Chapter VI: Preface: By John Ruskin (4)

Tiziano Vecellio--"il divino Tiziano," as his countrymen called
him--is one of the greatest names in the history of painting:
"There is a strange undercurrent of everlasting murmur about
his name, which means the deep consent of all great men that
he is greater than they" (_Two Paths_, § 57). Titian's works
"are not art," said one of his contemporaries, "but miracles;
they make upon me the impression of something divine, and as
heaven is the soul's paradise, so God has transfused into
Titian's colours the paradise of our bodies." It is not easy,
however, to point out the special characteristics of Titian,
for it is his glory to offer nothing over-prominent and to
keep "in all things the middle path of perfection." Titian's
mind was "wholly realist, universal, and manly. He saw that
sensual passion in man was not only a fact, but a Divine fact;
the human creature, though the highest of the animals, was,
nevertheless, a perfect animal, and his happiness, health, and
nobleness depended on the due power of every animal passion,
as well as the cultivation of every spiritual tendency"
(_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iii. § 30). As a youth
Titian worked under the influence of Giorgione, of whom (says
Vasari), "they who were excellent confessed that he was born
to put the breath of life into painted figures and to imitate
the elasticity and colour of flesh." The so-called "Sacred
and Profane Love" of Titian marks the culmination of his
"Giorgionesque" style, in which sensuous delight and spiritual
yearning are mixed in subtle harmony. The "Bacchus and Ariadne"
of our own Gallery belongs to a somewhat later date, and is a
combination of poetry and painting almost unique in the world
of art. "One object," says Sir Frederick Burton,[42] "Titian
kept steadily before him from the beginning--the rendering
of the lustre of the skin in its warmth, its pearliness, and
its light, such as it is found in the European races, and
nowhere perhaps in such perfection as in the blended northern
and southern blood of Venetia. He presents to us humanity in
its noblest and most beautiful forms, and so profoundly had
he studied it that the ideal personages introduced in his
pictures have an intense individuality. Naturally, therefore,
he stands supreme amongst the great portrait-painters. In the
department of landscape he was, if not the first to perceive,
at least the first to render, nature in her sublimer aspects.
When dealing with classical themes he thoroughly translated
the spirit, without idly imitating the forms, of antiquity."
And as the range of his intellectual sympathy was wide, so
was that of his executive skill. He is, indeed, especially
supreme as a colourist; but for the rest, the very greatness
of the master lies in there being no one quality predominant
in him. Raphael's power is properly called "Raphaelesque," but
"Titian's power is simply the power of doing right. Whatever
came before Titian, he did wholly as it _ought_ to be done"
(_Two Paths_, §§ 57, 58, 69).

This universality of Titian's art is reflected in his life--a
life prolonged far beyond the ordinary human spell, and full
to the end of "superhuman toil." He was sent from his country
home at Cadore to Venice to begin his studies when quite a
boy: he was only nine, it is said, when he entered Gentile
Bellini's studio. He lived to be ninety-nine, and his life
was one long education. He was nearly threescore years and
ten when he visited Rome and saw Michael Angelo, but he "had
greatly improved," he said in later years, "after he had been
at Rome." He painted until his dying hour, and is said to have
exclaimed at the last that he was "only then beginning to
understand what painting was." This continual striving after
perfection, this consciousness of falling short, is in striking
contrast to the honour and glory paid to him by others. He was
painter in ordinary to the Venetian State (a post in which he
succeeded Giovanni Bellini). He was an honoured guest at the
court of Alphonso I., Duke of Ferrara, for whom he painted
the "Bacchus and Ariadne" (35). To the Emperor Charles V. he
"stood as Apelles to Alexander the Great, the only man worthy
to paint his royal master," and he was made Count Palatine and
Knight of the Golden Spur, with precedence for his children as
nobles of the Empire. The emperor's son, Philip II. (of Spain),
was an equally generous patron; the Pope Paul III. tried hard
to induce Titian to settle in Rome; and Henry III. of France,
who visited him at his own house, wished the picture on which
the painter was then at work to be placed over his tomb. In
his house at Venice Titian lived in great style, attracting
kings and nobles and men of letters to him. There is all the
keenness of a city of merchants in Titian's business relations,
and many of the extant documents about him are petitions for
further favours and for arrears of pensions. But if he gathered
like a beggar, he spent like a prince. There is a story of two
cardinals coming to dine at his house. He flung his purse to
the steward, and bade him make ready, for "all the world was
coming to dine with him." Certain too it is that if he knocked
too much at the doors of princes, it was for the sake of his
children rather than of himself. At the loss of his wife (when
he was fifty-seven) he was "utterly disconsolate," says the
letter of a friend. His sister Orsa afterwards kept house for
him--"sister, daughter, mother, companion, and steward of his
household," so Aretino described her; and it was his daughter
Lavinia whom he oftenest loved to paint. She was "the person
dearest to him in all the world," and many years after she
had died (1560) in childbirth, he described her to Philip II.
as "absolute mistress of his soul." A less pleasant light is
thrown upon the great painter by his friendship and close
association with the infamous Aretino. This curious product
of the Renaissance came to Venice in 1527, and with Titian
and Jacopo del Sansovino formed "the so-called Triumvirate,
which was a kind of Council of Three, having as its _raison
d'être_ the mutual furtherance of material interests, and the
pursuit of art, love, and pleasure." To Titian's association
with Aretino some critics have ascribed the stronger vein of
sensuality which is discernible in some of his later works. To
the extreme limit, however, of his long life his hand never
lost its cunning, nor was the force of imagination abated. He
was carried off by the plague, and received even in that time
of panic the honour of solemn obsequies in the church of the
Frari--"the man as highly favoured," says Vasari, "by fortune
as any of his kind had ever been before him." His house at
Venice is still shown. It looks across the lagoons to the
distant mountains of his early home.

