A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools

    From a design by Michael Angelo. See 790.

The naked figure, typical of the human race, and reclining against a slippery globe, – with the world, we may say, before him, – is awakening, at the sound of a trumpet from above from the dream of life to the lasting realities of eternity. It may be the sound of the "last trump" or the call to a "new life" that comes before. Behind his seat are several masks, illustrating the insincerity or duplicity of a world in which "all is vanity"; and around him are visions of the tempting and transitory hopes, fears, and vices of humanity. On the right sits a helmed warrior, moody and discomfited; his arms hang listlessly and his face is unseen – hidden perhaps from the cruelty of War. Above him are battling figures – emblematic of Strife and Contention. A little detached from this group is a son dragging down his parent by the beard – "bringing his grey hair with sorrow to the grave." On the other side sits Jealousy, gnawing a heart; and above are the sordid hands of Avarice clutching a bag of gold. On the left hand Lust and Sorrow are conspicuous; Intemperance raises a huge bottle to his lips; and Gluttony turns a spit (see Landseer's Catalogue of the National Gallery, 1834, p. 41). Thus all around the figure of Human Life there wait —

The ministers of human fate
And black Misfortune's baleful train!..
These shall the fury Passions tear,
The vultures of the mind,
Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear,
And shame that sculks behind;
Or pining Love shall waste their youth,
Or Jealousy, with rankling tooth,
That inly gnaws the secret heart;
And Envy wan, and faded Care,
Grim-visag'd comfortless Despair,
And Sorrow's piercing dart.

    Gray: Ode on a distant prospect of Eton College.

9. "LORD, WHITHER GOEST THOU?"

    Annibale Carracci (Eclectic-Bologna: 1560-1609).

Annibale, younger brother of Agostino and cousin of Lodovico Carracci, was one of the three masters of the Eclectic School at Bologna, the characteristics of which have been discussed in the chapter on the Later Italian Schools. Annibale, the most distinguished of the family as a painter, was the son of a tailor and was intended for his father's business. He went off, however, to his cousin Lodovico, with whom he devoted himself to art. In 1580 he visited Parma, where he spent three years in studying the works of Correggio. The copies noticed above (7 and 37) were perhaps made at this time. Annibale afterwards studied in Venice. In 1589 the school of the Carracci was started at Bologna. They called it the Incamminati, or, as we might say, "The Right Road." In 1600 Annibale was invited to Rome by the Cardinal Odoardo Farnese to decorate his palace. Here, we are told, "he was received and treated as a gentleman, and was granted the usual table allowance of a courtier." He was assisted in the Farnese frescoes by Lanfranco, by Domenichino (then a young man), and by his brother Agostino, of whom, however, he was very jealous (see under 147). He died in 1609, and was buried near Raphael in the Pantheon. The frescoes of the Carracci in the Farnese palace were preferred by Poussin to all the works in Rome after those of Raphael, and they undoubtedly possess many technical merits. The subject-pictures by Annibale in our Gallery will fail greatly to please; they are academical and unindividual, and are deficient in true enthusiasm. Annibale was one of the first to practise landscape-painting as a separate department of art. In this field the influence of the Netherlands and of Venice may be seen united in Carracci's pictures, which in their turn laid the foundation for Poussin and Claude. In our Gallery Annibale is seen at his best in the two poetic subjects painted for a harpsichord (93 and 94); these are both graceful and spirited.

The Apostle Peter, according to a Roman tradition, being terrified at the danger which threatened him in Rome, betook himself to flight. On the Via Appia our Saviour appeared to him bearing his cross. To Peter's question: Domine quo vadis? ("Lord, whither goest Thou?") Christ replied, "To Rome, to suffer again crucifixion." Upon which the apostle retraced his steps, and received the crown of martyrdom. So much for the subject. As for its treatment, the note of almost comic exaggeration in St. Peter's attitude will not fail to strike the spectator; and "there is this objection to be made to the landscape, that, though the day is breaking over the distant hills and pediment on the right hand, there must be another sun somewhere out of the picture on the left hand, since the cast shadows from St. Peter and the Saviour fall directly to the right" (Landseer's Catalogue, p. 193).

10. THE EDUCATION OF CUPID

    Correggio (Parmese: 1494-1534).

