Chapter XII: Preface: By John Ruskin (10)

St. John is charming in the beauty of boyhood. In the youthful Christ the painter has striven after something more "ideal," and has produced a somewhat namby-pamby face.

192. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF.

_Gerard Dou_ (Dutch: 1613-1675).

Dou, who stands at the head of the Leyden School, is
remarkable for the patient industry which he devoted to his
work, and which was rewarded by his attainment of wonderful
mastery in delicate execution. "Mr. Slap-dash whips out his
pocket-book, scribbles for five minutes on one page, and
from that memorandum paints with the aid of the depths of
his consciousness the whole of his picture. Not so the true
follower of Gerard Dou. To him the silent surface with the
white ground is a sacred place that is to tell on after ages,
and bring pleasure or power or knowledge to hundreds of
thousands as silently. No eyes, emperor's or clown's, telling
the other that they have been there. It is worth this man's
while to spend a whole sketch-book, if need be, over one
twelve-inch panel" (_Letters of James Smetham_, p. 173). With
Gerard Dou "a picture was a thing of orderly progression,
even as the flowers of spring gradually unfold their leaves
and buds and blossoms to the sun. He hurried his work for no
man, but moved with a princely ease, as much as to say to the
world, 'Other men may hurry as they please, from necessity or
excitement; but Gerard Dou at least chooses to think, and to
perfect his works until he has satisfied himself.'" At first
he worked at portrait-painting, but his manner was too slow to
please his sitters. "The wife of a wealthy burgomaster paid
the penalty of possessing a fair white hand by having to sit
five long days while the painter transferred it to canvas. Had
his patrons come into the world for no other purpose than to
serve Gerard Dou, he could not have dissipated their time with
greater indifference. The cheek of his fair model would grow
pale with hunger and fatigue while he was rounding a pearl on
her neck" (968). Afterwards Dou devoted himself to scenes of
indoor _genre_, and herein "he spent as much time in imitating
an indentation on a copper stewpan as he devoted to a dimple
in the refulgent cheek of beauty. Each object he transcribes
is sharp or dull, transparent or opaque, rounded or squared,
as it ought to be. The texture is always given with exactness,
even to the minute threads in a costly robe. He paints goblets
of wine which would tempt an ascetic. His gentlemen smoke
such delicately moulded clay pipes with so much serenity that
smoking in his pictures is invested with all the grace of an
accomplishment. He carried his neatness and love of order into
his studio. Other painters were content to sit at an easel of
plain deal--Gerard Dou must have one of ebony, inlaid with
mother-of-pearl. He locked up his colours in a costly cabinet
as if they had been rubies, emeralds, and brilliants of the
first water. On arriving in front of his easel, he is said
to have paused for a few moments to allow the dust to settle
before he uncovered the picture" (Merritt's _Art Criticism and
Romance_, i. 170). The German painter Sandrart relates that he
once visited Dou's studio and admired the great care bestowed
by the artist on the painting of a broomstick. Dou remarked
that he would still have to work at it for three days more. The
history of his pictures is a remarkable instance of industry
rewarded. In his lifetime an amateur of the name of Spiering
used to pay him one thousand florins a year--in itself a good
income--for the mere privilege of having the first offer of
his pictures; and since his death their value has steadily
increased. Of his life, beyond what has been stated above,
little is known. He was the son of a glazier at Leyden, and was
apprenticed successively to an engraver and a glass-painter.
At the age of fifteen he entered the studio of Rembrandt, with
whom he remained three years. He lived nearly all his life in
his native town. Among his pupils were Schalcken (199), Mieris
(840), and Metsu (838).

This fine portrait is painted (says Sir Edward Poynter) in a style unusually large and free for the master.

193. LOT AND HIS DAUGHTERS LEAVING SODOM.

_Guido_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1575-1642). _See 11._

This and the companion picture (196) are interesting as being two of the nation's conspicuously bad bargains. The purchase of them at very high prices, £1680 and £1260, was indeed one of the grievances that led to the Select Committee of the House of Commons, 1853, and to the subsequent reconstitution of the Gallery. "Expert" witnesses declared before the Committee that these two pictures ought not to have been bought at any price or even accepted as a gift. Ruskin had some time previously written to the _Times_ about them as follows:--

"Sir, if the canvases of Guido, lately introduced into the
Gallery, had been good works of even that bad master, which
they are not,--if they had been genuine and untouched works,
even though feeble, which they are not,--if, though false and
retouched remnants of a feeble and fallen school, they had been
endurably decent or elementarily instructive,--some conceivable
excuse might perhaps have been by ingenuity forged, and by
impudence uttered, for their introduction into a gallery where
we previously possessed two good Guidos (11 and 177) ... but
now, sir, what vestige of an apology remains for the cumbering
our walls with pictures that have no single virtue, no colour,
no drawing, no character, no history, no thought?" (_Arrows of
the Chace_, i. 64, 65).

194. THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS.

_Rubens_ (Flemish: 1577-1640). _See 38._

At the wedding of Thetis and Peleus an apple was thrown amongst the guests by the Goddess of Discord, to be given to the most beautiful. Paris, the Trojan shepherd, was ordered by Jupiter to decide the contest. He is here seated with Mercury, the messenger of the gods, at his side, about to award the apple to Venus. On the right of Venus is Juno with her peacock at her feet; on the left, Minerva, with her owl perched behind her. Paris thus chose Pleasure, instead of Power or Wisdom; and from his choice came, the story adds, all the troubling of domestic peace involved in the Trojan War. The Goddess of Discord, already assured of her victory and its consequences, hovers in the clouds above, spreading fire and pestilence.

