Chapter V: Preface: By John Ruskin (3)

[28] The realism and the morbid taint in the religious pictures of the Italian decadence were in some measure the direct outcome of ecclesiastical teaching. "Depict well the flaying of St. Bartholomew," said a Jesuit father, "it may win hearts to piety." The comment of Shelley on the Bolognese Schools was this: "Why write books against religion when we may hang up such pictures?"

THE EARLY FLEMISH AND THE GERMAN SCHOOLS

"Why is it, probably, that Pictures exist in the world, and
to what end was the divine art of Painting bestowed, by the
earnest gods, upon poor mankind? I could advise once, for a
little! To make this poor authentic earth a little memorable
for us. Flaying of St. Bartholomew, Rape of Europa, Rape of the
Sabines, Piping and Amours of goat-footed Pan, Romulus suckled
by the Wolf: all this and much else of fabulous, distant,
unimportant, not to say impossible, ugly and unworthy shall
pass. But I say, Herewithal is something not phantasmal; of
indisputable certainty, home-grown" (CARLYLE: _Friedrich_, bk.
iv. ch. vi., slightly altered).

The Early Flemish and German schools are by no means so completely represented as the nearly contemporary schools of Italy; but there are enough pictures to bring out the characteristics of the northern art. Nothing can be more instructive, and convincing of the value of art as a means of national autobiography, than to compare the early pictures in these rooms _en bloc_ with those in any of the Italian rooms (_e.g._ the Umbrian). No one can fail to be struck at once by the contrast between what Mr. Ruskin has called "the angular and bony sanctities of the North," and "the drooping graces and pensive pieties of the South." This is the first distinguishing character of the early northern art: there is little feeling, or care, for beauty as such. Look round the rooms, and see whether there is a single face which will haunt you for its beauty. Look at the pictures which interest you most, choose out the brightest and the most exquisitely finished: and see if it is not an almost defiant absence of beautiful feature that characterises them. Coupled with their absence of feeling for the beautiful there is in the work of these artists a strange fondness for death--for agonies, crucifixions, depositions, exhumations. "It is not that the person needs excitement or has any such strong perceptions as would cause excitement, but he is dead to the horror, and a strange evil influence guides his feebleness of mind rather to fearful images than to beautiful ones,--as our disturbed dreams are sometimes filled with ghastlinesses which seem not to arise out of any conceivable association of our waking ideas, but to be a vapour out of the very chambers of the tomb, to which the mind, in its palsy, has approached" (_Modern Painters_, vol. iv. pt. v. ch. xix. § 16). Thus, in painting scenes from the Passion or stories from the book of martyrs, the Italians of the earlier time endured the painfulness, the northern artists rejoiced in it.

What, then, is it that gives these pictures their worth and has caused their painters to be included amongst the great masters of the world? Look at some of the best, and the more you look the more you will see that their goodness consists in an absolute fidelity to nature--in dress, in ornaments, and especially in portraiture. Here are unmistakably the men and women of the time, set down precisely in their habit as they lived. In this grim, unrelenting truthfulness these pictures correspond exactly to the ideal which Carlyle--himself a typical northerner--lays down, in the passage above quoted, for the art of painting.

Look at these pictures and at the Italian again, and another obvious difference is apparent. The Flemish pictures are on the whole much smaller. This is a fact full of significance. In the sunny South the artists spent their best energies in covering large spaces of wall with frescoes; in the damp climate of the North they were obliged to paint chiefly upon panels. The conditions of their climate were no doubt what led to the discovery of the Van Eyck method (described under 186), the point of which was a way of drying pictures rapidly without the necessity of exposure to the sun. It was a method only applicable to work on a small scale, but it permitted such work to be brought to the highest finish. This precisely suited the painstaking, patient men of the Low Countries. Hence the minuteness and finish which characterise their work. Moreover, "every charm that can be bestowed upon so small a surface is requisite to intensify its attractive power; and hence Flemish painters developed a jewel-like quality of colouring which remained peculiar to themselves." ... Further, the Van Eyck method, requiring absolute forethought and forbidding any alterations, tended to a set of stock subjects treated more or less in the same way. "Thus the chief qualities of the Flemish School may be called Veracity of Imitation, Jewel-like richness of Colour, perfection of Finish, emphasis of Character, and Conservatism in design. These indeed are virtues enough to make a school of art great in the annals of time, even though they may never be able to win for it the clatter of popular applause. The paintings of Flanders were not, and were not intended to be, popular. Flemish artists did not, like the Italians, paint for the folk, but for the delight of a small cultured clique."[29]

Such are the general characteristics of the Early Flemish School. Passing now to its historical development and to its relations with the schools of Germany, we may distinguish three successive periods. (1) The birthplace of painting as a separate art in the North was on the Lower Rhine, at Maastricht and Cologne. Of this school of the Lower Rhine a characteristic specimen is No. 687. It is properly grouped with the Early Flemish School, because in the fourteenth century most of the Flemish artists were Germans from the valley of the Rhine. (2) Later on, however, the great development in the prosperity and wealth of the Low Countries--the land of the Woolsack and the Golden Fleece, led to the growth of a native art. This was closely connected with the schools of illuminators patronised by the Courts of France and Burgundy, and many works of the _Primitifs_ cannot be distinguished, with any complete certainty, as French or Flemish. Just as at Venice the people, busy with their trade, preferred for a long time to buy rather than produce their works of art, but afterwards settled down and made works for themselves, so in Flanders the German art came to be superseded by a native Flemish art. The Early Flemish School, covering roughly the period 1400-1500, was the result, the most important masters being Van Eyck, Van der Weyden, Bouts, David, and Memlinc. (3.) It was now the turn of this school to influence that of Germany. The Flemish masters were great travellers, and the German masters were no doubt attracted to Flanders by the great technical skill there in vogue. Hence we now come to a second period in German painting--marked by Flemish influence. There is less of the mysticism and more realism; but with the realism there is an element of brutality and ugliness. Nos. 707 and 1049 are typical German pictures of this period.

