Chapter VIII: Preface: By John Ruskin (6)

Francesco Maria Mazzola was called Parmigiano from Parma, his
birthplace. After Correggio settled there, Parmigiano devoted
himself to the study and imitation of that master. In 1523 he
went to Rome, to study the works of Raphael and Michael Angelo.
In 1531 he returned to Parma, and undertook an important
commission to paint in one of its churches. He was paid in
advance, and when after five years he had not begun the work
he was imprisoned for breach of contract. He was released on
a promise that he would proceed with the frescoes, but he fled
the city, and shortly afterwards died, in his thirty-seventh
year. The chequered life of the artist finds a parallel in the
varying fortunes of his reputation as an artist. He was an
imitator both of Correggio and of Michael Angelo--here, for
instance, the head of the infant Christ recalls the former
master, the figures of St. Jerome and St. John recall the
latter; and in his own day was held to have imitated them
successfully, whilst Vasari adds that "the spirit of Raphael
was said to have passed into Parmigiano." Of one of his works
Reynolds, two hundred years later, expressed himself "at a loss
which to admire most, the correctness of drawing or grandeur
of conception." But the fashion in art has changed since
Reynolds's day, and modern critics have found Parmigiano's work
"incongruous," "insipid," and "affected." This difference of
opinion is well exemplified in the case of this picture. Vasari
calls it "singularly beautiful," and its subsequent popularity
is attested by the number of copies of it extant (visitors on
Students' Days will still often see copyists at work on it).
But other critics have attributed its fame "more to its defects
than its beauties" (Passavant), and have found it "mannered and
theatrical" (Mrs. Jameson), and "a pernicious adaptation of an
incongruous style" (Dr. Richter).

Leaving the visitor to form his own judgment, we may remind him that the subject is a supposed dream of St. Jerome when doing penance in the desert. He is asleep on the ground--doing penance, it might seem from his distorted position, even in his sleep, with a skull before him and a crucifix beside him. He is in the same desert where John the Baptist once preached, and thinking, we may suppose, of him, St. Jerome sees him in vision--with his camel skin about him--pointing upwards to the sky. There is the Virgin Mary seated as queen of heaven on a crescent moon, with a palm branch in her hand--the symbol now, not of martyrdom, but of victory over sin and death. And on her knee is the Divine Child, who rests his right hand on a little book on the Madonna's lap. It is a volume, we may suppose, of the Scriptures which St. Jerome had translated, and the vision thus foreshadows the time when it should be said unto him, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant; ... enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

34. VENUS AND ADONIS.

_Titian_ (Venetian: 1477-1576). _See_ 4.

Venus is endeavouring to detain Adonis from the chase; but the sun is up (see his chariot in the sky) and the young huntsman is eager to be off with his hounds and his spear. The enamoured goddess caresses him, but it will be in vain. For Cupid, the god of love, is not there: he is asleep and at a distance, with his bow and quiver hanging on a tree; and all the blandishments of beauty, unaided by love, are as naught.

Even as the sun with purple-colour'd face
Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheek'd Adonis hied him to the chase;
Hunting he loved, but love he laugh'd to scorn;
Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him,
And like a bold-faced suitor 'gins to woo him.

SHAKESPEARE: _Venus and Adonis_.

This picture (formerly in the Colonna Palace at Rome) is probably a studio-repetition of an original which is now at Madrid, and which was painted by Titian for Philip II. of Spain, then King-Consort of England. It was forwarded to him in London in 1554. The picture is thus forty years later than the "Bacchus and Ariadne," and critics find in it not unjustly a lack of the finer poetry which characterises the earlier classical works of the master. "That the aim of the artist was not a very high one, or this _poesia_ very near to his heart, is demonstrated by the curiously material fashion in which he recommends it to his royal patron. He says that 'if in the _Danaë_ (now at Naples) the forms were to be seen front-wise, here was occasion to look at them from a contrary direction--a pleasant variety for the ornament of a _camerino_.' Our worldly-wise painter evidently knew that material allurements as well as supreme art were necessary to captivate Philip" (Claude Philips: _The Later Work of Titian_, p. 80).

35. BACCHUS AND ARIADNE.

_Titian_ (Venetian: 1477-1576). _See_ 4.

A picture which is at once a school of poetry and a school of art--"in its combination of all the qualities which go to make a great work of art possibly the finest picture in the world" (Poynter). It is a translation on canvas of the scene described in Catullus, where Bacchus, the wine-god, returning with his revel rout from a sacrifice, finds Ariadne on the seashore, after she had been deserted by Theseus, her lover. Bacchus no sooner sees her than he is enamoured and determines to make her his bride--

Bounding along is blooming Bacchus seen,
With all his heart aflame with love for thee,
Fair Ariadne! and behind him, see,
Where Satyrs and Sileni whirl along,
With frenzy fired, a fierce tumultuous throng....
There some wave thyrsi wreathed with ivy, here
Some toss the limbs of a dismembered steer....
Others with open palms the timbrel smite,
Or with their brazen rods make tinklings light.

_Carmen_ lxiv.: Sir T. Martin's translation.