This picture--one of Rubens's masterpieces and "evidently entirely the work of his own hand"--belongs to his latest period; "never did he show his intense appreciation of the beauty of flesh and the delights of colour more conspicuously than in the pictures of his old age." Characteristic also is the painter's treatment of the subject. The goddesses are as substantial as any figures of flesh and blood; the picture is realistic, not symbolic. An exactly opposite method of treatment was exemplified in Mr. Watt's "Judgment of Paris," exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1887. Paris was left out, for does not every lover have the same choice to make for himself? and the goddesses were soft visionary forms of purely ideal beauty (_cf. Modern Painters_, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. viii. § 7).

195. A MEDICAL PROFESSOR.

_Unknown_ (German School).

The interest of this picture lies in the history of its purchase. It was bought by the trustees in 1845, on the advice of the then Keeper, as a Holbein. "The veriest tyro might well have been ashamed of such a purchase" (_Arrows of the Chace_, i. 65); and very much ashamed the trustees were, when immediately after the purchase the hoax was discovered. There and then they subscribed £100 between them, which they offered to M. Rochard, the dealer, "to induce him to annul the bargain, but he declined, and there was an end of it."[108]

196. SUSANNAH AND THE ELDERS.

_Guido Reni_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1575-1642). _See 11._

"A work devoid alike of art and decency" (_Modern Painters_, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. xiv. § 24). For the circumstances of its acquisition see above under 193.

197. A WILD BOAR HUNT.

_Velazquez_ (Spanish: 1599-1660).

Don Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez was born at Seville of
well-to-do parents--his father's name being Silva, his mother's
Velazquez. His talent for drawing quickly showed itself, and
when only twenty he married Juana, the daughter of his second
master, Pacheco (his first being another painter of Seville,
Herrera). Pacheco's house, says one of the Spanish historians,
was "the golden prison of painting," and it was here that
Velazquez met Cervantes, and obtained his first introduction
to the brilliant circle in which he was himself to shine. In
Pacheco's company he went in 1622 to Madrid, where he had
influential friends, and next year he was invited to return
by Olivares, the king's great minister. Olivares persuaded
the king to sit to Velazquez for his portrait. The portrait
was a complete success, and the painter stepped at once into
fame and favour. This immediate success is characteristic of
his extraordinary facility. "Just think," says Ruskin, "what
is implied when a man of the enormous power and facility that
Reynolds had, says he was 'trying to do with great labour'
what Velazquez 'did at once.'" Velazquez shows indeed "the
highest reach of technical perfection yet attained in art; all
effort and labour seeming to cease in the radiant peace and
simplicity of consummate human power"[109] (_Two Paths_, § 68;
_Fors Clavigera_, 1876, p. 188). From the time of this first
portrait of Philip IV. onwards, the life of Velazquez was one
long triumph. He was not only the favourite but the friend of
the king. He was made in succession painter to the king, keeper
of the wardrobe, usher of the royal chamber, and chamberlain,
and offices were also found for his friends and relations.
He lived in the king's palace on terms of close intimacy,
painting the king and his family in innumerable attitudes, and
accompanying him on his royal progresses. When our Charles I.,
then Prince of Wales, visited Madrid in 1623, Velazquez painted
his portrait, and figured in all the royal fêtes held in the
English prince's honour. The Duke of Buckingham, it would seem,
was also his friend, and Velazquez saw much too of Rubens, when
the latter came on his diplomatic mission to Madrid. Rubens
advised Velazquez to visit Italy, and in 1630 the king gave
his consent. He travelled with recommendations from the king,
and wherever he went--Venice, Ferrara, Rome, Naples--he was
received with all the honours accorded to princes. His second
visit to Italy was in 1648, when the king sent him to buy
pictures with the view of forming a Spanish Academy. At Rome he
painted the portrait of the Pope (Innocent X.), which made so
great a mark that it was carried in triumphal procession, like
Cimabue's picture of old. His royal master, however, became
impatient for his return, and he hurried back to Madrid, after
giving commissions to all the leading artists then at Rome. On
his return he was given fresh honours and offices--especially
that of Marshal of the Court, whose duty it was to superintend
the personal lodgment of the king during excursions. It was
the duties of this office which were the immediate cause
of his death. He accompanied the king to the conference at
Irun--on the "Island of the Pheasants"--which led to the
marriage of Louis XIV. with the Infanta Maria Teresa. There is
a picture of him at Versailles by the French artist Lebrun,
which was painted on this occasion. The portrait, sombre
and cadaverous-looking, was no doubt true to life; and when
Velazquez returned to Madrid, it was found that his exertions
in arranging the royal journey had sown the seeds of a fever,
from which after a week's illness he died. Seven days later his
wife died of grief, and was buried at his side.

Though Velazquez spent all his life, as we have seen, amongst
the great ones of the earth, no trace of vanity or meanness
is discernible in his character. Ruskin (_The Two Paths_,
§§ 62, 65) connects his sweetness of disposition with the
truthfulness which was characteristic of his art. "The art
which is especially dedicated to natural fact always indicates
a peculiar gentleness and tenderness of mind, and all great and
successful work of that kind will assuredly be the production
of thoughtful, sensitive, earnest, kind men, large in their
views of life, and full of various intellectual power ... (One
instance is Reynolds). The other painter whom I would give
you as an instance of this gentleness is a man of another
nation, on the whole I suppose one of the most cruel civilised
nations in the world,--the Spaniards. They produced but one
great painter, only one; but he among the very greatest of
painters, Velazquez. You would not suppose, from looking at
Velazquez's portraits generally, that he was an especially kind
or good man; you perceive a peculiar sternness about them;
for they were as true as steel, and the persons whom he had
to paint being not generally kind or good people, they were
stern in expression, and Velazquez gave the sternness; but he
had precisely the same intense perception of truth, the same
marvellous instinct for the rendering of all natural soul and
all natural form that our Reynolds had. Let me, then, read you
his character as it is given by Mr. Stirling (afterwards Sir
W. Stirling-Maxwell): 'Certain charges, of what nature we are
not informed, brought against him after his death, made it
necessary for his executor to refute them at a private audience
granted to him by the king for that purpose. After listening
to the defence of his friend, Philip immediately made answer,
"I can believe all you say of the excellent disposition of
Diego Velazquez." Having lived for half his life in courts, he
was yet capable both of gratitude and generosity.... No mean
jealousy ever influenced his conduct to his brother artists; he
could afford not only to acknowledge the merits, but to forgive
the malice of his rivals. His character was of that rare and
happy kind, in which high intellectual power is combined
with indomitable strength of will, and a winning sweetness
of temper.'" Nothing shows his character better than his
treatment of Murillo, who came to Madrid, an unfriended youth,
in 1640. Velazquez received him to his house, gave directions
for his admission to all the galleries and for permission to
copy, presented him to the king, procured him commissions, and
offered him facilities for making the journey to Rome.

