Chapter VII: Preface: By John Ruskin (5)

Jacopo Robusti, called Tintoretto (the little dyer), from the
trade of his father, is the last great master of the Venetian
School and "the most imaginative of all painters." His artistic
ambition was expressed in the line which he wrote on the wall
of his studio: "The design of Michelangelo and the colouring of
Titian." He engrafted (says Symonds) on the calm and natural
Venetian manner "something of the Michelangelesque sublimity,
and sought to sway by dramatic movement the romantic motives
of the school." He conquers Michelangelo (says Ruskin) in
his own field; "out-flies him in motion, outnumbers him in
multitude, outwits him in fancy and out-flames him in rage."
The imagination of Tintoret dwelt among the tragic and
dramatic scenes in sacred history. While he conceived of these
in the largest and most audacious spirit, his "imagination
penetrative" extended to the minutest details, and his great
works abound in those minor episodes which lend so much reality
to a poet's conceptions. In his classical pictures, Tintoret
combined with the sumptuous colour of Titian something of the
mythopoeic faculty which enabled him to inspire the tales of
ancient Greece with an intense vitality of beauty. In other of
his pictures, effects of light and shade are the vehicle of
his imagination. It was Tintoret (says Symonds) "who brought
to its perfection the poetry of _chiaroscuro_, expressing
moods of passion and emotion by brusque lights, luminous
half-shadows, by semi-opaque darkness, no less unmistakably
than Beethoven by symphonic modulations" (_Renaissance_, iii.
270). The intense vitality which characterises Tintoret's
subject-pictures is conspicuous also in his portraits. They
"render the man at his best, full of health and determination,
and make us look back with amazement to a state where the human
plant was in such vigour" (Berenson's _Venetian Painters_,
p. 59). The picture now before us (16) may give some idea of
Tintoret's power of imagination; and the decorative piece
lately added to the Gallery (1313) is exemplary of another
side of his genius. The Galleries at Hampton Court should also
be visited by all admirers of Tintoretto. But it is only in
Venice that this great master can properly be studied, and
only in the works of Ruskin that any full appreciation of
his powers is to be found.[58] One or two points, however,
may profitably be mentioned which visitors who come across
pictures by Tintoret in foreign galleries should bear in mind.
First, he is the most unequal in execution of all painters.
The Venetians used to say he had three pencils--one of gold,
one of silver, and a third of iron. Annibale Carracci said of
him that "if he was sometimes equal to Titian, he was often
inferior to Tintoretto." Secondly, "when no one would pay for
his colours (and sometimes nobody would even give him space of
wall to paint on), he used cheap blue for ultramarine;" and he
worked so rapidly, "and on such large spaces of canvas, that,
between damp and dry, his colours must go, for the most part."
Tintoret, from the rapidity of his execution, received the
nickname of _il Furioso_; and Sebastiano del Piombo used to say
that Tintoret could paint as much in two days as would occupy
him for two years. Thirdly, Tintoret "is entirely unconcerned
respecting the satisfaction of the public. He neither cares to
display his strength to them, nor convey his ideas to them;
when he finishes his work, it is, because he is in the humour
to do so; and the sketch which a meaner painter would have
left incomplete to show how cleverly it was begun, Tintoret
simply leaves because he has done as much of it as he likes"
(_Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret, passim_).

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

A picture of particular interest in the National Gallery, being a representation by one of the greatest of artists of the patron saint of England. The fight of St. George with the dragon is familiar to every one, being on the reverse of our gold sovereigns, and in the "Jubilee" coinage on that of our silver crowns. "As a piece of mere die-cutting, that St. George is one of the best bits of work we have on our money," but a reference to its absurdities in design will serve admirably to bring out some of the imaginative merits of this picture. On our coins St. George's horse looks abstractedly in the air, instead of where it would have looked, at the beast between its legs. Here Tintoret has admirably brought out the chivalry of the horse. Knight and charger are alike intent upon their foe, and note that St. George wears no spurs: the noble animal nature is attuned to his rider. But, though un-spurred, St. George is every inch a knight. His whole strength is given in the spear-thrust which is to kill the dragon: compare this with St. George on our coins, "with nothing but his helmet on (being the last piece of armour he is likely to want), putting his naked feet, at least his feet showing their toes through the buskins, well forward, that the dragon may with the greatest convenience get a bite at them; and about to deliver a mortal blow at him with a sword which cannot reach him by a couple of yards." To understand the other touches of true imagination in Tintoret's picture, it is necessary to recall the meaning of the legend of St. George and the Dragon (identical with that of Perseus and Andromeda).[59] The dragon represents the evil of sinful, fleshly passion, the element in our nature which is of the earth, earthy. Notice with what savage tenacity, therefore, the beast is made to clutch at the earth. From his mouth he is spitting fire--the red fire of consuming passion. St. George is the champion of purity; he rides therefore on a white horse, white being the typical colour of a blameless life. He wears no helmet--for that might obscure his sight, and the difficulty in this warfare is not so much to kill your dragon as to see him. In front of him is the dead body of another man:

He gazes on the silent dead
"They perished in their daring deeds."
This proverb flashes through his head,
"The many fail, the one succeeds."

