounted its greatest glory.
+
+Third, that it was accorded popular acclamation.
+
+Fourth, that its most attractive feature in the eyes of beholders was
+its life-like representation of the human form and other natural
+objects.
+
+Prosaic as these considerations may appear, they are nevertheless the
+fundamental principles that underlie the whole of the subsequent
+development of painting; and unless every picture in the world were
+destroyed, and the art of painting wholly lost for at least a thousand
+years, there could not be another picture produced which would not refer
+back through continuous tradition to one or every one of them. First,
+the basis of religion. Second, the development peculiar to the soil.
+Third, the imitation of nature. Fourth, the approbation of the
+public--there we have the four cardinal points in the chart of painting.
+
+It would be easy enough to contend that painting had nothing whatever to
+do with religion--if only by reference to the godless efforts of some of
+the modernists; but such a contention could only be based on the
+imperfect recognition of what religion actually means. In Italy in the
+thirteenth century, as in Spain in the seventeenth, it meant the Church
+of Rome. In Germany of the sixteenth, as in England in the eighteenth,
+it meant something totally different. To put it a little differently,
+all painting that is worth so calling has been done to the glory of God;
+and after making due allowance for human frailties of every variety, it
+is hard to say that among all the hundreds of great and good painters
+there has ever been one who was not a good man.
+
+As for the influence of environment, or nationality, this is so
+universally recognised that the term "school" more often means locality
+than tuition. We talk generally of the French, English, or Dutch
+schools, and more particularly of the Paduan, Venetian, or Florentine.
+It is only when we hesitate to call our national treasure a Botticelli
+or a Bellini that we add the words "school of" to the name of the master
+who is fondly supposed to have inspired its author. The difference
+between a wood block of the early eighteenth century executed in
+England and Japan respectively may be cited as an extreme instance of
+the effect of locality on idea, when the method is identical.
+
+With reference to the imitation of nature, at the mere mention of which
+modernists become so furious, it is worth recalling that the earliest
+story about painting relates to Zeuxis, who is said to have painted a
+bunch of grapes with such skill that the birds ignored the fruit and
+pecked at the picture. In later times we hear of Rembrandt being the
+butt of his pupils, who, knowing his love of money, used to paint coins
+on the floor; and there are plenty of stories of people painting flies
+and other objects so naturally as to deceive the unwary spectator.
+Vasari is continually praising his compatriots for painting "like the
+life."
+
+Lastly, the approbation, or if possible the acclamation, of the public
+has seldom if ever been unconsidered by the artist. Where it has, it has
+only been the greatest genius that has been able to exist without it. A
+man who has anything to say must have somebody to say it to; and though
+a painter may seem to be wasting the best part of his life in trying to
+make the people understand what he has to say in his language instead of
+talking to them in their own common tongue, it is rarely that he fails
+in the end, even if, alas for him, the understanding comes too late to
+be of any benefit to himself.
+
+Cimabue's last work is said to be a figure, which was left unfinished,
+of S. John, in mosaic, for the Duomo at Pisa. This was in 1302, which is
+supposed to be the date of his death, though Vasari puts it two years
+earlier, at the time he was engaged with the architect Arnolfo Lapi in
+superintending the building of the Duomo in Florence, where he is
+buried.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+GIOTTO DI BONDONE
+
+
+While according all due honour, and probably more, to Cimabue as the
+originator of modern painting, it is to his pupil, GIOTTO, that we are
+accustomed to look for the first developments of its possibilities. Had
+Cimabue's successors been as conservative as his instructors, we might
+still be not very much better off than if he had never lived. For much
+as there is to admire in Cimabue's painting, it is only the first flush
+of the dawn which it heralded, and though containing the germ of the
+future development of the art, is yet without any of the glory which in
+the fulness of time was to result from it.
+
+To Giotto, Vasari considers, "is due the gratitude which the masters in
+painting owe to Nature, seeing that he alone succeeded in resuscitating
+art and restoring her to a path that may be called the true one; and
+that the art of design, of which his contemporaries had little if any
+knowledge, was by his means effectually recalled to life." This seems to
+detract in some degree from his eulogies of Cimabue; but it is to the
+last sentence that our attention should be directed, which implies that
+in profiting by the master's example he succeeded in extending the
+possibilities of the new art beyond its first limits. Cimabue, we may
+believe, drew his Virgins and Saints from living models, whereas his
+predecessors had merely repeated formulas laid down for them by long
+tradition. Giotto went further, and extended his scope to the world at
+large. For the plain gold background he substituted the landscape, thus
+breaking down, as it were, a great wall, and seeing beyond it. Nor was
+this innovation merely a technical one--it was the man's nature that
+effected it and made his art a living thing.
+
+Giotto, who was born in 1276, was the son of a simple husbandman, who
+lived at Vespignano, about fourteen miles from Florence. Cimabue chanced
+upon the boy when he was only about ten years old, tending his father's
+sheep, and was astonished to find that he was occupied in making a
+drawing of one of them upon a smooth piece of rock with a sharp stone.
+He was so pleased with this that he asked to be allowed to take him back
+to Florence, and the boy proved so apt a pupil that before very long he
+was regularly employed in painting.
+
+His influence was not confined to Florence, or even to Tuscany, but the
+whole of Italy was indebted to him for a new impulse in art, and he is
+said to have followed Pope Clement V. to Avignon and executed many
+pictures there. Giotto was not only a painter, but his name is also
+famous in the history of architecture: the wonderful Campanile adjoining
+the Duomo in Florence was designed by him, and the foundations laid and
+the building erected under his instructions. On sculpture too he
+exercised a considerable influence, as may be seen in the panels and
+statues which adorn the lower part of the tower, suggested if not
+actually designed by Giotto, and carved by Andrea Pisano.
+
+Chief of the earlier works of Giotto are his frescoes in the under
+church at Assisi, and in these may be seen the remarkable fertility of
+invention with which he endowed his successors. Instead of the
+conventional Madonna and Child, and groups of saints and angels, we have
+here whole legends represented in a series of pictures of almost
+dramatic character. In the four triangular compartments of the groined
+vaulting are the three vows of the Franciscan Order, namely, Poverty,
+Chastity, and Obedience, and in the fourth the glorification of the
+saint. In the first, the Vow of Poverty, it is significant to find that
+he has taken his subject from Dante. Poverty appears as a woman whom
+Christ gives in marriage to S. Francis: she stands among thorns; in the
+foreground are two youths mocking her, and on either side a group of
+angels as witnesses of the holy union. On the left is a youth, attended
+by an angel, giving his cloak to a poor man; on the right are the rich
+and great, who are invited by an angel to approach, but turn scornfully
+away. The other designs appear to be Giotto's own invention. Chastity,
+as a young woman, sits in a fortress surrounded by walls, and angels pay
+her devotion. On one side are laymen and churchmen led forward by S.
+Francis, and on the other Penance, habited as a hermit, driving away
+earthly love and impurity. S. Francis in glory is more conventional, as
+might be expected from the nature of the subject.
+
+In the ancient Basilica of S. Peter in Rome Giotto made the celebrated
+mosaic of the _Navicella_, which is now in the vestibule of S. Peter's.
+It represents a ship, in which are the disciples, on a stormy sea.
+According to the early Christian symbolisation the ship denoted the
+Church. In the foreground on the right the Saviour, walking on the
+waves, rescues Peter. Opposite sits a fisherman in tranquil expectation,
+typifying the confident hope of the simple believer. This mosaic has
+frequently been moved, and has undergone so much restoration that only
+the composition can be attributed to Giotto.
+
+Of the paintings of scriptural history attributed to Giotto very few
+remain, and the greater part of those have in recent times been
+pronounced to be the work of his followers. Foremost, however, among the
+undoubted examples are paintings in the Chapel of the Madonna dell'Arena
+at Padua, which was erected in 1303. In thirty-eight pictures, extending
+in three rows along the wall, is contained the life of the Virgin. The
+ground of the vaulting is blue studded with gold stars, among which
+appear the heads of Christ and the prophets, while above the arch of the
+choir is the Saviour in a glory of angels. Combined with these sacred
+scenes and personages are introduced fitting allusions to the moral
+state of man, the lower part of the side walls containing, in medallions
+painted in monochrome, allegorical figures of the virtues and vices--the
+former feminine and ideal, the latter masculine and individual--while
+the entrance wall is covered with the wonderful _Last Judgment_.
+
+Here, as in his allegorical pieces, Giotto appears as a great innovator,
+a number of situations suggested by the Scriptures being now either
+represented for the first time or seen in a totally new form. Well-known
+subjects are enriched with numerous subordinate figures, making the
+picture more truthful and more intelligible; as in the Flight into
+Egypt, where the Holy Family is accompanied by a servant, and three
+other figures are introduced to complete the composition. In the Raising
+of Lazarus, too, the disciples behind the Saviour on the one side and
+the astonished multitude on the other form two choruses, an arrangement
+which is followed, but with considerable modification, in Ouwater's
+unique picture of the same subject now in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum at
+Berlin. This approach to dramatic reality sometimes assumes a character
+which, as Kugler puts it, oversteps the strict limits of the higher
+ecclesiastical style. It is worth noting, however, that the early
+Netherlandish school--as we shall see in a later chapter--developed this
+characteristic to a far greater extent, continuing the tradition handed
+down, quite independently of Giotto, through illuminated manuscripts,
+and with less of that expression of the highest religious or moral
+feeling which is so evident in Giotto.
+
+The few existing altar-pieces of Giotto are less important than his
+frescoes, inasmuch as they do not admit of the exhibition of his higher
+and most original gifts. Two signed examples are a _Coronation of the
+Virgin_ in Santa Croce at Florence, and a _Madonna_, with saints and
+angels on the side panels, originally in S. Maria degli Angeli at
+Bologna, and now in the Brera at Milan. The latter, however, is not now
+recognised as his. The earliest authentic example is the so-called
+Stefaneschi altar-piece, painted in 1298 for the same patron who
+commissioned the _Navicella_. Giotto's highest merit consists especially
+in the number of new subjects which he introduced, in the life-like and
+spiritual expression with which he heightened all familiar occurrences
+and scenes, and in the choice of the moment of representation. In all
+these no earlier Christian painter can be compared with him. Another and
+scarcely less important quality he possessed is in the power of
+conveying truth of character. The faces introduced into some of his
+compositions bear an inward guarantee of their lively resemblance to
+some living model, and this characteristic seems to have been eagerly
+seized upon by his immediate followers for emulation, as is noticeable
+in two of the principal works--in the Bargello at Florence, and in the
+church of the Incoronata at Naples--formerly attributed to him but now
+relegated to his pupils. The portrait of Dante in a fresco on the wall
+of the Bargello shows a deep and penetrating mind, and in the
+_Sacraments_ at Naples we find heads copied from life with obvious
+fidelity and such a natural conception of particular scenes as brings
+them to the mind of the spectator with extraordinary distinctness.
+
+Of Giotto's numerous followers in the fourteenth century it is
+impossible in the present work to give any particular account, but of
+his influence at large on the practice as on the treatment and
+conception of painting at this stage of its development, one or two
+examples may be cited as typical of the progress he urged, such as the
+frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa. This wonderful cloister, which
+measures four hundred feet in length and over a hundred in
+width--traditionally the dimensions of Noah's ark--was founded by the
+Archbishop Ubaldo, before 1200, on his return from Palestine bringing
+fifty-three ships laden with earth from the Holy Land. On this soil it
+was erected, and surrounded by high walls in 1278. The whole of these
+walls were afterwards adorned with paintings, in two tiers.
+
+So far as concerns the history of painting, the question of the
+authorship of these frescoes--which are by several distinct hands--is
+altogether subordinate to that of the subjects depicted and the manner
+in which they are treated, and we shall learn more from a general survey
+of them than by following out the fortunes of particular painters. The
+earliest are those on the east side, near the chapel, but more important
+are those on the north, of about the middle of the fourteenth century,
+which show a decided advance, both in feeling and execution, beyond
+Giotto. The first is _The Triumph of Death_, in which the supernatural
+is tempered with representations of what is mortal to an extent that
+already shows that painting was not to be confined to religious uses
+alone. All the pleasures and sorrows of life are here represented, on
+the earth; it is only in the sky that we see the demons and angels. On
+one side is a festive company of ladies and cavaliers, with hawks and
+dogs, seated under orange trees, with rich carpets at their feet, all
+splendidly dressed. A troubadour and a singing girl amuse them with
+songs, _amorini_ flutter around them and wave their torches. On the
+other side is another group, also a hunting party, on splendidly
+caparisoned horses, and accompanied by a train of attendants. On the
+mountains in the background are several hermits, who in contrast to the
+votaries of pleasure have attained in a life of contemplation and
+abstinence the highest term of human existence. Many of the figures are
+traditionally supposed to be portraits.
+
+The centre foreground is devoted to the less fortunate on earth, the
+beggars and cripples, and also corpses of the mighty; and with these we
+may turn to the allegorical treatment of the subject. To the first group
+descends the angel of death, swinging a scythe, and to her the
+unfortunate are stretching out their arms in supplication for an end to
+their sorrows. The second group, it will be seen, are tracing a path
+which leads to three open coffins in which lie the bodies of three
+princes in different stages of decay, while a monk on crutches--intended
+for S. Macarius--is pointing to them. The air is filled with angels and
+demons, some of whom receive the souls of the dead.
+
+A second picture is _The Last Judgment_, and a third _Hell_, the
+resemblance between which and the great altar-piece in the Strozzi
+Chapel in Santa Maria Novella at Florence, painted by Andrea Orcagna in
+1357, was formerly considered proof of the same authorship. They are
+now attributed to an unknown disciple of Pietro Lorenzetti, who was
+painting in Siena between 1306 and 1348, and is assumed to have been a
+pupil of Duccio.
+
+The fourth picture, apparently by another hand--possibly that of
+Lorenzetti himself--is _The Life of the Hermits_ in the wilderness of
+Thebais, composed of a number of single groups in which the calm life of
+contemplation is represented in the most varied manner. In front flows
+the Nile, and a number of hermits are seen on its banks still subjected
+to earthly occupations; they catch fish, hew wood, carry burdens to the
+city, etc. Higher up, in the mountains, they are more estranged from the
+world, but the Tempter follows them in various disguises, sometimes
+frightful, sometimes seducing. As a whole this composition is
+constructed in the ancient manner--as in Byzantine art--several series
+rising one above the other, each of equal size, and without any
+pretension to perspective: the single groups, at the same time, are
+executed with much grace and feeling.
+
+Next to this are six pictures of the history of S. Ranieri, and as many
+of the lives of S. Efeso and S. Potito. The latter are known to have
+been painted in 1392 by Spinello of Arezzo, or Spinello Aretino as he is
+called, of whose work we have some fragments in the National
+Gallery--alas too few! Two of these fragments are from his large fresco
+_The Fall of the Rebellious Angels_, painted for the church of S. Maria
+degli Angeli at Arezzo, which after being whitewashed over were rescued
+on the conversion of the church to secular uses. Vasari relates that
+when Spinello had finished this work the devil appeared to him in the
+night as horrible and deformed as in the picture, and asked him where he
+had seen him in so frightful a form, and why he had treated him so
+ignominiously. Spinello awoke from his dream with horror, fell into a
+state of abstraction, and soon afterwards died.
+
+On the third part of the south wall is represented the history of Job,
+in a series of paintings which were formerly attributed to Giotto
+himself, though it is now recognised that they cannot be of an earlier
+date than about 1370.
+
+The _Temptation of Job_ is by Taddeo Gaddi, and the others, painted in
+1372, are probably by Francesco da Volterra--not to be confused with the
+sixteenth century painter Daniele da Volterra.
+
+The paintings on the west wall are of inferior workmanship, while those
+on the north were the crowning achievement of Benozzo Gozzoli a century
+later.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE EARLIER QUATTROCENTISTS
+
+
+COMING to the second period in the development of the new art--roughly,
+that is to say, from 1400 to 1450--Vasari observes that even where there
+is no great facility displayed, yet the works evince great care and
+thought; the manner is more free and graceful, the colouring more varied
+and pleasing; more figures are employed in the compositions, and the
+drawing is more correct inasmuch as it is closer to nature. It was
+Masaccio, he says, who during this period superseded the manner of
+Giotto in regard to the painting of flesh, draperies, buildings, etc.,
+and also restored the practice of foreshortening and brought to light
+that modern manner which has been followed by all artists. More natural
+attitudes, and more effectual expression of feeling in the gestures and
+movements of the body resulted, as art seeking to approach the truth of
+nature by more correct drawing and to exhibit so close a resemblance to
+the face of the living person that each figure might at once be
+recognised. _Thus these masters constantly endeavoured to reproduce what
+they beheld in nature and no more; their works became consequently more
+carefully considered and better understood._ This gave them courage to
+lay down rules for perspective and to carry the foreshortenings
+precisely to the point which gives an exact imitation of the relief
+apparent in nature and the real form. Minute attention to the effects of
+light and shade and to various technical difficulties ensued, and
+efforts were made towards a better order of composition. Landscapes also
+were attempted; tracts of country, trees, shrubs, flowers, clouds, the
+air, and other natural objects were depicted with some resemblance to
+the realities represented; insomuch that the art might be said not only
+to have become ennobled, but to have attained to that flower of youth
+from which the fruit afterwards to follow might reasonably be looked
+for.
+
+Foremost among the painters of this period was FRA ANGELICO, or to give
+him his proper title, Frate Giovanni da Fiesole, who was born in 1387
+not far from Florence, and died in 1455. When he was twenty years old he
+joined the order of the preaching friars, and all his painting is
+devoted to religious subjects. He was a man of the utmost simplicity,
+and most holy in every act of his life. He disregarded all worldly
+advantages. Kindly to all, and temperate in all his habits, he used to
+say that he who practised the art of painting had need of quiet, and
+should live without cares and anxious thoughts; adding that he who would
+do the work of Christ should perpetually remain with Christ. He was most
+humble and modest, and in his painting he gave evidence of piety and
+devotion as well as of ability, and the saints that he painted have more
+of the air of sanctity than have those of any other master.
+
+It was the custom of Fra Angelico to abstain from retouching or
+improving any painting once finished. He altered nothing, but left all
+as it was done the first time, believing, as he said, that such was the
+will of God. It is also affirmed that he would never take his brushes in
+hand until he had first offered a prayer, and he is said never to have
+painted a crucifix without tears streaming from his eyes, and in the
+countenance and attitude of his figures it is easy to perceive proof of
+his sincerity, his goodness, and the depth of his devotion to the
+religion of Christ.
+
+This is well seen in the picture of the _Coronation of the Virgin_,
+which is now in the Louvre (No. 1290). "Superior to all his other
+works," Vasari says of this masterpiece, "and one in which he surpassed
+himself, is a picture in the Church of San Domenico at Fiesole; in this
+work he proves the high quality of his powers as well as the profound
+intelligence he possessed of the art he practised. The subject is the
+Coronation of the Virgin by Jesus Christ; the principal figures are
+surrounded by a choir of angels, among whom are a vast number of saints
+and holy personages, male and female. These figures are so numerous, so
+well executed in attitudes, so various, and with expressions of the head
+so richly diversified, that one feels infinite pleasure and delight in
+regarding them. Nay, one is convinced that those blessed spirits can
+look no otherwise in heaven itself, or, to speak under correction, could
+not if they had forms appear otherwise; for all the saints male and
+female assembled here have not only life and expression most delicately
+and truly rendered, but the colouring also of the whole work would seem
+to have been given by the hand of a saint or of an angel like
+themselves. It is not without sufficient reason therefore that this
+excellent ecclesiastic is always called Frate Giovanni Angelico. The
+stories from the life of Our Lady and of San Domenico which adorn the
+predella, moreover, are in the same divine manner; and I for myself can
+affirm with truth that I never see this work but it appears something
+new, nor can I ever satisfy myself with the sight of it or have enough
+of beholding it."
+
+No less beautiful are the five compartments of the predella to the
+altar-piece still in San Domenico at Fiesole--which were purchased for
+the National Gallery in 1860 at the then alarming price of L3500--with
+no less than two hundred and sixty little figures of saintly personages,
+"so beautiful," as Vasari says, "that they appear to be truly beings of
+Paradise."
+
+FRA FILIPPO LIPPI, born in Florence about 1406, and dying there in 1469,
+was the exact antithesis of Fra Angelico, both in his private life and
+in the method of his painting. He was just as earthly in both respects
+as Fra Angelico was heavenly. As a child he was put with the Carmelites,
+and as he showed an inclination for drawing rather than for study, he
+was allowed every facility for studying the newly painted chapel of the
+Branacci, and followed the manner of Masaccio so closely that it was
+said that the spirit of that master had entered into his body. It is
+only fair to Masaccio to add that this means his artistic spirit, for
+Filippo's moral character was by no means exemplary. The story of one of
+his best-known works, _The Nativity_, which is now in the Louvre (No.
+1343), is thus related by Vasari:--"Having received a commission from
+the nuns of Santa Margherita, at Prato, to paint a picture for the high
+altar of their church, he chanced one day to see the daughter of
+Francesco Buti, a citizen of Florence, who had been sent to the convent
+as a novice. Filippo, after a glance at Lucrezia--for that was her
+name--was so taken with her beauty that he prevailed upon the nuns to
+allow him to paint her as the Virgin. This resulted in his falling so
+violently in love with her that he induced her to run away with him.
+Resisting every effort of her father and of the nuns to make her leave
+Filippo, she remained with him, and bore him a son who lived to be
+almost as famous a painter as his father. He was called Filippino
+Lippi."
+
+The picture of S. John and six saints in the National Gallery (No. 677)
+also recalls the story of his wildness, inasmuch as it came from the
+Palazzo Medici, where Filippo worked for the great Cosimo di Medici. It
+was well known that Filippo paid no attention to his work when he was
+engaged in the pursuit of his pleasures, and so Cosimo shut him up in
+the palace so that he might not waste his time in running about while
+working for him. But Filippo after a couple of days' confinement made a
+rope out of his bed clothes, and let himself down from the window, and
+for several days gave himself up to his own amusements. When Cosimo
+found that he had disappeared, he had search made for him, and at last
+Filippo returned; after which Cosimo was afraid to shut him up again in
+view of the risk he had run in descending from the window.
+
+Vasari considers that Filippo excelled in his smaller pictures--"In
+these he surpassed himself, imparting to them a grace and beauty than
+which nothing finer could be imagined. Examples of this may be seen in
+the predellas of all the works painted by him. He was indeed an
+
+[Illustration: PLATE I.--FILIPPO LIPPI
+
+THE ANNUNCIATION
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+artist of such power that in his own time he was surpassed by none;
+therefore it is that he has not only been always praised by
+Michelangelo, but in many particulars has been imitated by him."
+
+As a contributor to the progress of the art of painting he is credited
+by Vasari with two innovations, which may be seen in his paintings in
+the church of San Domenico at Prato, namely (1) the figures being larger
+than life, and thereby forming an example to later artists for giving
+true grandeur to large figures; and (2) certain figures clothed in
+vestments but little used at that time, whereby the minds of other
+artists were awakened and began to depart from that sameness which
+should rather be called obsolete monotony than antique simplicity.
+
+It is noticeable that despite his bad character--which is said to have
+been the cause of his death by poison--all his work was in religious
+subjects. He was painting the chapel in the Church of Our Lady at
+Spoleto when, in 1469, he died.
+
+PAOLO UCCELLO, as he was called, was born at Florence in 1397, and died
+there in 1475. His real name was Paolo di Dono, but he was so fond of
+painting animals and birds--especially the latter--that he officially
+signed himself as Paolo Uccello. He devoted so much of his time,
+however, to the study of perspective, that both his life and his work
+suffered thereby. His wife used to relate that he would stand the whole
+night through beside his writing table, and when she entreated him to
+come to bed, would only say, "Oh, what a delightful thing is this
+perspective!" Donatello, the sculptor, is said to have told him that in
+his ceaseless study of perspective he was leaving the substance for the
+shadow; but Donatello was not a painter.
+
+Before his time the painters had not studied the question of
+perspective scientifically. Giotto had made no attempt at it, and
+Masaccio only came nearer to realising it by chance. Brunelleschi, the
+architect, laid down its first principles, but it was Uccello who first
+put these principles into practice in painting, and thereby paved the
+way for his successors to walk firmly upon.
+
+How he struggled with the difficulties of this vitally important subject
+may be seen in the large battle-piece at the National Gallery, and
+however crude and absurd this fine composition may seem at first sight
+to those who are only accustomed to looking at modern pictures, it must
+be remembered that Uccello is here struggling, as it were, with a savage
+monster which to succeeding painters has, through his efforts, been a
+submissive slave.
+
+This picture is one of four panels executed for the Bartolini family.
+One of the others is in the Louvre, and a third in the Uffizi.
+Another--or indeed almost the only other--work of Uccello which is now
+to be seen is the colossal painting in monochrome (_terra-verde_) on the
+wall of the cathedral at Florence. Strangely enough, this equestrian
+portrait commemorates an Englishman, Sir John Hawkwood, whose name is
+Italianized in the inscription into Giovanni Acuto. He was born at Sible
+Hedingham in Essex, the son of a tanner, and adventuring under Edward
+III. into France, found his way to Florence, where he served the State
+so well that they interred him, on his death in 1393, at the public
+expense, and subsequently commissioned Uccello to execute his monument.
+
+With all his devotion to science, the artist has committed the strange
+mistake of making the horse stand on two legs on the same side, the
+other two being lifted.
+
+TO MASACCIO, born in or about 1400, and dying in 1443, we owe a great
+step in art towards realism. It was he, says Vasari, who first attained
+the clear perception that _painting is only the close imitation, by
+drawing and colouring simply, of all the forms presented by nature
+showing them as they are produced by her, and that whoever shall most
+perfectly effect this may be said to have most nearly approached the
+summit of excellence_. The conviction of this truth, he adds, was the
+cause of Masaccio's attaining so much knowledge by means of perpetual
+study that he may be accounted among the first by whom art was in a
+measure delivered from rudeness and hardness; it was he who led the way
+to the realisation of beautiful attitudes and movements which were never
+exhibited by any painter before his day, while he also imparted a life
+and force to his figures, with a certain roundness and relief which
+render them truly characteristic and natural. Possessing great
+correctness of judgment, Masaccio perceived that all figures not
+sufficiently foreshortened to appear standing firmly on the plane
+whereon they are placed, but reared up on the points of their feet, must
+needs be deprived of all grace and excellence in the most important
+essentials. It is true that Uccello, in his studies of perspective, had
+helped to lessen this difficulty, but Masaccio managed his
+foreshortenings with much greater skill (though doubtless with less
+science) and succeeded better than any artist before him. Moreover, he
+imparted extreme softness and harmony to his paintings, and was careful
+to have the carnations of the heads and other nude parts in accordance
+with the colours of the draperies, which he represented with few and
+simple folds as they are seen in real life.
+
+Masaccio's principal remaining works are his frescoes in the famous
+Branacci Chapel at the Carmine convent in Florence. The work of
+decorating the chapel was begun by Masolino, but finished by Masaccio
+and Filippo Lippi. Vasari states it as a fact that all the most
+celebrated sculptors and painters had become excellent and illustrious
+by studying Masaccio's work in this chapel, and there is good reason to
+believe that Michelangelo and Raphael profited by their studies there,
+without mentioning all the names enumerated by Vasari. Seeing how
+important the influence of Masaccio was destined to become, I have
+ventured to italicise Vasari's opinions on the causes which operated in
+creating the Florentine style and in raising the art of painting to
+heights undreamt of by its earliest pioneers.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE LATER QUATTROCENTISTS
+
+
+THREE names stand out conspicuously from the ranks of Florentine
+painters in the latter half of the fifteenth century. But progress being
+one of the essential characteristics of the art at this period, as in
+all others, it is not surprising that the order of their fame coincides
+(inversely) pretty nearly with that of their date. First, ANTONIO
+POLLAIUOLO; second, SANDRO BOTTICELLI; and lastly, LEONARDO DA VINCI.
+
+It is important to note that Pollaiuolo was first apprenticed to a
+goldsmith, and attained such proficiency in that craft that he was
+employed by Lorenzo Ghiberti in the carving of the gates of the
+Baptistry, and subsequently set up a workshop for himself. In
+competition with Finiguerra he "executed various stories," says Vasari,
+"wherein he fully equalled his competitor in careful execution, while he
+surpassed him in beauty of design. The guild of merchants, being
+convinced
+
+[Illustration: PLATE II.--SANDRO BOTTICELLI (?)
+
+THE VIRGIN AND CHILD
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+of his ability, resolved to employ him to execute certain stories in
+silver for the altar of San Giovanni, and he performed them so
+excellently that they were acknowledged to be the best of all those
+previously executed by various masters.... In other churches also in
+Florence and Rome, and other parts of Italy, his miraculous enamels are
+to be seen."
+
+Now whether or not Antonio, like others, continued to exercise this
+craft, the account given by Vasari, as follows, of his learning to paint
+is extremely significant as showing how painting was regarded in
+relation to the kindred arts so widely practised in
+Florence:--"Eventually, considering that this craft did not secure a
+long life to the work of its masters, Antonio, desiring for his labours
+a more enduring memory, resolved to devote himself to it no longer; and
+his brother Piero being a painter, he joined himself to him for the
+purpose of learning the modes of proceeding in painting. He then found
+this to be an art so different from that of the goldsmith that he wished
+he had never addressed himself to it. But being impelled by shame rather
+than any advantage to be obtained, he acquired a knowledge of the
+processes used in painting in the course of a few months, and became an
+excellent master."
+
+As early as 1460 he had painted the three large canvases of _Hercules_
+for Lorenzo de'Medici, now no longer existing, but probably reflected in
+the two small panels of the same subject in the Uffizi. These alone are
+enough to mark him as one of the greatest artists of his time. The
+magnificent _David_, at Berlin, soon followed, and the little _Daphne
+and Apollo_ in our National Gallery. These were all accomplished
+unaided, but a little later he worked in concert with his brother Piero,
+to whom we are told to attribute parts of the painting of the large _S.
+Sebastian_ in the National Gallery, painted in 1475 for Antonio Pucci,
+from whose descendant it was purchased. "For the chapel of the Pucci in
+the church of San Sebastian," says Vasari, "Antonio painted the
+altar-piece--a remarkable and wonderfully executed work with numerous
+horses, many nude figures, and singularly beautiful foreshortenings.
+Also the portrait of S. Sebastian taken from life, that is to say, from
+Gino di Ludovico Capponi. This picture has been more extolled than any
+by Antonio. He has evidently copied nature to the utmost of his power,
+as we see more especially in one of the archers, who, bending towards
+the ground, and resting his bow against his breast, is employing all his
+force to prepare it for action; the veins are swelling, the muscles
+strained, and the man holds his breath as he applies all his strength to
+the effort. All the other figures in the diversity of their attitudes
+clearly prove the artist's ability and the labour he has bestowed on the
+work."
+
+It is in his superb rendering of the figure, especially in the nude,
+that Antonio Pollaiuolo marks a decisive step in the progress of
+painting, and is entitled to be regarded as "the first modern artist to
+master expression of the human form, its spirit, and its action." But
+for him we should miss much of the strength and vigour that
+distinguishes the real from the false Botticelli.
+
+"In the same time with the illustrious Lorenzo de Medici, the elder,"
+Vasari writes, "which was truly an age of gold for men of talent, there
+flourished a certain Alessandro, called after our custom Sandro, and
+further named di Botticello, for a reason which we shall presently see.
+His father, Mariano Filipepi, a Florentine citizen, brought him up with
+care; but although the boy readily acquired whatever he had a mind to
+learn,
+
+[Illustration: PLATE III.--SANDRO BOTTICELLI
+
+PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+yet he was always discontented, nor would he take any pleasure in
+reading, writing, or accounts; so that his father turned him over in
+despair to a friend of his called Botticello, who was a goldsmith.
+
+"There was at that time a close connection and almost constant
+intercourse between the goldsmiths and the painters, wherefore Sandro,
+who had remarkable talent and was strongly disposed to the arts of
+design, became enamoured of painting and resolved to devote himself
+entirely to that vocation. He acknowledged his purpose forthwith to his
+father, who accordingly took him to Fra Filippo. Devoting himself
+entirely to the vocation he had chosen, Sandro so closely followed the
+directions and imitated the manner of his master, that Filippo conceived
+a great love for him, and instructed him so effectually that Sandro
+rapidly attained a degree in art that none could have predicted for
+him."
+
+The influence of the Giottesque tradition which was thus handed on to
+the youthful Botticelli by Filippo Lippi is traceable in the beautiful
+little _Adoration of the Magi_--the oblong, not the _tondo_--in the
+National Gallery (No. 592). This was formerly attributed to Filippino
+Lippi, but is now universally recognised as one of Sandro's very
+earliest productions, when still under the immediate influence of
+Filippo, and prior to the _Fortitude_, painted before 1470, which is now
+in the Uffizi, and is the first picture mentioned by Vasari,
+thus--"While still a youth he painted the figure of Fortitude among
+those pictures of the virtues which Antonio and Pietro Pollaiuolo were
+executing in the Mercatanzia or Tribunal of Commerce in Florence. In
+Santo Spirito (Vasari continues, naming a picture which is probably _The
+Virgin Enthroned_, now at Berlin (No. 106)), he painted a picture for
+the Bardi family; this work he executed with great diligence, and
+finished it very successfully, depicting the olive and palm trees with
+extraordinary care."
+
+The influence of Pollaiuolo is more evident in his two next productions,
+the two small panels of _Holofernes_ and the _Portrait of a Man with a
+Medal_, in the Uffizi, and again in the _S. Sebastian_ now at Berlin,
+which was painted in 1473.
+
+About 1476 the second _Adoration of the Magi_ in the National Gallery
+was painted, and a year or two later the famous and more splendid
+picture of the same subject which is in the Uffizi. With this he
+established his reputation, showing himself unmistakably as an artist of
+profound feeling and noble character besides being a skilful painter. It
+was commissioned for the church of Santa Maria Novella. "In the face of
+the oldest of the kings," says Vasari, "there is the most lively
+expression of tenderness as he kisses the foot of the Saviour, and of
+satisfaction at the attainment of the purpose for which he had
+undertaken his long journey. This figure is the portrait of Cosimo
+de'Medici, the most faithful and animated likeness of all now known of
+him. The second of the kings is the portrait of Giuliano de' Medici,
+father of Pope Clement VII., and he is presenting his gift with an
+expression of the most devout sincerity. The third, who is likewise
+kneeling, seems to be offering thanksgiving as well as adoration; this
+is the likeness of Giovanni, the son of Cosimo.
+
+"The beauty which Sandro has imparted to these heads cannot be
+adequately described; all the figures are in different attitudes, some
+seen full face, others in profile, some almost entirely turned away,
+others bent down; and to all the artist has given an appropriate
+expression, whether old or young, showing numerous peculiarities, which
+prove the mastery he possessed over his art. He has even distinguished
+the followers of each king, so that one can see which belong to one and
+which to another. It is indeed a most wonderful work; the composition,
+the colouring, and the design are so beautiful that every artist to-day
+is amazed at it, and at the time it acquired so great a fame for Sandro
+that Pope Sixtus IV. appointed him superintendent of the painting of the
+chapel he had built in Rome."
+
+The visit to Rome was in 1481, and meantime Botticelli had produced the
+wayward _Primavera_, and the more stern and harsh _S. Augustine_ in the
+church of Ognissanti. Of his frescoes in the Pope's chapel nearly all
+have survived, including _Moses slaying the Egyptian_, _The Temptation_,
+and _The Destruction of Korah's Company_, besides such of the heads of
+the Popes as were not painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio and his other
+assistants in the work.
+
+Returning to Florence in 1482, he was for twenty years without a rival
+in the city--after the departure of Leonardo to Milan--and he appears to
+have been subjected to no new influences, but steadily to have developed
+the immense forces within him. Before 1492 may be dated the two examples
+in the National Gallery, the _Portrait of a Youth_ and the fascinating
+_Mars and Venus_, which was probably intended as a decoration for some
+large piece of furniture. The beautiful and extraordinarily life-like
+frescoes in the Louvre (the only recognised works of the master in that
+Gallery) from the Villa Lemmi, representing Giovanna Tornabuoni with
+Venus and the Graces, and Lorenzo Tornabuoni with the Liberal Arts, are
+assigned to 1486. Of this period are also the more familiar _Birth of
+Venus_; _The Tondo of the Pomegranate_ and the _Annunciation_ in the
+Uffizi, and the San Marco altar-piece, the _Coronation of the Virgin_
+in the Florence Academy.
+
+To the influence of Savonarola, however great or little that may have
+been, is attributed the seriousness of his latest work. Professor Muther
+characterises Botticelli as "the Jeremiah of the Renaissance," but
+whether or not this is a rhetorical overstatement, the "tendency to
+impassioned and feverish action, so evident in the famous _Calumny of
+Apelles_, reflects, no doubt, the agitation of his spiritual stress."[1]
+
+This is the latest of Sandro's works which are in public galleries, and
+there is every probability that the last years of his life were not very
+productive. "This master is said to have had an extraordinary love for
+those whom he knew to be zealous students in art," Vasari tells us, "and
+is affirmed to have gained considerable sums of money, but being a bad
+manager and very careless, all came to nothing. Finally, having become
+old, unfit for work, and helpless, he was obliged to go on crutches,
+being unable to stand upright, and so died, after long illness and
+decrepitude, in his seventy-eighth year. He was buried at Florence, in
+the church of Ognissanti in the year 1510."
+
+The large and beautiful _Assumption of the Virgin_, with the circles of
+saints and angels, in the National Gallery, which has only of late years
+been taken out of the catalogue of Botticelli's works, is now said to
+have been executed by his early pupil FRANCESCO BOTTICINI (_c._
+1446-1497) in 1470 or thereabouts. "In the church of San Pietro," Vasari
+writes of Botticelli, "he executed a picture for Matteo Palmieri, with a
+very large number of figures. The subject is the Assumption of our Lady,
+and the zones or circles of heaven are
+
+[Illustration: PLATE IV.--SANDRO BOTTICELLI
+
+THE NATIVITY
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+there painted in their order. The patriarchs, prophets, apostles,
+evangelists, martyrs, confessors, doctors, virgins, and the hierarchies;
+all of which was executed by Sandro according to the design furnished to
+him by Matteo, who was a very learned and able man. The whole work was
+conducted and finished with the most wonderful skill and care; at the
+foot were the portraits of Matteo and his wife kneeling. But although
+this picture is exceedingly beautiful, and ought to have put envy to
+shame, yet there were certain malevolent and censorious persons who, not
+being able to fix any other blame upon it, declared that Matteo and
+Sandro had fallen into grievous heresy." It is apparent that the picture
+has suffered intentional injury, and it is known that in consequence of
+this supposed heresy the altar which it adorned was interdicted and the
+picture covered up.
+
+In view of all the circumstances it is certain that it was designed by
+Botticelli, and very possibly executed under his immediate supervision
+and with some assistance from him. If we do not see the real Botticelli
+in it, we see his influence and his power far more clearly than in the
+numerous _tondi_ of Madonna and Child that have been assigned to him in
+less critical ages than our own. For the real Botticelli was something
+very real indeed, and though it was easy enough to imitate his
+mannerisms, neither the style nor the spirit of his work were ever
+within reach of his closest followers.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+LEONARDO DA VINCI
+
+
+Twelve years younger than Botticelli was LEONARDO DA VINCI (1452-1520),
+whose career as a painter commenced in the workshop of Andrea
+Verrocchio, goldsmith, painter, and sculptor. That so extraordinary a
+genius should have fixed upon painting for his means of expression
+rather than any of his other natural gifts is the most telling evidence
+of the pre-eminence earned for that art by the efforts of those whose
+works we have been considering. For once we may go all the way with
+Vasari, and accept his estimate of him as even moderate in comparison
+with those of modern writers. "The richest gifts," he writes, "are
+sometimes showered, as by celestial influence, on human creatures, and
+we see beauty, grace, and talent so united in a single person that
+whatever the man thus favoured may turn to, his every action is so
+divine as to leave all other men far behind him, and to prove that he
+has been specially endowed by the hand of God himself, and has not
+obtained his pre-eminence by human teaching. This was seen and
+acknowledged by all men in the case of Leonardo da Vinci, in whom, to
+say nothing of the beauty of his person, which was such that it could
+never be sufficiently extolled, there was a grace beyond expression
+which was manifested without thought or effort in every act and deed,
+and who besides had so rare a gift of talent and ability that to
+whatever subject he turned, however difficult, he presently made himself
+absolute master of it. Extraordinary strength was in him joined with
+remarkable facility, a mind of regal boldness and magnanimous daring.
+His gifts were such that his fame extended far and wide, and he was held
+in the highest estimation not in his own time only, but also and even to
+a greater extent after his death; and this will continue to be in all
+succeeding ages. Truly wonderful indeed and divinely gifted was
+Leonardo."
+
+To his activities in directions other than painting, I need not allude
+except to say that they account in a great measure for the scarcity of
+the pictures he has left us, and to emphasise the significance of his
+having painted at all. To a man of such supreme genius the circumstances
+in which he found himself, rather than any particular technical
+facility, determined the course of his career, and in another age and
+another country he might have been a Pheidias or a Newton, a Shakespeare
+or a Beethoven.
+
+But if the pictures he has left us are few in number--according to the
+present estimate not more than a dozen--they are altogether greater than
+anything else in the realm of painting, and with their marvellous beauty
+and subtlety have probably had a wider influence, both on painters and
+on lovers of painting, than those of any other master. They seem to be
+endowed with a spirit of something beyond painting itself, and in the
+presence of _The Last Supper_ or the _Mona Lisa_ the babble of
+conflicting opinions on questions of style, technique, and what not is
+silenced.
+
+Similarly, in writing of Leonardo's pictures, every one of which is a
+masterpiece, it seems superfluous to say even a word about what the
+whole world already knows so well. All that can be usefully added is a
+little of the tradition, where it is sufficiently authenticated,
+relating to the circumstances under which they came into existence, and
+such of the circumstances of his life as concern their production.
+
+When still quite a youth Leonardo was apprenticed to Andrea Verrocchio,
+and the story goes that it was the marvellous painting of the angel, by
+the pupil, in the master's _Baptism_ in the Academy at Florence, that
+induced Verrocchio to abandon painting and devote himself entirely to
+sculpture. This angel has been attributed to the hand of Leonardo from
+the earliest times, but can hardly be taken, at any rate in its present
+condition, as a decided proof of the genius that was to be displayed in
+manhood. More certain are the _S. Jerome_ in the Vatican, and the
+_Adoration of the Kings_ in the Uffizi, though neither is carried beyond
+the earlier stages of "under-painting." A few finished portraits are now
+assigned with tolerable certainty to his earlier years; but for his
+famous masterpieces we must jump to the year 1482, when he left Florence
+and went to Milan, where for the next sixteen years he was
+intermittently engaged in the execution of the great equestrian statue,
+which was destroyed by the French mercenaries before it was actually
+completed.
+
+It appears that he was recommended by Lorenzo de'Medici to Lodovico il
+Moro, Duke of Milan, probably for the very purpose of executing this
+statue. However that may be, it is now certain that in 1483 he was
+commissioned by the Franciscan monks to paint a picture of the Virgin
+and Child for their church of the Conception, and that between 1491 and
+1494 Leonardo and his assistant, Ambrogio di Predis, petitioned the Duke
+for an arbitration as to price. This was the famous _Virgin of the
+Rocks_, now in the Louvre, and the similar, and though not precisely
+identical, composition in our National Gallery is generally supposed to
+be a replica, painted by Ambrogio under the supervision of, and possibly
+with some assistance from, Leonardo himself.
+
+Between 1495 and 1498 Leonardo was engaged on the painting of _The Last
+Supper_. In the Forster Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum is a
+notebook which contains his first memoranda for the wonderful design of
+this masterpiece. At Windsor are studies for the heads of S. Matthew, S.
+Philip, and
+
+[Illustration: PLATE V.--LEONARDO DA VINCI
+
+THE VIRGIN OF THE ROCKS
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+Judas, and for the right arm of S. Peter. That of the head of the Christ
+in the Brera at Milan has been so much "restored" that it can hardly be
+regarded as Leonardo's work. Vasari's account of the delays in the
+completion of the painting is better known, and probably less
+trustworthy, than one or two notices of about the same date, quoted by
+Mr H. P. Horne, in translating and commenting on Vasari. In June 1497,
+when the work had been in progress over two years, Duke Lodovico wrote
+to his secretary "to urge Leonardo, the Florentine, to finish the work
+of the Refectory which he has begun, ... and that articles subscribed by
+his hand shall be executed which shall oblige him to finish the work
+within the time that shall be agreed upon." Matteo Bandello, in the
+prologue to one of his _Novelle_, describes how he saw him actually at
+work--"Leonardo, as I have more than once seen and observed him, used
+often to go early in the morning and mount the scaffolding (for _The
+Last Supper_ is somewhat raised above the ground), and from morning till
+dusk never lay the brush out of his hand, but, oblivious of both eating
+and drinking, paint without ceasing. After that, he would remain two,
+three, or four days without touching it: yet he always stayed there,
+sometimes for one or two hours, and only contemplated, considered, and
+criticised, as he examined with himself the figures he had made."
+
+Vasari's story of the Prior's head serving for that of Judas is related
+with less colour, but probably more truth, in the Discourses of G. B.
+Giraldi, who says that when Leonardo had finished the painting with the
+exception of the head of Judas, the friars complained to the Duke that
+he had left it in this state for more than a year. Leonardo replied that
+for more than a year he had gone every morning and evening into the
+Borghetto, where all the worst sort of people lived, yet he could never
+find a head sufficiently evil to serve for the likeness of Judas: but he
+added, "If perchance I shall not find one, I will put there the head of
+this Father Prior who is now so troublesome to me, which will become him
+mightily."
+
+In 1500 Leonardo was back again in Florence, and his next important work
+was the designing, though probably not the actual painting, of the
+beautiful picture in the Louvre, _The Virgin and Child with S. Anne_,
+the commission for which had been given to Filippino Lippi, but resigned
+by him on Leonardo's return. In 1501 Isabella d'Este wrote to know
+whether Leonardo was still in Florence, and what he was doing, as she
+wished him to paint a picture for her in the palace at Mantua, and in
+the reply of the Vicar-General of the Carmelites we have a valuable
+account of the artist and his work. "As far as I can gather," he writes,
+"the life of Leonardo is extremely variable and undetermined. Since his
+arrival here he has only made a sketch in a cartoon. It represents a
+Christ as a little child of about a year old, reaching forward out of
+his mother's arms towards a lamb. The mother, half rising from the lap
+of S. Anne, catches at the child as though to take it away from the
+lamb, the animal of sacrifice signifying the Passion. S. Anne, also
+rising a little from her seat, seems to wish to restrain her daughter
+from separating the child from the lamb; which perhaps is intended to
+signify the Church, that would not wish that the Passion of Christ
+should be hindered. These figures are as large as life, but they are all
+contained in a small cartoon, since all of them sit or are bent; the
+figure of the Virgin is somewhat in front of the other, turned towards
+the left. This sketch is not yet finished. He has not executed any
+other work, except that his two assistants paint portraits and he, at
+times, lends a hand to one or another of them. He gives profound study
+to geometry, and grows most impatient of painting."
+
+The history of this cartoon--as indeed of the Louvre picture--is
+somewhat obscure, but it is certain that the beautiful cartoon of the
+same subject in the possession of the Royal Academy is not the one above
+described.
+
+Lastly, there is the famous--or, may we say, now more famous than
+ever--portrait of _Mona Lisa_. "Whoever wishes to know how far art can
+imitate nature," Vasari writes, "may do so in this head, wherein every
+detail that could be depicted by the brush has been faithfully
+reproduced. The eyes have the lustrous brightness and watery sheen that
+is seen in life, and around them are all those rosy and pearly tints
+which, like the eyelashes too, can only be rendered by means of the
+deepest subtlety; the eyebrows also are painted with the closest
+exactitude, where fuller and where more thinly set, in a manner that
+could not be more natural. The nose, with its beautiful and delicately
+roseate nostrils, seems to be alive. The mouth, wonderful in its
+outline, shows the lips perfectly uniting the rose tints of their colour
+with that of the face, and the carnation of the cheek appears rather to
+be flesh and blood than only painted. Looking at the pit of the throat
+one can hardly believe that one cannot see the beating of the pulse, and
+in truth it may be said that the whole work is painted in a manner well
+calculated to make the boldest master tremble.
+
+"Mona Lisa was exceedingly beautiful, and while Leonardo was painting
+her portrait he kept someone constantly near her to sing or play, to
+jest or otherwise amuse her, so that she might continue cheerful, and
+keep away the melancholy that painters are apt to give to their
+portraits. In this picture there is a smile so pleasing that the sight
+of it is a thing that appears more divine than human, and it has ever
+been considered a marvel that it is not actually alive."
+
+It is worth observing that while these rapturous expressions of wonder
+at the life-like qualities of the portrait may seem somewhat tame and
+childish in comparison with the appreciation accorded to Leonardo's work
+in these times--notably that of Walter Pater in this case--they are in
+reality at the root of all criticism. If Vasari, as I have already
+pointed out, pitches upon this quality of life-likeness and direct
+imitation of nature for his particular admiration, it is only because
+the first and foremost object of the earlier painters was in fact to
+represent the life; and though in the rarefied atmosphere of modern talk
+about art these naive criticisms may seem out of date, it is significant
+that between Vasari and ourselves there is little, if any, difference of
+opinion as to which masters were the great ones, and which were not.
+"Truly divine" is a phrase in which he sums up the impressions created
+in his mind by the less material qualities of some of the greatest, but
+before even the greatest could create such an impression they must have
+learnt the rudiments of the art in the school of nature.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI
+
+
+IN the opening years of the sixteenth century the art of painting had
+attained such a pitch of excellence that unless carried onward by a
+supreme genius it could hardly hope to escape from the common lot of
+all things in nature, and begin to decline. After Botticelli and
+Leonardo, the works of Andrea del Sarto, "the perfect painter" as he has
+been called, fall rather flat; and no less a prodigy than Michelangelo
+was capable of excelling his marvellous predecessors, or than Raphael of
+rivalling them.
+
+Vasari prefaces his life to ANDREA DEL SARTO (1486-1531) with something
+more definite than his usual rhetorical flourishes. "At length we have
+come," he says, "after having written the lives of many artists
+distinguished for colour, for design, or for invention, to that of the
+truly excellent Andrea del Sarto, in whom art and nature combined to
+show all that may be done in painting when design, colouring, and
+invention unite in one and the same person. Had he possessed a somewhat
+bolder and more elevated mind, had he been distinguished for higher
+qualifications as he was for genius and depth of judgment in the art he
+practised, he would beyond all doubt have been without an equal. But
+there was in his nature a certain timidity of mind, a sort of diffidence
+and want of strength, which prevented those evidences of ardour and
+animation which are proper to the highest characters from ever appearing
+in him which, could they have been added to his natural advantages,
+would have made him truly a divine painter, so that his works are
+wanting in that grandeur, richness, and force which are so conspicuous
+in those of many other masters.
+
+"His figures are well drawn, and entirely free from errors, and perfect
+in all their proportions, and for the most part are simple and chaste.
+His airs of heads are natural and graceful in women and children, while
+both in youth and old men they are full of life and animation. His
+draperies are marvellously beautiful. His nudes are admirably executed,
+simple in drawing, exquisite in colouring--nay, they are truly divine."
+
+And yet? Well, let us turn to Michelangelo.
+
+"While the best and most industrious artists," says Vasari, "were
+labouring by the light of Giotto and his followers to give the world
+examples of such power as the benignity of their stars and the varied
+character of their fantasies enabled them to command, and while desirous
+of imitating the perfection of Nature by the excellence of Art, they
+were struggling to attain that high comprehension which many call
+intelligence, and were universally toiling, but for the most part in
+vain, the Ruler of Heaven was pleased to turn the eyes of his clemency
+towards earth, and perceiving the fruitlessness of so many labours, the
+ardent studies pursued without any result, and the presumptuous
+self-sufficiency of men which is farther from truth than is darkness
+from light, he resolved, by way of delivering us from such great errors,
+to send to the world a spirit endowed with universality of power in each
+art, and in every profession, one capable of showing by himself alone
+what is the perfection of art in the sketch, the outline, the shadows,
+or the lights; one who could give relief to painting and with an upright
+judgment could operate as perfectly in sculpture; nay, who was so highly
+accomplished in architecture also, that he was able to render our
+habitations secure and commodious, healthy and cheerful,
+well-proportioned, and enriched with the varied ornaments of art."
+
+A more prosaic passage follows presently, occasioned by the innuendoes
+of Condivi as to Vasari's intimacy with Michelangelo and his knowledge
+of the facts of his life at first hand. Vasari meets this accusation by
+quoting the following document relating to the apprenticeship of
+Michelangelo to Domenico Ghirlandaio when fourteen years old. "1488. I
+acknowledge and record this first day of April that I, Lodovico di
+Buonarroti, have engaged Michelangelo my son to Domenico and David di
+Tommaso di Currado for the three years next to come, under the following
+conditions: That the said Michelangelo shall remain with the above named
+all the said time, to the end that they may teach him to paint and to
+exercise their vocation, and that the above named shall have full
+command over him paying him in the course of these three years
+twenty-four florins as wages...."
+
+Besides this teaching in his earliest youth, it is considered probable
+that in 1494, when he visited Bologna, he came under influences which
+resulted in the execution at about that time of the unfinished
+_Entombment_ and the _Holy Family_, which are two of our greatest
+treasures in the National Gallery. As he took to sculpture, however,
+before he was out of Ghirlandaio's hands, there are few traces of any
+activity in painting until 1506, when he was engaged on the designs for
+the great battle-piece for the Council Hall at Florence. The one easel
+picture of which Vasari makes any mention, the _tondo_ in the Uffizi, is
+the only one besides those already noted which is known to exist. "The
+Florentine citizen, Angelo Doni," Vasari says, "desired to have some
+work from his hand as he was his friend; wherefore Michelangelo began a
+circular painting of Our Lady for him. She is kneeling, and presents the
+Divine Child to Joseph. Here the artist has finely expressed the delight
+with which the Mother regards the beauty of her Son, as is clearly
+manifest in the turn of her head and fixedness of her gaze; equally
+evident is her wish that this contentment shall be shared by that pious
+old man who receives the babe with infinite tenderness and reverence.
+Nor was this enough for Michelangelo, since the better to display his
+art he has grouped several undraped figures in the background, some
+upright, some half recumbent, and others seated. The whole work is
+executed with so much care and finish that of all his pictures, which
+indeed are but few, this is considered the best."
+
+After relating the story of the artist's quarrel with his friend over
+the price of this masterpiece (for which he at first only asked sixty
+ducats), Vasari goes on to describe the now lost cartoons for the great
+fresco in the Council Hall at Florence, in substance as follows:--
+
+"When Leonardo was painting in the great hall of the Council, Piero
+Soderini, who was then Gonfaloniere, moved by the extraordinary ability
+which he perceived in Michelangelo [he calls him in a letter a young man
+who stands above all his calling in Italy; nay, in all the world],
+caused him to be entrusted with a portion of the work, and our artist
+began a very large cartoon representing the Battle of Pisa. It
+represented a vast number of nude figures bathing in the Arno, as men do
+on hot days, when suddenly the enemy is heard to be attacking the camp.
+The soldiers spring forth in haste to arm themselves. One is an elderly
+man, who to shelter himself from the heat has wreathed a garland of ivy
+round his head, and, seated on the ground, is labouring to draw on his
+hose, hindered by his limbs being wet. Hearing the sound of the drums
+and the cries of the soldiers he struggles violently to get on one of
+his stockings; the action of the muscles and distortion of the mouth
+evince the zeal of his efforts. Drummers and others hasten to the camp
+with their clothes in their arms, all in the most singular attitudes;
+some standing, others kneeling or stooping; some falling, others
+springing high into the air and exhibiting the most difficult
+foreshortenings.... The artists were amazed as they realised that the
+master had in this cartoon laid open to them the very highest resources
+of art; nay, there are some who still declare that they have never seen
+anything to equal it, either from his hand or any other, and they do not
+believe that genius will ever more attain to such perfection. Nor is
+this an exaggeration, for all who have designed from it and copied
+it--as it was the habit for both natives and strangers to do--have
+become excellent in art, amongst whom were Raphael, Andrea del Sarto,
+Franciabigio, Pontormo, and Piero del Vaga."
+
+In 1508 Michelangelo began to prepare the cartoons for the ceiling of
+the Sistine Chapel. Space forbids me to attempt any description of
+these, but the story of their completion as related by Vasari can hardly
+be omitted. "When half of them were nearly finished," he says, "Pope
+Julius, who had gone more than once to see the work--mounting the
+ladders with the artist's help--insisted on having them opened to public
+view without waiting till the last touches were given, and the chapel
+was no sooner open than all Rome hastened thither, the Pope being first,
+even before the dust caused by removing the scaffold had subsided. Then
+it was that Raphael, who was very prompt in imitation, changed his
+manner, and to give proof of his ability immediately executed the
+frescoes with the Prophets and Sibyls in the church of the Pace.
+Bramante (the architect) also laboured to convince the Pope that he
+would do well to entrust the second half to Raphael.... But Julius, who
+justly valued the ability of Michelangelo, commanded that he should
+continue the work, judging from what he saw of the first half that he
+would be able to improve the second. Michelangelo accordingly finished
+the whole in twenty months, without help. It is true that he often
+complained that he was prevented from giving it the finish he would have
+liked owing to the Pope's impatience, and his constant inquiries as to
+when it would be finished, and on one occasion he answered, "It will be
+finished when I shall have done all that I believe necessary to satisfy
+art." "And we command," replied Julius, "that you satisfy our wish to
+have it done quickly," adding finally that if it were not at once
+completed he would have Michelangelo thrown headlong from the
+scaffolding. Hearing this, the artist, without taking time to add what
+was wanting, took down the remainder of the scaffolding, to the great
+satisfaction of the whole city, on All Saints' Day, when the Pope went
+into his chapel to sing Mass."
+
+Michelangelo had much wished to retouch some portions of the work _a
+secco_, as had been done by the older masters who had painted the walls;
+and to add a little ultramarine to some of the draperies, and gild other
+parts, so as to give a richer and more striking effect. The Pope, too,
+would now have liked these additions to be made, but as Michelangelo
+thought it would take too long to re-erect the scaffolding, the pictures
+remained as they were. The Pope would sometimes say to him, "Let the
+chapel be enriched with gold and bright colours; it looks poor." To
+which Michelangelo would reply, "Holy Father, the men of those days did
+not adorn themselves with gold; those who are painted here less than
+any; for they were none too rich. Besides, they were holy men, and must
+have despised riches and ornaments."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+RAFFAELLO DI SANTI
+
+
+The character and the influence of RAPHAEL are well expressed in the
+following sentences with which Vasari concludes his biography:--"O happy
+and blessed spirit! every one speaks with interest of thee; celebrates
+thy deeds; admires thee in thy works! Well might Painting die when this
+noble artist ceased to live; for when his eyes were closed she remained
+in darkness. For us who survive him it remains to imitate the excellent
+method which he has left for our guidance; and as his great qualities
+deserve, and our duty bids us, to cherish his memory in our hearts, and
+keep it alive in our discourse by speaking of him with the high respect
+which is his due. For through him we have the art in all its extent
+carried to a perfection which could hardly have been looked for; and in
+this universality let no human being ever hope to surpass him. And,
+beside this benefit which he conferred on Art as her true friend, he
+neglected not to show us how every man should conduct himself in all the
+relations of life. Among his rare gifts there is one which especially
+excites my wonder; I mean, that Heaven should have granted him to infuse
+a spirit among those who lived around him so contrary to that which is
+prevalent among professional men. The painters--I do not allude to the
+humble-minded only, but to those of an ambitious turn, and many of this
+sort there are--the painters who worked in company with Raphael lived in
+perfect harmony, as if all bad feelings were extinguished in his
+presence, and every base, unworthy thought had passed from their minds.
+This was because the artists were at once subdued by his obliging
+manners and by his surpassing merit, but more than all by the spell of
+his natural character, which was so full of affectionate kindness, that
+not only men, but even the very brutes, respected him. He always had a
+great number of artists employed for him, helping them and teaching them
+with the kindness of a father to his children, rather than as a master
+directing his scholars. For which reason it was observed he never went
+to court without being accompanied from his very door by perhaps fifty
+painters who took pleasure in thus attending him to do him honour. In
+short, he lived more as a sovereign than as a painter. And thus, O Art
+of Painting! thou too, then, could account thyself most happy, since an
+artist was thine, who, by his skill and by his moral excellence exalted
+thee to the highest heaven!"
+
+Raphael was the son of Giovanni Sanzio, or di Santi, of Urbino. He
+received his first education as an artist from his father, whom,
+however, he lost in his eleventh year. As early as 1495 probably, he
+entered the school of Pietro Perugino, at Perugia, where he remained
+till about his twentieth year.
+
+The "Umbrian School," in which Raphael received his first education, and
+in which he is accordingly placed, is distinguished from the Florentine,
+of which it may be said to have been an offshoot, by several
+well-defined characteristics. Chief of these are, first, the more
+sentimental expression of religious feeling, and second, the greater
+attention paid to distance as compared with the principal figures; both
+of which are explainable on the ground of local circumstances. They
+reflect the difference between the bustling intellectual activity of
+Florence and the dreamy existence but broader horizon of the dwellers
+in the upper valley of the Tiber. In the beautiful _Nativity_ of PIERO
+DELLA FRANCESCA (No. 908 in the National Gallery) we see something akin
+to the Florentine pictures, and yet something more besides. Piero shared
+with Paolo Uccello the eager desire to discover the secrets of
+perspective; but in addition he seems to have been influenced by the
+study of nature herself, in the open air, as Uccello never was. His
+pupil, LUCA SIGNORELLI (1441-1523), was more formal and less
+naturalistic, as may be seen by a comparison between the _Circumcision_
+(No. 1128 in the National Gallery) and Piero's _Baptism of Christ_ on
+the opposite wall. PIETRO PERUGINO (1446-1523)--his real name was
+Vannucci--was influenced both by Signorelli and by Verrocchio. In the
+studio of the latter he had probably worked with Leonardo and Lorenzo di
+Credi, so that in estimating the influences which went to form the art
+of Raphael we need not insist too strongly on the distinction between
+"Umbrian" and "Florentine."
+
+Raphael's first independent works (about 1500) are entirely in
+Perugino's style. They bear the general stamp of the Umbrian School, but
+in its highest beauty. His youthful efforts are essentially youthful,
+and seem to contain the earnest of a high development. Two are in the
+Berlin Museum. In the one (No. 141) called the _Madonna Solly_, the
+Madonna reads in a book; the Child on her lap holds a goldfinch. The
+other (No. 145), with heads of S. Francis and S. Jerome, is better.
+Similar to it, but much more finished and developed, is a small round
+picture, the _Madonna Casa Connestabile_, now at St. Petersburg.