Nothing can be finer than the painter's representation of Bacchus and his rout: there is a "divine inebriety" in the god which is the very "incarnation of the spirit of revelry." "With this telling of the story," says Charles Lamb (Essay on _Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Productions of Modern Art_), "an artist, and no ordinary one, might remain richly proud.... But Titian has recalled past time, and made it contributory with the present to one simultaneous effect. With the desert all ringing with the mad cymbals of his followers, made lucid with the presence and new offers of a god,--as if unconscious of Bacchus, or but idly casting her eyes as upon some unconcerning pageant, her soul undistracted from Theseus, Ariadne is still pacing the solitary shore, in as much heart-silence, and in almost the same local solitude, with which she awoke at daybreak to catch the forlorn last glances of the sail that bore away the Athenian." But though as yet half unconscious, Ariadne is already under her fated star: for above is the constellation of Ariadne's crown--the crown with which Bacchus presented his bride. And observe in connection with the astronomical side of the allegory the figure in Bacchus's train with the serpent round him: this is the serpent-bearer (Milton's "Orphiucus huge") translated to the skies with Bacchus and Ariadne. Notice too another piece of poetry: the marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne took place in the spring, Ariadne herself being the personification of its return, and Bacchus of its gladness; hence the flowers in the foreground which deck his path.

The picture is as full of the painter's art as of the poet's. Note first the exquisite painting of the vine leaves,[67] and of the flowers in the foreground, as an instance of the "constant habit of the great masters to render every detail of their foreground with the most laborious botanical fidelity": "The foreground is occupied with the common blue iris, the _aquilegia_, and the wild rose (more correctly the _Capparis spinosa_); _every stamen_ of which latter is given, while the blossoms and leaves of the columbine (a difficult flower to draw) have been studied with the most exquisite accuracy." But this detail is sought not for its own sake, but only so far as is necessary to mark the typical qualities of beauty in the object. Thus "while every stamen of the rose is given because this was necessary to mark the flower, and while the curves and large characters of the leaves are rendered with exquisite fidelity, there is no vestige of particular texture, of moss, bloom, moisture, or any other accident, no dewdrops, nor flies, nor trickeries of any kind; nothing beyond the simple forms and hues of the flowers, even those hues themselves being simplified and broadly rendered. The varieties of _aquilegia_ have in reality a grayish and uncertain tone of colour, and never attain the purity of blue with which Titian has gifted his flower. But the master does not aim at the particular colour of individual blossoms; he seizes the type of all, and gives it with the utmost purity and simplicity of which colour is capable." A second point to be noticed is the way in which one kind of truth has often to be sacrificed in order to gain another. Thus here Titian sacrifices truth of aerial effect to richness of tone--tone in the sense, that is, of that quality of colour which makes us feel that the whole picture is in one climate, under one kind of light, and in one kind of atmosphere. "It is difficult to imagine anything more magnificently impossible than the blue of the distant landscape; impossible, not from its vividness, but because it is not faint and aerial enough to account for its purity of colour; it is too dark and blue at the same time; and there is indeed so total a want of atmosphere in it, that, but for the difference of form, it would be impossible to tell the mountains intended to be ten miles off, from the robe of Ariadne close to the spectator. Yet make this blue faint, aerial, and distant; make it in the slightest degree to resemble the tint of nature's colour; and all the tone of the picture, all the intensity and splendour, will vanish on the instant" (_Modern Painters_, vols. i., xxvii., xxx. (Preface to the Second Edition), pt. i. sec. ii. ch. i. § 5, pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. i. § 15; vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. ix. § 18; vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iii. § 31; _Arrows of the Chace_, i. 58). We may notice lastly what Sir Joshua Reynolds points out (Discourse viii.), that the harmony of the picture--that wonderful bringing together of two times of which Lamb speaks above, is assisted by the distribution of colours. "To Ariadne is given (say the critics) a red scarf, to relieve the figure from the sea, which is behind her. It is not for that reason alone, but for another of much greater consequence; for the sake of the general harmony and effect of the picture. The figure of Ariadne is separated from the great group, and is dressed in blue, which, added to the colour of the sea, makes that quantity of cold colour which Titian thought necessary for the support and brilliancy of the great group; which group is composed, with very little exception, entirely of mellow colours. But as the picture in this case would be divided into two distinct parts, one half cold and the other warm, it was necessary to carry some of the mellow colours of the great group into the cold part of the picture, and a part of the cold into the great group; accordingly, Titian gave Ariadne a red scarf, and to one of the Bacchantes a little blue drapery."

This famous picture was a commission from the Duke Alfonso I. of Ferrara. There were great delays in its delivery, the Duke and his agents resorting alternately to threats and cajolery in order to extract the promised canvas from the painter. Among other excuses Titian said he had no canvas for it. The Duke supplied the canvas, and sent at the same time a frame. But the picture did not come. Ultimately Titian took it with him to Ferrara in 1522, and finished it there. He seems to have been engaged on it, off and on, for some three years. The picture subsequently passed into the Aldobrandini collection at Rome, from which it was purchased for an English collector in 1806. Twenty years later it was acquired by the National Gallery.

36. A LAND STORM.

_Gaspard Poussin_ (French: 1613-1675). _See_ 31.

The one gleam of light breaking through the clouds falls on the watch tower of a castle, perched on a rock--"a stately image of stability," where all things else are bent beneath the power of the storm. The spirit of the picture is, however, better than its execution. Take, for instance, the clouds. They are mere "massive concretions of ink and indigo, wrung and twisted very hard, apparently in a vain effort to get some moisture out of them" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. iii. ch. iv. § 6). In the tree forms, again, Ruskin sees a concentration of errors. "Gaspard Poussin, by his bad drawing, does not make his stem strong, but his tree weak; he does not make his gust violent, but his boughs of Indian-rubber" (for details of this criticism see _ibid._, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. vi. ch. i. §§ 12, 13).

37. _See under_ 7.

38. THE ABDUCTION OF THE SABINE WOMEN.

_Rubens_ (Flemish: 1577-1640).