One of the pictures which mark the advance made by Titian in the art of landscape. Look at the background of some earlier Holy Family--at the "purist" landscape, for instance, of Perugino (288),--and the change will be seen at once--a change from the conventional or ideal to the real and the actual. Titian was one of the first to "relieve the foreground of his landscapes from the grotesque, quaint, and crowded formalism of the early painters, and give a close approximation to the forms of nature in all things; retaining, however, this much of the old system, that the distances were for the most part painted in deep ultramarine blue, the foregrounds in rich green and brown" (_Lectures on Architecture and Painting_, p. 158). In particular he was the first[43] to "apprehend the subduing pathos that comes with eventide" (see Gilbert's _Cadore_ or _Titian's Country_, p. 33). Titian, says Ruskin (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ii. § 1, ch. vii. § 15), "hardly ever paints sunshine, but a certain opalescent twilight which has as much of human emotion as of imitative truth in it:

The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality."

5. A SEAPORT AT SUNSET.

_Claude Lorraine_ (French: 1600-1682). _See_ 2.

An instance of false tone (_cf._ under Cuyp, No. 53). "Many even of the best pictures of Claude must be looked close into to be felt, and lose light every foot that we retire. The smallest of the three Seaports in the National Gallery is valuable and right in tone when we are close to it, but ten yards off it is all brick-dust, offensively and evidently false in its whole hue." Contrast "the perfect and unchanging influence of Turner's picture at any distance. We approach only to follow the sunshine into every cranny of the leafage, and retire only to feel it diffused over the scene, the whole picture glowing like a sun or star at whatever distance we stand, and lighting the air between us and it" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. i. § 20).

6. DAVID AT THE CAVE OF ADULLAM.[44]

_Claude Lorraine_ (French: 1600-1682). _See_ 2.

David, in front of the cave, "longed and said, 'Oh that one would give me to drink of the water of Bethlehem, which is by the gate!' And the three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines (seen in the valley), and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, that was by the gate, and took it, and brought it to David" (2 Samuel xxiii. 15, 16). With regard to the landscape, the picture is a good instance at once of Claude's strength and weakness. Thus "the central group of trees is a very noble piece of painting" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. iv. ch. ii. § 8). On the other hand the rocks, both in the left corner and in the right, are highly absurd. "The Claudesque landscape is not, as so commonly supposed, an idealised abstract of the nature about Rome. It is an ultimate condition of the Florentine conventional landscape, more or less softened by reference to nature" (_ibid._, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. xviii. § 27). So, too, "the brown foreground and rocks are as false as colour can be: first, because there never was such a brown sunlight, for even the sand and cinders (volcanic tufa) about Naples, granting that he had studied from these ugliest of all formations, are, where they are fresh fractured, golden and lustrous in full light, compared to these ideals of crags, and become, like all other rocks, quiet and gray when weathered; and secondly, because no rock that ever nature stained is without its countless breaking tints of varied vegetation" (_ibid._, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. ii. § 16).

7, 37. GROUPS OF HEADS.