The chief characteristics of Velazquez's art have been already
incidentally alluded to. "Rejecting all influences," says Sir
Frederick Burton, "alike native and foreign, and following
nature alone, he succeeded in imitating the true appearances
of things as seen through the atmosphere that surrounds them,
with a fidelity that has never been matched. Whatever he
undertook to paint, whether the human face and figure, other
animals, or landscape scenery, the result in his hands was a
presentment intensely individualised, and yet, at the same
time, suggestive of the type." Some modern writers claim the
work of Velazquez as "impressionism"--a much abused and a
very ill-defined term. Certainly Velazquez, like every other
great artist, painted his impressions. But his sheet-anchor
was fidelity to fact; and as for his _technique_, it was
only by constant observation and practice that he attained
that lightness of hand, that felicity of touch, by which his
later work is characterised. For a painting of the master's
earliest period, see 1375. The truthfulness of Velazquez had
its reward, says Ruskin, in making him distinguished also
amongst all Spanish painters by the sparkling purity of his
colour. "Colour is, more than all elements of art, the reward
of veracity of purpose.... In giving an account of anything
for its own sake, the most important points are those of form.
Nevertheless, the form of the object is its own attribute;
special, not shared with other things. An error in giving an
account of it does not necessarily involve wider error. But
its colour is partly its own, partly shared with other things
round it. The hue and power of all broad sunlight is involved
in the colour it has cast upon this single thing; to falsify
that colour, is to misrepresent and break the harmony of the
day: also, by what colour it bears, this single object is
altering hues all round it; reflecting its own into them,
displaying them by opposition, softening them by repetition;
one falsehood in colour in one place, implies a thousand in
the neighbourhood.... Hence the apparent anomaly that the only
schools of colour are the schools of Realism.... Velazquez,
the greatest colourist, is the most accurate portrait painter
of Spain" (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. xi. § 8
_n._).[110] It is curious that the influence of Velazquez was
in his own time and country comparatively circumscribed. He
exercised no such overpowering attraction as that of Leonardo,
or Raphael, or Michael Angelo. The real followers of Velazquez
are painters of our own day, and more especially the French
painters of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and
their imitators in the other schools of Europe and America.

A very interesting picture, both for the sparkling brilliancy of its execution and for the truth with which it reproduces the court life of the time. Philip IV. was as fond of the chase as he was of the arts; and here we see some state hunting-party in a royal enclosure (such as was arranged, no doubt, for the pleasure of our Charles I. when he visited Madrid), with an array of huntsmen and guards, and magnificent carriages for the ladies of the court. "The king has just thrown his _horquilla_ [a kind of pitchfork] into the flank of a boar tearing furiously by.... Here the heroes of the day are very slightly sketched, but we at once recognise Philip IV. from the few touches suggesting his face; he keeps to the right, owing to the proximity of the ladies, and by him stands Olivares as equerry-in-chief.... In the second carriage is Queen Isabella. Occasionally the boars made tremendous leaps; hence the ladies are also provided with pitchforks to turn them aside. Moreover, two huntsmen with spears keep watch by the Queen's coach. The groups of spectators deserve minute study. They contain studies of costume and character enough for a scrap-book of "Castilian Types of the Seventeenth Century." Thus, notice under the tree on the right a peasant resting with elbows and chest on the patient back of his beloved ass--verily, another Sancho Panza! And those two rogues on the grass, one holding the water-jug to his mouth, look like a sketch by Murillo. The mendicant, again, in the brown cloak, both hands resting on his stick, is surely a privileged speculator, who solemnly invites the rich folk to increase their stock in the next world by entrusting their investments to him. Elsewhere is a rider slashing at the hard flanks of his obstinate mule, while his _escudero_ shoves from behind; two cavaliers paying each other formal compliments; a group of experts in "dog-flesh" near the master of the hounds, thronging round the fine boar-hound, who has been ripped up by the quarry. Notice, too, the isolated group of cavaliers in grey and scarlet cloaks, with the clergyman, perhaps the "chaplain to the hunt." They stand apart from the scene, having more weighty matters on hand." "The figures do not seem very numerous, as they are scattered about without a trace of conventional grouping. Yet, even without the heads that are merely suggested, there are over a hundred figures, some sixty outside and fifty inside the central enclosure. Sir Edwin Landseer declared that he had never seen so much large art on so small a scale" (Justi's _Velazquez and his Times_, pp. 212-14). Notice especially the two splendid dogs near the left-hand corner. Velazquez is very great in painting dogs; he "has made some of them nearly as grand as his surly kings" (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. § 13).