Finally, it will be noticed, as the visitor goes round the rooms, that many of the pictures are either altogether "unknown" or are attributed to artists whose names are not given, and who are merely described as the "master" of such and such other pictures. This is an interesting and characteristic point. Of individual painters of the Early German School, and for the most part of those of the Early Flemish, very little is known. They seldom signed their names,[30] and the works of the fifteenth century were in the next two centuries treated with neglect. Hence both the attribution of these pictures, and the lives of the painters to whom they are attributed, are still very uncertain. A second reason for this uncertainty is to be found in the Guild system, which was very strict amongst the northern artists. Painting, to the mediæval mind, was a craft like any other, and was subject to the same rules. The Guild educated the artist and bought his materials, and even when he emerged into mastership, stood in many ways between him and his patron. Hence pictures were often regarded as the work not of this or that individual, but of this or that Guild. Hence too the quiet industry and the uncompetitive patience of these Early Flemish painters. "It was not merely the result of chance that the brothers Van Eyck invented their peculiar method of painting by which they were enabled to produce pictures of almost unlimited durability and of unsurpassable finish, provided sufficient care were bestowed upon the work. The spirit of the day and the method of the day were reflections one of another.... Take any picture of this old Flemish School, and regard it carefully, you will find that only so do its beauties strike you at all.... The old Flemish artists did always the thing that was within their powers, striving indeed by daily industry to increase the strength of those powers, but never hoping either by luck or momentary insanity to attain anything unattainable by patient thought and long-continued labour. 'Patient continuance in well-doing' was the open secret of their success" (_Conway_, ch. ii.)

Of the later German School, specially distinguished in portraiture, the Gallery has now some fine examples, and here again there is similarity between the German and the early Flemish painters. "If," says Ruskin, "the reader were to make the circuit of this collection for the purpose of determining which picture united in its modes of execution the highest reach of achievement with the strongest assurance of durability, we believe that he would finally pause before a small picture or panel, representing two quaintly dressed figures in a dimly lighted room." Turn from the portraits by Jan van Eyck to the portraits by Cranach and Albert Dürer, and much of the same minute fidelity and careful workmanship will be found. For Holbein's portraits, the reader is referred to the notes (pp. 613-4).

FOOTNOTES:

[29] Sir W. M. Conway: _Early Flemish Artists and their Predecessors on the Lower Rhine_, 1887.

[30] The letters often found on pictures, which for a long time excited the curiosity and imagination of critics, are now fully explained as the initials not of the painters but of the patrons (see Wauters: _The Flemish School_, p. 61).

THE DUTCH SCHOOL

... Artists should descry abundant worth
In trivial commonplace, nor groan at dearth
If fortune bade the painter's craft be plied
In vulgar town and country!

ROBERT BROWNING: _Gerard de Lairesse_.

The Dutch and Flemish schools were formerly hung together at the National Gallery. They are now separated, and with the _early_ Flemish school we have already dealt. We take up the story here at the point where it leaves off there, and proceed to discuss the Dutch school; passing afterwards to the later Flemish school. The confusion between Dutch and Flemish art is, it may first be remarked, historical. Just as Flanders derived its earliest artistic impulse from German painters, so did the Dutch derive theirs from the Flemings. In the two first periods of Flemish art, Dutch art runs precisely parallel with it. During the sixteenth century a new development began in both schools. This is the period of Italian influence, of the "Romanists" or "Italianisers," as they are called, represented typically by Bernard van Orley and Mabuse.