Peter Paul Rubens, born on the festival of Saints Peter and
Paul (hence his Christian name), is the chief glory of the
Flemish School, and one of the great masters of the world. It
is impossible to walk round any gallery where there are good
specimens of his work and not to be impressed at once with his
_power_. Here, one feels, is a strong man, who knew what he
wanted to paint, and was able to paint it. Whatever moral or
poetical feelings he had or had not, he was at any rate master
of the painter's language,[68] and this language is itself "so
difficult and so vast, that the mere possession of it argues
the man is great, and that his works are worth reading." "I
have never spoken," says Ruskin elsewhere, "and I never will
speak of Rubens but with the most reverential feeling; and
whatever imperfections in his art may have resulted from his
unfortunate want of seriousness and incapability of true
passion, his calibre of mind was originally such that I
believe the world may see another Titian and another Raphael,
before it sees another Rubens." Rubens affords, in fact, "the
Northern parallel to the power of the Venetians." Like the
Venetians, too, he is a _great colourist_. The pictures by the
later Northern painters which here hang around his are dark
and gloomy; his are all bright and golden. He is like Paul
Veronese, too, in his "gay grasp of the outside aspects of the
world."[69] His pictures in this Gallery embrace a wide range
of subjects--some peaceful, others tumultuous--some religious,
others profane, but over them all is the same _gay glamour_,
"Alike, to Rubens, came subjects of tumult or tranquillity, of
gaiety or terror; the nether, earthly, and upper world were to
him animated with the same feeling, lighted by the same sun; he
dyed in the same lake of fire the warp of the wedding-garment
or of the winding-sheet; swept into the same delirium the
recklessness of the sensualist and rapture of the anchorite;
saw in tears only their glittering, and in torture only its
flush." A fourth characteristic, which also cannot fail to
be perceived in a general survey of Rubens's pictures in the
Gallery, remains to be noticed. In all his exuberant joyousness
is a strain of _coarseness_, "a want of feeling for grace and
mystery." "There is an absence everywhere of refinement and
delicacy, a preference everywhere for abundant and excessive
types." He would have agreed, one may think, with the saying
of Blake (in the _Marriage of Heaven and Hell_), "exuberance
is beauty,"--Madonnas, goddesses, Roman matrons, have all
alike a touch of grossness. Rubens, says Fromentin, "is very
earthy, more earthy than any among the masters whose equal he
is, but the painter comes to the aid of the draughtsman and the
thinker, and sets them free." To like effect Heine speaks of
"the colossal good humour of that Netherlands Titan, the wings
of whose spirit were so strong that they bore him up to the
sun, in spite of the hundredweights of Dutch cheese hanging to
his legs."