With regard to the execution of the picture (which was bought in 1846 and was alleged to have been damaged in cleaning), Ruskin wrote: "I have seldom met with an example of the master which gave me more delight, or which I believed to be in more genuine or perfect condition.... (The critic's) complaint of loss of substance in the figures of the foreground is, I have no doubt, altogether groundless. He has seen little southern scenery if he supposes that the brilliancy and apparent nearness of the silver clouds is in the slightest degree overcharged; and shows little appreciation of Velazquez in supposing him to have sacrificed the solemnity and might of such a distance to the inferior interest of the figures in the foreground.... The position of the horizon suggests, and the _lateral_ extent of the foreground _proves_, such a distance between the spectator and even its nearest figures as may well justify the slightness of their execution. Even granting that some of the upper glazings of the figures had been removed, the tone of the whole picture is so light, grey, and glittering, and the dependence on the power of its whites so absolute, that I think the process hardly to be regretted which has left these in lustre so precious, and restored to a brilliancy which a comparison with any modern work of similar aim would render apparently supernatural, the sparkling motion of its figures and the serene snow of its sky"[111] (_Arrows of the Chace_, i. 58-60).

198. THE TEMPTATION OF ST. ANTHONY.

_Annibale Carracci_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1560-1609). _See 9._

The legend of the temptation of St. Anthony, here realistically set forth, is the story of the temptations that beset the ascetic. In the wilderness, brooding over sin, he is tempted; it is only when he returns to the world and goes about doing good that the temptations cease to trouble him. St. Anthony lived, like Faust, the life of a recluse and a visionary, and like him was tempted of the devil. "Seeing that wicked suggestions availed not, Satan raised up in his sight (again like Mephistopheles in _Faust_) the sensible images of forbidden things. He clothed his demons in human forms; they hovered round him in the shape of beautiful women, who, with the softest blandishments, allured him to sin." The saint in his distress resolved to flee yet farther from the world; but it is not so that evil can be conquered, and still "spirits in hideous forms pressed round him in crowds, scourged him and tore him with their talons--all shapes of horror, 'worse than fancy ever feigned or fear conceived,' came roaring, howling, hissing, shrieking in his ears." In the midst of all this terror a vision of help from on high shone upon him; the evil phantoms vanished, and he arose unhurt and strong to endure. But it is characteristic of the love of horror in the Bolognese School that in Carracci's picture the celestial vision does not dissolve the terrors.

199. LESBIA AND HER SPARROW.

_Godfried Schalcken_ (Dutch: 1643-1706).

Schalcken was probably a pupil of Gerard Dou (see 192), whose
delicate finish he sought to rival. "But the smooth, polished
surface of his works is unpleasant, and the labour bestowed
upon them is too obvious" (Burton). He spent the greater part
of his life at Dort, but he was employed for some time in
England by King William III. In addition to his _genre_ pieces,
Schalcken painted numerous portraits, and also attempted sacred
subjects. He especially excelled in pictures of candle-light.

A picture in illustration of a Latin poem, as befits a painter whose father was headmaster of a Latin school (at Dort). Lesbia is weighing jewels against her sparrow, which she loved better even than her own eyes--

Mourn, every Venus, every Love!
Gallants gay, mourn every one!
My darling had a favourite dove,
That she did prize
As her own eyes--
Her dove is dead and gone.

G. R., from _Catullus_, iii.

200. THE MADONNA IN PRAYER.

_Sassoferrato_ (Eclectic: 1605-1685).

Giovanni Battista Salvi, called Sassoferrato from his
birthplace, not far from Urbino, is generally described as a
follower of the Carracci, but he seems to have been chiefly
a copyist of Raphael, Perugino, and other early masters.
Compare Sassoferrato's Madonnas with the earlier models, and
the distinction between sentimentality and sentiment becomes
plain. His works are, however, marked by real feeling, and he
maintained a certain elevation of style.

202. DOMESTIC POULTRY

_Melchior de Hondecoeter_ (Dutch: 1636-1695).

This painter, a member of a noble family of Brabant, devoted
himself to the poultry-yard, and became famous for his pictures
of fowl and other birds. His compositions show a constant study
of the subjects he treats. He studied first under his father,
Gysbert de Hondecoeter, and afterwards under his uncle, Jan
Baptist Weenix (1096).

"A beautiful brood of young chickens in the foreground. The cock was Hondecoeter's favourite bird, which he is said to have taught to stand to him in a fixed position as a model." (Official Catalogue).

203. CONVENTUAL CHARITY.

_William van Herp_ (Flemish: 1614-1677).

Works by W. Van Herp, a member of the Painters' Guild at
Antwerp, are not numerous. They show the influence of Rubens
and also of Jordaens, the two leaders of the Flemish School at
his time.

Franciscan friars are distributing food to the poor at the gate of a convent.

204. DUTCH SHIPPING.

_Bakhuizen_ (Dutch: 1631-1708).

Ludolf Bakhuizen comes second in the succession of Dutch
sea painters to W. van de Velde, and the reader is referred
to the remarks on that painter (see under 149) for the
general characteristics of them both. Whereas, however, Van
de Velde preferred calms, Bakhuizen preferred storms, and
even "voluntarily exposed his life several times," says a
compatriot, "for the sake of seizing, in all its horrible
reality, the effects of rough weather" (Havard: _The Dutch
School_, p. 255). It cannot be said, however, that the result
was very successful. There is, adds the same critic, a hardness
about his forms and a want of transparency in his colours
"which cannot be counterbalanced by the fury of upheaved
waves or the furious driving of the heavy clouds across the
sky." Bakhuizen, before he took to painting, was successively
a book-keeper (his father was town-clerk of Emden) and a
writing-master. Perhaps it is to his experience in the latter
capacity that the hardness and "peruke-like" regularity of
his waves are due. In his own day, however, his sea-pieces
were very greatly esteemed. The King of Prussia was among his
patrons, and the Tzar, Peter the Great, frequently visited his
studios, and even himself took lessons of him. He made many
constructive drawings of ships for that monarch. He was also
an etcher, and the British Museum possesses a fragment of a
sketch-book of his.

205. ITINERANT MUSICIANS.

_J. W. E. Dietrich_ (German: 1712-1774).