At the end of the sixteenth century, however, a national movement began in both schools--corresponding closely to political changes. In 1579 the "Union of Utrecht" was effected, whereby the Dutch "United Provinces" (= roughly what is now Holland) were separated alike from the Spanish Netherlands and from the Empire, and Dutch independence thus began. Within the next fifty years nearly all the great Dutch painters were born--Berchem, Bol, Cuyp, Frans Hals, Van der Helst, De Keyser, Rembrandt, Ruysdael. In characteristics, as well as in chronology, Dutch art was the direct outcome of Dutch history. This art has come to be identified in common parlance, owing to its chief and distinguishing characteristic, with what is known as "_genre_ painting,"--the painting, that is, which takes its subject from small incidents of everyday life. Three historical conditions combined to bring this kind of painting into vogue. First, the Reformation. The Dutch, when they asserted their independence, were no longer Catholics; but Protestantism despised the arts, and hence the arts became entirely dissociated from religion. There were no more churches to ornament, and hence no more religious pictures were painted[31] whilst religious rapture is superseded by what one of their own critics describes as "the boisterous outbursts which betoken approaching drunkenness" (Havard: _The Dutch School_, p. 12).[32] Secondly, the Dutch were Republicans. There was no reigning family. There were no palaces to decorate, and hence no more historical or mythological pictures were in demand. This point of distinction may best be remembered by the supreme contempt which the great King Louis XIV. of France entertained for the _genre_ style. _Eloignez de mot ces magots_, he said, "take away the absurd things," when some one showed him some works by Teniers. But the "plain, simple citizens" of the United Provinces did not want their faces idealised--hence the prosaic excellence of Dutch portraiture,--nor had they any ambition to see on their walls anything but an imitation of their actual lives--of their dykes, their courtyards, their kitchens, and their sculleries. Thirdly, the Dutch were a very self-centred people. "With the Dutch," says Sir Joshua Reynolds (Discourse iv.), "a history piece is properly a portrait of themselves; whether they describe the inside or outside of their houses, we have their own people engaged in their own peculiar occupations; working or drinking, playing or fighting. The circumstances that enter into a picture of this kind, are so far from giving a general view of human life, that they exhibit all the minute particularities of a nation differing in several respects from the rest of mankind." "Those innumerable _genre_ pieces--conversation, music, play--were in truth," says Mr. Pater, "the equivalent of novel-reading for that day; its own actual life, in its own proper circumstances, reflected in various degrees of idealisation, with no diminution of the sense of reality (that is to say), but with more and more purged and perfected delightfulness of interest. Themselves illustrating, as every student of their history knows, the good-fellowship of family life, it was the ideal of that life which these artists depicted; the ideal of home in a country where the preponderant interest of life, after all, could not well be out of doors. Of the earth earthy,[33] it was an ideal very different from that which the sacred Italian painters had evoked from the life of Italy; yet, in its best types, was not without a kind of natural religiousness. And in the achievement of a type of beauty so national and vernacular, the votaries of purely Italian art might well feel that the Italianisers, like Berghem, Bol, and Jan Weenix, went so far afield in vain" (_Imaginary Portraits_, p. 99).

The same awakening of a national taste made itself felt in the native school of Dutch landscape--a landscape excellent in many ways, but cabin'd, cribbed, and confined, like their own dykes. "Of deities or virtues, angels, principalities, or powers, in the name of our ditches, no more. Let us have cattle, and market vegetables" (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. § 11). But the Dutch School of landscape had the qualities of its defects. "The Dutch began to see what a picture their country was--its canals, and _boompjis_, and endless broadly-lighted meadows, and thousands of miles of quaint water-side; and their painters were the first true masters of landscape for its own sake" (Pater, _ib._ p. 98).

FOOTNOTES:

[31] This statement, like all others in so short and general a summary as alone can be here attempted, is of course only broadly true.

[32] It is interesting to note that this spirit of anti-religious revolt is what fascinated Heine in Dutch pictures. "In the house I lodged at in Leyden there once lived," he says, "the great Jan Steen, whom I hold to be as great as Raphael. Even as a sacred painter Jan was as great, and that will be clearly seen when the religion of sorrow has passed away.... How often, during my stay, did I think myself back for whole hours into the household scenes in which the excellent Jan must have lived and suffered. Many a time I thought I saw him bodily, sitting at his easel, now and then grasping the great jug, 'reflecting and therewith drinking, and then again drinking without reflecting.' It was no gloomy Catholic spectre that I saw, but a modern bright spirit of joy, who after death still visited his old workroom to paint many pictures and to drink" (Heine's _Prose Writings_, Camelot Series, p. 67).

[33] "The Dutch painters were not poets, nor the sons of poets, but their fathers rescued a Republic from the slime and covered it with such fair farms that I declare to this day I like Dutch cheese as well as any, because it sends one in imagination to the many-uddered meadows which Cuyp has embossed in gold and silver. What savoury hares and rabbits they had in the low blunt sand-hills, and how the Teniers boor snared them, and how the big-breech'd Gunn-Mann (I haven't any knowledge of Dutch, but I am sure that must be the Dutch for 'sportsman') banged off his piece at them, and then how the shining Vrow saw them in the Schopp and bargained for them. The Schopp had often a window with a green curtain in it, and a basso-relievo of Cupids and goats beneath, with a crack across the bas-relief, and iron stains on the marble, and a bright brass bulging bottle on the sill, and such pickling cabbage as makes the mouth water" (_Letters of James Smetham_, p. 172).

THE LATER FLEMISH SCHOOL

The early history of the Flemish school has been already traced (pp. 38-41). The birth of its later period is almost exactly contemporaneous with that which has been described in the case of the Dutch school. In 1598 the Archduke Albert and his consort Isabel established what was almost an independent State in the Spanish Netherlands (= roughly Flanders, or the modern Belgium). The "Spanish Fury" was at an end, the Inquisition was relaxed. Albert and Isabel eagerly welcomed artists and men of letters, and the exuberant art of Rubens responded to the call. This is the third and great period in the Flemish school--the succession being carried on by Rubens's pupils, Van Dyck and Teniers. Rubens, the greatest master of the Flemish School, was born in 1577 in Germany, but brought up at Antwerp, then the depository of western commerce, and he coloured every subject that he touched with the same hues of gay magnificence. It is by his pictures, and those of Van Dyck, that this room is dominated, and it is unnecessary to anticipate here the accounts of those masters given below (pp. 111, 130). They were painters of the Courts. The works of Teniers complete the picture of Flemish life and manners by taking us among the common people in country fairs and village taverns.