It is instructive to notice how the art of Rubens was
characteristic of the circumstances of his life and time. In
the first place, though he travelled in many lands, Rubens
remained to the end a Fleming, every inch of him.[70] "A man
long trained to love the monk's visions of Fra Angelico,
turns in proud and ineffable disgust from the first work of
Rubens which he encounters on his return across the Alps. But
is he right in his indignation? He has forgotten that while
Angelico prayed and wept in his _olive shade_, there was
different work doing in the dank fields of Flanders;--wild
seas to be banked out; endless canals to be dug, and boundless
marshes to be drained; hard ploughing and harrowing of the
frosty clay; careful breeding of stout horses and fat cattle;
close setting of brick walls against cold winds and snow;
much hardening of hands and gross stoutening of bodies in
all this; gross jovialities of harvest homes and Christmas
feasts which were to be the reward of it; rough affections,
and sluggish imaginations; fleshy, substantial, iron-shod
humanities, but humanities still; humanities which God had
his eye upon, and which won, perhaps, here and there, as much
favour in his sight as the wasted aspects of the whispering
monks of Florence. (Heaven forbid it should not be so, since
the most of us cannot be monks, but must be ploughmen and
reapers still.) And are we to suppose there is no nobility in
Rubens's masculine and universal sympathy with all this, and
with his large human rendering of it, Gentleman though he was,
by birth, and feeling, and education, and place; and, when he
chose, lordly in conception also? He had his faults, perhaps
great and lamentable faults, though more those of his time and
his country than his own; he has neither cloister breeding nor
boudoir breeding, and is very unfit to paint either in missals
or annuals; but he has an open sky and wide-world breeding in
him, that we may not be offended with, fit alike for king's
court, knight's camp, or peasant's cottage." It is thus that
Rubens was a child of Flanders. But he was also a child of
the intellectual time in which he lived. He was born at a
time, says Ruskin, when the Reformation had been arrested--his
father, curiously enough, had fled from Antwerp as a Reformer,
but afterwards returned to Catholicism. "The Evangelicals
despised the arts, while the Roman Catholics were effete or
insincere, and could not retain influence over men of strong
reasoning power. The painters could only associate frankly with
men of the world, and themselves became men of the world. Men,
I mean, having no belief in spiritual existences, no interests
or affections beyond the grave. Not but that they still painted
Scriptural subjects. Altarpieces were wanted occasionally,
and pious patrons sometimes commissioned a cabinet Madonna.
But there is just this difference between men of this modern
period and the Florentines or Venetians--that, whereas the
latter never exert themselves fully except on a sacred subject,
the Flemish and Dutch masters are always languid unless they
are profane." Rubens was thus a man of the world. When a
boy he was for some time page in the family of a countess
at Brussels. But his bent towards art was too strong to be
gainsaid. When only twenty-two he was already a master-painter
in the Antwerp Guild. Two years later he went to Italy, and
for eight years he was in the service of the Duke of Mantua.
An excellent Latin scholar, he was also proficient in French,
Italian, English, German, and Dutch. These gifts procured him
diplomatic employment. In 1603 "the Fleming," as they called
him, was sent on a mission to Spain. In 1608 news of his
mother's illness reached him, and he hastened home, when he was
appointed court-painter to the Archduke Albert, then Governor
of the Netherlands. In 1620 he visited Paris, at the invitation
of Mary de' Medici (a sister of the Duchess of Mantua), and
received the commission for the celebrated series of pictures
now in the Louvre, commemorating the marriage of that princess
with Henry IV. of France. In 1628 Rubens was sent on a
mission to Philip IV. of Spain, and made the acquaintance of
Velazquez. The great decorative master and the great realist
(his junior by twenty-two years) painted together, travelled
together, and talked together for eight or nine months. Rubens,
we are told, was never so well pleased as when he was in the
company of Velazquez, and Velazquez showed no resentment at
the commissions given by the court to the foreign painter. In
1629 Rubens was sent to Charles I. of England (_see under_ 46),
by whom, in the following year, he was knighted. He was also
given an honorary degree by the University of Cambridge. On
this occasion, Rubens was commissioned to paint the pictures
which adorn the ceiling of the Banqueting Hall of Whitehall
(now the United Service Institution). Wherever he went Rubens
continued to paint, and his diplomacy he considered as mere
recreation. "The painter Rubens," he is reported to have said
of himself, "amuses himself with being ambassador." "So said
one with whom, but for his own words, we might have thought
that effort had been absorbed in power, and the labour of
his art in its felicity." How hard he laboured is known by
the enormous number of his works which still survive, by the
large fortune he amassed, and by the great request in which
his talents were held. "Whatever work of his I may require,"
wrote a celebrated Antwerp printer, "I have to ask him six
months before, so as that he may think of it at leisure, and do
the work on Sundays or holidays; no week-days of his could I
pretend to get under 100 florins." But of the several thousands
of works ascribed to the master, many were painted from his
sketches by pupils and assistants. "To put it plainly, Rubens
established a picture factory at Antwerp. He was thus enabled
to paint portraits, landscapes, hunting scenes, and pictures
of _genre_, as well as to undertake several series of gigantic
decorations as important as those of Raphael or Michael
Angelo. The master made small, lively sketches of the work to
be done, the pupils laid them in, each doing what suited his
talent, while Rubens reserved to himself the duty of bringing
the picture together; in some cases by using the work beneath
as a ground for almost complete repainting, in most cases by
mainly correcting here and there, or enhancing the effect with
a few brilliant and dexterous touches" (R. A. M. Stevenson's
"_Portfolio_ monograph" on Rubens). Brueghel, Snyders, Teniers,
and Van Dyck were among his assistants. Some of Rubens's
letters contain curious information on his methods. Thus he
offers to Sir Dudley Carleton certain pictures in exchange for
a collection of antique marbles. Among them was to be "'A Last
Judgment,' begun by one of my pupils after an original which I
made of much larger size for the Prince of Neubourg, who paid
me for it 3500 florins in ready money. As the present piece is
not quite finished, I will retouch it altogether by myself, so
that it can pass for an original: 1200 florins."

Rubens was unspoilt by success. Like many other great artists,
he is conspicuous for "a quite curious gentleness and serene
courtesy.... His letters are almost ludicrous in their
unhurried politeness. He was an honourable and entirely
well-intentioned man, earnestly industrious, simple and
temperate in habits of life, highbred, learned, and discreet.
His affection for his mother was great, his generosity to
contemporary artists unfailing." He was twice married. In
1626 his first wife, Isabella Brant, died. Four years later
he married Helena Fourment, a beautiful girl of sixteen, the
living incarnation of his feminine type. "At the time of his
second marriage Rubens was fifty-three years of age. He led
a serious, happy, retired life. His leisure time he devoted
to his family, to a few friends, to his correspondence, his
collections, and his rides." "In the morning," we read, "he
rose very early, and while he painted someone read aloud Livy,
Plutarch, Cicero, Virgil or other poets. Then he would stroll
in his gallery to stimulate his taste by the sight of the works
of art he had brought from Italy. On other occasions he would
study science, in which he always retained an active interest.
Although he lived splendidly, he ate and drank moderately, and
the gout from which he suffered in later life was certainly
undeserved. He painted in the afternoon till towards evening,
when he mounted a horse and rode out of the town." His house
at Antwerp still stands; as also does his country-house, near
Mechlin, of which there is a view in our Gallery (No. 66)
(_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 15, sec.
ii. ch. ii. § 12; vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. i. § 2; vol.
iv. pt. v. ch. i. § 17; vol. v. pt. viii. ch. iv. § 21, pt.
ix. ch. vi. §§ 1-9; _On the Old Road_, i. 185, 186; _Stones of
Venice_, vol. i. App. 15; Wauters, _The Flemish School_, p.
214).

"A miracle of agitation. A flush tide of the richest colour, which positively seems to boil up in swirling eddies of harmonious form. Its whole surface is swept by lines which rush each other on like the rapid successive entrances of an excited _stretto_, till the violent movement seems to undulate the entire pattern of the picture" (R. A. M. Stevenson: _Velazquez_, 1899, p. 51). As for the subject, see for the story of the Sabine women under 644. But the subject in this case does not greatly matter. "Rubens in one of his most marvellous pictures, the Rape of the Sabines, which hangs in the National Gallery, did not even take the trouble to dress his Sabines in the costumes of their day. Without any more ado he dressed them in the style of the seventeenth century. One might rather think it a kidnapping of beautiful Antwerp women on a Flemish fair-day. But what difference does it make? He has _made_ white shoulders that shine, sumptuous stuffs, warriors with glittering arms--all which is instinct with life, and blazes with the deepest colouring of the greatest of Flemish masters. The colourists have never considered the subject otherwise than as a means of representing life under such and such actions, or such and such aspects, joyful or sad, or simply plastic" (Benjamin Constant in _North American Review_, Nov. 1900).