+
+A more important picture of this time is the _Coronation of the
+Virgin_, painted for the church of S. Francesco at Perugia in 1503, but
+now in the Vatican. In the upper part, Christ and the Madonna are
+throned on clouds and surrounded by angels with musical instruments;
+underneath, the disciples stand around the empty tomb. In this lower
+part of the picture there is a very evident attempt to give the figures
+more life, motion, and enthusiastic expression than was before attempted
+in the school.
+
+After this, Raphael appears to have quitted the school of Perugino, and
+to have commenced an independent career: he executed at this time some
+pictures in the neighbouring town of Citta di Castello. With all the
+features of the Umbrian School, they already show the freer impulse of
+his own mind,--a decided effort to individualize. The most excellent of
+these, and the most interesting example of this first period of
+Raphael's development, is the _Marriage of the Virgin_ (Lo Sposalizio),
+inscribed with his name and the date 1504, now in the Brera at Milan.
+With much of the stiffness and constraint of the old school, the figures
+are noble and dignified; the countenances, of the sweetest style of
+beauty, are expressive of a tender, enthusiastic melancholy, which lends
+a peculiar charm to this subject.
+
+In 1504 Raphael painted the two little pictures in the Louvre, _S.
+George_ and _S. Michael_ (Nos. 1501-2) for the Duke of Urbino. _The
+Knight Dreaming_, a small picture, now in the National Gallery (No.
+213), is supposed to have been painted a year earlier.
+
+In the autumn of 1504 Raphael went to Florence. Tuscan art had now
+attained its highest perfection, and the most celebrated artists were
+there contending for the palm. From this period begins his
+emancipation
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VI.--PIETRO PERUGINO
+
+CENTRAL PORTION OF ALTAR-PIECE
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+from the confined manner of Perugino's school; the youth ripens into
+manhood and acquires the free mastery of form.
+
+To this time belong the celebrated _Madonna del Granduca_, now in the
+Pitti Gallery, and another formerly belonging to the Duke of Terra
+Nuova, and now at Berlin (No. 247a). In the next year we find him
+employed on several large works in Perugia; these show for the first
+time the influence of Florentine art in the purity, fullness, and
+intelligent treatment of form; at the same time many of the motives of
+the Peruginesque school are still apparent. The famous _Cowper Madonna_,
+recently sold to an American for L140,000, also belongs to the year
+1505, when the blending of the two influences resulted in a picture
+which has been extolled by the sanest of critics as "the loveliest of
+Raphael's Virgins." An altar-piece, executed for the church of the
+Serviti at Perugia, inscribed with the date 1506, is the famous _Madonna
+dei Ansidei_, purchased for the National Gallery from the Duke of
+Marlborough. Besides the dreamy religious feeling of the School of
+Perugia, we perceive here the aim at a greater freedom, founded on
+deeper study.
+
+Raphael was soon back in Florence, where he remained until 1508. The
+early paintings of this period betray, as might be expected, many
+reminiscences of the Peruginesque school, both in conception and
+execution; the later ones follow in all essential respects the general
+style of the Florentines.
+
+One of the earliest is the _Virgin in the Meadow_, in the Belvedere
+Gallery at Vienna. Two others show a close affinity with this
+composition; one is the _Madonna del Cardellino_, in the Tribune of the
+Uffizi, in which S. John presents a goldfinch to the infant Christ. The
+other is the so-called _Belle Jardiniere_, inscribed 1507, in the
+Louvre.
+
+It is interesting to observe Raphael's progress in the smaller pictures
+which he painted in Florence--half-figures of the Madonna and Child.
+Here again the earliest are characterised by the tenderest feeling,
+while a freer and more cheerful enjoyment of life is apparent in the
+later ones. The _Madonna della Casa Tempi_, at Munich, is the first of
+this series. In the picture from the Colonna Palace at Rome, now in the
+Berlin Museum (No. 248), the same childlike sportiveness, the same
+maternal tenderness, are developed with more harmonious refinement. A
+larger picture, belonging to the middle time of his Florentine period,
+is in the Munich Gallery--the _Madonna Canignani_, which presents a
+peculiar study of artificial grouping, in a pyramidal shape. Among the
+best pictures of the latter part of this Florentine period are the _S.
+Catherine_, now in the National Gallery, formerly in the Aldobrandini
+Gallery at Rome, and two large altar-pieces. One of these is the
+_Madonna del Baldacchino_, in the Pitti Gallery. The other, _The
+Entombment_, painted for the church of S. Francesco at Perugia, is now
+in the Borghese Gallery at Rome. This is the first of Raphael's
+compositions in which an historical subject is dramatically developed;
+but in this respect the task exceeded his powers. The composition lacks
+repose and unity of effect; the movements are exaggerated and mannered;
+but the figure of the Saviour is extremely beautiful, and may be placed
+among the greatest of the master's creations.
+
+About the middle of the year 1508, when only in his twenty-fifth year,
+Raphael was invited by Pope
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VII.--RAPHAEL
+
+THE ANSIDEI MADONNA
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VIII.--RAPHAEL
+
+LA BELLE JARDINIERE
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+Julius II. to decorate the state apartments in the Vatican. With these
+works commences the third period of his development, and in these he
+reached his highest perfection. The subjects, more important than any in
+which he had hitherto been occupied, gave full scope to his powers; and
+the proximity of Michelangelo, who at this time began the painting of
+the Sistine Chapel, excited his emulation.
+
+At this period, just before the Reformation, the Papal power had reached
+its proudest elevation. To glorify this power--to represent Rome as the
+centre of spiritual culture--were the objects of the paintings in the
+Vatican. They cover the ceilings and walls of three chambers and a large
+saloon, which now bear the name of the "Stanze of Raphael."
+
+The execution of these paintings principally occupied Raphael to the
+time of his death, and were only completed by his scholars.
+
+In 1513 and 1514 Raphael also executed designs for the ten tapestries
+intended to adorn the Sistine Chapel, representing events from the lives
+of the apostles. Seven of these magnificent cartoons are now in the
+South Kensington Museum.
+
+Beside these important commissions executed for the Papal court, during
+twelve years, many claims were made on him by private persons. Two
+frescoes executed for Roman churches may be mentioned. One, in S. Maria
+della Pace, represents four Sibyls surrounded by angels, which it is
+interesting to compare with the Sibyls of Michelangelo. In each we find
+the peculiar excellence of the two great masters; Michelangelo's figures
+are grand, sublime, profound, while the fresco of the Pace exhibits
+Raphael's serene and ingenious grace. In a second fresco, the prophet
+Isaiah and two angels, in the church of S. Agostino at Rome, the
+comparison is less favourable to Raphael, the effort to rival the
+powerful style of Michelangelo being rather too obvious.
+
+Like all other artists, Raphael is at his best when, undisturbed by
+outside influences, he follows the free original impulse of his own
+mind. His peculiar element was grace and beauty of form, in so far as
+these are the expression of high moral purity.
+
+The following works of his third period are especially deserving of
+mention.
+
+The _Aldobrandini Madonna_, now in the National Gallery--in which the
+Madonna is sitting on a bench, and bends down to the little S. John, her
+left arm round him. The _Madonna of the Duke of Alba_, in the Hermitage
+at St. Petersburg. _La Vierge au voile_, in the Louvre; the Madonna is
+seated in a kneeling position, lifting the veil from the sleeping Child
+in order to show him to the little S. John. The _Madonna della
+Seggiola_, in the Pitti at Florence (painted about 1516), a circular
+picture. The _Madonna della Tenda_ at Munich; a composition similar to
+the last, except that the Child is represented in more lively action,
+and looking upwards.
+
+A series of similar, but in some instances more copious compositions,
+belong to a still later period; they are in a great measure the work of
+his scholars, painted after his drawings, and only partly worked upon by
+Raphael himself. Indeed many pictures of this class should perhaps be
+considered altogether as the productions of his school, at a time when
+that school was under his direct superintendence, and when it was
+enabled to imitate his finer characteristics in a remarkable degree.
+
+In this class are the _Madonna dell'Impannata_, in the Pitti, which
+takes its name from the oiled-paper window in the background. The large
+picture of a _Holy Family_ in the Louvre, painted in 1518, for Francis
+I., is peculiarly excellent. The whole has a character of cheerfulness
+and joy: an easy and delicate play of graceful lines, which unite in an
+intelligible and harmonious whole. Giulio Romano assisted in the
+execution.
+
+With regard to the large altar-pieces of his later period in which
+several Saints are assembled round the Madonna, it is to be observed
+that Raphael has contrived to place them in reciprocal relation to each
+other, and to establish a connection between them; while the earlier
+masters either ranged them next to one another in simple symmetrical
+repose, or disposed them with a view to picturesque effect.
+
+Of these the _Madonna di Foligno_, in the Vatican, is the earliest. In
+the upper part of the picture is the Madonna with the Child, enthroned
+on the clouds in a glory, surrounded by angels. Underneath, on one side,
+kneels the donor, behind him stands S. Jerome. On the other side is S.
+Francis, kneeling, while he points with one hand out of the picture to
+the people, for whom he entreats the protection of the Mother of Grace;
+behind him is S. John the Baptist, who points to the Madonna, while he
+looks at the spectator as if inviting him to worship her.
+
+The second, the _Madonna del Pesce_ has much more repose and grandeur as
+whole, and unites the sublime and abstract character of sacred beings
+with the individuality of nature in the happiest manner. It is now in
+Madrid, but was originally painted for S. Domenico at Naples, about
+1513. It represents the Madonna and Child on a throne; on one side is
+S. Jerome; on the other the guardian angel with the young Tobias who
+carries a fish (whence the name of the picture). The artist has imparted
+a wonderfully poetic character to the subject. S. Jerome, kneeling on
+the steps of the throne, has been reading from a book to the Virgin and
+Child, and appears to have been interrupted by the entrance of Tobias
+and the Angel. The infant Christ turns towards them, but at the same
+time lays his hand on the open book, as if to mark the place. The Virgin
+turns towards the Angel, who introduces Tobias; while the latter
+dropping on his knees, looks up meekly to the Divine Infant. S. Jerome
+looks over the book to the new-comers, as if ready to proceed with his
+occupation after the interruption.
+
+But the most important is the famous _Madonna di San Sisto_, at Dresden.
+Here the Madonna appears as the queen of the heavenly host, in a
+brilliant glory of countless angel-heads, standing on the clouds, with
+the eternal Son in her arms; S. Sixtus and S. Barbara kneel at the
+sides. Both of them seem to connect the picture with the real
+spectators. This is a rare example of a picture of Raphael's later time,
+executed entirely by his own hand.
+
+Two large altar pictures still claim our attention; they also belong to
+Raphael's later period. One is the _Christ Bearing the Cross_, in
+Madrid, known by the name of _Lo Spasimo di Sicilia_, from the convent
+of Santa Maria dello Spasimo at Palermo, for which it was painted. Here,
+as in the tapestries, we again find a finely conceived development of
+the event, and an excellent composition. The other is the
+_Transfiguration_, now in the Vatican, formerly in S. Pietro at
+Montorio.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE IX.--RAPHAEL
+
+PORTRAIT OF BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+This was the last work of the master (left unfinished at his death); the
+one which was suspended over his coffin, a trophy of his fame, for
+public homage.
+
+"I cannot believe myself in Rome," wrote Count Castiglione, on the death
+of the master, "now that my poor Raphael is no longer here." Men
+regarded his works with religious veneration as if God had revealed
+himself through Raphael as in former days through the prophets. His
+remains were publicly laid out on a splendid catafalque, while his last
+work, the _Transfiguration_, was suspended over his head. He was buried
+in the Pantheon, under an altar adorned by a statue of the Holy Virgin,
+a consecration offering from Raphael himself. Doubts having been raised
+as to the precise spot, a search was made in the Pantheon in 1833, and
+Raphael's bones were found; the situation agreeing exactly with Vasari's
+description of the place of interment. On the 18th of October, in the
+same year, the relics were reinterred in the same spot with great
+solemnities.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The schools of Lombardy and the Emilia, which derive their
+characteristics from Florentine rather than from Venetian influences,
+may here be briefly mentioned before turning to the consideration of the
+Venetian School. In 1482, it will be remembered, Leonardo went to Milan,
+where he remained till the end of the century; and the extent of his
+influence may be judged from many of the productions of BERNADINO LUINI
+(1475-1532) and GIOVANNI ANTONIO BAZZI, known as SODOMA (1477-1549). Of
+AMBROGIO DI PREDIS we have already heard in connection with the painting
+of our version of Leonardo's _Virgin of the Rocks_. GIOVANNI ANTONIO
+BOLTRAFFIO (1467-1516) was a pupil of VINCENZO FOPPA, but he soon
+abandoned the manner of the old Lombard School, and came under the
+influence of the great Florentine, of whom he became a most enthusiastic
+disciple.
+
+More independent--indeed, he is officially characterised as "an isolated
+phenomenon in Italian Art"--was ANTONIO ALLEGRI, commonly called
+CORREGGIO, from the place of his birth. In 1518 he settled at Parma,
+where he remained till 1530, so that he is usually catalogued as of the
+School of Parma, which for an isolated phenomenon serves as well as any
+other. Of late years his popularity has been somewhat diminished by the
+increasing demands of private collectors for works which are
+purchasable, and most of Correggio's are in public galleries. At Dresden
+are some of the most famous, notably the _Nativity_, called "La Notte,"
+from its wonderful scheme of illumination, and two or three large
+altar-pieces. The _Venus Mercury and Cupid_ in our National Gallery,
+though sadly injured, is still one of his masterpieces. It was purchased
+by Charles I. with the famous collection of the Duke of Mantua. Our
+_Ecce Homo_ is entitled to rank with it, as is also the little _Madonna
+of the Basket_.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE X.--CORREGGIO
+
+MERCURY, CUPID, AND VENUS
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+
+
+
+_VENETIAN SCHOOLS_
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE VIVARINI AND BELLINI
+
+
+In Venice the Byzantine style appears to have offered a more stubborn
+resistance to the innovators than in Tuscany, or, in fact, in any other
+part of Italy. Few, if any, of the allegorical subjects with which
+Giotto and his scholars decorated whole buildings are to be found here,
+and the altar pictures retain longer than anywhere else the gilt
+canopied compartments and divisions, and the tranquil positions of
+single figures. It was not until a century after the death of Cimabue
+and Duccio that the real development of the Venetian School was
+manifested, so that when things did begin to move the conditions were
+not the same, and the results accordingly were something substantially
+different.
+
+The influence of the Byzantine style still hangs heavily over the work
+of NICOLO SEMITECOLO, who was working in Venice in the middle of the
+fourteenth century, as may be seen in the great altar-piece ascribed to
+him in the Academy--the Coronation of the Virgin with fourteen scenes
+from the life of Christ. In this work there is little of the general
+advancement visible in other parts of Italy. It corresponds most nearly
+with the work of Duccio of Siena, though without attaining his
+excellence; while the gold hatchings and olive brown tones are still
+Byzantine.
+
+An altar-piece, by MICHELE GIAMBONO, also in the Academy, painted during
+the first half of the fifteenth century, shows a more decided advance,
+and even anticipates some of the later excellences of the Venetian
+School. The drapery is in the long and easy lines which we see in the
+Tuscan pictures of the period, and what is especially significant, in
+view of the subsequent development of Venetian painting, the colouring
+is rich, deep, and transparent, and the flesh tints unusually soft and
+warm. This is signed by Giambono, and is one of his most important
+works, as well as the most complete, as it exists in its original state
+as an _ancona_ or altar-piece divided into compartments by canopies of
+joiners' work. It is unusual in form, inasmuch as the central panel,
+though slightly larger than the pair on either side, contains but a
+single figure. This figure was generally supposed to be the Saviour, but
+it has recently been pointed out that it is S. James the Great, the
+others being SS. John the Evangelist, Philip Benizi, Michael, and Louis
+of Toulouse. Some of Giambono's finest work was in mosaic, and the walls
+and roof of the Cappella de'Mascoli in S. Mark's may be regarded as the
+highest achievement in mosaic of the early Venetian School. While this
+species of decoration had given place to fresco painting elsewhere, it
+was here, in 1430, brought to a pitch of perfection by Giambono which
+entitles this work to a prominent place in the history of painting.
+
+But the two chief pioneers of the early fifteenth century were Giovanni,
+or JOHANNES ALAMANUS, and ANTONIO DA MURANO. The former appears from his
+surname to have been of German origin, the latter belonged to the family
+of VIVARINI, and they used to work together on the same pictures. Two
+excellent examples of this combination are in the Academy at Venice.
+The one, dated 1440, is a Coronation of the Virgin, with many figures,
+including several boys, and numerous saints seated. In the heads of the
+saints we may trace the hand of Alamanus, in the Germanic type of
+countenance which recalls the style of Stephen of Cologne. A repetition
+of this, if it is not actually the original, is in S. Pantalone at
+Venice. The other picture, dated 1446, of enormous dimensions,
+represents the Virgin enthroned, beneath a canopy sustained by angels,
+with the four Fathers of the Church at her side. The colouring is fully
+as flowing and splendid as that of Giambono.
+
+We do not recognise here, as Kugler rightly observes, the influence of
+the school of Giotto, but rather the types of the Germanic style
+gradually assuming a new character, possibly owing to the social
+condition of Venice itself. There was something perhaps in the nature of
+a rich commercial aristocracy of the middle ages calculated to encourage
+that species of art which offered the greatest splendour and elegance to
+the eye; and this also, if possible, in a portable form; thus preferring
+the domestic altar or the dedication picture to wall decorations in
+churches. The contemporary Flemish paintings, under similar conditions,
+exhibit analogous results. With regard to colour, the depth and
+transparency observable in the works of the old Venetian School had long
+been a distinguishing feature in the Byzantine paintings on wood, and
+may therefore be traceable to this source without assuming an influence
+on the part of Padua, or from the north through Giovanni Alamanus.
+
+The two side panels of an altar-piece, representing severally SS. Peter
+and Jerome, and SS. Francis and Mark, now in the National Gallery (Nos.
+768 and 1284), are ascribed to Antonio Vivarini alone, though the centre
+panel, the Virgin and Child, now in the Poldi Pezzoli collection at
+Milan is said to be the joint work of Alamanus and Antonio. However that
+may be, there is no longer any dispute about the fascinating Adoration
+of the Kings in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum at Berlin, formerly supposed
+to be the work of Gentile da Fabriano, but now catalogued as that of
+Antonio.
+
+In 1450 the name of Alamanus disappears altogether, and that of
+BARTOLOMMEO VIVARINI, Antonio's younger brother, replaces it in an
+inscription upon the great altar-piece commissioned by Pope Nicholas V.
+in commemoration of Cardinal Albergati, now in the Pinacoteca of
+Bologna. The change is noticeable as introducing the Paduan influence of
+Squarcione, under whom Bartolommeo had studied, instead of the northern
+influence of Alamanus, into Antonio's workshop, and while this work of
+1450, as might be supposed, bears a general resemblance to that of 1446,
+the change of partnership is at least perceptible, and had a determining
+influence on the development of the Venetian style.
+
+A slightly earlier work of Bartolommeo alone is a Madonna and Child
+belonging to Sir Hugh Lane, signed and dated 1448. An altar-piece in the
+Venice Academy is dated 1464, a Madonna and Four Saints, in the Frari,
+1482, and S. Barbara, in the Academy, 1490. Bartolommeo is supposed to
+have died in 1499.
+
+ALVISE, or LUIGI, VIVARINI was the son of Antonio, and though he worked
+under him and his uncle Bartolommeo, as well as under Giovanni Bellini,
+the Paduan influence is apparent in his work. He was born in 1447, and
+his first dated work is an altar-piece at Montefiorentino, in 1475. In
+the Academy at Venice is a Madonna dated 1480, and at Naples a Madonna
+with SS. Francis and Bernard, 1485. Another Madonna at Vienna is dated
+1489, and the large altar-piece in the Basilica at the Kaiser Friedrich
+Museum in Berlin is assigned to about the same time. This is the first
+of his works in which the influence of Bellini rather than that of his
+family is traceable, while of the "Redentore" Madonna at Venice, of
+about five years later, Mr Bernhard Bernson says that, "As a composition
+no work of the kind by Giovanni Bellini even rivals it." In 1498 he had
+advanced so far as to be spoken of as anticipating Giorgione and Titian,
+in the effect of light and in the roundness and softness of the figures
+of the _Resurrection_, at Bragora. His last work, the altar-piece at the
+Frari, was completed after his death in 1504 by his pupil Basaiti.
+Bartolommeo Montagna, Jacopo da Valenza and Lorenzo Lotto were the chief
+of his other pupils.
+
+In connection with the Vivarini must be mentioned CARLO CRIVELLI, who
+studied with Bartolommeo under Antonio and Squarcione. But there was
+something fierce and uncongenial about Crivelli which takes him out of
+the main body of Venetian painters, and seems to have given him more
+pride in being made a knight than in his pictorial achievements,
+remarkable as they were. In his ornamentation of every detail with gold
+and jewels he recalls the style of Antonio Vivarini, but while the
+master used it as accessory merely, Crivelli positively revelled in it.
+An inventory of the precious stones, ornaments, fruits and flowers, and
+other detached items in the great "Demidoff Altar-Piece" in the National
+Gallery would fill several pages. Of the eight examples in this gallery
+the earliest is probably the _Dead Christ_, presumably painted in 1472.
+The Demidoff altar-piece is dated 1476. The _Annunciation_ (No. 739),
+which may be considered his masterpiece, was ten years later. In 1490
+Crivelli was knighted by Prince Ferdinand of Capua, and from that date
+onward he was careful to add to his signature the title _Miles_--as
+appears in our _Madonna and Child Enthroned_, with SS. Jerome and
+Sebastian--called the Madonna della Rondine:----
+
+CAROLUS CRIVELLUS VENETUS MILES PINXIT. This was painted for the Odoni
+Chapel in S. Francesco at Matelica, the coat of arms of the family being
+painted on the step.
+
+Our _Annunciation_ was executed for the convent of the Santissima
+Annunziata at Ascoli, and is dated 1486. Three coats of arms on the
+front of the step at the bottom of the picture are those of the Bishop
+of Ascoli, Pope Innocent VII., the reigning Pontiff, and the City of
+Ascoli. Between these are the words _Libertas Ecclesiastica_, in
+allusion to the charter of self-government given in 1482 by the Pope to
+the citizens of Ascoli. The patron saint of the city, S. Emidius, is
+represented as a youth kneeling beside the Archangel, holding in his
+hands a model of it. The Virgin is seen through the open door of a
+house, and in an open loggia above are peacocks and other birds. Amid
+all the rich detail, the significance of the group of figures at the top
+of a flight of steps must not be missed, amongst which a child and a
+poet are the only two who are represented as noticing the mystic event.
+
+Another painter of the earlier half of the fourteenth century may be
+mentioned here, though as he was more famous as a medallist his
+influence on the main course of painting is not observable. VITTORE
+PISANO, called PISANELLO, was born in Verona before 1400, and died in
+1455. Of the few pictures attributed to him we are fortunate in having
+two such beautiful examples as the _SS. Anthony and George_ and _The
+Vision of S. Eustace_ in the National Gallery. Both exhibit his two most
+noticeable characteristics, namely, the minute care and exquisite
+feeling that made him the most famous of medallists, and his wonderful
+drawing of animals. The latter, it is worth remarking, was attributed by
+a former owner to Albert Duerer. The other is signed "Pisanus"; in the
+frame are inserted casts of two of his medals, representing Leonello
+d'Este, his patron, and a profile of himself.
+
+Another very considerable factor in the development of Venetian painting
+was the influence of GENTILE DA FABRIANO (_c._ 1360-1430), who settled
+in Venice in the latter part of his life, and there formed the closest
+intimacy with Antonio Vivarini. The remarkable _Adoration of the Kings_
+in the Berlin Museum was until lately given to Gentile, though it is now
+catalogued as the work of Antonio. Of Gentile's education little is
+known, and of the numerous works which he executed at Fabriano, in Rome
+and in Venice very few have survived. From those that exist, however, we
+can form an estimate of his talents and of the difference between his
+earlier and later styles. To the first belong a fresco of the Madonna in
+the Cathedral at Orvieto, and the beautiful picture of the Madonna and
+saints which is now in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum at Berlin. Also the
+fine _Adoration of the Kings_, inscribed with his name and the date
+1423, formerly in the sacristy of S. Trinita at Florence, and now in the
+Accademia. This, his masterpiece, is one of the finest conceptions of
+the subject as well as one of the most excellent productions of the
+schools descended from Giotto. Of his later period the _Coronation of
+the Virgin_ (called the _Quadro della Romita_) in the Brera gallery at
+Milan is one of the finest. In many respects his work is like that of
+Fra Angelico, and was aptly characterised by Michelangelo when he said
+that "Gentile's pictures were like his name." Apart from the influence
+of the Paduan School, which will next be noticed, the Venetian owed most
+to Gentile da Fabriano, if only as the master of Jacopo Bellini, whose
+son, Giovanni Bellini, may be regarded as the real head of the Venetian
+School as developed by his pupils Giorgione and Titian at the opening of
+the sixteenth century.
+
+Whether or not Giotto left any actual pupils in Padua after completing
+the frescoes in the chapel of the arena there, it must be admitted that
+the older school of painting in Padua, which centred round the church
+containing the body of S. Anthony, was an offshoot of the Florentine,
+and that as Giotto was the great leader in Florence he must be
+considered the same here; though his followers differ so much from each
+other in style that beyond their indebtedness to their founder they have
+no distinctive feature in common. But with the opening of the fifteenth
+century one particular tendency was developed under the fostering
+influence of FRANCESCO SQUARCIONE, born in 1394, which affected in a
+very sensible degree the style of the great painters of the next
+generation in Venice. This, in a word, was the cult of the antique.
+
+Among the Florentines, as we have seen, the study of form was chiefly
+pursued on the principle of direct reference to nature, the especial
+object in view being an imitation in two dimensions of the actual
+appearances and circumstances of life existing in three. In the Paduan
+School it now came to be very differently developed, namely, by the
+study of the masterpieces of antique sculpture, in which the common
+forms of nature were already raised to a high ideal of beauty. This
+school has consequently the merit, as Kugler points out, of applying the
+rich results of an earlier, long-forgotten excellence in art to modern
+practice. Of a real comprehension of the idealising principle of classic
+art there does not appear any trace; what the Paduans borrowed from the
+antique was limited primarily to mere outward beauty. Accordingly in the
+earliest examples we find the drapery treated according to the antique
+costume, and the general arrangement more resembling bas-relief than
+rounded groups. The accessories display in like manner a special
+attention to antique models, particularly in the architecture, and the
+frequent introduction of festoons of fruit; while the exaggerated
+sharpness in the marking of the forms due to the combined influence of
+the study of the antique and the naturalising tendency of the time,
+sometimes borders on excess.
+
+The immediate cause of this almost sudden outbreak of the cult of the
+antique--whatever natural forces were behind it--was the visit of
+Squarcione to Greece, and Southern Italy, to collect specimens of the
+remains of ancient art. On his return to Padua his collection soon
+attracted a great number of pupils anxious to avail themselves of the
+advantages it offered; and by these pupils, who poured in from all parts
+of Italy, the manner of the school was afterwards spread throughout a
+great portion of the country. Squarcione himself is better known as a
+teacher than as an artist, the few of his remaining works being of no
+great importance. There is no example in the National Gallery, but of
+the work of his great pupil, Mantegna, we have as much, at any rate, as
+will serve to commemorate the master.
+
+ANDREA MANTEGNA was born at Vicenza in 1431, and when no more than ten
+years old was inscribed in the guild of Padua as pupil and adopted son
+of Squarcione. As early as 1448 he had painted an altar-piece for Santa
+Sophia, now lost, and in 1452 the fresco in San Antonio. In 1455 he was
+engaged with Nicolo Pizzolo (Donatello's assistant), and others, on the
+six frescoes in the Eremitani Church at Padua. The whole of the left
+side of the chapel of SS. James and Christopher--the life of S.
+James--and the martyrdom of S. Christopher are his, and in these, his
+earliest remaining works, we already see the result of pedantic
+antiquarianism combined with his extraordinary individuality.
+
+In 1460 he went to Mantua, where he remained for the greater part of his
+life, visiting Florence in 1466 and Rome in 1488.
+
+Among his earlier works are the small _Adoration of the Kings_ in the
+Uffizi at Florence, the _Death of the Virgin_ and the _S. George_ in the
+Venice Academy. From 1484 to 1494 he was intermittently engaged on the
+nine great cartoons of _The Triumph of Caesar_, which are now at Hampton
+Court, having been acquired by Charles I. with many other gems from the
+Duke of Mantua's collection. On the completion of these he painted the
+celebrated _Madonna della Vittoria_, now in the Louvre--a large
+altar-piece representing a Madonna surrounded by saints, with Francesco
+Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, and his wife, kneeling at her feet. It is a
+dedication picture for a victory obtained over Charles VIII. of France
+in 1495. It is no less remarkable for its superb execution than for a
+softer treatment of the flesh than is usual in Mantegna's work. Two
+other pictures in the Louvre are, however, distinguished by similar
+qualities--the _Parnassus_, painted in 1497, and the _Triumph of
+Virtue_.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XI.--ANDREA MANTEGNA
+
+THE MADONNA DELLA VITTORIA
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+In our own collection we have _The Agony in the Garden_, painted in
+1459--to which I shall refer presently--two monochrome paintings (Nos.
+1125 and 1145), the beautiful _Virgin and Child Enthroned_, with SS.
+Mary Magdalen and John the Baptist, which is comparable with the more
+famous Louvre _Madonna_, and, lastly, the _Triumph of Scipio_, in
+monochrome, painted for Francesco Cornaro, a Venetian nobleman,
+completed in 1506, only a few months before the painter's death. In this
+we see that Mantegna's antiquarianism was not simply a youthful phase,
+but lasted till the very end of his career. The subject is the reception
+of the Phrygian mother of the gods among the recognised divinities of
+the Roman State, as is indicated on the plinth by the inscription. In
+the centre is Claudia Quinta about to kneel before the bust of the
+goddess. Behind is Scipio, and in the background are monuments to his
+family. The composition includes twenty-two figures. It is significant
+that the subject and its treatment are so entirely classic as only to be
+appreciated by references to Latin literature.
+
+Another significance attaches to the _Agony in the Garden_ above
+mentioned, which is one of the very earliest, as the _Scipio_ is the
+very latest, of Mantegna's pictures, being painted before he left Padua
+to go to Mantua. In this we find that the original suggestion for the
+design appears to have been taken from a drawing in the sketch-book of
+his father-in-law, Jacopo Bellini, which is now in the British Museum;
+and the same design appears to have served Giovanni Bellini in the
+composition of the picture in our gallery (No. 726). This takes us back
+to Venice, and accounts for the Paduan influence traceable in the works
+of the Bellini family and their pupils.
+
+JACOPO BELLINI, whose considerable talents have been somewhat obscured
+by the fame of his two sons, Gentile and Giovanni, was originally a
+pupil of Gentile da Fabriano, after whom he named his eldest son. He was
+working in Padua in the middle of the fifteenth century, in rivalry with
+Squarcione, and in 1453 his daughter Nicolosia married Andrea Mantegna.
+Thus it happened that both of his sons came under the influence of
+Mantegna, and evidently, too, of the sculptor Donatello, when working at
+Padua between 1450 and 1460.
+
+Very few authentic pictures by Jacopo are known to us. _A Crucifixion_
+(much repainted) was in the sacristy of the Episcopal Palace at Verona;
+and another, which recalls the treatment of his master, Gentile da
+Fabriano, at Lovere, near Bergamo. In the sketch-book above mentioned,
+the contents of which consist of sacred subjects, and studies from the
+antique, both in architecture and in costume, we see the peculiar
+tendency of the Paduan School expressed in the most complete and
+comprehensive manner. These drawings constitute the most remarkable link
+of connection between Mantegna and the sons of Jacopo Bellini, all three
+of whom must have studied from them. The book was inherited by Gentile
+on his mother's death, and bequeathed by him to his brother on condition
+that he should finish the picture of _S. Mark_, on which Gentile was
+engaged at the time of his death.
+
+GIOVANNI BELLINI was born in 1428 or 1430 and lived to 1516. Albert
+Duerer, writing from Venice in 1506, says that "he is very old, but is
+still the best in painting."
+
+The greater number of Bellini's pictures are to be found in the
+galleries and churches in Venice, all of those which are dated being
+the work of his old age. Of his earlier pictures we are fortunate in
+having two fine examples in the National Gallery, _Christ's Agony in the
+Garden_ (No. 726) and _The Blood of the Redeemer_ (No. 1233). In both of
+these the influence of his famous brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna, is
+traceable,--the former being till lately attributed to him. Both
+Giovanni and Gentile worked in Padua, where Mantegna was established, in
+1460 or thereabouts, and where another influence, that of the sculptor
+Donatello, must have had its effect on the young brothers. Similar in
+character, and even more beautiful in some respects, is the _Redeemer_,
+a single half figure in a landscape, recently acquired for the
+Louvre--the first authentic example of the master in that collection.
+
+In 1464, Giovanni had returned to Venice, and it was some years before
+the severe Paduan influence melted before "the sensuous feeling of the
+true Venetian temperament." In 1475, however, the arrival of Antonello
+da Messina in Venice, bringing with him the practice of painting in oil,
+effected a revolution, in which Giovanni, if not one of the foremost,
+was certainly one of the most successful in adopting the new method. His
+later works, so far from showing any diminution of power, may be said to
+anticipate the Venetian style of the sixteenth century in the clearest
+manner. One of the chief, dated 1488, is the large altar-piece in the
+sacristy of S. Maria di Frari, a _Madonna Enthroned_ with two angels and
+four saints. The two little angels are of the utmost beauty; the one is
+playing on a lute, and listens with head inclined to hear whether the
+instrument is in tune; the other is blowing a pipe. The whole is
+perfectly finished and of a splendid effect of colour. To the year 1486
+belongs a _Madonna Enthroned with Six Saints_, now in the Academy at
+Venice. The famous head of the Doge Loredano in the National Gallery
+must have been painted in or after 1501. In 1507, he completed the large
+picture of _S. Mark Preaching at Alexandria_, now in the Brera Gallery
+at Milan, begun by his brother Gentile. Within three years of his death,
+namely in 1513, he could produce such a masterwork as the altar-piece in
+S. Giovanni Crisostomo. His last work, the landscape in which was
+finished by Titian, is dated 1514. This is the famous _Bacchanal_ now in
+the collection of the Duke of Northumberland.
+
+The influence of Bellini on the Venetian School was paramount, and his
+noble example helped more than anything else to develop the excellences
+observable in the works of Cimada Conegliano, Vincenzo Catena, Lorenzo
+Lotto, Palma Vecchio and Basaiti, to say nothing of his great pupils
+Titian and Giorgione. It is impossible to conjecture what course the
+genius of this younger generation would have taken without his guidance,
+but when we consider that in 1500 Bellini was seventy years old, and had
+stored within his mind the experience of his early association with his
+brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna in Padua, the introduction of the use of
+oil paints by Antonello da Messina in 1475, since which date he had
+sedulously developed the new practice; when we also take into account
+the dignity and gravity of his own works, and the indication they afford
+of the man himself, it is not difficult to judge how much his pupils and
+successors owed to him.
+
+The works of GENTILE BELLINI, the elder brother of Giovanni, are of less
+importance, but of considerable interest, especially in view of his
+journey to Constantinople in 1479 at the request of the Sultan, whose
+portrait he painted there in the following year. A replica
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XII.--GIOVANNI BELLINI
+
+THE DOGE LOREDANO
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+of this portrait has been bequeathed to the National Gallery by Sir
+Henry Layard, and it is to be hoped that the difficulties raised by the
+Italian government as to its removal from Venice will shortly be
+overcome. The picture of _S. Mark Preaching at Alexandria_ already
+mentioned as having been finished by Giovanni, is remarkable for the
+Oriental costumes of all the figures in it. Gentile's pictures are often
+ascribed to his brother; in two examples at the National Gallery (Nos.
+808 and 1440) there is actually a false signature on a cartellino. In
+the latter instance Messrs Ludwig and Molmenti are still of opinion that
+the picture is the work of Giovanni.
+
+VINCENZO CATENA (_c._ 1470-1530) is not known to have been a pupil of
+Bellini, but he began by so modelling his style upon him that one of his
+works in the National Gallery was until quite lately officially ascribed
+to him, namely the _S. Jerome in his Study_. Another, a later work, _A
+Warrior Adoring the Infant Christ_ was similarly ascribed to Giorgione.
+This is a proof that Catena was very susceptible to various influences,
+and was "an artist of extraordinary suppleness of mind, never too old to
+learn or to appreciate new ideals and new sentiments." In a manner more
+his own is the _Madonna with Four Saints_ in the Berlin Gallery (No.
+19). The _S. Jerome_ and the _Warrior_ are among the most popular
+pictures in the National Gallery--partly perhaps on account of their
+supposed illustrious parentage, but by no means entirely. A painter who
+could so absorb the characteristics of two such masters must needs be a
+master himself.
+
+CIMA DA CONEGLIANO, so called from his birthplace in Friuli--the rocky
+height of which serves as a background in some of his pictures--settled
+in Venice in 1490, when he was about thirty years old. The influence of
+Bellini may be seen in the temperamental as well as the technical
+qualities of his work, which is distinguished by sound drawing and
+proportion, fine and brilliant colour, as well as by sympathetic types
+of countenance. One of his best and earliest pictures is the _S. John
+the Baptist_ with four other saints, in Santa Maria del Orto in Venice.
+Another is the _Madonna with S. Jerome and S. Louis_, now in the Vienna
+Gallery. A smaller but peculiarly attractive piece is the _S. Anianus of
+Alexandria_ healing a shoemaker's wounded hand, at Berlin, distinguished
+for its beautiful clear colours and the life-like character of the
+heads.
+
+ANDREA PREVITALI, born in Bergamo in 1480, came to Venice to study under
+Bellini, whom he succeeded in imitating with remarkable success. _The
+Mystic Marriage of S. Catherine_ (No. 1409) in the National Gallery was
+formerly attributed to Bellini. If he had not the originality to carry
+the art any farther, his pictures are nevertheless a decided and very
+agreeable proof of the advance that was being made in it at the
+beginning of the sixteenth century, before the full splendour of
+Giorgione and Titian had unfolded.
+
+MARCO BASAITI, though probably not a pupil of Bellini, nevertheless
+acquired many of his characteristics. The picture in the National
+Gallery known as _The Madonna of the Meadow_ was until lately assigned
+to Bellini, and another of his, in the Giovanelli Palace at Venice,
+which is identical in technique, tone, and general effect with this one,
+is still so ascribed. Whether or not he learnt from Bellini, he was
+certainly an assistant to Alvise Vivarini, on whose death he completed
+the large altar-piece in the Church of S. Maria de Friari at Venice,
+representing _S. Ambrose surrounded by Saints_. His _Christ on the Mount
+of Olives_ and _The Calling of Zebedee_, both dated 1510, are now in the
+Academy at Venice, and together with the _Portrait of a Man_, dated
+1521, in the Bergamo Gallery, and _The Assumption_ in S. Pietro Martire
+at Murano, may be considered his best performances.
+
+More remote from Bellini, yet not so far as to be entirely free from his
+influence in some of their more important compositions, was the school
+formed by LAZZARO DI BASTIANI or SEBASTIANI, of which the chief ornament
+was Vittore Carpaccio, and among the lesser ones Giovanni Mansueti and
+Benedetto Diana. The history of this independent group of painters has
+only of late years been elucidated; Kugler, after a page devoted to
+Carpaccio, dismissed them with the remark that Mansueti and Bastiani
+were both pupils of Carpaccio, and that Benedetto Diana was "less
+distinguished." Our national collection was without any example until
+1896, when Mansueti's _Symbolic representation of the Crucifixion_ was
+purchased. In 1905 the National Art-Collections Fund secured Bastiani's
+_Virgin and Child_, and in 1910 Sir Claude Phillips presented Diana's
+_Christ Blessing_. Alas! that we are still without anything from the
+hand of Vittore Carpaccio. Seven portraits by Moroni do not fill a gap
+like this.
+
+The name of Lazzaro de Bastiani first occurs in Venice as a witness to
+his brother's will in 1449, and as early as 1460 he was painting an
+altar-piece for the Church of San Samuele. Ten years later, the brothers
+of the Scuolo di San Marco ordered a picture of the _Story of David_
+from him, promising him the same payment as they gave to Jacobo Bellini,
+who had been working for them with his two sons Gentile and Giovanni.
+In 1474, another proof of his rank and repute as a painter is afforded
+by a letter from a gentleman in Constantinople, asking for a picture by
+him, but that Giovanni Bellini should paint it in the event of Bastiani
+being already dead. He was thus, it would seem, preferred to Bellini,
+though it will be remembered that five years later, when the Sultan
+expressed the wish that a distinguished portrait-painter should be sent
+him from Venice, it was Gentile Bellini who was nominated. All the same,
+Gentile was a portrait-painter, and Bastiani was not; and it is fairly
+evident that the latter was at least in the front rank. One of his
+best-known pictures the _Vergine dai begli occhi_ in the Ducal Palace at
+Venice used to be attributed to Giovanni Bellini; but though he appears
+to have drawn inspiration for his larger and more important compositions
+from Jacobo Bellini, his style was chiefly developed through that of
+Giambono. His most important work is now in the Academy at Vienna--an
+altar-piece painted for the Church of Corpus Domini, Venice, _S.
+Veneranda Enthroned_. In the Imperial Gallery at Vienna are a _Last
+Communion_ and _Funeral of S. Girolamo_. In the Academy at Venice are
+_S. Anthony of Padua_, seated between the branches of a walnut-tree,
+with Cardinal Bonaventura and Brother Leo on either side, a large
+picture of a _Miracle of the Holy Cross_, and a remarkable rendering of
+_The Madonna Kneeling_, the child being laid under an elaborate canopy.
+An _Entombment_ in the Church of S. Antonino at Venice is reminiscent of
+Giovanni Bellini at his best.
+
+In 1508, the name of VITTORE CARPACCIO occurs with that of Bastiani in
+connection with the frescoes of Giorgione upon the facade of the Fondaco
+de Tedeschi, about which there was a dispute. To Carpaccio we are
+indebted for the most vivid realization of the contemporary life of
+Venice; for although his subjects were nominally taken from sacred
+history or legend, they are treated in a thoroughly secular fashion,
+giving the clearest idea of the buildings, people, and costume of the
+Venice of his time, with the greatest variety and richest development.
+His object is not only to represent single events, but a complete scene,
+and while we observe this characteristic in one or two pictures by the
+Bellini, Carpaccio not only shows it much oftener, but carries it to a
+much fuller development--possibly influenced by the Netherlandish
+masters.
+
+Many of his works are in the Academy at Venice; eight large pictures,
+painted between 1490 and 1495, represent the history of S. Ursula and
+the eleven thousand virgins. Such a wealth of charming material might
+have embarrassed a less capable painter, but "the monotonous incident
+which forms the groundwork of many of them," as Kugler coldly puts it,
+"is throughout varied and elevated by a free style of grouping and by
+happy moral allusions." Another series is that of the _Miracles of the
+Holy Cross_, among which may be especially noticed the cure of a man
+possessed by a devil; the scene is laid in the loggia of a Venetian
+palace, and is watched from below by a varied group of figures on the
+Canal and its banks. Larger and broader treatment may be seen in the
+_Presentation in the Temple_, painted in 1510, which is also in the
+Academy, and in the altar-piece of _S. Vitale_, dated 1514. This last
+brings Carpaccio into closer comparison with the later Venetian
+painters, being in the nature of a _Santa Conversazione_, where the holy
+personages are grouped in some definite relation to each other, and not
+independent figures.
+
+PALMA VECCHIO (1480-1528), so called to distinguish him from Giacomo
+Palma the younger--Palma Giovane,--was so much influenced by Giorgione
+and Titian that his indebtedness to Bellini appears to have been
+comparatively slight. The beautiful _Portrait of a Poet_ in the National
+Gallery has been attributed both to Giorgione and to Titian.
+
+The number of pictures which are now permitted by the experts to be
+called Giorgione's is so small, that we may learn more about him as an
+influence on the work of other painters--especially Titian--than from
+the meagre materials available for his own biography. The only
+unquestioned examples of his work are three pictures at the Uffizi, _The
+Trial of Moses_, _The Judgment of Solomon_, and _The Knight of Malta_;
+the _Venus_ at Dresden; _The Three Philosophers_ at Vienna; and the
+famous _Concert Champetre_ in the Louvre. But until the critics deprive
+him even of these, we are able to agree that "his capital achievement
+was the invention of the modern spirit of lyrical passion and romance in
+pictorial art, and his magical charm has never been equalled."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+TIZIANO VECELLIO
+
+
+TITIAN occupies almost, if not quite, as important a place in the
+history of painting as does Shakespeare in that of literature. His fame,
+his popularity, the wide range as well as the immense quantity of his
+works, entitle him to be ranked with our poet, if only for the
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XIII.--GIORGIONE
+
+VENETIAN PASTORAL
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+enormous influence they have both exercised on posterity: and without
+carrying the parallel farther than the limits imposed by the difference
+of their circumstances and their method of expression, it may fairly be
+said that Titian, in painting, stands for us to-day much as Shakespeare
+stands for in letters. "Titian," says M. Caro Delvaille,[2] "is the
+father of modern painting. As the blood of the patriarchs of old infused
+the veins of a whole race, so the genius of the most productive of
+painters was destined to infuse those of artists through all the ages
+even to the present day. He bequeathed, in his enormous _oeuvre_, a
+heritage in which generations of painters have participated."
+
+Not only was he the father of modern painting, but he was himself the
+first modern painter, just as Shakespeare was, to all present intents
+and purposes, the first modern writer. Among a thousand readers of
+Shakespeare, there is possibly not more than one who has ever read a
+line of Chaucer, or who has ever heard of any of his other predecessors.
+So it is with Titian. To the connoisseur, Titian is one of the latest
+painters; to the public he is the earliest. "In certain of his
+portraits," we read in the National Gallery Catalogue, "he ranks with
+the supreme masters; in certain other aspects he is seen as the greatest
+academician, as perhaps he was the first."
+
+As it happens, too, Titian stands in much the same relation to Giorgione
+as Shakespeare did to Marlowe. Giorgione was really the great innovator,
+and Giorgione died young, leaving Titian to carry on the work. It has
+always been supposed that Titian and Giorgione, like Marlowe and
+Shakespeare, were born within the same year; but in this respect the
+parallel is no longer admissible, as Mr Herbert Cook has shown to the
+verge of actual proof that the story of Titian being born in 1577, and
+having lived to be ninety-nine years old, is unworthy of acceptance. If
+this were merely a question of biography, it would not be worth dwelling
+upon; but as it seriously affects the whole study of early Venetian
+painting, it is necessary to point out that the probability, according
+to a critical study of all the evidence available, is that Titian was
+not born till 1488 or 1489, and was thus really the pupil rather than
+the contemporary of Giorgione, and therefore more slightly influenced by
+Giovanni Bellini than has been generally supposed.
+
+Without going into all the evidence adduced by Mr Cook (_Reviews and
+Appreciations,_ Heinemann, 1913) it is nevertheless pretty evident that
+in the account given by his friend and contemporary, Lodovico Dolce,
+published in 1557, we have the most authentic story of Titian's early
+years, and from this it is quite clear that Titian was considerably
+younger than Giorgione. "Being born at Cadore," he writes, "of
+honourable parents, he was sent, when a child of nine years old, by his
+father to Venice, to the house of his father's brother, in order that he
+might be put under some proper master to study painting; his father
+having perceived in him even at that tender age strong marks of genius
+towards the art.... His uncle directly carried the child to the house of
+Sebastanio, father of the _gentilissimo_ Valerio and of Francesco
+Zuccati (distinguished masters of the art of mosaic, ...) to learn the
+principles of the art. From them he was removed to Gentile Bellini,
+brother of Giovanni, but much inferior to him, who at that time was at
+work with his brother in the Grand Council Chamber. But Titian, impelled
+by nature to greater excellence and perfection in his art, could not
+endure following the dry and laboured manner of Gentile, but designed
+with boldness and expedition. Whereupon Gentile told him he would make
+no progress in painting because he diverged so much from the old style.
+Thereupon Titian left the stupid Gentile and found means to attach
+himself to Giovanni Bellini; but not perfectly pleased with his manner,
+he chose Giorgio da Castel Franco. Titian, then, drawing and painting
+with Giorgione, as he was called, became in a short time so accomplished
+in art that when Giorgione was painting (in 1507-8) the facade of the
+Fondaco de'Tedeschi, or Exchange of the German merchants, which looks
+towards the Grand Canal, Titian was allotted the other side which faces
+the market place, being at the time scarcely twenty years old. Here he
+represented a Judith of wonderful design and colour, so remarkable
+indeed, that when the work came to be uncovered it was commonly thought
+to be the work of Giorgione, and all the latter's friends congratulated
+him (Giorgione) as being by far the best thing he had produced.
+Whereupon Giorgione, in great displeasure, replied that the work was
+from the hand of his pupil, who showed already how he could surpass his
+master and (what is more) Giorgione shut himself up for some days at
+home, as if in despair, seeing that a young (_i.e._ younger) man knew
+more than he did."
+
+Again, in speaking of the famous altar-piece--the _Assumption_, now in
+the Academy at Venice--painted by Titian in 1516, Dolce mentions him
+twice as "giovinetto." "Not long afterwards he was commissioned to paint
+a large picture for the high altar of the Church of the Frate Minori,
+where Titian, quite a young man, painted in oil the Virgin ascending to
+Heaven.... This was the first public work which he painted in oil, and
+he did it in a very short time, and while still a young man."
+
+Vasari's account of Titian's early years is substantially the same, but
+unfortunately opens with the statement that he was "born in the year
+1480." This might easily have been a slip of the pen or a printer's
+mistake for 1488 or 1489, and subsequent passages in the life bear out
+this supposition. But partly because Titian was a Venetian and not a
+Florentine, and partly, no doubt, because he was still alive, and had
+been producing picture after picture for over sixty years at the time
+Vasari published his second edition in 1568, the whole account is so
+confused and inaccurate that its credit has been severely shaken by
+modern critics, with the result that it is hardly nowadays considered
+authentic in any respect. The following extracts, however, there seems
+no reason to question:----
+
+"About the year 1507, Giorgione not being satisfied [with the
+old-fashioned methods of Bellini and others] began to give his works an
+unwonted softness and relief, painting them in a very beautiful manner."
+And a little later "Having seen the manner of Giorgione, Titian early
+resolved to abandon that of Gian Bellino, although well grounded
+therein. He now, therefore, devoted himself to this purpose, and in a
+short time so closely imitated Giorgione that his pictures were
+sometimes taken for those of this master, as will be related below.
+Increasing in age, judgment and facility of hand, our young artist
+executed numerous works in fresco.... At the time when he began to adopt
+the manner of Giorgione, being then not more than eighteen, he took the
+portrait of a gentleman of the Barberigo family, who was his friend, and
+this was considered very beautiful, the colouring being true and
+natural, the hair so distinctly painted that each one could be counted,
+as might also the stitches in a satin doublet painted in the same work;
+in a word, it was so well and carefully done that it would have been
+taken for a work of Giorgione if Titian had not written his name on the
+dark ground."
+
+With this we may leave the question of Titian's birth date, and consider
+the exceptional interest attaching to the question of this Barberigo
+portrait. According to Mr. Cook, and also, under reserve, to several
+other eminent authorities, it is no other than the so-called _Ariosto_,
+which was purchased for the National Gallery in 1904. The chief
+difficulties in deciding the question are, first, whether it is possible
+that a youth of eighteen could have painted such a masterpiece, second,
+that the signature _Titianus_ is supposed not to have been used by the
+artist before about 1520, and lastly, that the head, at any rate, is
+decidedly more in the manner of Giorgione than that of Titian. This
+last, of course, did not trouble Vasari, and his testimony is therefore
+all the more valuable; but all difficulties vanish if we accept Mr.
+Cook's theory that the portrait was begun by Giorgione in 1508, was left
+incomplete at his sudden death in 1510, and finished by Titian in 1520.
+That is to say, the head and general design is that of Giorgione, the
+marvellous finish of the sleeve and other parts that of Titian.
+
+Of works left unfinished at a master's death and completed by a pupil
+there are numerous instances; the famous _Bacchanal_ at Alnwick is one
+which takes us a step further in Titian's career. This was begun by
+Giovanni Bellini, and Titian was invited by the Duke of Ferrara, in
+1516, to finish it. The landscape is entirely his. To complete the
+decoration of the apartment in which the picture was hung, he was
+called upon to paint two others of the same size, one the _Triumph of
+Bacchus_, or as it is usually called _Bacchus and Ariadne_ (now in the
+National Gallery) and the other a similar subject, the _Bacchanal_, now
+in the Prado (No. 418, formerly 450).
+
+Ridolfi, in his life of Titian characterises our picture as one to whose
+unparalleled merits he is inadequate to do justice; "There is," he says,
+"such a graceful expression in the figure of Ariadne, such beauty in the
+children--so strongly marked both in the looks and attitudes is the
+joyous character of the licentious votaries of Bacchus--the roundness
+and correct drawing of the man entwined with snakes, the magnificence of
+the sky and landscape, the sporting play of the leaves and branches of
+the most vivid tints, and the detailed herbage on the ground tending to
+enliven the scene, and the rich tone of colour throughout, form
+altogether such a whole that hardly any other work of Titian can stand
+in competition with it."
+
+In the composition of the second picture, _The Bacchanal_ at Madrid, a
+number of the votaries of Bacchus are assembled on the bank of a
+rivulet, flowing with red wine from a hill in the distance; some of them
+are distributing the liquor to their associates, while a nymph and two
+men are dancing. The nymph is supposed to be a portrait of Violante,
+Titan's mistress, as he has painted, in allusion to her name, a violet
+on her breast and his own name round her arm. Her light drapery is
+raised by the breeze, and discovers the beautiful form and _morbidezza_
+of her limbs. In the foreground Ariadne lies asleep, her head resting on
+a rich vase in place of a pillow.[3]
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XIV.--TITIAN
+
+PORTRAIT SAID TO BE OF ARIOSTO
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+Cumberland says that Raphael Mengs, who lived long at Madrid at the time
+when this picture was in the reception room of the New Palace, was of
+opinion that Titian's superior taste was nowhere more strikingly
+displayed, and remarks that he himself could never pass by it without
+surprise and admiration, more particularly excited by the beauty of the
+sleeping Ariadne in the foreground.
+
+Respecting the merits of both pictures the testimony of Agostino
+Carracci should not be omitted; when he viewed them in the possession of
+the Duke of Ferrara he declared that he considered them the first in the
+world, and that no one could say he was acquainted with the most
+marvellous works of art without having seen them.
+
+Commenting upon another picture of Titian's early period, Sir Joshua
+Reynolds delivers himself of the following criticisms on Titian as
+compared with Raphael, "It is to Titian that we must turn," he says, "to
+find excellence in regard to colour, and light and shade in the highest
+degree. He was both the first and the greatest master of this art; by a
+few strokes he knew how to mark the general image and character of
+whatever object he attempted, and produced by this alone a truer
+representation of nature than his master, Giovanni Bellini, or any of
+his predecessors, who finished every hair. His greatest object was to
+express the general colour, to preserve the masses of light and shade,
+and to give by opposition the idea of that solidity which is inseparable
+from natural objects....
+
+"Raphael and Titian seemed to have looked at nature for different
+purposes; they both had the power of extending their view to the whole,
+but one looked only at the general effect as produced by form, the
+other as produced by colour. We cannot refuse Titian the merit of
+attending to the general form of the object, as well as colour; but his
+deficiency lay--a deficiency at least when he is compared with
+Raphael--in not possessing the power, like him, of correcting the form
+of his model by any general idea of beauty in his own mind. Of this his
+_St. Sebastian with other Saints_ (in the Vatican) is a particular
+instance. This figure appears to be a most exact representation both of
+the form and colour of the model which he then happened to have before
+him, and has all the force of nature, and the colouring of flesh itself;
+but unluckily the model was of a bad form, especially the legs. Titian
+has with much care preserved these defects, as he has imitated the
+beauty and brilliancy of the colouring...."
+
+Of the Sebastian, Vasari says very much the same as Reynolds. "He is
+nude," he writes, "and has been exactly copied from the life without the
+slightest admixture of art, no efforts for the sake of beauty have been
+sought in any part--trunk or limbs; all is as nature left it, so that it
+might seem to be a sort of cast from the life. It is nevertheless
+considered very fine, and the figure of our Lady with the infant in her
+arms, whom all the other figures are looking at, is also accounted most
+beautiful."
+
+Two more of the pictures of Titian's earliest period are in the National
+Gallery--the _Christ appearing to Mary Magdalen_ (No. 270), and the
+_Holy Family_ (No. 4). The former is ascribed to about the year 1514,
+partly on the ground that the group of buildings in the landscape is
+identical, line for line, with that in the Dresden _Venus_ painted by
+Giorgione but completed by Titian after his death. The same landscape
+also occurs in the beautiful little _Cupid_ in the Vienna
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XV.--TITIAN
+
+THE HOLY FAMILY
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+Academy, and, as Mr Herbert Cook suggests, possibly represents some
+cherished spot in Titian's memory connected with his mountain home at
+Pieve di Cadore.
+
+The _Holy Family_, above mentioned, is a most charming example of the
+_sacra conversazione_ as developed by Titian from the somewhat formal
+and austere conception of Bellini and his contemporaries into something
+eminently characteristic of the secular side of his genius. The very
+titles of two of his most beautiful and most famous pictures of this
+sort proclaim the hold they have taken on the popular mind. The one is
+the _Madonna of the Cherries_, in the Vienna Gallery. The other is the
+_Madonna with the Rabbit_, in the Louvre. In our picture the
+distinguishing feature is the kneeling shepherd, with his little
+water-cask slung on his belt, who puts us at once in touch with the
+whole scene by the simple appeal to our common human experience. Raphael
+could move our religious feelings to revere the godhead in the child,
+but could seldom, like Titian, stir our human emotions and bring home to
+us that Christ was born on earth for our sakes.
+
+If this particular characteristic of Titian were confined to the
+pastoral setting of these Holy Conversations, it might be taken as
+merely accidental, and without further significance than should be
+accorded to a youthful fancy. But in the wonderful _Entombment_, now in
+the Louvre, in which he displays "the full splendour of his early
+maturity," the human element is such an important factor in the
+presentment of the divine tragedy that even a painter, M.
+Caro-Delvaille, must postpone his description of the picture to
+sentences like these:--"Sur un ciel tourmente," he writes, in phrases
+which it is impossible to render adequately in English, "se profile le
+groupe tragique. Aucun geste superflu; le drame est interieur. La
+Douleur plane dans l'air alourdi du crepuscule, comme une aile
+fatale--Jesus est mort! Le grand cadavre livide, que les apotres
+angoisses soutiennent, n'a rien dans sa robustesse inerte de la
+depouille emaciee des Christs mystiques. Le fils de Dieu semble un
+patriarche douloureusement frappe par le decret d'en haut.
+
+"Une aprete primitive, ou les larmes se cachent comme une faiblesse,
+communique a l'oeuvre un pathetique si poignant que le mystere de la
+mort s'etend jusqu'a nous.
+
+"La Vierge et la Madeleine sont la. Elle, la Mere, doute de la realite,
+tant elle souffre! Son regard fixe sur le corps cheri, elle ne peut
+croire que tout est consomme. La pecheresse pitoyable la prend dans ses
+bras pour essayer de l'arracher a l'horreur de cette vision.
+
+"Drame humain et divin! ne sont-ce point des fils qui ramenent le
+cadavre de leur pere a la poussiere? Tous ceux qui passerent par ces
+epreuves se souviennent de ce deuil qui semble se prolonger dans la
+nature entiere."
+
+Titian's first period may be said to end in 1530, by which time he had
+completed the famous _Peter Martyr_, which was destroyed by fire in
+1867. In 1530, too, Titian's wife died. This event of itself need not be
+supposed to have greatly influenced his career, as there is no evidence
+of her having appealed to his artistic nature as did his daughter
+Lavinia. As it happened, however, a more certain influence was nearly
+coincident with this event--the arrival in Venice of the notorious
+Aretine, who, chiefly as it appears, with an eye to business, entered
+into the most intimate relations with Titian. The accession of the
+sculptor
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XVI.--TITIAN
+
+THE ENTOMBMENT
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+Sansovino to the comradeship earned for the group the name of the
+Triumvirate.
+
+So far from Titian being corrupted by the society of Aretine, there is
+direct evidence in one of the poet's letters to him that he was not.
+"You must come to our feast to-night," he writes, "but I may as well
+warn you that you had better leave early, as I know how particular you
+are about certain things." Nor is there anything in the artist's works
+of this next period--which we may roughly date from 1530 to 1550, that
+betrays a more serious devotion to the sensual side of life than can be
+accounted for by the demands of the high and mighty patrons that Aretine
+was soon to find for him. As an artist he looked upon woman as a
+beautiful creature, as a man he most probably never troubled about her,
+or was troubled by her. There is no proof that any of his pictures are
+rightly called "Titian's mistress," and we may conclude that he was as
+good a husband and a father as was Rubens, who revelled in painting
+woman, or Velasquez, who seems to have frankly disliked it. Like
+Rowlandson, whom the general public only know as a caricaturist, but who
+when he once got away from London was the most pure minded and poetical
+artist, so Titian, when once dissociated from the demands of corrupt
+patrons, like Philip II., never reveals himself as having fallen under
+the influence of Aretine--if indeed at all. The _Danae_ and the _Venus
+and a Musician_ at the Prado are the only examples it is possible to
+cite--unless it be the _Venus_, to which popular opinion would hardly
+deny its place of honour in the Tribune at the Uffizi.
+
+At the same time the difference in circumstances, the fuller, richer
+life that he must have led in these years of patronage and prosperity,
+accounts for a certain "shallowness and complacency" which
+distinguishes his work during this period as sharply from that which
+preceded as from that which followed it; and fine as is his
+accomplishment during these years, especially in portraiture, it
+includes fewer of those masterpieces which appeal to the heart as much
+as to the eye.
+
+To 1538 belongs the large and beautiful picture of the _Presentation of
+the Virgin Mary in the Temple_, painted for the Scuola della Carita in
+Venice, which is now occupied by the Academy, where it still hangs, as
+is said, in its original place. It is twenty-two feet in length, and
+contains several portraits, among which are those of his daughter
+Lavinia (the Virgin, as is supposed), Andrea Franchescini, grand
+chancellor of Venice, in a scarlet robe; next him, in black, Lazzaro
+Crasso, a lawyer, and certain monks of the convent following them.
+
+We now find Titian employed by the Duke of Urbino on some of the
+principal works of this period. Among these were the Uffizi _Venus_,
+said to be a portrait of the Duchess herself. The _Girl in a Fur Mantle_
+at Vienna, portraits of the Duke and of the Duchess (1537), and the
+so-called _La Bella_ at the Uffizi. The so-called _Duke of Norfolk_ at
+the Pitti, supposed to represent the young Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino.