THE SPANISH SCHOOL

"For the learned and the lettered," says a Spanish author in
the reign of Philip IV., "written knowledge may suffice; but
for the ignorant, what master is like Painting? They may read
their duty in a picture, although they cannot search for it in
books."

"What we are all attempting," said Sir Joshua Reynolds, "to do
with great labour, Velazquez does at once."

None of the great schools of painting is so scantily represented in the National Gallery as the Spanish, although the works in this room by its greatest master, Velazquez, are of exceptional excellence in quality and of exceptional interest as illustrating the progress of his art. The deficiency in Spanish pictures is not peculiar to London. "Spain," said Sir David Wilkie, "is the Timbuctoo of artists." The Spanish School of painters and their history are still only half explored, and can only be fully studied in Spain itself. "He who Seville (and Madrid) has not seen, has not seen the marvels great" of Spanish painting.[34]

There are, however, enough examples of the school here to make some few general remarks desirable. The first point to be noticed is this, that all the painters represented in the room (with two or three exceptions) are nearly contemporary. The period 1588-1682 covers all their lives.

They are four of the chief painters of Spain, and they all reach a high level of technical skill. This fact suggests at once the first characteristic point in the history of the Spanish School. It has no infancy.[35] It sprang full-grown into birth. The reason of this was its Italian origin. The art of painting, except as purely decorative, was forbidden to the Moors; and it was only in 1492, when the banner of Castile first hung on the towers of the Alhambra, that the age of painting, as of other greatness, began for Spain. But the very greatness of Spain led to Italian influence in art. The early Spanish painters nearly all found means of going to Italy (Theotocopuli,--1122--was born there in 1548), and the great Italian painters were constantly attracted to the Spanish court.

But though Spanish art sprang thus rapidly to perfection under foreign influence, it was yet stamped throughout with a thoroughly distinctive character. In the first place the proverbial gravity of the Spaniard is reflected also in his art. Look round this room, and see if the prevailing impression is not of something grave, dark, lurid. There is here nothing of the sweet fancifulness of the early Florentines, nothing of the gay voluptuousness of the later Venetians. The shadow of the Spaniard's dark cloak seems to be over every canvas. Then secondly, Spanish painting is intensely "naturalist." Velazquez exhibits this tendency at its best: there is an irresistible reality about his portraits which makes the men alive to all who look at them; Murillo exhibits it in its excess: his best religious pictures are spoiled by their too close adherence to ordinary and even vulgar types.

Both these characteristics are partly accounted for by a third. Painting in Spain was not so much the handmaid, as the bondslave, of the Church. As the Church was in Spain, so had art to be--monastic, severe, immutable. "To have changed an attitude or an attribute would have been a change of Deity." Pacheco, the master of Velazquez, was charged by the Inquisition to see that no pictures were painted likely to disturb the true faith. Angels were on no account, he prescribed, to be drawn without wings. The feet of the Blessed Virgin were on no account to be exhibited, and she was to be dressed in blue and white, for that she was so dressed when she appeared to Beatrix de Silva, a Portuguese nun, who founded the order called after her. One sees at once how an art, working under such conditions as these, would be likely to lose free play of fancy. And then, lastly, one may note how the Spanish church tended also to make Spanish art intensely naturalistic. Pictures were expected to teach religious dogmas and to enforce mystical ideas. But, in the inevitable course of superstition, the symbol passed into a reality. This was more particularly the case with statues. Everything was done to get images accepted as realities. To this day they are not only painted but dressed: they have, like queens, their mistress of the robes. This idea of art--as something which was not to appeal to the imagination, but was to pass itself off as a reality--inevitably extended also to Spanish painting. How far it did so is best shown in a story gravely related by Pacheco. A painter on a high scaffold had just half finished the figure of the Blessed Virgin when he felt the whole woodwork on which he stood giving way. He called out in his horror, "Holy Virgin, hold me," and straightway the painted arm of the Virgin was thrust out from the wall, supporting the painter in mid-air! When a ladder was brought and the painter got his feet on it, the Virgin's arm relapsed and became again only a painting on the wall. One need not go farther than this story to see the origin of the realistic character of Spanish art, or to understand how Murillo, although often the most mystic of all painters in his conceptions of religious subjects, was also the most naturalistic in his treatment of them (see W. B. Scott: _Murillo and the Spanish School of Painting_).

--> _We now pass into Rooms XVI. and XVII., where pictures of
the French School are hung._

FOOTNOTES:

[34] On the ground floor small copies of many of the famous pictures at Madrid may be seen.

[35] This statement, though broadly true, requires, of course, much modification: see the early Spanish picture (of the 15th century) on loan in this room from the Victoria and Albert Museum.

THE FRENCH SCHOOL

_ROOMS XVI AND XVII_

Whate'er Lorraine _light-touch'd_ with _softening_ hue,
Or _savage_ Rosa _dash'd_, or _learned_ Poussin _drew_.

THOMSON.

Of the pictures in this room nearly all the more important are the works of three masters--Claude and the two Poussins. It is of them, therefore, that a few general remarks will here be made. It should be noticed in the first place how very different this French School of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is from the French School of to-day. The latter school is distinguished for its technical skill, which makes Paris the chief centre of art teaching in the world, but, also, and still more markedly, for its "excessive realism and gross sensuality." "A few years ago," adds Professor Middleton, "a gold medal was won at the Paris _Salon_ by a 'naturalist' picture--a real masterpiece of technical skill. It represented Job as an emaciated old man covered with ulcers, carefully studied in the Paris hospitals for skin diseases." There could not be a greater contrast than between such art as that and the "ideal" landscapes of Claude, the Bacchanalian scenes of Poussin, or the soft girl-faces of Greuze.