39. THE NURSING OF BACCHUS.

_Nicolas Poussin_ (French: 1593[71]-1665).

The life of Nicolas Poussin may be summed up in the cry of
Æneas, _Italiam petimus_--we make for Italy. He was born in
Normandy, of a noble family, and first learnt painting under
Quintin Varin at Les Andelys. When eighteen he went to Paris
and became acquainted with Courtois, the mathematician, whose
collection of Italian prints fired him with a desire to go to
Rome. This devotion to Rome became from that day the leading
point alike in his life and in his art. Among the artist
friends of his wandering years was Philippe de Champaigne
(see under 798). After several unsuccessful efforts to get to
Rome, Poussin made the acquaintance at Lyons of the Italian
poet Marino, who invited him to Rome (1624), and introduced
him to Cardinal Barberini. The Cardinal, however, was called
away, and for a time Poussin's life in Rome was one of severe
struggle. He also fell ill, and was nursed by a compatriot,
Dughet, whose daughter he afterwards married. The wife brought
her husband a comfortable dowry, with which a house was bought,
and the painter, now released from the pinch of poverty, was
able to give free play to his talents. In 1640 he returned to
Paris, where he was introduced by Richelieu (for whom amongst
other pictures he painted No. 62 in this Gallery) to Louis
XIII. The king appointed him his painter-in-ordinary, with a
salary of £120 and rooms in the Tuileries, but two years later,
disgusted with the intrigues and jealousies of Paris, and being
anxious to rejoin his wife, he returned to Rome, where he
remained--full of work--for the rest of his life. His house on
the Pincian, adjoining the church of the Trinita, may still be
seen, and he is buried in the church of St. Lorenzo. Poussin,
says his biographer, Bellori, led a regular life, rising early
and taking a walk for one or two hours, sometimes in the city,
but more often on Monte Pincio, not far from his house. From
these lovely gardens he could enjoy the view of Rome on its
hills; there he met his friends and discoursed on curious and
learned topics. "In the evening he went out again and walked
on the Piazza di Spagna, at the foot of the hill, in the midst
of the strangers who congregate there. He always had friends
with him, and often they made a kind of retinue. He spoke often
of art, and so clearly, that artists and all cultivated men of
talent came to hear his beautiful and profound thoughts about
painting." "During my sojourn in Rome," says a traveller of
that period, "I often saw Poussin. I admired the extreme love
this excellent painter had for perfection in his art. I met
him among the ruins of Rome, in the Campagna, and on the banks
of the Tiber, and I saw him carry home stones, moss, flowers,
and other things, in order to paint them from nature. One
day I asked him how he had attained such an elevation among
the greatest artists of Italy. He answered modestly, 'I have
neglected nothing.'"

It is Rome which gives the leading idea also to Poussin's
art. He has been called the "Raphael of France"; and certain
it is that at a time when the local art of France was purely
decorative in character, he returned, and strenuously adhered,
to classical traditions. Already at Paris he had studied casts
and prints after Raphael; and when he first went to Rome he
lived with Du Quesnoy ("Il Fiammingo"), under whom he learnt
the art of modelling _bassi-relievi_. He also studied anatomy,
and attended the academy of Domenichino, whom he considered
the first master in Rome. His profound classical learning has
caused him to be called "the learned Poussin." "He studied the
beautiful," says his biographer, "in the Greek statues of the
Vatican." "He studied the ancients so much," says Sir Joshua
Reynolds, "that he acquired a habit of thinking in their way,
and seemed to know perfectly the actions and gestures they
would use on every occasion." His learning went, however,
farther than this in its influence on his art. His ideal, says
Lanzi, was that of "philosophy in painting"; and in one of his
letters Poussin illustrates the idea from the Greek theory
of "modes" in music. If a subject were serious, it should be
painted in the Doric mode; if vehement, in the Phrygian; if
plaintive, in the Lydian; if joyous, in the Ionic.[72] This
classical learning of Poussin was the source at once of his
strength and of his weakness as an artist. On the one hand, it
often made his work wonderfully harmonious and impressive. Thus
in the Ionic mode, his Bacchanalian pictures in this Gallery
and elsewhere are nearly the best representations in art of
the Epicurean ideal of life, of a world in which enjoyment is
the end of existence. "His best works," says Ruskin, "are his
Bacchanalian revels, always brightly wanton, full of frisk and
fire; but they are coarser than Titian's[73] and infinitely
less beautiful. In all minglings of the human and brutal
character he leans on the bestial, yet with a sternly Greek
severity of treatment." Again, in more serious Doric mode, he
is "the great master of the elevated ideal of landscape." He
does not "put much power into his landscape when it becomes
principal; the best pieces of it occur in fragments behind
his figures. Beautiful vegetation, more or less ornamental in
character, occurs in nearly all his mythological subjects, but
his pure landscape is notable only for its dignified reserve;
the great squareness and horizontality of its masses, with
lowness of tone, giving it a deeply meditative character:"
see especially 40. On the other hand, he had the defects of
his training. It made him too restrained and too cold. "His
peculiarities are, without exception, weaknesses, induced
in a highly intellectual and inventive mind by being fed on
medals, books, and _bassi-relievi_ instead of nature, and by
the want of any deep sensibility." Thus he "had noble powers of
design, and might have been a thoroughly great painter had he
been trained in Venice;[74] but his Roman education kept him
tame; his trenchant severity was contrary to the tendencies
of his age, and had few imitators, compared to the dashing of
Salvator and the mist of Claude. These few imitators adopted
his manner without possessing either his science or invention;
and the Italian School of landscape soon expired.... This
restraint, peculiarly classical, is much too manifest in him;
for, owing to his habit of never letting himself be free, he
does nothing as well as it ought to be done, rarely even as
well as he can himself do it; and his best beauty is poor,
incomplete and characterless, though refined." Finally, his
"want of sensibility permits him to paint frightful subjects
without feeling any true horror; his pictures of the plague
are thus ghastly in incident, sometimes disgusting, but never
impressive:" see 165 (collected from _Modern Painters_, vol. i.
preface, p. xxv., pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 14; vol. ii. pt.
iii. sec. ii. ch. ii. § 19; vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. xviii. § 28;
vol. v. pt. ix. ch. v. § 17).