Behind him is a long castle wall, the towers and battlements perhaps of some great city. In many pictures of this subject (see _e.g._ 75) there are crowds of spectators on the walls, who will cheer the knight in his struggle and applaud him in his victory. But here the walls are deserted, and but for the princess in the foreground, there are no spectators of the struggle: it is one which has to be fought alone and in secret places. The princess had been given, in the story, as a sacrifice to the dragon, and St. George, who comes to rescue her, is thus the type of noble chivalry. "She turns away for flight; and if her hands are raised to heaven, and her knees fall to earth, it is more that she stumbles in a woman's weakness, than that she abides in faith or sweet surrender. Tintoret sees the scene as in the first place a matter of fact, and paints accordingly, following his judgment of girl nature." But in another sense the princess of the allegory represents the soul of man, which has to be freed from subjection to the dragon of the flesh. And so perhaps Tintoret makes her fly, "from a certain ascetic feeling, a sense growing with the growing license of Venice, that the soul must rather escape from this monster by flight than hope to see it subdued and made serviceable" (_St. Mark's Rest_, Second Supplement, pp. 14, 21, 33; _Fors Clavigera_, 1873, xxv. and xxvi.)

17. THE HOLY FAMILY.

_Andrea del Sarto_[60] (Florentine: 1486-1531). _See_ 690.

St. Elizabeth with her son, the infant John the Baptist, visiting the Madonna and infant Christ. It is "a Holy Family," but except for the symbolical cross of the Baptist and the faint circlet of golden light surrounding the Madonna's head, there is no hint of divinity about this pretty domestic scene.

18. CHRIST AND THE PHARISEES.[61]

_Bernardino Luini_ (Lombard: about 1475-1533).

Bernardino, "dear little Bernard," the son of Giovanni
Lutero, called Luini from his birthplace Luino, on the Lago
Maggiore, is perhaps, says Ruskin, "the best central type of
the highly-trained Italian painter," being "alone in uniting
consummate art-power with untainted simplicity of religious
imagination." "The two elements, poised in perfect balance, are
so calmed and restrained, each by the other, that most of us
lose the sense of both." Next to nothing is known of his life
beyond journeys to various places in the lake district--Lugano,
Legnano, and Saronno, to paint frescoes. "We have no anecdotes
of him, only hundreds of noble works. Child of the Alps, and
of their divinest lake, he is taught, without doubt or dismay,
a lofty religious creed, and a sufficient law of life, and of
its mechanical arts. Whether lessoned by Leonardo himself,
or merely one of many, disciplined in the system of the
Milanese School, he learns unerringly to draw, unerringly and
enduringly to paint" ... "a mighty colourist, while Leonardo
was only a fine draughtsman in black, staining the chiaroscuro
drawing like a coloured print." Luini's "tasks are set him
without question day by day, by men who are justly satisfied
with his work, and who accept it without any harmful praise
or senseless blame. Place, scale, and subject are determined
for him on the cloister wall or the church dome; as he is
required, and for sufficient daily bread, and little more,
he paints what he has been taught to design wisely and has
passion to realise gloriously: every touch he lays is eternal,
every thought he conceives is beautiful and pure" (_Queen of
the Air_, § 157; _Catalogue of the Educational Series_, p. 43;
Oxford _Lectures on Art_, §§ 73, 92). This picture, formerly
ascribed to Leonardo, belongs to Luini's second period, when
he was under the influence of that master. To his third and
independent manner belong the frescoes at Milan, Saronno, and
Lugano, and the three pictures in Como Cathedral (Morelli's
_Italian Masters in German Galleries_, 1883, pp. 435-438).
Luini's female figures (says Sir Frederick Burton) "are full of
sweetness and gracious dignity; and should we incline to cavil
at the monotony of his type, its loveliness disarms us. But a
merit even higher than his sense of beauty is the pathos which
he infused into subjects that required it. These he imagined
from within outwards, following his inspiration without egotism
or mannerism. He appears to most advantage in fresco; for few
have understood so well as he the management of the limited
palette of the fresco painter, and that skilful juxtaposition
of tints by which the value of each is exalted. The decorated
party-wall and adjacent chapels in S. Maurizio at Milan must
once have been as conspicuous for their harmonious colouring
as the former still is for the radiant beauty of the Virgin
Saints in its lower compartment." Copies of several of Luini's
frescoes are included in the Arundel Society's Collection.

Christ is arguing with the Pharisees, but he wears the tender expression of the man who "did not strive nor cry, neither was his voice heard in the streets." The disputant on the extreme right, with the close-shaven face and firm-set features, has his hand on a volume of the Scriptures, and is taking his stand (as it were) on the letter of the law. The one on the extreme left, on the other hand, is almost persuaded. In contrast to him is the older man with the white beard, who seems to be marvelling at the presumption of youth. The remaining head is the type of the fanatic; "by our law he ought to die." This picture, besides its splendid colouring, is a good instance of that law of order or symmetry which is characteristic of all perfect art. The central figure faces us; there are two figures on one side, balanced by two on the other; the face in the left corner looks right, that in the right corner looks left, whilst to break any too obtrusive symmetry the head of Christ itself inclines somewhat to the left also. This famous picture, of which there are several old copies, was formerly in the Aldobrandini apartments in the Borghese Palace at Rome.