Confining ourselves now to Claude and the Poussins--with whom, however, the contemporary works of Salvator Rosa (in Room XIII.) should be studied, we note that in spite of considerable differences between them they agree in marking a great advance in the art of landscape painting. The old conventionalism has now altogether disappeared; there is an attempt to paint nature as she really is. There are effects of nature, too,--not shown in any earlier pictures, and here painted for the first time,--graceful effects of foliage, smooth surface of water, diffusion of yellow sunlight. In some of these effects Claude has never been surpassed; but when his pictures are more closely examined, they are often found to be untrue to the forms of nature. Trees are not branched, nor rocks formed, nor mountains grouped as Claude and Poussin represent. Their conception of landscape, and especially of its relation to human life, is governed by the "classical ideal," to which as far as possible they made their pictures approach. This "classical" landscape is "the representation of (1) perfectly trained and civilised human life; (2) associated with perfect natural scenery, and (3) with decorative spiritual powers. (1) There are no signs in it of humiliating labour or abasing misfortune. Classical persons must be trained in all the polite arts, and, because their health is to be perfect, chiefly in the open air. Hence the architecture around them must be of the most finished kind, the rough country and ground being subdued by frequent and happy humanity. (2) Such personages and buildings must be associated with natural scenery, uninjured by storms or inclemency of climate (such injury implying interruption of the open air life); and it must be scenery conducing to pleasure, not to material service; all cornfields, orchards, olive-yards, and such-like being under the management of slaves, and the superior beings having nothing to do with them; but passing their lives under avenues of scented and otherwise delightful trees--under picturesque rocks and by clear fountains. It is curious, as marking the classical spirit, that a sailing vessel is hardly admissible, but a galley with oars is admissible, because the rowers may be conceived as absolute slaves. (3) The spiritual powers in classical scenery must be decorative; ornamental gods, not governing gods; otherwise they could not be subjected to the principles of taste, but would demand reverence. In order, therefore, as far as possible, without taking away their supernatural power, to destroy their dignity ... those only are introduced who are the lords of lascivious pleasures. For the appearance of any great god would at once destroy the whole theory of classical life; therefore Pan, Bacchus, and the Satyrs, with Venus and the Nymphs, are the principal spiritual powers of the classical landscape" (abridged from _Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. v. §§ 1-8).

It may be interesting to point out how entirely this ideal accords with the prevailing taste and literature of their time. The painting of Claude and Salvator precisely corresponds to what is called "_pastoral_ poetry, that is to say, poetry written in praise of the country, by men who lived in coffee-houses and on the Mall[36]-- ... the class of poetry in which a farmer's girl is spoken of as a 'nymph,' and a farmer's boy as a 'swain,' and in which, throughout, a ridiculous and unnatural refinement is supposed to exist in rural life, merely because the poet himself has neither had the courage to endure its hardships, nor the wit to conceive its realities.... Examine the novels of Smollett, Fielding, and Sterne, the comedies of Molière, and the writings of Johnson and Addison, and I do not think you will find a single expression of true delight in sublime nature in any one of them. Perhaps Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_, in its total absence of sentiment on any subject but humanity ... is the most striking instance; ... and if you compare with this negation of feeling on one side, the interludes of Molière, in which shepherds and shepherdesses are introduced in court dress, you will have a very accurate conception of the general spirit of the age.[37] It was in such a state of society that the landscape of Claude, Gaspar Poussin, and Salvator Rosa attained its reputation. It is the complete expression on canvas of the spirit of the time" (Edinburgh _Lectures on Architecture and Painting_, pp. 163-167). The reputation thus gained survived unimpaired almost into the present century, until Wordsworth in poetry and Turner in painting led the return to nature, and the modern school of landscape arose.

It is, however, the art of Constable to which direct influence must be attributed in the foundation of the modern school of landscape--_paysage intime_--in France (see Vol. II., pp. 93-4). Of this school, wholly unrepresented until lately in our National Gallery, a few examples--characteristic, if not very important--may now be seen in Room XVII. (see Nos. 2058, 2135, etc.).

--> _We have now concluded our survey of the Foreign Schools. The western doors in Room XVII. lead down a side staircase into the entrance Hall, and thus form an exit from the Gallery. On the staircases leading to the Hall and thence down to the basement, some foreign pictures are now placed. The visitor who wishes to see the British School should return into Room XVI. and thence proceed into the East Vestibule, where a few portraits by British masters are hung. Descending the steps and ascending those opposite, the visitor will come into the West Vestibule, which leads to the rooms of the British School--XVIII., XIX., XX., and XXI. Finally, at the east end of the Gallery, we reach Room XXII., devoted to the Turner Collection. For remarks on the British School see Volume II. From the Entrance Hall, the visitor reaches the West Basement, and by corresponding stairs on the other side the East Basement. In the Basement Rooms are collections of copies from Old Masters and the Turner Water Colours. For notes on the former, see end of this volume; for the Turners, see Volume II._

FOOTNOTES:

[36] Elsewhere Mr. Ruskin speaks of "Twickenham classicism" (with a side allusion, of course, to Pope) "consisting principally in conceptions of ancient or of rural life such as have influenced the erection of most of our suburban villas" (_Pre-Raphaelitism_, reprinted in _On the Old Road_, i. 283).