Antonio Allegri – called Il Correggio from his birthplace, a small town near Modena – is one of the most distinctive of the old masters. What is it that constitutes what Carlyle (following Sterne) calls the "Correggiosity of Correggio"? It is at once a way peculiar to him amongst artists, of looking at the world, and an excellence, peculiar to him also, in his methods of painting. Correggio "looked at the world in a single mood of sensuous joy," as a place in which everything is full of happy life and soft pleasure. The characteristics of his style are "sidelong grace," and an all-pervading sweetness. The method, peculiar to him, by which he realised this way of looking at things on canvas, is the subtle gradation of colours, – a point, it is interesting to note, in which of all modern masters Leighton most nearly resembles him (Art of England, p. 98). "Correggio is," says Ruskin, "the captain of the painter's art as such. Other men have nobler or more numerous gifts, but as a painter, master of the art of laying colour so as to be lovely, Correggio is alone" (Oxford Lectures on Art, § 177). The circumstances of Correggio's life go far to explain the individuality of his style. He was the son of a modest, peaceful burgher, and Correggio and Parma, where he spent his life, were towns removed from the greater intellectual excitements and political revolutions of his time. Ignorant of society, unpatronised by Popes or great Princes, his mind was touched by no deep passion other than love for his art, and "like a poet hidden in the light of thought," he worked out for himself the ideals of grace and movement which live in his pictures (see Symonds, Renaissance, iii. 248). Of the details of his life little is known. His earliest works, as Morelli first demonstrated, reveal the influence of the Ferrarese masters, nor was he untouched by the creations of Mantegna at Mantua, where he studied for two or three years. In 1514, in his twentieth year, he was entrusted with an important commission by the Minorite Friars of Correggio. The Court of Correggio was then a centre of refinement and culture, under the rule of Giberto and his wife Veronica, who was one of the most accomplished women of the day, and greatly admired "our Antonio," as she called the painter. In 1518 Correggio left his native city for Parma, which was to become for ever associated with his name. "There is little reason," says his latest biographer, "to lament that he never visited Rome or any other great city. Parma, rising in smiling tranquillity upon her fertile plains, girdled by castles and villages, and looking out upon the vaporous line of hills from which the streams which give her water descend into the champaign, offered our painter not only the serenity that suited his temperament, but a vaster field of activity than had ever been allotted to any artist. There were altar-pieces to be painted, rooms to be decorated; and the joyous fancies of his genius were to be allowed ample scope in the decoration of two stately cupolas" (Ricci). He was first employed by the Abbess of the Convent of S. Paolo to paint her principal chamber. It is characteristic of the time that the subjects selected were from pagan mythology. Afterwards Correggio was commissioned to cover with frescoes the cupolas of the Church of S. Giovanni Evangelista, and of the cathedral. In these compositions, Correggio "carries the foreshortening of the figures to a point which, while it displays the daring of the artist, too often transcends the limits of grace." Seen from below, little of the figures is sometimes distinguishable except legs and arms in vehement commotion. When one of the frescoes in the cathedral was first uncovered, a canon is said to have remarked that it looked to him like a "fricassee of frogs." But many of the angels' heads in Correggio's frescoes are exquisitely beautiful. It is only in Parma that Correggio's power can be fully appreciated. His charm is to be found rather in his oil-paintings, and in these the National Gallery possesses some acknowledged masterpieces. In 153 °Correggio lost his wife, and returned to his native town. "Although by nature good and well-disposed, he nevertheless," says Vasari, "grieved more than was reasonable under the burden of those passions which are common to all men. He was very melancholic in the exercise of his art, and felt its fatigues greatly." His life was but little longer than that of Raphael, for he died in his forty-first year. The stories of his poverty given in many biographies appear to be ill-founded. He was in constant employment; he was treated as a person of consideration, and received good remuneration; and the Governor of Parma wrote to the Duke of Mantua on the painter's death, "I hear he has made comfortable provision for his heirs." His fame was great, and has been enduring; but his influence upon later art was not fortunate. "His successors, attracted by an intoxicating loveliness which they could not analyse, threw themselves blindly into the imitation of Correggio's faults… Cupolas through the length and breadth of Italy began to be covered with clouds and simpering cherubs in the convulsions of artificial ecstasy. The attenuated elegance of Parmigiano, the attitudinising of Anselmi's saints and angels, and a general sacrifice of what is solid and enduring to sentimental gewgaws on the part of all painters who had submitted to the magic of Correggio, proved how easy it was to go astray with the great master. Meanwhile, no one could approach him in that which was truly his own – the delineation of a transient moment in the life of sensuous beauty, the painting of a smile on Nature's face, when light and colour tremble in harmony with the movement of joyous living creatures" (Symonds: Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, ii. 158).

One of the most celebrated works in the Gallery – "the two pictures which I would last part with out of it," Ruskin once said, "would be Titian's Bacchus and Correggio's Venus." It is a great picture first because it is true to nature. "Look at the foot of Venus. Correggio made it as like a foot as he could, and you won't easily find anything liker… Great civilised art is always the representation, to the utmost of its power, of whatever it has got to show – made to look as like the thing as possible" (Queen of the Air, § 163). Notice, too, the roundness of effect produced in the limbs by the gradation of full colours, the reflected lights, and the transparent shadows. The "chiaroscuro" is so clever that you can look through the shadows into the substance.

As for the subject of the picture, Mercury, the messenger of the gods (dressed therefore in his winged cap and sandals), is endeavouring to teach Cupid (Love) his letters, of which, according to the Greek story, Mercury was the inventor. Venus, the Goddess of Beauty and the Mother of Love, looks out to the spectator with a winning smile of self-complacent loveliness and points us to the child. She has taken charge meanwhile of Cupid's bow (from which he shoots his arrows into lovers' hearts), and is herself represented (as sometimes in classical gems) with wings, for Beauty has wings to fly away as well as Time and Love. The picture is sometimes called the Education of Cupid, but Love learns through the heart and not through the head, and "if you look at this most perfect picture wisely, you will see that it really ought to be called 'Mercury trying, and failing, to teach Cupid to read,' for indeed from the beginning and to the end of time, Love reads without letters, and counts without arithmetic" (Fors Clavigera, viii. 238).