19. NARCISSUS AND ECHO.

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

Narcissus, a beautiful youth, was beloved by the nymph Echo, but he spurned her love, and when she pined away she was changed into a stone which still retained the power of voice. But Narcissus, seeing his own image reflected in a fountain, became enamoured of it, and when he could never reach his phantom love he killed himself for grief, and the nymphs who came to burn his body found only the "short-lived flower" that bears his name. Here, half-hidden in the trees, we see the

Naiad hid beneath the bank,
By the willowy river-side,
Where Narcissus gently sank,
Where unmarried Echo died.

_Ionica._

This was one of Sir George Beaumont's Claudes which Constable so much admired when he was staying at Coleorton. "I am now going," wrote Constable to his wife, "to breakfast before the Narcissus of Claude. How enchanting and lovely it is; far, very far surpassing any other landscape I ever beheld" (Leslie's _Life of Constable_, 1845, p. 120). Ruskin, on the other hand, finds fault with some of the details, as showing Claude's ignorance of tree structure. "Take the stem of the chief tree in Claude's Narcissus. It is a very faithful portrait of a large boa-constrictor with a handsome tail; the kind of trunk which young ladies at fashionable boarding schools represent with nosegays at the top of them by way of forest scenery." Again, "Observe the bough underneath the first bend of the great stem, ... it sends off four branches like the ribs of a leaf. The two lowest of these are both quite as thick as the parent stem, and the stem itself is much thicker after it has sent off the first one than it was before. The top boughs of the central tree, in the 'Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca' (12), ramify in the same scientific way" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. vi. ch. i. §§ 7, 9).

20. IPPOLITO DE' MEDICI AND THE ARTIST.

_Sebastiano del Piombo_ (Venetian: 1485-1547). _See_ 1.

In 1531 Sebastiano received from the Pope the office of Frate del Piombo, Monk of the Leaden Signet, which was affixed to the pontifical diplomas. An entertaining account of Sebastiano's appointment is given in Benvenuto Cellini's Memoirs (see Symonds's translation, i. 150). The painter is here dressed in the black robe of his office; on the table are two parchment-deeds, with Sebastiano's hand on the seal of one of them, and the picture thus represents, perhaps, the ratification of the appointment by his friend and patron, the Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici. The artist's portrait of himself agrees very well with what Vasari says of his character. He was a painter more of necessity than of choice, and when once he received his valuable sinecure he forsook his palette for the lute, and people found it very hard to get any work out of him. He much preferred talking about pictures, says Vasari, to executing them. He was "of a very full habit," and young painters who resorted to him "rarely made any great profit, since from his example they could learn little beside the art of good living." But he was a thoroughly good fellow, and a kindly withal. A better or more agreeable companion never lived; and when he died he commanded that his remains should be carried to the tomb without any ceremony of priests and friars, and that the amount which would have been thus expended should be distributed to the poor, for the love of God: and so was it done. But in one branch of art, adds Vasari, Sebastiano was always ready to work, namely, in painting portraits, such as this, from the life. "In this art he did certainly surpass all others in delicacy and excellence--so much so that when Cardinal Ippolito fell in love with the lady Giulia Gonzaga, he sent Sebastiano with four swift horses to her home for the purpose of taking her portrait, and in about a month the artist completed the likeness, when, what with the celestial beauties of that lady, and what with the able hand of so accomplished a master, the picture proved to be a most divine one." No. 24 was formerly thought to be the portrait in question.

21. PORTRAIT OF A FLORENTINE LADY.

_Cristofano Allori_ (Florentine: 1577-1621).

An excellent portrait-painter, who painted many of the
distinguished persons of his time. Of his other works, the best
known is the "Judith with the head of Holophernes," in the
Pitti. The Judith "so beautifully and magnificently attired is
a portrait of his mistress; while her mother appears in the
character of Abra, and the head of Holophernes is that of the
painter, who permitted his beard to grow for this purpose."
He was very fastidious in his execution. "From this method,
and from vicious habits that often seduced him from his
labours, his pictures are rare, and he himself is little known"
(Lanzi's _History of Painting_, i. 217). Cristofano was the
son of Alessandro Allori, a painter of Michelangelo's school.

Notice the richly embroidered head-dress, resembling in form the Venetian rolled coif or turban which often occurs in pictures of Titian.

22. ANGELS WEEPING OVER THE DEAD CHRIST.

_Guercino_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1591-1666).

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri was called Guercino, the
Squintling, from an accident which distorted his right eye in
babyhood. He attained to much fame and wealth in his day; but
was self-taught, and the son of humble parents, his father
being a wood-carrier, and agreeing to pay for his son's
education by a load of grain and a vat of grapes delivered
yearly. As a young man, he settled in Rome, where he became
acquainted with Caravaggio. He returned to his native town,
Cento, in 1623, and there founded an academy which was much
frequented by young painters. In 1642 he removed to Bologna,
where he died in affluent circumstances in 1666. In art
history Guercino is interesting as showing the blending of
the Eclectic style of the Carracci with the Naturalistic
style of Caravaggio. In the work of his latest, or Bolognese,
period, "when he appears to have endeavoured to approximate
to the style of Guido, he forsook the vigorous handling and
treatment of his earlier pictures and fell into an insipid
manner" (Burton). Guercino (says Symonds) "lived the life of
an anchorite, absorbed in studies, reserved, sober, pious,
truthful, sincere in his commerce with the world, unaffectedly
virtuous, devoted to his art and God." In the motives of
his picture one sees reflected the Catholic revival of his
day,--"the Christianity of the age was not naïve, simple,
sincere, and popular, but hysterical, dogmatic, hypocritical,
and sacerdotal. It was not Christianity indeed, but Catholicism
galvanised by terror into reactionary movement" (_Renaissance_,
vii. 232).