+Also the _Isabella d'Este_ at Vienna, and somewhat earlier, the
+_Cardinal Ippolito_ in Hungarian dress, at the Pitti; and the _Daughter
+of Robert Strozzi_, at Berlin.
+
+The large _Ecce Homo_ in the Vienna Gallery, dated 1543, measuring 11
+ft. 3 in. by 7 ft. 7 in. was for some years in London, and with better
+fortune might still be in this country if not in our national
+collection. It was one of the nineteen pictures by Titian in the
+wonderful collection of Rubens, which the Duke of Buckingham persuaded
+him to sell to him for a fabulous price. The collection was shipped to
+England in 1625, when the pictures were taken to York House in the
+Strand, and the statues and gems to Chelsea. In 1649 a portion of the
+collection was sold at Brussels, and the _Ecce Homo_ was purchased there
+by the Archduke Leopold for his gallery at Prague, which now forms part
+of that at Vienna. The Earl of Arundel offered the Duke of Buckingham
+L7000 for it--an unheard of price, especially when we remember the
+greater value of money at that time.
+
+With another masterpiece--fortunately still preserved in the Prado,
+though not entirely uninjured by fire--we may close the second period.
+This is the magnificent equestrian portrait of _The Emperor Charles V._
+which was painted at Augsburg in 1548. A few years later the Emperor
+abdicated in favour of his egregious son, Philip II., of whom Titian
+painted three portraits in succession. The second of these, now in the
+Prado, has an especial interest for us, inasmuch as it was painted for
+the benefit or the enticement of Queen Mary before her marriage to
+Philip. As might be expected, it is a highly flattering likeness,--in
+white and gold, in half armour. To quote M. Caro-Delvaille, this king of
+_auto da fes_ and sunken galleys is here nothing more than a gallant
+cavalier--neurasthenic but elegant. For England was also painted the
+_Venus and Adonis_, in 1554; but unfortunately the original is now in
+Madrid, and only a copy in our National Gallery. However, the remains of
+Philip are there too, and not in Westminster Abbey!
+
+A copy of another famous picture painted by Titian for the Emperor
+Charles V. was also in the collection of the Duke of Buckingham, who
+probably brought it with him when he returned from his madcap expedition
+with Prince Charles to Madrid. It is described in his catalogue as "One
+great Piece of the Emperor Charles, a copy called Titian's Glory, being
+the principal in Spain, now in the Escurial." This was the great
+_Paradise_, or Apotheosis of Charles V. which Charles took with him into
+Spain at the time of his abdication and placed in the monastery of St.
+Juste, in Estramadura, to which he retired. After his death it was
+removed by Philip II. to Madrid.
+
+Of the two versions of _The Crowning with Thorns_, the earlier one at
+the Louvre, painted in 1560, is more familiar to, and probably more
+popular with, the general public than the much later one at Munich
+painted in 1571. But for the real merits of the two we need not hesitate
+to accept M. Caro-Delvaille's judgment, since if he had any bias it
+would be in favour of his own country's treasure. The former he
+characterises as an incoherent composition, in which useless
+gesticulation diminishes the dramatic effect, while striving to force
+it; and adds that all the false romanticism of painting comes from this
+sort of theatrical pathos. Of the other he writes "It was the picture at
+the Louvre which shocked me with its violent declamation and its forced
+blows that never hit anything. But here at Munich a mystery so profound
+broods over the drama that the melodramatic element disappears. The
+scene becomes tragic, lamentable, hopelessly sad. The great artist with
+a brush that trembles in his aged hands paints but the sentiment of it,
+to exhale from his work like a plaintive sigh. The veil of death
+descends and spreads over life.... Titian might seem to have painted it
+as an offering to Rembrandt when he, too, should feel the approach of
+death."
+
+Another of his latest pictures, the _Adam and Eve in Paradise_, is in
+the Prado (No. 429, formerly 456). This was copied, or one might almost
+say travestied, by Rubens when he was at Madrid in 1629, and his work
+was hung in the same room with it. As the colouring is of a lower tone
+than is usual with Titian, and the attitudes of the figures extremely
+simple and natural, the contrast is all the more marked, and was well
+expressed by Cumberland, who said that "when we contemplate Titian's
+picture of Adam and Eve we are convinced they never wore clothes; turn
+to the copy, and the same persons seem to have laid theirs aside."
+
+A more generous comparison between these two painters is made by
+Reynolds in a note on du Fresnoy's poem on Painting respecting the
+qualities of regularity and uniformity. "An instance occurs to me where
+those two qualities are separately exhibited by two great painters,
+Rubens and Titian: the picture of Rubens is in the Church of S.
+Augustine at Antwerp, the subject (if that may be called a subject where
+no story is represented) is the Virgin and Infant Christ placed high in
+the picture on a pedestal with many saints about them and as many below
+them, with others on the steps to serve as a link to unite the upper and
+lower part of the picture. The composition of this picture is perfect in
+its kind; the artist has shown the greatest skill in composing and
+contrasting more than twenty figures without confusion and without
+crowding; the whole appearing as much animated and in motion as it is
+possible where nothing is to be done.
+
+"The picture of Titian which we would oppose to this is in the Church
+of the S. Frari at Venice (the "Pesaro Madonna," where the two donors
+kneel below the Virgin enthroned). One peculiar character of this piece
+is grandeur and simplicity, which proceed in a great measure from the
+regularity of the composition, two of the principal figures being
+represented kneeling directly opposite to each other, and nearly in the
+same attitude. This is what few painters would have had the courage to
+venture; Rubens would certainly have rejected so unpicturesque a mode of
+composition had it occurred to him. Both these pictures are excellent in
+their kind, and may be said to characterize their respective authors.
+There is a bustle and animation in the work of Rubens, a quiet solemn
+majesty in that of Titian. The excellence of Rubens is the picturesque
+effect he produces; the superior merit of Titian is in the appearance of
+being above seeking after any such "artificial excellence."
+
+The most important artist besides Titian who was a pupil of Giorgione
+was SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO, as he was called--his father's name was
+LUCIANI. But as two other notable influences determined his career, he
+is not to be taken as typical of the Venetian School in general or that
+of Giorgione in particular. Born in Venice about the year 1485, he first
+studied under Giovanni Bellini, as appears from the signature as well as
+from the style of a _Pieta_ by him in the Layard collection, which we
+may hope soon to see in the National Gallery. Of his Giorgionesque
+period there is only one important picture known to us, the beautiful
+altar-piece in S. Giovanni Crisostomo in Venice, which is not far
+removed from the richness of Titian's earlier work. The picture
+represents the mild and dignified S. Chrysostom seated, reading aloud at
+a desk in an open hall; S. John the Baptist leaning on his cross is
+looking attentively at him; behind him are two male and on the left two
+female saints listening devoutly, and in the foreground the Virgin
+looking majestically out of the picture at the spectator--a splendid
+type of the full and grand Venetian ideal of female beauty of that time.
+The true expression of a _Santa Conversazione_ could not be more
+worthily given than in the relation in which the listeners stand to the
+reader, and in glow of colour this work is not inferior to the best of
+Giorgione's or Titian's.
+
+As early as 1510, however, he not only left Venice, but also his
+Venetian manner. He was invited to Rome by the rich banker and patron of
+the arts, Agostino Chigi, where he met Raphael, and with astonishing
+versatility succeeded as well in emulating the excellences of that
+master as he had those of Bellini and Giorgione. The half-length
+_Daughter of Herodias_ bequeathed to the National Gallery by George
+Salting is dated 1510, and in 1512 he painted the famous _Fornarina_ in
+the Uffizi, which until the middle of the last century was supposed to
+be a _chef d'oeuvre_ of Raphael. To this period also belongs the _S.
+John in the Desert_, at the Louvre.
+
+Within the next seven years a still mightier influence found him, that
+of Michelangelo, and how far he was capable of responding to it may be
+judged by our great _Raising of Lazarus_, painted at Rome in 1517-19 for
+Giulio de'Medici, afterwards Pope Clement VII., to be placed with
+Raphael's _Transfiguration_ in the Cathedral of Narbonne. Both pictures
+were publicly exhibited in Rome, and by some people Sebastiano's was
+preferred to Raphael's. According to Waagen the whole composition was
+designed by Michelangelo, with whom Sebastiano had entered into the
+closest intimacy; and Kugler states that the group of Lazarus and those
+around him was actually drawn by the master. However that may be, we can
+hardly fail to see how entirely the Venetian influence is obscured by
+that of the great Florentine, and to recognise the extraordinary genius
+of a painter who could do something more than imitate from such masters
+as Bellini, Giorgione, Raphael and Michelangelo.
+
+The last traces of the Vivarini influence are to be seen in the earlier
+works of LORENZO LOTTO(1480-1556), who was a pupil of Alvise, though his
+pictures after 1508, when he had left Venice, Treviso and Reccanti,
+where he had been employed, show the effect of his changed surroundings.
+To this date is assigned the _Portrait of a Young Man_, at Hampton
+Court. At Rome in 1509 he was painting with Raphael in the Vatican, and
+in his next dated work, the _Entombment_, at Jesi, the echoes of
+Raphael's Disputation and the _School of Athens_ are clear. The Dresden
+_Madonna and Child with S. John_ was probably painted at Bergamo in
+1518, and the _Madonna and Saints_, lately bequeathed to the National
+Gallery, is dated 1521.
+
+At Madrid is a picture by him of _A Bride and Bridegroom_ dated 1523, to
+which year probably belongs the _Family Group_ in the National Gallery.
+These are early instances of the comparatively rare inclusion of more
+than a single figure in a pure portrait. In our example the father and
+mother and two children are composed into a delightful picture, in which
+for once we may see the actual people of the time in something like
+their natural surroundings, instead of being posed, however effectively,
+to assist in the representation of some historic or legendary scene.
+
+In 1527 Lotto was back again in Venice, and was probably influenced by
+Palma Vecchio when he painted the superb portrait of the sculptor
+_Odoni_, which is at Hampton Court. A little later the influence of
+Titian is more visible. Two other portraits are in our National Gallery,
+those of the Protonotary Juliano and of Agostino and Niccolo della
+Torre.
+
+BONIFAZIO DI PITATI (1487-1553), sometimes called Bonifazio Veronese or
+Veneziano, was born at Verona, but studied in Venice under Palma
+Vecchio. The influence of his native city distinguishes his work in some
+degree from the pure Venetian, as it did that of the more famous Paolo
+in later years; but the atmosphere created by Giorgione was so strong as
+to cause Bonifazio's masterpiece (if we except the _Dives and Lazarus_
+at the Academy in Venice) to be attributed until quite lately to
+Giorgione. It is thus described by Kugler:--"A picture in the Brera in
+Milan, very deserving of notice, is perhaps one of Giorgione's most
+beautiful works; it is historic in subject, but romantic in conception.
+The subject is the finding of Moses; all the figures are in the rich
+costume of Giorgione's time. In the centre the princess sits under a
+tree, and looks with surprise at the child who is brought to her by a
+servant. The seneschal of the princess, with knights and ladies, stand
+around. On one side are seated two lovers on the grass, on the other
+side musicians and singers, pages with dogs, a dwarf with an ape, etc.
+It is a picture in which the highest earthly splendour and enjoyment are
+brought together, and the incident from Scripture only gives it a more
+pleasing interest. The costume, however inappropriate to the story,
+disturbs the effect as little as in other Venetian pictures of the same
+period, since it refers more to a poetic than to a mere historic truth,
+and the period itself was rich in poetry; its costume too assists the
+display of a romantic splendour. This picture, with all its glow of
+colour, is softer than the earlier works of the master, and reminds us
+of Titian...."
+
+The beautiful _Santa Conversazione_ in the National Gallery, again,
+which was formerly in the Casa Terzi at Bergamo, was there attributed to
+Palma Vecchio. Here the Virgin in a rose-coloured mantle is the centre
+of the composition, with the Child on her knee, whose foot the little S.
+John is bending to kiss. On the right is S. Catherine and on the left S.
+James the Less and S. Jerome. In the landscape are seen a shepherd lying
+beside his flock, while other shepherds are fleeing from a lion who has
+seized their dog. A copy of this composition is in the Academy at
+Venice.
+
+Oddly enough it was a pupil of Bonifazio who employed the grand Venetian
+manner in the humbler and more commonplace walks of life, and neglecting
+alike the _Sacra Conversazione_ and the pompous scenes of festivity,
+developed into the first Italian painter of _genre_. This was JACOPO DA
+PONTE, called from his birthplace BASSANO, who was working in Venice
+under Bonifazio as early as 1535. He afterwards returned to Bassano, and
+selecting those scenes in which he could most extensively introduce
+cottages, peasants, and animals, he connected them with events from
+sacred history or mythology. A peculiar feature by which his pictures
+may be known is the invariable and apparently intentional hiding of the
+feet of his figures, for which purpose sheep and cattle and household
+utensils are introduced. He confines himself to a bold, straightforward
+imitation of familiar objects, united, however, with pleasing
+composition, colour, and chiaroscuro. His colours, indeed, sparkle like
+gems, particularly the greens, in which he displays a brilliancy quite
+peculiar to himself. His lights are boldly infringed on the objects,
+and are seldom introduced except on prominent parts of the figures. In
+accordance with this treatment his handling is spirited and peculiar,
+somewhat in the manner of Rembrandt; and what on close inspection
+appears dark and confused, forms at a distance the very strength and
+magic of his colouring. The picture of the _Good Samaritan_ in the
+National Gallery is a good example, and was formerly in the collection
+of Reynolds, who it is said always kept it in his studio. The _Portrait
+of a Man_ (No. 173) is excelled by that of an _Old Man_ at Berlin.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+PAOLO VERONESE AND IL TINTORETTO
+
+
+It cannot be said that the Venetian artists of the second half of the
+sixteenth century equalled in their collective excellence the great
+masters of the first, but in single instances they are frequently
+entitled to rank beside them. At the head of these is JACOPO ROBUSTI
+(1518-1594), called IL TINTORETTO (the dyer), in allusion to his
+father's trade. He was one of the most vigorous painters in all the
+history of art; one who sought rather than avoided the greatest
+difficulties, and who possessed a true feeling for animation and
+grandeur. If his works do not always charm, it should be imputed to the
+foreign and non-Venetian element which he adopted, but never completely
+mastered; and also to the times in which he lived, when Venetian art had
+fallen somewhat into the mistaken way of colossal and rapid
+productiveness. His off-hand style, as Kugler calls it, is always full
+of grand and significant detail, and with a few patches of colour he
+sometimes achieves the liveliest forms and expressions. But he fails in
+that artistic arrangement of the whole and in that nobility of motives
+in the parts which are necessary exponents of a really high ideal. His
+compositions are achieved less by finely studied degrees of
+participation in the principal action than by great masses of light and
+shade. Attitudes and movements are taken immediately from common life,
+not chosen from the best models. With Titian the highest ideal of
+earthly happiness in existence is expressed by beauty; with Tintoretto
+in mere animal strength, sometimes of an almost rude character.
+
+For a short time he was a pupil of Titian, but for some unknown reason
+he soon left him, and struck out for himself. In the studio which he
+occupied in his youth he had inscribed, as a definition of the style he
+professed, "The drawing of Michelangelo, the colouring of Titian." He
+copied the works of the latter, and also designed from casts of
+Florentine and antique sculpture, particularly by lamplight--as did
+Romney a couple of centuries later--to exercise himself in a more
+forcible style of relief. He also made models for his works, which he
+lighted artificially, or hung up in his room, in order to master
+perspective. By these means he united great strength of shadow with the
+Venetian colouring, which gives a peculiar character to his pictures,
+and is very successful when limited to the direct imitation of nature.
+But apart from the impossibility of combining two such totally different
+excellences as the colouring of Titian and the drawing of Michelangelo,
+it appears that Tintoretto's acquaintance with the works of the latter
+only developed his tendency to a naturalistic style. That which with
+Michelangelo was the symbol of a higher power in nature was adopted by
+Tintoretto in its literal form. Most of his defects, it is probable,
+arose from his indefatigable vigour, which earned for him the nickname
+of _Il Furioso_. Sebastian del Piombo said that Tintoretto could paint
+as much in two days as would occupy him two years. Other sayings were
+that he had three brushes, one of gold, one of silver, and a third of
+brass, and that if he was sometimes equal to Titian he was often
+inferior to Tintoretto! In this last category Kugler puts two of his
+earliest works, the enormous _Last Judgment_, and _The Golden Calf_, in
+the church of S. Maria dell'Orto, while on his much later _Last Supper_
+he is still more severe. "Nothing more utterly derogatory," he writes,
+"both to the dignity of art and to the nature of the subject can be
+imagined. S. John is seen with folded arms, fast asleep, while others of
+the Apostles with the most burlesque gestures are asking, 'Lord, is it
+I?' Another Apostle is uncovering a dish which stands on the floor
+without remarking that a cat has stolen in and is eating from it. A
+second is reaching towards a flask; a beggar sits by, eating. Attendants
+fill up the picture. To judge from an overthrown chair the scene appears
+to have been a revel of the lowest description. It is strange that a
+painter should venture on such a representation of this subject scarcely
+a hundred years after the creation of Leonardo da Vinci's _Last
+Supper_."
+
+It was in 1548, when but thirty years old, that Tintoretto first became
+famous, with the large _Miracle of S. Mark_, now in the Venice Academy.
+This is perhaps his finest as well as his most celebrated work; but the
+greatest monument to his industry and general ability is the Scuola
+di'San Rocco, where he began to work in 1560 under a contract to produce
+three pictures a year for an annuity of a hundred ducats. In all there
+are sixty-two of his pictures in this building, the greater part of
+them very large, the figures throughout being of the size of life. _The
+Crucifixion_, painted in 1565, is the most extensive of them, and on the
+whole the most perfect. In 1590, four years before his death, he
+completed the enormous _Paradise_ in the Sala del Gran Consiglio,
+measuring seventy-four feet in length and thirty in height.
+
+In the National Gallery we have three characteristic examples,
+fortunately on a smaller scale, namely, the _S. George_ on a white
+horse, which, with its greyish flesh tones and the blue of the
+princess's mantle, is cooler in tone than the generality of his
+pictures; _Christ washing the Disciples' Feet_, and the very beautiful
+and radiant _Origin of the Milky Way_, purchased from Lord Darnley in
+1890. At Hampton Court a still finer example, _The Nine Muses_, is so
+discoloured by age and hung in such a difficult light that it is
+impossible to enjoy its full beauty.
+
+PAOLO CALIARI, better known as VERONESE, was born ten years later than
+Tintoretto, and died six years before him (1528-1588). He studied in his
+native city of Verona till he was twenty, and after working for some
+time at Mantua he came to Venice in 1555, where he was quickly
+recognised by Titian and by Sansovino, the sculptor and Director of
+Public Buildings, and was commissioned in that year to paint a
+_Coronation of the Virgin_ and other works in the church of S.
+Sebastian. The _Martyrdom of S. Giustino_, now in the Uffizi, and the
+_Madonna and Child_ in the Louvre are also among his earlier works. As
+early as 1562 he was at work on the enormous _Feast at Cana_, now in the
+Louvre, and a similar work at Dresden is of the same date. In 1564 he
+went to Rome, where he studied the works of Raphael and Michelangelo. On
+his return to Venice in
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XVII.--TINTORETTO
+
+ST GEORGE AND THE DRAGON
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+1565--after visiting Verona, where he painted in his parish church, and
+also married--he was employed to decorate the Ducal Palace, but much of
+his best work there was destroyed by fire. Two of his most important
+works completed before 1573 are in the Academy at Venice, _The Battle of
+Lepanto_ and the _Feast in the House of Levi_. In this last he incurred
+strictures from the Inquisition more severe than those of Kugler upon
+Tintoretto's _Last Supper_, and possibly with as much reason, it being
+objected that the introduction of German soldiery, buffoons, and a
+parrot was "irreligious." His _Family of Darius_, now in the National
+Gallery, was one of his latest works.
+
+Veronese, even more than Titian, whom in colouring he sought to emulate,
+and Tintoretto, whom in this respect he certainly excelled, expresses
+the spirit of the Venetians of his time--a powerful and noble race of
+human beings, as Kugler calls them, elate with the consciousness of
+existence, and in full enjoyment of all that renders earth attractive.
+By the splendour of his colour, assisted by rich draperies and other
+materials, by a very clear and transparent treatment of the shadows, he
+infused a magic into his great canvases which surpasses almost all the
+other masters of the Venetian School. Never had the pomp of colour, on a
+large scale, been so exalted and glorified as in his works. This, his
+peculiar quality, is most decidedly and grandly developed in scenes of
+worldly splendour; he loved to paint festive subjects for the
+refectories of rich convents, suggested of course from particular
+passages in the Scriptures, but treated with the greatest freedom,
+especially as regards the costume, which is always of his own time.
+Instead, therefore, of any religious sentiment, we are presented with a
+display of the most cheerful human scenes and the richest worldly
+splendour. That which distinguishes him from Tintoretto, and which in
+his later period, after the death of Titian and Michelangelo, earned for
+him the rank of the first living master, was that beautiful vitality,
+that poetic feeling, which as far as it was possible he infused into a
+declining period of art. At the same time it becomes more and more
+evident, as our attention is turned to the deeper and nobler spirit of
+the earlier masters in Venice, that the beauty of his figures is more
+addressed to the senses than to the soul, and that his naturalistic
+tendencies are often allowed to run wild.
+
+The most celebrated, and as it happens the most historically
+interesting, of his great pictures is the _Feast at Cana_, in the
+Louvre, measuring thirty feet wide and twenty feet high. This was
+formerly in the refectory of S. Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. The scene is
+a brilliant atrium, surrounded by majestic pillars. The tables at which
+the guests are seated form three sides of a parallelogram. The guests
+are supposed to be almost entirely contemporary portraits, so that the
+figures of Christ and His mother, of themselves insignificant enough,
+lose even more in the general interest of the subject. Servants occupy
+the foreground, while on the raised balustrades and the balconies of
+distant houses are innumerable onlookers. The most remarkable feature of
+the whole composition is a group of musicians in the centre of the
+foreground, which are portraits of the artist himself and Tintoretto,
+playing on violon-cellos, and Titian, in a red robe, with the
+contra-bass.
+
+_Christ in the House of Simon_, the Magdalen washing His feet, is
+another scarcely less gigantic picture in the Louvre; but it is much
+simpler in arrangement, and is distinguished by the fineness of the
+heads, especially that of the Christ. An interesting piece of technical
+criticism on the _Feast at Cana_ occurs in Reynolds's Eighth
+Discourse:--
+
+"Another instance occurs to me," he says, "where equal liberty may be
+taken in regard to the management of light. Though the general practice
+is to make a large mass about the middle of the picture surrounded by
+shadow, the reverse may be practised, and the spirit of rule may still
+be preserved.... In the great composition of Paul Veronese, the
+_Marriage at Cana_, the figures are for the most part in half shadow;
+the great light is in the sky; and indeed the general effect of this
+picture, which is so striking, is no more than what we often see in
+landscapes, in small pictures of fairs and country feasts; but those
+principles of light and shadow, being transferred to a large scale, to a
+space containing near a hundred figures as large as life, and conducted
+to all appearance with as much facility and with an attention as
+steadily fixed upon the _whole together_ as if it were a small picture
+immediately under the eye, the work justly excites our admiration; the
+difficulty being increased as the extent is enlarged."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the death of the great Venetians, Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul
+Veronese, in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, the history of
+Italian painting of the first rank comes to an end. In Florence, the
+imitation of Michelangelo was the chief object striven after, and, as
+might be expected, the attempt was not eminently successful. The greater
+number of the Italian painters of the early seventeenth century who
+attained any fame are known by the name of Eclectics, from their having
+endeavoured, instead of imitating any one of their great predecessors,
+to select and unite the best qualities of each, without, however,
+excluding the direct study of nature. The fallacy of this aim, when
+carried to an extreme, is, of course, that the greatness of the earlier
+masters consisted really in their individual and peculiar qualities, and
+to endeavour to unite characteristics essentially different involves a
+contradiction.
+
+The most important of the Eclectic schools was that of the Carracci, at
+Bologna, which was founded by LODOVICO CARRACCI (_c_. 1555-1619), a
+scholar of Prospero Fontana and Passignano at Florence. In his youth he
+was nicknamed "the ox," partly from his slowness, but possibly also for
+his study of long-forgotten methods, by which he arrived at the decision
+that reform was necessary to counteract the independence of the
+mannerists. He therefore obtained the assistance of his two nephews,
+AGOSTINO and ANNIBALE CARRACCI, sons of a tailor, and in concert with
+them opened an academy at Bologna in 1589. This he furnished with casts,
+drawings, and engravings, and provided living models and gave
+instruction in perspective, anatomy, etc. In spite of opposition this
+academy became more and more popular, and before long all the other
+schools of art in Bologna were closed.
+
+The principles of their teaching was succinctly expressed in a sonnet
+written by Agostino, in substance as follows:--"Let him who wishes to be
+a good painter acquire the design of Rome, Venetian action and
+chiaroscuro, the dignified colouring of Lombardy (that is to say, of
+Leonardo da Vinci), the terrible manner of Michelangelo, Titian's truth
+and nature, the sovereign purity of Correggio, and the perfect symmetry
+of Raphael. The decorum and well-grounded study of Tibaldi, the
+invention of the learned Primaticcio, and a _little_ of the grace of
+Parmigiano."
+
+This "patchwork ideal," as Kugler calls it, was, however, but a
+transition step in the history of the Carracci and their art. In the
+prime of their activity they threw off a great deal of their
+eclecticism, and attained an independence of their own. The merit of
+Lodovico is chiefly that of a reformer and a teacher, and the pictures
+by Agostino are few and of no great account. But in Annibale we find
+much more than imitation of the characteristics of great masters. In his
+earlier works there are rather obvious traces of Correggio and Paul
+Veronese, but under the influence of the works of Raphael and
+Michelangelo and of the antique, as he understood it, he developed a
+style of his own. Though in recent years he is a little out of fashion
+with the public, there is no question about his having a place among the
+greater artists. To show how opinion can change, I venture to quote a
+passage from a letter written to me on the subject of Carracci's _The
+Three Maries_, lately presented to the National Gallery by the Countess
+of Carlisle:--"I saw the gallery at Castle Howard in 1850. _The Three
+Maries_ was then still regarded as one of _the_ great pictures of the
+world; and they told the story of how Lord Carlisle and Lord Ellesmere
+and Lord----, who shared the Paris purchases [after the Peace of 1815]
+between them, had to cast lots for this, because it was thought to be
+worth more than all the rest of the spoil."
+
+The most important, or at any rate one of the most popular, of the
+pupils of Carracci was DOMENICO ZAMPIERI, commonly called DOMENICHINO
+(1581-1641). If we are less enthusiastic about him at the present, it
+may still be remembered that Constable particularly admired him, but it
+is significant that the four examples in the National Gallery are
+numbered 48, 75, 77 and 85--there is no more recent acquisition. He had
+great facility, and his compositions--not always original--are treated
+with great charm if with no real depth. His most famous picture, the
+_Communion of S. Jerome_, now in the Vatican, is closely imitated from
+Agostino Carracci's.
+
+GUIDO RENI (1575-1642), even more popular in the eighteenth and early
+nineteenth centuries than Domenichino, was as skilful in some respects,
+but hardly as admirable. The _Ecce Homo_, bequeathed by Samuel Rogers to
+the National Gallery, is an excellent example of his ability to charm
+the sentimentalist, and if ever there should be a popular revival of
+taste in the direction of the now neglected school of the Carracci, he
+will possibly resume all the honour formerly paid to him. The same can
+hardly be predicted for the far inferior Carlo Maratti, Guercino, and
+Carlo Dolce.
+
+Space forbids me more than the bare mention in these pages of the
+brilliant revival of painting in Venice during the earlier part of the
+eighteenth century by ANTONIO CANALE (1697-1768), GIOVANNI BATTISTA
+TIEPOLO (1692-1769), PIETRO LONGHI (1702-1785), and FRANCESCO GUARDI
+(1712-1793). Charming as their excellent accomplishments were, they must
+give place to more important claims awaiting our attention in other
+countries.
+
+
+
+
+_SPANISH SCHOOL_
+
+
+One of the sensations of the Exhibition of Spanish Old Masters at the
+Grafton Gallery in the autumn of 1913 was an altar panel, dated 1250,
+which was acquired by Mr Roger Fry in Paris, and catalogued as of the
+"Early Catalan School." In view of the fact that this picture is
+"certainly to be regarded as one of the very oldest of primitive
+pictures painted on wood in any country ... a decade earlier than the
+picture by Margaritone in the National Gallery," it seems somewhat
+dogmatic to assert that while retaining a strongly Byzantine character
+"the style is distinctly that of Catalonia." What was the style of
+Catalonia?
+
+So far as the history of the art is concerned, the chapter on Spain is,
+with one exception, a very short and a singularly uninteresting one,
+whether Mr Fry's panel was painted in Catalonia or whether it was not;
+and in spite of every effort to find in this uncongenial country that
+expansion of painting that might reasonably have been expected to flow
+from Italy and moisten its barren soil for the production of so
+wonderful a genius as Velasquez, there is positively nothing earlier
+than Velasquez, and not very much after him, that has more than what we
+may call a documentary interest. While in Italy or the Netherlands the
+names of scores of painters earlier than the seventeenth century are
+endeared to us by the recollection of the works they have left us, the
+enumeration of those of the few Spaniards of whom we have any knowledge
+awakens no such thrill, and if we have ever heard of them, their works
+mean little more to us than their names. Only when we come within touch
+of Velasquez does our interest awaken--as in the case of Ribera and
+Zurbaran--and that is less because of them than because of Velasquez. El
+Greco was not a Spaniard by birth, but a Cretan; and if he were ranged
+with the Italians, to whom he more properly belongs, he would scarcely
+be more famous than some Bolognese masters whose names are now--or
+perhaps we ought to say, at the present moment--almost forgotten. The
+announcement that one of his portraits has been sold to an American for
+L30,000 is of commercial rather than of artistic interest.
+
+If one had to sum up the career and the art of Velasquez in a sentence,
+it might be done by calling him a Court painter who never flattered.
+After recording his life from the time when he left his master Pacheco
+to enter the service of Philip IV. to the day that he died in it, we
+shall find that only a bare percentage of his work was not commissioned
+by the king; and in all his pictures which were not simply portraits
+there is little if anything to be found which is not as literal and
+truthful a presentment of the model in front of him as the life-like
+representations of Philip and those about his Court, of which the
+supreme quality is that of living resemblance, or to put it in more
+general terms, vivid realism. Gifted as he must have been with an
+extraordinary vision and a still rarer, if not unique, ability to put
+down on canvas what he saw, he confined himself entirely within the
+limits of actuality, and thereby attained to heights which his great
+contemporaries Rubens and Rembrandt in their noblest flights of
+imagination never reached.
+
+Velasquez was baptised on the 6th of June 1599, in the church of S.
+Peter at Seville. He was the son of well-to-do parents; his father, a
+native of Seville, was named Juan Rodriguez de Silva, his mother
+Geronima Velasquez. At thirteen years old he had displayed so strong an
+inclination towards painting that he was put to study under Francisco de
+Herrera, then the most considerable painter in Spain (his son, also
+Francisco, was the painter of the _Christ Disputing with the Doctors_,
+in the National Gallery), but owing to Herrera's violent temper
+Velasquez was shortly transferred to the studio of Francisco Pacheco,
+whose daughter he eventually married.
+
+Pacheco who was, besides being an accomplished artist, a man of literary
+tastes, and much sought after in Seville by the more intellectual class
+of society, was exceedingly proud of his pupil, and said of him that he
+was induced to bestow the hand of his daughter upon him "by the
+rectitude of his conduct, the purity of his morals, and his great
+talents, and from the high expectation he entertained of his natural
+abilities and transcendent genius," adding that the honour of having
+been his instructor was far greater than that of being his
+father-in-law, and that he felt it no demerit to be surpassed by so
+brilliant a pupil.
+
+In 1649 Pacheco published a book on painting, in which we are told that
+the first attempts of Velasquez were studies in still life, or simple
+compositions of actual figures, called _bodegones_ in Spanish, of which
+we have a fair example at the National Gallery in the _Christ at the
+House of Martha_. Sir Frederick Cook, at Richmond, has another, an _Old
+Woman Frying Eggs_, and the Duke of Wellington two more, of which _The
+Water Carrier of Seville_ is probably the summit of the young painter's
+achievement before he left Seville, in 1623, and entered the service of
+Philip IV. as Court painter.
+
+His first portrait of the king was the magnificent whole length in the
+Prado Gallery, now numbered 1182, standing in front of a table with a
+letter in his right hand. No. 1183 is the head of the same portrait,
+possibly done as a study for it. Philip was so pleased with this that he
+ordered all existing portraits of himself to be removed from the palace,
+and appointed Velasquez exclusively as his painter.
+
+Another of his earliest successes at Court was the whole length portrait
+of the king's brother, Don Carlos, holding a glove in his right hand;
+and the picture now in the Museum at Rouen of _A Geographer_ is probably
+of this date.
+
+In 1628, when Velasquez was still quite young, and had fallen under no
+influence save that of Pacheco and the school of Seville, he was charged
+by the king to entertain Rubens, who came to the Spanish Court on a
+diplomatic mission, and show him all the treasures in the palace. If any
+one could influence Velasquez, we might suppose it would have been
+Rubens, who was not only a great painter, but a man of the most
+captivating manners and disposition, ever ready to help younger artists.
+But not only did he have no perceptible effect on the style of
+Velasquez, but in the picture of _The Topers_, which must have been
+painted while Rubens was at Madrid, or very shortly after he left, we
+can almost see a determination not to be influenced by him; for the
+subject was a favourite one of Rubens's, and yet there is nothing in
+this most realistic presentment of
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XVIII.--VELAZQUEZ
+
+THE INFANTE PHILIP PROSPER
+
+_Imperial Gallery, Vienna_]
+
+actual figures under the title of Bacchus and his votaries which has
+anything at all in common with the florid and imaginative compositions
+of the Flemish painter. Velasquez had begun as a realist, and a realist
+he was to continue till the end of his days.
+
+Shortly after painting this picture he left his native country for the
+first time, and visited Venice and Rome. At Venice he made copies of
+Tintoretto's _Last Supper_ and _Crucifixion_; but little if any of
+Tintoretto's influence is to be seen in the two pictures he painted in
+Rome--_The Forge of Vulcan_ and _Joseph's Coat_, both of which are still
+as realistic as ever in treatment, though showing great advances in
+technical skill. Soon after his return to Spain in 1631, he probably
+painted the magnificent whole length _Philip IV._ in the National
+Gallery, which compares so well, on examination with the more popular
+and showy _Admiral Pulido Pareja_ purchased some years ago from Longford
+Castle. Senor Beruete, who has studied the work of Velasquez more
+closely and more intelligently than any one else, considers that whereas
+there is not a single touch upon the former that is not from the brush
+of Velasquez, the latter cannot be properly attributed to him at
+all--any more than can another popular favourite, the _Alexandro del
+Borro_ in the Berlin Gallery, now given to Bernard Strozzi.
+
+To this period may be also assigned the _Christ at the Column_ in the
+National Gallery, a picture which though not at first sight attractive,
+is nevertheless as fine in technique, and in sentiment, as any other
+picture in the Spanish room, and deserves far more attention than is
+usually given to it. Its simple realism and its pathetic sweetness are
+qualities which are wanting in many a more showy or sensational
+composition, and the more it is studied the nearer we find we are
+getting to the real excellences that distinguish Velasquez from any
+painter who has ever lived. The _Crucifixion_ at the Prado is perhaps
+more wonderful, but the familiar subject helps the imagination of the
+spectator to admire it, whereas the unfamiliar setting of our picture is
+apt at first sight to repel.
+
+The most important composition undertaken by Velasquez in this middle
+period of his career--that is to say between his two visits to Italy in
+1629 and 1649--is the famous _Surrender of Breda_, or, as it is
+sometimes called, _The Lances_. Soon after his arrival in Madrid he had
+once painted an historical subject, _The Expulsion of the Moors_, in
+competition with his rivals who had asserted that he could paint nothing
+but heads. In this competition the prize was awarded to him, but as the
+picture has perished we are unable to judge of its merits for ourselves.
+But apart from this, and such unimportant groups of figures as we have
+mentioned, he had been occupied wholly in painting single portraits, and
+it is a marvellous proof of his genius that he should produce such a
+masterpiece of composition as _The Lances_ with so little practice in
+this branch of his art. Here, at least, we might have expected to trace
+the influence of Rubens, but there is actually no sign of it; and if he
+sought any inspiration at all from other painters, it was from what he
+recalled of Tintoretto's work which he had seen and studied in Venice.
+
+In the king's eldest boy, _Baltazar Carlos_, who was born in 1629,
+Velasquez found a model for two or three of his most charming pictures.
+One is at Castle Howard; a second the equestrian portrait, on a
+galloping pony, at the Prado; and a third the full length hunting
+portrait, also at the Prado, in which we see the little prince standing
+under a tree, gun in hand, with an enormous dog lying beside him.
+Another is at Vienna, representing him as of about eleven years old,
+full length, with his hand resting on the back of a chair. All of these
+owe some of their charm to the youth and attractive personality of the
+subject; but if we want to see the power of Velasquez without any
+outside element to help us to appreciate it, there is the portrait of
+the sculptor _Martinez Montanes_ at the Prado. "The head is wonderful in
+its colour and its modelling," writes Senor Beruete; "and what a lesson
+in technique! The eyes, lightly touched with colour, are set deep in
+their sockets, and surmounted by a strongly marked forehead. The high
+lights are of a rich _impasto_, manipulated with extraordinary skill;
+the greyer tones of the flesh, so true and so delicate, are painted in a
+way that brings out with marvellous truth, both the soft parts of the
+cheeks and the harder structure of the face, under which one can follow
+the bones of the nose and forehead.... Everything in the picture is
+spontaneous, and one can see that it is a pledge of friendship given by
+one artist to another; there is nothing here of that artificial
+arrangement that spoils commissioned portraits even when they are the
+work of a painter as independent as Velasquez was. One feels here the
+assurance of an artist who knows that his work will be understood by his
+friend in the spirit in which it was executed." M. Lefort, the French
+critic, is even more enthusiastic. "Ah! these redoubtable neighbours,"
+he exclaims, seeing it surrounded by the works of other painters at the
+Prado. "This canvas makes them look like mere imitations--dead
+conventional likenesses. Van Dyck is dull, Rubens oily, Tintoret yellow;
+it is Velasquez alone who can give us the illusion of life in all its
+fulness!"
+
+In 1649 Velasquez paid his second visit to Rome, where he painted the
+famous portrait of His Holiness, _Pope Innocent X._ which is now in the
+Doria palace. This is exceptional in treatment, inasmuch as it is the
+only portrait by Velasquez in which the subject is seated--excepting of
+course equestrian portraits--and instead of the usual quiet tones of
+grey and brown which he was so fond of employing, the picture of the
+Pope is a radiant harmony of rose red and white. In its realism it is
+even more surprising than most of the other portraits, considering how
+ugly the face had to be made to resemble nature, although the sitter was
+of a still higher rank than Velasquez's royal master.
+
+Returning to Madrid in 1651, Velasquez never again left Spain, and the
+remaining twenty years of his life may be considered the third period of
+his artistic development, inasmuch as no special influence was exerted
+upon him outside the ordinary and somewhat tedious course of his
+employment at the Court. To this period are assigned twenty-six
+pictures--Senor Beruete only admits the authenticity of eighty-three in
+all, it may be mentioned--twelve of which are royal portraits, seven
+those of buffoons and dwarfs, three mythological and two sacred
+subjects, and the two famous pieces of real life, _Las Meninas_ and _Las
+Hilanderas_.
+
+Of the royal portraits those of the _Infanta Margarita_ are among the
+most fascinating, no less from their technical excellence than on
+account of the youthful charm of the little Princess. The one at Vienna
+represents her as about three years old, dressed in red, standing by a
+little table. Of this, Senor Beruete says that it is "one of the most
+beautiful inspirations of Velasquez, and perhaps one that reveals better
+than any other his power as a colourist; it is a flower, perfumed with
+every infantine grace." Another standing portrait, though only a half
+length, when she was not many years older, is that in the Salon Carre at
+the Louvre, which is more familiar to us being nearer home and more
+often reproduced. M. de Wyczewa praises it thus:--"The perfect
+_chefs-d'oeuvre_ collected in this glorious salon pale in the presence
+of this child portrait; not one of them can bear comparison with this
+simple yet powerful painting, which seems to aim only at external
+resemblance and without other effort to attain a mysterious beauty of
+form and colour." At Frankfort again is a charming picture of the little
+Princess, whole length, at the age of six or seven--a replica of which
+is at Vienna. She is dressed in greyish white with trimmings of black,
+and her hoop skirt is so enormous that her arms have to be stretched out
+straight to allow her hands to reach the edge of her coat.
+
+Of the three mythological subjects two are in the Prado, namely the
+_Mars_ and the _Mercury and Argus_, while the third and most beautiful
+is the _Venus at the Mirror_ recently purchased for our national
+collection. These were all of them painted for the decoration of the
+royal palaces, and we may therefore suppose that the artist was not
+entirely at liberty either in the choice of his subject or in his method
+of treating it. Certainly he does not seem to have been fond of painting
+the nude, unless with men, and it is noticeable that he has posed his
+model in this case with more modesty and reserve than is to be observed
+in the pictures of Rubens and Titian. The Holy Church was sternly averse
+to this class of painting, in which, accordingly, none of the Spanish
+school indulged; but at the same time the royal galleries did not
+exclude the most exuberant fancies of Rubens, Titian, Tintoretto, and
+others, and Velasquez was in all probability commissioned by Philip to
+paint this Venus--and another which has perished--along with the Mars
+and Mercury without regard to the ecclesiastical authorities. But it is
+hardly surprising if Velasquez availed himself less fully of the
+privilege than a Flemish or Italian painter would no doubt have done,
+and has given us so chaste and beautiful a realisation of the goddess.
+Having regard to the scepticism with which this masterpiece was received
+in England at the time of its purchase for the nation it is worth
+quoting Senor Beruete's remarks upon it in that connection. "The
+authenticity of this work," he writes "has found numerous doubters in
+Spain, less on account of its subject--being the only nude female figure
+in the whole _oeuvre_ of Velasquez--than because so few people ever
+suspected its existence; but after it was exhibited at Manchester in
+1857 and in London in 1890, it was recognised that its attribution to
+Velasquez was well founded. At the sight of the canvas all doubt
+vanishes. There, indeed, is the style, the inimitable technique of
+Velasquez."
+
+This, from the connoisseur who has devoted years of study to the work of
+the master, and who rejects such well established examples as the
+Dulwich _Philip IV._ and the _Admiral Pulido Pareja_, is surely more
+conclusive than the academic pedantry of ignorance masquerading as
+authority.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+BARTOLOME ESTEBAN MURILLO (1617-1682) has always been accounted the most
+popular of the Spanish painters, and it is only in recent times that his
+popularity has faded into comparative insignificance on the fuller
+recognition and understanding of the genius of Velasquez. The intensely
+Anglican feeling in this country during the eighteenth and nineteenth
+centuries
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XIX.--VELAZQUEZ
+
+THE ROKEBY VENUS
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+seems to have found peculiar relief in the sentimental aspirations of
+the followers of Raphael in the rendering of religious subjects from the
+Romish point of view. At the present time we are readier to estimate
+Murillo's justly high place in the annals of painting by such a picture
+as his own portrait, lent by Lord Spencer to the recent Exhibition, than
+to allow it on the strength of our recollection of the Madonnas and Holy
+Families, Immaculate Conceptions and Assumptions, of which there exist
+so many copies in the dining rooms of country rectories. The _Boy
+Drinking_, which is here reproduced, if it is the least "important" of
+the four examples in the National Gallery, is certainly not the least
+excellent.
+
+From the miserable state into which Spain had fallen by the end of the
+seventeenth century, it could hardly be expected that anything further
+in the nature of art would result, and it was not until towards the end
+of the eighteenth that another genius arose, in the person of FRANCISCO
+GOYA (1746-1828). Of this extraordinary phenomenon in the firmament of
+art it is impossible to say more than a very few words in this place.
+Like a meteor, he is rather to be pointed at than talked about, when
+there are so many stars and planets whose regular courses have to be
+observed and recorded. He was like a sharp knife drawn across the face
+of Spain, gashing it here and there, but for the most part just touching
+it lightly enough to sting and to leave a mark. As a Court painter he
+was an unqualified success, his salary under Charles IV. rising in ten
+years from 15,000 to 50,000 reals; but his official productions are not
+the less devoid of interest on that account, and are sometimes the more
+satirical from the necessity for concealment. In his more outspoken
+works, such as the _Disasters of War_, and the series of prints called
+_Los Caprichos_ and _Tauromachia_, he is too brutal not to affect the
+ordinary observer's judgment upon his artistic qualities. Velasquez
+himself could scarcely stop short enough, when painting dwarfs and
+idiots and cripples, to let us admire his genius unhampered by shivers
+of repulsion. Goya, being exactly the opposite of Velasquez in
+temperament, had no scruples about expressing the utmost of his subject;
+and even in decorating a church was reproved for "falling short of the
+standard of chastity" required. But between the extremes of brutality
+and conventionalism there is such a wide expanse of pure joy of painting
+that nothing can diminish the reputation of Goya, however much it is
+likely to be enhanced. To the modern Spanish painter he is probably as
+fixed a beacon as Velasquez.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XX.--MURILLO
+
+A BOY DRINKING
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+
+
+
+_FLEMISH SCHOOL_
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+HUBERT AND JAN VAN EYCK
+
+
+In 1383, on the death of Louis de Maele, his son-in-law Philip the
+Hardy, Duke of Burgundy, assumed the government of Flanders. In the same
+year Philip founded the Carthusian Convent at Dijon and employed a
+Flemish painter named Melchin Broederlam to embellish two great shrines
+within it. To the strong-handed policy of Philip and his successors
+during the ensuing century may be attributed the rise of Netherlandish
+art which, though existing before their time, required their vigorous
+repression of intestine feuds to give it an opportunity of developing.
+Under Louis and his predecessors Flanders and its cities had risen to
+great commercial importance, but its rulers had neither the strength nor
+the prestige to keep the turbulent spirit of their subjects in due
+bounds. The school of painting which now arose so rapidly to perfection
+under the Dukes of Burgundy thus owed a portion of its progress to the
+wealth and independence of the commercial classes. The taste, power, and
+cultivation of a Court gave it an additional spur; and the clergy
+throwing in their weight, added their support in aid of art.
+
+Two wings of one of the Dijon shrines are still preserved in the museum
+there, and in these Messrs Crowe and Cavalcaselle observe the
+characteristics of much that was to follow:--"Although Melchior's style
+was founded on the study of the painters of the Rhine, his composition
+was similar to the later productions of the Flemish school. A tendency
+to realism already marks this early Fleming, and is the distinctive
+feature of a manner in which the painter strives to imitate nature in
+its most material forms. Idealism and noble forms are lacking, but
+Broederlam is a fair imitator of the truth. Distinctive combination and
+choice of colours in draperies, and vigorous tone, characterise him as
+they do the early works at Bruges and other cities of the Netherlands
+which may be judged by his standard." And again, "the painter evidently
+struggled between the desire to give a material imitation, and the
+inspirations of graceful teachers like those of Cologne.... Penetrated
+with similar ideas the early Flemings might under similar circumstances
+have risen to a sweet and dignified conception of nature; and if we fail
+to discover that they attained this aim we must attribute the failure to
+causes peculiar to Flanders. Amongst these we may class the social
+status of the Flemish painters, whose positions in the household of
+princes subjected them perhaps to caprices unfavourable to the
+development of high aspirations, or the contemplation and free communion
+with self which are the soul of art."
+
+It is interesting to compare these observations, so far as they refer to
+the realism which characterises Netherlandish painting, with those of Dr
+Waagen, who it will be seen explains it on the broader grounds of
+national temperament. "Early Netherlandish painting," he contends, "in
+its freedom from all foreign influence, exhibits the contrast between
+the natural feeling of the Greek and the German races respectively in
+the department of art--these two races being the chief representatives
+of the cultivation of the ancient and the modern world. In this
+circumstance consists the high significance of this school when
+considered in reference to the general history of art. While it is
+characteristic of the Greek feeling--from which was derived the
+Italian--to idealise,--and to idealise, be it observed, not only the
+conceptions of the ideal world but even such material objects as
+portraits,--by the simplification of forms and the prominence given to
+the more important parts of a work of art, the early Netherlanders, on
+the other hand, conferred a portrait-like character upon the most ideal
+personifications of the Virgin, the Apostles, Prophets, and Martyrs, and
+in actual portraiture aimed at rendering even the most accidental
+peculiarities of nature, like warts and wrinkles, with excruciating
+fidelity.
+
+"While the Greeks expressed the various features of outward nature--such
+as rivers, fountains, hills, trees, etc.--under abstract human forms,
+the Netherlanders endeavoured to express them as they had seen them in
+nature, and with a truth which extended to the smallest details.
+
+"In opposition to the ideal, and what may be called the personifying
+tendency of the Greeks, the Netherlanders developed a purely realistic
+and landscape school.
+
+"In this respect the other Teutonic nations are found to approach them
+most nearly, the Germans first, and then the English."
+
+But whatever may have been the causes which produced the distinguishing
+features of Netherlandish painting, we have still to enquire the origin
+from which the practice of painting in northern Europe proceeded. For
+in taking Melchior Broederlam as a starting-point we are only going as
+far back--with the exception of certain rude wall paintings--as the
+earliest examples take us; and having seen how in Italy the whole
+history of the art is traceable to Cimabue, Duccio, and Giotto, through
+the Byzantines, at least a century before Broederlam comes under our
+notice, we might naturally conclude that it was from Italy that it
+spread to Cologne, and from Cologne to the Netherlands. So far as is
+known, however, this was not the case, and we must look elsewhere than
+to Italy for the influences which formed this school. Nevertheless it
+was a collateral branch of the same stock--Byzantine art--and the family
+resemblance comes out none the less strongly from the two branches
+having developed under different circumstances. In Italy, as we have
+seen, the Byzantine seed, sown in such fertile soil, attained suddenly a
+great luxuriance. In the north, transplanted by Charlemagne to
+Aix-la-Chapelle in the ninth century, it grew slowly and more timidly,
+but none the less surely, under the cover of Monasticism, in the
+manuscripts illuminated with miniatures; and thus when it did burst
+forth into fuller blossom, the boldness of the Italian masters, who
+worked at large in fresco, was wanting, and a detailed and almost
+meticulous realism was its chief characteristic. Another point worth
+noticing is that though primarily introduced for religious purposes, as
+in Italy, namely the decoration of the cathedral erected by Charlemagne
+at Aix-la-Chapelle, the paintings in his palace showed forth events in
+his own life, such as his campaigns in Spain, seiges of towns and feats
+of arms by Frankish warriors. At Upper Ingelheim, likewise, his chapel
+was adorned with scenes from the Old and New Testaments, while the
+banqueting hall exhibited on one wall the deeds of great Pagan rulers,
+such as Cyrus, Hannibal, and Alexander, and on the other those of
+Constantine and Theodosius, the seizure of Acquitaine by Pepin, and
+Charlemagne's own conquest over the Saxons and finally himself enthroned
+as conqueror. Although no trace remains of these paintings, contemporary
+manuscripts executed by his order are still in existence in the
+libraries of Paris, Treves, and elsewhere from which we can form some
+idea of the style in which they were rendered and of the source from
+which they were derived.
+
+Of these we need only mention the Vulgate decorated by JOHN OF BRUGES,
+painter to King Charles V. of France, in 1371, which contains a portrait
+of the king in profile with a figure kneeling before him, and a few
+small historical subjects. From these it is evident that the art of
+painting, at any rate in little, had made considerable progress in the
+Netherlands at that date, and the express designation of _pictor_
+applied to John of Bruges, while the ordinary miniaturist was called
+_illuminator_, shows the probability of his having painted pictures on a
+larger scale. The high development of realistic feeling as it first
+appears to us in the pictures of Hubert and Jan van Eyck is thus partly
+accounted for, especially when we also consider the wholesale
+destruction of larger works of art that took place in the disturbed
+condition of the Netherlands in the sixteenth century. The main points,
+however, to be borne in mind is that whereas Cimabue and Duccio started
+painting on walls under the influence of Byzantine teachers, Hubert van
+Eyck, a century later, began painting on wooden panels under that of
+illuminators and painters in books.
+
+To these, nevertheless, there must be added another scarcely less
+important, namely, that the early Italians were ignorant of the use of
+what we now call oil paints, and worked entirely in tempera--that is to
+say, there was no admixture of oil or varnish with their pigments. To
+Hubert van Eyck is attributed the invention of the modern practice, as
+Vasari relates with more colour than historic truth in his life of
+Antonello da Messina, who is supposed to have carried it into Italy. Be
+that as it may, the works of the van Eycks and their successors are all
+in oils, and there is no doubt that the employment of this medium from
+the first considerably influenced the style, colour, and execution of
+all the works of this school.
+
+HUBERT VAN EYCK who according to the common acceptation was born in the
+year 1366 at Maaseyck, a small town not far from Maestricht, must have
+been settled before the year 1412 in Bruges, when we hear of him as a
+member of the Brotherhood of the Virgin with Rays.
+
+There can be little doubt that Hubert van Eyck was acquainted with the
+work of this John of Bruges, and that it had a considerable influence on
+him. But while on the one hand he carried the realistic tendencies of
+such works to an extraordinary pitch of excellence, it is evident that
+in many essential respects he was actuated by a more ideal feeling and
+imparted to the realism of his contemporaries, by means of his far
+richer powers of representation, greater distinctness, truth to nature,
+and variety of expression. Throughout his works is seen an elevated and
+highly energetic conception of the stern import of his labours in the
+service of the Church.
+
+The prevailing arrangement of his subjects is symmetrical, holding fast
+to the earliest rules of ecclesiastical art. His heads appear to aim at
+an ideal beauty and dignity only combined with actual truth to nature.
+His draperies exhibit the purest taste and softness of folds, the
+realistic principle being apparent in that greater attention to detail
+which a delicate indication of the material of the drapery necessitates.
+Nude figures are studied from nature with the utmost fidelity; undraped
+portions of figures are also given with much truth, especially the
+hands. But what is the principal distinguishing characteristic of his
+art is the hitherto unprecedented power, depth, transparency and harmony
+of his colouring. Whatever want of exact truth there may be in the story
+as related by Vasari's story of the discovery of oil painting, there is
+no doubt that Hubert Van Eyck succeeded in preparing so transparent a
+varnish that he could apply it without disadvantage to all colours.
+
+The chief work by Hubert Van Eyck is the large altar-piece painted for
+the cathedral of S. Bavon at Ghent;--parts of this have been removed and
+are now in the Berlin Gallery, and supplemented with excellent copies of
+the rest, the whole of the wonderful composition may there be well
+studied; a large photograph of the whole altar piece may also be seen in
+the library at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which shows how the work
+was originally designed. It was painted for Jodocus Vyts, Burgomaster of
+Ghent, and his wife Elizabeth, for their mortuary chapel in the
+cathedral.
+
+The subject of the three central panels of the upper portion is the
+Deity seated between _the Virgin and S. John the Baptist_. Underneath
+these, of the same width, is the famous _Adoration of the Lamb_. These
+together formed the back of the altar-piece, and were covered by wings
+which opened out on hinges on either side.
+
+The three large figures of the upper part are designed with all the
+dignity and statuesque repose belonging to an earlier style, and they
+are painted on a ground of gold and tapestry, as was constantly the
+practice in earlier times: but united with the traditional type we
+already find a successful representation of life and nature in all their
+truth. They stand as it were on the frontier of two different styles,
+and from the excellence of both form a wonderful and most impressive
+whole. The Heavenly Father sits directly fronting the spectator, in all
+the solemnity of ancient dignity, His right hand raised to give the
+benediction to the Lamb and to all the multitude of figures below; in
+His left hand is a crystal sceptre; on His head the triple crown, the
+emblem of the Trinity. The features are such as are ascribed to Christ
+by the traditions of the Church, but noble and well proportioned; the
+expression is forcible, though passionless.
+
+The tunic and the mantle of this figure are of a deep red, the latter
+being fastened over the breast by a clasp, and falling down in ample
+folds over the feet. Behind, as high as the head, is a hanging of green
+tapestry which is ornamented with a golden pelican--a symbol of the
+Redeemer. Behind the head the ground is gold, and on it in a semicircle
+are three inscriptions describing the Trinity as almighty, all-good, and
+all-bountiful. The figures of S. John and of the Virgin display equal
+majesty; both are reading holy books, as they turn towards the centre
+figure. The countenance of S. John expresses ascetic seriousness, but in
+that of the Virgin we find a serene grace and a purity of form which
+approach very nearly to the happier effects of Italian art.
+
+The arrangement of the lower central picture, the worship of the Lamb,
+is strictly symmetrical, as the mystic nature of the allegorical subject
+might seem to
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXI.--JAN VAN EYCK
+
+JAN ARNOLFINI AND HIS WIFE
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+have demanded; but there is such beauty in the landscape, in the pure
+atmosphere, in the bright green of the grass, in the masses of trees and
+flowers--even in single figures which stand out from the four principal
+groups--that we no longer perceive either hardness or severity in this
+symmetry.
+
+The landscape of this composition and that part of it containing the
+patriarchs and prophets are generally supposed to have been completed by
+JAN VAN EYCK (_c._ 1385-1441), whose name till within a comparatively
+recent period had almost obscured that of Hubert. For although there is
+little doubt that the elder brother was the first to develop the new
+method of painting, yet the fame of it did not extend beyond Belgium and
+across the Alps until after the death of Hubert, when the celebrity it
+so speedily acquired throughout Europe was transferred to Jan Van Eyck.
+Within fifteen years after his death, 1455, Jan was commemorated in
+Italy as the greatest painter of the century, while the name of Hubert
+was not even mentioned. It was Jan van Eyck to whom Antonello da Messina
+is said by Vasari to have resorted in Bruges in order to learn the new
+style of painting; he alone also is mentioned in Vasari's first edition
+of 1550, Hubert not until the second edition in 1568, and then only
+incidentally.
+
+Fortunately there are in existence various authentic pictures by Jan Van
+Eyck in which his original powers are more easily recognised than in the
+part he took in the execution of the great altar-piece at Ghent, in
+which he doubtless accommodated himself with proper fraternal piety both
+to the composition and to the style of his elder brother--who was also
+his master. In these we can see that he possessed neither the enthusiasm
+for the rich imagery and symbolism of the ecclesiastical art of the
+Middle Ages, nor that feeling for beauty in human forms or in drapery
+which belonged to his elder brother. His feeling, on the other hand, led
+him to the closest and truest conception of individual nature. Where he
+had to paint portraits only--a task which was most congenial to the
+tendency of his mind--he attained a life-like truth of form and
+colouring in every part, extending even to the minutest details, such as
+no other artist of his time could rival, and which art in general has
+seldom produced. In his actual brush work he shows greater facility than
+was ever attained by Hubert, by which he was enabled to render the
+material of every substance with marvellous fidelity.
+
+What little we know of the personal history of Jan Van Eyck is of
+exceptional interest, inasmuch as we find him employed on diplomatic
+errands to foreign countries, like his great successor Rubens; and as it
+happens he landed in England, though not intentionally, in the course of
+one of these voyages, being driven into Shoreham and Falmouth by adverse
+weather. It was in 1425 that he was taken into the service of Philip
+III., Duke of Burgundy, as painter and "varlet de chambre," shortly
+after which he went to Lille. In the following year he was sent on a
+pilgrimage as the Duke's proxy, and again on two secret missions. In
+1428 he went with the Duke's Embassy to the King of Portugal which was
+to sue for the hand of Isabella, the Portuguese princess. It was on this
+occasion that he was driven on to our shores. Arriving at Lisbon he
+painted two portraits of Isabella, one of which was sent home by sea and
+the other overland. After a happy and successful career he died in 1441
+at Bruges, where he had married and settled down on his return from
+Portugal.
+
+The most beautiful example of Jan Van Eyck's work in England is the
+portrait of Jean Arnolfini and Jeanne de Chenany his wife, now in the
+National Gallery (No. 186). This is dated with the charming inscription,
+"Johannes de Eyck fuit hic 1434"--that is to say, instead of simply
+signing the picture, he writes, "Jan Van Eyck was here, 1434." No other
+picture shows so high a development of the master's extraordinary power
+and charm. Besides every other quality peculiar to him, we observe here
+a perfection of tone and of chiaroscuro which no other specimen of this
+whole period affords. It is recorded that Princess Mary, sister of
+Charles V. and Governess of the Netherlands, purchased this picture from
+a barber to whom it belonged at the price of a post worth a hundred
+gulden a year. Among its subsequent possessors were Don Diego de
+Guevara, majordomo of Joan, Queen of Castile, by whom it was presented
+to Margaret of Austria. In 1530 it was acquired by Mary of Hungary, and
+later it returned to Spain. In 1789 it was in the palace at Madrid, and
+soon after it was taken by one of the French Generals, in whose quarters
+Major-General Hay found it after the battle of Waterloo.
+
+Two other portraits in the National Gallery bear the signature of Jan
+Van Eyck. No. 222, An elderly man, head and shoulders, on the frame of
+which is the painter's motto, "als ich can," and his signature,
+"Johannes de Eyck me fecit anno 1433, 21 Octobris." The other, No. 290,
+is a younger man, half length, standing inside an open window, on the
+sill of which is inscribed "[Greek: Timotheos]," and "Leal Souvenir,"
+and below the date and signature, "Actum anno domini 1432, 10 die
+Octobris a Iohanne de Eyck."
+
+Among the Netherlandish scholars and followers of the Van Eycks of whom
+any record has been preserved some appear to have been gifted with
+considerable powers, though none attained the excellence of their great
+precursors. Although a number of works representing this school still
+exist in the various countries of Europe, yet compared with the actual
+abundance of them at one time they constitute but a scanty remnant.
+
+Though not actually a pupil of Jan Van Eyck, ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN
+acquired after him the greatest celebrity. As early as 1436 he filled
+the honourable post of official painter to the city of Brussels. The
+chief work executed by him in this capacity was an altar-piece for the
+Chamber of Justice in Hotel de Ville. According to the custom of the
+time, it set forth in the most realistic fashion examples of stern
+observance of the law for the admonition of those placed in authority.
+The principal picture showed how Herkenbald, a judge in the eleventh
+century, executed his own nephew (convicted of a grave crime, but who
+would otherwise have escaped the penalty of the law) with his own hands;
+and how the sacramental wafer which, on the plea of murder, was denied
+to him by the priest, reached the lips of the upright judge by means of
+a miracle. The wings contained an example of the justice of the Emperor
+Trajan. These pictures are unfortunately no longer in existence, having
+probably been burned when Brussels was besieged in 1695.