This famous picture has had a strange, eventful history. It was painted in 1521 or 1522, and a century later it was still in the Ducal Gallery at Mantua. In 1625 Charles I. of England despatched his music master, Nicholas Laniere, to Italy to buy pictures for him. Laniere communicated with a picture-dealer named Nys, who purchased several works from the Mantuan gallery. When the transaction became known, the citizens took it so ill that the Duke would have paid double the money to be rid of the bargain. But Nys would not relent, and the picture was included in the artistic freight which the ship Margaret took to London in 1628. On its arrival, our picture was hung in the king's private apartments in Whitehall. When he was beheaded, and his collection sold, the Correggio was bought for £40 by the Duke of Alva, and taken to Spain. It afterwards passed through several collections, and ultimately into that of Murat, King of Naples. Upon his fall from power his wife took it with her when she escaped to Vienna. During the congress of sovereigns in 1822 her chamberlain communicated with the ministers of all the Powers, with a view to the sale of this and another Correggio (15). Russia was negotiating for the purchase of them when Lord Londonderry, hearing by mere accident of the affair, went to the chamberlain, paid the larger price against which Russia was holding out, and despatched his courier post haste to Vienna to convey the treasures to England. An attempt was made to stop him, but they reached this country almost before the Russians had heard of the purchase.[45 - The two pictures were bought by the nation in 1834 for £11,550. The sum was then thought a very large one, and the trustees fortified themselves with the opinion of experts. Amongst these Sir David Wilkie, R.A., wrote, "It is certainly a large sum for two pictures; but giving this difficulty its due weight, I would decidedly concur in giving this sum rather than let them go out of the country, considering the rarity of such specimens even in foreign countries, and their excellence as examples of the high school to which they belong, to which it must be the aim of every other school to approach."] The picture has not come unscathed out of these changes and chances. "Repairs," says Sir Edward Poynter, "are visible in many places. Injudicious cleaning has done even more injury; and it has undoubtedly been deprived of much of that final delicate surface-painting which, in the hands of a great master, does so much to unite a picture into one harmonious whole. It remains, nevertheless, one of the most distinguished works in the collection" (The National Gallery, i. 4).

11. ST. JEROME

    Guido Reni (Eclectic-Bologna: 1575-1642).

Guido was a native of Bologna, the son of a musician, and first studied under Dionysius Calvaert, a Flemish artist established in that city. Guido afterwards removed to the school of the Carracci, and became one of their most celebrated pupils. For twenty years he worked in Rome, where he obtained great distinction. He left Rome abruptly, owing to a dispute with one of the Cardinals, and settled in Bologna, where he lived in splendour and established a school. "As a child he was very beautiful, with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a fair complexion. He was specially characterised by devotion to the Madonna. On every Christmas-eve, for seven successive years, ghostly knockings were heard upon his chamber door; and every night, when he awoke from sleep, the darkness above his bed was illuminated by a mysterious globe of light. In after life, besides being piously addicted to Madonna-worship, he had a great dread of women in general and witches in particular. He was always careful, it is said, to leave his studio door open while drawing from a woman" (Symonds's Renaissance, vii. 215). To the temperament thus indicated we may trace the half-effeminate, half-spiritual character of some of his works – the "few pale rays of fading sanctity," which Ruskin sees in him (Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iv. § 4). In later life his effeminate eccentricity amounted to insanity, and he gave himself wholly up to the gaming table. To extricate himself from money troubles he sold his time, says his biographer, at a stipulated sum per hour, to certain dealers, one of whom tasked him so rigidly as to stand by him, watch in hand, while he worked. How different from the honourable terms on which the earlier masters worked! How easy to understand the number of bad Guidos in the world! His biographer, Malvasia, relates that Guido's works were sometimes begun and finished in three hours. His earlier works were in the robust and forcible style of Caravaggio (see No. 172). Afterwards he aimed rather at ideal grace. Both styles are represented in the National Gallery; the "Magdalen" (177), the "Youthful Christ embracing St. John" (191), and the "Ecce Homo" (271), have all been much admired for their sentiment or sentimentality. The head of St. John is a work of undoubted grace. But Guido's best work is the Aurora of the Rospigliosi Palace at Rome.

For the story of St. Jerome, see under 227.

12. ISAAC AND REBECCA, OR "THE MILL."[46 - The picture is inscribed "Mariage d'Isaac avec Rebecca," but it is a repetition with some variations in detail of the Claude known as Il Molino (The Mill) in the Doria palace at Rome. Ruskin characterises this version of the subject as a "villainous and unpalliated copy." "There is not," he adds, "one touch or line of even decent painting in the whole picture; but as connoisseurs have considered it a Claude, as it has been put in our Gallery for a Claude, and as people admire it every day for a Claude, I may at least presume it has those qualities of Claude in it which are wont to excite the public admiration, though it possesses none of those which sometimes give him claim to it; and I have so reasoned, and shall continue to reason upon it, especially with respect to facts of form, which cannot have been much altered by the copyist" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. iii. ch. i. § 9, sec. iv. ch. ii. § 8).]

    Claude (French: 1600-1682). See 2.

This and the Claude on the other side of the door (14) are of peculiar interest as being the two which Turner selected for "the noble passage of arms to which he challenged his rival from the grave." He left two of his own pictures (479 and 498) to the nation on the express condition that they should always hang side by side – as they are hanging to-day – with these two by Claude.[47 - The following is the text of this portion of Turner's will: "I give and bequeath unto the Trustees and Directors for the time being of a certain Society or Institution, called the 'National Gallery' or Society, the following pictures or paintings by myself, namely Dido Building Carthage, and the picture formerly in the De Tabley collection. To hold the said pictures or paintings unto the said Trustees and Directors of this said Society for the time being, in trust for the said Institution or Society for ever, subject, nevertheless, to, for, and upon the following reservations and restrictions only; that is to say, I direct that the said pictures or paintings shall be hung, kept, and placed, that is to say, always between the two pictures painted by Claude, The Seaport and Mill." The "picture formerly in the De Tabley collection" is the "Sun rising in a Mist," 479. Turner bought it back at Lord de Tabley's sale at Christie's in 1827 for £514: 10s., and ever afterwards refused to part with it. The other picture, the Carthage (498), was returned unsold from the Academy, and Turner always kept it in his gallery. His friend Chantrey used to make him offers for it, but each time its price rose higher. "Why, what in the world, Turner, are you going to do with the picture?" he asked. "Be buried in it," Turner replied – a remark he often made to other friends.] To discuss fully the comparative merits of the pictures would be beyond the scope of this handbook; the whole of the first volume of Modern Painters was written to establish the superiority of Turner. We can only select a few leading points.