A comparison even of this little picture--in its somewhat morbid sentiment--with such an one as Crivelli's (602)--with its deeper because simpler feeling--well illustrates the nature of the change. This is, however, one of Guercino's best works. It was formerly in the Borghese Gallery, and Rumohr, in his account of that collection (1784), notices it as one of the productions of the painter's best time. "The figure of Christ is admirable in drawing and foreshortening, and painted with a broad decisive touch in really astonishing relief; while the weeping angels, if not of an elevated type, are marked by a real naïveté and sincerity of pathos. The wonderful chiaroscuro is here not only rich, and well concentrated, too, beyond the painter's wont, but impressive, and duly accounted for by the supernatural luminosity of the body of Christ" (_Portfolio_, August 1891).

23. "THE VIRGIN OF THE BASKET."

_Correggio_ (Parmese: 1494-1534). _See_ 10.

A celebrated work of the master, and one of the principal treasures of the National Gallery--"a little gem of extraordinary tenderness," Mengs calls it; and Frizzoni, "an incomparable marvel of light, vivacity, and smiling sweetness." Alike in sentiment and in technique, it is very characteristic. A comparison of it with Raphael's great Madonna or any of those of the earlier masters (_e.g._ Bellini) will show in a moment wherein the peculiarity of Correggio consists. The mother has none of the rapt look of the woman who "laid these things in her heart," and the child has no prophetic sense of future suffering. There is nothing to mark the picture as representing the Holy Family except the introduction of Joseph, the carpenter, in the background. It is a picture painted solely in the "religion of humanity," and full only of artless grace and melodious tenderness. The child is full of play and fun; the mother (with the household basket which gives the picture its name--"La Vierge au panier") is dressing him, and has just succeeded in putting his right arm through the sleeve of his little coat, and is endeavouring by gentle stratagem to do the same with the left; but something has caught his fancy, and she shares in his delight, smiling with all a young mother's fondness at the waywardness of her curly-haired boy. "As a painting," says Sir Edward Poynter, "it is one of those masterpieces of perfect technicality, of brilliant purity of lighting and colouring, and of completeness of modelling in the flesh tints, combined with the utmost apparent ease of execution, which may well be the despair of painters for all time. As a design it is no less remarkable; for though of studied harmony in the arrangement of the forms it is so natural that all appearance of effort is lost, and we cannot conceive of the scene as being rendered in a more artless manner" (_The National Gallery_, i. 4).

The date of this picture is uncertain. Some, liking to find in it a piece of the painter's own home-life, have dated it 1521-22, that is just after the birth of Correggio's first child. Others put it earlier in the artist's career, 1518. It is perhaps the picture which Vasari describes as in the possession of the Cavaliere Baiardi of Parma--"a marvellous and beautiful work by Correggio, in which Our Lady puts a little shirt on the Infant Christ." It was afterwards in the royal collection at Madrid, from which it passed by the gift of Charles IV. to Don Emanuele Goday, at whose instance it was subjected to a most rigorous cleaning. During the French invasion of Spain it fell into various hands, and in 1825 was bought for the National Gallery from Mr. C. J. Nieuwenhuys for £3800--a sum, it has been calculated, that would "cover the little panel with sovereigns just twenty-seven times over."

24. AN ITALIAN LADY AS ST. AGATHA.

_Sebastiano del Piombo_ (Venetian: 1485-1547). _See_ 1.

The nimbus around the head indicates the saint; the palm branch and the pincers indicate St. Agatha, who was "bound and beaten with rods, and her tender bosom was cruelly torn with iron pincers; and as her blood flowed forth, she said, 'O thou tyrant! shamest thou not to treat me so--- thou who hast been nourished and fed from the breast of a mother?' And this was her only plaint." See also under 20.

25. ST. JOHN IN THE WILDERNESS.

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

"And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his shewing unto Israel" (Luke i. 80). In his left hand is the standard of the Lamb, the symbol of his mission, for which he is preparing himself in the desert solitude, while with his right he catches water in a cup from a stream in the rocks, symbolical of the water by which that mission, the baptism unto repentance, was to be accomplished.

26. THE CONSECRATION OF ST. NICHOLAS.

_Paolo Veronese_ (Veronese: 1528-1588).