Johann Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich was born at Weimar, where his
father was court-painter. So precocious was his talent that
when only in his eighteenth year he was himself appointed
court-painter to Augustus II., King of Poland and Elector of
Saxony. In 1743 he went to Italy, and after this visit he
turned his name into Italian by signing it Dietrici (as in the
picture dated 1745). He was afterwards appointed keeper of the
celebrated Gallery at Dresden, a Professor of the Academy
there, and Director of the school of painting attached to the
porcelain manufactory. His pictures and etchings are numerous.
In his original work his style remained German. But he had also
a remarkable facility in imitating the works of other painters.
"He did more," says Merritt, the picture-restorer, "to confound
collectors than all other imitators put together. Hundreds
of his imitations of the various masters have been sold to
second-rate amateurs for original productions" (_Art Criticism
and Romance_, i. 164).

206. THE HEAD OF A GIRL.

_Jean Baptiste Greuze_ (French: 1725-1805).

To understand the great reputation which Greuze enjoyed in his
day one should remember, besides the prettiness of his pictures
in themselves, the contrast which they afforded in their
subject-matter to the art around them. Look, for instance,
at 1090 and 101-104. Those pictures are nearly contemporary
with Greuze's, and are typical, the first of the mythology,
the latter of the courtliness, and all of the sensuality, of
the current art of the time. The return to nature, the return
to simpler life and sounder morals, which inspired Rousseau,
found expression in Greuze's domestic scenes and sweet girl
faces. "Courage, my good Greuze," said Diderot of one of
Greuze's pictures of domestic drama; "introduce morality into
painting. What, has not the pencil been long enough and too
long consecrated to debauchery and vice? Ought we not to be
delighted at seeing it at last unite with dramatic poetry in
instructing us, correcting us, inviting us to virtue?"[112]
Greuze's art, in comparison with what was around it, was thus
simple, natural, moral. Yet one sees now that something of
the artificiality, against which his pictures were a protest,
nevertheless affected them. For instance there is an obvious
posing in this picture, just as there is a touch of affectation
in 1154. Decidedly, too, Greuze "invests his lessons of
bourgeois morality with sensuous attractions." There is neither
the innocence nor the unconsciousness in the girls of Greuze
that there is in those of Reynolds or Millais.

The life of Greuze is interesting for the curious instance it
affords of the inability, which so many eminent men have shown,
to know in what direction their best powers lay. Greuze's
reputation rested on his _genre_ painting--on his rendering of
domestic scenes or faces; but his ambition was to figure as
an historical painter. His one picture in this style--"Severus
and Caracalla" (in the Louvre)--was painted in 1769 as his
diploma work for the French Academy. They praised him for
"his former productions, which were excellent," and not for
"this one, which was unworthy alike of them and of him," and
admitted him as a painter in the class of _genre_ only. Greuze,
who was vain and overbearing in the days of his vogue, was
greatly incensed and ceased to exhibit at the Academy until
after the Revolution. But his power had then begun to fail;
the classic school reigned supreme; and Greuze, who had been
unhappily married, and whose large earnings were squandered by
extravagance and bad management, died in great poverty. He was
born in Burgundy, of humble middle-class parents, in the little
town of Tournus, where his modest birthplace may still be seen.
His happiest productions were taken from the daily life of the
middle-classes, and his sweet girl faces are unique in French
art (Lady Dilke's article in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, and
Morley's _Diderot_, vol. ii. chap. iii.).

Campbell's "Lines on a picture of a girl by Greuze" may be quoted of this picture:--

What wert thou, maid?--thy life--thy name
Oblivion hides in mystery;
Though from thy face my heart could frame
A long romantic history.

Transported to thy time I seem,
Though dust thy coffin covers--
And hear the songs, in fancy's dream,
Of thy devoted lovers.

How witching must have been thy breath--
How sweet the living charmer--
Whose every semblance after death
Can make the heart grow warmer!

207. THE IDLE SERVANT.

_Nicolas Maes_ (Dutch: 1632-1693). _See_ 153.

In the background is the family at dinner. The waiting-maid comes to the kitchen to serve the next course--the duckling, perhaps, which a cat is stealing--and finds the cook of Sancho Panza's philosophy: "Blessings on him who invented sleep, ... the food that appeases hunger, the drink that quenches thirst, ... the balance that equals the simple with the wise." Signed and dated 1655.

208. THE FINDING OF MOSES.

_Bartholomew Breenbergh_ (Dutch: 1599-1659).

Breenbergh, after visiting Italy, established himself in
France, where, after the example of Poussin and Claude, he
painted "classical landscapes," into which he introduced small
figures, supposed to represent scenes from Holy Writ, etc.
His work was in great request in France, and several of his
pictures are now in the Louvre.

209. THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS.

_Both_ and _Poelenburgh_ (Dutch). _See under_ 71 and 955.

The landscape by Both, the figures by Poelenburgh. For the subject of the judgment of Paris, see under 194.

210. VENICE: THE PIAZZA DI SAN MARCO.

_Francesco Guardi_ (Venetian: 1712-1793).

Francesco Guardi was a scholar and imitator of Canaletto. "Less
prized during the heyday of his master's fame, he has been
steadily acquiring reputation on account of certain qualities
peculiar to himself. His draughtsmanship displays an agreeable
stateliness; his colouring a graceful gemmy brightness and
a glow of sunny gold. But what has mainly served to win for
Guardi popularity, is the attention he paid to contemporary
costume and manners. Canaletto filled large canvases with
mathematical perspectives of city and water. At the same time
he omitted life and incident. There is little to remind us that
the Venice he so laboriously depicted was the Venice of perukes
and bagwigs, of masks and hoops and carnival disguises. Guardi
had an eye for local colour and for fashionable humours" (J. A.
Symonds, "Pietro Longhi," in the _Century Guild Hobby Horse_,
April 1889).