+
+In the Museum of the Hospital at Beaune is one of the most important of
+his works still in existence, _The Last Judgment_, though in this it is
+generally supposed he was assisted by Dirk Bouts and Hans Memling. It
+contains several portraits, notably those of the Pope, Eugenius IV., who
+stands behind the Apostles in the right wing, and next to him Philip the
+Good. The crowned female in the opposite wing is probably Philip's
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXII.--JAN VAN EYCK
+
+PORTRAIT OF THE PAINTER'S WIFE
+
+_Town Gallery, Bruges_]
+
+second wife, Isabella of Portugal, whose portrait Jan Van Eyck went to
+Lisbon to paint before her marriage. On the outer sides are excellently
+painted portraits of the founder of the Hospital, Nicolas Rolin, and his
+wife. This work has been classed with the Van Eycks' _Adoration of the
+Lamb_, and the _Adoration of the Shepherds_ by Hugo Van der Goes, as
+crystallizing the finest expression of early northern painting.
+
+In 1450 he visited Italy, where he painted the beautiful little
+altar-piece which is now in the Staedel Institute at Frankfort, for Piero
+and Giovanni de'Medici.
+
+Another very fine example of his work is the triptych, now in the Berlin
+Museum, executed for Pierre Bladelin. In the centre is the Nativity,
+with a portrait of Bladelin kneeling, and angels. On the one side is the
+annunciation of the Redeemer to the ruler of the West--the Emperor
+Augustus--by the agency of the Tiburtine Sibyl; on the other to those of
+the East--the Three Kings--who are keeping watch on a mountain, where
+the child appears to them in a star.
+
+One of the largest as well as of the finest of the master's works is a
+triptych in the Munich Gallery--the _Adoration of the Kings_, with the
+_Annunciation_ and the _Presentation in the Temple_ in the wings. The
+figure of the Virgin in the _Presentation_ is particularly pleasing for
+its simple and unaffected realism. _S. Luke painting the Virgin_, also
+in the Munich Gallery, is ascribed to Roger.
+
+No painter of this school, the Van Eycks even not excepted, exercised so
+great and widely extended an influence as Roger Van der Weyden. Not only
+were Hans Memling--the greatest master of the next generation in
+Belgium--and his own son, also named Roger, his pupils, but innumerable
+works other than pictures were produced, such as miniatures,
+block-books, and engravings, in which his form of art is recognisable.
+It was under his auspices that the realistic tendency of the Van Eycks
+pervaded all Germany; for it was only after the death of Jan Van Eyck,
+in 1441, that the widespread fame of Roger Van der Weyden induced
+Germans to visit his studio at Brussels. Martin Schongauer, one of the
+greatest German masters of the sixteenth century, is known to have been
+his pupil, and it is certain that there must have been many others.
+
+It is in HANS MEMLING (_c._ 1435-1494), whom Vasari states to have been
+the pupil of Roger, that the early Netherlandish School attains the
+highest delicacy of artistic development. His poetical and profoundly
+human qualities had a special attraction for the "Pre-Raphaelite
+Brotherhood" inaugurated by Rossetti and Holman Hunt in the middle of
+the nineteenth century. This unusual tenderness of feeling is probably
+also the origin of the legend that Memling was taken into the Hospital
+of S. John at Bruges--where he painted most of his masterpieces--as a
+sick soldier after the battle of Nancy. In feeling for beauty and grace
+he was more gifted than any painter except Hubert Van Eyck, and this
+quality, conspicuous amid the somewhat ugly realism of most of his
+contemporaries, has ensured him perhaps a little more popularity than is
+rightly his share. Compared with the works of his master, Roger Van der
+Weyden, his figures are certainly of better proportions and less
+meagreness of form; his hands and feet truer to nature; the heads of his
+women are sweeter, and those of his men less severe. His outlines are
+softer, and in the modelling of his flesh parts more delicacy of half
+tones is observable. His colours are still more luminous and
+transparent. On the other hand he is inferior to Van der Weyden in the
+carrying out of detail, such as the materials of his draperies or the
+rendering of the full brilliancy of gold.
+
+In 1467 Memling was a master painter at Bruges, and painted the portrait
+of the medallist, Nicolas Spinelli, which is now in the Royal Museum at
+Antwerp, and a small altar-piece now at Chatsworth. His most famous
+works, those in the Hospital at Bruges, belong to a somewhat later date,
+the _Shrine of S. Ursula_ not being completed till 1489. The _Adoration
+of the Kings_ and the altar-piece were some ten years earlier. The
+famous shrine of S. Ursula is about four feet in length, and the whole
+of the outside is adorned with painting. On each side of the cover are
+three medallions, a large one in the centre and two smaller at the
+sides. The latter contain angels playing on musical instruments; in the
+centre on one side is a Coronation of the Virgin, on the other the
+Glorification of S. Ursula and her companions, with two figures of
+Bishops. On the gable-ends are the Virgin and Child with two sisters of
+the hospital kneeling before them, and S. Ursula with the arrow, the
+instrument of her martyrdom, and virgins seeking protection under her
+mantle. On the longer sides of the reliquary itself, in six rather
+larger compartments, is painted the history of S. Ursula.
+
+Of about the same period, possibly a little earlier, is the _Marriage of
+S. Catherine_, which is also in S. John's Hospital at Bruges. The
+central figure is that of the Virgin, seated under a porch, with
+tapestry hanging down behind it; two angels hold a crown over her head:
+beside her is S. Catherine kneeling, whose head is one of the finest
+ever painted by Memling. Behind her is an angel playing on the organ,
+and further back S. John the Baptist. On the other side kneels S.
+Barbara, reading: behind her another angel holds a book to the Virgin,
+and still further back is S. John the Evangelist, a figure of great
+beauty, and of a singularly mild and thoughtful character. Through the
+arcades of the porch we look out, on either side of the throne, on a
+rich landscape, in which are represented scenes from the lives of the
+two S. Johns. The panel on the right contains the beheading of the
+Baptist, on the left the Evangelist in the Isle of Patmos, where the
+vision of the Apocalypse appears to him--the Almighty on a throne in a
+glory of dazzling light, encompassed with a rainbow.
+
+The whole forms a work strikingly poetical and most impressive in
+character; it is highly finished, both in drawing and composition.
+
+IAN GOSSAERT (_c._ 1472-1535), called JAN VAN MABUSE from his native
+town of Maubeuge, was the son of a bookbinder who worked for the Abbey
+of Sainte-Aldegonde. It is possible therefore that he might have formed
+an early acquaintance with illuminated manuscripts before studying the
+art of painting in the studio of a master. Memling, Gerard, David, and
+Quentin Massys have been suggested as his instructors, but it is not
+known for certain that he was actually a pupil of any of them. In 1508
+he went to Italy, where he appears to have been greatly influenced both
+by the work of the Renaissance painters and by the antique. The
+_Adoration of the Kings_, which was lately purchased from Castle Howard
+for the National Gallery for L40,000, was painted before he went to
+Italy.
+
+Towards the end of the fifteenth century, in consequence of the transfer
+of commerce from Bruges to Antwerp, this latter city first became and
+long continued the centre of art, and especially of Netherlandish
+painting. Here it is that we find QUENTIN MASSYS, the greatest Belgian
+painter of this later time. He was born
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXIII.--JAN MABUSE
+
+PORTRAIT OF JEAN CARONDELET
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+probably in 1466. His father is said to have been a blacksmith and
+clockmaker, and there is a tradition that Quentin only forsook the
+hammer for the brush at instigation of a tender passion for a beautiful
+lady. Be that as it may, he is an important figure in the history of
+Belgian art. He distinguishes, broadly speaking, the close of the last
+period and the beginning of the next. A number of pictures representing
+sacred subjects exhibit, with little feeling for real beauty of form,
+such delicacy of features, beauty and earnestness of feeling, tenderness
+and clearness of colouring and skill in finish, as worthily recall the
+religious painting of the Middle Ages, though at the very end of them.
+In his draperies, especially, we observe a charm which is peculiar to
+Massys. At the same time, in the subordinate figures introduced into
+sacred subjects, such as the executioners, etc., he seems to take
+pleasure in coarse and tasteless caricatures.
+
+In subjects taken from common life, such as money changers, loving
+couples, or ugly old women, he uses his brush with evident zest, and
+with great success. The pictures of his later period are also
+distinguished from those of other painters by the large size of the
+figures, which for the first time in his country are of three-quarters
+or even actual life size.
+
+Among his most original and attractive pictures are the half-length
+figures of Christ and the Virgin. These must have been very popular in
+his own time, for he has left several repetitions of them. Two heads of
+this class are at Antwerp, and two others of equal beauty are in the
+National Gallery in one frame (No. 295).
+
+The most celebrated of his subject pictures is that known by the name of
+_The Misers_, or _The Money Changers_, at Windsor Castle--of which there
+are numerous copies, and this is not supposed to be the original. _The
+Money Changer and His Wife_ at the Louvre is undoubtedly his.
+
+LUCAS VAN LEYDEN, as he was called (his real name being Luc Jacobez),
+was born in 1494, and died in 1533. He was a pupil of a little known
+artist, Cornelis Engelbrechstein, who was a follower if not a pupil of
+Memling. Lucas was an artist of multifarious powers and very early
+development. He painted admirably--though his authenticated works are
+very scarce--drew, and engraved. He pursued the path of realism in the
+treatment of sacred subjects, but with less beauty or elevation of mind.
+His heads are generally of a very ugly character. At the same time his
+form of expression found sympathy in the feeling of the period, and by
+the skill with which it was expressed, especially in his engravings,
+attracted a number of followers. In scenes from common life he is full
+of truth and delicate observation of nature, though showing now and then
+a somewhat coarse sense of humour. One of his most important works is a
+large composition of _The Last Judgment_, which is at Leyden.
+
+Very early in the sixteenth century--beginning in fact, as we have seen,
+with Jan Mabuse in 1508--the Netherlandish and German artists made it
+the fashion to repair to Italy, attracted by the reputation of the great
+masters; so that from this time onwards their work ceases to exhibit the
+purely northern characteristics of their predecessors. For it appears
+that precisely those qualities most opposed to their own native feeling
+for art made the deepest impression on their minds; more especially such
+general qualities as grandeur, beauty, simplicity of forms, drawing of
+the nude, unrestrained freedom, boldness, and grace of movement--in
+short, all that is comprised in art under the term "ideal."
+
+But the attempt to appropriate all these qualities could lead to no
+successful result. Being based on no inherent want on the part of their
+own original feeling for art, it became only the outward imitation of
+something foreign to themselves, and they never therefore succeeded in
+mastering the complete understanding of form, or in adopting the true
+feeling for beauty of line or grace of movement; and in aiming at them
+they only degenerated into artificiality, exaggeration in drawing, and
+violence in attitude. The pictures of this class, even of religious
+subjects, have accordingly but little to attract the eye, and when they
+selected scenes from ancient mythology, and allegories decked out with
+an ostentation of learning, the result is positively disagreeable.
+
+The most satisfactory productions of this period will be found in the
+department of portrait painting, which, by its nature, threw the artist
+upon the exercise of his own original feeling for art. As in every other
+respect this epoch is far more important as a link in the chain of
+history than from any pleasure arising from its own works, it will be
+sufficient to mention only the more important painters and a few of
+their principal pictures.
+
+The first painter who deserted his native style of art was, as before
+mentioned, Jan Mabuse. After the large _Adoration of the Kings_ in the
+National Gallery the most important picture of his pre-Italian period is
+the _Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane_ at Berlin. Nearly all his works
+subsequent to 1512, by which time he had settled in Brussels, are
+characterised by all the faults above mentioned. Their redeeming quality
+is their masterly treatment. Among those of religious subjects the
+smallest are as a rule the best. The _Ecce Homo_ at Antwerp, so
+frequently copied by contemporary painters, is a specimen of masterly
+modelling and vigorous colour. He is less successful with his life-size
+_Adam and Eve_, of which there are repetitions at Brussels, Hatfield,
+Hampton Court and Berlin. But his most unpleasing efforts are the
+mythological subjects such as the _Danae_ at Munich, and the _Neptune
+and Amphitrite_ at Berlin. On the other hand, his portraits are
+attractive both from being more original, and less influenced by his
+acquired mannerisms of style Four of these are in the National Gallery,
+and the _Girl weighing Gold Pieces_, in the Berlin gallery, is also
+worthy of mention.
+
+BERNARD VAN ORLEY, born at Brussels in 1471, is characterised in the
+catalogue of the National Gallery as "taking his place after Massys and
+Mabuse on the downward slope of Netherlandish painting." He has been
+immortalised by the fine portrait head of him by Albert Duerer which is
+now in the Dresden Gallery. He was Court painter to Margaret of Austria,
+Governess of the Low Countries, and retained the same post under her
+successor, Mary of Hungary. He is said to have visited Rome in 1509, and
+there made the acquaintance of Raphael, whose influence is certainly
+apparent, though hardly his inspiration, in the _Holy Family_ in the
+Louvre. A more Netherlandish work, both in feeling and in treatment, is
+the _Pieta_ in the Gallery at Brussels.
+
+IAN SCOREL, born in 1495, was a pupil of Mabuse, and appears to have
+been the first to introduce the Italian style into his native
+country--Holland. When on a pilgrimage to Palestine he happened to pass
+through Rome at the time his countryman was raised to the papal dignity
+as Adrian VI., and after painting his portrait he was appointed overseer
+of the art treasures of the Vatican. Returning to Utrecht, where he
+died, he painted the picture of the _Virgin and Child_, with donors,
+which is now in the Town Hall.
+
+A fine portrait by Scorel of Cornelius Aerntz van der Dussen is in the
+Berlin Gallery.
+
+The decided and strongly realistic style in which Quentin Massys had
+painted scenes from common life, as for instance the Misere or Money
+Changers, became the model for various painters in their treatment of
+similar subjects. First among these was his son, JAN MASSYS, born about
+1500, who followed closely but rather clumsily in his father's
+footsteps, and need only be mentioned for carrying on the tradition.
+More interesting were the Breughels, namely, PIETER BREUGHEL the elder,
+born about 1520, called Peasant Breughel, and his two sons Pieter and
+Jan. Old Breughel is best studied at Vienna, where there are good
+examples of his various subjects, notably a _Crucifixion_ and _The Tower
+of Babel_--both dated 1563--and secular scenes like _A Peasant Wedding_
+and a _Fight between Carnival and Lent_, which are full of clever and
+droll invention.
+
+His elder son, Pieter, was called Hell Breughel, from his choice of
+subject. He is far inferior to his father or to his younger brother Jan,
+called Velvet Breughel, born in 1568. Though more especially a landscape
+painter, Jan also takes an important place in the development of subject
+pictures, which, though seldom rising above a somewhat coarse reality,
+are of a lively character, and worthy forerunners of the more
+accomplished productions of Teniers, Ostade, and Brouwer.
+
+It is in portrait painting, however, that the Netherlandish School
+chiefly distinguished itself during its decline in the seventeenth
+century, and had all its sons remained in the country to enhance its
+glory, it is probable that the effect on the general practice of
+painting would have been more than beneficial. But portrait painters
+have not always been content to sit at home and wait for sitters to come
+to them, especially when the state of society in which they happen to
+find themselves makes waiting rather a long and tedious process. From
+the Reformation onwards, for over two centuries, there was a steady
+demand for portrait painters in England, and after the foundation of a
+really English school of painting by Reynolds in the middle of the
+eighteenth century, the stream of foreign, especially Netherlandish,
+talent never entirely ceased to flow. But confining ourselves for the
+present to the sixteenth century, we find that all the considerable
+Netherlandish portrait painters were employed for the most part outside
+their own country.
+
+Typical of these is JOOS VAN CLEEF, of Antwerp, who died in 1540.
+According to Vasari he visited Spain and painted portraits for the Court
+of France. At all events it is certain that he worked for a time in
+England, where the great success of Sir Antonio Mor is said to have
+disordered his brain. The few pictures that can be assigned to him with
+any certainty thoroughly justify the high reputation he enjoyed in his
+time--the two male portraits for example at Berlin and Munich, the
+portraits of himself and his wife at Windsor, and his own at Althorp.
+His style may be classed as between that of Holbein and Antonio Mor. His
+well-drawn forms are decided without being hard, and his warm and
+transparent colouring recalls the great masters of the Venetian School.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+PETER PAUL RUBENS
+
+
+Dr Waagen thus summarises the history of painting in the Netherlands
+during the interval of about a century and a half that elapsed between
+the death of Jan van Eyck in 1440 and the birth of PETER PAUL RUBENS in
+1577.
+
+"The great school of the brothers van Eyck," he writes, "which united
+with a profound and genuine enthusiasm for religious subjects a pure and
+healthy feeling for nature, and a talent for portraying her minutest
+details with truth and fidelity, had continued till the end of the
+fifteenth century, and in some instances even later, to produce the most
+admirable works, combining the utmost technical perfection in touch and
+finish with most vivid and beautiful colouring. To this original school,
+however, had succeeded a perverted rage for imitating the Italian
+masters, which had been introduced into the Netherlands by a few
+painters of talent, particularly by Jean Mabuse and Bernard van Orley.
+To display their science by throwing their figures into forced and
+difficult positions and strongly marking the muscles, by which they
+thought to emulate the grandeur of Michel Angelo, and to exhibit their
+learning by the choice of mythological and allegorical subjects, became
+the aim of succeeding painters, and before these false and artificial
+views of art, the spirit of religious enthusiasm and the pure, naive
+perception of the truth and beauty of nature gradually disappeared.
+
+"In proportion as the Flemish painters lost the proper conception of
+form, and the feeling for delicacy and beauty of outline, it followed
+of course that they became more and more removed from nature in their
+desire to rival each other in the forced attitudes of their figures, and
+in the exhibition of nudity, until at last such disgusting caricatures
+were produced as we find in the works of Martin Heemskirk or Franz
+Floris, artists who were even deficient in good colouring, the old
+inheritance of the school.
+
+"Some few painters, however, whose feeling for truth and nature repelled
+them instinctively from a path so far removed from both, took to
+portraying scenes of real life with considerable humour and vivacity; or
+they delineated nature in her commonest aspects with great minuteness of
+detail; and thus _tableaux de genre_ and landscape originated. Although
+a few isolated efforts to introduce a better state of things were
+visible towards the end of the sixteenth century, it was reserved for a
+mind of no common power to bring about a complete revolution."
+
+That Rubens was possessed of a "mind of no common power" will be readily
+admitted. He was an extraordinary person, in whom were combined such a
+variety of excellent qualities that there seems to have been no room
+left in him for any of the inferior ones which are usually necessary, as
+one must almost admit, for an alloy that will harden the finer metal for
+the practical purposes of success. With all his feeling for religion, he
+was seldom prudish; his amazing vitality never led him into excess or
+intemperance. His intense patriotism was all for peace; classical
+learning never made him dry or bumptious, nor the favour of kings
+servile. As fine a gentleman as Buckingham, he had no enemies.
+
+Something more than temperament and natural ability, however, was
+necessary to make Rubens exactly what he turned out to be, and that was
+environment. Had he remained in Flanders all his life we should have
+been deprived of much that is most characteristic in his art. He was too
+big, that is to say, for the flower pot. He needed to be bedded out, so
+that his exuberant natural genius might have the proper opportunities
+for expanding under suitable conditions. It was in Venice and Mantua, in
+Florence and Rome that he found himself, and took his measure from the
+giants.
+
+Rubens was born in 1577 at Cologne, where his father, a jurist of
+considerable attainments, had taken refuge from the disturbances at
+Antwerp in 1566. He was christened Peter Paul in honour of the saints on
+whose festival his birthday fell--29th June. At the age of sixteen he
+was placed as a page in the household of the widowed Countess of
+Lalaing, but as he showed a remarkable love for drawing he was
+apprenticed first to Tobias Verhaegt, a landscape painter, and then to
+Adam Van Oort. The latter was so unsuitable a master, however, that
+Rubens was soon committed to the care of Otto Vennius, at that time
+Court painter to the Infanta Isabella and the Archduke Albert, her
+husband; he prospered so well that in 1600 Vennius advised him to go to
+Italy to finish his education as a painter.
+
+Rubens was now in his twenty-third year, and besides being proficient in
+painting he was so well grounded in the classics and in general
+education and manners that he was recommended by the Archduke to
+Vincenzio, Duke of Gonzaga, whose palace at Mantua was famous for
+containing an immense collection of art treasures, a great part of which
+within the next quarter of a century were purchased by King Charles, the
+Duke of Buckingham, and the Earl of Arundel. The influence exerted on
+the young painter by surroundings like these is exemplified in a note by
+Waagen:--
+
+"Rubens during his residence at Mantua was so pleased with the _Triumph
+of Julius Caesar_ by Mantegna (the large cartoons now at Hampton Court
+Palace), that he made a free copy of one of them. His love for the
+fantastic and pompous led him to choose that with the elephants carrying
+the candelabra; but his ardent imagination, ever directed to the
+dramatic, could not be contented with this. Instead of a harmless sheep,
+which, in Mantegna, is walking by the side of the foremost elephant,
+Rubens has introduced a lion and a lioness, which growl angrily at the
+elephant. The latter is looking furiously round, and is on the point of
+striking the lion a blow with his trunk."
+
+That Rubens should have been so specially attracted by Mantegna may seem
+a little surprising, until we remember that both were lovers and
+students of classical antiquities--a fact that is often forgotten in
+recalling only the principal achievements of either. But it is important
+to know what sort of foundations underlie the most splendid erections if
+we wish to understand how they came into existence and what their place
+is in the history of the arts. A glance through Lempriere's _Dictionary_
+may furnish a modern Academician with a subject for a popular
+picture,--but that is stucco rather than foundation. The roots of tall
+trees go deep. Rubens when he was in Rome studied the antiquities of the
+place with the utmost diligence and zeal, as is evidenced by a book
+published by his brother Philip in 1608.
+
+It was in the autumn of this year that he received the news, when at
+Genoa, of his mother's illness, which induced him to return to Antwerp
+forthwith. On his arrival he found she had died before the messenger
+had reached Genoa.
+
+After four months of mourning he was ready to return to Flanders; his
+sojourn of eight years in Italy had so far influenced him that he might
+have remained there indefinitely had it not been for the Archduke and
+the Infanta pressing him to remain at Brussels and attach himself to
+their Court. Another circumstance may possibly have weighed with him;
+for within a year we find him married to Elizabeth Brant, the daughter
+of a magistrate of Antwerp, and it was not at Brussels, but at Antwerp,
+that he took up his quarters. Here he proceeded to build a wonderful
+house--said to have cost him 60,000 florins--after designs of his own in
+the Italian style, which he filled with the treasures he had collected
+in Italy.
+
+Rubens's first pictures were nearly all of them religious subjects.
+Before he went to Italy he had painted an _Adoration of the Kings_, a
+_Holy Trinity_, and the _Dead Christ in the Arms of God the Father_,
+which was engraved by Bolswert. When Vincenzio sent him to Rome to copy
+pictures there for him, he found time to execute a commission which he
+received from the Archduke Albert to paint three pictures for the Church
+of Santa Croce di Gerusalamme, namely, the _Crowning with Thorns_, the
+_Crucifixion_, and the _Finding of the Cross_. A year later--after
+returning from a journey to Madrid--he painted the altar-piece for the
+Church of Santa Maria in Vallicella, in which the influence of Paul
+Veronese is conspicuous. At Genoa, he painted the Circumcision and S.
+Ignatius for the church of the Jesuits.
+
+One of the first pictures which he painted on his return to Antwerp was
+an altar-piece for the private chapel of the Archduke Albert, of the
+Holy Family. This picture was so much admired that the members of the
+fraternity of S. Ildefonso, at the head of which was the Archduke
+Albert, commissioned him to paint an altar-piece for the Chapel of the
+Order of S. James near Brussels. This picture, which is now at Vienna,
+represents the Virgin enthroned, surrounded by four female saints,
+putting the Cloak of the Order on the shoulders of S. Ildefonso. On the
+wings are the portraits of the Archduke and Isabella, with their patron
+saints.
+
+Thus we find that, like the earliest painters in his own country as well
+as in Italy, the beginning of Rubens's art was under the influence of
+the Church. Further, we find that the most celebrated work of his
+earlier period, the _Descent from the Cross_, in the cathedral at
+Antwerp, was undertaken in circumstances which abundantly show how
+thoroughly he was imbued with the principles of the religion he
+professed. The story is that when preparing the foundations of his new
+house he had unwittingly trespassed upon a piece of ground belonging to
+the Company of Arquebusiers at Antwerp. A lawsuit was threatened, and
+Rubens, with all the vivacity of his nature, prepared measures of
+resistance. But when his friend Rockox, a lawyer, had proved him that he
+was in the wrong, he immediately drew back, and offered to paint a
+picture by way of compensation. The offer was accepted, and the
+Arquebusiers asked for a representation of their patron, S. Christopher,
+to be placed in his chapel in the cathedral. In the magnificent spirit
+which always distinguished the man, he presented to his adversaries not
+merely the figure of the great Saint, but an elaborate and significant
+illustration of his name (Christ-bearer). Thus, in the centre, the
+disciples are lifting the Saviour from the Cross; in the wings the
+Visitation--S. Simeon with Christ in his arms, S. Christopher with
+Christ on his shoulders, and an old hermit bearing a light.
+
+Among the earlier examples of secular pictures one of the most famous is
+the portrait of himself and his bride, which is now in the Munich
+Gallery. This was painted in 1609, when Rubens was over thirty years
+old.
+
+In 1627 Rubens went to Madrid on a diplomatic errand, but still as a
+painter, as we shall see when discussing his relations with Velasquez.
+
+Towards the end of the year 1629 he was sent on another diplomatic
+mission, this time to England. The choice of an ambassador could not
+have fallen on anyone better calculated to suit the personal character
+of Charles I., who was a passionate lover of art and easily captivated
+by men of cultivated intellect and refined manners. Rubens therefore, in
+whom the most admirable and attractive qualities were united to the
+rarest genius as an artist, soon succeeded in winning the attention and
+regard of the king. At Paris, too, Rubens had made friends with
+Buckingham, who had purchased his whole collection of statues,
+paintings, and other works of art for about ten thousand pounds.
+
+It was during his stay in London that he painted the picture now in the
+National Gallery, called _Peace and War_ (No. 46). This was intended as
+an allegory representing the blessings of peace and the horrors of war,
+which he presented to the king as a tangible recommendation of the
+pacific measures which he had come to propose. After the dispersion of
+the Royal Collection during the Commonwealth this picture was acquired
+by the Doria family at Genoa, where it was called, oddly enough,
+_Rubens's Family_. As a matter of fact the children are those of
+Balthazar Gerbier. He also painted the _S. George and the Dragon_,
+which is now at Windsor Castle, and made the sketches for the nine
+pictures on the ceiling of the Banqueting Hall--now the United Service
+Institution Museum--in Whitehall. It was on this occasion, too, that he
+received the honour of knighthood from Charles I., who is said to have
+presented him with his own sword.
+
+In the following year, 1630, Rubens married his second wife, Helena
+Fourment, who was only sixteen years old--he was now fifty-two or
+fifty-three. She belonged to one of the richest and most respectable
+families in Antwerp, and was by no means unworthy of the compliment of
+being painted in the character of the Virgin receiving instruction from
+S. Anne, in the picture which is still at Antwerp.
+
+In 1633 his painting was again interrupted by a diplomatic mission, this
+time to Holland; and his remaining years were subject to more
+distressing interruptions, from the gout, to which he finally succumbed
+in 1640.
+
+When we come to consider the English School of painting we shall see how
+much of its revival in the middle of the eighteenth century was due to
+the personality as well as to the genius of Sir Joshua Reynolds. In the
+Netherlands, likewise, it was not merely a great painter that was
+required to raise the art to life, but a great personality as well; and
+to the influence of Rubens may be attributed much if not all of the
+extraordinary fertility of the Flemish and Dutch Schools of the
+seventeenth century. Making every allowance for the difference in the
+times in which the Van Eycks and Rubens were working, there is no doubt
+that the former lived in too rarefied an atmosphere ever to influence
+their fellows, and with the exception of Hans Memling they left no
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXIV.--RUBENS
+
+PORTRAIT OF HELENE FOURMENT, THE ARTIST'S SECOND WIFE, AND TWO CHILDREN
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+one worthy to carry on their tradition. Rubens showed his contemporaries
+that art was a mistress who could be served in many ways that were yet
+unthought of, and that she did not by any means disdain the tribute of
+other than religious votaries. Beginning, as we have pointed out, with
+sacred subjects, Rubens soon turned to the study of the classics, and
+found in them not so much the classical severity that Mantegna had
+sought for as the pagan spirit of fulness and freedom. "I am convinced
+that to reach the highest perfection as a painter," he himself writes
+"it is necessary, not only to be acquainted with the ancient statues,
+but we must be inwardly imbued with the thorough comprehension of them.
+An insight into the laws which pertain to them is necessary before they
+can be turned to any real account in painting. This will prevent the
+artist from transferring to the canvas that which in sculpture is
+dependent on the material employed--marble, for instance. Many
+inexperienced and indeed experienced painters do not distinguish the
+material from the form which it expresses--the stone from the figure
+which is carved in it; that which the artist forces from the dead
+marble, from the universal laws of art which are independent of it.
+
+"One leading rule may be laid down, that inasmuch as the best statues of
+antiquity are of great value for the painter, the inferior ones are not
+only worthless but mischievous: for while beginners fancy they can
+perform wonders if they can borrow from these statues, and transfer
+something hard, heavy, with sharp outlines and an exaggerated anatomy to
+their canvas, this can only be done by outraging the truth of nature,
+since instead of representing flesh with colours, they do but give
+colour to marble.
+
+"In studying even the best of the antique statues, the painter must
+consider and avoid many things which are not connected with the art of
+the sculptor, but solely with the material in which he worked. I may
+mention particularly the difference in the shading. In nature, owing to
+the transparency of the flesh, the skin, and the cartilages, the shading
+of many parts is moderated, which in sculpture appear hard and abrupt,
+for the shadows become doubled, as it were, owing to the natural and
+unavoidable thickness of the stone. To this must be added that certain
+less important parts which lie on the surface of the human body, as the
+veins, folds of the skin, etc., which change their appearance with every
+movement, and which owing to the pliancy of the skin become easily
+extended or contracted, are not expressed at all in the works of
+sculptors in general--though it is true that sculptors of high talent
+have marked them in some degree. The painter, however, must never omit
+to introduce them--with proper discretion.
+
+"In the manner in which lights fall, too, statues are totally different
+from nature; for the natural brilliancy of marble, and its own light,
+throws out the surface far more strongly than in nature, and even
+dazzles the eye."
+
+I have quoted rather more of this passage (from Mrs Jameson's
+translation) than I at first intended, because it discloses one of the
+most important secrets of the successful painting of figures, by other
+artists besides Rubens himself--George Romney for example. The
+advantages of a "classical education" at our English public schools and
+universities are questioned, and there can be no doubt that for the bulk
+of the pupils they are questionable. But Rubens shows that the case is
+exactly the same for painters studying classical art as for scholars
+acquainting themselves with classical literature. A superficial study of
+the antique, just because it is antique, is of no use at all, but rather
+a hindrance. But if the study is properly undertaken, there is no surer
+foundation, in art or literature, on which to build. It makes no
+difference what is built; the foundation is there, beneath the surface,
+and whatever is placed upon it will stand for all time.
+
+The remarkable freedom and originality of Rubens's treatment of
+classical subjects is thus accounted for. Under the surface is his
+familiarity with the antique, but instead of carrying this above ground,
+he builds on it a palace in accordance with the times and circumstances
+in which he lived. The principles of classical art underlie the modern
+structure. Among his numerous works of classical mythology the picture
+at Munich of _Castor and Pollux_ carrying off the daughters of Leucippus
+is worthy of being first mentioned. The Dioscuri mounted on spirited
+steeds, one of which is wildly rearing, are in the act of capturing the
+two damsels. The calm expression of strength in the male, and the
+violent but fruitless resistance of the female figures, form a striking
+contrast. Although the former are merely represented as two coarse and
+powerful men, and the women have only common and rather redundant forms
+and Flemish faces, yet the picture produces as a whole such a striking
+effect, owing to the admirable manner in which the subject is conceived,
+the power of imagination which it displays, and the exquisite colouring
+and tone, that it would never occur to any unprejudiced spectator to
+regret the absence of antique forms and character.
+
+Two other pictures of this class are singled out for description by
+Waagen as masterpieces. One is the _Rape of Proserpine_, at
+Blenheim,--Pluto in his car, drawn by fiery brown steeds, is carrying
+off the goddess, who is struggling in his arms. The other is the _Battle
+of the Amazons_, in the Munich Gallery, which was painted by Rubens for
+Van der Geest. With great judgment he has chosen the moment when the
+Amazons are driven back by the Greeks over the river Thermodon: the
+battle takes place upon a bridge, and thus the horror of the scene is
+carried to the highest pitch.
+
+Both in Flanders and in Italy Rubens had been brought into close contact
+with all the magnificence and splendour which belonged to those gorgeous
+times, and he delighted in representing the pomp of worldly state and
+everything connected with it. Of all sacred subjects none afforded such
+a rich field for display as the _Adoration of the Kings_; he has painted
+this subject no less than twelve times, and his fancy appears quite
+inexhaustible in the invention of the rich offerings of the eastern
+sages. Among the subjects of a secular character the history of Marie
+de'Medici, the triumph of the Emperor Charles V., and the Sultan at the
+head of his Army, gave him abundant opportunities of portraying Oriental
+and European pageantry, with rich arms and regalia, and all the pomp and
+circumstance of war. Profusion--pouring forth of abundance, that was one
+of Rubens's most salient characteristics. Exuberance, plenty, fatness.
+
+As a painter of animals, again, Rubens opened out a new field for the
+energy of his fellow-countrymen, which was tilled so industriously by
+Frans Snyders and Jan Fyt, and in a lesser degree by the Dutchmen Jan
+Weenix, father and son, and Hondecoeter. That the naive instincts,
+agility, and vivacity of animals must have had a great attraction for
+Rubens is easily understood. Those which are remarkable for their
+courage, strength, intelligence, swiftness--as lions, tigers, wild
+boars, wolves, horses, dogs--particularly interested him. He paid
+special attention to animals, seized every opportunity of studying them
+from nature, and attained the most wonderful skill and facility in
+painting them. It is related that he had a remarkably fine and powerful
+lion brought to his house in order to study him in every variety of
+attitude, and that on one occasion observing him yawn, he was so pleased
+with the action that he wished to paint it. He therefore desired the
+keeper to tickle the animal under the chin to make him repeatedly open
+his jaws: at length the lion became savage at this treatment, and cast
+such furious glances at his keeper, that Rubens attended to his warning
+and had the beast removed. The keeper is said to have been torn to
+pieces by the lion shortly afterwards: apparently the animal had never
+forgotten the affront put upon him.
+
+By such means--though it is to be hoped not always with such lamentable
+results--Rubens succeeded in seizing and portraying the peculiar
+character and instinct of animals--their quick movements and
+manifestations of strength--with such perfect truth and energy that not
+one among the modern painters has approached him in this
+respect--certainly not Landseer, as Mrs Jameson would ask us to believe.
+
+The celebrated _Wolf Hunt_, in the collection of Lord Ashburton, was one
+of the earliest, painted in 1612 for the Spanish General Legranes only
+three years after Rubens's return from Italy. In this picture, his bold
+creative fancy and dramatic turn of mind are remarkably
+conspicuous--even at this early stage in his career. Catherine Brant,
+his first wife, on a brown horse, with a falcon in her hand, is near her
+husband; a second huntsman on horseback, three on foot, another old
+wolf and three young ones, with several dogs, complete the composition,
+which is most carefully painted in a clear and powerful tone throughout.
+
+Of scenes of peasant life, one of his earliest, and yet the most famous,
+is the _Kermesse_, which is now in the Louvre. A boisterous, merry party
+of about seventy persons are assembled in front of a country ale-house;
+several are wildly dancing in a circle, others are drinking and
+shouting; others, again, are making love.
+
+_The Garden of Love_, equally famous, was one of Rubens's latest
+pictures. Of this there are several versions in existence, of which
+those at Dresden and Madrid may be considered as originals. Several
+loving couples in familiar conversation are lingering before the
+entrance of a grotto, the front of which is ornamented with a rustic
+portico. Amongst them we recognise the portraits of Rubens and his
+second wife, his pupil Van Dyck, and Simon de Vos.
+
+As Rubens united to such great and various knowledge the disposition to
+communicate it to others in the most friendly and candid manner, it was
+natural that young painters of talent who were admitted into his atelier
+should soon attain a high degree of skill and cultivation.
+
+At "the House in the Wood," not far from the Hague, there is a salon
+decorated entirely by the pupils of Rubens. The principal picture, which
+is one of the largest oil paintings in the world, is by Jacob Jordaens,
+and represents the triumph of Prince Frederick Henry--the object of the
+whole scheme being the glorification of the House of Orange, in 1649.
+Most of the other pictures are of Theodore van Thulden, who in these
+works has emulated his illustrious master in the force and brilliance of
+his colouring.
+
+But it is not in any particular salon or palace that we must look for
+the effects of Rubens' influence; it was far wider than to be able to be
+contained within four walls. In portraiture he gave us Van Dyck; in
+historical subjects, Jacob Jordaens; in animal painting and still life,
+Frans Snyders, Jan Fyt, and the brothers Weenix. In pictures of everyday
+life he gave us Adrian Brouwer and David Teniers; in landscape,
+Everdingen, Ruisdael and Waterloo. "Thus was the art of painting in the
+Netherlands remodelled in every department," says Waagen in the
+concluding sentence of his memoir, "by the energies of a single great
+and gifted mind. Thus was Rubens the originator of its second great
+epoch, to which we are indebted for such numerous and masterly
+performances in every branch of the art."
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE PUPILS OF RUBENS
+
+
+DAVID TENIERS the elder, who was born at Antwerp in 1582, received the
+first rudiments of his art from Rubens, who soon perceived in him the
+happy advances towards excelling in his profession that raised him to
+the head of his school. The prejudice in favour of his son, David
+Teniers the younger, is so great that the father is generally esteemed
+but a middling painter; and his pictures not worth the inquiry of a
+collector. His hand is so little distinguished, however, that the
+paintings of the father are often taken for those of the son. The father
+was certainly the inventor of the manner, which the son, who was his
+pupil, only improved with what little was wanting to perfection.
+
+Rubens was astonished at his early success, and though he followed the
+manner of Adrian Brouwer, looked on him as his most deserving pupil by
+the brightness of genius that he showed. He soon saved enough money to
+undertake the journey to Italy, and when at Rome he established himself
+with Adam Elsheimer, who was then in great vogue. In Elsheimer's manner
+he soon became a perfect master, without neglecting at the same time the
+study of other and greater masters, endeavouring to penetrate into the
+deepest mysteries of their practice. An abode of ten years in Italy, and
+the influence of Elsheimer combined with that of Rubens, formed him into
+what he became.
+
+When he returned to his own country he employed himself entirely in
+painting small pictures filled with figures of people drinking and
+merry-making, and numbers of peasants and country women. He displayed so
+much taste in these that the demand for them was universal. Even Rubens
+thought them an ornament to his collection.
+
+Teniers drew his own character in his pictures, and in the subjects he
+usually expressed everything tends to joy and pleasure. Always employed
+in copying after nature whatsoever presented itself, he taught his two
+sons, David and Abraham, to follow his example, and accustomed them to
+paint nothing but from that infallible model, by which means they both
+became excellent painters. These were his only disciples, and he died at
+Antwerp in 1649.
+
+The only distinction between his works and those of his son, David
+Teniers the younger, is that in the latter you discover a finer touch, a
+fresher brush, a greater choice of attitudes, and a better disposition
+of the figures. The father, too, retained something of the tone of
+Italy in his colouring, which was stronger than his son's; but his
+pictures have less harmony and union--though to tell the truth, when the
+father took pains to finish his picture, he very nearly resembled his
+son.
+
+The latter, DAVID TENIERS the younger, was born in 1610. He was
+nicknamed the Ape of painting, from his powers of imitation. The
+Archduke Leopold William made him a gentleman of his bedchamber, and he
+made copies of all his pictures. He came to England to buy several
+Italian pictures for Count Fuensaldegna, who on his return heaped
+favours upon him. Don John of Austria and the King of Spain set so great
+a value upon his pictures that they built a gallery set apart to
+preserve them--there are no less than fifty-two in the Prado Gallery
+to-day.
+
+His principal talent was landscape adorned with small figures. He
+painted men drinking and smoking, alchemists, corps de garde,
+temptations of S. Anthony, and country fairs and merry-makings. His
+small pictures are superior to his large ones. His execution displays
+the greatest ease; the leafing of his trees is light, his skies are
+admirable: his small figures have an exquisite expression and a most
+lively touch, and the characters are marked out with the greatest truth.
+From the thinness of the colours his works seem to have been finished at
+once; they are generally clear in all their parts, and Teniers had the
+art, without dark shades, to relieve his lights by other lights, so well
+managed as to produce the effect he wanted, an art which few besides
+himself have attained. He died at Antwerp in 1694.
+
+FRANS SNYDERS was born at Antwerp in the year 1587, ten years later,
+that is to say, than Rubens. He received his first instruction in the
+art of painting from Henry van Balen. His genius at first displayed
+itself only in painting fruit. He afterwards attempted animals, in
+which kind of study he succeeded so well that he surpassed all that had
+ever excelled before him. He stayed for some time in Italy, and the
+works he met with there by Castiglione proved a spur to his genius to
+attempt outdoing him in painting animals. When he returned to Flanders
+he fixed his ordinary abode at Brussels, where he was made painter to
+the Archduke and Duchess, and became attached to the house of Spain.
+Twenty-two of his pictures are in the Prado Gallery.
+
+When Snyders required large figures in his compositions both Rubens and
+Jordaens took pleasure in assisting him, and Rubens in turn borrowed the
+assistance of Snyders to paint the ground of his pictures; thus they
+mutually assisted each other in their labours, while Snyders' manly and
+vigorous manner was quite able to hold its own even when joined with
+that of the great master.
+
+ANTHONY VAN DYCK was born at Antwerp in 1599, less than three months
+before Velasquez at Seville. Both became so famous in their capacity of
+Court painters that the rest of their achievement is popularly regarded
+as little more than a bye-product.
+
+In the case of Van Dyck there is the more excuse for the English public,
+inasmuch as, like Holbein before him, he was exclusively employed while
+in this country in the production of portraits; and as "his works are so
+frequent in England," as Horace Walpole observes in the opening sentence
+of his memoir in the "Anecdotes of Painting," "that the generality of
+our people can scarce avoid thinking him their countryman," it is easy
+enough to forget that he only spent the last nine years of his life
+here.
+
+Again, the insatiable craze of the English and American public for
+portraits has helped to obscure the extent of Van Dyck's capabilities in
+other directions, and while the National Gallery contains not a single
+subject-piece from his hand, more and more thousands are continually
+spent in the acquisition of more and more portraits. The bewitching
+_Cupid and Psyche_ in Queen Mary's closet at Hampton Court, painted a
+year before his death, is scarcely known to exist!
+
+At the same time it would be useless to deny that Van Dyck's principal
+claim to his place among the greatest masters rests chiefly upon
+portraiture. The point I wish to make is that portrait painting never
+yet made a great master, but that none but a great master ever became a
+great portrait painter; and so long as we are only permitted to see the
+particular achievement of the artist in our public galleries, so long is
+it likely that we shall continue to be flooded with mediocre likenesses
+of fashionable people by painters whose highest or whose only
+achievement they constitute. Anyone can write a "short story" for the
+cheaper sort of modern journal; only writers like Hardy, Stevenson, or
+Kipling can give us a masterpiece in little.
+
+It was said that Rubens advised Van Dyck to devote himself to
+portraiture out of jealousy: but that is hardly in accordance with what
+we know of his generous nature. If the advice was given at all we may be
+sure that it was given in a friendly spirit. But there was something in
+the temperament of Van Dyck which peculiarly fitted him for the Court,
+apart from any question as to his excellence in any particular branch of
+his art, and it is evident that the personality of Rubens, and his
+connection with the rich and mighty of the earth, influenced him almost
+as much as did his art. How much he owed to Rubens, and how much Rubens
+owed to him in painting is a matter that is arguable. He had been
+several years with Van Balen before he entered the studio of Rubens,
+when eighteen years old, not as a pupil but as an assistant. Here he not
+only had the practical task of painting Rubens's compositions for him,
+in company with numerous others, but had also the advantage of studying
+the works of Titian and other of the great Italian masters in Rubens's
+famous collection. If the hand of Van Dyck is traceable in some of the
+pictures of Rubens at this period, so the spirit of Rubens is very
+obvious in those of Van Dyck. The chief thing to be remembered is that
+in these early days he was not painting portraits. His earliest works,
+in which the influence of Titian is perceptible as well as that of
+Rubens, are the _Christ bearing the Cross_, in S. Paul's at Antwerp,
+painted in 1618; the _S. Sebastian_ at Munich, and the _Christ Mocked_,
+at Berlin. The familiar portrait of _Cornelius van der Geest_ in the
+National Gallery, is one of his very earliest, probably before 1620.
+Again, on his first visit to Genoa, in 1621, on the advice of Rubens,
+his ambition was not to paint portraits, as on his second visit some
+years later, but to rival Rubens in the composition of great historical
+pieces. It was not until 1627, when he left behind him in Genoa the
+superb series of Balbi, Brignole-Sala, Cattaneo, and Lomellini
+portraits, and returned to Antwerp to undertake those such as the _Le
+Roys_ at Hertford House, or the _Beatrice de Cusance_ at Windsor, that
+he had really become a portrait painter. Even then, he was still
+determined not to yield to Rubens at Antwerp, and painted, amongst other
+subjects, the _Rinaldo and Armida_ for Charles I. It was only at the
+solicitation of George Geldorp, a schemer as well as a painter, that he
+consented at length, in 1632, to come to England; and it was only the
+welcome afforded to him by Charles that induced him to settle here.
+
+Two considerations of personal vanity may be suggested as actuating
+Charles to be specially indulgent to Van Dyck--an indulgence of which
+the results posterity should not omit to credit to the sad account of
+the martyr--first, that his father had failed to retain the painter in
+his service, and second, that Velasquez, who had made a sketch of him on
+his mad visit to Madrid in 1623, was then immortalising Philip.
+Velasquez being out of the question, why not Van Dyck! An excellent
+idea! Especially when instead of dwarfs, buffoons, and idiots, the
+English Court contained some exceedingly fine material besides the royal
+family for the artist to exercise his talent upon.
+
+After this, Flanders knew Van Dyck no more, save for a year or two's
+sojourn from 1633-1635 when he painted one or two magnificent portraits,
+and then returned to England, where he died in 1641. With the death of
+Rubens the year before, Flemish painting had suffered another eclipse;
+and though Snyders lived till 1657, and Jordaens and the younger Teniers
+continued till late in the century, no fresh seedlings appeared, and the
+soil again became barren. Rubens and Van Dyck were both too big for the
+little garden--their growth overspread Europe.
+
+
+
+
+_DUTCH SCHOOL_
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+Frans Hals
+
+
+Meantime we must turn our attention to Holland, where FRANS HALS, who
+was born only three years later than Rubens, namely in 1580, was the
+forerunner of Rembrandt, Van der Helst, Bol, Lely, and a host more of
+greater or less painters, who made their country as famous in the
+seventeenth century for art as their fathers had made it in the
+sixteenth for arms. Without going into the complications of the
+political history of the Netherlands at this period, it is important
+nevertheless to remember that while the Flemish provinces remained
+Catholic under Spain, the northern states, after heroic struggles,
+formed themselves into a Republic; so that while it is difficult to draw
+a hard and fast line between what was Dutch and what was Flemish in
+estimating the influence of one particular painter upon another, there
+is no question at all as to vital difference between the conditions
+which led to the production of the pictures of the two schools. The
+Flemish pictures were for the Church and for the Court, the Dutch for
+the house, the Guildhall, or the bourgeoisie. The former were
+aristocratic, the latter democratic. Rubens and Van Dyck were
+aristocrats, Hals and Rembrandt democrats. Rubens painted altar-pieces,
+for the great churches or cathedrals or for the chapels of his patrons.
+Rembrandt painted Bible stories for whoever would purchase them. Van
+Dyck painted the portraits of kings and nobles. Hals painted the rough
+soldiers and sailors, singly, or in the great groups into which they
+formed themselves as Guilds. For the first time in the history of
+painting, neither Church nor Court were its patrons.
+
+In any age or under any circumstances Frans Hals would have seemed a
+remarkable painter, but to measure his extraordinary genius to its full
+height we must try to realise what those times and those circumstances
+were. In Florence and Venice, as we have seen, there were great schools
+of painting, and in Florence especially, the whole city existed in an
+atmosphere of art. There was no escape from it. In Haarlem, where Hals
+spent his youth (he was born in Antwerp), there was no such state of
+affairs. There were no chapels to be decorated, no courtiers to be
+flattered. The country was seething with the effects of war, and the
+whole population were ready for it again at a moment's notice. There
+were plenty of heroes--every man was one--but not of the romantic sort.
+They were all bluff, hardy fellows, who wanted to get on with their
+business. Who would have thought that they wanted to have their
+portraits painted? And who, accordingly, could have induced them to do
+so except a bluff, roystering genius like Hals, who slashed them down on
+canvas before they had time to stop him? Once it got wind that Hals was
+such a good fellow, and that he dashed off a portrait to the life in as
+little time as it took to pass the time of day with him, he had plenty
+of business, and from painting single portraits he was commissioned to
+glorify the Guilds by depicting their banquets, which he did with
+almost as much speed and considerably more fidelity than the limelight
+man at a City dinner in these times. His first great group--_The Archers
+of S. George_, at Haarlem--has all the appearance of being painted
+instantaneously as the banqueters stood around the table before
+dispersing.
+
+When we think of the cultured Rubens, brought up in the atmosphere of
+Courts, and studying for years among the finest paintings and painters
+in Italy, and compare him with this low, ignorant fellow, who had never
+been outside the Netherlands, do we not find his genius still more
+amazing? Nowadays we see a portrait by Hals surrounded with the finest
+works of the greatest painters in all times and in all lands, and see
+how well it stands the comparison. But our admiration must be increased
+a hundredfold, when we know that he was without any of the training or
+tradition of a great artist, and that it must have been by sheer
+character and genius alone that he forced his art upon his commercial,
+though heroic public.
+
+One thing especially it is interesting to notice about the Dutch
+portraits of the early Republican period, namely, that they are
+obviously inspired by the pleasure of having a living, speaking likeness
+rather than by pride and ostentation. Bluff and swaggering as some of
+Hals's portraits of men appear to be--notably _The Laughing Cavalier_,
+at Hertford House--that is only because the subjects were bluff and
+swaggering fellows--swaggering, that is to say, in the consciousness of
+their ability and their readiness to defend their country and their
+homes again, if need be, against the tyrant. But these swaggerers are
+the exception, and the prevailing impression conveyed is that of
+honest, if determined, bluffness. They are not posing, these jolly
+Dutchmen, they are sitting or standing, for Hals to paint them just as
+they would sit or stand to be measured for a suit of clothes. Look at
+the heads of the man and the woman in the National Gallery. Could
+anything be more natural and unassuming? Look at the _Laughing
+Cavalier_, and ask if it is not the man himself, as Hals saw and knew
+him, not a faked up hero? Hals caught him in his best clothes, that is
+all. He did not put them on to be painted in--he was out on a jaunt.
+Look at Hals's women, how pleased they are to be painted, just as they
+are.
+
+Poor Hals, he was a good, honest fellow, though sadly given to drink and
+low company. But for sheer genius he has never had an equal. The vast
+number of his paintings--many of which now only exist in copies--shows
+that with every predilection to ease and comfort, he could not help
+painting--it simply welled out of him. It was a natural gift which seems
+to have needed no labour and no study.
+
+It is certain that this fecundity was a very potent factor in the
+development of the Dutch School of painting. Had Hals confined his
+talent to painting the portraits of the highest in the land, which would
+never have been seen by the public at large, it is improbable that such
+a business-like community would have produced many painters. But Hals
+must have popularised painting much more than we generally suppose. An
+example occurs to me in the picture of _The Rommelpot Player_, of which
+no less than thirteen versions are enumerated by De Groot, none of which
+can claim to be the original. One is at Wilton, another in Sir Frederick
+Cook's gallery at Richmond, and a third at Arthingworth Hall in
+Northamptonshire.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXV.--FRANS HALS
+
+PORTRAIT OF A LADY
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+The subject is an old beggar man playing in front of the door of a
+cottage on a ridiculous instrument consisting of an earthen pot covered
+over like a jampot with a lid of parchment, on which he makes a rude
+noise with a stick, to the intense delight of a group of children. A
+picture like this, then, it is evident, instead of hanging in solitary
+confinement in the house of a great person, was so widely popular that
+it was copied on all sides, and must have been seen by thousands of
+people.
+
+Next to Hals, in point of time, was HENDRIK GERRITZ POT, who was born,
+probably at Haarlem, in 1585. It is to him rather than to Ostade, who
+was a quarter of a century later, that we must trace the origin of
+smaller _genre_ pictures of the Dutch School which in later years became
+its principal product. Pot's works are neither very important nor very
+numerous, but as a portrait painter he is represented in the Louvre by a
+portrait of Charles I., which was probably painted when he was in
+England in 1631 or thereabouts; while at Hampton Court is a beautiful
+little piece by him which is catalogued under the title of _A Startling
+Introduction_. This belonged to Charles I., for his cypher is branded on
+the back of the panel on which it is painted, and it was sold by the
+Commonwealth as "a souldier making a strange posture to a Dutch lady by
+Bott." The painter's monogram H.P. appears on the large chimney piece
+before which the "soldier" is standing.
+
+GERARD HONTHORST, born at Utrecht in 1590, can hardly be said to belong
+to the Dutch School at all. When he was only twenty he went to Rome,
+where his devotion to painting effects of candle-light earned him the
+sobriquet of "Gherardo della Notte." In 1628 he was elected Dean of the
+Guild of St. Luke at Utrecht, but he was in no sense a national painter,
+and neither took nor gave anything in the way of national influence. He
+was in England for a few months in 1628, to which chance we are indebted
+for the picture of the Duke of Buckingham and his family which is in the
+National Portrait Gallery, and another group of the Cavendish family
+which is at Chatsworth. Pictures of the nobility, or of celebrities like
+Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, were more in his
+line than those of his republican patriots, and consequently he plays no
+part in the development of the school we are now considering.
+
+BARTHOLOMEW VAN DER HELST, born in Amsterdam, 1613, died there 1670. He
+is by far the most renowned of the Dutch portrait-painters of this
+period. Although nothing is known as regards the master under whom he
+studied, it is probable that if Hals was not actually his teacher, his
+works were the models whence Van der Helst formed himself. We see this
+in the portrait of Vice-Admiral Kortenaar at Amsterdam, where the
+conception of forms, and the unscumbled character of the strokes of the
+brush, recall Hals. The same may be observed in two larger pictures with
+archers in the Town Hall at Haarlem, where the inartistic arrangement
+and monotony of the otherwise warm flesh tones point to the earlier time
+of the painter. By about the year 1640 his character was more fully
+developed. His arrangement of portrait-pieces with numerous figures
+became very artistic and easy, his tone excellent, and his drawing
+masterly. This standard of excellence he retained till about 1660. The
+following are principal pictures of this period:--A scene from the
+Archery Guild of Amsterdam in 1639, including thirty figures. The
+celebrated picture inscribed 1648, an Archery Festival commemorating the
+Peace of Westphalia, and consisting of a party of twenty-four persons,
+at Amsterdam. The chief charm of this work consists in the strong and
+truthful individuality of every part, both in form and colour; in the
+capital drawing, which is especially conspicuous in the hands; in the
+powerful and clear colouring; and finally, in a kind of execution which
+observes a happy medium between decision and softness. In 1657 he
+executed the picture of the Archery Guild known by the name "het
+Doelenstueck" at Amsterdam Gallery. This work represents three of the
+overseers of the Guild, with golden prize vases, and a fourth supposed
+to be the painter himself. It is almost surpassed by a replica on a
+smaller scale executed in the following year, which is now in the
+Louvre. At all events, this picture is in better preservation, and
+offers one of the most typical examples of portrait-painting that the
+Dutch School produced.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+REMBRANDT VAN RYN
+
+
+But the greatest of all the Dutch painters, in some ways the greatest
+painter that has ever lived, was REMBRANDT VAN RYN (1606-1669). Beside
+him all the rest seem merely commonplace, and their works the product of
+this or that demand, according to their different times and
+circumstances, executed with more or less skill. For Rembrandt there
+seems no place among them all--he must stand somewhere alone; and there
+is no standard by which to judge his perfections and imperfections
+except the man himself.
+
+Perhaps the greatest difference between Rembrandt and any other painter
+is that he never seems to have tried to please the public, but only
+painted to please himself. It is for this reason, no doubt, that he was
+never popular with the public, and is never likely to be; but just as
+Beethoven is only understandable by the really musical soul, so
+Rembrandt's appeal is to those who have the feeling for something in
+painting beyond the mere representation of familiar or heroic scenes and
+persons on canvas. For the public it is enough that one of his
+landscapes should be sold for L100,000, and they all flock to see it;
+but put a fine Rembrandt portrait in a shop-window without a name to it,
+and there would be little fear of the pavement being blocked.
+
+This failure of Rembrandt to please the public of his own day brings out
+the truth that the practice of painting had up to then subsisted only so
+long as it supplied a popular demand; and when we come to consider what
+that demand was, we find that it is for nothing else but a pleasing
+representation of natural objects, which may or may not embody some
+sentimental or historical association, but must first and foremost be a
+fair representation of more or less familiar things.
+
+The oldest story about pictures is that of Zeuxis and the bunch of
+grapes, which relates that he painted the fruit so like nature that the
+birds came and pecked at the painting--some versions, I believe, adding
+that the fruit itself was there but they preferred the painting. Similar
+stories with innumerable variations are told of later artists. Rembrandt
+himself is said to have been deceived by his pupils who, knowing he was
+careful about collecting money in small quantities, however extravagant
+he might be in spending it, painted coins on the floor of the studio,
+and enjoyed the joke of seeing him stoop to pick them up. We have heard,
+too, of flies painted with surprising skill in conspicuous places to
+deceive the unwary. But apart from these little pleasantries, one has
+only to remember how the earlier writers on painting have expressed
+themselves to see how much importance, consciously or unconsciously, was
+attached to life-like resemblance to the object painted. Vasari is
+constantly using phrases in which he extols the painter for having made
+a figure look like the life, as though that were the real thing to be
+aimed at. We remember Ben Jonson's lines under Shakespeare's
+portrait----
+
+    "Wherein the graver had a strife
+    With nature to outdo the life."
+
+And though Ben Jonson was not a critic, and if he had been there was
+little enough art in his time in England for him to criticize, still he
+expresses the general feeling of the public for any work of art.
+
+With the Dutch people this was most certainly the case, and the
+popularity of the painters of scenes of everyday life is a proof of it.
+That Hals, Brouwer, or Ostade were great painters was not half so
+important to them, if indeed they thought of it all, as that they were
+capable of turning out pictures which reflected their everyday life like
+a mirror.
+
+So long as Rembrandt painted portraits like those of the Pellicornes and
+their offspring--the two pictures at Hertford House--or a plain
+straightforward group like Dr Tulp's _Anatomy Lesson_ (though in this he
+was already getting away from convention), he was tolerated. And it was
+not so much his freedom in living and his extravagant notions of the
+pleasures of life that brought about his downfall, as his failure to
+realize that when he took the money subscribed for the group of Captain
+Banning Cocq's Company, the subscribers expected something else for
+their money than a picture (_The Night Watch_) which might be a
+masterpiece according to the painter's notions, but was certainly not a
+portrait group of the subscribers.
+
+Here, then, for the first time in the history of painting, we find an
+artist definitely at issue with the public. I do not say that this was
+the first time that an artist had failed to please the public, but it is
+the first occasion on which it was decided that if a painter was to
+undertake commissions, he must consider the wishes of the patron, or
+starve. It was something new for a painter of Rembrandt's repute to be
+told that not he, but the persons who commissioned the work, were to be
+the judges of whether or not it was satisfactory.
+
+The consequences were important. For Rembrandt, instead of taking the
+matter as a man of business, devoted the rest of his life to being an
+artist, and leaving the business of painting to men like Backer, Helst,
+and others, betook himself seriously to developing his art irrespective
+of what the public might or might not think of it. As a result, we have
+in the later work of Rembrandt something that the world--I mean the
+artistic part of it--would be very sorry to do without. Now the meaning
+of this is, not that Rembrandt was ill-advised in deserting his patrons,
+or in suffering them to desert him, but that for the first time in the
+history of painting an artist had the personality--I will not say the
+conscious determination--to realize that his art was something quite
+apart from the affairs of this world, and that what he could express on
+canvas was _not_ merely a representation of natural objects designed to
+please his contemporaries, but something more than human, something that
+would appeal to humanity for all time. That many before him had felt
+that of their art, to a lesser or greater degree, is unquestionable--but
+none of them had ever realised it. Duerer, certainly, may be cited as an
+exception, especially when contrasted with his phlegmatic and
+business-like compatriot Holbein. But then Duerer, a century before, and
+in totally different circumstances, was never assured of regular
+patronage as was Rembrandt.
+
+Rembrandt was the son of a miller named Harmann Geritz, who called
+himself Van Ryn, from the hamlet on the arm of the Rhine which runs
+through Leyden. His mother was the daughter of a baker. He was entered
+as a student at the University of Leyden, his parents being comfortably
+off; but he showed so little taste for the study of the law, for which
+they intended him, that he was allowed to follow his own bent of
+painting, in the studio of a now forgotten painter, Jacob van
+Swanenburg. Here he studied for about three years, after which he went
+to Amsterdam and was for a short time with another painter named
+Lastman, who was a clever but superficial imitator of the Italian School
+then flourishing in Rome.
+
+Returning to Leyden, Rembrandt set up his easel and remained there
+painting till 1631, when he went to Amsterdam. His works during this
+first period are not very well known in this country, but at Windsor and
+at Edinburgh are portraits of his mother, which must belong to it.