"The greatest picture is that which conveys the greatest number of the greatest ideas." Take first what Ruskin calls "ideas of relation," by which he means "the perception of intellectual relations, including everything productive of expression, sentiment, character." Now from this point of view this picture is a particularly clear instance of Claude's "inability to see the main point in a matter" or to present any harmonious conception: —

"The foreground is a piece of very lovely and perfect forest scenery, with a dance of peasants by a brook side; quite enough subject to form, in the hands of a master, an impressive and complete picture. On the other side of the brook, however, we have a piece of pastoral life; a man with some bulls and goats tumbling headforemost into the water, owing to some sudden paralytic affection of all their legs. Even this group is one too many; the shepherd had no business to drive his flock so near the dancers, and the dancers will certainly frighten the cattle. But when we look farther into the picture, our feelings receive a sudden and violent shock, by the unexpected appearance, amidst things pastoral and musical, of the military; a number of Roman soldiers riding in on hobby-horses, with a leader on foot, apparently encouraging them to make an immediate and decisive charge on the musicians. Beyond the soldiers is a circular temple, in exceedingly bad repair; and close beside it, built against its very walls, a neat watermill in full work. By the mills flows a large river with a weir all across it. The weir has not been made for the mill (for that receives its water from the hills by a trough carried over the temple), but it is particularly ugly and monotonous in its line of fall, and the water below forms a dead-looking pond, on which some people are fishing in punts. The banks of this river resemble in contour the later geological formations around London, constituted chiefly of broken pots and oyster-shells. At an inconvenient distance from the waterside stands a city, composed of twenty-five round towers and a pyramid. Beyond the city is a handsome bridge; beyond the bridge, part of the Campagna, with fragments of aqueducts; beyond the Campagna the chain of the Alps; on the left, the cascades of Tivoli. This is, I believe, a fair example of what is commonly called an 'ideal' landscape; i. e. a group of the artist's studies from Nature, individually spoiled, selected with such opposition of character as may ensure their neutralising each other's effect, and united with sufficient unnaturalness and violence of association to ensure their producing a general sensation of the impossible. Let us analyse the separate subjects a little in this ideal work of Claude's. Perhaps there is no more impressive scene on earth than the solitary extent of the Campagna of Rome under evening light… A dull purple poisonous haze stretches level along the desert, veiling its spectral wrecks of massy ruins, on whose rents the red light rests, like dying fire on defiled altars. The blue ridge of the Alban Mount lifts itself against a solemn space of green, clear, quiet sky. Watch-towers of dark clouds stand steadfastly along the promontories of the Apennines. From the plain to the mountains the shattered aqueducts, pier beyond pier, melt into darkness, like shadowy and countless troops of funeral mourners, passing from a nation's grave. Let us, with Claude, make a few 'ideal' alterations in this landscape. First, we will reduce the multitudinous precipices of the Apennines to four sugar loaves. Secondly, we will remove the Alban Mount, and put a large dust-heap in its stead. Next we will knock down the greater part of the aqueducts, and leave only an arch or two, that their infinity of length may no longer be painful from its monotony. For the purple mist and declining sun, we will substitute a bright blue sky, with round white clouds. Finally, we will get rid of the unpleasant ruins in the foreground; we will plant some handsome trees therein, we will send for some fiddlers, and get up a dance, and a picnic party. It will be found, throughout the picture, that the same species of improvement is made on the materials which Claude had ready to his hand. The descending slopes of the city of Rome, towards the pyramid of Caius Cestius, supply not only lines of the most exquisite variety and beauty, but matter for contemplation and reflection in every fragment of their buildings. This passage has been idealised by Claude into a set of similar round towers, respecting which no idea can be formed but that they are uninhabitable, and to which no interest can be attached beyond the difficulty of conjecturing what they could have been built for. The ruins of the temple are rendered unimpressive by the juxtaposition of the watermill, and inexplicable by the introduction of the Roman soldiers. The glide of the muddy streams of the melancholy Tiber and Anio through the Campagna is impressive in itself, but altogether ceases to be so when we disturb their stillness of motion by a weir, adorn their neglected flow with a handsome bridge, and cover their solitary surface with punts, nets, and fishermen" (Modern Painters, vol i., preface to second edition, pp. xxxvi. – xxxix.)

Take next the "ideas of truth" in the picture – the perception, that is to say, of faithfulness in a statement of facts by the thing produced. And first (1) for truth of colour. "Can it be seriously supposed that those murky browns and melancholy greens are representative of the tints of leaves under full noonday sun? I know that you cannot help looking upon all these pictures as pieces of dark relief against a light wholly proceeding from the distances; but they are nothing of the kind, they are noon and morning effects with full lateral light. Be so kind as to match the colour of a leaf in the sun (the darkest you like) as nearly as you can, and bring your matched colour and set it beside one of these groups of trees, and take a blade of common grass, and set it beside any part of the fullest light of their foregrounds, and then talk about the truth of colour of the old masters!" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. ii. § 5). (2) Next for truth of chiaroscuro. Claude neglects that distinctness of shadow which is the chief means of expressing vividness of light. Thus "the trunks of the trees between the water-wheel and the white figure of the middle distance, are dark and visible; but their shadows are scarcely discernible on the ground, and are quite vague and lost in the building. In nature, every bit of the shadow, both on the ground and building, would have been defined and conspicuous; while the trunks themselves would have been faint, confused, and indistinguishable, in their illumined parts,[48 - "So in N. Poussin's 'Phocion' (40) the shadow of the stick on the stone in the right-hand corner, is shaded off and lost, while you see the stick plainly all the way. In nature's sunlight it would have been the direct reverse: you would have seen the shadow black and sharp all the way down; but you would have had to look for the stick, which in all probability would in several places have been confused with the stone behind it" (ibid.).] from the grass or distance" (ibid., ch. iii. § 4). (3) Thirdly, for truth of space. In nature everything is indistinct, but nothing vacant. But look at the city on the right bank of the river: —