The wine-god is represented in infancy, nursed by the nymphs and fauns of Euboea, and fed not on milk but on the juice of the grape. "The picture makes one thirsty to look at it--the colouring even is dry and adust. The figure of the infant Bacchus seems as if he would drink up a vintage--he drinks with his mouth, his hands, his belly, and his whole body. Gargantua was nothing to him" (Hazlitt: _Criticisms on Art_, p. 33).

40. LANDSCAPE: PHOCION.

_Nicolas Poussin_ (French: 1593-1665). _See_ 39.

"The work of a really great and intellectual mind, one of the finest landscapes that ancient art has produced"[75] (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. i. § 8),--its excellence consisting in the perfect harmony of the landscape with the subject represented, and thus marking the painter's sense of the dependence of landscape for its greatest impressiveness on human interest. In the foreground to the left is Phocion "the good"--the incorruptible Athenian general and statesman, contemporary with Philip and Alexander the Great, of whom it is recorded that he was "never elated in prosperity nor dejected in adversity," and "never betrayed pusillanimity by a tear nor joy by a smile." He wears an undyed robe, and is washing his feet at a public fountain, the dress and action being thus alike emblematic of the purity and simplicity of his life. In entire keeping with this figure of noble simplicity is the feeling of the landscape in which "all the air a solemn stillness holds." In detail, however, Ruskin finds the picture deficient in truth--false, indeed, both in tone and colour (see _ibid._, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. ii. § 5).

41. THE DEATH OF PETER MARTYR.

_Ascribed to Cariani. See under_ 1203.

For the legend, see under 812--a more pleasing version of the same subject. The man was afterwards regarded as a martyr and canonised; and here, too, notice that he is made to see the angels as he dies.

42. A BACCHANALIAN FESTIVAL.

_Nicolas Poussin_ (French: 1593-1665). _See_ 39.

A realisation of the classic legends of mirth and jollity,
precisely in the spirit of Keats's ode _On a Grecian Urn_--

What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

"This masterpiece, conceived in the manner of Titian and imbued
with the spirit of the antique, full of life, and incomparable
for its qualities of drawing and painting, is perhaps the most
beautiful work which Nicolas Poussin ever painted, and, with
the 'Bacchanalian Dance' (No. 62), is among the most valued
possessions of the National Gallery" (Poynter: _The National
Gallery_, ii. 104).

43. CHRIST TAKEN DOWN FROM THE CROSS.

_Rembrandt_ (Dutch: 1606-1669). _See_ 45.

A sketch for a composition which Rembrandt etched and also drew. The drawing is in the British Museum. This sketch was formerly in the possession of Sir Joshua Reynolds, at whose sale it was bought by Sir George Beaumont.

44. A BLEACHING GROUND.

_J. van Ruysdael_ (Dutch: 1628-1682). _See_ 627.

This little picture, which dates from the earliest days of the National Gallery, was for many years obscured with dirt and not exhibited to the public. It has recently been cleaned, and shows one of the painter's favourite subjects--the bleaching grounds in the neighbourhood of Haarlem. Before the discovery of chemical means of bleaching linen, these were a great source of income to the town. Linen was brought here from all parts of the continent to be bleached, and then went back as Dutch linen or Holland.

45. THE WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY.

_Rembrandt_ (Dutch: 1606-1669).