+
+The next decade was the happiest and most prosperous in Rembrandt's
+career. At Amsterdam he soon found favour with wealthy patrons, and his
+happiness and success were completed by his marrying Saskia van
+Ulenburgh, the sister of a wealthy connoisseur and art dealer, with whom
+Rembrandt had formed an intimate friendship. To this period belong the
+numerous portraits of himself and Saskia, alone or together, most of
+which are characterized by a barbaric splendour of costume, utterly
+different from the profusion of Rubens, but far more intense. Living
+among the wealthiest Jews in Amsterdam, he seems to have been strongly
+attracted by their orientalism, and while Rubens gloried in natural
+abundance of every sort, and painted the bounty of nature in the full
+sunlight, Rembrandt chose out the treasures of art, and painted costume
+and jewels gleaming out of the darkness. The portraits of himself in a
+cap at Hertford House (No. 52), and of the Old Lady in the National
+Gallery (No. 775), both painted in 1634, are notable examples of this
+period, though they have none of the orientalism to be seen in the
+various portraits of Saskia, or in _The Turk_ at Munich. The two double
+portraits at Hertford House of Jean Pellicorne and his wife with their
+son and daughter respectively, were among the commissions which he
+received after he set up at Amsterdam, and are therefore less
+interesting as self-revelations. Prosperity is not always the best
+condition under which to produce the highest work, and the temperament
+of Rembrandt was so peculiar that there is little wonder that the prim
+Dutchmen were not entirely captivated by his exuberant sensuality, or
+that we ourselves reserve our admiration principally for the more sombre
+and mysterious products of his later years after misfortune began to
+fall upon him.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXVI.--REMBRANDT
+
+PORTRAIT OF HENDRICKJE STOFFELS
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+In 1642 the beloved Saskia died, leaving an only child, Titus, whose
+features are familiar to us in the portrait at Hertford House. As though
+this were not affliction enough, Rembrandt had the mortification of
+offending his patrons over the commission to paint Captain Banning
+Cocq's Company. From this time onward, as the world and Rembrandt
+drifted farther and farther apart, his work becomes more and more
+wonderful.
+
+Dr Muther, in his _History of Painting_, observes that perhaps it is
+only possible to understand Rembrandt by interpreting his pictures not
+as paintings but as psychological documents. "A picture by Rembrandt in
+the Dresden Gallery," he says, "represents _Samson Putting Riddles to
+the Philistines_; and Rembrandt's entire activity, a riddle to the
+philistines of his time, has remained puzzling to the present day.... As
+no other man bore his name, so the artist, too, is something unique,
+mocks every historical analysis, and remains what he was, a puzzling,
+intangible, Hamlet nature--Rembrandt." The author's theory of the
+psychological document is hardly a solution of the admitted puzzle,
+though it is interesting to follow him in tracing it out in Rembrandt's
+religious pictures, from the _Samson_ already mentioned to his last
+dated work, in 1668, the Darmstadt _Crucifixion_. What distinguishes
+Rembrandt from all painters up to, and considerably later than his time,
+and in particular from those of his own school, is the mental, as
+compared with the physical activity that his pictures represent. Perhaps
+this is only another way of stating Dr Muther's theory of the
+psychological documents, but it enables us to test that theory by
+comparing his work with that of others. In technical skill Beruete
+claims a far higher place for Velasquez, going so far as to say that
+the _Lesson in Anatomy_ is not a lesson in painting. But the difference
+between the two is not as great as that in technique, though infinitely
+wider in the mental process which led to the production of a picture. A
+reproduction of the _Portrait of an Old Pole_, at S. Petersburg, is in
+front of me, as it happens, as I am writing; and I see in this no
+inferiority in firmness and precision, in truth and vigour, to any
+portrait by Velasquez.
+
+In their technical ability to present the life-like portrait of a real
+man, we can place Rembrandt, Velasquez, Hals, and Van Dyck on pretty
+much of a level; if we had _Van der Geest_, _Montanes_, the _Old Pole_
+and the _Laughing Cavalier_ all in a row, we should find there was not
+much to choose between them for downright realization. But while in the
+work of Velasquez we see the working of a fine and sensitive
+appreciation of his friend's personality, and the most exquisite
+realization of what was before him, in that of Rembrandt we seem to see
+less of the Pole and more of Rembrandt himself. It is as though he were
+singing softly to himself while he was painting, thinking his own
+thoughts: while Velasquez was simply concerned with the appearance and
+the thoughts of his model.
+
+That Rembrandt's pictures are self-revelations, or psychological
+documents, is certainly true; and a proof of it is in the extraordinary
+number of portraits of himself. The famous Dresden picture of himself
+with Saskia on his knee can only be regarded in that light, and that
+brings into the category all the numerous pictures of Saskia and of
+Hendrike Stoffels, who formed so great a part of his life. If to these
+we add, with Dr Muther, his Biblical subjects, we find that there is
+not so very much left, and when we turn to the life's work of Rubens,
+Titian, Velasquez, or in fact any of the great painters, the difference
+is at once apparent. So that in the pictures of Rembrandt we may expect
+to find less of what we look for in those of others in the way of
+display, but infinitely more of the qualities which, to whatever extent
+they exist in other artists, are bound to be sacrificed to display. When
+we are asked to a feast, we find the room brilliantly lit, and our host
+the centre of an assemblage for whom he has felt it his duty to make a
+display consistent with his means and his station. If we were to peep
+into his house one night we might find him in a room illumined only with
+his reading-lamp, absorbed in his favourite study; but instead of only
+exchanging a few conventional phrases with him, and passing on to mingle
+with his guests and to enjoy his hospitality, we might sit and talk with
+him into the small hours. That is the difference between the success of
+Hals with his _Feast of S. George_, and the failure of Rembrandt with
+_The Night Watch_. Hals was at the feast, and of it. Rembrandt was
+wrapped up in himself, and didn't enter into the spirit of the
+company--he was carried away by his own. That is why his pictures are so
+dark--not of deliberate technical purpose, like those of the
+_Tenebrosi_, but because to him a subject was felt within him rather
+than seen as a picture on so many square feet of canvas. When we call up
+in our own minds the recollection of some event of more than usually
+deep significance in our past, we only see the deathbed, the two
+combatants, the face of the beloved, or whatever it may be; the
+accessories are nothing, unless our imagination is stronger than the
+sentiment evoked, and sets to work to supply them. It is this
+characteristic which so sharply distinguishes the work of Rembrandt
+from that of his closest imitators. There is a large picture in the
+National Gallery, _Christ Blessing the Children_, catalogued as "School
+of Rembrandt," in which we see as near an approach to his manner as to
+justify the attribution, but that is all. I do not know why it has never
+been suggested that this is the work of NICOLAS MAES, who was actually
+his pupil, and who was one of the few Dutch artists to paint life-sized
+groups, as he is known to have done in his earlier days when still under
+the influence of Rembrandt. _The Card Players_, close beside it, has
+marked affinities in style, and especially in the very natural
+characterization of the faces, which is also apparent in that of the
+child in the other picture, and another on the extreme left of the
+picture. That it cannot be Rembrandt's is quite evident; the grouping
+and the lighting of it proclaim the picture seen on the canvas, and not
+felt within the artist's own consciousness.
+
+The realistic tendency which, as has already been pointed out, was so
+characteristic of the whole art of the Netherlands, showed the most
+remarkable and original results in the work of an idealist like
+Rembrandt. Sandrart, one of the earliest writers on painting, says that
+Rembrandt "usually painted things of a simple and not thoughtful
+character, but which were pleasing to the eyes, and
+picturesque"--_schilderachtig_, as the Netherlanders called it. This
+combination of realism and picturesqueness, assisted by his marvellous
+technical power, put him far above and apart from all his compeers. In
+the absence of any pictures by his masters Van Swanenburg and Pinas, it
+is difficult to ascertain what, if anything, he learnt from them. From
+Peter Lastman we may be sure he learnt nothing in the way of technique.
+Kugler--who in these paragraphs is my principal authority--suggests that
+it is highly probable that in this respect he formed himself from the
+pictures of Frans Hals, with which he must have been early acquainted in
+the neighbouring town of Haarlem. At all events unexampled freedom,
+spirit, and breadth of his manner is comparable with that of no other
+earlier Dutch master. But all these admirable qualities would offer no
+sufficient compensation for the ugly and often vulgar character of his
+heads and figures, and for the total subversion of all the traditional
+rules of art in costume and accessory, and would fail to account for the
+great admiration which his works enjoy, if he had not been possessed,
+besides, of an intensely artistic individuality.
+
+In his earliest pictures his touch is already masterly and free, but
+still careful, while the colour of the flesh is warm and clear and the
+light full. _Dr Tulp's Anatomy_, painted in 1632, is the most famous of
+this period. In _The Night Watch_, at Amsterdam, dated 1642, the light
+is already restricted, falling only on isolated objects; the local tone
+of the flesh is more golden; the touch more spirited and distinct.
+Later, that is to say from about 1654 onwards, the golden flesh tones
+become still more intense, passing sometimes into a brown of less
+transparency, and accompanied frequently with grey and blackish shadows
+and sometimes with rather cool lights. The chief picture of this epoch,
+dated 1661, is _The Syndics_, also at Amsterdam, a group of six men.
+This, in the depth of the still transparent golden tone, in the
+animation of the heads, and in body and breadth of handling, is a true
+masterpiece.
+
+With respect to his treatment of Biblical subjects, two older writers,
+Kolloff and Guhl, accord him an honour which, as we shall see, Kugler
+gives to Duerer a century earlier, namely that of being the painter of
+the true spirit of the Reformed Church. Though it is certain, Kugler
+admits, that no other school of painting in Rembrandt's time--neither
+that of Rubens, nor that of the Carracci, nor the French nor Spanish
+schools--rendered the spiritual import of Biblical subjects with the
+purity and depth exhibited by the great Dutch master. Here the kindly
+element of deep sentiment combines most happily with his feeling for
+composition, as in the _Descent from the Cross_, at Munich, in _The Holy
+Family_, in the Louvre, and above all in _The Woman taken in Adultery_,
+in the National Gallery. In this last, a touching truthfulness and depth
+of feeling, with every other grand quality peculiar to Rembrandt, are
+seen in their highest perfection. Of hardly less excellence, also, is
+our _Descent from the Cross_.
+
+Endowed with so many admirable qualities, it follows that Rembrandt was
+a portrait painter of the highest order, while his peculiar style of
+lighting, his colouring and treatment, distinguish his portraits from
+those by all other masters. Even the works of his most successful
+pupils, who followed his style in this respect, are far behind him in
+energy of conception and execution. The number of his admirable
+portraits is so large that it is difficult to know which to mention as
+most characteristic. No other artist ever painted his own portrait so
+frequently, and some of these may first be mentioned. That in the
+Louvre, dated 1633, represents him in youthful years, fresh and full of
+hope. It is spiritedly painted in the bright tone of his earlier period.
+Another in the same gallery, of the year 1660, painted with
+extraordinary breadth and certainty of hand of that later period, shows
+a man weighed down with the cares of life, with grey hair and deeply
+furrowed forehead.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXVII.--REMBRANDT
+
+PORTRAIT OF AN OLD LADY
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+The one at Hertford House, already mentioned, and two in the National
+Gallery, fall between these extremes. Of other portraits we have already
+mentioned the two Pellicorne groups in the Wallace Collection; and
+another of this earliest period, the very popular _Old Woman_, in the
+National Gallery, dated 1634. This is of greater interest as showing, if
+anything does, whether it is fair to attribute any of his training to
+the influence of Hals. At any rate this picture is a highly important
+proof that at the early age of twenty-six, the painter was already in
+the full possession of that energy and animation of conception, and of
+that decision of the "broad and marrowy touch" which are so
+characteristic of him. Of his later period--probably about 1657--a fine
+example is _The Jewish Rabbi_, and of his latest the _Old Man_, both in
+the National Gallery.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+PAINTERS OF GENRE
+
+
+The painters of _genre_, by the number, quality, and diversity of whose
+pictures the Dutch School is specially distinguished, may be roughly
+divided into three classes; namely, those who studied the upper, the
+middle, and the lower classes respectively. But as Holland was a
+republic, and the great stream of its art welled up from the earth and
+was not showered upon it from above, it will be found convenient to
+reverse the social order in considering them, and begin with the
+immediate successors of Frans Hals, whose influence was without doubt a
+very considerable factor in the development of Adrian Brouwer and Adrian
+and Isaac Ostade.
+
+ADRIAN BROUWER, now generally classed under the Flemish School, was
+born at Oudenarde in 1606. But he went early to Haarlem, and it was not
+until about 1630 that he settled at Antwerp, where he died in 1641. He
+was a pupil of Frans Hals, and acquired from him not only his spirited
+and free touch, but also a similar mode of life. His pictures, which for
+the most part represent the lower orders eating and drinking, often in
+furious strife, are extraordinary true and life-like in character, and
+display a singularly delicate and harmonious colouring, which inclines
+to the cool scale, an admirable individuality, and a _sfumato_ of
+surface in which he is unrivalled; so that we can well understand the
+high esteem in which Rubens held them. Owing to his mode of life, and to
+its early close, the number of his works is not large, and they are now
+seldom met with. No gallery is so rich in them as Munich, which
+possesses nine, six of which are masterpieces. _A Party of Peasants at a
+Game of Cards_, affords an example of the brightness and clearness of
+those cool tones in which he evidently became the model of Teniers.
+_Spanish Soldiers Throwing Dice_, is equally harmonious, in a subdued
+brownish tone. _A Surgeon Removing the Plaster from the Arm of a
+Peasant_ is not only most masterly and animated in expression, but is a
+type of his bright, clear, and golden tone, and is singularly free and
+light in touch. _Card-players Fighting_, is in every respect one of his
+best pictures. The momentary action in each figure, all of them being
+individualized with singular accuracy even as regards the kind of
+complexion, is incomparable, the tenderness of the harmony astonishing,
+and the execution of extraordinary delicacy. The only example in the
+National Gallery is the _Three Boors Drinking_, bequeathed by George
+Salting in 1910; and at Hertford House the _Boor Asleep_, though of
+this we may without hesitation accept the description in the catalogue,
+"our painting is of the highest quality, and in the audacity of its
+realism rises almost to grandeur."
+
+ADRIAN VAN OSTADE, said to have been born at Lubeck, was baptized in
+1610 at Haarlem, where he studied under Frans Hals, and he formed a very
+good taste in colouring. Nature guided his brush in everything he
+undertook; he devoted himself almost entirely to painting peasants and
+drunkards, whose gestures and most trifling actions were the subject of
+his most serious meditation. The subjects of his little pictures are not
+more elevated than those of Brouwer, and considerably less than those of
+Teniers--they are nearly always alehouses or kitchens. He is perhaps one
+of the Dutch masters who best understood chiaroscuro. His figures are
+very lively, and he sometimes put them into the pictures of the best
+painters among his countrymen. Nothing can excel his pictures of
+stables, in which the light is spread so judiciously that all one could
+wish is a lighter touch in his drawing, and a little more height in his
+figures. Many of his brother Isaak's pictures are improperly attributed
+to him, which, though painted in the same manner, are never of the real
+excellence of Adrian's.
+
+The _Interior with Peasants_ at Hertford House, and _The Alchymist_ at
+the National Gallery are a characteristic pair of his pictures, which
+were sold in the collection of M. de Jully in 1769 for L164, the former
+being purchased by the third Marquess of Hertford and the latter passing
+into the Peel Collection. _Buying Fish_, at Hertford House, dated
+1669--when the artist was nearly sixty years old, is remarkable for its
+breadth of effect and brilliancy of colour.
+
+JAN STEEN, born at Leyden about the year 1626, died 1679. He first
+received instruction under Nicolas Knupler; and afterwards it is said
+worked with Jan van Goyen, whose daughter he married. An extraordinary
+genius for painting was unfortunately co-existent in Jan Steen with
+jovial habits of no moderate kind. The position of tavern-keeper in
+which he was placed by his family, gave both the opportunity of
+indulging his propensities and also that of depicting the pleasures of
+eating and drinking, of song, card-playing and love-making directly from
+nature. He must have worked with amazing facility, for in spite of the
+time consumed in this mode of life, to which his comparatively early
+death may be attributed, the number of his pictures is very great. His
+favourite subjects were groups like the _Family Jollification_; the
+_Feast of the Bean King_; and that form of diversion illustrating the
+proverb, "_So wie die Alten sungen, so pfeifen auch die Jungen_"; fairs,
+weddings, etc.; he also treated other scenes, such as the Doctor's
+Visit, the Schoolmaster with a generally very unmanageable set of
+boys--of which is a charming example at Dublin. The ludicrous ways of
+children seem especially to have attracted him; accordingly, he depicts
+with great zest the old Dutch custom on St. Nicholas's Day, September
+3rd, of rewarding the good, and punishing the naughty child; or shows a
+mischievous little urchin teasing the cat, or stealing money from the
+pockets of their, alas!--drunken progenitors.
+
+Jan Steen is the most genial painter of the whole Dutch School. His
+humour has made him so popular with the English, that at least
+two-thirds of his pictures are in their possession.
+
+A peculiar cluster of masters, belonging to the Dutch
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXVIII.--TERBORCH
+
+THE CONCERT
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+School, was formed by Gerard Dou. However careful in execution were such
+painters as Terburg, Metsu, and Netscher, yet Gerard Dou and his
+scholars and imitators surpassed them in the development of that
+technical finish with which they rendered the smallest detail with
+meticulous exactitude.
+
+GERARD DOU was born at Leyden on the 7th April 1613, died there 1680. He
+entered Rembrandt's school at fifteen years of age, and in three years
+had attained the position of an independent artist. He devoted himself
+at first to portraiture, and, like his master, made his own face
+frequently his subject. Afterwards he treated scenes from the life
+chiefly of the middle classes. He took particular pleasure in the
+representation of hermits; he also painted scriptural events and
+occasionally still life. His lighting is frequently that of lanterns and
+candles. Most of his pictures contain only from one to three figures,
+and do not exceed about 2 ft. high and 1 ft. 3 in. wide, being often
+smaller. His pictures seldom attain even an animated moral import, and
+may be said to be limited usually to a certain kindliness of sentiment.
+On the other hand, he possessed a trace of his master's feeling for the
+picturesque, and for chiaroscuro. Notwithstanding the incalculable
+minuteness of his execution, the touch of his brush is free and soft,
+and his best pictures look like Nature seen through the camera-obscura.
+His works were so highly estimated in his own time, that the President
+van Spiring, at the Hague, offered him 1000 florins a year for the right
+of pre-emption of his pictures. Considering the time which such finish
+required, and the early age at which he died, the number of his
+pictures--Smith enumerates about 200--is remarkable. In the Louvre are
+the following:--An old woman seated at a window, reading the Bible to
+her husband; this is one of the best among the many representations by
+Dou of a similar kind, being of warm sunny effect, and marvellous
+finish. Also the _Woman with the Dropsy_, which is accounted his
+_chef-d'oeuvre_.
+
+Among the scholars of Gerard Dou, FRANS VAN MIERIS, born at Leyden 1635,
+died 1681, takes the first place. In chiaroscuro, and in delicacy of
+execution he is not inferior to his master. Although his pictures are
+generally very small, yet with their extraordinary minuteness of
+execution it is surprising that, in a life extended only to forty-six
+years, he should have produced so many. The Munich Gallery has most,
+then Dresden, Vienna, Florence, and St. Petersburg. The date, 1656, on a
+picture in the Vienna Gallery, _The Doctor_, shows the painter to have
+attained the summit of his art at twenty-one years of age. Another dated
+1660, in the same gallery, executed for the Archduke Leopold, is one of
+his best. The scene is a shop with a young woman showing a gentleman,
+who has taken her by the chin, various handkerchiefs and stuffs. In the
+Munich Gallery is _A Soldier_, dated 1662, of admirable transparency and
+softness. Also _A Lady_ in a yellow satin dress fainting in the presence
+of the doctor. In the Hague Gallery is _A Boy Blowing Soap-bubbles_,
+dated 1663. This is a charming little picture of great depth of the
+brownish tone. Also _The Painter and His Wife_, whose little shock dog
+he is teasing; very naive and lively in the heads, and most delicately
+treated in a subdued but clear tone. In the Dresden Gallery are Mieris
+again and his wife before her portrait. This is one of his most
+successful pictures for chiaroscuro, tone, and spirited handling.
+
+NICOLAS MAES, already mentioned, born at
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXIX.--GABRIEL METSU
+
+THE MUSIC LESSON
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+Dordrecht 1632, died 1693, was actually a pupil of Rembrandt. His much
+prized and rare _genre_ pictures treat very simple subjects, and consist
+seldom of more than two or three figures, generally of women. The
+naivete and homeliness of his feeling, with the addition sometimes of a
+trait of kindly humour; the admirable lighting, and a touch resembling
+Rembrandt in impasto and vigour, render his pictures very attractive. In
+the National Gallery, besides _The Card Players_, are _The Cradle_, _The
+Dutch Menage_, dated 1655; and _The Idle Servant_: all these are
+admirable, and the last-named a _chef-d'oeuvre_.
+
+PETER DE HOOGH (1629-1677) decidedly belongs to the numerous artistic
+posterity of Rembrandt, possibly through Karel Fabritius, and stands
+nearer to Vermeer and to Maes, than to any other painter. His biography
+can only be gathered from the occasional dates on his pictures,
+extending from 1658 to 1670. Although he impresses the eye by the same
+effects as Maes, yet he is also very different from him. He has not his
+humour, and seldom his kindliness, and his figures, which are either
+playing cards, smoking or drinking, or engaged in the transaction of
+some household duty,--with faces that say but little--have generally
+only the interest of a peaceful or jovial existence. If Maes takes the
+lead in warm lighting, Peter de Hoogh may be considered _par excellence_
+the painter of full and clear sunlight. If, again, Maes shows us his
+figures almost exclusively in interiors, Peter de Hoogh places them most
+frequently in the open air--in courtyards. In the representation of the
+poetry of light, and in that marvellous brilliancy and clearness with
+which he calls it forth in various distances till the background is
+reached, which is generally illumined by a fresh beam, no other master
+can compare with him. His prevailing local colour is red, repeated with
+greater delicacy in various planes of distance. This colour fixes the
+rest of the scale. His touch is of great delicacy; his impasto
+admirable.
+
+GERARD TERBURG, born at Zwol 1608, died 1681, learned painting under his
+father, and when still young visited Germany and Italy, painting
+numerous portraits on a small scale, and occasionally the size of life.
+But his place in the history of art is owing principally to a number of
+pictures, seldom representing more than three, and often only one
+figure, taken from the wealthier classes, in which great elegance of
+costume, and of all accompanying circumstances, is rendered with the
+finest keeping, and with a highly delicate but by no means over-smooth
+execution. He may be considered as the originator of this class of
+pictures, in which, after his example, several other Dutch painters
+distinguished themselves. With him the chief mass of light is generally
+formed by the white satin dress of a lady, which gives the tone for the
+prevailing cool harmony of the picture. Among his pictures we
+occasionally find some which, taken successively, represent several
+different moments of one scene. Thus in the Dresden Gallery, there are
+two good pictures: the one of an officer writing a letter, while a
+trumpter waits for it; the other of a girl in white satin washing her
+hands in a basin held before her by a maid-servant; while at Munich, is
+another fine work, in which the trumpeter is offering the young lady the
+letter, who owing to the presence of the maid, who evidently
+disapproves, is uncertain whether to take the missive. Finally, in the
+Amsterdam Gallery, the celebrated picture known by the title of _Conseil
+paternel_, furnishes
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXX.--PIETER DE HOOCH
+
+INTERIOR OF A DUTCH HOUSE
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+the closing scene. The maid has betrayed the affair to the father, and
+he is delivering a lecture to the young lady, in whom by turning her
+back on the spectator, the painter has happily expressed the feeling of
+shame; good repetitions are in the Berlin Museum, and in the Bridgewater
+Gallery. But Terburg's perfection as regards the clearness and harmony
+of his silvery tone is shown in a picture at Cassel, representing a
+young lady in white satin sitting playing the lute at a table.
+
+JAN VERMEER OF DELFT (1632-1675) was certainly a pupil of Fabritius, and
+thus "grandson" of Rembrandt. To class him with painters of _genre_
+seems almost a profanation of the exquisite sense of beauty with which,
+almost alone among the Dutch painters, he seems to have been endowed. It
+is like classing Walter Pater with art critics. But as Vermeer had to
+express himself in some form, it is perhaps fortunate that the school
+had developed this kind of poetic portraiture, under Terburg, Metsu and
+others, to a point where a genius like Vermeer could use it as the
+vehicle of his fascinating self-revelations. In landscape we have the
+_View of Delft_, at the Hague, which has shown the nineteenth century
+painters more than they could ever see in their more famous
+predecessors; but it is in the simple compositions like _The Letter
+Reader_ at Amsterdam, _The Proposal_, at Dresden, or the _Lady at the
+Virginals_, in the National Gallery, that he displays his greatest power
+and charm.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+PAINTERS OF ANIMALS
+
+
+As a link between the painters of _genre_ and the landscapists, we may
+here mention some of the numerous artists who either made landscape the
+background for groups of figures and animals, or peopled their
+landscapes with groups--it matters not which way we put it. Among these
+we shall find several of the most famous, or at any rate the most
+popular artists of the Dutch School.
+
+PHILIPS WOUVERMAN (1619-1668), whose reputation during the last century
+was greater than that of almost any of the Dutch painters except
+Rembrandt and Dou, is said to have studied under Hals, but it is more
+certain that the master from whom he learnt most, if not all, was Jan
+Wynants at Haarlem, whose whole manner in landscape he quickly succeeded
+in acquiring, and surpassed him in his facility with horsemen and other
+figures.
+
+Wouverman's works have all the excellences that may be expected from
+high finishing, correctness, agreeable composition and colouring. It
+does not appear that he was ever in Italy, or even quitted the city of
+Haarlem, though it would seem probable that his more elaborate
+compositions owed something to other influences than those of Hals or
+Wynants. In his earlier pictures there are no horses, but later in his
+career he generally subordinated his landscapes to the groups or
+subjects for which he is most famous. In the National Gallery, among
+eleven examples, are a _Halt of Officers_, _Interior of a Stable_, _A
+Battle_, _The Bohemians_, and _Shoeing a Horse_, all of which contain
+numerous figures, mounted and unmounted--and there is nearly always a
+white horse.
+
+With all his success, he died a poor man, and it is related that in his
+last hours he burned a box filled with his studies and drawings, saying,
+"I have been so ill repaid for all my labours, that I would not have
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXXI.--JAN VERMEER
+
+THE LACE MAKER
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+those designs engage my son to embrace so miserable a profession as
+mine." This son followed his advice, and became a Chartreux friar. Peter
+and Jan Wouverman were his brothers. The former painted hawking scenes,
+and his horses, though well designed, were not equal to those of
+Philips. The latter is represented in the National Gallery by a
+landscape in which the spirit of Wynant's, rather than that of
+Philips's, is discernible.
+
+At Hertford House, out of seven examples, two are of more than usual
+excellence, and well represent his earlier and later manners. _The
+Afternoon Landscape with a White Horse_ (No. 226 in Room XIII), which
+Smith (in his Catalogue Raisonne), characterizes as possessing unusual
+freedom of pencilling, and powerful effect, dates from the transition
+from the early to the middle period, and is a very effective picture, as
+well as being very characteristic. The _Horse Fair_ (No. 65, in Room
+XVI), is not only much larger than the other--it measures 25 x 35
+inches--but is a really important picture. Lord Hertford paid L3200 for
+it in 1854. It was engraved by Moyrean, for his series of a hundred
+prints after Wouverman, under the title of _Le Grand Marche aux
+Chevaux_. It is thus described by Smith:--"This very capital picture
+exhibits an open country divided in the middle distance by a river whose
+course is lost among the distant mountains. The principal scene of
+activity is represented along the front and second grounds, on which may
+be numbered about twenty-four horses, exhibiting that noble animal in
+every variety of action, and nearly fifty persons. On the right of the
+picture is a coach, drawn by four fine grey horses, and in front of this
+object are a grey and a bay horse, on the latter of which are mounted a
+man and a boy. In advance of them is a group of four horses and several
+persons, among whom may be noticed a cavalier and a lady observing the
+paces of a horse which a jockey and his master are showing off. A
+gentleman on a black horse seems also to be watching the action of the
+animal. Near this person is a mare lying down, and a foal standing by it
+which a boy is approaching. On the opposite side of the picture is a
+gentleman on a cream-coloured horse, near two spirited greys, one of
+which is kicking, and a woman, a man and a boy are escaping from its
+heels. From thence the eye looks over an open space occupied by men and
+horses, receding in succession to the bank of the river, along which are
+houses and tents concealed in part by trees. This picture is painted
+throughout with great care and delicacy in what is termed the last
+manner of the master, remarkable for the prevalent grey or silvery hues
+of colouring."
+
+ALBERT CUYP, born at Dortrecht 1620, died there about 1672. Of the life
+of this great painter little more is known with any certainty than that
+he was the scholar of his father, Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp. Cattle form a
+prominent feature in many of his works, though never so highly finished
+as in those of Paul Potter or Adrian van de Velde; indeed, in many of
+Cuyp's pictures, they are quite subordinate. His favourite subjects, a
+landscape with a river, with cattle lying or standing on its banks, and
+landscapes with horsemen in the foreground, were suggested to him no
+doubt by the country about Dortrecht and the river Maas: but he also
+painted winter landscapes, and especially views of rivers where the
+broad extent of water is animated by vessels. Sometimes, too, with great
+perfection, fowls as large as life, hens, ducks, etc., and still life.
+He also painted portraits, though less successfully. However great the
+skill displayed in the composition of his works, their principal charm
+lies in the beauty and truthfulness of their peculiar lighting. No other
+painter, with the exception of Claude, has so well understood the cool
+freshness of morning, the bright but misty light of a hot noon, or the
+warm glow of a clear sunset. The effect of his pictures is further
+enhanced by the skill with which he avails himself of the aid of
+contrasts; as for example, dark, rich colours of the reposing cattle as
+seen against the bright sky. In his own country no picture of his, till
+the year 1750, ever sold for more than thirty florins. Indeed, Kugler
+was informed by a Dutch friend, that in past times, when a picture found
+no bidder, the auctioneer would offer to throw in "a little Cuyp" in
+order to induce a sale. The merit of having first given him his due rank
+belongs to the English, who as early as 1785, gave at the sale of Linden
+van Slingelandt's collection at Dortrecht high prices for Cuyp's works;
+About nine-tenths of his pictures are consequently to be found in
+England.
+
+One of his finest works is the landscape, in bright, warm, morning
+light, with two cows reposing in the foreground, and a woman conversing
+with a horseman, in the National Gallery (No. 53). The whole picture
+breathes a cheerful and rural tranquillity. In his mature time, these
+admirable qualities are seen in higher development. In the Louvre (No.
+104), is another fine example--a scene with six cows, a shepherd blowing
+the horn, and two children listening to him. This is admirably arranged,
+of greater truthfulness as regards the form and colouring of the cattle
+than usual, and with the warm lighting of the sky executed with equal
+decision and softness. This picture is one of the master's chief
+productions, being also about 4 ft. high by 6 ft. wide. Another with
+three horsemen, and a servant carrying partridges, and in the centre a
+meadow with cattle, is also in the Louvre. This is less attractive in
+subject, but ranks equally high as a work of art. In Buckingham Palace
+are two pictures, one with three cows reposing, and one standing by a
+clear stream, near them a herdsman and a woman; other cows are in water
+near the ruins of a castle. In this picture, we see Cuyp in every
+respect at his culminating point of excellence. Not less fine, and of
+singular force of colour, is the landscape, with a broad river running
+through it, and a horseman under a tree in conversation with a
+countryman.
+
+PAUL POTTER, born at Enckhuysen 1625, died at Amsterdam 1654. Although
+the scholar of his father, Pieter Potter, who was but a mediocre
+painter, he made such astonishing progress as to rank at the age of 15
+as a finished artist. He removed very early to the Hague, where his
+talents met with universal recognition, including that of Prince Maurice
+of Orange, and where he married. In the year 1652, however, he removed
+to Amsterdam at the instance of one of his chief patrons, the
+Burgomaster Tulp. Of the masters who have striven pre-eminently after
+truth he is, beyond all question, one of the greatest that ever lived.
+In order to succeed in this aim, he acquired a correctness of drawing, a
+kind of modelling which imparts an almost plastic effect to his animals,
+an extraordinary execution of detail in the most solid impasto, and a
+truth of colouring which harmonises astonishingly with the time of day.
+In his landscapes, which generally consist of a few willows in the
+foreground, and of a wide view over meadows, the most delicate
+graduation of aerial perspective is seen. With few exceptions, his
+animals are small, and his pictures proportionately moderate in size. By
+the year 1647 he had attained his full perfection. Of this date is the
+celebrated group called _The Young Bull_, in the Hague Gallery. All the
+figures in this are as large as life, and so extraordinarily true to
+nature as not only to appear real at a certain distance, but even to
+keep up the illusion when seen near.
+
+A picture dated 1649, now in Buckingham Palace, of two cows and a young
+bull in a pasture, combines with his customary fidelity to nature a more
+than common power of effect, and breadth and freedom of treatment. To
+the same year belongs also The _Farmyard_, formerly in the Cassel
+Gallery, now in that of S. Petersburg, which, according to Smith, fully
+deserves its celebrity both for the clearness and warmth of the sunset
+effect, as well as for its masterly execution. To 1650 belongs the
+picture of _Orpheus_, charming the animal world by the strains of his
+lyre, in the Amsterdam Museum. Here we see that the master had also
+studied wild animals. He is most successful in the bear. In the same
+gallery is another _chef-d'oeuvre_ of the same year--a hilly landscape
+with a shepherdess singing to her child, a shepherd playing on the
+bagpipe, and oxen, sheep, and goats around.
+
+The names of Weenix and Hondecoeter are so inseparably associated in the
+popular mind as painters of birds, whose respective works are not
+readily distinguishable moreover by the casual observer, that a short
+excursion into their family histories is advisable, for the purpose of
+showing how it was that this particular branch of the art was so
+successfully practised by the two. Moreover, as there were three
+Hondecoeters and two Weenixes who were painters, it is necessary to say
+something about each of them.
+
+MELCHIOR HONDECOETER, the best known, was of an ancient and noble
+family. He was instructed till the age of seventeen by his father
+Gysbert, who was a tolerable painter. Giles Hondecoeter, his
+grandfather, painted live birds admirably, but chiefly cocks and hens in
+the taste of Savery and Vincaboom. Melchior was born in 1636, and
+studied for a time with his father; but meantime his aunt Josina had
+married Jan Baptist Weenix, and a son was born to them, Jan Weenix, who
+inherited from old Giles Hondecoeter, his grandfather, his talent for
+painting poultry, and from his father, Jan Baptist Weenix, he acquired
+the benefit of several influences which were not shared by his cousin
+Melchior.
+
+JAN BAPTIST WEENIX, who was nicknamed "Rattle," was born at Amsterdam
+about 1621. His father was an architect, who bred his son up to that
+profession, but he was afterwards put to study painting under Abraham
+Bloemart. Soon after his marriage with Josina he was seized with the
+desire to visit Italy, and he set off alone to Rome, promising to return
+in four months. In Rome, however, he was so well received that he stayed
+there four years, and Italianized himself to an extent that may be seen
+in a picture in the Wallace Collection, a _Coast Scene with Classic
+Ruins_, which he signs _Gio. Batta. Weenix_. Though he returned to
+Holland and settled near Utrecht, his manner was sensibly modified by
+his sojourn in Rome.
+
+JAN WEENIX, who was born at Amsterdam in 1649, though he succeeded in so
+far assimilating his father's style that his earlier works are often
+confused with those of "Giovanni Battista," did not acquire the energy
+or the dramatic force displayed by Melchior Hondecoeter in representing
+live birds and animals, though he sometimes surpassed him in the finish
+and the harmony of his decorative arrangements of dead game and still
+life. Accordingly the one usually painted dead and the latter live
+birds. In other respects there is not much to distinguish their works.
+
+NICHOLAS BERCHEM was the only other pupil of Jan Baptist Weenix of whom
+we know anything. Berchem had other masters, beginning with his father,
+who was a painter of fish and tables covered with plates, china dishes,
+and such like. Having given his son the first rudiments of his art he
+found himself unequal to the task of cultivating the excellent
+disposition he observed in him, and therefore placed him with Van Goyen,
+Nicholas Moyaert, Peter Grebber, Jan Wils, and lastly with Jan Baptist
+Weenix, all of whom had the honour of assisting to form so excellent a
+painter. Indefatigable at his easel, Berchem acquired a manner both easy
+and expeditious; to see him work, painting appeared a mere diversion to
+him.
+
+His wife was the daughter of his instructor, Jan Wils, and was so
+avaricious that she allowed him no rest. Busy as he was by nature, she
+used to sit under his studio, and when she neither heard him sing nor
+stir, she struck upon the ceiling to rouse him. She got from him all the
+money he earned by his labour, so that he was obliged to borrow from his
+scholars when he wanted money to buy prints that were offered him, which
+was the only pleasure he had. _The Musical Shepherdess_ at Hertford
+House is a good example of his style, and the description of it in
+Smith's catalogue shows in what estimation the artist was held in early
+Victorian days:--"This beautiful pastoral scene represents a bold rocky
+coast under the appearance of the close of day. The rustics have ended
+their labours and are recreating with music and dancing. A group
+composed of two peasants and a like number of women occupies the
+foreground; one of the latter, attired in a blue mantle, is gaily
+striking a tambourine, and dancing to the music; her companion in a
+yellow dress sits near her; the shepherds also are seated, and one of
+them appears to have just ceased playing a pipe which he holds. The
+goats are browsing near them. Painted in the artist's most fascinating
+style."
+
+That Berchem had been to Italy is pretty certain, and though no
+authentic account of his visit is recorded, there is a story that when
+Jacob Ruisdael went to Rome as a young man, Nicholas Berchem was the
+first acquaintance he met, and that their friendship was of long
+standing. Their frequent walks round about Rome gave them the
+opportunity of working together from Nature, and one day a cardinal
+seeing them at work, inquired what they were doing. His eminence was
+agreeably impressed with their drawings, and invited them to visit him
+in Rome. The painters returned to their work, where they met with a
+second _rencontre_ of a very different nature; a gang of thieves robbed
+and stripped them of their clothes. They returned in their shirts to the
+city, and called on the cardinal, who took pity upon them, ordered them
+clothes, and afterwards employed them in several considerable works in
+his palace.
+
+Berchem at one time took up his abode in the Castle of Bentheim, and as
+both he and Ruisdael have left several pictures of this castle it may be
+inferred that they worked there together, as at Rome.
+
+Apart from personal friendship there is nothing to connect Berchem with
+Ruisdael, the popularity of the former being derived from qualities of a
+totally different nature from those which raise Ruisdael far above any
+of his contemporaries as a landscape painter.
+
+JAN VAN HUYSUM was born at Amsterdam in 1682. His father, Justus Van
+Huysum, who dealt in pictures, was himself a middling painter in most
+kinds of painting. He taught his son to paint screens, figures and vases
+on wood, landscape, and sometimes flowers; but the son being arrived at
+a reasoning age perceived that to work in every branch of his art was
+the way to excel in none, therefore he confined himself to flowers,
+fruit, and landscape, and quitting his father's school set up for
+himself.
+
+No one before Van Huysum attained so perfect a manner of representing
+the beauty of flowers and the down and bloom of fruit; for he painted
+with greater freedom than Velvet Breughel and Mignon, with more
+tenderness and nature than Mario di Fiori, Andrea Belvedere, Michel de
+Campidoglio or Daniel Seghers; with more mellowness than de Heem, and
+with more vigour of colouring than Baptist Monoyer.
+
+His pictures of flowers and fruit pleasing an English gentleman, he
+introduced them into his own country, where they came into vogue and
+yielded a high price. To express the motions of the smallest insects
+with justice he used to contemplate them through the microscope with
+great attention. At the times of the year when the flowers were in
+bloom, and the fruit in perfection, he used to design them in his own
+garden, and the Sieur Gulet and Voorhelm sent him the most beautiful
+productions in those kinds they could pick up.
+
+His reputation rose to such a height that all the curious in painting
+sought his works with great eagerness, which encouraged him to raise his
+prices so high that his pictures at last grew out of the reach of any
+but princes and men of the greatest fortune. He was the first flower
+painter that ever thought of laying them on light grounds, which
+requires much greater art than to paint them on dark ones.
+
+Van Huysum died at Amsterdam in 1749. He never had any pupil but a young
+woman named Haverman, and his brother Michael. Two other brothers have
+distinguished themselves in painting, one named Justus, who painted
+battles, and died at twenty-two years old, the other named James, who
+ended his days in England in 1740. He copied the pictures of his brother
+John so well as to deceive the connoisseurs: he had usually L20 for each
+copy. For the originals, it may be noted, from a thousand to fourteen
+hundred florins was paid.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+PAINTERS OF LANDSCAPE
+
+
+Coming now to the landscape painters we find that JAN VAN GOYEN, born at
+Leyden in 1596, was destined to exert a really powerful influence,
+inasmuch as he was the founder, as is generally acknowledged, of the
+Dutch school of homely native landscape. Beginning with figure subjects,
+he discovered in their landscape backgrounds his real _metier_, and
+seems only to have realized his great gifts when he looked further into
+nature than was possible when painting a foreground picture. He appears
+to have been by nature or by inclination long-sighted, and he is never
+so happy as when painting distance, either along the banks of a river or
+looking out to sea. This extended gaze taught him something of
+atmosphere that few painters beside himself ever acquired, and helped
+him to the mastery of tone which appears to have influenced so many of
+his followers, as for example Van de Velde in the painting of
+sea-pieces.
+
+JAN WYNANTS, born at Haarlem about 1620, and still living in 1677, was
+the first master who applied all the developed qualities of the Dutch
+School to the treatment of landscape painting. In general his prevailing
+tone is clear and bright, more especially in the green of his trees and
+plants, which in many cases, merges into blue. One of his
+characteristics is a fallen tree trunk in the foreground, as may be seen
+in three out of the six examples in the National Gallery. The
+carefulness of his execution explains how it was that in so long a life
+he only produced a moderate number of pictures. Smith's catalogue
+contains about 214. These differ much according to their different
+periods. In his first manner peasants' cottages or ruins play an
+important part, and the view is more or less shut in by trees of a heavy
+dark green, the execution solid and careful. In his middle time he
+generally paints open views of a rather uneven country, diversified by
+wood and water. That Wynants retained his full skill even in advanced
+life is proved by a picture dated 1672, in the Munich Gallery,
+representing a road leading to a fenced wood and a sandhill, near which
+in the foreground are some cows (by Lingelbach) being driven along. In
+his last manner a heavy uniformly brown tone is often observable.
+
+It is his genuine feeling for nature that makes Wynant's pictures so
+popular in England, where we meet with a considerable number of his best
+works.
+
+JACOB RUISDAEL (born at Haarlem 1628, died there 1682) is supposed to
+have developed under the influence of a school there that was opposing
+Van Goyen's tone treatment by local colour. Though not always the most
+charming, Ruisdael is certainly the greatest and the most profound of
+the Dutch landscape painters. His wide expanses of sky, earth or sea,
+with their tender gradations of aerial perspective, diversified here and
+there by alternations of sunshine and shadow, attract us as much by the
+pathos as by the picturesqueness of their character. His scenes of
+mountainous districts with foaming waterfalls; or bare piles of rock and
+sombre lakes are imbued with a feeling of melancholy. Ruisdael's work
+may be well studied in the six examples at Hertford House, and the
+fourteen in the National Gallery. Among his finer works in Continental
+collections the following are some of those selected by Kugler for
+description. At the Hague is one of his wide expanses--a view of the
+country around Haarlem, the town itself looking small on the horizon,
+under a lofty expanse of cloudy sky in the foreground a bleaching-ground
+and some houses reminding us, by the manner in which they are
+introduced, of Hobbema. The prevailing tone is cool, the sky singularly
+beautiful, and the execution wonderfully delicate. A flat country with a
+road leading to a village, and fields with wheatsheaves, is in the
+Dresden Gallery. This is temperate in colouring and beautifully lighted.
+Equally fine is an extensive view over a hilly but bare country, through
+which a river runs; in the Louvre. The horseman and beggar on a bridge
+are by Wouvermans: here the grey-greenish harmony of the tone is in fine
+accordance with the poetic grandeur of the subject. A hill covered with
+oak woods, with a peasant hastening to a hut to escape the gathering
+shower, is in the Munich Gallery. The golden warmth of the trees and
+ground, and the contrast between the deep clear chiaroscuro and soft
+rain-clouds, and the bright gleam of sunshine, render this picture one
+of the finest by this master.
+
+The peculiar charm which is seen in Holland by the combination of lofty
+trees and calm water is fully represented in the following works:--_The
+Chase_; in the Dresden Gallery. Here in the still water in the
+foreground--through which a stag-hunt (by Adrian van de Velde) is
+passing--clouds, warm with morning sunlight, appear reflected. In this
+picture, remarkable as it is for size, being 3 ft. 10-1/2 in. high, by 5
+ft. 2 in. wide, the sense even of the fresh morning is not without a
+tinge of gentle melancholy. A noble wood of oaks, beeches and elms,
+about the size of the last-mentioned picture, is in the Louvre. In the
+centre, through an opening in the woods, are seen distant hills. The
+cattle and figures upon a flooded road are by Berchem. In power, warmth,
+and treatment, this is also nearly allied to the preceding work. Of his
+waterfalls, the most remarkable are--A picture at the Hague, which is
+particularly striking for its warm lighting, and careful execution.
+Another with Bentheim Castle, so often repeated by Ruisdael, is at
+Amsterdam. In the same collection is a landscape, with rocks, woods, and
+a larger waterfall. This has a grandly poetic character which, with the
+broad and solid handling, plainly shows the influence of Everdingen. The
+same remark may be applied to the waterfall, No. 328, in the Munich
+Gallery. Here the dark, rainy sky, enhances the sublime impression made
+by the foaming torrent that rushes down the rocky masses. Another work
+worthy to rank with the fore-going is _The Jewish Cemetry_, in the
+Dresden Gallery: a pallid sunbeam lights up some of the tombstones,
+between which a torrent impetuously flows.
+
+The _Landscape with Waterfall_ at Hertford House is a good example; the
+_Landscape with a Farm_ in the same collection is another, though in
+this the figures and cattle are by Adrian Van der Velde. Ostade and
+Wouverman are also said to have helped him with his figures, and it is
+possible that one or other of them ought to have some of the credit for
+the beautiful _View on the Shore at Scheveningen_ in the National
+Gallery (No. 1390). The _Landscape with Ruins_ (No. 746) is perhaps the
+finest of the others there.
+
+WILLEM VAN DE VELDE, the younger, born at Amsterdam 1633, died at
+Greenwich 1707. His first master was his father, Willem van de Velde the
+elder, but his principal instructor was Simon de Vlieger. The earlier
+part of his professional life was spent in Holland, where, besides
+numerous pictures of the various aspects of marine scenery, he painted
+several well-known sea-fights in which the Dutch had obtained the
+victory over the English. He afterwards followed his father to England,
+where he was greatly patronized by Charles II. and James II. for whom,
+in turn, he painted the naval victories of the English over the Dutch.
+He was also much employed by amateurs of art among the English nobility
+and gentry. There is no question that Willem van de Velde the younger is
+the greatest marine painter of the whole Dutch School. His perfect
+knowledge of lineal and aerial perspective, and the incomparable
+technique which he inherited from his school, enabled him to represent
+the sea and the sky with the utmost truth of form, atmosphere and
+colour, and to enliven the scene with the purest feeling for the
+picturesque, with the most natural incidents of sea-faring life.
+
+Two of his pictures at Amsterdam are particularly remarkable;
+representing the English flagship _The Prince Royal_ striking her
+colours in the fight with the Dutch fleet of 1666; and its companion,
+four English men-of-war brought in as prizes at the same fight. Here the
+painter has represented himself in a small boat, from which he actually
+witnessed the battle. This accounts for the extraordinary truth with
+which every particular of the scene is rendered in such small pictures,
+which, combined with their delicate greyish tone, and the mastery of the
+execution, render them two of his finest works. A view of the city of
+Amsterdam, dated 1686, taken from the river, is an especially good
+specimen of his large pictures. It is about 5 ft. high by 10 ft. wide.
+The vessels in the river are arranged with great feeling for the
+picturesque, and the treatment of details is admirable. His greatest
+successes, however, are in the representation of calm seas, as may be
+seen in a small picture at Munich. In the centre of the middle distance
+is a frigate, and in the foreground smaller vessels. The fine silvery
+tone in which the whole is kept finds a sufficient counter-balance of
+colour in the yellowish sun-lit clouds, and in the brownish vessels and
+their sails. Nothing can be more exquisite than the tender reflections
+of these in the water. Of almost similar beauty is a picture of about
+the same size, with four vessels, in the Cassel Gallery, which is signed
+and dated 1653. As a contrast to this class of works, may be mentioned
+_The Gathering Tempest_, in the Munich Gallery. This is brilliantly
+lighted, and of great delicacy of tone in the distance, though the
+foreground has somewhat darkened.
+
+MEINDERT HOBBEMA (1638-1709) was a friend as well as a pupil of Jacob
+Ruisdael. The fact that such distinguished painters as Adrian van de
+Velde, Wouvermans, Berchem, and Lingelbach, executed the figures and
+animals in his pictures proves the esteem in which he was held by his
+contemporaries; nevertheless it is evident that the public was slow in
+conceding to him the rank which he deserved, for his name is not found
+for more than a century after his death in any even of the most
+elaborate dictionaries of art, while the catalogues of the most
+important picture sales in Holland make no mention of him at all up to
+the year 1739; when a picture by him, although much extolled, was sold
+for only 71 florins, and even in 1768 one of his masterpieces only
+fetched 300 florins. The English were the first to discover his merits.
+
+The peculiar characteristics of this master, who next to Ruisdael, is
+confessedly at the head of landscape painters of the Dutch School, will
+be best appreciated by comparing him with his rival. In two most
+important qualities--fertility of inventive genius, and poetry of
+feeling--he is decidedly inferior: the range of his subjects being far
+narrower. His most frequent scenes are villages surrounded by trees,
+such as are frequently met with in the districts of Guelderland, with
+winding pathways leading from house to house. A water-mill occasionally
+forms a prominent feature. Often, too, he represents a slightly uneven
+country, diversified by groups or rows of trees, wheat-fields, meadows,
+and small pools. Occasionally he gives us a view of part of a town, with
+its gates, canals with sluices, and quays with houses; more rarely, the
+ruins of an old castle, with an extensive view of a flat country, or
+some stately residence. In the composition of all these pictures,
+however, we do not find that elevated and picturesque taste which
+characterises Ruisdael; on the contrary they have a thoroughly
+portrait-like appearance, decidedly prosaic, but always surprizingly
+truthful. The greater number of Hobbema's pictures are as much
+characterized by a warm and golden tone as those of Ruisdael by the
+reverse; his greens being yellowish in the lights and brownish in the
+shadows--both of singular transparency. In pictures of this kind the
+influence of Rembrandt is perhaps perceptible, and they are superior in
+brilliancy to any work by Ruisdael. While these works chiefly present us
+with the season of harvest and sunset-light, there are others in a cool,
+silvery, morning lighting, and with the bright green of spring, that
+surpass Ruisdael's in clearness. His woods also, owing to the various
+lights that fall on them, are of greater transparency.
+
+As almost all the galleries on the Continent were formed at a period
+when the works of Hobbema were little prized (Ticcozzi's _Dictionary_,
+in 1818, does not include his name), they either possess no specimens,
+or some of an inferior class, so that no adequate idea can be formed of
+him. The most characteristic example to be met with on the Continent is
+a landscape in the Berlin Museum, No. 886, an oak wood, with scattered
+lights, a calm piece of water in the foreground, and a sun-lit village
+in the distance. Of the eight pictures in the National Gallery from his
+hand, most are good, and one world-famous--_The Avenue, Middelharnis_,
+which may be called his masterpiece. This was painted in 1689, when he
+had reached the age of fifty. His diploma picture, painted in 1663, is
+at Hertford House, together with four other interesting examples, all of
+which repay careful study.
+
+
+
+
+GERMAN SCHOOLS
+
+
+The origins of the German Schools of painting are obscure, but it is
+fairly certain that Cologne was the first place in which the art was
+soonest established to any considerable extent. Here, as in the
+Netherlands, we cannot find any traces of immediate Italian influences.
+The first painter who can be identified with any certainty is WILHELM
+VON HERLE, called MEISTER WILHELM, whose activity is not traceable
+earlier than about 1358. Most of the pictures formerly attributed to him
+have, however, been assigned to his pupil HERMANN WYNRICH VON WESEL, who
+on the death of his master in 1378 married his widow and continued his
+practice, until his death somewhere about 1414. His most important works
+were six panels of the High Altar of the Cathedral, the so-called
+_Madonna of the Pea Blossoms_ and two _Crucifixions_ at Cologne, and the
+_S. Veronica_ at Munich, dated 1410.
+
+More important was STEPHEN LOCHNER, who died at Cologne in 1451. His
+influence was widespread and his school apparently numerous, until, in
+1450, Roger van der Weyden, returning from Italy, stopped at Cologne and
+painted his large triptych, which eclipsed Lochner. From this time
+onwards the school of Cologne is represented by painters whose names are
+not known, and who are accordingly distinguished by the subjects of
+their works; such as _The Master of the Glorification of the Virgin_,
+_The Master of S. Bartholomew_, etc., until we come to Bartel Bruyn
+(_c._ 1493-1553), a portrait painter who is represented at Berlin, and
+by a picture of Dr Fuchsius bequeathed to the National Gallery by George
+Salting.
+
+In other parts of Germany, particularly in Nuremberg, Ulm, Augsburg, and
+Basle, various names of painters of the latter half of the fourteenth
+century have survived, but their works are of little interest except to
+the connoisseur as showing the influence under which the two great
+artists of the sixteenth century, Albert Duerer and Hans Holbein, and one
+or two lesser lights like Lucas Cranach, Albert Altdorfer, and Adam
+Elsheimer, were formed.
+
+In Germany the taste for the fantastic in art peculiar to the Middle
+Ages, though it engendered clever and spirited works such as those of
+Quentin Massys and Lucas van Leyden, was still unfavourable to the
+cultivation of pure beauty, scenes from the Apocalypse, Dances of Death,
+etc., being among the favourite subjects for art. On the other hand, the
+pictorial treatment of antique literature, a world so suggestive of
+beautiful forms, was so little comprehended by the German mind that they
+only sought to express it through the medium of those fantastic ideas
+with very childish and even tasteless results. We must also remember
+that that average education of the various classes of society which the
+fine arts require for their protection stood on a very low footing in
+Germany. In Italy the favour with which works of art was regarded was
+far more widely extended. This again gave rise to a more elevated
+personal position on the part of the artist, which in Italy was not only
+one of more consideration, but of incomparably greater independence. In
+this latter respect Germany was so
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXXII.
+
+"THE MASTER OF ST BARTHOLOMEW"
+
+TWO SAINTS
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+deficient that the genius of Albert Duerer and Holbein was miserably
+cramped and hindered in development by the poverty and littleness of
+surrounding circumstances. It is known that of all the German princes no
+one but the Elector Frederick the Wise ever gave Albert Duerer a
+commission for pictures, while a writing addressed by the great painter
+to the magistracy of Nuremberg tells us that his native city never gave
+him employment even to the value of 500 florins. At the same time his
+pictures were so meanly paid, that for the means of subsistence, as he
+says himself, he was compelled to devote himself to engraving. How far
+more such a man as Duerer would have been appreciated in Italy or in the
+Netherlands is further evidenced in the above-mentioned writing, where
+he states that he was offered 200 ducats a year in Venice and 300
+Philips-gulden in Antwerp, if he would settle in either of those cities.
+And Holbein fared still worse: there is no evidence whatever that any
+German prince ever troubled himself at all about the great painter while
+at Basle, and his art was so little cared for that necessity compelled
+him to go to England, where a genius fitted for the highest undertakings
+of historical painting was limited to the sphere of portraiture. The
+crowning impediments finally, which hindered the progress of German art,
+and perverted it from its true aim, were the Reformation, which narrowed
+the sphere of ecclesiastical works, and the pernicious imitation of the
+great Italian masters which ensued.
+
+LUCAS CRANACH, born in 1472, received his first instructions in art from
+his father, his later teaching probably from Matthew Grunewald. In some
+instances he attained to the expression of dignity, earnestness and
+feeling, but generally his characteristics are a naive and childlike
+cheerfulness and a gentle and almost timid grace. The impression
+produced by his style of representation reminds one of the "Volksbuecher"
+and "Volkslieder." Many of his church pictures have a very peculiar
+significance: in these he stands forth properly speaking as the painter
+of the Reformation. Intimate both with Luther and Melanchthon, he seizes
+on the central aim of their doctrine, viz., the insufficiency of good
+works and the sole efficacy of faith. His mythological subjects appeal
+directly to the eye like real portraits; and sometimes also by means of
+a certain grace and naivete of motive. We may cite as an instance the
+Diana seated on a stag in a small picture at Berlin, No. 564. _The
+Fountain of Youth_, also at Berlin, No. 593, is a picture of peculiar
+character; a large basin surrounded by steps and with a richly adorned
+fountain forms the centre. On one side, where the country is stony and
+barren, a multitude of old women are dragged forward on horses, waggons
+or carriages, and with much trouble are got into the water. On the other
+side of the fountain they appear as young maidens splashing about and
+amusing themselves with all kinds of playful mischief; close by is a
+large pavilion into which a herald courteously invites them to enter and
+where they are arrayed in costly apparel. A feast is prepared in a
+smiling meadow, which seems to be followed by a dance; the gay crowd
+loses itself in a neighbouring grove. The men unfortunately have not
+become young, and retain their grey beards. The picture is of the year
+1546, the seventy-fourth of Cranach's age.
+
+ALBERT ALTDORFER was born 1488 at Altdorf, near Landshuth, in Bavaria,
+and settled at Ratisbon, where he died 1528. He invested the fantastic
+tendency of the time with a poetic feeling--especially in
+landscape--and he developed it so as to attain a perfection in this
+sort of romantic painting that no other artist had reached. In his later
+period he was strongly influenced by Italian art. Altdorfer's principal
+work is in the Munich Gallery, and is thus described by Schlegel:--
+
+"It represents the Victory of Alexander the Great over Darius; the
+costume is that of the artist's own day, as it would be treated in the
+chivalrous poems of the middle ages--man and horse are sheathed in plate
+and mail, with surcoats of gold or embroidery; the chamfrons upon the
+heads of the horses, the glittering lances and stirrups, and the variety
+of the weapons, form altogether a scene of indescribable splendour and
+richness.... It is, in truth, a little world on a few square feet of
+canvas; the hosts of combatants who advance on all sides against each
+other are innumerable, and the view into the background appears
+interminable. In the distance is the ocean, with high rocks and a rugged
+island between them; ships of war appear in the offing and a whole fleet
+of vessels--on the left the moon is setting--on the right the sun
+rising--both shining through the opening clouds--a clear and striking
+image of the events represented. The armies are arranged in rank and
+column without the strange attitudes, contrasts, and distortions
+generally exhibited in so-called battle-pieces. How indeed would this
+have been possible with such a vast multitude of figures? The whole is
+in the plain and severe, or it may be the stiff manner of the old style.
+At the same time the character and execution of these little figures is
+most masterly and profound. And what variety, what expression there is,
+not merely in the character of the single warriors and knights, but in
+the hosts themselves! Here crowds of black archers rush down troop after
+troop from the mountain with the rage of a foaming torrent; on the
+other side high upon the rocks in the far distance a scattered crowd of
+flying men are turning round in a defile. The point of the greatest
+interest stands out brilliantly from the centre of the whole--Alexander
+and Darius both in armour of burnished gold; Alexander on Bucephalus
+with his lance in rest advances before his men and presses on the flying
+Darius, whose charioteer has already fallen on his white horses, and who
+looks back upon his conqueror with all the despair of a vanquished
+monarch."
+
+ALBERT DUeRER (1471-1528), by his overpowering genius, may be called the
+sole representative of German art of his period. He was gifted with a
+power of conception which traced nature through all her finest shades,
+and with a lively sense, as well for the solemn and the sublime, as for
+simple grace and tenderness; above all, he had an earnest and truthful
+feeling in art united with a capacity for the most earnest study. These
+qualities were sufficient to place him by the side of the greatest
+artists whom the world has ever seen.
+
+One of the earliest portraits by Albert Duerer known to us is that of his
+father, Albert Duerer, the goldsmith, dated 1497, in our National
+Gallery. In the year 1644, another version of this picture, which was
+engraved by Hollar, was in the collection of the Earl of Arundel, and is
+now in that of the Duke of Northumberland, at Syon House. Of about the
+same time--that is to say, before 1500--are the portraits of Oswald
+Krell, at Munich, of Frederick the Wise, at Berlin, and of himself, at
+the Prado.
+
+Several of Albert Duerer's pictures of the year 1500 are known to us. The
+first and most important is his own portrait in the Munich Gallery,
+which represents him full face with his hand laid on the fur trimming
+of his robe.
+
+His finest picture of the year 1504 is an _Adoration of the Kings_,
+originally painted for Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony,
+subsequently presented by the Elector Christian II. to the Emperor
+Rudolph II., and finally, on the occasion of an exchange of pictures,
+transferred from Vienna to Florence, where it now hangs in the Tribune
+of the Uffizi. The heads are of thoroughly realistic treatment; the
+Virgin a portrait from some model of no attractive character; the second
+King a portrait of the painter himself. The landscape background exactly
+resembles that in the well-known engraving of S. Eustace, the period of
+which is thus pretty nearly defined. It is carefully painted in a fine
+body of colour.
+
+In 1505 Duerer made a second journey into Upper Italy, and remained a
+considerable time at Venice. Of his occupations in this city the letters
+written to his friend Wilibald Pirckheimer which have come down to us
+give many interesting particulars. He there executed for the German
+Company a picture known as _The Feast of Rose Garlands_, which brought
+him great fame, and by its brilliant colouring silenced the assertion of
+his envious adversaries "that he was a good engraver, but knew not how
+to deal with colours." In the centre of a landscape is the Virgin seated
+with the Child and crowned by two angels; on her right is a Pope with
+priests kneeling; on her left the Emperor Maximilian I. with knights;
+various members of the German Company are also kneeling; all are being
+crowned with garlands of roses by the Virgin, the Child, S.
+Dominick--who stands behind the Virgin--and by angels. The painter and
+his friend Pirckheimer are seen standing in the background on the
+right; the painter holds a tablet with the inscription, "Albertus Duerer
+Germanus, MDVI." This picture, which is one of his largest and finest,
+was purchased from the church at a high price by the Emperor Rudolph II.
+for his gallery at Prague, where it remained until sold in 1782 by the
+Emperor Joseph II. It then became the property of the Praemonstratensian
+monastery of Stratow at Prague, where it still exists, though in very
+injured condition and greatly over-painted. In the Imperial Gallery at
+Vienna may be seen an old copy which conveys a better idea of the
+picture than the original.