Paolo Caliari (called Veronese from his birthplace) stands,
says Ruskin, in the forefront of the great colourists. "Titian,
Veronese, and Tintoret were the only painters who ever sought
entirely to master, and who did entirely master, the truths of
light and shade as associated with colour, in the noblest of
all physical created things, the human form." With Veronese,
"the whole picture is like the rose--glowing with colour in
the shadows, and rising into paler and more delicate hues, or
masses of whiteness, in the lights." Contrasting the aims of
Veronese with those of the great chiaroscurists, Ruskin says:
"Veronese chooses to represent the great relations of visible
things to each other, to the heaven above, and to the earth
beneath them. He holds it more important to show how a figure
stands relieved from delicate air, or marble wall; how as a
red, or purple, or white figure, it separates itself, in clear
discernibility, from things not red, nor purple, nor white;
how infinite daylight shines round it; how innumerable veils
of faint shadow invest it; how its blackness and darkness
are, in the excess of their nature, just as limited and local
as its intensity of light; all this, I say, he feels to be
more important than showing merely the exact _measure_ of the
spark of sunshine that gleams on a dagger-hilt, or glows on a
jewel. All this, moreover, he feels to be harmonious,--capable
of being joined in one great system of spacious truth. And
with inevitable watchfulness, inestimable subtlety, he unites
all this in tenderest balance, noting in each hair's-breadth
of colour, not merely what its rightness or wrongness is
in itself, but what its relation is to every other on his
canvas." In the tone of his colouring Paolo retained, as Sir
F. Burton points out, much of the tradition of the Veronese
school. "The silvery tone which differentiates his best works
from the golden lustre of Titian was not gained in Venice, and
under the lightsome skies of the lagoons he was not tempted
to alter it." In the tone of his mind Veronese was thoroughly
Venetian. It is a certain "gay grasp of the outside aspects of
the world" that distinguishes him. "By habitual preference,
exquisitely graceful and playful; religious, without severity,
and winningly noble; delighting in slight, sweet everyday
incident, but hiding deep meanings underneath it; rarely
painting a gloomy subject, and never a base one" (_Modern
Painters_, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. iii. § 16; vol. iv. pt. v.
ch. iii. § 18, ch. xx. § 16; vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iii. § 27;
_Cambridge Inaugural Lecture in O.O.R._, vol. i. § 314). Thus
Venetian in character, it is the Venice of his time--with all
its material magnificence and pride of life of a nation of
merchant princes--that Veronese everywhere paints. "Veronese,"
says Symonds, "elevated pageantry to the height of serious art.
His domain is noonday sunlight ablaze on sumptuous dresses and
Palladian architecture. Armour, shot silks and satins, brocaded
canopies, banners, plate, fruit, sceptres, crowns--all things,
in fact, that burn and glitter in the sun--form the habitual
furniture of his pictures." It is characteristic of the spirit
of his time that the pictures by Veronese of banquets and
other scenes of gaiety were mostly painted for monasteries.
The frank introduction of the costumes of the painter's own
time, clothing the fine race to which he belonged, gives to
his pictures of this kind an historical interest. Often he
introduces portraits into his groups. In expression his
figures are often deficient. "He will make the Magdalene wash
the feet of Christ with a countenance as absolutely unmoved as
that of any ordinary servant bringing an ewer to her master."
Animal force in men, superb voluptuousness in women, were
his favourite types. "His noblest creatures are men of about
twenty-five, manly, brawny, crisp-haired, full of nerve and
blood. In all this Veronese resembles Rubens. But he does not,
like Rubens, strike us as gross, sensual, fleshly; he remains
proud and powerful, and frigidly urbane. The same love of
display led him to delight in allegory--not allegory of the
deep and mystic kind, but of the pompous and processional, in
which Venice appears enthroned among the deities, or the genii
of the arts are personified as handsome women and blooming
boys." He painted with marvellous facility and revelled, as we
have seen, in exuberance. In this he resembled Rubens, but he
combined, as Rubens did not, moderation with profusion. Amid
so much that is distracting, Veronese never loses command over
his subject or his brush, "restraining, for truth's sake, his
exhaustless energy; reining back, for truth's sake, his fiery
strength; veiling, before truth, the vanity of brightness;
penetrating, for truth, the discouragement of gloom; ruling his
restless invention with a rod of iron; pardoning no error, no
thoughtlessness, no forgetfulness; and subduing all his powers,
impulses, and imaginations, to the arbitrament of a merciless
justice, and the obedience of an incorruptible verity."

Of the life of Paolo Veronese few incidents are related. He
was the son of a stone carver, and having shown a propensity
to painting was apprenticed to his uncle, a mediocre artist.
In his native city the works of Cavazzola and other Veronese
masters were before his eyes. After executing some commissions
in Mantua and Verona, he went in 1555 to Venice, which was
henceforward to be his home and the scene of his triumphs.
He soon began to rank with Tintoretto, who was nearly twenty
years his senior, and with Titian, then in his eightieth year.
He entered into a competition for painting the ceiling of the
library of St. Mark, and executed the commission with so much
power that his very rivals voted him the golden chain which had
been tendered as an honorary distinction. He visited Verona in
1565, where he then married the daughter of his old master;
and in 1560-61 he went to Rome in the suite of Grimani, the
Venetian ambassador. With these exceptions he remained in
Venice, full of work and honour. Upon his death his two sons
and his younger brother, Benedetto, continued the work of his
studio, signing the works which they produced in common as
"heirs of Paolo Caliari Veronese."

This picture, which was formerly in the church of San Niccolo de' Frari at Venice, represents the consecration of Nicholas (for whom see 1171) as Bishop of Myra, in Syria (hence the turbans of the attendants). Two dignitaries of the Church are presenting him to the patriarch, who holds aloft the symbolical cross of the Redeemer, and with his right hand gives his blessing. The bishop-elect abases himself meanwhile that he may be exalted, while the angel descending with the mitre and crozier signifies that his "call" is from above. Clearly it is the pageantry of a Church function that fascinates the painter. "His art is seen at its best," says Sir Edward Poynter, "in the grouping and light and shade in this picture. The boy kneeling on the right is a masterpiece of silvery colour, and, with his red stockings, gives vivacity to the whole composition." We may also observe in this picture the employment of a "glaze." "The kneeling figure of the Saint is robed in green, with sleeves of golden orange. This latter colour is carried through as under-painting over the whole draped portions of the figure, the green being then floated over and so manipulated that the golden tint shows through in parts and gives the high lights on the folds" (Baldwin Brown's _Fine Arts_, 1891, p. 310).