[37] In a later lecture on landscape (delivered at Oxford and reported in Cook's _Studies in Ruskin_, p. 290) Ruskin cited Evelyn (who was nearly contemporary with Claude) as another case in point: "We passed through a forest (of Fontainebleau)," says Evelyn, "so prodigiously encompass'd with hideous rocks of white hard stone, heaped one on another in mountainous height, that I think the like is nowhere to be found more horrid and solitary." It is interesting to note how long this ignorance of mountains lasted, even amongst painters. James Barry, the R. A., was "amazed at finding the realities of the Alps grander than the imaginations of Salvator," and writes to Edmund Burke from Turin in 1766 to say that he saw the moon from the Mont Cenis five times as big as usual, "from being so much nearer to it"!

NUMERICAL CATALOGUE, WITH BIOGRAPHICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE NOTES

N. B.--_The pictures here described are pictures belonging to Foreign Schools only. The numerals refer to the numbers on the frames._

_Pictures in the National Gallery to which, because they are deposited on loan or for other reasons, no numbers are attached, are described at the end of the Numerical Catalogue._

_References to books in the following pages are, except where otherwise stated, to the works of Ruskin. Wherever possible, the references to his books are by sections and paragraphs, instead of by pages, so as to make them applicable to all the different editions. The references to Vasari are to Bohn's translation, 5 vols., 1855._

1. THE RAISING OF LAZARUS.

_Sebastiano del Piombo_ (Venetian: 1485-1547).

This large picture is generally accounted the masterpiece of
Sebastiano Luciani. He was called _del Piombo_ (lead), from
his holding the office of Keeper of the Leaden Seal (see No.
20). Sebastiano was originally a painter and musician at
Venice, where he studied successively under John Bellini and
Giorgione. But in 1512 he was invited to Rome by the famous
banker Agostino Chigi. Here he fell under the influence of
Michael Angelo, who employed Sebastiano to execute several of
his designs, and saw in him a means, says Vasari, of outdoing
Raphael. The opportunity occurred when the Cardinal Giulio de'
Medici commissioned Raphael to paint the "Transfiguration"
(now in the Vatican), and at the same time Sebastiano to
paint this picture, on the same scale, of the Raising of
Lazarus. The pictures when finished were exhibited side by
side, and there were some who preferred Sebastiano's. "The
picture was painted," says Vasari, "with the utmost care,
under the direction, and in some parts with the design, of
Michael Angelo." There are in the British Museum two original
drawings by Michael Angelo which are evidently preparatory
studies for the figure of Lazarus; but Sebastiano cannot have
painted under his friend's direction, for Michael Angelo was
at Florence at the time, and Sebastiano writes to him, "There
has been some delay with my work. I have endeavoured to keep
it back as long as possible, that Raphael might not see it
before it is finished.... But now I do not hesitate any more. I
believe I shall not, with my work, bring discredit upon you."
Another masterpiece of Sebastiano has recently been added to
the Gallery (1450), which also contains two of his portrait
pieces (20 and 24), a branch of art in which he obtained great
success; Vasari particularly notices his skill in painting the
head and hands.

This famous picture is especially remarkable for its dramatic unity. It is crowded with figures, but all combine to concentrate attention on the central subject. The time chosen by the painter is after the completion of the miracle: "He that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes; and his face was bound about with a napkin." Jesus in the middle of the picture is uttering the words, "Loose him, and let him go;" with his right hand Jesus points to heaven, as if he said, "I have raised thee by the power of him who sent me." The three men, who have already removed the lid of the sepulchre, are fulfilling Christ's command. The grave-clothes, by which the face of Lazarus is thrown into deep shade, express the idea of the night of the grave which but just before enveloped him; and the eye looking eagerly from beneath the shade upon Christ shows the new life in its most intellectual organ. To the left, behind Christ, is St. John, answering objections raised against the credibility of the miracle. Farther off, behind this group, is one of the Pharisees, whose unbelief is combated by the man who points in evidence to the raised Lazarus. Behind Lazarus is his sister Martha, sickening now at what she most desired; behind her are other women--holding their noses.[38] At the foot of Jesus is the other sister, Mary, full of faith and gratitude--

Her eyes are homes of silent prayer,
Nor other thought her mind admits
But, he was dead, and there he sits,
And he that brought him back is there.

Then one deep love doth supersede
All other, when her ardent gaze
Roves from the living brother's face,
And rests upon the Life indeed.

TENNYSON: _In Memoriam_, xxxii.

2. CEPHALUS AND PROCRIS.

_Claude Lorraine_ (French: 1600-1682).