+
+With these productions begins the zenith of this master's fame, in which
+a great number of works follow one another within a short period. Of
+these we first notice a picture of 1508, in the Imperial Gallery at
+Vienna, painted for Duke Frederick of Saxony, and which afterwards
+adorned the gallery of the Emperor Rudolph II. It represents _The
+Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand Saints_. In the centre of the picture
+stand the master and his friend Pirckheimer as spectators, both in black
+dresses. Duerer has a mantle thrown over his shoulder in the Italian
+fashion, and stands in a firm attitude. He folds his hands and holds a
+small flag, on which is inscribed, "Iste faciebat anno domini 1508
+Albertus Duerer Alemanus." There are a multitude of single groups
+exhibiting every species of martyrdom, but there is a want of general
+connection of the whole. The scenes in the background, where the
+Christians are led naked up the rocks, and are precipitated down from
+the top, are particularly excellent. The whole is very minute and
+miniature-like; the colouring is beautifully brilliant, and it is
+painted (the accessories particularly) with extraordinary care.
+
+To 1511 belongs also one of his most celebrated pictures, _The Adoration
+of the Trinity_, which is also at Vienna, painted for the chapel of the
+Landauer Bruederhaus in Nuremberg. Above in the centre of the picture are
+seen the First Person, who holds the Saviour in his arms, while the Holy
+Spirit is seen above; some angels spread out the priestly mantle of the
+Almighty, whilst others hover near with the instruments of Christ's
+passion. On the left hand a little lower down is a choir of females with
+the Virgin at their head; on the right are the male saints with St John
+the Baptist. Below all these kneel a host of the blessed of all ranks
+and nations extending over the whole of this part of the picture.
+Underneath the whole is a beautiful landscape, and in a corner of the
+picture the artist himself richly clothed in a fur mantle, with a tablet
+next him with the words, "Albertus Duerer Noricus faciebat anno a
+Virginis partu, 1511." It may be assumed beyond doubt that he held in
+particular esteem those pictures into which he introduced his own
+portrait.
+
+In the Vienna Gallery is also a picture of the year 1512, the Virgin
+holding the naked Child in her arms. She has a veil over her head and
+blue drapery. Her face is of the form usual with Albert Duerer, but of a
+soft and maidenly character; the Child is beautiful--the countenance
+particularly so. It is painted with exceeding delicacy of finish.
+
+Two altar-pieces of his earliest period must be mentioned. One is in the
+Dresden Gallery, consisting of three pictures painted in tempera on
+canvas, representing the Virgin, S. Anthony, and S. Sebastian
+respectively. Although this is probably one of his very earliest works,
+it is remarkable for the novelty of its treatment and its independence
+of tradition.
+
+The other, a little later, is in the Munich Gallery (Nos. 240-3),
+painted at the request of the Paumgartner family, for S. Catherine's
+Church at Nuremberg, was brought to Munich in 1612 by Maximilian I. The
+subject of the middle picture is the Nativity; the Child is in the
+centre, surrounded by little angels, whilst the Virgin and Joseph kneel
+at the side. The wings contain portraits of the two donors under the
+form of S. George and S. Eustace represented as knights in steel armour,
+each with his standard, and the former holding the slain dragon.
+
+The year 1526 was distinguished by the two pictures of the four
+Apostles: John and Peter, Mark and Paul; the figures are the size of
+life. These, which are the master's grandest work, and the last of
+importance executed by him, are now in the Munich Gallery. We know with
+certainty that they were presented by Albert Duerer himself to the
+council of his native city in remembrance of his career as an artist,
+and at the same time as conveying to his fellow-citizens an earnest and
+lasting exhortation suited to that stormy period. In the year 1627,
+however, the pictures were allowed to pass into the hands of the Elector
+Maximilian I. of Bavaria. The inscriptions selected by the painter
+himself might have given offence to a Catholic prince, and were
+therefore cut off and joined to the copies by John Fischer, which were
+intended to indemnify the city of Nuremberg for the loss of the
+originals. These copies are still in the collection of the Landauer
+Bruederhaus at Nuremberg.
+
+These pictures are the fruit of the deepest thought which then stirred
+the mind of Albert Duerer, and are executed with overpowering force.
+Finished as they are, they form the first complete work of art produced
+by Protestantism. As the inscription taken from the Gospels and
+Epistles of the Apostles contains pressing warnings not to swerve from
+the word of God, nor to believe in the doctrines of false prophets, so
+the figures themselves represent the steadfast and faithful guardians of
+that holy Scripture which they bear in their hands. There is also an old
+tradition, handed down from the master's own times, that these figures
+represent the four temperaments. This is confirmed by the pictures
+themselves; and though at first sight it may appear to rest on a mere
+accidental combination, it serves to carry out more completely the
+artist's thought, and gives to the figures greater individuality. It
+shows how every quality of the human mind may be called into the service
+of the Divine Word. Thus in the first picture, we see the whole force of
+the mind absorbed in contemplation, and we are taught that true
+watchfulness in behalf of the Scripture must begin by devotion to its
+study.
+
+S. John stands in front, the open book in his hand; his high forehead
+and his whole countenance bear the impress of earnest and deep thought.
+This is the melancholic temperament, which does not shrink from the most
+profound inquiry. Behind him S. Peter bends over the book, and gazes
+earnestly at its contents--a hoary head, full of meditative repose. This
+figure represents the phlegmatic temperament, which reviews its own
+thoughts in tranquil reflection. The second picture shows the outward
+operation of the conviction thus attained and its relation to daily
+life. S. Mark in the background is the man of sanguine temperament; he
+looks boldly round, and appears to speak to his hearers with animation,
+earnestly urging them to share those advantages which he has himself
+derived from the Holy Scriptures. S. Paul, on the contrary, in the
+foreground, holds the book and sword in his hands; he looks angrily and
+severely over his shoulder, ready to defend the Word, and to annihilate
+the blasphemer with the sword of God's power. He is the representative
+of the choleric temperament.
+
+We know of no important work of a later date than that just described.
+His portrait in a woodcut of the year 1527 represents him earnest and
+serious in demeanour, as would naturally follow from his advancing age
+and the pressure of eventful times. His head is no longer adorned with
+those richly flowing locks, on which in his earlier days he had set so
+high a value, as we learn from his pictures and from jests still
+recorded of him. With the departure of Hans Holbein to England in 1528
+and the death of Albert Duerer in the same year, that excellence to which
+they had raised German art passed away, and centuries saw no sign of its
+revival.
+
+Of HANS HOLBEIN, born at Augsburg in 1498, we shall have more to say in
+a later chapter, when considering the origins of English portraiture.
+But as in the case of Van Dyck, and in fact of every great portrait
+painter, his excellence in this particular branch of his art was but one
+result of his being a born artist and first exercising his talents in a
+much wider field. In Holbein the realistic tendency of the German School
+attained its highest development, and he may, next to Duerer, be
+pronounced the greatest master in it. While Duerer's art exhibits a close
+affinity with the religious ideas of the Middle Ages, Holbein appears to
+have been imbued with more modern and more material sentiments, and
+accordingly we find him excelling Duerer in closeness and delicacy of
+observation in the delineation of nature. A proof of this is afforded by
+the evidence of Erasmus, who said that as regards the portraits painted
+of him by both these artists, that by Holbein was the most like. In
+feeling for beauty of form, also in grace of movement, in colouring, and
+in the actual art of painting--in which his father had thoroughly
+instructed him--Holbein is to be placed above Duerer. That he did not
+rival the great Italians of his time in "historical" painting can only
+be ascribed to the circumstances of his life in Germany, where such
+subjects were not in fashion.
+
+Of his pictures executed before he left his native country the greater
+number are at Basle and Augsburg, and are therefore less familiar to the
+general public than his later works. A notable exception is the famous
+_Meyer Madonna_, the original of which is at Darmstadt, but a version
+now relegated, somewhat harshly, to the "copyist" is in the Dresden
+Gallery, and certainly exhibits as much of the spirit of the master as
+will serve for an example of his powers. It represents the Virgin as
+Queen of Heaven, standing in a niche, with the Child in her arms, and
+with the family of the Burgomaster Jacob Meyer of Basle kneeling on
+either side of her. With the utmost life and truth to nature, which
+brings these kneeling figures actually into our presence, says Kugler,
+there is combined in a most exquisite degree an expression of great
+earnestness, as if the mind were fixed on some lofty object. This is
+shown not merely by the introduction of divine beings into the circle of
+human sympathies, but particularly in the relation so skilfully
+indicated between the Holy Virgin and her worshippers, and in her
+manifest desire to communicate to those who are around her the sacred
+peace and tranquillity expressed in her own countenance and attitude,
+and implied in the infantine grace of the Saviour. In the direct union
+of the divine with the human, and in their reciprocal harmony, there is
+involved a devout and earnest purity of feeling such as only the older
+masters were capable of representing.
+
+Another of his most beautiful pictures painted in Germany is the
+portrait of Erasmus, dated 1523. This was sent by Erasmus to Sir Thomas
+More, at Chelsea, with a letter recommending Holbein to his care, and as
+it is still in this country--in the collection of the Earl of Radnor at
+Longford Castle--it is not perhaps too much to hope that it may one of
+these days find its way into the National Gallery--perhaps when the
+alterations to the front entrance are completed. This picture has for a
+very long time been regarded as one of Holbein's very finest portraits.
+Mr W. Barclay Squire, in the sumptuous catalogue of the Radnor
+collection compiled by him, quotes the opinion of Sir William Musgrave,
+written in 1785, "I am not sure whether it is not the finest I have
+seen"; and that of Dr Waagen, "Alone worth a pilgrimage to Longford.
+Seldom has a painter so fully succeeded in bringing to view the whole
+character of so original a mind as in this instance. In the mouth and
+small eyes may be seen the unspeakable studies of a long life ... the
+face also expresses the sagacity and knowledge of a life gained by long
+experience ... the masterly and careful execution extends to every
+portion ... yet the face surpasses everything else in delicacy of
+modelling."
+
+Cruel, indeed, was England to have transplanted the one artist who might
+have saved Germany from the artistic destitution from which she has
+suffered ever since!
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXXIII.--HANS HOLBEIN
+
+PORTRAIT OF CHRISTINA, DUCHESS OF MILAN
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+
+
+
+_FRENCH SCHOOL_
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
+
+
+When we consider the peculiar beauty of the architecture and
+ecclesiastical sculpture in France during the Middle Ages and the period
+of the renaissance, and of the enamels, ivories, and other small works
+of art, it is wrong to regret that painting was not also practised by
+the French as assiduously as it was in Italy. For there can be no doubt
+that in being confined to one channel the artistic impulses of a people
+cut deeper than if dissipated in various directions. We may suppose,
+indeed, that if those of the French had found their outlet in painting
+alone, we should have pictures of wonderful beauty, of a beauty moreover
+of a markedly different kind from that of the Italian or Spanish or
+Netherlandish pictures. But on the other hand we should have perhaps
+lost the amazing fascination of Chartres, and the delights of Limoges
+enamel and ivories.
+
+As it happens, the earliest mention to be made of painting in France is
+the arrival of Leonardo da Vinci at Amboise in 1516, whither he had come
+from Milan in the train of the young king Francois I. Unfortunately he
+was by this time sixty-four years old, and in less than three years he
+died. At about the same time there was a court painter in the employment
+of Francois--under the official designation of _varlet de
+chambre_--named JEHAN CLOUET, who is supposed to have been of Flemish
+extraction. Nothing very definite is known about him or his work, but he
+had a son FRANCOIS CLOUET, who seems to have been born at about the time
+of Leonardo's arrival, and who succeeded to his father's office. At the
+funeral of Francois I. in 1547 he was ordered to make an _effige du dict
+feu roy_, and he continued to be the official court painter to Henri II.
+(whose posthumous portrait he was also ordered to paint), Francois II.,
+and Charles IX. He died in 1572. Every portrait of this period is
+attributed to him, just as was the case with Holbein in England. Neither
+of the two examples at the National Gallery can be safely ascribed to
+him. The little head of the Emperor Charles V., king of Spain, at
+Hereford House, is identical in style and in dimensions with that of
+Francis I., king of France, in the Museum at Lyons, which is attributed
+to Jean Clouet. Both may have been painted when Charles V. passed
+through Paris in 1539, but whether by Jean or one of his disciples
+cannot be said with certainty.
+
+Not until the very end of the sixteenth century were born Claude Gellee
+and Nicholas Poussin, the only two Frenchmen who were painters of
+considerable importance before the close of the seventeenth. Nor did
+either of these two contribute anything to the glory of their country by
+practice or by precept within its confines, both of them passing most of
+their lives and painting their best works in Italy and under Italian
+influence.
+
+NICHOLAS POUSSIN was born at Villiers near Les Andelys on the banks of
+the Seine, in 1594, where he studied for some time under Quentin Varin
+till he was eighteen. After this he was in Paris, but in 1624 he went to
+Rome where he lived with Du Quesnoy. His first success was obtained by
+the execution of two historical pieces which were commissioned by
+Cardinal Barberini on his return from an Embassy to France. These were
+_The Death of Germanicus_ and _The Capture of Jerusalem_. His next works
+were _The Martyrdom of S. Erasmus_, _The Plague at Ashdod_, of which a
+replica is in the National Gallery, and _The Seven Sacraments_ now at
+Belvoir Castle. By these he acquired such fame that on his return to
+Paris in 1640, Louis XIII. appointed him royal painter, and in order to
+keep him at home provided him with apartments in the Tuileries and a
+salary of L120 a year. Within two years, however, Poussin was back in
+Rome, and after twenty-three years' unbroken success died there in 1665
+in his seventy-second year.
+
+Poussin was a most conscientious painter, devoting himself seriously in
+his earlier years to the study both of the antique and of practical
+anatomy. Besides being the intimate friend of Du Quesnoy, he was a
+devout pupil of Domenichino, for whom he had the greatest reverence. It
+is not surprising therefore to find in his earlier works, such as the
+_Plague at Ashdod_, a certain academic dulness and lack of spontaneity.
+He was not the forerunner of a new epoch, but one of the last upholders
+of the old. He was trying to arrest decay, to infuse a healthier spirit
+into a declining art, so that he errs on the side of correctness. The
+influence of Titian, however, was too strong for him to remain long
+within the narrowest limits, as may be seen in the _Bacchanalian Dance_,
+No. 62 in the National Gallery, which was probably one of a series
+painted for Cardinal Richelieu during the short time that Poussin was in
+Paris in 1641. In this and in No. 42, the _Bacchanalian Festival_ as
+well as in _The Shepherds in Arcadia_, in the Louvre, we get a
+surprisingly strong reminiscence of Titian, more especially in the
+brown tones of the flesh and the deep blue of the sky.
+
+As the result of conscientious study of the human body the figures in
+these pictures are full of life--for correctness of drawing is the first
+requisite of lively painting without which all the others are useless.
+The fact that over two hundred prints have been engraved after his
+pictures is a proof of his popularity at one time or another, and though
+at the present time his reputation is not as widely recognised as in
+former years, it is certainly as high among those whose judgment is
+independent of passing fashions. As evidence of the soundness of his
+principles, the following is perhaps worth quoting:--
+
+"There are nine things in painting," Poussin wrote in a letter to M. de
+Chambrai, the author of a treatise on painting, "which can never be
+taught and which are essential to that art. To begin with, the subject
+of it should be noble, and receive no quality from the person who treats
+it; and to give opportunity to the painter to show his talents and his
+industry it must be chosen as capable of receiving the most excellent
+form. A painter should begin with disposition (or as we should say,
+composition), the ornament should follow, their agreement of the parts,
+beauty, grace, spirit, costume, regard to nature and probability; and
+above all, judgment. This last must be in the painter himself and cannot
+be taught. It is the golden bough of Virgil that no one can either find
+or pluck unless his lucky star conducts him to it."
+
+GASPAR POUSSIN, whose name was really Gaspard Dughet, was brother-in-law
+of Nicholas, and acquired his name from being his pupil. He was nineteen
+years his junior, and survived him by ten years. He was born in Rome of
+French parents, and died there in 1675, and though he travelled a good
+deal in Italy he never appears to have visited France. His Italian
+landscapes are very beautiful, and we are fortunate in the possession of
+one which is considered his best, No. 31 in the National Gallery,
+_Landscape with Figures_, _Abraham and Isaac_. Scarcely less fine is the
+_Calling of Abraham_, No. 1159, especially in the middle and far
+distance. The sacred figures, it may as well be said, are of little
+concern in the compositions, though useful for purposes of identifying
+the pictures.
+
+CLAUDE GELLEE, nowadays usually spoken of as Claude, was born at
+Chamagne in Lorraine in 1600. Accordingly he has been styled Claude
+Lorraine, le Lorraine, de Lorrain, Lorrain, or Claudio Lorrenese with
+wonderful persistency through the ages, though there was no mystery
+about his surname and it would have served just as well. He was brought
+up in his father's profession of pastrycook, and in that capacity he
+went to Rome seeking for employment. As it happened he found it in the
+house of a landscape painter, Agostino Tassi, who had been a pupil of
+Paul Bril, and he not only cooked for him but mixed his colours as well,
+and soon became his pupil. Later he was studying under a German painter,
+Gottfried Wals, at Naples. A more important influence on him, however,
+was that of Joachim Sandrart, one of the best of the later German
+painters, whom he met in Rome.
+
+Claude's earliest pictures of any importance were two which were painted
+for Pope Urban VII. in 1639, when he was just upon forty years old.
+These are the _Village Dance_ and the _Seaport_, now in the Louvre. The
+_Seaport at Sunset_ and _Narcissus and Echo_ in the National Gallery
+(Nos. 5 and 19) are dated 1644--the former on the canvas and the latter
+on the sketch for it in the _Liber Veritatis_, where it is stated that
+it was painted for an English patron.
+
+The _Liber Veritatis_, it should be observed, is the title given to a
+portfolio of over two hundred drawings in pen and bistre, or Indian ink,
+which is now in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire. Most of these
+were made from pictures which had been painted, not as sketches or
+designs preparatory to painting them, and in some instances there are
+notes on the back of them giving the date, purchaser, and other
+particulars relating to them. So great was the vogue for Claude's
+landscapes in England during the eighteenth century that as early as
+1730 or 1740 a good many of his drawings, which had been collected by
+Jonathan Richardson, Dr. Mead and others, were engraved by Arthur Pond
+and John Knapton; and in 1777 a series of about two hundred of the Duke
+of Devonshire's drawings was published by Alderman Boydell, which had
+been etched and mezzotinted by Richard Earlom, under the title of _Liber
+Veritatis_. This was the model on which Turner founded the publication
+of his own sketches under the title of _Liber Studiorum_. Thus, if
+Claude exerted little influence on the art of his own country, it can
+hardly be said that he exerted none elsewhere, for Turner was by no
+means the first Englishman to fall under his spell. Richard Wilson, the
+first English landscape painter, was undoubtedly influenced by him, both
+from an acquaintance with his drawings in English collections and from
+the study of his works when in Rome.
+
+In this connection we may consider the two landscapes, numbered 12 and
+14 in the National Gallery Catalogue, as our most important examples by
+this master, for Turner bequeathed to the nation his two most important
+pictures _The Sun Rising Through a Vapour_ and _Dido Building Carthage_,
+on condition that they should be hung between these two by Claude. The
+Court of Chancery could annul the condition, but they could not nullify
+the effect of Claude's influence on Turner or alter the judgment of
+posterity with regard to the relations of the two painters to each other
+and to art in general, and the Director has wisely observed the wishes
+of Turner in still hanging the four pictures together, the Court of
+Chancery notwithstanding. Both of Claude's are inscribed, besides being
+signed and dated, as follows:
+
+     No. 12. Mariage d'Isaac avec Rebeca, Claudio Gil. inv. Romae 1648.
+
+     No. 14. La Reine de Saba va trover Salomon. Clavde Gil. inv. faict
+     pour son altesse le duc de Buillon a Roma 1648.
+
+Both pictures are familiar in various engravings of them, and though the
+present fashion leads many people in other directions, there can be no
+doubt that the appreciation of Claude in this country is never likely to
+die out, and is only waiting for a turn of the wheel to revive with
+increased vigour.
+
+Meantime, however, France was not entirely destitute of painters, and
+though without Claude, Poussin or Dughet, who preferred to exercise
+their art in Rome, she anticipated England by over a century in that
+most important step, the foundation of an Academy of Painting. Not many
+of the names of its original members ever became famous--as may be said
+in our own country--but among them was SEBASTIEN BOURDON (1616-1671),
+whose work was so much admired by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Bourdon, also,
+wandered away from France; within four years after the foundation of
+the Academy, namely, in 1652, he went to Stockholm, and was appointed
+principal painter to Queen Christina. On her abdication, however, in
+1663, he returned to Paris, and enjoyed a great success in painting
+landscapes, and historical subjects. _The Return of the Ark from
+Captivity_, No. 64 in the National Gallery Catalogue, was presented by
+that distinguished patron of the arts, Sir George Beaumont, to whom it
+was bequeathed by Sir Joshua Reynolds, as being one of his most
+treasured possessions. "I cannot quit this subject," he writes in the
+fourteenth Discourse, alluding to poetry in landscape, "without
+mentioning two examples, which occur to me at present, in which the
+poetical style of landscape may be seen happily executed; the one is
+_Jacob's Dream_, by Salvator Rosa, and the other, _The Return of the Ark
+from Captivity_, by Sebastian Bourdon. With whatever dignity those
+histories are presented to us in the language of scripture, this style
+of painting possesses the same power of inspiring sentiments of grandeur
+and sublimity, and is able to communicate them to subjects which appear
+by no means adapted to receive them. A ladder against the sky has no
+very promising appearance of possessing a capacity to excite any heroic
+ideas, and the Ark in the hands of a second-rate master would have
+little more effect than a common waggon on the highway; yet those
+subjects are so poetically treated throughout, the parts have such a
+correspondence with each other, and the whole and every part of the
+scene is so visionary, that it is impossible to look at them without
+feeling in some measure the enthusiasm which seems to have inspired the
+painters."
+
+EUSTACHE LE SUEUR, born in the same year as Sebastien Bourdon (1616),
+was another of the original members of the Academy, and was employed by
+the King at the Louvre. His most famous work was the decorations of the
+cloister at the monastery of La Chartreuse (now in the Louvre) of which
+Horace Walpole speaks so ecstatically in the preface to the last volume
+of the _Anecdotes of Painting_. "The last scene of S. Bruno expiring"
+(he writes) "in which are expressed all the stages of devotion from the
+youngest mind impressed with fear to the composed resignation of the
+Prior, is perhaps inferior to no single picture of the greatest master.
+If Raphael died young, so did Le Sueur; the former had seen the antique,
+the latter only prints from Raphael; yet in the Chartreuse, what airs of
+heads! What harmony of colouring! What aerial perspective! How Grecian
+the simplicity of architecture and drapery! How diversified a single
+quadrangle though the life of a hermit be the only subject, and devotion
+the only pathetic!"
+
+PHILIPPE DE CHAMPAIGNE was another of the original members. He was born
+at Brussels in 1602, and did not come to Paris till 1621, where he was
+soon afterwards employed in the decoration of the Luxembourg Palace. But
+he was chiefly a portrait painter, his principal works being the fine
+full-length of Cardinal Richelieu, and another of his daughter as a nun
+of Port Royal, both of which are in the Louvre. There are four in the
+Wallace Collection, but perhaps the most familiar to the English public
+is the canvas at the National Gallery (No. 798), painted for the Roman
+sculptor Mocchi, to make a bust from, with a full face and two profiles
+of Richelieu. As a portrait this is exceedingly interesting, the more so
+from having an inscription over one of the heads, "de ces deux profiles
+cecy est le meilleur." The full length of the Cardinal presented by Mr.
+Charles Butler in 1895 (No. 1449), is a good example, which cannot
+however but suffer by juxtaposition with more accomplished works.
+
+But it was not until the close of the seventeenth century that portrait
+painting in France became anything like a fine art, and even then it did
+not get beyond being formal and magnificent. The two principal exponents
+were HYACINTHE RIGAUD and NICOLAS LARGILLIERE, both of whose works have
+a sort of grandeur but little subtlety or charm.
+
+Rigaud was born in 1659, at Perpignan in the extreme south of France,
+and studied at Montpelier in his youth, then at Lyons on his way to
+Paris--much as a Scottish artist might have studied first at Glasgow,
+then at Birmingham on his way to London. On the advice of Lebrun he
+devoted himself specially to portrait painting, which he did with such
+success that in 1700 he was elected a member of the Academy. He painted
+Louis XIV. more often than Largilliere or any other painter, and in his
+later years (he lived till 1743) Louis XV. his great-grandson. He is
+said to have shared with Kneller the distinction, such as it may be, of
+having painted at least five monarchs.
+
+Rigaud is best known in these days by the fine prints after his
+portraits by the French engravers. Of his brushwork we are only able to
+judge by the two doubtful versions at the National Gallery and the
+Wallace Collection respectively, of the fine portrait at Versailles of
+_Cardinal Fleury_. The group of _Lulli and the Musicians of the French
+Court_, which was purchased for the National Gallery in 1906 is not by
+him, and it is difficult to understand why the public money should have
+been wasted on it, or at least on the inscription attributing it to
+him.
+
+Nicolas de Largilliere was three years older than Rigaud and survived
+him by another three. He was born in Paris in 1656 and died six months
+before completing his ninetieth year. Early in life he went as a pupil
+to Antwerp, under Antoine Goubeau, and he is said to have worked in
+England as an assistant to Sir Peter Lely during the later years of that
+master. On his return to France he was received into the Royal
+Academy--in 1686.
+
+In the Wallace Collection is an interesting example of his work, the
+large group of the French Royal Family, in which four living generations
+are portrayed and the bronze effigies of two more. Henri IV. and Louis
+XIII., the grandfather and father of the reigning monarch, Louis XIV.,
+the Dauphin his son, the Duc de Bourgogne his grandson, and the Duc
+d'Anjou, his great-grandson--afterwards Louis XV., are all included in
+this formal group, which is a useful lesson in history as well as in
+painting.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
+
+
+ANTOINE WATTEAU was born at Valenciennes in 1684, and died near there
+about thirty-seven years later of consumption. Valenciennes really
+belonged to Flanders, and had only lately been annexed to France, so
+that Watteau owed something of his art to Flemish rather than to French
+sources. At the same time it cannot be said that his development would
+have been the same if he had gone to Brussels or Antwerp instead of to
+Paris to study, for though the works of Rubens and Van Dyck were from
+his earliest years his chief attraction, the influence of the French
+artist Claude Gillot, as well as that of Audran, the keeper of the
+Luxembourg Palace, without doubt exerted a very decided help in
+determining the future course of his work.
+
+When living with Audran, Watteau had every opportunity for studying the
+works of the older masters, especially those of Rubens, whose
+decorations, executed for Marie de Medici, had not at that time been
+removed to the Louvre. Besides copying from these older pictures,
+Watteau was employed by Audran in the execution of designs for wall
+decorations, etc.
+
+Watteau's two earliest pictures still in existence are supposed to be
+the _Depart de Troupe_ and the _Halte d'Armee_, which were the first of
+a series of military pictures on a small scale. To an early period also
+belong the _Accordee de Village_, at the Soane Museum in Lincoln's Inn
+Fields, the _Mariee de Village_ at Potsdam, and the _Wedding
+Festivities_ in the Dublin National Gallery.
+
+In 1712 other influences began to work upon him. In this year he came
+into contact with Crozat, the famous collector, in whose house he became
+familiar with a fresh batch of the Flemish and Italian masterpieces. It
+was at this time that he was approved by the Royal Academy, though he
+took five years over his Diploma picture, "_Embarquement pour l'Ile de
+Cythere_," which is now in the Louvre. Meantime the influence of Rubens
+and the Italian masters--especially the Venetians, had greatly widened
+and deepened his art, and these influences, acting on his peculiarly
+sensitive temperament and poetical spirit, had a magical effect,
+transforming the actual scenes of Paris and Versailles, which he painted
+into enchanted places in
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXXIV.--ANTOINE WATTEAU
+
+L'INDIFFERENT
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+fairyland, as he transformed the formal actual painting of the period of
+Louis XIV. into the romantic school of the eighteenth century in France.
+The setting of the famous pictures in the Wallace Collection, catalogued
+as _The Music-Party_ or _Les Charnes de la Vie_ (No. 410), is a view of
+the Champs Elysees taken from the gallery of the Tuileries. Who would
+have thought it? And what does it matter, except to show how entirely
+Watteau revolutionized the pompous and prosaic methods of his time by
+investing the actual with poetry and romance.
+
+Two other pictures at Hertford House, Nos. 389 and 391, were painted in
+the Champs Elysees, and the figures are, for the most part, the same in
+both, all three of these pictures are fine examples of the artist's
+power of broad and spirited treatment, combined with extreme delicacy
+and refinement of conception.
+
+Three other pictures at Hertford House are equally delightful examples
+of another class of subject, namely groups of figures dressed in the
+parts of actors in Italian comedy. From a note in the Catalogue we learn
+that a company of Italian comedians were in Paris in the sixteenth
+century, but were banished by Louis Quatorze in 1697 for a supposed
+affront to Madame de Maintenon. In 1716, however, they were recalled by
+the Regent, the Duc d'Orleans, and became once more the delight of
+Paris. Several of the figures in the Italian comedy had already passed
+into French popular drama, and in Watteau's time there seems to have
+been a fluctuating company, according as one actor or actress or another
+developed a part, and to Pantalone, Arlecchino, Dottore and Columbina
+were now added Pierrot--or Gilles--Mezetin, a sort of double of Pierrot,
+Scaramouche and Scapin. The vague web of courtship, dalliance, intrigue
+and jealousy called up by these characters attracted Watteau to employ
+them in his compositions, and to make them also the medium of the more
+sincere sentiments of conjugal love and friendship,--as in _The Music
+Lesson_, _Gilles and his Family_ and _Harlequin and Columbine_, at
+Hertford House. All of these three were engraved in Watteau's life-time
+or shortly after his death, and the verses sub-joined to the engravings
+are a charming rendering of the sentiment underlying the pictures.
+
+In _The Music Lesson_ we see the half length figures of a lady, seated,
+reading a music book, and of a man playing a lute opposite to her.
+Another man looks at the book over the lady's shoulder, and two little
+children's faces appear at her knee. The verses are as follows:--
+
+    Pour nous prouver que cette belle
+    Trouve l'hymen un noeud fort doux
+    Le peintre nous la peint fidelle
+    A suivre le ton d'un Epoux.
+
+    Les enfants qui sont autour d'elle
+    Sont les fruits de son tendre amour
+    Dont ce beau joueur de prunelle
+    Pouvait bien gouter quelque jour.
+
+In _Gilles and his Family_ we have a three-quarter length full-face
+portrait of le Sieur de Sirois, a friend of Watteau, with these verses
+under the engraving:--
+
+    Sous un habit de mezzetin
+    Ce gros brun au riant visage
+    Sur la guitarre avec sa main
+    Fait un aimable badinage.
+
+    Par les doux accords de sa voix
+    Enfants d'une bouche vermeille
+    Du beau sexe tant a la fois
+    Il charme les yeux et l'oreille.
+
+In the little _Lady at her Toilet_ (No. 439) we see the influence of
+Paul Veronese, though it is probable that this was not painted until he
+visited London in the later part of his short life. For there is a
+similar piece called _La Toilette du Matin_ which was engraved by a
+French artist who had settled in England, Philip Mercier, and on whose
+work the influence of Watteau is very noticeable.
+
+_Le Rendez-vous de Chasse_ (No. 416), which is of the same size, and in
+character similar to _Les Amusements Champetres_ (No. 391), is the last
+by Watteau of which we have any certain knowledge. It was painted in
+1720, the year before his death, when his health prevented him from
+making any sustained effort. It is said to have been a commission from
+his friends M. and Mme. de Julienne, in whose shooting-box at Saint
+Maur, between the woods of Vincennes and the river, he went to repose
+from time to time.
+
+NICHOLAS LANCRET was only by six years Watteau's junior, so that he can
+hardly be considered as a pupil or even a disciple, but only as an
+imitator of Watteau. He was the pupil of Claude Gillot, and afterwards
+his assistant, and it was not unnatural that a close friendship should
+have been formed between Lancret and Watteau, or that it should have
+been dissolved by the deliberate imitation by the former of the latter's
+style--seeing how successful the imitation was. Two of the pictures by
+Lancret at Hertford House, Nos. 422, _Conversation Galante_ and 440,
+_Fete in a Wood_, are fair examples of how close, at one period of his
+career, the imitation became. The latter is the _Bal dans un Bois_ which
+was exhibited at the Place Dauphine, and was complained of by Watteau on
+account of its close resemblance to his own work.
+
+Another in the Wallace Collection belongs to the same early period of
+Watteau's influence. The _Italian Comedians by a Fountain_ (No. 465),
+being attributed to Watteau in the sale, in 1853, at which it was bought
+for Lord Hertford. His lordship was particularly anxious to secure this
+picture, "Between _you_ and _I_," he writes, with the quaint
+regardlessness of grammar peculiar to the Victorian nobility, "(and to
+no other person but you should I make this _confidence_), I must have
+the Lancret called Watteau in the Standish Collection. So I depend upon
+you for _getting it for me_. I need not beg you not to mention a word
+about this to _anybody_, either _before_ or _after_ the sale." And
+again, "I _depend_ upon your getting the Lancret (Watteau in the
+Catalogue) for me. I have no doubt it will sell for a good sum, most
+likely more than it is worth, but we _must_ have it ... I leave it to
+you, but I must have it, unless by some unheard of chance it was to go
+beyond 3000 guineas." He was fortunate indeed in getting it for L735.
+
+_Mademoiselle Camargo Dancing_ (No. 393), and _La Belle Grecque_ (No.
+450), in the Wallace Collection, are good examples of the Comedian
+motive treated with more actuality, yet with no less grace. The four
+little allegorical pieces in the National Gallery, _The Four Ages of
+Man_, are more lively if less romantic, being composed more for the
+characters illustrating the subject than for poetical setting.
+
+JEAN BAPTISE JOSEPH PATER was actually a pupil of Watteau. He was ten
+years his junior, but was equally unhappy on account of his health, and
+died at forty. Like Lancret, he incurred Watteau's displeasure for a
+similar reason, though in his case it was rather the fear of what he
+would do than what he did that was the cause of Watteau's displeasure.
+At the same time, the names of both Lancret and Pater are inseparable
+from that of Watteau in the history of painting, and, both in their
+choice of subject and their treatment of it, they are hardly
+distinguishable to the casual observer. Watteau, it need hardly be said,
+was far above the other two, but it was fortunate indeed that his
+romantic genius had two such gifted imitators as Lancret and Pater--or
+to put it the other way, that they had such a master to imitate, without
+whom neither their work nor their influence would have been nearly as
+great as it was.
+
+FRANCOIS BOUCHER, though doubtless influenced by Watteau, more
+especially at the outset of his brilliant career, was nevertheless
+independent of him in carrying forward the art painting in his country,
+choosing rather to revert to the patronage of the Court like his
+predecessors Le Brun, Rigaud, and Largilliere than to devote himself to
+the expression of his own ideas and feelings. Being a pupil of Francois
+Le Moine, whose principal work was the decoration of Versailles, it is
+not unnatural that Boucher should have succumbed to the influence of
+Royalty, especially when exerted in his favour by as charming and as
+powerful an agent as Madame de Pompadour. Another early influence which
+shaped his artistic tendencies as well as his fortunes was that of Carle
+van Loo, in whose honour his countrymen coined the verb _vanlotiser_--to
+frivol agreeably--- on account of the popularity which he achieved as a
+painter of elegant trifles. There is a picture by Carle van Loo in the
+Wallace Collection entitled _The Grand Turk giving a Concert to his
+Mistress_ (No. 451), painted in 1737, which is a fair example of his
+proficiency in this direction, and there are one or two portraits
+scattered about the country which he painted when over here for a few
+months towards the end of his life. He died in Paris on the 15th July
+1765, and Boucher was immediately appointed his successor as principal
+painter to Louis XV.
+
+Madame de Pompadour was more than a patron to him, she was a matron! She
+made an intimate friend and adviser of him, and it is to her that he
+owed most of his advancement at Court, which continued after her death.
+The full-length portrait of her at Hertford House (No. 418) was
+commissioned by her in 1759, and remained in her possession till her
+death in 1764. It was purchased by Lord Hertford in 1868 for 28,000
+francs. In the Jones Collection at the South Kensington Museum is
+another portrait of her, and a third in the National Gallery at
+Edinburgh, not to mention those in private collections. The two
+magnificent cartoons on the staircase at Hertford House, called the
+_Rising and Setting of the Sun_, she begged from the king. These were
+ordered in 1748 as designs to be executed in tapestry at the Manufacture
+Royale des Gobelins, by Cozette and Audran, according to the catalogue
+of the Salon in 1753 when they were exhibited. They are characterised by
+the brothers de Goncourt as _le plus grand effort du peintre, les deux
+grandes machines de son oeuvre_; and the writer of the catalogue of
+Madame de Pompadour's pictures when they were sold in 1766 testifies
+thus to the artist's own opinion of them: "J'ai entendu plusieurs fois
+dire par l'auteur qu'ils etaient du nombre de ceux dont il etait le plus
+satisfait." They were then sold for 9800 livres, and Lord Hertford paid
+20,200 francs for them in 1855.
+
+Even without these _chefs d'oeuvre_ the Wallace Collection is richer
+than any other gallery in the works of Boucher, with twenty-four
+examples (in all), of which few if any are of inferior quality. But it
+must be confessed that the abundance of Boucher's work does not enhance
+its artistic value, and we have to think of him, in comparison with
+Watteau and his school, rather as a great decorator than a great
+painter. With all his skill and charm, that is to say, there is not one
+of his canvases that we could place beside a picture by Watteau on
+anything like equal terms. Superficially it may be equally or possibly
+more attractive, but inwardly there is no comparison. Let us hear what
+Sir Joshua Reynolds has to say of him:--
+
+"Our neighbours, the French, are much in this practice of extempore
+invention, and their dexterity is such as even to excite admiration, if
+not envy; but how rarely can this praise be given to their finished
+pictures! The late Director of their Academy, Boucher, was eminent in
+this way. When I visited him some years since in France, I found him at
+work on a very large picture without drawings or models of any kind. On
+my remarking this particular circumstance, he said, when he was young,
+studying his art, he found it necessary to use models, but he had left
+them off for many years.... However, in justice, I cannot quit this
+painter without adding that in the former part of his life, when he was
+in the habit of having recourse to nature, he was not without a
+considerable degree of merit--enough to make half the painters of his
+country his imitators: he had often grace and beauty, and good skill in
+composition, but I think all under the influence of a bad taste; his
+imitators are, indeed, abominable."
+
+Twenty-one years elapsed between the birth of Boucher and the next
+painter of anything like his ability, namely, JEAN BAPTISTE GREUZE. He
+was a native of Tournous, near Macon, and lived to see the century out,
+dying in 1805, at the age of seventy-eight. His popularity is nowadays
+due chiefly to his heads of young girls, which he painted in his later
+life with admirable skill, but with a sentimentality that almost repels.
+The famous example in the National Gallery is more free from the sickly
+sweetness that spoils most of them, and reminds us that he could paint
+more serious works, and paint them exceedingly well. He first came into
+notice by pictures like _La Lecture du Bible_, _La Malediction
+Paternelle_, or _Le Fils Puni_, which are now to be seen--though
+generally passed by--at the Louvre, and his style was imitated in later
+years in England by Wheatley and others of that school with more or less
+success. It was a great blow to him, and one which seriously affected
+his career when the Academy censured his Diploma picture, _The Emperor
+Severus reproaching Caracalla_. But for this we might have had more than
+these sentimental young ladies from a hand that was undoubtedly worthy
+of better things. However, as Lord Hertford admired them sufficiently to
+include no less than twenty-one of them in his collection, we ought not
+to be severe in criticising them, and we may quote the description of
+_The Souvenir_ (No. 398) given by John Smith, in his Catalogue Raisonne
+in 1837, as showing the esteem in which it was held.
+
+"_The Souvenir._ An interesting female, about fifteen years of age,
+pressing fondly to her bosom a little red and white spaniel dog; the pet
+animal appears to remind her of some favourite object, for whose safety
+and return she is breathing an earnest wish; her fair oval countenance
+and melting eyes are directed upwards, and her ruby lips are slightly
+open; her light hair falls negligently on her shoulder, and is
+tastefully braided
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXXV.--JEAN-BAPTISTE GREUZE
+
+THE BROKEN PITCHER
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+with a crimson riband and pearls. She is attired in a morning dress,
+consisting of a loose gown and a brownish scarf, the latter of which
+hangs across her arm. Upon a tree behind her is inscribed the name of
+the painter. This beautiful production of art abounds in every
+attractive charm which gives interest to the master's works."
+
+Very different, and far superior to Greuze, was JEAN HONORE FRAGONARD,
+born at Grasse, in the Alpes Maritimes, in 1732. In England his name was
+almost unknown until within quite recent years, and the National Gallery
+has only one picture by him, which was bequeathed by George Salting in
+1910. Fortunately he is well represented in the Wallace Collection,
+three at least of the nine examples being in his most brilliant manner.
+
+Fragonard's father was a glover. In 1750 the family moved to Paris, and
+the boy was put into a notary's office. The usual signs of
+disinclination for office work and a passion for art having duly
+appeared, he was sent to Boucher, who advised him to go and study under
+Chardin. This he did for a short time, but finding it dull--for Chardin
+was not as great a teacher as he was a painter--he went back to Boucher
+as an assistant. In 1752 he won the Prix de Rome, although he had never
+attended the Academy Schools, and in 1756 started for Italy.
+
+Reynolds had just returned from Rome at the date of Fragonard's capture
+of the opportunity of going there, and we know from the _Discourses_ how
+he spent his time there and what direction his studies took. Fragonard
+pursued an exactly opposite course, being advised thereto by Boucher,
+who said to him, "If you take Michelangelo and Raphael seriously, you
+are lost." Feeling that the advice was suitable to himself, if not
+sound on general principles, Fragonard devoted himself to the lighter
+and more sparkling works of Tiepolo and others of the seventeenth and
+eighteenth centuries. He also made a tour in South Italy and Sicily with
+Hubert Robert, the landscape painter, and the Abbe Saint Non, the latter
+of whom published a number of etchings he made after Fragonard's
+drawings, under the title of _Voyages de Naples et de Sicile_.
+
+On returning to Paris in 1761 his first success was the large
+composition of _Callirhoe and Coresus_, which was exhibited at the Salon
+in 1765, and is now in the Louvre. But he soon abandoned the grand
+style, chiefly, it is probable, owing to the patronage of the idle or
+industrious rich who showered commissions upon him, for smaller and more
+sociable pictures with which to adorn and enliven their houses. The
+beautiful, but exceedingly improper picture at Hertford House, called
+_The Swing_--or in French, _Les Hazards heureux de l'Escarpolette_,
+appears to have been commissioned by the Baron de St. Julien, within the
+next year or two, for in the memoirs of Cotte a conversation is recorded
+which shows that the Baron had asked another painter, Doyen, to paint
+it. "Who would have believed," says the indignant Doyen, "that within a
+few days of my picture of Ste. Genevieve being exhibited at the Salon, a
+nobleman would have sent for me to order a picture on a subject like
+this." He then goes on to relate how the Baron explained to him exactly
+what he required. We cannot entirely acquit Fragonard of all blame in
+accepting such a commission, but he was a young man, just starting as a
+professional artist, with the example of Boucher before him, and it
+would hardly have seemed wise to begin his career by offending a noble
+patron. The whole incident throws a glaring light on the conditions
+under which the art of France flourished in the Louis Quinze period,
+when Boucher was everybody and Chardin nobody.
+
+For the real Fragonard we may turn to _Le Chiffre d'Amour_, or the "Lady
+carving an initial," as the prosaic diction of the Wallace Collection
+has it (No. 382). In this the equal delicacy of the sentiment and of the
+painting combine to effect a little masterpiece of Louis Quinze art. It
+is simple and natural, and entirely free from the besetting sins of so
+slight a picture triviality, affectation, empty prettiness, or simply
+silliness. In its way it is perfect, and for that perfection is for ever
+reserved the popularity which we find temporarily accorded to pictures
+like Frith's _Dolly Varden_ or Millais' _Bubbles_.
+
+Another of the Hertford House examples, the portrait of a Boy as
+Pierrot, is equally entitled to be popular for all time, and like
+Reynolds's _Strawberry Girl_, might well be called "one of the
+half-dozen original things" which no artist ever exceeded in his life's
+work. A comparison between the two pictures, which were probably painted
+within a few years of each other, will serve to show the difference
+between the English and French Schools at this period. On the one
+hand--to put it very shortly indeed--we see Fragonard influenced by
+Tiepolo, France, and Louis XV.; on the other, Sir Joshua, influenced by
+Michelangelo and Raphael, England, and George III.
+
+The mention of JEAN BAPTISTE SIMEON CHARDIN among this brilliant and
+frivolous galaxy seems almost out of place. "He is not so much an
+eighteenth-century French artist," Lady Dilke says of him, "as a French
+artist of pure race and type. Though he treated subjects of the
+humblest and most unpretentious class, he brought to their rendering not
+only deep feeling and a penetration which divined the innermost truths
+of the simplest forms of life, but a perfection of workmanship by which
+everything he handled was clothed with beauty." That the Wallace
+Collection includes no work from his hand is perhaps regrettable, but
+truly Chardin was someone apart from all the magnificence that dazzles
+us there. His was the treasure of the humble.
+
+The effects of the Revolution upon French painting were as surprising as
+they were great. That the gay and frivolous art of Boucher and Fragonard
+should have suddenly ceased might have been considered inevitable; but
+whereas in Holland, when the Spanish yoke had been thrown off, and a
+Republic proclaimed, a vigorous democratic school arose under Frans
+Hals; and in England during the Commonwealth the artistic influence
+which was beginning to be spread by Charles I. and Buckingham utterly
+ceased; in France an artistic Dictator arose, as we may well call him,
+in the person of JACQUES LOUIS DAVID, who not only made painting a part
+of the revolutionary propaganda, but succeeded under the Emperor
+Napoleon also in maintaining his position as painter to the Government,
+and thereby imposing on his country a style of art which had a great
+influence on the whole course of French painting for many years to come.
+But the most remarkable thing was that it was to the classics that this
+revolutioniser went for inspiration. The explanation is to be found in
+the fact that he was bitterly aggrieved by the attitude of the Academy
+to him as a young man, and in the accident of his famous picture of
+Brutus synchronising with the events of 1789. He was at once hailed as a
+deliverer, and made, as it were, painter to the Revolution.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXXVI.--FRAGONARD
+
+L'ETUDE
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+But what was even more important in the influence he exerted at this
+time was his actual appointment as President of the Convention, which
+gave him the power to revenge himself upon the Academy, which he did by
+extinguishing it in 1793, and to remove any inconvenient rivals by
+indicting them as aristocrats. Of the older painters, Fragonard and
+Greuze were the only important ones left, and as they could not under
+the altered circumstances be considered as rivals to the classical
+David, they both saw the century out. Fragonard simply ceased painting
+for want of patrons, and David was good enough to procure him a post in
+the Museum des Arts, or he would have starved. Unfortunately he
+attempted to adapt himself to the new style, and was promptly ejected
+from his post--ostensibly on his previous connection with royalty--and
+was wise enough to fly to his native town in the south.
+
+During the first quarter of the nineteenth century the dictatorship of
+David was supreme. How it was finally overthrown we shall see in another
+chapter.
+
+
+
+
+_THE ENGLISH SCHOOL_
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE EARLY PORTRAIT PAINTERS
+
+
+In the preface to the _Anecdotes of Painting_ written in 1762, Horace
+Walpole observes that this country had not a single volume to show on
+the works of its painters. "In truth," he continues, "it has very rarely
+given birth to a genius in that profession. Flanders and Holland have
+sent us the greatest men that we can boast. This very circumstance may
+with reason prejudice the reader against a work, the chief business of
+which must be to celebrate the art of a country which has produced so
+few good artists. This objection is so striking, that instead of calling
+it _The Lives of English Painters_, I have simply given it the title of
+_Anecdotes of Painting in England_."
+
+As Walpole's work was merely a compilation from the voluminous notes of
+George Vertue, a painstaking antiquary who had collected every scrap of
+information he could acquire in the early years of the eighteenth
+century, his conclusions can hardly be questioned, and the foundation of
+the English school of painting is therefore generally assumed to have
+been effected by Reynolds. But as Wren's Cathedral replaced an older one
+which was destroyed by the fire of London, and as that was reared on
+the foundation of a Roman temple, so we find that the art of painting in
+England was certainly practised in earlier times, and but for certain
+circumstances much more of it would have survived than is now to be
+found.
+
+In other countries, as we have seen, the Church was in earlier times the
+greatest if not the only patron of the arts, and there is plenty of
+evidence to show that in England, too, from the reign of Henry III.
+onwards till the Reformation, our churches were decorated with frescoes.
+This evidence is of two kinds; first, entries in royal and other
+accounts, directing payment for specified work; and secondly, the
+remains of fresco painting in our cathedrals and churches. The former is
+of little interest except to the antiquary. The latter has suffered so
+much from neglect or actual destruction as to be considered unworthy of
+the attention of either the artist in search of inspiration or the
+critic in pursuit of anything to criticise; but when every
+inconsiderable production in the little world of English art has had its
+bulky quarto written upon it, it is curious that no one has yet
+discovered what a splendid harvest awaits the investigation of these old
+frescoes all over the country.
+
+As it is, we have only to note that as religion was so important an
+influence on painting in other countries so was it in England, only
+unfortunately as a destroying and not a cherishing influence. Granting
+the probability that there were few, if any, of our English frescoes
+which would be comparable in artistic interest with those in Italy,
+where the art was so sedulously cultivated, it must nevertheless be
+remembered that only a fragment remains here and there out of all the
+work which must have been produced, and that after the Reformation even
+those works which did survive were treated with positive as well as
+negative obloquy, so that where they have been preserved at all it is
+only by having been whitewashed over or otherwise hidden and damaged.
+
+Even worse than the Reformation in 1530, was the Puritan outburst a
+century later, which not only destroyed works of art, but extinguished
+all hope of their being created. Is it to be wondered at, then, that the
+foundation of the English School of painting should have been postponed
+for a century more?
+
+At the same time it is interesting to note that the little painting
+which did creep into England in the sixteenth century, was of the very
+kind that formed the chief feature of the English School when it was
+finally established, namely portraiture. Here again we see the influence
+of religion; for to the reformed church, at least as interpreted by the
+English temperament, the second commandment was and is still second only
+in number, not in importance. To Protestant or Puritan the idea of a
+picture in a church was anathema. As late as 1766, when Benjamin West
+offered to decorate St. Paul's Cathedral with a painting of Moses
+receiving the tables of the law on Mount Sinai, the Bishop exclaimed, "I
+have heard of the proposition, and as I am head of the Cathedral of the
+Metropolis, I will not suffer the doors to be opened to introduce
+popery."
+
+The painting of a portrait, however, was a very different matter, and
+from the earliest times appears to have appealed with peculiar strength
+to the vanity of Britons. Loudly as they protested against the iniquity
+of bowing down to and worshipping the likeness of anything in heaven
+above or in the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth, they
+were never averse to giving others an opportunity of bowing down to and
+worshipping the likenesses of themselves; and while religion fostered
+the arts in other countries, self-importance kept them alive in this.
+The portrait of Richard II. in Westminster Abbey, if not actually an
+instance of this, certainly happens to seem like one.
+
+With the exception of Jan de Mabuse, who is said to have been in England
+for a short time during the reign of Henry VII., the first painter of
+any importance in this country was Hans Holbein. Hearing that money was
+to be made by painting portraits at the English Court, he forsook his
+native town, his religious art, and his wife, and came to stay with Sir
+Thomas More at Chelsea, with an introduction from Erasmus. Arriving in
+1527, he started business by making a sketch in pen and ink of More's
+entire family, with which marvellous work, still preserved in the Museum
+at Basle, the history of modern English painting may fairly be said to
+have begun; for though it was long before a native of England was
+forthcoming who was of sufficient force to carry on the tradition, the
+seed was sown, and in due course the plant appeared, and after many
+vicissitudes, at last flourished.
+
+The immediate effect may be noted by mentioning here the names of
+GUILLIM STREETES, who was possibly English born, and JOHN BETTES who
+certainly was. To the former is attributed the large whole-length
+portrait at Hampton Court of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, in a suit of
+bright red. Another portrait of Howard belongs to the Duke of Norfolk,
+having been presented to his ancestor by Sir Robert Walpole. Both were
+exhibited at the Tudor Exhibition in 1892. Streetes was painter to King
+Edward VI., and according to Stype he was paid fifty marks, in 1551,
+"for recompense of three great tables whereof two were the pictures of
+his Highness sent to Sir Thomas Hoby and Sir John Mason (ambassadors
+abroad), the third a picture of the late Earl of Surrey attainted, and
+by the Councils' commandment fetched from the said Guillim's house."
+Horace Walpole was under the impression that this was the Duke of
+Norfolk's picture, but the Hampton Court Catalogue claims the other one
+as the work of Streetes.
+
+In the National Gallery is a bust portrait of Edmund Butts, physician to
+Henry VIII., which is inscribed _faict par Johan Bettes Anglois_, and
+with the date 1545. In this the influence of Holbein is certainly
+discernible, though not all pervading. There were two brothers, THOMAS
+and JOHN BETTES who are mentioned by Meres with several other English
+painters in _Palladis Tamia_, published in 1598--"As Greece had moreover
+their painters, so in England we have also these, William and Francis
+Segar, brethren, Thomas and John Bettes, Lockie, Lyne, Peake, Peter
+Cole, Arnolde, Marcus (Mark Garrard)," etc. Walpole, quoting this, adds,
+"I quote this passage to prove to those who learn one or two names by
+rote that every old picture you see is not by Holbein." At the same time
+it must be admitted that until some considerable fund of information
+concerning these early days of painting is brought to light, there is
+very little to be said about any one except Holbein till almost the end
+of the sixteenth century.
+
+That Holbein was "a wonderful artist," as More wrote to Erasmus, is not
+to be denied. But in placing him among the very greatest, we must not
+forget that his range was somewhat limited. We might nowadays call him a
+specialist, for in England he painted nothing but portraits, and very
+few of his pictures contained anything besides the single figure, or
+head, of the subject. The famous exception is the large picture called
+_The Ambassadors_, which was purchased at an enormous price from the
+Longford Castle collection, and is now in the National Gallery.
+Important and interesting as this is as showing us how Holbein could
+fill a large canvas, there is no doubt that he is far happier in simple
+portraiture, and that the L60,000 expended on _Christina Duchess of
+Milan_ was, relatively, a better investment for the nation. In the
+famous half-lengths like the _George Gisze_ at Berlin (which was painted
+in London) and the _Man with the Hawk_, where the portrait is surrounded
+by accessories, Holbein is perhaps at his very best; but it is as a
+painter of heads, simply, that he influenced the English School, and set
+an example which, alas! has never been attainable since.
+
+For one thing, which is apart altogether from talent or genius,
+Holbein's method was never followed in later times, namely, the practice
+of making carefully finished drawings in crayon before painting a
+portrait in oils. He was a wonderful draughtsman, and in the series of
+over eighty drawings at Windsor we have even more life-like images of
+the persons represented than their finished portraits. I am not aware
+that any portrait drawings exists of Holbein's contemporaries or
+successors in England earlier than one or two by Van Dyck. There are a
+good many belonging to the seventeenth century, but with one or two
+exceptions they are little more than sketches. And though sketches have
+only survived by accident, as it were, not being intended for anything
+more than the artist's own purposes, finished drawings would have been
+kept, like Holbein's, with much greater care.
+
+In a word, then, Holbein's first and chief business was in rendering the
+likeness of the sitter. Being a
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXXVII.--HANS HOLBEIN
+
+ANNE OF CLEVES
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+born genius, he accomplished far more than this; but it is important in
+tracing the development of the English School of painting to remember
+that its origin was not in the idealization of religious sentiment, but
+in the realization of the human features. From the time of the first
+great genius to that of the next, exactly a century later, there is
+hardly a portrait in existence that is valued for anything but its
+historic or personal interest. Between Holbein and Van Dyck is a great
+gap, in which the only names of Englishmen are those of the
+miniaturists, Hilliard and Oliver, who were veritably of the seed of
+Holbein, but only in little.
+
+Van Dyck struck deeper into the English soil, and loosened it
+sufficiently for the growth of larger stuff, if still somewhat coarse,
+like the work of William Dobson and Robert Walker. To Van Dyck succeeded
+Peter Lely, who boldly and worthily assumed the mantle of Van Dyck, and
+kept English portraiture alive throughout the dismal period of the
+Commonwealth. After the Restoration he was still in power, and under him
+flourished one or two painters of English birth, like Greenhill and
+Riley, who in turn gave way to others under Kneller without ceding the
+monopoly to foreigners. From these came Jervas, Richardson, and, most
+important, Hudson, who was Reynolds's master, and so we arrive at the
+beginning of what is now generally known as the English School.
+
+Another source, however, must here be mentioned as joining the main
+stream, and contributing a solid body of water to it, chiefly below the
+surface, namely the art of WILLIAM HOGARTH. Being essentially English,
+and without any artistic forefathers, it is not surprising that he left
+less perceptible impressions on his immediate successors than the more
+accomplished and educated Reynolds; but the solid force of his
+character, as exemplified in his career and his works, is hardly a less
+important factor in the development of the English School, while from
+his outspoken opinions on the state of the arts in his time he is one of
+the most valuable sources of its history.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+WILLIAM HOGARTH
+
+
+WILLIAM HOGARTH occupies a curious position in the history of English
+painting. There was nothing ever quite like him in any country--except
+Greuze in France; for though a comparison between two such opposites,
+seems at first sight absurd, it must be remembered that French and
+English painting in the middle of the eighteenth century were no less
+far apart. Both Greuze and Hogarth, in their own fashion, tried to
+preach moral lessons in paint, the one in the over-refined atmosphere of
+French surroundings, the other in the coarse language of England in his
+time.
+
+Hogarth's chief characteristic was his blunt, honest, bull-dog
+Englishness, which at the particular moment of his appearance on the
+artistic stage was a quality which was eminently serviceable to English
+painting. Though of humble parents, his honest and forceful character
+won for him the daughter of Sir James Thornhill in marriage (by
+elopement) and his sturdy talent in painting secured for him his
+father-in-law's forgiveness and encouragement. Thornhill came of a good,
+old Wiltshire family, and had been knighted by George I. for his
+sterling merits as much as for his skill in painting and decorating the
+royal palaces and the houses of noblemen. His place among English
+artists is not a very high one, but he deserves the credit of having
+stood out against the monopoly that was being established by foreigners
+in this country in every department of artistic work, and in this sense
+he is a still earlier forerunner of the great English painters, than his
+more forcible son-in-law.
+
+If Hogarth had been content to follow the beaten track of portraiture as
+his main pursuit, and let the country's morals take care of themselves,
+he would in all probability have attained much greater heights as a
+painter. But his nature would not allow him to do this. His character
+was too strong and his originality too uncontrollable. There is enough
+evidence among the works which have survived him, especially in those
+which were never finished, to show that his accomplishments in oil
+painting were of a very high order indeed. I need only refer to the
+famous head in the National Gallery known as _The Shrimp Girl_ to
+explain what I mean. In this surprisingly vivacious and charming sketch
+we see something that is not inferior to Hals, in its broad truth and
+its quick seizure of the essentials of what had to be rendered. In
+another unfinished piece, which is now in the South London Art Gallery
+at Camberwell, we see the same powerful qualities differently exhibited,
+for it is not a single head this time, but a sketch of a ballroom where
+everybody is dancing, except one gentleman who is even more vivid than
+the rest, in the act of mopping his head at the open window. There is
+nothing grotesque in this picture, but it is all perfectly life-like and
+wonderfully sketched in.
+
+In his finished pictures Hogarth does not appear to such great
+advantage--I mean as a painter; but it must be remembered that in his
+day there was little example for him to follow in the higher departments
+of his art. Nor had he ever been out of England to see fine pictures on
+the Continent. Not only this, but as his work was intended especially to
+appeal to ordinary people, it is hardly to be expected that he would
+express himself in terms other than might most quickly appeal to them.
+His most famous works, indeed, were executed as well as designed for the
+engraver, namely _The Harlot's Progress_, _The Rake's Progress_,
+_Marriage a la Mode_, and _The Election_, each of which consisted of a
+series of several minutely finished pictures. In portraiture he showed
+finer qualities, it is true; but even in these he was thinking more of
+getting the most out of his model, according to his forcible character,
+than of any technical refinements for which he might be handed down to
+posterity as a great painter.
+
+It was easy enough for Reynolds to sneer at Hogarth for his vulgarity,
+when he was trying to impress upon his pupils the importance of painting
+in the grand style. "As for the various departments of painting," he
+says in his third Discourse, "which do not presume to make such high
+pretensions, they are many. None of them are without their merit, though
+none enter into competition with this universal presiding idea of the
+art. The painters who have applied themselves more particularly to low
+and vulgar characters, and who express with precision the various shades
+of passion as they are exhibited by vulgar minds (such as we see in the
+works of Hogarth), deserve great praise; but as their genius has been
+employed on low and confined subjects, the praise which we must give
+must be as limited as its object." And yet it was in following an
+example set by Hogarth in portrait painting that Reynolds gained his
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXXVIII.--WILLIAM HOGARTH
+
+THE SHRIMP GIRL
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+first success in that art. I mean the full-length portrait of Captain
+Keppel, painted in 1752. This originality and boldness in disregarding
+the tame but universal convention in posing the sitter was peculiarly
+Hogarth's own. With him it amounted almost to perverseness. He would not
+let anybody "sit" to him, if he could help it. When he did, as in the
+portraits of Quinn, the actor, and Hoadly, Bishop of Winchester, in the
+National Gallery, the result is not the happiest; for, with all their
+force, these portraits lack the grace that a conventional pose requires
+to render it acceptable in the terms of its convention. If a man must
+put on the accepted evening dress of his time, he must see that it
+conforms in the spirit as well as in the letter of the fashion, or he
+will only look like a dressed-up greengrocer. Hogarth was too sturdy and
+too wilful to put on court clothes. If he had to, he struggled with
+them.
+
+Hogarth's father was a man of literary tastes, and a scholar. He had
+written a supplement to Littleton's Latin Dictionary, but was unable to
+get it published. "I saw the difficulties," writes the artist, "under
+which my father laboured; the many inconveniences he endured from his
+dependence, living chiefly on his pen, and the cruel treatment he met
+with from booksellers and printers. I had before my eyes the precarious
+situation of men of classical education; it was therefore conformable to
+my wishes that I was taken from school and served a long apprenticeship
+to a silver-plate engraver." This is printed in Allan Cunningham's _Life
+of Hogarth_, together with many more extracts from autobiographical
+memoranda, from which we may learn at first hand a great deal of
+information bearing on the state of painting at this period, and the
+circumstances under which it received such a stimulus from Hogarth,
+before the sun had fully risen (in the person of Reynolds) to illumine
+the whole period of British art.