27. THE POPE JULIUS II.

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

This is one of nine replicas, or contemporary copies, of the
portrait in the Uffizi at Florence. Julius died in 1513; the
portrait belongs, therefore, to the earlier part of Raphael's
Roman period.

The portrait of a Pope of the church militant. "Raphael has caught the momentary repose of a restless and passionate spirit, and has shown all the grace and beauty which are to be found in the sense of power repressed and power at rest. Seated in an arm-chair, with head bent downward, the Pope is in deep thought. His furrowed brow and his deep-sunk eyes tell of energy and decision. The down-drawn corners of his mouth betoken constant dealings with the world" (Creighton's _History of the Papacy_). For it was in the temporal, not in the spiritual world that Julius lived and moved and had his being, and became, by his combination of military and diplomatic abilities, the most prominent political figure of his day. But, like other great princes of the time, Julius was a liberal and enlightened patron of the arts: it was he who laid the foundation-stone of St. Peter's, and who called Michael Angelo and Raphael to his court. On the green hanging which forms the background, the cross-keys of the pontifical office are indicated, and from the two corners of the back of the chair rise two shafts, surmounted by gilt ornaments in the form of acorns--in reference to the armorial bearings of the Pope's family (_della Rovere_). "No amount of elaboration in the background could disturb the attention of any one looking at the portrait of Julius the Second, by Raphael, also in the Tribune, which I cannot help thinking is _the_ finished portrait in the world. A portrait is _the most truly historical picture_, and this is the most monumental and historical of portraits. The longer one looks at it the more it demands attention. A superficial picture is like a superficial character--it may do for an acquaintance, but not for a friend. One never gets to the end of things to interest and admire in many old portrait-pictures" (G. F. Watts, R.A., in the _Magazine of Art_, January 1889).

28. SUSANNAH AND THE ELDERS.

_Lodovico Carracci_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1555-1619).

Lodovico is famous in art history as the founder of the
Eclectic school of Bologna. Disgusted with the weakness of the
Mannerists (of whom Baroccio was the best; _see_ next picture),
he determined to start a rival school, and enlisted the
services of his two cousins, Agostino and Annibale, for that
purpose. Their object, as expressed in a sonnet by Agostino,
was to be to "acquire the design of Rome, Venetian action, and
Venetian management of shade, the dignified colour of Lombardy
(Leonardo), the terrible manner of Michael Angelo, Titian's
truth and nature, the sovereign purity of Correggio's style,
and the just symmetry of Raphael." Lodovico, who was the son
of a Bolognese butcher,[62] was a man of very wide culture and
of great industry. In natural talent he was deficient. When
first sent to an art school at Bologna, he was called by his
companions "the ox," and when he visited Venice the veteran
Tintoretto warned him that he had no vocation. But resolving
to win by industry what nature seemed to have denied him, he
studied diligently at Florence, Parma, Mantua, and Venice. He
superintended the school, at first conjointly with his cousins,
afterwards alone, from 1589 to his death.

A less objectionable rendering than most, of the story of Susannah in the Apocrypha--a story for all time, setting forth as it does the way in which minions of the law too often prey upon the innocent, and the righteous condemnation that the people, when there are just judges in the land, mete out to the offenders. Two judges, "ancients of the people," approached Susannah and threatened to report her as guilty unless she consented to do their bidding. She refused, and was reported accordingly. Judgment had well-nigh gone against her, when Daniel arose to convict the elders of false-witness, and they were straightway put to death. It is the moment of Susannah's temptation that the artist here depicts. "It is," says Hazlitt (p. 5), "as if the young Jewish beauty had been just surprised in that unguarded spot--crouching down in one corner of the picture, the face turned back with a mingled expression of terror, shame, and unconquerable sweetness, and the whole figure, with the arms crossed, shrinking into itself with bewitching grace and modesty." But Hazlitt never took notes, and Susannah's arms are not crossed--nor is her expression quite so naïve as he describes.

29. "OUR LADY OF THE CAT."

_Baroccio_ (Umbrian: 1528-1612).

Federigo Barocci, or Baroccio, is the best of the "Mannerists."
"He feebly continued the style of Correggio," says Symonds,
"with a certain hectic originality, infusing sentimental
pietism into that great master's pagan sensuousness"
(_Renaissance_, viii. 211). His colouring is peculiar: he used
too much vermilion and ultramarine, and too few yellows. He was
a native of Urbino, and the son of a sculptor. In 1548 he went
to Rome and remained there some years, devoting his time to the
study of Raphael. He then returned to Urbino, again visiting
Rome in 1560, when he was employed in the Vatican. While there
he was nearly poisoned, by some rival it is supposed, and for
the rest of his long life he suffered from disease of the
stomach, which rendered him unable to do much work. He died at
Urbino at the age of eighty-four.