Claude Gellée was the son of humble parents, and to the end he
was an unlettered man. He was born in the village of Champagne,
in the Vosges, Duchy of Lorraine, and thence acquired the name
of _Le Lorrain_. Lineal descendants of Claude's brother still
live in the village, and the house in which he was born is
now preserved as a museum of relics of the painter. He was
brought up, it is said, as a pastry-cook, but he entered the
household of Agostino Tassi, a Perugian landscape painter, at
Rome, in the capacity of general factotum, cooking his master's
meals and grinding his colours. From him Claude received his
first instruction in art. Subsequently he travelled to the
Tyrol and to Venice--the influence of which place may be seen
in the "gentle ripples of waveless seas" in his Seaports.
After working for some time at Nancy, the capital of Lorraine,
he returned in October 1627 to Rome, and there settled down
for the remainder of his life. The house which he inhabited
may still be seen at the angle of the streets Sistina and
Gregoriana. Of his life at Rome many interesting particulars
are given by his friend Sandrart, a German painter, who was for
some years his companion. "In order," says Sandrart, "that he
might be able to study closely the innermost secrets of nature,
he used to linger in the open air from before daybreak even to
nightfall, so that he might learn to depict with a scrupulous
adherence to nature's model the changing phases of dawn, the
rising and setting sun, as well as the hours of twilight....
In this most difficult and toilsome mode of study he spent
many years; making excursions into the country every day, and
returning even after a long journey without finding it irksome.
Sometimes I have chanced to meet him amongst the steepest
cliffs at Tivoli, handling the brush before those well-known
waterfalls, and painting the actual scene, not by the aid of
imagination or invention, but according to the very objects
which nature placed before him."[39] (One of these sketches
is now in the British Museum.) On one expedition to Tivoli,
Claude was accompanied, we know, by Poussin, but for the most
part he lived a secluded life; "he did not," says Sandrart, "in
everyday life much affect the civilities of polite society."
Such seclusion must partly have been necessary to enable
Claude to cope with the commissions that crowded in upon him.
For the Pope Urban VIII. he painted the four pictures now in
the Louvre, and the three succeeding popes were all among his
patrons. So was Cardinal Mazarin and the Duke of Bouillon, the
Papal Commander-in-Chief, for whom amongst other pictures he
painted two (12 and 14) in this Gallery. England was a great
buyer of his works: nineteen were ordered from here in 1644
alone; and commissions came also from Denmark and the Low
Countries. One sees the pressure of a busy man in the number
of "stock" subjects which he repeated. He suffered much too
from forgers, and it was partly to check the sale of fictitious
Claudes that he prepared his "Liber Veritatis"--a collection
of drawings of all his pictures, now in the possession of
the Duke of Devonshire. Two hundred and seventy more of his
drawings may be seen in the British Museum. For his figures,
however, he was glad of outside help, and many painters put
these in for him. The soft, pensive, and almost feminine charm
which characterises his landscapes well agree with what we know
of his life. He was passionately fond of music. To a little
girl, "living with me and brought up in my house in charity,"
he bequeathed much of his treasures. He had received also a
poor, lame lad into his house, whom he instructed in painting
and music, and who rewarded him by demanding arrears of salary
for "assistance." Towards his poor relations he was uniformly
generous, and when Sandrart left him it was a nephew from the
Vosges whom he called to keep house for him.

With regard to the characteristics of Claude's art, his general
position in the history of landscape painting has been defined
in the chapter on the French School, and some further points
of detail are noticed under his several works. Here, however,
it may be convenient to give Ruskin's summary of the matter.
(1) Claude had a fine feeling for beauty of form, and is seldom
ungraceful in his foliage. His tenderness of conception is
especially shown in delicate aerial effects, such as no one
had ever rendered before, and in some respects, no one has
ever done in oil-colour since. But their character appears to
rise rather from a delicacy of bodily constitution in Claude
than from any mental sensibility; such as they are, they give
a kind of feminine charm to his work, which partly accounts
for its wide influence. To whatever their character may be
traced, it renders him incapable of enjoying or painting
anything energetic or terrible. Thus a perfectly genuine and
untouched sky of Claude is beyond praise in all qualities of
air. But he was incapable of rendering great effects of space
and infinity. (2) As with his skies, so too with his seas.
They are the finest pieces of water painting in ancient art.
But they are selections of the particular moment when the
sea is most insipid and characterless. (3) He had sincerity
of purpose; but in common with the other landscape painters
of his day, neither earnestness, humility, nor love, such
as would ever cause him to forget himself. Hence there is
in his work no simple or honest record of any single truth,
and his pictures, when examined with reference to essential
truth, are one mass of error from beginning to end. So far as
he felt the truth, he tried to be true; but he never felt it
enough to sacrifice supposed propriety, or habitual method,
to it. Very few of his sketches and none of his pictures show
evidence of interest in other natural phenomena than the
quiet afternoon sunshine which would fall methodically into a
composition.[40] One would suppose he had never seen scarlet
in a morning cloud, nor a storm burst on the Apennines. (4)
He shows a peculiar incapacity of understanding the main
point of a matter, and of men of name is the best instance
of a want of imagination, nearly total, borne out by painful
but untaught study of nature, and much feeling for abstract
beauty of form, with none whatever for harmony of expression.
(5) Yet in spite of all his deficiencies Claude effected a
revolution in art. This revolution consisted in setting the
sun in heaven. We will give him the credit of this with no
drawbacks.[41] Till Claude's time no one had seriously thought
of painting the sun but conventionally; that is so say, as a
red or yellow star (often), with a face in it, under which
type it was constantly represented in illumination; else it
was kept out of the picture, or introduced in fragmentary
distances, breaking through clouds with almost definite rays.
Claude first set it in the pictorial heaven (collected from
_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. §§ 3, 5,
14, sec. iii. ch. i. § 9, ch. iii. §§ 13-15, 17; vol. ii. pt.
iii. sec. ii. ch. ii. § 18; vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. xviii. §§ 22,
27, and Appendix i.; vol. v. pt. ix. ch. v. §§ 10, 11). This
summary should show that it is a mistake to represent Ruskin
as blind to the merits of Claude. He has done full justice
to Claude's amenity and pensive grace; to the beauty of his
skies and the skill and charm of his aerial effects. At the
time when Ruskin began to write _Modern Painters_, Claude was
still accounted the prince of all landscape painters. The
estimate of Claude against which Ruskin protested may be found
in Goethe. "Claude Lorraine," he said, "knew the real world
thoroughly, even to its smallest detail, and he made use of it
to express the world contained in his own beautiful soul. He
stands to nature in a double relation,--he is both her slave
and her master: her slave, by the material means which he is
obliged to employ to make himself understood; her master,
because he subordinates these material means to a well reasoned
inspiration, to which he makes them serve as instruments."
And elsewhere, Goethe expresses his admiration for the depth
and grasp of Claude's powers. Ruskin, in vindicating the
greater sweep and depth of Turner's genius, fastened with all
the emphasis of an advocate upon the weak points in Claude's
artistic and intellectual armoury. By so doing he cleared the
ground for a truer appreciation of Claude. As a corrective
or supplement to Ruskin's adverse criticisms, the reader may
be referred to Constable's enthusiastic appreciations. "I
do not wonder," wrote Constable to his wife, "at you being
jealous of Claude. If anything could come between our love,
it is him.... The Claudes, the Claudes are all, all, I can
think of here" (Leslie's _Life of Constable_, 1845, p. 121).
Constable was writing from Sir George Beaumont's house, where
several of the Claudes, now in the National Gallery, were then
hanging. Constable, however, was alive to some of Claude's
defects. "Claude's exhilaration and light," he wrote to Leslie,
"departed from him when he was between fifty and sixty, and he
then became a professor of the 'higher walks of art,' and fell
in a great degree into the manner of the painters around him;
so difficult is it to be natural, so easy to be superior in
our own opinion. When we have the pleasure of being together
at the National Gallery I think I shall not find it difficult
to illustrate these remarks, as Carr has sent a large picture
of the latter description" (_ibid._, p. 221). The picture in
question is No. 6, painted in 1658.