"I have seen many cities in my life, and drawn not a few; and I have seen many fortifications, fancy ones included, which frequently supply us with very new ideas indeed, especially in matters of proportion; but I do not remember ever having met with either a city or a fortress entirely composed of round towers of various heights and sizes, all facsimiles of each other, and absolutely agreeing in the number of battlements. I have, indeed, some faint recollection of having delineated such a one in the first page of a spelling book when I was four years old; but, somehow or other, the dignity and perfection of the ideal were not appreciated, and the volume was not considered to be increased in value by the frontispiece. Without, however, venturing to doubt the entire sublimity of the same ideal as it occurs in Claude, let us consider how nature, if she had been fortunate enough to originate so perfect a conception, would have managed it in its details. Claude has permitted us to see every battlement, and the first impulse we feel upon looking at the picture is to count how many there are. Nature would have given us a peculiar confused roughness of the upper lines, a multitude of intersections and spots, which we should have known from experience was indicative of battlements, but which we might as well have thought of creating as of counting. Claude has given you the walls below in one dead void of uniform gray. There is nothing to be seen or felt, or guessed at in it; it is gray paint or gray shade, whichever you may choose to call it, but it is nothing more. Nature would have let you see, nay, would have compelled you to see, thousands of spots or lines, not one to be absolutely understood or accounted for, but yet all characteristic and different from each other; breaking lights on shattered stones, vague shadows from waving vegetation, irregular stains of time and weather, mouldering hollows, sparkling casements: all would have been there; none indeed seen as such, none comprehensible or like themselves, but all visible; little shadows and sparkles, and scratches, making that whole space of colour a transparent, palpitating, various infinity"[49 - Compare on this point G. Poussin's "Abraham and Isaac" (31).] (ibid., ch. v. § 7).

(4) Lastly, the picture entirely ignores truth of mountains. And this in two ways. First, there is a total want of magnitude and aerial distance: —

"In the distance is something white, which I believe must be intended for a snowy mountain, because I do not see that it can well be intended for anything else. Now no mountain of elevation sufficient to be sheeted with perpetual snow can by any possibility sink so low on the horizon as this something of Claude's, unless it be at a distance of from fifty to seventy miles. At such distances … the mountains rise from the horizon like transparent films, only distinguishable from mist by their excessively keen edges and their brilliant flashes of sudden light; they are as unsubstantial as the air itself, and impress their enormous size by means of this aerial-ness, in a far greater degree at these vast distances, than even when towering above the spectator's head.[50 - One may compare with Ruskin's description the similar one by Tennyson of a distant view of Monte Rosa —How faintly-flush'd, how phantom-fair,Was Monte Rosa, hanging thereA thousand shadowy-pencill'd valleysAnd snowy dells in a golden air.The Daisy.] Now, I ask of the candid observer if there be the smallest vestige of an effort to attain, if there be the most miserable, the most contemptible, shadow of attainment of such an effect by Claude? Does that white thing on the horizon look seventy miles off? Is it faint or fading, or to be looked for by the eye before it can be found out? Does it look high? Does it look large? Does it look impressive? You cannot but feel that there is not a vestige of any kind or species of truth in that horizon; and that however artistical it may be, as giving brilliancy to the distance (though as far as I have any feeling in the matter it only gives coldness), it is, in the very branch of art on which Claude's reputation chiefly rests, aerial perspective, hurling defiance to nature in her very teeth. But there are worse failures in this unlucky distance… No mountain was ever raised to the level of perpetual snow without an infinite multiplicity of form. Its foundation is built of a hundred minor mountains, and from these, great buttresses run in converging ridges to the central peak… Consequently, in distant effect, when chains of such peaks are visible at once, the multiplicity of form is absolutely oceanic; and though it is possible in near scenes to find vast and simple masses composed of lines which run unbroken for a thousand feet or more, it is physically impossible when these masses are thrown seventy miles back to have simple outlines, for then these large features become mere jags and hillocks, and are heaped and huddled together in endless confusion… Hence these mountains of Claude having no indication of the steep vertical summits which are characteristic of the central ridges, having soft edges instead of decisive ones, simple forms instead of varied and broken ones, and being painted with a crude raw white, having no transparency, nor filminess, nor air in it, instead of rising in the opalescent mystery which invariably characterises the distant snows, have the forms and the colours of heaps of chalk in a limekiln, not of Alps" (ibid., sec. iv. ch. ii. §§ 8, 9).

13. THE HOLY FAMILY

    Murillo (Spanish: 1618-1682).