_After Correggio. See under 10._

Copies by Annibale Carracci from Correggio's compositions in the church of S. Giovanni at Parma (Layard's edition of Kugler's _Italian School of Painting_, ii. 631). These pictures have had an eventful history, and been connected with the fortunes of many sovereigns. They came to the National Gallery from Mr. Angerstein, who bought them from the Orleans collection. They had formerly been in the possession of Queen Christina, having been carried off to Sweden as part of the plunder of Prague when that city was captured by the Swedes in 1648. The pictures collected there by the Emperor Rudolph II. were removed to Stockholm.

8. A DREAM OF HUMAN LIFE.

_From a design by Michael Angelo. See 790._

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

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

GRAY: _Ode on a distant prospect of Eton College_.

9. "LORD, WHITHER GOEST THOU?"

_Annibale Carracci_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1560-1609).

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

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

10. THE EDUCATION OF CUPID.

_Correggio_ (Parmese: 1494-1534).

Antonio Allegri--called Il Correggio from his birthplace, a
small town near Modena--is one of the most distinctive of
the old masters. What is it that constitutes what Carlyle
(following Sterne) calls the "Correggiosity of Correggio"? It
is at once a way peculiar to him amongst artists, of looking
at the world, and an excellence, peculiar to him also, in his
methods of painting. Correggio "looked at the world in a single
mood of sensuous joy," as a place in which everything is full
of happy life and soft pleasure. The characteristics of his
style are "sidelong grace," and an all-pervading sweetness.
The method, peculiar to him, by which he realised this way
of looking at things on canvas, is the subtle gradation of
colours,--a point, it is interesting to note, in which of all
modern masters Leighton most nearly resembles him (_Art of
England_, p. 98). "Correggio is," says Ruskin, "the captain
of the painter's art as such. Other men have nobler or more
numerous gifts, but as a painter, master of the art of laying
colour so as to be lovely, Correggio is alone" (_Oxford
Lectures on Art_, § 177). The circumstances of Correggio's life
go far to explain the individuality of his style. He was the
son of a modest, peaceful burgher, and Correggio and Parma,
where he spent his life, were towns removed from the greater
intellectual excitements and political revolutions of his time.
Ignorant of society, unpatronised by Popes or great Princes,
his mind was touched by no deep passion other than love for
his art, and "like a poet hidden in the light of thought," he
worked out for himself the ideals of grace and movement which
live in his pictures (see Symonds, _Renaissance_, iii. 248). Of
the details of his life little is known. His earliest works,
as Morelli first demonstrated, reveal the influence of the
Ferrarese masters, nor was he untouched by the creations of
Mantegna at Mantua, where he studied for two or three years. In
1514, in his twentieth year, he was entrusted with an important
commission by the Minorite Friars of Correggio. The Court of
Correggio was then a centre of refinement and culture, under
the rule of Giberto and his wife Veronica, who was one of the
most accomplished women of the day, and greatly admired "our
Antonio," as she called the painter. In 1518 Correggio left his
native city for Parma, which was to become for ever associated
with his name. "There is little reason," says his latest
biographer, "to lament that he never visited Rome or any other
great city. Parma, rising in smiling tranquillity upon her
fertile plains, girdled by castles and villages, and looking
out upon the vaporous line of hills from which the streams
which give her water descend into the champaign, offered our
painter not only the serenity that suited his temperament,
but a vaster field of activity than had ever been allotted to
any artist. There were altar-pieces to be painted, rooms to
be decorated; and the joyous fancies of his genius were to be
allowed ample scope in the decoration of two stately cupolas"
(Ricci). He was first employed by the Abbess of the Convent of
S. Paolo to paint her principal chamber. It is characteristic
of the time that the subjects selected were from pagan
mythology. Afterwards Correggio was commissioned to cover with
frescoes the cupolas of the Church of S. Giovanni Evangelista,
and of the cathedral. In these compositions, Correggio "carries
the foreshortening of the figures to a point which, while it
displays the daring of the artist, too often transcends the
limits of grace." Seen from below, little of the figures is
sometimes distinguishable except legs and arms in vehement
commotion. When one of the frescoes in the cathedral was first
uncovered, a canon is said to have remarked that it looked
to him like a "fricassee of frogs." But many of the angels'
heads in Correggio's frescoes are exquisitely beautiful. It is
only in Parma that Correggio's power can be fully appreciated.
His charm is to be found rather in his oil-paintings, and
in these the National Gallery possesses some acknowledged
masterpieces. In 1530 Correggio lost his wife, and returned to
his native town. "Although by nature good and well-disposed, he
nevertheless," says Vasari, "grieved more than was reasonable
under the burden of those passions which are common to all men.
He was very melancholic in the exercise of his art, and felt
its fatigues greatly." His life was but little longer than that
of Raphael, for he died in his forty-first year. The stories of
his poverty given in many biographies appear to be ill-founded.
He was in constant employment; he was treated as a person of
consideration, and received good remuneration; and the Governor
of Parma wrote to the Duke of Mantua on the painter's death,
"I hear he has made comfortable provision for his heirs." His
fame was great, and has been enduring; but his influence upon
later art was not fortunate. "His successors, attracted by an
intoxicating loveliness which they could not analyse, threw
themselves blindly into the imitation of Correggio's faults....
Cupolas through the length and breadth of Italy began to be
covered with clouds and simpering cherubs in the convulsions
of artificial ecstasy. The attenuated elegance of Parmigiano,
the attitudinising of Anselmi's saints and angels, and a
general sacrifice of what is solid and enduring to sentimental
gewgaws on the part of all painters who had submitted to the
magic of Correggio, proved how easy it was to go astray with
the great master. Meanwhile, no one could approach him in that
which was truly his own--the delineation of a transient moment
in the life of sensuous beauty, the painting of a smile on
Nature's face, when light and colour tremble in harmony with
the movement of joyous living creatures" (Symonds: _Sketches
and Studies in Italy and Greece_, ii. 158).