+
+"As I had naturally a good eye and fondness for drawing," Hogarth
+continues, "_shows_ of all sorts gave me uncommon pleasure when young,
+and mimicry, common to all children, was remarkable in me. An early
+access to a neighbouring painter drew my attention from play, and I was
+at every possible opportunity engaged in making drawings.... My
+exercises at school were more remarkable for the ornaments which adorned
+them than for the exercise itself. In the former I soon found that
+blockheads with better memories would soon surpass me, but for the
+latter I was particularly distinguished.
+
+"The painting of St. Paul's and Greenwich Hospital, which were at that
+time going on, ran in my head, and I determined that silver-plate
+engraving should be followed no longer than necessity obliged me to it.
+Engraving on copper was, at twenty years of age, my utmost ambition. To
+attain that it was necessary that I should learn to draw objects
+something like nature, instead of the monsters of heraldry, and the
+common methods of study were much too tedious for one who loved his
+pleasure and came so late to it.... This led me to consider whether a
+shorter road than that usually travelled was not to be found.... I had
+learned by practice to copy with tolerable correctness in the ordinary
+way, but it occurred to me that there were many disadvantages attending
+this method of study, as having faulty originals, etc.; and even when
+the prints or pictures to be imitated were by the best masters, it was
+little more than pouring water out of one vessel into another. Many
+reasons led me to wish that I could find a shorter path--fix forms and
+characters in my mind--and, instead of copying the lines, try to read
+the language, and if possible find the grammar of the art, by bringing
+into one focus the various observations I had made, and then trying by
+my power on the canvas how far my plan enabled me to combine and apply
+them to practice....
+
+"I had one material advantage over my competitors, viz., the early habit
+I acquired of retaining in my mind's eye, without coldly copying on the
+spot, whatever I intended to imitate.... Instead of burdening the memory
+with musty rules, or tiring the eye with copying dry or damaged
+pictures, I have ever found studying from nature the shortest and safest
+way of obtaining knowledge in my art...."
+
+"I entertained some thoughts," he writes again, "of succeeding in what
+the puffers in books call the great style of history painting, so that,
+without having had a stroke of this grand business before, I quitted
+small portraits and familiar conversations, and with a smile at my own
+temerity commenced history painter, and on a great staircase at St.
+Bartholomew's Hospital painted two Scripture stories, _The Pool of
+Bethesda_ and _The Good Samaritan_, with figures seven feet high. These
+I presented to the charity, and thought that they might serve as a
+specimen to show that, were there an inclination in England for
+encouraging historical pictures, such a first essay might prove the
+painting them more easily attainable than is generally imagined. But as
+Religion, the great promoter of this style in other countries, rejected
+it in England, and I was unwilling to sink into a
+portrait-manufacturer--and still ambitious of being singular, I soon
+dropped all expectations of advantage from that source, and returned to
+the pursuit of my former dealings with the public at large."
+
+Few seemed disposed to recognise, in any of Hogarth's works, a higher
+aim than that of raising a laugh. Somerville, the poet, dedicated his
+_Rural Games_ to Hogarth in these words--"Permit me, Sir, to make choice
+of you for my patron, being the greatest master in the burlesque way.
+Your province is the town--leave me a small outride in the country, and
+I shall be content." Fielding had a different opinion of his merits: "He
+who would call the ingenious Hogarth a burlesque painter would in my
+opinion do him very little honour, for sure it is much easier, much less
+the subject of admiration, to paint a man with a nose, or any other
+feature of a preposterous size, or to expose him in some absurd or
+monstrous attitude, than to express the affections of man on canvas. It
+hath been thought a vast commendation of a painter to say his figures
+seem to breathe, but surely it is a much greater and nobler applause
+that they appear to think."
+
+In answer to criticism of his _Analysis of Beauty_, Hogarth writes:
+"Among other crimes of which I am accused, it is asserted that I have
+abused the 'Great Masters'; this is far from being just. So far from
+attempting to lower the ancients, I have always thought, and it is
+universally admitted, that they knew some fundamental principles in
+nature which enabled them to produce works that have been the admiration
+of succeeding ages; but I have not allowed this merit to those
+leaden-headed imitators, who, having no consciousness of either symmetry
+or propriety, have attempted to mend nature, and in their truly ideal
+figures, gave similar proportions to a Mercury and a Hercules."
+
+Another and a better spirit influenced him in the following passage--he
+is proposing to seek the principles of beauty in nature instead of
+looking for them in mere learning. His words are plain, direct, and
+convincing. "Nature is simple, plain, and true in all her works, and
+those who strictly adhere to her laws, and closely attend to her
+appearances in their infinite varieties are guarded against any
+prejudicial bias from truth; while those who have seen many things that
+they cannot well understand, and read many books which they do not fully
+comprehend, notwithstanding all their parade of knowledge, are apt to
+wander about it and about it; perplexing themselves and their readers
+with the various opinions of other men. As to those painters who have
+written treatises on painting, they were in general too much taken up
+with giving rules for the operative part of the art, to enter into
+physical disquisitions on the nature of the objects."
+
+After this it would be unfair to withhold the praise of Benjamin West
+(who succeeded Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy)--a painter,
+prudent in speech, and frugal in commendation. "I remember, when I was a
+lad," says Smith, in his account of Nollekens, "asking the late
+venerable President West what he thought of Hogarth's _Analysis of
+Beauty_, and his answer was, 'It is a work of the highest value to
+everyone studying the art. Hogarth was a strutting consequential little
+man, and made himself many enemies by that book; but now that most of
+them are dead, it is examined by disinterested readers, unbiassed by
+personal animosities, and will be more and more read, studied and
+understood.'"
+
+In his memoranda respecting the establishment of an Academy of Art in
+England, Hogarth writes well and wisely. Voltaire asserts that after
+the establishment of the French Academy not one work of genius appeared,
+for all the painters became mannerists and imitators. Hogarth agrees
+with him, declaring that "the institution will serve to raise and
+pension a few bustling and busy men, whose whole employment will be to
+tell a few simple students when a leg is too long, or an arm too short.
+More will flock to the study of art than genius sends; the hope of
+profit, or the thirst of distinction, will induce parents to push their
+offspring into the lecture-room, and many will appear and but few be
+worthy. The paintings of Italy form a sort of ornamental fringe to their
+gaudy religion, and Rome is the general storeshop of Europe. The arts
+owe much to Popery, and Popery owes much of its universality to the
+arts. The French have attained to a sort of foppish magnificence in art;
+in Holland, selfishness is the ruling passion, and in England vanity is
+united with selfishness. Portrait-painting, therefore, has succeeded,
+and ever will succeed better in England than in any other country, and
+the demand will continue as new faces come into the market.
+
+"Portrait painting is one of the ministers of vanity, and vanity is a
+munificent patroness; historical painting seeks to revive the memory of
+the dead, and the dead are very indifferent paymasters. Paintings are
+plentiful enough in England to keep us from the study of nature; but
+students who confine their studies to the works of the dead, need never
+hope to live themselves; they will learn little more than the names of
+the painters: true painting can only be learnt in one school, and that
+is kept by Nature."
+
+Hogarth disliked a formal school, says Cunningham, because he was the
+pupil of nature, and foresaw that students would flock to it from the
+feeling of trade rather than the impulse of genius, and that it become a
+manufactory for conventional forms and hereditary graces. Opulent
+collectors were filling their galleries with the religious paintings of
+the Romish Church, and vindicating their purchases by representing these
+works as the only patterns of all that is noble in art and worthy of
+imitation. Hogarth perceived that all this was not according to the
+natural spirit of the nation; he well knew that our island had not yet
+poured out its own original mind in art, as it had done in poetry; and
+he felt assured that such a time would come, if native genius were not
+overlaid systematically by mock patrons and false instructors.
+
+"As a painter," says Walpole, "Hogarth has slender merit." "What is the
+merit of a painter?" Cunningham concludes. "If it be to represent
+life--to give us an image of man--to exhibit the workings of his
+heart--to record the good and evil of his nature--to set in motion
+before us the very beings with whom earth is peopled--to shake us with
+mirth--to sadden us with woeful reflection--to please us with natural
+grouping, vivid action, and vigorous colouring--Hogarth has done all
+this--and if he that has done so be not a painter, who will show us
+one?"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS AND THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
+
+
+Whether or not SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS is entitled to be ranked among the
+very greatest painters, there can be no question that he has a place
+among the most famous, not only on account of his actual painting, but
+also because of the influence exerted by his whole-hearted devotion to
+his art, and his strong character in forming, out of such unpromising
+elements, a really vigorous school of painting in this country. The
+example he set in the strenuous exercise of his profession, the precepts
+he laid down for the guidance of students, and the dignity with which he
+invested the whole practice of painting which, until he came, had
+degenerated into a mere business, were of incalculable benefit to his
+own and succeeding ages, and Edmund Burke was paying him no empty
+compliment but only stating the bare truth when he said that Sir Joshua
+Reynolds was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant
+arts to the other glories of his country.
+
+Joshua Reynolds was born at Plympton in Devonshire on the 16th July
+1723; the son of the Rev. Samuel Reynolds and his wife Theophila Potter.
+He was on every side connected with the Church, for both his father and
+his grandfather were in holy orders, his mother was the daughter of a
+clergyman, and his maternal grandmother also. His father's elder
+brother, too, was a clergyman, a fellow of Eton College and Canon of St.
+Peter's, Exeter. So that here, as in Italy, we start with a basis of
+religion.
+
+The young artist's first essays were made in copying several little
+things done by his elder sisters, and he afterwards took great delight
+in copying such prints as he met with in his father's books,
+particularly those in Plutarch's _Lives_, and in Jacob Cats's _Book of
+Emblems_, which his great-grandmother by his father's side, a Dutch
+woman, had brought from Holland. When he was only eight years old he
+read with great avidity a book called _The Jesuits Perspective_, an
+architectural, not a religious work, and made himself so completely
+master of it that he never afterwards had occasion to study any other
+treatise on the subject. In fact, a drawing which he then made of
+Plympton School so filled his father with wonder that he said to him,
+"Now this exemplifies what the author of the _Perspective_ says in his
+preface--that by observing the rules laid down in his book a man may do
+wonders, for this is wonderful!"
+
+From these attempts he proceeded to draw likenesses of his friends and
+relations with tolerable success. But what most strongly confirmed him
+in his love of the art was Richardson's _Treatise on Painting_, the
+perusal of which so delighted and inflamed his mind, that Raphael
+appeared to him superior to the most illustrious names of ancient or
+modern times--a notion which he loved to indulge all the rest of his
+life.
+
+Before he was eighteen years old his father placed him as a pupil with
+Thomas Hudson, who was then the most distinguished portrait-painter in
+England; but having some disagreement with his master, the young man
+returned to Devonshire, where he practised portrait painting with more
+or less success until in 1749 he accompanied Admiral Keppel to the
+Mediterranean, and remained for two or three years studying the old
+masters in Italy.
+
+As this period of Reynold's career had so determining an influence not
+only on himself but on the whole course of the history of painting in
+England--inasmuch as it formed the greater part of the groundwork of his
+discourses when President of the Royal Academy, it is worth having an
+account of it at first hand from the painter himself. "It has frequently
+happened," he says, "as I was informed by the Keeper of the Vatican,
+that many of those whom he had conducted through the various apartments
+of that edifice when about to be dismissed, have asked for the works of
+Raphael, and would not believe that they had already passed through the
+room where they are preserved, so little impression had those
+performances made on them. One of the first painters now in France once
+told me that this circumstance happened to himself, though he now looks
+on Raphael with that veneration which he deserves from all painters and
+lovers of the art. I remember very well my own disappointment when I
+first visited the the Vatican: but on confessing my feelings to a
+brother student, of whose ingenuousness I had a high opinion, he
+acknowledged that the works of Raphael had the same effect on him, or
+rather that they did not produce the effect which he expected. This was
+a great relief to my mind, and on inquiry further of other students I
+found that those persons only who from natural imbecility appeared to be
+incapable of ever relishing those divine performances, made pretensions
+to instantaneous raptures on first beholding them.
+
+"In justice to myself, however, I must add that though disappointed and
+mortified at not finding myself enraptured with the works of this great
+master, I did not for a moment conceive or suppose that the name of
+Raphael, and those admirable paintings in particular, owed their
+reputation to the ignorance and prejudice of mankind; on the contrary,
+my not relishing them as I was conscious I ought to have done was one of
+the most humiliating circumstances that ever happened to me. I found
+myself in the midst of works executed upon principles with which I was
+unacquainted: I felt my ignorance, and stood abashed. All the indigested
+notions of painting which I had brought with me from England where the
+art was in the lowest state it had ever been in (it could not indeed be
+lower) were to be totally done away and eradicated from my mind. It was
+necessary, as it is expressed on a very solemn occasion, that I should
+become _as a little child_.
+
+"Notwithstanding my disappointment, I proceeded to copy some of those
+excellent works. I viewed them again and again; I even affected to feel
+their merit and to admire them more than I really did. In a short time a
+new taste and new perceptions began to dawn upon me, and I was convinced
+that I had originally formed a false opinion of the perfection of art,
+and that this great painter was well entitled to the high rank which he
+holds in the estimation of the world."
+
+"When I was at Venice," he writes in a note on Du Fresnoy's _Art of
+Painting_ about the chiaroscuro of Titian, Paul Veronese and Tintoretto,
+"the method I took to avail myself of their principles was this. When I
+observed an extraordinary effect of light and shade in any picture, I
+took a leaf of my pocket-book and darkened every part of it in the same
+gradation of light and shade as the picture, leaving the white paper
+untouched to represent the light, and this without any attention to the
+subject or to the drawing of the figures. After a few experiments I
+found the paper blotted nearly alike; their general practice appeared to
+be to allow not above a quarter of the picture for the light, including
+in this portion both the principal and secondary lights; another quarter
+to be as dark as possible, and the remaining half kept in mezzotint or
+half shadow.
+
+"Rubens appears to have admitted rather more light than a quarter, and
+Rembrandt much less, scarce an eighth; by this conduct Rembrandt's light
+is extremely brilliant, but it costs too much, the rest of the picture
+is sacrificed to this one object."
+
+The results of these studies in Rome and Venice were at once observable
+on his return to England in the beautiful portrait of _Giuseppe Marchi_,
+one of the treasures belonging to the Royal Academy. It was altogether
+too much for the ignorant British artists, and it excited lively
+comment. What chiefly attracted the public notice, however, was the
+whole-length portrait which he painted of his friend and patron Admiral
+Keppel. On the appearance of this Reynolds was not only universally
+acknowledged to be at the head of his profession, but to be the greatest
+painter that England had seen since Van Dyck. The whole interval, as
+Malone observes, between the time of Charles I. and the conclusion of
+the reign of George II. seemed to be annihilated, and the only question
+was whether the new painter or Van Dyck were the more excellent.
+Reynolds very soon saw how much animation might be obtained by deviating
+from the insipid manner of his immediate predecessors, and instead of
+confining himself to mere likeness he dived, as it were, into the minds
+and habits and manners of those who sat to him, and accordingly the
+majority of his portraits are so appropriate and characteristic that the
+many illustrious persons whom he has delineated are almost as well known
+to us as if we had seen and conversed with them.
+
+Very soon after his return from Italy his acquaintance with Dr Johnson
+commenced, and their intimacy continued uninterrupted to the time of
+Johnson's death. How much he profited thereby, especially in the
+practice of art, he has recorded in a paper which was intended to form a
+part of one of his discourses. "I remember," he writes, "Mr Burke
+speaking of the _Essays_ of Sir Francis Bacon, said he thought them the
+best of his works. Dr Johnson was of opinion 'that their excellence and
+their value consisted in being the observations of a strong mind
+operating upon life; and in consequence you find there what you seldom
+find in other books,' It is this kind of excellence which gives a value
+to the performances of artists also.... The observations which he made
+on poetry, on life, and on everything about us, I applied to our art;
+with what success others must judge. Perhaps an artist in his studies
+should pursue the same conduct, and instead of patching up a particular
+work on the narrow plan of imitation, rather endeavour to acquire the
+art and power of thinking."
+
+In another passage from his memoranda, quoted by Malone, Sir Joshua lets
+us into some more of the secrets of his pre-eminence in his art, both of
+painter and preceptor: for we are to remember that the British School of
+painting owes more to the influence of Reynolds than perhaps any other
+school to the example of one man:--
+
+"I considered myself as playing a great game," he writes, "and instead
+of beginning to save money, I laid it out faster than I got it in,
+purchasing the best examples of art that could be procured; for I even
+borrowed money for this purpose. The possessing portraits by Titian, Van
+Dyck, Rembrandt, etc., I considered as the best kind of wealth. By
+studying carefully the works of great masters, this advantage is
+obtained--we find that certain niceties of expression are capable of
+being executed, which otherwise we might suppose beyond the reach of
+art. This gives us a confidence in ourselves, and we are thus incited to
+endeavour at not only the same happiness of execution but also at other
+congenial excellencies. Study indeed consists in learning to see nature,
+and may be called the art of using other men's minds. By this kind of
+contemplation and exercise we are taught to think in their way, and
+sometimes to attain their excellence. Thus, for instance, if I had never
+seen any of the works of Correggio, I should never perhaps have remarked
+in nature the expression which I find in one of his pieces; or if I had
+remarked it I might have thought it too difficult, or perhaps impossible
+to be executed.
+
+"My success and continual improvement in my art (if I may be allowed
+that expression), may be ascribed in a good measure to a principle which
+I will boldly recommend to imitation; I mean the principle of honesty;
+which in this as in all other instances is according to the vulgar
+proverb certainly the best policy: I always endeavoured to do my best.
+
+"My principal labour was employed on the whole together, and I was never
+weary of changing and trying different modes and different effects. I
+had always some scheme in my mind, and a perpetual desire to advance. By
+constantly endeavouring to do my best, I acquired a power of doing that
+with spontaneous facility that which at first was the effort of my whole
+mind."
+
+"I had not an opportunity of being early initiated in the principles of
+colouring"; he continues, "no man indeed could teach me. If I have never
+been settled with respect to colouring, let it at the same time be
+remembered that my unsteadiness in this respect proceeded from an
+inordinate desire to possess every kind of excellence that I ever saw in
+the works of others, without considering that there are in colouring, as
+in style, excellencies which are incompatible with each other.... I
+tried every effect of colour, and by leaving out every colour in its
+turn, showed every colour that I could do without it. As I alternately
+left out every
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XXXIX.--SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS
+
+LADY COCKBURN AND HER CHILDREN
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+colour, I tried every new colour; and often, as is well known,
+failed.... My fickleness in the mode of colouring arose from an eager
+desire to attain the highest excellence."
+
+In the year 1759 Reynolds began to write, and three of his essays were
+printed in the _Idler_, which was conducted by Dr. Johnson. Northcote
+records that at the same time he committed to paper a variety of remarks
+which afterwards served him as hints for his discourses. One or two of
+these will give us as good an idea as we are likely to get from
+elsewhere of what are the first requisites of a successful painter.
+
+"It is absolutely necessary that a painter, as the first requisite,
+should endeavour as much as possible to form to himself an idea of
+perfection not only of beauty, but of what is perfection in a picture.
+This conception he should always have fixed in his view, and unless he
+has this view we shall never see any approaches towards perfection in
+his works; for it will not come by chance.
+
+"If a man has nothing of that which is called genius, that is, if he is
+not carried away, if I may so say, by the animation, the fire of
+enthusiasm, all the rules in the world will never make him a painter.
+
+"He who possesses genius is enabled to see a real value in those things
+which others disregard and overlook. He perceives a difference in cases
+where inferior capacities see none; as the fine ear for music can
+distinguish an evident variation in sounds which to another ear more
+dull seem to be the same. This example will also apply to the eye in
+respect to colouring."
+
+In the beginning of the year 1760, Reynolds moved into the house on the
+west side of Leicester Square which he occupied for the rest of his
+life. It is now tenanted by Messrs. Puttick & Simpson, the Auctioneers.
+Northcote has usefully recorded the following details his studio. His
+painting-room was of an octagonal form, about twenty feet long and about
+sixteen in breath. The window which gave the light to this room was
+square, and not much larger than one half the size of a common window in
+a private house, whilst the lower part of this window was nine feet four
+inches from the floor. The chair for his sitters was raised eighteen
+inches from the floor, and turned round on castors. His palettes were
+those which are held by a handle, not those held on the thumb. The
+sticks of his pencils (brushes) were long, measuring about nineteen
+inches. He painted in that part of the room nearest the window, and
+never sat down when he worked. As the actual methods of a great artist
+are possibly of more value in a history of painting than the subjects,
+or even the prices, of his pictures, I venture to quote the following
+extracts from various parts of Sir Joshua's own memoranda:--
+
+Never give the least touch with your pencil (_i.e._ brush) till you have
+present in your mind a perfect idea of your future work.
+
+Paint at the greatest possible distance from your sitter, and place the
+picture ... near to the sitter, or sometimes under him, so as to see
+both together.
+
+In beautiful faces keep the whole circumference about the eye in a
+mezzotinto, as seen in the works of Guido and the best of Carlo Maratti.
+
+Endeavour to look at the subject or sitter from which you are painting,
+as if it was a picture. This will in some degree render it more easy to
+be copied.
+
+In painting consider the object before you, whatever it may be, as more
+made out by light and shadow than by lines.
+
+A student should begin his career by a careful finishing and making out
+the parts; as practice will give him freedom and facility of hand: a
+bold and unfinished manner is commonly the habit of old age.
+
+On painting a head--
+
+Let those parts which turn or retire from the eye be of broken or mixed
+colours, as being less distinguished and nearer the borders.
+
+Let all your shadows be of one colour: glaze them till they are so.
+
+Use red colours in the shadows of the most delicate complexions, but
+with discretion.
+
+Contrive to have a screen with red or yellow colour on it, to reflect
+the light on the shaded part of the sitter's face.
+
+Avoid the chalk, the brick dust, and the charcoal, and think on a pearl
+and a ripe peach.
+
+Avoid long continued lines in the eyes, and too many sharp ones.
+
+Take care to give your figure a sweep or sway.
+
+Outlines in waves, soft, and almost imperceptible against the
+background.
+
+Never make the contour too coarse.
+
+Avoid also those outlines and lines which are equal, which make
+parallels, triangles, etc.
+
+The parts which are nearest to the eye appear most enlightened, deeper
+shadowed, and better seen.
+
+Keep broad lights and shadows, and also principal lights and shadows.
+
+Where there is the deepest shadow it is accompanied by the brightest
+light.
+
+Let nothing start out or be too strong for its place.
+
+Squareness has grandeur; it gives firmness to the forms; a serpentine
+line in comparison appears feeble and tottering.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One is apt to forget in these enlightened days how greatly the art of
+painting benefited by the establishment of public exhibitions.
+Farington's observations on this point, occasioned by the inauguration
+of the exhibitions at the Society of Arts from 1760, until the
+foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768, are both instructive and
+amusing.
+
+"The history of our exhibitions," he says "affords the strongest
+evidence of their impressive effect upon public taste. At their
+commencement, though men of enlightened minds could distinguish and
+appreciate what was excellent, the admiration of the _many_ was confined
+to subjects either gross or puerile, and commonly to the meanest efforts
+of intellect; whereas at this time (1819) the whole train of subjects
+most popular in the earlier exhibitions have disappeared. The loaf and
+cheese that could provoke hunger, the cat and canary bird, and the dead
+mackerel on a deal board, have long ceased to produce astonishment and
+delight; while truth of imitation now finds innumerable admirers though
+combined with the highest qualities of beauty, grandeur and taste.
+
+"To our public exhibitions, and to arrangements that followed in
+consequence of their introduction this change must be chiefly
+attributed. The present generation appears to be composed of a new and,
+at least with respect to the arts, a superior order of beings. Generally
+speaking, their thoughts, their feelings and language, differ entirely
+from what they were sixty years ago. The state of the public mind,
+incapable of discriminating excellence from inferiority proved
+incontrovertibly that a right sense of art in the spectator can only be
+acquired by long and frequent observation, and that without proper
+opportunities to improve the mind and the eye, a nation would continue
+insensible of the true value of the fine arts."
+
+In view of these very pertinent observations it is worth inquiring a
+little as to the origin of exhibitions in England, and the stimulus
+given by them to British art before the institution of the Royal
+Academy. From the introduction to book written by Edward Edwards, in
+continuation of Walpole's "Anecdotes of Painters," and published in
+1808, I extract the following account of them, as far as possible using
+his own quaint phraseology.
+
+Although the study of the human form had long been cultivated and
+encouraged in Italy and France by national schools or academies, yet in
+England until the eighteenth century such seminaries were unknown; and
+it is therefore difficult to trace the origin or ascertain the precise
+period when those nurseries of art were first attempted in this country,
+especially as every establishment of that kind was, at first, of a
+private and temporary nature, depending chiefly upon the protection of
+some artist of rank and reputation in his day. The first attempt towards
+the establishment of an academy is mentioned by Walpole as having been
+formed by several artists under Sir Godfrey Kneller in 1711. Afterwards
+we find, by other accounts in the same author, which are corroborated by
+authentic information, that Sir James Thornhill formed an academy in his
+own house, in the Piazza, Covent Garden. But this was not of long
+duration, for it commenced in 1724 and died in 1734; which reduced the
+artists again to seek some new seminary; for the public of that day were
+so little acquainted with the use of such schools, that they were even
+suspected of being held for immoral purposes.
+
+After the death of Thornhill a few of the artists (chiefly foreigners),
+finding themselves without the necessary example of the living model,
+formed a small society and established their regular meetings of study
+in a convenient apartment in Greyhound Court, Arundel Street. The
+principal conductor of this school was Michael Moser, who when the Royal
+Academy was established was appointed keeper. Here they were visited by
+artists such as Hogarth, Wills, and Ellis, who were so well pleased with
+the propriety of their conduct, and so thoroughly convinced of the
+utility of the institution, that a general union took place, and the
+members thereby becoming numerous, they required and sought for a more
+convenient situation and accommodation for their school. By the year
+1739 they were settled in Peter's Court, St Martin's Lane, where the
+study of the human figure was carried on till 1767, when they removed to
+Pall Mall.
+
+But a permanent and conspicuous establishment was still wanting, and on
+this account the principal artists had several meetings with a view to
+forming a public academy. This they did not succeed in doing; but they
+were so far from being discouraged that they continued their meetings
+and their studies, and the next effort they made towards acquiring the
+attention of the public was connected with the Foundling Hospital. This
+institution was incorporated in 1739, and a few years later the present
+building was erected; but as the income of the charity could not, with
+propriety, be expended upon decorations, many of the principal artists
+of that day voluntarily exerted their talents for the purpose of
+ornamenting several apartments of the Hospital which otherwise must
+have remained without decoration. The pictures thus produced, and
+generously given, were permitted to be seen by any visitor upon proper
+application. The spectacle was so new that it made a considerable
+impression upon the public, and the favourable reception these works
+experienced impressed the artists with an idea of forming a public
+exhibition, which scheme was carried into full effect with the help of
+the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce,
+who lent their great room for the purpose.
+
+The success of this, the first, public display of art was more than
+equal to the general expectation. Yet there were some circumstances,
+consequent to the arrangement of the pictures, with which the artists
+were very justly dissatisfied; they were occasioned by the following
+improprieties. The Society in the same year had offered premiums for the
+best painting of history and landscape, and it was one of the conditions
+that the pictures produced by the candidates should remain in their
+great room for a certain time; consequently they were blended with the
+rest, and formed part of the exhibition. As soon as it was known which
+performances had obtained the premiums, it was naturally supposed, by
+such persons who were deficient in judgment, that those pictures were
+the best in the room, and consequently deserved the chief attention.
+This partial, though unmerited, selection gave displeasure to the
+artists in general. Nor were they pleased with the mode of admitting the
+spectators, for every member of the Society had the discretionary
+privilege of introducing as many persons as he chose, by means of
+gratuitous tickets; and consequently the company was far from being
+select, or suited to the wishes of the exhibition. These circumstances,
+together with the interference of the Society in the concern of the
+exhibition, determined the principal artists to withdraw themselves,
+which they did in the next year.
+
+Encouraged by the success of their first attempt, they engaged the great
+room in Spring Garden, and their first exhibition at that place opened
+on the 9th May 1761. Here they found it necessary to change their mode
+of admission, which they did by making the catalogue the ticket of
+admission; consequently one catalogue would admit a whole family in
+succession, for a shilling, which was its price; but this mode of
+admittance was still productive of crowd and disorder, and it was
+therefore altered the next year. This exhibition, which was the second
+in this country, contained several works of the best English artists,
+among which many of the pictures were equal to any masters then living
+in Europe; and so strikingly conspicuous were their merits, and so
+forcible was the effect of this display of art, that it drew from the
+pen of Roubilliac, the sculptor, the following lines, which were stuck
+up in the exhibition room, and were also printed in the _St James's
+Chronicle_:--
+
+    Pretendu Connoiseur qui sur l'Antique glose,
+    Idolatrant le hom, sans connoitre la Chose,
+    Vrai Peste des beaux Arts, sans Gout sans Equite,
+    Quitez ce ton pedant, ce mepris affecte,
+    Pour tout ce que le Tems n'a pas encore gate.
+
+    Ne peus tu pas, en admirant
+    Les Maitres de la Grece, ceux d l'Italie
+    Rendre justice egalement
+    A ceux qu'a nourris ta Patrie?
+
+    Vois ce Salon, et tu perdras
+    Cette prevention injuste,
+    Et bien etonne conviendras
+    Qu'il ne faut pas qu'un Mecenas
+    Pour revoir le Siecle d'Auguste.
+
+"In the following season," says Edwards, "they ventured to fix the price
+of _admission_ at one shilling each person, but had the precaution to
+affix a conciliatory preface to their catalogue, which was given
+gratis," As it is becoming more and more usual of late years to preface
+a catalogue with a signed article, or, as in a recent instance, a
+facsimile letter, it is interesting to know that this "conciliatory
+preface" was written by Dr Johnson. As a document its value in the
+history of the British School of Painting demands its reproduction here
+in full:--
+
+"The public may justly require to be informed of the nature and extent
+of every design for which the favour of the public is openly solicited.
+The artists who were themselves the first promoters of an exhibition in
+this nation, and who have now contributed to the following catalogue,
+think it therefore necessary to explain their purpose, and justify their
+conduct. An exhibition of the works of art being a spectacle new in this
+kingdom, has raised various opinions and conjectures among those who are
+unacquainted with the practice in foreign nations. Those who set their
+performances to general view, have been too often considered as the
+rivals of each other; as men actuated, if not by avarice, at least by
+vanity, and contending for superiority of fame, though not for a
+pecuniary prize. It cannot be denied or doubted, that all who offer
+themselves to criticism are desirous of praise; this desire is not only
+innocent but virtuous, while it is undebased by artifice, and unpolluted
+by envy; and of envy or artifice those men can never be accused, who
+already enjoying all the honours and profits of their profession are
+content to stand candidates for public notice, with genius yet
+unexperienced, and diligence yet unrewarded; who without any hope of
+increasing their own reputation or interest, expose their names and
+their works, only that they may furnish an opportunity of appearance to
+the young, the diffident, and the neglected. The purpose of this
+exhibition is not to enrich the artist, but to advance the art; the
+eminent are not flattered with preference, nor the obscure insulted with
+contempt; whoever hopes to deserve public favour, is here invited to
+display his merit. Of the price put upon this exhibition some account
+may be demanded. Whoever sets his work to be shewn, naturally desires a
+multitude of spectators; but his desire defeats its own end, when
+spectators assemble in such numbers as to obstruct one another.
+
+"Though we are far from wishing to diminish the pleasures, or to
+depreciate the sentiments of any class of the community, we know,
+however, what every one knows, that all cannot be judges or purchasers
+of works of art. Yet we have already found by experience, that all are
+desirous to see an exhibition. When the terms of admission were low, our
+room was throng'd with such multitudes, as made access dangerous, and
+frightened away those, whose approbation was most desired.
+
+"Yet because it is seldom believed that money is got but for the love of
+money, we shall tell the use which we intend to make of our expected
+profits. Many artists of great abilities are unable to sell their works
+for their due price; to remove this inconvenience, an annual sale will
+be appointed, to which every man may send his works, and send them, if
+he will, without his name. These works will be reviewed by the committee
+that conduct the exhibition; a price will be secretly set on every
+piece, and registered by the secretary; if the piece exposed for sale is
+sold for more, the whole price shall be the artist's; but if the
+purchasers value it at less than
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XL.--SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS
+
+THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+the committee, the artist shall be paid the deficiency from the profits
+of the exhibition."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This mode of admission was found to answer all the wished-for purposes,
+and the visitors, who were highly respectable, were also perfectly
+gratified with the display of art, which, for the first time, they
+beheld with ease and pleasure to themselves.
+
+The exhibition, thus established, continued at Spring Garden Room, under
+the direction and management of the principal artists by whom it was
+first promoted, and they were soon also joined by many of those who had
+continued to exhibit in the Strand (_i.e._ at the Society of Arts,
+etc.), which party being mostly composed of young men, and others who
+chose to become candidates for the premiums given by the Society,
+thought it prudent to remain under their protection. But the Society
+finding that those who continued with them began to diminish in their
+numbers, and that the exhibition interfered with their own concerns, no
+longer indulged them with the use of their room, and the exhibitions at
+that place terminated in 1764. These artists, who were mostly the
+younger part of the profession at that time, thereupon engaged a large
+room in Maiden Lane, where they exhibited in 1765 and 1766. But this
+situation not being favourable, they engaged with Mr Christie, in
+building his room near Pall Mall, and the agreement was that they should
+have it for their use during one month every year, in the spring. Here
+they contrived to support a feeble exhibition for eight years, when
+their engagements interfering with Mr Christie's auctions, he purchased
+their share of the premises, and they made their last removal to a room
+in S. Alban's Street, where they exhibited the next season, but never
+after attempted to attract public notice. It may be observed that while
+this Society continued there were annually three exhibitions of the
+works of English artists, namely, the Royal Academy, the Chartered
+Society, and that last mentioned, the members of which styled themselves
+the Free Society of Artists. Their exhibition was considerably inferior
+to those of their rivals. By the Chartered Society, Edwards means the
+artists who formed the exhibition at the Spring Garden Room, who in 1765
+obtained a Charter from the king. Owing partly to internal
+disagreements, but more no doubt to the foundation of the Royal Academy
+in 1768, this Society gradually diminished in importance, until Edwards
+could write of their exhibition in 1791 that "the articles they had then
+collected were very insignificant, most of which could not be considered
+as works of art; such as pieces of needlework, subjects in human hair,
+cut paper, and such similar productions as deserve not the
+recommendation of a public exhibition,"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To the first exhibition of the Royal Academy, which was opened on the
+2nd of January 1769, Reynolds sent three pictures:--
+
+_The Duchess of Manchester and her son, as Diana disarming Cupid._
+
+_Lady Blake, as Juno receiving the Cestus of Venus._
+
+_Miss Morris as Hope nursing Love._
+
+That all of them were, so to speak, "fancy portraits" is not entirely
+without significance. Portraiture, the painters bread and butter, was
+apparently deemed hardly suitable for the occasion, and among a list of
+the pictures which attracted most attention Northcote only includes the
+portraits of the _King and Queen_ by Nathaniel Dance, _Lady Molyneux_ by
+Gainsborough, and the _Duke of Gloucester_ by Cotes. The rest are as
+follows:--_The Departure of Regulus from Rome_, and _Venus lamenting the
+Death of Adonis_, by Benjamin West; _Hector and Andromache_, and _Venus
+directing Aeneas and Achates_, by Angelica Kauffmann; _A Piping Boy_,
+and _A Candlelight Piece_, by Nathaniel Hone; _An Altar-Piece_ of the
+Annunciation by Cipriani; _Hebe_, and _A Boy Playing Cricket_, by Cotes;
+A landscape by Barrett, and _Shakespeare's Black-smith_, by Penny.
+
+In all, Reynolds exhibited two hundred and fifty-two pictures during the
+thirty-two years of his life in which exhibitions existed, namely from
+1760 to 1791; of which two hundred and twenty-eight went to the Royal
+Academy.
+
+Of these, or most of them, ample records and criticisms may be found in
+the copious literature which has grown up around his name. For our
+present purpose a glance at his influence, his methods, and his
+circumstances has seemed to me to be more in point, and as a succinct
+estimate of the man and his work from one of his most illustrious
+contemporaries, the following passage may be added by way of
+conclusion:--
+
+"Sir Joshua Reynolds," wrote Edmund Burke six years after the painter's
+death, "was on very many accounts one of the most memorable men of his
+time. He was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant
+arts to the other glories of his country. In taste, in grace, in
+facility, in happy invention, and in the richness and harmony of
+colouring, he was equal to the great masters of the renowned ages. In
+portraiture he went beyond them, for he communicated to that description
+of the art, in which English artists are the most engaged, a fancy and a
+dignity derived from the higher branches, which even those who
+professed, them in a superior manner, did not always preserve when they
+delineated individual nature. His portraits remind the spectator of the
+invention of history and the amenity of landscape. In painting portraits
+he appeared not to be raised upon that platform, but to descend to it
+from a higher sphere. His paintings illustrate his lessons, and his
+lessons seem to be derived from his paintings. He possessed the theory
+as perfectly as the practice of his art. To be such a painter, he was a
+profound and penetrating philosopher."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH (1727-1788), whose name we can seldom help thinking
+of whenever we hear that of Reynolds, was in many ways the very
+antithesis of his more illustrious rival. In his private life he most
+certainly was, and so far as his practical influence on his
+contemporaries is concerned, he is altogether overshadowed by the first
+President of the Royal Academy. With respect to their works there is a
+diversity of opinion, and it is largely a matter of personal feeling
+whether we prefer those of the one or of the other. Both were great
+artists, and on the common ground of portraiture they contended so
+equally, and in some cases with such similarity of method, that it is
+impossible to say impartially which was the greater. How is it possible
+to decide except on the ground of individual taste, as to whether we
+would rather lose Gainsborough or Reynolds as a portrait painter,
+without considering for a moment that the former was a great landscape
+painter as well? And, putting aside Wilson, whose landscape was
+essentially Italian, whether executed in Italy or not, the first
+landscape painter in England was Gainsborough. We are so accustomed to
+bracket him with Reynolds as a great portrait painter, so thrilled over
+the sale of a Gainsborough portrait for many thousands of pounds, that
+we are apt to forget him altogether as a landscape painter. And yet two
+or three of his best works in the National Gallery are landscapes, and
+two of them at least famous ones--_The Market Cart_ and _The Watering
+Place_. How many more beautiful landscapes by him there must be in
+existence it is impossible to say, but there can be no doubt that there
+are not a few which are only waiting their turn for a fashionable
+market, but are now reposing unappreciated in private hands. In the
+Metropolitan Museum at New York is a splendid example, the like of which
+I have never seen in this country, but which is so much closer in
+feeling to his numerous drawings and sketches in chalk or pencil that it
+is impossible to believe that no similar examples exist. If we could
+only bring them to light!
+
+The fact is that the state of society in the middle of the eighteenth
+century was, with all its brilliance and intellect, the cause of
+hampering the natural development of the three great painters of that
+period. Reynolds came back from his stay in Italy an ardent disciple of
+the grand style, burning to follow the example of Raphael and
+Michelangelo. Romney, too, was all for Italian art, but looked further
+back, and worshipped the classics. Gainsborough was a born landscape
+painter, and his whole time was devoted, when he was not executing
+commissions for portraits, to making sketches and studies of woods and
+valleys and trees. But so bent on having their likenesses handed about
+were the brilliant personages of their time, that Reynolds, Gainsborough
+and Romney were compelled in spite of themselves to turn their
+attention to portraiture, to the exclusion of every other branch of
+their art, and as portrait painters they have made themselves and their
+country famous.
+
+In the numerous sketches and studies that Gainsborough has left us, we
+can see how much we have lost in gaining his wonderful portraits. He
+loved landscape, from his earliest youth to his dying day. Loved it for
+itself. For among all the drawings of his which I have ever seen, I do
+not remember one which can be identified as any particular place. In the
+eighteenth century there was a perfect mania among the smaller fry for
+making topographical drawings, in pencil or water-colour, views of some
+town or mountain or castle. But with Gainsborough the place was
+nothing--it was the spirit of it that charmed him. A cottage in a wood,
+a glade, a country road, a valley, was to him a beautiful scene,
+whatever it was called or wherever it happened to be, and out of it
+accordingly he made a beautiful picture, or at least a drawing. That his
+pictures of landscape are so extraordinarily few while his drawings are
+so numerous, may be accounted for in a great measure by the exigences of
+portrait painting, but not entirely; and the probability is that there
+are many more which are now forgotten.
+
+For an estimate of Thomas Gainsborough both in regard to his place in
+the story of the English School and to the abilities and methods by
+which he attained it, it is needless to look elsewhere than to that of
+Sir Joshua Reynolds, contained in the discourse delivered shortly after
+Gainsborough's death:--
+
+"When such a man as Gainsborough rises to great fame without the
+assistance of an academical education, without travelling to Italy, or
+any of those preparatory studies which have been so often recommended,
+he is produced
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XLI.--THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
+
+THE MARKET CART
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+as an instance how little such studies are necessary, since so great
+excellence may be acquired without them. This is an inference not
+warranted by the success of any individual, and I trust that it will not
+be thought that I wish to make this use of it.
+
+"It must be remembered that the style and department of art which
+Gainsborough chose, and in which he so much excelled, did not require
+that he should go out of his own country for the objects of his study;
+they were everywhere about him; he found them in the streets, and in the
+fields; and from the models thus accidentally found he selected with
+great judgment such as suited his purpose. As his studies were directed
+to the living world principally, he did not pay a general attention to
+the works of the various masters, though they are, in my opinion, always
+of great use even when the character of our subject requires us to
+depart from some of their principles. It cannot be denied that
+excellence in the department of the art which he professed may exist
+without them, that in such subjects and in the manner that belongs to
+them the want of them is supplied, and more than supplied, by natural
+sagacity and a minute observation of particular nature. If Gainsborough
+did not look at nature with a poet's eye, it must be acknowledged that
+he saw her with the eye of a painter; and gave a faithful, if not a
+poetical, representation of what he had before him.
+
+"Though he did not much attend to the works of the great historical
+painters of former ages, yet he was well aware that the language of the
+art--the art of imitation--must be learned somewhere; and as he knew he
+could not learn it in an equal degree from his contemporaries, he very
+judiciously applied himself to the Flemish school, who are undoubtedly
+the greatest masters of one necessary branch of art, and he did not
+need to go out of his country for examples of that school; from _that_
+he learned the harmony of colouring, the management and disposition of
+light and shadow, and every means of it which the masters practised to
+ornament and give splendour to their works. And to satisfy himself, as
+well as others, how well he knew the mechanism and artifice which they
+employed to bring out that tone of colour which we so much admire in
+their works, he occasionally made copies from Rubens, Teniers and Van
+Dyck, which it would be no disgrace to the most accurate connoisseur to
+mistake at the first sight for the works of those masters. What he thus
+learned he applied to the originals of nature, which he saw with his own
+eyes, and imitated not in the manner of those masters but in his own.
+
+"Whether he most excelled in portraits, landscapes, or fancy pictures,
+it is difficult to determine; whether his portraits were most admirable
+for exact truth of resemblance, or his landscapes for a portrait-like
+representation of nature, such as we see in the works of Rubens,
+Ruisdael, or others of those schools. In his fancy pictures, when he had
+fixed on his object of imitation, whether it was the mean and vulgar
+form of the woodcutter, or a child of an interesting character, as he
+did not attempt to raise the one, so neither did he lose any of the
+natural grace and elegance of the other; such a grace and such an
+elegance as are more frequently found in cottages than in courts. This
+excellence was his own, the result of his particular observation and
+taste; for this he was certainly not indebted to the Flemish school, nor
+indeed to any school; for his grace was not academic, or antique, but
+selected by himself from the great school of nature....
+
+"Upon the whole we may justly say that whatever he attempted he carried
+to a high degree of excellence. It is to the credit of his good sense
+and judgment that he never did attempt that style of historical painting
+for which his previous studies had made no preparation.
+
+"The peculiarity of his manner or style," Reynolds continues a little
+later, "or we may call it the language in which he expressed his ideas,
+has been considered by many as his greatest defect.... A novelty and
+peculiarity of manner, as it is often a cause of our approbation, so
+likewise it is often a ground of censure, as being contrary to the
+practice of other painters, in whose manner we have been initiated, and
+in whose favour we have perhaps been prepossessed from our infancy: for
+fond as we are of novelty, we are upon the whole creatures of habit.
+However, it is certain that all those odd scratches and marks which on a
+close examination are so observable in Gainsborough's pictures, and
+which even to experienced painters appear rather the effect of accident
+than design; this chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance, by a
+kind of magic, at a certain distance assumes form, and all the parts
+seem to drop into their proper places; so that we can hardly refuse
+acknowledging the full effect of diligence under the appearance of
+chance and hasty negligence.
+
+"That Gainsborough himself considered this peculiarity in his manner,
+and the power it possesses of exciting surprise, as a beauty in his
+works, I think may be inferred from the eager desire which we know he
+always expressed, that his pictures at the exhibition should be seen
+near as well as at a distance.
+
+"The slightness which we see in his best works cannot always be imputed
+to negligence. However they may appear to superficial observers,
+painters know very well that a steady attention to the general effect
+takes up more time and is much more laborious to the mind than any mode
+of high finishing or smoothness without such attention. His handling,
+the manner of leaving the colours, or, in other words, the methods he
+used for producing the effect, had very much the appearance of the work
+of an artist who had never learnt from others the usual and regular
+practice belonging to the art; but still, like a man of strong intuitive
+perception of what was required, he found a way of his own to accomplish
+his purpose."
+
+To Reynolds's opinion of this technique as applied to portraits, we may
+listen with even more attention. "It must be allowed," he continues,
+"that this hatching manner of Gainsborough did very much contribute to
+the lightness of effect which is so eminent a beauty in his pictures;
+as, on the contrary, much smoothness and uniting the colours is apt to
+produce heaviness. Every artist must have remarked how often that
+lightness of hand which was in his dead-colour (or first painting)
+escaped in the finishing when he had determined the parts with more
+precision; and another loss which he often experiences, which is of
+greater consequence: while he is employed in the detail, the effect of
+the whole together is either forgotten or neglected. The likeness of a
+portrait, as I have formerly observed, consists more in preserving the
+general effect of the countenance than in the most minute finishing of
+the features or any of the particular parts. Now, Gainsborough's
+portraits were often little more in regard to finishing or determining
+the form of the features, than what generally attends a first painting;
+but as he was always attentive to the general effect, or whole
+together, I have often imagined that this unfinished manner contributed
+even to that striking resemblance for which his portraits are so
+remarkable."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE CLOSE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
+
+
+Not until the year of Gainsborough's death, 1788, was there born another
+landscape painter. This was JOHN CROME, and he too came from the east of
+England, nearest to Holland, being born in Norfolk, the neighbouring
+county to Gainsborough's native Suffolk. Within ten years more, two
+still greater landscapists were born, also in the east, Constable in
+Essex, still closer to Sudbury, and Turner in London.
+
+John Crome--Old Crome, as he is usually called to distinguish him from
+his less distinguished son, John Bernay Crome--was born at Norwich, and
+had to support himself most of his life by teaching drawing, not to
+professional pupils unfortunately; but incidentally he founded "The
+Norwich School" of landscape painters, who loyally carried forward the
+traditions he had inculcated. But having to spend his time as a
+drawing-master, he was not free like the old Dutch painters to put out
+pictures when and as often as he would, and his work in oils is
+therefore comparatively scarce. The three examples at the National
+Gallery are typical of his varied powers, _The Slate Quarries_,
+_Household Heath_, and _Porringland Oak_ are all of them masterpieces.
+
+JOHN SELL COTMAN, born in 1782, was, after Crome, the most considerable
+of the Norwich School. He, too, was compelled to earn a livelihood by
+being a drawing-master, for there was not as yet a sufficient market,
+nor for some time later, for landscape pictures, to support existence,
+however humble. Cotman devoted much of his energies to water-colours,
+and he is better known in this branch of the art than in painting; that
+is the only excuse for the National Gallery in having purchased as his
+the very inferior picture called _A Galliot in a Gale_. The other
+example, _Wherries on the Yare_, is more worthy of him, though it by no
+means exhibits all his wonderful power and fascination.
+
+In GEORGE MORLAND (1763-1804) we have something more and something less
+than a landscape painter. Landscape to him was not what it was to
+Wilson, Gainsborough or Crome,--the only end in view; nor was it merely
+a background for his subjects. But, as it generally happened, it was
+both. To Morland, the landscape and the figures were one and the same
+thing. Out of the fulness of his heart he painted pictures of _Boys
+Robbing an Orchard_, _Horses in a Stable_, or a _Farmer on Horseback_
+staying to talk to a group of gypsies beside a wood, and whether or not
+the picture might be classed as a landscape depended entirely on the
+nature of the scene itself. Whatever he saw or chose to see he painted
+with equal skill and with equal charm; and as his choice of vision lay
+in the simple everyday life that surrounded him, his variety is not the
+least of his attractions.
+
+The fact that his mother was a Frenchwoman (his father was Henry
+Morland, the painter of the delightful pair of half-lengths, _The
+Laundry Maids_) suggests to my mind the wild surmise that she may have
+been the daughter of Chardin. For in the technique as well as in the
+temperament of Morland,--making allowance for difference of
+circumstances,--there is something remarkably akin to those of the great
+Frenchman. Both eschewed the temptation to become fashionable, both
+painted the humble realities of middle-class life with a zest that could
+not possibly have been affected, and both painted them with much the
+same extraordinary charm. At his best, Morland is not much inferior to
+Chardin, and but for his unfortunate wildness and his susceptibility to
+the temptations of strong drink, he might easily have excelled the
+other. The feeling exhibited in two such different subjects as Lord
+Glenconner's _Boys Robbing an Orchard_, and _The Interior of a Stable_,
+in the National Gallery, certainly equals that of Chardin's most famous
+pieces, I mean the feeling for the particular scene he is depicting. The
+nearest, in fact the only, approach that Morland made to portrait
+painting was in such pieces as _The Fortune Teller_ in the National
+Gallery, which brings to mind the "Conversation Pieces," introduced by
+Hogarth and Highmore into English painting, but which were never widely
+attempted. In the Portfolio monograph "English Society in the Eighteenth
+Century" I tried to collect as many examples as I could of this form of
+art, but found it difficult to fill even a small volume, so entirely was
+the single figure portrait the vogue. A few notable instances are worth
+mentioning, if only as exceptions to the general rule. Gainsborough's
+_Ladies Walking in the Mall_, belonging to Sir Audley Neeld; Reynolds's
+large group of _The Marlborough Family_ at Blenheim, and a very early
+group of _The Elliott Family_, consisting of eleven figures, belonging
+to Lord St Germans; John Singleton Copley's _Children of Francis
+Sitwell, Esq._, at Renishaw; and lastly Zoffany's _Family Party_, at
+Panshanger.
+
+For life-like representation of the English people we look to Hogarth
+and Morland, and yet nothing could be more different than the motives
+which inspired the two, and the way they went to work upon their
+subject. Hogarth was above all things theatrical, Morland natural.
+Hogarth first conceived his idea, then laid his scene, and lastly
+peopled it with actual characters as they appeared--individually--before
+him. Morland simply looked about him and painted what he happened to see
+at the precise moment when what he saw coincided with his natural
+inclination, or we may even say inspiration, to paint it. It was much
+the same difference as between the work of Zola and that of Thomas
+Hardy. The one had a moral to preach, the other a story to tell.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the most we hear of GEORGE ROMNEY nowadays is the price that has
+been paid for one of his portraits at Christie's, it is refreshing as
+well as informative to turn to the criticism of one of his greatest
+though not in these times so highly priced contemporaries, I mean John
+Flaxman. "When Romney first began to paint," he writes, "he had seen no
+gallery of pictures nor the fine productions of ancient sculpture; but
+then women and children were his statues, and all objects under the
+canopy of heaven formed his school of painting. The rainbow, the purple
+distance, or the silver lake, taught him colouring; the various actions
+and passions of the human figure, with the forms of clouds, woods, and
+mountains or valleys, afforded him studies of composition. Indeed, his
+genius bore a strong resemblance to the scenes he was born in; like
+them, it partook of the grand and beautiful; and like them also, the
+bright sunshine and enchanting prospects of his fancy were occasionally
+overspread with mist and gloom. On his arrival in Italy he was witness
+to new scenes of art and sources of study of which he could only have
+supposed previously that something
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XLII.--GEORGE ROMNEY
+
+THE PARSON'S DAUGHTER
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+of the kind might exist; for he there contemplated the purity and
+perfection of ancient sculpture, the sublimity of Michelangelo's Sistine
+Chapel, and the simplicity of Cimabue and Giotto's schools. He perceived
+those qualities distinctly, and judiciously used them in viewing and
+imitating nature; and thus his quick perception and unwearied
+application enabled him, by a two years' residence abroad, to acquire as
+great a proficiency in art as is usually attained by foreign studies of
+a much longer duration.
+
+"After his return, the novelty and sentiment of his original subjects
+were universally admired. Most of these were of the delicate class, and
+each had its peculiar character. Titania with her Indian votaries was
+arch and sprightly; Milton dictating to his daughters, solemn and
+interesting. Several pictures of Wood Nymphs and Bacchantes charmed by
+their rural beauty, innocence, and simplicity. The most pathetic,
+perhaps, of all his works was never finished--Ophelia with the flowers
+she had gathered in her hand, sitting on the branch of a tree, which was
+breaking under her, whilst the moody distraction in her lovely
+countenance accounts for the insensibility to danger. Few painters have
+left so many examples in their works of the tender and delicate
+affections; and several of his pictures breathe a kindred spirit with
+the _Sigismonda_ of Correggio. His cartoons, some of which have
+unfortunately perished, were examples of the sublime and terrible, at
+that time perfectly new in English art. As Romney was gifted with
+peculiar powers for historical and ideal painting, so his heart and soul
+were engaged in the pursuit of it whenever he could extricate himself
+from the importunate business of portrait painting. It was his delight
+by day and study by night, and for this his food and rest were often
+neglected. His compositions, like those of the ancient pictures and
+basso-relievos, told their story by a single group of figures in the
+front, whilst the background is made the simplest possible, rejecting
+all unnecessary episode and trivial ornament, either of secondary groups
+or architectural subdivision. In his compositions the beholder was
+forcibly struck by the sentiment at the first glance: the gradations and
+varieties of which he traced through several characters, all conceived
+in an elevated spirit of dignity and beauty, with a lively expression of
+nature in all the parts. His heads were various--the male were decided
+and grand, the female lovely. His figures resembled the antique--the
+limbs were elegant and finely formed. His drapery was well understood,
+either forming the figure into a mass with one or two deep folds only,
+or by its adhesion and transparency discovering the form of the figure,
+the lines of which were finely varied with the union or expansion of
+spiral or cascade folds, composing with or contrasting the outline and
+chiaroscuro. Few artists since the fifteenth century have been able to
+do so much in so many different branches; for besides his beautiful
+compositions and pictures, which have added to the knowledge and
+celebrity of the English School, he modelled like a sculptor, carved
+ornaments in wood with great delicacy, and could make an architectural
+design in a fine taste, as well as construct every part of the
+building."
+
+After the death of Reynolds and the retirement of Romney, in the last
+decade of the eighteenth century, the field of portraiture was left
+vacant--in London at least--for JOHN HOPPNER, whose name is now
+generally included with those of Lawrence and Raeburn among the first
+six portrait painters of the British
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XLIII.--GEORGE ROMNEY
+
+MRS ROBINSON--"PERDITA"
+
+_Hertford House, London_]
+
+School. His fame in recent years has certainly exceeded his merits, but
+it is due to him to say that he was a conscientious artist, and a firm
+upholder of the tradition of Reynolds, so far as in him lay. The old
+King had always disliked Reynolds, and Hoppner was not well enough
+advised to hold his tongue on the subject of the master: worse than
+this, he openly accepted the patronage of the Prince of Wales, and by so
+doing opened the door for the admission of Lawrence as royal painter
+much sooner than was at all necessary. The story of their rivalry is
+thus--in substance--sketched by Allan Cunningham, their
+contemporary:--The light of the Prince of Wales's countenance was of
+itself sufficient to guide the courtly and beautiful to Hoppner's easel.
+Suffice it to say that before he was forty years of age (he was born in
+1759), he had been enabled to exhibit no less than fifteen ladies of
+quality--for so are they named in the catalogues--a score of ladies of
+lower degree, and noblemen unnumbered. But by this time another star had
+arisen, destined to outshine that of Hoppner; though some at that
+period, willing to flatter the older practitioner, called it a meteor
+that would but flash and disappear--we allude to Lawrence. Urged upon
+the Academy by the King and Queen, and handed up to public notice by
+royal favour, this new aspirant rose rapidly in the estimation of the
+public; and by the most delicate flattery, both with tongue and pencil,
+became a formidable rival to the painter whom it was the Prince's
+pleasure to befriend. The factions of Reynolds and Romney seemed revived
+in those of Hoppner and Lawrence. If Hoppner resided in Charles Street,
+at the gates of Carlton House, and wrote himself "portrait painter to
+the Prince of Wales," Lawrence likewise had his residence in the Court
+end of the town, and proudly styled himself--and that when only
+twenty-three years old--"portrait painter in ordinary to His Majesty."
+In other respects, too, were honours equally balanced between them; they
+were both made Royal Academicians, but in this, youth had the start of
+age--Lawrence obtained that distinction first. Nature, too, had been
+kind--some have said prodigal--to both; they were men of fine address,
+and polished by early intercourse with the world and by their trade of
+portrait painting could practise all the delicate courtesies of
+drawing-room and boudoir; but in that most fascinating of all flattery,
+the art of persuading, with brushes and fine colours, very ordinary
+mortals that beauty and fine expression were their portions, Lawrence
+was soon without a rival.
+
+The preference of the King and Queen for Lawrence was for a time
+balanced by the affection of the Prince of Wales for Hoppner; the Prince
+was supposed to have the best taste, and as he kept a court of his own
+filled with the young nobility, and all the wits of that great faction
+known by the name of Whig, Hoppner had the youth and beauty of the land
+for a time; and it cannot be denied that he was a rival in every way
+worthy of contending with any portrait-painter of his day. The bare list
+of his exhibited portraits will show how and by whom he was supported.
+It is well said by Williams, in his _Life of Lawrence_, that "the more
+sober and homely ideas of the King were not likely to be a passport for
+any portrait-painter to the variety of ladies, and hence Mr. Hoppner for
+a long time almost monopolised the female beauty and young fashion of
+the country."
+
+This rivalry continued for a time in the spirit of moderation--but only
+for a time. Lawrence, the gentler and the smoother of the two, kept
+silence longest; the warm nature of Hoppner broke out at last. "The
+ladies of Lawrence," he said, "show a gaudy dissoluteness of taste, and
+sometimes trespass on moral as well as professional decorum." For his
+own he claimed, by implication, purity of look as well as purity of
+style. This sarcastic remark found wings in a moment, and flew through
+all the coteries and through both courts; it did most harm to him who
+uttered it; all men laughed, and then began to wonder how Lawrence,
+limner to perhaps the purest court in Europe, came to bestow indecorous
+looks on the meek and sedate ladies of quality of St. James's and
+Windsor, while Hoppner, limner to the court of a gallant young prince,
+who loved mirth and wine, the sound of the lute and the music of ladies'
+feet in the dance, should to some of its gayest and giddiest ornaments
+give the simplicity of manner and purity of style which pertained to the
+Quaker like sobriety of the other. Nor is it the least curious part of
+the story that the ladies, from the moment of the sarcasm of Hoppner,
+instead of crowding to the easel of him who dealt in the loveliness of
+virtue, showed a growing preference for the rival who "trespassed on
+moral as well as on professional decorum." After this, Lawrence had
+plenty of the fairest sitters.
+
+
+
+
+_THE NINETEENTH CENTURY_
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT
+
+
+In the preceding chapters we have traced the development of painting for
+five centuries--from the beginning of the fourteenth, that is to say, to
+the end of the eighteenth--in Italy, in the Netherlands, in Germany, in
+Spain, and lastly in France and England. In the nineteenth the story is
+confined to the last two alone, as with one or two minute exceptions the
+art of painting had by this time entirely ceased to be worth
+consideration in any of the others. Only in France and England, where it
+had been most recently established, was it to continue; and besides
+continuing, reach out with the most astonishing vigour to snatch at and
+grasp fruits that no one before would have dreamt of being within its
+reach.
+
+Between France and England--if by the latter we may be taken to mean
+Great Britain, and include within its artists those who have
+acclimatised themselves within her shores--the honours of the
+achievement are pretty equally divided, though it will have to be left
+to individual choice to decide exactly on which side the balance of
+credit is due. A mere list of the greatest names is not sufficient to
+apportion the praise, though as a preliminary step it may be of value in
+clearing the issue. Let us take a dozen on either side, and see how they
+look.
+
+_England._
+
+Lawrence.
+Constable.
+Turner.
+De Wint.
+Nasmyth.
+Stevens.
+Whistler.
+Cotman.
+Cox.
+Watts.
+Rossetti.
+Hunt.
+
+_France._
+
+David.
+Gericault.
+Ingres.
+Delacroix.
+Corot.
+Millet.
+Daubigny.
+Courbet.
+Daumier.
+Decamps.
+Manet.
+Degas.
+
+Among these Turner stands out conspicuously from the rest, and he would
+be included by anyone in a list of twenty, or perhaps a dozen, of the
+greatest painters in the world. But oddly enough his influence on the
+art in general has been comparatively small, if we are to judge by its
+effects on other painters up to the present, while that of Constable has
+been considerably greater. Manet, again, and Delacroix, have
+accomplished far more for the history of painting than any other two in
+our lists--and yet their names are scarcely known outside the circle of
+those who know anything at all about painting.
+
+For the English public at large an entirely different list would
+probably prove the superiority of their own race to their complete
+satisfaction--in spite of Meissonier, Dore, and Bouguereau on the other
+side. But that is only because the British public, owing to the
+monopoly
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XLIV.--JACQUES LOUIS DAVID
+
+PORTRAIT OF MME. RECAMIER
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+enjoyed by the Royal Academy, have never had a chance of judging for
+themselves what they approve of and what they do not, and their taste
+has been vitiated for generations by the exhibition of what this
+self-constituted authority, no doubt unconsciously, conceives to be best
+for them--and which, as might be expected, is usually found to coincide
+pretty nearly with the sort of thing they are capable of producing
+themselves. Hogarth's predictions at the time the Academy was instituted
+have in a great measure come perfectly true, and the only benefit that
+it has been to the English School of painting is that it has kept it
+going. How far this may be called a benefit is at least arguable, but in
+the main it is probable that if so many bad pictures had not been
+painted, there would not have been so many good ones. On the other hand,
+the removal of a man like Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema from his native
+sphere of influence is quite enough to account for the unlooked-for
+flowering of blossoms like the brothers Maris, Bosboom, Israels, and
+Mauve in the Dutch garden, and if that is so, one need not grudge him
+his interment amongst Nelson, Wellington, and other heroes of our own.