Bartolomé Estéban Murillo, the most widely popular of the Spanish painters, was himself sprung from the "people." He was born of humble parents in Seville, and his earliest attempts at art were pictures for fairs. He is also believed to have supplied some of the Madonnas which were shipped off by loads for the convents in Mexico[51 - "In some of the convents (in Mexico) there still exist, buried alive like the inmates, various fine old paintings … brought there by the monks" (Dublin National Gallery Catalogue). The Spanish influence gave birth, moreover, to a native Mexican School of painting, said to be of considerable merit.] and Peru. A turning-point in his artistic career came, however, when a certain Pedro de Moya came into the studio of Murillo's uncle, Castillo. De Moya had been studying under Van Dyck in London. Van Dyck's style was a revelation to Murillo, who determined forthwith to start off on the grand tour. First, however, he went to Madrid, where Velazquez helped him greatly. His studies there were so successful, and his popularity became so great, that the foreign journey was abandoned. He married a lady of fortune, his house became a centre of taste and fashion, commissions poured in upon him, and in 1660 he formed the Academy of Seville. His life was as pious as it was busy. He was often seen praying for long hours in his parish church, and in his last illness (which was brought on by his falling, in a fit of absence of mind, from a scaffold) he was carried every day to pray before Pedro Campaña's "Descent from the Cross." "I wait here," he said to the sacristan who asked one day if he were ready to go, "till the pious servants of our Lord have taken him down."

Murillo was thus one of the last sincerely religious painters – a class which, "after a few pale rays of fading sanctity from Guido, and brown gleams of gipsy Madonnahood from Murillo, came utterly to an end" (Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iv. § 4). But it was "gipsy Madonnahood": there is an entire want of elevation in his religious types, and the peasants whom he painted as beggars or flower-girls he painted also as angels or Virgins. This mingling of the common with the religious alike in subject and treatment was no doubt a principal reason of his great popularity in his own country.[52 - "Murillo, of all true painters the narrowest, feeblest, and most superficial, for those reasons the most popular" (Two Paths, § 57 n.) – "The delight of vulgar painters (as Murillo) in coarse and slurred painting merely for the sake of its coarseness, opposed to the divine finish which the greatest and mightiest of men disdained not" (Modern Painters, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. x. § 3).] His vulgarity of treatment in his favourite beggar subjects is best seen in the Dulwich Gallery; of his religious style, the pictures here are characteristic examples. There is a certain "sweetness" and sentimentality about them which often makes them immensely popular. The French in particular are subject to a furore for Murillo, his "Immaculate Conception," now in the Louvre, having been bought in 1852 for £23,440 – the largest sum ever given up to that time for a single picture.[53 - The French partiality for Murillo is traditional, dating back to Marshal Soult's time, from whose collection the "Immaculate Conception" was bought. Murillos were his favourite spoils from the Peninsular War. "One day, showing General G – his gallery in Paris, Soult stopped opposite a Murillo, and said, 'I very much value that, as it saved the lives of two estimable persons.' An Aide-de-camp whispered, 'He threatened to have both shot on the spot unless they gave up the picture'" (Ford's Handbook).] With children, too, Murillo is nearly always a great favourite. A maturer taste, however, finds the sentiment of Murillo overcharged, and the sweetness of expression an insufficient substitute for elevation of character. "His drawing," says Ruskin, "is free and not ungraceful, but most imperfect and slurred to give a melting quality of colour. That colour is agreeable because it has no force or severity; but it is morbid, sunless, and untrue. His expression is sweet, but shallow; his models amiable, but vulgar and mindless; his chiaroscuro commonplace, opaque, and conventional; and yet all this is so agreeably combined, and animated by a species of wax-work life, that it is sure to catch everybody who has not either very high feeling or strong love of truth, and to keep them from obtaining either" (Letter to Dean Liddell, given in the Memoir by H. L. Thompson, p, 224.)[54 - "He was not a bad painter," continued Ruskin, "but he exercises a most fatal influence on the English School, and therefore I owe him an especial grudge. I have never entered the Dulwich Gallery for fourteen years without seeing at least three copyists before the Murillos. I never have seen one before the Paul Veronese… I intend some time in my life to have a general conflagration of Murillos." Ruskin would have been relieved to know that of late years at the National Gallery Paul Veronese – and especially his St. Helena – has been very frequently copied.] "Murillo," says a more appreciative critic, "who assimilated least of foreign elements, had become the most international of all Spanish painters; for he possessed the art of winning the favour of all, the gift of a language intelligible to all times and peoples, to all classes and even to aliens of his faith" (Justi: Velazquez and his Times, p. 236). One charm his pictures have which no criticism is likely to take away: they are all stamped with the artist's individuality; there is never any mistaking a Murillo.

This picture – known as the Pedroso Murillo, from the Pedroso family, in whose possession it remained until 1810 – is one of the painter's last works, painted when he was about sixty. The look of childlike innocence in the head of the young Christ is very attractive, although the attitude is undeniably "stagey." The heads of the Virgin and St. Joseph also are good instances of Murillo's plan of "supplying the place of intrinsic elevation by a dramatic exhibition of sentiment" (W. B. Scott). The picture is characteristic of what is known as Murillo's third, or vaporoso, manner. His first manner is called frio, or cold; his second warm, or calido, and the third, from its melting softness, vaporoso. The first style is generally spoken of as lasting up to 1648, the second up to 1656, but he did not so much paint in these different manners at different times as adapt them to the different subjects severally in hand.

14. SEAPORT: THE QUEEN OF SHEBA

    Claude (French, 1600-1682). See 2.