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

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

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

11. ST. JEROME.

_Guido Reni_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1575-1642).

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

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

12. ISAAC AND REBECCA, OR "THE MILL."[46]

_Claude_ (French: 1600-1682). _See_ 2.

This and the Claude on the other side of the door (14) are of peculiar interest as being the two which Turner selected for "the noble passage of arms to which he challenged his rival from the grave." He left two of his own pictures (479 and 498) to the nation on the express condition that they should always hang side by side--as they are hanging to-day--with these two by Claude.[47] To discuss fully the comparative merits of the pictures would be beyond the scope of this handbook; the whole of the first volume of _Modern Painters_ was written to establish the superiority of Turner. We can only select a few leading points.

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

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

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

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

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

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

13. THE HOLY FAMILY.

_Murillo_ (Spanish: 1618-1682).

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

Murillo was thus one of the last sincerely religious
painters--a class which, "after a few pale rays of fading
sanctity from Guido, and brown gleams of gipsy Madonnahood
from Murillo, came utterly to an end" (_Modern Painters_, vol.
v. pt. ix. ch. iv. § 4). But it was "_gipsy_ Madonnahood":
there is an entire want of elevation in his religious types,
and the peasants whom he painted as beggars or flower-girls
he painted also as angels or Virgins. This mingling of the
common with the religious alike in subject and treatment was
no doubt a principal reason of his great popularity in his own
country.[52] His vulgarity of treatment in his favourite beggar
subjects is best seen in the Dulwich Gallery; of his religious
style, the pictures here are characteristic examples. There is
a certain "sweetness" and sentimentality about them which often
makes them immensely popular. The French in particular are
subject to a _furore_ for Murillo, his "Immaculate Conception,"
now in the Louvre, having been bought in 1852 for £23,440--the
largest sum ever given up to that time for a single
picture.[53] With children, too, Murillo is nearly always a
great favourite. A maturer taste, however, finds the sentiment
of Murillo overcharged, and the sweetness of expression an
insufficient substitute for elevation of character. "His
drawing," says Ruskin, "is free and not ungraceful, but most
imperfect and slurred to give a melting quality of colour. That
colour is agreeable because it has no force or severity; but
it is morbid, sunless, and untrue. His expression is sweet,
but shallow; his models amiable, but vulgar and mindless; his
chiaroscuro commonplace, opaque, and conventional; and yet all
this is so agreeably combined, and animated by a species of
wax-work life, that it is sure to catch everybody who has not
either very high feeling or strong love of truth, and to keep
them from obtaining either" (Letter to Dean Liddell, given in
the _Memoir_ by H. L. Thompson, p, 224.)[54] "Murillo," says
a more appreciative critic, "who assimilated least of foreign
elements, had become the most international of all Spanish
painters; for he possessed the art of winning the favour of
all, the gift of a language intelligible to all times and
peoples, to all classes and even to aliens of his faith"
(Justi: _Velazquez and his Times_, p. 236). One charm his
pictures have which no criticism is likely to take away: they
are all stamped with the artist's individuality; there is never
any mistaking a Murillo.

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

14. SEAPORT: THE QUEEN OF SHEBA.

_Claude_ (French, 1600-1682). _See_ 2.

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

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

15. ECCE HOMO!

_Correggio_ (Parmese: 1494-1534). _See under_ 10.

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

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

16. ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON.

_Tintoretto_ (Venetian: 1518-1594).