An admirable example of the decline of Italian art. The old religious spirit has entirely vanished, and the Holy Family is represented as worrying a bird with a cat! John the Baptist holds the little goldfinch; while the Madonna expressly directs the attention of the infant Christ to the fun. "See, the cat is trying to get at it," she seems to say. Behind the bird, the painter, in unconscious irony, has placed the Cross. The visitor who wishes to see how far Italian art has travelled in a hundred years should compare this picture with such an one as Bellini's (280), or with one of Raphael's, of whom Baroccio was a fellow-countryman. The connecting link should then be seen in Correggio (23). With Bellini or Perugino, the motive is wholly religious. With Raphael it is intermingled with artistic display. Correggio brings heaven wholly down to earth, but yet paints his domestic scene with lovely grace. Baroccio brings, one may almost say, heaven down to hell,[63] and uses all his skill to show the infant Saviour's pleasure in teasing a bird. But the artist only embodied the spirit of his time. Baroccio was one of the most celebrated painters of his day, and his biographer (Bellori) writes of him that "his pencil may be said to have been dedicated to religion: so devout, so tender, and so calculated to awaken feelings of piety, are the sentiments expressed in his pictures."

30. SEAPORT: ST. URSULA.

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

The best Claude in the Gallery, for it is a perfect example of his chief merit--the painting of quiet skies. Constable, in one of his lectures, refers to it as "probably the finest picture of _middle-tint_ in the world. The sun is rising through a thin mist, which, like the effect of a gauze blind in a room, diffuses the light equally. There are no large dark masses, there is no evasion in any part of this admirable work, every object is fairly painted in a firm style of execution, yet in no other picture have I seen the evanescent character of light so well expressed" (Leslie's _Life of Constable_, p. 338). "The effect of the breeze upon the water and upon the trees," says Ottley, "and the freshness of the morning atmosphere, in this picture, are expressed with a closeness of imitation bordering on illusion" (_Descriptive Catalogue of the National Gallery_, 1826, p. 42).

As for the subject: St. Ursula, a beautiful and gifted Sicilian princess, was sought in marriage by a prince of Britain; but having already dedicated herself to Christ, she made a condition that before her marriage, she, with eleven thousand attendant virgins, should be permitted for the space of three years to visit the shrines of the Saints. This being permitted, the maidens started on a miraculous voyage. Guided by angels they proceeded as far as Rome, where pagans having plotted their death, on their further journey to Cologne they were martyred by the barbarians besieging that city. Here in the picture they are represented as embarking.

31. THE SACRIFICE OF ISAAC.

_Gaspard Poussin_ (French: 1613-1675).

Among the artists who were most closely associated with
Nicolas Poussin (_see_ 39) were his wife's brothers, Giovanni
and Gaspard Dughet. The former was loved by Poussin as a
son; the latter was also his pupil and adopted his name,
though in France he is familiarly known as "Le Guaspre."
Gaspard was Poussin's junior by nineteen years, and the older
man, recognising his abilities, encouraged him to landscape
painting. By the time he was twenty, Gaspard had established
himself as an independent painter in Rome, and his works were
eagerly sought by lovers of art. The Palazzo Doria and the
Palazzo Colonna are especially rich in his works; the picture
now before us, by some considered Gaspard's masterpiece, was
formerly in the latter palace. Gaspard resided chiefly at
Rome, but he also rented houses at Frascati and at Tivoli.
In the noble scenery of those places and elsewhere in the
country around Rome, he found the subjects for many of his
best pictures. He worked so rapidly, we are told, that he
would often "finish a picture in a day." He had a genuine love
for nature, and also a passion for the chase. "A little ass,
that he cared for himself, his only servant, bore his entire
apparatus, provisions, and a tent, under which, protected
from the sun and wind, he made his landscapes." There is
(says Ruskin) more serious feeling in his landscapes, more
"perception of the moral truth of nature," and "grander
reachings after sympathy" than in those either of Nicolas or
of Claude. It is impossible to look at many of his pictures
in this Gallery without sharing the sense of grandeur and
infinity in nature which inspired them, and hence it is that
from Gaspard's own time till now they have enjoyed "a permanent
power of address to the human heart." But more than this
has been claimed for Gaspard. Critics thought they found in
his works faithful adherence to the truths of nature in sky
and trees. Ottley, for instance, in his _Catalogue of the
National Gallery_ (1826), speaks of Gaspard's "unrivalled
correctness of imitation." Against these claims Ruskin took
up his fiery parable. Gaspard's pictures are "full," he says,
"of the most degraded mannerism;" first and foremost, in his
search of a false sublimity, he painted every object in his
picture, vegetation and all, of one dull gray and brown; and
too many of his landscapes are now one dry, volcanic darkness.
And secondly, he had a total want of imagination in seizing
the true forms of natural objects, so that some passages of
his landscapes are, as we shall see, perfect epitomes of the
falseness to nature in the painters of that age[64] (collected
from _Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. §§ 3,
14; vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. v. § 12, sec ii. ch. ii. §
18; vol. iv. pt. v. ch. xvi. § 24).