This seaport – inscribed in the right corner La Reine de Saba va trouver Salamon, – is one of Claude's masterpieces. Like its companion, the picture was painted in 1648 for the Duke of Bouillon. "The spectator," says Sir Edward Poynter, "may almost imagine that he feels the freshness of the early morning, and the breeze which sends the crisp waves rolling in from the open sea, while the limpid purity of the sunlit atmosphere and the sparkle of the sun on the water, not only invite sympathy with the more exquisite aspects of nature, which is, perhaps, the highest achievement of this art, but are expressed with a simplicity and perfection of execution which surpass all the works of other painters in which similar effects have been attempted" (The National Gallery, i. 192). The picture which Turner selected to vie with this is not one of his best, but Ruskin makes a point out of Claude's poverty of invention in the details. The queen is starting for a distant expedition, and was going in great state (she went "with a very great company, and camels that bare spices, and gold in abundance, and precious stones"); yet the prominent incident in the picture is the carrying of one schoolgirl's trunk. She is going by sea, and is setting out in the early morning (for the sun is represented only a little above the horizon);[55 - Amongst the curiosities of criticisms are the differences between experts as to whether this is a morning or an evening effect. Contradictory opinions on the point were submitted to the Select Committee of 1853, but as the picture had been "restored," each side was able to impute the difficulty of deciding to the "ruinous" nature of that operation.] yet has no wraps, nor even a head-dress. For the rest, Ruskin notices the tameness of Claude's waves and a certain conventionality in his treatment of ships and seaports generally. "A man accustomed to the broad, wild sea-shore, with its bright breakers, and free winds, and sounding rocks, and eternal sensation of tameless power, can scarcely but be angered when Claude bids him stand still on some paltry chipped and chiselled quay, with porters and wheel-barrows running against him, to watch a weak, rippling, bound and barriered water, that has not strength enough in one of its waves to upset the flower-pots on the wall, or even to fling one jet of spray over the confining stone"[56 - It may be interesting to note on the other side that Dr. Waagen (whose experience of the sea is given under No. 149) finds the waves in this picture to "run high," and to be "extraordinarily deep and full."] (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 5). Claude's ships, too, and his conception of seaports generally, show a strange want of true imagination:

"His ships, having hulls of a shape something between a cocoanut and a high-heeled shoe, balanced on their keels on the top of the water, with some scaffolding and cross-sticks above, and a flag at the top of every stick, form perhaps the purest exhibition of human inanity and fatuity which the arts have yet produced. The harbours also, in which these model navies ride, are worthy of all observation for the intensity of the false taste which, endeavouring to unite in them the characters of pleasure-ground and port, destroys the veracity of both. There are many inlets of the Italian seas where sweet gardens and regular terraces descend to the water's edge; but these are not the spots where merchant vessels anchor, or where bales are disembarked. On the other hand, there are many busy quays and noisy arsenals upon the shores of Italy; but queens' palaces are not built upon the quays, nor are the docks in any wise adorned with conservatories or ruins. It was reserved for the genius of Claude to combine the luxurious with the lucrative, and rise to a commercial ideal, in which cables are fastened to temple pillars, and lighthouses adorned with rows of bean-pots" (Harbours of England, pp. 17, 18). Notice, lastly, the "atrocious error in ordinary perspective" in the quay on the left of which the figure is sitting with his hand at his eyes[57 - Compare for equally defective perspective the covered portico in 30.] (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. i. sec. i. ch. v. § 5, pt. ii. sec. vi. ch. ii. § 1).

15. ECCE HOMO!

    Correggio (Parmese: 1494-1534). See under 10.

"Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the Man!" —Ecce Homo! (John xix. 5). Over the domain of tragedy Correggio – with his pretty grace and sentimentality – had little sway. In this respect he has been called "the Rossini of painting. The melodies of the Stabat Mater are the exact analogues in music of Correggio's voluptuous renderings of grave or mysterious motives" (Symonds: Renaissance, iii. 248). Thus here it is rather a not-unpleasant feeling of grief than any profound sense of sorrow or resignation that the painter expresses; but within these limits the picture is a very effective one. "The features of Christ express pain without being in the least disfigured by it. How striking is the holding out of the fettered hands, as if to say, 'Behold, these are bound for you!' The Virgin Mary, who, in order to see her son, has held by the balustrade which separates him from her, sinks with grief into the arms of Mary Magdalene. Her lips still seem to tremble, but the corners of the mouth are already fixed, it is involuntarily open; the arched eyelids are on the point of covering the closing eyes; the hands with which she has held fast let go the balustrade" (Waagen: Treasures of Art in Great Britain, i. 327). To the right is a Roman soldier, robust and rugged, yet with a touch of pity in his look; whilst to the left, standing just within the judgment hall, is Pilate, the Roman proconsul, with a mild look of self-satisfaction on his face – as of the man who "washed his hands" of the affair and left the populace to do with Christ as they would.

This picture (which is supposed to have been painted in 1521) was formerly in the possession of the Counts Prati of Parma, and subsequently in the Colonna Palace at Rome. It was purchased of the Colonna family by Sir Simon Clarke, who, finding it impossible to take it out of Italy, sold it to Murat, then King of Naples. It was purchased, as already related, with No. 10 by Lord Londonderry in 1834.

16. ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON

    Tintoretto (Venetian: 1518-1594).