Rembrandt Harmensz--called also Van Rhyn, "of the Rhine," from
having been born on the banks of that river--has a place apart
by himself in the history of painting. He is the greatest
genius of the Dutch School, and one of the six supreme masters
of the world. He is also one of the most distinctive and
individual of them all. In what, let us ask, do the genius and
the individuality of Rembrandt consist? In the first place, his
mastery of the resources of painting, within the sphere and
for the ideals he chose for himself, is surpassed by no other
artist. "It will be remembered," said Millais, "that Rembrandt
in his first period was very careful and minute in detail,
and there is evidence of stippling in his flesh-painting;
but when he grew older, and in the fulness of his power, all
appearance of such manipulation and minuteness vanished in the
breadth and facility of his brush, though the advantage of
his early manner remained. The latter manner is, of course,
much the finer and really the more finished of the two.[76] I
have closely examined his pictures at the National Gallery,
and have actually _seen_, beneath that grand veil of breadth,
the early work that his art conceals from untrained eyes--the
whole science of painting. And herein lies his superiority
to Velazquez, who, with all his mighty power and magnificent
execution, never rose to the perfection which, above all with
painters, consists in _ars celare artem_" (_Magazine of Art_,
1888, p. 291). "Rembrandt," says Sir Frederic Burton, "would
have been unparalleled had he treated nothing but frivolous
subjects"; but, in the second place, "the artist was a poet
and a seer." He was a seer in his penetration into the mind of
man; a poet in his perception of a special kind of beauty. His
portraits have "an inward life that belongs to no others in a
like degree." It is as a painter of character that he shows
himself supreme, bringing out the personality of his sitters
in their gestures and attitudes, and in the peculiarity of
bearing and expression stamped upon them by temperament and
habits. From his dramatic action and mastery of expression,
Rembrandt has been called "the Shakespeare of Holland." In his
religious subjects, the originality of his mind and power of
his imagination are also conspicuous. "He gives," says Ruskin,
"pathetic or powerful fancies, founded on real Scripture
reading, and on his interest in the picturesque character of
the Jew." In all subjects alike, "he moves us by his profound
sympathy with his kind, by his tragic power, by his deep
pathos, by his humour, which is thoroughly human and seldom
cynical." What he held up to nature--and herein is Rembrandt's
individuality most marked--was the dark mirror. "He was," says
Leighton, "the supreme painter who revealed to the world the
poetry of twilight and all the magic mystery of gloom." "He was
in the mystery," says Burton, "that underlies the surface of
things." "He accosts with his dark lantern," says Fromentin,
"the world of the marvellous, of conscience, and the ideal; he
has no master in the art of painting, because he has no equal
in the power of showing the invisible." "It was his function,"
says another critic, "to introduce mystery as an element of
effect in the imitative arts." "As by a stroke of enchantment
Rembrandt brought down a cloud over the face of nature, and
beneath it, half-revealed, half-hidden, her shapes met the
eye in aspects full of new suggestion."[77] In the technical
method by which Rembrandt worked out his ideal he is the great
master of the school of chiaroscuro--of those, that is, who
strive at representing not so much the colours of objects,
as the contrasts of light and shade upon them. "If it were
possible for art to give all the truths of nature it ought to
do it. But this is not possible. Choice must always be made
of some facts which _can_ be represented from among others
which must be passed by in silence, or even, in some respects,
misrepresented.... Rembrandt always chooses to represent the
exact force with which the light on the most illumined part
of an object is opposed to its obscurer portions. In order
to obtain this, in most cases, not very important truth, he
sacrifices the light and colour of five-sixths of his picture;
and the expression of every character of objects which
depends on tenderness of shape or tint. But he obtains his
single truth, and what picturesque and forcible expression is
dependent upon it, with magnificent skill and subtlety."[78]
Rembrandt "sacrifices the light and colour of five-sixths of
his picture." This is inevitable. For both the light and the
darkness of nature are inimitable by art. "The whole question,
therefore, is simply whether you will be false at one end of
the scale or at the other--that is, whether you will lose
yourself in light or in darkness.... What Veronese does is
to make his colours true to nature as far as he can. What
Rembrandt does is to make his contrasts true, never minding
his colours--with the result that in most cases not one colour
is absolutely true."[79] An exception, however, must be made.
For he often "chose subjects in which the real colours were
very nearly imitable,--as single heads with dark backgrounds,
in which nature's highest light was little above his own." He
was particularly fond also of dark scenes lighted only by some
small spot of light; as, for instance, in this picture and in
No. 47.