Notice the effect of light on the Church of St. Mark at the end of the square: "Beyond those troops of ordered arches there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great square seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it far away;--a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long low pyramid of coloured light" (_Stones of Venice_, vol. ii. ch. iv. § 14).

211. A BATTLE-PIECE.

_Johan van Huchtenburgh_ (Dutch: 1646-1733).

Huchtenburgh was in great request as a battle-painter, and in
1708 was commissioned by Prince Eugene to paint the victories
won by that prince and the Duke of Marlborough over the French.

212. A MERCHANT AND HIS CLERK.

_Thomas de Keyser_ (Dutch: 1596-1667).

This painter--the son of an eminent sculptor and architect--was
born at Amsterdam, and was one of the chief forerunners of
Rembrandt in the art of portrait painting. "If," says Burton,
"in some of his work remains of the formality and stiffness
of the sixteenth century may be traced, the greater number
show a freedom and a sense of life unusual among those of his
predecessors."

This picture--which is signed (on the mantelpiece) and dated 1627--is interesting as showing us, in a particular instance, the condition of social and political life out of which the Dutch art of the seventeenth century arose. The merchant has his globes before him: he was one of those who had built up the riches of his country by foreign trade. But he is a man of taste as well as of business, and the two things are closely united.[113] His office is itself hung with rich tapestry, and amongst the implements of his trade, his plans and books and maps, is a guitar. "The United Provinces, grouped together by the Convention of Utrecht (1579), ... concentrated the public functions in the hands of an aristocratic middle class (such as we see them in Terburg's historical picture, 896), educated and powerful, eager for science and riches, bold enough to undertake everything, and persevering enough to carry their enterprises to a successful conclusion. The brilliant heroism, implacable will, and indefatigable perseverance which had aided the people to recover their liberty and autonomy were now directed to other objects.... Their shipbuilders covered the seas with vessels, a legion of adventurous sailors went forth in all directions to discover distant shores or to conquer unknown continents.... Gold was now to be found in plenty in the country which hitherto had been poor, and with the influx of riches, taste, luxury, appreciation of the beautiful and love of Art were developed" (Havard: _The Dutch School_, p. 62).

213. THE VISION OF A KNIGHT.

_Raphael_ (Urbino: 1483-1520). _See_ 1171.

This picture--with the original pen-and-ink drawing from which
it was traced[114]--is the earliest known work of Raphael,
painted when he was not more than seventeen and was "pluming
his wings and meditating a flight." His first (or as it is
commonly called, "Perugian") period may be divided into two:
(1) Down to about 1500, before he went to Perugia, and whilst
he was still studying at Urbino under Timoteo Viti; (2) From
1500-1504, at Perugia. This picture probably belongs to the
former of these periods. It is unlike Perugino in several
respects--in the landscape, for instance, and in the broad hand
of the sleeping knight, whereas Perugino's hands are narrower
and longer. In connection, too, with Raphael's early pupilage
under a Ferrarese master, note that the figure of Duty is
like Francia's saint in No. 638 (see further on this subject
Morelli's _Italian Pictures in German Galleries_, pp. 285-340).
The picture, which was at one time in the possession of Sir
Thomas Lawrence, came to England from the Borghese Gallery at
Rome. It was originally in the Ducal Palace at Urbino. "The
subject breathes the very essence of that courtly and romantic
atmosphere which haunted the palace of Urbino and may well
have been inspired by the Duchess Elizabeth herself. This
accomplished lady was the first to honour the son of her old
friend Giovanni Santi with her patronage, and Raphael may have
painted this little allegory for the decoration of her chamber,
just as Costa and Mantegna painted their picture of Parnassus
and the Muses for Isabella d'Este's grotto at Mantua" (Julia
Cartwright: _Early Work of Raphael_, p. 12).

A young knight sleeps under a laurel--the tree whose leaves were in all ages the reward of honour; and in a dream of his future career he sees two figures approach him, between whom he has to make his choice. The one on the left speaks with the voice of Duty; she is purple-robed and offers him a book and a sword--emblematic of the active life of study and conflict. The other is of fair countenance and is gaily decked with ribbons and strings of coral. Hers is the voice of Pleasure, and the flower she offers is a sprig of myrtle in bloom--"myrtle dear to Venus." Raphael was thinking, perhaps, of the Greek story which told of the choice of Hercules. For Hercules, when he came to man's estate, laid him down to rest and pondered which road in life to take; and lo! there stood by him two women. And one of them took up her parable and said: "O Hercules, if thou wouldst choose the smoothest and the pleasantest path, then shouldst thou follow me." And Hercules said: "O lady, I pray thee tell me thy name." And she answered: "Those who love me call me Pleasure, and those who hate me call me Evil." Then the other woman came forward and said: "O Hercules, there is no road to happiness except through toil and trouble; such is the gods' decree, and if thou wouldst be happy in thy life and honoured in thy death, then up and follow me." And her name was Duty. And Hercules chose the better part, and went about the world redressing human wrong, and was reverenced by men and honoured by the gods--

Choose well; your choice is
Brief, and yet endless.
Here eyes do regard you
In Eternity's stillness;
Here is all fulness,
Ye brave, to reward you.
Work, and despair not!

GOETHE, tr. by Carlyle (_Past and Present_).

214. CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN.

_Guido_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1575-1642). _See_ 11.

In pictures of this subject two distinct conceptions may be noticed. In some the coronation of the Virgin is, as it were, dramatic; the subject is represented, that is to say, as the closing act in the life of the Virgin, and saints and disciples appear in the foreground as witnesses on earth of her coronation in heaven. No. 1155 is a good instance of that treatment. This picture, on the other hand, shows the mystical treatment of the subject--the coronation of the Virgin being the accepted type of the Church triumphant. The scene is laid entirely in heaven, and the only actors are the angels of the heavenly host. Notice the carefully symmetrical arrangement of the whole composition, as well as the charming faces of many of the angel chorus.