Jacopo Robusti, called Tintoretto (the little dyer), from the trade of his father, is the last great master of the Venetian School and "the most imaginative of all painters." His artistic ambition was expressed in the line which he wrote on the wall of his studio: "The design of Michelangelo and the colouring of Titian." He engrafted (says Symonds) on the calm and natural Venetian manner "something of the Michelangelesque sublimity, and sought to sway by dramatic movement the romantic motives of the school." He conquers Michelangelo (says Ruskin) in his own field; "out-flies him in motion, outnumbers him in multitude, outwits him in fancy and out-flames him in rage." The imagination of Tintoret dwelt among the tragic and dramatic scenes in sacred history. While he conceived of these in the largest and most audacious spirit, his "imagination penetrative" extended to the minutest details, and his great works abound in those minor episodes which lend so much reality to a poet's conceptions. In his classical pictures, Tintoret combined with the sumptuous colour of Titian something of the mythopœic faculty which enabled him to inspire the tales of ancient Greece with an intense vitality of beauty. In other of his pictures, effects of light and shade are the vehicle of his imagination. It was Tintoret (says Symonds) "who brought to its perfection the poetry of chiaroscuro, expressing moods of passion and emotion by brusque lights, luminous half-shadows, by semi-opaque darkness, no less unmistakably than Beethoven by symphonic modulations" (Renaissance, iii. 270). The intense vitality which characterises Tintoret's subject-pictures is conspicuous also in his portraits. They "render the man at his best, full of health and determination, and make us look back with amazement to a state where the human plant was in such vigour" (Berenson's Venetian Painters, p. 59). The picture now before us (16) may give some idea of Tintoret's power of imagination; and the decorative piece lately added to the Gallery (1313) is exemplary of another side of his genius. The Galleries at Hampton Court should also be visited by all admirers of Tintoretto. But it is only in Venice that this great master can properly be studied, and only in the works of Ruskin that any full appreciation of his powers is to be found.[58 - Visitors to Venice may like to be reminded that most of Ruskin's criticism upon Tintoret's works there is now easily accessible in (1) The Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret, (2) The Stones of Venice, travellers' edition, and (3) the reissue of the second volume of Modern Painters. Mr. Ruskin always accounted his "discovery" of Tintoret as one of the chief works of his life. "I have supplied," he wrote in Stones of Venice (1853), "somewhat copious notices of the pictures of Tintoret, because they are much injured, difficult to read, and entirely neglected by other writers on art." "I say with pride," he wrote in the epilogue to the second volume of Modern Painters (1883), "what it has become my duty to express openly, that it was left to me, and to me alone, first to discern, and then to teach, so far as in this hurried century any such thing can be taught, the excellency and supremacy of five great painters, despised until I spoke of them; – Turner, Tintoret, Luini, Botticelli, and Carpaccio. Despised, – nay, scarcely in any true sense of the word, known." For the Pre-Ruskinian view of Tintoret, the reader may consult Kugler's Handbook of Painting.] One or two points, however, may profitably be mentioned which visitors who come across pictures by Tintoret in foreign galleries should bear in mind. First, he is the most unequal in execution of all painters. The Venetians used to say he had three pencils – one of gold, one of silver, and a third of iron. Annibale Carracci said of him that "if he was sometimes equal to Titian, he was often inferior to Tintoretto." Secondly, "when no one would pay for his colours (and sometimes nobody would even give him space of wall to paint on), he used cheap blue for ultramarine;" and he worked so rapidly, "and on such large spaces of canvas, that, between damp and dry, his colours must go, for the most part." Tintoret, from the rapidity of his execution, received the nickname of il Furioso; and Sebastiano del Piombo used to say that Tintoret could paint as much in two days as would occupy him for two years. Thirdly, Tintoret "is entirely unconcerned respecting the satisfaction of the public. He neither cares to display his strength to them, nor convey his ideas to them; when he finishes his work, it is, because he is in the humour to do so; and the sketch which a meaner painter would have left incomplete to show how cleverly it was begun, Tintoret simply leaves because he has done as much of it as he likes" (Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret, passim).

The well-founded pride which is thus stamped on Tintoret's art is conspicuous in his life. From the first he stood alone. His father had sent him as a boy to Titian's studio; but after ten days the master dismissed him. From this time forward the two men remained upon distant terms, – Tintoretto being indeed an ardent admirer of Titian, but never a friend, and Titian and his set turning the cold shoulder upon Tintoret. The slight passed by Titian upon the young Tintoret threw him back upon his own resources, and henceforth he pursued his own ideals, self-taught. He bought casts from the antique and from the works of Michelangelo; he devoted the day to painting, and in the night he made drawings from his casts. His persevering labour won for him in time a high position among the painters of Venice, and before he was forty he had become the acknowledged rival of Titian himself. For some years, however, he worked in poverty, often accepting commissions without pay, and when he became famous he often worked "for nothing." For years he painted in the Scuola di San Rocco – "a shrine reared by Tintoret to his own genius" – at the rate of 100 ducats a year. For his "Paradise" in the Ducal Palace, "the greatest picture in the world," he was asked to name his own price, but he left it to the State, and abated something from what they tendered. While the commission was still pending, Tintoret used to tell the senators that he prayed to God for it, so that paradise itself might perchance be his recompense after death. His exquisite "Three Graces" in the Ducal Palace was painted for fifty ducats. He lived aloof from the world, seldom leaving Venice. His house, on the Fondamenta de' Mori, is still standing, and there are stories told of the way in which his wife, the daughter of a Venetian nobleman, tried to guard against his unworldliness. When he left the house she would wrap up money for him in a handkerchief, and expected an account of it on his return. Tintoretto, it is said, had always to confess that he had spent it upon alms. He loved all the arts, and played the lute and various instruments, some of them of his own invention. He designed theatrical costumes, and was well versed in mechanics. He abounded in witty sayings, but no smile, we are told, ever hovered on his lips. He died at the age of seventy-six, leaving as the record of a long life, devoted with rare single-mindedness to his art, the remark that the art of painting was one which became ever increasingly difficult.