The technical skill and sense of power which distinguish
Rembrandt's work are reflected in his life--a life of hard
labour, sinking towards its close into deep gloom, and a life
at all times of a certain aloofness and of restricted vision.
He was born at Leyden, being the fifth child of a miller, and
from a very early age set himself to etch and sketch the common
things about the mill. "His father's mill was, doubtless,
Rembrandt's school; the strong and solitary light, with its
impenetrable obscurity around, the characteristic feature of
many of Rembrandt's best works, is just such an effect as would
be produced by the one ray admitted into the lofty chamber of a
mill from the small window, its ventilator" (Wornum). He never
went to Italy or cultivated the grand style. He studied the
life and manner of his own time and people. His models were
not conspicuous for elegance; beauty of form was not within
the compass of his art. He was indefatigable in making studies
both of himself and of his mother. Among the things he studied
were, it must be admitted, the lowest functions of humanity and
often obscenities of a rollicking kind; coarseness of manner
and conversation was common at that time. Rembrandt studied for
a short period under a well-known painter, Pieter Lastman, at
Amsterdam, where he had for a fellow-pupil a fellow-townsman,
Jan Lievens (see 1095), but returned to Leyden in 1624,
determined "to study and practise in his own fashion." He soon
acquired a considerable reputation; a Dutch poet, in a book
published in 1630, refers to him as an instance of precocity,
and in disproof of the doctrine of heredity. Rembrandt,
"beardless, yet already famous," was the son of a miller, "made
of other flour than his father's." As most of his sitters lived
in Amsterdam, then a great centre of wealth and learning,
Rembrandt moved to that city in 1631. The famous "Anatomy
Lesson," now in the Museum at the Hague, was produced in the
following year. "He lived very simply," we are told, "and when
at work contented himself with a herring or a piece of cheese
and bread; his only extravagance was a passion for collecting."
In 1634 he married Saskia Uilenburg, a lady of a good Frisian
family, and possessed of some fortune. Her features may be
recognised in a large number of the painter's pictures; in none
more attractively rendered than in the famous picture of the
Dresden Gallery, in which she is sitting on her husband's knee.
During this period of Rembrandt's life all went well with him.
Commissions poured in; his studio was crowded with scholars,
and his etchings spread his fame far beyond his native land.
He lived for his art and his home, mixing little in society.
"When I want to give my wits a rest," he said, "I do not look
for honour, but for liberty." "When he was painting," said
one of his biographers, "he would not have given audience
to the greatest monarch on earth, but would have compelled
even such an one to wait or to come again when he was more at
leisure." He never travelled, even in Holland, and he dwelt
apart. He had few books, but his taste in art was catholic.
To his passion for collecting we have already referred. His
house, which still stands in the Breedstraat, was a museum of
curiosities, containing costly materials, stuffed animals,
richly ornamented weapons, casts, engravings, and pictures
(including works by Palma Vecchio and Giorgione). The pearls,
precious stones, rich necklaces, clasps and bracelets of every
kind that Saskia wears in her portraits were not gems of the
painter's imagination, but actual objects from the jewel-cases
which he filled for his wife. "When Rembrandt was present
at a sale," says Baldinucci, "it was his habit, especially
when pictures drawn by great masters were put up, to make an
enormous advance on the first bid, which generally silenced all
competition. To those who expressed their surprise at such a
proceeding, he replied that by this means he hoped to raise the
status of his profession." This lordly buying was the undoing
of Rembrandt's worldly fortunes. In 1642 Saskia died, and his
financial embarrassments, which had already begun, went from
worse to worse. In 1656 he was declared bankrupt; his house and
collections were sold, and at the age of fifty-one he found
himself homeless and penniless. He was stripped, we read, even
of his household linen, though of this, to be sure, he seems to
have had but a meagre store. In his life, as in his art, there
were heavy shadows; but the light shines out in his undaunted
perseverance. He had lived for some years with his servant,
Hendrickje Stoffels, an uneducated peasant, who served him as a
model, and whose homely features appear in many of the pictures
of his middle period (_see e.g._ No. 54). In 1654 Rembrandt had
been summoned before the elders of the Church on account of the
irregularity of their relationship. But Hendrickje was a good
mother to Rembrandt's legitimate children as well as to her
own, and in 1660 she and the painter's son, Titus, entered into
partnership as art dealers, and supported Rembrandt by the sale
of his etchings. His vogue as a painter had by this time been
eclipsed by the popularity of painters of less sombre genius.
Fallen from his rich estate and frowned upon by the Church, the
master found himself in the last period of his life deserted
and unhonoured. Yet to this period belong many of his noblest
works. "He had never cared," says M. Michel, "for the suffrages
of the crowd. He set his face more steadily than ever towards
the goal he had marked out for himself. Within the walls of
his makeshift studios, seeking solace in work and meditation,
he lived for his art more absolutely than before; and some
of his creations of this period have a poetry and a depth
of expression such as he had never hitherto achieved." But
fresh sorrows descended upon the master as the end drew near.
Hendrickje died about 1664, and this blow was followed in 1668
by the death of Titus. Crushed in spirit and broken by poverty,
the old painter did not long survive his son. He died in
1669--unknown, unrecorded, and dishonoured. Gerard de Lairesse,
then at the height of his reputation, said of him only that he
was a master "who merely achieved an effect of rottenness,"
and was "capable of nothing but vulgar and prosaic subjects."
Now, two centuries and a quarter after his death, Rembrandt's
fame stands higher than even in the heyday of his success. His
work as a painter is represented in the National Gallery by
several masterpieces. Of his drawings and etchings the British
Museum possesses a splendid collection; an exhibition of these
(illustrated by an admirable Catalogue) was arranged in 1899.

A _tour de force_ in the artist's speciality of contrasts of light and shade. Notice how a succession of these contrasts gradually renders the subject intelligible. "The eye falls at once upon the woman, who is dressed in white, passes then to the figure of Christ, which next to her is the most strongly lighted--and so on to Peter, to the Pharisees, to the soldiers, till at length it perceives in the mysterious gloom of the Temple the High Altar, with the worshippers on the steps" (Waagen: _Treasures of Art in Great Britain_, i. 353). "Beyond the ordinary claims of art, this picture commands our attention from the grand conception of the painter, who here, as in other pictures and etchings, has invested Christ with a majestic dignity which recalls Leonardo and no other" (J. F. White).

This picture, which was painted in 1644 for Jan Six, the well-known patron of Rembrandt, passed eventually into the possession of Mr. Angerstein. The poet Wordsworth, describing a visit he paid to the Angerstein collection, wrote to Sir George Beaumont in 1808: "Coleridge and I availed ourselves of your letters to Lawrence, and saw Mr. Angerstein's pictures. The day was very unfavourable, not a gleam of sun, and the clouds were quite in disgrace. The great picture of Michael Angelo and Sebastian (No. 1) pleased me more than ever. The new Rembrandt has, I think, much, very much, in it to admire, but still more to _wonder at_ rather than admire. I have seen many pictures of Rembrandt which I should prefer to it. The light in the _depth_ of the temple is far the finest part of it: indeed, it is the only part of the picture which gives me very _high_ pleasure; but that does highly please me" (_Memorials of Coleorton_, ii. 49).

46. THE BLESSINGS OF PEACE

_Rubens_ (Flemish: 1577-1640). _See_ 38.

This picture was presented in 1630 to King Charles I. by Rubens, when he came to England as accredited ambassador for the purpose of negotiating a peace with Spain. After the death of Charles, the Parliament sold the picture for £100. It passed into the possession of the Doria family at Genoa, where it was known as "The Family of Rubens." It was afterwards bought by the Marquis of Stafford for £3000, and by him presented to the National Gallery.[80]