These remarks cannot be better illustrated than in the present picture. Abraham and Isaac--the former with a lighted torch, the latter with the wood--are ascending the hill on the right to the sacrifice; while Abraham's two servants await his return below. The whole spirit of the picture is "solemn and unbroken," in perfect harmony with the subject. But it is kept from being a really grand picture by the "hopeless want of imagination" in the forms of the clouds, the colour of the sky, and the treatment of the distant landscape. These painters, says Ruskin, looked at clouds, "with utter carelessness and bluntness of feeling; saw that there were a great many rounded passages in them; found it much easier to sweep circles than to design beauties, and sat down in their studies, contented with perpetual repetitions of the same spherical conceptions, having about the same relation to the clouds of nature, that a child's carving of a turnip has to the head of the Apollo.... Take the ropy, tough-looking wreath in the 'Sacrifice of Isaac,' and find one part of it, if you can, which is not the repetition of every other part of it, all together being as round and vapid as the brush could draw them" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. iii. ch. iii. § 8). Equally deficient is the colour of the sky:--

"It is here high noon, as is shown by the shadow of the
figures; and what sort of colour is the sky at the top of the
picture? Is it pale and gray with heat, full of sunshine,
and unfathomable in depth? On the contrary, it is of a pitch
of darkness which, except on Mont Blanc or Chimborazo, is as
purely impossible as colour can be. He might as well have
painted it coal-black: and it is laid on with a dead coat of
flat paint, having no one quality or resemblance of sky about
it. It cannot have altered, because the land horizon is as
delicate and tender in tone as possible, and is evidently
unchanged; and to complete the absurdity of the whole thing,
this colour holds its own, without gradation or alteration, to
within three or four degrees of the horizon, where it suddenly
becomes bold and unmixed yellow. Now the horizon at noon may be
yellow when the whole sky is covered with dark clouds, and only
_one_ open streak of light left in the distance from which the
whole light proceeds; but with a clear, open sky, and opposite
the sun, at noon, such a yellow horizon as this is physically
impossible.... We have in this sky (and it is a fine picture,
one of the best of Gaspar's that I know) a notable example of
the truth of the old masters--two impossible colours impossibly
united!... Nor is this a solitary instance; it is Gaspar
Poussin's favourite and characteristic effect" (_ibid._, vol.
i. pt. ii. sec. iii. ch. i. § 10).

Lastly, the same want of truth is shown in the wide expanse stretching away to the distance:--

"It is luminous, retiring, delicate and perfect in tone, and
is quite complete enough to deceive and delight the careless
eye to which all distances are alike; nay, it is perfect
and masterly, and absolutely right, if we consider it as a
sketch,--as a first plan of a distance, afterwards to be
carried out in detail. But we must remember that all these
alternate spaces of gray and gold are not the landscape itself,
but the treatment of it; not its substance, but its light and
shade. They are just what nature would cast over it, and write
upon it with every cloud, but which she would cast in play, and
without carefulness, as matters of the very smallest possible
importance. All her work and her attention would be given to
bring out from underneath this, and through this, the forms
and the material character which this can only be valuable to
illustrate, not to conceal. Every one of those broad spaces she
would linger over in protracted delight, teaching you fresh
lessons in every hair's-breadth of it, until the mind lost
itself in following her; now fringing the dark edge of the
shadow with a tufted line of level forest; now losing it for an
instant in a breath of mist; then breaking it with the white
gleaming angle of a narrow brook; then dwelling upon it again
in a gentle, mounded, melting undulation, over the other side
of which she would carry you down into a dusty space of soft
crowded light, with the hedges and the paths and the sprinkled
cottages and scattered trees mixed up and mingled together in
one beautiful, delicate, impenetrable mystery, sparkling and
melting, and passing away into the sky, without one line of
distinctness, or one instant of vacancy"[65] (_ibid._, vol. i.
pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. v. § 8).

32. THE RAPE OF GANYMEDE.

_School of Titian. See under 4._

Ganymede--so the Greek story ran--was a beautiful Trojan boy beloved of Jupiter, and was carried off by an eagle to Olympus to be the cup-bearer of the gods. Which things, say some, are an allegory--for "those whom the gods love die young," and are snatched off, it may be, in sudden death, as by an eagle's swoop.

Flushed Ganymede, his rosy thigh
Half-buried in the Eagle's down,
Sole as a flying star shot thro' the sky.

TENNYSON: _Palace of Art_.

This picture was painted, like Tintoret's "Milky Way" (1313) and the four Veroneses (1318, 1324-6), for a compartment of a ceiling. It corresponds with a picture described by Ridolfi as painted by a scholar of Titian, though some connect it rather with Tintoret (see J. B. S. Holborn's _Tintoretto_, 1903, pp. 34, 35). It was formerly in the Colonna Palace: the background is a restoration by Carlo Maratti (_see_ 174).

33. THE VISION OF ST. JEROME.

_Parmigiano_ (Parmese: 1503-1540).

A picture of great interest both for itself and for the
circumstances under which it was painted. Parmigiano was
painting it at Rome in 1527 when the city was sacked by the
army of the Emperor Charles V. under Constable Bourbon. So
intent, says Vasari, was our artist on his work that "when his
own dwelling was filled with certain of these men, who were
Germans, he remained undisturbed by their clamours, and did
not move from his place; arriving in the room therefore, and
finding him thus employed, they stood confounded at the beauty
of the paintings they beheld, and, like good and sensible men
as they must have been, they permitted him to continue his
occupation."[66] Parmigiano had other narrow escapes in his
career, which ultimately came to a bad end, owing, Vasari says,
to his forsaking painting for alchemy, "since he believed
that he should make himself rich much more rapidly by the
congelation of mercury than by his art."