215, 216. VARIOUS SAINTS.[115]

_School of Taddeo Gaddi_ (Florentine: 1300-1366).
_See also_ (p. xix)

Taddeo Gaddi was the godson and pupil of Giotto, with whom he
lived twenty-four years, and whose tradition he faithfully
carried on: art had "gone back," he used to say, "since his
master's death." His most extensive works were the frescoes
in the Spanish Chapel in Santa Maria Novella (described in
ch. iv. of Ruskin's _Mornings in Florence_). Taddeo was also
distinguished as an architect. "He built the Ponte Vecchio, and
the old stones of it were so laid by him that they are unshaken
to this day."

There is an air of settled peace, of abstract quietude, about this company of saints which is very impressive--something fixed in the attitude and features recalling the conventual life as described by St. Bernard and paraphrased by Wordsworth in his _Ecclesiastical Sonnets_--

Here Man more purely lives, less oft doth fall,
More promptly rises, walks with stricter heed,
More safely rests, dies happier, is freed
Earlier from cleansing fires, and gains withal
A brighter crown.

218. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI.

_Ascribed to Peruzzi_ (Sienese: 1481-1536).

Baldassare Peruzzi, an excellent draughtsman and fair painter,
was most distinguished as an architect. His life, says Sir
Edward Poynter, was one which any artist might envy. "Brought
up at his own wish as a painter at Siena, he soon gave
evidence of such talent that he was entrusted with important
commissions at Rome, making acquaintance by this means with one
of the great Roman patrons of art, Agostino Chigi, the same
for whom Raphael painted a chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo.
Baldassare found leisure to devote himself to the study of
architecture; from this time he seems to have had almost the
happiest lot that one can imagine falling to an artist, that
of building palaces and decorating them with his own hand"
(_Lectures on Art_, ch. viii.). Among these were the Farnesina
Palace for Agostino Chigi, and the Palazzo Massimi, which is
"justly considered one of the most beautiful and ingeniously
constructed in Rome." It is characteristic of the taste of the
time that what Vasari most admired in Peruzzi's buildings was
"the decoration of the Loggia at the Villa Farnesina, painted
in perspective to imitate stucco work." "This is done so
perfectly," he says, "with the colours, that even experienced
artists have taken them to be works in relief. I remember that
Titian, a most excellent and renowned painter, whom I conducted
to see these works, could by no means be persuaded that they
were painted, and remained in astonishment when, on changing
his point of view, he perceived that they were so." Baldassare
also designed the fortifications of Siena, and on the death
of Raphael was appointed architect of St. Peter's at Rome.
His life was not free from adventures. At the sack of Rome
in 1527 he was plundered of all he possessed by the Imperial
soldiers, and was forced to paint a picture of their general,
the Constable Bourbon, who had been killed in the assault of
the city. He died at Rome, not without suspicion of having been
poisoned, and was buried in the Pantheon, near the tomb of
Raphael.

There is a drawing by Peruzzi of this subject in possession of the National Gallery, No. 167. Girolamo da Treviso (623) made a copy of it, which is perhaps this work. The figures of the three magi are interesting as having been portraits of Titian, Raphael, and Michael Angelo.

219. THE DEAD CHRIST.

_Unknown_ (Lombard School, 16th century).

Perhaps to be ascribed to Bazzi (see under 1144).

221. HIS OWN PORTRAIT.

=Rembrandt= (Dutch: 1606-1669). _See_ 45.

Compare No. 672. That was painted when he was about thirty; this, some thirty years later. We see here the same features, though worn by age; the same self-reliant expression, though broken down by care. "In manner," says Sir Walter Armstrong, "it is amazingly free, irresponsible, and what in any one but a stupendous master we should call careless. It looks as though he had taken up the first dirty palette on which he could lay his hands, and set himself to the making of a picture with no further thought. To those who put signs of mastery above all other qualities, it is one of the most attractive pictures in the whole Gallery" (_Portfolio_, September 1891).

222. A MAN'S PORTRAIT (dated 1433).

_Jan van Eyck_ (Early Flemish: about 1390-1440). _See_ 186.
_See also_ (p. xxi)

One of Van Eyck's obviously truthful portraits, so highly finished that the single hairs on the shaven chin are given. On the upper part of the frame is the inscription, "Als ich kan"--as I can, the first words of an old Flemish proverb, "As I can, but not as I will,"--an inscription beautifully illustrative of a great man's modesty; accurately true also as a piece of criticism. No pictures are more finished than Van Eyck's, yet they are only "as he can," not as he would. "Let all the ingenuity and all the art of the human race he brought to bear upon the attainment of the utmost possible finish, and they could not do what is done in the foot of a fly, or the film of a bubble. God alone can finish; and the more intelligent the human mind becomes, the more the infiniteness of interval is felt between human and divine work in this respect" (_Modern Painters_, vol. iii. pt iv. ch. ix. § 5).

223. DUTCH SHIPPING.

_Bakhuizen_ (Dutch: 1631-1708). _See_ 204.

224. THE TRIBUTE MONEY.

_School of Titian. See under_ 4.

The Pharisee, hoping to entrap Jesus into sedition, asks him whether it is lawful to give tribute unto Cæsar. "Show me _the tribute money_" is the answer. "Whose is this image and superscription?... Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's." Titian's great picture of this subject (painted about 1514) is at Dresden.

225. BEATIFIC VISION OF THE MAGDALEN.

_Giulio Romano_ (Roman: 1498-1546). _See_ 624.

A semicircular fresco (formerly in the church of the Trinita de' Monti, Rome), showing the Magdalen borne upwards by angels to witness the joys of the blessed.

226. VIRGIN AND CHILD, WITH ST. JOHN AND ANGELS.

_School of Botticelli_ (1447-1510). _See_ 1034.