For the story of Cephalus, who is here receiving from Procris the presents of Diana, the hound Lelaps, and the fatal dart with which she was killed, see under 698. As for the landscape, Mr. Ruskin cites this picture as an instance of the "childishness and incompetence" of Claude's foregrounds.

"I will not," he writes, "say anything of the agreeable composition of the three banks, rising one behind another from the water, except only that it amounts to a demonstration that all three were painted in the artist's study, without any reference to nature whatever. In fact, there is quite enough intrinsic evidence in each of them to prove this, seeing that what appears to be meant for vegetation upon them amounts to nothing more than a green stain on their surfaces, the more evidently false because the leaves of the trees twenty yards farther off are all perfectly visible and distinct; and that the sharp lines with which each cuts against that beyond it are not only such as crumbling earth could never show or assume, but are maintained through their whole progress ungraduated, unchanging, and unaffected by any of the circumstances of varying shade to which every one of nature's lines is inevitably subjected. In fact the whole arrangement is the impotent struggle of a tyro to express by successive edges that approach of earth which he finds himself incapable of expressing by the drawing of the surface. Claude wished to make you understand that the edge of his pond came nearer and nearer; he had probably often tried to do this with an unbroken bank, or a bank only varied by the delicate and harmonious anatomy of nature: and he had found that owing to his total ignorance of the laws of perspective such efforts on his part invariably ended in his reducing his pond to the form of a round O, and making it look perpendicular. Much comfort and solace of mind in such unpleasant circumstances may be derived from instantly dividing the obnoxious bank into a number of successive promontories, and developing their edges with completeness and intensity" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. iv. ch. iv. §§ 17, 18).

3. A CONCERT.

_School of Titian_ (Venetian). _See under next picture._

The young man in the red velvet cap plays on the violoncello;
the other on the oboe, of which only the reed is visible. The
other three are vocalists. The master is keeping time, and is
intent on the boy pupil. The young girl, with her hand on her
husband's shoulder, is waiting to chime in, and looks far away
the while to where the music takes her. "In Titian's portraits
you always see the soul,--faces 'which pale passion loves.'
Look at the Music-piece by Titian--it is 'all ear,'--the
expression is evanescent as the sounds--the features are seen
in a sort of dim _chiaroscuro_, as if the confused impressions
of another sense intervened--and you might easily suppose some
of the performers to have been engaged the night before in

Mask or midnight serenade
Which the starved lover to his mistress sings
Best quitted with disdain."

(HAZLITT: _Criticisms on Art_, edition 1843, p. 10).

Perhaps it is indeed a travelling party of musicians practising for a serenade. Certainly one thinks of this picture as one reads of a supper party at Titian's house. "Before the tables were set out, we spent the time in looking at the lifelike figures in the excellent paintings of which the house was full, and in discussing the real beauty and charm of the garden, which was a pleasure and a wonder to every one. It is situated in the extreme part of Venice upon the sea, and from it may be seen the pretty little island of Murano, and other beautiful places. This part of the sea, as soon as the sun went down, swarmed with gondolas adorned with beautiful women, and resounded with varied harmonies--the music of voices and instruments till midnight" (Priscianese, describing a visit to Titian in 1540: cited in Heath's _Titian_, "Great Artists" series, p. 53).

4. A HOLY FAMILY.

_Titian_ (Venetian: 1477-1576).