+
+In a word, the history of painting in the nineteenth century is Revolt.
+What it is going to be in the twentieth I am fortunately not called upon
+to say; but if I may throw out an opinion based upon what is already
+happening, I should say that no word has yet been coined which will
+adequately express it.
+
+In the last century the issues were simple, and can be easily expressed.
+On the one side was the complacent body of practitioners following to
+the best of their ability the practice of painting as handed down to
+them in a variety of different forms, just as the Byzantine craftsmen
+earned their living when they were so rudely disturbed by Cimabue and
+his school. On the other was a small but ever-increasing number of
+individuals who, like Cimabue, began to think things out for themselves,
+but, unlike him, did not succeed in effecting a popular triumph
+without--if at all--first raising both the painters and the public to a
+pitch of fury. It is indeed curious to read Vasari and modern historians
+side by side, and to wonder if, after all, Vasari knew or told
+everything, in his desire to glorify the art, or whether Giotto and
+other innovators were not in fact burnt at the stake. Probably not.
+Gallileo, as we know, and Savonarola suffered for their crimes. But they
+were working against the Church, and the artists were working for it.
+
+In the nineteenth century, painting had altogether broken away from the
+Church, and so it had to fight its own battles out in the street, or in
+the law courts. That is what has given it such a swagger and strength.
+It no longer looks to its protector, it will hit you in the face before
+you know where you are. The feeble kind, only, looks to Academies for
+support, and thereby becomes feebler still.
+
+In the present chapter, accordingly, we shall hear no more of the
+Madonnas, the Holy Families, and all the sacred and profane subjects on
+which the old masters exercised their genius. Five centuries of painting
+had established the art in a position of independence; and in a
+sixth--that is to say, the nineteenth--it began to assert itself, and to
+prove that its education was not in itself an end, but only a means to
+various ends. Instead of following out the fortunes of each painter,
+therefore, and attempting to set in any sort of order the reputations of
+artists before sufficient time has elapsed for them to cool, I propose
+to confine myself in the remaining pages to the broad issues raised
+during this period between the painters, the critics, and the public.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+EUGENE DELACROIX
+
+
+The man who began all this street fighting was a Frenchman--Eugene
+Delacroix. While still a youth he was bullied, and the bully was such a
+redoubtable giant that it took somebody with the grit and genius of
+Delacroix to tackle him, but tackle him he did. The story of the fight,
+which is a long and glorious one, is so admirably told in Madame Bussy's
+life of Delacroix, that I have obtained permission to give the essence
+of it in her own words.
+
+In the Salon of 1822 was exhibited Delacroix's picture of _Dante and
+Virgil_, which is now in the Louvre, and evoked the first of those
+clamours of abuse which were barely stilled before the artist's death.
+For nearly thirty years all French painters, with the exception of Gros
+and Prudhon; had shown themselves unquestioning disciples of the school
+founded by Jacques Louis David, whose masterful character and potent
+personality had reduced all art to a system; and Delacroix himself spoke
+of him with sympathy and admiration. The chief dogma of David's school
+was that the nearest approach to the _beau ideal_ permitted to the human
+race had been attained by the Greeks, and that all art must conform as
+closely as possible to theirs. Unfortunately, the chief specimens of
+Greek art known at that time were those belonging to a decadent
+period--neither the Elgin marbles nor the Venus of Milo were accessible
+before 1816--so that the works from which they drew their inspiration
+were without character in themselves, or merely the feeble and
+attenuated copies of ancient Rome. In the pictures of this school,
+accordingly, we find only the monotonous perfection of rounded and
+well-modelled limbs, classical features and straight noses. Colour, to
+the sincere Davidian, was a vain and frivolous accessory, serving only
+to distract attention from the real purpose of the work, which was to
+aim at moral elevation as well as at ideal beauty. Everything in the
+picture was to be equally dwelt upon; there was no sacrifice, no
+mystery. "These pictures," says Delacroix, "have no epidermis ...they
+lack the atmosphere, the lights, the reflections which blend into an
+harmonious whole, objects the most dissimilar in colour."
+
+By the untimely death of Gericault, whose _Raft of the Medusa_ had
+already caused a flutter in 1819, Delacroix was left at the head of the
+revolt against this pseudo-classicism; and amid the storm that greeted
+the _Dante and Virgil_ it is interesting to find Thiers writing of him
+in the following strain:--"It seems to me that no picture [in the Salon]
+reveals the future of a great painter better than M. Delacroix's, in
+which we see an outbreak of talent, a burst of rising superiority which
+revives the hopes that had been slightly discouraged by the too moderate
+merits of all the rest.... I think I am not mistaken; M. Delacroix has
+genius; let him go on with confidence, and devote himself to immense
+labour, the indispensable condition of talent." Delecluze, by the by,
+the critic-in-chief of the Davidian School, had characterised the
+picture as _une veritable tartouillade_.
+
+In 1824 the Salon included two pictures which may be regarded as
+important documents in the history of painting. One of these was
+Constable's _Hay Wain_--now
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XLV.--EUGENE DELACROIX
+
+DANTE AND VIRGIL
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+in our National Gallery--which had been purchased by a Frenchman; the
+other was Delacroix's _Massacre of Scio_, the first to receive the
+enlightenment afforded by the Englishman's methods, which spread so
+widely over the French School. It was said that Delacroix entirely
+repainted his picture on seeing Constable's; but his pupil, Lassalle
+Bordes, is probably nearer the truth in saying that the master being
+dissatisfied with its general tone, which was too chalky, transformed it
+by means of violent glazings. The critics were no less noisy over this
+picture than the last. "A painter has been revealed to us," said one,
+"but he is a man who runs along the housetops." "Yes," answered
+Baudelaire, "but for that one must have a sure foot, and an eye guided
+by an inward light."
+
+When the Salon opened again in 1827, after an interval of three years,
+the public were astonished to find how large a number of painters had
+abandoned Davidism and openly joined the ranks of the enemy. Delacroix
+himself exhibited the _Marino Faliero_ (now at Hertford House) and
+eleven others. The gauntlet was flung down, and war began in deadly
+earnest between the opposing parties. It was at this time that the terms
+Romanticism and Romantic came into common use. Delacroix always resented
+being labelled as a Romantic, and would only acknowledge that the term
+might be justly applied to him when used in its widest signification.
+"If by my Romanticism," he wrote, "is meant the free expression of my
+personal impressions, my aversion from the stereotypes invariably
+produced in the schools, and my repugnance to academic receipts, then I
+must admit I am Romantic."
+
+Here we have the plain truth about the painting of the nineteenth
+century--and after! The critics were unanimous in their violent
+condemnation of Delacroix's works: "the compositions of a sick man in
+delirium," "the fanaticism of ugliness," "barbarous execution," "an
+intoxicated broom"--such are some of the terms of abuse showered upon
+him. The gentlest among them commiserate the talent which here and there
+can be seen "struggling with the systematic _bizarrerie_ and the
+disordered technique of the artist, just as gleams of reason and
+sometimes flashes of genius may be seen pitiably shining through the
+speech of a madman." The final touch to Delacroix's disgrace was given
+by the Directeur des Beaux Arts sending for him and recommending him to
+study drawing from casts, warning him at the same time that unless he
+could change his style he must expect neither commissions nor
+recognition from the State!
+
+The year 1830 has given its name to that brilliant generation of poets,
+novelists, painters and philosophers which, as Theophile Gautier says
+with just pride, "will make its mark on the future and be spoken of as
+one of the climacteric epochs of the human mind." The revolution of July
+inspired Delacroix with one of his most interesting pictures. _Le 28
+Juillet_ is the only one of his works in which he depicts modern life,
+and was a striking refutation to those who complained that modern
+costume is too ugly or prosaic to be treated in painting. "Every old
+master," Baudelaire usefully pointed out, "has been modern in his day.
+The greater number of fine portraits of former times are dressed in the
+costume of their period. They are perfectly harmonious because the
+costumes, the hair, and even the attitude and expression (each period
+has its own), form a whole of complete vitality." _Le 28 Juillet_ gives
+us the very breath and spirit of modern street fighting. Though the
+public
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XLVI.--JOHN CONSTABLE
+
+THE HAY WAIN
+
+_National Gallery, London_]
+
+remained hostile and the jury bestowed none of its prizes, as before,
+the Government acknowledged the artist's talent and politics by making
+him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Further, from 1833 to 1853 he
+was intermittently employed in decorating the Chamber of Deputies, the
+Senate, and other public buildings. In 1855 he showed at the Great
+Exhibition a series of thirty-five of his most important pictures, the
+effect of which was immense. For the first and only time in his life he
+enjoyed a triumph, none the less great because his life-long rival
+Ingres also took the opportunity of exhibiting a selection of his works
+in the same building. But in spite of this success, and in spite of his
+being elected an Academician in 1857, the critics remained incorrigible.
+His pictures in the Salon of 1859 once more called forth one of those
+storms of abuse that Delacroix had the gift of arousing. Weary and
+disheartened--"All my life long I have been livre aux betes," was his
+bitter exclamation--he vowed to exhibit no more, and kept his word.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+RUSKIN AGAINST THE PHILISTINES
+
+
+IN England, meantime, great things were being accomplished amid peaceful
+surroundings. In portraiture Lawrence soon became supreme, and what
+excellence he possessed was accentuated on his death in 1830 by the
+appointment of Sir Martin Archer Shee as his successor in the Presidency
+of the Royal Academy. That was the end of portraiture in England until a
+new school arose. But it was in landscape that our country occupied the
+field in the first half of the nineteenth century, and tilled it with
+the astonishing results that are usually the effect of doing much and
+saying little. The work accomplished by Turner, Constable, and Cotman,
+in the first half of the century, to say nothing of Crome and one or two
+of the older men who were still alive, has never been equalled in any
+country, and yet less was heard about the execution of it than would
+keep a modern journalist in bread and cheese for a week. Turner, who
+wouldn't sell his pictures, and Constable, who couldn't, between them
+filled up the measure of English art without any other aid than that of
+the materials with which they recorded their gorgeous communion with
+nature. When Ruskin stepped in with the "Modern Painters," originally
+designed as a vindication of Turner against certain later-day critics,
+Turner's comment was, "He knows a great deal more about my pictures than
+I do. He puts things into my head and points out meanings in them that I
+never intended." That was in 1843, when Turner was well on in his third
+manner--within eight years of his death. But let us go back to the
+beginning.
+
+Until he developed his latest manner, Turner was about the most popular
+artist that ever lived. His pictures were not above the comprehension of
+the public, educated or otherwise, and no effort was either needed or
+demanded to understand them. In the diary of a provincial amateur,
+Thomas Greene, are recorded an impression of Turner's work as early as
+1797:--"Visited the Royal Exhibition. Particularly struck with a
+sea-view by Turner ...the whole composition bold in design and masterly
+in execution. I am entirely unacquainted with the artist, but if he
+proceeds as he has begun, he cannot fail to become the first in his
+department." And again in 1799:--"Was again struck and delighted with
+Turner's landscapes.... Turner's views are not mere ordinary transcripts
+of nature,--he always throws some peculiar and striking _character_ into
+the scene he represents."
+
+Brought up as a topographical draughtsman, he made no departure till
+quite late in life from the conventional method of depicting scenery;
+but being a supremely gifted artist, he was capable of utilising this
+method as no other before or since has ever succeeded in doing. The
+accepted method was good enough for him, and he laid his paint upon the
+canvas as anybody else had done before him, and as many of our
+present-day painters would do well to do after him--if only they had the
+genius in them to "make the instrument speak." The impressions created
+on our mind by Turner's earlier pictures are not conveyed by dots,
+cubes, streaks, or any device save that of pigment laid upon the canvas
+in such a manner as seemed to the artist to reproduce what he saw in
+nature. That he did this with surprising and altogether exceptional
+skill is the proof of his genius. Unflagging energy and devotion to his
+art enabled him to realise, not all, but a wonderful number of the
+beauties he saw in the world, with an experience that few beside him
+have ever taken the trouble to acquire. When barely thirty years old--in
+1805--he was already considered as the first of living landscape
+painters, and was thus noticed by Edward Dayes (the teacher of
+Girtin):--"Turner may be considered as a striking instance of how much
+may be gained by industry, if accompanied with perseverance, even
+without the assistance of a master. The way he acquired his professional
+powers was by borrowing when he could a drawing or picture to copy; or
+by making a sketch of any one in the exhibition early in the morning and
+finishing it up at home. By such practice, and a patient perseverance,
+he has overcome all the difficulties of the art." Turner himself used to
+say that his best academy was "the fields and Dr Monro's parlour"--where
+Girtin and other young artists met and sketched and copied the drawings
+in the doctor's collection. Burnet, in his notice of "Turner and his
+Works," suggests that John Robert Cozens had paved the way for both
+Girtin and Turner in striking out a broad effect of light and shade.
+"The early pictures of Turner," he observes, "possess the breadth, but
+are destitute of the brilliant power of light and colour afterwards
+pervading his works, and ultimately carried to the greatest extreme in
+his last pictures. Breadth of light seems to have been latterly his
+chief aim, supported by the contrast of hot and cold colour; two of his
+unfinished pictures exemplified the principle; they were divided into
+large masses of blue where the water or sky was to come and the other
+portions laid out in broad orange yellow, falling into delicate brown
+where the trees and landscapes were to be placed. This preparation,
+while it secured the greatest breadth, would have shone through the
+other colours when finished, giving the luminous quality observable in
+his pictures. In many instances his works sent for exhibition to the
+British Institution had little more than this brilliant foundation,
+which was worked into detail and completed in the varnishing days,
+Turner being the first in the morning and the last to leave; his
+certainty in the command over his colour, and the dexterity in his
+handling, seemed to convert in a few hours 'an unsubstantial pageant'
+into a finished landscape. These _ad captandum_ effects, however, are
+not what his fame will depend on for perpetuity; his finest pictures are
+the production of great study in their composition, careful and repeated
+painting in the detail, and
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XLVII.--J. M. W. TURNER
+
+CROSSING THE BROOK
+
+_National Gallery of British Art, London_]
+
+a natural arrangement of the colour and breadth of the chiaroscuro."
+
+Whether or not we agree with all of Burnet's opinions, we shall be more
+likely to learn the truth about Turner from prosaic contemporaries of
+his earlier years than from all the rhapsodies of later days. How
+significant, when stripped of its amusing circumstances, is the simple
+fact related thus by Leslie:--"In 1839, when Constable exhibited his
+_Opening of Waterloo Bridge_, it was placed in one of the small rooms
+next to a sea-piece by Turner--a grey picture, beautiful and true, but
+with no positive colour in any part of it. Constable's picture seemed as
+if painted with liquid gold and silver, and Turner came several times
+while he was heightening with vermilion and lake the decorations and
+flags of the city barges. Turner stood behind him looking from the
+_Waterloo Bridge_ to his own picture, and at last brought his palette
+from the great room where he was touching another picture, and putting a
+round daub of red lead, somewhat bigger than a shilling, on his grey
+sea, went away without saying a word. The intensity of this red lead,
+made more vivid by the coolness of his picture, caused even the
+vermilion and lake of Constable to look weak. I came into the room just
+after Turner had left it. "He has been here," said Constable, "and fired
+a gun." On the opposite wall was a picture by Jones of Shadrach Meshach
+and Abednego in the Furnace. "A coal," said Cooper, "has bounced across
+the room from Jones's picture and set fire to Turner's sea." Turner did
+not come in again for a day and a half, and then in the last moment
+allowed for painting, he glazed the scarlet seal he had put on his
+picture, and shaped it into a buoy."
+
+It was in 1835, after an unbroken popular triumph lasting over thirty
+years, that the critics openly rounded on him. The occasion seized by
+_Blackwood's Magazine_ was the exhibition of his first Venetian picture
+exhibited in that year--it is now in the Metropolitan Museum in New
+York. "What is Venice in this picture?" wrote Blackwood's critic. "A
+flimsy, whitewashed, meagre assemblage of architecture, starting off
+ghost-like into unnatural perspective, as if frightened at the affected
+blaze of some dogger vessels (the only attempt at richness in the
+picture). The greater part of the picture is white, disagreeable white,
+without light or transparency, and the boats with their red worsted
+masts are as gewgaw as a child's toy which he may have cracked to see
+what it is made of. As to Venice, nothing can be more unlike its
+character."
+
+Ruskin was then only sixteen years old, but eight years later appeared
+in print the first volume of "Modern Painters," "by an undergraduate of
+Oxford," as the result of his growing indignation at this and subsequent
+attacks on Turner. Without following Ruskin into the dubious regions
+whither the pursuit of his romantic fancies ultimately led him, we may
+in fairness quote the opening sentence of his second chapter, "Of Truth
+of Colour," which will help us, moreover, in understanding the
+conditions under which painting was being conducted at this period.
+"There is nothing so high in art," he says, "but that a scurrile jest
+can reach at, and often the greater the work the easier it is to turn it
+into ridicule. To appreciate the science of Turner's colour would
+require the study of a life; but to laugh at it requires little more
+than the knowledge that the yolk of egg is yellow and spinage green; a
+fund of critical information on which the remarks of most of our
+leading periodicals have been of late years exclusively based. We
+shall, however, in spite of the sulphur and treacle criticisms of our
+Scotch connoisseurs, and the eggs and spinage of our English ones,
+endeavour to test the works of this great colourist by a knowledge of
+nature somewhat more extensive than is to be gained by an acquaintance,
+however formed, with the apothecary's shop or the dinner table."
+
+So much for the critics. For the artist, if Ruskin said more than Turner
+himself could understand, he has summed up his achievement in a few
+passages which may possibly outlast the works themselves. "There has
+been marked and constant progress in his mind; he has not, like some few
+artists, been without childhood; his course of study has been as
+evidently as it has been swiftly progressive; and in different stages of
+the struggle, sometimes one order of truth, sometimes another, has been
+aimed at or omitted. But from the beginning to the present height of his
+career he has never sacrificed a greater truth to a less. As he
+advanced, the previous knowledge or attainment was absorbed in what
+succeeded, or abandoned only if incompatible, and never abandoned
+without a gain: and his present works present the sum and perfection of
+his accumulated knowledge, delivered with the impatience and passion of
+one who feels too much, and has too little time to say it in, to pause
+for expression or ponder over his syllables." And again of his latest
+works--"There is in them the obscurity, but the truth, of prophecy; the
+instinctive and burning language, which would express less if it uttered
+more; which is indistinct only by its fulness, and dark with its
+abundant meaning. He feels now, with long-trained vividness and keenness
+of sense, too bitterly, the impotence of the hand and the vainness of
+the colour to catch one shadow or one image of the glory which God has
+revealed to him. He has dwelt and communed with Nature all the days of
+his life: he knows her now too well, he cannot falter over the material
+littlenesses of her outward form: he must give her soul, or he has done
+nothing, and he cannot do this with the flax, the earth, and the oil. 'I
+cannot gather the beams out of the east, or I would make _them_ tell you
+what I have seen; but read this, and interpret this, and let us remember
+together. I cannot gather the gloom out of the night sky, or I would
+make that teach you what I have seen; but read this, interpret this, and
+let us feel together. And if you have not that within you which I can
+summon to my aid, if you have not the sun in your spirit, and the
+passion in your heart, which my words may awaken, though they be
+indistinct and swift, leave me; for I will give you no patient mockery,
+no laborious insult of that glorious Nature, whose I am and whom I
+serve. Let other servants imitate the voice and the gesture of their
+master, while they forget his message. Hear that message from me; but
+remember that the teaching of Divine truth must still be a mystery.'"
+
+Within a very few years Ruskin was performing a more useful service for
+the English School of painting than that of gilding the fine gold of its
+greatest genius. Whether or not he was aware of the fact, young Holman
+Hunt had borrowed a copy of "Modern Painters," which, he says, entirely
+changed his opinions as to the views held by society at large concerning
+art, and in 1849 there were exhibited Hunt's _Rienzi_, Rossetti's
+_Girlhood of Mary Virgin_, and Millais' _Lorenzo and Isabella_, each
+inscribed with the mystic letters "P.R.B.," meaning "Pre-Raphaelite
+Brotherhood." It is interesting to note that this alliance was formed
+when the three young artists were looking over a book of engravings of
+the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa.
+
+In the following year Hunt exhibited the _British Family_, Millais, _The
+Carpenter's Shop_, and Rossetti the _Ecce Ancilla Domini_, and in 1851
+were Hunt's _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ and three by Millais. The fury of
+the critics had now reached a point at which some notice had to be taken
+of it--as of a man in an apopleptic fit. That of the Times in
+particular:--"These young artists have unfortunately become notorious by
+addicting themselves to an antiquated style, false perspective, and
+crude colour of remote antiquity. We want not to see what Fuseli termed
+drapery "snapped instead of folded," faces bloated into apoplexy, or
+extenuated into skeletons; colour borrowed from the jars in a druggist's
+shop, and expression forced into caricature. That morbid infatuation
+which sacrifices truth, beauty, and genuine feeling to mere eccentricity
+deserves no quarter at the hands of the public." It was in disapproval
+of the tone of this outburst that the author of "Modern Painters"
+addressed his famous and useful letter to the _Times_, vindicating the
+artists, and following it up with another in which he wishes them all
+"heartily good speed, believing in sincerity that if they temper the
+courage and energy which they have shown in the adoption of their
+systems with patience and discretion in framing it, and if they do not
+suffer themselves to be driven by harsh and careless criticism into
+rejection of the ordinary means of obtaining influence over the minds of
+others, they may, as they gain experience, lay in our England the
+foundation of a school of art nobler than the world has seen for three
+hundred years."
+
+If any one of this strenuous young band had been a painter of the first
+rank, this prediction might have been abundantly verified. But it must
+be owned that none of them was. Holman Hunt came nearest to being, and
+Millais probably thought he was, when he had abandoned his early
+principles and shaped for the Presidency of the Academy. Rossetti had
+more genius in him than the others, but it came out in poetry as well as
+in painting, and perhaps in more lasting form. As it was, the effects of
+the revolution were widespread and entirely beneficial; but those
+effects must not be looked for in the works of any one particular
+artist, but rather in the general aspect of English art in the
+succeeding half century, and perhaps to-day. It broke up the soil. The
+flowers that came up were neither rare nor great, but they were many,
+varied, and pleasing, and in every respect an improvement on the
+evergreens and hardy annuals with which the English garden had become
+more and more encumbered from want of intelligent cultivation. More than
+this, the freedom engendered of revolt had now encouraged the young
+artist to feel that he was no longer bound to paint in any particular
+fashion. People's eyes were opened to possibilities as well as to
+actualities; and though they were prone to close again under the
+soporific influence of what was regular and conventional, they were
+capable of opening again, perhaps with a start, but without the
+necessity for a surgical operation. In 1847, for example, George
+Frederick Watts had offered to adorn, free of charge, the booking-hall
+of Euston Station, and had been refused--Watts, by the by, was quite
+independent of the Pre-Raphaelites--whereas in 1860 the Benchers of
+Lincoln's Inn accepted his _School of Legislature_, and in 1867 he was
+elected an academician.
+
+Two somewhat remarkable effects of the movement are attributed to it by
+Mr Edmund Gosse (in a note on the work of Alfred Hunt, written in
+1884), which are probably typical of many more. The Liverpool Academy,
+founded in 1810, had an annual grant of L200 from the Corporation. In
+1857 it gave a prize to Millais' _Blind Girl_ in preference to the most
+popular picture of the year (Abraham Solomon's _Waiting for the
+Verdict_), and so great was the public indignation that pressure was
+brought to bear on the Corporation, the grant was withdrawn, and the
+Academy ruined.
+
+In the other instance we may not go the whole way with Mr Gosse, when in
+speaking of the Pre-Raphaelite principle he says that "the school of
+Turnerian landscape was fatally affected by them," or that all the
+landscape painters, except Alfred Hunt, "accepted the veto which the
+Pre-Raphaelites had tacitly laid upon composition or a striving after an
+artificial harmony of forms in landscape." But to a certain extent their
+influence undoubtedly was prejudicial in that respect. In suggesting
+another reason for the cessation of Turner s influence he is quite as
+near the mark, namely, the action of the Royal Academy in admitting no
+landscape painters to membership. At Turner's death in 1851 there were
+only three, among whom was Creswick. "This popular artist," says Mr
+Gosse, "was the Upas tree under whose shadow the Academical patronage of
+landscape died in England. From his election as an associate in 1842 to
+that of Vicat Cole in 1869, no landscape painter entered the doors of
+the Royal Academy." Of this august body we shall have something to say
+later on.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+MANET AND WHISTLER AGAINST THE WORLD
+
+
+Let us now cross the channel again, and see what is going on there, in
+1863. Evidently there is something on, or there would not be so much
+excitement. As we approach the Capital we are aware of one name being
+prominent in the general uproar--that of EDOUARD MANET.
+
+Manet's revolt against tradition began before he became an artist, as
+was in fact necessary, or he would never have been allowed to become
+one. The traditions of the Bourgoisie were sacred, and their power and
+importance since the revolution of 1848 not to be lightly set aside. But
+young Manet was so determined that he was at last allowed by his
+bourgeois parents to have his way, and was sent to study under that very
+rough diamond Couture. Now again his "revolting" qualities showed
+themselves, this time in the life class. Theodore Duret, his friend and
+biographer, puts it so amusingly that a quotation, untranslated, is
+imperative:--"Cette repulsion qui se developpe chez Manet pour l'art de
+la tradition," he says, "se manifeste surtout par le mepris qu'il
+temoigne aux modeles posant dans l'atelier et a l'etude du nu telle
+qu'elle etait alors conduite. Le culte de l'antique comme on le
+comprenait dans la premiere moitie du XIXe siecle parmi les peintres
+avait amene la recherche de modeles speciaux. On leur demandait des
+formes pleines. Les hommes en particulier devaient avoir une poitrine
+large et bombee, un torse puissant, des membres muscles. Les individus
+doues des qualites requises qui posaient alors dans les ateliers,
+s'etaient habitues a prendre des attitudes pretendues expressive et
+heroiques, mais toujours tendues et conventionelles, d'ou l'imprevu
+etait banni. Manet, porte vers le naturel et epris de recherches,
+s'irritait de ces poses d'un type fixe et toujours les memes. Aussi
+faisait-il tres mauvais menage avec les modeles. Il cherchait a en
+obtenir des poses contraires a leurs habitudes, auxquelles ils se
+refusaient. Les modeles connus qui avaient vu les morceaux faits d'apres
+leurs torses conduire certains eleves a l'ecole de Rome, alors la
+supreme recompense, et qui dans leur orgueil s'attribuaient presqu'une
+part du succes, se revoltaient de voir un tout jeune homme ne leur
+temoigner aucun respect. Il parait que fatigue de l'eternelle etude du
+nu, Manet aurait essaye de draper et meme d'habiller les modeles, ce qui
+aurait cause parmi eux une veritable indignation."
+
+It was in 1863 that the storm of popular fury burst over Manet's head,
+on the exhibition of his first important picture, painted three years
+before, generally known as _Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe_. This wonderful
+canvas was something so new and so surprising that it was rejected by
+the jury of the Salon. But in company with less conspicuous though
+equally unacceptable pieces by such men as Bracquemond, Cazin,
+Fantin-Latour, Harpignies, Jongkind, J. P. Laurens, Le Gros, Pissarro,
+Vollon, and Whistler, it was accorded an exhibition, alongside the
+official Salon, which was called _le Salon des refuses_. Being the
+largest and most conspicuous work shown, it attracted no less attention
+than if it had been officially hung, and probably much more. "Ainsi ce
+Dejeuner sur l'herbe," says M. Duret, "venait-il faire comme une enorme
+tache. Il donnait la sensation de quelquechose outre. Il heurtait la
+vision. Il produisait, sur les yeux du public de ce temps, l'effet de la
+pleine lumiere sur les yeux du hibou."
+
+There was more than one reason for this remarkable picture surprising
+and shocking the sensibilities of the public. It represents a couple of
+men in everyday bourgeois costume, one sitting and the other reclining
+on the grass under trees, while next to one of them is seated a young
+woman, her head turned to the spectator, in no costume at all. A
+profusion of _articles de dejeuner_ is beside her, and it is evident
+that they are only waiting to arrange the meal till a second young
+woman, who is seen bathing in the near background, is ready to join
+them. The subject and composition are reminiscent of Giorgione's
+beautiful and famous _Fete Champetre_, in the Louvre, and Manet quite
+frankly and in quite good faith pleaded Giorgione as his precedent when
+assailed on grounds of good taste. But unfortunately he had not put his
+male figures in "fancy dress," and the public could hardly be expected
+to realise that Giorgione had not, either. As for the painting, it was a
+revelation. He had broken every canon of tradition--and yet it was a
+marvellous success!
+
+Another outburst greeted the appearance of the wonderful _Olympia_ in
+1865, this time in the official catalogue. This is now enshrined in the
+Louvre. It was painted in 1863, but fortunately, perhaps, Manet had not
+the courage to exhibit it then--for who can tell to what length the fury
+of the Philistines might not have been goaded by two such shocks? As it
+was, this second violation of the sacred traditions of the nude, which
+had been exclusively reserved for allegorical subjects, was considered
+an outrage; and the innocent, natural model, of by no means voluptuous
+appearance, was regarded as a disgraceful intrusion into the chaste
+category of nymphs and goddesses. As a painter, however, Manet had shown
+himself unmistakably as the great figure of
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XLVIII.--EDOUARD MANET
+
+OLYMPIA
+
+_Louvre, Paris_]
+
+the age, and if we have to go to Paris or to New York to catch a glimpse
+of any of his work, it is partly because we are too backward in seizing
+opportunities so eagerly snapped up by others.
+
+The next great storm in the artistic world followed in the wake of one
+of Manet's companions in adversity at the _Salon des Refuses_--JAMES
+M'NEILL WHISTLER, who left Paris and settled with his mother in Chelsea
+in the late 'sixties. That he should have existed for fifteen whole
+years without breaking forth into strife is so extraordinary that we are
+almost tempted to attribute it to the influence of his mother, who used
+to bring him to the old church on Sundays, as the present writer dimly
+remembers. In this case it was not the public, but the critic, John
+Ruskin, who so deftly dropped the fat into the fire. Having, as we saw,
+taken up the cudgels for poor Turner against the public in 1843, and for
+the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1850, he now, in 1877, ranged himself
+on the other side, and accused Whistler of impertinence in "flinging a
+pot of paint in the face of the public." The action for libel which
+Whistler commenced in the following year resulted in strict fact in a
+verdict of one farthing damages for the libelled one; but in reality the
+results were much farther reaching. The artist had vindicated not only
+himself, but his art, from the attacks of the ignorant and bumptious.
+"Poor art!" Whistler wrote, "What a sad state the slut is in, an these
+gentlemen shall help her. The artist alone, by the way, is to no purpose
+and remains unconsulted; his work is explained and rectified without
+him, by the one who was never in it--but upon whom God, always good
+though sometimes careless, has thrown away the knowledge refused to the
+author, poor devil!" This recalls Turner's comment on Ruskin's
+eulogies--which Whistler had probably never heard of--and making every
+allowance for Whistler's fiery, combative nature, and sharp pen, there
+is much truth, and truth that needed telling, in his contention. "Art,"
+he continues, "that for ages has hewn its own history in marble, and
+written its own comments on canvas, shall it suddenly stand still, and
+stammer, and wait for wisdom from the passer-by? For guidance from the
+hand that holds neither brush nor chisel? Out upon the shallow conceit!"
+
+Of the hopeless banality of the critics during this period there are
+plenty of examples to be found without looking very far. Several of the
+most amusing have been embodied in a little volume of "Whistler
+Stories," lately compiled by Mr Don C. Seitz of New York. Here we find
+_The Standard's_ little joke about Whistler paying his costs in the
+action--apart from those allowed on taxation, that is to say--"But he
+has only to paint, or, as we believe he expresses it 'knock off' three
+or four 'symphonies' or 'harmonies'--or perhaps he might try his hand at
+a Set of Quadrilles in Peacock Blue?--and a week's labour will set all
+square." Then there is this priceless revelation of his art when
+questioning his class in Paris. "Do you know what I mean when I say
+tone, value, light, shade, quality, movement, construction, etc.?"
+_Chorus_, "Oh, yes, Mr Whistler!" "I'm glad, for it's more than I do
+myself." More serious was the verdict of Sir George Scharf, keeper of
+the National Gallery, when (in 1874) there was a proposal to purchase
+the portrait of Carlyle. "Well," he said, icily, on looking at the
+picture, "and has painting come to this!"
+
+High place, it would seem, did not always conduce to an appreciation of
+high art. Here is the opinion of Sir Charles Eastlake, F.R.I.B.A., also
+keeper of the
+
+[Illustration: PLATE XLIX.--J. M. WHISTLER
+
+LILLIE IN OUR ALLEY
+
+_In the possession of John J. Cowan, Esq._]
+
+National Gallery, published in 1883, on one of Rembrandt's pictures in
+the Louvre:--
+
+"_The Bath_, a very ugly and offensive picture, in which the principal
+object is the ill-proportioned figure of a naked woman, distinguished by
+flesh tones whose colour suggests the need of a bath rather than the
+fact that it has been taken. The position of the old servant wiping the
+woman's feet is not very intelligible, and the drawing of the bather's
+legs is distinctly defective. The light and shade of the picture, though
+obviously untrue to natural effect, are managed with the painter's usual
+dexterity."
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE ROYAL ACADEMY
+
+
+The last revolt of the nineteenth century was effected in a peaceable
+and business-like, but none the less successful manner, by the
+establishment, in 1886, of the New English Art Club as a means of
+defence against the mighty _vis inertiae_ of the Royal Academy. As an
+example of the disadvantage under which any artist laboured who did not
+bow down to the great Idol, I venture to quote a few sentences from the
+report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords appointed to
+inquire into the administration of the Chantrey Trust, in 1904:----
+
+"With five exceptions, all the works in the collection have been bought
+from summer exhibitions of the Royal Academy."
+
+"It is admitted by those most friendly to the present system that the
+Chantrey collection regarded as a national gallery of modern British art
+is incomplete, and in a large degree unrepresentative. The works of
+many of the most brilliant and capable artists who worked in the last
+quarter of the nineteenth century are missing from the gallery, and the
+endeavour to account for these omissions has formed one main branch of
+the inquiry."
+
+"It has been stated that while containing some fine works of art, it is
+lacking in variety and interest, and while failing to give expression to
+much of the finest artistic feeling of its period, it includes not a few
+works of minor importance. Full consideration of the evidence has led
+the Committee to regard this view as approximately correct."
+
+Up to 1897, when the collection was handed over to the nation, little
+short of L50,000 had been spent upon it. And with five exceptions,
+amounting to less than L5000, the whole of that money had been expended
+on such works alone as were permitted by the Academy to be exhibited on
+their walls.
+
+Of the L5000, it may be noted, L2200 was well laid out on Watts's
+_Psyche_; but with regard to the very first purchase made, in 1877, for
+L1000,--Hilton's _Christ Mocked_, which had been painted as an
+altar-piece for S. Peter's, Eaton Square, in 1839, the following
+question and answer are full of bitter significance for the poor artist
+of the time:----
+
+     Lord Ribblesdale.--Was Mr Hilton's picture offered by the Vicar and
+     Churchwardens?
+
+     The Secretary to the Royal Academy.--Yes, it was offered by
+     them--one of the Churchwardens was the late Lord Maghermorne--he
+     was then Sir James M'Garrell Hogg--he was a great friend of Sir
+     Francis Grant who was the President, and he offered it to him for
+     the Chantrey Collection.
+
+When repeatedly pressed by the Committee for the reasons why so few
+purchases were made outside the Academy exhibitions, the President, Sir
+Edward Poynter, repeatedly pleaded the impossibility of a Council of
+Ten, all of whom must see pictures before they are bought, travelling
+about in search of them. In view of this apparent--but obviously
+unreal--difficulty, the following questions were then put by the Earl of
+Lytton:----
+
+420. Without actually changing the terms of the will, has the question
+of employing an agent for the purpose of finding out what pictures were
+available and giving advice upon them ever been suggested?--No.
+
+421. That would come within the term of the will, would it not, the
+final voting being, as it is now, in the hands of the Academy; it would
+be open to the Council to appoint an agent, as was suggested just now,
+of going to Scotland, and going about the country making suggestions as
+to pictures which in his opinion might be bought?--The question has
+never arisen.
+
+422. But that could be done, could it not?--I suppose that could be done
+under the terms of the will, but I do not suppose that the Academy would
+ever do it.
+
+As a comment on this let us turn to the "Autobiography of W. P. Frith R.
+A." (Chapter xl.):--"A portion of the year ... was spent in the service
+of the winter Exhibition of Old Masters. My duties took me into strange
+places.... One of my first visits was paid to a huge mansion in the
+North.... I visited thirty-eight different collections of old masters
+and named for selection over three hundred pictures.... The pictures of
+Reynolds are so much desired for the winter Exhibition that neither
+trouble nor expense are spared in searching for them; so hearing of one
+described to me as of unusual splendour, I made a journey into Wales
+with the solitary Reynolds for its object."
+
+Here, where it is not a question of a Trust for the benefit of the
+public and for the encouragement of artists, there appears to have been
+no trouble or expense spared. But the real reason for the Academic
+selection leapt naively from the mouth of the President a little later,
+in reply to question 545.--"The best artists come into the Academy
+ultimately. I do not say that there have been no exceptions, but as a
+general rule all the best artists ultimately become Academicians. It is
+natural, if we want the best pictures that we should go to the best
+artists."
+
+On this point the answer to a question put by Lord Lytton to one of the
+forty, Sir William Richmond, K.C.B., is of value, as showing that the
+grievances of "the outsiders" were not imaginary:--
+
+767. I just want to ask you one more question. When you said that in
+your opinion the walls of the Academy have had priority of claim in the
+past, have you any particular reason for that statement?--Yes. I may
+mention this to show that I am consistent. Before I was an Associate of
+the Royal Academy, I fought hard for what are called, in rather
+undignified language, the outsiders, and I was anxious that men should
+be elected Associates of the Royal Academy not necessarily because they
+exhibit on the Royal Academy walls, but because they are competent
+painters. That was my fight upon which I stood; and I refused to send a
+picture to the Royal Academy on the understanding that if I did I should
+probably be elected Associate that year, and also that my picture would
+be bought by the Chantrey Fund. My answer to that was, "If my picture is
+good enough to be purchased for the Chantrey Bequest my picture can be
+purchased from the walls of the Grosvenor Gallery as well as from the
+walls of the Royal Academy. That seems to me to be justice."
+
+The "New English," then, had some justification for their establishment;
+and although they did not make very much headway before the close of the
+nineteenth century, they find themselves at the opening of the twentieth
+in a position to determine to a very considerable extent what the future
+of English painting is to be, just as the Academy succeeded in
+determining it before they came into existence.
+
+For the Academy everything that was vital in English art in the last
+half century had no existence--was simply ignored. For the New English,
+it was the seed that flowered, under their gentle influence, into the
+many varieties of blossoms with which our garden is already filled. To
+the Academy there was no such thing as change or development--their ears
+were deaf to any innovation, their eyes were blind to any fresh beauty.
+To others, every new movement foretold its significance, and the century
+closed with the recognition of the fact that art must live and develop
+if it is to be anything but a comfortable means of subsistence for a
+self-constituted authority of forty and their friends.
+
+Let me be allowed to conclude this chapter, and my imperfect efforts to
+indicate the energies of six centuries of art in so small a space, with
+a passage from a lecture delivered in 1882 by Mr Selwyn Image, now Slade
+Professor at Oxford, which embodies the spirit in the air at that time,
+and foreshadows what was to come. "I do not feel that we have come here
+to sing a requiem for art this afternoon," he said. "As a giant it will
+renew its strength and rejoice to run its course. I am not a prophet, I
+cannot tell you just what that course is going to be. Nor is it possible
+to estimate what is around us with the same security, with the same
+value, that we estimate what has passed--you must be at a certain
+distance to take things in. But in contemporary art we can notice some
+characteristics, which are quite at one with what we call the modern
+spirit; and extremely suggestive--for they seem to indicate movement,
+and therefore life, in this imaginative sphere, just as there is
+movement and life in the sphere of science or of social interests. For
+instance, in modern representative work ... I think anyone comparing it
+as a whole with the work of the old masters, will be struck as against
+their distinctness, containedness, simplicity and serenity; with its
+complexity, restlessness, and vagueness, and emotion, and suggestiveness
+in place of delineation, and impressionism in place of literal
+transcription--and this alike in execution and motive. I do not mean to
+say that these qualities are better than the qualities that preceded
+them, or worse--but only that they are different, only that they are of
+the modern spirit--only that they indicate movement and life; and so far
+that is hopeful--is it not?"
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+_INDEX_
+
+
+Academy of Painting, the French, 231
+
+---- the Royal, 279, 286, 329-333
+
+Alamanus, Giovanni or Johannes, 60, 61
+
+Allegri, Antonio, or Correggio, 58
+
+Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence, 307
+
+Altdorfer, Albert, 212, 214-216
+
+Angelico, Fra, 19
+
+Animal Painters, 154, 191-202
+
+Aretino, Spinello, 17
+
+Arnolde, 255
+
+
+Backer, 174
+
+Balen, Henry van, 159, 162
+
+Barret, 287
+
+Basaiti, Marco, 63, 74
+
+Bassano, Jacopo da, 98-99
+
+Bastiani, Lazzaro di, 75-76
+
+Baudelaire, 311, 312
+
+Bazzi, Giovanni Antonio (Sodoma), 57
+
+Bellini, Gentile, 70, 72-73, 76, 81
+
+---- Giovanni, 62, 63, 66, 70-72, 76, 81, 82, 83, 94
+
+---- Jacopo, 66, 69, 70, 75
+
+Belvedere, Andrea, 201
+
+Berchem, Nicholas, 199-201, 205, 208
+
+Beruete, Senor, quoted, 113, 115, 116, 118, 177
+
+Bettes, John, 254, 255
+
+---- Thomas, 255
+
+Bol, 165
+
+Boltraffio, Giovanni Antonio, 57
+
+Bonifazio Veronese or Veneziano, 97-98
+
+Bordes, Lassalle, 311
+
+Bosboom, 307
+
+Botticelli, Sandro, 26, 28-32, 33
+
+Botticini, Francesco, 32
+
+Boucher, Francois, 241-243, 245, 246, 247, 248
+
+Bouguereau, 306
+
+Bourdon, Sebastien, 231-232
+
+Bouts, Dirk, 132
+
+Bracquemond, 325
+
+Bril, Paul, 229
+
+Broederlam, Melchior, 121, 122, 124
+
+Brouwer, Adrian, 157, 158, 173, 183-185
+
+Brueghel, Jan, or Velvet Brueghel, 141, 201
+
+----- Pieter (or Peasant), 141
+
+---- ---- his son, 141
+
+Brun, Le, 234-241
+
+Bruyn, Bartel, 212
+
+Buonarroti. _See_ Michelangelo
+
+Burnet, on Turner, 315
+
+Byzantine Art, 59, 124
+
+
+Caliari, Paolo, 102-103
+
+Campidoglio, Michel de, 201
+
+Canale, Antonio, 108
+
+Caro-Delvaille, quoted, 79, 87, 91, 92
+
+Carpaccio, Vittore, 75, 76-78
+
+Carracci, the, 106, 182
+
+---- Agostino, 106, 107, 108
+
+---- Annibale, 106, 107
+
+---- Lodovico, 106, 107
+
+Catalonia, School of, 109
+
+Catena, Vincenzo, 72, 73
+
+Cazin, 325
+
+Champaigne, Philippe de, 233-234
+
+Chantrey Trust, the, 329
+
+Chardin, 245, 247, 296, 297
+
+Chartered Society, the, 286
+
+Cimabue, Giovanni, 1-9, 10, 11, 124, 125, 308
+
+Claude (or Claude Lorraine, or Gellee), 226, 229-231
+
+Cleef, Joos van, 142
+
+Clouet, Francois, 226
+
+---- Jehan or Jean, 226
+
+Cole, Peter, 255
+
+---- Vicat, 323
+
+Conegliano, Cima da, 72, 73-74
+
+Constable, 295, 306, 310, 314, 317
+
+Cook, Herbert, quoted, 80, 83, 87
+
+Copley, John Singleton, 297
+
+Corot, 306
+
+Correggio, 58
+
+Cotes, 287
+
+Cotman, John Sell, 295-296, 306, 314
+
+Courbet, 306
+
+Couture, 324
+
+Cox, 306
+
+Cozens, John Robert, 316
+
+Cranach, Lucas, 212, 213-214
+
+Credi, Lorenzo di, 49
+
+Creswick, 323
+
+Crivelli, Carlo, 63, 64
+
+Crome, John, or Old Crome, 295, 314
+
+---- John Bernay, his son, 295
+
+Crowe and Cavalcaselle, quoted, 122
+
+Cunningham, Allan, "Life of Hogarth," 261, 266, 267, 301
+
+Cuyp, Albert, 194-196
+
+---- Jacob Gerritz, 194
+
+
+Dance, Nathaniel, 286
+
+Daubigny, 306
+
+Daumier, 306
+
+David, Jacques Louis, 248, 249, 306, 309
+
+Dayes, Edward, quoted, on Turner, 315
+
+Decamps, 306
+
+Degas, 306
+
+Delacroix, Eugene, 306, 309-313
+
+Diana, Benedetto, 75
+
+Dilke, Lady, quoted, 247
+
+Dobson, William, 257
+
+Dolce, Carlo, 108
+
+---- Ludovico, on Titian, 80, 81
+
+Domenichino, 107-108, 227
+
+Donatello, 23, 70
+
+Dore, 306
+
+Dou, Gerard, 187, 188, 192
+
+Doyen, 246
+
+Duccio of Siena, 5, 6, 59, 124, 125
+
+Duerer, Albert, 70, 140, 175, 181, 212, 213, 215-222, 223
+
+Duret, Theodore, quoted, on Manet, 324-325
+
+Dyck, Anthony van, 156, 157, 160-163, 165, 166, 178, 236, 272
+
+----  ---- in England, 256-257
+
+Dutch School, 165-210
+
+
+Eclectics, the, 105
+
+Edwards, Edward, quoted, on Art Exhibitions, 279
+
+Elsheimer, Adam, 158, 212
+
+Emilia, Schools of, 57
+
+English School, early Portrait Painters of, 251-258
+
+---- in Eighteenth Century, 295-298
+
+---- spirit of revolt in Nineteenth Century, 305 _et seq._
+
+Everdingen, 157, 205
+
+Exhibitions of Painting, 278
+
+Eyck, Hubert van, 121, 125, 126, 127, 143, 150
+
+---- Jan van, 121, 125, 129-131, 133, 134, 150
+
+
+Fabriano, Gentile da, 65, 70
+
+Fabritius, Karel, 189
+
+Fantin-Latour, 325
+
+Fiori, Mario di, 201
+
+Flaxman, John, on Romney, 298-300
+
+Flemish School, 121-163
+
+Floris, Franz, 144
+
+Foppa, Vincenzo, 57
+
+Fragonard, Jean Honore, 245, 248, 249
+
+Francesco, Piero della, 49
+
+Franciabigio, 45
+
+Free Society of Artists, 286
+
+French Academy of Painting, 231
+
+French School in Seventeenth Century, 225-235
+
+---- in Eighteenth Century, 235-249
+
+---- in Nineteenth Century, 305
+
+Frith, W. P., quoted, 331
+
+Fyt, Jan, 154, 157
+
+
+Gaddi, Taddeo, 18
+
+Gainsborough, Thomas, 286, 288-295, 297
+
+Garrard, Mark, 255
+
+Gellee, Claude, or Claude, 226, 229-231
+
+Genre Painters of Dutch School, 183-191
+
+Gericault, 306, 310
+
+German Schools, 211-224
+
+Ghirlandaio, Domenico, 43, 310
+
+Giambono, Michele, 60, 61
+
+Gillot, Claude, 236, 239
+
+Giorgione, 76, 79, 81, 82, 83, 86, 97
+
+Giotto di Bondone, 10-18, 24, 66, 124, 308
+
+Girtin, 315, 316
+
+Gossaert, Jan, or Mabuse, 136, 138, 139, 143, 254
+
+Gosse, Edmund, quoted, 322, 323
+
+Goubeau, Antoine, 235
+
+Goya, Francisco, 119-120
+
+Goyen, Jan van, 186, 199, 202-203, 204
+
+Grebber, Peter, 199
+
+Greco, El, 110
+
+Greene, Thomas, quoted, on Turner, 314
+
+Greenhill, 257
+
+Gros, Le, 309, 325
+
+Greuze, Jean Baptiste, 243-245, 249, 258
+
+Gruenewald, Matthew, 213
+
+Guardi, Francesco, 108
+
+Guercino, 108
+
+
+Hals, Frans, 165-169, 173, 178, 179, 181, 183, 184, 192, 248
+
+Harpignies, 325
+
+Heem, de, 201
+
+Heemskirk, Martin, 144
+
+Helst, Bartholomew van der, 165, 170-171, 174
+
+Herle, Wilhelm van, or Meister Wilhelm, 211
+
+Herrera, Francisco de, 111
+
+Highmore, 297
+
+Hilliard, 257
+
+Hobbema, Meindert, 208-210
+
+Hogarth, William, 257, 258-267, 280, 297, 298, 307
+
+Holbein, Hans, 175, 212, 213, 222-224
+
+---- in England, 254
+
+Hondecoeter, Giles, 197, 198
+
+---- Gysbert, 198
+
+---- Melchior, 154, 198, 199
+
+Hone, Nathaniel, 287
+
+Honthorst, Gerard, 169-170
+
+Hoogh, Peter de, 189, 190
+
+Hudson, Thomas, 257, 269
+
+Hunt, Alfred, 323
+
+---- Holman, 134, 306, 320, 321, 322
+
+Huysum, James van, 202
+
+---- Jan van, 201-202
+
+---- Justus van, 202
+
+---- Michael van, 203
+
+
+Image, Mr Selwyn, quoted, 333
+
+Ingres, 306
+
+Israels, 307
+
+
+Jervas, 257
+
+John of Bruges, 125, 126
+
+Jongkind, 325
+
+Jordaens, Jacob, 156, 157, 160, 163
+
+
+Kauffmann, Angelica, 287
+
+Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 234, 257, 279
+
+Knupler, Nicolas, 186
+
+Kugler, quoted, 13, 61, 67, 75, 77, 95,
+97, 99, 101, 103, 107, 181, 182, 195, 204, 223
+
+
+Lancret, Nicholas, 239-240, 241
+
+Landscape, painters of, 202-210
+
+Largilliere, Nicholas, 234, 235, 241
+
+Lastman, Peter, 180
+
+Laurens, J. P., 325
+
+Lawrence, 300, 301-303, 306, 313
+
+Le Brun, 234, 241
+
+Le Gros, 309, 325
+
+Le Moine, Francois, 241
+
+Le Sueur, Eustache, 232-233
+
+Lefort, quoted, on Velasquez, 115
+
+Lely, Sir Peter, 165, 235, 257
+
+Leyden, Lucas van, 138, 212
+
+Lingelbach, 203, 208
+
+Lippi, Fra Filippo, 21, 26, 29
+
+---- Filippino, 22
+
+Lochner, Stephen, 211
+
+Lockie, 255
+
+Lombardy, Schools of, 57
+
+Longhi, Pietro, 108
+
+Loo, Carle van, 241
+
+Lorenzetti, Pietro, 17
+
+Lorraine, Claude, 226, 229-231
+
+Lotto, Lorenzo, 63, 72, 96-97
+
+Luini, Bernardino, 57
+
+Lyne, 255
+
+
+Mabuse, Jan van, 136, 138, 139, 143, 254
+
+Maes, Nicolas, 180, 188-189
+
+Manet, Edouard, 306, 324-327
+
+Mansueti, Giovanni, 75
+
+Mantegna, Andrea, 67-70, 71, 72, 146, 151
+
+Maratti, Carlo, 108
+
+Maris, the Brothers, 307
+
+Masaccio, 18, 21, 24-26
+
+Masolino, 26
+
+Massys, Jan, 141
+
+---- Quentin, 136-138, 141, 212
+
+Mauve, 307
+
+Meissonier, 306
+
+Memling, Hans, 132, 133-136, 150
+
+Mengs, Raphael, 85
+
+Messina, Antonello da, 71, 72, 126, 129
+
+Metsu, 191
+
+Michelangelo, 26, 40-46, 66, 95, 100
+
+Mieris, Frans van, 188
+
+Millais, 320, 321, 322, 323
+
+Millet, 306
+
+Moine, Francois le, 241
+
+Monoyer, Baptiste, 201
+
+Montagna, Bartolommeo, 63
+
+Mor, Sir Antonio, 142
+
+Morland, George, 296-298
+
+---- Henry, his father, 296
+
+Moroni, 75
+
+Moser, Michael, 280
+
+Moyaert, Nicholas, 199
+
+Murano, Antonio da, 60
+
+Murillo, Bartolome Esteban, 118-119
+
+Muther, Dr, quoted, 32, 177, 178
+
+
+Nasmyth, 306
+
+New English Art Club, 329, 333
+
+Norwich School, 295
+
+
+Oil Painting, introduction of, 126
+
+Oliver, 257
+
+Oort, Adam van, 145
+
+Orcagna, Andrea, 16
+
+Orley, Bernard van, 140, 143
+
+Ostade, Adrian van, 173, 183, 185, 206
+
+---- Isaac van, 183, 185
+
+Ouwater, 13
+
+
+Pacheco, 110-111
+
+Padua, School of, 66
+
+Palma, Giovane, 78
+
+---- Vecchio, 78, 96, 98
+
+Parma, School of, 58
+
+Pater, Jean Baptiste Joseph, 240-241
+
+Peake, 255
+
+Penny, 287
+
+Perugian or Umbrian School, 48, 49, 51
+
+Perugino, Pietro, 48, 49
+
+Pinas, 180
+
+Piombo, Sebastiano del, 94-96
+
+Pisanello, Vittore, 64, 65
+
+Pissarro, 325
+
+Pollaiuolo, Antonio, 26-28, 30
+
+Pontormo, 45
+
+Pot, Hendrik Gerritz, 169
+
+Potter, Paul, 196
+
+---- Pieter, 196
+
+Poussin, Gaspard (Gaspard Dughet), 228-229, 231
+
+---- Nicholas, 226-228
+
+Poynter, Sir Edward, 331
+
+Predis, Ambrogio di, 36, 57
+
+Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 134, 320, 323, 327
+
+Previtali, Andrea, 74
+
+Prudhon, 309
+
+
+Quattrocentists, the Earlier, 18-26
+
+---- the Later, 26 _et seq._
+
+
+Raeburn, 300
+
+Raphael, 26, 45, 47-57
+
+---- Sir Joshua Reynolds on, 85, 270
+
+Rembrandt van Ryn, 165, 166, 171-183, 192
+
+Reni, Guido, 108
+
+Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 267-278, 286-288, 289
+
+---- quoted, on Boucher, 243
+
+---- ---- on Bourdon, 232, 233
+
+---- ---- on Gainsborough, 290-294
+
+---- ---- on Hogarth, 260
+
+---- ---- on Rubens and Titian, 93-94
+
+---- ---- on Titian and Raphael, 85
+
+---- ---- on Veronese, 105
+
+---- revival of English School due to, 150
+
+---- _Refs._ to, 245, 247, 251, 257, 297, 301, 331, 332
+
+Ribera, 110
+
+Richardson, 257
+
+Ridolfi, quoted, 84
+
+Rigaud, Hyacinthe, 234, 241
+
+Riley, 257
+
+Robert, Hubert, 246
+
+Robusti, Jacopo. _See_ Tintoretto
+
+Romano, Giulio, 55
+
+Romney, George, 100, 152, 289, 298-300, 301
+
+Rossetti, 134, 306, 321, 322
+
+Rowlandson, 89
+
+Royal Academy, the, 329-333
+
+---- foundation of, 279, 286
+
+Rubens, Peter Paul, 143-157
+
+---- and Van Dyck, 161-162
+
+---- and Velasquez, 112, 149
+
+---- pupils of, 157-163
+
+---- _Refs._ to, 89, 93, 114, 117, 158, 160,
+165, 167, 176, 179, 182, 184, 235, 236, 271
+
+Rucellai Madonna, the, 5
+
+Ruisdael, Jacob, 157, 200, 204-206, 208, 209
+
+Ruskin against the Philistines, 313-323
+
+---- on Whistler, 327
+
+
+Sandrart, Joachim, 229
+
+---- quoted, 180
+
+Sansovino, 89, 102
+
+Sarto, Andrea del, 41, 45
+
+Scharf, Sir George, 328
+
+Schlegel, on Altdorfer, 215
+
+Schongauer, Martin, 134
+
+Scorel, Jan, 140
+
+Sebastiani, Lazzaro di. _See_ Bastiani
+
+Segar, Francis, 255
+
+---- William, 255
+
+Seghers, Daniel, 201
+
+Semitecolo, Nicolo, 59
+
+Shee, Sir Martin Archer, 313
+
+Signorelli, Luca, 49
+
+Smith, John, Catalogue Raisonne, quoted, 193, 199, 244, 265
+
+Snyders, Frans, 154, 157, 159-160, 163
+
+Sodoma, 57
+
+Spanish School, 108-120
+
+Spinello of Arezzo, or Aretino, 17
+
+Squarcione, Francesco, 62, 63, 66-67, 70
+
+Steen, Jan, 186-187
+
+Stevens, 306
+
+Streetes, Guillim, 254, 255
+
+Strozzi, Bernard, 113
+
+Sueur, Eustache le, 232-233
+
+Swanenburg, Jacob van, 175, 180
+
+
+Tassi, Agostino, 229
+
+Teniers, Abraham, 158
+
+---- David, the Elder, 157, 158
+
+---- ---- the Younger, 157, 158, 159, 163, 185
+
+Terburg, Gerard, 190-191
+
+Thornhill, Sir James, 258, 279
+
+Thulden, Theodore van, 156
+
+Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista, 108
+
+Tintoretto, Il, 99-102, 103, 104, 105, 113, 114, 117
+
+Titian, 78-94, 100, 102, 103, 104, 105, 117, 179
+
+Turner, 295, 306, 314-320, 323, 327
+
+---- Claude's influence on, 230, 231
+
+Tuscan Schools, 1-58
+
+
+Uccello, Paolo, 23-24, 25
+
+Umbrian or Perugian School, 48, 49, 51
+
+
+Vaga, Piero del, 45
+
+Van Balen, Henry, 159, 162
+
+Van Cleef, Joos, 142
+
+Van de Velde, Adrian, 203, 206, 208
+
+---- Willem, the Elder, 206
+
+---- ---- the Younger, 206-208
+
+Van der Helst, Bartholomew, 165, 170-171, 174
+
+Van der Weyden, Roger, 132-134, 211
+
+Van Dyck, Anthony, 156, 157, 160-163, 165, 166, 178, 236, 272
+
+---- ---- in England, 256, 257
+
+Van Eyck, Hubert, 121, 125, 126, 127, 143, 150
+
+---- Jan, 121, 125, 127, 131, 133, 134, 150
+
+Van Goyen, Jan, 186, 199, 202-203, 204
+
+Van Huysum, James, 202
+
+---- Jan, 201-202
+
+---- Justus, 202
+
+---- Michael, 202
+
+Van Leyden, Lucas, 138, 212
+
+Van Loo, Carle, 241
+
+Van Mabuse, Jan, 136, 138, 139, 143, 254
+
+Van Mieris, Frans, 188
+
+Van Oort, Adam, 145
+
+Van Orley, Bernard, 140, 143
+
+Van Ostade, Adrian, 173, 183, 185, 206
+
+---- Isaac, 183, 185
+
+Van Swanenburg, Jacob, 175, 180
+
+Van Thulden, Theodore, 156
+
+Vasari, quoted, on Andrea del Sarto, 41
+
+---- on Botticelli, 28, 30, 32
+
+---- on Cimabue, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9
+
+---- on Fra Angelico, 20
+
+---- on Fra Filippo Lippi, 21, 22, 23
+
+---- on Giotto, 10
+
+---- on introduction of oil painting, 126, 127, 129
+
+---- on Leonardo da Vinci, 34, 37, 39, 40
+
+---- on Masaccio, 25, 26
+
+---- on Michelangelo, 42, 43, 44, 45
+
+---- on Pollaiuolo, 26, 27, 28
+
+---- on the Quattrocentists, 18
+
+---- on Raphael, 47
+
+---- on Spinello of Aretino, 82, 86
+
+---- on Titian, 82, 86
+
+---- _Refs._ to, 173, 308
+
+Vecellio, Tiziano. _See_ Titian
+
+Velasquez, 89, 109, 110-118, 120, 163, 178, 179
+
+Venetian Schools, 59-108
+
+Verhaegt, Tobias, 145
+
+Vermeer of Delft, Jan, 189, 191
+
+Veronese, Paolo, 103-104, 105
+
+Verrocchio, Andrea, 34, 35, 49
+
+Vertue, George, 251
+
+Vinci, Leonardo da, 26, 33-40, 49, 57, 225
+
+Vivarini Family, the, 59, 60
+
+---- Antonio, 62, 63, 65
+
+---- Bartolommeo, 62
+
+---- Luigi, or Alvise, 62
+
+Vlieger, Simon de, 206
+
+Vollon, 325
+
+Volterra, Daniele da, 18
+
+---- Francesco da, 18
+
+Vos, Simon de, 156
+
+
+Waagen, Dr, quoted, 95, 122-123, 143, 146, 153, 157, 224
+
+Walker, Robert, 257
+
+Walpole, quoted, 251, 252, 267
+
+Wals, Gottfried, 229
+
+Watteau, Antoine, 235-239, 240, 241
+
+Watts, George Frederick, 306, 322
+
+Weenix, Jan Baptist, 154, 197, 198, 199
+
+---- ---- his son, 154, 198
+
+Wesel, Hermann Wynrich von, 211
+
+West, Benjamin, 253, 256, 287
+
+Weyden, Roger van der, 132-134, 211
+
+Whistler, James M'Neill, 306, 325, 327
+
+Wilhelm, Meister, 211
+
+Wills, 280
+
+Wils, Jan, 199
+
+Wilson, Richard, 230, 288, 296
+
+Wint, Peter de, 306
+
+Wouvermans, Philip, 192-193, 205, 206, 208
+
+Wyczewa, M. de, quoted, 117
+
+Wynants, Jan, 192, 203-204
+
+
+Zampieri, Domenico, or Domenichino, 107-108
+
+Zoffany, 297
+
+Zurbaran, 110
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] National Gallery Catalogue.
+
+[2] "Titien," par Henry Caro-Delvaille. Librairie Felix Alcan.
+
+[3] An old copy of this picture is in the Edinburgh Gallery.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Six Centuries of Painting, by Randall Davies
+
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