This is a copy of a picture by Botticelli in the Rospigliosi Palace at Rome. In the background is a hedge of roses, Botticelli's favourite flower. "No man has ever yet drawn, and none is likely to draw for many a day, roses as well as Sandro has drawn them" (_Fors Clavigera_, 1872, xii. 2). And he painted them, just as he painted his Madonnas, from life, and from everyday life--for even as late as forty years ago, Florence was "yet encircled by a wilderness of wild rose." It should be noticed, further, that there was a constant Biblical reference in the flowers which the painters consecrated to their Madonnas--especially the rose, the emblem of love and beauty. The background in Madonna pictures is frequently, as here, a piece of garden trellis: "a garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse" (Song of Solomon, iv. 12).

227. ST. JEROME IN THE DESERT.

_Florentine School_ (15th century).
_See also_ (p. xix)

Kneeling below are Girolamo Rucellai and his son. The arms of
the Rucellai family are at each end of the _predella_. The
picture was originally an altar-piece in the Rucellai Chapel
in the church of the Eremiti di San Girolamo at Fiesole.
Formerly ascribed to Cosimo Rosselli, the picture is now
conjecturally attributed to Botticini (for whom see under 1126).

St. Jerome (A.D. 342-420) who first made the great Eastern book, the Bible, legible in the West, by translating the Hebrew into Latin, was one of the chief saints of the Latin or Western Church, and was a favourite subject in Christian art; there are a dozen pictures of him in the National Gallery alone. One of the chief events in his life is told in the left-hand compartment at the bottom of this picture. Jerome is tending a sick lion, and in all the pictures of him a lion appears as his constant companion. The story is that one evening a lion entered the monastery, limping as in pain, and all the brethren fled in terror, as we see one of them doing here, whilst the others are looking on safely behind a door; but Jerome went forward to meet the lion, as though he had been a guest. And the lion lifted up his paw, and Jerome, finding it was wounded by a thorn, tended the wild creature, which henceforward became his constant companion and friend. What did the Christian painters mean by their fond insistence on the constancy of the lion-friend? They meant to foretell a day "when the Fear of Man shall be laid in benediction, not enmity, on inferior beings,--when they shall not hurt or destroy in all the holy Mountain, and the Peace of the Earth shall be as far removed from its present sorrow, as the present gloriously animate universe from the nascent desert, whose deeps were the place of dragons, and its mountains, domes of fire. Of that day knoweth no man; but the Kingdom of God is already come to those who have tamed in their own hearts what was rampant of the lower nature, and have learned to cherish what is lovely and human, in the wandering children of the clouds and fields" (_Bible of Amiens_, ch. iii. § 54). The other compartments depict incidents in the lives of St. Damasus, St. Eusebius, St. Paula, and St. Eustache--saints associated with St. Jerome. The picture itself shows an earlier period of his life, when, before he settled in a monastery, but after a life of pleasure in Rome, he left (as he himself tells us) not only parents and kindred, but the accustomed luxuries of delicate life, and lived for ten years in the desert in the effort to obtain some closer knowledge of the Being and Will of God. The saints who are made by the painter to keep St. Jerome company below are in sorrow; the angels above, in joy. The other kneeling figures are portraits of the patron for whom the picture was painted.

228. CHRIST AND THE MONEY-CHANGERS.

_Bassano_ (Venetian: 1510-1592). _See_ 173.

Christ is driving out from the House of Prayer all those who had made it a den of thieves--money-changers, dealers in cattle, sheep, goats, birds, etc. A subject which lent itself conveniently to Bassano's characteristic _genre_ style.

230. A FRANCISCAN MONK.

_Francisco Zurbaran_ (Spanish: 1598-1662).

Zurbaran--the contemporary of Velazquez--unites in a
typical manner the two main characteristics of the Spanish
School--asceticism in subject, realism in presentment. He
is, says Stirling-Maxwell, the peculiar painter of monks, as
Raphael is of Madonnas, and Ribera of martyrdoms; he studied
the Spanish friar, and painted him with as high a relish as
Titian painted the Venetian noble, and Vandyck the gentleman of
England. In the Museum of Seville are several pictures which he
painted for the Carthusians of that city. "The venerable friars
seem portraits; each differs in feature from the other, yet all
bear the impress of long years of solitary and silent penance;
their white draperies chill the eye, as their cold hopeless
faces chill the heart; and the whole scene is brought before
us with a vivid fidelity, which shows that Zurbaran studied
the Carthusian in his native cloisters with the like close and
faithful attention that Velazquez bestowed on the courtier,
strutting it in the corridors of the Alcazar or the alleys
of Aranjuez" (_Annals of the Artists of Spain_, ch. xi.).
Zurbaran was the son of a peasant, but having shown an early
talent for drawing was released from the plough and sent to the
studio of the painter-priest Juan de Roelas, at Seville. His
abilities and his close study of nature soon gained him a high
reputation; his forcible naturalistic style acquired for him
the name of "the Caravaggio of Spain." He was employed in the
cathedral of Seville, which remained his abode for the greater
part of his life. In his picture of "St. Thomas Aquinas" in
the museum there, the dark wild face, immediately behind the
Imperial adorer, is traditionally held to be the portrait of
Zurbaran himself. His habits were those of the recluse, but
in 1650 he was, through the influence of Velazquez, called
to Madrid. There he was set to a task little suited to his
tastes--the production of a series of pictures (now in the
Prado) to illustrate the labours of Hercules. Philip IV. used,
we are told, to visit the artist whilst engaged on these
pictures, and on one occasion expressed his admiration of his
powers by laying his hand on his shoulder, and calling him
"painter of the King, and king of the painters." "His best
characteristic," says Burton, "is his power of imparting the
sense of life to the heads of his figures. He was in fact a
great, though not a professed, portrait painter."